I now have a two day shoot for NatGeo on a story about rising sea levels. My assignment in Rodanthe NC is very specifically to shoot a house being moved off the fast eroding beach and down the road to higher ground. I will do this in the next few days. Yet here just down the way lays princess Barbie tucked comfy in the pine needles. She is from the childhood Barbie doll collection of Denise Halminski, local resident, who had 4 feet of water rushing around her house during hurricane Sandy. Barbie is lying now exactly as Sandy left her. Small details often tell bigger stories.
You do realize, naturally, that without the fake brown tint and fake square output by your iPhone, via that useless app, without saving the original file, does not measure up to the blahblah accompanying this extremely forgettable, kitschy snap, right?
Just venting, cause I’m sick and TIRED of this type of laziness, when it comes to professional imaging.
Best!
Moere to add.
WTF happened!?
This was started – by you DAH – as the cutting edge, BuRN them all platform?
I thought this was a place for stuff I cannot possibly live without, visually.
Now?
You post a few sexy babe snaps you made of someone you did or wish to lay, a few pros’s stuff, and that’s that!?
Really!?
Please get back on BuRNB track.
As in fucking BURN!!!
Otherwise, you’re boring me.
Really!!!
Love ya!
Michal, pull yourself together lad, it’s just a photo.
Michal, you are missing the point here. Understand, I do not own a smartphone, have started shooting film again, am one of the really old guys (almost as old as DAH). But this sort of imagery, instant stream of consciousness stuff is far from boring. It’s only boring if you are expecting the “same old”.
” instant stream of consciousness stuff” sounds very blah blah to me …. ratify “same old”. to back up your statement otherwise it just becomes stab in the dark talk
So what’s your take on this photo Imants, and the whole instant smartphone pic thing?
What no reply a question instead , politicians respond in this nature
The smartphone etc is very much a part of popular culture and why not results are impressionable and instant, society is in love with them. There is better way to describe your new boyfriend/girlfriend than sending a picture.
Yup I use phones pads extensively in schools when I do tutorials for visual arts. They are great to demonstrate process of different types of media,presenting art theory,a fantastic feed back and evaluation tool etc
I also use phones pads etc both for video and stills, great devices for getting people to understand how film is processed, doing voice overs for slideshows,the mechanics of printing, stop animation etc
On a personal note, I rarely have camera with and carrying a phone under duress, my phone is used for making the odd call I spend about 40 dollars a year on calls if that.
‘She is from the childhood Barbie doll collection of Denise Halminski…’
…the image tells a story…oime…how can we help?…
a civilian
“Small details often tell bigger stories” :)))))…EXACTLY…
and that is what i’d like on my tombstone, though won’t, will have the ashes scattered….
MICHAL:
i know you’re ribbing david (and what would a good Czechk motherfukcer be if he couldnt rib his friends? ;)), but just a reminder, what I like about the ‘road trip’ part of BURN (i think this pic is there) is that its more like a diary (visual, verbal)…some of david’s snaps that show up positively kill with their beauty and some of just snaps to pictorialize a thought (i like that idea very much, obviously)…so, i think brother, you gotta keep that shit in mind…i think barbie snap is funny but also gets me to that last line and that’s alot :))….as for BURN, well have a look at the essays, you know of Lijie before she was published here?…i’m so happy BURN published her (and i know her), have a look, she’s got the goods……
michal needs some Civi time ;))))…
hugs
off to teach on a saturday….
b
BOBBY…I haven’t checked MICHAL’s work yet…he sounds European though…hihiii…
WE LOVE MICHAL…
back to my IMF “duties”…oime…where is the ouzo?
…”good Czechk”?…yoho,yoho…the pirate’s life for him and for ALL of US !!!
