Throwback Thursday

October 31, 2019 Ray Pfeiffer

On a spooky Halloween night going deep into the vault and bringing treats back out into the light…

In thinking about Halloween and spooky things, one of the first things that comes to mind (after candy!) are the horror movies we watched as kids, and one of the best of all, The Phantom of the Opera. My favorite parts were the scenes of the Phantom playing the organ. I thought that was really cool.

One of the great joys of the time I was still living and working in Buffalo was the opportunity to photograph Shea’s Performing Arts Center, the crown jewel of the theatre district. For several years, prior to leaving, I photographed events, musicals and the occasional concert. I met and photographed many of the stars that came through with touring Broadway musicals.

I also photographed the restoration of the theatre and the stage expansion. The stage expansion allowed the larger touring shows to move in. The first show after the completion of the expansion was The Phantom of the Opera.

The image above is of the theatre lobby and grand staircase. My first time attending a musical was while in middle school. As a school trip we attended a matinee performance of 1776. I didn’t even know what a musical was, but my parents insisted I go. I still remember sitting in the middle of the theatre before the show, staring up at the ceiling and being overwhelmed by how opulent it was. I grew up in Riverside. I had never seen anything like this.

I may dig a little deeper into the archives and bring up some of the interior shots at another time, but this one will have to suffice for now.

Also apropos to the Halloween theme, are many people who believe the theatre is haunted. There are those who claim to have seen the ghost of Michael Shea wandering the hallways reminding people how “magnificent” it is.

I cannot prove or disprove the veracity of those claims to having seen him. But I can say with certainty, he is absolutely correct in his opinion of the theatre. It is truly magnificent.

Throwback Thursday

October 24, 2019 Ray Pfeiffer

Another excursion into the archives…

As I’ve mentioned, I rarely leave home without a camera, and I suppose if I consider that my phone is also a camera, I never really do.

Family lore will have it that there are never people in my photographs.In my personal work, I suppose that is largely true, although I do believe that while you don’t actually see people, their presence is always felt.

But, the image below belies that notion.

Here, the people are actually present.

This picture was made roughly 25+ years ago while attending a family reunion. Jeremy and Christopher are the sons of two of my (many!) cousins. Both boys are now married with children of their own.

I recall watching them try to kick the ball around which, not surprisingly, given their size relative to the ball, wasn’t going very far. Even so, their enthusiasm never waned. Results matter less than just having fun. Such are the ways of the very young.

Looking at this picture now, I go right back to that day, and then further back to when I was that age, and some of the most enjoyable days of my youth spent with my cousins on Sundays and on holidays running, yelling and laughing until we collapsed from exhaustion, or it was time to go home.

Great times. A time of joy and innocence, which I think I’ve been able to capture here.

Throwback Thursday

October 17, 2019 Ray Pfeiffer

Once again, here we go, searching the archives and bring the past into the present…

A couple of quick throws this week.

Intently looking is a major component of a photographers DNA. We are always staring, looking for something to capture our attention that then compels us to make a picture. Something I often refer to as “restless eyes”.

Sometimes referred to as “vernacular photography”, Stephan Shore is the Godfather of all practitioners. There is no one better. He is one of my photo heros.

Each of the images here was made while out and about, with no particular goal in mind. In the case of Architectural Geometry, I was standing in line waiting to see a film during the Full-Frame Film Festival in Durham. Being captivated by the lines and graphic elements of the office building across the street, I couldn’t resist the impulse to take out my phone and make a few pictures.

Diesel was made while stuck in traffic. I was totally entranced by the graphic elements created by the smudges on the bus next to me. A picture had to be made.

Looking Up was made while on a lunch date with my wife. I was particularly taken with the contrast between the umbrella and the clear blue sky. Initially I thought the moon (as a small spot on the left) was a cool addition. Now it strikes me as an annoying dust spot but I’ll keep living with it for now.

None of these pictures are especially noteworthy or potentially award winning. But who cares? What all three of them do have in common is the joy that comes from sharing the vision of our “restless eyes”.

