Beauty is in the photograph, not the gear

"Beauty is in the photograph, not the gear. Lenses matter, but even today’s kit lenses are capable of creating beautiful photographs. ... And if the best thing people say about my work is, “Wow, it sure is sharp,” then I’ve failed and the lens is irrelevant."

Highly quotable statement from David DuChemin in his blog.

DIY-photos in magazines: authentic or trite?

A weekly had asked its female readers to send in their best pictures of their husband (partner, or whatever politically-correct term you want). Many sent a picture of hubby in bed with a cat. Maybe those were the pictures that made these readers happiest. But if you then make it into a policy of your magazine to use only pictures made by its readers instead of professionally-made photos, will you get 'authentic' content or just trite DIY-pictures?

This discussion I read about in my newspaper got going because a magazine for young parents wants to use only illustrations it gets from its readers. The main argument from the magazine’s editor is that in this way the pictures will be more authentic and ‘de-glamourised’. I can agree with their point, and also with the other point they made, namely that small children are so spontaneous and that parents can capture those moments better in natural situations at home than professional photographers who always intrude into the natural situation.

An old example from my own experience (scanned from an analogous photo): a pro would not have got that relaxed-curious attitude from my daughter.

A professional photographer made the counterargument of triteness, using the anecdote of the hubby & cat pictures. Amateur photographers simply lack the imagination and the vision that a professional photographer brings to the scene.

Looking at (too many of!) my own pictures, I must agree with the counterargument, too: my pictures may be too conventional, not surprising enough. Or just made too lazily, as when I do not want to take the trouble of getting down on my knees to get a better perspective, or when I do not want to set up a tripod to get better sharpness.

And I also agree that getting the imagination and vision is largely a matter of training. But I don’t agree that only professionally-schooled photographers have that training. A lot of advanced amateur photographers have that too. Sometimes my own pictures are not too bad, and I see others’ which are much better, also among my internet friends—no professional would be ashamed of them!

Finally, there is more to photographic vision than training; maybe there is such a thing as talent. I’m thinking, for instance, of my own daughter, who without any training sometimes went out with her simple compact camera and then shot really good pictures. But she too has her share of conventional, boring pictures—a bit more training or experience would help! She has her own DSLR now... Still, here comes a little example of what she made from an inspired day in a museum.

Erwin Olaf shoots (or paints?) like Rembrandt

Dutch star photographer Erwin Olaf produced (for want of a better word) a series of pictures inspired on the Relief of Leiden, a defining moment in Dutch 17th century history. His pictures are inspired by paintings from that time. I see a mix of Vermeer and Rembrandt: the baroque atmosphere of Rembrandt, with a more serene light like Vermeer's.

The photo series Erwin Olaf schildert Leids Ontzet :: nrc.nl shows some of those pictures and 'making of' shots. Olaf and his team are shooting individual portraits which will be integrated into huge compositions.

Olaf's pictures are exhibited in Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden, in the festivities around Leiden's Relief, celebrated with all kinds of events in 5 days around October 3. Starting today!

Information on "De Dag van de Fotografie"

For my Dutch and/or Dutch-speaking readers: Er komt op 21 oktober een Dag van de fotografie. Uiteraard in Amsterdam. Deze Dag van de Fotografie belooft veel evenementen rond fotografie en wordt georganiseerd door fotobureau Hollandse Hoogte. Veel van de activiteiten zijn voor foto-professionals, maar ook voor amateurs is er van alles: een fotoboekenmarkt, een fotoquiz, workshops, enzovoorts.

Ik ben dan nog eventjes heel ver van Nederland. Wie laat me weten hoe het was?

Robert Capa's Dead Soldier: Truth or Fame?

The solution to the question if Robert Capa's iconic picture of a Loyalist soldier dying in the Spanish civil war in the 1930s was true or false was the subject of an article in the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad on October 9 (the article itself is not in the public part of the website--sorry!). It was a long article, so the answer was not simple.

