Or so said Henri Cartier-Bresson in a Newsweek Interview: Man of the Moment. It is interesting to read him (in rather curmudgeonly fashion, though that is forgivable in his case) dismiss photography as an endeavor.
G Dan Mitchell :: Jul.01.2008 :: Photographers :: No Comments »
Thanks to Jim M Goldstein for sharing the link to a video interview with Ansel Adams’ son Michael on Fast Company TV’s PhotoCycle program.
(It is fun to watch the video and see so many places I know so well… :-)
G Dan Mitchell :: Jun.30.2008 :: History, Photographers :: No Comments »
I’m a bit embarrassed that, as a long-time Californian, I had not thought to go to the redwoods to photograph flowers. However, Inge Fernau has and she is currently posting a wonderful series of photographs that make me think I need to get up there. Soon.
G Dan Mitchell :: May.26.2008 :: Commentary, Locations, Photographers :: No Comments »
Fred Larson does a daily Mystical Photography blog for SF Gate which features photographs of Bay Area subjects. (For obvious reasons, I understand the effort it must take for him to come up with a photo of these subjects every day of the year… ;-) Sometimes Fred comes up with a shot that is really unique, and this photograph of an egret is certainly in that category.
(His blog has a RSS feed.)
G Dan Mitchell :: May.11.2008 :: Photographers :: No Comments »
… and succeeding. :-)
Photographer Jim M. Goldstein has posted a piece at his blog about his visit to Caribou Pass Valley in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. While I’ve been to Alaska a couple of times (for a total of about a month) I’ve never been that far north, and on my visits I was not equipped to do serious photography.
(About the “that far north” observation… On my most recent Alaska trip I rode my bike - along with a group of students - 1100 miles from Skagway through the Yukon to Fairbanks and then to Anchorage. Really.)
G Dan Mitchell :: May.08.2008 :: Commentary, Photographers :: No Comments »
While I have my preferences when it comes to subjects, I tend too shoot quite a variety of them - landscapes, urban, night, some sports, the occasional informal portrait, and more. On the other hand, some photographers focus almost exclusively on mastering a single subject. Poesie is one such photographer - her work features lovely images of flowers, a subject that she has mastered. Check out her Flickr Gallery where you’ll find an amazing and beautiful collection of photographs.
G Dan Mitchell :: Apr.18.2008 :: Photographers :: No Comments »
SFGate reviews the Friedlander show currently at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
We accept an image such as “Nashville, Tennessee” (1971) as an instantaneous document of social reality because everyone in it - maybe even Friedlander himself behind the lens - appears taken by surprise. And because it appears to make no assertion about what it records, unless we care about the importance ascribed to highly coiffed hair at a certain American place and time.
But look at a recent picture, such as “New York City” (2002) in the Fraenkel Gallery’s concurrent Friedlander show, “America by Car,” and you realize immediately that his camera has constructed a moment of layered, colliding optical perspectives that the eye unaided could never assemble, let alone fix.
We might see “Friedlander,” the retrospective, as tracking a career-long disproof of any presumed equivalence between seeing the world and seeing the world as photographed. Yet Friedlander works as if he has no ideological stake in this truth, merely a fascination with it, a fascination continually reawakened as different subjects come before his camera.
Thru May 18…
G Dan Mitchell :: Feb.23.2008 :: Photographers, Shows :: No Comments »
If you aren’t already following it, take a look at Shorpy: The 100 Year Old Photography Blog, where really wonderful old photographs appear daily, often with some descriptive text or comments. Yesterday’s Dorothea Lange photograph (”A New Beginning: 1939“) is absolutely wonderful. (You can view it full size.) At first glance it might seem like an old photo of some guy, but there is so much to like in this photograph. The face of this “Ex-Nebraska farmer” is an absolute wonder - simultaneously inscrutable and open. And the image is a lesson in reducing the content down to only that which is absolutely critical to the subject - nothing more and nothing less.
(For something a bit more scary, take a look at this photo while you are there…)
G Dan Mitchell :: Feb.07.2008 :: History, Photographers :: No Comments »
Back in college - and I’m not going to confess how long ago that was - I knew a talented keyboard player by the name of Charlie Cramer. It turns out that my wife and her family knew him as well from their church - and he even played organ at our wedding.
Yes, that Charles Cramer - the very talented and highly regarded landscape photographer. (If you don’t know his work, take a look at his web site. Even better, try to see some of his prints. His large scale prints are wonders of form and detail and color and really must be seen large to be appreciated.)
This week I finally had a chance to visit with Charlie. On a very rainy afternoon I drove over to his home and spent a couple hours in his studio talking about old times and about photography. Charlie is a warm and generous person, and I am grateful to him for sitting and talking with me - and for sharing some wonderful insights into photography and the tools of the trade. (Yes, Charlie, I’ve already applied “selecting smaller” and “to make it lighter, first you must make it darker” and I’ve now done “the thing that Ansel couldn’t do.”:-)
(By the way, I understand that Charlie does workshops and I hear that they are excellent.)
G Dan Mitchell :: Jan.27.2008 :: Photographers :: No Comments »
I wasn’t there this past weekend for the big surf championship. I was nearby on a beautiful section of the coast a bit further south. I saw really big waves. I saw surfers. But I didn’t see Mavericks. (My photos are scheduled show up here in early February, though you can see a preview at my Flickr and Photo.net galleries now.) Jim Goldstein did photograph Mavericks, from all evidence from very close to the action, and he has posted a first set of images.
G Dan Mitchell :: Jan.14.2008 :: Photographers :: No Comments »