August twenty-second was the anniversary of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s birth in nineteen-oh-eight. It was a hot day in Los Angeles lo these hundred and one days later, but I figured I better do something to celebrate the man.

I decided to head downtown and bring a camera with me. I figured I’d go back to my roots, such as they are, and take the Canonet, even though Henri was a Leica man. With my rangefinder I vowed to avoid photos of three things: Cars, doors, buildings — basically the things I always shoot. The point was people. I made it my mission to run through two rolls of film taking only shots of people. I am not good with people. So, this was a challenge.

I soon realized that I wasn’t looking to imitate Cartier-Bresson or shoot in his style. This was not about “street photography.” I just wanted to find a moment, a face, a gesture, something. There was for me no searching for a decisive moment. I was looking for a face of my own.

I wasn’t choosy. Anytime a moment even suggested itself, I focused as best I could and fired. As a result, I had two rolls of mostly blurred shapes and incomplete subjects. It was a study in raw amateurism from a man who is far from mastering his technique. I walked for miles, sunburned and sweaty in the later summer afternoon. I shot my two rolls. I saw many things I wish I could have captured.

And, still:

Here’s my Los Angeles face: He was waiting on a very crowded street corner. I ducked behind someone walking the opposite way and tried to take his photo, miraculously apart from everything and everyone around me. He saw me anyway, and raised his hand to ward off my criminal camera. This gesture, this reflexive negation is Los Angeles to me, everyone is so self-aware, everyone is eager to put up barriers. Or, this is how I have been imagining it. Still, you can see his terrified eye behind his hand. Pierced and fearful.

Sir, it is just a camera.

Does this mean my walk was a success?

Disregard. I’m just testing out something…

Just seen misposted on Craigslist. Keep in mind, the seller is not yet ready for an actual offer, only to start the discussions.

Genuine Barry Manilow 35mm Slide – circa 1980

Email with your phone number if you are interested in discussing

If only I was tied in to a global distribution concern for coffee mugs, fridge magnets, and mousepads. There’s money to be made, here!

I took this photo when I was “photowalking” with a friend of mine in industrial Carson, CA on May 3, 2009 — a godforsaken area of large refineries, processing plants, huge piles of fluorescent yellow goop, in other words a goldmine for people who like to photograph the gritter side of our declining civilization. I parked, and rode in her car. As we lingered around one refinery, one of a bunch of places we stopped that day, I noticed the signs saying it was illegal to loiter. And, I noticed the signs declaring that the place caused cancer. and that it drained to the ocean. I thought it was a nice, sarcastic example of bald corporate bureaucratic evil.

Now, over three months later, on a sunny Summer morning with birds chirping in the air, my friend was just visited by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force — “our nation’s front line on terrorism” — because security reported suspicious characters loitering around the nations crucial oil supply, and they got her license plate on camera. Chilling! Funny, I don’t see any warning signs in that menu above saying anything about being taped by “teh guv’ment”. Luckily — really luckily — my friend was super cool, calm, and she reports that the FBI agent was polite and just doing his job.

Here’s a snip of her account:

Taking fotos nears petrol plants gets you put on surveillance cameras and they
tracked me down by my license plate. Luckily he was a fellow photographer and it was all cleared up and my file will be closed.

Oh how we suffer for our craft.

I’m not one to cry OMGZORS BLACK HELICOPTERS!!!11!, like some people, but it’s just another example of a broken system. It’s broken because she got “visited” even though they know she’s no threat. If we had been up to anything nefarious, waiting for over three months to check it out would seem pretty silly, wouldn’t it

This is how we battle terrorism? This is how crucial manpower is allocated? This is the “front line” as the FBI describes it? I find it hard to see how this has anything at all to do with protecting America. I also don’t think it’s an organized attempt to harass or surveil citizens. It’s all just nonsense. It’s a system with so many heads that it can’t possibly function sanely. It’s the result of directives from administrators living in vacuums in a reaction to problems they don’t understand and can’t control. And, no matter who you voted for President, it’s just going to keep getting worse. A nation uneducated is a nation that does silly things no matter what charismatic politician smiles at you.

