Conserving, celebrating, and contributing to the excellence that is Western Civilization.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Photography...
What a stupendous invention. Yes, I'm secretly a B&W fan. But oh my, color can be so... vivid. A collection taken by Albert Kahn from the early 20th century.
Luther, the photographs are mesmerizing! I could get lost in that site for hours!
I added Goodshit to "Kitchen Spices". Thanks so much for posting this!
I clicked on a dozen or so photographs with an "adult content" warning, but they were all beautiful family portraits and landscapes. It must be a generic disclaimer (although I'm sure there are probably photographs on the site that may earn the warning).
I love old photography (I check out Shorpy regularly), and old color photos are an added bonus. The color on these looks a bit primative, but I love it.
I once saw some colo(u)r movie film of some WWI soldiers marching.
You're welcome, Lady Red. Glad you and RadioMattM enjoyed the site. And I, too, enjoy old photography. It's almost as if the light of the world was different back in those days. But... when I think back in memory fifty years ago the world was different, somehow. Like your observation re silver halide and 1's and 0's., an essence there in the former that seems to be missing now. Uh-oh, now I sound like an old fart. :)
I wonder though, Lady Red, if you might have confused 'Good S*it' with the site hosting those photographs? As I assure you that on some days 'GS' is definitely NSFW. Something I should have warned about last night.
You know, Lady Red, I don't know that it is the digital aspect of photgraphy today, it is more a matter of content.
Back in the days of large format cameras, you really had to think about the shor before you made it. With the advent of 35mm roll film, you could shoot a million pictures and pick what you like. I say 35mm because medium format films such as 120 took 8-12 shots (depending on whether the frames were square or rectangular). This made the photographer think.
Let's look at some of the Pulitzer Prize winning photos.
First, let's look at In the famous picture of Babe Ruth.
That was the photgraphers last sheet of film. He wanted to do something else than what everyone else was doing (notice the line of photographers to the right). He also believed in using natural light -- there was no flash used. The result? an iconic photo.
Here is another good one. The photgrapher snnuck up to the stage, pretended to fool around with his camera, not wanting anyone else to see what he had seen.
Ooops, these turned up a bit larger than I expected. The second photo was of the flag at Iwo Jima, and you know what it looks like. You can see the meat of the others.
There is a book of the Pulitzer-Prize winning photos. Find it. I like the older edition better -- the newer photos are not as good (for the reasons described above), and the text is better in the older edition.
I agree about content, Matt, and about thinking, composing. Notice too, though, that your examples are in B&W. Not to enter into that debate but B&W does have its enduring and endearing characteristics. Somewhat of a stark realism that color, to me, doesn't always seem to capture. I mean, imagine that shot of Ruth in color... would it have the same intensity or impact?
I've never used a large format camera but my first 35MM was sans light meter, auto focus, flash, etc. I knew nothing then about 'taking pictures', nor do I now. I shot mostly in B&W but later switched to color slides. But, with rudimentary knowledge, I enjoyed learning f-stops and speeds based on conditions as it did, as you say, force me to think about what I was doing, what I wanted to frame, and how. And you're correct, now it's too easy to just take a hundred snaps and sort them out later. That's taken away from the enjoyment I used to have with that old 35.
Luther, while I agree that modern automation has removed some of the mystique in photography, it has also vastly improved what we can do with less fuss and without chemical manipulation.
I was a "manual camera" only guy until the late 1990's. My battery of cameras included 2 Nikon F2 bodies, with motor drives, albeit with old DP-1 needle type light meters for those days when "F8 and be there" wasn't quite enough. I did also own two Nikkormats, one old FTN model (the orignal with J screen)and one Nikkormat EL model, that had automated light metering, but I always used it on manual mode. I still have the EL for nostalgia.
I still made adjustments to the light settings the meters called for, because I knew they were based upon an 18% gray card standard, which = "blah." Always under exposed on slide film, always over exposed on print film...for example, when using Kodak's Professional Portrait Print film rated at ASA 160, I always would set for ASA 100. If using Fuji-chrome(slide) ASA 50 slide film, set for ASA 64.
Today, with digital, I make the same compensations for ISO (ne: ASA) ratings and set as I would have for slide films....setting exposure compensation at -1/3 or -2/3 of an F stop....then I utilize a Kodak plug-in in Photoshop ("Elements" will do fine) to open up shadows and pull out details....just you would do chemically with Ektachrome.