First of all, the answer did not come from the 'Mexican suitcase', the suitcase full of negatives made by Capa that surfaced in 2008 in Mexico. The negative of the famous photo was not there; it has been missing for years. Second, the state of the art on this question will forever remain a matter of debate between experts and would-be experts. It is, so much we can take from the discussion, probably not a photo of a soldier dying in a large-scale action. Probably Capa went on a small tour with a group of soldiers for a photo shoot; it was a staged photo. Some stories have it that the man in the picture was shot by a sniper at the moment Capa pressed the shutter--to my mind too good a story to be true. It was said that Capa himself never claimed it was a picture 'at the moment of death'.

The impression of authenticity of the photo may have been a trick: Capa may have made a slightly unfocused photo on purpose (no autofocus in those days, of course!), and moved his hands a bit to give the impression he himself was diving for safety while pressing the shutter.

And then there is the role of the press. Capa's picture was first published September 1936 in two French magazines, Vu and Regards. In Vu they published a whole series of the young photographer (he was 22 at the time and not yet famous) with poetic, symbolic captions going with the photos. When the same picture was republished later in world-famous magazine Life in the USA, July 1937, there was a much more dramatic caption, talking about the photo being made at the moment the soldier was killed. Being published in Life, and with such a dramatic caption, were the occasion for Capa to become world-famous--and he did not say that the caption going with his photo was not truthful. He did not even lie, he just did not tell 'the whole truth'. What would I have done--what would you have done--if fame suddenly beckons?

Footnote: the picture can be found on many websites so have a look at Google or better the Wikipedia if you do not know it, but is copyrighted.

Doubling by halving: f/1.4 instead of f/2.8 and artistic sense

Jeffrey Friedl's most recent post was about a French photographer and author, Stéphane Barbery, who borrowed Jeffrey's camera for a while because he wanted to enjoy 'a thin depth of field with my Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 that his current camera can't match.' That's even less of depth-of-field, or more selective sharpness, than f/2.8, especially with Jeffrey's full-frame camera! By halving the aperture number, the selectivity of sharpness is doubled--as a figure of speech.

Are those lenses more affordable in Japan, where he lives, or is he just fanatic about maximum light and miminum depth-of-field? Anyway, it makes me jealous--not because of the price or the weight (both must be tremendous), but because of the photographic possibilities it gives.

What also makes me jealous is how this Stéphane Barbery has a very different sense of photographic beauty. Friedl discusses a 'throw-away test shot' that Barbery made and that he finds beautiful. So did I. Have a look here; it also gives links to Barbery's web site--worht a look too!

Every so often... you just have to take that picture

"Every so often, you turn a corner and there it is--a great photograph." That is how Guardian photographer Eamonn McCabe summarised his fascination with (black & white) photography. He felt inspired by a book of the same title, Every so often, by another photographer, Raymond Moore. It's a matter of (quoting McCabe's column in August's Black+White Photography again): "just enjoying the process of looking". I agree, and whished I had a camera built into my eyes: you just click your fingers (that is an allusion to a recent song by Daniel Lohues, of course) and then it's stored in your memory. So even when I don't have a good camera with me, sometimes I just have to take that photograph--as this one, in the streets of Athens, in 2007. What did that junk do in the street? Why is the passer-by looking at it, or beyond it through the window? Never mind the technically bad quality of the photo, use that little old compact (as in this case) or even your phone's camera. Point and shoot--to keep wondering whenever you see the picture again about a moment you otherwise would have forgotten.

Landscape book -- little gem with flaws

A book on landscape photography is what I picked up in a 'modern antiques' bookstore ('ramsj', in Yiddish-Dutch), when my daughter drgged me into it. (A matter of self-protection, as I would be certain to come out with too many books if I let meyself loose in such a store...). It was the Dutch version of 'The World's Top Photographers - Landscapes' edited by Terry Hope. You may find little gems among the rubbish of those cheap bookstores, so do go and have a look--if you can control yourself ;-)

The book itself is still on sale in the main online bookstores (no advertisements by me; you can find your own).

