More fun from Shorpy and Google Street View:
Then and Now
Film Noir
Then and Now
More fun from Shorpy and Google Street View:
Girls in the Windows
"In 1960, while a construction crew dismantled a row of brownstones right across from my own brownstone studio on East 58th Street, I was inspired to, somehow immortalize those buildings. I had the vision of 43 women in formal dress adorning the windows of the skeletal facade.
We had to work quickly to secure City permissions, arrange for models which included celebrities, the demolition supervisior's wife (third floor, third from left), my own wife (second floor, far right), and also secure the Rolls Royce to be parked on the sidewalk. Careful planning was a necessity as the photography had to be accomplished during the workers' lunch time!
The day before the buildings were razed, the 43 women appeared in their finest attire, went into the buildings, climbed the old stairs, and took their places in the windows. I was set up on my fire escape across the streeet, directing the scene, with bullhorn in hand. Of course I was concerned for the Models' safety, as some were daring enough to pose out on the crumbling sills.
The photography came off as planned. What had seemed to some as too dangerous or difficult to accomplish, became my fantasy fulfilled, and my most memorable self – assigned photograph. It has been an international award winner ever since.
Most professional photographers dream of having one signature picture they are known for. Girls in The Windows is mine."
Girls in The Windows. Ormond Gigli, 1960.
This really spoke to me.
Road Trip!
Last week was Ben's fall break, so on Monday he and his friend Barry drove up to the Grand Canyon. I had never really considered that as a day trip, but they proved me wrong. To be honest, I was more than a little jealous simply being able to get away from all. the. shit. going on, so Ben suggested we make the same trip on Saturday since his park pass was good for a week.
It has been forever since we'd gone on a proper road trip (the Arcosanti* visit in August really doesn't count as it was so close to home), so we got up early and hit the road yesterday.
To be honest, I am filled with angst at the thought of any road trip in the "new" car. This is for a variety of readily-admitted ridiculous reasons. First off, Rabbit is the first car I've bought used. Granted he's not that old and has low mileage, but not being the original owner I don't know his complete history, and while his CarFax was clean and he received all his scheduled maintenance, I'm still…apprehensive.
I never worried about hopping in Anderson for an impromptu trip. Hell, one of the first things I did was take a scenic, multi-day trip through New Mexico right after I'd gotten him. And then there were the trips to Yellowstone, White Sands, Green Bay, and of course, more than one round-trip to Denver. I think it's because the car was new—or relatively so—at the time and I knew its complete history. In addition, the car had never done anything to have me question its reliability.
Of course the reliability thing came into question over the last two years, which I think spooked me enough—even though this is a completely different car—to have trust issues, even with a few months remaining on the original factory warranty as well as having an extended warranty in place for another 50,000 miles after that.
Something else I was thinking about as we left Phoenix on our adventure was how all those times I hopped in the car by myself to go on these thousands-mile trips; the first time without even having a cell phone!
I don't know; maybe it's the additional ten years I've aged since my last major solo trip, but I just don't feel (and frankly I'm hesitant to use the word) as confident as I once was being out and about on my own. I don't expect anything to happen, but as you get older it's something you at least need to have at the back of your head.
Anyway, the combination of getting spooked by Anderson's troubles last year and my advancing age has definitely put a dent in my desire to throw caution to the wind and just hit the road for a day or a weekend. And then there's the question of the dogs…
But I digress.
Our little trip north was enjoyable. Being on the road kept me disconnected from the endless online assault of the horrors of the world and allowed me to decompress emotionally, something that was much needed. And the Canyon was thirty degrees cooler than Phoenix, always a welcome respite.
Rabbit behaved beautifully, and while Anderson got a little better MPG, I certainly can't complain. I think a few more trips are in order to dispel my motoring angst with this new ride, and if nothing else to simply keep reminding myself that at 30K, Rabbit is still a young'un, and even Anderson didn't have his first major issue (a clutch replacement, covered under warranty) until 60, so relax and as MINI tells us, "Keep Motoring!"
*I posted photographs to Instagram but never blogged about it – probably because it wasn't near as impressive as the hype had lead me to believe all these years. In fact, after seeing it, I now refer to it as "The place where old hippies go to die."
Then and Now
More fun courtesy Shorpy and Google Street View:
Truth
This is so true, especially in the days before cell phones and digital photography. On those rare occasions when I want to remind myself of what a truly horrible person I was prior to my cancer diagnosis and start reading through my journals, I run across names of men I had dated and were absolutely obsessed with—but for whom I am totally unable to conjure forth a mental image.
And it's not just the dated-but-ultimately-went-nowhere guys in my journals. I had friends in the 70s, 80s, and even 90s—good friends—for whom I have not a single photo. I at least retain somewhat of a memory of their faces and their smiles, but it saddens me I have nothing tangible to refer to. Was it the cost of the film and the developing? Possibly, but I don't honestly know. I have tons of photos of other shit from those years, but for some reason the people closest to me are totally absent.
Warhol Polaroid Portraits from the 70s
I lived through the era, but evenso I can only identify 5 of the 9…
You?
Quite the Show Last Night
Speaking of Night Skies…
I still have no idea how people are creating the fantastic night sky photos you see online using only their iPhones. I'm lucky if I get 2-3 shots that are in focus, much less showing the galactic background.
