Analog Photography at its Best

Instant Talent: Angel Pastor

 

Angel Pastor is a self-taught amateur photographer from the Asturias along the northern coast of Spain. 

I had discovered on Flickr an extraordinary body of digitally enhanced work from this superbly gifted photographer.

He says, " I try to learn from photos I see and things I read and of course my very own ideas ... lately I tend to use watercolours and pencil drawings from my father to use as textures in my [P]hotoshop editing ... and I love Polaroid and The Impossible Project. . . ."

He works with a Polaroid One camera from the special edition that was offered by the Impossible Project. 

Click on these images to enlarge them.

My First Polaroid Transfer, by Angel Pastor.

 

The Very Same Jar of Jellies with Another Texture by Angel Pastor

 

Certain Colonial Air by Angel Pastor

 

Hotel Dreams by Angel Pastor

Instant Talent: Bastian Kalous

Meet Bastian Kalous of Germany, who has this to say about his work and his presence here.

"...Instant Talent...wow!!! My name is Bastian Kalous and I absolutely don't feel like a special talent. I just feel like a man who gets inspired in nature and loves taking pictures together with my girlfriend and the dog with a passion for this instant material that works with its own fascinating rules. But yes, Instant Talent sounds great!! 

Again, thank you very much for asking [me] to be part of this wonderful blog!"

Bastian Kalous, SX-70 and TZ film, 2010

How could I not be intrigued when I came across this on Flickr?



Bastian Kalous, The beauty of SX-70, 2009

Bastian Kalous, Sssccchhh. . . , SX-70 and TZ film

This is a perfect example of "Get in Close!" that the original Polaroid Corporation always counseled in their instructional material. The subject is Bastian's favorite model, Julia.



Bastian Kalous, play a song, 2011

Bastian Kalous, Hay Subway, 2010

Julia waiting for a subway train.

Bastian Kalous, beauty and beast, SX-70 and TZ film, 2010



Bastian Kalous, Miss Poppins, SX-70 and Impossible Chocolate film, 2010

Bastian Kalous, Winter Lady, SX-70 and TZ film, 2009



Bastian Kalous, leave your hat on, 2011



Bastian Kalous, pure magic, Polaroid Model 250 and 669 film, 2010



Bastian Kalous, The Little Prince, Polaroid Model 110A, 2010




Bastian Kalous, Schoki, Riverside, SX-70 and TZ film, 2010



Bastian Kalous, sunday morning, SX-70 and TZ film, 2011

"Waking up on a january sunday morning with bright sunlight is something special, here in deep bavaria!"



Bastian Kalous, lollipop, SX-70, 2009




Bastian Kalous, Blinded by Time-Zero,  SX-70 and TZ film, 2009

These bottom three photos are positive proof that with an excellent model and photographer, even mechanical problems can't distract from the subject, perhaps even enhance the final product. 

Instant Talent: Kim Oberski, Unscripted Moments

About Kim Oberski /Unscripted Moments

[In Kim's own words]

I am a self-taught photographer from Michigan. I started out using Nikon digital in 2007. After a few years of taking photos of my two young children, I started a small photography business with a focus on family and newborns. The business, by my standard, was successful but it drained me of all my creativity. I needed more.  

In the spring of 2010, I read an article on the Impossible Project Film being introduced, bought a few packs and was hooked. I loved the learning curve in using the new film. It made me truly think about what I wanted to capture and how all the elements surrounding me effected the final image. Instant film has made me slow down and focus on getting the image right straight out of the camera, not worrying about what I can do with it in photoshop.

Currently, my main photography project is doing a 365 using Instant Film. Before I take the photo of the day, I try to think of a poem, song, thought, feeling I want to capture. The end result is sometimes better than expected, others times not so well. :) The meaning behind the image isn't always something someone else will understand but this is a project I am doing for me: a project for the inner soul. 

Currently my main camera is a Polaroid SX70 with various Impossible Film products. I also have a Polaroid Land Camera 210, a OneStep Flash, a One600, a Fuji Instamax, and a Diana with a Polaroid back. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
All photos copyright © Kim Oberski, Unscripted Moments.

Instant Talent: Rich Burroughs

Rich, in his own words:

People often use words like "lonely" and "introspective" to describe my images. I spent my teens in a small Iowa town where I was an outsider by definition, and that had a huge impact on how I see the world. Part of me participates and another part observes, whether I'm looking through a viewfinder or not.

