If there is any one product that has to do with my own personal success (and millions of other photographers too for that matter), it is Kodak. When I was going to Brooks Institute School of Photography, it seemed that nearly everything we used was Kodak yellow and red. Kodak fixer could indeed fix anything, we were only as good as the Kodak film we shot, and color was Kodak vibrant. Like many other professional photographers, I love the company and what it has done for the culture of photography. So it with great sadness that I learned of Kodak’s filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January and their intent to exit the digital capture business.

It’s like Apple dropping computers or Jack Daniel’s switching to milk. It ain’t fittin, as they say. You really know that the world’s gone to hell if Kodak isn’t making photographic stuff. Fuel up the rocketship.

Kodak essentially invented the concept of “the snapshot,” with the very first Kodak camera in the late 1880’s. For the first time, nearly anyone could make a photograph. Their motto was “You push the button, and we do the rest.” For all intents, Kodak WAS photography.

Kodak's webpage announcing their reorganization. This still seems a bit surreal, and almost like it's from the universe next door and not ours. I imagine that we'll know it's real when we can't get Kodak products anymore. I dread that day.

A lot of us photographers have been watching Kodak’s slow demise for quite some time now, and are not all that surprised that it has come down to this Chapter 11 status. It’s not a happy or unexpected realization by any means, but we still hope that Kodak will rise out of the ashes. If I were a Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, I’d look into the section below titled “Did Kodak make the nails for their own coffin?” I’m sure that there are many nuances to this story that the public is not privy too, but us professional photographers have been  bearing witness to a few decades worth of missteps that more than likely had something to do with their downfall.

Just last week I was shooting Kodak Tri-X black & white film with a wide-field camera. Not for nostalgia's sake, but because I needed some cool cityscape photos in black & white.

Abridged Kodak Story

In order to understand the above webpage describing Kodak’s exit out of dedicated capture devices, you really need to understand who they were and examine the core of their essence, so here goes, please bear with me. This story could actually be published in book length, but since this is a blog, here is the McNeil condensed version (part of this blog entry was plucked out of my lecture notes from when I taught a History of Photography course).

In the early 1870’s, photographers couldn’t even buy pre-made negatives, film did not exist. This is a special area of research for me, as I have a collection of glass plate negatives that marks the time at the cusp between when photographers had to make the collodion hand coated negatives and when they were able to simply purchase ready-made dry plate negatives. Photographers had to hand-coat their own glass plates (which was closer to alchemy than science) and essentially made their own negatives.

Large format hand coated wet plate collodion negative that predated the manufacture of film. Negative by Felix Bonfils at the ruins of Capernaum, from the McNeil collection. You can easily see where the photographer was carefully painting the negative with a black opaque material to render a white sky, because the collodion wasn't capable of a proper exposure of the sky while photographing a landscape. The wet plate collodion negative was only sensitive to blue light.

I learned many of the nuances of glass plate negatives from a scholar at the George Eastman House by the way (she spent the afternoon carefully examining my 1870’s & 1880 glass plate negatives made by the famous Felix Bonfils). The concept of being able to buy photographic film hardly existed prior to Kodak’s arrival. There were a number of international companies that made dry plate negatives, but it was Kodak who transformed it into an amateur phenomenon, which created millions of new photographers. It means that more than any other company, Kodak transformed photography  into a common practice for nearly anyone to use, and they did it on a global scale.

When I think of Kodak, I think of the entire culture of photography since the late 1800’s, and especially how they’ve dominated nearly every phase of the culture and industry of photography for so long, most notably during the entire 20th century. In this sense, Kodak is nearly a quintessential or archetypal model of American industry. Kodak obviously didn’t invent photography, but rather stepped in nearly 50 years later to make photography easily available to the world for the first time.

Kodak round photo from the first Kodak camera, dated late 1800's, from the first generation of cameras that used roll film. Library of Congress, number 3g04797u. This is an uncropped download that shows a visual aesthetic with the first Kodak snapshots (the photo is a bit askew, but this is the way it was presented from the archive). Kodak learned early that women were primary consumers of their products, partly because women made most of the family snapshots, and partly just because they were damn good photographers. Therefore, Kodak aimed much of their advertising and corporate strategies towards women.

A quirky bit of history has the Reverend Hannibal Goodwin teaching bible studies with lantern slides in the mid-1880’s. He was looking for a way to make this easier, and discovered that he could transfer the texts onto a type of flexible film called nitrocellulose and filed a patent for it in 1887, two years before Kodak’s patent for nearly the same thing. Goodwin contended that the patent was rightfully his, and sold it to the Ansco company, which sued Kodak for it and won a five million dollar judgement years later, in March of 1914. This little scenario had to do with the invention of roll film, which essentially acted as a literal basis for photography for over 100 years, plus made motion picture film possible.

Kodak mass produced film to create the revolution in photography that made it available to nearly anyone. The key phrase here is mass availability, ease of use and affordable prices. Roll film is what made this happen, and it is likely the number one technological advance that moved photography into popular culture.

A scholar could make the assertion that George Eastman was a visionary, and his powerful personality had everything to do with Kodak’s success as a large corporation. This is a critical stance, because I’ll also make the claim that without a visionary leader at the top, a company can flounder, and when important aspects of a company are left to committees to determine, things can go drastically wrong. Eastman died in 1932.

Eastman was an astute business person, and could be compared to the Bill Gates of his day in that instead prioritizing camera production, he set Kodak’s priority on the manufacture of film. It’s kind of what Bill Gates and Microsoft did with computers regarding selling the operating system, and let others fight it out with building the computers. It meant that Kodak became the de facto near-monopoly for the sale of film, and in fact held many of the roll film patents.

Throughout the entire 20th century, Kodak dominated the industry and culture of photography. It became clear in the 1940’s that other countries could manufacture the high-end cameras more affordably and Kodak gave up that part of the industry. Up until then they made a number of professional level large format cameras and lenses, in addition to cameras such as the legendary Ektra and classic Kodak Bantam Special. It became clear that Japan could manufacture high quality cameras at more affordable prices, so Kodak gave up that segment of the camera market and prioritized affordable snapshot cameras that of course encouraged the use of high volumes of their film.

Kodak Bantam Special from 1936. In my opinion, this was the most beautiful camera ever designed. It is ultra-compact (around 3 inches wide), made of precision machined parts with an aluminum shell, was fast to operate and made high quality photographs on 828 sized film. It costed $110.00 new, which translates to $1,793.75 in 2012 dollars (according to the Consumer Price Index inflation calculator).

The Kodak Bantam Special was designed by the legendary designer Walter Teague. It had a lightning fast f/2 lens that allowed high quality photos to be made with the slower ISO Kodachrome film. This was a camera for the true photographic connoisseurs who only wanted the best of the best, which of course means that I use one, even today (B&H sells 828 film for this camera). The pre-war versions used the German Compur shutters; Kodak was starting to use German parts for some of their cameras.

By the mid-to late 1900’s it was clear that Kodak really didn’t have any real rivals with film manufacture, even as there were dozens of other excellent film producers. Kodak was relegated to the production of amateur cameras (millions of units per camera model), having given up on the manufacture of professional quality cameras in favor of amateur versions, where volume was the key to success. Not only that, but as mentioned earlier, the cameras were not the key income producer, it was the film that Kodak was targeting with their largest volume of sales. Kodak also had the near monopoly with professional quality films too, it’s where pros went to get the film that defined their livelihoods. Kodak spent millions of dollars on research and development to assure that they stayed on top as the company that had a reputation for making the best films in the world.