I agree it is hard to discipline yourself to slow down and take a photograph with the same concentration you'd have used with short rolls of film, like the 120's I began with as a kid. However, the best photographers still do it, even if firing off 3 to 10 shot bursts.
You can know all the technology, but without the "eye" for an image, it's just like scribbling in a note book. I've still not the "eye" of my professional friends, but I try. With fur & feathers shots, "eye contact" is important to me...and on rare occasion I achieve it.
Some examples (to burn up band width :-))...not all "good" shots, and not retouched, but the idea....
Thanks for the samples, Ari. My interest is in landscapes and street scenes showing day to day life. In fact, some of my photos may look pretty boring to look at them shortly after they are taken, but they hold a great deal of interest a few years after the fact.
I have a picture of the old south-end Seattle Monorail station, which was torn down years ago when Westlake Center was built. Capturing scene that change make for interesting photos later on.
Your examples, great shots, I love your dogs. Now imagine that you didn't have that great zoom lens, even though you still had to stalk to get the pictures you did with that lens. Imagine a cardboard box with a pinhole, size of your choosing, in the front. Halide in the back. That's the kind of thinking I'm thinking about.
This subject is kinda like sex, unless you're a professional who can sell it to make a living we rest are amateurs who just like what we like.
Luther....Hah, the Nikon F2 body was a "tank" and out of production for 20+ years by the late 90's, originally all manual, the view finders were interchangeable and I added the first of the light meter finders when it came out.
I am very familiar with stalking close to game subjects to photograph, usually using a blind of some kind once a track/scat trail was located. An army surplus USMC camo poncho served very well as an extra portable "blind." A lot of work. When it comes to grizzly bears, I prefer the zoom lenses of today, thank you very much. Wolves are no problem, just very hard to get close to, period.
Now and then you don't have to use a zoom lens....this shot in the Gallitan Mountains area southeast of Yellowstone...taken by a friend. I'd coxed Mr. Fox close with nothing but voice chirps and crinkling paper in my pocket. He'd obviously be habituated by someone before me...but he was otherwise wild:
My first camera at about age 7 was a Kodak Brownie...can't get much more manual than that in the modern era. I later had an old late 30's Graflex 4x5 that was plain tedious to use, but superb optics. About the same time, about age 8 I got my first Rifle, a Model 52 Winchester .22 caliber.
Once I was hooked on shooting and photography I've owned many guns and cameras, but after ceasing hunting, the post WWII Nikons were my favorites...as I said until the late 90's.
Even my digital cameras are older, now, no longer made, but giving me 10 to 12 Megapixels in a range from 18mm to 700 mm in 35mm film terms....all in a space 1/5th the size of the old gear.
"This subject is kinda like sex, unless you're a professional who can sell it to make a living we rest are amateurs who just like what we like."
Luther, you slay me! ROFLMAO!!!!
Great photographs, guys. I'm in Luther's category; I like what I like, though I may not always understand the reasons. In high school, I was one of the school photographers, and I took many of the shots that ended up in the yearbook and school paper. We had our own darkroom, and it was a lot of fun. We used 35 mm. cameras.
Nowadays, I have a Kodak digital, and the pictures aren't nearly as sublime as the old black and whites I took with the 35 mm.
Noah has taken some wonderful photographs with his digital camera, though. I'll try to convince him to write a post, and show off some of his better shots. :)
I did not mean to publish that yet. I was going to put Ari's comment, "My first camera at about age 7 was a Kodak Brownie," in there -- but when I came back down to my comment, it had already published. I am dangerous sometimes.
I have many pictures in my senior year book, too. The photography teacher was also the yearbook adviser, and he didn't like the work of most of the yearbook class photographers -- so some of his photography class students filled in the gap.
Lady Red....actually, I didn't approach the Fox, he approached me while I was taking pictures of his mate and her kits. I try not to "approach" any animal unnecessarily...this guy just walked straight up to me, so I stood still. Here's a shot of him from my vantage point with him at my feet...and one of his mate further way.
I fully understand why black & white photographs have a special impact, if exposed properly and developed properly, any drama just pops out at you....any contrast is vivid. The slower black & white film emulsions were spectacular if developed and printed properly, which often meant a fair amount of time in the dark room. Ansel Adams' photos of Yosemite in black and white are hard to beat.
