jimadams

June 23, 2014

Does that look and sound familiar? "All photos are copyright the photographer, and may not be used without written permission."

It should, it's on everyone's portfolio on this site. I don't know about the rest of you, but I've never given anyone written permission, or any other kind of permission, to use my photographs for their own ends.

Yet photo.net allows your photographs to be tweeted, Facebooked, Googled, liked or disliked by idiots who aren't even members of this site, and otherwise sent all around the world on the Internet. Basically, photo.net allows your photographs to be used in any shape, form, or fashion without you having the slightest say-so in the matter. I've found my photographs on Google, and on middle European websites with comments on them written in languages I have no hope of understanding.

Ever work in an office environment with a LAN system, a system that usually gives you a warning with you log in that goes something like "you have no reasonable expectations of privacy, etc. etc. blah blah blah.? Same thing on photo.net. You have no control over your own work here. Your work can be stolen, printed, sold, misinterpreted, and who knows what all. And what do you get out of it? Nothing. Zero. Nada. Zilch.

It pisses me off, big time. What about you? Or do any of you even pay any attention to where your work ends up?

June 1, 2014

Anyone notice that the man on the right has what appears to be a bottle of whiskey in his left hand? I can't tell if it's empty or not, though.

It's immaterial to me whether or not this is a publicity shot. There is a staggering amount of detail in this photograph. The viewer can even see the sign for the Essex House far in the background (sort of over the middle man's head, and it's in reverse). But one of the things I like most about this photograph is the sense of casualness and fun, which is entirely authentic to me. As someone who, in his younger days, did iron work similar to this, I can relate to this. It took me about a day-and-a-half (and a lot of ribbing from the other guys on the crew) of sliding along a 9-inch-wide beam on my butt before I could get up and actually walk on it, but once I did, it was just another job. Like these guys, we had no safeties. There was no such thing as OSHA yet. We even had guys who would do little dance steps as they carried bags of big steel bolts along the beams (I was not one of them). So I imagine this crew had its share of clowns, too.

The thing to remember about this photo, is that it was 1932. The height of the Great Depression. A man would take any job, anywhere, to support his family. These guys were one tiny misstep away from death every day, but they did it anyway. You don't see that in this photo, but you can feel it.

I love this photograph. It's real, but not real at the same time. It may be a setup, but it's also documentary photography at its finest...no HDR and overprocessing here, just straight photography. It shows our country in a way that we'll never see it again, I think.

I'd like to know what kind of camera, lens, and film were used.

May 14, 2014

Thanks, Michael. Where did you find the link?

May 13, 2014

How do I view the names of photographers following me? There seem to be a good many of them...I'd like to know who they are. I can't find any info in my workspace on this.

April 26, 2014

I've never made an HDR image in my life.

April 26, 2014

My adult children don't want to go to flickr anymore so it is getting a little more difficult to share images (I am not a Facebook fan).

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Why not just e-mail them photos, along with your thoughts and comments on the photos? Give it a personal touch rather than the impersonal interface offered by a computer.

Or better yet, put photos on disk and mail the disk to them.

Flickr, much like Photo.net, is becoming a parody of itself.

April 12, 2014

I have to say that lens designers are really making huge strides these days. Some of the new lenses are significant improvements over those of ten years ago.

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Do you have any particular examples in mind, any specific manufacturer? Just curious.

April 11, 2014

...this historical period of photography during which Ravens was made (the 70s or so)...

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I think Ravens was published in 1986.

April 11, 2014

That same year the British Journal of Photography cited "Ravens" as the best photo book in the past 25 years.

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If that was in 2010, it would take us all the way back to 1985. I'd have to ask what criteria The British Journal of Photography based their opinion on, because there were some brilliant photographers working during those twenty-five years between 1985 and 2010. And some of them are still working today. Tom Millea, who should be a national treasure, and who is one of the best print makers on the planet, comes immediately to mind. Some of Millea's dark visions and photographic insights into the human heart make Fukase look like a disturbed child who uses only one color in a coloring book.

I'll keep my comments brief. Despite some admiration for Ravens, my mind and eyes tire of looking at an almost endless series of black blobs. The book is entirely too obscure to be called the "best" of anything. Fukase strips ravens of their detail and personalities (they're anything but solitary), and turns them into a product or projection of his own little personal type of insanity.

