Summer travel guide - front and back covers • click to embiggenMiguel Garcia-Guzman, on his blog, [EV +/-] Exposure Compensation, has an entry, Photography to promote tourism in which he states:

There is no better way to promote tourism than to use great photography to convey the beauty of the location, the experience of the place, and the charm of the people living in the region. Strangely, it is very uncommon that organizations in charge of promoting tourism will ever use photography effectively. It seems that photography is not an area of expertise in tourism boards.

Miguel is certainly correct about the "no better way" part. He is also 80-90% correct about the "uncommon that organizations .... use photography effectively" part. But, regarding the "photography is not an area of expertise in tourism boards" part, he 100% right and 100% wrong. Since this field - tourism marketing / tourism photography - is how I butter my bread, I thought that I might shed a little light of experience on the subject.

The truth of the matter is that most tourism organizations do not have anyone on staff who has an area of photography expertise. The best that can be hoped for is that someone in the organization, at the very least, knows the difference between a good picture from a bad one. Unfortunately, in most cases, even that minimal skill is well beyond hope (it's hiding somewhere behind "despair"). Fortunately, in some organizations, there exist people with the skill to hire ad agencies, photographers, and creative types who can tell the difference ....but .....

The truth of that matter is that most tourism organizations are greatly underfunded for the task at hand. The net result is that they can not hire the best and the brightest of ad agencies, photographers, and creative types. Consequently, the marketing materials that are produced (to include photography) do not, in fact, look like they were created by the best and the brightest. That's the sad reality.

That said, in my case, there are people in the Essex County Convention & Vistors Bureau (Lake Placid) who know an assh*** from a hole in the ground. And, fortunately for them, I (one of the best and brightest) am willing to do what I do for them - photography, creative direction, ad / marketing materials design and production, and assorted other related things - for very modest $$$$ (relative to a full-service ad agency). It's a win-win situation. They get great stuff and I get to do my thing in the place I love best on this planet.

FYI, the picture on the top of this entry is part of this year's print media advertising. You can find it on page 94 of this month's National Geographic Adventure magazine. And, btw, that's the wife and one of our dogs, Ron (short for AdirRONdog), perched on the rock.

Picture window with fruit • click to embiggenIn the Vanity Fair article about Robert Frank, he opined that, "There are too many images ... Too many cameras now. We’re all being watched. It gets sillier and sillier. As if all action is meaningful. Nothing is really all that special. It’s just life. If all moments are recorded, then nothing is beautiful and maybe photography isn’t an art anymore. Maybe it never was."

After which the article's author opined, "And maybe it is his fault. Who would believe that a hairy little man could take snapshots of nothing and make millions of dollars?"

Now, we all know that Frank was not taking "snapshots" but, in fact, his pictures do project the appearance of snapshots. That appearance is a big part of their power - the picture's haphazard casualness implies that finding and picturing so many Americans (28,000 photographs) who didn't fit the mold of the American Myth was not a difficult task. They were everywhere, rather commonplace, in fact. Which, as it turned out, was what really pissed off those who were clinging to the Myth.

But, that said, back to Frank's statement about "too many images, too many cameras". This not exactly a new sentiment. Much has been said on the subject and there is no denying that we live in a visual-media saturated world. Throw in the zillions of people with cameras, many of whom lay claim to the moniker of "photographer" and you'd have to be blind (literally) to not notice the overwhelming clutter of pictures - a Tower of Visual Babble, of sorts.

Sifting through the babble is nigh unto impossible. There's no denying that some of the cream still rises to the top but one has to wonder if the embarrassment of visual riches, when taken together with all the visual garbage, doesn't have a deadening, or at least numbing, effect on the senses.

I have been thinking about this notion for a while. My interest in it has intensified recently as I began to scan my 'old' 8×10 color negatives. What I have realized is that during my 8×10 heyday, which spanned 2-3 years, I made approximately 50 negatives. That's a total of 50, not 50 keepers. Aside - I'm quite pleased to say that, upon revisiting these 50 negatives some 25 years later, virtually all of them are keepers.

Compare that number to the over 600 digital-format ku keepers that I have amassed in just the last 5 years - not to mention the thousands of slight variations thereof (bracketing, 'working' the subject, etc.). Of course, this vast difference in 'output' is not totally attributable to digital. These days, I'm working less and enjoying it more, so to speak - I do have much more time to picture for myself now than I did then but ....

