Books, not politics

It's the day after the election, and that's all I'll say about that. (As written, but I delayed hitting publish button for a day.)

You get books today. Some think paper books are quaint and outmoded. They'd rather read on a device. Which mostly is fine when it comes to text. Screens are better now, and there's lots of handy things a device can do that a paper book cannot. Like give you the definition of a word by clicking on it, as opposed to putting the book down, picking up another book or device and looking that word up, which is a likely path to being distracted along the way, which might perhaps lead to a happy coincidence.

I was getting distracted there. But images. A hand held device sucks when it comes to images, especially really nice images. The screen is just so small, and images on a device, even a good desktop computer monitor, look different than they do in print, and typically not better. 

After all, a book image looks the way the photographer wants it to look. An image on the screen could have had any number of alterations. How the screen is set up for brightness and colour balance are the main issues, but even the very dimensions of the image could be altered. Don't get me started on the damage done by "optimizing" for the web. 

You can hold a book in your hands and see the image as the photographer intended, within the limits of printing and publishing technologies. When you're looking at a book, you're almost certainly paying attention to it, unlike the fraction of a second as you scroll past a photo on IG. 

New Zealand by Helmut Hirler. I'm not sure how I didn't blog about this before. Closest I got is here. I chatted with him a bit about his approach. He does research, then rides his motorbike to the place and camps out. The most important step is to wait for the light to be right for what he wants. The images are amazing! Doubly so if you like wide, panoramic images in black and white or infra red. 

Borrowed Time by George Webber. The same George that led the recent darkroom class I took. He's been at the game a long time. It's fun looking through the book and finding places I'd been. Some of them aren't there any more. The photos bring a huge sense of time and place, and take you on a journey.

Both Sides Now by Ari Jaksi. I recently found Ari on Youtube, here, talking mainly about film photography. Most of what's on Youtube is crap, (Totally validating Sturgeon's Law, at the very least.) but I keep coming back to Ari. He talks about gear sometimes, but it's not the modern, 'you need this camera to be a good photographer', or trying to push the newest camera. It's more about how a particular lens, or the combination of camera, film, developer, and paper to get the results or look he likes. He uses mostly old film cameras, and he even made a functional camera out of household materials. I'd sum up his approach by saying, 'less is more'. This is a book to savour, enjoying the images. The text snippets are not about the images, rather are extracts from a work journal that somehow go with the photos. I chuckled at some of them, coming from much the same industry, albeit in a much less exalted position.

Canadian Photographs by Geoffrey James. My big question about this is why the photos are laid out as they are. It made no sense to me at all. I wasn't impressed with the photos, as near as I could tell they could have been taken by any tourist on a trip.

From here down is a draft that I found. I'm not sure when it dates from, but it could be several months back. 

The Changing Face of Portrait Photography by Shannon Thomas Perich

Not a comprehensive list of portrait photographers and their work, but a selection from the earliest days to now. A interesting read, seeing how photographers struggled with their limitations, and a sampling of their work.

Mastering Portrait Photography by Paul Wilkinson and Sarah Plater. Good for beginners. Kind of a cookie cutter approach, talking about techniques, but not getting into the artistry or emotion of it.

Georgia O'Keeffe edited by Tanya Barson

This has gone back to the library, and I don't remember the details now. It was pretty darn scholarly.