In my opinion, Fukase and his book are both epic failures.

April 6, 2014

$180 for 4 hours work? Plus post-shoot processing? Driving over an hour one way? Packing and unpacking gear? Potential traffic hassles. Cost of gas? Possibly obnoxious people? No, just no. I'd be hard pressed not to laugh in someone's face if they offered me a "deal" like this. Bottom line? I wouldn't touch this.

April 4, 2014

...just someone taking some photos.

Happy snapper.

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If Brassai was "just someone taking photos", I seriously doubt his work would have been exhibited in museums and galleries all over the world. I also doubt there would have been so many collections of his works published in book form.

And what, pray tell, is a "happy snapper"?

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April 4, 2014

<a href="http://www.americansuburbx.com/wp-content/gallery/brassai/5532448040_f6512870b9_b-custom.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">THIS PHOTO</a> suggests to me the normalization and openness, the loveliness, of something that at the time would more often have remained hidden, and still does to this day in many quarters.

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That's the photo I intended to use as the jumping off point of this discussion, but couldn't get the link to work. Then when I looked for the photo again, I couldn't find it, period.

Thanks, Fred.

April 2, 2014

Have you taken the backs apart and cleaned them, especially the rollers?

March 30, 2014

I love his work in general. He inspired generations of people by his love of the city and its light, at daytime of at night.

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Anders, for once we agree about something.

March 30, 2014

How do I delete the Administrative Messages in my personal messages? I have messages going back to December of 2013, and here it is the end of March, 2014. Most of these messages go unread, anyway.

How do I get rid of the things?

March 30, 2014

For the most part I am not familiar with Brassai or his work. It would be easier for me to comment on a single photo than on a body of work of a person whose work I am not familiar with.

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Maybe you should begin by viewing as much of Brassai's body of work as possible. Then you could narrow your focus to individual photographs that truly interest you, thus gaining a better understanding of the depth of feeling Brassai put into a lot of his work.

I'll be the first to admit that some of Brassai's photographs simply don't work for me. They don't say anything to me. But when they do work, I think they're the equal of anything done by Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doineau, or Helmut Newton.

I wish I could find the photo I originally picked for this discussion. I had the link in my original draft of this essay, but when I clicked on it to test it, it was broken...and I haven't been able to locate the photograph again since then. Sorry.

March 29, 2014

Brassai has been one of my favorites since I was a kid in the 1960s-'70s just getting into photography. I have one edition of the US version of Paris By Night, which turned out to be rather tame and omitted many of his studies of dancers, prostitutes and other interesting characters.

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Lex...<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Brassai-Paris-Anne-W-Tucker/dp/0810963809">this</a> is the book you probably want to get. It's the original book that went along with the exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. The cover is different from my original, but it should be the same book inside.

March 29, 2014

I'll try to keep my little introduction as brief as possible here for two reasons. One, I don't want to bore you, and two, I don't want my own thoughts and impressions to influence what others think. But if I'm going to do this, you have to know how I think about the subject I'm going to talk about.

In 1998, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, held an exhibition of photographs by Henri Brassai. They also published a hard cover book to go along with the exhibition. I remember the book as being way too expensive for my budget then, but I ordered it anyway. I knew this was something I had to have. And thus began my fascination with Brassai's work and a different style of shooting than what I'd been doing before. I was on a hamster wheel of generic glamour and fashion photography and it was becoming a chore. Sixteen years later, I'm not sure I've escaped The Wheel, but sometimes I think I've made some progress.

I became enamored of Brassai's talent for capturing his "Secret Paris", a night time mélange of photographs that some considered as showing the seamy side of life, but which I saw as recording reality and truth. The word "mélange" actually has its roots in an older word that means "to meddle". That's what Brassai did...he meddled. He poked his lens into hidden places, and strangely enough, no one seemed to mind. It's as if his subjects were saying, "Feel free to photograph what you see here...this is what and who we are, and we make no excuses or ask for anyone's approval". I love Brassai's approach, and I love his results. Brassai was friends with Picasso, Matisse, and cited Toulouse-Lautrec as an influence. His photograhy was influenced by great artists and it shows, I think.

