The Tuesday Face

The Tuesday Face

Music Mondays

"I don't love you much do I.  Just more than anything else in this whole world." (Sigh)

The Tuesday Face

Music Mondays

A long time favorite and one of the only songs I'll sing in public.  

The Tuesday Face

Music Mondays!

Thanks to my buddy, Jake, for reminding me about this one.  

I'm taking requests, folks!  What are your favorite love songs?

Friday Photo Facts

Below is the current most expensive photograph in the world.  'Rhein II', by Andreas Gursky, was sold in an open auction at Christie's New York in November of 2011.  

The final selling price?  $4,338,500.

The Tuesday Face

Friday Photo Facts

The First Aerial Photograph

A Parisian photographer known as Nadar (his birthname is Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) is credited with the first aerial photograph in 1858.  The photograph was taken from a hot air balloon built especially for the occasion in order to accommodate the large format camera needed to achieve the photo.  This balloon, named 'Le G`eant' (the Giant), was so large and inventive, it inspired Jules Verne's 'Five Weeks in a Balloon'.  

While the photo itself doesn't exist anymore, the process to achieve it was so inventive and grand that the credit is undeniable.  Nadar was credited with many firsts in the history of photography and I will comment on all of them in coming weeks so stay tuned.  He is a favorite of mine.  

Here is a fantastic cartoon of Nadar achieving the first aerial photograph.  Below it is a photo of my foot while I achieved my first aerial photograph in Hong Kong in 2011.  What do you think?  Kind of awesome to see similar formats from such different eras, no?  
Nadar:  Hot air Balloon, 1858.  Me:  Helicopter, 2011.  Pretty.  Cool.

Slideshow Thursdays: Lillian Bassman

Lillian Bassman worked as a textile designer and fashion illustrator before working at Harper’s Bazaar as an art director and then a self-taught photographer under Alexey Brodovitch. 

It is pretty clear how her background influenced her photographic aesthetic, but, still, how incredibly brave of her to be a woman working in literally the ‘Mad Men’ era of advertising and magazine publishing New York City, and challenge the way the world sees the female figure.  I am of course editorializing here, but many have and do agree.  Lillian Bassman was a trendsetter in her time.  And in her time, it was very challenging to be taken seriously as a female artist. 

I love her work because it still challenges our perception of ‘woman’ and the female form more than half a century later.  Even her skilled darkroom experimentation can hardly be mimicked today with the most advanced technologies.  Lillian Bassman had the ability to created drama, romance, elegance, and mystery in a single frame.  All the while advertising a brand of perfume, pantyhose, fine jewelry and cosmetics. 

Bassman lived and worked until just last year, passing away in February of 2012.  There were fabulous tributes written after her passing.  If you’d like to read more, please click here to see what the New Your Times had to say.

Do you like her photography?  Do you think it would still make great advertising photography in today’s world? 

The Tuesday Face

Music Mondays!

Greetings from Austin, TX!  I'm here taking some photos at South By Southwest for the next few days.  Here's a favorite love song from one of my favorite Texans.  

Slideshow Thursdays: Philippe Halsman

One of my many photographic heroes, Philippe Halsman (1906-1979) proved that portraiture has no boundaries.  The results of his dedication to experimental and psychological portraiture offer proof that no two people are alike and their portraits must be unique and exhibit the same diversity.  
Halsman's archive, library and life history are well managed and preserved here.  You can read Halsman's autobiography on his website, but here's a copy of the brief career overview from his website if you're just stopping in for a quick read...

Philippe Halsman (1906-1979) was born in Riga, Latvia and began his photographic career in Paris. In 1934 he opened a portrait studio in Montparnasse, where he photographed many well-known artists and writers — including André Gide, Marc Chagall, Le Corbusier, and André Malraux, using an innovative twin-lens reflex camera that he designed himself.

Part of the great exodus of artists and intellectuals who fled the Nazis, Halsman arrived in the United States with his young family in 1940, having obtained an emergency visa through the intervention of Albert Einstein.