As a child, film cameras were toys for me. I spent time playing with our family's Brownie Holiday Flash and our Polaroid SX-70. At age seventeen I began shooting film for my high school newspaper using a manual 35mm camera. On one assignment I met a photographer from the UPI wire service who gave me the best advice I've ever gotten about photography. "You can never have too much film," he said. "If you think you've brought enough, bring more." It was liberating for me to hear that even a professional shooting for one of the biggest news organizations in the country took bad photos, and lots of them. He shot with a motorized winder.

I continued to take pictures on and off over the years, but my real love of the art came back to life when I picked up a Holga in 2007. I was researching buying my first DSLR at the time. Somehow while Googling I stumbled across an article describing the Holga, which was exactly the opposite of what I had been looking for: a medium format film camera with a lens made of plastic that cost about $30. The images in the article were moody and evocative in a way I hadn't seen in photos from a digital camera. I ordered my first Holga soon after and made my entry into the world of medium format film photography.

Since then I've come to love shooting on medium format film, especially black and white. I still use Holgas but I also shoot with other medium format cameras, including a Hasselblad. I also shoot with Polaroids -- my favorite is an SX-70 from the 1970s, like the one I played with as a child.

I started shooting with models in 2009 and that's been the focus of most of my recent work. I view that work as portraiture, even though many of the images are nudes. To me a good portrait reveals something honest about the subject, that's what I strive for. I try to provide an environment where my subjects feel open and creative. I view it as a collaboration.

One thread that runs through a lot of my work is a love for natural beauty, whether I'm shooting with a model or shooting landscapes. I'm also a minimalist. I'm always happy when someone uses the word "timeless" to describe one of my images. 

Note the reference to nudes, a few of which follow. I hope they won't be a problem for you.

There are more to be found at Rich's website, so be ye forewarned.

 
 

Rich Burroughs, Holga camera on Ilford Delta 400

 

Rich Burroughs, Hasselblad 500C camera on Ilford Delta 100

 

Rich Burroughs, Hasselblad 500C camera on Ilford Delta 100. Love those dogs

 

Rich Burroughs, Hasselblad 500C camera on Ilford Delta 100

 

Rich Burroughs, Polaroid 180 camera on Polaroid 669 film

Rich Burroughs, Polaroid SX-70 camera on Polaroid SX-70 Blend

Rich Burroughs, Polaroid SX-70 camera on Polaroid SX-70 Blend

Rich Burroughs, Holga camera on Ilford Delta 400. Overlapping done in camera

 
Rich Burroughs, Polaroid Image 1200 on Image Softtone film

 

Edward Steichen, 1879-1973

Edward Steichen, born Eduard Jean Steichen in the duchy of Luxembourg in 1879, and died 94 years later in Redding, Connecticut, bridged the gap of almost a century in the history of photography. I recommend you click on the links below to learn about this remarkable man while I offer these examples of his accomplishments from his associations with Alfred Stieglitz and Camera Work to his extraordinary exhibit of The Family of Man at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1955.
http://mastersofphotography.blogspot.com/2011/02/edward-steichen.html 

 
Edward Steichen, The Flatiron Building, 1905.
Gum brichromate over platinum print.
 
Edward Steichen, Rodin, Le Penseur and Victor Hugo, Paris, 1902

 
Edward Steichen, In Memoriam, New York, 1904.
Platinum and gum print.

 
Edward Steichen. J.P. Morgan, 1903

 
Edward Steichen, Gary Cooper, 1928

 
Edward Steichen, Gloria Swanson, 1928

 
Edward Steichen, Louise Brooks, 1928

 
Edward Steichen, Greta Garbo, 1929

The following photos were made by Steichen for his advertising client Matson Lines, in the 1940s.

 

 

 

 
Steichen in the uniform of a commander in the U.S. Navy Reserve during World War II, courtesy LIFE magazine. He was commissioned a lieutenant commander and retired as a captain.

In World War I, he was commissioned a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army and took command of the photographic services of the American Expeditionary Forces in France, retiring with the rank of lieutenant colonel and honors from both France and the U.S.A. 

This title was published in many printings and can be found at very reasonable prices where used books are sold. The prologue is by the noted poet Carl Sandberg, Steichen's brother-in-law.


Steichen's fourth wife, Joanna, wrote this exhaustive and candid account of their June and December courtship and marriage when she was 26 and he 80 years of age, which is surrounded by expertly printed large examples of his best work throughout the years of his extraordinary career.

