Serpentine Shadow
LA Woman Sunday Afternoon
Strip Mall Corner: Sepulveda and Pico Blvds, Los Angeles, CA
Tif Sigfrids
Colorella
Heat
Klaatu Barada Nikto!
Turquoise Ford
Beverly Hills Art Fair, 5/16/09
Words on Glass
Corner Window: Beverly Hills, CA 1/30/2010
Black Beret
New York Times: Photography as a Balm for Mental Illness
donald barnat – 50lux.com
Seems that maybe there is, in this eye-opening piece on NYTimes.com, a blurring of the lines between what is thought of as mental illness and what might be considered emotional or other behavioral problems and issues. But nevertheless I’m glad they cast a wide enough net to include many of us and I’m thinking this might be a very interesting ongoing subject to discuss here or amongst any group of creative people.
(I didn’t feel comfortable using an image belonging to one of the photographers profiled in this article without permission so I used one of mine. It is in no way a commentary on nor are the subjects pictured in any way associated with this article.)
To the casual observer, Danielle Hark was living an enviable life, with a devoted husband, a new baby and work she enjoyed as a freelance photo editor. But she was so immobilized by depression that she could barely get out of bed. Her emotional state could not be explained in postpartum terms — she had suffered from debilitating depression for most of her life, and ultimately received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder when her daughter was a year old.
Lounging in Orange
Flag of the Republic
Fussing
If Looks Could Kill
All Hat, No Cattle
Half Akimbo 2
Half Akimbo
Water Garden
Underpass
Fourteen
Sun Shadow
B-duh-zee-ooh!
LACP Juried Member’s Exhibition Opens Tonight!
No, this untitled shot from 2008 isn’t what I’m showing. But I’m extremely proud to have an image selected for this landmark event in Southern California photography taking place at the Los Angeles Center of Photography’s Hollywood gallery location. The exhibition will run through August 12 and features 49 works by what is I’m sure a wide range of local photographic talent.
Details are as follows:
LACP Grand Opening & First Annual Members’ Show!
Today at 7:00pm
1515 Wilcox Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90028
Buddy
La Cienega Blvd. Los Angeles, 10/31/10
Thai Dishes
Remembering a nice afternoon a few years ago with our friends at Thai Dishes in Santa Monica. Leica 50mm 2.0 Summicron showing what a lovely lens it is.
Hard Candy
Western Avenue, L.A., 7/6/2014
Inside My Mind Right Now
Inside my mind right now it looks like this image. Except for National Geographic anything. They are not involved in any way. I have an incredible idea for a photographic project bordering on a life’s mission. It consumes every moment I’m online. I won’t talk about it publicly until I’m really well into actually shooting it but a huge part of it is research and planning.
As I’ve admitted in an earlier post, I have become ambivalent towards my LA street photography, a condition that comes at a very odd time considering one of my images will be featured in an exhibition at the Los Angeles Center of Photography. Printing, preparing, and presenting that image for exhibition was rewarding and a somewhat challenging experience that has led me to a different and much better place in terms of my own ability to get my images into a state where they can be viewed and sold.
I have now probably many dozens of images that I’ve been taking in the last month that I’m somehow unable to bring myself to share here. I don’t know why. The only thing I can offer is some vague feeling that they just aren’t good enough or don’t say any of the things I’ve typically wanted my images to say. I’ve had a feeling over the last year or so that I was in some kind of a sweet spot that might not last forever. I don’t know. Maybe I was right.
I really want to thank the many people, friends now, who have visiting and liked and commented on this blog over the last two years and ask for patience as I work through whatever it is I’m going through. You’re probably going to continue to see a lot of much older photography that I’ve done because while I’ve kind of grown kind of cold on the photography I’ve been doing lately, I’m simultaneously feeling a real appreciation and need to revisit and maybe even talk about all the stuff I used to do.
Anyway. The image above was taken yesterday, ironically and appropriately. Please know also that if you see current street photography here on this blog in the coming days and weeks, that I’m as dubious about its quality and worthiness as I possibly could be. To be perfectly honest.
Window on the Street
Chinatown
Long Board
Detroit Street Photographers at Marianne Boesky and Marlborough Chelsea Galleries
“Another Look at Detroit: Parts 1 and 2,” which opens Thursday and runs through Aug. 8 at the Marianne Boesky and Marlborough galleries, takes place at a crucial turning point for a city that has had so many illusory turning points over the years. The city’s federal bankruptcy case heads to trial in mid-August, a reckoning that will give Detroit a fresh start but will also determine the fate of the Detroit Institute of Arts, whose collection, under siege by the city’s creditors, has become the symbolic heart of the battle between Detroit’s financial future and its cultural past.
via Detroit Artists at Marianne Boesky and Marlborough Chelsea Galleries – NYTimes.com.
