This Is Not a Leica.

It is said that "The best camera is the one you have with you."  A quick (and relatively lazy) internet search doesn't provide an easy answer as to who actually said it, although I did find one who credited Chase Jarvis.  At any rate, in this post I want to address the thought, because besides my Leica, I do carry a lot of other cameras.

However, here's the thing: I always have my Leica with me, ever since I missed that picture one Christmas of the decorations being set up in Lexington's little version of Central Park, Hopkins Green.  Even today when I ran an errand, interrupting my writing here, I came across an image of people on a local sidewalk casually playing old time fiddle music.  Only in Lexington.  I had the chance to shoot just one frame with my M3, but that was more than if I hadn't brought it.  And I would have been really frustrated about that.

Sadly, nowadays my finances intrude on this photography.  Film lies undeveloped ... for two years.  I just can't afford to get it processed.  So I often double shoot with the camera I have with me: my iPhone. 

These are all pictures I made while my daughters rehearsed for their dance recital this past weekend.  As any dance parent knows, weeks and months of careful practice go into these events, and those weeks and months require patient attendance.  Needless to say, when I saw an image in those empty moments, I wanted to capture it.  The phone was the easiest way.

I used the standard photo function that comes with the Apple iPhone, then ran it through the free version of PS Express, changing it to Black and White, perhaps tweaking the brightness and contrast, and adding the border.  That's it.

By the time we moved into the theatre, I started shooting color.  I'm not sure why.  However, this only changed my process in that, rather than using the Black and White conversion function in PS, I shifted in the other direction, juicing up the saturation.

The exercise is interesting, in its way, much like my exercise of using only one Leica with whatever lens I've chosen to put on it for the day (or, for that matter, usually for an entire roll of film).  I'm pleased that, when I've posted these on Facebook, they've gotten positive responses, including "Likes" from my photographer friends and even on (for the picture immediately above) from the Tamarkin Camera Facebook page.

In my fantasies, they are impressed enough by my work here to lend me one of the new digital M (240)s.  The stuff I could do with that video function!

 

Perhaps I should keep my dreams realistic: like getting enough money to get that film processed ...

So What Have You Done for Me Lately?

It's been a rough year financially, but I do what I can.  Unfortunately, what I can't do is get film processed ... or for that matter, buy more film.  Slowly, I've been working my way through the refrigerator (Why do I think there should be a D in that word?), using up old film I had stocked up on for various unfinished, undone or (rarely) overstocked projects.  I'm hoping that 20-year-old color neg stuff I was issued when a wire photog still processes.

Anyway, as I've mentioned, I still carry a Leica with me every day as I do TV work in Roanoke, Virginia, and I still shoot pictures when I see them.  However, until I find the cash to get the film processed, you won't see them.

So what the heck are these, you might be asking?  Look at them as promises of things to come.  On my other blog, the writing one, Cat Typing, I talked about getting an email from a photo agency asking, "What are you working on?"  You can pop over there via the link to find out my full answer, but the short version is: Not nearly enough.

However, I have messed about with a concept on the way in to the day (sort of) job in the early morning hours, using digital Nikon equipment.  So technically, for these pics, I'm not the Guy with the Leica, but just another guy with a Nikon.

Let's hope that I'll be able -- to use a term that amused a coworker no end once -- to make a photo dump from the Leicas here soon ...

More to Come ...

It's been a while, and it may be a while longer.

I've been shooting, I'm still seen with a Leica as I work ... and as I don't work.  I try not to go out without one, even though I find myself using an iPhone for snapshots more and more. 

The thing is, the expense of buying and processing film has become too great in a life where I borrow money for gas in the final days before I receive my paycheck.  But I still shoot, slowly working through the stockpile of film that had accumulated through the years.  I try not to look at the dates on the boxes and canisters.

Someday, I hope to get the growing pile of film processed.  Boy, then you'll see something. 

I hope.

My New Gig

This is not the first time I've lamented not blogging enough, either here or at Cat Typing, but this time I have an explanation. I spent February focused on changing jobs and helping to put together a brand new TV show in Roanoke, the Fox 21/27 Morning News.



There were two weeks of planning, interrupted by Washington and Lee's Mock Convention (more on that to come), a week of pulling together practice sessions, then a week of full runthroughs.

We went on the air March 12, and I've been making pictures throughout, but more often with digital Nikon gear because we want to upload pictures to Facebook as quickly as possible. But as this plog (phlog?) is a memorial to my fascination with Leica and film, here are a couple done the good, proper, old way.

Catching Up ... from January

The thing with shooting film is that it takes a while to get it processed, edited, run through Photoshop and then uploaded. As I finish this, which has awaited my uploading it as I took a new day job, five more rolls of film await the Photoshop treatment.

Why Photoshop? The simple answer is that it's quicker and requires less space than chemically printing and then scanning the prints. The more complicated answer is that almost no picture is ready for viewing straight out of the camera. Ansel Adams, it is said, thought of the negative as sheet music, and printing as the performance. I run all my pictures through a process, ensuring the color is correct, the contrast is what I want. There's the electronic equivalent of burning and dodging, and removing dust spots.

I won't do anything -- at least I don't like to do anything -- that I couldn't have done in a darkroom, and wouldn't have done as a matter of course as a photojournalist. Ironically, some of those techniques -- techniques I consider photojournalistic -- have come under controversy lately, like in this piece about contest winners: http://blog.photoshelter.com/2012/03/should-photo-contests-require-original-image-files/. Personally, my apporoach is like Potter Stewart's to pornography: I'll know I've passed the limit when I see it.