I've often thought of his work as casual documentary portraiture, although I don't like to categorize any photographer's work. I actually considered his work as an extension of E. J. Bellocq's photographs made in the bordellos of Storyville, the red light district of New Orleans in 1912. Bellocq is another photographer I admire greatly. I think Brassai's work foreshadowed a lot of Helmut Newton's work and style, and to a lesser degree, that of Richard Avedon and Herb Ritts.

You may find many examples of his work <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=henri+brassai&client=firefox-a&hs=cAO&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=M0o3U4-GIevMsQTCzILYDg&ved=0CDMQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=866&dpr=1#imgdii=_">Click Here</a>. I couldn't include the photograph I wanted to show because the link wouldn't work, so you'll have to satisfy yourselves by looking at Google images. But look for the images where it's difficult to tell male from female. Brassai may have been the first serious photographer to faithfully document transgender people. His work is in black and white, of course. Black and white brings a clarity to his work that I think color would dilute. There's a danger of color making a photographer's work "pretty".

I've always thought that to be a successful documentary portraitist, you must be brave. Not physically brave, but brave in a visual sense. You cannot afford to look away. You frame the shot and whatever you see through the viewfinder, you shoot it, and damn what anyone else thinks of it.

So. My little (somewhat disjointed) essay comes to an end. Henri Brassai and his work. He passed away in 1984. Let's hear what you think of him and his work. He can't hear you. But if he could, I doubt he'd care. He did what he wanted, and he did it his way. What more can you ask of a photographer? What more can you ask of yourself? I think Brassai made photographs to please himself, to satisfy his own creativity. To me, that's what it's all about.

March 24, 2014

Thanks to everyone who responded.

I found the culprit, gave it a severe beating, and things are working as they should now.

March 24, 2014

I can't see anyone's photos after clicking on the thumbnail.

March 24, 2014

I don't have an answer for a number and can only suggest an advisory or warning when the portfolio exceeds a number to remind the photographer that it might discourage people from viewing the portfolio.

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It's currently the photographer's choice to choose the number of photos in a folder, and even the number of folders in the whole portfolio...especially if he or she is paying for site usage.

As a viewer, you have the choice to view the entire portfolio or folder on one page, so you you have the option to pick which photos you look at or don't look at. It's a simple matter of scrolling down a web page and making a choice.

We don't need any more "advisories" or "warnings" on Photo.net.

March 24, 2014

The thumbnails of my photos are visible, but when I click on them to enlarge them, all I see is an empty space.

I am not talking about nudes, either. I'm talking about all of them, including recent uploads.

Where are my <a href="/photo/17717413">photos</a>?

March 5, 2014

I've always scanned with the negative directly on the glass with a sheet of anti-Newton glass on the negative to hold it flat. The results have always been (to my eyes) excellent. I turn off all scanner settings that relate to tone correction. I scan 4x5 negatives at either 1600ppi or 3200ppi. With a 1600 scan, I usually end up with a 50-something Mb file to begin with. I've made prints from these scans with excellent results...sharp and detailed. When you view a scan at the "actual pixels" setting in Photoshop and can count someone's eyelashes and see the tiny blood vessels in their eyes, you know you have a good scan.

March 2, 2014

"But, . . . From reading all the different threads on the issue over the last few months, I think your response to one of the image's comments may be the cause in your specific case also, as it contains the word 'nude.'" So I'm not even allowed to say the word "nude" in photo critiques or in reply to a critique without it having some collateral and negative effect on the photograph, itself? But anyway, I did get the problem corrected after I complained about the utter childishness of it.

But I'll have to give your theory some thought, James, and maybe try it out. I'll use the word "nude" in a reply to a comment on some of my animal photographs and see what happens.

But then again, I'm wondering if it is really worth the bother. The more I think about it, the more I think the whole concept is just too dumb to waste any more of my time on.

March 2, 2014

"...It clearly demonstrates the absurdity of the site's MO of hiding images of nudes and the extent of this methodology's inherent paternalism. C'mon folks, this is photography, not pornography."

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I couldn't agree more. I have the "cover nude images" thing disabled in my workspace, but even when I'm logged in, I still have to jump through the p.net hoops of clicking on an image once or twice in order to see my own photographs! Until recently, Photo.net even had <a href="/photo/3603243">this photograph</a> covered as a nude because "the other photographs in the folder are nudes". Seriously, I'm not making this up.

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Posts posted by jimadams