Digital or Film Black and White (poll)

Jun 182013
 

This began with the following question on LinkedIn:

B+W film photography is an art form that will survive and thrive despite the digital age.

It’s in a locked group, but maybe you can get in: Art Photography

But even if you can’t get in – you can still use the test I put together on G+ (open to the public):

G+ : Is it Film or Digital (reminds me of an old radio ad).

 

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DaveBeckerman/posts/A8DNsGfXYEP

I’m curious as to what you all think – though maybe it’s more fair if it were prints you were looking at.

Dave

 

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East River Night (pano)

Jun 182013
 

Composed of 56 images. 2 x 1 ratio Panorama. This can easily be blow up to 40 x 20 feet. I’m going to start adding the panoramics and composites to the store, showing the largest size they can be blown up to without losing quality.

This particular one took about a week to complete. It was mostly my own fault as it was an early attempt, and shot at night, and I made a mistake the first time I did this one: (good tip) I kept the Image Stabilization (ISP) turned on while the camera was on the tripod. This is a very bad idea – as the camera is locked in place and this interferes with the IS. In other words – I had to go back the second night to re-shoot.

also – I realized the first night that you need a penlight, or Smartphone flash light to be able to read all the degree stuff on the rotator head to setup the clicks properly. So the second night was easier.

Bit even with that I had trouble figuring out the overlapping using a longer lens than was usual forme. I ended up doing that by eye, and it worked pretty well. 56 images and it all fit together properly like a jigsaw puzzle (thank you Kolor AGP)

After that – the colorizing took me forever to figue out.

But that sas the most fun for me. I love playing wi

th the density and color in these types of slightly . And then of course, it took a longer time because I had to keep creating new “flat” files so that I could work on relatively small 8-bit file first and then do the remasking etc. on the larger file. I do have money to upgrade my Mac Pro – but I’m waiting to read more aout the new futuristic Mac Pro (the cylanders) with thunderbolt and all that. In the meantime – I upgraded to Mountain Lion so that I could download the new version of Lightroom 5.

Am also inching my way towards picking up the Canon 6D. It’s a full-frame DSLR for u Thee’s ben a lot ofierest (and a few ad nder $2K. Also has a “quiet” shutter mode; and very useful (high ASA) mode. With a good wide-angle lens, I can begin to fool around with hand-held 360 degree panos.

Oh – adn here’s the latest half-pano. These panos and composites are getting a lot of interest, and a few sales though they’e ot even in te store yet. I might sell them by the square foot.

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Memoirs – Chapter 5

May 312013
 

Chapter 5 in which I find that I have to go back to the past to show the present and talk about my mother – Sara

When I read memoirs or autobiographies, this is generally the chapter or chapters that I skip. It seems as I read through what I’ve got so far, I’ve given you the bun without the hamburger. Yes, this is the part I’ve put off because you really don’t want to jump back to grandparents and all that unless it’s relevant and well – you don’t want to make private lives public.

But it turns out, that you can’t – well let’s just say that you should feel free to skim over this chapter because I’m going to talk about two major rocks that were tossed in the family lake that have ripples right down through the generations.

I am using real names, and I’m not so sure that’s a good idea either. Though most of the people who could be hurt by any of this are dead.

My mother’s side of the family are Russian Jews. That last part – the Jewish thing is important because although my maternal grandfather – Charles – had a good job in the Moscow Symphony Orchestra as first or possibly only Oboist – and although my mother’s family were at least connected with what was the equivalent in those days of a chain of bookstores in Moscow – they had to leave because Jews were being drafted and used as canon fodder.

At that point, they only had the two daughters and somehow they all made it out of Russia (like many other Jews) and escaped pogroms and there are the stories of hiding in the cellar as the Cossacks came through town and all that… but they arrived in New York and my grandfather – once a prestigious musician – became a house painter.

It’s a familiar story – and it goes on to this day with immigrants.

But – the kicker is that he was determined to renew his musical dreams through his children. And though this sounds like the Goldilocks story – it goes something like this:

A year after Charles and Lisa arrived in New York, my mother Sara was born. In the meantime, grandfather Charles (a neat tidy little man who always wore a bow-tie and clean suit) began to try and teach the two older girls the piano.

Nothing came from it. Luckily for them – they had no musical ability at all. If they had even had a bit I’m sure Charles would’ve kept at them.

And along comes Sara who at the age of two or three (that kind of thing is never really clear) is able to hum along with Charles and remember tunes. The point being that she had inherited his gift, and maybe even more than he had it. She was the wunderchild – the prodigy – the prayed for miracle. And it doomed her.