At any rate, the picture above needed very little processing. We were in Lexington Antiques, selling some things to the store's owner, when I noticed the sunlight spilling in through the front window. What photographer could resist that light and texture?

God, with his infinitely ironic sense of humor, gave us the birthdays of Robert E. Lee, "Stonewall" Jackson and Martin Luther King, Jr., all within days of each other in mid-January. In Lexington, where both Jackson and Lee are buried, the Confederate generals' birthdays have been celebrated in past years with greater and larger amounts of pomp and ceremony, depending on the amount of government involvment and history enthusiasts ... uh, enthusiasm.

This past year, however, there was more attention as the local Sons of Confederate Veterans engaged in their second year of lobbying to hang Confederate flags from lightposts throughout the weekend ... including the Monday holiday for King. The city responded with an ordinance limiting flags on city property to the US and Virginia state flags. The SCV promptly sued.

When no progress had been made by the day in question, SCV members responded by calling on supporters to stand by the lightposts, holding their flags.

Each lightpost was conveniently labeled with a tag, so the various SCV chapters could find their place.

Bob and I did a live shot at the Roanoke Civic Center for the annual Guns & Hoses Hockey Game, a fundraiser for the Muscual Ystrophy Association. Here, a policeman texts the Roanoke Police Chief to find out when he'll arrive to be interviewed.

The sign amused me.

Downtown Lynchburg in the predawn darkness. We were at Amazement Center, which is just out of frame to the right.

I convinced Bob, towards the end of January and about a week before we both left channel 7, that we had to do something on Djangoary and Gypsy swing music. A local band was performing that weekend; I had grand visions of an artful piece. It all ended with a simple taped interview, some B-Roll of the band practicing ... and us locked out of the venue in the foggy predawn darkness.

It's ironic, I think, that I shot these pictures in that predawn, reminiscent, if I dare make the comparison, of the work of early street photographers in Paris in the time when Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli were creating that very form of jazz.

11-26-11

The scene of the killing.

Each morning, the Assistant Producer calls around to the local police and fire departments to see if anything is going on. In addition, when a major crime or arrest has occurred, the police will send out a news release. In the past, they faxed it, but now they just send an email. One weekend morning, we got an email from Christiansburg.

A three-year-old was dead; a man was under arrest for the killing. Typically, there weren't many more details than that. Reporter Holly Pietrzak and I drove down there all the same; sadly, this sort of thing is the very definition of "news." This is the address the police gave. There was no one at home. A child seat rested in the back of the car parked in front, as if waiting to take its tiny passenger on the next errand in just a moment. A big wheel sat abandoned out back.

The neighbors knew nothing of the death, and had little to offer about the people who lived there.

This seemed to me typical of our experience of this sort of story. We get the email and hurry down, gather what facts that we can, then drive on. Our view is nothing more than a brief glimpse from the inside of a news car...

Election day, 2011. Poll workers straighten out the paperwork and setup the electronic voting machines before things begin.

Reporter Joe Dashiell listens while a community group discusses the drawbacks of uranium mining in Virginia. We had been invited to listen in on the gathering at an apartment in Roanoke.

Assistant Producer Molly Binion digs into ice cream we brought back from the Homestead Creamery, while anchor Kimberly McBroom waits her turn.

Just inside the entrance to the Virginia Museum of Transportation, early on a day after I had shot some B-Roll of one of the train engines on display there. I couldn't resist the light spilling in from the front door...

The setup for a women's luncheon at the Taubman Museum of Art in downtown Roanoke. I really like the scrambled patterns of light and shadow, chair and table...

Every time they play at Virginia Tech's Lane Stadium, the field must be painted. Lines and number, hash marks and logos, and perhaps most importantly: the words "Virginia Tech" in the end zones. Before one particularly big game, a game that induced our News Director to bring the whole show out in the field for the day under the banner "Hokie Hoopla," Bob did a "Do My Job" painting the letters. He did the R. It looked pretty good, really. This is the guy who normally does the job, continuing to work after we finished filming.

A presentation on a new theater at Center in the Square...

Just as the 11-o'clock news starts on Saturday. The anchors sit in their places, the lights up, the cameras in place. In the foreground, the network's program winds through the final credits ...

11-7-11 Addenda

Inside the Homestead Dairy. As I shot it while filming a "Do My Job, Bob," I guess this could have gone with the earlier post, but it seemed more appropriate here. The bottles (real glass, just like the old days) are loaded into the crates by hand. In a neighboring room, ice cream is still hand-packed into the containers. Really a heartwarming place to see at work.

Outside dance class, on nice days, they have this little table, and in the late afternoon the setting sun shines between the buildings across the street, casting artful shadows.

Inside dance class, we all remove our shoes before going in. The scattered little shapes had a sort of Jackson Pollock aspect for me, as well as telling a little story.

Halloween at the International House of Washington & Lee University...

Before the political rally at Roanoke Airport. I was told I was to cover the governor arriving -- a quick hello, maybe a sound bite, then into the car and off to a day of campaigning. We just needed something for the noon news. But the posters started going up, and the politicians started arriving, and the crowd gathered, and it began to become clear this was something more than advertised. As things prepared to kick off, a texted a photo back to the newsroom showing a lineup of a dozen or so politicos lined up, as if waiting for ice cream, behind the lectern -- the governor, lieutenant governor, state attorney general, congressmen, state senators, etc., etc. "This could take a while," I wrote ... and it did.

But I did enjoy this classic scene of American politics: two volunteers making sure their candidate's poster was up behind the speakers' platform.

And here the crowd listens to the speakers. I felt foolish later to learn that the woman at far right is Octavia Johnson, Roanoke's sheriff. I had no idea at the time...