The Kodak Brownie was produced in many incarnations and is one of the all-time volume sellers for cameras in the world. They were made of cheap materials and easily mass produced to sell to the masses. Everyone was supposed to be able to afford one, even people in the lower classes who couldn’t afford luxuries; Eastman’s philosophy was to make photography available to everyone. Many photographer’s first cameras (including myself) were Kodak Brownies.

Kodak’s most legendary film was the Kodachrome slide film, which was only discontinued last year as a casualty of the digital photography revolution. Their other flagship film was black and white Tri-X film, which is still manufactured today (and is what I ask my own students to use in our black and white film class, by the way). By the mid-1970’s Kodak sold an astounding 90% of the film in America; nearly a monopoly. These were the good times, and darker events were to soon unfold.

The Center for Creative Imaging in Maine was "THE" place to learn digital photography back in the early 1990's. It's where I learned many aspects of digital photography; it was an awe-inspiring place to learn, because Kodak spared no expense in making it the state of the art facility in the world for digital photography.

Did Kodak make the nails for their own coffin?

1st Nail: Ektachrome & the advent of Fujifilm

To begin with, I’ll make the assertion that these seven Kodak missteps happened because there wasn’t a George Eastman or Steve Jobs type visionary leader at the top to cut through all the nonsense and simply see that things got done, period. No messing around or heads would roll. I’m betting that not only did heads not roll, but there wasn’t any one entity held responsible for this long list of failures. My bet is that it was the board of directors trying to do some very difficult tasks via committee and it simply did not work. Steve Jobs would have told you straight out that some things you simply do not vote on, and in order to make innovation a reality, you must have a very strong-willed, tenacious leader taking charge and seeing that bad things absolutely did not happen, at  least not on your watch.

So in a very real sense, not only did bad things happen, they also happened in slow motion over many decades, and by this January’s Chapter 11 filing, there was hardly anything anyone could do to stop the downward spiral.

In my opinion, one of the big Kodak missteps happened throughout the 1970’s. For some reason, Kodak did not apply a high level of quality control over their Ektachrome films. Many of the 35mm versions of Ektachrome were simply awful with obvious color shifts and had a tendency to fade fairly quickly.

One of the drawbacks with Kodachrome was that it took a long time to process, and pros wanted a film that could be processed quickly and without the highly specialized labs that Kodachrome required. Even though it was the best film ever made, Kodachrome took too long to process in this speeded up world. I can remember sending packets of film to the closest Kodachrome lab in Palo Alto via many of the new overnight shipping companies that were springing up at this time.

Ektachrome slide film was supposed to fill the need for fast, same day processing and it only required a more basic process called E-6 chemicals and processing equipment. From what I understand, it was also supposed to use less toxic chemicals than the Kodachrome compounds. At any rate,  many of the Ektachrome versions fell right on their faces as dismal failures. Professionals were beyond belief that Kodak would release a substandard film, and voted with their feet by simply not buying the film. In the meantime, a company named Fujifilm in Japan was working on producing a high quality transparency film that could use the easier and more affordable E-6 same-day processing that didn’t have to be shipped to a specialized lab.

Fujifilm stepped in during the early 1980's and filled the gaping void left by Kodak.

Fujifilm came forth with a beautifully rich film that had the high color saturation, superfine grain, and accuracy that came nearest to the best of what Kodachrome had to offer. Pros didn’t have to deal with the awful Ektachrome anymore and Fujifilm became a nearly instant bestseller and took over a large segment of the film market that Kodak had owned for decades. It should have served as a wake-up call to Kodak that they were vulnerable to outside companies taking over a market segment that Kodak thought was invincible. Fujifilm only got better, and during the decades of the 1980’s and 1990’s Fujifilm had the audacity to displace Kodak and their E-6 line of transparency films. Kodak’s response was too little, too late and Fujifilm’s sales skyrocketed.

2nd Nail: Disc film… hush, sweep it under the rug, quick

This is more minor, but worth mentioning. Kodak was experimenting with a new film format called Disc Film. Kodak was answering the call for even more compact cameras, and it needed a more compact film to make it work, which is why Disc cameras and film came on the scene. The photos were too grainy even under the best circumstances and it was eventually discontinued due to low sales. A number of other film companies also made disc film, but none of them really had any success with it. Disc film was notable however, because it reflected the consumer’s desire for more compact cameras that made good photos.

3rd Nail: The Polaroid debacle, oh no

In my opinion, Kodak made a mistake by using the Polaroid instant film technology without bothering to buy rights to their use. The courts agreed, and in 1986 Kodak had to discontinue the manufacture of their instant films because it was infringing upon Polaroid’s patents.  This was a significant third strike against Kodak in the 1980’s and photographers and consumers were starting to wonder if perhaps Kodak was losing an edge in the world of photography. Kodak was still a powerhouse though, and could have recovered easily from these setbacks, but a downward cascade was set in motion.

The digital repreive

The bright spot in the above was that Kodak was taking the lead with inventing digital technology that was to set the stage for the transition to digital photography. In this sense, Kodak was in fact playing the role of being a visionary company by imagining the future of photography. Kodak came forth with a flurry of inventions and new patents for digital photography, and also found themselves collaborating with a large number of new players in the emerging field of digital photography.

By the early 1990’s the desktop publishing revolution had taken off, and programs such as Photoshop quickly became industry leaders on the computer side of the equation, as did Apple computer for the desktop of choice for digital photographers. Kodak released their first consumer level digital cameras in the early 1990’s, but they were fairly expensive and the public still didn’t have the infrastructure to really use the digital photographs. It wasn’t until 1997 that Kodak was able to market a megapixel point and shoot digital camera for under $1,000.00, so digital photography for the general public still wasn’t a reality yet because they were too expensive for the average consumer (it was roughly $1,400.00 adjusted for inflation in 2012 dollars).

Kodak DC120 digital camera that was the $1,000.00 price buster in 1997. I know this camera well, because I purchased the model immediately previous to this one, but it was badged with the Chinon brand, the ES-3000.

In 1995 the ES-3000 was priced at $1,400.00, and since I was going to make digital photography my livelihood, I purchased one. It was large, awkward and generally clunky, but hey, it was digital! It made 1/3 of a megapixel photos and represented the first generation of digital cameras. As I recall, it sucked up a tremendous amount of battery power in just a few shots and you always had to carry a lot of extra batteries with you. It had a 38-115mm equivalent zoom lens and didn’t have an LCD screen.

Kodak also collaborated with companies such as Nikon to manufacture some of the first high-end digital cameras designed for professional use. Many of these cameras were hybrids between film camera bodies and digital components. Most were nearly twice as large as regular 35mm pro cameras and costed thousands of dollars, which put them out of the reach of average consumers. It meant that in the 1990’s, digital photography was still too expensive for the huge amateur market and film was still dominant.

This literally looked like someone took a Nikon film body and screwed on the Kodak digital components. It was 1.5 megabytes of pure digital power.

This was a curious time in Kodak’s life, because it was at the crossroads of two photographic technologies, film and digital. I suspect that it made for a number of fierce debates on their board, because on one hand they had their lucrative film products that was their mainstay for so long, and on the other, they had the newer digital technology to explore. I don’t know this for a fact, but suspect that there was an internal war where the digital group was a minority, and likely had to fight for every little bit of funding for their endeavors, and the film group was not convinced that the digital group deserved the funding it was requesting. At least this is what it looks like from the outside. I’d love it if someone were to do the research to learn how this inside conflict unfolded over the years up until just now, when Kodak had to declare Chapter 11 protection.

