Grab Shots: Pixels about PJ

Posted on September 4, 2009 by Tim Porter

*How Not to Get Shot in a War Zone: Advice from conflict photographer Teru Kuwayama. First on the list: Wear your seat belt because “it’s the traffic that’s most likely to kill you.” (Via Photo Editor.)

* Does the World Even Need Photojournalists? That’s a question being asked on Lightstalkers by Aaron J. Heiner. He comments: “Truth be known it’s hard to see why the media would want to pay us to do a task that people are willing to do for free. yes, we have training, and experience, but it seems that the big boys (the networks, CNN, FOX and so forth) would gladly give that up for free man-on0the-street coverage.”

* Dispatches: Report from Afghanistan on The Digital Journalist by photographer David Bathgate. A quote: “Attacks with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms were nearly a daily occurrence during my stay at Firebase Lindstrom.”

* Burn, Baby, Burn: Emerging photographers show their work at Burn Magazine.

*Magnum Blog No More: Photojournalism agency Magnum has put its blog on hiatus, promising new things on its website. You can follow Magnum on Twitter or Facebook.

America’s National Pastime

Posted on August 29, 2009 by Tim Porter

Now, don’t get me wrong — I love overindulgence and have indulged overly and often throughout my life. I’ve always believed, though, that incessant feeding of the inner beast (corporal or emotional) also requires eventual self-correction. In other words, excess is a big “yes” and it comes with a bill that must be paid with the currency of “no.”

Sadly, many of us — and particularly Americans — just ain’t got no “no’s” when it comes to food and drink. Few places is that more on display than during a game of America’s favorite pastime, where what’s happening between the foul lines often seems secondary to what’s happening in the beer and pizza lines.

Last night, my wife and I saw a great game of baseball — Giants vs. Rockies with the Giants winning 2-0 — in arguably the country’s greatest ballpark. We took the boat from Marin, sat down low, saw the Little Panda homer and had a couple of beers and dogs. All good.

What was evident, though, from the moment we boarded the ferry in Larkspur until we returned hom five hours later was many people view a ballgame as simply an excuse to publicly drink and eat as much as possible.

Guys were buying beers and cocktails two or three at time on the ferry, enough for them to get well lit by the end of the hour-long bay-crossing. At the park, people around us ate non-stop for nearly three hours. I watched them inhale hot dogs and mounds of garlic fries, crunch down plates of cheesy nachos and bags of peanutes, then wash it all down with beer after beer after beer.

The result was not bad behavior — nothing more than the usual Bud and testosterone-fueled boisterousness at any Giants or Niners game — but bad bodies laden with fat, sugar and carbs.

The young couple in front of us (above) were in their 20s, but were already 40 to 50 pounds overweight apiece, poundage that surely increased during the game. Nearby seats will filled with “older” people — 40s and 50s — whose beer-bellied guts ballooned out like those of pregnant women, whose knees, aching from carrying the extra weight, wobbled on the stairs, and whose backs, pulled forward by years of too many pounds, were hunched and rounded. They looked and acted decades older than their age.

And, yet, young and old alike, they ate and ate and drank and drank throughout the game, saying “yes” to thousands of calories. Clearly, they had indulged their ravenous appetites for years outside of the ballpark, but just as clearly the game provided an opportunity — and an excuse wrapped in the bunting of the national pastime — to amp up that indulgence to a feverish pace.

Why should I care? For a couple of reasons.

First, the drinking among men in their 20s and 30s these days seems to outpace even that of my generation, and I always thought we had set a high benchmark for self-excess. Of course, I realize this observation is ridden with irony and smacks of inter-generational typicalness.

More importantly, though, I should care (and so should you) because Americans are eating themselves to death and costing our society billions in the health care needed to treat diseases cause by obesity.

During the whole contentious debate on U.S. health care reform, obesity has been called the elephant in the room — one most Americans don’t want to hear about because it would force an admission that a simple change in behavior would improve their own health (and their children’s) and lower the overall price all of us pay for medical care.

If America’s National Pastime was just saying “no” to overindulgence more often, we could start saying “yes” to health care reform. Yes, it is more complicated than that, but it’s a good place to start.

On the Job: Going With the Wind

Posted on August 18, 2009 by Tim Porter

” You can’t always get what you want, And if you try sometime you find, You get what you need.”

