Three Dimensionality

I've been reading The Age of Insight by Eric Kandel for quite a few days. It's not a work to rush through. I can read only three or four pages at a time before I find I have to put the book down and think about and absorb what I've read. It's an exceptional book for anyone who wants to understand how our brains perceive and process visual art and stimuli.

The challenge for an artist or photographer is to present material that is rendered in two dimensions - length and width - and still create the illusion of depth. One of the greatest artistic revelations of the Renaissance was the concept of perspective and depth perception. It developed steadily through the 19th Century until artists such as Cezanne, Picasso, Bonnard, Gaugin, Van Gogh, and Matisse decided to rid themselves of the shackles of dimensionality. 

Kandel makes the point that the human eye, at a distance of more than 10 feet, perceives the world two dimensionally and passes that two dimensional information into the brain of the viewer which then reinterprets the data to recreate the third dimension based on our unconscious learned perceptions of the world around us. 

My aim as a photographer when creating an image is to give as much (or as little) information as is necessary to entice the viewer to see what I want to be seen in the way I want it to be seen. I took this shot on Fifth Avenue during lunchtime, when the sidewalk was jammed with people. It was a hip shot (I would have much preferred to have gotten the woman on the right with her whole arm in the frame, but such are the tribulations when shooting from the hip) with my Fuji X-Pro1 using the 18mm lens, at 1/250th second, f8, ISO 800. The critical vertical line in the image is the edge of the church about a quarter of the way into the image from the left. From that line the perspective drops off deeply to the left (into the dark), and more shallowly to the right and that composition defines the perspective of the image. The two people in the foreground of the image are on an extended plane from the left side of the church, and are brought forward in the image by the receding background behind them. 

I'd like to say that this was all carefully thought out when I took the shot. But it wasn't. It was a lucky hip shot. The more you get out to shoot and experiment, the more likely it is that shots like this will happen. I know it may be rude of me, bu t I call this shot 'The dork and the doll'.

Fuji X-Pro1 and the M mount

One of the most compelling reasons to have gotten the Fuji X-Pro1 camera was the announced intention of Fuji to make an m-mount adapter so that old Leicaphiles such as myself (the Leica part, not the old) would be able to make use of their wonderful Leica m-mount lenses on this yummie new type of camera. I was hot to get the adapter but resisted the temptation to get a cheaply produced third party adapter ring with no electronic/digital functionality. 

When I got the Fuji adapter I checked all my Leica lenses to see which lenses would or wouldn't be functional.  There is a problem with some lenses because when focused to infinity the rear element housing protrudes from the back of the lens and hits an internal baffle in the adapter. I really wanted the adapter so that I could use my 50mm f2 lens and my 90mm f2.8 lens (on the DX sensor that translates into 75mm and 135mm respectively). I did all the setup stuff that Fuji recommended: adjustments for barrel/pincushion distortion, peripheral illumination, and color shading, and did some quick tests around town. Everything seemed fine.

I had yet to really use the adapter and Leica glass in a field test on the streets of New York. I made it a 

mission for my street walk yesterday. Those focal lengths are not what I would customarily use for my street work, as I like to be in close, so I found a chair on the plaza in front of the Apple Store on the corner of 59th Street and Fifth Avenue and watched as people walked by. My standard configuration now is to set the camera on Auto ISO 3200, shutter to 1/250th second, and aperture to f8. That's what I used here.

To manually focus I tried spot focus, hyper focal distance focus, and zone focus. Since I was sitting in one spot and taking my time to shoot manually, the best result was using spot focusing. It's essential to use the electronic viewfinder in this configuration. With the camera set to M (manual focus)  and with a gentle pressure on the function wheel the viewfinder zooms into the focus point at a magnification of 1.5X. The zoom functionality is very good to have for critical fine focusing, but with aging hands like mine the zoomed image was very jittery. No matter, the focusing in regular mode worked well, and for whatever flak Fuji has taken over the speed of its auto focus mechanism, auto focus is much faster than manual focus - at least for now until I get my manual chops back up to speed. 

