On location: Place

Whenever I give students an assignment, I always do it myself.  This helps me understand what it's like, and how easy the assignment is to accomplish.

So, this weekend I did the assignment "Place."  For this assignment, students were asked to photograph a single, distinct place.  They had to use two full rolls of film in this single place and couldn't include any other photographs on the rolls.

Before they started, I asked them to first just explore the place with their eyes and ask some questions...

• What do you see? 

• What visual elements stand out? 

• Are there dramatic lines and relationships, convergences of light and shadow, or bold shapes that appear? 

• How can you represent a three- dimensional space in a two dimensional photograph? 

• Do you want to create an informative representation or an interpreted one? 

• Can your place tell a story?

Before I could head out, I had to ready my gear.  I used a Mamiya 7II.  It's one of my favorite medium format cameras because it's very lightweight and easy to tote around.  One of the reasons it's so light is because it's a rangefinder camera.  The metering and film advance is also really similar to a 35mm SLR. 


My gear, all laid out:

• my camera (with fresh batteries and a strap)

• a lens shade

• a lens cap

• several fresh rolls of film (I'm using lford FP4+  for a low speed and fine grain)

• a couple of my favorite filters: yellow, polarizer and neutral density

    Everything goes into a case.  

I was long overdue for some time outdoors, so I decided on a specific area of Ravenswood near East Palo Alto.  It's a really big preserve with trails for walking and biking (these areas are too delicate to allow people to walk on the grasses and along the shore).  

There's a great view of the bay.  But, if I only made compositions into the distance, they would all look the same.  That's boring.  So I needed to get closer to ensure I had a variety of compositions.

Sometimes that means taking a new position, bending down and looking close.  

If you go to a place like this, please do not go off trail!  

These ecosystems are very vulnerable and the delicate balance is destroyed by human footsteps.  Many wetland birds lay eggs on the ground, and other creatures live in burrows.  You don't want to accidentally crush them.  

Here's where a lens shade will help.  If the sun shines directly on the lens, the light can bounce around inside the lens elements and create those unsightly flares.  You can also use your hand to create a shadow over the lens.  I should also mention the use of sunscreen and a hat.

You should protect your film from the sun when reloading.

In some places, it's hard to create a composition that doesn't include the freeway and power lines.  This was especially hard because I wanted to stay on the trail.  

You have to decide to include the power lines...

Or try a different angle and crop them out. 

Getting a different angle is often the better choice because you don't want all your pictures to look the same.  Again, this goes back to trying to make each composition unique.  It's a lot easier to do when you get closer and/or get a different perspective.

The red color of the water is due to bacteria that thrive in salty water.  

All that white stuff is salt from evaporated water.  

Don't forget that compelling compositions can be made anywhere!  You don't need to go to a beautiful place to make beautiful pictures.  See with your eyes, not with your mind.  Speaking of … that mud on the side of the road warrants closer inspection!

Back at home, I gather my film up for processing and get my camera bag ready for another day.  And here's the result: just 5 rolls of film.  I can't wait to get back into the darkroom and process it.  

Joel Sternfeld at Pier 24 tomorrow

Pier 24 Photography is excited to announce an upcoming lecture by photographer Joel Sternfeld presented at California College of the Arts, San Francisco. This lecture is part of the ongoing Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program, a collaboration between Pier 24 Photography, California College of the Arts, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Joel Sternfeld, Glen Canyon Dam, Page, Arizona, 1983, (From the series American Prospects) Lecture by Joel Sternfeld Wednesday, September 17, 2014 / 7PM Timken Lecture Hall, California College of the Arts 1111 Eighth Street San Francisco, CA 94107 Free and open to the public. No RSVP - Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis American photographer Joel Sternfeld helped pioneer the use of color in art photography in the 1970s and 1980s, first gaining serious recognition with the publication of American Prospects in 1987. The book, which featured pictures taken on a series of road trips across the country, subtly documented underlying socioeconomic issues in America with irony and humor.  Subsequent projects have focused on different aspects of American life and culture, including alternative lifestyle communities, environmental degradation, historical sites and strangers. With an eye for the absurd as well as the quietly monumental, Sternfeld captures all of his subjects with dignity. Throughout his career, the book has been a significant method of presenting work for Sternfeld.  American Prospects was the first of a number of highly regarded and influential books, which includes On This Site (1996), Stranger Passing (2001), Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America (2006), iDubai (2010), First Pictures (2011) and others. Sternfeld's work has been widely exhibited internationally and is included in the collections of institutions such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; and Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Prix-de-Rome (1990-91) and the Citibank Photography Award (2004). He currently lives in New York City and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. CURRENTLY ON VIEW AT PIER 24 PHOTOGRAPHY Erik Kessels, Installation view at Pier 24 Photography, 2014 For its sixth exhibition, Pier 24 Photography presents Secondhand, featuring artists who build repositories of found images, from which they appropriate, construct, edit, and sequence in order to create something entirely new. Through this process, their distinctly personal approaches become as wide-ranging as their source material.  The works presented in Secondhand resonate with our visual culture's obsession with communicating through selecting and editing existing material, allowing the distinction between curator and creator to become less defined. With more than one hundred and fifty years of printed photographs at their disposal, along with the millions of digital pictures uploaded daily, the artists included in Secondhand critically examine the role of images in our society. While mining these found images to reveal their own perspectives, the defining features of their artistic voices become process, craft, and display.  For information on the exhibition, please click here. VISIT PIER 24 PHOTOGRAPHY All appointments to visit Pier 24 Photography are made online.   To make an appointment, please select Individual or Group using the link below: CLICK HERE TO MAKE AN APPOINTMENT  Appointments are available Monday - Friday, 10:00AM - 5:15PM ABOUT PIER 24 PHOTOGRAPHY Located on San Francisco's Embarcadero, Pier 24 Photography offers a venue to experience and quietly contemplate photography. In addition to presenting ongoing exhibitions, publications, and public programs, Pier 24 Photography houses the permanent photography collection of the Pilara Foundation. Join on FACEBOOK, TWITTER and INSTAGRAM.

