Understanding Flash Sychronization

Synchronizing electronic flash with ambient light is an extremely powerful technique in photography to control the look of your images. Flash can fill in dark shadows, freeze motion, and add amazing pop & drama to your photos. It seems, however, that many people have a hard time figuring out how to control this technique. After a few shots with uncontrolled blown out flash, many aspiring photographers just figure flash is hard, ugly, and not worth the bother. Too bad, because correct flash technique can really save the day in difficult lighting conditions, and once you understand how it works, it's really easy to get exactly the results you are looking for. This article does the best job I've seen lately in explaining all the details of how to get your flash under your command. It's well worth the read. http://cornicello.com/itfigures/shutter-speed-with-flash-or-strobes

scoopneil's photostream

scoopneil's photostream on Flickr.

An Open Letter to the Management of the Few Remaining Local Newspapers

Written after an encounter with a local reporter at a neighborhood house fire:

Dear Jon Doe,

On second thought, I'd ask that you NOT use any of my images with the house fire story. Our encounter last night really got me thinking about trends in print journalism: In my view, basically rushing headlong into its own grave. The idea that you'd use (and here I'm going to use "you" as a representative of a corporation, not "you" as a person, in the spirit of the recent Supreme Court decision, I suppose) a person's photograph with the assumption that paying them for that work would be almost a joke, speaks volumes about the state in which the journalism industry finds itself today. While I don't have a problem with "crowd-sourced" images in a journalistic context in certain exceptional circumstances, the offhand dismissive tone of your response to my question about compensation for the use of my photographs suggested that the use of free content is simply taken for granted at the Local Paper.

Let's back up a few years. As a student, as well as for many years after college, I often freelanced as a photographer for commercial, editorial, industrial clients, and worked several years as a freelance corporate photographer, supporting myself with a pretty good living standard by doing so. For each of these roles, I was paid. Some jobs paid better than others. Sometimes I would accept jobs as a stringer for local newspapers for much less than my corporate day rate, but it was still worth my time to do this work. The checks would add up to a helpful supplement to my income at the end of the month. I wasn't getting rich, but none of my clients, newspapers included, would have dreamed to assume that I'd be willing to work for free. Nobody ever had the gall to ask. It was simply understood that I had made a substantial investment in my training, equipment, and had a practiced eye for composition. I know how to tell stories with my images, could be counted on to get solid shots in any circumstances, no matter how technically or environmentally challenging, and had the portfolio to prove it.  Now it seems, it's simply assumed that original content will be handed over, without the though or question of payment even coming up, in exchange for nothing more tangible than a brief moment in the spotlight--the fabled chance for exposure and experience! As the internet meme has it, Great! I'll just go ahead and pay my bills with exposure and experience!

Granted, I'm NOT currently making my living as a photographer, but as a college professor in photography, I certainly have a vested interest in the continued viability of the profession. Obviously, plenty of your fellow employees are also somewhat invested in continuing in careers as photojournalists. Your organization has on staff a crack team of extremely talented and professional photographers. From what I hear the paper has never had a policy of hiring freelancers and stringers, etc., preferring to rely on this talented staff to generate original images that tell the story of our community in pictures. I deeply admire their work as a group, and also some of them as individuals. Sadly, I know both through you, and from other acquaintances at your paper that all of you are anxiously awaiting the immanent announcement of staff layoffs. I sincerely hope that your job is spared, as I have been for some time aware that you're actually doing a pretty great job of chasing down local news stories. You are a good reporter. I'm sure that your training, work ethic, experience, instinct, and talent contribute to that success. Now imagine that it was simply assumed that just anyone would send in news items, and not expect payment. Wouldn't a little bit of exposure and byline be enough? Newspapers are written at a sixth grade or so comprehension level, no? So potentially anyone that has finished the sixth grade could cobble together a credible news story. Where does that leave you and your ability to make a living? What about the factual accountability of the stories in question? I'm quite sure that you could advance any number of arguments re. professionalism, accountability, experience, talent, and journalistic integrity that would justify your continued employment. Perhaps you've practiced these arguments in the mirror in anticipation of receiving that dreaded pink slip.