I got this using the 90mm f2.8 lens at 1/400th second, f8, at ISO 1600. I was far enough from the young woman so that she was totally unaware of my presence until one of her friends mentioned to her that I was taking photos. I got several shots off before she turned to look at me. But this was the best of them.

Forever Young?

One of my favorite spots in New York City is the plaza on the southeast corner of 59th street and Fifth avenue. I could sit there for hours and watch the world walk past. And photograph it. I spotted these two fillies strolling down the avenue hoping to be seen. They beamed with joy when I raised my camera to take this shot.

The Artist And The Viewer

In my bog post for July 18th I mentioned Eric Kandel's book The Age of Insight. I was initially impressed with the premise of the book and looked forward to delving in. Reading the book is slow going, there is a lot to give pause and think about, and the way the subject matter is presented is definitely stimulating. Since the subject matter of the book centers on the life of fin de siecle Vienna the main proponents discussed are Freud, Klimt, Schiele, and Kokoshka. They form the core of the premise in the book. Because Freud is the only actor on the intellectual/scientific side of the equation, the premise of the book falls heavily on subliminal sexuality and aggression as the underlying or unconscious factors motivating the artists (I've yet to encounter any mention of spirituality).

The strongest attraction that the book holds for me is its exploration of the role the intended audience plays in the investment of feeling and emotion by the artists in their work. Any artistic work presented, in any medium, without that deep investment by the artist falls flat on its face and isn't worth my time. When I see a performance I want to be pinned to the back of my seat, when I view a photo, painting, or sculpture I want to have the wind knocked out of me. And that's the effect I seek to have on my viewers.

I invest my work with specific feelings when I take the photo, and I try to enunciate and accentuate those emotions as I process it to create the image. That processing involves the conversion from color to b/w, the optimization of tones and contrast, and the manipulation of perspective to create drama and draw your eye to where I want it to be in the image. As a piece of music unfolds, or as a drama plays out, the composer/playwright has complete control of your attention because the work unfolds in time. With a visual work, such as a painting, sculpture, or photograph the whole work is presented in its entirety at the moment of perception. The viewer is free to move around the work as he sees fit, and that often does not  suit the intention of the artist who is trying to convey an emotional message. It's through subtle adjustments in processing the image that the photographer pushes the viewer's eye to where and how it's intended to focus.

I invest a meaning in any image I present, based upon my emotional (conscious or unconscious) motivation in taking, processing, and developing the image. I can't hope to elicit the same interpretation or response from anyone who happens to see the work. There may be millions of people who view the work (oh all right, tens of viewers ..... who's counting!) and each person brings his/her own feelings to the experience. But if I invest myself in the process - and that means I don't simply go out and snap snap snap pictures, as so much of street photography seems to me to be - I can expect that by my latent emotional investment in the work I can elicit and emotional response by the viewer who brings to the experience his own feelings.

I approach street work in two ways. I try to stay as inconspicuous as possible to capture the people in my images reacting and responding to the environment in which they are immersed. I make a point of not insinuating myself into the situation - that would change the dynamics of the experience. On the other hand, sometimes I get noticed. When that happens I try to make the most of the situation and interact as positively as I can with the subject. Even though the camera was at my waist as I walked past this gentleman on 125th street in Manhattan, he saw me coming. The tip of his hat and the effort to look dapper in spite of the condition of his clothes, the cigarette hanging from his lips, and his body language shouted attitude to me.

Photography and Insight

Third in line of my favorite activities, after playing music and shooting photos, is reading. I'm always searching for interesting books, fiction and nonfiction, that are challenging and engaging. And I'm spurred on in my search by the utter dearth of such material on TV (except for the occasional - and very occasional at that - interesting broadcast on PBS). I've just begun to read a book by Eric Kandel entitled The Age of Insight which explores the role of the unconscious in art. The book is especially interesting to me because Kandel focuses on my favorite period of art history - German expressionism of the turn of the 20th century, and specifically on three of my favorite artists from any period of art history - Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoshka, and Egon Schiele.

