Who Are These People?

So I was talking with my anchor the other day as we drove to shoot a story, and we were discussing how often TV equipment (including things like nonlinear editing programs) seems to have been designed by someone who has never actually used it in the field.  Quirky functions, difficult to use aspects, impractically fragile parts ... all part of one's daily life with both TV and still photography.

My favorite anecdote on this, though it begins to age now, is about when Sony first introduced the Betacam in the late 1980s.  The camera itself was transformative, in some cases unfortunately, as it made it much easier for broadcast networks to reduce the average TV news crew from two technicians -- one with the deck and audio kit, usually a shotgun mike on a fishpole -- to just one cameraman, as the deck was now part of the camera.

However, as part of that original kit, there was a brand new plate to attach the camera to the tripod.  This was a longer affair than in the past (because of the longer camera), but also had a very different quick release system, involving a trio of bolts that fitted into slots on the bottom of the camera.  When one wished to release the camera, one pulled a small, plastic lever on the side, which caused a series of mechanical pieces inside the plate to move around, which in turn moved the bolts.  Even in my late 20s, as I moved the clever but elaborate piece, feeling the parts inside slide and interact, I knew that it would last about three weeks in the field before something broke.

Then, as now, I joked that somewhere in Tokyo was some bright, young engineer showing this to his colleagues and bosses proudly, saying: "Look what I did!"

But I just know there are people who test these things before release.  I was once told the story that, in the 70s when Olympus made a decent play for the photojournalist market, they dropped some cameras and motor drives by the UPI offices in Washington.  One photographer there already used and liked Olympus, and promptly took them on.  But the motor drives in particular were oddly designed, an intentional step away from the traditional thick bar clamped to the bottom of the camera with a handgrip ending in a shutter release in front of where the camera's own release was (a design developed and long used by first Leica and then Nikon).  Instead, if I remember correctly, the handle went down, like a pistol grip, with a trigger release.

Some months later, the Olympus rep returned to ask what the photographer thought.  "It's over there," he gestured vaguely at a nearby table.  Nothing more needed to be said.  In the intervening time, he had taken the drives apart and taped them back together in the more traditional form.  The pistol grip just wasn't practical.

More recently, Leica has come out with a series of new developments on its legendary M design, finally ending with the Leica digital M.  With each release, for those in the Leica obsession world, there have come stories of a select few given prototypes to field test and recommend improvements, as well as others who are then allowed to borrow the new cameras after they've been announced but before the production numbers are high enough to be seen regularly in stores.  Who are these people?  And more importantly, what do I have to do to get on that list?

Of course, in the case of Leica, it's pure jealousy on my part.  (Though I'm very available and easy to contact -- are you listening Christian Erhardt?)  However, in the case of, say, Panasonic or Sony, I would gleefully explain to them how what they are doing makes life easier or harder for your average TV professional.  Or perhaps the legendarily uninterested Apple corporation?

But in the end, it still leaves me wondering: Where do they get their testers, or do some of these companies simply not care?  Do they just trust that clever little engineer who is so proud of his complicated design?  What are they thinking?

The Ghost in the Machine

So in my quest to continue posting frequently, and also to avoid continuing to clean up the house, I was going through my old posts, and I found the one about getting into Cy Twombly's studio after his death.  As I said in the post, it produced a nice little piece, one I was and continue to be very proud of.  Unfortunately for me, I left WDBJ shortly after I did that to go to work for the Fox 21/27 Morning News, and so my hopes to rack up a few prizes for it were dashed.  So it goes ...

Anyway, I have it still on tape for my personal use, but I haven't seen the piece for a long time.  It runs over four minutes -- exceedingly long for a TV news story -- and has no narrator at all, yet I think tells a good history in an entertaining way.

So as I was looking at the post, I noticed I had hot linked to the video playout at WDBJ7.com ... and I got curious.  Would it still be there?

It is.  The entire page comes up, complete with a freeze frame in the video player ... but it doesn't seem to play.  Curious. like the aftershadow in your eye after a bright flash.  (Or like the frozen figures in Ray Bradbury's story in Martian Chronicles.  You know, the reverse shadows of the people charred into the house walls after a nuclear attack?)

Guess I'll just have to dig out that tape sometime ...

N is for Neville, who died of ennui ...

Got this email today, from the head of a large photo agency:

Just curious, what sort of photographic projects are you working on?

Which got me thinking ...

Problem 1: The answer is both nothing and quite a lot.  The first answer is the one that inspired me to write this, because -- though I have a lot of things in mind (that's half of "quite a lot") -- I'm not really working on a personal project.  And that's disappointing.

You see I have stacks of stuff, piles of papers and books and files, all the inspirations for various personal projects.  I have all sorts of immediate ideas running around in my head for things I'd like to do right now.  I even have a couple I've made some minimal effort to do.

