GET YOUR OWN GREATS

I thought I may be going to DC for work so I looked up the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery to see if their are any shows and lo and behold a show ending in Sept called Great Britons. Traveling from the NPG in London. Fab. I had a quick look to see what was being presented and was struck, not once, not twice but three times at some of the choices for the all time Great Britons. Sir Winston yes, Queen Victoria check, James Joyce of course...... whooooa horsey, did I miss something, did Dublin move, is it still in the Emerald Isle? James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, Séamus Seoighe as Gealge, in Irish. Born Feb 2nd, 1882, Rathgar, Dublin. Does that sound like someone who was born in Chelsea. Alright so you give 'em one, so who's next, Oscar Wilde? For the love of mike. Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, their wasn't a English Victorian mother who would bestow that moniker upon any child, plus they threw him in jail for his ...poetry. I'm sure he wasn't the only Poet in England at the time, but he was an Irish poet. So what am I gleaning from this. The National Portrait in London decided that if your country had been invaded by the Empire, you renounced you nationality whether you like it or not, you fell nicely into their category of Briton, as the commonwealth was spread nice and wide back then. So would that make Mahatma Ghandi a big Tottenham Hotspur fan?, he still wouldn't be happy about that today. Now to round all this off, here's another one who snugly fit in between Queen V and Kate Winslett, Oliver Cromwell. Well if this wasn't a genocidal maniac roaming the seas I don't know who was. Responsible for the death of anywhere between 2 and 10,000 Irish people in quelling the rebellion of 1641, he may have single handedly set of a string of events that would hold sway over Ireland for the next 400 years. Pitting Protestants again Catholics, this divisiveness festered till, well.... today. The saying " may Cromwell's curse be on ya" still is used by many old timers in the auld sod. My great auntie Jo would spit every time his name was mentioned and believe it or not its still mentioned. Plus he rankled his own crowd so much they dug him from his grave, hung him and then beheaded him. Nice chap. I'm not quite sure what the NPG were thinking here, what was the prerequisite for entrance to the hallowed list. This may sound like an inferiority complex, trust me its not. The Commonwealth has influenced my thinking as much as anyone, but you have to stick up for your own even if they are all dead. Get your own greats leave ours alone. PS Becks never look better.

Image resizing

I received an email from regular Pelicula 64 devotee Scott McDermott last night, with this very interesting You Tube video on image resizing. Basically an algorithm software for changing the size of an image without distorting it. Watching the first minute or two is really fun till you realize exactly how this could and will be used in our business. Scott's words were "interesting, aside from the artistic and ethical ramifications". Right on. I Love the narrator who comforts all of us with " we gracefully re size the image to fit into a window". Can't you see it now, break you heart to set up a shot, with specific this, that, and the other thing, all coinciding just to make your image, YOURS. Then some schmuck comes along at a magazine and squares up your perfectly aligned 8x10.... just so as it fits.......who will notice? This is well worth keeping an eye on because it will be used. Right on Scott thanks for noticing.

Nina Berman

Nice layout in the Arts section of the Times on Wednesday for Nina Berman and her new book Purple Hearts. The series revolves around soldiers who have been injured in Iraq. I just went to the opening of her show at Jen Beckman gallery on Spring St. Moving and thought provoking to say the least and she also seems like a really nice person. The show is up till the 30th of August so give a visit if you can. Nice work Nina.

The Most Beautiful Born

Great post from the Online Photographer in regards to "airbrushing" of celebs. If you have ever worked in the larger studios in NYC you see this go on all the time as they try to sell you their digital package. You can browse the celebrity clean up line with your latte, and notice he's got the same scar I do. Not for long boyo. But I haven't been around those studios too much lately so I have forgotten just how insane it really looks. It just blows me away what they try to sell up the river. No wonder kids are bulimic. The chic form Grey's Anatomy's tits are raised at least 3 inches. I love the guy with the pimple on his nose, Kelly Clarkeson loses 4 inches all round and Eva Longoria, and they made SKINNIER!!!! Impossible, what magic. Anyway if you have teenagers, or even God forbid adults you know who idolize these people, go to iwannexstudio, click on portfolio and scroll over the most beautiful born among us. God bless Penelope Cruz, who doesn't love one breast higher than the other.

VANS FRIDAY

I found this on a blog from Ireland called Bubble Brothers. They sell wine and give out some great information on smaller vineyards and more reasonably priced wine. This is Van Morrison and Chet Baker doing Send in the Clowns. From the looks of it, it may be Ronnie Scotts, a jazz club in London but I will have to look that up. I have been a fan of the The Mans since my brother Joe introduced him to me and he and Kieran Healy made me listen to Its Too Late To Stop It Now, vowing a better live record was yet to be made. Since that recording in 1974 Van has released 2 more live recordings. But this I had never heard of. He did do a string of jazz club in the early and mid 80's, not a lot of regular concert hall gigs, Van being infamous for leaving the stage at a whim and other rock eccentricities. This was also right before he made a four or five of Irish centric albums, going back to live in Ireland after being in the US and England for years. What's great is not only the pairing but the fact that they murder this version. Every great song writer has one or two songs that everybody thought they could sing the best, this happens to Stephan Sondheim's, the greatest American song writer of the latter 20th century. This was also right before Chet died in Holland, I'm sure not too much footage of him before he went. This may have been Chet's set as Van seem to be reading the lyrics and looks like he just joined for one song. About as hackneyed a song as their is but give a listen, these two martyrs will still move ya. Maybe this will become a regular spot, Vans Friday

Flux Capacitor, no its a Lumen stupid.