I wish I could be more constructive in response to this, but I don’t know what to do or how to react. I should just buy a t-shirt with a catchy slogan and show it off at Starbucks.

We’re losing the war on ignorance, and I don’t know how to stop it.

And now after the jump, press ‘play’ on a song from The Chameleons and enjoy more photos from that area.

(more…)

The professional football team I’ve rooted for in the past has just agreed to pay one million six-hundred thousand dollars to Michael Vick, a man convicted of raising dogs for the purpose of torturing and killing those dogs as entertainment.

I love to watch sports, despite certain problems I have with the value system that professional sports represent.  I am now faced with the question if this employment of Michael Vick is something that I ignore,  or is there a line where enough is enough.

There is a line. On one side of the line here is the situation:

I really do love sports as a diversion from the mundane. I try to ignore the unbalanced compensation for these athletes and instead revel in their physical accomplishments. The beauty of sports is that doing a better job results in a victory. And, often that plays out in dramatic, surprising, and entertaining fashion.

The compensation and reward for athletic feats indicates a problem in our society.  It is a free market, and they are entitled to whatever we are willing to pay them.  The unbalanced compensation itself is not the problem. The willingness on our behalf to participate and encourage the imbalance it is the problem.

I believe the reason we are willing to compensate celebrities beyond their value is because we’ve willingly failed to educate ourselves about how a functioning society of millions of people must work over hundreds of years.  On some level, we understand that giving millions of dollars to a physically gifted man while laying teachers off their jobs is wrong, but we don’t fully understand the long-term effects on our collective well-being. We believe that’s just how things work in a democracy, and so far it hasn’t really made all our lives the poorer – just a few people not worth mentioning.  Of course, this was similar to the prevailing social view before the fall of the Roman Empire.

And, being a dutiful citizen-consumer, I’ve been able to ignore the millions of dollars given to athletes and the ways they dispose of that money; the incredible castles they build, the chariots they ride in.  They are just humans like you and me. It’s not their fault.  They got lucky. Good for them, in a way. I see the issue, but feel powerless to effect change. Bring me bread and a circus!

And here is the other side of that line:

Here is a man, Michael Vick, whom we know has done pure evil. We know exactly what he did. It has been proven, and the details we know are evil. If you believe anything in the world can be called evil, this man has done that thing.

In his words, he made “a mistake.”  But, four years of meticulously planned activity, with custom built facilities is more than a mistake.  It is a lifestyle.

It has been said that with his prison term he has paid his debt, and that he deserves a second chance.  I wholeheartedly agree with this. Except, a second chance means he should be able to remain free of prison in a three-bedroom house while he pours concrete for a living, clips coupons, buys the cheap beer, and volunteers at animal shelters.  That’s the same “chance” the rest of us have.  If he is a changed man, he is entitled to work hard as a free man. There is no duty to restore him to a highly-compensated life of protected privilege, there is only the choice to willingly bestow upon him those things if you believe he,  as a member of society, deserves better compensation than the average teacher, nurse, or physical therapist.

So, for the owners and management of the Philadelphia Eagles to willingly give the man one million six hundred thousand dollars is an unequivocal statement. It is a statement that they believe there is nothing they would not ignore in their selfish pursuits for enrichment. There is no value they will not willingly undermine in an attempt to get even richer than they already are.

I’m following the “national debate” on what this all means with a morbid resignation.   No one understands the deeper level of how uneducated we are. The most vocal opinions are often the least educated.  Brains are getting a workout only as far as they can be used to craft sharper attacks on the opposite viewpoint.  Any nuanced view gets obliterated, as we all dutifully take opposite positions, ignoring the underlying issues and problems that are too shockingly intractable to acknowledge. In this way, it is exactly like politics.

