March Notes
When I met Gordon Parks in 1990 we spoke briefly about his new book and he kidded me about having gotten a copy before he had even seen the final published version. While we spoke I was hoping that he wouldn't see how utterly in awe I was of him.

Of all the great photographers I admire and consider to have had an influence on my own work, Gordon Parks had to be the greatest of inspirations. I read his first autobiography, Choice of Weapons, in the early 1980's. I was overwhelmed. That book, the story of his early life and career, made my life seem privileged. His words made it clear that the most important thing is what you do, because that is what you become.

With confidence in his creative power he overcame brutal obstacles to become one of the most prolific artists of the twentieth century. Not only did he overcome those obstacles, he tore them down. As a photographer, composer, poet and film maker he set some very high standards and at the same time he showed the rest of us how to achieve them.

Gordon Parks was an enormous talent. He was probably the warmest, sincerest, and most genuine person I have ever had the privilege to meet. And he was certainly the only person I have ever met who was truly worthy of the awe I felt that day when I shook his hand and thanked him for everything that I could become.

Gordon Parks passed away March 7, 2006. He was 93.

February Notes
Digital photography has a way to go.

While some really great work is being done by dedicated photographers I know and admire, I'm still reluctant to give in to the lure of a digital camera.

There are a few issues specific to shooting digital that send up warning signs for me. First is actual resolution. Film still has inherently higher resolution than can be achieved using the current top of the line digital SLRs. While 12 and 18 megapixel DSLRs can produce files that allow for very nice 16X20 prints they fall short in their ability to resolve good shadow detail in certain lighting situations. The same holds true for many film scanners with a dynamic range of less than 4.8. At the same time new scanning and printing technology has made it possible to finally realize the full potential of a film negative, and that exceeds the capability of current digital cameras. You have to stop and ask yourself if the DSLR is the best tool for making and preserving images, for capturing and preserving your personal vision.

Durability is another issue. I know my negs will be in good shape in a hundred years. We still don't know the life span of digital and magnetic media. Barring fire or flood my negs will be printable long after I'm gone. Film may become a product similar to oil paint: made in small quantities by small manufacturers filling a niche market, and it will probably become more expensive, but I don't think it's going away very soon.

Digital cameras are a hot ticket right now. Companies stand to make a lot of money selling them, and companies are in the business of making money. We are being marketed to. We are being told that digital cameras are the future of photography and that may be true at the level of the consumer. This is why camera manufacturers distinguish between consumer and professional markets. The consumer market will always make more money for any company. But it is the professional market that cues the consumer market. This is why the very first digital cameras were big collaborative efforts between Kodak and Nikon aimed at the professional market. If tomorrow Jay Maisel decided to start shooting Kodachrome again you can bet Kodak would crank up production, create a new and improved package design, and woo Maisel away from Sandisk with a better contract than the one they offered him in the 1980s.

I recently saw an exhibition of Bob Hsiang's beautiful behind the scenes images of Chinese Opera. Some of the 13x20 prints were absolutely stunning. Bob is now shooting with a Nikon 12 megapixel D2X and enjoys the freedom and immediate feedback shooting digital allows.

I was inspired. When I got home I hit the internet to take another look at Nikon's 10 megapixel D200. It was looking pretty good until I came across a discussion concerning a banding problem that had cropped up with that particular model.

"Banding," wow, I never saw that on a piece of film. Again I had to remind myself that a digital camera is a computer with a lens attached. And as with computers in six months there will be something bigger, better and faster on the market and it will have the same $1500 price tag as the current model. So I decided to sit back and keep my eye on things.

When you consider that photography is not quite 200 years old it puts a little perspective on things. It was only last year that I bought my first auto-focus SLR and I only use it for very specific jobs. I think I'll wait for digital photography to reach a certain maturity before I uncork that bottle.

Lately I've been engrossed in an e-mail dialogue with a good friend of mine, Melissa Post. Melissa and her husband, Tom Porter, are both photographers now living and showing their work in Connecticut. I've known Melissa and Tom for about 15 years and greatly admire their work and their dedication to their art.

In one of her e-mails, Melissa mentioned a conversation she recently had with another photographer at a reception. The photographer brought up the question of whether non traditional prints could be considered art or if they were simply a product of technique.