— The Stones

It was the first day of summer, the solstice, and a chill wind was blowing fierce off the ocean. Perched as we were on a ridge high on Mt. Tam, we were catching it full on — me, my wife, a friend and her husband, who was the “model” for the above photo.

The wind was so strong that even 50 pounds of sand and two people could barely keep the softbox from becoming airborne.

We were here to make a picture for Marin Magazine, where I do a bit of writing and a lot of shooting. The editors needed an opening image for the magazine’s annual Editors Choice issue that illustrated the thrill of living in Marin County.

The top editor had an idea in mind — something she had seen in a stock shot — of someone stretching languorously against the sky, relaxing and letting out the jams after a hike or run on Mt. Tam, the 2,600-foot peak that forms Marin’s skyline signature.

The whole concept of the shot depended on location, a place that overlooked the ocean, faced the sun and had enough other visible landscape to say “Marin” — golden hill, blue sky, etc. I only had one day to scout and the evening before the shot drove all over the mountain looking for a spot. None were perfect, but I thought this ridge might work even though at this time of year the sun sets much more to the north than to the west.

Soon after we set up, though, and I began making test shots while waiting for the sun to drop further it became clear the angle was not going to work. Even on a ladder, I couldn’t get all the elements in the frame the way I wanted.

There was one other complication: Our “model,” while in decent shape was far from buff. Cove-up was needed. My wife donated her vest.

We shot for about 45 minutes up and down the ridge, and I didn’t have what I needed. Pack it up, I said. We opened a cooler, broke out the brew and began stowing gear. Just as we started to break down the strobe, the sun touched the top of a hill to the north, spraying golden light all over us.

I jumped up with a camera, the model set down his bear, the others grabbed the light (just holding the boom in their hands) and I shot about 15 or 20 frames, switching for the last few to a 17 mm with a graduated neutral density filter screwed on the front.

There it was. A shot. Not the one I came for, but one I could take home.

(Here’s a slide show of the whole Editors Choice shoot.)

Grab Shots: Craziness & Bizz-i-ness,

Posted on August 17, 2009 by Tim Porter

Link-gathering while I’m on hold with Adobe:

* Woodstuck: Magnum puts up a slideshow of photos by Elliot Landy from Woodstock. And, yes — since you asked — I was there.

* Crazy, man, just crazy: Dirck Halstead at The Digital Journalist gets asked, “Why would you be a photojournalist today?” And answers, “You have to be crazy.” Then adds: “I have always considered being crazy as important to a photographer as being curious.”

* Taking the biz out of news business: Jack Shafter says at the Slate that what’s bad for business just might be good for journalism: “If the downside of the battered-down barriers to entry is less pay and lower status, the potential upside is that a flood of new entrants into the field could portend a journalistic renaissance.” Now, let’s see about getting paid.

* Putting the bizz into journalism: National Press Photographers Association has a toolkit of business practices.

* Eddie Adams reviewed: Sportshooter has a review of “Eddie Adams: Vietnam.” One quote from Adams: “Making pictures in Vietnam is easy…Things are happening all around you and you just have to press a button and not get killed.”

Walkin’ the Dog

Posted on August 6, 2009 by Tim Porter

What do you get when you combine the relentless self-absorption of Mill Valley with the cheery self-entitlement of dog owners? A cluster of dogs, people of all ages, wandering tourists and the standard assortment of Marin eclectics, all crammed into a corner of the downtown square on a foggy late afternoon for a cute dog contest. (See the slide show.)

Sponsored by Pacific National Bank, the contest attracted hundred of entries, including my mother-in-law, who entered her rambunctious terrier, Topper. A snapshot I made of him was displayed among with those of fellow contestants on the bank’s windows.

The winners — small and large — were chosen yesterday and the grand prizes (paintings of the winning dogs by a local artist) were secondary to the event itself. As dogs strained at leashes, reaching for tables of dog biscuits, chews and chocolates, owners socialized, strutted and, some too obviously, preened vicariously for their canines. Good fun.

As I meandered through the scene, I shot with my 17 mm held low to the ground, using the auto-focus to get down to the dog’s level. Some shots came out pretty well. Take a look.

California Dreamin’ (Marin County style)

Posted on July 30, 2009 by Tim Porter

Lots of work this month with little time to write, but I want to share some of the images I made for the August issue of Marin Magazine and its annual Editors Choice awards. The package featured a perfect day in each Marin community, from Sausalito to Novato to Point Reyes Stations. I was fortunate enough to be able to photograph the entire series. Click on the image above for a quick slideshow (and a bit of California dreamin’ on this summer’s day.)