Throwback Thursday

October 10, 2019 Ray Pfeiffer

Once again, here we go, searching the archives and bring the past into the present…

An often annoying character trait of many photographers is the obsessive need to discuss gear. Put more than one photographer in a room and before you can say: “Say Cheese!” there will be a conversation on the type of gear they’ve used in the past; what they’re using now; what they’ve sold to buy more gear that now they wish they’d kept; and what they’d like to buy in the future.

Ugh…

I don’t know why we do, but we do. I am occasionally as guilty as anyone else. Perhaps it’s because it’s bond we all share. Perhaps it’s because we have nothing else interesting to say. Who knows?

All i do know is, it just doesn’t matter.

The best camera is the one you have with you, and most often, it’s your phone. As convenient as that is, with all the apps available, it couldn’t be more fun to make pictures. Even when I’m carrying another camera, I will still use my phone if I think I might want to play around with the images later.

The picture above was made on one of those occasions. While out working on a project, I passed the abandoned farm house and after making several pictures with my larger cameras, I thought it might also be fun to make a few with my phone.

Generally, my go to phone app is Snapseed, mostly because you can make all your adjustments later, and if you don’t like them, you discard them. But I really love my Hipstamatic app and that’s what I used here.

So while technically, this IS about the gear, it was really mostly about the fun!

Throwback Thursday...

October 3, 2019 Ray Pfeiffer

So in honor of Holga Week, once again we go deep into the archives to bring the past into the present…

I’ve probably mentioned it more than just a few times that I have a sizable collection of cameras most of which I’ve owned for a very long time. With the exception of my digital gear, I don’t think that there is a film camera in my arsenal that I’ve owned for less than a decade.

And I still use them.

All the time.

Because of this, whenever I travel, I feel the need to bring it all with me. Not a big deal if I’m going by car, but, lacking a Sherpa, any other mode of transportation presents many logistical challenges., not the least of which is the sheer weight. The old stuff was mostly made of metal, built to last forever and it’s heavy …

Fortunately, one of my favorite cameras, is small, made almost entirely of plastic, fits easily in my bag, and weighs practically nothing.

Yes, it’s the Holga.

I absolutely love this camera and never venture out without one. I have at least 6 and of varying models. I have versions with a plastic lens, glass lens, panorama, stereo, pinhole, you name it, I probably have it.

So naturally, on a trip to Alaska a few years ago, my 120 GN got an extensive workout.

Alaska is like no other place I’ve ever seen. It rained just about every day we were there. This is fine by me as I prefer the light on cloudy days as it’s much more diffuse. This tends to soften the shadows and reduce the specularity of the highlights. It’s “God’s softbox” as I like to say. So the feel of the light and way it presented the landscape made me think the soft and dreamy look of the Holga would work well together. I think I was right.

The sequence above is a strip from one of the contact sheets. It wasn’t planned but the three images really work well together, so I had them printed as a single panorama print. That’s one of the great things about analogue photography. Had I just been looking at files on a screen, I don’t know that this sequence would have made itself known. As much as we like to think we’re so clever, we really aren’t. Sometimes the discoveries come to us…

Throwback Thursday...

September 26, 2019 Ray Pfeiffer

Once again we go deep into the archives to bring the past into the present…

This picture was made for a very good friend of mine very early in my career. Made sometime in the early 80’s, it would become one of those defining moments that would lead me to the path that would eventually define who I would be as a photographer. Although it would only become clear to me later…

I had been photographing both kids since they were born, and so having me around with my camera was second nature to them. This was just around the time I had my first studio location, but since it was a nice day, and we often took pictures of the kids outside, we thought it would be fun to make some portraits at the park.

So after the obligatory “posed” pictures, the kids went off to play and I just tagged along,continuing to “play” with my camera, making pictures as they ran from one play thing in the park to another. After a couple of hours, children and adults both being suitably exhausted, they returned home for naps, and I to my studio wishing I could take one too.

When the contact sheets came back, there were several really good portraits, and a few more really good candids, but this one turned out to be mom’s favorite. It’s still one of mine, even with all the “flaws”.

For one thing, the background is over-exposed. On such a bright day given the difference in brightness between shadows and highlights, it would have been necessary to use some fill flash to balance out the difference. But since it wasn’t planned, we were just playing around and I was shooting from the hip, it didn’t seem necessary.