My point is, of course, that the same arguments also apply to photojournalism. By actually PAYING freelance contributors, an organization is demonstrating at least some level of commitment to and backing to the work that they are using to represent their account of events. If there is no financial stake in this enterprise, it also signifies that there is no value to this content, nor necessarily any institutional responsibility to or for its veracity. I'm sure you are well aware that a photograph can just as easily misrepresent an event or situation as can the written word. It makes sense to rely on professional contributors who's careers are at stake in assuring their audience that their work presents a credible view of the events represented. Furthermore, by routinely accepting unpaid content, you are undercutting a valuable career path for aspiring journalists, as well as endangering the continued validity of your own job, not to mention those of the photo staff.

I do not wish to be party to this continued erosion of journalistic standards, and I hope that you'll also think twice about the ways that the Local Paper and other publications are allowing the same things to happen. This is a slippery slope that ends inevitably in the total irrelevance of the local newspaper, or even print journalism in general. If your content consists of unpaid and unprofessional volunteer submission, what distinguishes you from Facebook? What's the difference between journalism and hearsay? How will you pay for groceries, your mortgage, and your children's shoes? Why do we need newspapers at all? I'm sure that you were just trying to do a difficult job, under deadline stress, and certainly didn't "ask" for such a response from a random stranger, nor do you personally have any say in the way that the Local Paper gathers, vets, or compensates contributors for their work, but I'd really love for more journalists to think hard and long about these questions, and do whatever is necessary to hold your organizations accountable to some basic standards of professionalism and sustainability, before the term "journalist" becomes a word as quaint and uncommon in daily usage as so many other words denoting former professions, such as gas lighter, blacksmith, and telephone operator. Your own career hangs in the balance, as does the future of anyone who is proud to have earned the title of "journalist."

Cheers,
Neil

A Liminal Textual Expression Explicating My Generative Cultural Practice Manifested in a Redundantly Professional Theoretical Linguistic Dialect

All the recent discussion online on Artspeak's unique linguistic manifestations http://canopycanopycanopy.com/16/international_art_english alerted me to the disconcerting possibility that my current artist statement http://www.neilchowdhury.com/pages/7071-artists-statement is woefully comprehensible by any reasonably literate reader of English. It's no wonder that my work has sometimes been consigned to exhibition in dubiously salubrious contexts, for example, this one in the men's urinal at the Gershwin Hotel, downtown Manhattan: 

Obvious Duchampian associations notwithstanding, the thought of my hard won compositional virtuosity being exclusively apprehended by men with micturating phallus in hand brought about a highly ambiguous emotional response. Amongst other points of potential objection, the exclusion of my work to a female audience was never my intention; therefore in order to mitigate charges of an overtly sexist exclusionary stance, I have been motivated, as the first step in a multi-pronged strategy to remedy this unfortunate state of events, to attempt a complete rewrite of artist statement in order to better conform to the professionally accepted dialect of International Art English. 

Although a legitimate holder of the requisite MFA degree, I now realize that my adoption of this language schema has perhaps been hampered by the humble state university origins of my credentials, a lack of skill, or perhaps, horror of horrors, even a preantidiluvian misconception that the written word accompanying artistic production should actually be comprehensible to a lay reader. As a relative novice and reluctant late adopter of this sort of linguistic prestidigitation, I therefore invite you, Dear Reader, to add your own revisions and additions to my efforts below in the comment section. Please don't get the idea that I was ignorant of the existence of this sometimes mystifying manifestation of the English Language. My inbox has been just as inundated  with eFlux press releases as anyone else's who has attempted  to follow the gyrations of Art World happenings and happenstance this last eventful decade. Although I've admittedly been a little ambivalent in my attitude towards the long term reputation of Artspeak's utterances, it would apear, based on the evidence cited in the article above, as if I'd better get on the bandwagon before the party is over, and I'm forever consigned to the historical ash heap of ignored over-earnest artists who just didn't "get it" in the post postmodern realm of irony, mystification, and elitist exotification posing as inclusionary democratization of the redefinition of Art. If that didn't make much sense to you, don't worry, I'm just getting warmed up. So here, at the risk of exposing myself as the Midwestern raised rube, the contemptible neophytic pretender transparently masquerading as the art world insider towards which my middle class aspirational immigrant ambitions compel me to overreach, for the pleasure of your mystification and in mutual acknowledgement of your elite acculturation is my official first stab at International Art English:

My work solicits interpretive cultural metatextualizations utilizing a hybridity of emergent optical, chemical and digital imaging strategizations, generative of a technological proxy metaphorically representational to the ineffably platonic hyperpersonalized visual space via a matrix of technoderivative photographic simulacra intuited juxtapositionally via discontinuous synthetic assemblages, nonlinear sequential narrative deconstructuralizations, and temporal memorialization of perceived special and temporal singularities, deploying constructed metasocializations of the assumed real, notwithstanding assumed referentialities to dialectical exclusionary conceptualizations to examine the reinterpretability of photographically derived mediation’s perceived indexicality potentiating communicability’s ambiguatorily auratic poetically reoriented narrational manifestation that expresses and transcends photographic media’s temporal existential limitations and interrogates the primacy of the colonial gaze, reacknowledging the ineffability of psycho-sexual, cultural and economic influential factoriality that form a subjective visual interpretational field theory systemic to intraendemic academic ontological structures, while interrogating liminal cultural artifacts arising within specific historically derived affinities that through ahistorical decontextualization, reconfigure interminably, suggesting interpretive potentialities in denial of definitive categorization in relation to extant taxonomic structural matrices normatively proximate to contemporary epistemological art world schema.

At the risk of redundancy, I'd like to reiterate that if anyone can decipher concrete meaning encoded within the  above new and improved artist statement, please let me know and I'll attempt to reambiguate the liminality of my textual exposition. Really, folks. I need all the help I can get here.

Shameless Self Promotion Dept.

Radiate at Gallery 400

CURATED BY KATHRYN MYERS

Radiate represents the work of eleven artists currently residing in the Northeast United States who share origins and connections in South Asia. The diversity of meaning, metaphor, and material in their work defies attempts at locating any fixed geographic or cultural “essence” of identity among these artists. Rather, multiple and mutable senses of self and history are expressed through concepts and forms that weave an abundant labyrinth of associations.

The artists featured in Radiate articulate a variety of different questions centering around their identities and experiences within the South Asian diaspora. Religion and mythology serve as particular points of inspiration, reference, and practice for Siona Benjamin, Tenzin Wangchuk, Amina Ahmed, and Ebenezer Sunder Singh. The dynamics of global politics as well as personal experiences of displacement and migration, connection and detachment, are reflected in the work of Vijay Kumar, Sonia Chaudhary, Samantra Batra Mehta, and Neil Chowdhury. Finally, the integration of traditional and new technologies through media and metaphor are reflected in the work of Shelly Bahl, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, and Anjali Deshmukh.

Artists of the South Asian diaspora have been a dynamic force in reframing and reshaping Asian and Euro-American art history. Whether drawing from family heritage in South Asia, the United States, or other parts of the world, their movements between geographies, histories, and cultural practices of East and West characterize an open and adaptable sense of self that is the optimum “essence” for a globalized world.

