Play with the Plastic

I was feeling a bit stale in my approach to photographing. Maybe it was just the aftermath of a long cold rainy Oregon winter, but I thought I needed a change of pace. Something to shake loose the cobwebs and see things in a new way. Yadda yadda yadda. So I signed up for a workshop. I’ve taken several workshops over the years, and taught quite a few as well, but it’s always nice to get together with other folks with a shared interest/passion and have some fun. You don’t have to have a definite agenda beyond maybe trying something new, learning a new trick or two, or just taking a few pix. So I signed up for an all-day field trip to Sauvie Island.

Sauvie Island is, not surprisingly, an island in the Columbia River northwest of Portland, Oregon. It’s mostly farms, beaches (some clothing optional!), and wildlife refuges. The workshop/fieldtrip, offered by the Newspace Center of Photography in Portland, was led by Susan Bein, a long time Photoshop guru, photographic artist, and genuinely nice person. The first stop on the excursion was the Bybee-Howell farmstead, an old house that is now overseen by the State Parks Department. Susan had brought along a 400-foot roll of plastic intended for use as a painter’s drop cloth. It’s very lightweight, translucent, and tends to drift in the air and billow in the breeze. As we were walking up to the house, she asked if I wanted to use the plastic in some photographs. After all, that’s why she brought it along.

I looked at the plastic, looked at her, and thought, “Are you kidding? That is nothing that I would ever photograph!” But I said, “Uh, no thanks,” and shuffled on. Now remember that I signed up for the workshop for a change of pace, and here I was turning down something that was a definite change of pace, for me anyway. Not a shining moment for yours truly. Well to make a short story long, once we got in the old house and I saw how she was using the plastic, I did take some photos. And I did have a good time doing it. And I even like the images I made.

Moral of the story is: if someone offers you some plastic to play with, take it and have fun with it. You’ll be glad you did. Thanks, Susan.

Below are a couple of shots of the plastic in the old house. Spooky.

The Cutest Digital Camera

Okay, I might have to save up for this one (speaking of eqipment). Komamura Corporation, in Japan, has unveiled a miniature Rolleiflex Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) camera as a digital camera, called the Rolleiflex MiniDigi AF5.0. It works much the same as an old Rollei, except it's 3-inches tall and it is digital, after all. MSRP will be around $399, or so. But isn't it cute?

Does Equipment Matter?

There’s a kind of online debate going on at the moment that will be of interest to photographers. It’s about the importance of equipment. Ken Rockwell wrote an article called, “Your Camera Doesn't Matter,” and the title says it all. Michael Reichmann, the guy behind the excellent site Luminous Landscape, offers a counter-argument called, “Your Camera Does Matter.” Click on the titles to read those articles.

Rockwell offers a ton of clichés and clever one-liners, not to mention redundancies and downright bizarre statements, to support his view that photographs are made inside a photographer’s mind and not in the camera and that the camera is inconsequential to how well a photo turns out. Well, in my experience, the camera and lens and all the dozens of decisions and choices made along the way have a definite effect on any resulting photographs. While it may be true that if you can’t “see” an image in the first place you won’t be able to capture it even with an excellent camera, to pretend that equipment doesn’t matter is just not being realistic. It’s like all the other choices a photographer makes in creating an image, the equipment you choose impacts your images in a very real way.

Reichmann’s point of view is that photography is a craft (not just an art) that uses equipment to produce its images. It’s hard to argue with this statement and matching the equipment to the subject matter is a very important part of being a photographer. After all, you can’t make professional quality architectural photographs with a disposable camera. You can’t make a formal portrait with an old Polaroid camera. That’s why black-and-white landscape photography is almost always done with 4x5 and 8x10 view cameras or more precisely folding field cameras, or at least it used to be. But it seems like Reichmann’s leaving out or downplaying the photographer’s creativity—the mental process that happens in making an image. And frankly it’s true that having the best equipment is no guarantee for getting the best images.

Over the years, I’ve known plenty of photographers with all the latest expensive equipment who can’t make a decent image and I’ve known many who use cameras I wouldn’t even pick up on a dare, but manage to create wonderful images just the same. I believe it’s a matter of matching the photographer’s working methods or personality to the equipment and the subject matter. When these three qualities are aligned with each other, excellent images are the result. But in my experience, better quality equipment can allow a photographer to achieve even greater results. Good equipment makes the job of photographing easier, and it’s just that simple.

It seems like Rockwell and Reichmann are both trying to separate the art from the craft (coming from different directions) and that’s not something you can really do with photography—art and craft in photography are way too entwined. So in a way, they are both right and wrong. Does equipment matter? Of course it does. Does creativity matter? Of course it does. They all matter just as much as any of the other variables that exist in photography. And like I usually say, the art of photography is found in the choices you make in creating a photograph.

