In an age in which privacy is important we have come to appreciate mannequins. Mannequin Photo Workshop coming soon!!! (Not really....).

 

I reinterpreted my doctor's orders and did a long walk. I took a camera with me. I took my black and white sentiment with me as well. I am wearing an old pair of pants that always fit me perfectly. They still do but now they have spots and splashes of green paint that won't wash out and around the bottom of the trouser legs is some discoloration caused by mishandled bleach. I just couldn't bear to throw the pants out because they fit so well. So comfortable. I've incorporated them into my "street photography uniform" since they seem... worker-esque now. An old, long sleeve t-shirt on top. Some scuffed Birkenstocks on the bottom and I'm good to go. The walk was very productive. So far it's generated images for four blog posts. Amazing what one can accomplish in an hour or so of walking, looking and not worrying about...anything. 

Hey, if you want to see an interesting, current, black and white movie you might be interested in: 

Nouvelle Vague. It's a movie by Richard Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused, Boyhood, etc.) and it's a fictional look at the making of French director, Jean-Luc Goddard's breakthrough, trendsetting 1960s movie, Breathless. Breathless was a movie that changed cinema in a profound way. Handheld camera, black and white, nearly square format, no real script, gorgeous stars. Everything. And Linklater does a masterful job of getting the feel of the older movie reimagining just right. Absolutely just right. 

Admission: I have a copy of "Breathless" in my library. Love every second of it. 

The new movie, Nouvelle Vague just dropped on Netflix. Watch it as many times are you want. A warning for those living in red states: It's mostly in French (a foreign language) and it is subtitled. To get the full value of the movie you need to be able to read.... or understand spoken French.

On to the mannequins... >

Virtual mannequins .

See the reflection on the top right of the mannequin's head?

I used the reflection removal tool in Lightroom on a similar image below

 and with one click removed the entire refection. 

It's seems to have worked flawlessly...

Reflection on head totally erased and replaced with the underlying image.

Loving the Grateful Dead t-shirt.

And the vague attempt at making the glasses fit.

A critic who is unamused. 

A committee meeting at the East Window. 

We will not be at war with Switzerland!

Hurray. 

I'm sure you've been Breathlessly awaiting an update on my medical progress. All good here. Family and staff changing bandages. The sutures look fabulous and will no doubt generate many tall tales about bar room knife fights when I take my shirt off for swim practice. Everything is healing nicely. My GP inspected the work of the specialist and gave his two thumbs up. Guarded optimism everywhere. 

Lots of time to blog. With an edge. Buyers beware. (for the snooty amongst us: Caveat Emptor!).

Yesterday I played with a 90mm lens and the idea of black and white imaging. How to find the tones I like. Not the ones in the textbook..

 

I think it is impossible to explain to anyone else how you see. Literally, how your eyes and your brain interpret the things in front of you that enter your consciousness via your eyeballs, your optic nerves and the interpolation of your own, unique, "Bayer" filter. It's a time honored tradition in philosophy to wonder if the way one person sees the color red is the same way, exactly, that another person sees the color red. When we use science to try and figure out what works and what doesn't we end up with an empty embracing of... "the average." But it's entirely possible that the science is wrong and that colors and shapes are rendered either vaguely or radically different from person to person and culture to culture. 

In 1939 or 1940 (or both) photographer, Ansel Adams, came up with a system for exposing and developing black and white films in a way that gave the resulting material a wide range of tones. The widest range that would fit well on photographic paper and at the same time accurately reflect; to him! the tonality of the scene the camera captured. Tight regulation of time and temperature of development would create a negative with more contrast (a more limited number of steps between full black and full white) or a negative with less contrast ( many more finer steps between the extremes. Also referred to as a "flat" negative). 

The lesser minds of photography, from then until today, embraced the idea that more tones was better. That more tones was more "accurate" and that making more tones and trying (desperately) to shove them onto the four or five stops of dynamic range of photographic paper represented the "correct" and unimpeachable approach to making photographs. These practitioners and misguided interpreters of Ansel Adam's intention delight in making images in which the widest range of gray tones possible must be represented in a photographic image while giving a cavalier nod to the notion that a tiny bit of pure black and an equally tiny bit of white should also be present somewhere in the print or digital image in order to represent accurately the full scale. Open shadows and discernible highlight details were the main targets of the exercise. 

In many ways the folks who still practice the endless gray aesthetic resemble the fanatics of mid-epic digital imaging in their search for whatever the latest obsession was, in line with technical advances; photos of kitty whiskers to show of the ultimate in image resolution and sharpness. HDR overkill to show off ever improved dynamic range. And kilo acres of images not meant to show off content or point of view but to prove a technical concept. High resolution and high dynamic range became the grandchildren of the quest for ever longer grayscale tonal ranges. But the grandfathers of black and white photography are still beating the old horse. 