Radiate

OPENING RECEPTION

Friday, November 2, 2012 – 5:00PM to 8:00PM
Gallery 400
400 South Peoria Street

Chicago, IL 60607

Tuesday through Friday, 10am-6pm
Saturday 12-6pm and by appointment

Admission to the gallery is FREE.

http://gallery400.uic.edu/visit

Thoughts on the LA MOCA Mess

The recent public discussions surrounding the ouster of LA MOCA Chief Curator Paul Schimmel, and the subsequent resignation of every artist member from the museum’s board of directors have inspired me to take a closer look at some of the issues underpinning this controversy. The personnel changes at LA MOCA reflect the continuing struggles of the museum to find the right balance between the need to appeal to a broad audience, and the museum’s mission to promote and exhibit cutting edge contemporary art. The Gold plated LA Culturati seems to be collectively chewing its manicured nails in nervousness at the horrific prospect that the museum could be too closely following the precedent set by the Guggenheim Museum’s 1998 exhibition, The Art of the Motorcycle, which was critically panned as a lowbrow pandering to the masses, even as it achieved unprecedented blockbuster status in terms of its public attendance, while the LA museum’s public audience is responding with an outpouring of derision and indifference at the attention being given to such a specialized crisis. The existence of such a split in perception reveals the root of a problem facing contemporary art’s place in society.

The Art of the Motorcycle exhibition was hardly the first museum show to attempt to engage a larger popular audience at the perceived expense of its place in art world sophistication. In the medium of photography, Edward Steichen’s 1955 Family of Man exhibition generated similar criticism, as well as a similarly record breaking public attendance. The contemporary museums’ identity crisis, however seems to be predicated on a much wider gulf between the popular and the advanced notion of art than was evident in 1955. Today’s museums face even greater pressures to raise money and public support in a much more difficult economic climate, while contemporary art is arguably more distant from the understanding and participation of the public than was the relatively comprehensible art world of the 1950’s. On retrospect, 50’s advanced art was still at least rooted in generally accepted and understood principles of aesthetics and human experience, deriving its avant-garde status from a critical engagement with a much less abstruse theoretical framework than today’s offerings, despite the immediate perplexity it sometimes engendered in its public reception at the time. 1955’s advanced art revolved around the expression of one’s personal subjective journey, engaging fields such as psychology, physics, and metaphysics that were largely familiar to an educated public. Today’s public may be less aware of the layer upon layer of postmodern, post feminist, post structuralist & semiotic theory & contemporary art’s increasingly obscure historical referents that despite their utility in generating new ways of looking at cultural text and social phenomenon, appear from outside its confines as merely  post rational and post relevant, serving only to gird the contemporary art world like an armored gate against access or comprehension by a potentially interested layperson.

One could also look at the Guggenheim motorcycle show as the recognition of the aesthetic achievements of a marginalized culture through a unique vernacular art form --acknowledgement of the fact that Art with a capital A doesn't necessarily have to originate from the scions of upper crust institutions and social strata. Considering the source, as well as the way it has modeled subsequent and increasingly populist exhibitions I don't doubt that the true intention of such programming was and continues to be a calculated ploy to suck in the ticket buying masses to pay the bills. Many blockbuster museum shows have obviously followed suit with an increasingly blatant pandering to popular taste. Given the perspective of the current LA MOCA fiasco as one in a long history of this ever escalating conflict, I hope its current iteration might inspire some contemporary artists, curators and art administrators to contemplate WHY more academically oriented work often fails so miserably to engage the public.

