duotone posters

Can anyone recommend a print house for doing high quality duotone posters?

Madonna, Escalator

From escalator, Metropolitan Museum

Just as a note, I've begun to use PhotoKit from Pixel Genius for all my color conversion (this was a digital shot). It uses non-destructive layers; has a tremendous amount of burn / dodge features; i.e. with PowerRetouche changes are made to the background layer; yes you can create a copy of the background and work on that but you can't see what Retouche is doing then. Photokit is a set that in some ways overlaps the functionality of Retouche - but it never touches the background layer so you can always do things like add layer masks or change opacity of the Photokit layer.

The image was shot raw - the red / orange was pumped up, and then:

Selling 2002, 6 train

Passenger, 6 Train

It's odd, but street photography seems to be hardest thing to sell. I say odd because it is also the most difficult to do well. If you are lucky enough to capture an evocative moment - there's a good chance that the lighting, or the framing won't be perfect. But more importantly - odds are that it will be of a specific human being. And a stranger at that. Not even a celeb. Why should the celeb be so much more interesting than the stranger? Answer - because we have already invested them with our own hopes and dreams. They are - essentially - already an abstract entity. Ready-made icons.

How can we read all of this into a complete stranger? Someone who is flesh and blood and is taking the subway - just like we are. How can that stranger become iconic and allow us to clothe them with our own feelings? They are just so specific.

One thing I've noticed is that the stranger, or strangers in street photography become more iconic if they are abstracted in some way.

By this I mean other elements such as fog, mist, halos, clusters of meaning make the image palatable. Is this an heretical street photography theory?

Blurred or abstract street shots become enigmatic - and at the same time closer to traditional ideas of beauty.

To counter-act specificness - the street photographer wants to juxtapose several ideas in the same frame. Mystery - which is to say, non-specifness increases as the forms counteract each other and bring an ambiguity to the frame.

With all that being said - I am drifting back to the dream of the street.

Memorial on 5th

Memorial Day Definition: a three-day holiday. A time of sales. Original meaning forgotten. Dwindling connections to the past. 50% off. Arms and legs off. Honey, spray some OFF on my arms, the mosquitos are murder this year. Unofficial start of summer. Hamburgers on the grill. Red poppies on lapels. Broken hearts. Busted lives. Heroes and villians. Telegrams from the War Dept. Loss of loved ones. Zero percent financing on selected vehicles. Zero percent left of my ancestor. My shell-shocked uncle. Those who never returned. Buy one get one free. Nothing is free.

Aquarium

#1



#2

Children's Zoo, Central Park. You can stick your head in these things to get closer to the fish, but they're so dirty you can't see anything. Did a lot of shooting here, wide open, slow shutter and Tri-x -with the Leica M3. So the problems I was having with IR film must be related to the cloth shutter on the M3. Phew.

My father

convinced me to enter a couple of photo contests. I started off with the Spider Black and White Awards ($35 per entry). I submitted Crossing Brooklyn Bridge under the People section. I've always had a dislike for art contests in general. I don't expect to win anything - so I can't see any disappointment in store - but there's something about the idea of these contests that seems obnoxious. I haven't analyzed the feeling but it has something to do with the inability of anyone to quantify art. But I'll play the game and enter a couple to please my father who has been pestering me about this for about ten years.

When I told him that I had been receiving e-mail offers for years about entering contests he said that he almost hung up the phone on me - he was that upset.

My portfolios arrived from Light Impressions so now there's one more project to finish up. I've been too busy to even open the box and see what they look like.

Infrared is going on the back burner for a while. I have a hankering to shoot straight photography again with ye olde tri-x.

Sales have been downright dismal - but I have about five irons in the fire (whatever that means) and maybe one of them will ignite. I'm always curious about where these idioms come from: irons in the fire.

Very busy

with a bunch of photo projects that I can't talk about yet.

MRI

"After Billy Wagner's performance against the Yankees yesterday, Willie Randolph told the trainer to bring him in for a brain scan. This is the result.

In the center you'll note a bird's-eye view of the field at Shea conspicuously missing the pitcher's mound. This dysfunctional perception of one's immediate environment, known as the Looper Syndrome, is common among Met closers.

Wagner's condition was confirmed this morning when the trainer asked him where he was yesterday around 4 PM and he said at the Taco Bell in Flushing." - Courtesy of Lester.

Field of Nightmares

Dreams, Shea Stadium




Slide

This was IR film (what else) . It was a memorable day. I had some glitches (so did the Mets) - between the shutter on the M3 which needs to be adjusted; and loading one roll of IR film in what I thought was shade (without changing bag) and the first half of the roll was completely fogged. Won't do that again. I was shooting with two cameras, the M3 and the Bessa R2A and I forgot that with the Bessa you need to manually set the rangefinder frame for the lens you're using until after I took a couple of shots which could have been good... Oh well. I managed to salvage two or three interesting shots.

P.S. The problem with the M3 is that if I use speeds of 1/100th of a sec. or less with IR film the right side of the frame is apt to show motion blur. I shot loads of Tri-x at low speeds without a problem. So I'm thinking it might have something to do with the fact that it's a cloth shutter.

Reading

The great thing about literature is that there is always some new discovery. I've been reading a lot of Wodehouse (not only the Jeeves series) and loving it. And at the same time I found Carson McCullers books buried away somewhere that I hadn't read.

There is a portrait of McCullers on the cover of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter in b&w, and I was just staring at it before opening the book. It looks like McCullers is sitting on top a coal heap and looking so mournful. You can't tell if she is looking at the camera or just staring blankly. What a sad picture. On closer inspection, I see that it's not a coal heap, but just the way the plants or weeds around her look.

Open the cover, curious to see who took such a piercing photo: none other than HCB. Man - that guy never fails to amaze me.

e n g l i s h

Since things are starting to hop around here and I can't talk about any of it - I decided to give my alter ego Tex a chance to have some blog time. Tex - are you around?

Sure am pardner.

Dang. They finally made ENGLISH our official language. That's fine as cream gravey.

First time ah strolled into Starbucks - those flannel-mouths jest got my dander up when they started yammering about Vente something 'er other. Hey sidewinder, ah just want a heap o' coffee.

Ah'd take out some of them French words too: such as quoi-sant??? I can't pronounce it. Give it an English name such as crescent. Ah got a beauty of a crescent wrench, why do I have to call it a croissant? This is plumb local.

Ah'd rename the danged states 'n cities too. Dang it. Los Ang-o-les? Ah'd jest as well call it Angel City and be done with it.

Ah'd test those pesky Brits who claim to speak good English. Ah can't understand a dang blame thing they say.

Speak Amurican!! Dang it. Speak Amurcan - like me. And if you don't like it: hobble yer lip.