RAdioMattM...your photo of the truck dangling from a bridge is a prime example of what I said earlier here. You can have the best gear, and the most technical knowledge, but with the "Eye" for an image and the timing and patience to capture it, you are just taking notes. The greatest photographs can be taken with the simplest equipment...all the modern gear does is increase the opportunities. You still have to be there and see it.
Last "photo" comment (I promise)...a great example of the drama of black & white...a photo taken by another person of iconic Vietnam War photographer Tim Page, on the right, along side photographer Martin Stuart Fox, center, during a mortar attack in the Ia Drang Valley. Page had, and still has, the "Eye" and was notorious for "being there"...in the fight, not just watching it, just as his compatriots Sean Flynn and Michale Herr were in those days.
The place he is shown in here is the location of the real battle of the IA Drang portrayed by (then LTC) Lt Gen. Hal Moore in "We Soldiers Once, and Young"....also made in to a movie that strayed from the book quite a bit.
Tim Page has several books of images published, and any one of the is worth the price. He captured it.
I lied...one more comment. Just for Luther, the iconic and fantastic photographer of US Marines in action, from the midst of the action, the never daunted Larry Burrows. He loved "his" Marines and embedded with them at every hazardous opportunity....which was routine for the Marines in RVN.
Burrows was killed in action, when the Huey he was riding in was shot down on the Laotian border in 1971.
One more....my favorite of all photographs of the Vietnam War, taken by a close friend who was a young US Marine at the time, when the first Marines were departing Danang to take the fight to the Viet Cong...most of you have seen it before from my prior posts elsewhere. It hangs 16x20 in my living room, and I think of it as "all I need to know about war and who pays for it." It is reminiscent of journalist Jules Roy's comment, paraphrased: "We we must barricade against children, we are doing something wrong"...referring to French barricades in Hanoi pre-1954.
Lady Red...Norm and I had a "debate" of sorts when we printed the image for my use. He was unfamiliar with Jules Roy or his comments back in the 50's...Norm wanted the barbed wire on the left mostly cropped out. It was one of the few "artistic" issues I won out on in our various discussions over time...and rightfully so.
Long before he got a degree in photography and film, he had that "Eye" I speak of...his photos of his time in RVN, as a USMC infantryman, many of individuals he encountered, are riveting. Sadly, he has not made very many available, and then only to friends or places he felt they were appropriate. This one isn't even his favorite.
He used a very small half-frame 35 mm Canon camera while there, something easily fit on to an already heavy pack harness. This photo was first printed to a 4x5 negative, then printed on paper from that.
I'll violate our trust just slightly for one more example of eye contact...
Norm and I are the same age, so when the day comes he is gone, I will likely be as well. I know of no one who would then finally publish his best work over 45+ years as a collection. Among many other things, he is a master of eye contact in candid photography.
RadioMattM...Okay. Your photo of firemen looks like those who fight forest fires, and there really is a connection between that and the image of Page and Fox I posted. It is a very similar endeavor, a combat without question, one that wears men down but yet they get up and go on. Some believe they are immortal. Page was wounded a few times before he was finally wounded badly enough to be sent home. Burrows, same for him, until he was finally KIA. Sean Flynn, one of Page's buddies, disappeared in Cambodia where he'd gone after the Communists took over there....he was following the photographer's rule: "be there." He still is.
I enjoy photography as a hobby, but most of all that hobby has taught me to recognize passion and great work by others when I see it.
Actually, they had spent all night fighting a house fire. The house was in a wooded area on a hillside, and was a total loss.
The thing with the war photographers you discuss are that they went out to do the job -- they were not the modern "journalist" who lets someone else do the dangerous work, then goes and pretends to be in the face of danger.
Any discussion of war photographers has to include Robert Capa. Some of his images define the term "Iconic image."
Wary, about 'Good Shit'. One needs wide open eyes.
ReplyDeleteHmmmm... well, males will likely have them on occasion, bulging eyes, females, on the other hand, may suffer from constriction.
But Fred has a wide ranging and interesting mind, really, and always in good taste. Even if a tad too left for me now and then.
Luther, the photographs are mesmerizing! I could get lost in that site for hours!