It's easy to be cynical about the lowbrow preferences of the unwashed hoi polloi, but it shouldn't be necessary for museums to mirror popular culture in order to attract a crowd if the art shown had more of a direct connection to human experience, striving to connect and communicate, rather than exclude and obfuscate. I’ve heard today’s hipsters, the latest iteration of self proclaimed guardians of populist cutting edge taste directly state that if anyone else has heard of X, Y, or Z cultural text, then it’s automatically no longer cool. I’ll not get too hung up on the irony that this statement usually refers to a “band”, itself the product of a music that could only exist in the popular sphere by very definition, but rather reflect upon the notion that this pose itself has never been cool, and instead embodies cool’s very opposite, a thinly disguised elitism that depends upon what it excludes rather than what it expresses for the dubious value of its cachet. It seems to me, that the art world has for too long blindly tread this same unfortunate path. By no means all, but a lot of what is celebrated as advanced contemporary art has similarly lost its ability to relate to a general audience, functioning instead as a semi private joke that only speaks to a select few who have (or pretend to have) a deep understanding of successive layers of obscure art historical and theoretical reference that along with the requisite bank balance to use the art market as a playground for a game of hide and seek with the IRS, basically signifies nothing beyond membership in an exclusionary elite club. I agree with the LA MOCA artist board members’ public call for more transparency and accountability in the institution’s decision making, but I’d be infinitely more impressed if they used the enviable visibility of their platform to call for more transparency in the meanings, social relevance, means of production, and curation of art itself. Since some of the very artists (formerly) on the LA MOCA board have both contributed to, and benefited mightily from this hermetic culture that has risked cutting off advanced art from the roots of the society from which it arises, and to which it owes some semblance of relevance, I’m not holding my breath in anticipation for the appearance of any such manifesto.

On one level their response to the museum’s new direction is admirable. Any public institution owes its constituency a clear rationale for its direction and choices of leadership and programming. The collective contributions of these artists to the art world and LA MOCA alike are also undeniable, but from another perspective, the walkout could look a lot like the predictable fit of pique displayed by members of any elite club when certain “undesirable elements” clamor for admittance. That this drama is playing on Main Street to a very different response from the hand wringing and consternation of art world insiders is readily visible if those involved would temporarily remove their noses from expensive art journals, and check out the public comments sections on the daily newspaper accounts of this latest tempest in high culture’s fur lined teacup.

Big, publically funded art institutions simply can't expect to sustain an exclusionary world of advanced practice and theory, while still engaging enough of an audience to support and finance them. I'm not arguing for the dumbing down of art, or for an art world that must depend solely on a brutal pure capitalist calculation, but conservative politicians and an alienated pubic alike will see to it that this is the final outcome unless the art world itself recognizes that it should function in the service of society, not as a separate society on some strata far above the reach of the commoner. Beyond indulging in a self serving jargon laden internal dialog, incomprehensible to even the well educated layman, surely there is an interpretive and educational role for those holding the keys to the specialized knowledge, history and practice of advanced art. I’m suggesting that in order for this field to remain socially relevant, and thus supported, it must look beyond the limited dialectic between populism and elitism, embracing its responsibility to educate the public in ways that encourage participation and inclusion, finding a middle ground that retains its roots in relatable sources of cultural and personal origins. Only then will the new ideas that it generates advance the perceptions, self understanding, and thinking of society as a whole, earning it the right to an audience by its ultimate usefulness as a critique and reflection of contemporary concerns, rather than as a spiritually and conceptually bereft commodity market that’s outlived its social contract. 

Looking into the Future with Google Glasses

Two recent blog posts about advances in photo technology have caught my eye. This: https://plus.google.com/111626127367496192147/posts

and this: http://www.bagnewsnotes.com/2012/07/the-future-of-photojournalism-robots/, both claiming to be the future of photography. In both cases, the technical skill of the individual photographer seems to be superseded by technology. These new tools can't really replace the ability anticipate a significant event by simply being there ready at the right time. No matter what new tools we get, it seems that Weegee's Law," F/8 and be there" has yet to be disproved, although with the robot, "F/8 and been there" might be a useful amendment. Google Glasses represent for me the realization of a long held dream--to be able to capture whatever image is seen by my eye--without the obvious interference introduced by the recording apparatus. 

As much as I love the beautiful machinery of photography, the true purpose of the camera is to visually record the scene it's placed in front of. Many times, the presence of this machinery changes the thing that it's observing, therefore undermining its own purpose. These new devices, by being virtually invisible, or at least transparent to the subject, come much closer to realizing photography's original objectives. I can't help but conclude that Google Glasses (once perfected) and similar devices may at last solve Schrödinger's paradox, at least for photographers, finally allowing us to photograph the cat without killing it. This development may not change what makes a good photograph, but it will change the dynamic of what it takes to make a good photograph, forever. 