[This is a heavy, huge, very expensive book that can be borrowed from US public libraries.]

http://philosophyofscienceportal.blogspot.com/2010/08/deceased-joanna-t-steichen.html

This link is an interview Joanna gave to Steve Roberts on the Diane Rheim show in 1908.

Joanna Steichen died in August of 2010 at the age of 77.

 

Elliott Erwitt at the ICP

The International Center of Photography at 1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036 is exhibiting 100 works by Elliott Erwitt from May 20 to August 28, 2011.

 
Elliott Erwitt, Marilyn Monroe, New York City, 1956
One of the best photos of the photogenic Marilyn that I've ever seen. Erwitt was definitely connecting with her.

 
Elliott Erwitt, The Misfits, Reno, Nevada, 1961
Marilyn, with husband Arthur Miller and her costars, a bunch of misfits if there ever was one, according to an old friend who was witness to the frustrations and delays caused by MM's erratic behavior on location.

 
Elliott Erwitt, Dogs' Legs, New York, USA, 1974
I love it. What is the wall-eyed dog thinking about all this?

 
Elliott Erwitt, Grace Kelly, New York City, USA , 1955
A well-done grab shot of a huge celebrity just before she became Princess Grace of Monaco.

 
Elliott Erwitt, Bratsk, Siberia, USSR, 1967
Who is the guy on the left? And what does he know?


Elliott Erwitt, Buzios, Brazil, 1990
I don't dare comment on this one, but I feel certain you'll be sure to have an opinion.

 

Julia Margaret Cameron, 1815-1897

 
Julia Margaret Cameron, Sadness [actress Ellen Terry at 16], 1864

Julia Margaret Pattle was born in Calcutta, India, to a British official of the East India Company and his aristocratic French wife, Adeline de l'Etang. She was the ugly duckling in a family of beautiful daughters, the great-aunt of Virginia Woolf, who acknowledged her talent as a portrait photographer of intellectual and literary lions of her time, despite the fact that she did not begin her photographic career until the age of 48.

 
Julia Margaret Cameron, Charles Hay Cameron, 1864

Julia was educated in France, and returned to India to marry Charles Hay Cameron, twenty years older than she, and already a distinguished judge. They returned to England in 1848 and purchased a home on the Isle of Wight, where they had visited the residence of Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Click on this line for her complete bio on Wikipedia, with links to Tennyson, Darwin, Browning  and other of her famous subjects.

 
Julia Margaret Cameron, Annie, Restored albumen print,1864

 
Julia Margaret Cameron, Julia Jackson, circa 1865

 
Julia Margaret Cameron, Thomas Carlyle, 1867

 
Julia Margaret Cameron, Charles Darwin, 1869

 
Julia Margaret Cameron, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1868

 
Henry Herschel Hay Cameron (1852-1911) Julia Margaret Cameron, 1870 

For much more about Julia Cameron, her philosophy and photos, enjoy these links:

http://larkabout.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/portrait-julia-margaret-cameron/

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Esoteric Curiosa

The Venetian Red

The Venetian Red Eminent Victorians

Photographers of genius at the Getty

 

Gertrude Stanton Käserbier, 1852-1934

Gertrude Stanton was born 18 May 1852 in Fort Des Moines, grew up as a child in the wild west plains of Iowa and Colorado until enrolling in the Moravian College for Women in Bethlehem, PA. After moving with her mother to Brooklyn NY, at the age of 22 in 1873, she married a financially comfortable businessman, Edward Käserbier.  It was not to be an agreeable marriage for her so by 1880, they led separate lives, divorce being considered scandalous in those times.

After raising their three children she became a student at the Pratt Institute in 1888 where she studied painting and photography, later studying in France and Germany.

She opened a portrait studio in New York in 1897, switched to photography, saying:

"I earnestly advise women of artistic tastes to train for the unworked field of modern photography. It seems to be especially adapted to them, and the few who have entered it are meeting a gratifying and profitable success."

From Wikepedia, Gertrude Käsebier

Gertrude Käserbier, Evelyn Nesbit, 1903

This photo was featured in Alfred Stieglitz's famous publication, CameraWork

Click on this link for more about Evelyn Nesbit.

       

Stieglitz had published Käsebier's photos in July 1899 in an earlier publication of his called Camera Notes, describing her as “beyond dispute, the leading artistic portrait photographer of the day.”

 

Gertrude Käserbier, Blessed Art Thou Among Women, 1899

 

Gertrude Käserbier, Chief, circa 1901

For a period of time Käserbier photographed native Americans, inspired by a visit to Wild West shows popular at the time and recalling her earlier years in Colorado and the American West.