Now days, cameras and flashes calculate these things automatically. In those days, I would have had to meter the shadows in the foreground, meter the highlights in the background, figure out the difference, calculate how much light I wanted to fall on the subject, the power level and distance of the light source, set the flash and camera controls… AAUUGGG! It’s a great moment! We’re all having fun! Just take the picture!

So I did.

There is another frame from this series where Eric is standing still and the lines of the jungle-gym are straight. I don’t like it nearly as much as this one. When Eric started to move I tipped the camera and tripped the shutter. I like his movement against the dynamic of the tilted lines. I think it adds a little energy to what is already an energetic moment. Most importantly, it’s mom’s favorite too. Many years later, I would also photograph Jenny’s wedding. This photo was on the wall still…

So this picture was the first commissioned photograph created in the style that would eventually define my work for the next 30+ years. Ironically, it would be a picture I made in the studio that would eventually lead me in that direction. But that will have to be a story for another day…

Throwback Thursday...

September 12, 2019 Ray Pfeiffer

Once again, we dig into the archives and bring the past into the present…

It’s been several years since I last photographed a wedding but I still look back on my wedding photography days fondly. I considered it an honor and a privilege to be such a big part of one of the most important days in a couple’s life and to use my art to create their first family heirloom.

In an earlier post, I mentioned how early in my career I worked very hard to make work that looked like what every other “pro” was making. I felt that if I was to be as successful as they were, I needed to understand how they made pictures and replicate them as best I could.

It made sense at the time, but looking back, that strategy would only be useful if I were creating another commodity, like widgets, off an assembly line. Good for widgets, but bad for art which is what I felt I needed to be making. Needless to say, it was something of a struggle in the beginning. And not so much a struggle to make work that clients loved, but to create work that I loved.

So what to do…

In college, I had a professor in a creative writing class who talked all the time about the importance of the “central emotional structure” of every story. Without it, you didn’t have much of a story. He was right. And the more I thought about my wedding photography, the more I realized that’s what was missing in my work.

While overall, my work was decent, I wasn’t creating a narrative for each bride and groom as unique as they were, but creating one narrative that every bride and groom had to fit. In other words, the pictures were interchangeable. The only difference from one wedding to another were the faces. No two stories are ever alike, so why should your pictures all look alike?

This is OK if you’re a factory, but not so good if what you want to do is tell a story as unique as each couple you meet. I may go a little deeper into this idea in another post, but for now I think these three images illustrate how my approach had changed.

First, I began to add B&W images to each coverage. I felt that color pictures told the color of the day, but B&W pictures expressed the feeling of the day. This may not seem so radical today, but back then it was almost unheard of.

“Do they still make B&W film?”

“My parents wedding pictures were in B&W. Why would I want that?”

“No real professional photographer would make B&W pictures. Not these days. I think we should get some of our money back.”

I’m not making any of these up. Clients actually said these things. And more. And in the beginning, it was confounding to me. Couldn’t they see the beauty of it? (BTW, the couple from the last quote did not get money back!)

Eventually, I found my audience and things took off. Which then, I felt, gave me licence to explore many other techniques to enhance the ways I could tell a story. I began using different types of film, like high ISO B&W film because I loved the grain; infra-red film because I loved the ethereal look and feel; high speed color film because I loved the subdued color palette.

I spent less time posing and more time documenting. I enhanced motion by “dragging the shutter” as in the first two images here. I used different angles looking down, looking up, tilting the camera to create dynamism and add impact.

In short, I used every tool I had available to tell THE STORY!

Because at the end of the day, it’s all about the story…

Throwback Thursday

August 22, 2019 Ray Pfeiffer

These two images, having been made just a little over a year ago, are probably closer to toss-backs than full-fledged throw-backs to the archives, but we’ll say that it’s close enough that the judges will give us a pass.

I’m inclined to believe that visual artists suffer from some mutated form of attention deficit disorder. It’s not that we can’t focus and pay attention, but that we can’t stop looking, and so are constantly paying attention. This tends to make us especially sensitive to people, places and things the rest of the world just misses. We’re often so focused, we get lost in the details, and so to the rest of the world we’re walking around with our heads in the clouds (or, perhaps somewhere else the sun isn’t shining..).