MICHAL DANIEL
i just want to ask, have i ever been rude to you? just curious
thank you for sending me a link to your Nokia work…nice pictures, and impressive tech too with that phone, which is for sure a better camera than the iPhone…
i think the readers of Burn know that my little Road Trips bit here is just my sketchpad, or a contact sheet, a bit of whimsy, and often helpful to some i think who track the whole bit..those who follow this thread know the Barbie shot, surely not a picture i hold especially high, is just me waiting for the damned house to get moved!! (see newest post)…and might add an odd element to a larger engineering feat up against mother nature…not sure what a “fake square” is exactly Michal, huh?, but yes with the Instagram i will occasionally tint a bit to tone down the contrast i get with my iPhone…you can be sure however, all of the iPhone pics here, including the new post i just made, are almost all also shot with a “real camera” especially since i am on a commission for this house moving bit…
the young woman from the Ukraine, if you had been paying attention, has been photographed before by me as part of another commission on students here on foreign exchange…sure Dasha is an attractive beautiful woman, but aren’t you in fact disrespecting female beauty just a bit with your assumption? you may meet Dasha if you want and ask her how i treated her…maybe the problem is in your head?
always nice to have you here Michal, and i look forward to your next body of work….show us please
cheers, david
—“Was Balzac’s fear of the Daguerreotype real or
feigned?” Nadar asks. “It was real…”—since the procedure of
photography is a materializing, so to speak, of what is most
original in his procedure as a novelist. The Balzacian operation
was to magnify tiny details, as in a photographic enlargement, to
juxtapose incongruous traits or items, as in a photographic layout:
made expressive in this way, any one thing can be connected with
everything else. For Balzac, the spirit of an entire milieu could be
disclosed by a single material detail, however paltry or
arbitrary-seeming. The whole of a life may be summed up in a
momentary appearance.
Just Quoting again… S. Sontag p.133
My laziest way to reassert something I’ve learned here: not the tint, not the tone, not the camera…
DAH,
You’ve never been rude to me. If you were to be, I’d likely deserve it.
I’m just sick and tired of instagram mangled imagery, that’s all.
And I already shared my latest stuff with you and your assistants, a very long while back, four or five time, over a period of two years. Nothing ever came of it.
Best,
M.
MICHAL
oh, i know many really hate the Instagram bit….it is sort of an irony i guess that i do Instagrams and at the very same time am super intent on making limited editioned prints for collectors, and a whole lot of stuff in between…i can like many different kinds of picture taking and picture presenting scenarios…
but you must know that i have the Instagram work in a totally different category than the so called “serious work”, although i am getting ready to make some super sized “contact sheets” from my iPhone pics just to see how it looks and feels…i do like the unprofessional look of it…the diary look of it…yet i do understand where you are coming from as well….
if whatever i do does not end up in a book or a show, then you can bet your last dollar that i was just playing around, and sometimes playing in my case leads to something i can dig into…
by the way, we have searched just now through all submissions and we see nothing from you…i do recall being interested in your stage photography at some point, and i do recall a bit of discussion, but do not remember ever getting down to the nitty gritty with it…
to whom and where did you send your pictures? if you sent your work for example in an email only to me , then heaven help us!! you need to copy anything to me to all the rest of the staff listed on Burn..i might be really interested in something, but then head off for weeks somewhere…copying the others is totally necessary please please…
we have in the last few months eliminated our old submissions section, but are going to bring back a new version of it…
if this is an oversight on our part , then we do apologize…again, we can find nothing doing a routine search….
i was pleased publishing on Burn your essay In Your Face…one of our more provocative essays…it was a key in our original Burn slideshow….
in any case, we welcome you to please re submit…i would not want anyone here to somehow not have their work seen and thought about carefully…
cheers, david
DAH,
It was the theatre work. At your request, I submitted it a number of times, IDs and all. Each time I heard back that it was a go. Nothing happened. Then we went around that block a few times.
Bottom line: you have the work.
Best,
M.
