Dektol in the Sandbox: I <3 Photography

I mean dig deep enough into the story around 'the americans' and you'll find that frank was probably being a little disingenuous - there were clear principles motivating his organizing of the book, the division into 4 sections separated by an american flag... idk

<3 my ILP dudes

btw milo i am interested in your experiences of studying & concentrating on photography, with others, etc. like i've never studied it (which with anything else would give me the luxury of flexing the i'm self taught line, which somehow doesn't seem totally as appropriate w/my shaky-ass photz), & to have talked stuff through with others & presumably having to demonstrate progress & like intention must be interesting. or w/the street photography workshop thing, it's interesting to me that that's taught, presumably being more about approach than the strictly technical stuff.

talking about photos is pretty boring to me because you return to the same old statements about how the picture is a puzzle and doesn't divulge its secrets etc. etc.

disappointed to hear my original critical thinking lumped under "same old statements about how the picture is a puzzle" but okay

I mean, there's that winogrand video where he points out that no picture tells a story by itself, and that's true - you don't know if the guy in the picture is taking the hat off the girl or putting it on. and the way we look at images that's probably true.

idk I find myself trending more towards seeking out the context behind pictures. despite being a rabid new critic literary type 'the text is its own world, self-sufficient' etc. which is prob more true for books than for photographs.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the neat thing about photographs is that you don't have to talk about them. you can just look at them and contemplate the sublime, like schopenhauer would have you do. looking at photograph feeds the soul. for me looking at good photographs is like breathing in really fresh, clean, cold air - invigorating, bracing. that's the metaphor i always seem to return to in my head.

lol schlump I didn't mean to implicate you in anything! these are just thoughts that I've been fomenting on

lol kidding, i just read it back & realised that my sarcasm wasn't as pronounced as i'd hoped

i am p tempted by the errol morris book on photos that just came out re: some of the above regarding context

to bring some of the above full circle - the sensation of just looking at photos, the crazy alchemy of william eggleston - i remember catching the eggleston exhibition at the whitney & feeling like i'd had an eye test or something, it had been so strong just to see his colours. also re: this entirely irrelevantly, i just got a poster for this exhibition like three years belatedly & am so psyched about it because it is going to be on my walls forever & i'd been heartbroken that they weren't available at the time

(http://s.ecrater.com/stores/60130/4937349e65951_60130b.jpg)

fuck the haters, looking at WE photos is like looking at the sun

btw milo i am interested in your experiences of studying & concentrating on photography, with others, etc. like i've never studied it (which with anything else would give me the luxury of flexing the i'm self taught line, which somehow doesn't seem totally as appropriate w/my shaky-ass photz), & to have talked stuff through with others & presumably having to demonstrate progress & like intention must be interesting.

For my part, I didn't realize what I was doing at the time, there's a clear line running through my (absolutely, ungodly terrible, no one should have to see their negatives from that age) work that's about loneliness, class and suburban anonymity. Which aren't exactly the most exciting ideas in themselves, but make sense given my political bent at the time. I didn't have the language to express it, so I took a bit of 'be more conceptual' flak. Which made what I did do less personal, because I was thinking out the project instead of just getting my mind out of the way.

Ultimately, I think (some) university photo programs might suffer from not having narrow enough focus - not from making students take classes in the other arts, but in having to spend 60 credit hours on biology and calculus and stuff. It's hard to really focus as much as you might need to in order to make breakthroughs. Today, at 30 and thinking of finishing that degree, I think I'd get a lot more out of it, because I'm much clearer in direction and less influenced by outside forces. And wouldn't be distracted by all the 19-year old art school girls because damn that's creepy.

there's a really good book on The Americans that shows many (or maybe it's all) of his contact sheets and how different printings have used different crops and printing styles and how that influences what you take away from the individual images and the project as a whole

One big takeaway for me from The Americans - Frank shot 500-700 rolls in a single year. You need to be profligate to really figure things out, and for the perfect accidents to appear.

I have that book!