It’s another one of those pretty old stories of the frustrated and harsh father pouring all his dreams into his child – and the amazing thing is that for a while it worked. My mother began taking piano lessons while she was barely able to sit on piano bench. And as time went by, her talent was recognized and there were other Russian teachers that wanted to have a crack at the gifted kid.

After she died, one of the things I kept were the piano books from her childhood. I should scan a few to give you an idea of the harshness of the Russian teachers she studied with. The wounding pencil marks about the classical piano pieces – and you can even see that on one page the pencil must have torn through the page and broke off because there’s a scratch that goes clear through the page.

I know from talking to my mom, that these years were a horror. Besides going to regular school, all the rest of her time was spent either performing like a trained dog (her words) or taking piano lessons, or practicing.

It was nerve-wracking and it used to cause her to vomit (there is no polite way of saying that is there mom?) before her piano lessons. Especially when she was a pre-teen and giving performances.

I’ll make this short – by the time she was 12 – she had played at Carnegie Hall with the emperor of the violin (at that time) Joseph Heifetz. And by the time she was 14, she had played on a coast to coast radio broadcast. And hard pieces. You know – Liszt and all that.

And when she was 15, she skipped her first lesson. Just never showed up. Her father took a leather strop to her. She declared her independence and no matter how she was beat – would not touch the piano again.

In her 20′s and 30′s she would play popular pieces for fun at parties – but she wouldn’t play classical music again until shortly before her death. And that upbringing. The sense that it engendered in her of not being loved for yourself but for what you could do. Whatever it did to her, she would become a woman who was strong in many ways – and also terrified of so many things that she would end up in therapy – the real lie on the couch 5 days a week psychotherapy for almost her entire life.

Her fear of what certain men could do, and search for a protector was one of the reasons she ended up with my father. So there’s ripple number one – because on the surface – a more unlikely couple you just couldn’t make it up.

As soon as I was able to drive, I was the one assigned to drive my mother to the psychiatrists on Pelham Parkway in the Bronx because she couldn’t drive. I’d sit there for the hour. She’d usually come downstairs with a tissue in her hand – and you could see she’d been crying. We never talked about what went on in those sessions other than to say she spent most of the time talking about her early days with Charles.

As I said at the beginning – this is the part you might want to skip over as you say what does it have to do with the story – but whatever talent I have – and it came through in various artistic ways (yes, I too took piano lessons with grandpa Charles!) it came from my mother. At least the genetic part.

And I can tell you that although my Grandpa Charles was an old man – when I knew him – at least when you are seven years old he seemed ancient – he scared the heck out of me.

Growing up, we always had a grand piano in the house. As I say, my mother wouldn’t play classical music on it – but for parties she could play any of the popular pieces for people to dance to by ear. She had what they call Perfect Pitch. That means that you could ask her to sing any note, and she could hit it immediately. In other words she could hear it in her head.

It turned out that I had Relative Pitch. Which meant that for example if someone sang a middle C and asked me to sing a third or a fourth above it or below it – I could do that easily. I could hear it in my head and sing it. And I began college as a music major (though that’s a story for another time).

But when Charles sat down with you at the piano, he had his red bow-tie on, and his hair was dyed almost a dark blonde color, and there was a handkerchief in his jacket pocket – in other words he was – at least for his time – dandified – although he was a house painter.

(I have to tell you – from what I’ve heard he was one heck of a house painter. Remind me to tell you the story about how Grandpa Charles and my paternal Grandfather – Max once worked together on a house. The original odd couple).

But back to the piano lesson with Charles. Now sit straight. Place your hands slightly above the keys in a ball. Each finger like a piston – ready to strike. No – not like that. In a ball. Okay, that’s better. Now I’m going to hold this ruler above your fingers as you play. Your knuckles should just brush against it.

And the music was in front of me and the ruler held just so – and there were many times I was rapped with that ruler; many times he’d talk to me sternly – that I wasn’t really trying. I was trying – and he kept at it with me for an hour or so once a week and it’s true – I learned to read music and play the piano – but honestly – when I was about twelve I went to take banjo lessons in the west village and that was the end of the Charles experience.

The point to wrap up this chapter – where I thought I’d get to my father’s story which is much more complex – and in my mind much sadder – is that my mother grew up wounded – but loaded with talent. Not only with music but she painted, sculpted – and could improvise on the piano as well as most jazz pianists I knew. But she wouldn’t touch classical music again – although she bought us phonograph records with the stories of the great classical musicians and we’d fall asleep in our apartment on University Avenue – the place where we were the poorest – to the sound of Liszt dying and the music swelling.

Okay – let me get to my father’s side of the family.

