Who Knew Then,Treat it Serious Now

That's my dad, Raphael and his partner Leroy. That's a Tommy gun on the right. That's a riot gun on the left. That's the third largest diamond ever found in the raw, handcuffed to my dad. 

Found in South Africa when a woman tilling her field sat on it by accident, later sold to Harry Winston, it was shipped via the United States Postal System. The Two in the picture, a team of Postal Inspectors had the honor of receiving it and transporting it to Harry Winston in NYC. Harry took advantage of the best and lowest price escort by insuring it via the US Mail, but that's not what this story is about. 

It is about the importance of archiving photography, for a future we can't see now and not judging what has or doesn't have value. 

On route to Harry. they stopped to check in at their office and another inspector there asked them to stop and pose for a quickie Polaroid. A fast snap taken to show the folks back home, me included who at the time was a young photographer with my bathroom darkroom setup and my new MamyiaRB67 . It was another assignment in my dad's work but one that needed some extra copies to send to the rest of the family. The original must have been 3x4 apprx. and he asked if I could make a copy. I did and a few negatives at that. I stored them in an archival glassine, gave one to them and filed the others.

35 years later, the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC wanted to dedicate a section to the Postal System and its great Postal Inspection Department. Also known as a secret service that took no credit for the myriad of cases both local and international, it gave away the accolades to the other departments that enforce the law. Its history is rich and its reputation among the inside law enforcers and breakers was outstanding. They were the final word...FEDERAL.

The Smithsonian searched for a definitive picture that would speak for the whole of who they are and after many thousands of edits stumbled on this one long gone faded Polaroid but from a print done from the copy neg, chose this. With today's better equipment. I scanned and cleaned negative and gave them a reproducible  file to turn into this card,calendar, and permanent display in the museum. 

Often we pass over many images that we deem as no real value. In our haste we discard or misplace the many images, particularly in today's digital world seeing them as non-important,a happy snap,something that we don't even consider. This one thirty some years ago could have been just that...a " hey guys, look aver here" and time would have moved on as this would have faded away. Luckily it didn't. It, while who knew then, now belongs and is part of history. 

From this point of view, we are more than jsut photographer, we are the in a way the gaurdians of history, no matter how big or small the events we record. To that end, our responsibility to the future is our approach to the present and what we do as photographers, happy snaps or major works takes on a different meaning.         

Hopping truths in the News..?

Here's a funny story that happened some years ago when I first started to shoot food.

I was called on by an editor of some popular "rag sheets" that you find at the checkout counters in the supermarkets. They wanted to do a story about frog legs and asked if I had any in stock. I didn't but living here in South Florida at that time provided no problem .

A local fish market had a supplier who hunted frogs in the Everglades, big ones too and that afternoon I got some of the best. I prepared them myself, some I had to eat of course...and photographed them as well. Sending up the film..(ah the good old film days when I wasn't in front of the computer all day for every thing I now do, when I dropped off my film,had lunch with others while we waited the 3 hours or so,had food,beer/wine and talked about everything, about being and having a HUMAN touch ).. excuse me I digress... anyway, they selected this and a verticle shot as well to see how it would lay out.

I had asked about the story but they were vague, she was simply the photo editor doing her research etc... about a month  later I am in a local super market and I spot my shot very nicely reproduced with all appropriate bylines, and paid for of course, under the headline.. " Scientists have found why the French make such great lovers"  semi quoted here...why ,the story asks..because they eat Frogs legs and frogs have been found to feed on flies, the aphrodisiac ones that they pass on in their meat.Since the French are known to eat them...VOILA..cum eere ma cheri!!!  Now I may be French and on occasion eat a couple, I always thought it was my je ne sait qua ...  

Now a couple of months go by and I am at the photo show in NYC at Javits. I go to a local market and there in another newspaper I see the shot again, this time..." Man sues famous restaurant in France over a heart attack, when his diner of frogs legs gets up and dances in his plate." wow...Fred Astair and Kermit rolled into one... 

