I like film...(open thread)

[mikemgb]

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Leica M2, 7-Artisans 35mm, Ilford HP5 pushed 2 stops to ISO 1600.

 

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[edwardkaraa]

1 hour ago, A miller said:

A somewhat painterly scene from the salty shores of the Dead Sea

503cw, 80mm planar, Velvia 50 (PL)

 

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Beautiful color combination, Adam. This is very different from all the previous posts from the Dead Sea. It’s probably the polarizer? I remember that B+W pol used to cause a greenish cast that was very nice for landscapes.

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[mikemgb]

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[A miller]

4 minutes ago, edwardkaraa said:

Beautiful color combination, Adam. This is very different from all the previous posts from the Dead Sea. It’s probably the polarizer? I remember that B+W pol used to cause a greenish cast that was very nice for landscapes.

Thanks, Edward.  I think the difference is probably attributable to a combo of the use of the PL and the fact that it was a particularly windy day and so there wasn't a lot of transparency in the water (which I wasn't too happy about in general).

[MT0227]

9 minutes ago, A miller said:

Thanks, Edward.  I think the difference is probably attributable to a combo of the use of the PL and the fact that it was a particularly windy day and so there wasn't a lot of transparency in the water (which I wasn't too happy about in general).

I think the ripples in the water, caused by the wind, produce various shade changes thoughout giving the photo a painterly feel.....well at least to me.  Fabulous greens and blues!

[mikemgb]

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[Guest chris_z]

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vor 16 Stunden schrieb Doc Henry:

Superb shot Chris , nice black and white tone of  Kodak TX

What is your developer ?   Thanks

Best Henry ,   the source of "can' s worms" in this thread

Thanks! This one is lab developed. They’re using DD-X

[Doc Henry]

1 hour ago, chris_z said:

Thanks! This one is lab developed. They’re using DD-X

Chris develop yourself  it is very easy and  I think it will be nicer 

Thanks for your reply

Best

H

[Guest chris_z]

Gerade eben schrieb Doc Henry:

Chris develop yourself  it is very easy and  I think it will be nicer 

Thanks for your reply

Best

H

Used to do it a lot. It‘s a time issue now.

[stray cat]

On 12/4/2018 at 3:16 PM, Ernest said:

"So many subjects, so little time!" So true! I hear you sounding the clarion call to action; oh, to resist the cliché, the conundrum, and claim new territory with fresh insight. What's at risk?

The presence of absence. A photograph is not always so much what is shown but rather what is not shown. Thinking of Samuel Beckett.

Looking at Eggleston, there is a disquieting nothingness. Vacant. Remote. Fraught with vague possibilities. The cast sometimes ambiguous amber. Kodachrome daydreams. Frustrated, the opening shot to a David Lynch film without any of the resolution . . . or irresolution. Why didn't Ansel Adams appreciate Eggleston's photographs? What did John Szarkowski see?

Mr. Keating, an allusion to John Keats. "Tear out the page. Rip it out!" A challenge to conformity. More a metaphor. What is more at stake is the conformity of the class to the adapted mindset of Mr. Keating himself. Still, the crux of the metaphor is amply demonstrated by artists, such as Robert Rauschenberg I've mentioned before, who made a statement demonstrating by erasing a De Kooning drawing and calling it art. Art that was only possible using art that preceded it. Without the De Kooning, there would be no erased De Kooning by Rauschenberg. Still another spin on production by negation is Gerhard Richter's painting Tisch, which has the central subject of a table, painted in photographic-looking gray values, which the artist has obliterated for the most part, as though he was in the process of wiping the canvas clean for another painting. It seems the record of a painter demonstrating the creative process and making decisions, perhaps changing his mind and abandoning the work. As a fragmented image that alludes to its prior wholeness, the complete table, it is now a completed fragment, even though indeterminate. Mr. Keating's call to "tear out the page--rip it out" is to fragment the poetry textbook, and in so doing, make it whole. This is Hollywood's notion, which borrows from Perrine's Sound and Sense, used in many English classes today, fleshing it out with some mathematics on the XY axes, which Perrine later discounts.

The real J. Evans Pritchard on poetry: "If it is to communicate experience, it must be directed at the whole man, not just at his understanding. It must involve not only his intelligence but also his senses, his emotions, and his imagination. Poetry, to the intellectual dimension, adds a sensuous dimension, an emotional dimension, and an imaginative dimension." Sounds more than something like Mr. Keating. Such is Hollywood. This is why many academics discount The Dead Poet's Society, since it efficiently deconstructs itself.

Phil, your most valuable point for me is extending your metaphorical example, to challenge conformity, the cliché, in photography, and realizing in so doing, the creative spirit sometimes lurches forward. As photographers, where would we all be without each other?

