A couple of weeks ago I went to the opening of the Bruce Katsiff exhibit at the Michener Art Museum where I got the chance to meet Bruce himself. But because it was so crowded I really didn’t have a chance to seriously study things I would have liked. Katsiff is a photographic legend in Bucks County so I had to come back!

I enjoyed our conversation so much that I asked Bruce on the spot if he would like to get together for lunch! We scheduled the time to meet, but before that I needed to get over and see the exhibit again! Entitled Bruce Katsiff: Pieces of Life, it’s a wonderful sampling of key projects from a lifetime work, including Rivertown Portraits, 1970-1980, composed of large black and white portraits made of his neighbors in nearby Lumberville,  where he had lived; Nature Norte, 1981-2005, striking platinum prints of animal remains; Face Maps, large color distorted and rearranged portraits of friend and family; street scenes made in Europe and Latin America during the fifties and sixties, as well as photographs melded to together with paintings and drawings done in collaboration with other artists. The shows runs through August 2^nd. Highly recommended!

Next up, lunch with Bruce. What a wonderful time I had! Bruce is funny and a great guy!  I heard all sorts of stories from his great career including ones about the great legends he had met. What fun! Most interesting though was how he categorized photographs … either as “directed” or “windows to nature”.  The former were constructed or created; the later were what was found and seen in the world. Simple and it makes sense!

Finally, I attended Bruce’s lecture at the Michener on the history of photography up to the dawn of digital capture. Truly outstanding and entertaining!  So much so that I asked Bruce if he would be willing to give it again at CAMP!  He has agreed and we look forward to scheduling it later this year!

Bruce is a great photographer … and a terrific and supportive guy!  I wish there were more like him and look forward to staying in contact in the future!

Stay well,

Michael

You never know how these things are going to turn out, especially for something brand new, but I’ve got to say, the gallery was packed for our show’s opening, the inaugural event at CAMP! The gallery was beautiful and the darkroom and workroom were ready to go with full capabilities to print 35mm up to 8×10 negatives, as well as contact prints using alternative processes!  It was very gratifying to see people I know and to meet new friends interested in black and white analog photography. It was also great to see the work of my Monalog colleagues again and to talk with guests about the stories behind my photographs.

CAMP is off to a great start and I will serve as Executive Director to help get it up and running with more exhibits to come, along with lectures, workshops and other cool programs to be announced.

The Monalog show runs to July 11^th on Saturdays 12-5pm and by appointment. I’d love to see you. So if you plan to be in the area how about stopping by to check out CAMP and see what all the fuss is about!

Stay well,

Michael

Since I was sixteen, except for some early years of marriage and impoverishment, I’ve always had my own car, even if it was a beater. But recently, I decided to sell my beloved hardtop/convertible (A very neat car … the best of all worlds!).  I did it for a couple of reasons. It wasn’t very practical which often meant I had to rent a car rather than leave my wife stranded without one. And with 16 mpg city/20 mpg highway and a hunger for premium it was costing a small fortune to keep running (The high octane stuff is now creeping toward $6.00 where I live unless I’m near a Costco).

So now we’re down to one car and I’m going to do my best to work it out with my wife so we can both be happy.  But it may not always be possible to schedule who gets it when, time I’d be gone, etc. The easy thing to do would be to buy a Prius or an all-electric vehicle … sorry not a Tesla for some obvious reasons you may think of. That means for the time being I’m going to try to make this work out despite the psychological hit I seem to be taking … my rugged individualism and independence … that sort of thing.

The key question is what will this do to my photography?  Well the short answer is not much. Why? Because I’m not going to let it!

The easy thing would be to dial things back or only photograph really nearby. While focusing primarily on what is really close might actually be a good thing for a variety of reasons, I’m just not going to let that happen. If anything, now that my car is gone, I’m going to move ahead without it being a diversion in my life that it had become, work hard to schedule things with my wife and just rent a car whenever I need one. It’s really pretty simple when you think about it.