Thank goodness for photographers like Bill Brandt, Daido Moriyama and so many others who showed us, emphatically, that shadows could be inky black and highlights at the extreme could blow out to white, and that the higher contrast would serve the image, serve the vision and serve the aesthetic in a way that slavishly following Adams's basic tool for negative expansion could not duplicate. It's instructive to all that many of Adams's prints are filled with blocked shadows. They impart an important piece of the puzzle when it comes to whether a print or digital image is captivating, exciting, melodic and engaging. 

Flat black and white images were a temporary partial fix to the fact that materials in 1940 didn't print well in offset printing. Blacks tended to fill up too quickly on the presses and a shift to restore detail in shadows by making them lighter and flatter had the effect of killing the highlights. Beginning with a flatter negative, and then a flatter print gave offset press operators more options, more chances at getting a good half tone from a printing press. Real artists understood this and worked around it for the most part. But a contemporary John Sexton print of maple trees makes highly effective use of black and white, as well as the necessary grays, to make beautiful images. His secret is to mix in contrast to the art print. That's what give it life. Looking at original prints by Edward Weston informs me that he never intended his print to be primarily made for mechanical reproduction but were considered destined to be framed and displayed. His blacks testify to this.

Anyway, I was playing around trying to see how to get what I like out of my camera, lens and post processing (we have so many more options toward success today with post processing...).  I used my camera and lens set up as a black and white system with the Leica "High Contrast Monochrome" setting engaged and shot in the Jpeg format. I like an inky black. I don't fear deep shadows. I've grown up in Texas where the sun is bright and highly collimated on cloud free days. It seems natural to me to see shadows that seem, when juxtaposed next to subjects in full sun, as black as can be. I worked to represent this as accurately as my own preferences allowed. I am not above raising the shadows a bit and I'm always in favor of adding significant contrast to mid-tones. I find very flat prints very boring and staid; like experiments in 1950's half tone printing. But a beautiful black goes a long way toward anchoring a look.

Here are things I photographed in order to practice with the tones. Some images were shot about two stops under what the camera meter suggested. Some less. But none anywhere near the null point of the meter. Saving the highlights and dealing with shadows and deep mid-tones in post.

No detail in the middle person's cap. No detail in the left hand person's white shirt. No elevated shadows. Much more personalized than stylized. 

Christmas Season Approaches. Back to the Theatre for a fun dress rehearsal on Tuesday.

 

Last photographs of the day. Over on South Congress Ave. Racks of "Love Locks."

 

Images taken with the Leica SL2-S and the Sigma Contemporary 90mm f2.8.

A nice combination for work in low light and work up near the 

minimum focusing distance. Nice out of focus rendering as well. 

f3.5 and be there.

Maybe the perfect height for a photographer to be invisible while working is about five feet, eight inches tall. The big, brooding, overly tall seem to have more problems blending in and avoiding unpleasant confrontations. Maybe try not to look so... big?

 

Practicing invisibility at Jo's Coffee. Seems to work fine. 

I have photographic acquaintances who seem to have difficulty with a certain type of street photography. That which involves making candid shots of strangers. Usually they have one of two, or both, of these issues: They are extremely fearful of strangers and potential conflicts and they give off waves and waves of uncomfortable, anxious energy which any attentive person in their sphere can easily detect. This tells the intended subjects that someone in their midst is nervous, possibly unstable and potentially dangerous. Hence, instant defense mechanisms kick in and cooperation drops to zero.  Defensive behavior gets aroused. 

Or, secondly, they are physically large, ungainly, and in spite of their size have no sense of other people's safe zone. The invisible distance between strangers that makes people feel safe while in public.  Few people feel secure when someone close by is looking down at the top of their head...

Add these two conditions together and you come up with a person who is constantly being rebuffed in his (usually "his" ) attempts to make street photographs. Of people. They are fine with static objects.

It's basic anthropology. We're hard wired to be on alert for danger when out in public. We sense people who are giving off vibes of anxiety and fear. We are unsure of our safety when confronted with people who have a threatening affect or who project "large." 

The first condition can be overcome by learning to chill out and not project nervous, pensive energy. Maybe some behavioral cognitive therapy with a good mental health professional...

The second condition is harder to fix but requires one to learn what constitutes a comfortable distance in relation to strangers. It requires not adding to the implicit threat profile of "oversized" with egregious tattoos. Or black t-shirts advertising heavy metal bands. Or spike studded dog collars. Or red "gimme" hats with political messages on them. And maybe tone down the laser intensity stare. 

Just a thought after talking to several different photographers concerned about their failure to blossom as "street" photographers. Or people photographers of any type. 

Just be nice. Project nice. Act nice. It can all work out just fine. Helps to pretend that you are having fun and not on a mission.

How many feet to Jo's Coffee? Just two...