As always, my photos are for sale. If you just MUST have a print of the Novato or Fairfax theaters on your wall, or any of others from the series, visit my Pictopia gallery.

Thanks for looking.

Tim

New York Walkabout

Posted on June 15, 2009 by Tim Porter

One day. One lens. One great city. That’s a combination to live by — especially when it gives me the opportunity to resurrect one of my photographic roots: street photography, which I’ve always taken to mean as nothing fancier than walking around with a camera and shooting whatever comes my way.

My wife and I need a regular New York fix — museums, meat, martinis and, for me, a Manhattan walkabout. I indulged in the latter (after too much of the former) on a Sunday afternoon. Starting at the southern tip of Manhattan, I strolled Battery Park amid a glut of other tourists, circumnavigated the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, walked up to Wall Street to Trinity Church and then caught an uptown train to Midtown for a B&H break, and finally onto Central Park.

I only took two lenses to New York –a 50 1.4 for nighttime and 17-35 2.8 for everything else. This is part of a discipline I’m trying to adhere to of carrying less and looking more. I had only the wide zoom for the walkabout and, I’ll think you agree, it served me well. (Full gallery here.)

I loved the freedom of almost no gear and the demands it placed on me to move and adjust. Instead of bringing the picture to me, as a big fat bag of lenses can do, I had to go the picture. I also had speed. For those of you who jump to the gallery, look at the wedding shot. It was a turn and shoot, over in a 25oth moment. One lens, ready to go, makes that possible.

These days, as I chase assignments, try to learn technical skills others learned long ago, and spend hours at the computer doing high-rezzes and cataloging, it’s easy to forget the joy simple photography brings — the frame being filled, the captured moment, the image preserved. These were the thrills that drew me to photography originally.

A photo walkabout on a sunny New York Sunday does wonders to refresh the eye, lighten the head and remind me, again and again, of the wonders of photography.

Click here the images (and a few choice New York quotes). I hope you enjoy seeing them as much as I did making them.

On the Job: New Portfolio Cover

Posted on May 22, 2009 by Tim Porter

Following the advice of Sportsshooter.com founder Brad Mangin, I’m changing the cover of my liveBooks portfolio once a month. Above is the first one. The goal is to have a fresh cover that better reflects my range of skills than the the shot of the Golden Bridge at dawn that’s been up there for a year (fans of that photo can find it here), as well as put my contact information front and center.

As always, each of these images has its own story.

The twins are Noah and Logan Miller, author and actors who made the movie Touching Home and wrote a book, You’re Either In or In the Way, about how the film came to be. I made the picture for Marin Magazine in Nicasio in Marin County, the setting for both the book and the movie.

The child wrapped in her mother’s hands is Maya. I also made this photo for Marin Magazine for a short Mother’s Day feature. The longer story behind this picture involves me blowing the first image I tried to make with another child.

The young woman in the upper left part of a series of portraits I’m doing of people with red hair. This was shot in her East Bay home.

Play Time

Posted on May 21, 2009 by Tim Porter

Work, work, work. Everyone’s worried about it. There’s either too much or — for many photographers and writers these days — too little. The best way I’ve found to beat back the anxiety beast is to pick up a camera and shoot. Making pictures is what got me started, and making pictures is what keeps me going. That’s why I love any opportunity to just play with the camera.

I had the chance to do just that last week when family came to visit from Paris and Lost Angeles. After a couple days of doing the tourist thing, we gathered one morning at my studio with bags full of colorful hats and scarves, and spend a fun couple of hours dressing up and being silly.

The one child in the group — Vanessa, 4 — tired of the fun before the adults, which says something about the need we grownups have to let loose the inner child more often.

Above is Vanessa and my mother-in-law, Deborah. (The hat became Vanessa’s favorite and she’s considering, as much as a 4-year-old can, of changing her middle name to Rose.). Below is Vanessa and her mom, Karina.

Grab Shots: Fashionably Avedon

Posted on May 15, 2009 by Tim Porter

Richard Avedon and Twiggy * Avedon Hung Up: The International Center for Photography in New York is showing a Richard Avedon retrospective (until Sept. 16) and the New York Times has the story behind the exhibit. It summarizes his work this way: “Avedon’s photography has always amounted to a plea for beauty — to see it mysterious, to see it raw but ultimately to see it whole.”