Well, there is one reoccurring problem that seems to be popping up in the new world order. Our remaining car … my wife’s … is very nice, but very complicated … at least for me.  No surprise there!  Every setting has been set up perfectly to suit her needs and believe me I don’t want to get in the way of that. It’s got a lot of faux buttons on the very large touch screen that serves as the center of all things. So here’s a newsflash … despite my best intentions, I’ve somehow managed to screw things up several times.

Toleration probably has its limits so I’ll try to be better … I promise.

So what would this kind of change to your life do to your photography?

There’s always an excuse you can find not to get out there … like getting rid of your car. Don’t fall for them!

Stay well,

Michael

I tend to think of lenses in their 35mm equivalents. Ok, so I don’t own a 40mm lens, but I have the fabulous Plaubel Makina 670 with the stupendous fixed mount Nikkor 80mm lens. That’s the 6×7 equivalent of the smaller format 40mm lens. Yes, there are some quirks with using the Plaubel, but it’s truly my all time favorite, because of the camera operation, the lens itself and the perspective its focal length provides. But there is another reason … it just may be the perfect focal length for the vast number of subjects I’m interested in or come across … and it may be the same for you!

I’ve always considered myself a 50mm kind of guy, and historically that lens or its equivalent has been my focal length of choice. But as time goes by, the more I think about it, it seems I’ve been drawn to medium format cameras that use an 80mm lens, be it the Mamiya 7/7II or the Plaubel Makina. I’ve owned and used three Plaubels during the last 40 years, and now that camera/lens combination has essentially become my go to.

Why?

I think in large part, the single most compelling reason is that it enables me to accomplish just about anything I want for almost any situation I find myself in. In 35mm terms, there’s no thinking about whether I need to switch from using my go to 50mm for the 35, or when I’m using 35mm whether I need to go back to the 50. Of course with my Leica’s I can use both my M3 and the ridged 50mm Summicron along with my M2 and the 35mm f/2.8 Summaron. While I’ve done that many times, but found that I often seemed to finish a roll of film in the M3/50mm but not in M2/35mm, with the unfinished roll sitting in the M2 for a long time.

I’ve have gotten away from that approach when using 35mm cameras and have gravitated towards just using my M2 with both the 50mm and 35mm lenses. But here’s another problem … once I mount a particular lens on a camera, especially when I’m on the street, I tend to leave it on and adjust as opportunities present themselves rather than change lenses back and forth. In fact, that is exactly what happened a couple of weeks ago when I photographed the No Kings protest here in Doylestown. I don’t feel this has kept me from making good pictures, but maybe I could be making better ones, or doing less cropping in the darkroom for example if I switched lenses as appropriate.

In medium format land, the 80mm solves that problem wonderfully. Perhaps one of the reasons is that it turns out to be very close to the way the eye sees. A 40mm lens on a 35mm camera would do the same thing.

So where does all this leave me? I still want to be able to have the option of using other lenses when the occasion calls for them, e.g., making photographs of murals might require using both wider and longer lenses.  And I still will be using a 35mm camera as the situation calls for it, or just maybe when the mood happens to strike me.

I promise this isn’t a sudden GAS attack, but maybe I’ll find either a 40mm lens that will most likely work best with my M3 (supposedly I would have to judge composition just outside the 50mm frame lines), or get a Leica CL or Minolta CL (the camera bodies and lenses are the same … apparently they were jointly designed by Leitz and Minolta), or possibly a Minolta CLE with its updated lens. All three were designed to use the 40mm natively. Finally, I might even try a much cheaper option, but one that could work just as well sans the Leica cachet, and pick up an old Olympus 35RC with its fixed and apparently quite good 42mm f/2.8 lens. Nice ones can be had for about $150 bucks!

Fun fact … I discovered that Henri Cartier Bresson had used a CL to do a project in nearby New Jersey!

Is it a sign?

I guess you can tell I’ve started to think about this!

Trouble is I really love my vintage Summicron and Summaron lenses!!!

Stay well,

Michael

I recently stumbled across a black and white film photographer with an interesting YouTube channel. He does good work and his videos are fairly entertaining. As I was digging into his video archive I noticed he had done something concerning the importance of focusing on a single photograph … quality vs. quantity. Fair enough. He essentially went through his entire process, all the way to mounting, matting and framing.  I was fine with everything except for one important thing. He scans his negatives so he can review them on his computer instead of making proof sheets.