Working with an 8×10 view camera, much more so than even with a 4×5 vc, is a very deliberate thing. One must be much more selective in one's selecting if for no other reason than the time it takes, start to finish, to make a single exposure - everything from loading film holders, to setting the camera up, focusing and composing on the ground glass, and, in the case of many of my 8×10s made at dusk, long exposure times (up to 20 minutes). It's not an exaggeration to state that exposing a single sheet of film can take between 45-60 minutes.

That said, it's the being "selective in one's selecting' that I wonder about with digital. The ease of digital - everything from shooting to viewing the 'contacts' - encourages blazing away in manner that, well, discourages being "selective in one's selecting'.

Does this mean that the mere act of being picturing prolific diminishes the prospect of making good/great pictures? I don't think so. Does it mean that there will be more pictures than there might be if everything were still analog? Most certainly, yes. But, does that mean that 'pictures, pictures, everywhere' will cheapen photography as an Art form? I don't know, but I do suspect that that is the real question in all of this.

Wanna venture a shot at an answer?

PS - does the notion of "too many images" being raised by a man who made 28,000 of them in 3 years seems just a bit odd to you?

kodak cameras and film • click to embiggenThere is a wonderful article in Vanity Fair about Robert Frank. Like my recent viewing of the Ansel Adams film, I enjoyed the Frank piece because it's not really about photography per se. It's about Frank, the man.

Not that I ever doubted it, but the more I learn about photographers as persons, not as photographers, the more I am convinced that good/great photography comes from 'within'. Just about anyone can learn the craft of photography but only a relative handful (relative to the total number of photographers out there) can make good/great pictures. By the phrase, "good/great pictures", I mean those pictures that are rich with meaning for more than just the photographer him/herself. Pictures that will survive the test of time. Pictures that have power that does not necessarily reside in what they depict but, rather, communicate a vision that offers something to think about and maybe even an occasion for wonder.

Robert Frank is, quite obviously, one such person. A person who, when he pictured what it meant to be human in 1950s America, created a seminal work, The Americans, that changed the face of photography and laid bare the myth of America. When the book was first published in 1959, Frank's portrayal of the American landscape and street corners was so contrary to the prevailing American Myth that no American publisher would touch it - it was first published in France. The work was roundly panned by all manner of commentators including Popular Photography magazine which called the book a "meaningless blur, grain, muddy exposures, drunken horizons and general sloppiness" and then went on to label Frank as "a joyless man who hates the country of his adoption." - a consummate act of denial and killing the messenger.

50 years later, the work is currently being republished for the 5th time and it is now being considered as the groundbreaking work - both as social commentary and photographic innovation - the really is/was. I like the comment from the VF piece which states that "... the genius lay in editing them (28,000 photographs) down to 83 daggers which he plunged directly into the heart of the Myth."

And, "... Before Frank, the visual orientation of photographs had been straight, horizontal, vertical. The subject of the picture was always obvious. You knew what the picture was about and what it meant to say. Frank, the shadowy little man, came along and changed the angles, made graininess a virtue, obscure lighting a benefit. His pictures were messy; you weren’t sure what to feel, who or what to focus on ... Frank intellectually changed photography—that is, what a photographer was supposed to look at. If Ansel Adams chose to capture the mightiness of nature, how could you argue with that? Where’s the fault in stone and sky and snow? There is no fault. And therein lies its fault. Frank snatched photography from the landscapists and the fashion portraitists and concentrated his lens on battered transvestites, women in housedresses, and sunken mouths. Life is not boulders and snow and perfume and chiffon. Life is difficult and sad and ephemeral. Life is flesh, not stone ..."

All of that said, here's what really interested me about Frank, the man.

He is quoted as saying about his children, "I wish I would have given them something ... their Jewishness or something." because, as he and the author of the piece agreed that the fantastic and fatal blessing of the American life [is] One can choose to be whatever one wants in America without the constraints of societal mores ... In America you might throw away ... old structures and live however you choose. But if you do not replace the old structure with a new one, this freedom will explode in your face like a car battery."