Both stories in separate papers used this image, created in my kitchen supplied from the Everglades. Now, I know about freedom of the press and artistic license but this was absolute parody or should have been. 

While it didn't make me hopping mad, it did make me laugh for a long time. If you have a similar story email to me to post it here...   

Time,Reputation,Family Portraits

This is my Dad, Grandmother and Uncle. The location, Tampa, Florida,1938, actually Ybor City. My grandmother had a hard but happy life. She never had much, having gone through some of the tougher economics times of this country but one thing she did have, invested in, and handed down were photographs...professional ones that she had taken with her children,family and later me whenever I visited her from New York. She had a favorite studio in Tampa, where an excellent photographer exercised the perfection in his craft,you see here. 

His canvas background and various chairs that appear in other photographs he took of us through the years were his only special effects, long before PhotoShop. His concentration on his view camera,lighting and his subjects all the while putting up with us and the demands of her added to the treasure chest of memories and recordings that made up her trove. Her documentation, ink, who knew?

Her importance to these sessions were equally met by her photographer and maybe that is what this post is about; the importance of time, the one we take, the one we share and the one we leave for those who couldn't be there. Some things are worth doing, unaccountable to dollars but to the love of what one does and this shows it. Looking at this family portrait,we see a classic Black and White of its time, perfect posing ( a little stiff by today's standard ) perfect lighting,exposure and expression, not something that he pumped out because the next 40 were in line. This was an important moment for all. You can see he took it seriously because it was important to her, his client and him, his reputation. He didn't measure her wallet,it wasn't that big. He weighed his reputation and it weighed much more than whatever she could given him. This was Angelo's Studio and the approach wasn't about immediate money buta personal worth over the course of time.    

A few short years later, my dad on the left went to the Army and my uncle, the chunky one, went to the Marines, both went to war and made this image and this photographer's skill and attention to the details much more precious to her and to those of us who will carry on.   

 

Power/Responsibility/Orphan Works

 In a great scene from Spiderman, Uncle Harry turns to his nephew Peter Parker, yet to be become the super hero, and says " With great power comes great responsibility." Later , Peter now Spiderman, learns the depth of that statement.

This is my mother, in her youth , right after World War ll in France. 

It is an honest portrait showing a strong beautiful girl not trying to project anything but her strong presence in the moment of who she is,  unknown to another viewer all the experiences of World War ll   that she endured during the German occupation. Technically, flawed by a cheap camera  it still holds her real self, even now as an elderly lady, as I know her. It speaks for her in that moment, sure of today with no expectations of tomorrow. It is a time piece.

A few years later, early 50s, arriving in New York City, a professional photographer took these next images. While they are technically perfect with all the high grade professionalism and beauty of classic photography, they are someone else that I never knew but only discovered in my teens lying in a draw.While I recognized her as my mother, this was a woman I never knew existed, or could. For all purposes, it was my mother being someone else. It doesn't have the honesty about her but obviously it was not meant to. It was a projection of someone else. 

60 years ago, neither photographer probably had any knowledge of where or who these distinctly different images of the same person would wind up nor whom would view them. Luckily both had some knowledge of how to preserve them and both these time pieces endured and hopefully will continue for the future generations of my family. 

As photographers we are not Spiderman, but like him we also share an awesome responsibility because like him, we wield an awesome power. The power of stopping time and holding it in one place. It is something that we don't think of each time we push the button.  but exists in the future of the viewer whose life is affected by it. Sometimes its history, sometimes its personal. Always it is a powerful thing that affects both the viewer in the present and more so the one in the future  

In a previous post I spoke of Orphan Works, a very hot item among us photographers. Luckily I knew the first photographer, my dad. The second one unfortunately is lost. I would have loved to have met him today if he is still with us just to talk about the entire series of images he made here. With his forgiveness I am showing his work here with admiration.

In our possible future, images will contain an image footprint much like a finger print where no two are exactly alike, due to the digital information contained in both its metadata and the very pixels in the scan or digital file itself that make the image.This footprint would be recorded and housed so that by sending this image to that house would show me who,what and where this image came from. Were that the case,I would have been able to look him up, contact him and chatted, or at the least with whomever owns this image today.

