blake_schwalbe

<p>dpreview apparently decided to postpone it's review of the s100 because the first three samples it received from Canon had de-centered lenses. They're going to wait for Canon to send a fourth one, but that raises a lot of issues, because one would think Canon would now select a camera without a de-centered lens to send to dpreview, but what about a regular consumer buying retail?</p>

<p>Have you seen Mark Cohen's work? Such as <em>Grim Street</em> and <em>True Color</em>. Very exciting visually. Full of energy. He shoots around Wilkes-Barre and Scranton in Pennsylvania. Gets extremely close, often with flash. I wouldn't recommend the technique, for personal safety reasons. Just so interesting and good.</p>

<p>Sorry, I always try to flatter my subjects. Hard habit to break from doing head shot photography for too long. Yes, f8 - f11 is better, that way you'll get everything in focus. But Ellen there has a wood molding going through her cheek and out the back of her head. And the McDonalds paper cup is given the same visual importance as her eyes. What if, maybe, you would have positioned her a little farther from all of that clutter, maybe by the front of the desk, and with a longer focal length and larger aperture have given her prominence, with the defocused background hinting at the environment, the monitor and clippings, without actually being able to read them?<br /><br /> Arnold Newman did environmental photography where everything was in focus though. </p>

<p>Mark, one approach could be to use a large aperture so the background is out of focus, to achieve good separation. The lighting in your samples is very clean and bright, but also perhaps somewhat stark and flat. Have you tried synching your flash to lower ambient (background) light, so your subjects stand out more (use a faster synch speed).</p>

<p>Does vertical alignment affect focus accuracy?</p>

<p>As Stephen said, there is a broad spectrum and continuum from straight photography to highly manipulated images, and room within that for innumerable varieties of approaches to the medium.<br /><br />It's really quite too complex and limiting to try to strictly define photography with reductionist concepts. I think this is what people object to, because it seems not to account for complexities inherent in even the simplest of photographs.<br /><br />Having said that, one can discuss personal preferences, as there really is no way to account for them -- that is, they're essentially all valid.<br /><br />My own tastes are highly eclectic and I enjoy very disparate approaches in other people's work.<br /><br />One thing that I do notice with image manipulation is that there is a desire and tendency to enhance photographs through surface decoration, by adding gradients, tints, textures, vignetting, dodging and burning, etc., to an excessive degree. Often it comes across as a desperate and maybe unconscious effort to create over idealized photographs, or maybe to add mood and feeling where they didn't exist, or to enhance them beyond what was there. Is that okay? Of course, but although I don't object to it conceptually, in practice, many times I find myself questioning the photographer's intention.</p>

<p>Yes, I understand. Then I'm not really sure what it means. Perhaps one histogram is cached and the other is re-calculated or refreshed, or is considering other color settings (color space) ... but I of course don't know.</p>

<p>I think it's a feature. I use levels and curves for color correction. If you change the blending mode to "luminosity" colors will not be affected. For example, if you make a typical S-curve in the curves dialog to increase contrast, you'll also increase saturation unless you change the blending mode to luminosity.</p>

<p>The images load quickly and the design of the site is very user friendly. It allows one to quickly get at the photographs.<br /><br />The photographs are all excellent. It seems like you could have full time photographic careers in a number of different photographic specialties. The site works well to highlight the range of your work. <br /><br />Have you considered how to market yourself? It seems that your portfolio is excellent in many areas.</p>

<p>I'm honestly more than a little ambivalent about such images. I don't discount them outright, but I have a natural suspicion and resistance towards accepting them. And these views obviously reflect my personal biases. For one, I tend to link them in my mind to trends in marketing and advertising and the culture at large that are aimed at hyping products, personalities, celebrities, and consumerism. I associate it in my mind to the same mentality that in Hollywood creates movies with inane plots packaged in dazzling special effects.</p>

<p>I'm also ambivalent about the fact that the aesthetic imitates analogue technologies. I know it's not meant to deceive, but why the imitation of the toy camera look or other low-fi photographic technologies besides the desire to project and construct a hipster cool persona? It seems something appropriate maybe for teenagers, or that would appeal to them.</p>

