677. Panduka de Silva

  Date: 4/27/01 11:34 AM   I would like to be registered with Zonezero. Panduka de Silva AISLP Professional Photographer 200/3, Nelum Pedessa Kalapaluwawa, Rajagiriya Sri Lanka  

Friday, 27 April 2001

679. 'Hasta Luego' darkroom

    When I started in photography in the early fifties, we used to buy bulk film among a group of friends so that we could afford to buy the entire can with the equivalent of about 20 rolls of film, at a much cheaper price. The problem with loading one's own film in recycled canisters, was that such a solution all too often scratched the film. No matter how much one took care in avoiding this, somehow those miserable dark streaks running across the entire roll of film would rear their ugly head, ruining all the images in the process. Not only that, but we also had to deal with the inevitable light leaks on to the film; and those almost useless counters on the bulk film loader were never precise, so one would end up with an uncertain number of available film frames per roll. That always led one to discover that the film ran out at the worst possible moment. I neglected to say; the film used was always black and white.   Black and white photography was widely used throughout the world, less for any alleged artistic esthetics as for reduced costs. Not only was such film cheaper, but also periodicals, books and dailies were produced in black and white for economical reasons. Obviously making black and white photographic prints was also much cheaper per sheet of paper. Chemicals and all the darkroom accessories were simpler and easier to use than the comparable options for color photography.   For most of my career, I only photographed in black and white. With an eye for costs being the main reason for doing so. Color was essentially a luxury that few could afford. As time moved on the use of color became more accessible in direct relation to its reduction in costs, but by then esthetics of black and white photography had taken hold, and one would find the abstraction offered by a black and white image to be a lot more appropriate, for certain topics, than an equivalent image in color.   For years, one would hear comments such as "a really artistic photograph is made in black and white". There was this prejudice in favor of black and white photography as being the real thing, so when it came to passing judgment if an image was artistic or not, the reference was that black and white equaled high esthetics (as in high art).   It is strange how an economic reality became such an intense definer for what passed as high art. The fact that the photographers used black and white materials out of necessity and not necessarily choice, has hardly ever been discussed.   However, now that the digital age has arrived, things are changing very rapidly. For starters, the cost for a color or black and white image is the same. Digital cameras are being built with the choice (b&w or color) built-in to the camera itself, so that the photographer can select if the image is to be in one or the other of these options. One can take this matter even further, in programs such as Photoshop; you can turn a color picture into a black and white image after having taken it, while retaining all the levels of color, only the appearance changes. You can print digitally as a black and white image, or as a color image, which is in gray scale colors. It all comes down to your esthetic preferences.   Therefore, for the first time, one can conclude that black and white imagery is really going to be made out of choice and not out of an economic necessity. Furthermore, the photographer still has the option even after having made the image in color, to then review it in black and white and define which looks best according to his personal values.   We are still at a stage, judging by the vast numbers of photographers who grace our pages in ZoneZero whose work stems from images done on film, that the stage for working with digital cameras has yet to come. Understandably, the process is gradual. However, that does not preclude that those photographic archives made on film, have to be printed in an analog fashion as well. The numbers of those scanning pictures from film, as a first step towards the digital world, is clearly on the rise and in large numbers.   However, there are those who cling to the black and white print on photographic paper as if it were a religious matter. To them, let me suggest you give yourself the opportunity to look at black and white prints made with ink jet printers on some of the most luscious cotton papers, that no photographic paper would be able to match. Placed next to each other, I tell you the ink jet prints are going to take it all away, when everything is said and done. They will be longer lasting than silver prints, the papers from which to select will be more abundant, the images can have a tonal range that puts photographic paper into a very tough bind, even those images made by the best of analog printers.   Furthermore, let me tell you, that after nearly thirty years, some of my negatives are being brought back to life through digital means that had been stashed away because of all their scratches from the bulk loading I told you earlier or other problems derived from being poorly archived. Some real beauties that were, for all intents and purposes unusable have found a new lease on life. A case in point is the poignant image of this months' cover, "Hasta Luego" (which means in Spanish, "Until Later or Bye-Bye").   I can well imagine that there is going to be a real renaissance for black and white photography, as it is going to be deployed out of real love rather than mostly convenience. Moreover, as we all know, when there is real love involved, some great things can happen.   Pedro Meyer April 10, 2001 Coyoacan, Mexico   For comments post a message in our forum section at ZoneZero         http://zonezero.com/editorial/abril01/april.html    

