Sorry for the implicit chauvinism; obviously balls here is a shorthand for the mixture of courage, audacity, and shamelessness that is sometimes essential if one is to make an excellent photograph. Obviously not something that’s gender-limited. : )

Of course, my own photography is only occasionally ballsy, but I do know that I owe some of my best photographs to a moment of uncharacteristic ballsiness, and I certainly know that some of my greatest photographic regrets have come from moments when I didn’t have the balls required by the situation.

Also, while balls are obviously more mandatory in street photography or wildlife type situations than in, say, tabletop photography, courage can take many forms. Sometimes it’s more about about a willingness to make a photograph that will challenge or provoke the viewer, sometimes it manifests in areas as prosaic as how you spend your money or to whom you show a photograph…

I wonder sometimes about the extent to which my street photography skews toward white subjects…there is a trend there, I’m fairly sure. In part this is because some of the bustling areas I like to photograph in are comparatively gentrified, and also I think partly because of a sort of habitual racism or reverse racism (or maybe a little of each) which registers caucasians as fair targets, as opposed to people of other ethnicities. (And yes, I do sometimes think of street photography subjects in that way, as targets.)

I think also, though, it touches on the problem of reality in photography. One of the things that I think draws me to some of my street photography subjects is the illusions they carry with them, and in general white people are a much richer source of illusions than people of color. (If you don’t know what I mean, try googling “double consciousness.”)

Not sure why that leapt to mind just now. Something to do with Robert Frank, I imagine, since I’m reading the expanded edition of Looking In right now, and since I have a lot of qualms about how Frank deals with race. Also possibly because of this post on Colin Pantall’s blog, which was in my google reader earlier today.

In case anyone is curious and didn’t already know, I’m of mixed race.

I had a minor epiphany about street photography today:

In street photography, the subject is not a person; it is a situation.

I don’t mean by this that people aren’t essential to a photograph in this genre; of course they are. But such a photograph does not become a portrait, not even an environmental portrait which works by placing the subject in a context which allows us to refine our understanding of the subject. There is an essential difference, which becomes apparent in how such are composed, what sort of moment is captured, and — perhaps essentially — the way the photographer’s gaze functions and appears.

Street photography is in this respect more like landscape photography than like portraiture. In landscape photography, every element of the composition can, potentially, have equal weight, and the subject of the landscape photograph is the sum of the parts, or the synthesis of them.

I think that effect is very much at work in Cartier-Bresson. Bresson’s photographs often display a surprising lack of interest in the particulars of the people who populate his images. Often the person appears at a great distance, or as a blur, or with their features obscured or out of focus. But Bresson has captured the shape or the motion of the person at a particular point in space or time which fits with the city or countryside around them in a why that is sublime — in much the same way as a windblown tree or a stray cloud may unite and transform a landscape.

This notion has been very helpful for me in understanding the task of composition in street photography. Composition is critical, and it takes place in four dimensions. Each conjunction of human and inhuman elements in space and time is unique and cannot be recovered after it is lost; thus, the “decisive moment” really is.

Of course, I don’t intend to present these comments as the sage remarks of a street photography wizard. (Especially not given some of the harsher things I had to say about Frank’s The Americans recently.

Hell, I’m not even past the struggle with my social reticence and ethical qualms about whipping out my camera and photographing people in their sight. I’m just thinking things out in this context because trying to explain things to someone other than oneself is often the best way to actually start getting a grip on them…

It’s not really my cup of tea — I prefer Portra 800, with its more neutral colors, and its lovely grain. Not to mention its high speed But the Ektar definitely has its own charms. And working with the slower shutter speeds and wider apertures dictated by working with Ektar handheld can lead to some interesting results…

I spent an hour or so working with this piece of charred broccoli, two flashes, umbrellas and diffusers, different backgrounds, etc., along with the bits and pieces of Light: Science and Magic that I’ve been absorbing intermittently (and incompletely). And when it was done, I had a couple of images that are a bit interesting, and I had largely forgotten why I had started shooting that subject in the first place.

Almost immediately after I finished, I had filed the whole thing in the drawer of my mind reserved for technical exercises and shut it.

But when I sat down to write my debrief of the day’s photography, stuff started popping back up:

Today I shot some tabletop macro stuff with a charred piece of broccoli I noticed last night while trying to relight a pilot. It was unususal — for a bit of scorched food-stuff — in that it was fully recognizable and indeed had retained its structure down to a rather fine level of detail. The scorching created a fantastic effect — the surface was highly glossy, but color was still faintly visible below the surface. It was like some sort of beautiful, horrible demon broccoli from another dimension.

That moment of minor revelation — of pure seeing — in which I first noticed that burnt bit of vegetation was easily obscured by the clutter of all the thinking and adjusting and reacting that I had done in playing with the lighting. If I hadn’t stopped to write it down, then the thinking — and not the seeing — would have become the whole story of the thing. And within a few days, odds are, that story would fixed in my memory. Stopping that night to write it down gave me an opportunity to change that story.