Our responsibility will lie with a serious approach of entering and registering as much info that is possible with whatever new digital programs are yet to be written. In our near future and their distant one, we and everything about what we have created will further that awesome power as long as we can further our responsibility.  

On the subject of Orphan Works,    John Harrington, voices his opinion on his blog, well worth reading. 

Pictures/Images..and Orphan Works

 I want to talk about old pictures and images for some. This is my aunt, Lilly,early 1930s, photographed in Lyons,France where I am from. In its original print before this scan, it was silver and black  that looked as though it was printed on metal paper. The lighting, the hair, the style truly captured its time and becomes a classic beauty, a real jewel of photography. It is for all purposes a great Stock shot with many potentials not to mention a period piece.

I said in the opening, old pictures, images for some and that some is today's photographers. In her era, prints were about the only medium shown, and reproduced from. Professionals had labels, signatures, embossed or inked stamps to say who they were and whom to contact. 

Today, images are in many forms, digital being dominant and for professionals we have metadata that not only say the same things but add much more info, including copyright the new challenge being threatened. The threat....Orphan Works    

In brief, it says that if every attempt to locate or find out who the photographer was fails, then it is open market to a third party user. This picture has no marks nor signatures. It is almost 80 years old, now an orphan except than in actuality, I do know who the photographer is, my grandfather, who is no longer behind his camera. 

The case rests on a premise ( a revamp to copyright law) ...would images like these and those with historical value be lost, unusable, no longer seen unless you are viewing the original in a museum or collection, if its creator could not be found, under current copyright law?  

What if in todays images the metadata were stripped away or unreadable by tomorrow's tools, would they in the creator's lifetime be open game to a myriad of users? with the Orphan Works, by the current wording, yes..as well. Theoretically you could post an image or through a third party ( a client using a website, it gets downloaded by another and reposted) your metadata stripped, and now it is an orphan, open game.      

ASMP is trying to fight and re-word Orphan Works but that alone will not protect our images from becoming lost/orphaned. Technology must come to the rescue by creating a permanent non-strippable way to keep all info within the image itself and not a side issue. 

With today's technology we share knowledge openly. Like launching a message in a bottle in hopes to reach the right receivers but little control on where it lands. With our hope, comes its threat. For our future, must come a new defense. We can not lose what is in the past nor give up what is in the present. Join and support whatever photo group fits you best and help to bring some solution.

 

        

            

New Brush 2

..OK...so the first rule of thumb with a G9 camera from Canon is..CHECK THE BATTERY STATUS first...it loves the juice.....

After a false start, due to to the above fact learned the hard way!!! I came home and decided to use it where I would normally use my BIG GUN camera. This is fine for me here since my final intention was to produce the result on the web rather than on a page..(yet to be tested).

So for my other blogsite...http://www.matthewapcefood.blogspot.com
where the recipe and layout is

I shot this image,"Cilantro Shrimp in Plantain Cup" hand held, under a low lighting condition. The anti shake feature came on automatic and the result in Raw seems fine. I also shot a small jpeg with to see how the camera program would interpret it, which it also did very close to my taste. My next trial will be on an assignment....

Eager to try the new Canon G9, I went to Miami Beach in the morning. This top left image was originally shot Raw...100ISO..the next converted to BW in CS3, and the third with filters applied, cross strokes and water colors..all images here are at 72ppi jpeg for the web..

IMHO..the original file is very sweet at 12mp...tight and smooth. The ease of the camera was easy once I sat and read the extensive manual( good thing I already have some Canon savy) I chose to program one of the custom settings C1 to my preferences in color,format etc.

Now the part about the new brush...If I had been carrying my Gear, I might not have stopped to set up. Here during a quick walk by I spotted this image. Taking a glance down at the back,camera in hand, I made the shot. Because of this shot, I will return to continue along this point of view and see where it takes me.