Woodstock, NY

Danielle

This is Danielle in the barn at Peters Valley. We only had a few minutes to work with each model, and this was her first experience, but the result is not nearly as 'stiff' as it might have been.

In his discussion at the workshop, Herb spoke at great length about 'quality'. I've been thinking about that subject, and spent some time reading Herb's essay on the topic. While I don't disagree with what he said, I think I put is in slightly different terms.

All photographs start with an image. For the photographs to be good, there are certain things that must be true about the image. It must be strong. It must be composed in a way that makes it very clear what the photograph is about and that causes the eye to remain within the photograph. It must be properly exposed. A picture that starts as a technically-flawed image will rarely achieve greatness (although there are serendipitous mistakes). It must have a cohesive narrative - it should tell a story. And the image ideally should be something that triggers an emotional reaction in the viewer - which usually means that the subject triggered an emotional reaction in the photographer.

Good images are good images - and bad images are bad images. It doesn't matter what the purpose of the image may be - sensitive portraiture or commercial advertising, nature or sports, still life or photojournalism - the image must meet minimum criteria on these dimensions to achieve any degree of quality.

In his essay, Herb concentrates at length on what he calls "hand made photographs' - his term for platinum/palladium prints. This is the point where I suspect that we may part company a bit. Herb's thesis is that the 'hand-made' dimension of Pt/Pd prints puts them in a special category. My view is that the special category exists at the point where the print takes on an intrinsic value that is over and above the inherent value of the underlying image.

Good images can appear in books and magazines or on web sites. They can even be printed with 150-line screens on cheap newsprint paper (witness the daily newspaper). They retain whatever quality that the basic image may have in whatever medium they appear.

The element of craft is a factor in the incremental quality of a fine print. There is an obvious difference when the maker takes care to produce the finest possible print, be it silver gelatin, Pt/Pd, cyanotype, ambrotype or any other process. A knock-off workprint on RC paper can be used to successfully translate the image into a book, magazine or newspaper, but it takes craftsmanship to produce a print that will stand on its own when framed in a matt. That craftsmanship is an emotional investment by the maker.

Today, Linda and I drove down to Woodstock, NY. That's an interesting little town - lots of neat shops and galleries, with a distinctive counter-culture atmosphere. During our visit, I walked into two galleries that were showing fine photography. GallerieBMG was showing a group of Pt/Pd prints of botanical subjects by Yumiko Izo that were drop-dead gorgeous! Photosensualis was showing silver figure studies that were also very nice. In both cases, the prints on display were far more than mere images because the makers took care to make an emotional investment in their preparation.

One interesting observation - we found that the lights were off at Photosensualis. Now that's understandable - it makes sense to keep lights off to conserve energy when no one is there to view the prints. But it would be such a simple matter to have a motion detector to automatically turn on the lights when potential customers walk into the gallery. There was a person in the gallery, but she was more interested in working on her laptop that trying to help us look at the art. Sad.

Peters Valley, 2008

Anouk

This past weekend was spent at Peters Valley in a workshop on Portraiture. The instructor was Herbert Ascherman, a portraitist from Cleveland.

As always, the workshop was fun and challenging. Peters Valley is such a wonderful place - remote, quiet, with beautiful light (especially early in the morning) and often with delightful fog and lots of animals (rabbits, deer, turkeys, and even the occasional black bear, etc). It was unusually quiet this weekend with workshops in fine metals, tapestry weaving, blacksmithing, and photography, so the dormitories were not crowded.

Herb is an excellent photographer who uses an 8x10 view camera in most of his portraiture, making Pt/Pd prints. He has strong opinions, but he is also the first to observe that his views are his and others can differ. His work is very traditional - he insists on using a tripod for every image, formal posing, and 'proper' dress (no short sleeve shirts, no advertising on clothing, etc). He does do some street work - but his approach (with the 8x10) is anything but casual.

After initial introductions, we were assigned to photograph each of the other members of the class. The image here of Anouk resulted from that exercise. That afternoon, we shared work that we had brought to the session.

On Saturday morning, we had a shooting session in one of the Peters Valley barns with two models, Norm and Danielle. Norm had worked as a figure model (for drawing), but this was Danielle's first experience. We photographed them both clothed and nude. Then, on Sunday, we drove to the summer home of one of the class members in nearby Milford, PA where we photographed Danielle and another model, Dana, in a forest setting, surrounded by large boulders and blueberry bushes.

On Monday, we went back to Milford to photograph total strangers on the street. Actually, I found the light to be entirely too harsh on the street, and that I could get better results by going indoors. And a secondary advantage of that approach was that indoors meant air conditioning! Finally, we again paired off with other class members on Tuesday morning for self-portraits, with the 'buddy' standing in for composing and framing, and then releasing the shutter when everything was done.

Overall, the workshop was fabulous. However, there was one downside. I had corresponded with Herb many months ago about his plans for the weekend, and he said at that time that he was planning for either film or digital. But later he appeared to have changed his mind and opted for a process with faster turnaround. I did film on Saturday, and was able to process the negatives, but there simply wasn't time enough to make proof prints for review. For the rest of the session I borrowed a Canon 20D digital from Andy Schmitt so that I could get the same turnaround time as the others in the class. I did do a few 4x5 monochrome portraits, and of course a number of landscape and architecture studies.

Anouk Dirkse was another of the students in the class. Originally from Holland, she came to the US 18 years ago to work as a fashion model. She was very easy to photograph!