I suspect that if I can keep this up, it will play an important role in staving off the disaffection that sometimes comes over me when I’m working instensively on black triangles (technical stuff), and keeping my eyes — as it were — on the real task of photography, which is seeing (and allowing others to see), not mastering techniques.

Okay, there aren’t pictures associated with this post yet. But I had a very exciting day (for mostly non-photographic reasons), and I want to get this down while it’s still fresh.

Went to SF today to see a live taping of You Look Nice Today with my mom and sister and Andrew

Some things that happened:

We had delicious things from Miette, Mijita, and Delica RF-1.

Andrew fought an epic battle with an eldeberry “refreshment drink.” And yes, there will have been blood.

Later, I spread cheese from safeway on other cheese from safeway and ate it. It was delicious.

You Look Nice Today was AWESOME. Jordan Jesse Go was funny, too.

My sister got a free YLNT t-shirt. This is both more and less awesome than it sounds. (She always gets stuff at events. Sexism, I say.)

She got Scott, Merlin, and Adam to sign said shirt. Awesome.

During the Q&A session, I asked if there was going to be a CD at some point with “Baby on a Dog” and the theme to “Barber and the Balls.” They all slowly backed away from the mics and milled around. Then Jesse got on a table, and it broke.

Despite SF Sketchfest’s Orwellian proclamations about photography, I got some shots with my Olypmus XA and my new (ancient) Koni-Omega. Hopefully awesome — we’ll see once I get it developed. ::crosses fingers::

Took a picture of Adam through the box office window, stalker-style. He played it cool, but then I waved excitedly at him. Because I’m a fourteen-year-old girl. But not really, or else I probably would have gotten a fucking shirt, too.

Then he came out and asked me about the camera (second person today to ask me about it, because it’s awesome), and we talked about surreptitious photography, and it was awesome. Then Merlin told us to make sure to “watch our backs” while taking BART home. Because no, it’s not too soon. Awesome. Scott mentioned his work on a Wii game (“Heavy Metal Food”). Awesome. Also, Merlin said something about a YLNT “Behind the Music.” AWESOME.

There was some kind of alcoholic after-thing, which none of us went to, because some of us have jobs, some of us don’t drink, and some of us had to find a place to stay. Less awesome, but I’m okay with that.

Then, while walking back to BART, Andrew mentioned that something during the evening had reminded him of a Borges story he’d been reading on the train up, but he couldn’t remember which one. I asked to see the book, explaining that sometimes I can figure these things out. He was, to say the least, doubtful regarding my ability to divine what he had been reading that YLNT had reminded him of. Need I say that I got it on the first try?

Fuck yeah.

Good times had by all.

Hopefully the retoucher got paid, though, given Leibovitz’s recent litigation problems…

I’ve had to turn a bunch of photos that had no sense of anything technical in to an image worthy of the brand name Leibovitz. Pieces that were supposed to fit had to be horribly distorted to match her post-shoot preproduction mockup made by a low res retoucher on her staff; many times she needed to use a tripod and did not; I also had to match images from different cameras and films together as well. Bottom line is, what is handed to the retoucher is a big pile of doo-doo handled by dozens of her staff—then have to produce images that look impeccable.

The Online Photographer: A Note From Underground.

Update: I am also food.

Recently I blogged about my excitement regarding the San Francisco MOMA’s decision to begin allowing photography in their permanent collection after years of maintaining a closed no photography policy. Directly because of this change in policy, I decided to purchase a family membership in order to support the museum, both with my artistic energy and financially. I was excited to begin spending regular time exploring and documenting the museum.

Unfortunately, I should have known better than to really believe that the San Francisco MOMA was serious about opening up the art and architecture entrusted to them to the general public.

Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection

Score! Been looking for a copy of this for ages.

Don’t ask me to tell you how much I paid for it. I bought it from the fourth-floor Moe’s sanctum sanctorum, where when you buy a book, they print you out an invoice, not a receipt. They also have a pretty hard time making change and zipping flies. Seriously, it’s a whole different universe of books. : )

Minor White is a photographer who really interests me, in part because he’s one of the greats of all time, in part because he’s a photographer who is strongly interested in the connection between photography and modes of religious experience, and in part because he is frequently identified as a “Zen” photographer, which I’m pretty sure is hogwash. (Based on everything I’ve read by and about him, he is defined far more by the I-Though modality of Western mysticism than he is by Zen, although he was certainly aware of Zen and had an interest in it.)

Anywho, this makes White interesting and an interesting problem, but finding primary or even secondary material on him can be a bit tricky, so I’m always happy when I my hands on more of the puzzle.

Librarything Entry