Remembering Brett Weston

John Sexton, one of the greatest traditional landscape photographers working today, has posted the first part of a series of videos about Brett Weston on his website. The video features John with photographers Randy Efros and Kim Weston (grandson of Edward Weston, son of Cole Weston, and nephew of Brett Weston) sitting around reminiscing about Brett. You can view the video here and while you are there, you might as well look around and take a look at John's work. He's a very fine photographer.

Brett Weston was a monumentally influential photographer for me. His images were pure photography in a way that not many people have ever achieved. And by that, I mean that his images only really existed to be those black-and-white images. That was their only context for him. His photographs were examples of how he saw the world and what he responded to as he existed and worked in the world. For example, a picture of a leaf was not really a picture of a leaf to him, it was an image of lights and darks, shapes and textures. It was a pure abstraction of the world, breaking it down into its parts and then arranging those parts into an image that resonated for him. Even his nudes were treated in the same way; they were about tones and shapes and composition, not about sexuality or even sensuality, thought he was personally very interested in women. Photographically to him, a mountain was no more significant or beautiful than a piece of melted plastic lying in the street. They were both raw ingredients for his visual imagination.

Brett was also a dedicated photographer who lived to photograph. He printed nearly every day of his life, early in the morning before sunrise, and after breakfast, he would go out and photograph. Photography was his life and nothing ever got in the way of that, and he continued this way nearly up until he died. His dad, Edward, was one of the seminal photographers of the 20th Century and in some respects Brett always worked in his dad's shadow. But for many late 20th Century West Coast landscape photographers, his work was probably the greater influence. His beautifully clear and coolly analytical images guided many photographers' work. And with his penchant for Porsche sport cars and dark sunglasses, he was cool, too. If you are not familiar with Brett Weston's images, take the time and look them up. He's worth it.

Last of its Kind Print Sale at the Online Photographer!

"Ctein"

[Update: The dye transfer sale sold out after a few hours. And that, as they say, is that!]

The blog known as The Online Photographer will be hosting another print sale and this time, it will be something different and special. Photographer and writer Ctein will be selling off the last of his dye transfer prints and The Online Photographer is hosting this event. Ctein (pronounced "kuh-tine") is a prolific writer, having written more than 2000 articles on photography over the years for magazines like Darkroom Techniques and two books, Post Exposure and Digital Photo Restoration, and he is one of the last and best photographers and printmakers to work in the demanding and now mostly lost art of the dye transfer print.

A dye transfer print was made by taking a transparency or color negative and creating three negatives that separated out the colors into cyan, magenta, and yellow for printing, and then soaking each of the negatives in dye (cyan, magenta, and yellow dyes) and separately pressing each of the dye-soaked negatives onto the print in perfect register to make a full color print. Done right, a dye transfer print is one of the best looking color prints that have ever been made. I own one of Ctein's original dye transfers and it is indeed one of my favorites in my collection. However, Kodak stopped making the supplies for this process many years ago in 1993, but Ctein mortgaged his house to buy what he thought was a lifetime supply of the dyes, matirix films, and print paper. And now, he is at the end of those supplies.

So Ctein and Mike Johnston will sell off the remaining prints that Ctein can make, which is around 160 16x20-inch prints. After these are made and sold, Ctein will be out of supplies for good and will close down his wet darkroom. Of course, he will continue to work in digital and with ink jet printers. These dye transfer prints will sell for $575 each, which is about 1/3 of his regular price. You'll be able to see what images he will offer for this last printing today at The Online Photographer. The sale will last for 5 days or until the 160 prints are sold. If you can spare the cash, this is an opportunity that you will not get a second chance to buy.

Pacific Grove, part 2

Here are some black-and-white images from my trip to Pacific Grove, California.

photo by Hermon Joyner

photo by Hermon Joyner

photo by Hermon Joyner

photo by Hermon Joyner

photo by Hermon Joyner