Camera Work

To contribute to this thread I would like to introduce you to the work of an italian photographer who unfortunately left us too early: Mauro Fiorese (1970-2016)

https://www.maurofiorese.photography/

His photography is poetic and surreal like here: https://www.maurofiorese.photography/portfolio/dream-of-a-place-of-dreams/?id=10

Artwork Galleries is a place worthwhile to watch.

"Lybra in Cancer" is an intimate diary of his journey with, how he called it "not really a nice guy".

https://www.libraincancer.it/?page_id=5

I had opportunity to spend a few days with him taking part in a couple of workshops together with american photographer Keith Carter, he was really a nice guy always ready to inspire and help you.
 
Ming Thein's closing his Blog.

Those of us who've worked commercially have taken note of the recent change in the Photo Market. Lots changed with the introduction of digital cameras and non paper publishing. The Smart Phone Cameras got so good that, many in business began using photos taken by employees rather than pros for all but the "best" photos needed for their web pages and Ads.

i'm retired now, and my photo energies are completely oriented around my hobby pictures. I've had time to read around the web photo sites and find many are done talking about photography. The photo kiddies have finally taken their toll on a few gems in the photo blog world. It's sad but, everything changes, often for the worse it seems.

Please visit Ming's site so you can see the photos he's posted. Here's some of the text of his final blog post:


Full circle
August 30, 2020 by Ming Thein 226 Comments

Almost 20 years ago to the day, a teenager made an unwise camera choice* to record what he was experiencing in case he might later forget. In reality, the choice was really to consciously notice the world around him and single out the bits that mattered – starting immediately with the things he was involved in, which at the time was the crazy period of growing up known as ‘university’. He’d used the family camera before, of course – for the obligatory vacation and landmark images and with the admonition not to ‘waste film on pictures without people in them.’ University represented freedom and the first time he could decide what to aim the camera at – back then, merely his friends’ silly poses and an image or two without people that he felt compelled to take, but wasn’t sure why. It wouldn’t be until much, much later that the process was a conscious one and more importantly, transcended the medium.

I had no idea that the decision to start seeing the world around me would not just sustain me through the creative depression of the corporate wilderness for the better part of a decade, but take me to places I’d never even dreamed of. It would give me a respite in lunch-hour sized chunks from the sheer mind numbing boredom of audit. It would bring me to the attention of the watch collecting community – in lieu of actually being able to afford anything at the time – and brand principals in the early days of online forums, and later supply my first professional job. It would take me through a part time contributor position at a magazine that would lead to editor, disagreements over commercial/editorial integrity and the formation of this site, to write the truth and present it how I felt was right, independent of influence or dependency on advertising. It would lead me to make ‘pictures without people in them’ for companies and individuals I’d never thought I’d be involved with, let alone creatively contributing to. It would put me in a position to take user feedback and personal experience to directly develop better products with just about all of the major camera manufacturers – and it would leave a lot of things tainted in the harsh light of reality. It would train me to think like an entrepreneur and be self sufficient, and give me the ability to present the best face of my projects to the world. It would give me a meditative reprieve from times when I didn’t want to dwell too much on my immediate situation. It would lead me to question and seek to understand art, human psychology, my own motivations, and what truly motivates us; it would help me to understand the meaning of balance in more ways than one. Above all, it would make me close friends around the world. For all of that, I’ll always be thankful.

It hasn’t always been an easy ride, as anybody close to me will confirm. I’ve had my fair share of uncertain income, business mistakes, taking on jobs I wasn’t entirely sure I could pull off and unpleasant surprises from clients, unrelated individuals, industry peers and entities and everything in-between. I’ve been the target of jealousy and smear campaigns and entitlement and copyright infringement. Some of that frustration I’ve shared here before. Months of drought alternated – often back to back – with months so full I barely had time to sleep and was running on pure adrenalin. I’ve held anywhere between three and six ostensibly full time jobs at any given time, for most of my full time professional photographic career since 2012 – a close friend once joked that I was doing the work of six for the pay of two and a half, which is not far from the truth. I entered professional photography at a rapidly changing time and probably the last period to really make a run of things before fragmentation into quantity, the whole social media influencer mess; my guess at the time was I’d have 3-5 years before I’d have to figure out what to do next.

During the times I’d previously dabbled in trying to turn pro, I’d figured out that I would have to have a diversified approach: a professional portfolio that was focused enough to look specialised but with enough skills to take on pretty much any job; a public presence to build reputation and audience; something with more consistent income like teaching or education (which turned into workshops and videos); and something to put all of the pieces together to deliver unique value: this would be the consulting side for the camera companies. It seems that the strategy worked a little too well, because to this day people seem to assume all I do is reviews – even though that’s less than 5% of the content of this site. But they played an important part since validation is by far the most commonly searched-for thing photographically. Why that’s the case, I’ll never know – everybody has different objectives and opinions are therefore of at best relative value.

As it turns out, my workload split itself pretty much equally between professional work, education, consulting, and this site. In the last eight and a half years, I shot 202 assignments excluding those for my own watch company; led nearly 50 workshops around the world including smuggling six Americans into Cuba in 2014; produced close to 200 hours of educational video and two years of the weekly photoshop workflow series; wrote 1,815 posts (and owe Robin Wong a big thanks for another 80+) and replied to nearly 100,000 of your comments. At peak, there were nearly a quarter of a million unique visitors every month, and there have been just shy of 30 million visitors to date. I had half a dozen exhibitions internationally and nearly fell out of a plane making a series that in the end, never got shown. I worked with Hasselblad, DJI, Zeiss, Olympus, Leica, Sigma, Sony, was ambassador for three of those brands and nearly started my own camera company. I wore out three keyboards writing this site, and a further four Wacom tablets in retouching and post processing. Lastly: I don’t have an exact number, but my best guess is I shot more than two million images.



