let us now catalogue famous people

http://life.time.com/culture/its-about-time-gjon-milis-stroboscopic-portraits/

i know this isn't double exposure, exactly, but double exposure is one of those early-attractions-of-photography, cf lens flare, that i never play with anymore

I love taking pictures of stores with glass displays because in B&W it looks like a double exposure, you get two for the price of one

however I'm not sure I've ever fully understood conscious double exposure - transposing two radically different scenes - don't really understand harry callahan's double exposure photographs, wish somebody would explain them to me

Got 'Wonderland' today - normally I'm 100% opposed to photos crossing the gutter at all, but this is the perfect binding if you're going to make everything a double-truck spread, it lays flat enough that the images aren't compromised.

have generally hated pictures across the gutter too, but I like the way that a lot of japanese photo books through caution to the wind wrt cropping, printing quality, image placement etc. AND I just discovered an amazing store in NYC, Kinokuniya, that has a *lot* of photo books. picked up W. Eggleston's Paris which I've wanted for a couple years and put off getting, and a Morimaya book. They've got full shelves of Morimaya and Araki books though, and many more that are a mystery to me, AND tons of Japanese photo magazines, including ones that seem to have endless profiles of all manor of vintage film cameras, only I can't read them!

ugh through = throw, where is my brain

and manor = manner, of course

anyway, I was never in the mood for that sort of high contrast, heavily cropped, low quality printing before, but I appreciate it now as a change of pace from the immaculately printed and pristine photo books I'm used to.

they stocked Photographica magazine, but sadly not this back issue: http://kenshukan.net/john/archives/2009/12/30/travel-photography-by-photographica/

tons of Japanese photo magazines, including ones that seem to have endless profiles of all manor of vintage film cameras

by stuff, I mean magazines that aren't really stories or histories of vintage gear, just pictures of it with cataloging details

gaaaah I wanted to pick this up but now it's sold out

http://www.japanexposures.com/books/product_info.php?products_id=10336

oh man kinokuniya, how have you lived in new york without a japanese stationery hookup? the bookstore there is v nice.

thought of you when i read about this in the nyer, china: it's work by luigi ghirri & a bunch of other mid-century guys, it looked interesting: http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/art/galleries/current-and-upcoming-exhibitions-3

guess I should have know about that place sooner indeed. I might check that Hunter thing out. looks cool.
today I trade in (probably) my nearly unused Voigtlander 35mm for an old Leica screwmount Summitar. psyched.

i spent the last couple of days wondering how i need to change my life to acquire a leica. i am thinking about becoming an arms dealer.

hey look at this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt7HhRMUUxY

it is obviously so hilarious - trembling hands, a generally weird solution to books-on-screen - but you know, still, chromes.

the photobook website/video thing is so weird. folks worried that not enough people will come over to see how great their book collection is I guess.

guess I should have know about that place sooner indeed. I might check that Hunter thing out. looks cool.
today I trade in (probably) my nearly unused Voigtlander 35mm for an old Leica screwmount Summitar. psyched.

― lou reed scott walker monks niagra (chinavision!), Tuesday, March 13, 2012 8:54 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

hmmm - that voigt is a $300-400 lens no?

it used to be that you could get a summitar for around $200. they're nice lenses but they don't have clickstops.

yeah $350 or so? The Summitar is $199 at Adorama. I don't know what they'll offer for the Voigtlander but if it's low I'll just eBay it or Craigslist it instead.

schlump, do you have a budget for buying a camera? sometimes a Leica can be cheaper than you expect.

also, the summitar takes a weird filter - it won't take a standard 39mm filter, you either need to source the special leica filter or find a 3rd party custom job. if you care about filters, that is.

incidentally - I got my canon 50mm 1.8 back from essex after I sent it to be CLA'd - handles really nicely. I got mine from KEH - think I got lucky because this one had, afaict, no scratches on the front or rear elements but it was still listed as BGN. previous copies I've owned have had scratched to hell front elements, also sourced from KEH.

been shooting with the 50mm for the past few weeks as a result. feels weird!