4th nail: Internal conflict of film vs digital technology

This is the murkiest part of Kodak’s downfall and is admittedly little more than pure speculation. It appears that there was an internal conflict going on with Kodak and they simply couldn’t agree on whether they were to be a film company or a digital company, so their decisions with both seem to have been compromised by each other, but who really knows? The board of directors knows, but I’m betting that none of them will ever admit as much. We only have clues to this assertion, and I’ll bring the Kodak DCS 14n forward as an example.

5th Nail: The abrupt shift to digital photography (oops)

Kodak was doing some very exciting things by the early 2000’s, including releasing a flurry of small point and shoot digital cameras that were very solid and just as good, if not better than their competitors.  All of a sudden, the market was flooded with tens, if not hundreds of digital cameras made by dozens of companies, including Nikon, Canon, Fuji, Minolta, Konica, Sony, Olympus, Panasonic, Leica, Agfa, Casio, Sigma, and so on. The digital revolution was in full swing and consumers could buy a digital camera for less than a few hundred dollars. The years between 2000 and 2003 were little more than a blur regarding digital cameras because the market was flooded with them nearly overnight. All of a sudden, consumers were buying more digital cameras than film cameras and companies like Kodak were caught totally unprepared for the abrupt change from film to digital photography. Nobody thought that it would happen in the course of just a couple years and companies were unprepared for the dramatic hits their film divisions would take as consumers stopped buying film and film cameras.

On the professional end of the market, both Nikon and Canon were releasing some very high quality digital single lens reflex cameras (DSLR’s) that were starting to eliminate the need for film among pros too. Canon broke a price barrier with their Canon EOS 300D, which made high quality DSLR’s available to pros and serious amateurs for less than $1,000.00 with a kit lens. The higher-end DSLR’s were still overly expensive with many near the $10,000.00 price range.

6th Nail: The Kodak DCS 14n (the elephant in the corner)

The Kodak DCS 14n caused quite the stir among pros, because for the fist time (you can’t count Contax because they never released their version) a sensor the size of a 35mm frame of film was released. This has come to be known as a “full frame sensor” because most of the DSLR sensors are smaller than this (it also meant that lens focal lengths were accurate measurements again and did not have a factor to measure as with smaller sensors). Canon was set to release their version of a full frame sensor too, but it costed $8,000.00, three thousand dollars more than this Kodak 14n.

Critics called it a medium format camera because it had the unprecedented size of 14 megapixels, more than twice the size of most DSLR’s. It was a huge leap and even now, nearly a decade later it is still considered a large image sensor.

The Kodak 14n became “a nail in their coffin” because Kodak did not allocate the proper amount of research and development resources to make it successful. There were many very negative deficiencies that held the 14n back from being successful. It had excessive noise even at moderately low ISO settings, which meant that the camera was only useful in bright sunlight or with studio lights. This frustrated pros because they wanted to believe in Kodak and their high-end 14n camera; everyone desperately wanted this camera to be a success, an answer to their digital challenges. By this time, photographers were already used to high quality results from DSLR’s and Kodak was expected to easily surpass the quality of the smaller megapixel DSLR cameras.

By early 2003 it became clear to nearly everyone that the 14n was a failure. It caused a sensationalist stir in the online photography community, because by now there were a number of review sites where users could publicly share their conclusions about the camera and users were very vocal about the 14n’s shortcomings. Rants were common from users, as were photographers coming to Kodak’s defense. Kodak eventually quietly abandoned the camera, never publicly conceding defeat with it.

The 14n could be viewed as a key pivotal point with Kodak, because they had the potential to take a decisive lead with this camera, and it could have been a flagship digital camera that set the standard for future cameras from all manufacturers. The view from professional photographers was that it appeared that Kodak was not willing to do what it took to make this camera a success. This saddened many, and exasperated the ones who invested in the 14n camera bodies and lenses. It irked them that Kodak would give up on this camera that held so much positive potential, and a rift was made between professional photographers and Kodak, and many of them turned their backs on Kodak for good.

Canon and Nikon have stepped up to take the lead with DSLR’s, and Kodak is obviously not even a player anymore. This is where so many photographers like myself are disappointed, because Kodak was so close to taking the lead a decade ago with this 14n camera. In my opinion, this entire scenario helped set a precedent for how Kodak was to approach their digital photography initiatives.

7th nail: Overproduction of digital cameras and the iPhone camera

Another element of the digital photography scenario (that Kodak obviously can’t control) is that there is a glut of digital cameras being mass produced by nearly everyone. There are literally hundreds of models being released every year, all striving to become the most recent bestseller. Many of the models are nearly identical to each other and after a certain point there appears to be a clear lack of real innovation. Sure, there are lots of very cool models being made, and I just got a new one about a year ago that I like a lot. It appears that a few companies are distinguishing themselves quite nicely with models that are ultra-compact, yet go into manual override easily so that you can have a very precise control over the look of your photographs. Some even have a certain “coolness factor” that also jumps into the fray, just to make things more interesting.

This sea of digital cameras nearly became moot when Apple released their iPhone with a digital camera a few years ago. It’s first incarnation was low resolution and couldn’t focus or adjust the brightness levels. It was a low quality camera, a joke to real photographers. However, what it did have was an easy method to share its photos, either via Wifi or over the mobile service. It was ridiculously easy to share photos and it coincided perfectly with the social networking sites like Facebook. For the first time, way more photos were being shared online than being printed. I hear that people on Facebook are sharing 4 million photos per day. This means that people are crazy about the iPhone and other cell phone cameras.

Apple makes some of the coolest computers on the planet, but I've never been all that excited about their iPhone camera. I notice it still doesn't have any lens protection, which means that it's photos will be soft in no time, due to a scratched up lens.

Hardly any of the camera manufacturers picked up on this Wifi trend, even as photographers asked for connectivity. Camera manufacturers ignored these requests for Wifi with digital cameras, and as a result, the digital camera bestseller is the one with this feature, the iPhone. I think that even today, most manufacturers still don’t get it. Kodak was a player in this scenario and could’ve come forth with a bestseller if they responded, but this is just my opinion.

At any rate, digital camera sales are still not nearly as high as they could be because of the widespread use of the iPhone. Apple has become a digital camera bestseller, even with their low quality camera, because they led the trend with digital connectivity and ease of use. Any photographer can tell you that the most popular camera is always going to be the one you can just pull out in a few seconds, and today that is the iPhone. My advice still stands for Kodak and all the other camera companies; if you want to have a bestseller, make it with built-in Wifi that is easier to use than the iPhone combined with a higher quality camera. Easy as pie, what are you waiting for?

Conclusion: Can Kodak make a comeback?

All of the above is what I meant by a “slow motion downfall,” because it appears to have been a downward cascade over a number of decades that slowly  eroded Kodak until it is at the place it is today. As a professional photographer, I still do not want to give up on Kodak, even as it seems more likely that it will be cannibalized into a number of smaller entities.

I think that the irony in all of this is that at least a part of Kodak realized that the digital revolution was coming and it was critical to take the lead with it. The sad part appears to be that the leadership didn’t heed the findings of their own research teams.

I’m not sure what to think about Kodak’s disappearance from photography, except that it is not good. As of this spring 2012 semester we and many other universities still have a film component to our photography curriculums. Next week I am evaluating the Kodak Tri-X film from our students and a part of me is wondering how much longer it will be around. A long time I hope.

Here’s to you Kodak, and like I mentioned in the first paragraph, Kodak essentially defined my profession and for that I will always be sincerely grateful.

KODAK LIVES!

Story and photos Copyright Larry McNeil 2012, All rights reserved.

