View Camera-Jan.Feb 2006

[Dave Wooten]

Love Karen Kuehn's cover portrait of painter Wilson Hurley, nice 4 x 5 work by Ken Lee, and Kerry, as usual, has some very informative articles, Steve Sherman has lead 7 x 17 photo of article on the exhibition of traditional large format photography, Montgomery County Center for the Visual Arts in Gaithersburg MD, To test your film speed, Steve Simmons presents Fred Picker's method that even I can follow, also a listing of large format sheet films available, color and b and w, I didn t realize 5 x 7 color was available, J.B Harlin presents part 2 of his well done Vertical Banquet Camera Project....I really like this issue...

that's my review

Dave in Vegas

 

[colrehogan]

I'm looking forward to seeing it. Hope it comes soon.

 

[roteague]

I'll look for it as well. I suspect it won't be on the shelves until near the end of February.

 

[Monophoto]

My test of magazines like VC and B+W is how much of the book I mark for archiving when the next issue arrives.

Normally, I mark individual images that I clip and paste into a "sketch book" - as a form of inspiration when I'm feeling uncreative. I most certainly marked the cover image on the latest issue of VC.

On fairly rare occasions, there are entire articles in a magazine that I find interesting and valuable enough to clip and archive in a binder of reference material. There were three such articles in this issue of VC - that's a record!

So yeah - it's a great issue.

 

[JosBurke]

"I suspect it won't be on the shelves until near the end of February"'-I picked up my copy (the one you mention) at Barnes and Noble yesterday--I let my subscription lapse--sad part is B&N usually has it on the shelf before I would get it in the mail. I picked up B&W too as I like the pics usually (I said usually) --I only subscribe to a few mags that wrap their issues as my mail continuously gets wet and my Mail-person (female) isn't worth a sh*t at shoving it all the way into my mailbox --actually she's not worth a sh*t in general. I don't discriminate but I do loathe laziness even my own but I can overlook my own much easier than I can overlook my wet reading material for my throne room!! Sheesh!!
Back on track--I just gandered at it briefly yesterday and noticed the simplified film testing article in the table of contents--- I was not impressed by the article or work in Cambodia using the digital back--My only gripe with VC magazine and Camera Art's of ago was that there needs to be some better editing or a least some spell checking---I've seen better editing and spelling from my children---I'm sure I'm not the only one that notices such errors--Again, I loathe laziness!!
I'll step down now!!

 

[Dave Wooten]

Just finished reading part 2 of J.B. Harlin's article on the verticle camera project....as a result I checked out J.B and his wife Susan's web site....outstanding ULF photographs! Also good illustrations showing the construction of the cameras....camera builders, heads up here!...

As a former (and future) college photography intstrucor, I was impressed also by the 4 books authored by J.B. and ended up ordering all 4! Will write a short review when I have had time to study them....they look good and are obviously written by one who practices what he/preaches and have the impressive results to show for it.

Dave in Vegas

interestingly enough the mail subscription (View Camera) arrived here in Vegas a few days ago and it is not yet on Border's shelf? I read 'em all...this is a good issue.

 

[sanking]

I just had a chance to go through the issue and IMO it is one of the better done and most interesting ones in a long while. I don't nit-pick too much on the typo things but did not see any big ones on first reading so there does appear to be a big improvement in this area. I also like the mix of traditional and digital, as in the platinum over digital, and the piece on making your own vertical 7X17, to say nothhng of the beautiful work by Ken Lee.

Sandy

Love Karen Kuehn's cover portrait of painter Wilson Hurley, nice 4 x 5 work by Ken Lee, and Kerry, as usual, has some very informative articles, Steve Sherman has lead 7 x 17 photo of article on the exhibition of traditional large format photography, Montgomery County Center for the Visual Arts in Gaithersburg MD, To test your film speed, Steve Simmons presents Fred Picker's method that even I can follow, also a listing of large format sheet films available, color and b and w, I didn t realize 5 x 7 color was available, J.B Harlin presents part 2 of his well done Vertical Banquet Camera Project....I really like this issue...

that's my review

Dave in Vegas

 

[Charles Webb]

Wilson Hurley is one of my favorite heros! His work is wonderful!

