I made enough progress with my movie making (got voice over to work) and completed a short 4 minute film (will post after I clean a few things up) with Final Cut Express, that I allowed myself to take some pictures today, and you should always begin when you haven’t photographed a city for a long time, with pigeons.

Put that down in your lesson books.  Dave suggests pigeons as a way to get back into the shooting mood.  Especially if the pigeons are well-lit.

Pigeons (tonemapped) this morning, first ave.

And so yes, I have settled down with FCE.  And I don’t think I’ll need to ruin your mornings with any explanations, just compete with your alarm clock, or your favorite monologues once in a while.  In the meantime – I’m free to walk around again without trying to shoot movies and still at the same time – which leaves you with neither one being any good.

I don’t know why everyone has a sale on Labor Day, other than that it’s a holiday, so more people are off – and in the old days would go shopping in physical stores?  But now that you can get most of what you need on the web… why can’t you just sit at your desk and look around for online stores that are having a sale and pick up what you need?

Anyway – it’s 20% off, and end at midnight (oooh spooky) Monday.  Who was it that always did that (ooooh scary).  Oh yeah, second city t.v.

“Now that blew up real good.”

And the guy that would dress as vampire… yeah… he was the one that would pretend it was in 3-D (don’t get me started on that gimmick) – and say, “Ooooh, scary” with a very bad Eastern European accent.

I think everyone in that show went on to star in at least one movie, (Uncle Buck?) ; and some are still popping up in bit parts, and still funny.

I’d love to read a book about Second City… they have just turned out one great comedian after another.

And speaking of comedians – I’m just hear to remind you that there’s a Labor Day Sale that just started.  Don’t worry, it doesn’t mean that you have to do any labor to get the discount.  It’s just a celebration that summer has ended (why celebrate that) and that for the whatever generation we’re up to now – school starts.  Man oh man – did I hate that feeling that school was starting again.  The summers seemed so long.  And the idea of going back to school, whether it was a new school where I knew people, or even worse, a new school, like Junior High where I didn’t know anyone – that gave me what I used to call – and maybe people still do – The Sunday Night Blues.  Butterflies in the stomach.  A floating anxiety. It was just never something I looked forward to until I was in my late 20’s!

I think my biggest problem in school was that I simply wasn’t athletic, and definitely not tough; at least not for the schools I was going to.  That was my downfall.  I can imagine an entirely different life, if I had been taller and athletic.  There’s no way I would have ended up sitting here writing a blog about (sometimes) photography.  I’m certain that if I had fit in socially, and been popular, and well-liked by the guys and the girls – I would’ve had a tremendous amount of self-confidence – and would’ve gone off into an occupation that involved selling things.  Maybe I would’ve been a humorous car salesman.  Yes, I can easily see myself selling high-end sports cars, and importing them from Italy and one day I’d find out that I had a long lost brother who was autistic and take a cross country trip with him… ooops…. sorry ’bout that…

But even if I had still gone into the arts – it would’ve been as a producer or something like that. Or maybe I would’ve done what I really wanted to do and get into show business.  I can remember thinking about going to Chicago to apply for Second City Improv.  I’ve always been able to start rambling (proof is in this post) about just about anything.  And sometimes I could make it funny.  So maybe I would have ended up in Second City, and that would’ve brought me to Saturday Night Live… from there as a vocation, something to relax with, like say Richard Gere, or Kenny Rogers – country singer and  I’d pick up a camera and be famous at the same time… ah… that would be the life.  Then I wouldn’t even have to worry about sales.  People would buy my stuff because I was famous as a singer or a clown (ever see Red Skelton paintings of clowns) or Richard Gere – blurry shots in Tibet.  But beautiful.

And that’s how these posts go.  Start with the sale and end up talking about Richard Gere and Kenny Rogers.  Doesn’t seem possible – but there it is.

You’ve followed me long enough to know that I will sometimes get fixated on some new technology and as my friend Matt would say, get stuck in the secret lab.  I happened when I first got into digital cameras, and then infrared, and well, it’s a long list.  But what seems to keep me going is how surprising the new stuff is.  When I say surprising, I mean that every once in a while I fall over something that I never thought possible.

You remember how I was going back and forth between iMovie, then Final Cut Express (FCE) and then Adobe Premiere Pro (an old version).  And I’ve been futzing with them over the last few days slowly coming to the conclusion that Premiere was going to work the best for me – and this morning I’m reading up about sequences, and importing files – especially images.  This whole movie thing really revolves around photography.

And I’m wondering about what format, what bit-depth, what color space etc. to import image files into Premiere when I come across a line that says, in effect, that Premiere can not only understand Photoshop files, but when you import a PSD (Photoshop file) with layers – it can – if you want it to, break it apart and stick each layer as a separate clip (file).

And then I’m reading that you can use Photoshop tools, like the clone tool, while you are in Premiere…?  Is that true, or am I getting something mixed up. The one thing that does seem clearer is that there is going to be a bridge (so to speak) between Photoshop and Premiere… and how that bridge works… I’m not sure yet, but the idea that come from it for animation… and various effects…

You could, for example, show a movie made out of layer dissolves or cuts…  again, just for explanation purposes…  sorry for the ellipses but I want to jump back to the lab.

Infrared Film, with IR flash.

The ethics of photography place us in odd positions that we just didn’t find ourselves in ten years ago.  As photographers, we have the ability to easily cross the line between documenting what we saw at the time, and strengthening the theme of what we saw.