<p>You could look at the work of Fred Ritchin (<a href="http://www.pixelpress.org/afterphotography/">After Photography</a>). Some of the videos of Ritchin's talk from the FOAM conference (<em>what's next</em>) may be interesting: <a href="http://1000wordsphotographymagazine.blogspot.com/2011/04/whats-next.html">link</a>.</p>

<p>"coffee table photo book fanboys." We were talking about photobooks. You're misrepresenting what people have said purposefully to put them down.<br /><br />Not everyone is a NYT fanboy like you. If someone dares to criticize the "important" editors and "important" readership of the NYT, you call them arrogant. You've stated multiple times in this thread that if it's in the NYT it's good by default. That's so pompous. Is that something like if you're richer than someone else or more powerful you know better than they do?</p>

<p>On closer inspection, if you look closely, quite a few of the photographs in the grid are in fact different from the photographs that accompany the audio. Possibly a number of important choices were made for Soth by the editors, and the exigencies of the project. Simon, some of the photographs, viewed individually, do indeed have a lot of good in them. Soth's photographic vision re-emerges and I see clear echoes and links to his other work. It's tempered somewhat by the use of the smaller digital camera, another exigency of working on deadline for publication. The 8x10 and 300 mm lens arrange space differently. I think a photo editor probably arranged the grid, and sequenced and edited the photos there in a presentation that really does a disservice to the photos, selecting alternate takes for uniformity and graphic effect at the expense of integrity of vision. It's like seeing a crack in the facade. How important sequencing and selection of images and their presentation is. Soth has dedicated his career to making incredibly well conceived books, and it's interesting how a heavy handed editor can present even the best work in a way that really diminishes it. It really is an entire creative process, from taking the photograph to its final form and sequencing in a book, and here it seems the editorial hand has put some cogs in the wheel.</p>

<p>Did you get the Bessa III?</p>

<p>Yes, it's true, Soth has really been brilliant in his interpretation and reformulation of Sander's work and the tradition of nineteenth-century photography. I knew that Soth also has done some small serialization projects of architecture, displaying them in the ubiquitous grids. I just hadn't seen him follow in the footsteps of the typological aspect of the Bechers and their Dusseldorf School in portraiture. I know he uses the Becher's deadpan aesthetic, and is also clearly influenced by Eggleston and Stephen Shore. I always found the connection he has to the people he photographs, the way they seem disarmed by him, such an integral part of his attraction. That's why I was dismayed when I saw the serialized approach to these portraits on the cover of the NYT Magazine.</p>

<p>Brad, that's not very nice asking me how <em>I</em> would photograph the assignment.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>No. I don't. Nor does that characterization even come to mind viewing this series. That's your view. Perhaps you would have been happier with a more dramatic, upbeat and heroic Karshian style to help tell the story?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes, of course it's my view. That's why I wrote it myself. I didn't attribute it to you did I? I'm not trying to change your mind, or I don't see that to be the purpose of expressing one's interpretation in a forum. The choice you offer in response though is a false choice that you came up with on your own. I didn't say anything to suggest that I wanted anything "dramatic" or "upbeat" or "heroic" as a counterpoint to Soth's approach. If you attribute ideas to other people so that they're easily defeated, you're setting up a sham argument to further your point at someone else's expense.</p>

<p>Yes, it's true, and I don't have any real reservations about that merging. I know that Martin Parr was vehemently opposed for inclusion by one member of Magnum especially. He has just an amazing ability to transcend and to work seamlessly it seems in so many areas of the photography world. And for Soth, I can only really say good things about his work, but this specific set of photographs for the NYT Magazine, they seem just so wrong on many levels. They seem rushed and done by rote. It seems that anyone could have stood in for the portraits, even a mannequin. If you care about people's stories, why serialize them into non-entities? How can twenty people have the same affectless expression? Why choreograph them all to seem withdrawn and hermetic in the same way? It doesn't seem to work either as photojournalism or conceptualized art.<br /><br />And although I don't attribute any conscious cunning on the part of Soth, who seems always so sanguine and down to earth about his position in the art world, isn't there a bit of irony in sending one of the highest paid art photographers, represented by the single most glamorous influential gallery in the art world, with the editors of one of the most powerful newspapers, to photograph the "American Worker." I think there is particularly if the photographs are destined for MOMA and collectors. They almost seem to have been produced on spec for that purpose. That's why I would feel exploited had I been one of the people photographed -- how aware were they of the conception of the whole project and their role in participating in it? Maybe there was a down on his or her luck photographer willing to work for the Times to do this story.</p>