Tuesday, 10 April 2001

681. Patricia Leeds

  Date: Sat, 07 Apr 2001 11:28:08 -0700   Hi,   I am a professional photographer and love your website! I look forward to each edition. I found out about you through my husband who presently receives it. Please include me on your e-mail.   Also please send me your guidelines for submissions.   Thank you for the outstanding work.   Patricia Leeds  

Saturday, 07 April 2001

683. Don Wood

  Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 22:23:41 -0700 (PDT)   I signed up for your mailing list as a fan of your site. I also edit a wesite and just sent out this email to our subscribers who might be interested. Hope it helps with some traffic Zonezero.com is a labor of love and it shows. A great way to waste some time and learn more abvout the freshest and best thinking about digital photography. Find out more at:   Don Wood EditorMen360.com  

Monday, 02 April 2001

685. Julie Guiches

  Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 17:04:29 +0200 (MET DST)   Hola, Soy estudiante de doctorado en ciencias y tecnicas de fotografia y multimedia en la Universidad Paris VIII en Francia, tengo 24 anos. Me encontre con su trabajo en un taller de edicion electronica en el cual el profesor nos enseno su CDrom. Me gusta mucho su trabajo y la manera que tiene de hablar de esto, como ensena la realizacion tecnica, y las ideas que tiene de la foto mezclada, o no con el digital, ademas me hicieron reir mucho las cartas escritas por los artistas. Despues fui a mirar su website y claro que me encanta, me gusta como esta hecho, por su frescura y su funcionamiento sencillo. Me parece muy bien la idea de que se pueda exponer asi, y la apertura a gente de todos lados. Voy a mandar tanbien unos trabajos en poco tiempo, trabajo con la foto y uso el digital para variar los puntos de vista y trabajar en el tiempo. Me gustaria estar al dia de las actividades que realizan. Ha sido grato encontrar su trabajo y siga adelante con animo.   Julie Guiches  

Thursday, 29 March 2001

687. Dean Pajevic

  Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 08:07:48 -0700   Hi,   I really dig your magazine. Not only is the photography compelling and engaging, but the writing and the thinking is first class as well.   Very nice!   Thanks,   Dean Pajevic  

Thursday, 29 March 2001

689. Andy Gordon

  Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 09:10:15 -0500   Please regiser me in ZoneZero   Andrew Gordon Consultant, Print On Demand Consulting Service   ******************************************** CAP Ventures, Inc. Norwell, MA  

Wednesday, 21 March 2001

691. Dan Biferie | The Sun

  Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 10:16:23 -0500   Dear Pedro,   I have something that I wish to share with you.   I have dropped out of the self-promotion loop for a while, as I would rather make work than promote it. Exhibits tend to be unfulfilling (I have received more feedback through ZoneZero, than from all my exhibits combined over the past 25 years!).   My goal of publishing a book of my works remains alive, but it has not yet crystallized in my mind yet.   Dan  