Charlie.........................

 

[roteague]

"I suspect it won't be on the shelves until near the end of February"'-I picked up my copy (the one you mention) at Barnes and Noble yesterday--

I went today, and we still have the old issue. Then again, I live in Hawaii, we don't get magazines on a timely basis.

I was not impressed by the article or work in Cambodia using the digital back

If you mean Jim Collum's work, I saw some of his Cambodia images posted on another group I belong to. Can you spell "yuck"; the images are flat, lacked any hint of life, and were just plain not sharp. I said so, but he didn't seem to appreciate that.

 

[smieglitz]

I'm very surprised at the positive reviews of this issue.

I thumbed through it and found several pages of unsharp, flat images, the lack of focus I assume caused during the magazine reproduction process. The platinum over ink stuff also was not appealing to me but I can't tell if that was due to the reproduction or the original. (I suspect both.) I'd also already seen the website about the vertical camera project (maybe a year ago ?) so that was old news and Simmon's defense of Picker's method has been discussed/argued by him ad nauseum on various internet venues so I passed over that article as well. Thus, as a result being familiar with the content of several articles already and of being turned off by the image reproduction quality, I put the magazine down without reading any of the articles. I'll get back to it, but my initial reaction was ho-hum.

IMO, this issue missed the mark although I usually eagerly anticipate the arrival of VC each month. I realize it must be difficult to come up with fresh content in such a narrow interest field each month, but I'm really put off by the reproduction quality issues which seem to occur on a regular basis.

Joe

 

[photomc]

Interesting view Joe...after seeing the postive reviews, thought maybe I just did not get it. Like you, I had already seen JB Harlins website...but will say that I did enjoy the work of Karen Kuehn. With so much negative flow recently on this site, thought perhaps it was just that. Still, have enjoyed the previous issues and to be honest knew that there would be issues that did not appeal to me...after all different strokes. It would be very hard to publish any periodical that we all would love to look at even every other month. I mean hell, there are times I wonder what I was thinking when I look at my own work...

Cheers

 

[roteague]

Surprisingly, the Jan/Fed issue of View Camera came into the store today, and I picked it up. I know that Steve Simmons comes in for a lot of grief at times about the magazine, but I appreciate the magazine. This issue had both good and bad; the good was the "Vision and Craft", the bad was "Digital Capture ..." - and not because it was digital (I enjoyed Charles Cramer's article), the images are just plan crappy, and not worthy of a magazine like View Camera.

 

[Jon Shiu]

Beautiful images by Ken Lee. It is a bit unclear which of his images are platinum, silver gelatin or inkjet, though.

Jon

 

[roteague]

Beautiful images by Ken Lee. It is a bit unclear which of his images are platinum, silver gelatin or inkjet, though.

Jon

Yeah, I find it really difficult to tell much about an image was produced through a printed page in a magazine or a web page, although I find most digital images to be very flat, color-wise. The Jim Collum images I saw on another forum, and found them horrid there, and worse in the magazine.

 

[BradS]

Just picked up a copy at the local Borders a couple of days ago. Finally got around to looking through it on my way to work this morning.

On the positive side, Steve Simmons' artical about film and paper testing was worth the price of the mag. Kerry Thalmann's "Notes from the Field" is well written and contained some very useful advice and even a few creative storage ideas. The lead article "Why Large Format" by Ted Harris' was entertaining if a little simplistic. Did you find yourself in one of his categories? I did - perhaps I really span portions of two of them. Karen Kueh's photos more than make up for her writing. I liked many of Ken Lee's photos - well all of them except one. Finally, Steve's summary of large format film availability was encouraging, timley and I am sure generally useful to the community. Amazingly, I did not find a single misspelled word in any of the articles that I read.