Avedon’s early fashion work (he’s with the model Twiggy here) was before my time, but when I his American West portfolio, which I saw in a Berkeley museum when I was a young journalist, left an indelible impression for its straightforwardness and honesty.

* Avedon’s Competition: Irving Penn.

* Fashion Photography: What is it? Now you know.

Grab Shots: Capa, Lyon, Gilden

Posted on May 7, 2009 by Tim Porter

Cornell Capa * The Mexican Suitcase: The International Center of Photography in New York has begun releasing images from the 4,300 negatives it received in a suitcase a couple of years ago containing the work of Magnum co-founder Robert Capa and his fellow photojournalists covering the Spanish Civil War, Gerda Taro and David Seymour. Amazing images, say the curators, but still no negative of Capa’s most famous and somewhat disputed photo, “The Falling Soldier,” a shot of a Spanish soldier being hit by a bullet. Capa’s photo at left is of a Spanish refugee camp in France. The New York Times has a slideshow.

* Danny Lyon, Down and Dirty: The Times also has a profile of photographer Danny Lyon, who has a new book, “Memories of Myself.” The Times describes Lyon as being …

” … among a group a revolutionaries whose work rose to prominence in the late 1960s and ’70s and transformed the nature of documentary photography. … The idea of conscience has been embedded more deeply in Mr. Lyon’s photography than in those of all but a few of his contemporaries.”

The new book is a collection of photo essays whose settings range from Chicago to Haiti.

* Detroit: The Troubled City: Think the recession has hit your town hard. Chances are where you live is better off than Detroit. Magnum shooter Bruce Gilden has a new photo essay up showing the hard times in Motor City.

On the Job: Community College

Posted on May 1, 2009 by Tim Porter

College of Marin students YouTube is awash with behind-the-scenes videos of famous photographers like Annie Liebowitz and other high-end shooters doing magazine or fashion shoots. The videos show gobs of equipment and small armies of camera assistants, stylists and make-up artists. With all these people scurrying about, usually to an up-tempo soundtrack, the viewer is given a sense that each of these photographers’ images — and by extension the magazines who pay them — is a production of grand artistic and financial scale.

The everyday reality for most photographers (Liebowitz included) is quite different. Although I do hire assistants and stylists for some jobs, many others consist just of my primary crew: Me.

The picture, shot for the cover of the College of Marin’s latest class catalogue is a good example.

The image started with a call from the college’s communication director. We had worked together a few times before. She needed a picture of several students in one of the school’s new medical programs and wanted to use the emergency room sign at a local hospital for a backdrop. She also needed the photo taken the following day. And at mid-day — the only time everyone was available.

I responded with a photographer’s two most important words: No problem.

I drove by the hospital for look-see. Awful. Cluttered background everywhere, and all but one of the emergency room signs were in parking lots.

The next day, the communication director and I met at the hospital, walked the area together and chose this spot, the only one I thought would work. What you see here is just a few feet of sidewalk. On either side is an array of pipes.

I set up one light in a round softbox, snooted another on the sign, gave direction to the students and started shooting. I’d stop every few frames to move them a bit, add or remove a prop, take off the white jackets, put them back on and adjust the light (which is only about 3 or 4 inches out of the frame.)

I made this frame about halfway through 20 minutes of shooting them as a group. I then did individual shots of each.

Later, after the college chose the shot it wanted from a set of proofs I put online for them, I worked up the image extensively in Photoshop — lots of skin smoothing and cleanup, about an hour in all.

This was not a big job, but it was a satisfying one. A good client needed a photo in a hurry. I overcame a horrible location with some selective framing and light. And the college was happy with the results. A good day’s work for a working photographer.

On the Job: Scientists

Posted on April 24, 2009 by Tim Porter

This is Victoria Lunyak, one of a dozen amazing scientists at the Buck Institute for Aging Research I photographed for the current issue of Marin Magazine.

The assignment was to create a package of photographs and text marking the 10th anniversary of the institute, whose focus is seeking treatment for diseases associated with again such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinsons.

To the non-scientific community, the Buck is perhaps better know for it’s striking modernist building designed by I.M. Pei. For that reason, I wanted to emphasize the faces and voices of the scientists who work there as a way to demystify the institute. We selected a dozen scientists, people like Lunyak, who runs her own epigenetics lab, to junior staff scientists who spend much of their time moving fruit flies from one jar to another.