Tuesday, 20 March 2001

693. A Century's Photo History Destined for Life in a Mine

  It will be a surreal burial. The Bettmannn archive, the quirky cache of pictures that Otto Bettmannn sneaked out of Nazi Germany in two steamer trunks in 1935 and then built into an enormous collection of historical importance, will be sunk 220 feet down in a limestone mine situated 60 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, where it will be far from the reach of historians. The archive, which is estimated to have as many as 17 million photographs, is a visual history of the 20th century. Since 1995 it has belonged to Corbis, the private company of Microsoft's chairman, William H. Gates. The Bettmannn archive is moving from New York City to a strange underworld. Corbis plans to rent 10,000 square feet in a mine that once belonged to U.S. Steel and now holds a vast underground city run by Iron Mountain/National Underground Storage. There Corbis will create a modern, subzero, low-humidity storage area safe from earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, vandals, nuclear blasts and the ravages of time. But preservation by deep freeze presents a problem. The new address is strikingly inaccessible. Historians, researchers and editors accustomed to browsing through photo files will have to use Corbis's digital archive, which has only 225,000 images, less than 2 percent of the whole collection. Some worry that the collection is being locked away in a tomb; others believe that Mr. Gates is saving a pictorial legacy that is in mortal danger. One thing is clear. This is a momentous occasion. As Henry Wilhelm, a film preservationist in Grinnell, Iowa, put it, "This is the closing of the era of traditional photography." The Bettmannn archive, now housed at Broadway and 20th Street in Manhattan, includes not only Bettmannn's private collection - millions of images of everything from sunglasses to demolitions to medical tools - but also the United Press International collection, 10 million news photos from archives that once belonged to Hearst, Scripps, The Daily News and The Chicago Tribune. The pictures are moving for their own good, said Bill Hannigan, the editorial director of Corbis's digital archive. For years no one thought the photographs were valuable. They were "components of a business," he said. They were pictures made to be printed in newspapers and magazines. They were bent, scribbled on, captioned and recaptioned. Some were stored near radiators and leaky pipes. No one took care of them, and now many are falling apart. A lot of the color film has faded and the acetate-based negatives have begun to break down, bubble and crack. By 1997 the verdict was clear, Mr. Hannigan said: "Get them out of here." Film needs to be in cold, dry storage. That is the only thing that can slow its deterioration, Mr. Wilhelm said. At the moment, the most vulnerable Bettmannn negatives in New York are in two commercial freezers, awaiting the move to the mine. As Mr. Wilhelm noted, "Sara Lee cakes are much better taken care of than most film." That will change soon. This fall, Corbis will start trucking all of its photographs, negatives and other graphic materials from New York to the new site that Mr. Wilhelm is helping to plan in the Pennsylvania mine. "The objective is to preserve the originals for thousands of years," he said. When the move is done, Corbis's New York office will contain nothing but people and their computers, plugged into a digital archive. No photographic prints, no negatives, no rotting mess. Analog is having a burial, and digital is dancing on its grave. And that is the rub. "What is the point of conserving the photographs if no one can see them?" asked Gail Buckland, a photo historian and curator who used the Bettmannn to research the photographs used in the book "The American Century" by Harold Evans. Photographs are original historical documents, she said. As a historian "you develop a sixth sense" when you work with them. You stumble on things you would never find on your computer. "I know the ephemeral qualities of holding pictures in your! hand," said Mr. Hannigan, who wrote "New York Noir," a book based on the crime photos in the Daily News Collection. Going through the Corbis collection, he said, he found a lot of images no one had seen before, including photographs taken by Weegee at Sammy's Bowery Bar and at Coney Island. Ken Johnston, who has worked for the Bettmannn archive since 1985 and is now the manager of Corbis's historical collection, sounded wistful about the archive's departure. "I love that stuff," he said. "Not being able to get my hands on it will be tough. But I will develop a relationship by remote control." The remote relationship may already be compromised, though. Only a fraction of the photographs will be digitized before the move. And after the move, the digitization will be slow at best. In other words, the researcher’s who help newspapers, magazines and publishers find the images they need will not be working with a full deck of pictures. When Mr. Gates bought the Bettmannn and U.P.I. collections in 1995, digitization was his mission. Mr. Gates, who also owns Sygma (a documentary photo agency based in Paris that has about 30 million images) and Saba Press (a news-photo service based in New York that has about a million photos) and has the rights to license digital reproductions of works from the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, the Philadelphia Museum, the Barnes Collection in Merion, Pa., and