West Elm Catalog Copy

I saw the latest catalog from West Elm, a contemporary home furnishings company. They feature a few framed photographs for sale along with beds, sofas, and rugs. The descriptions of the photographs leave me a little baffled, however. In three of the four examples, they include what kind of camera made the image in specific detail.

Here’s an example: “These striking images were captured using a Nikon D70 camera with Nikon 17-80mm lenses.” Ignoring the grammar problems, why would a potential buyer be interested in this level of product detail? Maybe I could see it if the camera and lens used were rare or high-end professional models, but this is not even strictly pro-oriented gear.

Either an image is interesting or it isn’t. Knowing what kind of camera was used won’t make it any more appealing. I don’t know of anyone who has ever bought a photograph because of the equipment used to make it. They might buy one because of who made it, but for the most part people buy photographs because the images are beautiful, interesting, nostalgic, or shocking.

News Briefs - February 11, 2008

Polaroid has announced that they are completely getting out of the (instant) film business by the end of this year and will concentrate on television and digital photography technologies. This is a sad day for all the photographer/artists that used Polaroid materials to such good ends for so many decades. Gone will be all the square little SX-70 pictures. Gone will be all the cool and unique image and emulsion transfer prints. Gone will be the black-and-white images with the distinctive edges, such as Mark Klett’s. While their decision is understandable from a business sense, they will be missed.

Trading on the enduring reputation of Swiss bank accounts for security and discretion, the Swiss Picture Bank is now offering the first online, guaranteed permanent digital archive. Their catchy motto is: “Safe. Forever.^TM” Since most digital photographers are a hard drive crash away from losing most or all of their images, this could be seen as a valuable resource. The costs start out at a reasonable one-time charge of $.03 an image for 30 years of storage. Seems like a good idea to me.

This last item is not photo related, but I found out today that actor Roy Scheider died this past weekend from complications of cancer. He was 75 years old. His notable film roles include The French Connection, Sorcerer, 2010, Marathon Man, All That Jazz, and, of course, Jaws. He always brought a genuine sense of the everyman to his characters and carried himself with dignity and gravitas. Every movie that he was in benefited from his presence. I’m sorry to see him go.

Hermon

PMA 2008 News

Well, the PMA show (Photographic Marketing Association) came and went last week and there were a few noteworthy items that showed up. Canon has a new digital Rebel, the Rebel XSi. It now has a 12-mp sensor, Live View (sort of like what point & shoot cameras have), and uses SD cards instead of CompactFlash cards. The expected replacement for the 5D wasn’t shown, but since this is a Photokina (that’s the big European trade show) year, it might show up in the Fall. Nikon has a few new lenses: a AF-S 60mm f/2.8G Micro lens and a PC-E 24mm f/2.8D tilt-shift lens. From Casio, not exactly a leader in digital cameras, comes the Pro EX-F1, which looks like a small SLR and has the astounding shoot rate of 60 frames per second at full 6-mp resolution. I guess you better have a big memory card for this camera. I’m not really sure what this will be good for (motion studies? scientific research?), but that’s truly amazing performance.

Fuji showed a good camera for people who want D-SLR performance, but don’t want to change lenses: the S100FS. It has a wide-range image-stabilized lens, equivalent to a 28-400mm 35mm lens, and has an 11-mp sensor. If you want high performance and only one camera, you might take a look at this one.

Perhaps the most curious camera shown was a unnamed prototype also from Fuji: a folding 6x7 medium format film camera with Aperture Priority automatic exposure. Since they discontinued all their medium format cameras a few years ago, this was a surprise to say the least. Still for the film fans out there, this will probably be a great camera to shoot with—small, portable, and with a tack sharp lens on it. Some of my favorite and most used view camera lenses were made by Fuji. You can see a photo of this new camera here. It’s kind of pretty, in a nostalgic sort of way.

And Now a Word from the Department of Transportation

Effective January 1, 2008, passengers on planes will no longer be able to carry loose rechargeable lithium batteries (the kind that are commonly used in digital cameras, camcorders, and laptops) in their checked baggage. However, you can have them in your carry-on bags, as long as they’re in their original packaging or in a simple resealable plastic bag. And you’re limited to a total of only two spare rechargeable lithium batteries in your carry-on bags. It seems that under certain circumstances, these batteries can explode and catch fire. Hmmm. Makes me wonder what exactly are those circumstances? So if you’re traveling, plan ahead. And just to be safe, don’t carry lithium batteries in your pants pockets. Ouch.