We tend to be especially sensitive to the interplay of light, of form, of color and gesture. Once this visual switch is activated within us, it’s rarely switched off. If we’re awake, we’re looking. We have to. It’s what makes us feel alive.

I don’t know if there is a scientific name for this, but I call it “Restless Eye Syndrome”. If this doesn’t cover the process behind an artists visual perception, at least it explains why I often look like I’m bored and not really paying attention. Trust me, I’m not bored. I really, really am paying attention. It just looks like I’m not.

And so it was the day these pictures were made. I was with a group of friends in Charleston, SC, waiting for an Uber to take us to dinner. As we stood in front of the hotel chatting, I couldn’t help but notice the shadows as they were falling along the building across the street. And because the best camera is the one you have with you, I pulled out my iPhone, wandered away from the group and went to work.

I took several photos, zooming in and out, of the various patterns made by the power lines and the buildings architecture when I noticed the young man walking down the street dragging his skateboard behind him. Thinking that if I could get in the right position, I might capture something interesting, I hurriedly positioned myself in what I thought would be the best position, composed the frame, and waited for the young man to enter.

At the same time, I’m scanning up and down the street to make sure no people or vehicles would get in the way of the shot. Nothing ruins an image made on location like a wandering tourist or a wayward vehicle. Fortunately, this time there were neither.

Click!

Got it.

As I stared at the back of my phone analyzing the shot, my reverie was broken by the shouts of my friends calling me to the car. Our driver had arrived and I hadn’t noticed. If I didn’t come now, I would be eating alone. Not wanting to miss neither dinner nor desert, I quickly made my way to the car and jumped in.

One benefit to being tall and having long legs, is that when traveling with a group, I usually get a window seat. This tends to give me the best view of the scenery as we roll by. It also allows me to photograph as we go if I feel so inclined.

Generally, since sitting in a vehicle won’t afford one much opportunity in the way of selecting the best angle of view to photograph, if I take a picture from the car, even if I have one of my other cameras with me, I use my phone so I can use the geo tag to return when I am able to spend the necessary time to make the picture. On that evening, the phone was all I had.

As we pulled up at a traffic light, my attention was again drawn to the shadows and textures highlighted by the sun as it raked the building next to us. Not being able to control the window, I hesitated to take out my phone as I thought it would probably be a waste of time shooting through the glass. But because making a picture is as reflexive as scratching an itch, I pulled out my phone and was able to get off two frames before we pulled away.

Pocketing my phone, I was able to spend the remainder of the evening enjoying the company of my friends and, of course, desert. Feeling that I had a pretty good photo in the first image, I didn’t really look too closely at the second image until several months later. Only after downloading the image to my computer and viewing it on a larger screen did I realize that I had an image that really worked. Who knew? Two keepers within 10 minutes of each other?! Unheard of!

Beyond the lessons on being prepared and paying attention, is a reminder that we should never prejudge our own work. Because I felt fairly certain that the first image really worked, I didn’t even consider looking at the second one very carefully until I stumbled back over it while clearing photos off my phone.

The value of that was recently made especially clear when the second image was juried into the Depth of Field show at The United Arts Council MJH Gallery. The first image was not.

I hope if you’re in the area you’ll be able to stop in and see it. The show runs for another week. Details are on my landing page.

Throwback Thursday...

August 15, 2019 Ray Pfeiffer

Well, this is not a very deep throw, but it does go back..

I rarely go anywhere without a camera, and often carry several of them. While it’s true that if you have a phone you have a camera, in my backpack I generally have one digital camera, and two or more film cameras of varying formats. I imagine as I get older and the bags get heavier, I will pare back, but until then, I trundle on…

There are many types of distracted drivers. Some are daydreamers, some (most?!) are using their phones, some might be lost and looking for directions, and others may be more interested in conversations with other passengers then to give proper attention to what is happening on the road in front of them.

I am none of these. I am distracted searching for photo ops.