If things are starting to take on a tone of finality, that’s because this is the point at which I confirm the suspicions you’ve been having: MT the writer and mingthein.com are both going into retirement. Between the demands of my ‘other’ job, not being able to travel, and trying not to repeat myself – I’ve run out of things to say. There really isn’t anything meaningful which we have not covered on this site in the usual rational, systematic fashion with plenty of images – there are certainly subtleties on subtleties about approach and theory and philosophy that we could continue to debate, but at that point, I’d be writing dissertations for an audience of at best, one. The truth is, I’ve said everything I wanted to say and more; I’ve done enough thinking and dissection about how and why I shoot that the whole enormous mass has become intuitive – and I want to go back to applying that and shooting the things that interest me, for me, without feeling the need to create content for the entertainment of somebody else. The internet has a nasty habit of a short attention span: they tend to look at things in tl;dr terms and not bother to use the search function. There is admittedly quite a lot of frustration in having a comment taken out of context and applied without relativity; a really good example is the inability to decouple equipment from process from creative objective. Yes, I go through a lot of gear. No, it isn’t for the sake of having the Next Best Thing or some sort of placebo – it’s because I’m in search of what I think of as envelope; the ability to achieve very specific creative objectives, which change – and therefore so must the tools.

But it does get tiring having to explain this all the time. I’ve always said that the very best position to be in as a photographer is an amateur: a person who engages in the activity for the love of it, without the constraints of shooting to a client’s expectation – be that a social media audience or a paying employer. This is my chance to go back to being an amateur, at least for a little while. The whole COVID situation has enforced a strange motivation on us creatives: at the start, I had one of my most productive periods because there wasn’t a lot else to do being under lockdown and unable to leave the house. But it was productivity in a different avenue – I did a lot of designing, and almost no writing or photographing. I’ve long come to accept that creativity needs multiple outlets; a single medium isn’t enough to fulfil one’s vision. But for photographers, the last few months has been a bad period not just professionally but also creatively: when you’re constrained to the same familiar environment you’ve probably already photographed to death within the first few months of moving in, what’s left? You’re forced to either not shoot, reshoot the same images, or try to see something different in the familiar. Many documented the personal process of lockdown, including myself; but after a while, routine looks the same. But the process of doing it felt oddly familiar: it was like starting to shoot all over again, and I kinda liked it.



more
https://blog.mingthein.com/2020/08/30/full-circle/
 
charjohncarter said:
Thanks for posting, I wish I had known about Ming sooner.
Click to expand...

I hope, all his past posts stay up on the web. Kirk Tuck also announced "another prolonged vacation" from writing about photography. I think, Ming's decision to move on may have caused Kirk to look closely at the time he's spent writing for people who have little acknowledgement for his efforts.

Snip


9.02.2020

Thinking I'll take a break from blogging about photography. It's hard to justify the time required. Photography has changed so much in the last 11 years. And so has the internet.

Boy, blogging sure has changed over the last eleven years. We used to talk as much about gear back then as we do now but it seemed more important at the beginning. People were still transitioning to digital from their filmic pasts. Gear was improving by leaps and bounds. Mirrorless cameras were in their infancy and it seemed that DSLRs would rule forever. LED lighting was on very few peoples' radars. Portable flashes were the hot photo topic - that, and full frame cameras.

Now writing a photography blog seems like a "boomer" activity only. My audience has steadily declined except for those days when I write something about micro four thirds cameras. Comments, which I always take as indicators of interest, have also declined. I liked sharing my knowledge about photography and how I practiced it but our way of life has evolved into something quite different and our need to know trivia and details about the craft have faded significantly as everyone's post production skills have improved.

I'm more interested now, commercially, in video and I fully understand that for many of you who visit here that video is way down on the list of your interests. I think the deepest plunges in readership come on the days when I write something about making movies or the foibles of recording audio. As I fall deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole of video I see myself writing less and less about new photography gear and new picture making practices. And spending less and less time waxing nostalgic about how we "used to do it in the old days."

I have recently (finally) come to grips with the whole concept that, in what's left of the commercial imaging world, you can do quite well with a smart phone and a suite of programs to enhance your smartphone photos, with less hassle and less time spent than "doing them the right way."

When commercial photography was thriving the blog seemed like an important way to keep connected. When I had books to share it seemed like a good way to point toward the books' mini-sites on Amazon.com. But now I have nothing to sell, little to share that I haven't already shared, and little reason to continue on in the current milieu. A break is in order.

Belinda and I are looking forward, after the vaccine or some other future miracle, to doing a lot of traveling while my deepest interests lie in shooting photographs just for myself and also making little black and white movies with my ever-changing collection of cameras.

Most of the people that I know are now more comfortable sitting back and watching someone entertain and (mildly) educate them via "internet television" than they are sitting down with a cup of coffee and (God Forbid!) reading a longer form blog post.

Funny, I've shut down the blog before after particularly harsh and confrontational encounters with trolls on the web but this time there is no antipathy, no vendetta and no awkward push. Just a sad realization that we've run our course here (for now) and have both run out of topical things to talk about and also run out of opportunities, in the moment, to do the kind of work I love sharing. I think we've all had enough graffiti and isolated walks through a shopworn and empty Austin downtown landscape, and the photographic souvenirs from such walks.

I've met a couple of dozen of you over the last decade and enjoyed every encounter. Some of you have become good friends. Some of you were loyal and valuable commenters and, even cheerleaders.

