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Photojournalism and hurricanes--a 97-year family history Shotgun Shooting An Everest of a man Resolutions, sans yellow Singing the election night photo blues Wait! Don't push that trash button Digital voodoo The thin grey line around freedom of the press Is the film king dead? Long lived the king! A question and an answer October 07 November 07 December 07 January 08 February 08 March 08 April 08 May 08 June 08 July 08 August 08 September 08 October 08 
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Professional digital cameras have a button with a trash can symbol beside it. It's used to delete unwanted pictures. The difference between the electronic trash can and the real version is that you can’t reach in and change your mind. Each time I hit the delete key, I think of Luis MiGuel Castineda Navas. He’s a Leica photographer who lives in Spain. I’ll let him explain: When my great uncle died I helped to dismantle the house. It is a rather strange feeling having to dig into the intimacy of someone else…having to choose what to keep and what to trash of a whole life….I rescued from the boxes to be discarded a few bits--such as his pre-war driving license, the savings book and a couple of negatives and prints. As Luis describes it: This one of an encierro (bulls run) was made between about 1940's or very early 50's. No notes, no nothing apart the seal of the lab and the label of Agfa papers in the back. He always enjoyed the bulls, la fiesta, a truly aficionado, and during the bulls season he used to attend as many as he can. Also did it with photography, I knew that whole boxes were trashed the day before. The people wear clothes and shoes typical of the same time of the other pictures and there is a black guy which wasn't common in Spain at that time, so it could be made in the north of Morocco or maybe close of any of the seaports near Gibraltar--all the places where my great uncle he was moving around at the time. The picture is exquisite. And it serves as a reminder to pause for a second before hitting that delete key. Some trash truly is treasure.
Monday in the Rosebud café. Victoria Public Information Officer O. C. Garza--who also is a Leica fan--and I are having lunch. Typically, we both brought our cameras. O. C. had his Epson R-D1, a digital rangefinder. An excellent review available at: http://www.luminous-landsca... On the table next to the Epson was my Leica M6. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wik.... A youngster who works at the café came up to the table and looked at both cameras. “Oh,” he said, pointing at O.C.’s Bessa, “That’s a digital camera. But this,” he said, touching the M6, “this is a REAL camera.” Now that’s a topic of a conversation! The whole digital revolution prompted me to remember a winter day in 1965 at the Globe News Publishing Company in my hometown, Amarillo. The eyes of everyone in the photography department were glued to the Associated Press wirephoto machine as the paper slowly, painfully, inched forward line by line to reveal another moonscape taken by Ranger VIII as it crashed on the moon. February 20. The next day, sitting in the same room, I remember predicting that we would live to see the day when a photographer shot a picture for the paper with a TV camera, transmitted the picture back to the company by radio where it would be captured at a TV screen. The picture editor would "process" the image with knobs to adjust brightness and contrast and then send it directly to engraving. “The day that happens,” said another photographer named Lonnie, “I will quit photography." Actually, he quit the next summer to sell, I seem to remember, refrigerators. I can only guess what he must think about today’s photographic world. I may still shoot film but, once it is processed, everything is digital. I scan the negative, correct the photo with Adobe Photoshop and then post the images to the internet. The first time my wife Reba showed me Photoshop, I realized that never again would I have to galvanize my lungs with acidic acid stop bath and fixer. There are some who still know the thrill of alchemy, watching a print develop in a tray. But it can’t hold a candle to the ability to turn to a computer and see a sunset on another world: http://photojournal.jpl.nas... Now, THAT’S magic!
Earlier this week, a freedom of the press issue occurred on the streets and sidewalks of Victoria. At issue was a second grade youngster who darted into the streets between two cars and got hit in the head by a rear view mirror attached to a day-care van. She sustained a bruise on the head; the incident also produced a headache here at the Advocate. Staff photographer Roni Gendler captured the whole story showing a woman applying an ice pack to the student's head: http://www.victoriaadvocate... But, at she was taking the picture, the girl's mother told Roni that she--the mother--would not allow the picture to be published. She later relented From a strict interpretation of the law, a news photographer has the right to shoot anything that happens on a public street. The accident occured on a public street; the photographer was on a public street. But the incident serves notice that it's not that simple anymore. I could stand on a public sidewalk and take an innocent photograph of a little girl--and almost immediately be suspected on being a pedophile. I enjoy trains, and I think the silhouette of a highball freight against the sunset on Highway 77 makes a great photo. But I'm afraid to take it for fear of the unpleasant conversation I might have with Homeland Security. The law may be on my side in both instances but is the pictrue worth the hassle? The Advocate decided that publishing the picture--which might prompt a parent to show their children that darting out into the street without looking can have painful, even deadly, consequences--overweighed the wishes of the little girl's mother whose concern probably stemmed from the natural instinct to protect her daughter. Photographer Stanley Foreman in Boston faced a similar situation in 1975. He won a Pulitzer for this image: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/... The older person died from the fall; her granddaughter survived. After it was published, Foreman says a man called the Boston paper and complained that his five-year-old daughter has asked him about death and that he couldn't talk to her about it and that