 

Gertrude Käserbier, Alfred Stieglitz, 1902

Click on this link for more about Alfred Stieglitz.

Alfred Stieglitz, Hansom Cabs, 1894. Collection Eastman Kodak House

Gertrude Käserbier, Robert Henri, 1907

 

Click on this link for more about Robert Henri.

Robert Henri, Moira, 1924

Gertrude Käserbier, Rose O'Neill, circa 1907

 

Click on this link for more about Rose O'Neill.

Gertrude Käserbier, George Luks, circa 1910

Click on this link for more about George Luks.

George Luks, Lily Williams, circa 1909

On a personal note I must tell you that my mentor Harold Irving Smith studied with both Robert Henri and George Luks about whom he had endless stories of both great admiration for Henri and his method of teaching at the Art Student's League of New York, and great frustration with the sometimes very kind but nevertheless relentlessly alcoholic George Luks.

 

Dorothea Lange, 1895-1965

If I had to choose only one great photograph of all those I have ever seen, this would be it. The exposures which follow explain how it was made. It is also a tribute to great composition by the photographer, evidenced in this image which can be enlarged to full frame by clicking on it.

Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, 1936

Migrant Mother is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made of Florence Owens Thompson and her children in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California.

Lange was concluding a month's trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration.

In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience in the magazine Popular Photography for February 1960:

"I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it."

These images were made using a Graflex camera. The original negatives are 4x5" film. It is not possible to determine on the basis of the negative numbers (which were assigned later at the Resettlement Administration) the order in which the photographs were taken.

 

This was a migrant agricultural worker's family in 1936, destitute in pea picker's camp, Nipomo, California, because of the failure of the early pea crop. There are seven hungry children and a 32-year-old mother. Their father is a native Californian. These people had just sold their tent in order to buy food. Of the twenty-five hundred people in this camp most of them were destitute.

This a photo of the scene as Dorothea Lange approached them with her camera. The following are prints of her exposures as she brought this imposing large format camera closer to her subjects.

 

 

And here below is Dorothea Lange posed on the roof of what appears to be a 1935 Ford "Woody."

 
Dorothea Lange, White Angel Breadline, San Francisco, 1933

 

 
Dorothea Lange, Street Demonstration, San Francisco, 1933

 

 
Dorothea Lange, Crossroads Store, Alabama, 1937

 

 
Dorothea Lange, J.R. Butler, 1938

 

   
Dorothea Lange, One Nation Indivisible, San Francisco, 1942

 

 
Dorothea Lange, Grandfather and Grandson, Manzanar, 1942

 

 
Dorothea Lange, Spring in Berkeley, 1951

 

 
Dorothea Lange, Korean Child, 1958

 

Arnold Genthe, 1869-1942

 
Arnold Genthe, 1918

Arnold Genthe was born in Berlin in 1869, studied in Berlin and Jena, and received a doctorate in philology in 1894. His mastery of languages brought him to San Francisco as a tutor for some young German nationals studying there in 1895. He became interested in photography the following year and opened his own studio three years later after a successful series of photos of Chinatown and a developing interest in portrait photography at which he soon excelled. He then relocated to New York to pursue his career and found his subjects in the arts, literature and theatre. I have selected these photos as among the most impressive, which I believe rival anything being done today.

 
Arnold Genthe, San Francisco Chinatown Concubine, date unknown

Unlike his later, deliberately posed portrait subjects, this looks to me like what would be called a "grab shot" today.

Click on images to enlarge them.

Please use the hot links for comprehensive information about the subjects.

 
Arnold Genthe, San Francisco Earthquake 1906

Can you imagine what it must have been like for Genthe to see his city consumed in flames after a monstrous earthquake that is estimated to have registered 8.25 on the Richter Scale? Fortunately he had the presence of mind to photograph the scene in memorable images such as this.

Arnold Genthe, Author Jack London, circa 1906

Arnold Genthe, Chorus girl and model Evelyn Nesbit and son, Russell William Thaw, 1913

 
Arnold Genthe, Author Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1914

   
Arnold Genthe, Author William Butler Yeats, 1915

 
Arnold Genthe, Actress Elsie Ferguson, 1917

The feeling for his subjects and the magical quality of his prints are as rare today as I believe they were then, a century ago. 

My thanks to Wikipedia and Vanity Fair for helpful research.