I mean, it really is a short telephoto. HCB must have been standing a-ways back to get those shots.

pretty much don't touch filters, so I'm not sweating it. I see the color skopar going for upwards of $300 used on eBay though, so I'll keep that in mind when at Adorama

xxpost

speaking of 'cataloguing famous people' has anyone read the Todd Papageorge "Core Curriculum" book? He goes on at one point speculating that HCB must have actually used a 35mm from time to time (mostly in the early days), despite the 'only 50mm' reputation.

yeah I've read a few stories of HCB that mention he DID use a 35mm, also someone saw him with a 90mm at some point in the 70s.

btw, if any of you were in nyc, I'd suggest looking into this M2: http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/pho/2866360714.html
$500 and this listing has been sitting for a while. I'm kinda surprised!

wow, I didn't know that M2s came with buddha ear strap lugs (really inside baseball, apologies)

what'd you usually shoot with if not 50mm, dayo - 35? i'm so used to the 50mm on my om-1, never really occurs to me to swap, & i figure the combination of like my height and that lens explains any continuity between any photos i take

schlump, do you have a budget for buying a camera? sometimes a Leica can be cheaper than you expect.

― lou reed scott walker monks niagra (chinavision!), Tuesday, 13 March 2012 13:14 (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, ha, kinda just not now, really, i think, which is the thing that makes it so unimaginable. but as someone who has never really spent a lot of money on camera gear, i can only envisage it as a feasible thing the way that flights & trips are sometimes feasible, which is that one month i can get paid & recklessly just throw down as much as possible of my wages on something. i guess i can imagine a time in the future where i might be able to compel myself to spend like £300, £400 (/$600) on something if i figured it would be kinda forever (/would permit me to join the weird housing-market-esque ladders of camera-trading, on a specific rung). i can't even tell. i think part of the leica-despair-thing is just noting the equilibrium between body and lens prices, when i look around, something which for me isn't even really a factor on the level i'm working at; like if i wanted to just acquire an slr i could probably get a cheap practika on ebay that would come with whatever lens it had as a single thing, without much further preparation required. it was really encouraging to hear some of the discussion on here about acquiring and then trading/swapping out leicas, a while back, though i don't know whether i'm quite eligible right now.

(also back to the thread:

http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg546/scaled.php?server=546&filename=briefcaser.jpg&res=medium

^ william eggleston's camera briefcase)

actually, that looks like a M2 with a M3 body shell. xp

wauw @ eggleston the gearhead

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2010/05/ebay-treasures-the-7element-summicron.html

It went on to become the first "normal" lens for the M3, a new model that combined a huge viewfinder with the rangefinder patch in the same window and used a proprietary bayonet mount. Modern Photography magazine called the 50mm Summicron the sharpest lens it had ever tested, and the Summicron was the lens that Henri Cartier-Bresson was to use on various cameras for the rest of his life. Although he also carried a 35mm and a 90mm, and experimented occasionally with other lenses (hey, he was a photographer!), the overwhelming majority of his pictures were taken with the collapsible 7-element Summicron.

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2009/04/top-ten-recommended-cameras-8.html

Mike,
I got a personal tour of Magnum in New York from Erich Hartmann, who was a past President of Magnum, and who let me look at some of Cartier-Bresson's proof books (there are *lots*). Although H. C.-B. carried both a 35mm and a 90mm as well as the 50mm, Erich told me that you can look through proof book after proof book and not see more than a shot or two taken with the 90mm (I know of only one of his iconic images that was taken with that lens), and almost none taken with the 35mm. Erich and Henri were good friends for 40 years or more.

Like any photographer, H. C.-B. experimented with lenses from time to time. But he used the collapsible 50mm Summicron from the time it was introduced until he stopped photography, and he indeed used it for almost all of his shooting--at least 95%, and very likely well over 98%.