For me this brings up the question: "When does art happen?"

It's all about the image and the vision that created that image. For me art happens at the moment of the perception of the image, at that anticipated decisive moment, if you will. It's the instant it all comes together and you know you've captured it on film or even in digital code. Getting that image to print is all about craft. There is nothing more technical or that employs more technique than a traditional wet darkroom: f-stops, filters, color temperature, exposure times, paper emulsions, mixing of chemicals (proportions, ratios), temperatures of chemicals and baths and washes, minutes in developer, fixer, stop bath, it goes on and on.

If the art happens it should show through all the craft and technique, no matter if the technique is traditional or digital. Of course, if you're not good at the craft or have poor execution of technique you lose the art. Art isn't about watching an image materialize on a piece of paper that's soaking in a bath of chemicals. Art isn't hiding in the materials you manipulate. Art is in your heart, in your vision, in your relationship to your chosen subject. Giving life to that art and sharing it with others is creating a "work of art," and to do that you must be willing to explore all the craft and technique available to you.

December Notes:
San Francisco provides abundant opportunity to photograph unique or unusual scenes and events. There's so much to choose from one has the luxury of leaving the camera in the bag and waiting for that perfect moment or set of circumstances to materialize. There are times, however, when those choices can be very hard to make.

The images I chose for December's Recent Work page illustrate the point. While the anti-war demonstration depicted was relatively tame, people were being arrested and I saw one photographer who was working for the organizers of the demonstration being roughed up by police officers. It was obvious the potential for confrontation was increasing. It took some time before I felt reasonably sure of avoiding a direct confrontation and took my camera from the bag.

I shot a total of 19 frames before putting the camera away. Several young men had begun taunting the police when I decided to stop shooting. I had no desire to be involved in a full blown police action, so I packed it up and headed for the the subway station.

I started asking myself why I stopped to shoot the pictures in the first place. No one pays me to shoot pictures. I'm not hired to photograph breaking news stories. Yet, I felt compelled to photograph this particular protest march. I actually felt that I should make the pictures, and that if I didn't I would be neglecting some moral obligation to record the socially significant events of the time and place in which I live.

I grew up heavily influenced by the effects of photojournalism and television news. I remember the days on which the Kennedys and Martin Luther King were assassinated, and I remember watching the Vietnam War brought home through intensive television coverage. Those images, in large part, shaped my social consciousness.

I'm never without a camera, but I don't leave the house each morning intent on finding a story. I'm simply prepared to take pictures. But if I do come across a story it's not easy to simply say, "That's not the kind of thing I shoot." It's not easy to just walk away. It becomes one of those difficult choices. A choice that one way or another has to be made.

From 1998 to 2001 I worked in the photography industry in one capacity or another. Early on, my goal was to start a freelance business shooting editorial assignments. To that end I spent about four years working as a photo researcher and studio assistant for other photographers. I learned a lot about the business and came to realize that “success” in the business didn’t always require creating superior imagery. As with everything else, “politics” often determines “success.” Of course that led to a serious questioning of my understanding of success.

When I quit working for other photographers and ventured into the arena of freelance work, it soon became clear to me that shooting assignments wasn’t necessarily the way I wanted to be making images. For a few years I worked shooting images for a variety of magazines devoted to bicycling. It was a subject I was interested in and an activity in which I participated. I thought the match would be perfect. To a certain degree it was, but I wasn’t making a living. I was accumulating a sizable file of stock images that didn’t really excite me or satisfy my need to make compelling images. I gradually returned to shooting the type of subject matter that genuinely moved me and also to shooting black and white film.

September Notes:
On August 26th I made my third photographic trip to Alcatraz, this time with photographer John Wall. I expected to shoot a few exteriors I had neglected on the previous trips and thus wrap up this little project. But as John and I explored the ruins, away from the areas crowded with tourists, I realized I was only now beginning to feel the place.

As my friend Dan Unger, a NPS ranger assigned to Alcatraz, led John and me through the 1940's industries building, it became obvious that I had spent enough time looking and that I was now beginning to see. This project is just beginning, there is so much more to do.