the paper shouldn't run pictures like that. But that photograph, reprinted in newspapers around the world, prompted many a fire department and building owner to inspect their fire escapes--actions I doubt would have occurred had the editors not pubished the photograph. The question remains, then: How many lives were saved by Gendler's and Foreman's photographs? By a quick and probably inaccurate count in a recent catalog--about the size of a Victoria phone book--B&H Photo now offers 132 digital cameras. The digital revolution is not news, but its effect (please note I did not use the word "impact") is widespread. For instance, this recent article in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2007... Film drop-off processing plants appear to have a limited future. A member of the Leica Users Group wisely points out that in the rush to go digital, "everyone seems to overlook one inescapable advantage of film, NEGATIVES….Five years from now if someone asked you to reprint a specific digital image, do you suppose you could find it? I doubt it." Good point. Many a photographer has learned that while the ability to preview what you have just shot is a godsend, going digital also carries a heavy price of storage. It’s just too tempting to take too many pictures of the same subject and then to store them. This discussion is concurrent with Kodak’s introducing a new version of (gasp) T-Max 400 FILM! And, a press release that is heartening to those of us who still enjoy shooting film: http://www.kodak.com/eknec/... One tiny anecdote about switching from film to digital,--at least if you are a Leica rangefinder user: Since the introduction of the famous M series of Leica with a re-wind lever to advance the film, photographers have rested their thumb against that lever. It made the photographer stabilize the camera and allowed the film to be advanced quickly for the next shot. Well, with the introduction of the M8--the digital version--there was no reason for a film advance lever. Enough Leica shooters have complained that when they are shooting with the M8 they have no place to put their thumb, a man now offers for sale a spiffy attachment. One end slips into the hot shoe. The other end has a tab on which to rest your thumb. Thumbs up to that idea! Previously I mentioned Leicas. The famous rangefinder cameras have been much in the public eye. Not only has the company introduced a digital rangefinder [$5,000--line forms on the right] but The New Yorker recently published a feature article entitled "The Cult of the Leica." Having been admonished--by some--that my previous posting was not a blog but a column [way too long, not enough links] I simply will ask a question: What is one of the best-known images taken with a Leica? The answer: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/... -0- Thanks to all who have left comments. I will be glad to answer, once I figure out the blogging software. Meanwhile--a tip: take your camera every where you go. Good pictures rarely wait for you to recognize them, run back to the car, drive home, find the camera, and return. Usually they are long gone.
The Scene: Executive Surf Club, Corpus Christi, a few years ago. The photo director of the CORPUS CHRISTI CALLER TIMES and I are talking about what photographers always do in a social setting: Photography. PD: When did you start? BC: 1960. PD: Oh, you belong to that Golden Age of Photojournalism!
I never recall that conversation without feeling old. Well, old…er. But in looking back at that first job for a weekly newspaper in Amarillo, Texas, I am amazed at the changes--some gone, some bad. I made $25 a week then, and thought I was rich. And if measured by the satisfaction of learning, in retrospect I can admit I was. In the intervening years, I have gathered enough war stories to burgeon many a blog. Most of them are funny and I’m usually the object of the joke. For there isn’t a mistake possible to make in photography that I can’t claim. Example: My first assignment. "I’ll be with you in just a second," I tell the woman with the impatient Basenji dog. "just as soon as I figure out these instructions on how to load the camera." There’s nothing like instilling confidence in a subject and that is nothing like it. From a selfish standpoint, one purpose for this blog (a word that sounds like something spilled on the carpet but I’m afraid we’re stuck with it) is to share those stories. But also to hear yours. There are only two ways to learn photography: The first is to keep shooting. The second is to study what others are shooting. That’s the real idea here--talking about photography, laughing at our mistakes, looking at photographs. This venue isn’t exactly the Executive Surf Club. But it’s a sneaky (the ultimate superlative: good, better, best, sneaky) way to share photographs. And to have a conversation. I’ll start with my name. It rhymes with "rough." But, over the years, I’ve learned to answer to Clow, Cloof, Cloh, Clog and Clug. Once, over a U.S. Navy public address system, they called for "Cloogie." That was too far off the bell curve for me to react. Now I just tell people that I was very young when I was given that name or I would have done something about it. Back to photography. If you are interested you can peruse my website: www.gallery.leica-users.org/v/Bill1941 Some are individual frames; some are albums. I’m just as curious to see what you shoot. "But I’m not a photojournalist," some may say. I beg to differ. The whole reason anyone shoots a picture is to tell a story. This is me. I was here. This is important to me. "But, I don’t own any of those fancy cameras." Doesn’t matter. True, I use both with Leicas (film) and Nikons (digital). I pick up the single-lens reflexes when shooting for a client. The rangefinders are for what used to be called "pictures at the end of the roll"--frames taken not for others but for ourselves. However, it isn’t equipment that counts, or not much, anyway. It isn’t brands of camera or retinue of lenses or bags of accessories. All that is mechanics. It’s the human eye that sees the picture. And that’s a truth known long ago. I believe it was photographer Man Ray who reported finding some words etched in stone over a door in Europe: Of what use are lens and light For those who lack in mind and sight? That entranceway dates back to the Medieval--long before the invention of photography.
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