Eugene Richards lecture Friday

Here's a repost of an interesting lecture coming up Friday:

The Reva and David Logan Gallery of Documentary Photography

cordially invites you to  Red Ball of a Sun Slipping Down Photographs by Eugene Richards Friday, September 19, 2014 Reception & Book Signing: 6:30 - 7:15 p.m. & The Second Annual Fotovision Lecture by Eugene Richards: 7:30 p.m. UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism North Gate Hall Room 105

Exhibition on view through January 2015 The Arkansas Delta has been called at different times the soul of the South, the land of opportunity, a place ruled by race, a forgotten place. Eugene Richards first went to the delta as a VISTA volunteer in 1969. Richards would stay for more than four years, working as a social worker and reporter until the community service organization and newspaper he helped found were forced to close their doors. But over the years he would keep returning. Red Ball of a Sun Slipping Down speaks of remembrance and change, of struggle and privation, of loving and loss, of then and now. Black-and-white photographs made long years ago but never before published are interwoven with recent color photographs, that relates Richards’s relationship with an impoverished delta family as well as a growing awareness of his own aging and mortality. Eugene Richards, an editorial photographer, filmmaker, and writer, was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He published has published over fifteen book including his first book, Few Comforts or Surprises: The Arkansas Delta in 1973 and  his most recent Red Ball of a Sun Slipping Down in 2014. Among numerous honors, Richards has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Kraszna-Kraus Book Award, the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography, and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Journalism Award for coverage of the disadvantaged. Free and open to the public. Click here for campus map, including nearby parking lots (cash only). Parking Metered street parking is available in the commercial blocks of Euclid Ave, Hearst Ave and Ridge Rd. ADA Accessibility The ADA accessible entrance to North Gate Hall is located in the inner courtyard. To reach this entrance, travel around to the south side of the building along Haviland Road, and take the path at the farthest Southeast corner in to the courtyard. The ADA entrance is through the North facing door.

Printing this week!

Well, my computer didn't explode and the final video is now up on my youtube channel.  I left the two videos separate because it made uploading faster.  Please do watch the first video on contact sheets before you watch the second one listed below.  View it in Youtube for a better view.

Oh, and here;s those supplemental questions:

1.  What might cause a purple stain on your print?

2. What area of an enlarged print should you look at to evaluate density.

Oh, teaching blog… (updated)

Oh, teaching blog…

how I wish I had more time to dedicate to you!

Actually, for the last few days I've been working to make a new video about printing.  The video will walk you through the steps to making a contact sheet and great prints.  Even if you already know a bit about printing, it'll be worth watching.

Today I've spent several hours working on it and my poor old computer is about to explode.

It reviews the steps to making a contact sheet and discusses how to make great prints. I'll cover…

How to make and evaluate a test strip for a contact sheet.
How to process prints and how to avoid problems.
How to make and evaluate a test strip for an enlarged print.
How to evaluate and change print contrast.
How to evaluate for, and perform, dodging and burning.
How to evaluate the quality of printing technique.

 I'll have the video up on youtube up by tomorrow afternoon, so please check back before class.

Here's a sample:

A great book to read

I like books.  I especially like photography books.

I've been reviewing lots of books lately because I'm searching for a new textbook for my course.  A few weeks ago, I was shopping on Amazon when I cam across this interesting one:  The Nature of Photographs.    At less than $15 it's also a great deal.

When it arrived, I was impressed to find very straightforward and inviting text.  In contrast to most books that are filled with page after page of wordy text, this book provides succinct, short explanations paired with a visual examples.  The reproductions in the book are excellent quality.

If you feel a bit intimidated by heavy textbooks, this is a great one to get you started.  Stephen Shore presents a clear foundation for understanding the nature of photographs (as the title implies).  He discusses the basic elements of a photograph, why the medium transforms the world, how we can begin to read photographs and understand them better.

This is not a technical book, it's an idea book.  I highly recommend this book for my students, or even for experienced photographers who want to develop a deeper understanding of the medium.  The more you understand about the language of photography, the more effectively you can use the medium to communicate.

how to unload a camera

Wondering what to do with your film once the roll is finished?  These two videos will walk you through all the steps to getting the film out of the camera.

As always, don't force any part of the camera. That can lead to film or camera damage.  If you get into trouble, bring your camera to class for help. And now the videos ...


This video shows you how to get your film out of a camera with a manual system.




This video shows you how to get your film out of a camera with an automatic system.