It contains two spreads with a little bit of text and one to circa four photos from 38 photographers, ordered alphabetically. The photos are quite nice--'inspiring' in the not too far from true enthusiastic parlance of the Introduction--and the texts give a good impression of what it takes to be a good landscape photographer. Knowing your special corner of the world and a lot of persistence are among the key ingredients, so much is clear to me already after leafing through just a few of the photographers' little chapters.

It is only too noticeable that the book originally was published in 2003, before the digital revolution in photography. All photos are made on film (almost invariably Fuji, just a few on Kodak--I used to prefer the fuller Fuji colours, too). Of course, there still are many landscpae photographers who work on film, especially in the large cameras (4x5 inch, etc.). But many now also work digitally, and that is not found in this book. Besides, I would have liked more detailed technical information with the photos: what is the use of knowing the brand of camera or film, but not the aperture and shutter speed (plus ISO setting)? For instance, the trick of getting the 'glazed' smoothness of the sea in some photos depends on the shutter speed and then I'd like to learn if it takes 2, 20 or 200 seconds for getting that effect.

Annoying about the Dutch translation is that it was not done by a photographer, otherwise the translation of 'tripod' would not have been the literal 'driepoot' but the correct 'statief', for instance. So I found the book a gem with little flaws, but it will be useful on many rainy days for getting more inspiration!

The photo here is just a little illustration of landscape and nature photography 'learned young'. As my daughter had my DSLR, I took her picture with the small compact camera--good enough for the purpose. I tried to take care of some composition rules (object at 1/3), and felt aided by the S-curve in the park's path to suggest depth. What's the flaw in this little gem?

Yvonne van der Mey wins with photo "against the rules"

Yvonne van der Mey, who directed the workshops on nature photography that I followed the last two weekends, won a prize! The prize photo, entitled "Leopard male in the early morning, desperately looking for a female" she had shown to us during the workshop as one with which she was quite satisfied, although it went against a primary rule of composition, namely that you ought to see the subject's eyes in a portrait-like picture. But here, clearly, that rule does not really apply: we as viewers are following the leopard's gaze into the depth of the unknown, almost feeling his anxiousness.

That's a point about so-called rules of composition: you have to adhere to most of them to avoid mistakes in your photo, but you must know when to break one of them to make a truly good shot.

By the way, I wonder if the title of the photo was really true: maybe the leopard was just looking for food, or was frightened through hearing a pride of lions roaring, rather than being on the lookout for a mate, but it is a nice title that adds to the picture's meaning--it makes the animal more symphatetic to human viewers, and if that's what gives you a prize, why not?

Magnolia in Spring--Far to Go to Reach Imogen Cunningham

Really irresistible, this spring: temperatures are much above normal since some time and all plants and flowers are just exploding! After a day of hard work in the garden, the magnolia tree looked gorgeous in the sunset. Even better is the purity of a single magnolia flower in close-up. But a snapshot like mine is far from the perfect photo Imogen Cunningham once made of a magnolia--I swhowed her photo a long time ago already.
Still, I'm not dissatisfied with this snapshot, the more so as it was taken with the 'second camera', the Panasonix Lumix TZ5, and without a tripod. Not bad at all, this little compact camera! But that's something I said before, too ;-)

John, Yoko and Archiving

A 15-year student, wanting to become a photographer, forged a press card to get into the famous bed-in press session of John Lennon and Yoko Ono in the Amsterdam Hilton hotel, in 1969. Govert de Roos, who went on to become a professional glamour photographer, was quoted in my newspaper magazine "M" saying that het was so nervous that after shooting one roll, he sneaked out for fear of being found out. One of his photos was published, but the others were lost. Until, that is, De Roos's daughter found the sheet with the negatives back, almost 40 years later--mislaid among family pictures. The 40-year anniversary of the bed-in (and finding back the photos) was the occasion for an exhibition.
Lesson for us, 21st century digital photographers: use keywords to archive your pictures! And do it as soon as you upload from your camera to your computer...

