School boys in the Amazon port city of Manaus leap from fishing boats into the Rio Negro below a central city market. The Rio Negro enters the Rio Solimões at Manaus to form the Brazilian Amazon. © Kevin Moloney, 1995

Henri Cartier-Bresson… Garry Winogrand… Helen Levitt… Robert Frank… André Kértész… William Klein… Jacques Henri Lartigue… Marc Riboud… Raymond Depardon… Elliot Erwitt… Joel Meyerowitz…

A school girl in Havana looks up to chat with a friend. © Kevin Moloney, 2001

I started this list as I thought of who all the great street photographers might be. But I stopped early, realizing that in photojournalism (or any of its other pseudonyms) we all photograph life in the street.

Some of these photographers have made street photography the central aspect of their work, like Winogrand and Levitt. For others, like Frank and Klein, it is the piece of a complex work puzzle that made them most famous, or led to other opportunities.

It started when I was asked recently by student Danielle Alberti:

“The second you put the camera up to your eye, it seems strangers suddenly become very aware of you, and often suspicious. And because it’s in public, it’s rare that you’ll have enough time for them to relax. So we often find ourselves doing the subtle ‘lower the camera and hope autofocus works’ trick. Of course, when this trick works, I think it works well. But do you have any other street photography suggestions that might help when you want to photograph an interesting stranger without disturbing the scene (or pissing someone off)?”

This is a very common problem for young photographers (and old). We love how photographing someone pulls us into their world. But street photography can feel a bit more like an attack, or sniping. You’re often making images without explicit nor even tacit approval.

Women chat in the central market in Bamako, Mali. © Kevin Moloney, 2007

This is also the single hardest thing to which young students of photojournalism must adjust. Even those who have worked cameras for years grew up posing family or making live images of friends with whom they are comfortable. Then I come along and ask them to hunt. It’s an initially daunting task.

Many sense that the world has changed and the streets are meaner to a camera than in the past of Cartier-Bresson, Levitt and Evans. I do agree that there was perhaps a sweet spot, when cameras were familiar enough and photos not easily published in a way that the subject would feel harmed. There may be some truth in the idea that today, with the Web’s ubiquity and possibility, that any image can affect or harm you.

Maybe today, a camera can steal your soul more easily than before.

A bride taps out a cigarette as she poses for prenuptial photos near the Church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição, or Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, in Ouro Prêto, Brazil. © Kevin Moloney, 2009.

But I think this is only a partial truth. On any given street, in any time, you could find the camera-suspicious alongside the camera-nonchalant. The situation hasn’t changed that much. And official restriction on images has waxed and waned throughout photography’s two centuries.

So how did the greats act on the street?

Wait, watch, shoot. Cartier-Bresson was the cat. “Like an animal and a prey,” he said in The Decisive Moment, an educational program produced by the ICP and Scholastic in the 1970s. A nervous hunter, he scanned the world in front of him to anticipate the moment where something slight or something grand would unfold.

“That’s why it develops a great anxiety, this profession. because you’re always waiting… what’s going to happen? What what what what?

In photography you’ve got to be quick quick quick quick. Like an animal and a prey, braaam like this. You grasp it and you take it and people don’t notice that you’ve taken it.

I’m extremely impulsive. Terribly. It’s really a pain in the neck for my friends and family. I’m a bunch of nerves, but I take advantage of it in photography. I never think. I act. Quick.”

Cartier-Bresson was as subtle as he was quick, carrying one small camera and typically one small lens. He often saw a setting and waited patiently for a character or moment to complete the scene, making only a frame or two. “You shouldn’t overshoot,” he said. “It’s like overeating or overdrinking. You have to eat, you have to drink, but over is too much. Because by the time you press and arm the shutter once more, and maybe the picture was in between.”

Granted, now we have cameras that can make more than ten frames per second. How could you miss?

Travelers pass a Tyranosaurus Rex display at Pittsburgh International Airport advertising the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. © Kevin Moloney, 2007.

You miss by becoming a massive presence on the street. The big cameras that do that can be intimidating enough. But add to that the assaulting power of a motor advance ripping at you like a machine gun, and suddenly everyone feels attacked rather than honored by the image.

Indeed we may soon find that some of the most important street images are being made with ubiquitous and inoffensive cell phones.