Like what?  Like this:

This is one of a series of what I've called "test shots" of nighttime views of Roanoke, Virginia.  It's a vague, lazy, passing effort at a larger project of proper, night shots of the city shot with a Speed Graphic on 4x5 film, or perhaps with a Leica using a Zeiss 21mm.  (The Speed's lens wouldn't be wide angle enough for a view like that above).

It's a vague, lazy test shot because I shot it with a Nikon D80, basically on the fly on the way into work on the morning show where I am the staff photographer.  (That's the other half of "quite a lot" -- producing all the visuals for a daily, two-hour show is really time consuming.)

Anyway, this is a continuation of a project I did in DC with the Speed, shooting pictures of the city at night reminiscent of those by Volkmar Wentzel.  And I haven't really put a lot of time and effort into it.  As it is, I keep patting myself on the back for bothering to get out of the car for 10 minutes to shoot these pics.

But the point is: Why am I not working directly on a project?  And why haven't I put more effort into this blog, or my other one?  Well, hopefully with this post, that last part is gonna' end...

Problem 2: Why am I getting an email from the president of a major photo agency?  My ego knows no bounds, and I like to think he's heard of me from my work with the NPPA, or perhaps from friends who work for the agency, but it just doesn't compute.  I think he got me off a list (again, NPPA?) and did a mass mailing.

But why?  What does this say about the state of photo agencies, that he's trolling for new ideas?  In an age where many outlets think viewer photos and random input from Instagram is sufficient, photo agencies -- many of which have vanished or been eaten up by their competitors in recent years -- need to rethink their position and role in the media world.  I think there's a place for them, once the public realizes that any ol' picture isn't as good as a truly well done picture by someone who spends his life making pictures, and then publications (or whatever falls under that term, since literal publishing and its role in the media is a separate question) see a profit from using good, professional photos.  The evidence is there, but I guess it just has to become numerically obvious.

Something to think about.  Maybe while I buckle down and get to work on that next project ...

Don't Panic!

This, ironically, is from a Kodak blog.  They just announced the other day that what is left of the company is trying to sell of its still film products division.  This makes me sad.

It makes me sad in a bunch of ways.  For one thing, there's the obvious loss of another lovely thing in the world.  The tragic but inevitable demise of Kodachrome was bad enough, but that stuff was grossly expensive to make and especially to process.  Yeah, the color was wonderful, but it was a 1920s solution to the problem, rich and glorious but antiquated and, in the end, impractical.

So why, you're now asking with a predatory gleam in your eye, am I calling for the preservation of Tri-X?  Isn't that a 1950s solution to a problem that no longer exists?  (How does one get pictures for half-tone reproduction in newspapers in normal room light?)  Well, yeah.  But it was a helluva' solution, one that was so good that it ended up solving a bunch of other questions too, like how does one get nice candid pictures quickly and easily with simple equipment and exposure by eye?  I mean, TX is incredibly generous in its tonal range, and really dependable once you get used to it.  Depending on how you treat it, and the quality of the light, it can be almost as smooth as lower ISO films or as grainy and gritty as you want.

And it's really simple and relatively cheap to process.  All you need is couple of cans and reels, some D-76 and fixer, temperatures somewhere in the relatively comfortable range, and a dark room (preferably a darkroom, but anything from a bathroom at night to a closet will do) and some running water.  Okay, there are a few items on that list, but compared to other films (like the notoriously difficult to process Kodachrome), this is like saying: "Take stick, bang on stone.  You're done!"

Also, there's this whole question of my having shelves full of film cameras.  Once Kodak goes -- and I guess this might be inevitable in some way; look at GAF's film operation now* -- one's left with the feeling that it's a rapidly accelerating decline into oblivion for 35mm acetate-backed roll film.  Then what?  All my precious Leica Ms become, well, beautiful doorstops.

And I really like film.  It's something that's there.  You can hold it up to a window, and review the negatives without any further technical devices required.  (See above rant on simplicity)  And, with reasonable care, it won't go anywhere.  Open the file drawer, the barrister's box, and there they are, the black and white captures of life, a thousandth of a second from 20 or 40 or however many years ago.  Still there, vibrant and frozen in a moment of life.  How cool is that?  One slip of the wrong key, one hard drive crash, and where are your digital pictures?  Don't get me started on the subject of proof sheets ...

So, I guess I have to remember that almost every past form of photography is still practiced somewhere within reason.  There was a Daguerreotype of the Obama inauguration, for God's sake.  Surely someone will still make roll film. 

But what of my beloved Tri-X?




* That link's not a mistake.  GAF, the successor to, in reverse chronological order, Ansco and Scovil and the E. & H. T. Anthony Company, the place where Mathew Brady first learned to make pictures, now makes ... roof tiles.