I don't want to guess at how many more trips to the island I will make before I feel I have completed the project. Nor do I want to speculate on the final outcome. But I am compelled to keep looking at and photographing this mesmerizing ruin of one of our society's darkest institutions.

August Notes:
As a photographer I often find myself in a situation I'm sure is familiar to most serious photographers: A friend, acquaintance, or otherwise interested individual is looking at one of my portfolios, the prints exhibited in my studio, or a stack of freshly printed images, and I just know that statement is rolling around in their mind, making its way to the tip of their tongue: "These pictures are beautiful, you must use a really good camera."

My wife is a painter. No one has ever said to her, "Your paintings are beautiful, you must use really good brushes." Do writers get this: "That novel you wrote is just wonderful, you must use a really good typewriter"? Have you ever been to a dinner party and enjoyed the meal so much that you felt compelled to compliment the cook on the quality of their stove? Think about it: How many people believe that by simply sitting down at a Steinway they will be able to play like Glenn Gould? Yet there are thousands of people who believe that spending thousands of dollars on a Leica will make them great photographer. Why is that?

A camera is a light-tight box that holds a piece of film in place behind a curtain. The shutter is the mechanism that opens and closes the curtain in a fraction of a second thus exposing the film to light. That's all a camera can do. It doesn't matter if the light-tight box is a Leica, a Nikon, a Minolta or a Quaker Oats carton. It doesn't matter if the light-tight box is totally mechanical, electronic, computerized and fully automatic. They are all doing the same thing: holding a piece of film in place behind a curtain then opening and closing the curtain in a fraction of a second exposing the film to light. That's all any camera can do.

No piece of equipment, no matter how precisely manufactured, has ever been responsible for making a great photograph. To paraphrase a quote from one of Eddie Adams' mentors: "Cameras don't make photographs. People make photographs." If I make a good photograph it's because I'm being a good photographer, not because I'm using a Leica M4-2. If I make a great photograph it's because when I released the shutter I was experiencing a great moment as a photographer. And I experienced that great moment because practice as a photographer has trained my vision to anticipate and recognize that great moment so that I'm releasing the shutter and exposing my film at precisely the instant that moment unfolds.

So, I guess that's the answer: Cameras don't make photographs. Practice and dedication to photography makes good photographs.

July Notes:
My first serious experience in photography was with black and white film. Reading books, I taught myself how to develop film. I bought a Bessler enlarger and taught myself how to make prints.

In the 1980's, when I had hopes of a successful career in commercial and editorial photography, I shot color almost exclusively: Fujichrome 50 Professional then Fuji Velvia. As those career hopes diminished, I gradually returned to the 'wonderful world' of black and white.

The more I worked the more I came to realize that my true vision would never have emerged in color. My natural and most honest vision will always be found in black and white.

I occasionally return to the question of color vs. black and white and while I greatly enjoy many fine color images, I always end up on the black and white side of the debate.

The presence of color provides so much familiar information that one often assumes to completely understand the image at a glance. Black and white focuses one's attention on the essence of the image, its truest subject. It forces one to actually spend a little time studying the image, to be able to see what's in it.

Some years ago I came across an article on Bernice Abbott in an issue of American Photographer. In it she is credited with saying that color too often gets in the way of the image. I generally agree with that idea, and in my own work I find that to absolutely be the case. On the other hand, color can be a very vital tool if one thinks of color in the same way a painter thinks about and uses color.

The most powerful, dynamic and often most successful color photographs are those in which color is as much the subject of the image as is the object being photographed.

Consider the work of the following photographers:

PeteTurner - www.peteturner.com

Jay Maisel - www.jaymaisel.com

Eric Meola - www.ericmeola.com

Art Kane - www.artkane.com

Every now and then I hear about a new color film being released and I get that familiar twinge of excitement I often experienced twenty years ago when every new product release by a film manufacturer made every die-hard Kodachrome user cringe. From time to time I'll have a little fun shooting a roll of color, but so often when I 'm going through the proofs I'll find myself looking at an image and wishing I'd shot it in black and white. I can find inspiration in the work of Pete Turner or Jay Maisel, but the most I could do would be to copy them. The uniqueness of my work, how ever subtle it may be, will only exist as various percentages of gray.