On the not so good side, With the exception of Steve Sherman's lead photo "Ansonia Opera House" all of the photos in the "Metropolitan Center for the Visual Arts" article are...well, poorly reproduced.

All in all, a pretty darned good issue. Thanks Steve and the folks at View Camera.

 

[jimcollum]

Robert,

I can understand not liking someone's work. I figure lots of people don't like it. But from what i've read, you seem to feel it's *really* bad.. having been posting that repeatedly.

From viewing your portfolio/website, it's obvious you and I live on opposite ends of the Photoshop saturation slider. That doesn't make work bad, just different (i'd suspect that Meyerowitz's and Misrach's work also doesn't live up to your limits for saturation.. although my work isn't even close to theirs in vision).

Saying it's outright bad, and not deserving of being in a magazine is a different matter though. There's a vast difference between an online image and an actual print. I have yet to be able to reproduce the feel of a platinum print or a platinum/pigment print in an online jpg file. They are meant for print. I've sold quite a bit of work through at least one of the leading international photographic galleries, and have traded work with some of the leading b/w & color photographers (at their request).

In 2004 and 2005, I submitted portfolios to the IPA ( http://photoawards.com ). The submission was in the professional division, under Fine Art. Among those that entered were Joyce Tennyson, Lauren Greenfield, Keenan Ward, Art Wolfe, William Neill, Jeff Dunas, Loretta Lux. The judges were the curators of the leading photographic galleries world wide, museum curators, magazine editors, etc (feel free to browse their website for more information). In 2004 there were over 11,000 entries, in 2005 there were more than 17,000 entries.

In 2004, I submitted one portfolio (5 images), Cement Works.. a series of platinum/pigment prints. It made Honorable mention (6th runner up) in the Fine Art (Other) catagory. In 2005 I submitted 2 portfolios (Metamorphosis and Salton Sea.. both 5 image series, and both platinum/pigment). Those entries ranked 8th runner up and 15th runner up.). Not world class... not historically significant... but among a pretty decent cross section of photographers worldwide, being in the top 100 out of 17,000 isn't bad (not great.. i understand.)

My images may not be to your taste, and they are not world class images.. but they are not terrible, and in my opinion, of the quality to be included in a magazine (which approached me to have the article and portfolio published).

The series i mentione above can be found at:

http://collum.dev.omniblog.com

again.. these are jpg representations.

If you're ever in Northern California, feel free to drop me a line, and you'd be welcome to see actual prints.


Btw.. IPA is open for entries for the 2006 year. It's a great way of getting your work in front of museums, galleries and magazines. I'll probably be submitting the Angkor series this year.

Jim

 

[Jon Shiu]

IPA - the Competition

Hi Jim, do you send prints or jpegs to the competition?

thanks,

Jon Shiu
Elk, CA

Robert,

I can understand not liking someone's work. I figure lots of people don't like it. But from what i've read, you seem to feel it's *really* bad.. having been posting that repeatedly.

From viewing your portfolio/website, it's obvious you and I live on opposite ends of the Photoshop saturation slider. That doesn't make work bad, just different (i'd suspect that Meyerowitz's and Misrach's work also doesn't live up to your limits for saturation.. although my work isn't even close to theirs in vision).

Saying it's outright bad, and not deserving of being in a magazine is a different matter though. There's a vast difference between an online image and an actual print. I have yet to be able to reproduce the feel of a platinum print or a platinum/pigment print in an online jpg file. They are meant for print. I've sold quite a bit of work through at least one of the leading international photographic galleries, and have traded work with some of the leading b/w & color photographers (at their request).

In 2004 and 2005, I submitted portfolios to the IPA ( http://photoawards.com ). The submission was in the professional division, under Fine Art. Among those that entered were Joyce Tennyson, Lauren Greenfield, Keenan Ward, Art Wolfe, William Neill, Jeff Dunas, Loretta Lux. The judges were the curators of the leading photographic galleries world wide, museum curators, magazine editors, etc (feel free to browse their website for more information). In 2004 there were over 11,000 entries, in 2005 there were more than 17,000 entries.