My spy in Japan tells me that the new Canon 5D MKIII is due to be released any day now, although they’re not sure what it’s going to be named. I hope they stay with the 5D name, because it’s already seared into our psyche as near legendary status (like the ultra-cool, classic Leica M6);  and besides, “5E” sounds kind of lame, like the room number they send the boneheads to when they mess up. In Tlingit, Eeeee means something bad, so that will not do at all, no sir.

It was important that our guy blended easily into the crowds in Japan. We think it worked, because a few people approached him, asking something in Japanese. He replied with a smile that he was Ainu and mysteriously vanished back into the masses. The last time anyone saw him he was quickly firing off a few frames on the night train out of Tokyo.

This essay is kind of a departure for me, because just about all of my published material in books has been about art, not camera gear. For artists, digital techno gear has become something that we have to stay on top of in order to push our art along. It doesn’t necessarily mean that gear drives the look of our art, I think it means that we need to constantly question how to make it all easier to get the looks that we imagine.

I'd say that the 5D is the best DSLR of the first decade of the 21st Century, and that's saying a lot. Look at who has it at his side all the time. What it all comes down to is having the ability to allow our imaginations to have the run of the world, and in my opinion, Canon does this better than anyone else.

My heartfelt open letter to Canon. I hope they take it seriously, man.

Run-of-the-mill, dull digital camera review sites & dealers

I’ve been noticing that many of the typical digital camera review sites write nearly identical reviews of each other with little new information. Too many of them lean towards the banal techno-babble style and they often merely parrot the blurbs from the camera manufacturers. So much for original thinking. With the internet we’re pretty much overrun with dummies who simply cut and paste from other sites. Like we won’t notice. On the other hand, there are some very good ones out there too and I’ve come to look forward to their reviews before going to play with a new camera at the camera store. I’m impressed with B&H when I go to NY and had my own favorite people at Gassers in San Francisco. The first place I met my wife was at a camera store in San Francisco, so as you can see, I’m serious about this stuff, no messin’ around.

The Real Deal; the best photographic gear reviewers in history (stand up & take your hat off)

The premium labs for performing accurate scientific measurements of photographic equipment simply do not exist outside of camera manufacturers anymore. Dang. It means that the independent scientific quantification of photographic equipment is really quite minimal compared to past decades when it was very rigorous and lively. It means we’re regressing on this front, and if we don’t watch out, we may be grunting our reviews to each other.

The magazine "Modern Photography" had the best lab in the world for objective, precise measurements for an entire array of benchmark tests, along with a large staff of highly skilled technicians. They essentially epitomized the scientific independent review of cameras and lenses, so that manufacturer's claims could be either confirmed or repudiated with hard scientific facts, and subjectivity was removed from the equation. My version of the lab test is to drop a camera on the sidewalk and if it doesn't crack or break, it earns the "Dang Good" rating.

My own 5D MKII experiences

I got my own 5D MKII three years ago, in February of 2009, and it was love at first sight. I was wrangled into shooting an annual report for Sealaska Corporation in Alaska and needed to bring a good all-around camera with me. The Canon 5D MKII was perfect because it  worked just as well in a studio setting as in a driving winter blizzard; harsh elements. I ran it through it’s paces, gave it the works from a hard driving pro who wrings every little bit out of his gear. After that I used the camera on a one-year Arts and Humanities Fellowship on a project having to do with the Global Climate Crisis, a couple trips to Aotearora (New Zealand) to work with cool Maori artists, and various art projects. It hasn’t failed me yet.

I’m fairly familiar with this 5D MKII and have grown to like it’s tough build, fairly compact size, ease of use and very intuitive controls, not to mention its sumptuous 21 Megapixel photographs.I like how Canon has evolved their camera designs from one camera generation to the next, because if you know one well, chances are good you’ll know the others too. Keep that going Canon, it’s brilliant. However, there are a few improvements that could be made, and hopefully they’ll show up on the new 5D MKIII, so here goes with my suggestions.

Drum roll please:

#1 Increased megapixel size and more efficient electronics, the medium format slayer on the loose

Of course, a digital camera is really a computer with a lens that captures images, and like us, it’s only as good as the brains that run it. I vote for the one with the better brains.  In that sense, Canon did a superb job with it’s Digic 4 processor. They say that every 18 months computers double their processing power and speed, so we’re likely in for quite a jump in hardcore image crunching power with the new MKIII. I would bet that we have an increase in ISO speed with less noise, but who knows? If this is the case, it would also foster the logic of increased megapixel size. I’m guessing 38 Megapixels, only because of the math with improved processor performance.

Ok give it up; you know that our number one request is more pixels. Hand 'em over.

If we do in fact end up with a 5D that has 38 Megapixels at an affordable price, that would mean that this MKIII went beyond being a straightforward DSLR and could theoretically represent a medium format slayer; that digital medium format cameras are on notice that their days are numbered. Especially if all those pixels can be fit onto a full sized sensor that didn’t have to make the leap to a larger medium format sized sensor. If this is the case, I can see why it took longer than usual for this MKIII to be released.

I would also make the argument that Canon should not charge a medium format price for a camera with this amount of megapixels. One of the reasons that the Canon 5D MKII was such a bestseller was because Canon did not get overly greedy with the price and charged a fair price for the camera. If Canon wants sales to skyrocket for a camera with this kind of configuration, it has to be priced affordably or else they’ll just sit on shelves in the store.

I’d like to see the electronics made more efficiently so that they use less power. I realize that the big LCD screen sucks up a lot of battery power, maybe that could be tweaked to be more efficient. Maybe even a firmware option so that only 40% of the screen is used in a pinch when you’re running low on power. The batteries are inordinately expensive. On the other hand, I am  happy with the image processor. It operates quickly and I’ve never had to wait for the frame capture to catch up with my shooting, even when shooting in fast bursts (such as my aerial photos of a coal mine from a small plane when I had to shoot like a machine gunner).

#2 Keep the full frame sensor size

I do like the size of the 5D body, but it could be made even smaller. I know some people with big hands like big cameras, but let them be ditch diggers or something more suited to their physique. Let us normal sized people have smaller cameras. This means not making the sensor larger, that would be a step backwards.

The full frame sensor is a perfect size for the array of lenses already out there, so I’d advocate for the sensor to stay the same size for optimal image quality while making the body smaller. In the future, smaller sensors are going to be the norm, but the technology is not there yet. I can easily imagine image sensors eventually being reduced to only the smallest fraction of the current full sized sensor, which will be a most excellent prospect because it will also mean having pro cameras and lenses that are only a fraction of the current size. Until that day, keep the full sized sensor and try and cram more pixels onto it without compromising image quality. Big cameras are a 20th century contrivance and should join the ranks of 8-track tape players, so pretty please with sugar on top, don’t make the 5D larger. Good riddance big cameras, bring on the tiny cameras with quality that current high-end pro cameras can only dream about.

#3 Wifi & GPS, because after all, we’re on the run, always

My next wish for the new 5D MKIII is Wifi. Look, it would just fit on the far left! The portrait is of the honorable Dr. Walter Soboleff, for the annual report shot for Sealaska, of course made with the Canon 5D MKII.

Wifi capability for a pro digital camera is long overdue. Look at what makes the iPhone so popular, it’s ability to easily send photos. Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to log onto a wifi connection and have the ability to send high-end photographs? This would help make any pro DSLR an instant bestseller. Just make sure that the controls are fast and intuitive so that we don’t have to mess around too much, we’re likely to be in a hurry. Wifi should’ve been made available to pros before amateurs, but better late than never. As long as you’re at it, put in a GPS, because we like to occasionally geotag photos along the way, it would come in handy. It’s critical to have the ability to easily switch it off though, because after all, some of our places are meant to be secret; mystery is good.

