Author Archives: David

The glories of black and white photography

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A weaker man would post about the cute and cuddly red pandas frolicking in the snow at the Cincinnati zoo. But I will not yield to temptation. What I want to talk about today is the “Your Photographs” feature on the BBC, which this week is highlighting some gorgeous black and white photographs from its readers. This is a place to go to see two things: first how much great photographic talent there is around among amateurs, and second how black and white photography, always my personal favorite, is alive, well, and flourishing.

The second point, the enduring appeal of black and white photography, is at some level surprising at others not. From a technological stand point it represents a transitional technology, and you might have expected a complete adoption of color photography. But it stayed around as sole photographic form for so long that it became a recognized art form. Indeed, an on the other hand, the same is true in drawing. Black and white drawings, charcoals, pen and inks, and engraving are still all very appealing. And every once in a while some cinematographer will still produce a black and white film, because “the subject matter demands it.”  Whatever that means! As a jaded ex-New Yorker, I always assumed that it meant that the artist was too cheap to spring for the color film.

Never-the-less, the BBC series shows the magnificence of the art and the glorious appeal of deep black and brilliant whites and really everything in between. Like thick cream, it’s almost tactile! When I photograph, my first thought and inclination is always towards black and white. My favorite among the BBC images is Daniel Furon’s wonderful photograph of coffee cups and saucers at the Café Stijl in San Francisco. De Stijl is a Dutch art movement, whose origins date to 1917, that was based on pure abstract geometric form. And therein is an important point really. For this kind of geometric image, color would be superfluous and distracting. Shedding color accentuates the geometry, and I find my eye delightedly exploring Mr. Furon’s image. The compositional balance in the photograph to me is just perfect.  Well done, indeed!

Bring in the drones

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The age of drones is upon us – another technology that is moving faster than we are.  If you take a short nap, Rumpelstiltskin, it will catch you unawares.  Yesterday the Town of Somerville in Massachusetts sent the drones out to locate roofs in danger of collapse from all the snow – this rather than the dangerous and painstaking process of sending firemen up to “check it out.”

Well, we’ve spoken about this before, and there are many reasons to be concerned.  There is the bad side of drones and their ability to deliver bad things.  There is the disappointing fact that the US Postal Service is certain to miss the boat or drone and continue its downward spiral.  We can obsess about potential accidents with aircraft, cars, and pedestrians or about being attacked by irate raptors.  But the truth is that the same was said about bicycles and cars and airplanes.  And honestly, friends, as Pierre Curie could attest horse drawn carriages caused accidents as well.

But of more immediate, and artistic interest, in terms of photography are some truly stunning photographs of a frozen Niagara Falls taken from a drones.  We are assured, btw, that the falls have too much water to freeze completely.  A century ago people were assured that hydroelectic works on the Niagara River would never tap more than 5 % of the flow.  My understanding is that we are now up to about 50 %.  Back to the drones, these devices, a kind of floating or flying tripod, are now quite affordable for hobbyists and enthusiasts.  So as a tool of photographers, the everlasting search, for new perspectives, this is truly something spectacular – a real game changer.

So I am going to have to default once again to my standard that you can’t fight or ultimately control technology.  As a result, you had best embrace it and open its potential.  And right now, at this moment, I am going to revel in these glorious images of the falls that played such a significant role in the dawn of the electrical age a century ago.

 

Caramel lace

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Figure 1 - Caramel lace, Sudbury, MA, February 2015. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Caramel lace, Sudbury, MA, February 2015. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

An amazing aspect about snow is that you can’t stay made at it for long.  It’s all about a love/hate relationship. And now that I’ve got about a billion pounds of it taken off my roof, I’m back to focusing on just how beautiful it is, and I will continue loving it until I have to drive in it again. Hmm!

Last night we have a gentle snow fall and awoke to the sense that some numinous deity had sprinkled confectioners sugar on all the trees.  I was packing the car for work when I was captured by the site of my neighbor’s tree.  It was glistening in the morning light like so much caramel lace. I say “caramel” because, of course, I was going to sepia tone it.  I was especially struck by the contrast between the dendritic fractal pattern of the branches and the parallel lines of the electrical wires – all equally snow encrusted.