It should be noted that Frank states that "There was no agenda" when he set out on 3 successive Guggenheim grant-funded cross country car trips in the mid-50s. I don't doubt his words but I can't help but think that in his heart and soul he knew (an unthought known) that the American Myth was just that - a Myth. That, for a great many in America life, was indeed "difficult and sad and ephemeral". That in America, old structures and social mores had been thrown away not replaced with "something new". That, in fact, our freedom to live a life of the cult individuality had begun to "explode in the American face like a car battery".

What Frank did was nothing more than the seemingly simple act of picturing what he knew (consciously or not) to be true. There was "no agenda". The Americans was, in his words, "... a book of such simplicity." In fact, agenda-wise, He states that "It really doesn't say anything. It's apolitical. There's nothing happening in these photos ... I just went out into the streets and looked for interesting people."

It seems perfectly obvious to me that Frank was just being himself and the pictures flowed from within.

But there is one more very telling anecdote about Frank. When asked, "Do you carry any photographs in your wallet?”, Frank answered:

“One maybe.”

He removed his billfold from his back pocket, flipped through some receipts and a medical-insurance card. There it was. The only picture the master carried was a business-card photograph of Niagara Falls with block lettering underneath it that read, Niagara Falls, in case its holder should forget what it was he was looking at.

“It must be very beautiful, very romantic,” he said somewhat hopefully. As it turned out Robert Frank had never been to Niagara Falls. “Is it? Romantic?”

“Yes, quite romantic,” I lied. Let the old man be happy.

Kinda makes you wonder, despite what he knew to be true back in the 50s - ant, most likely, for his entire life, what it was he was looking for when he made all those pictures.

The Famous Grouse Scotch # 1 • click to embiggenDoug Stockdale asked (on his blog, singluarimages) "... what constitutes Contemporary Landscape Photography?" Past Landscapist guest host, Chantal Stone offered this answer -

Contemporary photography, I don’t think, is easily defined. But it’s more like photography without emotion…like a “way I see things” kind of thing. I think the idea of CP is to simply show the world, or snippets of the world, as objectively as possible. No easy task, imo ....

But in terms of landscape photography, I think CP is the best way to approach it. Contemporary landscape photography, I feel, is the most truthful way to show our world, as it is…the good, the bad, the pretty, the not so pretty. There’s no pretense with CLP, and with how rapidly our landscapes are changing I feel it’s important to document the world just as it is.

Chantal went on to opine that I - that's me, gravitas et nugalis - am "one of the best contemporary landscape photographers around" which implies that I might actually know what the hell it is that I am doing and, by extension, what 'Contemporary Landscape Photography' is as well. However, even though I rarely shrink from issuing forth with grand sweeping pronouncements, I am not going to rise that particular bait. That said, I would like to comment on the "photography without emotion ... show the world, or snippets of the world, as objectively as possible" thing.

IMBC&EO (In My Brilliantly Considered & Educated Opinion), there is an overwhelming and ubiquitous tendency, especially amongst those photographers given to pictorialism excesses or hopelessly romantic themes, to label landscape photography in which the referents are neither "spectacular" or iconic nor embellished with velvia-esque qualities (however attained) to be "without emotion". It also seems, IMBC&EO, that the emotion most cherished by the same crowd is that of "WOW!!!!"

From that reasoning, it is also assumed that photographers who make such 'non-conforming' photographs are doing so "objectively" - that is to say, uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices. The way this notion is most often articulated by the pictorialist excesses crowd is, "... looks like the shutter was tripped by accident ...".

Now, I don't know about you, but the only way that I can conceive of a photograph being created, uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices, by a person (as opposed to, say, a surveillance camera) is for that person to be in a coma and hooked up to some sort of devise that trips a camera shutter every time that he/she twitches involuntarily- leaving aside the fact that a non-comatose co-creator who is influenced by emotions or personal prejudices (how ever weird) would have had to set the whole thing up.

Of course, I, as do many others, make pictures that give the appearance of being 'cool', 'detached', or 'unaffected' observation, but, as we all know (or should), that appearance is an illusion. And, it's worth stating that 'cool', 'detached', and 'unaffected' are all actual emotional states - the opposite of 'impassioned', perhaps, but emotional states, nevertheless.