the National Gallery in London, had always planned to make his worldwide collection, now 65 million photographs strong, fully digital. So in 1996, Corbis began transferring the Bettmannn and U.P.I. images into digital format at the cost of about $20 per picture. But suddenly this January, when only about 225,000 photographic images had been scanned, the scanning stopped. Corbis laid off 79 members of its worldwide staff of 1,300, including those involved in editing and digitizing Bettmannn and U.P.I. images. Why? "There was too much of a preservation issue" to finish editing and digitizing the whole thing, Mr. Hannigan said. If Corbis had scanned everything it would have taken 25 years to finish. And that was time the pictures did not have. "It is heartbreaking to look at these images and see their structure breaking down." The images scanned first were those deemed most valuable, both culturally and commercially. Pictures of Kennedys, Rockefellers, Roosevelts, the Depression, the two world wars and the Vietnam War have been scanned. As have money-making 20th-century icons: Einstein sticking out his tongue, Rosa Parks on the bus, Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, Orson Welles doing his "War of the Worlds" broadcast and anything with Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth or Martin Luther King Jr. in it. Then the collection was searched for undiscovered treasures. "It's like shucking oysters," Mr. Hannigan said. One has to go through a lot of boring pictures of ribbon cuttings and mayors with their eyes shut before finding the pearls. But pearls were found: a blood-spattered Miles Davis being arrested after fighting with a police officer who had ordered him off a Manhattan sidewalk, Dorothy Dandridge with Samuel Goldwyn, and Joe DiMaggio in a batting cage at Yankee Stadium. What will happen to the still-unshucked images? They will be going to the mine with the rest of the pictures. Eventually some will be digitized, Mr. Hannigan said, "but how and when has not been finalized." The mine will be staffed by only two people, one for research and one for scanning. With such a small staff, the prospect of finding hidden gems or doing much digitizing seems remote. Meanwhile, Corbis's most popular photographs - say, the picture of John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father's coffin - will become ever more popular. Even now, Mr. Johnston said, "the same stuff is seen over and over again." Of all the pictures that Corbis owns, he said, "only a small amount have ever been used for stories - a tiny percentage." And the more pictures are requested, the more they are requested. Visual history is doomed to repeat itself. But at least the history won't disappear. Corbis is lucky, Mr. Hannigan said, that "its owner is wealthy enough and committed enough to build the new facility." But critics are quick to point out that Mr. Gates is probably also rich enough to finish digitizing the collection and choose a more accessible location. Many other photo and film collections are digitizing, and many have off-site storage facilities. The Museum of Modern Art has one in Pennsylvania and the Library of Congress has one in Maryland. But, Ms. Buckland said, "they are not packing up and moving out." Why should all of the Bettmannn and U.P.I. photographs be moved when not all of them are in immediate danger? "Why send every one out to the boondocks just because a few are ailing?" she asked. She added: "These images are part of our history and culture, a sacred trust, and if Bill Gates is buying it up, he's creating a monopoly situation by not giving access to it." But the collection "was never a public trust," even in Bettmannn's time, Mr. Hannigan said. "It has always been privately held," a for-profit business. "We don't allow people to get to the originals now," he added. And for most of Corbis's clients, like People magazine, American Heritage magazine, cable television stations and advertisers, it is easy to find a photograph to suit their needs. "It doesn't matter to them whether it's a daguerreotype or a digital image," Mr. Hannigan said. And scholars, he said, can always look on the Corbis Web site (www.corbisimages.com) for a picture they want or have a Corbis researcher help them. If they need an image that hasn't been digitized, it can be defrosted and scanned in the mine. All of the written information that exists about the collection in card catalogs and logbooks will be in the digital database by the time of the move. So, "If we can find it now," Mr. Hannigan said, "we can find it then." But maybe retrieving specific images is not the point. "I want to see everything," Ms. Buckland said. "I don't think Bill Gates understands the importance of originals." Maybe, she said, he is figuring that "as long as he keeps the reproduction rights, who cares about the objects?" It is just the opposite, Mr. Wilhelm said. "I believe that thousands of years from now, Bill Gates will be remembered for having preserved - and made digitally accessible - a very important segment of our photographic history," he said. Burial means different things to different people. To some it means preservation. To others it means death. "Conservators will think it's the greatest thing," Mr. Hannigan said. "Others will think Bill Gates locked up the collection and threw away the key.   This article originally appeared in The New York Times (April 15, 2001).       http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/boxer/century.html    