I asked them why they became scientists, what they hoped to achieve and how they see the role of science in modern society. (Answers here.) I was struck by the amount of passion in their responses. Nearly all expressed a motivation to find cures to debilitating diseases, and some told compelling personal stories about why they became a scientist.

The portraits were done over two days, with locations ranging from open labs to the fruit fly room to the Pei buildings striking interiors. All were shot with small speedlights, using two or three lights in some instances to just one in others, like this shot above.

I also made three pre-dawn visits to the Buck to photograph the exterior at first light, once in the rain. The magazine used one of those shots (see below) in the table of contents, but the opening photo, which ran across a page and three-quarters, I shot one afternoon purely by chance while on a scouting mission, confirming once again that in this business serendipity can be as important as preparation.

You can see the series of portraits and some exteriors here. The magazine package is here.

On the Job: Marin Magazine Cover

Posted on February 25, 2009 by Tim Porter

The last couple of months I have been purposefully shooting landscapes with the goal of getting more covers on the magazine. This means I have been going out before first light in the morning or trying to catch the last light of the day, the proverbial golden hour.

The best light in the Bay Area happens during the winter, and that’s especially true here in Marin County, where the almost daily summer fog literally grays out the first morning light and can dull the evening light. Winter also brings rain clouds, something we don’t see in Northern California during our arid summers.

This picture was made in what may seem like an unlikely location — in a bayside marshland behind a sewage treatment plant. What the spot lacks in olfactory appeal, it more than makes up for in its marshes and wildlife. I have shot here several times and made some nice pictures, but nothing I considered having the necessary “grab” for a cover. When I saw this scene in mid-December on a day that had been showery, I knew I had found my moment.

Later, when I showed the editor of the magazine a half-dozen images — from this day and from other locations — she immediately went to this one. The final cover image was about a three-quarter crop from the original, with the art director taking some off the bottom. I had shot the original with the cover crop in mind.

Technical stuff: D3, 17-35mm lens, ISO 400, 1/160, F4, handheld.

Grab Shots: Annie Hocks Her Work

Posted on February 24, 2009 by Tim Porter

*Pawn My Photos: Annie Leibovitz has hocked all “copyrights … photographic negatives … contract rights” to work (past and future) as well as several pieces of real estate in exchange for a $15.5 million loan from a company called Art Capital Group, essentially an art pawn shop for the well-to-do. In other words, as the New York Times put it today, “one of the world’s most successful photographers essentially pawned every snap of the shutter she had made or will make until the loans are paid off.”

* Shooting Annie: Seattle photographer John Keatley talks with Feature Shoot about photographing Leibovitz: “I didn’t want to over think it, or get too worked up so far in advance. So I took a vacation to Mexico!”

* Making a Difference: Zack Arias produces a video for Scott Kelby in which he explores how to make his mark on “this massive matter of visual pollution we serve up every day.”

* Hot Shoe Diaries: That’s the title of Joe McNally’s new book on shooting with speedlights. Good stuff for those of use who don’t know everything. Pre-order it here.

* May I Shoot? No! Mary Ellen Mark talks about photographing Marlon Brando on the set of The Missouri Breaks. Brando’s rule, she tells LA Weekly, “was that set photographers must always ask permission before shooting him. Every time. And the answer was always no.” (Via A Photo Editor.)

Pobre Mexico

Posted on February 22, 2009 by Tim Porter

A few days ago the Wall Street Journal published a lengthy story about the ominous criminal, political and social conditions in Mexico that have combined to degrade civil society in many parts of the country to the brink of public disorder.

Fueling this collapse are two evils — the ravenous appetite of the narco cartels for control of the border, of law enforcement and of the proverbial hearts and minds of Mexico’s impoverished citizens; and the endemic, ubiquitous and persistent corruption of government on all levels.

The Journal piece focused on the implications for the United States should the rule of law fail in Mexico. It quoted a high-ranking official in the country’s current ruling party, the PAN:

“The Mexican state is in danger. We are not yet a failed state, but if we don’t take action soon, we will become one very soon.”

For me, it’s more personal. I have good friends — Mexicans and Americans — who live there. I have a house in Oaxaca, Mexico’s most beautiful state and also its poorest. I have seen the country’s working people, through resilient desire and endless effort, carve out good lives for themselves amid a system that favors the wealthy, the connected and the corrupt. And, sadly, I have witnessed well-off people I considered friends express disdain for the poor and for the creation of a society of laws. They are, after all, the beneficiaries of the current system.