Happy Birthday, Mrs. 50Lux!!!
Happy Birthday, Sweetie!!!
To know you is to know someone special,
Someone with a warm and thoughtful way
Of making life especially nice for others
And adding so much sunshine to each day…
To know you is to want you to be happy
To have your every wish and dream come true
And so, not just at birthday time, but always,
You’re wished the best that life can bring to you!
Love you! Have a great day!
Koreatown Portrait
Couch Potato
Beverly Hills in Black and White
Pulling more images from the old Nikon days. These are in the range of five to ten years old. Hope they’ve aged as well as some of the subjects.
Blur from the Past
I have to admit I’m burning out on the street photography I’ve been doing for the last few years. So there’s probably going to be a lot of blasts from the pasts here on 50lux.com for quite some time. Anything and everything.
Here, with a color goosing and frame filter from Exposure 5 is an absolutely ancient digital image that I actually have framed on my living room wall. I don’t know why but there was a time when shooting blur pictures at night had a magic feel to it.
Taken so long ago with a Nikon Coolpix 950. 😉
Silly Rabbit
Memories of Rio
As I’m typing this, Russia and Belgium are scoreless in the 82nd minute in the stadium in Rio. Yes, I wish I was there. The afternoon we went to Corcovado was incredible. Finding my scattered images from those days is, however, an incredible pain. Anyway… GOOD LUCK… to Team USA later today as we take on Portugal! Happy Sunday to everyone.
Not Daguerreotypes
Everywhere a Sign
Horace Silver
Long live Horace Silver. My favorite.
I’m no great shakes as a musician. But when you’ve internalized someone’s music their loss is felt that much more. That I can tell you today.
Maybe 15 years ago I recorded a bunch of jazz standard lead sheets for a friend back home. Just a one afternoon with nothing better to do project for a friend. Here is the Horace Silver portion of that inadequate effort.
A New Leica M-E is Coming! Happy Dance (and a bit of a confession from me…)
Some of the images in this post were made with a Leica M7 and Fujifilm 400 and some were made with a Leica M-E. This isn’t a test or a game. They’re just so wonderfully close and that result is so typical of the M-E that I thought I’d sweeten this news with a graphic demonstration of why I’m so happy with the Leica M-E and the news that follows.
Incredibly excited beyond any words today to hear this. Please click on the link at the bottom to the great Leica News & Rumors blog for more info.
But I have to say, one reason I’m so happy to hear this is that I can now really open up about how happy I am with the Leica M-E. And the selfish reason I didn’t do that to the extent that I wanted to is because my understanding is that Leica was discontinuing production of the M-E and that the CCD based Leica would be no more. Thus stock would dwindle and I might not ever get my hands on a new replacement let alone the half dozen I dream of having in rotation when I get back in the game of making money with a camera. I love this camera. I’m incredibly excited to hear that it will live on. As should be every single photographer on this planet.
Because this is a camera. Plain and simple. (Reminds me of the line from Julius Caesar spoken by Marc Antony over the slain leader’s dead body. Something like, “Here lies a Caesar. When comes such another?”) That’s how good of a picture taking image making machine is this Leica CCD camera and now we know when comes such another. Simple. Incredible. Film-like results. Film like ISO performance which, given the glass you can place on the thing, is and always has been plenty adequate. Anyway, as we used to say back in the 80s here in LA, I’m fucking stoked!
If this rumor is correct, this would be a clever move from Leica since many people prefer the specific look of the photos taken with the 18MP CCD sensor.
via Leica rumored to announce a M-E camera replacement | Leica News & Rumors.
Portrait of a Street Photographer
19 Pages of Famous Leica Photographers and their Cameras – NewOldTime
Incredible! Mary Ellen Mark did not just show up at the Leica Gallery in LA lovely but apparently was a lovely person prior to last summer. Who knew? And she actually DID shoot Leica cameras. What a shocker that is. (kidding. well… )
HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON: “Arrogant Purpose” 1947 | AMERICAN SUBURB X
Absolutely one of my favorite places online, American Suburb X. Please click on the link to a great bit of writing from all the way back in 1947 that accompanied an exhibition of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s work at the Whitney.
Excerpt from Review of the Whitney Annual and Exhibitions of Picasso and Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Nation, 5 April 1947
The unusual photographs of the French artist, Henri Cartier-Bresson, also at the Museum of Modern Art, provide an object lesson too – in how photography can assimilate the discoveries of modern painting to itself without sacrificing its own essential virtures. One thing that painting since Manet has emphasized is that a picture has to have a “back”. It cannot simply fade off in depth into nothingness; every square millimeter of picture space, even empty sky, must play a positive role. This, Cartier-Bresson, like his fellow-photographer Walker Evans, has learned preeminently.
via HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON: “Arrogant Purpose” 1947 | AMERICAN SUBURB X.
50'Lux 