#4 Make it more rugged man, don’t hold back

While shooting a coal-fired power plant for one of my projects, it was driving rain when I arrived, and it only got worse as the afternoon progressed. It sounded like little pebbles hitting the windshield. I was losing light fast and had to do something, so I jumped out and fired off a bunch of shots from a few different angles, got back in the car to dry off the camera and repeated this until I got the shots I needed. This 5D earned my respect that day, and the photographs looked exceptional; way better than I could have expected.

Don’t get me wrong, the 5D MKII is tough, but it lacks the formidable feel of the previous generation of film cameras. Even after all these years of shooting with DSLR’s in snow storms and pouring rain, I still get the feeling that they’ll fail me if I shoot in the snow or rain for too long. Maybe it means using an even more robust covering with more rugged seals. I noticed that the camera body covering gets a little slippery when it gets moist. I want a camera that’ll be able to take a direct phaser blast and keep on shooting without skipping a beat, no wimpy cameras allowed.

Leica has a practice of sometimes letting people design a special edition of a camera. If Canon would let me design a limited edition 5D MKIII, it would be made out of brass, have special heavy-duty seals and the black paint would be weathered around the edges so that the brass would show through. How cool would that be?

#5 Figure out how to get rid of the image sensor filter

Let’s be honest here, it’s kind of ridiculous to make an image sensor with a filter in front of it that softens the image sharpness. This is where film is still better than digital photography. You can’t beat the sharpness from a film camera with a set of high quality lenses, and in the second decade of the 21st century, that’s just plain silly. Are sharp photos too much to ask for? This may be even more challenging to get rid of because of the addition of the integrated cleaning system, which puts even more material in front of the sensor, but does make it cleaner. It’s like making lenses out of the best quality glass and putting a cheap filter on it, resulting in unsharp photos. In this instance, film beats digital cameras, it’s no contest.

#6 Do a better job of streamlining the stinkin’ postprocessing tasks

After days deep in the shadowy labyrinths of the postprocessing mines you feel gritty & thrashed, and wonder why you're spending your life in front of a computer instead of behind a camera. Fresh air and bright light seem alien after days of digital postprocessing grunt work.

Every single photographer will agree that postprocessing simply takes way too long. It eats into slim profit margins and turns photographers into computer slaves. Instead of spending time on the creative end of things behind the camera, we’re spending more and more time in front of a computer doing postprocessing tasks. It means that our digital workflow is taking way too long. For an example, why not have the photographs shot at a native resolution of 150 or 300 pixels per inch, since these are already standard sizes for digital editing? Programs like Lightroom are automating many of the postprocessing tasks, but the interface settings between the camera and postprocessing software could be improved and speeded up substantially.

Another reality is that editing film is way faster than editing digital photos. It used to be that a professional photographer would shoot with transparency film, do a set of edits on a light table and simply put the film away in some orderly fashion. A big job could be edited and archived in less than a couple hours. With digital photography it can take days instead of hours to do the same thing. In this sense, digital photography is still way behind film photography and needs to be dramatically speeded up.

Maybe it simply means figuring out a way to speed up the electronic pipeline between the camera and the computer so that archiving and database protocols are way more automated than now. I get the feeling that this is caveman work, striking two stones together to build a fire and we’re missing something very basic here. Maybe it just means that this particular part of the evolution of digital photography is going too slow and something needs to be jump started to get it up to the proper speed. A better compression scheme for files? Pixels that are dual function? You read it here first. This is a copyrighted idea so don’t steal it. Fly me over to Japan to talk to your research and development people; I’ve got some interesting ideas on how to do this, we can solve this bottleneck.

#7 Sturdy interchangeable LCD viewfinder prism & magnifier attachment

One of the really amazing things that medium format camera manufacturers did was to make an entire array of viewfinders that used high quality optics for image magnification and to help shade bright light. Many also had high quality prisms so that you could hold the camera comfortably and naturally while composing your photos.This should be a built-in option for high-end viewfinders to attach to the 5D MKIII LCD screen. For an example, look at the variety of viewfinders that Hasselblad made for their viewing screens. They were both lightweight, had high quality viewing, and built extra rugged so they could take being banged around in everyday use. It’s completely absurd to not have the option of a built-in viewfinder for the LCD screen on a professional camera. I hope that the 5D MKIII eliminates this glaring shortcoming, especially with the advent of shooting digital video, but even with everyday still photography.

Canon can learn from Hasselblad with premium viewfinders. The interface needs to be made out of sturdy metal that has a simple attachment with few moving parts and made as compact as possible. Hasselblad viewfinders were elegant and built like armored tanks and you were able to choose from various prisms that allowed for viewing from different angles (with an LCD, 90º for looking straight down, 45º for near eye level, and straight out for looking straight into the LCD viewfinder with just magnification and no prism).

#8 Metering, camera controls, digital noise, white balance, etc.

I’m generally impressed with the camera controls and would advocate for increased simplicity whenever possible. As the electronics, image processor and firmware become ever-more sophisticated, their design should aim towards making the camera operations easier and more automated. It’s good to go into manual override along the way too, and there is much to be said for a clean, uncluttered design. If the controls become more sophisticated, something is wrong, because the controls should become simpler as the circuitry becomes more sophisticated. Therefore, the MKIII should be even easier to operate than the MKII.

I do like the philosophy of using dials and buttons for many of the more commonly used controls, it is way faster than navigating through all the layers of menu items. The menu items are nicely and logically planned out too though; I’d try and hold onto this simplicity in future versions.

There is always a bit of digital noise to deal with and this has to do with improved sensor technology. I get the sense that this is very evolutionary and will improve by degrees, unless there is a leap in technology, which could very well may happen at some point. I am certain that in 20 years we’ll be laughing at how crude today’s high-end DSLR cameras were designed. Same with things like white balance and more precise metering. It seems to me that it’s time for a leap in image quality for RAW files with things like an expanded exposure latitude with a broader dynamic range. I don’t want the sky, only better digital photographs.

Same with white balance; it seems that this is also one of the holy grails of digital photography in that it’s a constant quest for making it better. The bottom line lies with how well the camera sensor and image processor interprets specific scenes. The easiest scenes to replicate are simply ones with bright daylight. Good old 5000º Kelvin is easy as pie to interpret, even for cheap point and shoot amateur cameras. I would give the 5D MKII high grades on making accurate photographs in tricky lighting. One of the hallmarks of a good pro is how they make great photos in low light or mixed lighting. I would encourage the Canon research and development people to keep hammering away at how the 5D interprets white balance and to make it even more sensitive to the light and to keep striving for precision, especially in challenging situations.

#9 Don’t sweat the small stuff, but…

I do miss having a built-in flash, even if it’s a piddly wink. It’s useful in a pinch when you just need a burst of light quickly. Sometimes I try raising my hands towards the heavens and bellowing “LET THERE BE LIGHT,” but it hasn’t worked that well yet. I’ll get back to you on that one.

I was horrified at the tinny quality of the built-in microphone. It sounded like a 1960’s recording device, not a 21st century microphone on a top of the line digital camera. For the first time ever, I found myself purchasing an external sound recorder for one of my pro cameras. Even a video neophyte like me didn’t like the built-in mic, so video pros must’ve been even more disappointed.

I like it that there are interchangeable viewing screens and would advocate for a center split screen viewfinder so that photographers can focus more accurately when using manual focus.