Thursday, 15 March 2001

695. Tony Bridge | Re: my last email

  Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 12:24:05 +1200   Pedro: you may be interested to know that we have installed one of those nasty censorship programmes on our network, to keep the pupils out of those naughty sites. And it has locked me out of Zonezero, apparently because the search string contains the word "erotica". long live the ghost of George Orwell!   Regards Tony Bridge TIC Photography Papanui High School P.O. Box 5220 Papanui Christchurch NEW ZEALAND  

Wednesday, 07 March 2001

697. Traditional Photography vs. Digital Photography

    It appears that a boxing match is taking place; in one corner we have "traditional" photography, and in the other, a new contender: "digital" photography.   However, there is one major problem with this alleged "fight", these two cannot be opponents, as they are both on the same side. What is called "traditional" photography can be produced either in an analog way using a chemical process or in a digital format, electronically. If you have a particular "style" of photography, which could be done, using either technique, there need be no confrontation at all, and the metaphor of antagonism becomes redundant. The only reason why people perceive the changes in photography in this way, is because there is a lot of misunderstanding as to what digital photography is actually all about.   Let us explore this further. A portrait photograph using film and old dark room techniques created in the most "traditional" fashion can today be created just the same with a digital camera and with the aid of a computer printed with ink jet printers or posted on the web. In either case, the look of the image, or style, has nothing to do with the underlying technology of how it was produced.   There is enormous confusion, whereby digital images are mainly associated with manipulation, with the implication that something has been "changed" in a clandestine manner, people then think that a "traditional” picture (unaltered of course) has to be the converse, and therefore confined to the opposite corner of the ring.   The debate then becomes even more convoluted, as there are many positions surrounding the issues associated to the term, "manipulation". As an aside, I, personally have never liked that term: manipulation, to describe a very legitimate process -that of alteration-, it arrives already loaded with very negative connotations that invoke all creative intentions on the part of the digital photographer as inevitably suspect. By all means question the medium -the photographs- but don't invalidate them solely because they are digital.   So allow me to replace the term manipulation with the word "alteration". Yes, we alter images just the same in the analog world (chemicals) as we do in a digital (electronic) environment. Photographers have always done so. The only consideration today is that we do it in different ways, and at different stages within the process. Historically it has been primarily before the shutter clicks, where as today - in the digital arena- it can also occur after the click.   In either case, you will observe that digital photography is not about a specific style of image making. Bringing clarity to this issue then, allows many photographers who so far have felt that altering images (after the fact) was not their cup of tea, can now proceed to get involved with digital technology for what it can offer those photographers. In general it can be a faster (?), easier (?), cheaper (?) way of working, even if all that you are doing could be described as traditional images.   You will surely have noticed the caveats introduced above by the question marks following the adjectives regarding the benefits of digital technologies. The reason for this is that in most cases, it's almost true, but this is not always the case. For instance, it is a lot faster to take a picture and look at it on the computer screen, once you have downloaded it from you camera, as compared to developing and making contact sheets. It is a lot faster to print an image on your printer, regardless of which one you use, than standing in the darkroom in front of your trays with chemicals and all the circus which takes place around the enlarger.   However, to master all this, you need to know your digital equipment and software very well, and that process does not happen over night. It takes a lot of time to acquire such knowledge, and then one has to constantly keep up to date. And if that would not suffice, let me tell you that I spend at least 35% of my time, just working out problems of a technical nature, of things that refuse to work they way they ought to. So if you add and subtract time of what you gain and what you loose, I think with the way technology stands today you end up with a net gain of zero.   In addition to this, a new phenomenon has emerged from the digital age. Today you can accomplish so much more with an image -from a creative point of view- that you also end up playing around a lot more with those same images and experimenting and exploring many more "what if" scenarios than ever before. The thinking that goes on all the time is: what if, I just changed this, that or the other?   