As I sat down to write about this, I wondered why I would even bother.  But, then I heard anecdotes about families selling their Eagles season tickets. I heard a report of fans in tears at the Eagles stadium.  Could it be that this line exists for others too? I wondered what it would be like if the public finally rose up and refused to continue to support “their team” no matter what indecency is promoted by that organization?  Could this be a “teachable moment” that future humans can look back at in pride and say, “Enough was enough.”?

Well, not likely. But, maybe.

I can’t support this sports team after their decision to employ Michael Vick.

This intersection of chance, luck, fortune and funk arose from me riding my bike in the neighborhood. I came across this cool car. I parked and whipped out the Lubitel — a plastic low-fi twin-lens-reflex camera. The camera is made for one-twenty medium-format sized film. But, I’d loaded it with thirty-five millimeter drugstore film. Thing is, I never sealed the red window that normally shows the film counter. So light poured in the window, and exposed the film from the back.

Everything else on the frame is ‘real’ too. The scratches are on the negative. The sprocket holes are real. The rough edged border comes from the cardboard negative holder I made myself to scan the negative.

It is Rocket Car.

Bonus: See it large to note the Mesa sticker in the window

What will happen on 09/09/09 at 09:09?? A little cat told me we’ll be in ninth heaven on that date. What will be given birth to? Hmm. Will it be full-frame?

All jokes aside: I guess the more important question is: Can I afford to be part of this nonogonal notion?

Nein!

Images from the Nine group on Flickr.

New Flickr Search « Flickr Blog.

Wow, Flickr reoganized their search results page. At first I thought it was a vaguely general positive. I was ready to rip Flickr for their snail’s pace of progress and lack of innovation, but then I realized that when you search the site for my favorite event to photograph, “coachella,” it gives me some additional recognition. I am awesome.  So yeah, if you keep rolling out these incremental tweaks and ignore the larger social media picture, that’s fine. Keep letting Facebook drink your milkshake — especially if you continue focus on how great I am.

This is commentary on: For Annie Leibovitz, a Fuzzy Financial Picture – NYTimes.com.

I’m ashamed to admit that for many years, I dismissed the name Annie Liebovitz as fluff celeb photography. This was before I got into photography myself. To be sure, she does some really flamboyant work for Vanity Fair, but she is a very, very, very good eye. (Duh)

Now comes word that she is in a spot of bother with her finances, a twenty-four million line of credit is due in a month. And, yes the worst contingent is in play: She put her negatives up as collateral.

The New York Times article is very lacking on particulars — nobody can seem to say why she owes so much money. She owns a few homes, and travels. That’s about it.But, who knows.

One key rumor though is that the love of her life Susan Sontag had left her a large inheritance, which was taxed like crazy because they were unable to marry.  If true, that’s a tragic twist of affairs. But, with a larger perspective one can’t feel too much sympathy with someone not managing that much money in  smarter manner.

Should she lose rights to her own work? Yes, she absolutely should if that’s the agreement she signed in order to spend twenty-four million dollars on whatever it is she spent it on. Talented people deserve to make a living off their work — but our society is too lopsided, awarding the top few percent an outsized piece of the pie. The celebrity worship that she profited from is a big part of why we produce so little of real value.

I stop short of saying she contributed to celebrity worship. Her work is worth whatever someone wishes to pay for it. She takes wonderful images of notable people, and I am in awe of her talent.  But, I do believe she benefits from an aspect of society that does not advance humanity.  And, had she perhaps lived a little more within her means, she’d not risk the loss of her creative work. This tragedy is, unfortunately, of her own making. Live by the dollar, lose by it as well.

Access Hollywood listed their Top Ten Most Iconic Annie Leibovitz Photos. One of those, and one that wowed me was her portrait of Queen Elizabeth.

Here she is shooting Keith Richards for Louis Vuitton earlier this year: