May/090
oh Polaroid … don’t leave me …
How do I turn back the clock 20 years so I can spend a good long career as a photographer shooting film and - more specifically - Polaroid?
(click to make 'uge)
Model: Leslie Wilcox w/ Basic NYC
Camera nerd info: Speed Graphic 4x5 w/ Kodak Aero Ektar 7" 2.5 @ f/5.6, ~1/2s shutter
I made the photo above last week, exhausting the last of my Polacolor Tungston. And as stocks of polaroid in the world - all expired - slowly wilt and go the way of the polar bear, I come to realize just how invaluable they really are.
The combination of the tones and texture of the grain and the paper are so unique, with a subtle linearity the grain takes as it follows the fiber of the print.
Even this little one from the back of the hassy captures my heart:
So I've found my aesthetic just in time to let it go. In some ways, shooting polaroids like this amounts to good training for post processing. Digital has become the modus operandi of convenience even for the biggest studios. Alex - the assistant I hired in Paris - had a great anecdote about Demarchelier. They were on location entrenched in mountain snow with light so good, Alex said you could literally taste its tartness and smell its crispness. "And here's this guy," he said, "shooting fucking digital".
Though the old techniques are coming back using new technology, replacing high-gloss images that are so crisp it's deafening (every pore snaps to the beat of "when you're a jet ..") and you can't hear yourself think.
But it's changing.
The thrill is gone.
Tones are more important than edges.
As a sign of this, the other day my site had a hit from Steven Meisel's studio. Someone had searched "Lilian Bassman Darkroom" and found my post on some of her work. Maybe we'll see a bit of the Bassman aesthetic crop up in a future Meisel shoot. I'm interested to see that, as I love the bleaching techniques she uses - and the way brush strokes (or cottonball strokes) come out of the shadows. Knowing Meisel's team is amazing, I want to see what they're capable of.
Even now as I look through Bassman's work, I see it informing the image above - little subtleties that caught my eye - the nape of a neck, or how the hands become so gentle, or the lines of a nose ...
Oh yeah - one important thing about that polaroid above... the best shot of the day: when I pulled the 'roid, this is how it came out:
The film is 4 years out of date and doesn't work as it's supposed to sometimes. But it was such an amazing half an image, that I went back the the digital files, pulled one, shopped it and shopped it and shopped it some more - and completed the file.
So it's not an either/or - it's always a dance between the newest technology and the timeless techniques that inform the final aesthetic.
May/090
no shame
(click to view large)
It's tough times all around these days.
A little while ago I was driving up Rt. 4 in rural Maryland when I passed three little girls sitting on the side of the road in front of a pickup and utility trailer. Just shy of 8am, they were helping their mom sell odds and ends - and the image was so striking, I stopped and talked with them for a little while. Times are tough, and they're out most weekends to make a little extra. Their mother was so embarrassed to admit this - and when I asked if I could take a photo of the girls, at first she didn't want the little one to hold her can of generic cola even though I liked it, and thought she should keep it with her. She said it was "poverty cola". I insisted it was called having three kids. Just people doing what people do: survive.
Then today while working a job at a surgeon's office up in a really really nice part of northern DC/MD, I walked a few blocks for coffee in the full crowd of noontime lunch, passing at least twenty or thirty people. They were a mix of professionals and of well quaffed shoppers heading to Saks, Tiffanys, etc., and all had one thing in common: they looked absolutely miserable. Along with their Yves st Laurent, they wore a mix of worry and severe distaste either for their own lives or for ours ... or both. No eye contact - no acknowledgement. No life.
Leaning is a healing form of contact. If you can afford to be an island, the world is a lonely place.
It reminded me of the humanity laid bare in Steinbeck, and more recently of the audio interviews Studs Terkel did of people who lived through the great depression. Please take a moment and listen to some of them here as Act 1 of NPR's "This American Life" episode 368. They start around 6 minutes into the hour-long broadcast.
I'm floored by the wisdom of these voices.
May/090
More from the pocket camera
I've been on a kick lately of getting things done - with a vengeance. Up early, doing yoga again after a longish stint of not being so good to my poor corpse. And part of that regimen has been finally running the backlog of film from the little russian rangefinder I've taken to keeping in my pocket this past winter.
Here's the latest batch of the Brooklyn roommates and other things I stumbled across.