<p>My impression for example is that far from the Times and the editors respecting the people photographed, is that they exploited them. They're sort of used as interchangeable props. I mean, when you go to tell someone's story, do you think of serialization, uniformity, concocted plastic art-world affectlessness, staged tableaux. You could as well have hired actors. </p>

<p>So it seems that people are responding positively to Soth's new approach of serialization and images constructed to hew to a conceptualized artistic intention? I always loved the connections that he made with people, the trust that he gained from them. I was really disheartened to see this new direction of depersonalization and sterile images, especially for editorial photography. He's always approached portraiture as a collaboration, and although not all his subjects were aware of his status as an important art photographer and this wasn't essentially relevant in many instances, I find the implications for social responsibility and honest reporting in this series troubling.</p>

<p>John, I'm beginning to understand how you respond to criticisms of your ideas, which is to set-up straw men that you then shoot down. You attribute ideas and beliefs to other people that they haven't expressed and then criticize your own formulation as if it was attributable to someone else.</p>

<p>I've always been a big fan of his work. I went to see him when he spoke with Elliot Erwitt on stage and it was a great experience. I really like him and his photographs, and have been a fairly assiduous collector of his books. Anyway, I don't even mind that he's moving in more conceptual directions lately. It's okay. I'm just criticizing this series of portraits, not diminishing his work. I don't like that he's moving away from the 8x10 and I think it shows here. I'm paraphrasing, but indeed the world through a 300 mm lens looks different. These are sincere criticisms, from someone who isn't a photographer, so someone doesn't say, oh you're jealous because he's been canonized to such an extent. But it doesn't automatically exempt him from criticism. </p>

<p>I call them pronouncements because John's statements appear to me to be sham arguments. He writes things like:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Who cares what a viewer "wants?" Must feeding expectations be a top photographer's job? I think the point was to challenge, not to please. I doubt Soth shoots weddings.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>It's like setting up a straw man to be defeated, but I can't find where anyone has suggested that hypothesis. I also don't understand the use of quotation marks for so many words. By the way, I'm not attacking John personally (the <em>ad hominem</em> argument), which was made in the other thread, which is designed often to make people defensive.<br /><br />For example, I think, and I may be mistaken, that people are responding with sympathy for the people depicted, their honesty, which I fully share. But the photography I think reveals the opposite of what John posited, i.e., the lack of "ego" (which I put in quotation marks because it's not a word that would occur to me to describe photographic and artistic intention).<br /><br />Taking John's sentence, quoted above, I would argue that Soth is precisely pandering to his viewers (collectors and gallerists and art critics and other artists for example) and "feeding expectations," in John's words. The photographs are in a style that has been widely adopted by artist photographers, as well as by Soth. It hews to a well established path, which works wonderfully in many cases. In this instance, though, it seems to me that the subjects in the photographs have been shoehorned into this mold, to conform to the neutral aesthetic that Soth does so well, that is so remunerative for him in the rarefied market for prints that he inhabits.<br /><br />For example, why are so many people in the photographs depicted with downward glances to the side of the camera? Were they directed to not smile and look down and to the side. Why were they photographed with such a high resolution camera on a tripod -- was it to make spectacularly detailed large prints that could then fetch large sums at Gagosian? Alec Soth is of course not an ingenue. I'm just a bit ambivalent when photographs are constructed for the art market.<br /><br />I liked listening to their stories.</p>

<p>Also, Ross, sometimes the conversation or the tone of the conversation may seem to go in a direction that you don't like, but you should feel empowered to present your viewpoint. Don't let yourself be marginalized from a platform from which you can have your say.</p>

<p>Ross, why would you say that? This is a forum -- the more points of view the better. Otherwise if everyone thought alike, what kind of a forum would it be? It's nice many times to feel part of a community, even if it's only online in this case for most people. Sometimes everyone agrees, and you feel as if you have like people around that you can talk to. Other times people disagree or may even seem hostile, although it's hard to tell from forum postings. I read forum postings from one of my old professors in college (not on here), and he is one of the most cultured and kind people I've known, but he sounds like a lunatic online for some reason. Not on purpose.</p>