I mean yeah the stories of all the greats touch on how many rolls they shot - there was a rumor that HCB would shoot a roll before breakfast, winogrand would shoot at least 3 rolls a day, etc.

and of course it's a great takeaway in the age of digital that though they shot so much, their publish work amounts to maybe .01% of their total shooting (I've harped on this before)

here was a rumor that HCB would shoot a roll before breakfast

ha, i think this is as useful in illuminating the differences between these guys just in habits/ambitions for what might be accomplished pre-breakfast, as much as photographic habits, etc

thanks for the breakdown, Milo, that's really interesting - I'm impressed that you're able to think about, even then, your concerns so clearly - like it's obviously "the stuff you're drawn to photograph" but being able to be critical & thoughtful about it is cool.

500 - 700 rolls in a year sounds like a lot but i think if i was in new places, let alone ~as a photographer~ i would be doing that easy; just shooting details of a new city can be pretty engrossing, though of course it's maybe more impressive w/frank that he was shooting life rather than quirky street signs or w/e

It also helps to have a Guggenheim fellowship to pay for the film and all the associated costs.

Digital is obv. freeing in that regard, as a sunk cost (nothing niggling at the back of your mind saying 'well, you know that shot was bullshit and cost about $.35') but totally requires much harsher personal editing (I've been meaning to go through my LR archive and delete obvious crap, but that could take some time) and discipline in making yourself print (in some form, any form). I've been enjoying shooting my M4/35, but I do keep looking at it and going "is this special in any way relative to digital?" I've got a couple more rolls of Portra 400 to use up at Christmas, but after that the return to 35mm film experiment is going traditional B&W only. PITA to scan, but I've got ~50 rolls of Tri-X, Neopan 400 and HP5. Going to make myself try to treat it more like I do digital, free-er to experiment.
At least w/ trad B&W I can tell myself that future generations might find my negatives and spend some time asking why the fuck anyone gave a damn about the stuff I'm shooting. I shall be remembered.

I read the HCSP street photography image critique thread on Flickr and it's pretty lolsy, from the range of images posted and reactions (so many wannabe Szarkowskis! and people who would get drummed out of a class critique for being dicks!) to their idea that getting into the HCSP pool is a major, major accomplishment worth arguing over.

guggenheims are like 40k a year? not that much...

film costs money yeah but I've already placed it in the category of necessary things like food and beer. I cut back in other areas of my life obv

HCSP is very lolsy, they're part of the reason why I started to move away from winogrand I think

Ha, for years I've been confusing the Guggenheim ($40k) and MacArthur ($500k) grants.

itt we are blasé about $40k

That would buy four M9-Ps to use as ashtrays, so at least you can outfit a patio.

Missed a lot I guess, but I think in the real ILX thread I do some criticizing of the the HCSP stuff, and yeah, I hate it.

Regarding refining an idea by reducing the options & learning from visible failure, this is the biggest reason I find it's super useful to just always be taking pictures. Now I know when I see a car positioned in a certain way in some certain light to say "stop! you always take this picture and it never looks good!"

Sometimes knowing what not to do is the best. Knowing what doesn't ever work for you. Knowing what you dislike. It's really good to have a strong sense of what you dislike.

fuck the haters, looking at WE photos is like looking at the sun

Always and forever. And so effortless seeming.

Oh boy, speaking of knowing what I dislike:

http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/feature/2133918/post-processing-digital-age-photojournalists-10b-photography

I haven't read the whole thing yet, but this shows some before and after examples of the processing applied to some photojournalism images, and I loath the afters. Some of the images started out with some nicely subtle contrast that showed lots of shadow detail and seemed sort of more immediate, and were later turned into stylized, amped-up contrast, deepened blacks monstrosities.

Dunno if the site will let me link or not. Let's see...

http://www.bjp-online.com/IMG/809/205809/10b-yuri-kozyrev-02.jpg?1324380059

whoops

http://www.bjp-online.com/IMG/809/205809/10b-yuri-kozyrev-02.jpg?1324380059

Look how much better the first one is!
And this isn't an issue of "truth" or "honesty" for me, but just terrible aesthetic choices.