####

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A Night to Remember (chapter 4)

May 302013
 

) It’s a little bit messy, but you can read the first four chapters of a rambling but true memoir on Google + (

https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/%23memoirdlb

Before I dropped out of grad film school, guess what – I dropped out of college.  I had one semester left at the SUNY at Buffalo.  I just couldn’t see any purpose in having the diploma, and I always wanted to be somewhere else.

And so, I dropped out.  I had no money (as usual) and decided to hitch back to New York from Buffalo.  If you don’t know the state, Buffalo is about as far from the Bronx as you can get and still be in New York.

It was a cold gloomy day, typical for a Buffalo winter.  I had my things in a duffel bag.  No computers or cell phones back then. Just clothes and a few books.

I got a ride to the Thruway pretty fast and a few rides further I was near Oswego and then my luck gave out and as it got dark, I was shivering on the side of the main highway, praying for a ride.

And so I was thrilled when a big black cadillac slowed down and then pulled over ahead of me.  I grabbed the duffel and went running towards it.

Just one guy in there and he looked friendly enough, although at that point I might’ve gotten into a car with anyone.  And he introduces himself as – sorry – whoever you were but I don’t exactly remember names 30 years later.  But let’s just say his name was Joe.  And he’s going another hundred miles or so.

Long story short – I don’t remember much about the ride – but he invited me to stay at his house overnight and get a fresh start in the morning.  Sounded good.  Car pulls into the driveway of a green (that I do remember) wooden two-story home, maybe from the thirties.  I hear dogs barking in the backyard.

We come in – and walk directly into the kitchen where there are three girls (yes, we called them girls in those days) about my age, that he says he’s renting rooms to.

I was very shy around girls in those days and they were doing most of the talking – I was just listening.  I do remember, and this is strange after all this time that the girl next to me was called Gloria and that she had done all the cooking.  I also remember that they had my favorite food for dinner – beef stew.  Strange to remember that.

Okay.  Forget all that.  I’m trying to get to the point of the story, if there is one.

And yes, there is one.

When I left college, I was about 20 years old.  I had told my father the day before, and they had tried to talk me out of it, but I had my mind made up.  I was going to come back to New York and be a writer.

What, you say?  A writer?  What’s next, a ballet dancer.

No.  It’s true.  The first thing I wanted to be was a writer.  And unfortunately for me I found myself hanging out in Buffalo with other kids who wanted to be writers and this one kid Glen (that is his real name) who was already published.

I believe, that’s what set me off.  And anyway, they say that guy’s brains aren’t really fully formed until they’re in their late twenties and Socrates wrote that you should never allow someone to be a philosopher until they were in their forties.

So it was really Glen that kept saying things like, “man, you’re just wasting your time here…”  or, “any writer worth his salt would be doing interesting stuff already…”

The whole hitch hiking thing was big back then.  We didn’t worry about maniacs behind the wheel.  We really didn’t.

I probably could’ve afforded to take a bus back to the city, but I did want to be a writer and a writer needed to get a lot of experience.  That was common knowledge.

Well, I did have an experience that night.  Joe showed me up to a small room on the second floor near the stairs and I remember thanking him and he was saying that he’d be gone early…

Actually, now I remember – it wasn’t a room – it was the attic, and yes there were stairs that lead up to it (let the editor cut out the other stuff later about the room) and a small window and a cot and it was dusky.  And guess what – I was keeping a journal at that time – to be a writer – and I still have the journals from back then.  So just to refresh my memory – I found the day, and what I wrote about coming back to New York.

“January 4, 1972 – Miserable ride home. Wet. Cold.  Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”

Then I write about the fight with my father the night before and it just breaks off in the middle with a big dash and…

What happened was this.  While I was writing, I heard low chanting that sounded as if it were outside my door.  It wasn’t really scary, but there was also some sort of aromatic smell and a very very slight scratching on the ladder that lead up to the attic opening.

Frankly, I was afraid to turn the light off.  I still had my clothes on and I basically sat on the edge of the bed straining to hear what the words were.

Somehow, given how tired I was and the chanting faded out, and I managed to fall asleep, though I kept the lamp on.

Of course there’d be no point in telling the story if that’s how it ended, so what happens next?  I awakened, around midnight I would guess by more chanting.  Whereas before it seemed to be mostly female, now there’s a male voice as well that I recognize as Joe’s voice.

Okay, well, that’s enough for me.  One thing I know is that I won’t be staying there that night.  I throw the journal (got have experiences, right) in the duffel and as quietly as I can, damned creaky floorboards, look down the ladder to the second floor which is empty and before you know it I’m on the second floor.