So it was while flying north up Route 70 near Durham, NC that I came upon the scene above. Hardly believing what I was seeing, I slammed on the brakes and pulled off the road as quickly as I could. Plowing through the underbrush I worked my was as close to the scene as I could. If I had taken the time I might have noticed the service road nearby and made my way more easily. But that would not have been nearly so dramatic. Or as much fun.

If I have the time, I like to spend some time looking around and trying to visualize what I think I would like the final image to look like. Other times, I like to play around just to see what I might discover. This was one of those in-between situations. I had some time, but not a lot as I suspected the scene would change quickly as the crew went about the work of removing the crane from the baby’s forehead.

I made several versions of this but this is the one I like the best. I have a closeup of the baby’s face which illustrates the damage the crane has done, and the baby’s obvious displeasure, but I think the panoramic version tells more of the story. We see the surroundings, the tipped over crane and the damage it’s caused. We also see the workmen along the side of the crane which gives everything a sense of scale.

All-in-all, we have all the components to tell an interesting story.

Throwback Thursday...

August 8, 2019 Ray Pfeiffer

Here is another favorite of mine, and not just because the Sabres won the game.

This image was made on April 14, 1996. I know this because I still have the ticket stub! The game was between the Buffalo Sabres and the Hartford Whalers and was the last game they would ever play in the old Buffalo Memorial Auditorium. Otherwise known as: “The Aud.”

Buffalo Sabres vs. Hartford Whalers April 14, 1996

The great thing about images like this are that they have the ability to immediately take you back to that moment in time. I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast this morning, or even if I did, but I look at this photo and can instantly remember everything about that night. Thinking about how many games I had attended with my dad. How excited we were when Buffalo finally got an NHL team. Listening to the games on my transistor radio while hiding under the covers in my bed, long after I should have been asleep.

Even going back to the days of the Buffalo Bisons, our AHL team. The Pepsi logo on the old jerseys. How dark and scary the old building seemed as young boy. Crushing soda cups to make them “pop”. The sound as it echoed throughout the building. I can still hear it today. And the pick up hockey games with other kids as we kicked the cups around in the hallways between periods. A large slice of my childhood, encapsulated in a single photograph. Such is the power of photography.

Prior to the game, I had called the department at city hall responsible for the maintenance of the building and politely inquired as to the possibility of having a bucket filled with Zamboni ice. After a long stunned silence, the man on the other end of the phone gave me the name of the person to ask for. So immediately after the game, I ran back to my car, returning with a five gallon pickle bucket. I made my way down to the basement where the Zamboni’s were parked and assuring the maintenance crew that I had the appropriate permissions, requested that I be able to fill my bucket with ice from the Zamboni.

Another long stunned silence ensued, this time accompanied by an incredulous stare. After several awkward moments, the older man in charge directed a younger man to fill my bucket for me. I wouldn’t be insured if there happened to be an accident, he explained. How nice that there was someone to do the work for him, I thought, as I watched my bucket being filled with ice. After a short time my bucket was filled, and thanking the crew profusely, i was on my way, delighted with my souvenir, their quizzical eyes following me as I exited the building.

Over time, all relationships evolve and change, and the ways we, as viewers or keepers of memories relate to images, are no different. While the memories come flooding back, how we respond to those memories will often change over time. What I could never have anticipated at the time this image was made, was how it would change for me.

The following season, the Hartford Whalers would move south to Raleigh, North Carolina and become the Carolina Hurricanes.

Several years later, although for far different reasons, I would follow.

Who knew?

For the technically minded, this image was made with a swing-lens panorama camera much like the one I used for the church image from a few weeks ago. It just uses a larger film format. The distortion and curvature in the image is a result of the changing distance of the foreground and middle view and that of the view to the edges. As the lens rotates, the distance to each element of the view is changing. The edges are further away than the middle, so therefore it looks closer. Our eyes correct for this but the camera lens cannot. And the distortion is made worse by me tilting the camera down to include all of the ice surface. So I’m really messing with with all the optical planes here. Oh well,..

So while there are many technical ‘problems” with this image, I still like it a lot. It tells a story of a time and place that is extremely important to me. And in that, it’s perfect…