(I know I need totally dark skies to see that galactic background, but even knowing that my pictures for the msot part are lousy.)
Just a Gorgeous February Late Afternoon in Phoenix
Forgotten Photos
Not exactly forgotten, as I do still have the original prints, but my recent scans from the negatives do look immeasurably better.
It's That Time Of Year Again
Maybe another month of air-conditioned free life. But then it starts…
"Daddy…
…put away that screen! It's time to go to bed NOW!"
Sliver
Manipulated Selfie
I wish I could still grow a full beard. Sadly, my radiation treatments killed that option 17 years ago.
The Stillness of Morning
Forgotten Photos
Steve Golden (1957-1990)
Papago Park, Phoenix AZ, May 1983
Forgotten Photos
Forgotten Photos
I bought a film/slide scanner the other day. Why I didn't do this years ago is beyond me. I've started going through my box of negatives and slides and I'm running across photos I'd forgotten I'd taken because I gave away the prints long ago. These are among many I'll be posting as time goes by. My friend Marty Kamner (1953-1995), taken June 1988:
I took these as part of two separate photoshoots we did in the quest to find a photo I could paint a portrait from.
These Always Surprise Me
Escaping the Heat
We drove up to Payson and took a drive along the Mogollion Rim yesterday to escape the heat. It was easily 35 degrees cooler than Phoenix and it rained! It was delicious.
And while we didn't think it would happen, the storm followed us home. About an hour after we got there, it POURED for a solid 20 minutes.
Saturday Getaway
Ben and I both needed a break and to get outside our own heads for a while, so yesterday we headed south to Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson.
The Air and Space Museum has always been a favorite destination of mine for photography; the stark desert light, the contrast between sea and sand, and of course the brilliant colors of the aircraft themselves set against those backgrounds.
Surprising
With only a couple exceptions, these are not what I consider to be my best photos posted to Instagram over the past year. Only 5 of them were actually taken in 2018; three are many years old, and one isn't even my own work. But what do I know?
Sometimes…
…it's worth having the doggies drag me out of bed at the crack of dawn.
More Scenes From a Road Trip
I Call This One…
I Call This One…
…Old Man in a Starbucks Bathroom (2018)
I Need To Get Out With My Camera Again
Still working on organizing 50 years of photos.
And it's making me realize I've taken a lot of shots I really like, (a few from 2008-2009 follow) but for some reason have never been posted, either here or on Flickr. I guess maybe at the time I didn't think they were that good, or perhaps required more Photoshop tweaking than I had skills for. Or maybe I was just lazy. But it's showing me that I miss making photos and really need to get my lazy ass out there again…
A Hot Mess
Many years ago, while out of work and undergoing radiation treatments for my cancer, I finally had enough free time on my hands to start a project I'd been wanting to undertake since the first flatbed scanner came into my life: digitizing the contents of my photo albums.
At the time, I really didn't have a system for organizing the photos, and over the years this has proven to be a huge problem. I had something like ten albums, so I simply named each photo with a sequential number based on which album was being scanned, followed by a short description that included the year. If there were multiple photos of a single event, I'd append an "a" or "b" to the end.
During the years that followed the initial completion of the project, that convention completely fell apart when I stopped printing photos and putting them into albums. Adding to the confusion was the fact that sometime around 2006, I'd purchased a new scanner that could digitize slides. The slide scans (of already scanned photos) were far and away better quality than the corresponding photos, but I made no attempt whatsoever to integrate them into the existing naming sequence, simply naming them scan1, scan2, etc.
After my dad passed, I got hold of his family photo albums and scanned all those photos into the mix. His albums were roughly organized by year, so in the interest of simply getting it done, I took advantage of that rough organization and threw the newly-scanned images into yearly folders. Unfortunately I made no attempt to properly name any of them, opting instead of a generic album name 001, 002, etc. At some point thereafter, I went back and moved all my photos into those yearly folders as well, since there was no reason to keep them separate.
The other day I was trying to locate a particular photo I knew existed in the collection, but after spending the better part of an hour coming up empty handed no matter what search parameters I put in, I knew the time had come that something had to be done about the hot mess that this photo collection had become.
I knew it was bad, but I didn't realize how bad it was. There were exact duplicates in the same folders with different names. There were duplicates with different names and years in different folders. There were the hundreds of scanxx photos, and I soon realized this was probably going to be a weeks-long (if not months-long) project getting this disaster organized.
Add to that I've been sitting on a dozen or so of my mom's family albums that are waiting to be scanned. My sister keeps asking if I've gotten around to doing it, and I keep putting her off, not wanting to wade into that without first organizing the mess I already had.
So the other day I created monthly folders in each yearly folder and started moving those items I had either previously named with a month, or knew with relative certainty happened at a particular time.
This time, my naming convention is year-month-numerical sequence-short description (where needed). In other words, 1989-06-0046-kevin ohm at sf pride.jpg. Fortunately Adobe Bridge has a batch rename function that allows me to do everything except the description automatically.
Even with that automation tool (and PhotoSweeper to weed out duplicates), at approximately 32,000 photos, this isn't going to happen overnight, but it is forcing me to rediscover a lot of photos I'd completely forgotten about.