Yes, we photographers can still sometimes focus better than the autofocus function, especially in tricky situations where you’re using a specialized lens or are shooting a scene with a complex composition where the auto settings may be utterly confused and it’s preventing a photograph from being made quickly. We pros need speed in all situations and it simply does not do to wait for the camera to try and decide where to focus, which is why a better interchangeable viewing screen is critical for getting sharp photos fast.

High Definition Video is all the rage

I’ll confess that video is my weakness and I hardly use it, although I am learning. Shooting high definition video is obviously both an art and a skill with a broad array of collaborators that are necessary if you are to do a bona fide video production. I can see that shooting video is radically different than still photography, and it takes way more production skills in order to do it well, such as scriptwriting, directing, sound, lighting, editing and so on. One of the key elements that is driving the push towards video is the reality that so much of the online content is leaning towards video, and even amateur point and shoot cameras can shoot decent video for online purposes. It makes me curious as to whether us photography professors need to rethink our photography curriculums so that they are more inclusive of current trends like digital video. In the past, video production would be a separate program; maybe now they need to be more closely linked.

I’m not even going to pretend to be an HD digital video pro, but instead, will send you to the Canon website where they have a very informative place for you to learn about what the Canon 5D is capable of producing in the hands of video professionals; check this out:

Canon DLC: Gallery: Cinema EOS: Insights from the Crew.

Canon has an interesting and useful "Digital Learning Center" segment to their website. I liked this one in particular, because they had a cinematographer and director talking about how they used a 5D for a video production. Pretend the video isn't a wannabe copy of "Blade Runner," but rather more an exercise in what the camera is capable of producing on HD video. Then click on the "Cinema EOS Media Gallery" link for more samples of video shot on the 5D. The clear message here is that you can get big-budget looks at a fraction of existing production costs. I suspect that the 5D may lead to other large sensor HD video cameras designed specifically for video, but we'll see.

State of the art

Well, there you have it; my nine (or was that 11?) suggestions for taking the MKIII way better than the MKII. Like I mentioned at the beginning, I suspect that the camera is due to be released fairly soon, and it’ll be fun to see which features Canon has implemented into their new 5D. And I hope that Canon takes me up on my request to talk with their research people as to how to add dramatic speed to their pixels. Until then, happy shooting.

"Winter in Juneau" was really shot in a blizzard in Juneau, deep in the heart of winter. I was thinking about Raven as one of our mythical creatures, and how the image is kind of a bridge between two bodies of work.

If you shoot with Canon professional cameras for over 20 years, you earn a tattoo that qualifies you for secret preferential services. Don't tell anyone I told you.

Story and Photographs Copyright Larry McNeil, 2012, All Rights Reserved.

I’d been grounded from driving for months (for medical reasons, nothing handed down by a judge) and my teenage son was my driver all summer and I’d noticed this on our forays around town. We were always  too busy to stop, but one day as we were going by I noticed that the light was hitting it in a very cool manner and asked him to turn around and go back to it. He parked and I walked over to shoot a series of photos with my little iPhone, since I wasn’t carrying any real cameras that particular day.

Shit house of the apocalypse.

Since I’m a photographer, I have a heightened sense of light and sometimes stop to photograph something just because the light was looking cool. I never take things at face value when it comes to photographic composition either, so I walked completely around the outhouse, paying keen attention to how it looked so differently, depending on the angles of the light hitting it. I liked the shadow side that also had a warm glowing reflection, as well as the highlight side where you could clearly see people’s handprints on the new metal.

This just seemed like a bizarre manifestation of the 2012 apocalypse stuff flying around, so of course it meant I had to stop and do a visual investigation. Anyway if anything bad hits this December, at least I know there will be a safe place to go to the bathroom.

Story & Photography Copyright Larry McNeil, 2012. All Rights Reserved.

You need a set of jewelers screwdrivers and tools, preferably ones that will take the screen apart without marring the finish. You take the case apart and set the screen aside and do a bunch of secret stuff to it. If it doesn’t take, you give it a sharp whack with a ball & peen hammer, just to knock a bit of sense into it. Show it who’s the boss around here, dang it.

Then you put it back together and voilà! You end up with a much cooler iPhone. Apple will void the warranty, but who cares? My warranty ran out decades ago.

Whoa! Look at all those cool new icons, man.

• My favorite new icon is the camera. Hey, I’m a photographer and don’t give a shit what anyone says, Hasselblad still rules all.
• The Stocks and Weather icons were made especially for 2012. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
• I’ll guarantee you that my maps are way more accurate than google’s dopey stuff. Made by none other than Scotty on the USS Enterprise.
• You can’t reach some of my contacts on a stinkin’ iPhone, you need way better Mojo than that.
• I’m not saying what happens when you push the “Larry McNeil” button. You’ll just have to find out for yourself.
• Some of my mail is delivered via the Raven Express and you definitely need good Mojo for that too. Reserve this one for important stuff.

I call this the Raven iPhone and now I feel like it’s mine and not some drone zone phone. Bottom’s up, man.

Story and Photos Copyright Larry McNeil, 2012. All Rights Reserved.

On this auspicious first day of 2012, I wish you an extraordinary new year and the hope that things improve for the people, and for our home planet. It seems that the global state of gloom and doom has gotten everyone’s attention by now.

I can’t help but be reminded that it is the struggle that defines humanity, and we are at our best when things get rugged. My advice is to remain flexible with whatever you encounter this year, especially if it’s challenging. Sharpen your wits to a razor’s edge and don’t forget the coffee.

Ice lens.

As for myself, I’m going to add a new camera to my bag of tricks, just in case. It has a built-in monopod that not only shoots cool photos, but can double as a zombie flail if need be. I call this my 2012 Digital Camera, because it takes five digits to grasp it properly.

My new custom-made camera setup for 2012.

Nothing freezes the zombie action like this 2012 Digital Camera. You realize I’m just kidding, right? It’s really not a flail at all; it’s just a camera for the upcoming year.

Have a great new year and remember, the magic words for 2012 are flexibility, preparedness and quick wits. Think like a raven.

Story & Photos Copyright Larry McNeil, 2012, All Rights Reserved

Gold DVD-R's are worth their weight in, well... gold.

Empty your digital camera’s memory card and burn the photos to a DVD-R disc. Same with the photos from your cell phone because I’m sure there are lots of cool ones there. Burning your photos onto gold DVD-R’s are the best way of saving them for the future. There is NO close second place here. Everyone always brags about how cool and fast digital photography is compared to film, and I’d agree for the most part. However, the one aspect that is more tedious is the archiving. It drives me kind of near the edge to have to do this all the time, but it’s the best method by a long shot. Take my word on this one.

I like to transform it into a kind of a Zen experience, where you put yourself in a quasi-meditative state and do a lot of them at once. Some of us even have our own choice composers to listen to as we merge into this higher plane. My own favorite is John Coltrane’s “Live in Japan” double album. His live version of “My Favorite Things” always sends me directly into the zone. As the raven flies.

Coltrane's Live Album has been known to open the portal to the universe next door, so be prepared to hold onto your chair or something.

Anyway, get some of the DVD pages so that you can put them all in a notebook. Organize them so you can find specific photos easily. Some people simply organize them by date. If you’re a pro, you use something like a photo database program like Lightroom or Aperture. In the big scheme of things, it doesn’t matter how you do it, the main thing is to just get them onto the gold discs.

Do this as one of your new year’s resolutions. Care for your photos. Ommm.

Story & Photos Copyright Larry McNeil 2011, All Rights Reserved

First Light, Winter Solstice (lithograph)

Back in the summer of 2007 I made a collaborative print with Brooke Steiger titled “First Light, Winter Solstice.” Brooke did a beautiful job and I really love this print, especially now at First Light, on Winter Solstice.

