Dektol in the Sandbox: I <3 Photography

ctein over at top is an advocate of printing from scans for negatives - you have much more control over the printing process and editing than you would in a traditional darkroom

huh.. guess I figured I'd be losing out on "the magic" or something. nice to know that it isn't considered a dead end!

well you get much more precise control over stuff like tonality and gradation and color shifts etc. you control more variables

and since you have a dedicated 35mm I imagine it's no slouch!

it's not bad, although prob not the best in the world. I need to get my hands on a decent printer so I can sink further into the photography time hole.

Stephen Shore has also gone entirely to digital output. I liked printing color in a darkroom, but it's hard to beat the control and archival qualities of a good inkjet print.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/alex-webbs-dialogue-with-the-streets/

xp yeah, I gotta think that digital printing works best with color prints

Those Alex Webb pictures are stellar.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7004/6457815743_fa0f685285.jpg
miners by dysign, on Flickr

woot!

oh - it did work. disregard previous woot.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7017/6457818407_f589976dac_b.jpg

huh. sorry that is so big.

10 more pix

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7010/6484935243_c675119bd0_z.jpg

http://ihardlyknowher.com/idiotcervantes/big

dayo, is there actually such a pervasive sense of quiet, anomic despair on the streets in HK, or do you shelve the photos of people going about not seemingly contemplating their insignificance? yr photz are so good & they have such a strong feeling to them. sorta like tsai ming-liang's taiwan

aw thanks schlump! no there are tons of happy people in HK I just don't take pictures of them :< I keep thinking about this idea that I read in a gerry badger book that he got from somebody else prob that photography is a medium best suited for melancholy and I wonder how true that is

ha that's interesting. i saw Geoff Dyer give a talk about photography recently & he was maybe slightly mythically talking about the photographers in the '60s & '70s loving the empty streets, or the "built environment" "haunted" by "lone figures", which you can obv bring a lot of evidence for (i'm not good w/names but obv there are a few of those classic NY guys shooting outta their windows). all of which seems to feed an idea of melancholia - the people faceless & far away & made Keaton-ishly small by the dominance of the city &c&c&c. i think it is def a poignant thing - a kinda break or paradox or something - to be able to get on film, cf Frank's elevator girl maybe.

the idea of putting together some sort of book is appealing, but I just don't know how I'd have the time?

but china you LOVE SCANNING, c'mon throw yourself into it. i know what you mean. i have been so pleased w/how things have looked on screen that the impetus to do much with physical prints has become smaller, but i can see the kind of 'cohesive' / 'physical object' appeal of a book. i think i have less of a priority of things looking their best than you guys (i guess bc my photography is so much better?, & i am sorta a more original visual thinker?, & bad facsimiles of my photos are still superior to well-rendered representations of allay'all's? no idk i just mean i don't go that extra mile re: good scans), but just making an object even if it were sorta hand-made would still mean something to me, i think.

here is another tangent: has anyone ever really fucked w/their negatives, much? the violence of it can be so striking & disarming, seeing it in (again) Frank's later work, it is a wild thing to me. i wish there were more crossover between a couple of the ilx filmmakers & the ilp cru bc i feel like i've read some super-eighters talk about the physicality of celluloid interestingly before

lol I was going to post about how frank's elevator girl is maybe my most favorite photograph ever but I see you got there first!

ha. i can't even choose that way. i know i posted this maybe a while ago, re: discussion of crowds vs emptiness, but my reflex pick for fav photo is this b/w eggleston, which actually sorta seems relevant to the same point of like, 'dislocation in built environments', &c. for frank jeez who could choose, i always liked the guy hugging the girl but it could be one of a million. & yeah the elevator girl is allllll time.

also fond of this photo of christina carter by Benoit Chaput ("after bagels & coffee, 2004")

http://www.manybreaths.com/images/photos/45.jpg

& a photo of my grandparents that i don't have a scan of.

aw that eggleston is a seriously great photo. the shadow on the lawn, some kind of split. wish I could see it bigger.

ah, frustrating i can't find it any bigger; was so psyched at his whitney show to see it, a slightly damaged print, not so big. the guy in it is holding his spectacles in his right hand & looks sorta dazed, which w/o being too prescriptive is just perfect, what w/it being such almost cartoonish "the american suburbs" in the backdrop. HOW DID I GET HERE?.

all this egglestoning reminds me, i've still never seen either of the documentaries about him, but i watched this clip a couple of days ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R8wQ7YFSxs

which would only persuaded me to watch it for the lols. it's like that great saul leiter interview from a while back. documentarians bringing too much to the table.

I love that Christina Carter photo, her sleepiness and the messy, domestic scene

yeah it just propaganda for breakfast that photo, you want to inhabit it. she is a totally radiant subject anyway but that photo has so much going for it.

