Golden Temple

I thought that to mark my 700th post on this blog I would show one of my favourites: The Golden Temple at Amritsar after the sun has gone down.

Equipment footnote: This photograph was made on a NIkon D200 which I bought in 2006. I had the camera for 2 1/2 years and used it extensively for travel and commercial work, mostly with Nikon prime lenses. Re-working the  raw files in Lightroom 4 beta it is clear that this combination is more than good enough for 95% of the things I want to do. A touch of sharpening and and hint of noise reduction works wonders. 30 x 20 inch prints are just fine. If you look closely enough you can see that the D700 files are better. But if you if view prints from more than 6 inches you don't notice it. I could really have saved myself a lot of money from not buying and selling equipment. Except that I would have been unhappy, with that nagging feeling of missing out on something new, something better. A sobering thought as I wait on the Fuji X-Pro. I could re-buy a D200 and 2 primes for £900 (I could do much the same with the slightly better D300 as well). The X-Pro equivalent outfit is £2700. Either way I'm not happy.

Who needs a camera?

2 guys in Detroit. It looks like a photograph, but actually its a pencil drawing by Scottish artist Paul Cadden. Check out his website for more

How Much?

Noticing that William Eggleston's print sale at Christie's in New York netted him $5.9m (and well deserved), I checked out  the 10 most expensive photographs ever. Some appear to old classics and rare, others may be more about brand / fashion / and the current art world obsession with conceptual work. If I had money I would happily pay a lot to build a photographic collection. I'm not sure though that I would buy many of these prints; numbers 4, 8 and 9 excepted. Especially the Steichen, which due to its gum layer colour process makes it both a rare example of the technique and also an unusual and beautiful picture. I would also like the Eggleston below, just sold for $422.500. Although I'm pleased for Bill Eggleston, it is rather a lot of money.

The Top Ten

1. Andreas Gursky, Rhein II (1999), $4,338,500

2. Cindy Sherman, Untitled #96 (1981), $3,890,500

3. Andreas Gursky, 99 Cent II Diptychon (2001), $3,346,456

 4. Edward Steichen, The Pond-Moonlight (1904), $2,928,000

 5. Cindy Sherman, Untitled #153 (1985), $2,700,000

 6. Unknown photographer, Billy the Kid (1879–80), tintype portrait, $2,300,000

 7. Dmitry Medvedev, Tobolsk Kremlin (2009), $1,750,000

 8. Edward Weston, Nude (1925), $1,609,000

9. Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe (Hands) (1919), $1,470,000

10. Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe Nude (1919), $1,360,000

Playing with words

Harland Miller is what the British might call a professional witty northerner. He is also an artist and author. One of his main themes is the role of words in art. He developed a series based on the massively popular Penguin books, where he re-titles or invents new titles and produces the revised book covers as large paintings. All this is published as International Lonely Guy a fascinating book that includes interviews with Ed Ruscha amongst others. A couple of my favourites are: 'Bridlington - Ninety Three Million Miles From The Sun', and 'Grimsby - The Self Catering Years'. Not forgetting 'Gateshead Revisited'. All very amusing for those who have visited these places. Then there are the personal stories:

The same trope works in photography where the words are the substance of the picture. Sometimes this needs context to work, other times it needs to be contextless. A few of my favourites;

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Tourist Instruction, Gyantse, Tibet

Llandudno, Wales

Book review: Greg Girard, Phantom Shanghai

One slow night and I'm idly reading the latest William Gibson book 'Distrust That Particular Flavour', a compilation of his factual writings. In amongst his musing on Tokyo, music, films and the failures of the Internet, Gibson reproduces his introduction to Greg Girards book Phantom Shanghai. He writes:

"Shanghai is the actual vanishing, the hideous 21st century urban hat trick itself. I think of the line of dawn rushing through desert, causing stones to explode. It is almost more than I can bear to contemplate, though the images themselves are so gorgeous, so extraordinary, that of course I look and look"

I have to admit that I was not aware of Girard, but after a comment like that you just have to track the book down.

The book is roughly A3 in size with good quality reproduction. The photographs are taken just after the sun has gone down,  house lights are on and mixed with the fading light of the sky. Many of the pictures have colour shifts giving an 'other world' feel. This is enhanced by the absence of people apart from the occasional figure blurred by the time exposure.  You can see the final glimpse of a world that is passing and the ever encroaching modern high rise city. The most powerful photographs are the interior shots where peoples scant belongings humanise the scene. As Girard comments "I found that by photographing not the people, but the spaces, it revealed so much if not more about how people lived". It is interesting how this works. If people were there it would be a document about them as individuals. As it is the book is about collective faceless people living an unknown life, captured in proxy by buildings and artefacts seemingly moments before all is lost. Around 2.5 million people being moved away from their homes into tower blocks on the edge of the expanding city. 


This is a work shot evening after evening, year after year, dedication to the cause. It is a gorgeous book with the colour almost swamping the content. As William Gibson said, you have to look and look.

For a video of Girard discussing the book go here

There is also a 56 minute film called  'Shadow of the City', which follows Girard as he photographs Shanghai.

View this movie at cultureunplugged.com

Greg Girard website

You can help - Fototazo

Fototazo promotes photography and supports young emerging photographers from disadvantaged backgrounds in Medellin, Columbia. The project raises funds to equip these young photographers with basic equipment, offers training and promotes their work in exploring the world from their perspective.

Photo by Yanina Boldyreva

Do have a look at the Fototazo website and gallery of work developed to date. Please consider donating a few dollars or surplus equipment to the project. Most of us have decent cameras sitting around the house doing not very much. Fototazo would put them to much better use. The current recipient of of the microgrant is Juliana Henao Alcaraz. She is a 20 year old student. The grant will provide 50% of the cost of a basic Canon DSLR and kit lens. Juliana is providing the other 50%. I'm sure you a have a few dollars to spare to help her out.

A couple of pictures from her portfolio:

Whiteness Head, Scotand

Panasonic GH2 with Olympus 9-18mm Lens

Camera sizing

A brilliant site that lets you compare the relative size of different cameras. Essential information for equipment freaks. Also gives you the relative weight as well. I especially like the optional average size male hand that you can move around.

http://camerasize.com/compare/#289,181

Cartier-Bresson meets the 21st Century

The iPhone Rangefinder is a phoneography system that gives your iPhone all the style of a classic camera. It'll equip your phone with a shutter button, viewfinder, aperture numbers, two loops for a camera strap, and a tripod mount!

But it isn't all about looks. You actually get to use the shutter button and viewfinder to take your shots! Plus, you can attach all of your favorite Magnetic Cell Lenses: Fisheye, Wide Angle/Macro, and 2x Telephoto.

Buy the The iPhone Rangefinder at the Photojojo Store!