In 2004, I submitted one portfolio (5 images), Cement Works.. a series of platinum/pigment prints. It made Honorable mention (6th runner up) in the Fine Art (Other) catagory. In 2005 I submitted 2 portfolios (Metamorphosis and Salton Sea.. both 5 image series, and both platinum/pigment). Those entries ranked 8th runner up and 15th runner up.). Not world class... not historically significant... but among a pretty decent cross section of photographers worldwide, being in the top 100 out of 17,000 isn't bad (not great.. i understand.)

My images may not be to your taste, and they are not world class images.. but they are not terrible, and in my opinion, of the quality to be included in a magazine (which approached me to have the article and portfolio published).

The series i mentione above can be found at:

http://collum.dev.omniblog.com

again.. these are jpg representations.

If you're ever in Northern California, feel free to drop me a line, and you'd be welcome to see actual prints.


Btw.. IPA is open for entries for the 2006 year. It's a great way of getting your work in front of museums, galleries and magazines. I'll probably be submitting the Angkor series this year.

Jim

 

[jimcollum]

i sent actual prints. they allow 11x14, which is a good size.

 

[Chazzy]

I subscribe to the magazine basically for Kerry's articles, and once again I was not disappointed. What caught my eye was the improvement in the area of proofreading. Thanks for that, Steve. I think I saw only about 6 mistakes that jumped off the page at me. I would say that is not unusual for a magazine, and I'm a picky reader to satisfy, with my background of doing editorial work for a journal and correcting more student papers than I want to think about.

 

[MurrayMinchin]

I think Jim's work doesn't live up to its full potential in the click & run computer environment. They are quiet, and would need time and real life viewing for the subtleties to coalesce.

Murray

 

[mark]

I picked the issue up last night and was not impressed with most of it. Unlike most here I was not impressed with Kuehn's work. I think there is much better work on her website. Typical of VC is the poor writing, but untypical(is that a word) was the piss poor reproduction of some of the photos. Or there are people who cannot focus their cameras I am not talking about shallow depth of field.

The images that stood out too me were collum's images. I liked the subtle sureal look. Well done Jon.

I HATED THE AD ON THE BACK. WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP THAT THING PEDDLED.

 

[donbga]

I picked the issue up last night and was not impressed with most of it. Unlike most here I was not impressed with Kuehn's work. I think there is much better work on her website. Typical of VC is the poor writing, but untypical(is that a word) was the piss poor reproduction of some of the photos. Or there are people who cannot focus their cameras I am not talking about shallow depth of field.

The images that stood out too me were collum's images. I liked the subtle sureal look. Well done Jon.

I HATED THE AD ON THE BACK. WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP THAT THING PEDDLED.

Jim Collum's work is excellent. I've had the pleasure of looking at his prints first hand and magazine repros don't do them justice. I agree about the B&W repro quality of VC and Kuehn's web stuff was also much better.

Don Bryant

 

[avandesande]

Kuehn's MF stuff is better.

 

[Wayne]

I picked the issue up last night and was not impressed with most of it. Unlike most here I was not impressed with Kuehn's work. I think there is much better work on her website. Typical of VC is the poor writing, but untypical(is that a word) was the piss poor reproduction of some of the photos. Or there are people who cannot focus their cameras I am not talking about shallow depth of field.

The images that stood out too me were collum's images. I liked the subtle sureal look. Well done Jon.

I HATED THE AD ON THE BACK. WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP THAT THING PEDDLED.

I hate to bring this up (I hated the ad too) but didnt Collum use that thing on the back for some of his images?

 

[mark]

Yes he did, but this whole digital BS thing, panoramics were shot with film and not stitched together. I fully believe he could have accomplished what he did without the computer gear in the field.