If Cartier-Bresson was the cat slipping elegantly and unnoticed from portico to portico on the street, Garry Winogrand was the nervous, fast-walking, bemused, gleeful, grunting American bear rumbling down the sidewalk.

His approach was as different from the French style as his images were. He waded into the stream of street traffic and deftly snatched salmon from the upstream flow.

Joel Meyerowitz described working the streets with Winogrand in Bystander: A History of Street Photography:

“Yeah. Oh yeah. You know, he set a tempo on the street so strong that it was impossible not to follow it. It was like jazz. You just had to get in the same groove. When we were out together, I wasn’t watching him — we were both watching the action around us — but I did pick up on his way of working and shooting. You could see what it was in his pictures. They were so highly charged, all you had to do was look at them and you began to assume the physical manner necessary to make pictures. They showed you right away that they were an unhesitating response.

Walking the streets with Garry gave me clues to being ready, to just making sure that I was. I had been a third baseman, so being ready came naturally. I was a quick study on that stuff, darting and twisting and the kinds of moves that were necessary to get a picture.

You know, if you hesitate, forget it. You don’t have but a fraction of a fraction of a second. So you have to learn to unleash that. It was like having a hair trigger. Sometimes walking down the street, wanting to make a picture, I would be so anticipatory, so anxious, that I would just have to fire the camera, to let fly a picture, in order to release the energy, so that I could recock it. That’s what you got from Garry. It came off him in waves — to be keyed up, eager, excited for pictures in that way.”

Winogrand was so keyed up about making photographs that he is said to have left behind 2,500 rolls of undeveloped film and 300,000 unedited images at his death in 1984.

With those numbers you might have expected him to have loved the motor drive. But he used the same little rangefinder cameras as Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank and others. He was just a relentless hunter.

A boy walks below artfully painted walls in the village of Pucará, Bolivia. Ernesto "Che" Guevara was captured by the Bolivian army in 1967 in a nearby valley and executed in nearby La Higuera days later. © Kevin Moloney, 2004.

He also moved quickly, pushing his Tri-X film to ISO 1200 and higher so he could shoot a 1,000th of a second shutter speed at f/16 and never miss a moment from blur or focus. He did this through much wider angle lenses than Cartier-Bresson. He marched down the street, straight toward his subjects and whipped up the camera the moment he or they passed. It was like a surprise punch. He wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t look and wouldn’t engage. He simply marched on with a bemused smile.

Of course, in my classes he would also be forced to engage with subjects in ways he didn’t. I require IDs and full captions to build reporting skills and skills of engagement with subjects. The game changes when you must shoot at, then talk to, a subject.

Winogrand’s work is amazing, visceral and live. But it did not need the journalist’s caption. “I don’t have anything to say in any picture. My only interest in photography is to see what something looks like as a photograph. I have no preconceptions.”

Helen Levitt, who died only last year at 95, had an eye for busy streets. Though the famously private Levitt said little about her working methods, she did tell New York Times photo critic Sarah Boxer in various interviews, “You’re talking about the past, honey. I’ve been shooting a long time.”

When asked if she followed people to photograph them, the nonagenarian said, I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t remember following anybody.”

“I go where there’s a lot of activity. Children used to be outside. Now the streets are empty. People are indoors looking at television or something.

The streets were crowded with all kinds of things going on, not just children. Everything was going on in the street in the summertime. They didn’t have air-conditioning. Everybody was out on the stoops, sitting outside, on chairs.

In the garment district there are trucks, people running out on the streets and having lunch outside.”

Cuban elementary students line up in martial form after a field trip through the city. In Cuba, the land of party-run TV, nobody stays in to watch television. © Kevin Moloney, 2001.

Was she disarming? Maria Morris Hambourg, curator of photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art tells NPR’s Melissa Block, “She’s very quiet. She’s like a cat — very slight. She moves softly. There’s no imposition of a mood or a tone or a need. If the picture didn’t present itself she would not have ever forced it.”

But Levitt did admit to Block that she used a right-angle lens from time to time, deceiving people around her about where her camera was aimed.

Perhaps Helen Levitt simply made a natural act of photographing on the street, analyzing not the act but the result.

A local theater troupe promotes an upcoming show at a Lafayette, Colo., street fair. © Kevin Moloney, 1999.

