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Hybridization of Beauty, Thanks to Photoshop

Beauty Hybrids
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Wedding Photography (Fulton Ferry)

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Another Digital Manipulation Controversy

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Left, the “original”; right, the “altered” as it appeared in print.

Since my weekend NYT subscription is on hold, I missed this brouhaha at the Times Magazine over a series of digitally altered photographs. The photographer in question, Edgar Martins, presented his photos for a story called “Ruins of the Second Gilded Age” as actual documentary, unretouched images to his editors. The story ran on July 5th, then the pixel peepers started deconstructing the images, pointing out perfect symmetries and cloned pipes and staircases that went to nowhere. The Times retracted the story, apologized to readers, and banished Martins from practicing journalism at its paper. On July 31st, since the controversy ignited a great debate in imaging circles, Martins was generously invited to defend himself on Lens, the Times’ photography blog. Not much of what he says elucidates anything about why he did what he did, nor does he seem to understand the contract with viewers of documentary photography. The problem stems from Martins being an artist rather than a journalist, however much he seems to lie that his photographs are an actual depiction of reality. He is clearly more interested in aesthetics and theory than in pure documentation, something which I tend to share. The Times photography manipulation policy is very general:

Images in our pages, in the paper or on the Web, that purport to depict reality must be genuine in every way. No people or objects may be added, rearranged, reversed, distorted or removed from a scene (except for the recognized practice of cropping to omit extraneous outer portions).


It does not take into account selective sharpening, blurring, color balancing, dodging and burning, high dynamic range photography, and the dozens of other techniques, aside from cloning and montaging, which photographers use to enhance their images everyday. I’m sure we will be revisiting this issue many more times as technology matures. Very soon digital still and movie cameras will be able to montage and manipulate on the fly, further blurring the definitions of reality and beauty.
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Recent Published Work

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Clockwise from top left: Photos from Tokyo Crossing series in Redivider, a photo from my Visual Haiku series in Shots, a short story, Second Act, in Cutthroat, a short-short, South of the Border, in Sonora Review’s David Foster Wallace tribute double issue, which is a great read, highly recommended.

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Some of my artwork photography has been featured in recent exposition catalogs for Alex Katz and a benefit show of a collaboration of 70s rock photographer Mick Rock and the artist Russell Young.
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Manhattan Panorama from LIC

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Click the pic to see a 30” panorama that was shot handheld and stitched in Photoshop CS4.
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Homage to Nadar Project

Last Tuesday and Wednesday I photographed performance artist LuLu LoLo as part of my Homage to Nadar project. I shot over 2000 frames in about 30 different expressions. There’s a lot of editing to do. But there are many great shots, including a few below.

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Flats Fixed

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Panorama of Castle Rock State Park (near Boulder Creek)

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Beach Panoramas

Here are two panoramas (click on them for bigger versions) which I stitched together of the beach at Oso Flaco and Guadalupe Dunes Park near Santa Maria.
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After the Rain, Santa Maria

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Trees in Fields, Guadalupe

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Rancho Guadalupe Dunes Park

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The Kiss that Ends the War

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This iconic photograph of a jubilant sailor kissing a nurse near Times Square has always held a special place in my personal history. To an aspiring photojournalist, it was a benchmark of great news photography. That it bordered on the contrived and was compositionally simple (yet satisfying), only added to its greatness for me. Behind the joy was Japan’s defeat, but it was the optimism so perfectly captured in this photograph that led my father to leave Tokyo in 1956 to do his medical internship in New York.

Anyway, yesterday I stumbled upon an interesting postscript to Alfred Eisenstaedt’s photograph in the archives of Life magazine. While I knew that Eisenstaedt had been anxious to get a great kissing image, shooting at least a half-dozen frames of other kisses in the crowds, I didn’t know that another Life photographer, William C. Shrout, captured Eisenstaedt, seen below with his shouldered Leica M3, getting a taste of the decisive moment himself.
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For photographers, who are basically voyeurs at heart, there’s often a tension between bearing witness and participating in the drama unfolding before your eyes. On August 14, 1945, Eisenstaedt had his cake and ate it. For more about the famous photograph go here.
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Bush in Tears

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U.S. President George W. Bush re-enters the White House East room to say goodbye to staff and friends after his primetime address in Washington, January 15, 2009. REUTERS/Jason Reed (UNITED STATES)

This Bush photo, along with many others, are discussed on Errol Morris’ blog at the nytimes.com. It’s hard to feel sorry for the man after all the colossal mistakes he’s made, but this photo, taken right after his final public address to the nation, makes feel sorry for him. As one of the photo editors who talked with Morris said, it seems pretty obvious that Bush had been weeping right before he returned to the room to privately thank his staff and the press corps for the last time. Most of Morris’s Mirror Mirror on the Wall blog entry concerns the subtle role of photography as political propaganda and the way society--even presidents--have come to view images as aesthetic validations of history. The list of the Bush administration’s failures and lies and outright cronyist greed is just amazing, and Bush’s reaction to a lot of these photographs seems to confirm that he remains incapable of contrition. No surprise, given his genius for denial. Of course he did have one great success...