I’m not even talking about the most obvious uses of post-processing where you take someone’s head and stick it on a body to show that so-and-so was at a certain rally.  In other words, the easiest issues to deal with are when post-processing is used propaganda.  That territory has been well-covered.  The ends justify the means (for example).  And you can read Plato’s thoughts about such things.

But what interests me is the ability to start with a legitimate fine-art idea.  In this case, there are three objects that seem related: the Aphrodite of Melos (sans arms), the prosthetic leg, and maybe – the religious figure next to the Aphrodite of Melos.  The beautiful statue that is missing limbs; the piece of equipment to replace a leg; and the idea of prayer.  Those ideas are floating around in the image.

But they will probably be lost on the viewer because these items are physically far away from each other.

So what if you decide, as the photographer / artist to cross the line, and re-arrange the important objects so that they still look realistic, but are closer to each other?

Is it still a photograph?  In the old days, photographers used as many tricks as they could dream up.  The main one may have been adding clouds to a cloudless sky.  But here you are making an editorial statement.  You can still be subtle about it.  No need to throw it in the viewers face, but make the connection that you see more visible.  Would you do it?  Is it simply a new form of art, processed photograph?

The same questions were (maybe still are) asked about the inkjet print.  But as time goes on, customers don’t seem to care anymore.  A beautiful image, is impressive, no matter what technique was used.

And over time, I guess that a new form of media called ALTERED PHOTOGRAPHY will arise.  Maybe it has already – I haven’t googled it. But the idea is that if you call it what it is, that seems to be okay, but it is an odd mixture.  As a viewer, you have to wonder what the photographer has changed.  And at what point is the photograph considered altered?  Today, just about every photograph is altered to some degree.

You could say that anything that could have been done in the darkoom is okay, i.e. unaltered.  As someone who worked for a few decades in the darkroom, even that is pretty tricky, because you could cut contrast masks for a particular negative, but would you really do it.  I didn’t have the time or patience.  Now I can do the same trick with a few clicks.

Well… let me do a bit of work on this shot and I’ll just call it ALTERED PHOTOGRAPH.  Same for the crummy iPhone picture of Buddy (the cat).  ALTERED PHOTOGRAPH.

Put another way – we are living through a time when traditional photographic techniques are merging with painting techniques and painting technique is merging with computer renditions.  That, to me, is actually a good thing to be enjoyed.  How many artists get to live through such fantastic transitions?  My own experiments with HDR, for example, lead me to try and use it to make more naturalistic images with a wide tonal range.  It’s up to the artist to decide what tools they want to use and how much they want to say about their creations.

MAN WITH TWO PHOTOGRAPHS

MAN WITH TWO PHOTOGRAPHS (Altered Media)

Yes.  A whole post for John Prine.  I have followed him since his first album which came out while I was a student at SUNY Buffalo.  Singer / songwriter.  Country-ish story teller.  One of the greatest songwriters of my lifetime.  Songs often written in the “voice” of someone else, i.e. “I am an old woman, named after my mother, my old man is another, child that’s grown old.” Angel from Montgomery (a song which has been covered by tons of performers).

The songs range from downright hysterical (Dear Abby) to woeful tales of loneliness and sorrow.  Unlike Dylan (the other great in my book), his songs are usually stories that can be understood – not always from the first listening, but eventually they dawn on you.

Yes – he had throat cancer (heavy cigarette smoker) but I’ve seen and heard him since then and he’s still okay as a performer.

My list of favorite musicians is thin.  Like a iceberg, if you were to look by artists’ name, you would only see a few, but if you were to look beneath the surface, you’d find, that just as I’ve done with writers that I like, I have everything I can put my hands on for these artists: Randy Newman, John Prine, (to some extent Dylan, but his recorded output is really for collectors), Tom Waits, and it’s hard to think of anyone else that I am still that gung-ho about.

Definitely a similarity.  They are story tellers that often use literary devices.  Every once in a while, they will have a song that hits mainstream, but as great a writer as Randy Newman is, I’ve been to concerts at small venues in New York that he couldn’t sell out.  And Governors Island isn’t exactly Madison Square Garden, though I’m sure Prine has played there before.  But they made it.  Randy Newman has had a couple of top hits, like I Love L.A.  but his real mark on pop culture is probably the soundtrack for The Natural.  Yes, that’s his score, and one of the great ones of recent years (no wonder – he comes from a line of Hollywood orchestrator (all uncles) such as Alfred Newman, and Lionel Newman. Other Newman scores include:  the music for A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc., Pleasantville, Ragtime, Seabiscuit, Toy Story.

Anyway – that’s one aspect of my own character – the idea of finding a few artists and having long-standing, deep relationships with their work, that I can trace back to the idea of serialization that began, in my own case, with the Hardy Boys and continued into the realm of the Russian novelists, Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Ivan Turgenev, and so on.

At least with Dostoyevsky – there’s always more.  With Gogol, you will find yourself re-reading his books, or finding a book written by another Russian about him.  I suppose that affinity for Russian 19th century work can be traced back to my own Russian ancestry.

Anyway – there you have it.  John Prine. Sept. 10th. Governor’s Island.  I’m informed that photography is permitted, and I will be one of those nuts that will be waiting ahead of time to try and get a good seat.

Boy on Bike: HIE Infrared with Leica M3 / Tonemapped Single Image / Lightroom Adjustments

Interesting, mood-wise if you were to hang this on the wall next to the previous post of woman with water bottle. It’s that sort of contrast that you don’t (at least I don’t) get to make in the blog format; or any format unless everyone had a a large monitor.