Native American Dances at the Pendleton Round-Up

This past weekend I was hired to photograph at the Pendleton Round-Up in Pendleton, Oregon. This is a rodeo that just celebrated its 101 anniversary and for most of that time, the Indian Dances have been a part of this event. The Native Americans compete with each other in different categories of Native dances to win honor for themselves and their families. They also win Pendleton Trade Blankets. They make their own costumes or regalia, and they make the dances open to the general public. Lots of people, mostly Native Americans, attend the dances and if you follow a few guidelines and don't make a pest of yourself, anyone is welcome to photograph.

One thing to remember is that you are a guest and you should behave like one. Be polite, stay out of the way of the dancers and judges, and if anyone tells you to move, do it. Earlier this summer I interviewed Steve McCurry for PhotoMedia magazine, who made the famous image "Afghan Girl," and he had some interesting things to say about photographing in public. According to McCurry, he never takes a picture of anyone without some kind of verbal or nonverbal permission. For a documentary or street photographer, that's an amazing position to take. In the context of a public dance, this means that the performers are mostly fair game, since they are in a public performance, but spectators should be asked before photographing them.

In technical terms, for most of the images I used a medium telephoto (an 80-200mm f/2.8 zoom lens) on a reduced sensor D-SLR body. I shot in Aperture Priority, though I could have used Shutter Priority, and used an ISO of 800. The autofocus was set on servo mode, to follow the action, and continuous motor drive was used. I tended to shoot in bursts of 3 to 5 images and followed the movements of the dancers. It's hard to predict the movements of the dancers, or any other action-oriented event, so it's best to shoot as much as you can and edit later. During the 2 hours of the dances, I shot around 1000 images. The photos ranged from full-length shots to details. Below are a few of my favorites.

Great Printer Deal

B&H has a great offer on a great inkjet printer that I have to tell you about. The Canon PIXMA Pro9500 Mark II is a pigment-based inkjet printer that will do 13x19 prints. It has ten ink cartridges, includes red and green inks, two blacks (one for matte and one for glossy prints), and one gray ink cartridge.

I have to say that I've used all the major brands of inkjet printers (Epson, Canon, and HP) and once you get the printers figured out, they all do exceptional prints. Some are more reliable than others though. Based on my own personal experience, for what that's worth, I'd rank them this way from most to least reliable: Canon, Epson, and a dismal and distant HP. So if you are looking for a good printer for your images, this is a deal you may want to consider. Just keep in mind that the deal is short-lived, so act fast.

B&H is offering a $200 instant rebate on the Pro9500 Mark II. This brings the $749.95 printer to $549.95. On top of this, Canon is offering a mail-in rebate of $300 on it, bringing the price to 249.95. To say the least, this is a good deal.

The $200 instant rebate ends September 4th. The Canon rebate ends September 30th. Act now or regret it!

Why Harper Lee Never Wrote Again

Though this has little or nothing to do with photography, it does have a lot to do with creativity and with being an artist. Some artists, no matter their area of expertise, are endlessly prolific, churning out an unceasing number of canvases, or prints, or performances, or books. Other artists, like author Harper Lee, who wrote To Kill A Mockingbird, seem to have only one good effort in them. They create one stunning achievement and then nothing else. This can be frustrating for the audience and frightening for other artists.

Harper Lee wrote one of the most cherished books of the 20th Century and it was turned into one of the most cherished films of the 20th Century, yet she never had a follow-up. There was no second book or anything else. She became a recluse in New York City and stayed out of the public eye for the rest of her life. Why would this happen?

For working artists, Harper Lee's story and life must seem like a nightmare. To create the one good piece and then have the well of creativity run dry? Never to create again? That is a nightmare for creatives, but I don't think this was the case for Harper Lee. For her, one good work was enough and the benefits of the life of an artist and writer never came close to matching the drawbacks she experienced to make writing worthwhile for her. For her enough was enough.

Her friend, Dr. Thomas Lane Butts, told Harper Lee's side of the story:

“She once said to me when we were up late one night, sharing a bottle of scotch: ‘You ever wonder why I never wrote anything else?’ And I said, ‘Well, along with a million other people, yes’.

“I espoused two or three ideas. I said maybe you didn’t want to compete with yourself. She said, ‘Bullshit. Two reasons: one, I wouldn’t go through the pressure and publicity I went through with To Kill A Mockingbird for any amount of money. Second, I have said what I wanted to say and I will not say it again’."

For most people, the story of Harper Lee is baffling. Most believe that an artist should create and create until they die, never letting anything get in their way. So what is the lesson here? Well, sometimes, creating one good and beautiful thing is enough and being true to yourself is more important than anything else. The truth is, Harper Lee didn't have it in her to keep working as a writer and she knew it. And then she acted on that knowledge. You have to admire her for her sense of personal integrity.

Another photokina Comes Around

It seems like an off year for photokina, the every-other-year exposition in Cologne, Germany, for photographic products. Not much was offered that peaked anyone's interests, except for a few products. So here they are.

The Fuji X100 appears to be the darling of the show. It seems to be everything that photographers have wanted in a compact, serious digital camera. Old-fashioned, simple controls and supposedly excellent images quality in a small, nearly pocketable size. It will be slightly expensive at around $1000 with a non-interchangeable 35mm-E, f/2 lens. I have to admit that my heart did a little skip when I first saw it online. I'm looking forward to at least taking a closer look at this one.