Just to continue the thread of the Crewdson piece, there is an interview with his director of photography, Richard Sands, This guy does ferocious work. I have worked on many large scale sets, non film, all still photography, but seeing their lighting set list is quite daunting. 136 lights at one time, massive. So a major shout out to Richard and his crew. But I found listening to the interview, an expression I had vaguely heard before, maybe not, I just don't want to sound like a complete idiot. Lumen. A lot of film guys have different terms for the same gear we use on still shoots, but in context of the interview I was a little lost. Sands says "because we are trying to achieve an F-stop 32.5 we have to use intense Lumieres? (type of HMI?). HMI sources have the best Lumens per watt effecicecy". Lumieres must be a type of light, though I could not find a reference for it anywhere. Please tell me he is not using the French term for light. But Lumens? Not comin to me. Anyway I looked up Lumen in the dictionary and here it is. If a light source emits one candela of luminous intensity into a solid angle of one steradian, the total luminous flux emitted into that solid angle is one lumen. Alternatively, an isotropic one-candela light source emits a total luminous flux of exactly 4π lumens.
Boy can't you hear that on the walkie talkie, "That 10K needs to come down -4π lumens and not a candela more. Yes Gregory".

BRITISH STAND DOWN IN IRELAND

The British army ends on Tuesday July 31st its 38-year role supporting police in Northern Ireland, its longest ever military operation.

THE SWIMMING VISIONARY?

Nice piece in PDN this month about Gregory Crewdson. Go here for an equally compelling Q&A on NPR . Very candid in his answers about his process. This guy is another one, who like Gursky, elicits a lot of chatter. Of course I feel camaraderie for the paysan because of his affinity for 8x10, but I have had some people ask me " how is he a photographer anymore". I suppose I could have told them to go listen to the NPR piece but then we wouldn't have any thing to write about. Anyway, I'm sure most people ask the above question in the true sense of the word, - see the image - shoot the scene - print the picture. Of course our business is ever changing and that model seems quite quaint in comparison to what in fact is the reality of most peoples photography today, no matter what their process is. Instead of is he a photographer?, maybe the question really is, what is a photographer today? With the advent of digital, Flickr etc just about everyone can be and seems to be a photographer. Martin Parr's story about Bruce Davidson losing out on a rather large job to a Flickrite, being an example. If you can point it, shoot it and you get some work then where does that place someone like Crewdson, in photographic terms. You really can't say he just takes a photograph. The production alone would make Walker Evans, one of his original inspirations, turn in his grave. Imagining the Mis-en-scene is so complex, putting a six figure photo shoot is immense, that work alone could kill ya. But.... in reality he doesn't light the scene himself, doesn't do any of the digital work himself, which seems like a monumental part of the job, doesn't proof his prints, doesn't print the finished product. These are all things we loved about being photographers right? I would have my minions do all that kind of drudgery also. So what exactly does he do? "Acctionn" Click.He has a crew of 70 people to run the whole schebang. I know that's pretty simplistic, in view of the huge production but... photographically? How much of the work do you have to do yourself to be still considered a photographer, in the old sense of the word. For all intense and purposes he is a director but he doesn't have to illicit the range of emotions all directors have to get from their actors. I think the cobbling together of the images and director of photography he uses, seem to be the sticking points for a lot of people also. So is there another newer, more modern name for Mr Crewdson and his ilk, image director, photo imager, image creator, or just Visionary. I know other photographers have left some of less glamorous photographic work behind them along time ago, advertising and Fine Art guys in particular but I wonder if Crewdson did much more of the process in camera, would that quell some of the questions?. He says he has never used strobe but considering he doesn't do it himself anyway, why not. I'm sure someone out there would be willing to take on the challenge of one of his lighting scenarios. Find some old Stacked Ascors, they will give you F32 in hurry. Before the advent of the new technology this was one of the great challenges posed to many an advertising photographer, "I want all that in the frame and I will pay you to do it". No Photoshop, figure it out. And how is that different from the galleries funding Crewdson's work so they can all make profit from the final image. Is that really a fine art or a pure money making venture for Crewdson and the galleries?, not unlike making a film for a studio. Certainly artistic with great vision but there is a bottom line, somebody will want a return on their money. Nothing wrong with any of this, we are all looking for funding in some way or other.
Now lets get this straight the finished product is terrific. What he creates in one image can sometimes be mesmerising but these are many of the questions being raised with the advent of digital and how one implements it in ones work. The other is whether Mr Crewdson could give a rats ass what he is called. And will that word photographer, as we once knew it, be obsolete sometime soon?