Throwback Thursday...

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…

Jenny & Eric

Jenny & Eric

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...

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

This week I’ve gone just about as far back as it’s possible to go. For several years I photographed with cameras borrowed from friends or that belonged to the school I attended. Unfortunately, those negatives are lost to time.

Contact Sheet 0001

The first serious camera I owned was a Yashica 35mm. It was sold as a kit that had a 35mm, 50mm, and 135mm lenses. And it came with a really nice leather camera bag! I still have the camera and it still works flawlessly. although only the 50mm lens remains with it.

My parents insisted on using the camera at my sisters graduation because they wanted “really nice pictures”. What exactly happened is a story for my therapist*, but the bag and extra lenses never returned. The loss was also deepened by the realization there were several rolls of exposed film I had failed to remove from the bag, and now, they too, were gone forever.

*Sigh*

Nevertheless, the image above is a contact sheet from the first roll of film that I put through the camera. The pictures were made as I walked to and from school and work. It was a roll of Ilford HP5 B&W film that I developed and printed myself. There are 3 missing strips from the roll and I think those were images shot for the yearbook that year, and so I kept them separate. Wherever they went I’m sure they were wonderful.

Contact sheets are an invaluable editing and organizational tool for photographers. I even make them from my digital images. For a long time I used 16x20 enlarged contact sheets as a proofing tool. Clients loved them, and often purchased one or more as add-on’s. A highly beneficial and unintended consequence resulting from something I did just because it was different and easy for me to do. Who knew?

For all the materials I save, one thing I don’t have are accurate records of when the pictures were made. For some silly reason (perhaps my therapist can shed some light on this?*) in those days I didn’t put dates on anything, so I can’t say with any certainty when any of my early work was done. At some point later, I did add a guesstimate of April 1979 for this roll. Based on the image content and what I remember of that time, this is probably a pretty good guess.

Nowadays, with digital imaging, the record keeping is done for you in the exif data embedded in each image file. And geo tags will even tell you where you were when the picture was made! Although it was easy enough to keep good records back in the day. All you needed was paper and a pen. Oh, well…

*I don’t actually have a therapist. In fact, the story had a kind of happy ending. From the money I received from my parents home owners insurance, I was able to purchase my first Nikon, an FM2. I still have that one too…

Throwback Thursday...

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…

Dancing

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 Dance

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.

Waiting

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…

Wednesday Wisdom...

“When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.”

“The eye should learn to listen before it looks.”

“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”

“Above all, life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference”

- Robert Frank

In memory of Robert Frank who died yesterday at the age of 94.

(I couldn’t pick my one favorite, so here are four. There could have been many more…

Throwback Thursday...

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

Being born and raised in Buffalo, it’s almost mandatory that you be a Buffalo Bills fan. Fortunately, it came easily to me.

“The Rockpile”

My dad was a big football fan and it was our Sunday tradition to watch the Bills away games on tv. He also had season tickets he shared with our “Uncle Al”. It was a rite of passage when we reached fifth grade and could have our own season ticket and go to home games. I knew I had arrived!

The Bills first stadium was War Memorial Stadium on the corner of Jefferson and Dodge streets in Buffalo. Affectionally known as “The Rockpile” it was built during the depression as a WPA project, opening in 1937. The Bills began play there in their inaugural season of 1960. They moved to what is now New Era Field in Orchard Park to start the 1973 season.

The stadium was used for minor league baseball and college football until 1988 when it was partially torn down and the land used to create a public park with a track and field stadium. This image was made the day of the ceremonial sledgehammer strike to start the demolition. The media were allowed to wander the stadium and relive it’s better days.

I walked the concourse along the same path we used to take to get to our endzone seating. I made my way to our old seats and sat for awhile and reminisced. I thought about all those Sundays sitting with dad and eating the popcorn we had popped the night before. I thought about how cold the games were in December, and how we used to bundle ourselves up. I thought about how I used to tuck a transistor radio into a coat pocket with the cord for an earpiece that snaked through the top of my cloths. All that to hear Van Miller call the play-by-play. I thought about how we had seen far more losses than wins, but at that moment it didn’t seem to matter.

With the expansion of the stadium for the Bills first season in 1960 a roof was installed over the additional seating, At the eastern corner of the endzone a broadcast both for radio announcers was hung from the roof. Yes, that’s right. Hung from the roof. So to access the booth it was necessary to climb a narrow metal ladder to the platform that led to the entrance. It was small and cramped. I would guess it was really cold in the winter and stifling in the summer.

But the best feature was the trap door in the ceiling that led up to the roof. It was from there that I made this picture. I may be deathly afraid of heights, but there is something about having a camera in one’s hand that mitigates the fear.

Throwback Thursday...

Once again we dip into the archives and bring the past into the present…

I often talk about the need to shoot with intent. As much fun as it is to shoot randomly (and I do this quite often) our best work will come when we are intentional about our approach.

Intent can be of any type, and you may not even be aware of what it is you’re intending to do.

If that doesn’t make sense consider this…

Prelude: In the Beginning

I shot this along the shores of Lake Erie, near Hamburg, NY. I was out with a group visiting some friends and we sat along the waterfront watching the sunset. And as we chatted I was especially taken with the graphic formed by the railing for the steps to the beach. I especially love the dangling bolts hanging from the middle bar.

Listening to the waves as they gently caressed the stones below, I became so entranced by the scene I gradually became less aware of my companions and completely focused on the textures and rhythms of the water below. A musical performance for anyone who would take the time to stop and listen,

As the sun dropped closer to the horizon, I waited for it to silhouette the railing and made the picture. The sound of the shutter seemed to shatter my reverie and I returned to my group.

One frame. (Yes, film!) One random image. But completely intentionally.

Meditation #26

Here is a more recent image from my Meditations series. (For a more complete description of the series, check out the other images in the portfolio section of my site.) This series, still continuing, is a visual representation of my reactions to the sound and rhythms of water.

See a direct line?

I didn’t either. Not until much later.

But it was the intentional approach that allowed me to make the connection so many years later.