A Physicist is an Atom’s Way of Looking to Itself – Niels Bohr

Living close to nature provides for unplanned moments of delightful encounters. This morning I was enjoying my first cup of coffee when a mamma deer and her two fawns came to say hello. It was simple, short and without pretension.  I held my 1960s Nikkor-H 180mm telephoto steady waiting for all of them to look at me.

And they did.

… As a street photographer, I avoid taking photos of persons looking at me. It defeats the purpose of capturing folks in their natural environment and un-influenced attitude. But, there are encounters when having the subject(s) notice my presence can add to the story I try to capture with every click.

Here is a couple:

Downtown Prescott, Arizona. It was a reenactment of cowboy shoot-out and all actors were dressed accordingly. I wanted to have the lady look at me as it added more unscripted liveliness to the staged movements.

Santa Cruz, California. This man was, well, “Soo California!” The young man jumping the fence in a wet-suit to catch some waves was as well, but I wanted a reaction from others walking the ocean side. The women on the left provided that context.

So, as in any form of art, there are no prescriptive rules to follow all the time: if the subject looks at you and adds to the story, go ahead and click!

April 19, 2017

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2017

When a Photo Becomes a Painting

I have done a few posed photo sessions, primarily as portraiture. In all instances I knew the persons and that is essential to trying capture the character of that person as one knows it.  I always mention to them that whatever I capture is there – my lens will not alter or “create” a smile or a capricious look.  Often, the person who asked for a portrait will look at the product of my darkroom and say “Hmm, I did not think I tilt my head like that” or “funny, I look just like my mother!”

When I can unveil a side of them they may not know, I feel like I accomplished what I had in mind.

… Recently a friend and well known Native American painter asked me to take photos of a woman she wanted to paint. I had not met the model before and did not know what to expect. The idea was that I would take photos of her with a buffalo hide around her shoulders with the hope that one of my photos may help my friend have a constant model in her studio to paint from.

After all, the buffalo hide weighed more than the model and one cannot expect her to stay still for more than a few minutes under that weight in a studio!

So, decided to shoot a roll of medium format film with my Mamiya 1000s from the 1970s.

We spend a short time talking before the shoot. I could see certain postures that seemed to define who she is.  A Native American artist from the Yaqui Tribe, she is a photographer who still uses film!! I could not recall the last time I met someone who still does so on a professional level… I thought I was the last one left standing….

Her name is Night, and given her dark hair, I could not resist mentioning to her that “Night” would be the equivalent to “Layla” in Arabic as a woman’s name. That made her smile very discretely, and I wanted to capture that smile.

Therefore, by the time I started taking photos, I knew what I was looking for. Interestingly when looking at the negative strip in my darkroom, I realized that the shot I wanted was the 12^th frame out of the total 15 shot. Perhaps it took me that many clicks before anticipating the look I wanted. That is why it is so important to know the person before doing portraiture.

…So, here is the frame I chose. I printed it in two ways:

First by blurring the background using the traditional dodging method under the enlarger’s light. I have discussed this simple method here: https://liveingray.blogspot.com/2014/01/dodging-and-burning.html. I find the dreamy aspect of this photo quite charming.

Second, I wanted to somehow give texture to the plainness of the buffalo hide (the smooth hide was around her neck and the fur on the outside) which gave too much of “empty space” around her. I like contrast in B&W photography. Well, I like contrast in all aspects of existence …. So, wanted to do something creative, but in traditional darkroom printing one has one sheet of paper, one exposure to light through one frame of film. So, I stopped exposure (with a dark purple filter in front of the light bulb) at 12 seconds of exposure, and moved the paper around hoping to get it right. Then I exposed the negative again, on the same paper, for 7 seconds.

I was pretty close. I wanted a shadow of her face in that empty space of the hide and the paper rotation was spot on.

… The most delightful part of this experience was that I had a chance to learn more about her around a cup of coffee we all had after the session. But not just any coffee – my friend had a pound of Lebanese ground cardamom coffee and a hand hammered solid copper coffee pot! I made 5 cups of coffee, one for everyone in the room.

Night is a very talented photographer – some of her photos can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/Night.Hush.Photography/

April 19, 2017

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2017