I am not a tech person at all, yet I do take pride in my ability to hand hold slow shutter speeds. Yoga trance. This image from Bahia on ISO 50 film must hv had me wide open 1.4 at a quarter of a second. I love slow film in low light. No other look quite like it. Upcoming piece in Leica M features my Brazil work. Nice n easy #Bahia #Brazil #leica
Great shot. Great color. I could go on and on about how good this picture is. Also shows how “High-ISO” can ge overrated.
What I wonder, though, is whether this frame stood out on the roll of film that it was shot on, or whether there were many frames of the same quality? I was always think of photography as and art of selection: first, What and how to frame? — and then, What to select from the shots you have?
Cheers, Mitch/Potomac, MD
CORRECTION: the last sentence of the first paragraph should read: ” Also shows how “High-ISO” can be overrated.”
MITCH ALLAND
as a transparency shooter for many years, and a paid transparency shooter, i pretty much have my technique DOWN… since i never was able to see what i shot on assignment until weeks later (seems impossible to think about now) i had to get it right….so i would always try to “nail it”….there were quite a few frames of this situation that were “close”…this is generally true…i have some totally random single frames but mostly i am really working one thing over and over and over….small tweaks of movements , very slight tweaks of exposure but as i said i had the tech down down down…..and you would not want to be bracketing exposure because you might bracket right on THE frame…so i could FEEL Kodachrome after years, and later the same with Velvia here…love slow film in low light…especially those two films….with a real BLACK in them….
cheers, david
That total mastery of a medium is one of the things that drives me as well. It’s more than technical, as this example shows. You did not master the slow film to produce “perfectly exposed” photos. You did it to part capture, part create your own vision.
I’m curious to see your finished zine. Although I’ve liked many of the individual shots you’ve posted, I’ve yet to see much story or meaning that ties them together. I guess that’s the trade-off of showing the work as it develops rather than producing a finished piece like was necessary in the old days. When presented more as an out-of-order serial, you see some of the best sentences, maybe even the best chapters, but have no idea what the book is about.
After reading your recent “burned out” post, I was thinking maybe you were stretching yourself too thin with all the shooting and book and magazine publishing. It’s difficult to be great at one high level creative career, being great at three simultaneously is a real feat. Helps to have good help, I suppose. But it does seem as if the magazine has been suffering a bit. Lately it’s felt kind of like a semi-abandoned mall. Or maybe I just have an unrealistic memory of the good old days when there was a lot of challenging work published along with the technically Very Good. To take one example, I miss Panos’s more out-there work and other stuff like that in that it was far from the photo world norm. Stuff that is not Very Good, but is either an ambitious failure or great. Love stuff like that or hate it, and I know a lot of people hated it, at least it was interesting and spurred serious thought and conversation in ways that Very Good work rarely does.
Anyway, I’m probably projecting somewhere between a bit and a lot as I am stretched thin in similar ways and have a tough time balancing the bank account, creativity and creative integrity at the same time. So maybe there’d be at least a tiny sliver of truth to an accusation that I’m turning sour grapes into whine. No more than a sliver of truth though. Mostly I just love the work.
On the positive side, I did my first workshop a couple weeks ago and that went very well. As you know, I’m very much into understanding the rules of composition so I spent a lot of time on that. As a teaching aid, I overlaid the various rules grids such as rule of thirds and the golden ratio-based patterns over famous photographs. It’s interesting to see how the most universally recognized as great photos are consistent with so many of those patterns. But you also see how complex they tend to be, usually working with several patterns simultaneously, even in a superficially simple looking photo. Eggleston’s tricycle is the most perfect example I’ve come across.
I know you don’t think about it when you compose, but your images are fascinating when looked at in the context rules. The Cuba photo with the guy carrying the stringed instrument and the car in the foreground, for example, is a perfect golden spiral. Most others I looked at were perfect in several ways, but totally broke the rules in others. The image above is a good example. It has the spiral thing going, the rule of odds, the horizon is “correctly” located, there are interesting leading lines and triangles and you captured the decisive moment. Meanwhile, the woman’s head is cut off, which most would teach is a definite no-no, but that, along with the color and meaning, is what elevates the image making it much more than the sum of any “rules.”
That’s the kind of thing, however, that I’ll save for an advanced workshop. This one was basic and by just following the simple rules, and taking photographs rather than pictures of things, the students dramatically improved their work. It was all good fun.
Anyway, looking forward to the zine. Seems like that may be a good way to go these days, less expensive to produce than a book, more tangible than a website.
Eerie, innit?
Well, that didn’t work. Click here instead.
http://youtu.be/yF2C6KuN328
MW…
i think you are correct on all counts….i did get stretched a bit too thin…it can happen , right? very very easy to get too many irons in the fire….in my case, it is not about work work, it is about passion work, work that i love and enjoy…so its too much candy, not too much stress oriented work . not at all..still too much of a good thing is too much…well fantastic things are happening with Burn…we will have a huge sponsorship at LOOK3, we have three new books coming…and our grant support went up by 5k with sponsorship by Fuji…so we are not sitting on our hands…but if we are laying out a book , we are probably not writing back to MW….our story cycles are the same ..we are publishing at the same rate and BurnDiary is fresh food every day….so thats Burn….now for dah i have not stopped shooting since i did the Korea Sea Women (Haenyeo) in November…now that is a book too…then back to Rio for a month to do a workshop and shoot BeachGames…and as i have clearly said over and over, BeachGames is NOT at journalistic story….it is a set of related pictures…but i am not gonna fill in the dots…the viewer must…it is def a realistic document of the beach game experience…yet for sure it will be rejected by many and embraced by a few….i am happy with that equation…bored to tears by readership surveys and the popularity of stuff on FB and Instagram….yet it may all tie together better than you imagine…just do not imagine a traditional story…like a wine tasting, let it roll around a bit on your tongue..
cheers david
“but if we are laying out a book , we are probably not writing back to MW…”
Don’t worry, mw never expects a response to his comments and is still, after all these years, surprised when you do respond. It’s certainly not any kind of misplaced requirement. So no, it’s all good on that front.
Basically, I just like writing about photography and for good or ill, this is where I tend to get it out of my system. And I’ve given it some thought and don’t think that any mild criticism I may have of the overall direction of burn will have any negative impact on your business. If I did, I wouldn’t do it. But, if you ever have any problem with these “contributions,” feel free to let me know off-line. Writing here is not so important to me that I’d want to be a pain.
As for the upcoming Beach Games Zine, I meant on criticism at all. As someone with similar outlook and interests, I’m just interested in how you approach the larger question of how best to present one’s work and given your track record, one certainly has to respect your approach. Is it better to show a lot of individual photos our of context of the story to generate interest, or present the finished work with single image integrated into the whole? I may have my personal preferences one way or another, but it doesn’t really matter as I am but a bystander, not really part of your intended audience. And no one ever made a living in photography by following my example.
Anyway, no offense intended. And seriously, as for these little posts, I don’t feel you are in any way obligated to respond, ever, and I don’t expect it. Better to be out shooting, or working on your books, or playing with your cats, or taking a nap, or whatever.