So how do you roll, then, looking for Cartier-Bresson’s complex fleeting moments, Winogrand’s sanguine street document, Frank’s dark beat poem or Levitt’s sensitive and charmed glance?

Body language is everything. We have a choice of being quick like Cartier-Bresson, elusive like Winogrand, or disarming like Levitt.

A young girl in traditional Indian dress dances through Cuzco's Plaza de las Armas as her brother hangs onto the family dog at rear. The kids were put on display for their mother to attract alms from passers-by. © Kevin Moloney, 1996.

Carry yourself with sincerity no matter what method you might choose. If you appear to have the right to be there with a camera, passers-by will assume you do. If you relax, appear to be having fun and mean no harm, you might be more easily tolerated.

Let your intent for photographing appear on your face. If you are charmed by someone’s antics, smile as you photograph. If moral outrage shared with a subject drives you, carry yourself with concern and sincerity.

Never appear critical, unless you are as big as Garry, as surly as Weegee or as fleet as Henri.

When caught, engage. Walk up with a charmed smile and explain who you are and why you’re photographing.

Be ready to share. Offer images to your subjects and they will feel less like they’ve been exploited. Give them your e-mail address. Don’t ask for theirs.

Teens Ariel Farmer, 14, left, Kyla Sharp Butte, 14, center, and Will Sharp Butte, 15, hang out on the hood of a car in the parking lot of a convenience store to pass time on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in southern South Dakota, Thursday, May 24, 2007. An epidemic of teen suicides and attempts has reservation adults worried. Making these images caused a worried father — even one to whom I had introduced myself — call the tribal police. © Kevin Moloney, 2007.

Expect the protective concern of parents. Children are one of the most fun of street subjects because they live their young lives with little restraint or self- consciousness. But thanks to the creeps out there, they may fear for their child’s present and future safety when someone makes a picture.

Photograph those kids just the same, if possible without affecting the scene by asking first. But as you do, glance around for parents, and if found, make eye contact as soon as possible with a nod and a smile. As soon as you can, introduce yourself and offer a business card and copies of the pictures. Proud parents will love the images and trust more the person who is unafraid to say hello.

If there are no parents apparent, ask the children where they might be and find them. If unfound, give the child a card, because Johnny or Mary will surely talk about “that nice bearded photographer with the sunglasses who took pictures of me in the park.” You’re asking for calls to the police if they don’t know who you might be.

But there is no specific recipe for success. You will surely find fun, pleasant and trustworthy people who feel honored by your attention. And even the most bright-faced young photographer with the biggest smile will encounter people accusing her of being a freak, a creep or a terrorist.

Pigeons fly overhead as a Havana resident looks up to gauge the day's weather. © Kevin Moloney, 2001.

Get your street legs by photographing public events. People are not surprised by being photographed for no apparent reason at a parade, festival or event. Then take your confidence out to the everyday world.

Though you have a right to photograph on the street in the U.S. and most places, when you encounter resistance, apologize and walk away with a smile. You’ll never convince them of your rights anymore than they will convince you with their indignation.

Make those images. Explore the visions and moments of the street and leave a document of the 21st century as valuable as the one our predecessors left of the 20th.

…Michael Ackerman… William Albert Allard… David Alan Harvey… Werner Bischof… David “Chim” Seymour… Weegee… Edouard Boubat… Willy Ronis… Bruce Davidson… Jodi Cobb… Walker Evans… Josef Koudelka… Ben Shahn… Martine Francke… Roy DeCarava… Miguel Rio Branco… Leonard Freed… Antonin Kratochvil… Manuel Alvarez Bravo… Dorothea Lange… Marion Post Wolcott… Dan Weiner… Wayne Miller… Diane Arbus… Graciela Iturbide… Danny Lyon… Berenice Abbott… Martin Parr… Eugene Richards… Larry Towell… Alex Webb… Sylvia Plachy… Lee Friedlander…

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Others have written at length on this subject and their work is a valuable resource. For further reading have a look at:

Bystander: A History of Street Photography, by Colin Westerbeck and Joel Meyerowitz
Thames and Hudson, London, 1994

The Street Game Is to Be Distinctive Without Seeming to Work at It, by Sarah Boxer of the New York Times

President Obama on the magazine cover and in the original photograph with Charlotte Randolph, president of a Louisiana parish, and Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard. Right image © Larry Downing/Reuters (hotlinked from nytimes.com)

I was unhappy to see today that Britain’s venerable Economist joined the ranks of other foolish magazines that unacceptably alter cover images.

