beau 1664876222

<p>Hello Ray! Hope you're well. I guess you've touched on the point of my post. This guy is not interested in drawing attention to his photography. There are no stylistic affectations, no technical flourishes, no carefully-chosen gear involved. He's like a photographer for the post-photography era. <br>

That being said, I disagree that these are snapshots anyone could do. He's got a great feel for the timing involved in portraiture and his use of light, composition, background, etc. is very effective. But of course most of what he's doing is about his ideas and, I guess, his interactions with his subjects.<br>

Mainly I just think he's worth talking about because here's a street photographer who's become a phenomenon; how often does that happen? Hundreds of thousands of people eagerly await each of his photos. So clearly there's something worth examining about what he's doing.</p>

 

<p>Barry, not a bad idea if you're not opposed to becoming rich and famous. I mean, this guy started out as just another shmoe with a dslr taking street portraits, and now he's so busy fighting off book offers, movie offers, journalists, TV reality shows, etc. that I don't know where he finds time to keep shooting. </p>

<p>You know what's funny? I'd never even been to his website; I was only familiar with his facebook page. In a way, I find the FB "blog" the most powerful presentation of his work, just the pictures (tons of them) and his little notes on each one.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/humansofnewyork">http://www.facebook.com/humansofnewyork</a></p>

<p>Thanks for the responses. By way of background, I'm not sure exactly how many followers or viewers this guy has, but I'm sure it's a big number and as I mentioned, there's a lot of word-of-mouth about it in NYC. There's a buzz as if a great new TV series has come out or something.<br>

What I enjoy about his pictures, and about his success, is how the images are not really about the photography, or about the photographer. Sure he's doing a lot of subtle things to make the images look good, but I never hear people saying, "wow, what great photos" or "wow what a great photographer that guy is." People just fall in love with the project without being conscious of the craft involved, or even really focusing on the artist himself. I guess there's some good lessons in there for many of us.</p>

<p>Sorry if this has been discussed previously, but what do we think of HONY?<br>

It seems like in a very short time it's become an absolute phenomenon; everywhere I go people seem to be talking about it.<br>

I have to admit the guy's a special talent, both in terms of the portraits and the witty captions. I do find myself scrolling through his latest pics quite regularly.<br>

On the other hand it reminds me a little too much of stuff like "The Sartorialist" where there's too much reliance on attractive people and their clever fashions to keep your attention. <br>

Anyway, I figure some of the street denizens here would have some thoughts on it.</p>

<p>Hey Ray! Long time. Hope all's well.<br>

Several years ago I borrowed that exact camera for a few weeks and it drove me crazy, just not a pleasure to use (at least for me) - viewfinder, focusing, feel in the hand, etc.<br>

The photos looked pretty good but not as sharp as I'd have expected -- looking closely it seemed like more of a "jiggle" problem than a lens problem (shutter recoil? I dunno). As I recall the max aperture wasn't all that wide so it was hard to get a good boke going, and the rendering of color and light wasn't in any way special to my eye.<br>

Yes the 6x9 negative made for some nice tones, but for most images the improvement wasn't enough to overcome the other issues. And scanning those huge negs is a bit of a chore...</p>

<p>Trust your original instinct and find a Summicron 50. You'll see the Leica effect immediately, and while you may not fall in love with it, at least you'll know...</p>

<p>Hey guys, thanks for the kind words. In terms of providing a description, I couldn't think of anything to say about the photos, either for marketing purposes or in the book itself. It's just a bunch of photos! I did take a lot of care in selecting them and sequencing them, however.<br>

Alex, the publisher approached me about it. I've never made an effort to do commercial marketing or promotion of my photography, but sometimes people approach me about doing a project of some kind and I go along with it, like in this case. I learned a lesson in the music business that trying to "make it" just makes the art less fun; however, when an opportunity presents itself to reach a wider audience or whatever, I'm cool with it.</p>

<p>I haven't been haunting this board as much in recent years, but I see that some of my old friends are still around. So I thought I'd announce that a book of my photos has just come out, in case you're interested.

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<p>The book is called <em>Downcasting</em> and it contains images that many of you will recognize as first having appeared on these pages. The photos were mainly taken with a Leica M6 (see, I'm on topic!).

<p>It's produced by a specialist art-book publisher out of the UK, so I'm not sure where and when it'll be available at retail in the USA. You can get them direct from the publisher, but since I seem to recall you're not allowed to post links here, I'll just suggest you do a web search for "Doubleplusgood Books" and follow the links to their online shop. At 17 pounds, it makes a great stocking-stuffer!

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<p>By the way, I get a flat fee no matter how many they sell, so I don't get any economic benefit from shilling it. I just thought it might be of interest to some of the folks here.

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<p>Kind regards,

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<p>Beau

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<p>Not that it's the gear, but I much prefer Misrach's 8x10 landscape stuff. Judging by the handful of sample images, in my opinion a lot of people have done post-Katrina photography better.</p>

<p>The bokeh is pretty good, but I find that I have to keep telling the subject to take a step back.</p>

<p>Digression, but relevant: A very old relative of my wife's died, and a large box of her old negatives made its way to me. She lived her whole life in Germany, and the negatives are 35mm reels taken during the 1930's and 1940's (with Leicas and Contaxes I believe). I scanned the negatives and almost all the images look excellent. This was a fascinating family and obviously an eventful time in history, and it's all there in the photos. Today the family would not part with these pictures for a million bucks. I wonder how many of our digital images will be enjoyed by our descendants 80 years from now? Or even 10?</p>