Raven steals everything that isn’t nailed down. Heck, even some stuff that is nailed down, so it was perfectly natural that I in turn “borrowed” Edward Curtis’ flagship photograph that he dubiously titled “The Vanishing Race.” Sorry Curtis, it’s mine now. Only it is changed to reflect a scene more grounded in reality. Rez cars.

Curtis made a high art out of constructing inane stereotypical scenes about Indians, such as this one with them riding into the sunset as a poetic farewell. The photographic scenes were a mix between what appeared to be museum dioramas and staged photo sets, complete with actors, costumes, makeup, and of course fine photography and lighting. In the midst of his photographic project on Indians, Curtis did in fact work for Cecil B. Demille as a Hollywood cameraman.

At any rate, Curtis passed his Vanishing Race photographs off as truth and did it with a flourish, because after all, he was a highly trained photographer; certainly good enough to get J.P. Morgan to provide seed money, to have President Theodore Roosevelt to write the forward to his books and have Cecil B. Demille hire him as a part of his own Hollywood myth making team. See the pattern here with myth making? I would put forth the assertion that Curtis’ work is ultimately about White Man, not indigenous people. Curtis’ photographs are telling a story strictly from the standpoint of White Man, plain and simple. It’s a romanticized Western story that has little to do with reality.

The young Edward Curtis trying to look mysterious. He was using his mom's hat in the lighting test and forgot to put his own back on.

Curtis was indeed a very talented photographer who made beautiful work about real people too though; the photographs were just not very honest much of the time, that’s all. I would have liked his work a lot better if he photographed the indigenous people as he actually found them, like in front of their cars, talking on the telephone or studying with electric light bulbs. Or better yet, with them riding by an old Rez car that was fading back into the landscape.

This takes us to First Light Winter Solstice, where I wanted to make the characters more grounded in reality, like them going to a Winter Solstice ceremony at first light, passing an old beat up pickup truck along the way. It’s about continuing ancient ceremonies, not fading into the sunset. Raven transformed the scene with a bit of magic, digital tools and good old artistry with a master Tamarind lithography printer. We had to solve a lot of very challenging creative and technical tasks too, and even had to recruit master printer Bill Lagattuta to help solve some of the more extraordinary technical roadblocks we encountered.

This Rez car was remarkably difficult to make and was where we had to pull in another master printer to get the look I was looking for.

It is only here at the first light of the new winter solstice that I again fully appreciate the teamwork that allowed us to make the lithograph I had envisioned at the beginning of our collaboration at the Tamarind Art Institute. It also took an entire team of organizations to make this project a reality, starting with the State Department, where the Arts in Embassies program resides. It also took the National Museum of the American Indian, the Tamarind Art Institute and many other key people behind the scenes to make it a reality. I send my heartfelt thank you to them all, including the other artists who participated at the time: Jaune Quick-to See Smith, Norman Aikers, Marie Watt, and Mario Martinez.

I love the idea of making art that was designed to act so specifically as an ambassador for our people. I was thinking of who we really are as Americans, both Indigenous and the proverbial ‘melting pot’ that forms our collective identity. I was thinking of early Cowboy and Indian films that formed the world’s perception of who we are, especially as a mythical place.

Raven the transformer never stops shifting things around, we are in a constant state of change.

I wanted a heroic Raven pictograph for the background because he is from our own creation story and frequently amuses himself with the often-subliminal nature of a quasi-educator, a poetic rascal. By using a sepia toned photograph I played with the perception that Indians were and are only in the past, and brought them into the present and did it with a bit of a sly joke that we can chuckle about. If we can take outdated stereotypical ideas and laugh about them, we acknowledge that they were indeed a bit absurd and we can move on in a good way. Especially at the first light of the winter solstice, which is also about transformation and continual shifts everywhere.

Art in Embassies website at the State Department. McNeil's editions may be tracked as to which Embassy is exhibiting a lithograph.

Story Copyright Larry McNeil, All Rights Reserved, 2011

Things were way too stuffy for the young West Coast California photographers; they needed fresh air, wide-open spaces, cars, the Pacific Ocean, the desert, a dash of eroticism (except for Ansel), dramatic light, and most of all, freedom from the stifling East Coast crowd and their mind-numbing Pictorialist dregs. The date was November 15, 1932, exactly 79 years ago today. It marked the date that the f/64 photographers had their coming out exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.

Come to think of it, these West Coast photographers didn’t really care for much of anything that remotely smacked of the East Coast (well, except for maybe killer bagels and lox), and even named their Oakland gallery the “683,” mocking the Alfred Stieglitz New York “291″ gallery. Mocking is good, I like that. Sometimes all you’ve got left is spunk and a nearly empty box of film. These new photographers couldn’t stand the pretentiousness of the cramped New York scene and were brazen about it. Danged if they were going to let a bunch of haughty East Coasters define them, and after naming themselves “Group F/64,” they even came up with a manifesto. How’s that for audaciousness?

Imogen Cunningham, Plant Pattern, 1920's

I absolutely love this photograph by Imogen; it reminds me of a ferocious great white shark being hunted down by Killer Whales from my ancient homeland in Alaska. The paper with the mottled light has echoes of mountainous waves and the black values at the top echoes the drama of a night sky, which is a perfect metaphor for trying to survive in the worst depression America has ever witnessed. It feels ominous and predatory without being didactic, and the coolest part is simply naming it something as innocuous as “Plant Pattern.” Brilliant, simply brilliant. Especially when you realize that it was the 1920’s and other artists were pretending to make work with relevance as Imogen was quietly making a portfolio of photograhic prints that had this visual aesthetic; she was a master of light in addition to the artistry of her compositions. I can only imagine her figuring out the light for this photograph, because like many of her other works, the negative spaces and shadows were just as pivotal as the highlights and mid-tones. Her carefully crafted rim of highlights served to add weight to the negative spaces. This is where blacks were so important, and I’m sure she spent many hours in the darkroom emphasizing this look, it wasn’t accidental by any means. Imogen knows blacks.

Not only that, but Imogen studied chemistry in Dresden Germany and her key research had to do with improving the platinum printing process. Printing with a platinum handmade emulsion is part chemistry, part alchemy and in my opinion, part mojo. There is something extremely challenging about working in that media because so many things can go unexpectedly wrong, but when you get it on target, you end up with the most beautiful photographs with a tonality and range of values that today’s digital photographers can only dream of attaining.

Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham and Ansel Adams were the most well known of the original seven members. They were fierce about breaking out of the painterly, soft-focus romanticized Pictorialist style and presented their own visual aesthetic that was a reflection of the new modernist times.

Pepper Number 30, Edward Weston, 1930

Unfortunately, the modernist times also included the Great Depression, which was in full swing, with poverty and unemployment the norm for most of the country. This was an essential part of what informed the mindset for this f/64 group, that the average person would have to fight for social justice in the land. It’s part of what fueled the radical “Manifesto” part of their identity; it was both rebellious and assertive about hammering out a new paradigm for themselves.

Floating Nude, Edward Weston, 1939. Weston was starting to experiment with spacial values that were nearly surreal, but also wanted to hold onto the realism that Group f/64 developed.

They wanted a style that epitomized what big cameras and high quality lenses were capable of making; they wanted to stretch the capabilities of what photography could offer, including a look that had the entire photograph impeccably sharp from corner to corner with a tonal range that pulled as much out of their film as it could offer, which meant rich blacks, a full range of mid-tones and detail in the highlights.