And some kind of understanding that photojournalism can't be serious until it's high contrast and gritty, I guess.

in this post-hipstamatic world

it's not always bad - they brought out more shadow detail in the third or fourth one down, the one with the guy and his hands on his head

it's definitely a 'sigur ros' approach tho

Seems like for every time they gain a little shadow detail, there are ten times where they contrast it into oblivion.
The funny thing is with the image I posted, I think anyone working in film with, say, a medium format, would be super pleased to get those tones and that soft contrast, but when someone gets a raw file looking like that, the first thing they do is boost the blacks and pump that s-curve. I'd think it was for the lousy print quality of newspapers, except that I'm guessing these are all mostly looked at on screens anyway.

well the s-curve is usually built into film anyway

I always figured the low contrast possibilities of digital were actually kind of an advantage!

apart from the fucked up zombie gstar shirt i don't know if i mind. i thought it was following in tradition of punching up contrast of images for newspaper even if like cv said most are not going to be seen on newsprint.

http://lahem.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Metro-27.jpg
http://lahem.info/archives/tag/shawn-2

i like this

I'm also love to complain, don't forget.

"I'm also love to..." is what happens when you only halfway edit your post.

Totally not doing the Turnley workshop. $1500 workshop, $400 airfare, and since I'd need to be close to the UWS for morning critiques I'm having a hard time finding a hotel without a million bed bug reports for under $200/night.

What a superb thread this is. You guys are bringing immense content to the table.

I'm a terrible man for the processing; the only one I really don't like in that BJP article is this one... which I've had a bash at myself... (yeah, I know, I'm processing a low-res JPG off the web here)

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7018/6551010959_985bacbfbe_z.jpg

No beef with the amount of manipulation done here, but much of it is of questionable quality IMO. The first one seems to have a bit of a halo in the transition between foreground to sky, oversharpened maybe.

The men standing in the burned out building (with charred bodies) and the following one (blind man?) are improvements, though I don't know that it was necessary to bring up his eyes to make them look stranger.

The first one just needs the blacks brought up +5 (give or take a couple) in LR3 (or similar adjustments in whatever) and very little else changed, they totally overdid it.
I've been finding that RAW files often need that black adjustment (if LR3 doesn't have a camera profile) or else they appear to have a kind of grayness overlaid.

It's more an overall desaturation to the 4th one which completely alters skintones and makes it highly stylised. I do this A LOT but I'd like to think I wouldn't do it if I was a PJ. It's just odd.

xp - yes, agreed

Totally not doing the Turnley workshop. $1500 workshop, $400 airfare, and since I'd need to be close to the UWS for morning critiques I'm having a hard time finding a hotel without a million bed bug reports for under $200/night.

― milo z, Wednesday, December 21, 2011 5:04 PM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah the Turnley thing seems like it's aimed at well-heeled amateurs who are wondering why they aren't taking better pictures despite have a 5dII/D3/M9 etc. the fact that it takes place in NYC is a big clue

i mean, this is how i get lost in this thread, maybe because i have a completely diff background to the rest of you guys but i mean i'll take whatever i get back from asda and i mean i'm more bothered about issues of composition, gesture, mood than really thinking about contrast, tonality etc. this always seems v technical to me. i dont want to go over all that stuff abt "looking" again

asda?

yeah I mean you've mentioned before about how there's a 'visual grammar' and yeah everybody's got their own, it's not universal. I just happen to approach pics from a documentary mode. and yeah the talk about tonality and contrast can be a little technocratic at times, but it can also be used to get at what the picture is about. like you can def talk about tonality w/ an alec soth picture in both technical and artistic terms, and both avenues have merit.

and there are def critics who talk about photographs in terms of composition and gesture and mood! idk it just makes me uncomfortable because it then starts to implicate questions of intentionality (which are there, but hard to talk around)