Its June 19 cover features an image of Barack Obama in front of an offshore oil rig, looking as upset as Obama seems capable of looking. It’s a strong metaphor that fits their “Obama v BP” headline.

The problem is that there were two other people in the original Reuters image. And in seeing the whole frame Obama is not looking down in dismay. He’s gazing at cleanup materials at his feet or bending an ear to parish president Charlotte Randolph. The context for the downward gaze was entirely removed.

The criticism over the last two days has been justifiable, and the response from the editor in command as unjustifiable. Economist deputy editor Emma Duncan told the New York Times:

“I was editing the paper the week we ran the image of President Obama with the oil rig in the background. Yes, Charlotte Randolph was edited out of the image (Admiral Allen was removed by the crop). We removed her not to make a political point, but because the presence of an unknown woman would have been puzzling to readers.

“We often edit the photos we use on our covers, for one of two reasons. Sometimes — as with a cover we ran on March 27 on U.S. health care, with Mr. Obama with a bandage round his head — it’s an obvious joke. Sometimes — as with an image of President Chavez on May 15 on which we darkened the background, or with our “It’s time” cover endorsing Mr. Obama, from which the background was removed altogether — it is to bring out the central character. We don’t edit photos in order to mislead.

“I asked for Ms. Randolph to be removed because I wanted readers to focus on Mr. Obama, not because I wanted to make him look isolated. That wasn’t the point of the story. ‘The damage beyond the spill’ referred to on the cover, and examined in the cover leader, was the damage not to Mr. Obama, but to business in America.”

If I could bring her into my classes and ask her to comment on the alteration decision, I doubt she would survive long under questioning from students. I, like most of my colleagues, hope to train students beyond the simplistic “you just don’t do that” argument. Critical thinking is a key to good journalistic judgment, and rarely does the easy answer hold up.

Let’s look critically at Duncan’s reasoning.

1. “We removed her not to make a political point, but because the presence of an unknown woman would have been puzzling to readers.”

First, intent is not evident to a reader. Her lack of intent to make a political point is irrelevant. You lose any argument that a decision is apolitical as soon as an alteration is made, because why else would you alter history?

Second, a puzzled reader is a simple thing to overcome. As Wilson Hicks, the venerable editor of Life Magazine noted, it is the combination of words and pictures that most effectively communicates. Few if any journalism pictures can stand alone without a caption. More puzzling than a mysterious extra person is the choice to put a deceptive picture on the cover of one of journalism’s most esteemed publications. Why would she want to erode reader trust by changing what was before the camera?

2. “We often edit the photos we use on our covers, for one of two reasons. Sometimes — as with a cover we ran on March 27 on U.S. health care, with Mr. Obama with a bandage round his head — it’s an obvious joke.”

“Obvious” is the key there. Digital alterations of news images is a hot-button issue because as journalists we seek to not deceive readers. I frankly have no trouble with heavy-handed art made from news images in news publications as long as it is patently obvious to the average reader that the image has been rethought, combined with others or torqued beyond question. I have not seen that March 27 cover, but I would guess it is pretty clearly a digital mashup. But this June 19 case is certainly not so. They made this woman disappear in a way that Stalin would envy.

How many of you image-savvy professionals out there would have spotted this as an alteration? Would you flip several pages deep to hunt for the six-point credit that reads, “Photo Illustration by…”?

And if the average person did, would s/he think that the term “photo illustration” was anything more that a couple redundant words before someone’s name? (Having not seen the magazine yet I have no idea if they credited the image in this cryptic way).

It’s OK to be plainly, playfully obvious I think. But this was certainly not a transparent change.

3. “Sometimes — as with an image of President Chavez on May 15 on which we darkened the background, or with our “It’s time” cover endorsing Mr. Obama, from which the background was removed altogether — it is to bring out the central character. We don’t edit photos in order to mislead.”