I saw a film about eggleston once, can't remember what it was called. I like the stories about him driving around in a cadillac, wearing white cotton gloves.

he is so cool in every photo i have ever seen of him. that sounds dumb & teenagishly impressed but i just mean i guess they all contribute to my idea of him as exactly what you expect/hope, this southern guy packing a camera & crouching to shoot a few times a day.

yes ^^^

http://pushedbuttonsburning-in.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Maude_Schuyler_Clay_William_Eggleston.jpg

posting this again

http://www.shanelavalette.com/images/journal/egglestonandlynch.jpg

oh hey btw

did you ever get to your copy of for now, btw? everytime i see things from it online i get closer to buying it, & i am not a buy-photo-books kinda guy, really

xp lol yes
actually trying to find a couple of others from i think an essay i read a while ago by a friend of his, w/some candid shots of him hanging out/shooting on a porch, on the street, &c, hm.

yeah I have for now at home, haven't looked at it, along with a billion other books. I think all my discretionary spending goes towards booze and photography stuff. will look at over break

ha, okay. i have a couple eggleston books which i guess i don't just pick up & look through often enough, so maybe it's that that is dissuading me. spending on photography stuff = p good plan i think. going places is the most meritous thing i can think to do with money & that's a good fit w/taking photos also.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lbgmzbdigt1qbiq3oo1_500.jpg

^ the southern gentleman ferris bueller

I assume Eggleston is drunk 90% of the time. That's probably completely unfair, but it feels right. I saw the documentary (William Eggleston in the Real World) a few years ago, but he's so spacy and evasive I don't think I got anything about his work from it. Pretty sure all of it is online via Youtube.

I've never seen my favorite photograph online - it's from Eugene Richards's 'Americans We' book, a homeless man holding his dog to his chest like it's the last good thing on Earth.
http://i1118.photobucket.com/albums/k607/milosz999/photo.jpg

I got lucky and found a cache of Richards's early books at a used store. Dorchester Days, Americans We & Cocaine True Cocaine Blue are amazing

aw milo - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2065292/Loyal-end-Chinese-dog-refuses-budge-late-master-s-graveside-seven-days-food.html

I saw the documentary (William Eggleston in the Real World) a few years ago, but he's so spacy and evasive I don't think I got anything about his work from it. Pretty sure all of it is online via Youtube.

yeah this is the one I saw I think. he has a very calm way of photographing - so peaceful, taken by the moment.

There's nothing like watching great photographers photograph to get you in the mood. Eggleston's causal ease, Garry Winogrand's uptight camera-clutching and motormouth, etc. Love the way that Eggleston is so smooth, while others do the sort of lurch-and-lunge thing that we're used to seeing in a crowd.
Hitting that shutter always feels so good!

theriobook.com

David Alan Harvey set up a blog documenting his most recent trip to Rio for his new book project. $1.99 for access to all the posts he's made - I'm about halfway through and it's pretty interesting.
Less documentary on shooting, more behind the scenes of No Reservations - DAH is at a party! - since you're seeing photos from him while shooting, rather than other people following him.

he responds to a lot of the comments on each post, which might be more informative, I'm mostly just looking at the pictures and reading his posts now.

As ever, I got nothing goin' on except kids' parties, work parties and the ever-present commute. So, a couple from the last category then...

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7034/6530682523_1171a5a8f5_z.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7164/6530681013_c5a55efb03_z.jpg

http://www.americansuburbx.com/2010/10/william-eggleston-afterward-from.html

i can't exactly tell but i'm just going to assume that WE hates the way i look at photos

http://www.peterturnley.com/workshops.html

Thinking of signing up for his New York workshop in June. Would get ungodly expensive w/ a place to stay and food, but I've heard that he's a great teacher and will really help you in figuring out how to shape up and present a portfolio. Plus the NY one comes with a M9 for the week, I guess? Rental fee on that's $500 by itself.

william eggleston otm xp

ha, you're just saying that because you've reached the next-level/zen/asshole stage of I CANNOT SEE THE PHOTO ONLY THE GRAIN, even while you're sat there disinterestedly leaving fingerprint oils on HCB prints

lol "I am at war with the obvious" is one of the great all-time photography quotes

the disdain for the snapshop, the war with the obvious

In this case, the obvious has won:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7171/6527392319_3a91caaf9e_z.jpg

idk isnt that more compositionally degas-french curves: all hollow centre and peripheral action. kindof the opposite of the "obvious" snapshot that eggleston is talking about

Mostly just joking that the clashing animal prints are so wild as to be "obvious."
As in, obviously I had to take that picture.

like i feel like a big part of how eggleston's photos want to be thought of is terms of touching the edges, touching their margins.. these vectors that locate the image in terms of how something is cropped or pushes out of the frame. at least thats how i thought it was being read by szarkowski in those essays/interviews a lot of you were loving this summer.

yeah i get you but i think the "obvious" as its being talked about here might be a little sneakier than it appears