I could, in fact, have stopped a hundred times this morning to take tree images.  Well maybe.  The thing is that our streets are now snow tunnels, and it is impossible to safely pull over to take photographs.  SO I had to remain satisfied with the image of Figure 1.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM Lens at 98 mm, ISO 400, Aperture-priority AE mode. 1/400th sec at f/9,0 with no exposure compensation.

A thin veneer

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I’m seeing more and more bizarre images this winter – sights that stretch credulity and imagination.  This evening I came across this image from WITN out of Greenville, NC.  It shows an unusual ice formation actually cast into shape by a Jeep’s grill. It was snapped at a parking lot at the Vidant Medical Center in Greenville on Feb 17. An eyewitness reported that  the vehicle’s owner warmed up the engine and left behind this imprint., and the imprint remained after the driver backed out of the parking space. The ice was attached to the curb. It is a kind of modern fossil, a sense that is accentuated by its reminiscence of some kind of carnivorous dinosaur. OK I’ve got a strong imagination. Stranger than truth and you saw it first at Hati and Skoll!

 

Hugh Welch Diamond and the face of madness

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Figure 1 - Patient, Surrey County Lunatic Asylum Albumen silver print from glass negative 19.1 × 14 cm (7.5 × 5.5 in). From the En Wikimepedia and in the public domain because of its age.

Figure 1 – Patient, Surrey County Lunatic Asylum by Hugh Welch Diamond, 1850 – 1858, Albumen silver print from glass negative 19.1 × 14 cm (7.5 × 5.5 in). From the En Wikimepedia and in the public domain because of its age.

A curious recurring photographic theme is “The face of madness,” which tend to be a series of portraits of inmates at asylums, hospitals, and half-way houses.  I have seen several of these.  But they all have their roots in the 19th century and began with the, then, ground breaking, work of Dr. Hugh Welch Diamond (1809 – 1886). He was an early specialist in the new science of psychiatry and was appointed to Brookwood Hospital, the second Surrey County Asylum. Diamond was also a founding member of the Photographic Society, ultimately becoming its Secretary and editor of the Photographic Journal. For a series of his images see.

It was common belief at the time that “madness” could be read in the faces of a person, which was, of course, an offshoot of the field of phrenology.  Perhaps, this is an early form of “profiling,” now so common in world airports.  Our faces are to be read and assessed by digital cameras and computers. We have to ask who is mad now?

In terms of photographic opus the results of Diamond’s efforts form a revealing and not unsympathetic step backwards into the world of the poor souls condemned to these places.  This is the world of “Blackwell’s Island” and “Bedlam,” of 19th century “it runs in the family.”  We have spoken of the way in which we seem to communicate mutely with the subjects of old photographs and here it is even more profound, because you wonder exactly what was in the minds of these people.  An image such as that of Figure 1 demands the question whether the smiling face is that of Bertha Mason, Rochester’s wife imprisoned in the attic in the novel Jane Eyre.

Mardi Gras 2015

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Sorry to disappoint, but I am not going to post about Miss P, the beagle.  I will admit that she is cute.  But we try to avoid cute cuddly animal pictures here at Hati and Skoll.  Also, I am not going to post about Bostonians jumping off roofs and out of windows into the snow.  I went this morning into the belly of beast – straight into downtown Boston.  By the time I found a place to park, I fully understood the frustration of these snow jumpers.

I have however, been carefully studying all the carnival photographs from around the world.  My favorite is a snap of my friend, and reader, Mary from the Dominican Republic with a rather scary looking character.  But from a more public venue I have settled upon (Best in Show) a beautiful and very blue image – cool blue –  by  Vanderlei’ Almeida for the AFP showing Samba dancers at the annual carnival parade in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  But dig in to all the images yourself.  It is a colorful wayl to escape winter – images from Rio, New Orleans, and of course, from Venice.