ReplyDeleteI added Goodshit to "Kitchen Spices". Thanks so much for posting this!
I clicked on a dozen or so photographs with an "adult content" warning, but they were all beautiful family portraits and landscapes. It must be a generic disclaimer (although I'm sure there are probably photographs on the site that may earn the warning).
I love old photography (I check out Shorpy regularly), and old color photos are an added bonus. The color on these looks a bit primative, but I love it.
ReplyDeleteI once saw some colo(u)r movie film of some WWI soldiers marching.
Matt, I love old photography too. It captures an essence that's lacking with today's digital photography, don't you think?
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome, Lady Red. Glad you and RadioMattM enjoyed the site. And I, too, enjoy old photography. It's almost as if the light of the world was different back in those days. But... when I think back in memory fifty years ago the world was different, somehow. Like your observation re silver halide and 1's and 0's., an essence there in the former that seems to be missing now. Uh-oh, now I sound like an old fart. :)
ReplyDeleteI wonder though, Lady Red, if you might have confused 'Good S*it' with the site hosting those photographs? As I assure you that on some days 'GS' is definitely NSFW. Something I should have warned about last night.
You know, Lady Red, I don't know that it is the digital aspect of photgraphy today, it is more a matter of content.
ReplyDeleteBack in the days of large format cameras, you really had to think about the shor before you made it. With the advent of 35mm roll film, you could shoot a million pictures and pick what you like. I say 35mm because medium format films such as 120 took 8-12 shots (depending on whether the frames were square or rectangular).
This made the photographer think.
Let's look at some of the Pulitzer Prize winning photos.
First, let's look at In the famous picture of Babe Ruth.
img:"http://www.artknowledgenews.com/files2009a/Babe_Ruth_Retires.jpg"
That was the photgraphers last sheet of film. He wanted to do something else than what everyone else was doing (notice the line of photographers to the right). He also believed in using natural light -- there was no flash used. The result? an iconic photo.
Same goes for this one.
img:"http://ohs-image.ohiohistory.org/images/about/pr/ctm/1945.jpg"
I remember the next one when it was in the news. It still moves me (if you don't know the story, I think you can figure out what happened)
img:"http://thegoodparts.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/rocco-morabito-the-kiss-of-life.jpg"
Here is another good one. The photgrapher snnuck up to the stage, pretended to fool around with his camera, not wanting anyone else to see what he had seen.
img:"http://manolomen.com/images/Adlai%20Stevenson%20with%20a%20hole%20in%20his%20shoe.jpg"
There are many other -- some which I cannot find on line. It is amazing how these photos tell stories. You do not need any words.
Ooops, these turned up a bit larger than I expected. The second photo was of the flag at Iwo Jima, and you know what it looks like. You can see the meat of the others.
ReplyDeleteThere is a book of the Pulitzer-Prize winning photos. Find it. I like the older edition better -- the newer photos are not as good (for the reasons described above), and the text is better in the older edition.
I agree about content, Matt, and about thinking, composing. Notice too, though, that your examples are in B&W. Not to enter into that debate but B&W does have its enduring and endearing characteristics. Somewhat of a stark realism that color, to me, doesn't always seem to capture. I mean, imagine that shot of Ruth in color... would it have the same intensity or impact?
ReplyDeleteI've never used a large format camera but my first 35MM was sans light meter, auto focus, flash, etc. I knew nothing then about 'taking pictures', nor do I now. I shot mostly in B&W but later switched to color slides. But, with rudimentary knowledge, I enjoyed learning f-stops and speeds based on conditions as it did, as you say, force me to think about what I was doing, what I wanted to frame, and how. And you're correct, now it's too easy to just take a hundred snaps and sort them out later. That's taken away from the enjoyment I used to have with that old 35.
Of course I love all photo sites. But perusing through the H/T link I came across this one (Lindsay Lohan)...GOOD GRIEF!!
ReplyDeleteimgw:"http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y128/aridog/SHxIU.png"
Luther, while I agree that modern automation has removed some of the mystique in photography, it has also vastly improved what we can do with less fuss and without chemical manipulation.
