Koreatown Portrait
Leica M-E
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
Mary Ellen Mark at the Leica Gallery in Los Angeles
Reposting this from last summer when Mary Ellen Mark, icon of 20th century documentary photography, presented and discussed images from her incredible career upstairs at the gallery atop the (then) new Leica store in Los Angeles.
The store was and is beautiful. The event was flawlessly executed. Mary Ellen Mark running a slide show (not really, it was a Mac-powered presentation) of her work and talking about it was a moving and humbling experience.
But nothing, of course, matched the thrill of photographing her. During her talk she mentioned that the biggest mistake photographers make is, after they’ve taken a few dozen shots of a subject or situation, thinking they have the shot. She said she works a photographic opportunity to death and that was probably the best advice she could give to photographers.
This is not advice I have ever needed to hear.
After the presentation the great Mary Ellen Mark hung around to meet and chat with members of the audience and sign a few of her books. There were, of course, a number of people snapping pictures of her. I know these kinds of events, the light, the many challenges, etc. It’s why I’ve chosen the Leica M gear that I use with incredibly capable and expensive lenses like the 50mm Summilux 1.4.
I was surprised to see that no other photographer at the Leica gallery was shooting an M – anything. Very surprised. There were X2 and X Varios but not an M that I could see. And consequently, no M glass. Well, at that point a light bulb went off in my head. A talking light bulb. It said, you’re the only photographer here with a camera and lens capable of pulling this off. It’s Mary Ellen Mark. Get to it!
So I started moving around the room, moving in close and low when I could, struggling to hold the camera still on my end and hoping Mary Ellen et. al. didn’t move too much themselves so that I could come away with some sharp images. At first, Mary Ellen paid me no mind. Most everyone there wanted to meet her and set about doing just that. She was very busy and very gracious.
(click for larger view)
I didn’t really want to meet her in a situation such as this. I don’t really count that as actually meeting someone. What would I say beyond expressing my respect and admiration which does very little but force her, in this context, to respond for the fiftieth time in ten minutes. But as I continued to move around stalking my shots I couldn’t help but notice that, after more than one quick glance my way, she actually became a more animated subject.
You sometimes sense that people don’t want their picture taken. But Mary Ellen Mark, as a photographer who has inserted herself into so many desperate and even dangerous situations, shot so many difficult and dramatic human subjects, was familiar with and navigating that tension and resistance and the people projecting it to her long before I ever even picked up a camera with any serious intent.
Mary Ellen did not, thank you very much, project anything like that resistance or tension to me.
So I kept shooting. Adjusting my settings. Trying to think of everything. People were, of course, moving, jostling for position. It’s a crap shoot but you just keep going and going knowing that most of the shots you’re getting are throw aways. In retrospect, I wish I had done a lot of things different. I think I’d had too much caffeine.
This goes on, well, sort of off and on, for about 20 minutes. I’m really the only person there behaving like a photographer, diligently snapping away at this scene. I don’t know how or why that was the case, but it was. Lucky me.
At one point not long before I bailed, the fact that I wasn’t going to approach and meet her no doubt became apparent to her, as was it clearly mutually understood that I was photographing her and she was allowing me to photographer her. Either I had taken her advice to heart or came to the event already in possession of it. And it was at that point that Mary Ellen Mark gave me a look, a very sly smile, with squinted twinkling eyes.
I have that picture but it’s not the most flattering shot. So these will have to do.
Colors of Hollywood Boulevard
Pico Life
My Image Entitled “Gestalt Moment”…
Very excited to learn that the above image, Gestalt Moment, won a spot in the Los Angeles Center for Photography’s first Juried Member’s Exhibition that will run from July 11 – August 12. Over 800 images were submitted and 50 were selected.
I set out to do a number of things in terms of street photography when I embark into the city to make my images. I don’t go out with a single project in mind but after so many years of shooting in Los Angeles I know there are a number of things on the spectrum of possibilities that I can hope to find and document.
This image actually represents a number of those things. First and foremost I think what my photography is about is that it’s psychological. That’s certainly a matter of perception and right or wrong, true or false, I attempt to make images of that which I perceive to be happening in the lives or minds of my subjects. There are certain psychological states which I look for that would be reflected in things like facial expressions or body language and gestures.