I'm just much more happy w/ photographs being mute shrines

asda is a place in england

isnt there just as much intentionality at work in choosing ones gear. thinking about framing might be as simple a decision as looking in the viewfinder and deciding that you're gonna push the shutter. photographing still lifes, objects landscapes, people, animals, there's varying degrees to which you can be in control of the image and certain set-ups and subject matter gives you more control. i mean if you think of commercial photographers doing product photography for advertising and the way they endlessly tweak and hone an image, lighting, composition, etc. the way it is fine tuned with the input of different parties and interests. this is probably the furthest i can think of from the lionised street photographer and the decisive moment, but there are different ways of working and approaches. there is the process of trying to repeat happy accidents, returning to a subject again and again. and also how a lot of work is posed, i think of sally mann (who as well is somebody who is all about gear as well so) and how you can see videos of her setting up and posing those shots of her kids.

i saw a clip of eggleston where he said that he doesn't bother taking two photos of the same thing because he doesn't like having to pick between two almost identical photographs and i kindof immediately started doing the same thing, consciously thinking about this. and maybe this isn't what he intends but for me its about frontloading those decisions. and i think the consistency of a given photographers output is sufficient for me to want to think about those decisions. i mean also i studied painting not photography and am v much a dilettante, novice, amateur. like i said, i just get everything processed at the cheapest place i can find but even that is a decision and i think the employment of chance is not the same as leaving things to chance.

I'm happy to talk about the composition, gesture, and mood trifecta! I also think we *are* talking about them when we talk about contrast, tonality, camera choice, format size, digital vs. film, etc. If I don't talk about the subject, or more directly about, say, composition, I think it's because those are things that I think about when selecting images, and then not again.
And my obsession with scanning, contrast levels, color balance, etc. is my own method of reducing choice. I've mandated that I will always try to process pictures in a sort of kinda "natural" way, so I will never have to think about whether to keep dust & scratches, or whether to amp up the contrast, etc. etc. It's my version of just getting the film back from asda, but it just takes longer and is a total pleasure!!

Totally not doing the Turnley workshop. $1500 workshop, $400 airfare

Dude, just spend on the airfare and stay someplace cheap and stalk the city with a camera the whole time! It will probably be just as valuable!

nb I know that there is nothing "natural" about the contrast even on a "neutral" film, or film at all, or a still picture at all, but you know...

Yeah, I'm going to spend a week in SF in March, maybe. Or I was thinking of some place like Venice Beach - I've never been to LA and if I stuck to one hood, I wouldn't have to rent a car, maybe.

Pipe dream is to just sublet a place in NY for a month in the summer, but I doubt I can escape my local obligations here.

I default in editing/criticism of other peoples' work (written, photos, etc.) to 'how would I do that differently/what choices would i change' or 'how is that doable.'

I'm much better at separating myself from that in the arts where I have no personal experience.

For what it's worth, I think that LA is one of the most photogenic cities out there. All strange landscapes with poles, wires, and signs every which way. Bizarre foliage and buildings etc. And SF is my true love city. Lotsa good pictures to be had all over.

isnt there just as much intentionality at work in choosing ones gear.

yeah! I mean I largely agree with everything you said. funny as you mention gear as gear IS a shortcut for tlaking about how a photographer works - like leicas are synonymous with street photog, large format cameras with 'serious format.' I swear to god, find me one essay that talks about a large-foramt photographer that doesn't mention how 'measured' and 'slow' and 'intentional' you have to be when using one.

and yeah what I meant about the dangers of ascribing intentionality really just meant the dangers of saying 'this shot came out exactly how the photographer envisioned it.' peoples choices about what to use, where to point the camera at, when to click the shutter definitely ARE intentional acts - but to get at them you can't treat it as discrete instances, but like you said, as accretions, accumulations of choices that were made when the photographer picked up the camera in the first place.

and yeah like cv said those technocratic terms can be used to get at the pith of what a photographer does. like I dunno if you can talk about weston without mentioning...tonality.