ReplyDeleteI was a "manual camera" only guy until the late 1990's. My battery of cameras included 2 Nikon F2 bodies, with motor drives, albeit with old DP-1 needle type light meters for those days when "F8 and be there" wasn't quite enough. I did also own two Nikkormats, one old FTN model (the orignal with J screen)and one Nikkormat EL model, that had automated light metering, but I always used it on manual mode. I still have the EL for nostalgia.
I still made adjustments to the light settings the meters called for, because I knew they were based upon an 18% gray card standard, which = "blah." Always under exposed on slide film, always over exposed on print film...for example, when using Kodak's Professional Portrait Print film rated at ASA 160, I always would set for ASA 100. If using Fuji-chrome(slide) ASA 50 slide film, set for ASA 64.
Today, with digital, I make the same compensations for ISO (ne: ASA) ratings and set as I would have for slide films....setting exposure compensation at -1/3 or -2/3 of an F stop....then I utilize a Kodak plug-in in Photoshop ("Elements" will do fine) to open up shadows and pull out details....just you would do chemically with Ektachrome.
I agree it is hard to discipline yourself to slow down and take a photograph with the same concentration you'd have used with short rolls of film, like the 120's I began with as a kid. However, the best photographers still do it, even if firing off 3 to 10 shot bursts.
You can know all the technology, but without the "eye" for an image, it's just like scribbling in a note book. I've still not the "eye" of my professional friends, but I try. With fur & feathers shots, "eye contact" is important to me...and on rare occasion I achieve it.
Some examples (to burn up band width :-))...not all "good" shots, and not retouched, but the idea....
imgw:"http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y128/aridog/Wolf-LaidBack-P1010387.jpg"
imgw:"http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y128/aridog/Wolf-P1010444-cropsmall.jpg"
imgw:"http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y128/aridog/Zoya-Ari-March05.jpg"
imgw:"http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y128/aridog/09-06-14-Antelope-P1010210-rz.jpg"
imgw:"http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y128/aridog/09-06-11-Pop-1-P1000898-rz.jpg"
Thanks for the samples, Ari. My interest is in landscapes and street scenes showing day to day life. In fact, some of my photos may look pretty boring to look at them shortly after they are taken, but they hold a great deal of interest a few years after the fact.
ReplyDeleteI have a picture of the old south-end Seattle Monorail station, which was torn down years ago when Westlake Center was built. Capturing scene that change make for interesting photos later on.
Well, hell, Ari. You've gone all geek on me. :)
ReplyDeleteF2... is that a race car? Oops, that's an F1.
Your examples, great shots, I love your dogs. Now imagine that you didn't have that great zoom lens, even though you still had to stalk to get the pictures you did with that lens. Imagine a cardboard box with a pinhole, size of your choosing, in the front. Halide in the back. That's the kind of thinking I'm thinking about.
This subject is kinda like sex, unless you're a professional who can sell it to make a living we rest are amateurs who just like what we like.
This subject is kinda like sex, unless you're a professional who can sell it to make a living we rest are amateurs who just like what we like.
ReplyDeleteLMAO!
Luther....Hah, the Nikon F2 body was a "tank" and out of production for 20+ years by the late 90's, originally all manual, the view finders were interchangeable and I added the first of the light meter finders when it came out.
ReplyDeleteI am very familiar with stalking close to game subjects to photograph, usually using a blind of some kind once a track/scat trail was located. An army surplus USMC camo poncho served very well as an extra portable "blind." A lot of work. When it comes to grizzly bears, I prefer the zoom lenses of today, thank you very much. Wolves are no problem, just very hard to get close to, period.
Now and then you don't have to use a zoom lens....this shot in the Gallitan Mountains area southeast of Yellowstone...taken by a friend. I'd coxed Mr. Fox close with nothing but voice chirps and crinkling paper in my pocket. He'd obviously be habituated by someone before me...but he was otherwise wild:
imgw:"http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y128/aridog/090611_DSC_8551copyS-rz.jpg"
My first camera at about age 7 was a Kodak Brownie...can't get much more manual than that in the modern era. I later had an old late 30's Graflex 4x5 that was plain tedious to use, but superb optics. About the same time, about age 8 I got my first Rifle, a Model 52 Winchester .22 caliber.
Once I was hooked on shooting and photography I've owned many guns and cameras, but after ceasing hunting, the post WWII Nikons were my favorites...as I said until the late 90's.