Mike

Posted by: Mike Johnston | Wednesday, 15 April 2009 at 01:54 AM

the doc the image above links to is interesting - it's from a british tv programme that weirdly cannibalises existing programmes, so i can't tell whether it's one of the other docs about him carved up and renarrated. but it's good, sort of a nature documentary about eggleston, capturing him in the wild, roaming around, prowling around an abandoned fridge behind a convenience store. i wondered sometimes, maybe around the time of the first twange of its c. 2004 era low-budget new-american horror-movie score, whether it would be better & somehow soothing to watch on mute.

i kinda can't imagine being eggleston and just cruising around neighbourhoods looking for something to shoot though. strange. i wondered, too (the excerpts of his B&W stuff featured being so persuasive - the guy on the phone, &c), whether he ever loads b&w film, still. like it feels like it would be weird not to, even if you're william eggleston.

xxp

xxxxxpost

wow, I didn't know that M2s came with buddha ear strap lugs (really inside baseball, apologies)

I thought the same thing!

no way re: M3 body shell! M2 doesn't have the bevelled embellishment around the rangefinder/viewfinder windows.

the top plate is definitely a M2 top plate but the body shell is definitely a M3 - look at the lens release button

also schlump, a leica iii or similar (like in w. eggleston's briefcase there) is cheaper than an M!

is the metal rim something that was only on the M3?

may have been on some early versions of the M2 but that serial number, over 1 million, makes it unlikely

man the HK leica forum I used to buy gear on, that was populated by some gearheads. they would devote threads to talking about stuff like this: http://forum.hklfc.com/upload/992519-440c9a.jpg

I definitely appreciate that spirit

bonus to buying a used Leica: you'll only lose Ebay/Paypal fees if you ever go to sell it

Eggleston Trust auction raised over $5 mil for an Eggleston Museum in Memphis.

awesome - feel like it should be built in some rundown novelty shop for the full effect

you get to get drunk and shoot guns inside, do drugs and play the piano

feel like it should be built in some rundown novelty shop for the full effect

http://collections.walkerart.org/item/object/907

haha I both can't believe/think it's awesome that sherrie levine has a successful art career

ty for the leica advice china. thinking about it always, maybe i'll google it around. buy a briefcase with my budget surplus.

i spent some time flipping through democratic camera last night. it is just funny, i end up turning the page & looking at

http://www.moma.org/collection_images/resized/349/w500h420/CRI_232349.jpg

& just being all HOW DID THIS HAPPEN; HOW DID YOU MAKE THIS HAPPEN

like i think i forget about how invisible he is in so many of his photos; there is that thing about how his framing - cutting off subjects at the borders - maybe insinuates that the action continues outside of the frame, but even still i never really see him, there, in a hotel room. i remember hearing him say that the naked guy in the room with words scrawled on the walls was a dentist. it seems impossible.

also never knew this was an alec soth photo. to be used as a guide when recreating the william eggleston museum playpenn.

http://blogs.eciad.ca/photo/wp-content/blogs.dir/57/files/articles/soth_eggleston.jpg

hah that eggleston photo might be my favorite eggleston.

the naked guy in the red room is a friend of egglestons, yeah he is a dentist I think? the eggleston book I have has information on him.

it's just amazing that he's a dentist. i don't know any dentist. i didn't think they had interior lives, daubing the names of deities & swearing on their walls, stumbling around like harvey keitel, howling, drunk, broken. their crazy hands in my mouth.

it is a good pic. it is one of the few that have names, he names the guy in the background (the driver?, perhaps?, rather than the guy in the white, i never saw the driver until now), & the bayou. i never noticed the class & flower in this picture either:

http://hapstancedepart.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/william-eggleston-two-girls-on-couch-1976.jpg

it was always one of my favourites. like how is he in the room. but then you see him & remember he was this snappy young guy.