Believers in reality--aren't we all?

Every now and again the discussion flares up: is post-processing of photos allowed? The main problem is of course that "the belief remains that
when there are no obvious clues concerning image manipulation, the image must depict reality" as a student in Media from Amsterdam, Alexander van Dongen, wrote in his 2006 thesis, which I stumbled upon in the Net. At the same time: the charm of photography is precisely its 'believability', its truth-likeness. It would not be fun if viewers did not believe that the photo was real.
To me the issue remains contextual--and then it's simple: if you want to convey a message of reality, then no fooling around is allowed beyond general interpretation of the sensor data (i.e. making truthlike colours by adjusting the white-balance, adjusting erroneous exposure and the like). If the aim is just to please the viewer's eye, then all is allowed.
But we don't believe in the self-organising force of the market anymore: it has become only too clear that markets may be good at coordinating supply and demand of simple goods, but when cheating is possible, it will happen, so that controls on honesty are necessary. Newspaper editors, photo award juries etc. are the public's agents in that respect. How they make their "contracts" with photographers, may be an interesting question for researchers of property rights theory, or principal-agent theory. For me the poitn is: I want to trust my newspaper--and I want to enjoy pictures at an exhibition for what they are.

Stumbled upon: JuanKa

Googling more links around the BBC's 'Genius of Photography' series, I stumbled upon a fellow-blogger. Great animal pictures from someone calling himself Juanka, living practically in the Everglades national park, Florida USA. Have a look yourself through this link. Amazing!

Photos on TV: BBC Documentary Series 'Genius of Photography'

A must-see for photographers--and I missed the first episode and a half! This is BBC's series 'the Genius of Photography', advertised as 'Documentary series exploring the history of photography - from daguerreotype to digital, from portraits to photo-journalism, from art to advertising.' Has been aired on BBC Four in 2007 and 2008, apparently, but our cable company gives BBC 2, which is doing the 6-weeks' series now: every Saturday, 7 to 8 PM, Greenwich time.
The BBC does not have it on iPlayer, due to 'rights restrictions', but luckily salvation can be found in the Net. No more time for writing; I must catch up with last week, first!

Atget, Abbott and the Wonderment of Reality

Dutch TV in the early Sunday evening showed a documentary about two famous photographers of cityscapes: Eugène Atget, working in Paris around 1900-1925 and Berenice Abbott, famous for her pictures of New York in the 1930s. Abbott in fact had two careers, because she also was the one who rescued Atget's legacy of almost two thousand glass negatives. And it was Atget's photos of the disappearing old Paris around 1900 that inspired her to document the changes in New York city. The documentary showed the links, but also the differences between the two photographers: Atget as essentially a 19^th century romantic, Abbott as a 20^th century photographer who learned photography from surrealist Man Ray but who felt inspired by Atget to document New York's transformation. Some of the surrealist fascination was already visible in Atget's work, too: he made a number of photos of shop windows with reflections like the one copied here, which lookèd quite modern in the 1920s--Man Ray himself made the contact between Abbott and Atget.

Somehow both Atget and Abbott transcended the simple documenting of the old-and-the-new juxtaposed, intermingled or destroying one another. What is it that makes some photos and some photographers do that trick? I found in both of them the same things that inspire my photography (at a rather more amateurish level of course): "The real world, seen with wonderment and surprise" (Abbott writing about Atget), realising that the art of photography is "selecting what is worthwhile" (Abbott commenting on an Atget photo).

Technically, it was interesting to see how both of them worked with large plate camera's: 8"x 10" negatives to get ultimate sharpness, with flexible tilt-and-shift lenses to achieve perpendicular verticals. Digital APC-sensors are not the end of photographic evolution!

Hopefully, the documentary will appear in the Dutch public TV's archive. Give it a try; it's 45 well-spent minutes!

Where is Frans Lanting when you need him?