MICHAL
i am trying to piece together what went wrong here….i think it is a simple matter of both of us going around the system we had set up for story production…you came straight to me, evidently at my request you say, and i am sure that is correct, and that was the downfall….it was my fault i did not tell you to just put the work in Submissions…when work is in submissions it cannot get misplaced…i must have sent it to one of my picture editors with a note, but then it just got lost…in other words if any one of us was not thinking Michal Daniel that morning, it could just keep getting forgotten because it was not in our face like all the other stories…and as i said, i go running off to France or something and then well you might see how things could slip….my European friends who would know where your pictures might be are sound asleep, and i have a shoot in the morning, but by tomorrow afternoon i should know something….in any case, all three picture editors tell me after mucho search that you were never officially in the submissions system….
just got a text from Diego now who confirms all i said, and claims i sent him a link, which he has , but again not in the system for some reason…
will let you know by email what is up after we take another look….sorry about the mixup….
cheers, david
IMANTS
i wish i could be as you in this respect…i panic if my iPhone is lost or i do not have it with me…i rarely make a phone call, but texting has got me as bad or worse as the teenagers i see with phones who are in groups as usual but all laughing and smiling at their phones!! Jules Verne and George Orwell had no idea of the future as it turns out!!
Yea I managed to keep a lot of personal space around myself…… George got the system right not the technology. I am sure most don’t realise what mass control the telco carriers and smartphones producers have over their lives. You are only free if you pay us you depend on us ……….then again it probably doesn’t matter we managed to give back a lot of that hard fought freedom
the iphone probably replaced barbiee
DAH,
Here is the link:
http://www.proofsheet.com/burn/
And here is the required blahblah to go under them:
“Born in Prague, then Czechoslovakia. Left for the US in 1969. Served in the USAF and became photographer after seeing my first 4×5 negative come up in the developer, under a green safelite—military boot stepping on a flower. Corny, I know, but hey, instant love, to this day. Got my US citizenship and ran my own custom b&w photo lab in Minneapolis for two decades after that, while teaching fine b&w printing. Meanwhile, didn’t get rich inventing or marketing the original M-Grip for M Leica cameras, nor being the first and then exclusive US importer of FOMA film and paper products from the Czech Republic. Been a street life photographer since day one, and became a live entertainment photographer since Theatre de la Jeune Lune let me in, back in 1980.”
Best,
M.
Given what he wrote above, not sure why Michal Daniel would want to be published on burn. Seems when he has nothing but contempt for the magazine and its publisher.
On a completely different topic, after whining about not getting down to Coney Island to shoot landscape pictures immediately after the storm yesterday, I got up early today and took a walk around the island.
mw,
“Given what he wrote above, not sure why Michal Daniel would want to be published on burn.”
My garbage was already published on BuRN.
I much appreciate that.
“Seems when he has nothing but contempt for the magazine and its publisher.”
Dead wrong conclusion. If I had noting but contempt for the magazine and its publisher, I’d STFU!
In fact, I have nothing but respect for the magazine and its publisher.
We just sometimes disagree on the content.
Happens, among dear friends.
Best!
M.
Michal,
those pictures
https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2009/05/michal-daniel-in-your-face/
I found much stronger than your theatre pictures, and the “Personal Views – Czech” http://www.proofsheet.com/czech/ on your website, are also very strong.
Thanks for showing.
Thanks Thomas!
I know. I’ll never get better than In Your Face.
Unless better phonecam toys come out, with the lens placed correctly, as it was on the eyemod…
http://www.640×480.net/about.html
M.
Michal, In Your Face is one of my all time favourites here.
The theatre pictures are fine, and interesting to see some famous faces. I did a bunch of theatre photography years ago. I remember getting great stuff, but it always seemed like shooting fish in a barrel. Great lighting, and subjects that pretended you didn’t exist.
If you say so. I guess if I had dear friends like you I wouldn’t need angry guys hurling insults about their perception of my sex life at me on the internets.
Can’t say I liked the In Your Face project. Kinda thing that makes people hate photographers. Like the theater stuff, though.
Thanks Gordon,
I’ll ignore you mw, you don’t matter to me me cause you don’t add, you subtract.
I KNOW I make my best work on the street, always did.
Does NOT pay the bills, so I make theatre stuff for dental, medical, retirement reasons.
Still, think I’m the best at that.
Beat me!
M.
Beat you? Okay. Perhaps I’m missing something, but I don’t see that your street work is telling us anything about the subjects. Far as I can see, it’s just about you showing you’re not afraid to put a camera in some old person’s wrinkled face. The great street photographers tell more interesting stories. And more often than not, their camera empathizes with the subjects rather than ridiculing them.