Of course the privacy implications of such technology, as well as their effect on the already beleaguered profession of photojournalism will certainly catalyze no end of comment. The privacy issues implied by Google Glasses may generate more generalized objection in society, but we've already become so accustomed to sharing once private aspects of our lives with the world, that I predict that the debut of GG's, giving everyone the ability to effortlessly record and broadcast personal experience to one and all will be absorbed and accepted into society more quickly than our ability to understand the implications of these changes. As with every technological revolution from the printing press to the mobile phone, we'll adopt the new tech wholesale and deal with the social consequences afterwards. Perhaps the further loss of what we've traditionally viewed as individual privacy will bring us closer to the original human social structure of everyone being interdependent and mutually accountable to everyone else that was lost by the advent of modernity's illusion of individualism, but this is a topic for another day. The implications of this change for photography will be no less revolutionary for our profession.

The reaction of professional photographers to Google glasses may be more vociferous and bitter than the inevitable objections of society in general. Think how many articles, conversations, seminar topics, etc. have centered on the ubiquity of cellphonography, and its supposedly deleterious effects on the field of photography. Google glasses, if and when they become widely available, have the potential to further revolutionize this democratization of imagemaking.  We don't have time to cry at our own funeral. Rather than waste energy mourning the further encroachment of technology into what has traditionally been a hard earned skill, we photographers would do well to reevaluate and develop the skills we posses that are not subject to technological obsolescence, embrace the new possibilities, and apply our creative energy to finding innovative ways to use all the tools available that will enable us to use our images in a way that is analogous to how writers use words: We can SHOW the world stories that inspire, engage, and inform our audiences.

One never hears writers complaining that technology of word processing software and computers made their craft too easy for the masses, therefore endangered their profession or art form. Writers earn that title by having something significant to say, the skill to do it beautifully and clearly, and the dedication and savvy to bring the work to the right audience. Writers have not, since the advent of the printing press and generalized literacy, been able to depend on the exclusivity of their creative product in order to define and justify the importance of their art and craft. Good writers know that their reputation depends on having the ability to tell stories that inspire, engage, and inform their audiences. If we photographers have anything significant to communicate with our images, the ubiquity of photographic technology that makes it easier to capture and disseminate them should be seen as a blessing that enables our objectives, not as a curse that opens some previously exclusive realm for anyone. The value of photography should not be measured by its exclusivity of access to those who can afford to invest in expensive equipment, but by the worth of what is communicated, both in form and content. 

It's undeniable that digital technology has proven enormously disruptive to the traditional business models of how we photographers have distributed and gotten paid for our work. The internet has obviously superseded many revenue streams that have supported professional photographers in the past, and undercut the rest. I'm not denying this reality, or downplaying its often negative impact on the profession. Like it or not, Google Glasses are only going accelerate this trend. Standing on the soapbox of outmoded copyright law and suing everyone who reposts our images online is the digital equivalent of closing the barn door after the horses have escaped. The train's already left the station, the milk is spilt and the water's way past the bridge. Those who are adaptable enough to use the new technology to provide quality visual stories that attract and engage an audience in whatever medium and venue becomes available will carry advanced photography into the future. 

What a glorious mess.....I can't help but love these!

http://theworldofphotographers.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/billy-monk-photographer/

If it's ever been useful to look back a bit to understand what's going on now, this interview with John Szarkowski is a shining example, as his aesthetic decision-making still has a vast unspoken influence on the photography that is shown today. His reference to quite a few now forgotten writings on photography that influenced the thinking of artists and curators of his generation is also fascinating. Lots of reading to do!

http://www.americansuburbx.com/2010/11/theory-eyes-wide-open-interview-with.html

Oh Hey!

Time to resurrect this long lost blog. More changes coming soon!