I think I need a spell of rejuvenation and rediscovery. I'm not interested any longer in writing books. I'm not particularly interested in the nuanced mechanics of blog writing.

Snip
Finding myself straying from the core mission of pursuing Visual Science is in itself disturbing. But I'm sure we'll all get over it and move on to enjoying other pursuits. If you need more information about swimming you'll find wonderful tutorials at: the YouTube channel: "Effortless Swimming."

Ming Thein wrote his farewell last week. I'm not so final. I'm just going to say: "See You Around."



more
https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2020/09/thinking-ill-take-break-from-blogging.html
 
From Wired 4.21.2020


wired.com
Film Photography Can Never Be Replaced
Jonathon Keats
5-6 minutes

Confirmation comes time and again. Film refuses to die.

When Polaroid abandoned instant film in 2008, a 39-year-old fan named Florian Kaps showed up at an event commemorating the shuttering of the last factory and convinced the company's production manager to join him in making their own product. Kaps' film company, Impossible Project, was so successful that it eventually bought the Polaroid brand name and branched out to make instant film cameras as well.

In 2012, Kodak discontinued Ektachrome, its popular 35-mm slide film. But a nascent audience of shutterbugs drove the company to revive Ektachrome five years later; Kodak's film business saw year-over-year growth of 21 percent in 2018.

Today dozens of first-rate films are readily available at your local Walmart, including Kodak's traditional black-and-white Tri-X 400, Fujifilm's versatile Fujicolor Pro 400H, and, of course, the newly reissued Ektachrome. Buying these films by the cartful, hip designers now tote around cheap Lomo and Holga cameras, relishing the lens flare and light leaks. And then there's Shane Balkowitsch, a Midwestern nurse who never picked up a camera until he saw the spectacularly detailed images made on glass with wet-plate collodion photography, a labor-intensive process used by photographers before roll film became available in 1888. After mastering the essentially obsolete technique, he's made portraits of celebrities, including one of Greta Thunberg in which she appears to be a visionary time traveler.

The long tail of archaic technologies is normal. Some people still use typewriters and phonographs, never buying into their replacements. Others, like Balkowitsch, fall for old-school methods when they discover communities of committed antiquarians.

Yet more than mere legacy is needed for an outmoded technology to become popular. The standard explanation for retro trends, which has been used to account for the return of vinyl records and analog film, is that the future is coming on too fast. And as much as rapid-fire advances seem unavoidable, the arts can provide a refuge. Nostalgia is a balm.

Just look to the plethora of digital filters that make your shots look like film. The Huji Cam app purposely corrupts perfectly exposed smartphone pics with simulated light streaks (and a faux 1998 date stamp). The more sophisticated VSCO emulates the color gamut of dozens of films, many out of production, so you can set your phone to capture a shot with the high saturation of Agfa Ultra 50 or the soft skin tones of Kodak Portra 150NC.

But as closely as software can imitate a vintage rig, and as well as it may hide the fact that you're shooting on an iPhone 11, people still crave the real thing. Digital simulations don't satisfy us, and that points to a deeper reason for analog's persistence.

Smartphone photography is fast and easy because it's aided by algorithms. Although skill still matters, the number of variables involved in taking a photo has been engineered to a minimum. That can make digital photography feel cold and artificial, and the digital photographer more like a tool than an artist. Those filters we add, then, personalize pictures that are generically exact already. The algorithms that tweak colors or fake a lens flare let you be imperfect, but only in a perfectly calculated way. Your phone still pwns you.

The popularity of analog photography can be seen as a reaction to this pwnership—and a manifestation of anxiety that most everything we do is executed by software intermediaries that make decisions on our behalf. Like our smartphone cameras, our Echos and Teslas try to second-guess our desires, as do the social networks where we post our photographs. We're not in control and not fully genuine.

Analog photography is dignifying because it's out of the hands of the algorithms, which means it affords you the freedom to make your own mistakes. Suffering the consequences of human error is paradoxically liberating, and a great picture can provide a rush equivalent to winning a marathon.

A couple of years ago, when Huji was released, Time asked photographer Stephen Shore what he thought of digital filters. He dismissed them as gimmicks, remarking that a photograph “is good because of the decisions the photographer makes.”

https://www.wired.com/story/film-photography-can-never-be-replaced/
 
Assisting Avedon, From Assistant's Magazine RIP

post 1 of 3

There are bits and pieces of the full article series on this site. I'll archive them here as, i was sorry to have found the original missing. pkr
https://assistingavedon.typepad.com/

BEGIN

"Photography's Golden Age ended long ago but remains very much alive in my memory. From 1952 through 1965 I was an assistant to the world-famous photographer Richard Avedon during his most creative period, and do I ever have the stories to tell! Now is the time to reveal all, while I'm still alive and kicking. Tales of personalities, motivations, intrigues, and even the fine details of how it was all done."


Assistant Magazine

Assistant Magazine



The first issue of Assistant Magazine is out, and is it ever glorious!

This quarterly journal deals with the past, present, and especially with the future role of assistants in fashion, fashion photography, style, the visual arts and more as stepping stones to their own careers.

Seven pages of this beautifully-produced magazine are devoted to me and my time assisting photographer Richard Avedon in the 1950s and early 1960s, his most creative period. In this I left this advice:

"Be invisible. Do your job, but don't be the center of attention.

You are there to work, not to distract."

Assistant is published in France for worldwide distribution, and is completely in English. The quality of reproduction, the paper stock, and of the layouts approaches art-book levels.