Even my digital cameras are older, now, no longer made, but giving me 10 to 12 Megapixels in a range from 18mm to 700 mm in 35mm film terms....all in a space 1/5th the size of the old gear.
"This subject is kinda like sex, unless you're a professional who can sell it to make a living we rest are amateurs who just like what we like."
ReplyDeleteLuther, you slay me! ROFLMAO!!!!
Great photographs, guys. I'm in Luther's category; I like what I like, though I may not always understand the reasons. In high school, I was one of the school photographers, and I took many of the shots that ended up in the yearbook and school paper. We had our own darkroom, and it was a lot of fun. We used 35 mm. cameras.
Nowadays, I have a Kodak digital, and the pictures aren't nearly as sublime as the old black and whites I took with the 35 mm.
Noah has taken some wonderful photographs with his digital camera, though. I'll try to convince him to write a post, and show off some of his better shots. :)
Aridog, the photo of you and the fox is amazing! I can't believe he let you get that close!
ReplyDeleteThe Pulitzer Prize winning photo for 1954 was taken with a Brown (and expired film).
ReplyDeleteimg:"http://www.radiostanford.org/Pics/truck.jpg"
I did not mean to publish that yet. I was going to put Ari's comment, "My first camera at about age 7 was a Kodak Brownie," in there -- but when I came back down to my comment, it had already published. I am dangerous sometimes.
ReplyDeleteI have many pictures in my senior year book, too. The photography teacher was also the yearbook adviser, and he didn't like the work of most of the yearbook class photographers -- so some of his photography class students filled in the gap.
OK, speaking of 'Iconic Photos' I have had a link to saite by that name since very shortly after I got this new PC.
ReplyDeletehttp://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/category/war/page/4/
Scroll to the bottom of that page, for a photo that has haunted me since it was published.
I wanted to find the photographer and grab his throat and scream in his face 'Did you HELP that baby!?!?!'
After reading this site, I saw that he had, and that what he had experienced there led to his taking his own life.
Saite = site.
ReplyDeleteLady Red....actually, I didn't approach the Fox, he approached me while I was taking pictures of his mate and her kits. I try not to "approach" any animal unnecessarily...this guy just walked straight up to me, so I stood still. Here's a shot of him from my vantage point with him at my feet...and one of his mate further way.
ReplyDeleteimgw:"http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y128/aridog/09-06-11-PleezGibtoMe-P1010056.jpg"
imgw:"http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y128/aridog/09-06-11-YawnandStretch-P1000879.jpg"
I fully understand why black & white photographs have a special impact, if exposed properly and developed properly, any drama just pops out at you....any contrast is vivid. The slower black & white film emulsions were spectacular if developed and printed properly, which often meant a fair amount of time in the dark room. Ansel Adams' photos of Yosemite in black and white are hard to beat.
ReplyDeleteAn example of Adams' work....
imgw:"http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01184/arts-graphics-2008_1184871a.jpg"
RAdioMattM...your photo of the truck dangling from a bridge is a prime example of what I said earlier here. You can have the best gear, and the most technical knowledge, but with the "Eye" for an image and the timing and patience to capture it, you are just taking notes. The greatest photographs can be taken with the simplest equipment...all the modern gear does is increase the opportunities. You still have to be there and see it.
ReplyDeleteDamn!!
ReplyDelete"but with the "Eye"...is supposed to be "but WITHOUT the 'Eye'"....
Last "photo" comment (I promise)...a great example of the drama of black & white...a photo taken by another person of iconic Vietnam War photographer Tim Page, on the right, along side photographer Martin Stuart Fox, center, during a mortar attack in the Ia Drang Valley. Page had, and still has, the "Eye" and was notorious for "being there"...in the fight, not just watching it, just as his compatriots Sean Flynn and Michale Herr were in those days.
ReplyDeleteimgw:"http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y128/aridog/6a00c2252555dbf2190110181fbb7a860f-.jpg"
The place he is shown in here is the location of the real battle of the IA Drang portrayed by (then LTC) Lt Gen. Hal Moore in "We Soldiers Once, and Young"....also made in to a movie that strayed from the book quite a bit.
Tim Page has several books of images published, and any one of the is worth the price. He captured it.
I lied...one more comment. Just for Luther, the iconic and fantastic photographer of US Marines in action, from the midst of the action, the never daunted Larry Burrows. He loved "his" Marines and embedded with them at every hazardous opportunity....which was routine for the Marines in RVN.
