still life ~ the light

Orange with "hard" light • click to embiggen
Orange with "soft" light • click to embiggenMuch has been said, IMO ad nauseum, about "perfect" light. As far as I'm concerned, there is just light. However, that said, there is such a thing as the "right" light, but, the "right" light is dependent upon your picturing intent.

That is to say, depending upon your referent and how you wish to portray it, a particular type of light - soft / hard / warm / cold / back light / front light / strong directional light or some combination thereof - might be employed to best convey your feelings about your referent.

George Eastman said it best when he stated ...

Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography.

Of course, there are those who have made a fetish of certain kinds of light. In the landscape picture making world, many picture makers limit their picturing to a short window, morning or evening, of warm romantic light. Their view of the natural world is a truncated vision, all warm and cuddly and devoid of nature's many other moods. For them, high noon and other times of day are dead zones where, apparently, nothing ever happens.

IMO, light chasers (as many label themselves) have a limited knowing of light. They love "the light" and, in all too many cases, their pictures are about "the light". Their referent seems to be a just a prop for "the light". But, of course, good pictures are more than just about the light.

In my experience, those who know light best are often studio based picture makers. In their picturing world, they make/control the light. In doing so, they come to understand light in all its many facets and very often, when (or, if) they venture out from the studio, they make the best landscape picture makers.

For them light is a many-splendored thing to be embraced in all its various manifestations. They tend to make the best of what light they encounter - light is just light and consequently they know the key to photography.

and now for something completely different # 3

Enviromental portrait • click to embiggenDuring my commercial picture making life, in addition to making Norman Rockwell-like tableau people pictures, I also made lots of environmental portraits (people in their environments, both work and personal activity wise).

One of the more interesting and enjoyable such assignments was an annual report for Gould Pumps, a manufacturer of industrial pumps for mining, gas & oil, and power generation industries. At the time of the assignment, the company was aggressively acquiring quite a number of smaller pump manufacturing companies. Consequently, a large number of new employees were added under its corporate umbrella.

As a result, the decision was made to feature in that year's annual report some of their employees with interesting or unusual outside of work activities. The featured employees were spread out across the US of A in a variety of interesting locations which ranged from the middle of nowhere on the Texas panhandle (outside of Lubbock) where I pictured the 2nd runner-up in the Tarantella Chili Cook-off, to an "iffy" inner-city neighborhood in Newark, NJ where I pictured a community service volunteer.

Obviously, meeting interesting people and visiting interesting locations was what made this assignment ... well ... interesting and quite enjoyable. However, the was another aspect which added considerably to the interesting and enjoyable thing - my traveling companion (in addition to my assistant) was a former newspaper reporter / local tv news anchor turned freelance copywriter (some Rochester, NY readers may recognize the name, Ron Robitaille) who was an expert at living-large expense account travel.

Everywhere we went, Ron's first question, upon greeting our assigned Gould Pump representative at each location, was always the same - "Where can we sample the best local/regional food and drink". Getting that info was always the first order of business. Once obtained, it was then on to the other business of making pictures or, in his case, doing interviews with my subject.

Needless to say, the food and drink we had on that 2 week trip was incredible - BBQ chicken and ribs in a Texas roadhouse, the best paella I ever ate in a Portuguese neighbor restaurant in Newark NJ, some delightful haute cuisine in a tony LA restaurant, and local beers galore, to name just a few of the delights we sampled.

All of that said, the thing which has stuck with me the most from that whole experience was my introduction, from Ron Robitaille, to the appreciation and consumption of fine Kentucky bourbon (I already had the fine food thing down pat). Unfortunately, a few years after the annual report assignment, Ron also reminded me of another lesson as result of his too-young-to-die demise - don't over do it (drink and fine [rich] food).

FYI, the picture in this entry is not from the aforementioned annual report assignment. It is from an assignment from a Pittsburgh PA ad agency which featured agency people in their work environments but with props from their outside work activities - pictured in BW before BW was an "effect".

civilized ku # 2016-17 ~ moon shadow on barn roof

Moon shadow on barn roof ~ Peru, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
Christmas tree at Orchard House Catering ~ Peru, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenLast night, while driving home from the wife's firm's Christmas party at a beautifully renovated farm house (Orchard House Catering), I was struck by a bright barn roof with a moon shadow. The nearly full moon was perfectly positioned in time and space relative to my position in time and space to create a bright reflective glare on the barn roof.