I urge anyone interested in the subject to give it a try. http://www.assistantmagazine.com/

Posted on 11/25/2014 at 01:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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My name is Earl Steinbicker and I have a story to tell about Richard Avedon (1923-2004), one of the Twentieth Century's most creative and best known photographers, as his creativity matured during the 1950s and 1960s. It was my good fortune to have assisted him during this period.

I am almost certainly the only one left from that time who can tell the whole story, just as it happened those many years ago.
A few sample chapters are posted below, in blog, not app, format, and with only a very few of the many illustrations. Underlined entries are links on the actual app, but are inactive here.


CONTENTS
AvBlog2

Introduction
About the Author
Prologue

ACT I:
How it All Began
The Job Begins
That First Year
Avedon's Earlier Style
The 49th Street Studio
A Milestone is Reached
Think Pink – The Making of Funny Face
Suzy
Our Personal Relationship

INTERLUDE
Farewell, For Now
Observations

ACT II:
Return to Avedon
The 58th Street Studio
In Cold Blood
Photographing the First Astronauts
Teaching Others
Avedon's First Major Exhibition
The Paris Collections
Those Clairol Trips
Stormy Pink at a Seaside Ranch
Defiling a Castle in Spain
Nothing Personal
Leaving Avedon

EPILOGUE:
The Avedon Paradox
Avedon's Manhattan
Darkness and Light

APPENDIX:
On Being an Assistant Photographer
Avedon's Other Studios
Avedon's Cameras
Why 8x10?
Painting with Light
Those Fabulous B&W Prints
Advertising Made it All Possible
Fred Thomas and His Wondrous Toys
Cast of Characters



AVEDON'S EARLIER STYLE

AvBlog3

Those trademark stark, ultra-sharp figures against a white background for which he is now famous were not always Richard Avedon's style. Indeed, back in the 1940s and 1950s his work was often quite theatrical and made use of what he later described as "exquisite" lighting along with soft focus, blur, and grain. He even used props and costumes.

The soft focus was achieved quite simply with the 8"x10" Deardorff camera — he just smeared a bit of Vaseline around the edge of the 12" Goerz-Dagor lens. I know. I had to clean the optics after the session. I have never known him to commit this crime to a Rolleiflex lens, however. With Rolleis he created blur by jerking the camera during exposure.

Another trick he had at softening pictures was to lay a sheet of very thin tissue paper over the photographic paper being exposed under an enlarger, with the section he wanted sharp cut out, of course. The paper was moved a bit during the exposure. He also at times tilted the easel to introduce distortion. Graininess was occasionally produced by the use of Kodak's long-forgotten (but hardly missed) Super XX black & white film, overexposed and overdeveloped. These techniques were only used during those early years, and were later abandoned.

Avedon was no purist. He had no compunctions against darkroom cropping and image manipulation, nor against heavy airbrush retouching.

Lighting at the Madison Avenue studio was either under the skylight courtesy of the sun, tented in with reflector panels, or by using tungsten lamps. These consisted of two 5,000-watt bucket floods, three 1,500-watt floodlamps, and two 750-watt keg lights. All of these were on stands with wheels, and all were balanced at 3,200° Kelvin for use with Type B color films. It was several years later that he began using strobes.

Avedon's fashion photographs implied a narrative story, a major departure from the rather cold, aloof and formal fashion photography common at that time. He always took special care to show every detail of the garments while still introducing blur and other creative effects.

Unlike most magazine and advertising photographers, Avedon did not usually knuckle under to the demands of his clients. Even though he took literally hundreds of exposures on a job, he only let the editors and art directors see the few that he chose for them.

One exception to this happened at the Madison Avenue studio around 1954. The choices that he sent to Harper's Bazaar from a fashion session did not show the garment quite the way the editors thought it should. So, into the studio marched the fearsome fashion editor Diana Vreeland (1903-89), demanding to see the outtakes. Avedon was not there, and I couldn't stop her as she invaded the darkrooom and rummaged through the garbage bin where wet, chemically-drenched rejects went to die. She found a pose that she liked, screamed Aha!, then ordered "Print This!" When Avedon returned I informed him about the incident, and he then told studio manager Frank Finocchio to make finish prints of her choice.

During my first years with Avedon, a period of 53 months from September 1952 through 1956, he produced no fewer than 26 covers for Harper's Bazaar, one for virtually every other issue. The only other photographer rivaling this record was Louise Dahl-Wolfe (1895-1989), who worked for Bazaar from 1936 through 1958, and was a great influence on him.

Avedon was equally prodigious with inside pages, having several of them devoted to his fashion and portrait photography in practically every issue.

Other well-known photographers who worked for Bazaar during this period included Lillian Bassman (1917-2012), Paul Himmel (1914-2009), Steve Colhoun, Karen Radkai, Pellegrini, Gleb Derujinsky, John Engstead (1912-84), Tom Palumbo (1921-2008), Toni Frissell (1907-88), and Francesco Scavullo (1921-2004). Travel and reportage photography was done mostly by Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) and Brassai (1899-1984).

Although Avedon was already famous for his striking fashion photography, it was his commercial advertising work that paid the bills and made the whole operation possible. At that time, in the early 1950s, we probably did more advertising jobs than anything else, with clients like Revlon, Helena Rubinstein, DuPont, Maidenform, and Hertz Rent-a-Car. He was a smart businessman who really embraced advertising work, putting as much care into it as he did for the more creative jobs. There was no "artsy" pretentiousness here.

Portraiture also evolved during this period, especially with a growing concern for social problems and political awareness. As early as 1952 he was already making statements through portraiture; witness his portrait of Charlie Chaplin.

In this, he was much more of a director than a photographer, often capturing more about his subjects than they remembered revealing. He did not always succeed at this, as his January 1961 portraits of President-Elect John F. Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy demonstrate.