Your clients, you will discover, if you are involved in studio work, will love to play with an array of endless options and ask of you (at their expense, one would hope) for all kinds of changes –alterations- which before they would not have dreamt of asking for. “Could you please change the color of the shirt in this image?” or “ Can you please move that person forward?” “Oh! Yes, the chair has to go.”... “The Palm tree is to green, or too yellow, or too pink .” etc.... What ever the case may be, we are all exploring the possibilities that until yesterday had no where else to go other than to stay silent and with very few options beyond their initial imprimatur.   You must also take into account, that we are at an early stage, as that of an infant. We spend much of our time playing as a means of gaining knowledge and finding out how the world actually works. As the photographic community matures around these new technologies, it is very probable that the "playing" around part will be more focused and less time is going to be spent in just aimless explorations. Having said that, I already feel sad at the notion that my "playing time" might somehow be narrowed down. I rebel. We obviously have here two opposites pulling at each other. Yes, this time the opponents are real, on the one hand the search for efficiency and productive output, on the other, the artistic creation, which requires the outmost exploration and “inefficiency”. This time the artists have many more paths to explore and avenues where we might loose our way.   The beauty of the whole digital age is that for some it is a matter of becoming more efficient, as the options are narrowed down to some very basic essentials, and thus standardized around speed and results. For others, it is a matter of taking a swim in a sea of endless possibilities without an immediate concern to reach the other shore; the creative process will be the only one that will define such limits. In essence this dichotomy existed always, what is different this time around is the scope and depth of these two polar experiences. The productivity will be far superior to anything in the past, and so will any creative explorations or what some view as a total " waste " of time. By both being more intense and different than before, our choices of which best suits our needs, will have to be defined early on in the process of working digitally, or we really end up in trouble.       About the picture of the man with the "black eye"   He is actually a colleague and a good friend of mine, Marco Antonio Cruz. If you click on the image, you will discover the original picture without alteration. The importance of this particular photograph has to do with the misconceptions around "alteration" that a number of art critics have sustained all along. They have used some terms derived from other art forms, to describe digital alterations, and called these "photomontage" or “collage”. They had in mind the work done by artists such as George Grosz, Hannah Höch, Raoul Hausmann, Josep Renau, and one of the more established artists in this context, John Heartfield. The problem with using the term of photomontage, which originates in a process of "cut and paste", is that it did not consider the technological transformations inherent in the production of today’s images.   To the picture of Marco Antonio, I did not add anything. Moving around and pushing the same pixels that existed there already, altered the eyes. No pixels were added from other images. The skin tone was controlled down to the level of every pixel to achieve the tonality desired: that of a bruised eye.   I believe this image allows me to make another point which goes back to my earlier statements about a traditional and an altered image both possibly being digital. Here we have an example, the first image I did of Marco Antonio, is unaltered, “traditional” and digital; the second one is altered and also digital. As you see, the fact that something is digital has nothing to do with an inherent style.   One last point I would like to make. The image of the man with the disfigured face looks credible enough so that everyone who knows Marco Antonio has been asking me, “Oh My God! What happened to him?” Well, where do we take such a picture from here, you will ask. I say it is increasingly a matter of context. Where and for what purpose an image is displayed or published, and how do we offer it to an audience. Secondly, we should view photographs solely for what they are: interpretations, nothing more. If we understand context and the inherent nature of the photograph, I think we can go a long way in placing digital photography in the right direction. Don’t forget, the context is almost always provided by the publication in which the image appears, not the photographers.   Pedro Meyer March 1, 2001 Mexico City     For comments post a message in our forum section at ZoneZero         http://zonezero.com/editorial/marzo01/march.html      

Thursday, 01 March 2001

699. Miguel

  Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 00:40:22 +0100   Hola que tal   Me llamo Miguel. Soy técnico especialista en medios audiovisuales en la facultad de ciencias de la comunicación de Málaga(España).   ZoneZero me parece una pagina completa en todo lo relacionado con este mundo que nos une a tantas personas. La fotografia ha sido siempre, desde niño, una afición para con el tiempo convertirse en mi oficio. Lo más importante, para mi, de ZoneZero es su continua adaptación a las nuevas tecnologías.   Esperando la inclusión en la lista de correo se despide atentamente Miguel.  

Friday, 23 February 2001