This is, of course, extremely subjective. Can I tell what people are thinking by the look on their face? No? Maybe? Sometimes? Does a photograph lie? Of course photographs can be misleading and can seem to show something entirely different from the reality of any situation.
Personally, I’ve never cared too much about the answers to those kinds of questions in relation to my street photography. It is not reportage or photojournalism. I think some of the images selected by Robert Frank for The Americans are possibly very misleading moments. But they advance his narrative and that’s what matters more than the notion that he took a specific image when the moment and time and place were all so oppressively pregnant with the exact point he was attempting to make with his book about America.
Detachment is a theme and a human condition I attempt to capture when I’m shooting street photography. Social detachment. Emotional detachment. Temporary detachment. Literal, metaphorical. I’m open to whatever I can find. Detachment was the unifying theme of the six images I sent in to be considered for the exhibition at the LACP.
Alone, elderly, downward aspect to her gaze, body language that’s slouching away from the world, literally disappearing into a darkened doorway, there’s enough evidence of social and emotional detachment here that I would hope I don’t have to discuss that element in this post or it would end up being 10k words.
Another thing I hope to do, and rarely accomplish, is to tell my little real or imagined social and psychological stories without actually showing someone’s face or revealing their identity. Two of the images I sent in accomplished that and this was one of those.
That’s for both artistic and just very practical reasons but to some extent there are ethical considerations as well. It’s not an easy thing to do by any means. But I can almost feel the exhibition juror looking over street photographs by me or any number of other photographers and (with a sigh of relief) being inclined to choose images that don’t reveal the identity of any human beings. It’s like an ‘ah’ moment. Yes! Thank you! These aren’t legal concerns, maybe, but any number of lesser worries are avoided. So there’s that.
Then there are, it is hoped, things that you cannot plan for or take any credit for whatsoever. The gestalt aspects of this photograph represent nothing less than a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.
To be the photographer who goes into the world seeking out something like this, spending his or her hours searching for opportunities that would, when photographed, represent examples of gestalt? God, I think I’d rather sell my cameras and start a disco band. That’s just not who I am as a photographer.
To those who might not know of gestalt theory or perception. As simply as I can state it, it is a combination of elements, dots, shadows, lines, that taken by the MIND in total, form or represent something other than those elements, dots, shadows, lines, etc.
In this image, you only see this woman’s hat and hair really. A purse strap. It is really the red, yellow, and blue polka-dots on her jacket, and the blocking of light by her legs which tells you her shape, her posture, etc. Those elements allow your mind to ‘see’ the human form of the woman.
That those elements, captured at this moment, reveal her body language, a gestalt perception that to me forms in the mind an expression of her detachment, one of the many things I seek to photograph with my cameras and lenses, is simply off the charts good fortune.
As part of the process of participating in this exhibition and having an image featured I’ve been asked to set a price for this photograph. I think it’s worth $1M. But I don’t want to sell myself short so I’m thinking of asking five. 😉
Thanks for looking!
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Conversation
Forward Emotion
A Drizzle of Dang
Holiday Weekend
Bus Stops of Hollywood Boulevard
Just Want to Smoke Weed
Souls Not For Sale
Green Benches, Western Avenue, Los Angeles, Winter 2014
Wilshire Blvd, Santa Monica, October, 2013
Fingers on the Buttons
Jessica Alba’s Back
I attended a luncheon on Friday that had originally been scheduled at the iconic Beverly Hills Hotel. Well, as the principle owner of the Pink Palace is the Sultan of Brunei, and Brunei has just passed laws permitting the stoning of women for… well… we can stop right there. What else do you think anyone here in LA needed to know? Event cancellations become the norm for the Beverly Hills Hotel and this particular event, The Helping Hands 2014 Mother of the Year awards, was moved to the Beverly Hilton.
Anyway, Jessica Alba was awarded 2014 Mother of the Year. We all sat down and ate our lunch and I, of course, had no idea that the movie star was sitting about ten feet directly behind me. I was there as a guest and I couldn’t stalk the situation for shots or even make myself obvious to anyone. My Leica M-E is discreet, that’s for sure. But I wasn’t able to get up from my seat and take images.