It’s obvious that the chants are coming from the living room which is just near the kitchen and that in order to sneak out of the house, I’m going to have to walk right by where the chanting emanates from.

I creep down the stairway, as slowly and quietly as I can and as I’m halfway down I pull back a little because I can just get a glimpse of whatever is going on in the living room and the glimpse I got scared the crap out of me.

I don’t know if what I saw was really that scary; I see many similar things on t.v. today and they don’t’ scare me; but in 1972, it was scary to see a bunch of witches and a warlock (if that’s what you’d call him) sitting around the pentagram chanting.

Maybe if I knew them better it wouldn’t be so scary but in those days – you did have Manson and some other horrors in the back of your head; and I was frozen on that step.

I wasn’t sure what to do.  To get out of the place, I’d have to pass them.  Two of the girls would surely be facing me.

There was a screen door, and the main door to open.  A lot of wood to walk by.  And even once I got out to the driveway – what then?  What was I going to do?  I didn’t even know how to get to the highway.

On the other hand, they hadn’t really done anything to me; and actually they had been the friendliest people I had met all day.

So, like I say.  The male mind isn’t fully operational at that age.  I turned around quietly and went back up to the attic.

I can tell you this.  That was one long night.  I began to explore the attic and found the usual stuff – a baseball bat (which I kept by my side), there were a lot of records with rock music.  A lot of what I’d call hippie stuff.

So.  Nothing happened.  It was just a very long night and I didn’t sleep at all.

Around dawn, I got up, and was preparing to leave when one of the girls – the one I remember as Gloria – called up that breakfast was ready.

Joe was already at the table, wearing overalls.  Last night I had seen him in some sort of dressing gown.  Gloria was wearing a flannel shirt and jeans.  I probably remember her because she was the prettiest.  She was at the stove making pancakes and sausages.

It was as if the whole thing had never happened.

Gloria brought the food over and Joe was talking about how fresh orange juice was better than this frozen stuff but that it was winter…  in other words, banal bantering… and my duffel bag was in the hallway behind me and I sat down to eat.

Witches or not, I was hungry.  I asked if it would be okay if I used their phone.  My father must’ve been worried sick, expecting me to be home already.

Joe said no problem, though if it was long distance he would charge me.  I made a collect call, telling my dad where i was and surely I would be home that day, and that I would call him when I made it to the House of Pancakes near Yonkers Raceway.  (That HoJo’s closed a long time ago).

Back to the table to finish up breakfast.  I offered to help wash the dishes but they said they’d take care of it.

Joe was on his way into town to pick up wood for the stove and said he’d drop me off by the thruway.  And so, with my nerves settled, I got into the black caddy with Joe and off we went.

As soon as the car door closed, Joe reached into the glove compartment and Joe found a small bag of grass and rolled a joint.  While he was rolling it with expert fingers, he wanted to know if I had slept well.

I lied – yes.

He comes right out and says that he and the girls are all witches – and that they don’t use their powers for evil or anything like that and they take people in all the time – usually hitch hikers – which is how he met the three girls that were there now – and then he says something that I’ll never forget.

“You know,” he says, as he takes a long deep toke on the joint, “you look like a writer.”

I was taken aback.  And as the car filled with smoke, I had a few hits with him, and began to tell him the story about how I was leaving college to be a writer.  And he was telling me that it would take a very long time.  Maybe a few decades.  But eventually, whatever I set my mind to, if I stuck with it – it would happen.

I eventually made it home of course.  Drenched by more rain.  Met my father by HoJo’s and went forward to meet my destiny.  Okay, maybe that’s too dramatic but nevertheless true.

 

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Photographers Memoirs

May 282013
 

I began writing my memoirs a few years ago… but didn’t get that far with it (5 original chapters).  I’m going to keep going with it, doing the posting on G+.  You don’t need to be a member to read them, just to comment.  It’s not the easiest thing, or perhaps the smartest thing, to write a memoir that people read live – generally you write something like this, and then go through it for editing – take out the stupid parts etc.

But I like these types of experiments – so I’ll continue with it.  For now there are just three chapters up.  They’ve all got the hash tag #memoirdlb  (my middle initial is L for Lee).

https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/%23memoirdlb

I may move them all to a page in Google where I have a little more control over how they show up.  If you have trouble reaching the site… let me know.

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New York Thru Central Park Panorama

May 222013
 

This is a huge panorama composed of 24 full-sized images.  The file, without any extrapolation is 31,000 pixels by 7,636 pixels.   Click image for a 1600 pixel web versi0n.  I haven’t figure out yet how to sell these huge files / prints.  It feels like it should be sold by the square foot.

new york thru central park panorama

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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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