(click on images to enlarge)
May/090
history
I was going through some archives last night when I found this shot, taken during a break on a day Melody was mixing "My One and Only Thrill" downstairs at Capital Records while I was upstairs working on our design of the album cover. She's stretching due to a bad back, one of the complications of the accident that inevitably led to her career as a musician.
The room is studio A, where Sinatra recorded some of his biggest hits, and the Steinway was Cole Porter's.
This image made me think of David Burnett, a friend of Robb Scharetg who I've had the pleasure of meeting over beers one night at a local hang. He has over forty years of covering ... everything. Take a minute and click on the link to his site; it's inspirational, and reminds me that following your camera long enough will let you in on some amazing moments in the history of things.
If I disassociate myself from this photo and what it may mean to me personally, it's a moment in history when a beautiful girl with an amazing talent takes her place in the history of jazz greats.
May/090
more lost and found
I took this last October as an agency test with a new up-and-coming model named Clara with Ford NYC. She's rapidly going from the woods of West Virginia to some really big fashion spreads in New York and Europe - all before she's graduated high school. It's interesting what this industry sees in girls like her and can pull from them. By that I suppose I mean me, though I don't feel as if I did any engineering - just captured a moment.
For engineered, see her latest work:
For the sake of juxtaposition, this is Clara in the wild:
I had some digital files, but also shot some film with a Hasselblad. For me, it also highlights just how much I like shooting to film when it's warranted. There's a tool for every job - sometimes it's digital, and other times it's film. For portraits such as these, I'm simply addicted to the quality and feel of a piece of 6cm celluloid. It's amazing how many times people - even somewhat experienced models - say they've never been photographed with film before. A really good mentor named Robb taught me what I know of film. He shoots medium and large format and has cases of filters that he uses expertly to give his work the most unique look.
Though I used to have my own darkroom I abandoned it for digital until I started working with him a few years ago (has it been that long?)... Though digital was really good for me - allowing me to shoot my face off for a few years and expedite the process of going from mostly crap images, to honing my eye enough to need fewer frames to get the shot.
I can only imagine how few frames Irving Penn needs - or Avedon needed. I've worked on my own shoots, and assisted others for some big magazines, and seen the moment of chaos when you have fifteen minutes to get it right. I've worked with Jeff Reidel on 4x5 film for GQ and Robyn Twomey on leaf digital for Time, and realize there's a definite place for each depending on your shooting style. Mine - like so many other photographers these days - is somewhere in between. But photos like the one above remind me not to rely too much on the easier of the two.
May/090
shh. listen
I heard some of Bebo while listening to Astor Piazzolla radio on Pandora today.
May/091
Editorial with Leanne Marshall
I love working with artists of all kinds - musicians, actors, performers; it's a focus I want to work toward more with my personal work. To that end, last week I shot with Leanne Marshall, the winner of last season's "Project Runway". It really was fantastic meeting her in her new Brooklyn space, and we had a really fun couple hours shooting.
She's a beautiful, charming girl with an amazing talent and a disarming smile who likes to work on the floor rather than at a table. I'm glad to have made a new friend and look forward to when our paths cross again.
Here is the best image of the day:
And a two alternates:
Leanne's model Karalyn from the show was nice enough to come around for these shots, and to thank her, I've cropped her head off. Sorry Karalyn - I have a few with your head that (of course) look great, but this crop was just too appealing not to leave.
Favorite
NYTimes Photography Blog
- Pictures of the Day: West Bank and Elsewhere 9 September, 2010Ramadan and Rosh Hashana are observed. […]By THE NEW YORK TIMES
- Medieval Flagellation in an Italian Town 9 September, 2010The images are medieval but Roberto Boccaccino shot them only a month ago, as Daniel J. Wakin reports. […]By DANIEL J. WAKIN
- When the Shah of Iran Took the Pictures 8 September, 2010Newsha Tavakolian was inspired by an intimate series of photos taken by the shah of Iran. Yes, the shah. […]By KERRI MACDONALD and AMANDA RIVKIN
- Pictures of the Day: On a Chinese Oil Rig and Elsewhere 8 September, 2010Oil workers were perched precariously but the oil company said no oil had been spilled. […]By RAYMOND MCCREA JONES
- Mourning at the Scene of a Stabbing 8 September, 2010At the scene of a stabbing in Manhattan, a little girl mourned a young woman she didn't know. […]By KERRI MACDONALD and ANGEL FRANCO