Aspens, Northern New Mexico, Ansel Adams

In order to capture this new modernist look, they needed lenses that could stop down to f/64 in order to maximize sharpness, especially if camera movements were involved that minimized distortions, hence their name. They also needed to shoot with view cameras, generally either 4×5 or 8×10 if they could afford the larger more expensive film. Part of their photographic workflow included using the large camera that took a great deal of patience and meticulous handling in order to make the careful and studied compositions. They needed the large cameras because the larger film translated to less enlarger magnification, which in turn meant dramatically finer grained prints or almost eliminating film grain altogether.

Dunes, Oceano, Weston 1936

Agave, Imogen Cunningham, 1920's

Van Deren Coke, who used to be the Curator of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and then later a scholar at the University of New Mexico, described Cunningham’s photographs as “Her inherently sensuous subjects- large graceful flowers, elegant tapered leaves and rounded cacti- were transformed into formal compositions by her emphasis on close-up views, geometric detail and the tendency of shadows to appear as opaque silhouettes in photographs. Cunningham speaks to the beauty of pure geometry in nature… (From “Photography: A Facet of Modernism” P.36).

Van Deren Coke is one of my heroes because he helped establish the Photography Area at the University of New Mexico where I earned my Master of Fine Arts degree and also earned a Van Deren Coke Fellowship as a graduate student.

So how does this Group f/64 body of work stand the test of time 79 years later? Especially as we slip and slide around in the Postmodern zone, where anything goes? I’d say that Group f/64 set a nice standard for photographers and artists who want to break out of outdated conventions, aesthetics and ideas about the creative process. They made it just fine for photographers to let go of the old ways of thinking, especially in troubling times as we are in again with a large scale socio-economic depression of our own. I’m reminded that perhaps it is time for another manifesto that signifies a shift in the social strata of the land, and have it reflected in a new paradigm of art making.

All I really know is that as a photographer, I have an appreciation and gratitude for the beauty of the f/64 work. There came a time back in the late 1990’s where I needed to use a 4×5 camera in a studio with lights and everything. I couldn’t get the look I was looking for with scanned negatives, so I shot on 4×5 Polaroid film and made platinum prints from them because it had a wider tonal range, so I could squeeze out a few additional tones of black. It did the trick, so it was cool that I was able to pull this modernist stuff out of the hat like it was a magic rabbit or something.

Raven asks Pontiac, McNeil, 1998. Made with Polaroid type 55 negative film and a handmade platinum emulsion. I'll have to confess that I was looking for a modernist look with the hood ornament, because I really love that Group f/64 feel, especially when combined with the 19th century platinum printing process. It was a total hybrid.

Ordinarily, the story would end here, but since I’m an artist and photographer first, I thought I’d share what I’m doing with some of these f/64 modernist tools in 2011. I take that back, my Schneider lens only goes to f/45, but that’s plenty good enough for my plan. I just purchased a heck of a camera on eBay, a very cool Wista 4×5 rangefinder field camera. What’s cool about it is that it uses the large format film, but you can use a rangefinder for focusing, which makes it way faster for photographing people. I guess that means I’m not really an f/64 purist, but that’s okay I guess. I’m not the least bit worried about it,but am very excited at the idea of using a 4×5 camera again, because it has that beautiful f/64 look that digital cameras can’t quite squeeze out yet.

Wista RF 4x5 field camera for my next project.

But wait, you haven’t heard it all yet– I have ten boxes of Polaroid Type 55 negative film to use with this. Wow. For you photographic peasants who don’t know what this means, too dang bad, I’ll show the photos in a future entry. But for now, happy 79th year of having the f/64 photographers splash on the scene. Here’s to all of you, bottom’s up, man.

Story by Larry McNeil, Copyright 2011, All Rights Reserved.

The Apple Computer website, October 6, 2011

An artist or a poet would recognize the Steve Jobs story in a heartbeat. He was a general at the top of his powers whom was humiliatingly ousted from his army and sent into the wilderness to live via his wits alone. It’s an origin story that has it’s roots in ancient times. After years in the scorching desert, he returns to his nearly defeated army and by force of pure will, transforms them into a blistering fighting machine that lays waste to the enemy, leaving them all in smoking ruins.

I’d say that a critical part of this story had to do with the life-changing transformation that came from his fall from grace and the toil and humility of fighting for his survival in a paradigm turned upside down and inside out. It’s a story of knowing deep in your soul that you are mortal and vulnerable. It’s a story of how someone responds to extreme adversity, which is why he had a nearly demented love/hate relationship with the underdogs of the universe, and fought relentlessly to institute the new paradigm he envisioned while in the depths of the desert wastelands.

Jobs had more than a vision, it was more like a burning insatiable hunger of transformation that had to do with leaving his rivals in a humbling and miserable ocean of mediocrity. In this sense, he had way more than an executive’s desire for manufacturing products. This was intensely personal, and is what drove him like a madman, because he knew intuitively that time was indeed short and one could be ejected at any time and he sure as hell didn’t want to find himself in the scorching wilderness again. That was a powerful lesson that he only needed to learn once, and he ran with it like a general leading an army whose days were numbered if they failed. There was nothing abstract or philosophical about any of it; this was about gut-wrenching survival, about overcoming the odds to win and win big.

Here’s to you Steve Jobs, nicely done.

PS: In my opinion, Jobs seems way more comfortable navigating as a Taoist than a Buddhist, what with his shrewd strategies more closely resembling Sun Tzu than that of a Buddhist monk.

Story by Larry McNeil, Copyright 2011, All rights reserved.

I could relate to Curious George and his health issues.

But the Gods of Wheels were smiling down on me. My son, who was about to turn 16, just finished Driver’s Ed and he became my chauffeur for the summer. He did a fabulous job by the way, taking me wherever I needed to go all summer long. Thank you T’naa, you did a most excellent job! Well done, my boy, you are a true McNeil team member.

Teenager Rite of Passage: Today was our son's first day of driving a car... I really liked the facebook feedback from friends by the way.

At any rate, we both did exceptionally well, and yesterday marked the three month freedom date, and I’m now free to bicycle commute again! I thought a good way to celebrate was to have my favorite cycle shop “George’s Cycles” do a pro tune-up on my wheels. I named my bike “My Private Jet,” by the way. When people ask whether I can make it to their art openings, I tell them, “I’ll just have to see whether My Private Jet is up to it.”

Man, there's nothing like a professional tune-up; it means the universe is spinning with attitude.

This is a true thing of beauty, almost like a new lens or laptop right out of the box. The gears are beautiful. I'm so easy to please.

My first bike ride in 3 months was awesome. Ok, so it was a bit slow & I got winded, but it felt good. I have a feeling it'll take a few weeks to get back into bike shape. This is the front of our house. Let's ride, man.

This bike is cool because it’s an all-weather machine. I pack my laptop in the canvas saddlebags along with a change of clothes for when I get to school. In my opinion, it’s worth investing in a cool commuter bike because of all the money you save on gas. I noticed that it costed $63.00 to fill up my gas tank in my little Forester this summer. Dang!

Want to know the coolest part of being a bicycle commuter? I get to spend the money I save on gas on fun stuff! Yeah man.

Today I’m a bit sore from my first ride in three months, but am ready to hit the road again, it feels good. Get a bicycle and spin. For the good of the land, for the good of the air and for the just plain good. This is part of my Boise State University Arts and Humanities Fellowship by the way, because it has to do with helping to minimize the carbon dioxide emissions belched into the atmosphere from our automobiles.

Sometimes you've just got to stop and ask about the meaning of life.

Have fun and be safe.

Story Copyright Larry McNeil, 2011, All Rights Reserved.