Our Lady of Street Photography

I sometimes wonder if Vivian Maier isn't some sort of an elaborate hoax perpetrated on the gullible ... like me.  After all, it is generally said if something is too good to be true, it probably is.  Is she really the exception to the rule?

If you don't feel like following the hotlink (your loss; the pictures are absolutely amazing), I'll quickly summarize.  Maier was a nanny who, on her off days, pursued an interest in photography, generally using a twin-lens Rolleiflex and black and white film.  She shot thousands of rolls of film, but apparently the photography was a reward in itself.  The general public knew nothing of this until a large number of her negatives were purchased when a storage bin was auctioned.  The buyer, discovering the quality of her work, began to research who she was.  He located her ... just months after her death.  Here's the long version.

Her stuff stands up with Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank ... and coming from me, that's saying something.  It's revealing and stunningly beautiful, deep and full.  She clearly had a quick, perhaps anticipatory eye, and a really fast hand.  Focusing the Rollei, I've discovered, is far more difficult than you'd think.  The thing has a surprisingly narrow depth of field -- useful in making the picture interesting, but devilishly hard to anticipate without a lot of experience.  It would be interesting to see some proof sheets ...

On top of all that, the pictures are amazingly revelatory.  Of course, that's the purpose with "street photography" in general -- to capture life unawares -- but in many images, her subjects seem blissfully unaware of the woman with the magic box.  How is this?  My days are bracketed with people ponderously announcing, as if they were senators on the way to a meeting of the Trilateral Commission, that they don't want their picture taken.  Fine, pal, whatever.

This usually happens to me while heaving a 28-pound, AJ-SPC700P Panasonic television camera onto my shoulder, so I am a less-than subtle figure.  And this got me thinking: Was it the Rollei that helped her?  The waist-level finder, the cognac leather case, comfortably slung around the neck of that plain woman?  "What on earth," the subject might for a moment think, "is that odd lady taking a picture of?  There's nothing here but a street."  It's worked for me -- the quickly deployed Leica, a la the immortal HCB, or the Rollei casually slung over the shoulder -- but more often than not, I get busted.  My more candid stuff almost always happens when I'm around people who have become accustomed to me, to the point of dismissing the camera as part of the background.

But I have begun to think of late that it wasn't just the creative cauldron of the 1950s that caused all those people -- HCB, Frank and Maier -- to do great work then.  I'm wondering if the inability to get, or perhaps rarity of, pictures like that is because we're all so media aware now.  A DSLR for example is a great, huge, unsubtle weapon of potential personal destruction in the age of the cellphone.  Everyone can make digital pictures, and the very thing I selfishly treasure about my gear (the fact that it announces that I am a professional*) is what kills my chances of candid shots.  "Why is that pro taking my picture?  Where is he going to sell it?"  That is what now goes through the subject's mind.

For Maier, photography was still an unusual, complicated and infrequent hobby.  Sure, families had cameras, but they were hauled out for special occasions and trips to the Grand Canyon.  A single roll of film in the Kodak (yes, children, once upon a time the fabulous Kodak made cameras too) could last six months or a year.  When it was finally shot out, the canister was ceremonially delivered to the local camera shop, where solicitous but elite professionals would carefully swath it in a special envelope for delivery to Rochester, from whence it might return in a week or so.

To walk the streets with a Rollei was the province of a newspaperman -- someone rarely seen, and then only at news events.  His usually came with a massive flash gun, and was about as unsubtle as artillery.  For that thin, drably dressed, common woman to be walking about with one was ... well, you just didn't see that a lot.  Far from being a curiosity, I wonder if it just didn't register.  The brain didn't expect it, and in the demands of daily life -- a life in which cameras had little presence, let alone import -- the sight was dismissed as unthreatening and therefore unimportant.  As part of the background, Maier was able to approach closer, catch moments more honestly.

Or maybe I'm just jealous.



*I admit a certain amount of ego, as well as professional pride, in being known as someone who is a photographer.  When working as a photojournalist, this carries through in the mentality that I deserve to be able to go where others can't (eg: the sidelines at a football game) because that is my job, and I am not beyond holding a camera very prominently, like a shield, to bully people out of my way.  Surprising how often that works ...

A Short Cri de Coeur

I find my world
is boundaried by things I am denied to do,
and filled with
things I must do.

A Short Rant on Wardrobe Boxes

Tall and inevitably heavy
(they encourage you to overload them
by their size alone)
They're topheavy by nature,
with the handles in uncomfortable places.

Why do they exist at all?
Are there that many clothes that require hanging?
I thought modern fabrics ended all that.

Really, how long would your clothes be folded?
Would they wrinkle that easily?
More easily than the scratches and cramps I suffer
carrying that goddam thing?

It's just another one of those things
that do more to make us feel better,
more clever, more efficient,
but really do none of those things.