HCB and his camera

Wonderful! Thank you.

Some memorable quotes, philosophical insights, and humor in this short film.
 
Youtube pop it out for me yesterday. Dude spend some time to paste and cut from existing, already published media.
If some is still new to it...
Don't take all HCB words and something real. He was saying one frame is enough, yet, looking at his contacts, he was machine gunning.

As for copy, paste dude... He is clueless, where is more than just M3 in materials he used from existing, published media.
 
HCB's best line from the video: "But you shouldn't overshoot...over is too much." I also liked it when he said: "The maybes should go in the trash."
 
I go to the museum and see Renoir, Degas, Matisse, Cezanne, Rembrandt, Dali and so on. If I were a painter would I want to paint like them? Doubtful. Vivian Maier was a wonderful street photographer. I doubt she knew Capa, Cartier-Bresson or any of the other great street photographers in the immediate post-war era. She mostly used a TLR Rollei, the Leica came later. Her work is amazing, to me anyway. That I bought some Leicas does not mean I will photograph any better than if I used an old Argus C3, but the Leicas do very much appeal to the snob in me. There is more covet attached to an old Leica than there is to an old Argus. Neither will make the photographer. That is something inside of us. Cartier-Bresson says it, Overgaard says it, " . . . wear your camera." Someone asked the great bike racer Eddy Merckx how to become a great bike racer like him. Eddy's reply? "Ride your bike a lot." Going out with a camera and taking photos will do more for skills than looking at books of other's skills, IMHO. Maybe not so humble.

I have a friend who is a successful pro photographer. He used to think every exposure on a roll had to be a winner. Then he progressed to where getting just one on a roll was good. He also had an M3 "which had never been sullied by color film." LOL Unlike Maier most of my photos are not good. But the law of averages works in all our favors. Take enough photos and you will come away with some winners. Not all of Cartier-Bresson's photos were good so we will be swimming in the same lake. Let's try to do it in shorts we ourselves pick out.
 
Give a monkey enough time pounding at a typewriter, and he'll create an as-yet unwritten work of Shakespeare, or so they say. However, I've been punching shutter buttons for 60 years, and I've yet to create the photographic equivalent, which would be, I guess, an as-yet unshot photo by HCB. Or something like that. Let's face it; the guy was hard-wired for photographic genius. The rest of us mostly just muddle along, but that's OK, too.
 
I like that dancing in the street contre jour clip where to get the camera still he balanced on one foot long enough to stop the vertical movement. It was obviously a 'demonstation' piece but cute nevertheless.
 
Retro-Grouch said:
Give a monkey enough time pounding at a typewriter, and he'll create an as-yet unwritten work of Shakespeare, or so they say. However, I've been punching shutter buttons for 60 years, and I've yet to create the photographic equivalent, which would be, I guess, an as-yet unshot photo by HCB. Or something like that. Let's face it; the guy was hard-wired for photographic genius. The rest of us mostly just muddle along, but that's OK, too.
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Have you noticed that no one ever says how long it will take for those monkeys to get the job done? You could do the same with a computer just shooting out random letters. It is, of course, a smart-ass comic's patter. I have never known a serious person propose this as solid speculation, conjecture or prediction. It is humor, of a sort.

Taking a lot of photos is quite different because it is not random. Intent and skill factor in and increase the odds of success greatly. And as in the Jesuit motto of learning, "Reptitio, repititio, repititio" instructs we can learn by repetition or practice. After all, practice is how you get to the Paramount.

Achieving equivalency with Cartier-Bresson is impossible for you because you have set yourself up to fail. You say you cannot equal him and condemn yourself to that fate. His book, The Decisive Moment, has a lot of boring photos in it. But we have been told they are all genius. I remember when the book first appeared. I had a Vito II Voigtländer at the time and was quite serious about photography, or so I thought. In the intervening years I have seen a lot of photos and have come to agree with Cartier-Bresson that all the fuss about his photos is bullshit. He has taken many good ones but so have many other photographers. Cartier-Bresson does not have a lock on good street photography and he was the first to admit it. I'll second it. You can do what you wish.

The geometric analyses of his photos, all after the fact, remind me of the same of the Crystal Palace and the Pyramids which were all supposed to have great mathematical relationships and truths proving all and sundry. Yeah, right. Cartier-Bresson took a lot of good photos and so have many others.
 
Cartier-Bresson is great, as early as 1932 he took brilliant photos with a very primitive Leica (model I). He had a very special sense of composition. In 1932 too he understood that you should always use the entire negative.

Erik.
 
It's quick and early in the video, at the 28-second mark, he is winding on.. but what is on the rewind knob? It looks too large in diameter to be a stock M3 part. Looks more like a Contax or Kiev rewind knob. An add on? Or am I imagining things?
 
Larry H-L said:
It's quick and early in the video, at the 28-second mark, he is winding on.. but what is on the rewind knob? It looks too large in diameter to be a stock M3 part. Looks more like a Contax or Kiev rewind knob. An add on? Or am I imagining things?
Click to expand...

It is a Zorki 4, a very good camera. Picasso had a Zorki too.

Erik.
 
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