A Daily Dose: 5.27.13

A Daily Dose is a new feature to my photography blog.

Each day, if everything goes as planned, I will post a new image here on Photography News & Notes.

For years I have been doing this on my Flickr page, but in light of the recent changes at Flickr I have decided to use platforms that will better serve my needs and remain flexible enough to accommodate those needs as they change.

Starting today, with this post, my daily image upload will appear here. Sometimes it will be accompanied by an extended caption or a regular blog entry. More often it will have a simple caption and possibly some technical information included.

I will continue to use 500px as an online portfolio so you will be able to see an ever growing and larger group of my images there.

You can also follow more of what's going on at BogCrow Studio by dropping in on the new BigCrow Studio tumblr blog. There you can follow the everyday workings of how Anna and I go about our creative pursuits.

I think this move will certainly motivate me to communicate more via these media and hopefully be in closer touch with all of you. Remember, comments are always welcome and intelligent discussion encouraged, so make comments, ask questions, start a dialog.

I'm looking forward to seeing you here.

Photo: Market Street, San Francisco, California. ©2013 David W. Sumner

Where is Winogrand?

I visited the Garry Winogrand exhibition at SFMOMA four times and I found less in the exhibition each time I went to see it. But I think its biggest problem is that so much of it was work Winogrand never saw or more likely would have never wanted the public to see.

I think a lot of his photography was for no one but himself. I don't believe he would ever have intended much of that work to be put on public view.

I also think curators are failing to understand that he used photography to serve many purposes in his life. It will take considerable effort to distill his images into the work of "Garry Winogrand, Photographer" and put the rest of his images into an archive for the biographers and psychoanalysts to use in their research. No one has attempted that yet. Admirers and groupies are still trying to figure out how much of a pedestal they can prop him up on.

Even Rubinfien admitted that in the course of putting together the SFMOMA exhibition he realized that Winogrand's best work was done in the 50s & 60s. The amount of work he did is simply too overwhelming to get a clear picture of who Winogrand actually was as a photographer. But I think a hint of it creeps through in the current exhibition. Sadly that hint is given in only about five or six images in the show, but it's enough to make me think of Winogrand's photography as more of an archaeology project than anything else.

There's a lot of crap to dig through to get to the true and the meaningful. I keep thinking it's like an accordion player on Fisherman's Wharf who goes home to his baby grand and works on writing a symphony. That symphony may be performed only a few times and the sheet music ends up lost in the piles sheet music for accordion. Or the poet who writes romance novels for a living. Winogrand could make good pictures, good compositions, moving images. But he was also an unhappy middle aged divorced man who got his kicks taking sneaky pictures of women and girls. Miroslav Tichý was made famous for that simply because that's all he did.

This is a tough one. I'm still wondering where is Winogrand the photographer in all this. He's in there some where. We just can't see him yet.

Back to My Old Ways

After about twenty years of using chromogenic B&W film to avoid having to mix chemistry at home, I have taken to processing my own B&W film again.

I wanted to use silver based films again to bring back a little texture to my images and to be able to take advantage of the differences in emulsions that exists among the films available today.

The process is fast and the chemistry is reusable over a long period of time so it has a lesser environmental impact than the developers I used twenty years ago. It’s also extremely economical as are the films I’m using. They are much cheaper per roll than the C41 processed film I was shooting on a daily basis. So I’m saving quite a bit of money and bringing my photography more in line with my current yet ever evolving tastes. 

Photo: ©2013 David W. Sumner

The Future of Your Seeing

The looking you do today influences the future of your seeing.

It hardly needs to be said that photography, as a visual medium, takes a lot of practice to be able translate one's vision to a two dimensional surface. And defining that vision can take a life time. But being aware of what shapes that vision as one develops as a photographer is vital to achieving that goal.

Everything we look at or watch or see a fleeting glimpse of will in some way shape our personal vision:  the way we look at the world, the way we see the world. As I've often said, looking and seeing are different things. Looking can lead to seeing and looking certainly shapes the way we see and this is key to developing a consistent vision.

The more we look the greater the chance of seeing. And the more things we look at the greater the potential for developing that deeper vision.

Photography benefits from a photographer's experience looking at not just photographs, but looking closely at paintings, drawings, typography, theatre, sculpture, every sort of visual media in addition to every aspect of one's physical surroundings.

I've spent a lot of time throughout my life in museums and galleries looking at paintings and all forms and types of art. Having a great many friends who are visual artists, writers and musicians has had a tremendous influence on how I look at the world. All this has shaped and influenced the way I see. Remember: seeing is the thoughtful interpretation of the act of looking.

The image above owes a great deal to the work of Edward Hopper and Ed Ruscha, two artists, among many others, who have shaped my visual language. But, this has happened only because I have spent time looking knowing that eventually I will begin to see.

Photo: ©2013 David W. Sumner

Feel the Light

As you come to know light you develop a 'feel' for its presence. You begin to know intuitively when light is performing, really putting on a show.

Sometimes the performance is subtle and full of nuance, but you are aware of all that and you begin to photograph.

Photo & text: @2013 David W. Sumner

Off the Shelf

I just finished reading a few interviews with Tod Papageorge. And I must say, though I tried to see some merit in his endless references to poetry and his philosophy regarding photography, I found none.

In some cases he parroted Winogrand to such an extent I wondered if there is any substance uniquely his to be found. Indeed it is the current Winogrand retrospective at SFMOMA that set me on this effort to study more about Papageorge. While they were close friends and may well have shared the same view point and philosophy regarding photography, I see no worth while similarity or reasonable comparison beyond that.

I admit I haven't seen a great number of Papageorge's images but those I have seen have not inspired me to seek out others. He seems to have done well running Yale's photography program and inspired several students through harsh criticism on to notable careers in photography, but when asked ( Kolby Yarnell, New York Times Magazine Nov. 25, 2007) why he only recently started publishing books of his work, his response was, "Nobody called." I hope this wasn't a tactic he taught his students: Make your photographs then sit back and wait for ecstatic waves of recognition to pour over you.

I must say I'm not impressed.

Photo: ©2013 David W. Sumner

Workshop March 23rd, 2013

This workshop has 
SOLD OUT - 3/19/13

"The Best Light is the Available Light" - Saturday, March 23, 2013

Photography is dependent on light. It is the job of the photographer to understand light as the essential resource in creating dynamic imagery and how to best utilize every aspect of this resource to communicate his or her personal vision.

David's March 2013 workshop will show how your personal vision can grow through an understanding of available light and how you can shape it to create your unique imagery.

The workshop will answer the most commonly asked questions about light, including:

- Is the available light always the best light?

- Is available light the same thing as ambient light?

- How do I create a powerful image with available light alone?

David will guide participants through a practical understanding of ambient light, natural light, enhanced light and modified light.

As a participant, you will learn how to take command of the available light to create successful photographs in almost any situation.



Date: Saturday, March 23rd, 11:00am - 5:00pm

Fee: $70.00

Location: Golden Gate Park (Meet at the Music Concourse to the left of the Band Shell at 11:00am)

SCHEDULE

Instruction & discussion: 11:00 - 1:00

Break: 1:00 - 1:30

Photographing & problem solving: 1:30 - 4:00

Discussion & wrap up: 4:00 - 5:00

Be sure to bring a camera: digital, film, SLR or point & shoot and some sort of note taking device. (Pack a lunch for the break or there is often food available at the trucks or in the de Young Cafe.)

To register email David at: dave@bigcrow.com

(PayPal currently unavailable)