I am reminded that in James Whale's Frankenstein with Boris Karloff, Victor Frankenstein proclaims at the moment the Creature is re-animated, "It's alive! It's alive!" Or was he characterizing LUF online?

I am for lurching and Phil's poetry, for which I'm grateful.

Cut and print,
Rog

 

On 12/4/2018 at 12:17 PM, Ernest said:

Such a lightning rod, you are, for oblique perspectives. The smash cut to Apocalypse Now! There's a floodgate that opens so many tributaries. Storaro. I remember seeing The Spider's Strategem at UCLA, and now, my VHS tape is one of the few I've saved because it's so hard to find. His cinematography, the lighting, the palette, so instructive. And then, there's Eleanor Coppola's Notes that I bought at Larry Edmunds Cinema Bookshop in Hollywood, the book that keeps reminding me of my promise to finish the reading.

Apocalypse Now. That quotation starts the mind's projector rolling.

Decapitated heads that litter the steps to Colonel Kurtz‘s temple, like horrific punctuation marks in this incoherent sentence of war in the jungle. And then, there is Dennis Hopper at his frenetic best as the war photo journalist at his, lacing his machine gun crazed monologues with the occasional shutter clack of one of the four Nikons dangling from his neck. Of course, he must have long-ago run out of film, just as he has run out of reason, reduced to a caricature incessantly shooting 35mm blanks as a way to objectify through the viewfinder the horror theatre. Think of the metaphor of shooting without film in a futile war.

It reminds me. Yesterday, I was shooting a sidewalk abstract outside Starbucks, the well of liberating libation of the espresso kind. A fellow, who was six years older than I, stopped and asked what I was shooting, remarking that my M-A looked like an old camera. I told him it was. He said that he used to shoot a lot of pictures with his Minolta, Kodachromes, but he doesn’t anymore. I suggested that he get out and shoot his Minolta, even without film, just as a way of looking at things. He confided that his wife had suffered a stroke, then four years later, with a gun, she committed suicide. Married forty years. He said he still can’t get over it. Every morning. Stroke can do that, I told him. It short circuits things. When I see him again at Starbucks, I am going to ask if he is shooting his Minolta, yet.

This brings me back to the idea of photography at times being an accretion of indecisive moments, a layering of images that may seem unrelated at the time, having no apparent coalescing narrative. But then later, considering the images in context to each other, a narrative finds its way, Alexander Pope‘s aha!, the epiphany as the mind unravels ambiguity and decisively connects the images, creatively filling the gaps in the visual fragments. The opening sequence of shots in Henri Cartier-Bresson’s film Victory of Life (1937) demonstrates how a still image from each one of the cuts creates a narrative, whereas each shot taken individually, divorced from context, is indecisive.

Listening to Trent Parke discuss his method of shooting, albeit motivated by that creative connectivity that is the intersection of psyche and coming to terms with the nature of things, that knee-jerk reaction to grabbing a shot in the moment, a shot that evaporates a nanosecond later, the echo of HCB’s passion for instinctively acting in the moment when “the geometry” is perfect. But then, Parke enters another zone, editing his photographs in a sequence, a narrative develops, speaking to his psyche. It’s almost as though it’s a mime of self-discovery, the visuals creating their own crosstalk as he traces the arc of connections.

I am anxiously awaiting delivery of The Black Rose. Thanks so much for generously sharing your insight, a constant surprise of fresh perspectives.

I am reminded that in James Whale's Frankenstein with Boris Karloff, Victor Frankenstein proclaims at the moment the Creature is re-animated, "It's alive! It's alive!" Or was he characterizing LUF online?

Rog, I think Colonel Kurtz might have been characterizing LUF online when he uttered on his dying breath "The Horror. The Horror".

Full disclosure: Apocalypse Now is right up there in my top couple of films.

Thank you so much for riffing on your encyclopædic knowledge and extraordinary experience when talking photography/art/creativity. It really does expand an already vibrant and fascinating thread into something altogether fascinating. Your story of the fellow you met outside Starbucks is quite moving yet, given the man's obvious sadness, you have forwarded him an advice that is perfectly sympathetic and logical - to shoot his Minolta even without film in it. There is a symmetry there, too, given the tragedy of his wife's passing.

It starts me to thinking - realizing, understanding really, that the photographs we are privileged enough to make - together they construct a testimony to the fact "I was there". This photograph - these photographs - could not exist were I not at a specific place at a specific time to make them. It is an obvious point, but a salutary one, for here is the evidence that we existed and that we visited these places, knew these people, thought enough of whatever was in front of our camera at any given moment to raise the camera and make a picture.

This epiphany puts me in mind of the words of a photographer you mentioned in relation to Christoph's wonderful picture of unrestrained teenage lust, Edouard Boubat: "Photography is made from everything and of nothing … We can only say thank you, to the lovers, the beaches, the sun, the encounters. These are all fleeting and after them only a photograph remains. And for that, I am thankful".