<p>The article is way too long, but he's right of course. Photography is about noticing stuff and being able to visualize a photo it could make. Having simple gear gives you a useful trick: if your gear always does the same thing to the stuff you see, then your eye starts to see like that gear and recognize the photos it would make of things. We know that all the important work happens before the gear is involved - a great photographer can spot good images all over the place, even if he or she has no gear on hand, whereas everything looks about the same to poor photographers, regardless of what they use to record it. So for anyone that isn't great, it's much more valuable to enhance that recognition process than the capture process.</p>

<p>I use the 24mm 2.8 and the 105mm 2.5 AIS lenses on the D700. They work just fine. The old 55mm 2.8 macro is great too. The one I don't like is the 50mm 1.4, but I didn't like it on my FE2 either.<br>

I've also used the current 24-70mm zoom. It is maybe a tiny bit sharper and more contrasty than the old primes, but the images don't look as nice to my eye, especially the out-of-focus areas. Plus, for what I usually do, that package is just too huge and heavy. </p>

<p>Beautiful photos. But they caused me to remember the traumatizing experience of watching the film "Titicut Follies" and I'd really hoped to forget that one...</p>

<p>You need at least 2 backs. Having interchangeable backs is a big part of what these cameras offer, and they're pretty cheap.<br>

I never got used to the waist-level finder and was much happier when I got a NC-2 prism. It makes the camera bigger and heavier but at least now I can focus it. With the prism, I can live with the usual screen and don't need a split-image. </p>

<p>I get a lot of inquiries about using my images for commercial stuff. I'm represented by an agency that deals with all that, so I just refer everybody to them. The agency usually scares the person off with demands for lots of money, which is fine by me. Once in awhile the person pays up; usually they give up. I'm one of those people that hates to disappoint others, and since I don't need to make a living from photography, my tendency is to just give things away. So it's nice to have a "bad cop" to look out for me. You should look into it...</p>

<p>Even if the sensor is not quite as good as the one in my D700, I'd pay a few extra grand just to have the size and ergonomics of the M when shooting digital. To use the Leica lenses I'd pay a lot more, too, but then I guess I already have... </p>

<p>I once read an interview with Paul McCartney where he proposed that making good art required a sort of bipolar personality: in the creative phase you need a grandiose overconfidence, a sense that you can try anything and succeed, but in the editing phase you need an almost self-loathing humility, a feeling that only your very best efforts are worthy (and even those need polishing to be acceptable). A lot of bad artists have one but not the other - either they foist tons of crap on everyone, or they lack the audacity to try anything bold. And it's interesting to note how many good artists actually do have bipolar disorder, particularly writers. But McCartney suggests that a mentally healthy artist can train himself to swing between the extremes.</p>

<p>I can't say my photography would be one ounce worse if I'd never put down my Nikon FE2 from 1985. In fact people email me periodically saying "your old stuff was better." Although I guess in recent years Nikon stopped stocking parts for that model, so...</p>

<p>The M9 seems very sensibly priced relative to the products it's competing with. If you didn't tell me their costs, but asked me whether I would pay more for an M9 than, say, a Nikon D3x, the answer would be: absolutely, a lot more- I see it as a dramatically more useful thing. Now whether one would prefer this camera to other things available for its price (a nice trip overseas, let's say, or a humanitarian donation that could change a lot of lives), that's a separate matter.</p>

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<p>Leica is to be congratulated for a major turnaround here. Nitpick if you want, but all 3 of their new cameras are sensational. In the long run they may or may not prove successful, but they sure have everyone's attention and, at least with respect to the M9 and S2, could be revolutionary products. <br>

Given that I'm a little invested emotionally in the company's success, I'm embarrassed to admit that I've never monetarily supported Leica itself (all my gear bought used), seemingly having made the subsconscious assumption that the company was irretrievable. I think that's going to change with the M9. It looks like a digital camera that really is better than anything else for my purposes. <br>

I suppose I'll be dumping a D700 pretty soon...</p>

<p>I think one of the ways corporations are dealing with the bad economy these days is borrowing a trick from the health insurance industry: refuse to do anything until you absolutely have to. <br>

Just the other day I bought an expensive item for my drumset, and a piece was missing from the box. The guy at the store calls the company rep, and the rep says, "there's no way that part was missing, it's impossible for the box to leave the factory without that part." Oh, so I'm a liar I guess, thanks for your help. Finally the store clerk pulled the missing part off the display model and gave it to me, and said, "I can't believe the way these company reps are behaving these days." Seems like a pattern...</p>

<p> I had a 2200 for a long time and I eventually realized that the ImagePrint RIP was the only thing that produced really excellent BW prints. <br>

If you use the Epson driver normally, the BW prints have green and purple casts, depending on the light. I couldn't stand it after awhile and went to black-only, but eventually got sick of the tonality -- it should be called "brown only".<br>

ImagePrint produces amazing prints, and it makes the whole process way easier and more intuitive. You don't have to check little boxes and deal with color management at all, and you can size and combine images on the fly.<br>

Unfortunately, ImagePrint is a brilliant product sold by a company (Colorbyte) that has no concept of keeping customers happy. It's expensive, has all sorts of annoying security features, and worst of all, when it didn't work with the Tiger operating system, they didn't provide any kind of patch to fix it -- they just said, feel free to spend another $500 on the latest version.<br>

So now I use a 3800. The BW quality is high, close to ImagePrint, but superior in that glossy papers look good. I really miss the ImagePrint interface and other features, but the standard Epson driver on the 3800 is good enough, and I hate the Colorbyte people enough, that I'm not going to spend the money on buying it again.<br>

Incidentally, anyone want ImagePrint for the 2200 and pre-Tiger Mac OS?</p>