Memoirs of a Photographer (Chapter 2)

May 212013
 

Photographer’s Memoir Part 2

I get to work in a PR firm and more

[In previous chapter, I had left grad. film school to carried sandbags for low-budget feature films; worked my way up to focus puller and then lighting director; quit that to write scripts; sold one feature film; had the star die before production began; ran out of money; and found myself as a secretary at a large public relations firm in New York]

At that time,  it was unusual for a guy to be a secretary.  And although you might think that it was fun, it wasn’t.  Secretaries, and administrative assistants, were the slaves of the organization.  I was at a the PR Firm – and one of my jobs (this is after finishing school at NYU MFA) and working on film sets, was to get coffee for whoever needed it.  If there was a conference in the morning I needed to enter the room first and prepare coffee and danish and maybe bagels.  I found this to be the worst part of the job.

And after having fallen so far down, so quickly, I began to suffer from panic attacks.  Panic attacks are common in my family.  I once did a family tree, putting red dots next to the branches that suffered from any sort of mental illness, and almost the entire tree was red.  My father always walked around with valium in his pockets.  And my mother was simply a phobic though artistic woman.  When I first got my driving license I had to drive her to her psychiatrist since she was terrified of driving.

My own phobias were numerous: I know realize I had social anxiety; fear of being stuck in a crowded subway car (pretty common in NYC); terrified of pretty girls; and the ultimate terror would be the dentist or a close tie with the doctor.  Maybe I’ll write an entire chapter on family phobias later – but for now – let’s just say that if I had my choice between having a severe anxiety attack where you faint – or being mildly depressed for a while (and don’t think I haven’t had this conversation with family members) we all agreed that depression would be preferable.  But anyway…

So it wasn’t surprising that I was unhappy bringing coffee and danishes for the bosses who were younger than I was brought me back to that anxious state of feeling like a complete and utter failure.

All of a sudden I found myself chained to a typewriter (yes that far back) and my three bosses would buzz me; and generally I would be asked to type up a press release, or call people to set up a meeting.

And as I say, I hadn’t suffered from panic attacks too often – but I began to feel sick to my stomach as I entered the skyscraper.  The periodontist who was scraping my gums in my off time had given me a few 5 mg valium tablets, and I broke them up into four tiny bits and took one at the start of a day, finding that it helped.

But there was something to be discovered there.  The trio of PR agents I worked for were mostly responsible for training authors on how to present themselves during t.v. interviews.

Did you know that when you see so-and-so, unless they are very famous and have done this before, there are mock studios all over the world for them to train in and getting “news” placed in the newspapers or t.v.  You’d be amazed at how much of what you see as news (even today) is really just PR firms pushing products or personalities.

There were  mock t.v. interviews for new authors.  For a special appearance – there were mock studios with actual audiences to make noise and clap and get the author used to being in front of a crowd.

I can remember seeing an author walk into our mock studio, and my boss asking me to get coffee and danish and I brought them in and there were mock t.v. cameras made from cardboard, I think – maybe plastic – and – well you get the idea.

A few days later I saw the same writer being interviewed on one of the morning shows.

* * *

Don’t worry, there’s a connection between all this PR stuff and how I fell back into photography.   I wasn’t shooting at that time.

Early on, I asked my friend Lester what I should do.  That I was just very unhappy.  He advised me to quit.  I had saved enough money to last a few months and look for something else; but after being so broke for so long, I was afraid to quit.

Instead, I found a psychiatrist.  It was my first session.  And it was cheap.  These were actually psychiatrists in training.  But I made my way to the clinic every Tuesday evening.

Strange place.  For one thing you had to sign in when you arrived, and the sign-in pad was there for anyone to see.

One day I noticed that someone had signed in as David Beckerman.

Weird.  Not me.  But of all things, there was another David Beckerman in New York – and he was also going to this place.  I asked one of the ancient clerks who sat behind the barred cage if they had ever seen this David Beckerman – and did what did he look like.

That they wouldn’t tell me, but they did say that they had noticed the fact that there were two David Beckerman’s, and that we were both seeing the same therapist and how confusing that must be for all concerned.

Fortunately, they said that my double didn’t look anything like me.  He was, they said, very short – probably about five feet tall – and had blue eyes.

Whereas I was tall and skinny (about six foot) with brown eyes.  However, as time went on, I became more curious about this other David Beckerman and one day while waiting for my session, it turned out that he had rescheduled his appointment for the following day (Weds morning).

I don’t know what I thought I was going to find out about him.  David is a pretty common name.  But the idea that we were both seeing the same therapist – that was definitely weird.

I decided that I would call in sick the next day, and see if I could pick this guy out when he went to the therapy session.   And it was at this point, that I had the brilliant idea of pulling my old SLR out of the closet – and I still had a pretty good telephoto lens – and my plan was to get there early (his appointment was for 9 a.m.) and at the very least take a snap of him when he arrived.

This was the first time I had taken the camera from the bag for a very long time and turned out to be how I got back into photography for what I’ll call the second time.  It was crazy what it lead to.