I think they did intend to bring out the central character here, and I can sympathize with that hope. I am sure their ideal cover involves a clear, simple graphic statement that acts as a metaphor or confirmation of lead story. Having seen neither the Chavez nor Obama Health Care covers, I can’t judge whether they were obvious enough for me. But removal of anything from an image is misleading and can be even if the image is only cropped. There was context behind both those heads, and perhaps even context cropped by the photographer as s/he shot the images. Cut-out images need to be as transparent as any other. Even if those two other examples were as clear as I’d hope, this June 19 image is not.

Here are some questions I’d ask a class:

How many images have been made of Obama? Of the Gulf oil spill? Of Obama at the Gulf oil spill? Is this really the only image out there that makes this point? Isn’t a better answer — one that would maintain the critical trust of the readers — to find a different image?

If all that is impossible and you feel the only image available would not work without being altered, then why not go all out? Why cop out with the simple removal of a person who was there giving context to that image when you could find a perfect Obama, a perfect flaming oil rig and make something infinitely more artful and obvious?

Caricature-like montage illustrations are a cop-out in my book too, but if there’s any place they work it might be magazine covers or opinion pages, so it’s a reasonable choice here — certainly better than this deceptive alteration.

This is an excellent example of why we should not alter journalistic images. Intent to deceive or not, the entire story has changed from the original to the final alteration.

4. “I asked for Ms. Randolph to be removed because I wanted readers to focus on Mr. Obama, not because I wanted to make him look isolated. That wasn’t the point of the story. ‘The damage beyond the spill’ referred to on the cover, and examined in the cover leader, was the damage not to Mr. Obama, but to business in America.”

Then why is this the one and only image that could be used? Why was this frame so important that it needed to be deceptively altered? For me the resulting image says only that Obama is disgusted with the spill somehow. And that isn’t the true message of the original frame. The original Reuters picture says Obama discusses cleanup efforts with local and national officials. So this altered image lies. And if the story is about the damage to business in America, then this image is a total failure. No hint of that message is there.

Like every similar case I see, the excuses are simply excuses. When a publication decides to make an alteration to a news or documentary image it all comes down to laziness. They didn’t take the research time, the creative effort or the thought to find the honest solution. And the resulting justifications (of which there are hundreds) are simply poor justifications.

Riders prepare to take to the chutes for a bull ride at a small arena behind the Stampede Steakhouse in Fort Collins, Colo. Nationally ranked professional bull rider Bryan Guthrie often rode in the small local series. Guthrie died of an overdose of heroin last December. His former friend Joel Murdoch faces sentencing in June for conspiracy to distribute drugs. © Kevin Moloney, 2010

© Kevin Moloney, 2010

Rider Tyler Rick and bull explode from the chutes at a small arena behind the Stampede Steakhouse in Fort Collins, Colo. © Kevin Moloney. 2010

Professional bull rider Scott Barajas, 19, of Cheyenne, demostrates the up-facing riding position of his good friend Bryan Guthrie. Stitched into a patch on Barajas' protective vest is "BJG † 1988-2009." © Kevin Moloney, 2010

Barajas and girlfriend Kaitlyn Eisenbarth share a dance floor kiss at the Stampede Steakhouse following the bull riding action in Fort Collins, Colo. © Kevin Moloney, 2010

The NY Times story

Stars from a moonless and little-polluted midnight sky shine over the distinctive buttes at Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park in southern Utah. © Kevin Moloney, 2009

There’s a spot I love to camp in Utah, on the edge of a red rock canyon miles from the nearest town. On a clear moonless night the stars are so rich that I can never sleep. I spend most of the night gazing at the curls and eddies of the Milky Way, smiling at passing satellites and listening to wind hiss off the wing feathers of diving swallows working the cliff-edge currents.

“I’ll find a deal on a clock drive,” I’d think to myself, wondering how I could photograph this amazing visual. I’d get the star-tracking device astronomers use to keep a far-off celestial object in their lens for longer than a few seconds.

Below a starry sky, light from the Glen Canyon Dam upriver glows from cliff faces on the Colorado River below the dam. © Kevin Moloney, 2010

Using film, or a digital camera only three years ago, it would have been necessary to expose for hours to get the detail I wanted. And without complex engineering the stars would all move and become the clichéd star trails in a camping photo. The clock drive would be a compromise too, as in relation the ground would move. Capturing both that sky and the canyons below it would be a daunting task.