Why adopt such a so-called 'emotionless' appearance for my photographs? It's very simple, really. While my personal prejudices come to the fore in my act of referent selection, that is to say, in choosing that to which I am attracted and to which I wish to direct the viewer's attention, initially, I want the viewer to react to my pictures influenced by their emotions or personal prejudices. However, ultimately, I hope that my pictures will also cause the viewer to question their emotions or personal prejudices regarding the referent(s) presented in my pictures.

In my experience, and especially when viewed by those who are not hopelessly enthralled with pictorialist excesses, my pictures do just that. They often cause those who view them with an open mind to say things such as, "I never noticed that before" or, "I never thought of that in that way before", or even "I'm not sure about this, but I'll have to think about it."

It is my belief that they have this reaction because I give the viewer room to move, both emotionally and intellectually. I do not put them in an emotional / intellectual stupor by bludgeoning them with first-glance, nearly overwhelming 'shock and awe'. I treat the viewers of my pictures with intellectual and emotional respect - a sort of 'freedom of (thinking) choice', if you will. I assume they have a brain and that they know how to use it without me telling them how to use it.

And, on the subject of 'passion', I am very passionate, no matter how emotionally and intellectually dis-passionate my pictures appear to be, in the pursuit of making those pictures.

I don't know how well all of this goes towards defining "Contemporary Landscape Photography" but it's does define (in part) the how and why I make my contemporary landscape pictures.

PS: if you're listening, Chantal - thanks for the compliment.

Truth and revelation • click to embiggenMy thanks to John Denniston for his informed and informative response to my comments on urban ku # 178 -

In the Post Modern Photo Art world there is no difference between pictures taken by a war photographer in the field and those created using props and models such as the one by Jeff Wall. I listened in disbelief once when Roy Arden, one of Jeff Wall's more successful students, explain that he protested the Vietnam war by photographing products in Wall Mart and that it had the same impact on the war as did the pictures taken by photographers who actually went to Vietnam to record what they saw happening. To these people the words documentary and propaganda are interchangeable. Documentary photographs are not documents but photographs made to further a point of view. It's interesting that I have been to a number of lectures at the Vancouver Art Gallery (the home gallery of Jeff Wall) in the last few years and there was a subtext which said that photographers don't think they just push buttons. Jeff Wall calls himself an artist and would be insulted if you called him a photographer. I was surprised that A.D. Coleman in a lecture at the VAG two weeks ago said he knew of few photographers who could think. He said this in praise of pictorialism which he is fond the very of. Pictorialism, of course, is much about changing what the camera saw into a more dramatic or painterly thus artistic image. The problem with all of this is that photography ceases to be appreciated for what it does best, record what we see in front of us. Photography is praised for the unnatural colours we create in photoshop, the distortions we create with wide angle and telephoto lenses or in Jeff Wall’s case, the tableaus we create with props and models. I’ve seen the photo in question and found it, despite its impressive size and technical merit, to be cold and without passion. Its impact on me was similar to those colour advertisements I see every once in while in very old Life magazines from the 1960’s; unconvincing, unreal, staged; advertising at its most banal. I’ll take pictures from the photographers who were actually there every time.

I'm pleased that someone rose to my photo-constructionist bait in such an articulate manner. And, despite what I opined (and meant) about Jeff Walls picture - which I too have viewed 'in the flesh' - I agree with most of John's statement. I even agree with the his assessment that Wall's Dead Soldiers Talking appears to be "cold and without passion" which I believe is part of its power - IMO, the carnage of war is meted out by the gods of fate in a very indiscriminate (cold and without passion) fashion. Some human beings, when placed in harm's way in the guise of modern firepower, tend to be maimed or killed without any rhyme or reason behind their being plucked from the crowd. So, I like the fact that there is a overarching emotional first-impression of "cold and without passion" in Wall's picture that, for me, sets the stage for other emotional revelations to come.

Obviously, not everyone sees it - literally or figuratively - in that manner. Some, like John, prefer "pictures from the photographers who were actually there ..." as opposed to pictures from photo-constructionists. Personally, I like it to have both ways and fortunately, the apparatus of the very messy medium of photography can be employed to create all manner of pictures from the cauldron of which just about anyone can find a lid for their particular pot.