[to be continued in Memoirs of a Photographer Chapter 3

 

 

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Using Your DSLR with View Camera

May 132013
 

While browsing through digital backs, looking at costs etc. for a large format camera, I came across several interesting (and new to me) ways that you can get the full benefit of tilts, swings, etc. without buying one of the very expensive digital backs.  There are actually two versions of this idea that I found interesting.  The one above, and a second type of Horseman gizmo which has four spots to put the DSLR so that they can easily be stitched together.

The basic idea of both types of bellow adapters is that you buy the system which is around $2K, and use it with either a medium or a view camera lens so that you have a larger image circle to work with.  So rather than having to work with the much smaller image circle of say a 35mm tilt lens (also expensive) you could buy a relatively inexpensive large format lens, and attach your (in this case Canon) Eos camera to the adapter and tilt, swing, and tilt as you like.

Here’s a link to this Horseman LD View Camera.

And here’s a link to the Horseman VCC Pro View with four places to attach the DSLR so that the image can easily be stitched.

I haven’t done a bit of research about the pros / cons of this system other than reading through the descriptions – but I did find it fascinating as costs for full digital backs are way beyond my means not to mention that I never like the idea of spending tons on a digital product as it is bound to be obsolete pretty quickly.  In these cases, as you buy your next DSLR, you don’t need to be concerned that it won’t work with these viewfinder systems.  Almost makes me wish I hadn’t sold all my large format lenses.

Would love to hear from anyone that’s tried one of these systems – or investigated them at all.

 

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Cherry Blossoms Central Park (composite)

May 082013
 

Cherry Blossoms - Central Park Spring

This is another composite picture made up of about 50 separate images, and stitched with APG.  This was one of those magical places in Central Park that I hadn’t seen before.  It was (is) on the East Side Drive – across from the eatery and lake (to the right).  Again, as I’ve said with many of the composites, I just don’t think it translates well to a small web image – but let’s just say that the original file is about 10,000 pixels by 14,000 pixels after being cropped.

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Canon 4ti and Canon 5ti?

May 042013
 

I happen to have and use the Canon 4ti.  The other day a friend called up to ask for advise about a camera called the Canon 5ti.  I went over to B&H Photo site and looked them both up, and at first, other than the slightly higher price for the 5Ti I couldn’t see any difference.

Same size files, same processor, same size…  At first glance everything seemed to be the same.  So I brought up both spec sheets (seen below).

Canon T5i

Anyone notice what the big change is?

 

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The Digital Silver Imaging Kickstarter Campaign

May 012013
 

I’m not often in the position to donate to worthy causes – but this is one that I felt strongly enough about to donate $45.  And you know it’s a good deal because you get to do an 11 x 14 fiber silver print.  I really want DSI to live long and prosper and to be able to make large silver prints because that’s what designers often want.  So if DSI can afford to purchase this large (to me it’s a black box) that can do extremely large true silver gelatin prints – I can only say, wow that would be great and I’d be able to offer those prints to designers and hopefully one day museums.

Here’s the link to the Kickstart Campaign for the super large silver gelatin machine (as I call it).  For me this is the best of all worlds.  I’m able to make corrections once, in Photoshop or your post processor of choice – and then do your prints on true Ilford Silver Gelatin paper.  I’ve seen the prints, and they’re better than I could do with straight darkroom techniques.

I’m also starting to change my site so that I can also offer Silver prints in addition to the Ultrachrome prints (which are good but just aren’t silver fiber which is still the standard).

 

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Pano Composites etc.

Apr 242013
 

I’ve started to add the panos which I now call composites to the store.  They’re not in panoramic form of 2 x 1, and people just don’t consider them panos, so I came up with Composites.

Anyway, that’s not why I started to write this post.  I just wanted to give you an example of the degree of detail available and the size of some of these things.  This is not even a particularly large one.  So first here’s the shot you see on the web, which I’m calling A Hazy Shade of Winter.

Think about it.  Shot with a 50mm lens.  Huge. And every bit of it is in perfect focus.

And here’s what a 100% piece looks like with the Lightroom Info.  Remember – this is without any interpolation.

 

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What is Pano?

Apr 202013
 

I may have made a mistake in calling all these images that have been stitched together with Giga Pano software – panoramics or panos.  At least that is the idea that several people have written to me about.  It’s true that many of the images I’ve been doing are composed of from 6 to 60 separate shots – but they aren’t usually in the Panoramic Aspect which I suppose is about length 2 by height 1 or the other way around.

The early attempts were more or less class panoramics – long to short ratios with wide angle lenses (mostly) and maybe showing 180 or 360 degrees of a scene.  There’s no doubt those are recognized as panos.  But what happens when you take that pano that was originally composed of 60 images and you project it using the planar projection so that lines in the middle are rather straight – and you crop off the edges where the planar projection tends to get blurry.  Is it still a pano if it’s now in a 4 x 5 ratio.

It seems as if you could call it a montage – but that’s really film talk.  And a collage – it’s not that.  Anyway – calling them panos has confused a bunch of people who say, “Where’s the pano – I don’t see it.”

And then you have this shot which is on the line… 12 images with a 20mm lens… and not cropped.  It’s not the aspect ratio of a pano, but the effect of viewing 180 degrees without much distortion is a possibility with pano.  So just chime in if you have an idea.

Central Park South – Storm

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