Halsman’s prolific career in America over the next 30 years included reportage and covers for every major American magazine. These assignments brought him face-to-face with many of the century’s leading statesmen, scientists, artists and entertainers. His incisive portraits appeared on 101 covers for LIFE magazine, a record no other photographer could match.

Part of Halsman’s success was his joie de vivre and his imagination — combined with his technological prowess. In 1945 he was elected the first president of the American Society of Magazine Photographers (ASMP), where he led the fight to protect photographers’ creative and professional rights. In 1958 Halsman’s colleagues named him one of the World’s Ten Greatest Photographers. From 1971 to 1976 he taught a seminar at The New School entitled “Psychological Portraiture.”

Halsman began a thirty-seven year collaboration with Salvador Dali in 1941 which resulted in a stream of unusual “photographs of ideas,” including “Dali Atomicus” and the “Dali’s Mustache” series. In the early 1950s, Halsman began to ask his subjects to jump for his camera at the conclusion of each sitting. These uniquely witty and energetic images have become an important part of his photographic legacy.

Friday Photo Facts

The very first photo manipulation...EVER!

'Cloudy Sky, Mediterranean Sea', Gustave Le Gray 1857

After the first successful photographs hit the scene in the 1820s, there was great controversy surrounding its viability as a serious art form.  Gustave Le Gray was a French painter-turned-photographer and a very skilled darkroom technician who believed that photography absolutely possessed the power to interpret our natural surroundings and express artistic impressions.  

Le Gray set out to create a series of seascapes in order to prove his ideas, but quickly faced a technical challenge.  Photographic materials were not yet advanced enough to capture the ominous skies and clouds while properly exposing the subtle ripples and texture in the water surface below.  In other words, when the water was properly exposed, the sky would render completely white or 'washed out'.  When the sky was properly exposed, the water would be completely black with no detail whatsoever.  Le Gray's solution?  He created two separate glass negatives, each accurately exposing one element and then later seamed them together at the horizon line to create one image.  Seems kind of obvious now, but this was the first time in history this had ever been accomplished and turned many heads in the art community at the time.  One noteworthy French art critic described this series of photo manipulations 'the event of the year'.  The technique was quickly adopted by the photography community and labeled 'combination printing.'

These days, we commonly say, "Eh, just Photoshop it."  Next time you say that, think of our dear Monsieur Le Gray slaving away in his Parisian darkroom in the 1850s and think about how far we've come.  

Have you ever seamed two photos together to create one?  What techniques did you use?
                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Slideshow Thursdays

My favorite day of the week is Thursday.  This started while I was studying at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA, and taking classes with my most significant photography mentor, Ken Merfeld.  Ken would put slideshows together for every class....and I mean REAL slideshows.  Actual analog photographic slide film mounted to little cardboard squares and inserted in special sequence into a SLIDE PROJECTOR.  

Ken's slideshows struck a very nostalgic and sentimental chord for me.   My grandfather also exhibited slideshows throughout my entire childhood.  He loved to travel and loved photography.   He'd get his film back from the lab after returning from his adventures, slave for days over a slideshow exhibition and then sit the entire family down and show off the incredible treasures he collected during his travels.  

Ken's slideshows were full of images from all the great photographers to walk before us.  He showed Cartier-Bresson, Bassman, Winogrand, Eggleston, L'Artigue, Halsman, Moon, Carter, Cameron....the list goes on.  

Every Thursday afternoon, the lights would go dim, the projector motor on and Ken would speak about extraordinary artists.  It was always the highlight of the week for me and the day I looked forward to most.  I would find inspiration, of course, but most importantly, and with Ken's help, I would remember that any challenge I was facing with my own work had already been someone else's problem.  I was humbled and motivated with every advancing frame.  And that one little detail I was agonizing over for my shoot that weekend?  Problem solved, agony gone, enter excitement and anticipation, gimme that camera!

So now here we are, I have a blog to write and it's Thursday.  What better way to honor my mentor and inspire my audience than to post a slideshow of my favorite photographers every Thursday.  Stay tuned for next Thursday.  It's gonna be a good one!

Who are some of your favorite historical photographers?  Who would you like to see in a slideshow?