I often begin to read intellectual explorations of the psychology of creativity, probably in the hopes of getting some sort of cognitive understanding of what goes on in my very confused brain, only to be disappointed by the lack of intuitive understanding most writers exhibit through their sterile academic analyses and/or their pandering to 'new age' philosophy. In just the brief preface Kandel has written to this book I see that neither is the case.

Most often my photography work is centered around people - in particular, the street portraits I feature in my blog posts. In this book Kandel says that he intends to focus specifically on the portraiture work of the three artists mentioned because (as he says in the preface) 'we now have the beginnings of an intellectually satisfying understanding - in both cognitive psychological and biological terms - of how we respond perceptually, emotionally, and empathically to the facial expressions and bodily postures of others.' What is street portraiture, if not the photographer's intuitive reaction and/or response to the people and faces towards which he is drawn to point the lens?

Kandel focuses on three great masters of painting. I don't presume to intimate that my work approaches the genius of what they produced. There may be those who would deny the similarities between painting and photography - I chose not to engage in that dialogue. The process that I enchants me is the unconscious intuitive visualization of a persona, how it is expressed by facial and body language, and how the artist seeks to recreate that visualization so that viewers of his work can have the same experience of the artist's subject at that moment.

I was walking across 125th street in Harlem a few Sundays ago and noticed that many people, dressed in their 'Sunday' finest, were coming out of a church on 124th street. I noticed these three 'church ladies' who's' faces were aglow with the spirit of the service.

An Old Friend

I lost an old friend this past week. I first met Bill in 1962 when I was a college student. We were both just cutting our musical teeth at the time, learning to play bluegrass. The Down State Rebels was the first band in which I played fiddle. Bill played guitar. There was an intimacy and a bond that grew between us, but were much to young to understand. We were friends as only bandmates can be. Over the years we lost touch as our lives spun in different directions, but several years ago we reconnected at a reunion in Washington Square that has become an annual gathering of those of us that were the folkies from the '60's. By the time we became reacquainted, our musicality had diverged dramatically. Didn't matter at those reunions. We just bubbled with the joy of reconnecting with old friends and sharing a memory - as only old bandmates can. About a two weeks ago I plucked up my courage to get to the hospital to visit with Bill. While I talked to him, heavily sedated as he was, he raised an eyebrow - he knew I was there, and I knew I was getting through. Unnerved hardly describes how a felt after seeing him. And yet I felt a calm peacefulness as I travelled home.

However trivial in may sound, life and time move on, entropy is forever progressing, and all we can do is continue on to slow the process in our infinitely small way. John Donne, in Meditation 17 of his Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, wrote words of which Hemmingway grew so fond.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or thine own were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. 


Since I got the unfortunate news, whenever I pick up the violin to practice Bill comes to mind. I took my regular photo stroll in Manhattan today which included the area of Union Square. Students abounded there - outlandish dress, radical ideas, and songs of outrage and protest. Made me proud to be part of that initial outpouring of angst along with Bill those many years ago around the fountain in Washington Square Park.

I got this shot on West 13th Street at an outdoor cafe. Beats the hell out of me why anyone would want to sit out on the street in 90º heat with all the New York soot and grit in the air. She was a beauty, and the smile she gave me after I took the shot lit me up.

The Focus Thing

The Fuji X Pro-1 camera has had a lot of press since it came out. Some raves and some criticisms. By far the most critical comments have been about the auto-focus functioning. I've written quite a bit about this camera since I got it. I wanted to love it from the get go. And indeed I do, quirks and all. The focus thing took some getting used to, but the time was well invested. I still don't nail every shot. What photographer does? But when I do, the results are, well ...... you tell me. I shot this brunette beauty on 34th street with the Fujinon 35mm f1.4 lens (1/160th second, f8, ISO 200). What more could anyone ask for? I dunno.