Alessandra Sanguinetti will be giving an artist’s talk at Aperture Gallery this Tuesday. Alessandra’s work is electric, beautiful and iconic and her quick rise to the upper echelon of the contemporary photography scene has been impressive. See you there.
Benefit auction season is on in a big way. See here and here. This Saturday Photographic Center Northwest is holding their second annual PhotoVision Award & Auction. The folks at PCNW has been very generous to me over the years and I was more than happy to lend a piece from my Domesticated series for the auction to support their ongoing programs and activities. You can check out the auction catalogue online.
Here are the details:
The Second Annual PhotoVision Award & Auction
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Photographic Center Northwest
900 Twelfth Avenue, Seattle
A couple of days ago I received an email from a public relations firm inviting me to a product preview party for Nikon at Buddha Bar in the Meatpacking District. Clearly, these folks recognized me as the influential connector and cultural king-maker that I am and wanted some of that magic to grace their flashy, super cool PR spectacular. As I’ve stated before, I am the opposite of cool. And, I don’t mean that in an ironic way that might suggest I am cool. I am literally not cool. So, it was with great trepidation and a supreme curiosity that I decided to RSVP and attend the event Wednesday night.
We felt it critical to begin the evening with a relaxing dinner and a few glasses of wine to settle the nerves before we headed to the Meatpacking District to rub shoulders with the models and i-bankers. Every time I go to that part of town I feel so out of place that I am overcome by an irrational fear that style snipers will spot me and fire a couple of warning rounds at my feet to drive me back into the West Village. Properly juiced, the stroll through the Meatpacking District proved carefree.
Once at Buddha Bar we were greeted by a yellow carpet, super bright something-fabulous-is-going-on-here exterior lighting and an endless succession of people with clipboards and walkie-talkies asking for our names to check against their master list. There were so many clipboard checkpoints it felt like we were trying to get into the Green Zone. In the end the wait was worth it. We made it through the final velvet rope and were lead to a fantastical land where the bar was top shelf and open and the sushi flowed freely. The evening was all about the product, so friendly Nikon reps were there to showcase their line of new digital cameras. Oh, and I was given a free CoolPix camera on a silver plater. Not bad. I quickly warmed to the idea that I really did belong in a place like this.
So, let it be known to all PR people, Amy Stein has embraced her inner shill and is now ready to bring her brand of cool to your corporate event. Of course, I will be preparing a proper rider to make the process of satisfying my needs a little easier. (Kabbalah water, purple Skittles and a carton of Lucky Strikes–you know, standard issue stuff.) If you are interested just have your people contact my people.
This evening when I coming home my subway car had seven men with moustaches. Seven! That has to be the highest concentration of ’staces this side of a cop convention.
For the past five years, I’ve been using a Canon D60 for all of my night time work. When it was first introduced, I believe it was the only digital camera capable of shooting a whopping four minutes (under cool temperatures) without producing unacceptable levels of noise. Since then, sensor technology has improved. Clean exposures of up to ten minutes without noise reduction are not uncommon. And longer exposures of up to one hour, using in-camera noise reduction, are also possible.
Last month Canon introduced the EOS 40D, the forth-generation replacement for the D60 (don’t be confused by the naming conventions… this lineage went D30, D60, 10D, 20D, 30D, 40D). Last night I conducted some long exposure tests with the 40D. The subject isn’t interesting, but I didn’t have time to drive somewhere more interesting and start jumping fences.
I’ve uploaded the various 100% crops to this Flickr set, which also includes some daytime ISO tests. The shooting parameters are in the title of each shot.
Since my preferred ISO setting for night shooting has always been 200, I took most of these shots at ISO 200 over 3, 6, 9 and 12 minute exposures. I also had time for one 3-minute ISO 100 exposure to determine the difference between ISO 100 and 200 at long exposure.
Keep in mind that you can’t directly correlate daytime ISO comparisons to long exposure night shots because the noise increases as the duration of the exposure increases (it’s also effected by the temperature of the sensor). I may add more examples of different ISO/exposure combinations (along with in-camera noise reduction and Noise Ninja post-processing) in the future.
As a follow up to last week’s post about long exposures with the Canon 40D, last night I shot a pair of 9-minute exposures (f/9.5 at ISO 200) to compare the effect of in-camera noise reduction.
(9 minutes, f/9.5 ISO 200. Read below to see the 100% crops)In a nutshell, in-camera noise reduction does a wonderful job of reducing sensor noise on long exposures. It works by immediately repeating your shot, but it turns the sensor on and keeps the shutter closed. This creates a “dark frame”, which is electronically subtracted from the original image to produce a noise-free image. The disadvantage is that it locks up your camera for a period of time equal to the duration of the original image.