I don’t cry easily. The scar tissue laid on during 20 years of daily journalism usually keeps the tears in check. But these days Mexico makes me cry.

In the fall of 2006 I stood in the zócalo, the main square, of Oaxaca – a place I love, where I got married, where I built a house on the far end of a dirt road – and watched a battered TV play a video of the day state police rousted striking public school teachers from the square. I watched the rise and fall of batons on makeshift shelters. I saw the march of heavy boots through darkened streets. Fires burned. Rocks flew. The camera shook. Above all, I heard the sound of helicopters, which police used to fling canisters of tear gas into the crowds below.

I cried right there as the video played. A woman next to me, dressed in the traditional apron of a southern Mexican housewife, saw me, an aging gringo journalist laden with camera gear, and said, “Que triste. Que triste.” How sad. How sad.

A few days later, local thugs — some say off-duty cops — opened fire on a protest march, killing freelance American journalist Brad Will. (Here’s a picture — not mine — of the shooting.)

The resulting international outrage — far beyond any that accompanied the earlier deaths of dozens of Oaxacans — prompted the federal government to send troops into the city restore order.

More than two years later, nothing has changed for the better in Oaxaca. The economy, highly dependent on tourism, has yet to recover. The governor who attacked the striking teachers remains in power. The leaders of the strike are jailed. The killers of Brad Will are free. (The photo at the top of the post is from an anniversary march in Oaxaca’s main square two years after the 2006 attacks.)

Multiply this one incident — a strike, a shooting, a disregard by the authorities for even the facade of justice — throughout the country and amplify it along the drug-trafficking lanes in the border cities and you begin to get grasp of the severity of the challenges Mexico faces. Here’s one fact: 6,000 people were killed in Mexico last year in drug-related violence. The U.S. dead in Iraq for six years of war is 4,200.

Perhaps you wonder why you should care about what happens in Mexico. After all, aren’t the beaches in Baja still beautiful and the pina coladas in Cancun just as tasty? De veras, they are. But Mexico is much more than an American playground.

First, it is also, as the Journal points out, the largest U.S. trading partner and with our economy already on life support we don’t need to lose our best customer.

Second, if you think having more than 4 million undocumented Mexican immigrants living in the United States is troublesome, then imagine the immigration pressure on the border should the Mexican government collapse. Says the Journal:

“It has 100 million people on the southern doorstep of the U.S., meaning any serious instability would flood the U.S. with refugees.”

Finally, there is morality. What is happening in Mexico is simply wrong. It is wrong to oppress the poor so the wealthy can prosper. It is wrong to deny people jobs because they belong to an opposing political party. It is wrong to glorify crime and drug use. And, it is wrong to kill journalists. (Read this report, or this one, or this one from the Committee to Protect Journalists.)

Poor Mexico. I cry for you. I wish I could do more.

Grab Shots: Old News Edition

Posted on February 18, 2009 by Tim Porter

* Newsies in the Pipeline: Newspapers are on life support, but J-school applicants are up in the U.K. and and in N.Y., reports Jarvis. Discuss.

* Readers Come, Money Doesn’t: Newspaper web readership is up 12% year over year (although web revenue is down). Nieman Journalism Lab lists its Top 15 newspaper sites. My hometown Chron (SFGate) averages 4.1 million uniques a month, up 10%. Somehow, there’s got to be a business in there.

* Ready the Tombstones: Former S.F. Examiner colleague and Salon pioneer Gary Kamiya concludes: “If newspapers die, so does reporting.” And, in light of the web revenue report, he adds: “Currently there is no business model that makes online reporting financially viable.” (Mutter mines the same vein.)

* Cancel the Funeral: Steve Yelvington says he just has “to call bullshit on the “Newspapers Are Dead” meme. Some numbers:

“In spite of the worst economy since Roosevelt, many U.S. newspapers are still turning profits in the 15-20 percent range, and the U.S. newspaper industry is still turning around 50 billion dollars of gross revenue every year.”

* Cue the Elegy: Joe Mathews mourns for the L.A. Times of old in the New Republic, lamenting, among many things, the loss of local stories that “show deep digging.” (Andrew Cline calls BS on him, saying: “Nostalgia is dead. It’s time to discover or create the next venue for journalism.”