ReplyDeleteBurrows was killed in action, when the Huey he was riding in was shot down on the Laotian border in 1971.
Perhaps his most famous photograph....
imgw:"http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y128/aridog/276274093_485da18e9b_o.jpg"
One more....my favorite of all photographs of the Vietnam War, taken by a close friend who was a young US Marine at the time, when the first Marines were departing Danang to take the fight to the Viet Cong...most of you have seen it before from my prior posts elsewhere. It hangs 16x20 in my living room, and I think of it as "all I need to know about war and who pays for it." It is reminiscent of journalist Jules Roy's comment, paraphrased: "We we must barricade against children, we are doing something wrong"...referring to French barricades in Hanoi pre-1954.
ReplyDeleteimgw:"http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y128/aridog/Vietnam_006.jpg"
No words can do justice to your last photograph, aridog, so I won't offer any. It speaks for itself.
ReplyDeleteAri, your photo of the photgraphers above reminds me of this photo:
ReplyDeleteimgw:"http://www.iaff1604.org/Pulitzer.jpg"
These are firefighters in Burien, south of Seattle.
Lady Red...Norm and I had a "debate" of sorts when we printed the image for my use. He was unfamiliar with Jules Roy or his comments back in the 50's...Norm wanted the barbed wire on the left mostly cropped out. It was one of the few "artistic" issues I won out on in our various discussions over time...and rightfully so.
ReplyDeleteLong before he got a degree in photography and film, he had that "Eye" I speak of...his photos of his time in RVN, as a USMC infantryman, many of individuals he encountered, are riveting. Sadly, he has not made very many available, and then only to friends or places he felt they were appropriate. This one isn't even his favorite.
He used a very small half-frame 35 mm Canon camera while there, something easily fit on to an already heavy pack harness. This photo was first printed to a 4x5 negative, then printed on paper from that.
I'll violate our trust just slightly for one more example of eye contact...
imgw:"http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y128/aridog/Approachingwolf2-081020_DSC_9616.jpg"
Norm and I are the same age, so when the day comes he is gone, I will likely be as well. I know of no one who would then finally publish his best work over 45+ years as a collection. Among many other things, he is a master of eye contact in candid photography.
Ari, as far as I am concerned, your "last" comment was the last until the next one -- and that is perfectly alright with me.
ReplyDeleteYour observations, comments, photos, etc., are always facinating. Keep them coming.
RadioMattM...Okay. Your photo of firemen looks like those who fight forest fires, and there really is a connection between that and the image of Page and Fox I posted. It is a very similar endeavor, a combat without question, one that wears men down but yet they get up and go on. Some believe they are immortal. Page was wounded a few times before he was finally wounded badly enough to be sent home. Burrows, same for him, until he was finally KIA. Sean Flynn, one of Page's buddies, disappeared in Cambodia where he'd gone after the Communists took over there....he was following the photographer's rule: "be there." He still is.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy photography as a hobby, but most of all that hobby has taught me to recognize passion and great work by others when I see it.
Actually, they had spent all night fighting a house fire. The house was in a wooded area on a hillside, and was a total loss.
ReplyDeleteThe thing with the war photographers you discuss are that they went out to do the job -- they were not the modern "journalist" who lets someone else do the dangerous work, then goes and pretends to be in the face of danger.
Any discussion of war photographers has to include Robert Capa. Some of his images define the term "Iconic image."
imgw:"http://designblog.uniandes.edu.co/blogs/dise2616/files/2008/11/robert-capa.jpg"
imgw:"http://rosenblumtv.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/capa_beach.jpg"
One can't help but wonder if Capa's D-Day photos would have been as powerful had someone not screwed up in the dark room.
Some background on "Robert Capa"...aka born Endre Friedmann in Hungary.
ReplyDeleteLeft click on the link and open it under a new tab for easier reading.
Capa died on a land mine in French Indo-China in 1954 IIRC.
Another great was Dickey Chapelle ...a small woman, tiny really, killed near Chu Lai, RVN
ReplyDeleteimg:"http://www.wellesley.edu/Polisci/wj/Vietimages/Audio/Chapelle/Huet,_Chapelle.jpg"
Photograph by Henri Huet.