I received a copy of Ralph Gibson's Self Exposure this week but decided I'd pass it over to the family to give me for Christmas. I really think that book will be very special (I'll do the same with Refractions when that arrives). Thank you so much for recommending them.

Thank you also for introducing Gerhard Richter's painting Tisch. There is a fascinating mindset involved here, and I have come to appreciate Richter's work very much thanks to your heads up. As an aside, I did find Banksy's recent shredded drawing rather contrived, both for the reason that the drawing on paper was never the artwork - that was on a wall; and  I also thought that, despite the action being somewhat original, the act of destroying artwork is kind of clichéed. There are many examples - among them Rauschenberg dumping his collages into the River Arno, John Baldessari's Cremation project, my research tells me that Richter burned many of his paintings on a rubbish heap and I remember reading that Brett Weston burnt all his negatives once he considered enough prints had been made from them. I remember our art teacher at photography college telling us back in the early 1990s about Anselm Kiefer's art - about how in the galleries at night the security guards were known to report that the only sounds they could hear were the plop, plop plop of materials falling from Kiefer's paintings.

Think of the metaphor of shooting without film in a futile war. Yes! This is perfect. I'd never considered that in relation to Dennis Hopper's character, but of course it is the perfect metaphor. A phrase I've always liked that comes to mind thanks to this is from "East Coker" by T. S. Eliot:

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,

The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant...

I hope you see your friend again, and I hope he has his Minolta with him.

 

[stray cat]

6 hours ago, mikemgb said:

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Mike - I think I'm beginning to get interested in military history.

[stray cat]

8 hours ago, MT0227 said:

 

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Rollex 6x9 ~ Ektar 100 ~ Developed w/Unicolor C-41 Press Kit ~ LS-9000

Some more Blue Hour; in Brooklyn

 

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Blue In Brooklyn by Marc Tauber, on Flickr

 

9 hours ago, A miller said:

A somewhat painterly scene from the salty shores of the Dead Sea

503cw, 80mm planar, Velvia 50 (PL)

 

These are both exquisite. Marc - that light against the dark building silhouettes and Adam - the richness in that emerald green - just mind-blowing!

[stray cat]

On 12/4/2018 at 11:24 AM, A miller said:

Who do you think wears the pants in this household....? 😉

Portra 400, M-A, 28mm

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Dunno who wears the pants, but I want to go clothes shopping with this couple!

[Wayne]

On 12/3/2018 at 7:24 PM, A miller said:

Who do you think wears the pants in this household....? 😉

Portra 400, M-A, 28mm

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OK. They put Uncle Gus on the train in Lansing, bound for Minneapolis; he somehow gets on the wrong train in Chicago; winds up in NYC, where he wanders around aimlessly for two days. Finally meets a nice divorcee who, over a cup of coffee, discovers Gus has a fat GM pension; is marching him down to the courthouse for a quick marriage......Gus was ready to get of of Lansing, permanently, anyway.

Man! Adam! You are a master of telling a story with your camera.

Best,

 

Wayne

Edited December 5, 2018 by Wayne

[MT0227]

1 hour ago, stray cat said:

 

These are both exquisite. Marc - that light against the dark building silhouettes and Adam - the richness in that emerald green - just mind-blowing!

Thanks for the kind words Phil, very much appreicated.

[oldwino]

First snow of the season. A good excuse to go out and exercise the Isollete's shutter.

Delta 400 / Xtol Replenished

 

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[onca]

shadows on the wall

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Edited December 5, 2018 by greybear

[onca]

shadows on the wall_sw

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Edited December 5, 2018 by greybear

[philipus]

On 12/4/2018 at 3:31 AM, Wayne said:

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Just great Wayne. You have an awesome eye for composition.

On 12/4/2018 at 5:52 PM, Suede said:

Just in time...  [T-Max 400]

You're giving HCB a serious run for his money here, Pritam. Excellent stuff.

18 hours ago, MT0227 said:

 

Linhof Master Technika Classic ~ Schneider 90/5.6 Super Angulon

Rollex 6x9 ~ Ektar 100 ~ Developed w/Unicolor C-41 Press Kit ~ LS-9000

Some more Blue Hour; in Brooklyn

 

Blue In Brooklyn by Marc Tauber, on Flickr

And you're giving Adam a run for his money, Marc. A seriously ominous-looking take on Gotham.

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Hallo,

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[MT0227]

7 minutes ago, philipus said:

And you're giving Adam a run for his money, Marc. A seriously ominous-looking take on Gotham.

Thanks Philip....appreciate the comparison    Adam convinced me to get back into film photography about 3 years ago.  I had many concerns,  he has shown me a lot, and my photography has benefited significantly.   The wonderful examples of different styles, approaches and discussions in this forum keeps the drive alive.