Carnival for photographers is a wonderful mix.  You’ve got colors.  You’ve got strange and wonderful forms that ultimately test the bounds between reality and fantasy.  What more could you ask for?

The Rosa Parks Collection

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Figure 1 - Resident of Plain City, OH standing in front of L.L Spiger clothing store circa 1935. Image from the Frm Security Administration and in the collection of the United States Library of Congress and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – Resident of Plain City, OH standing in front of L.L Spiger clothing store circa 1935. Image from the Frm Security Administration and in the collection of the United States Library of Congress and in the public domain.

February 4th was the 102nd anniversary of the birth of civil rights hero Rosa Parks, and in celebration of the event a collection of her memorabilia including 7,500 manuscripts and 2,500 photographs became available to scholars at the United States Library of Congress.  These are on loan to the LOC for ten years from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.  The photographs are for the most part the kind of personal snaps that, when they belonged to a person of critical note, cause the hair on the back of your neck to rise.  Especially poignant is a posed image of Ms. Parks reenacting her famous bus protest.  The effect is interesting, because while you know that it is posed, it really does not seem to detract from your sense of the bravery of the woman.

Well, one thing leads to another and in an accompanying article on the health effects of the northern migration of African Americans to escape Southern Jim Crow I found the amazing photograph of Figure 1 from the Farm Security Administration, also in the collections of the LOC showing an African American resident of Plain City, Ohio circa 1935 smoking a pipe in front of a clothing store.This image is gorgeous for so many technical reasons that I found myself returning to it over and over again.  I just had to share it here. I love the tones.  I love the fact that the gentleman is caught in mid puff. And I love the way that the hats seem to march upward and draw our attention to the figure.

 

 

Snowstorm at dawn

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Figure 1 - Snowstorm at Dawn, February 15, 2015. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Snowstorm at Dawn, February 15, 2015. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

It is dawn on the day after Valentine’s Day, February 15, 2015 and it is snowing like crazy, again.  I am looking out my back window at the birds frantically trying to find food to maintain their body temperatures.  I thought that I would try to capture the scene, the pale blueness everywhere and the gusts of wind causing the snow to swirl  The result is Figure 1.  I am hand holding without IS; so shooting with my lens resting against the window pane and at ISO 3200.  I try to use as long an exposure as possible to capture some of the snow trails. I am hoping that the tree leaning to the right gives a sense of opposition to the wind. I found that I preferred taking the image first to black and white and then adding a subtle amount of blue or cold toning.

Pretty soon, I fear that I will no longer be able to see outside the windows as the snow drifts up against.  There is a glorious dullness to the scene, a lack of contrast, and all is quiet because all sound is muffled by the snow-pack.  This is interrupted only by and the wind.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 75 mm, ISO 3200, Aperture-Priority AE mode, 1/40th sec at f/9.0 with no exposure compensation.

Valentine’s Greetings from Hati and Skoll

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Figure 1 - Big Pink Heart postcard Valentines from ~ 1910. From the Wikimedia Commmons and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – Big Pink Heart postcard Valentine’s from ~ 1910. From the Wikimedia Commmons and in the public domain because it was first published before 1923.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone.  I thought that we should celebrate with this early twentieth century photographic postcard image from circa 1910 – a Big Pink Heart Valentine’s.  There is not enough information available; so we have to guess that the original was perhaps an autochrome.  They definitely had a great love for redheads in those days.  The image has some very classic pictorialist features, the toga, the hair style, the headband, and the sense of fecundity that the figure portrays.  In this last regard I am reminded of the bride in “The Arnolfini Wedding 1434,” a painting where every little detail signifies something.

The nice thing about the image and about Valentines Day, in general, is the theme of love.  The world could use a whole lot of love about now, and the fact that our grand and great grand parents would have sighed and said the same thing a century ago as we say now about the need for love is really kind of pathetic.

So my recommendation is that we all hold our loved ones tight this Valentines Day! Spread the love, people.<3