Anyway, this marks my last post about Bush--call it the final catharsis.
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Contact Sheet: A Photo a Day

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Unfortunately I didn’t think of this until Max was a few days old. But I took out my beautiful Leica M6 and shot a picture of him everyday--just about. 36 frames from about August 24th until mid October.
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Painting in the Window

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Holiday Lights, Bokeh Style

Any lens can do this, but these were taken with the new, creamy Nikkor 50f1.4G with 9-blade aperture.
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Feels Like the Seventies

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Don’t know if the recession will lead to 1970s era unrest and urban blight, but this seen on Livingston Street may be a scene of things to come.
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Empire Fulton Ferry Park Panorama

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ISO Urban Landscaper (Jay Street, Downtown Brooklyn)

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Sensor Noise

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Shooting into the sun with my D40, I can force a weird kind of sensor flare which exaggerates chromatic abberation and causes purple and green fringing. Looks kind of cool, perhaps analogous to a light leak in a film body.
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A Couple More Fall Colors

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Brooklyn Borough Hall, Dusk

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Necchi Sewing Machine Ad (Chelsea)

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The Manipulator Manipulates McCain

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Somehow I missed this photojournalism controversy last week. Jill Greenberg, aka The Manipulator, was hired by The Atlantic to shoot a portrait of John McCain and she posted photoshopped outtakes (a few shown here) from the shoot on her website (all since removed). The editor of The Atlantic released a condemnation of Greenberg’s actions as well as an apology to the McCain campaign. The whole controversy has spawned some lively discussions (here, here, and here) on photojournalist ethics. Though I find her actions unprofessional and childish, I don’t see why Greenberg can’t publicize her strong political views. Of course, she won’t be working for The Atlantic again, but so what? Maybe she’ll have to give up her title of photojournalist, since she can’t remain impartial. But that’s okay, she’s not documenting reality anyway, she’s an artist illustrator.

Artists can and should take stands; too often they end up only making slick PR advertisements for the subjects they shoot. Even if McCain’s image was made into propaganda, it does not change the fact that he’s a Bush lapdog, a man who has totally lost his principles, and someone we should really fear running this country.

For an interesting read on how a real pro dealt with photographing a subject he considered evil, read this about Arnold Newman posing Alfred Krupp.
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Photos of Photos

An Araki+Moriyama spread on the sofa...
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Ralph Gibson crotch shot...
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Another Pierrot Test

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Pierrot Redux

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These are from a project I’m doing with LuLu LoLo, an hommage to Nadar’s photos of Pierrot.
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Buddha Project

Lens Culture has an interesting feel-good webpage inviting viewers to submit photos of the buddha wherever he may be. This shot was taken during the Chinese New Year at Mahayana Temple on Canal Street in Chinatown.
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In Praise of Redheads

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Chelsea Hot Summer Afternoon

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Rain Over Hudson (from Battery Park)

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Paris Pix Online

A portfolio of our trip to Paris is now online here.
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Montparnasse Cemetary

Beckett and Baudelaire, among many others...
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Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: Chalk Project

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Ruth Sergel's Chalk Project 2008 memorializes the 146 victims (mostly women) who died in the March 25, 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, one of the worst fires in NYC history and the start of modern labor safety law movement. For the last couple of years, she has recruited volunteers to fan out over the city to chalk the names of the victims in front of the houses where they lived. Most of the young women lived in tenements on the Lower East Side, but four lived near my apartment in Prospect Heights, so Julie, me, and my friend Ranbir headed on a walk from Park Slope, through Columbia Terrace and onto Red Hook to chalk their names on the sidewalk.
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Seagulls at Battery Park

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The Beauty of Reststops

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Sunset over New Jersey Turnpike reststop, sponsored by Levitra.
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Battery Park Snowy Day

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Staten Island Ferry from Battery Park

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Snow at the Custom House

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1st Big Snow!

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A cardinal on the fire escape...
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and a morning dove.
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Flag, Gowanus

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Upper East Side: Bloomberg+Citicorp+Chrysler

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Snowy Evening

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Chinese New Year, Mahayana Temple, Chinatown

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Custom House Inside Details

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Custom House Outside Details

Here are some photos of the great sculptures and architectural details of the Alexander Hamilton Custom House, designed by Cass Gilbert and built in 1907.
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The View from My Desk at the Custom House

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Park Slope Geometries

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Cab Meter at Night on the Way to the Manhattan Bridge

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Wall Street Building Mosaics

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Rainy Night

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Santa Maria, Oso Flaco, Morro Bay

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National Gallery

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Propaganda Photos: Which Came First—Chicken or Egg?

If you haven't been following Errol Morris' indefatigable research into which of Roger Fenton's two pictures of the Valley of the Shadow of Death came first, it is definitely worth a read (part1, part2, part3). Like a one-manned JFK assassination inquiry, Morris tries to refute Susan Sontag's claim that the photo with the canon balls on the road was staged, "a fake." This whole subject is fascinating for photographers like me who strive to document reality, but know that aesthetics often trump when the subject is mundane. Here are the two photos in question. Now, which was shot first and why?
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Visit to Albee Residency, Montauk


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Dumbo Arts Festival

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Brooklyn College Library

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Ogunquit

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Bill Sullivan MTA

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A fascinating, democratic series of passengers leaving MTA turnstyles.
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