During the time that I assisted him, and prior to that, virtually all of his portraiture was done with a Rolleiflex camera. It was only later that he switched to the much larger 8x10 view camera although he had long used it for fashion and advertising photography.

The critical reception given his 1964 book Nothing Personal caused him to cut back on portraiture for a few years, as he rethought his priorities. After that he came back with a vengeance, and defined his signature minimalist aesthetic.
 
post 2 of 3

PHOTOGRAPHING THE FIRST ASTRONAUTS

AvBlog4

It was a busy day on March 30th 1961 as we did a fashion session for Harper's Bazaar and some reportage for a future project. Still tired the next morning, we dashed off to the airport for an early morning flight to Newport News, Virginia to photograph the three original astronauts at Langley Field, home of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The astronauts were:

Alan Shepard (1923-98), the first American into space, riding the Mercury-Redstone 3 on May 5, 1961.
Gus Grissom (1926-67), the second American into space, riding the Mercury-Redstone 4 on July 21, 1961.
John Glenn (b.1921), first to orbit the Earth, aboard Mercury-Atlas 6 on February 20, 1962.

Since this was on a military base, Avedon had the good sense to bring along supermodel and actress Suzy Parker to keep the boys interested. By this time Suzy had already starred in four major Hollywood movies, one of which — Kiss them for Me, co-starring Cary Grant and Jayne Mansfield — was a comedy about Navy pilots on leave. Suzy was by now a favorite among the military and later made another film, Flight From Ashiya, along a similar but more serious theme.

Upon arrival at Newport News I rented a car and the three of us drove out to the Air Force Base. We were met at the gate by a colonel who discussed the arrangements and then escorted us to the mess hall for lunch, where Suzy was the center of attention. Was she ever the center of attention!

This should have been a very easy job as Avedon and I set up a white paper background and Balcar studio strobes in a hangar, right next to a practice Mercury capsule. Then things went terribly wrong.

A huge thunderstorm was brewing outside, with lightning striking around the hangar. I turned on the strobes and BANG! No more electricity. Darkness prevailed. Whether this was the fault of the strobes or the storm, I don't know. Astronaut Alan Shepard came to the rescue and showed me how to tap into emergency circuits. That did the trick, and the session continued without further problems.

But there were problems outside. The storm had become so severe that all flights were cancelled and we were stuck there. Avedon had appointments in New York the next day, so we decided to drive instead. Since he was a terrible driver, Suzy and I agreed to take turns at the wheel heading up through Washington D.C. (the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel had not yet been built), Maryland, Delaware, and finally New Jersey. The storm continued all the way. Very late that night the lit-up skyline of Manhattan came into view as we entered the Lincoln Tunnel. Home at last.

Avedon's connection with the space program actually began in late 1959 (while I was still in the Army), when he did fashion photography at Cape Canaveral, Florida. It continued when he, his young son John, and I were given a private tour of Cape Canaveral, including the control rooms, in early 1962. This was before the base was opened for public touring.

The April 1965 issue of Harper's Bazaar was filled with space references, including a head shot of supermodel Jean Shrimpton in a genuine NASA space helmet with a starry background by artist Roy Lichtenstein. That same spacesuit accompanied me to London in January 1965, where Beatle Paul McCartney posed in it for the same issue of Bazaar.


STORMY PINK AT A SEASIDE RANCH

AvBlog5




One of the most enjoyable locations for fashion photography lies just 110 miles east of New York City, on Long Island near Montauk. Deep Hollow Ranch (#1 on the map), america's oldest cattle ranch, was founded in 1658 — and is still going strong as a very private hideaway for equestrian pleasures by the seaside. Avedon used it several times as a setting for both editorial fashion and commercial advertising.

The most exciting of these was on July 7, 1963, when he shot the spectacular image of Suzy Parker in a chiffon dress leading a frightened and excited white stallion through the foaming surf off Montauk Point to promote Revlon's latest lipstick and fingernail polish color. In the dead of the night. For six hours. With raging water all around. And with an 8"x10" view camera for maximum clarity. What a production that was!

Supermodel Suzy Parker, the gal in the picture, speaks about the Revlon Stormy Pink job: "We worked at night (double the fee) off Montauk Point, in the ocean, and I had to hold a stallion. We really did that. It was very dangerous because it was windy and the pebbles kept rolling beneath the horse's feet, and I'm trying to hold him down. We worked on that for almost six hours in the middle of the night, in the middle of the ocean (well, not quite), and I was in a chiffon dress. I think the reason I was such a good model wasn't that I was such a particular beauty or anything, but that I was as strong as a horse. And that occasion proved it."

Revlon's ad copy was as purple as the skies were dark. Some samples: "Revlon unleashes an Angry Young Pink — the killer color of the year!," "Stormy Pink, a wild-and-arrogant pink...cross bred with red...," "It's the runaway trend of our time. Why fight it?"

At my end, the technical problems were severe, especially in seeing to it that nobody got electrocuted. There was of course no place to plug in the powerful Balcar strobe needed to get enough depth of field for the 300mm lens on slow 8"x10" Ektachrome sheet film. I solved this by borrowing a Jeep from the ranch and mounting a gasoline generator on it along with the flash head on a tall pole. This I drove out into the surf (#2 on the map). I was concerned about the sync wire to the camera and the fact that both Avedon and another assistant were standing in water, but they never got so much as a tingle.

The resultant ad appeared quickly all over America, produced by Revlon's ad agency, Norman, Craig & Kummel. In the November 1963 issue of Harper's Bazaar the tall ad ran sideways, covering pages 14-15.