Nevertheless, I was able to grab a handful but certainly nothing to write home about. I sure hope the shots at least get you in the room for a moment. 😉
Thank you!
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Tupac’s Dead, Don’t Look So Surprised
Earth Tones
Bus Schedule
Not Fargo
Faces of Beverly Hills
Monique & Joe Know…
What Sandwich Are You?
California Girls
Pitch a Wang Dang Doodle
The Orange Life
Visions of Orange
Happy Easter!
Costume Shop, Santa Monica, Easter 2014
East Hollywood Liquor Store and Bus Stop, April 14, 2014
Pico Boulevard and La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, California, April 13, 2014
Art, Documentary, or News: Photography and Racial Politics
That title suggests a lot, I know. These are amazing times online. There are at any point, almost surely simultaneous, multiple battles occurring in larger cultural wars over things like racial and sexual politics. The recent Stephen Colbert – Suey Park skirmish was fascinating, the back and forth analysis provided me, at least, with an education in the current taxonomy of racial and gender politics at least framed by a small subset of the larger culture.
Anyway, so it now falls on photography to fire our interest and further the fine-tuning of all of our racial and political sensibilities. Here specifically, in the article I’m linking to, the analysis turns towards two different presentations of the same photographs taken (obviously) by the same photographer and how those presentations differ and cross many lines. Some that are probably okay to cross and some that are, increasingly, not.
None of us really want to offend with our photographs or our presentation of them, or to have our work frowned upon by those who are more in-tuned, sometimes by way of professional experience and sometimes by way of their own personal experiences, to the myriad and shifting protocols surrounding photography that involves the lives of people who are not us. Whoever we may be.
Okay that was tricky. I have included a bunch of MY recent images that I do (or do NOT) think work well with this subject matter. (I refuse to say. ;-)) But I repeat, these are NOT the images referred to in the articles. These are my own images, taken yesterday in downtown Los Angeles. By me.
I would love to hear what others here have to say about all of this. Please feel free to jump in. I think one place to start, maybe most obviously, is what is the responsibility of photographers to click the shutter, or not, when seeing realities that also represent stereotypes in his or her viewfinder. That would be a starting point for one discussion, actually. The blurred line betweens art and documentary photography, presentation and commentary, etc., all are other fascinating angles as well. Anyway.
Here is a quote that describes what the writer of this piece does in the linked article. It’s a great idea. The result itself might elicit a more mixed response from readers.
Below, I step through the images that Politico ran, juxtaposing the caption of the photo from Raab’s site with the Politico caption with a brief comment on how that copy effects the meaning of the picture.
via Art Photography vs. News Photography: Politico, Race and the “Other Washington” — BagNews.
Apropos of Nothing at All
The Troubles I Have Seen
mister mojo risin’
Secrets of Hollywood
Let the Sunshine In
Miss Thai Town Los Angeles 2014
Electra
Alas, It Was Not Meant to Be
This very nice image aside, the Leica 75 APO-Summicron 2.0 ASPH lens I bought yesterday was a disappointment. I took it to a great Leica repair expert and he found no issues with the rangefinder or the focusing. But something wasn’t right. It was a used lens. Sometimes you win sometimes you lose. Back to the store it went. If I ordered this lens from B&H new I’m sure it would be stellar. It’s just that this one wasn’t. I’m kind of crushed, actually. Oh well. Sure does make me appreciate how fortunate I am to have some kit that really really hits the mark and satisfies my admittedly picky nature when it comes to lens performance. C’est la vie.
The Boys in the Band
Meet the Newest Member of My Family
No, not Rika, my main Leica pimp at BelAir Camera! It’s a new lens. The 75mm APO-Summicron 2.0 ASPH. Here NOT shown at its best, unfortunately. NO not because of Rika. Behave yourselves! It’s because I shot at ISO 160 which brought my shutter speed down to an arrogant 1/30th of a second. Too slow for my excited hands in that light. So you don’t really see the incredible sharpness of the glass wide open. But… uh… you do see the color and contrast of this incredible tool. Thank you and good morning!
Construction Zone
Star Gazing
Under the Banyan Tree
Sunday Was Soft and Warm
Ain’t That Peculiar
Dani California
50'Lux 