Pentax has been working on this camera, the Pentax 645D, for several years, but it's finally in production and so far it's selling like hotcakes in Japan. Later this year (December) or early next year, it will be available in a kit with a 55mm lens for around $10,000. Gulp. Well, it has a 40 MP sensor and the reports from Japan indicate it has first-rate image quality and is very popular with wedding and portrait photogs. I expect landscape photogs will like it, too. All things considered, the Pentax 645D is a bargain in the world of medium-format digital cameras, as we'll see in the next new product.

Now for the big guns. Leaf introduces the world's largest and highest resolution digital back, the Aptus-II 12. It has an 80 MP sensor and will produce TIFF images around 480 MB in size. To paraphrase Sheriff Brody in Jaws, "I think we're gonna need a bigger harddrive." And a bigger bank account it seems, as the back will run around $32,000 without the camera in front of it. Which adds another $10,000 plus to it. Oh, who needs a new car anyway?

Last Roll of Kodachrome

National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry was given the very last roll of Kodachrome to be manufactured. This marks the end of a very long era in photography. 35mm Kodachrome film was introduced by Kodak in 1936. McCurry used Kodachrome for 35 years and he shot this roll of film in India and New York City.

This film was the standard against which all slide films were measured and few could match its color palette and image quality. In my experience, Kodachrome 25 was the best of the Kodachrome films and it especially did well with reproducing warmer colors. The film made its way into popular culture when musician Paul Simon wrote and recorded a hit called "Kodachrome" in 1973.

National Geographic plans to air a TV special next year on McCurry and this last roll of Kodachrome.

You can read about McCurry and Kodachrome here.

Print Offer at The Online Photographer

Now through this coming Friday, you have the opportunity to purchase a real platinum print for not much money. The photographer is Carl Weese, a talented large format photographer. The website is the excellent blog, The Online Photographer, which is edited by Mike Johnston. If you haven't run across his blog, you should do so right now.

You have a choice of three images shot on 8x10 negatives, I'm partial to the drive-in theater picture, as either platinum prints or as digital inkjet prints. The platinum prints cost $180 and the digital prints cost $80. If you want a compare and contrast set, you can buy the same images in both mediums, and you get the digital print for a mere $40.

Carl Weese is a wonderful photographer and you will never find another offer like this. Go here to read about the images and the purchase information. Remember, this sale is a limited time offer. As mentioned, offer ends this Friday, April 30th.

Is Photography Over?

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is hosting a two day symposium on April 22 and 23 called, “Is Photography Over?” Several participants in the discussion include such photographic luminaries as Peter Galassi (the curator of photography at MOMA in New York City), Geoff Dyer (the author of the excellent book about photography, The Ongoing Moment), and Philip-Lorca diCorcia (acclaimed artist/photographer). There is an announcement about the symposium on the SFMOMA site here and more interesting there are the written responses to the question, “Is Photography Over?”, here. The answers make for long reading, but they are fascinating food for thought.

This question prompts me to think about the topic as well. Is photography at a crossroads? Yet again? Well, more than most artforms, photography has been on a steady course of ever-changing technology that has changed the way photography has been accomplished. I mean, very little has changed in painting for several hundred years. If you include the cave paintings of ancient Cro-Magnon people, we’ve been painting, even making air-brushed paintings, for tens of thousands of years. The same could said of music and singing, even with computers and improved recording technologies, live music performance hasn’t really changed all that much. But photography has changed a lot.

In the course of its not quite 200 year existence, we’ve gone from hand-made paper negatives to colloidal glass negatives to plastic-backed negatives to now, no negatives at all in digital capture. And that’s just talking about the recording medium. Cameras started out as large wooden direct-view devices and then went to complicated mechanical boxes that could focus the light into an image to now, miniature computers. The evolution of cameras has been one of miniaturization, for the most part. Cameras keep getting smaller as the image quality keeps getting better. Today, the sales of consumer point-and-shoot digital cameras will probably disappear and be replaced by the cameras that are in our cell phones. If this hasn’t already happened.

What does this mean for photography? I have no doubt that photography will continue to change its form like the shapeshifter it has always been. If it stops, that will mean that it truly has died. For the average person, they may soon no longer have separate dedicated cameras, but they will continue to document their everyday lives the way we all have since photography was invented. The role of and need for photography is one that will not go away.

The biggest challenge to the new era of digital photography is the question of Truth. Photography, whether it was ever absolutely true or not, has always been perceived as a documentary tool. Photographers capture the events and subjects in front of their cameras with absolute fidelity as they happen. They capture the Truth. Now with Photoshop, especially the frightful implications of CS5, you can no longer assume any photograph is the Truth. Every photograph can be undetectably manipulated. Of course, the act of manipulating images has been with us from the beginning of photography, but never has it been so easy to do. This is a serious challenge for photography and photographers. Though in another light, perhaps it now places photography in the same context as painting, which has never had the same restrictions to depicting truth and reality. Perhaps, perhaps.

Anyway, does all this mean the end of photography? I don’t think so. Photography and photographers are good at adapting. How we deal with the issue of Truth is an important issue, but not an insurmountable one. Photography will continue to change in ways we can’t imagine at this time, but the reason for its existence will remain with us as long as we exist—to record and remember our lives, our world, and our dreams.