Avedon used the Montauk ranch at other times, including several days in May 1960 for beach fashions; these appeared in the September 1960 issue of Harper's Bazaar, pages 242-249. Swipe the map above to see a photo of me with a horse from this job.

It must be noted that Avedon was quite familiar with horses and often rode in New York's Central Park. I rode with him once, across the Arizona desert at dawn in November 1962. After fellow assistant Jim Houghton and I established our own studio in late 1965 we also worked out of Deep Hollow Ranch a few times.

Avedon surely loved Montauk, since about 1980 (some 15 years after I left) he purchased a 7.5-acre mini-compound (#3 on the map) on a desolate cliff overlooking the sea, less than two miles southwest of the historic 1795 lighthouse (#4 on the map) at Montauk Point.

Featured in the 1995 PBS documentary Darkness and Light, it had six bedrooms, a studio, a stable, an orchard, a pool, and gardens. It was here that he played country gentleman by growing apples and raising chickens for the next 20 years.

Deep Hollow Ranch is located about three miles beyond the town of Montauk, on State Route 27, just east of East Lake Drive, on the left. The beach is nearby, on the Atlantic Ocean. Check it out at www.deephollowranch.com.

Quotations from Suzy Parker were taken from Fire and Ice — the Story of Charles Revson, by Andrew Tobias, © 1976. Other text and map © 2012 by Earl Steinbicker.
 
post 3 of 3

AVEDON'S MANHATTAN

AvBlog6

Most of Richard Avedon's life was spent living and working on that exciting and glorious island called Manhattan in New York City, U.S.A.

Although he traveled extensively throughout the world, he always remained a New Yorker at heart. Many of the places associated with him still exist while others have yielded to the inevitable march of progress. The map above and text below describe places that can still be seen and even experienced as well as pointing out those that are but memories.

For the ambitious among you, this list is organized as a do-it-yourself tour on foot or by bus or taxi. Or you might just go to see a few, or even just read about them.

Touch map in upper left to fill the screen, then slide a finger from right to left to see photos of the places. Numbers in parentheses correspond to numbers on the map.

From an early age through all of his teens Richard lived with his parents in a spacious apartment at 55 East 86th Street (1), on the uptown side between Madison and Park avenues. Built in 1924 and fifteen stories high, this building still stands and looks much as it did when the Avedon family moved in during the early 1930s. His father had been a prosperous merchant throughout the 1920s, but the Great Depression put them in reduced circumstances although they continued to live well as this rather exclusive address suggests.

From here it is only a short stroll to Fifth Avenue and down a few blocks to the magnificent complex of imposing buildings known as the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2), the largest such institution in the Western Hemisphere. The young Avedon frequented these galleries in his quest for elegance and beauty, which he found especially in the works of ancient Egypt, the Etruscans, and such modern artists as Amedeo Modigliani. These highly stylized images feature simplicity of line and form in the human figure, which deeply influenced his later photography.

From September to November of 1978 the museum held a major retrospective of Avedon's fashion photography between the years 1947 through 1977, which later traveled to other museums in Dallas, Atlanta, and Tokyo. There is a picture from this time of him dancing down the museum steps, arms outstretched, under the huge banner reading "Avedon." In 2002 the Met held another major exhibition with a huge banner above the steps reading "Richard Avedon Portraits."

The Metropolitan Museum presently has dozens of Avedon prints in their permanent collection.

Another nearby gallery that featured Avedon's work is the fortress-like Whitney Museum of American Art (3) on the southeast corner of Madison Avenue and 75th Street. The 1994 exhibition there, which ran from late March through late June, was billed as "Richard Avedon: Evidence 1944-1994." Unlike most of his shows, this one focused on the unity of purpose between his portraiture, reportage, and fashion photography, and celebrated his profound contribution to the history of the art as well as his relentless quest for self-knowledge.

A further stroll down Fifth Avenue, with Central Park to your right, brings you to The Frick Collection (4). This gated, block-long mansion has its entrance on 70th Street. As a boy, young Richard would often visit here with his mother, admiring the classical works of 14th-to-19th-century European art, furnishings, and decorations. He was enthralled by the Fragonards, the Gainsboroughs, the Goyas, the Reynolds, and especially by the Rembrandts. Through these portraits he developed the belief that served him so well in later years — that faces are the windows to the soul.

Continuing down Fifth Avenue alongside the park takes you past locations where, as a young man, he witnessed the most innovative fashion photographer of the 1930s, Martin Munkácsi, at work. Avedon also used this spot for his famous 1965 portrait of singer Bob Dylan. Steps at 64th Street lead down to the Arsenal (5) of the late 1840s, a necessary stop for all photographers doing commercial work in the city's parks as this is where the permits are issued. It is also the entrance to the Central Park Wildlife Conservation Center, formerly known as the Zoo.

Now it's a lovely short stroll under shady trees to Grand Army Plaza at 60th Street. Avedon's first studio was a block from here, at 640 Madison Avenue (6) between 60th and 59th streets. The block-long, two-story building was torn down around 1955 and replaced with the present unremarkable office structure, but back in the 1930s it contained the skylit studio of fashion photographer George Platt Lynes. This became Richard Avedon's studio in 1946 after Lynes moved to Hollywood. Avedon remained there until sometime in 1954, and it was here that I first began assisting him in September of 1952.

Across 57th Street, at 40 West near the Avenue of the Americas, is the Marlborough Gallery (7). In 1975 this was the venue of Avedon's exhibition "Portraits: 1969-1975," notable for its huge prints and consistent use of his signature white background as part of his final, mature style.

