Apr 07
0

big money?

By | photography

You know the Diane Arbus photograph of the creepy kid with the toy handgrenade, looking as if he could kill his own mother? Someone once remarked -and I found it to be both funny and true- can you imagine some manager hanging that picture proudly on the wall behind his managerial desk in the big office room? He might fear the reaction from a visitor: “O, nice, your grandson, I suppose.”

Photographs with strangers on them don’t seem to be attractive as a decoration. Much too confronting, too personal. People who have the taste and the money to buy a good photograph will still prefer a landscape (in color most of the time) or something perfectly meaningless, but aesthetic, to the more problematic work of say, Robert Frank or Winogrand. So, if you want to make money from photography without having to wait for fame, forget street photography. Do it for passion or you will be disappointed big time.

Apr 07
0

hit rate

By | photography

The subject came up again some time ago: how many of the photographs you have taken on a certain occasion do you really use in the end? I remember talking about it one afternoon years ago with my friend Ed van der Elsken, looking at the peacocks outside his farmhouse near Edam. He was known to be a prolific shooter and wondered what my results were. His were about one “usable” (as he called it) picture for every film, so 1 out of 36. By usable he meant “worth publishing” by the way, not “technically o.k.” of course, and he had a good eye for catchy images! Neither of us used motor drives then, needless to say. I had to think of it, but thought that overall, my results matched his 1 out of 36.

When I did use motordrives for the house parties series, the numbers went up quite naturally, and after one of these many nights I came home at 4.30 a.m. tired, but with 14 exposed films in my pockets, my best result until then. As I had agreed that my hit score was about the same as Ed’s it was reasonable to expect something like 10 to 14 great pictures, for I had not even made excessive use of the motordrive (I never do, preferring the single exposure mode to sequences). This was not bad at all, but of course it’s only the “rough material” for laying out a series, and more than one perfect image gets edited out  later. In fact, the more choice you have, the better the series will be in the end.

Apr 06
0

vegetation: steady company

By | photography

Plants surround us, nearly always. But most people don’t notice. I myself  look at plants all the time; can’t help photographing them too. Whatever subject I’m working on. Their forms fascinate me, especially untamed. For we try to impose our shortsighted ideas about beauty and neatness upon them. We put them in straight rows, we clip their branches, we even use the chainsaw to cut down in a few minutes what took maybe centuries to grow. And for what, what ugliness takes its place? I like the way vegetation fills the spaces we leave to it, there’s drama and vitality in the way plants struggle to survive our combined efforts to select, replace or reshape them. They are our steady company. Living at a different pace they remind us of life and death. Their apparent chaos is just order of a different kind, not recognised by most of us…

Apr 04
0

Winogrand – street photography quote

By | photography, street photography

Garry Winogrand, my favorite photographer and doubtless the greatest street photographer ever, nevertheless hated that term as he hated categorisations in general. Here are some more interesting quotes from his famous interview with Barbaralee Diamonstein: …”I think that those kind of distinctions and lists of titles like “street photographer” are so stupid. […] I’m a photographer, a still photographer. That’s it. […] People are just dumb. They misunderstand.”

[…] “I’m pretty fast with a camera when I have to be. However, I think it’s irrelevant. I mean, what if I said that every photograph I made was set up? From the photograph you can’t prove otherwise. You don’t know anything from the photograph about how it was made, really. […]  The whole discussion is a way of  not talking about photographs. [What is really important] is the photograph.”

Asked what he wanted to evoke with his photographs, he answers: “I have no ideas on that subject. I’m not making ads. I couldn’t care less. Everybody’s entitled to their own experience.”

Garry Winogrand (tv interview by Barbaralee Diamonstein ©1981 “Visions and Images”, Rizzoli Int. Publ. Inc.)

Apr 02
0

invisible

By | street photography

What is it that makes some street photographers (and wannabees) want to be invisible ? The thought would never have struck me, had I not come across this subject so regularly in articles and blogs lately. I don’t want to be invisible and it wouldn’t improve my photographs either, I think. If it is the fear of people reacting, well, that depends for the greater part on how you behave yourself. Even if you know you’re not doing anything wrong, does your body language show that your intentions are o.k.? Make sure you are self confident. Using long lenses and shooting from the hip is sneaky and makes you feel uneasy. In my book it’s a big nono. 

Sorry, but you will run into the occasional paranoid nut every now and then. Be prepared. Invisibility is no part of that, I’m afraid.

Apr 01
0

party war zone

By | photography

When I started taking photographs of house parties I had to choose the right camera for the job. I had a long time experience with several Nikon models, so that’s what I took along. They were strong, easy to operate (I had practised changing films in complete darkness, which came in handy!). I used 2 identical FE’s with 28mm’s (the old type, which has a wider spaced and therefore more precise indication of close range on the distance ring). For use in the dark I later even added white paint markers on some close range distances that I used a lot.  The 2 identical flashlights were preset for the same expected range. I also took care not to use the blinding full blast to spare my subjects. Not that many of them noticed the flash at all amongst the room lights and the occasional strobe…

I tried to use the viewfinder as much as I could for composing, but sometimes it was so dark that I saw nothing. In that case I put my eye as close to the finder as possible, and looked alongside it, using my experience in aiming to get the “framing” as precise as possible. Surprisingly, this worked most of the time. What I liked a lot was the extra grip provided by the motordrives, making up for their – considerable – added weight.

One time when the 2 cameras+speedlights+motordrives around my neck worked against me was the unlucky night when I slipped on the steep perforated steel stairs that lead up to the dj, causing their combined weight to make me loose my balance. In falling the stairs made a long cut in my forehead, causing a lot of bleeding. Fortunately that was all, but nevertheless I was rushed to a hospital, leaving my cameras at the club. When I collected them later, there was blood all over and I had to take them to the official Nikon repair department. They looked at me and then at the cameras, inquiring what war zone I came from… By the way, both Nikons were o.k. after cleaning, just a small scratch. Good camera for a war zone.

Mar 28
0

blur you

By | photography

So you don’t wanna be seen on Google Street. Wear stuff with a lot of faces on – they’ll blur you out.

Mar 28
0

scary

By | photography

The forest was dense and large. I heard a strange noise coming my way. It was the Google camera car.

Mar 27
0

vegetation016 take 1-4

By | photography

Let’s see now, big leaves, enclosure, vague light in the background. A scene from childhood when you were still smaller than most plants around you. Close to water, maybe, you’ve seen such plants there, and there’s that light… On the photograph is just an imprint of what was before me, before the camera as Garry rightfully said… No more than that… Can’t show what’s not there. Light on surface. You have your thoughts, lookthink. You may think: this looks like rhubarb, right, maybe you think this is from a dream you were once in. You may think: no rain on your face under the big leaf; find shelter together with the insects on the moist ground, the light gets less because it rains, home not far, safe. Take four: now you touch the leaves as you stand up and look at the trees beyond. It’s all valid. It’s there if you want, here’s the picture: the image is of another day under a different sky. I can’t reach you, you can reach yourself, you make the connections, you make it work. I just give you the image. Look… And think.