And speaking, once again, of time and space, since I was tripodless, it was very fortunate that, at the roadside, an underground utilities box was also perfectly positioned therein. It afforded me at perfect surface on which to steady my camera.

and now for something completely different # 2

illustration / risks of creative thinking • click to embiggenHave I ever mentioned that I have done a fair amount of commercial digital illustration work? No? Well, I have.

and now for something completely different

Kodak - America's Storyteller • click to embiggenOver the years during which I have been blogging, I haven't posted all that much about my commercial work. I guess that's because I never thought of this blog as a vehicle for self promotion of that work.

However, I have noticed that, in the photo blog-o-spere, there is a certain amount of gravitas which comes from having / having had a successful commercial picturing making career. That is especially so if one has made pictures for many of the biggies - the biggies being companies on the Fortune 500 list and my client list included many Fortune 500 companies such as Kodak, Xerox, Heinz, Corning, Bausch & Lomb / Ray-Ban, Quaker State, McDonalds, Dairy Queen, R.T. French, and the like. So, why not harvest a little gravitas of my own?

One of my areas of expertise in the commercial picturing world was making pictures of people in a Norman Rockwell tableaux kind of way. "Real" people doing "real" things with a dash of gentle/kind humor thrown into the mix. Of course, the "real" people were most often professional models (but not always) and the "real" things were very carefully scripted, staged, lit, and propped productions.

The picture with this entry is from one of several shoots I did for Eastman Kodak's (you remember them, right?) America's Story Teller campaign. This campaign was primarily an in-store (cameras stores) campaign which featured quite a number of "all-American" themes. Each "story" in the campaign required 5-6 pictures which were used for a large counter-card, a life-size stand-up cutout, a window poster, an in-store poster, a counter mat, and a large (6-7ft.) hanging banner.

The story theme from which the attached picture was pulled was based around a cute young girl (there were never any thing but cute children in Kodakland) making a birthday cake for her grandfather's birthday - to include both the making of the cake and the party. The cast included her mom, dad, little brother, grandmother, and a dog. The dog, dad, and brother were all bit players. The "story" was all about the little girl, grampa, and to a lesser extent, mom.

Finding the "perfect" cast usually took about a week. First by sifting through model agency books / head-sheets, then selecting quite a number of possibilities for each character, followed by in-studio Polaroid tests of each potential subject. Those results were then shown to and discussed with the ad agency in order to make the final selections which were then shown to the client for final approval.

While model selection was going on, I was also working with a couple photo stylists who were tasked with prop gathering - in this case, everything from clothes, to baking/cooking paraphernalia, and household stuff. There was also a food stylist who was charged with making the "perfect" birthday cake.

Because the project spanned 4-5 days of shooting, all the pictures were made on studio sets (in my studio) rather than on location. Set construction ran concurrent with all the other pre-shoot preparations.

Since the end use of the pictures were quite large, the project required the use of a large format 4×5 camera - not the ideal choice for shooting people wherein the objective is to capture "perfect" gestures together with "perfect" expressions. Using a view camera to capture that "perfection" is made exponentially even more less than ideal when 2 (or more) actors are acting together.

Example: notice how in the above 2 exposures, in the top exposure (chosen as the final) the girl and grampa are in perfect sync, gesture and expression wise. Whereas in the bottom exposure, the girl is still "on" expression wise (although her hand has dropped to a less than desirable position), but grampa's expression and gesture seem to say,"Ya little bratty smartass, I'm gonna shove this stinkin' frosting right up yer stinkin' nose", which, while it might often be rather true-to-life, it is not exactly the message Kodak was trying to get across.

This type of assignment is best handled by some sort of roll film camera, 35mm, or medium format. Cameras which can make exposures in rapid order, which allows the "actors" to get into character, act out, and get into a flow. That is just not possible when using a view camera - each exposure requires loading a film holder into the camera, pulling out the dark-slide, cocking the shutter and and the flash-sync thingy, tripping the shutter, re-inserting the dark-slide, removing the film holder and then, do it all again for the next exposure. All of which is very far cry from shooting with a motorized roll film camera.

In addition to the slow-going, getting-in-the-groove inhibiting factor associated with shooting with a large format camera, the film is also expensive. Although, in this case, film cost was a non-issue because of course I could just walk into Kodak's film cooler and walk out with as much film as I could carry.

The view camera shooting procedure was sped along by the fact that I had 2 camera assistants - 1 to load and reload the film holders and another to handle the shutter / strobe sync thingy cocking. This allowed me to concentrate solely upon the actors - move this body part / move that body part, chin up / chin down, lips together / lips apart, fix her hair / fix his tie, more of this / less of that, and so on. A 3rd assistant was keep busy in the darkroom, unloading and reloading film in the film holders.