Here is the full image. You can see 100% crops of the shot without in-camera noise reductionhere and here. You can see 100% crops of an almost-identical shot taken with in-camera noise reductionhere and here.
Elton John issued a statement today confirming his ownership of the Nan Goldin photo seized by police.
The photograph entitled “Klara and Edda belly-dancing” (1998) is one of 149 images comprising the “Thanksgiving” installation by renowned US photographer Nan Goldin.The photograph exists as part of the installation as a whole and has been widely published and exhibited throughout the world. It can be found in the monograph of Ms Goldin’s works entitled “The Devil’s Playground” (Phaidon, 2003), has been offered for sale at Sotheby’s New York in 2002 and 2004, and has previously been exhibited in Houston, London, Madrid, New York, Portugal, Warsaw and Zurich without any objections of which we are aware.
In my mind the picture in question in not even close to being sexual in a Jock Sturges or Sally Mann kind of way. I guess people see the sexuality they want to see.
The 2007 MacArthur Fellowship ‘Genius Grants’ were announced yesterday and I nearly spit my coffee on my keyboard when I read the name Shen Wei listed as one of the recipients. Holy crap! Did my good friend Shen just get access to a cool half million to spend as he pleases? I was excited for Shen, but I was really excited for me because I thought surely I was going to get a call any second inviting me to a celebratory dinner at Nobu. On Shen, of course.
I quickly went to the MacArthur site and learned it was Shen Wei the dancer, not Shen Wei the photographer. Damn it all.
(Shen, you can still take me out to dinner–it’s the genius thing to do.)
In recent years, it seems that “Vernacular Photography” has become a true art form within the photographic and art communities. Classifying old, found photos as such is one thing, but then declaring them to be works of art is something else, is it not?
Wikipedia says this:
Vernacular photography refers to the creation of photographs by amateur or unknown photographers who take everyday life and common things as subjects. Examples of vernacular photographs include travel and vacation photos, family snapshots, photos of friends, class portraits, identification photographs, and photobooth images. Vernacular photographs can also be considered types of “accidental” art, in that they often are unintentionally artistic in some way.
Closely related to vernacular photography is “found photography,” which in one sense refers to the recovery of a “lost,” unclaimed, or discarded vernacular photograph or snapshot. Found photos can be “found” at flea markets, thrift stores, yard sales, estate sales, in dumpsters and trash cans, between the pages of books, or on sidewalks.
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Taking this into account, many people I know, including myself, are vernacular photographers, or at least will be, when we die and people find our boxes of prints and negatives, or our images on Flickr. But is it really art? As we all know, art is in the eye of the beholder, and yes, there are some beautiful vernacular photos out there. But since photography is all about capturing the MOMENT, are some of these better just because they have captured long lost moments that will never exist again, or are they art because they capture our imagination and engage us in some way. I think unless someone is completely clueless with a camera, there always exists the possibility of making a great image. On one hand, I have seen a person with the latest DSLR take shots that are so lacking in aesthetics that I wondered why they even bother; and I have seen amazing works of art taken with Holgas and box cameras. So putting ability aside, if a photograph stimulates us in some way is it art? (Not that kind of stimulation!) - I suppose it is, but I think we have the “lens of nostalgia” affecting how we interpret many of the images from the past. Four examples are presented below.
Is this a work of art?
God I hope not. It’s me from 1975 camping with friends.
Is this a work of art?
Detroit, 1950s.
This one?
New Jersey, 1890s.
Or this one?
Take a guess.
Some Vernacular sites you might be interested in that appeal to ME.
The Found Photo
Square America
Let me know what you think. I’d like to think that many of my photos are works of art. Others are just documentation. But someday, they’ll be vernacular photography…
Ridiculousness from today’s Telegraph:
Seized ‘art porn’ owned by Sir Elton John
A photograph by a controversial American artist which is part of Sir Elton John’s private collection has been seized by police from a gallery on suspicion it may have breached child pornography laws.The image, which featured two young girls one of whom was sitting down with her legs wide apart, was taken by the renowned photographer Nan Goldin.
The shot, from the artist’s Thanksgiving series, was to be exhibited at the Baltic Modern Art gallery, Tyneside, this week along with some of her other work. But the day before it was due to be viewed by the public, police came and removed the image over fears that it might be breaking the law.
