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This blog is intended to showcase my pictures or those of other photographers who have moved beyond the pretty picture and for whom photography is more than entertainment - photography that aims at being true, not at being beautiful because what is true is most often beautiful..

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Entries in polaroids (26)

Wednesday
Jul012015

diptych # 143 / kitchen sink # 28 / tourist polaroid / life in pictures #19 ~ a picture making dilemma of sorts

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graffiti ~ New York, NY • click to embiggen
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hotdog debri ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
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red umbrella / Hugo ~ 1000 Islands, NY • click to embiggen
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Chanel N˚5 ~ New York, NY • click to embiggen

Over the past few weeks I have been moving about the landscape and have managed to make almost 100 pictures. As is my wont, those pictures are all over the landscape (metaphorically writing), referent wise. Some of the pictures fit into some of my various bodies of work but most do not.

Consequently, as I sit viewing all of the pictures - all open on my screen - I find myself ill at ease with the notion that I may be making too many pictures for my own good inasmuch as I don't know how to organize / categorize the ones which do not fit into one or the other of my existing bodies of work.

Some of the pictures suggest opportunities to create new bodies of work, assuming that I want to do so. While I have, in fact, been contemplating my next picture making thing, I am limited by my location in pursuing specific picture making opportunities. As an example, I live in a rather remote area so any thought of pursuing a body of work which requires regular access to big-city stuff - reference the graffiti pictures in this entry - is somewhat of a lost cause. So, looking the reality of the situation in the eye, I feel that I should (must?) find a new picture making thing which is within reach, literally and figuratively.

While I will never be able to rein in my picture making promiscuity, I do have the desire to sink my picture making teeth into a focused endeavor. Fortunately, thanks to a couple angst filled days of staring at my recent accumulation of pictures, I believe I have come up with an idea for my next picture making thing.
Friday
Dec102010

polaroid ~ long gone

Burwell Theater ~ Parkersburg, West Virginia

From an assignment series - teen life in Parkersburg, West Virginia (circa 1988) - for a national teen magazine. The Burwell Theater is now long gone.

Friday
Dec032010

polaroid ~ an old picture making friend / on seeing

Lighthouse ~ near Woods Hole / Martha's Vineyard

It's impossible to state how much I miss Polaroid film, especially the SX 70 variety. And no, that stuff someone is making now is not a suitable replacement.

That said, in my mind, Polaroid Photography is a entirely separate / much different picture making medium than Straight Photography. Even if you don't squish the emulsion around and make "straight" Polaroid pictures it is still distinctly different than plain old Straight Photography. Again, in my mind, Polaroid Photography, family-style snapshots aside, is best suited to making pictures of impressions of things rather than true representations of the real.

For those of you who might be laboring under the false impression that I am a diehard Straight photography purist, think again. There is an enormous and very impressive body of work / Art out there all of which is made with one Polaroid process or another. And, IMO, it stands the Art test of time very well.

It has always been my opinion, like that of Walker Evans ...

Nobody should touch a Polaroid until he's over sixty.

According to Evans, it was only after years of work and struggle and experimentation, years of developing one's judgment and vision, that the instrument could be pushed to its full, revelatory potential. Using the SX-70, and leaving aside the intricacies of photographic technique, Evans stripped photography to its bare essentials: seeing and choosing.

Personally, I would take out the "over sixty" caveat and go with the "years of work and struggle and experimentation, years of developing one's judgment and vision ... stripp[ing] photography to its bare essentials: seeing and choosing" part.

IMO, the saddest part of Polaroid's demise is the fact that it was a picturing making medium that could really help the in development of one's judgement and vision / seeing and choosing for those who didn't quite have it. More's the pity. And IMO, this is one thing (of many) that "the market" got wrong.

FYI, Evan's Polaroid book is out of print (I have mine) but it can be had, albeit at rare-book prices. That said, it is really worth having - Xmas is coming. Treat yourself.

On the other hand, what could be labeled as the Polaroid Bible, picture wise, THE POLAROID BOOK, is still available at a ridiculously low price. If you can't afford the Evan's book, this one is definitely a must have.

Friday
Dec032010

Polaroid ~ impressions

Collen and a young Cinemascapist ~ Lake Ontario - near Rochester, NY

Tuesday
Dec092008

I'm hot!

My ex was hot for one of my best friends

Just in case someone has just fallen from the sky, landed here on The Landscapist and has read only the last 2 entries, I feel compelled to point out that at times I make pictures just for the pure fun of it.

Monday
Dec082008

lots of lights

PPG Plaza ~ Pittsburgh, PA.

Saturday
Dec062008

the power of light

Approximately 25 years ago I started picturing friends at our dining room table by candle light. It was a very informal thing.

Whenever we had friends over for dinner, which was a fairly frequent thing, at some time during the evening I would haul out the SX-70 and make pictures. In those days our dining room was festooned with candles and we always entertained by candle light and on occasion we still do - Xmas, Thanksgiving, and so on.

I have always liked soft subdued interior lighting and it could be accurately stated that the warmer that light the better - which accounts for the fact that I rarely use the "correct" light balance for indoor picturing. Most often, I make interior and exterior incandescent light pictures with daylight white balance and during the RAW conversion I tend to split the color temperature difference between 5200K and 3200K with a bias towards the warmer end of the spectrum.

BTW, if you have not had the pleasure of viewing Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, you should because it is a visual cinemagraphic masterpiece (I happen to like the story very much as well).

Kubrick began his rise to film making fame as his high school's official photographer. Shortly thereafter he became an apprentice photographer and later a full-time staff photographer for Look magazine. Much of the look of Kubrick's later film work was influenced by his still-picture making experience and sensibilities. IMO, never more so than in Barry Lyndon where so many of the scenes are basically exquisitely framed "still" shots with moving elements contained therein.

In fact, many of the scenes appear to be classic paintings from the era (circa 1750 - 1800) with moving elements contained therein. They are visually quite stunning. I was/am especially impressed with those interior scenes that Kubrick filmed entirely by the light of candles (in this clip go to the 1:43 mark). In an innovative move, he mated 3 f0.7 Zeiss still photography lenses (developed for NASA) to his motion picture cameras in order to do so. Once again, the effect - both visual and emotional - is stunning.

In any event, I consider today's picture to be of me having a Barry Lyndon moment. I have no memory of who made this picture but I suspect from the look on my face that it most likely was a woman.

Tuesday
Dec022008

a last wink? (cue the spooky organ music)

Marlene's casket and burial plot

Years ago I lost a good friend to cancer. She was far too young, vigorous, and engaged to die. She was a professor in the School for American Craftsmen at R.I.T. and an Artist in her own right with a one-person show of her work at MOMA to her credit.

Literally, on her deathbed or, to be more accurate, the bed she would die in a few days later, she revealed to me - as part of an intense and emotional day long conversation about so many things - that, almost from the moment we met, she had considered me to be her platonic lover.

A few days later at her burial - in a plot given to her from the family plot of her attending physician at Sloan-Kettering (because she had no family to speak of) - I made this Polaroid picture.

Now, you and I know that the burned-out highlight on her casket is the product of the lens flare property of my SX-70 camera. BUT ... I would be remiss in not noting that my friend had always considered herself to be endowed with a healthy dose Extra Sensory Perception. And, I must admit that, on occasion, she demonstrated some remarkable "insights" (that she attributed to this "gift") that were difficult to explain using conventional wisdom.

So, who knows. Maybe she was sending me a good bye wink.