Back on Madison Avenue, at the northwest corner of 56th Street once stood an old office building at Number 572 (8), whose site is now part of the immense 590 Madison Building. This was home to both Harper's Bazaar and Town & Country magazines, both of which Avedon worked for extensively from 1945 through 1965. Back in the 1940s and 50s this was also the lair of Alexey Brodovitch, the influential art director who first discovered his talent and later became his chief mentor.

Avedon's first job as a photographer was in 1944 at the Bonwit Teller (9) fashion department store on Fifth Avenue at the northeast corner of 56th Street, now replaced by the Trump Tower.

Continue down Fifth to 53rd Street. Between here and Madison Avenue, on the north side of 53rd, is one of New York's most delightful hidden gems. Paley Park (10) was a gift to the people of New York by one of Avedon's friends, William S. Paley, the founder and long-time C.E.O. of CBS.

This urban oasis of 1967 sports a 20-foot-high waterfall spanning the width of the park as a backdrop to the airy trees and lightweight furniture at which visitors can relax and perhaps have lunch. The story goes that Paley, who loved hots dogs, could not find suitable ones from the local sidewalk vendors. To solve this dilemma he purchased the former Stork Club building, tore it down, created the park, and had a snack bar installed that sells simple foods at reasonable prices. It's a delightful place for a quick lunch. I would imagine that Avedon ate here a few times with his friend Paley, although this would have been after I left.

Turn west on 53rd Street to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (11), one of the world's preeminent cultural institutions. Founded in 1929 in temporary quarters, its present building dates from 1939 and has been substantially altered and enlarged over the years. MoMA was a pioneer in recognizing photography as a fine art in the same league with painting and sculpture. Avedon had a one-man show here in 1974 that consisted of touching portraits of his dying father, Jacob Israel Avedon, taken during the last years of his life. The museum also has a large number of Avedon prints, both portraits and fashion, in its permanent collection.

Just west of the main entrance, and part of the same complex at Number 25, are the offices of the Richard Avedon Foundation. This organization is charged with maintaining Avedon's legacy through touring exhibitions around the world, through publications, and by providing prints to museums, libraries, and scholarly institutions. Visits can only be made by prior arrangements, and then only by researchers, scholars, and those on Foundation business.

Some of Avedon's major advertising clients were located nearby, at 488 Madison Avenue between 52nd and 51st streets. Once the home of Look Magazine, the building remains as it was although that publication is history. Another tenant here was the advertising agency Norman, Craig & Kummel, for whom Avedon did a great deal of work over the years on the Revlon, Maidenform, Schick, Chanel, Clairol, and Hertz accounts.

The International Center of Photography (12), on the Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue) near the northwest corner of 43rd Street, was founded in 1974 and moved into the present galleries in 2000. Its major exhibition "Avedon Fashion 1944-2002" was held from May 15 through September 20, 2009. This was the most comprehensive exploration of Avedon's fashion photography ever attempted, and included some 175 photographs. Among these were both vintage and modern prints, original contact prints, and past issues of the magazines in which they appeared.

There's absolutely nothing to see toay, but the east side of Fifth Avenue at 39th Street was once the site of the Avedon Building (13), home to a ladies wear store known as Avedon's Fifth Avenue. Co-owned by Avedon's father and uncle, this fell victim to the Great Depression. The building was still there in the 1960s when he pointed it out to me as we were passing by, but has since been replaced by a nondescript structure.

The neighborhood around Madison Avenue north of 42nd Street was home to a great many advertising agencies, including several of Avedon's best clients such as BBD&O and J. Walter Thompson. Several of his suppliers were located in the former Grand Central Palace (14), a massive 1911 structure at 480 Lexington Avenue, between 46th and 47th streets. Sadly, this was torn down in 1963. Originally designed for exhibition spaces, it was home to a number of photography studios, Bernard Arkin Photo Supplies (Avedon's principal supplier), Modernage Photographic Services (which made many of his largest prints), and Harriet Woolen Retouching.

Avedon's second studio was at 203 East 49th Street (15), on the northeast corner of Third Avenue. Frank Finocchio, his studio manager at the time, and I first checked this place out in early 1954, arriving there on the old Third Avenue El. The spacious studio area was on the second floor of the historic 19th-century two-story building, above the famous Manny Wolf's Steakhouse. Although this restaurant is now called Smith & Wollensky's, today the structure looks almost exactly as it did in the 1950s. There were actually two studio rooms, the smaller one used by his associate photographer Bill Bell, and later by Hiro Wakabayashi.

Continue down 49th Street to First Avenue, cross it, and take the small street that leads uphill to 24 Beekman Place (16). When I first started with Avedon in 1952 he was living in a townhouse midway between 49th and 50th streets, on the west side of the place. That three-story house is long gone, replaced by a luxury apartment building.

Head uptown on First Avenue to East 58th Street and turn right. At the far end, overlooking the East River, is a small gated driveway called River View Terrace (17). Avedon and his family moved into a townhouse here on August 31, 1964 and were still living there when I left his employ.

By bus, cab, or even on foot, continue north on Sutton Place, passing under the Queensboro Bridge, after which it becomes York Avenue, to East 75th Street. Along the way you will pass, on the right, Rockefeller University, Cornell Medical Center, and the New York Hospital. The old carriage house at 407 East 75th Street was Avedon's final home and studio (18), which he purchased in 1970. A total of 7,000 square fet in size, it was put on sale in 2005 with an asking price of $6.75 million.

Head downtown on either Second or Lexington avenues to 65th Street, turning right to Park Avenue. The large old apartment building at 625 Park Avenue (19) was home to the Avedons from the late 1950s until the early 1960s. It looks exactly the same today. Their apartment occupied one-half of an upper floor; the other half was home to Madame Helena Rubinstein of cosmetics fame.