If you’re theater stuff is as uninteresting to you as you say, why should it be interesting to anyone else? Small wonder it got lost in the stacks.
Is that enough or shall I beat you some more?
Yeah, mw, I suck dogshit.
You? Show me your best, or shut the fuck up!
M.
I take this all back.
It’s absolutely IDIOTIC.
My dick is bigger than yours.
Why did I ever get caught up it this SHIT!!!???
We’re ALL EQUAL here. We all matter. We all try.
Fuck all this rivalry.
FUCK IT!!!
M.
Michal
You make Theatre photos to pay the bills, at the same time you love what you do and are good at it. Your “serious” stuff is something else.
I make portraits to pay the bills. my “serious” stuff is something else.
At the same time, what we do to pay the bills is serious stuff too. Your photographs are some of the most important photographs in the world to a limited audience (probably the theatre people). My portraits are the most important photographs in the world to my clients, they’d run out of their burning house with them.
I learned long ago to separate my art from my craft. What I practiced every day for the past 40 years is my craft. If some of what I’ve done transcends craft, and becomes art, then that would please me. But I have no illusions or expectations. I’m happy to have done something that is important to someone, gives them pleasure or comfort.
You’re good at what you do. I’m good at what I do. We make a difference. What more can we ask, or hope for?
Michal, no need to get upset. I was half joking, half offended by what you said about David. Sure, let’s move on.
But since we’re on the topic (and this is not directed at you, but at the larger audience, many of whom like quotes), I’ll share (steal) a few quotes from an article by Glenn Kenney about how artists should (not) respond to critics:
“An author places himself uncalled before the tribunal of criticism, and solicits fame at the hazard of disgrace.” — Samuel Johnson
“Some reviews give pain. This is regrettable, but no author has the right to whine. He was not obliged to be an author. He invited publicity, and he must take the publicity that comes along.” — E.M. Forster
“A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down…If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book, nothing can help him.” — Edna St. Vincent Millay
“Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic of his own works.” — John Keats
“Today it is the fantasy of celebrity, hardly the love of beauty, that seems to propel most aspirant writers—a term now all but equivalent to “novelists.” Thus, unfavorable notices of their work offend deeply because they seem to proclaim their ineptitude to a wide paying audience, and it’s a rare second- or third-rate writer who can resist whipping off a letter to the review journal protesting the response his work has occasioned. Such a letter I have called an A.B.M., or Author’s Big Mistake, since its effect is simply to reveal to an amused audience how deeply the author’s feelings have been lacerated by the criticism he himself has so sedulously solicited. If the bad review has made him look like a ninny, his letter of outrage makes him look like an ass. What, then, is the author’s appropriate recourse/ Silence. His appropriate action? Getting busy on the next book immediately, and resolving this time to be as little elated by public praise as downcast by public blame.” — Glenn Kenney
“No photograph ever was good, yet, of anybody–hunger and thirst and utter wretchedness overtake the outlaw who invented it! It transforms into desperadoes the meekest of men; depicts sinless innocence upon the pictured faces of ruffians; gives the wise man the stupid leer of a fool, and a fool an expression of more than earthly wisdom. If a man tries to look serious when he sits for his picture the photograph makes him look as solemn as an owl; if he smiles, the photograph smirks repulsively; if he tries to look pleasant, the photograph looks silly; if he makes the fatal mistake of attempting to seem pensive, the camera will surely write him down as an ass. The sun never looks through the photographic instrument that it does not print a lie. The piece of glass it prints it on is well named a “negative”–a contradiction–a misrepresentation–a falsehood. I speak feeling of this matter, because by turns the instrument has represented me to be a lunatic, a Soloman, a missionary, a burglar and an abject idiot, and I am neither.”
– Mark Twain, Letter to the Sacramento Daily Union, written July 1, 1866
ouzo time…
Can I sing now?
Speaking of Barbie Dolls…
POPE NO MORE inside Notre Dame a Paris…
http://www.kaltura.com/index.php/extwidget/openGraph/wid/0_eqwxhxr4