 

As I was recuperating this week I had a crazy thought. What if people who wrote long paeans to old lenses (and new ones) and how glorious they were (and are) routinely supplied photographs taken with those lenses to prove their assertions of optical magic? Wouldn't that be cool?

 

In some ways I tend to be a throwback to a different time. A time in which we were required, in math class, or engineering, to show our work. To show how we arrived at a solution. To offer a proof, as it were, that our hypotheses were valid and the solutions repeatable. We could not just write a paper and say, "The Answer is 11.395. You'll just have to take my word for it." That would never fly. Imagine buying a house with some property attached but without having a survey or access to a previous land survey. "Sure. It's 1.52 acres --- take my word for it." Says the seller. And you happily write the check. 

There is a saying on the web when someone tells an outlandish story. A story that aggrandizes the teller and at the same time strains the credulity of the listener. That saying is: "Photos or it didn't happen." 

Along the same lines there are far too many photo bloggers, website copywriters, and some v-loggers who spin endless tales about miraculous lenses from the 1960's, 1970's, 1980's and the 1990's. Thick with nostalgia these lenses become talismans of great photographic power and seemingly their powers were only appreciated by an anointed few. The true cognoscenti.  A priesthood sharing of cultish photo knowledge which they now insist on passing down like a story of a lost "grail." To hear the tales it's as if these lenses had magical powers which lent images taken with them a special and almost indescribable affect or power. Like Harry Potter's wand. Or Excalibur.

When "less" educated photographers try the lens out on their own and fail to "appreciate" the specialness of the optic the members of the cult are quick to explain that this or that neophyte just doesn't (yet) appreciate the special "character" the lens can bring to an image. And round and round we go. 

A few lenses go on to achieve the highest level in the pantheon of camera lenses. But their charms are only apparent to people from the "hallowed" film era. People over 50 or maybe 60 years old. People representing the religion of the Tri-X, the beliefs of the coven of Kodachrome. But to lay people, often the special powers of the lenses are hidden behind opaque curtains. The acolytes must first enter into a suspension of disbelief, engendered by a new belief in the cult master, who will lead them to the appropriate epiphany.

The cult master becomes the reference standard and gate keeper of great knowledge only after repeating over and over again how special and deep his knowledge and understanding are. As Goebbels and Roy Cohn knew all too well, repeating something endlessly turns it into fact --- over time. 

Though we are mostly aware that technology moves on and lenses get better and better, as do cameras, we still want to believe in the magic being peddled. And this isn't just aimed at ancient and obsolete equipment but also a new gear. The gist of all this is the idea also of context. 

When I was a young photographer I happened to be on a beach in Mexico with a beautiful girl who was dressed in next to nothing, striking an alluring pose in front of the most amazing sunset I have ever seen. Golden hour everywhere. Soft, billowing, cascading light. I took a photograph on slide film. The image was, to me, incredible. I praised the lens to the heavens though on some level I knew it was a huge confluence of things, all at just the right time, that made the shot work for me...spilling punctum everywhere. But I let everyone I knew hear about the magic of that lens. I took a photograph months later. It was on a job. I used the magic lens to photograph an unattractive scientist who was bored, boring, far too fat, and we did this shoot in a florescent lit room decorated by mimeographed notices and dead houseplants. The lens was horrible. Who could work with such a lens? Why had I fooled myself so badly?  I sold the "holy" lens a short time later. 

This is all to say that after hearing that X 50mm lens from the 1970s is one of the best 50mm lenses ever for the 1,001th time I decided never to believe the written word about magic lenses ever again. If the writer of an article, blog post, or memoir starts to rattle on about some mythic lens I want to see the proof. I want to see actual results. Not results 640 pixel on the wide side. Nope I want to see proof that makes me sit up and notice. 8K or better. With a sworn statement promising that the image is right out of the camera; no clarity slider action, no complex sharpening, no multi-step color regeneration. 

I want the writer to put his lens where his keyboard says it lives. Making photographs. Proving a point. 

Memory is fickle but memory is always our personal ally. 

It's almost never fact.

Show me, or it never existed. 

Contax Aria camera with Contax 28-70mm zoom.

contax 50mm f1.7

Mamiya 6. Mamiya 50mm f4

Sony R1 (NOT RX...) with built in zoom lens.

Hasselblad 500 C/M with 150mm f4.0 Planar

Canon 50mm f1.4 FD

Hasselblad 500 C/M + 150mm f4.0 Planar

Nikon D700. Nikon 24-120mm zoom. 

Minox ML. Built in 35mm lens. 

Samsung Galaxy NX + 85mm Samsung lens.

Canon Rebel film camera. Canon EF 50mm f1.8

The power of a lens depends on the context and the content of an image.

All lenses are beautiful if you point them at the right subject with the 

right lighting and the right styling.