Saunter down Park Avenue, passing the Chase Bank on the southwest corner of 60th Street. This is where Avedon kept his money, and where he once sent me to borrow a $5,000 bill as a photo prop. With a wink in the eye, I assured the bank manager that we would not take a picture of it. The wink was returned.

A left turn on 58th Street takes you to the site of Avedon's third studio (20) at 110 East. He moved in here sometime in the late 1950s and remained until it was torn down in the late 1970s. The two studio rooms, offices, workrooms, and darkrooms were on the fifth floor, with both his and his representative's offices on the penthouse level. The latter rooms were used by Alexey Brodovitch for his classes, while the second studio room was used by associate photographer Hiro Wakabayashi.

The tour is over, and you will pass the site of Roger's Bar around the corner between 58th and 57th streets. This is where the sandwiches for the almost-daily studio lunches came from. Unfortunately, it is now a Starbucks.

Maps and text copyright © 2012 by Earl Steinbicker

This app is in no way endorsed by nor associated with the Richard Avedon Foundation.

The above is only a very small sample of what's on this app! Find out more about it HERE.

Posted on 01/15/2013 at 09:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

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05/05/2012
 
I asked Chris Crawford to post some of his favorite stuff here.

This is a nudge Chris.

There are several serious photographers on RFF who should be kept current on here. Please invite them to post.
 
Here's something different from what you're used to seeing from me. For several years now, I have been working on a series of abstract color photographs, using the sky as the basis for them. Cloud shapes, colors, patterns form beautiful abstract designs that I isolate with my camera. They're heavily manipulated to bring out the colors I want; this is not documentary work like most of my photography!


Here are a few recent ones, done this year.




8-31-20-sky-1.jpg





8-27-20-sky-3.jpg







8-8-20-sky-2.jpg







7-29-20-sky-1.jpg







8-30-19-sky-1.jpg







8-30-19-sky-2.jpg







8-8-20-sky-4.jpg







8-6-19-sky-1.jpg





Some are simple, some complex. Some were shot at sunset, where the colors and forms are more dramatic; other were shot during the day.
 
Anthony Harvey said:
They're beautiful Chris, not only the composition - they've all got that gleam that lifts the spirit so much! The light ... the light ...
Click to expand...




Thanks, Anthony. Yes, the light is vital to them, as will all photographs. Even for my normal photographs, I have often waited weeks for the right light to photograph a place!
 
Thanks Chris.

Abstract Color is an interest of mine. Cool stuff!

Please keep your work curren with this thread. You have an "official open invitation", not that you need one.

pkr
 
PKR said:
Thanks Chris.

Abstract Color is an interest of mine. Cool stuff!

Please keep your work curren with this thread. You have an "official open invitation", not that you meed one.

pkr
Click to expand...




I try to post a new photo every day in my "Some New Photos From Fort Wayne" thread, but because I am way behind in my work and don't feel well enough to sit in front of the computer editing photos as long as I should, I sometimes slip. I haven't posted them here because I know if I posted every new one here that inevitably someone would complain that I'm spamming the forum by posting in two threads.


Here is something new I posted today that I think is cool. A landscape I shot in western New York a couple weeks ago. This isn't something you'd find in northeast Indiana! There are some waterfalls in southern Indiana that I should try to photograph sometime.




9-22-20-medinafalls.jpg





This waterfall is in a small town called Medina, one of the many towns that grew up on the Erie Canal. The waterfall is actually just north of the Canal, and is visible only from the concrete walkway along the canal. The rest of the area around the waterfall is heavily wooded and the top of the fall is about 40 feet lower than the level of the ground surrounding it.
 
Hi Chris;

I'm interested, and figure others are too, in how you work. How much gear you carry, tripod use, etc.

As I'm retired, for the most part, from doing photo work for money, I've become a minimalists in what i'm willing to pack around. I use a tripod a lot. My favorite is, a very old Gitzo Compac Studex with a modern ball head. But, it weighs 10+ Lbs. I like it's mass when supporting a camera. It's a PITA to pack for a distance. I use a minimal of film gear, an F3 and 3 lenses. No digital cameras are generally used.

It's a big, and welcome, change for me.

pkr
 
PKR said:
Hi Chris;

I'm interested, and figure others are too, in how you work. How much gear you carry, tripod use, etc.
Click to expand...

Yes, I'm interested in your working process.

I read you are very careful to the light and oft wait for the moment or the day when the light is appropriate. And this alone is a lesson, or at least a good suggestions !
 
Revisiting Larry Towell

Snip

Larry Towell

"I would say there have always been too many photographs in the world, but there have never been too many good ones. But even for those of us who are working on issues that are socially engaging, it's hard to find an audience – I think part of it is there are too many distractions.

"I didn't decide to become a photographer, it just happened. I wanted to be a storyteller, and I wanted to engage with human rights violations and be a reporter. The fact that nobody's listening doesn't mean you stop. In fact, the opposite is true. The fact that nobody is listening means you have to do more, and you never stop.

"Celebrity culture is a disease, actually. Wanting to be famous is a mental illness, and we don't recognise that. And now it's become pretty much endemic, where even photographers are supposed to be celebrities rather than journalists. Of course it's dangerous."

https://www.canon.co.uk/pro/stories/future-of-photojournalism/

http://larrytowell.com/

https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/larry-towell/

https://www.bulgergallery.com/artists/110-larry-towell/biography/

https://www.widewalls.ch/artists/larry-towell

https://www.henricartierbresson.org/en/laureats/larry-towell-2/


The Restoration of Union Station
https://www.streetshootr.com/magnum-photographer-larry-towell-toronto/
 
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