In rushed my wife: "A bird of prey caught a dove!" Oh, where is Frans Lanting (or any other nature photographer) when you need one? Rushed out of the study behind her, camera in one hand, memory card in the other (I had just imported some pics into the PC) and switching the camera to Sports mode at the same time. I usually hate those pre-cooked modes, but now it came in handy: ISO 800, fast-shutter time preference, hi-speed (5 frames/second) drive setting. Not that we saw much of the sparrowhawk, because he (it was a young male) found a spot to devour his prey in a secluded corner of the garden and we did not want to go out and disturb him. So photos had to be made from behind the window. The trees and other growth made manual focusing necessary and that was not easy I must admit. How do the Frans Lantings of this world do that? I admire them increasingly. By the way, I mentioned Frans Lanting because he once published this book 'Eye to Eye' (sold out now, there's just a postcard-book at Amazon and a special portfolio at Taschen), and the eyes are the most catching part of my photo too, I think (the rest is sub-zero quality—don't mention it!).

Oscar van Alphen (2): The Photo as a Shroud

"The photo shows reality as the shroud shows the dead body
without identification, without name, without history.
What remains is the external intensity of the neutral,
the fascination with the ever-recurring question about concealing or revealing."

Thus reads the first of two stanzas copied into an "Untitled" picture of 1987 by Oscar van Alphen—I promised I'd come back to him. The photo is a black-and-white one, with a large, rolled-up white sheet (the shroud of the poem) in the foreground; the rest is a Dutch, flat landscape. A rather empty picture, accordingly. Which fits the poem alright.

Van Alphen's photo is the only one of over a hundred in the 1991 exhibition catalogue 'The Decisive Image: Dutch photography from the 20^th century' with a text in it. (Must have been difficult in those pre-digital days to get a text into a photo with darkroom techniques rather than printing techniques. Probably a slide of white letters on a completely black background copied into the large photo. But that was not the point of my blog entry.)

His text is indeed a question about the truth in photography: what is "in" a picture? What is its relation to reality? How external is what we see in a picture? These are not easy questions—were not easy in the analogous days, and have become more complicated in the digital days in some (but not in all) respects. It is too late in the day for me to even try to approach the question intellectually. Perhaps Van Alphen was not so crazy when he tried to do it with a photo surrounding his text. Roland Barthes' 'Camera lucida' with his musings on the photo of his deceased mother are not a very readable alternative... Strange that death plays a role in Van Alphen's picture as much as in Barthes' classic text on photography. Or has Van Alphen read Barthes'text? For although we see only the 'external intensity' of the photo, it may lead to the thought of where it came from: what was the photographer trying to tell us? Why was s/he trying to tell us precisely this? That is where Van Alphen's reading on photography may come into play.

Even more to muse upon, when the evening gets still later.

Oscar van Alphen - Dutch photographer

Photo magazine 'Focus' in its December 2008 issue has an article on photographer Oscar van Alphen--a bit of an advertorial, since they are publishing a book about him. I did not find his documentary photos that remarkable, but was triggered by the remark that he was a pioneer because of his 'asking often fundamental questions about the medium that others found to be essential only much later'. How could I--thinking that I too am interested in the question of what does photography do?--be unaware of him?

After all, he is mentioned in the standard anthology 'Fotografen in Nederland' (not at Amazon, but sold by Proxis) and there I may find the clue why I was not triggered to his work: one of his major books is praised for being an 'associative whole' and that is the type of artistry that puts me off: I want a formal Auseinandersetzung with basic questions, even if I have to admit that photography works more directly through the senses than through formal logic and reasoning. At least you should know why it works the way it works, I'd think. Stil this Van Alphen seems an interesting guy to look into. Some of his photos from Amsterdam (oh, how 1968!) are found at the local council archive, and one of his apparently most famous installations is revived in an exhibition right now in the Rotterdam Fotomuesum.

If I find time [big if!], I'll check his basic questions (he wrote some books about photography) and then I'll come back to him in due course.