If memory serves correctly, each of the 6 scenes in this campaign required the making of about 80 exposures each in order to insure we got the "perfect" shot - that single sheet of film that got it all right, "perfect" gestures together with the "perfect" expressions ...

... all in the cause of capturing the picture-perfect "perfect" American story.

Update on Friday, December 9, 2011 at 10:36AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Sven W (no link provided) asked/wrote: "If you had to do this job today, would you use a top-end FF digital? ... [T]he ability to view the image on the LCD / tethered monitor would be useful not only to you but the actors."

my response: It should be noted that Kodak insisted on the use of the 4×5 view camera for this project. They were rather "old school" / conservative in that respect, especially so considering the fact that, at the time, they made some splendid fine grain + high acutance medium format film. Film that would have been more than up to the end use size requirements of the project.

Based on that experience and considering the fact that Kodak makes very high-end medium format digital sensors - found in some Pentax, Leica, Leaf, Hasselbald, Phase One medium format cameras and backs - I am certain they would be requiring the use of one of those medium format products for the project.

Yes, a tethered monitor would be helpful, especially for the art director and client during the shoot. However, the models / "actors" would only see it after the shoot. Their job is to get into character and stay there as long as possible. Any distraction, such as looking at a monitor, would be simply out of bounds for them. I might check on occasion but only if I were certain that doing so wouldn't break the flow of the shoot.

civilized ku # 2015 ~ breakfast memories

Saturday morning newspaper ~ Auberge du Vieux-Port - Old Montreal, CA • click to embiggenDuring our recent visit to Montreal, the wife suggested that I should make a picture book comprised of pictures from our numerous trips to that city. My first thought was, "duh, why didn't I think of that idea?" - a really good question to self.

I mean, I make picture books on a fairly regular basis but come to think of it, with 3 exceptions, all of those books have been comprised of my "art" pictures. FYI, the 3 exceptions are my Tuscany book and my 2-volume Shore Light books. Not that I don't consider the pictures in those books to be art, but...

...in addition to the art aspect of the pictures, the one quality that is integral to those 3 books (and not all of my other books) is the notion of memories and the sensations associated with them. And while virtually all of the pictures in those 3 books are of my memories and sensations, they depict people/places/things/events which easily are capable of evoking, in many others, memories / sensations connected to those specific places.

That said, the pictures in those books can be viewed / perceived by others without memories of those specific places for the picture's art qualities. However, that said, the pictures infer / connote enough "universal" information, independent of their referent(ial) specificity, to evoke memories / sensations in those same viewers who have had experiences similar to the people/places/things/events depicted therein.

All of that said, IMO, the idea of memories and their associated sensations is the primary reason most people wielding cameras make pictures. Perhaps, without consciously knowing it, those same people intuitively understand Bertrand Russell when he stated:

Memory demands an image. ~ from The Analysis of Mind

IMO, Russell, in so stating, did not necessarily imply that one must have an actual physical picture/print to accompany one's mental memories. I'm fairly certain he was stating that the mind always manages to produce a mental image that is inseparable from any memory which being contemplated.

I know that I, for one, when asked, "do you remember ...", always search my mental picture archive for the associated picture. Often, if I can't find a picture, I can't find the memory. Memory and image are inexorably linked in my mind. But, truth be told, I do think in pictures.

In any event, how about you? Do you make pictures which are inexorably linked to memories? Can you experience your memories as result of seeing pictures made by others? How important to you is making pictures which preserve / enhance memories?

civilized ku # 2014 ~ empty space

Alley tunnel to loading dock ~ Old Montreal, CA • click to embiggen

cilivized ku # 2011-13 ~ shrines - big and small, religous and secular

St. Joseph ~ L'Oratoire Saint-Joseph du Mont-Royal - Montreal, CA • click to embiggen
Lilies ~ Auberge du Vieux-Port - Montreal, CA • click to embiggen
QUINTAL ET FILS ~ Auberge du Vieux-Port - Montreal, CA • click to embiggenIMO, each of these shrines, in its own way, seeks to address the human desire/need for peace and serenity. If one is attuned to either (or for some, both) of the its-bigger-than-me sensibilities to which each one pays homage, it is indeed somewhat remarkable how much they all can incite quiet introspection.

Although, it should be stated that only the shrine to St. Joseph had hundreds, perhaps thousands, of discarded crutches hanging nearby it as testament to the so-called miracles attributed, by true believers, to St. Joseph.

Update on Tuesday, December 6, 2011 at 09:09PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Andre (no link provided) wrote: "Actually, these "miracles" are attributed to "Frère André", the humble doorman instrumental in having the oratory built."

my response: Thanks, Andre. I stand corrected.