You might say this isn’t a big deal, but I think it is. In fact, I think it’s a really BIG DEAL!!! Look, if you’re going to be an analog photographer, BE ONE ALL THE WAY and forget about viewing your negatives using Lightroom or whatever else is out there.

Yes, I know … it’s fast and yes it’s easy to do it that way. But that’s not the point is it. Art is hard, so why look for fast and easy when you can do things slow and steady and get much more out of it? Otherwise, I think you are just fooling yourself. Our photographer spent over six hours to get the final print he liked, then went to the trouble to expertly spot the print where necessary.  Great, but why take all this time and effort, only to replace one of the most important series of steps … making the proof sheet, then carefully studying it for size, composition, cropping, print tonality, etc. ON THE PAPER YOU’RE GOING TO PRINT ON … and replacing all of this by merely staring at the screen, looking at thumbnails?

My answer won’t make those looking for fast and easy happy. Sorry, but here it is.  Don’t shortchange yourself for the sake of speed and convenience. Art is hard … at least good art is.

Stay well,

Michael

Emmet Gowin had juried a show I had submitted to right before Covid went crazy. I was excited because I wanted to see how my work would fare with such an eminent photographer. He chose a photograph of mine as one of the best in show. That was the good news. The bad news was that the show was cancelled one week later. No opening and no meeting with Emmet Gowin.

Well all these years later I finally met Emmet and his lovely wife Edith, while at the opening of Bruce Katsiff’s career multi-media retrospective at the Michener Museum here in Doylestown. Katsiff is a photographic legend in Bucks County. Beyond his important body of work created over a lifetime, he led the Bucks County Community College’s storied photography department and the Michener Museum for over twenty years. I will be going back to take in this most interesting show in a much more leisurely way when it is a more quiet.

I had never met Bruce before so this was a great pleasure! And after a very nice conversation with him he introduced me to someone that seemed a little bit familiar. Damn, it was Emmet Gowin! Ended up talking with him and sharing a few stories together, like how I had hoped to meet him before. Then his lovely wife came over and introduced herself. I told her I was familiar with her, having seen many of Emmet’s sensitive pictures of her.

All in all a wonderful chance encounter with someone I admire greatly, but also a chance to meet not only the artist but his delightful supportive life partner and muse. Perhaps I will see them again sometime.

I certainly hope so.

Stay well,

Michael

I felt like I was at a Sixties protest, complete with signs, protest songs that would have made Woody Guthrie proud and plenty of fiery speeches.  As an aside it sure is funny what people say to you when they see a nearly 70 year old camera hanging from your neck. Talked to a fellow Leica user who had two new ones attached to some very fancy straps (one new M6 for film and one very fancy looking digital number), as well as a protestor who used Nikon F’s and Rollei’s. The latter had a darkroom, shot black and white and was actually familiar with the Monalog Collective! My guess is the former scanned his negatives and printed them on an inkjet printer. Sorry … I know … be nice!

I had intended to go to the protest in Philly that day, but having just got back from Buffalo I thought it best to stay local, and I’m really glad I did!  It doesn’t matter where you are protest … just get out there and be a part of it! It will make a difference! There were over 8 million who participated this time around and I suspect the next one in May will draw an even larger turnout.

I started going to these events primarily to photograph, but the more I’ve gone, the more I’ve become a full participant. Still making photographs but getting much more involved. The good thing is you can do both … participate and be a part of something truly historic and chronicle the history that is being made!

So there you have it … short and sweet … if you care about our democracy and our proper role in the world, and you happen to make photographs, then what are you waiting for?  Get out there!  It’s the perfect thing to do!

Make some plans for May and be sure to check out the other events that will certainly take place before it.  It will be worth it! And don’t worry if you’re characterized as a communist, radical leftest or worse by El Jefe and the regime’s sycophants and Vichy collaborators. That means you’re having a positive impact! Think of it as a badge of honor!

Stay well,

Michael