Advice in a Storm

Posted on February 17, 2009 by Tim Porter

I have, to paraphrase Blanche Dubois, always benefited from the kindness of strangers. By this I mean I have had many guides — good people who, through advice, action or simply mannerism, provided me with a way forward when I could not see one and anchored me against the storms to which I have always been unwisely drawn.

One of the most important of these people was Fran Ortiz, a photographer with the “old” San Francisco Examiner who taught me the principles of photojournalism at San Francisco State and, later, encouraged me to pursue a career in it. I took half of that advice — I kept the “journalism,” but dropped the “photo.” Now, I am trying to reunite them in some form.

Fran was a man of immense visual talent, but what made him such an accomplished photographer were his patience, gentility and humor, qualities that enabled him to insert himself (and his camera) into the lives of his subjects so seamlessly.

As a teacher, Fran was persistent in pushing us toward excellence. He taught me how to read a contact sheet to understand how I shot, how I moved through a scene or interacted with the person I was shooting. One frame, he would say, says little about the photographer. The entire shoot reveals his technique, personality, strengths and weaknesses. The same observations apply today on a screenful of images.

He told us to get closer, to move in, to be amid the action not apart from it, and to get in front of people — faces, not asses, he would say. These techniques were all part of Fran’s belief that, as Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Kim Komenich said in this tribute: “Fran realized a photo should be made and not ‘taken.’ He based his entire way of seeing on the idea that the negative is the score and the print is the performance.”

Made not taken. I try to judge my own work by that standard and still fall far too short far too often.

One of the best times to make pictures, Fran said, was in the worst of weather. When the weather gets bad, grab the camera and head out, he would tell us in class. During these last few days of heavy (and welcome) Northern California rain, I’ve heard Fran’s voice in my head quite often.

The shot above — San Francisco under a storm — is my response. I like it, but I keep wondering how Fran would tell me to improve it. (Take a bigger look.)

Grab Shots: Autumn and Annie

Posted on February 15, 2009 by Tim Porter

* Mystery Image Revealed: While doing some rainy day bookmark cleaning, I found this aging link from David Pogue of the Times about one man’s quest to find the origin of the Windows screensaver image you see at the left. Here’s the whole, hilarious story from writer Nick Tosches. One quote: “I see people in black hoods and robes sitting round a table, bound by blood oath never to divulge the latitude and longitude of Autumn.” Read on.

* Annie Works, We Watch: Annie Liebowitz photographs pairings of actors and directors for Vanity Fair. Here are the vids. Make sure to watch Mickey Rourke, then click to this Huffington Post collection of Rourke photos with him posing with one hand down his pants.

* Blogging Photog: A new entry on the blogroll is travel photographer Paul Souders. His blog is well worth the click. Here’s a takeout from an entry on shooting surfers in Costa Rica:

“I have never been much of a surf beach kind of guy. I grew up next to a chicken farm, a long way from any ocean. Plus I have issues with public nudity stemming from low self-esteem and a rigorous Lutheran upbringing.”

* Wayback Machine: Ever wondered what big city newspaper photographers looked like a couple of decades ago? Here’s the answer. The big guy on the left, Kim Komenich, won a Pulitzer; the pretty boy on the right, Kurt Rogers, is one of the founders of Think Tank Photo. All worked for the “old” San Francisco Examiner.

* Burning, Man: Magnum shooter David Alan Harvey has started Burn Magazine, an online platform for emerging photographers.

Grab Shots: Zelman, Reputation and a Duck

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Tim Porter

* Inside Bill Zelman: Strobist David Hobby does an interview with photographer Bill Zelman. Among other pearls he lays before us swine is this one: “Shooting good portraits is equal parts psychology, trust and technical expertise — with the technical part probably being the least important.” Read the whole interview. Check out the video as well.

*Wish You Were There? So, you couldn’t make to Joe McNally’s lastest lighting workshop, heh? No worries. Click here. Plenty of good photos and explanations of how they were made.

* Word of Mouth, Word of Mouth: That’s what Tom Miles, a 16-year commercial photographer in England, tells a college student is the secret to his success. He adds: “Doing a good job, being reliable and professional will get you more repeat work than any other method.”

* What the Duck, Man? Economy dragging on you? Editors treating you bad? Need a laugh? Go here.

* No Wimpy Photos: That’s the new mantra of Santa Rosa newspaper photographer John Burgess (and not a bad slogan for the whole newspaper industry). Here’s a result of that outlook — a portrait of Joel Peterson of Ravenswood Winery — and the story behind it.

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