Color

This doesn't exactly have a picture to go with it. It's more of a rambling. I have noticed that there have been very few color photographs that use color in the same way that black and white photographs have. This is true in film and video as well as photography.

I think this started as a topic of mine when I saw the movie "Under the Volcano" by John Huston. I was impressed by that film, not only for Albert Finney's fantastic portrayal of the alcoholic expat, but also how color was used to tell the story rather than to just show it. I think that in large part, that is the distinction. The difference between telling a story and showing a story. The abstraction of black and white automatically casts the scene as being in a reductivist locale of narrative. It requires an immediate, and obvious mediation step to decode the form into meaning. Color seems to require less mediation and therefor appears more as an innocent signifier, closer to the signified.

Anyway - maybe there's something unique to our relationship with black and white images, but I'm very interested in exploring color images to see if there's some aspect of them that can function to the same ends as black and white. What is the problem set?

Inside Outside

I'm always captivated by examples of separation - windows, walls, linear elements that break the picture plane - barriers, real, formal or metaphoric. I was captivated by reading, what over the past 15 years has amounted to 20% of, Derrida's _The_Truth_in_Painting_, where he writes at length about the parergonal, the frame, the boundary between the picture and the not-picture, and how the primary question about painting happens within this edge.

This picture interests me because of my co-conspirator, thus your co-conspirator, in a seat up ahead. He's an image of us - lurking in the shadows under the yellow light, hiding behind the window. Yet the picture plane casts him as the lurker; our observation point let's us watch and conspire to watch.

This picture reminds me of a design exercise involving order and chaos that my graduate adviser taught to art students at Northwestern. It involves containing as much disorder as you can create within a very restrictive grid. There's a tension that exists in that balance both visually and creatively. Photography is interesting in this regard, because it is so much about that one moment of solidifying shapes and signs and light into a rectangle. But it's also about manipulating that rectangle - sometimes tortuously, changing crops and tones and color balance. I'm just glad that part is in a computer for me now - though I do miss how printed images emerge from the paper like magic.

Exploratorium

The Exploratorium is one of my favorite places to photograph. The mix of technology and old architecture, kids and old folks -- where it seems everything old, really is, new again. I like to take the kids there and watch them rediscover new things in the exhibits. Seeing that magic of learning through their eyes is a wonderful and exciting thing.

The building itself is such an incongruous place. Turn of the (20th) century girder, shell construction - like an old airplane hanger, salvaged statues, all in huge bays big enough to house two floors of exhibits all in the open. And the light is a fantastic mix of filtered natural light and exhibition lighting.

In my eye

I think it's fascinating when I find an image to be captivating, but no one else seems to. This one was taken on a walk around the town where I live. There was something in the tones and the color, and in the stark sunlight on the white that seemed to play with the typical hazy nostalgia of places like this. No one seems very interested in it though.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

My Exa

I really love my Exa - the way it feels in my hand, the mass and tiny size are really very nice - especially compared to today's hulking DSLRs. I need to check it's seals and stuff and make sure it's working right. Tends to take thin somewhat fogged looking negs. Oh well they have a very interesting look.

Clouds

I think clouds are fascinating. Growing up in Colorado I used to lay down in the grass and watch clouds roll off the mountains and head out across the plains to Kansas. I could imagine almost anything in them and they were always changing. The clouds in the Bay Area are much less massive but fly so low and speedy that can almost seem like time-lapse movies.

Mel's Diner - instant nostalgia

So after a few hours at the Exploratorium, nothing hits the spot like burgers at Mel's down the way on Lombard. It's also a ready made nostalgia machine with lots of very interesting shiny surfaces, colors and characters. And the food's okay too :)

my Zeiss Ikon Ikonta 6x9 521/1

Just for equal time here's my Ikonta - it's very nice I've shot a lot of neat photos with it. It's un-coated so it hazes a bit, and I always forget to close the little film counter window and do a lot of double (or more) exposures. My daughter helps me develop the film which is very nice :)

Exploratorium

The kids and I went to the Exploratorium on Thursday while they were on Spring Break - it's one of my all time favorite places to photograph. The light is always interesting, there are weird technogadgets and old fashioned mechanics and electronics, and all in an exposed steel girder construction. And those statues! wow.

I went there with my two kids my Rodenstock 4.5x6 and my Ricoh gx200. Left with both kids and both cameras - all in all a good thing. I'll develop the 120 film at some point but I wanted to put up one shot from the day before I get down to the business of cleaning the clutter of my closets. I think this one has a lot of the elements of what I like about photographing the Exploratorium.

History Painting

I've noticed recently that there seems to be something in my pictures that borrows a lot from Western History Painting. I'm not quite sure exactly what - the compositions, sense of scale, themes? Oh well - it's something I've decided to investigate a bit. I've mad a Flickr group for "History Painting"

http://www.flickr.com/groups/1050311@N20/

I hope it generates some interest - I think it's fascinating how we're informed by visual history.

I think this one has a certain History Painting feel. It's frontal, contained in a proscenium, the actions imply a coherent narrative, though here the story of washing up from the beach is not exactly the heroic stuff of yore.

My Rodentock 4.5x6

I really like this little camera. It folds up tiny, but takes some very interesting pictures. I wouln't exactly say the lens is "tack sharp", but honestly, as I get less sharp. my lenses can as well. Hey if I'm as sharp as this lens when I'm in my 70's that'll be pretty good. It's also a 2.9 70mm so it's pretty fast to boot. I want to get some of that Ilford 3200 120 film and take it on the train. Anyway, here it is.

Creosote Photo

I will attempt to photo blog - got no real idea how to do it or really what to put in it, but we launch into tomorrow with a spirit that desires.


























This is a picture I took with my new old Rodenstock 4.5x6 120 folder. I really like the format and I like the feel of the camera. It's hard to put my finger on why, but there's something grounding about it. This picture is taken out at the Pacific Shores conglomeration of green glass boxes that are floating on the Bay in a salt marsh. I used to work there and still have many friends who do. It's still a fascinating place to take pictures.