Pictures of Buildings & People

forward, into the past !

Nope, uh-uh, I know the headline makes you think I'm going to say something political about those other ummmm. . .people, but it's more about our common mania: r e t r o . We have vinyl, blue tooth handsets mimicking the uber-phone of the 50s, and it certainly is a deep fundamental part of the photography world, but here's great candy cane twist on it. . . little plastic Japanese view cameras called Blackbird. An amusing Wired article on the Blackbird and the Japanese Jenius Hideki Omori behind them. Move over Holga-ites.

let me exploit an American newspaper in trouble. . . again

Thank you to Mr. T Horgen for this crucial, essential, panacea index to all the rooftop drinkyterias in our humble, lil' metro. It's nice to indulge in some unrepentant summertime swankery.

more on green paint

It's been encouraging to see more and more low VOC paints come on the market. But what about all the paint that goes in the gutter, or the landfill, not the local hazardous materials depot? Well, excess paint has been collected for overseas by various non-profits. But finally, someone is trying to make it happen as a part of the U.S. economy here in Minnesota. A pragmatic quote from the Star-Trib article : Contractors, people with rentals, they like the consistency of getting a good product, getting a really good price and getting that same color six months from now, Kasten said.  Fridley-based Amazon Environmental is a model that others would well to look at. We really need this kind innovation now. Maybe Valspar, which started on the East Coast and now has it's h.q. in Minneapolis, should buy them out and plug this product into their distribution chain.

idiosyncratic ad copy

So, have you seen that Dos Equis ad? With the world's most interesting man? It really is unique for so many reasons, especially that it's basically anti-advertising in it's approach. An article in Slate gives you the details, but I don't think I'll ever forget two hysterical non-sequiters: He once had an awkward moment just to see how it feels or He lives vicariously through himself. If you think too hard about that last one, vertigo and nausea may set in!

yin yang \ alpha omega

The current New Yorker has a cover done by an illustrator Jorge Colombo who created the entire work on his iPhone - the link here is to the NY site, but I couldn't get the movie to play right. . . hmmm - that aside, what an interesting comment on how things are playing out. There goes the Strathmore, Bienfang, etc art pad (not really, I mean the iPhone is small and can you really do shading? ) But now in Netherlands, a bunch of image devotees are single handedly reverse engineering the Polaroid instant camera ! Talk about a labor of love, which I won't belabor, just hit the link. It's an astonishing tale. In Paris, I saw camera stores with actual film for sale in real volume! It struck me how those square bins, orientated on point like a diamond shape, are similar to wine bottle storage! [Here in Minnesota, the last official holder of the Polaroid assets has been seriously busted for fraud.]

more on Vincent Laforet

Well, yesterday he picked up some competition honors from PDN for the 2009 Photo Annual. I saw these images from the recent Olympics* projected on a large screen. I did some time in broadcast news and it was great to hear him say one of the golden rules of event imaging: if you see a whole bunch of photographers (still or video) in a location to get the shot - go somewhere else. Vive Vince! *load the gallery, go to name of winner pull down window and go to his name.

the Louvre

The utter, total opacity of the past, and in this case the ancient past is a the subject of a NYT article. It was at the Louvre, in Paris. I did a somewhat brief visit there but there's always that w o w sensation when all the stuff you've seen in books, magazines for years are now on the wall, with you breathing the very molecules of it as it slowly degrades in front of your face. And the Louvre didn't have the kind of security we see over here, you could just walk right up this paintings and look close like.  Back in the 90's, as they were digging to make another plaza at the Louvre, they hit rock and ultimately revealed the base of the original fort built in the 900s CE, and I say w o w again! Well, yeah, saw the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, Venus di Milo, blah, blah, but what I really liked was at the Musee d'Orsay. Have you had it with all that pretty Monet?: the lilies, the gardens and oh, the haystacks which we have in spades here at the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts. Monet painted his turkeys! and they even had them at his restored home too! Just like my dad's Uncle and Aunt in Duluth (well outside of it). That's where I got the only souvenir of the whole trip, a  Monet Fondation staff  T shirt (black of course).  By the way, souvenir is French for  memory.

'the puppet show' from winker + noah / italia

yeah, it's a gimmick, but it works, and as a father it strikes a nerve. But when you read about children in various 'compounds' in the USofA, you get the feeling this is what a lot of adults are shooting for. .

Vincent Laforet

Laforet spoke at an ASMP meeting in Minneapolis Wednesday night 5/20 at MCAD. For any photographer, the potential of shooting video with the new Canon 5D MII was interesting. I would say that after witnessing the presentation and hearing what Laforet had to say, it could well be an industry sea change. I don't think that's hype - time will tell of course - but alot, alot of things spring to mind in terms of different approaches, different imaging, different art, different product. My head is still spinning. The fact that since he released Reverie, he's been approached by all the West Coast production royalty and the unions says a lot. It finally struck me that the internet and in particular the 'social networking' of the past few years is another blow to that part of print industry dependent on creatives for promotional work. You spend a couple of grand on a project (Reverie) and get a quarter million hits in a day. That's more then you would get sending out cards. (I didn't come up with this, Laforet commented on it)

the competition

  I've entered some of my Kansas City images in two competitions - one West Coast, one East Coast, well, Florida. Also well worth checking out K.C. photographer Mike Sinclair's blog - he makes the built environment speak.