Now camera manufacturers have reached astronomical heights in low-noise ISO, and making that photo is remarkably simple: A bright lens, ISO 1600 or so and maybe 30 seconds. In that time the stars don’t move much and the camera’s sensor seems to see into even the shadows of light cast through the atmosphere by a city a hundred miles off, or from the stars themselves. I just have to get back to that favorite spot under a new moon.

But it’s not just about stars and gimmicks. As the photographers of the last century must have felt when film reached ISO 100, “You can photograph anything now.”

ISO has become such a versatile and useful element in the equation of photography that I wish camera makers would promote the controls for it to the same level as shutter speed and aperture. I want to change it as often as I change those two.

For Harry- or Mary-DSLR-owner this means great cushion in getting that family moment onto Facebook. For a professional photojournalist, though, it is versatile power. Some of the world’s most disturbing, telling or satisfying moments happen after the sun is down, in only the smallest hints of light. What every storyteller wants are better tools with which to tell the full story.

This power was immediately put to use in the toughest places. Images of conflict and injustice in the night started appearing as fast as this generation of cameras appeared. Look, for example, at the work of Tyler Hicks and Michael Kamber. Also, while searching unsuccessfully for one image (possibly by Hicks or Kamber) I found the work of Michael Yon.

And in their latest edition, National Parks magazine filled their cover and several inside spreads with starry landscapes. The story was written by my colleague and sometime student Anne Minard.

Four-wheel-drive trucks pass the dune field of the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve as the stars roll over on a moonlit night. With film like this, a beautiful, but different story. © Kevin Moloney, 2007

Another of the great gifts of digital photography is the perfect ability to correct color in white balance. This has been there since the first RAW files on my notoriously bad Nikon D1. (Give it a break. It was first out of the chute for truly usable digital cameras.) Film corrections took exposure-robbing filters that needed  a huge investment in time and money to reach commercial perfection.

These wonderful tools are certainly helpful to amateurs too, and lately a few colleagues have admitted being nervous about them in the hands of just anyone. I suppose in days of old it was as much the technical craft of photography that separated us pros from the great un-hypo-cleared masses as anything. Only we had the know-how to correct fluorescent lights and expose at ISO 3200. But what has separated us from just anyone with a camera is the ability to tell the story well and accurately.

It’s not the tools that do the job. It’s the experience of the photographer that does.

This is a beautiful age in our art. Not only do we have almost all the power of the film world still at hand, but we have the ever expanding power of the digital world at our fingertips.

This is my ode to the digital age. Never has our toolbox been so full.

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Thank you for being patient between posts as I teach, study and shoot. Summer is here!

Charles Moore: I Fight With My Camera

Charles Moore is the legendary Montgomery photojournalist whose coverage of the Civil Rights era produced some of the most famous shots in the world (the dogs and fire hoses in Birmingham, the Selma Bridge, and Martin Luther King’s arrest in Montgomery, among many others.) His photographs are credited with helping to quicken the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The noted historian, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. said that Moore’s photographs transformed the national mood and made the legislation not just necessary, but possible. This is his story.

Each semester, as I show some of the work of Bruce Davidson to my students, I find myself wondering why I can only name a few photographers who deeply covered the Civil Rights Movement: Davidson, the recently deceased Charles Moore, Danny Lyon, Gordon Parks… There are a few others.

The events of the movement — big and small, violent and not — are the material of photojournalism dreams. As we develop as photographers we imagine honing in on where the world is changing, going there and documenting history in the making. As a culture we look back with awe at what was accomplished by brave activists, marchers and average citizens.

But why does it seem so few photographers of the time honed in on that movement as a historic change in American history? Like today, there were tens of thousands of photojournalists in the U.S.

Perhaps it was the background news noise of a generation. We feel the brief flash of an earthquake, but not the constant continental drift. I’m sure many more photographers than those above were dispatched to a march, a riot, an arrest, and covered them as one-off news events without ever sinking into that time of great change as a story itself.

So what is happening today, around us, as background news noise, that will be an astounding piece of history to the next generation? And when will we start working on it?

Behind me, on the other end of my office, is my grandfather’s 1923 Underwood upright. As a kid I pounded on it until all the keys bunched up in a wad. I rolled the platen. I rang the little end-of-line bell.

I love computers and digital technology. I am fascinated by the powerful communication tools offered by the 21st century. But nothing beats a cool mechanical device. The sensuality adds to the creative process.

A.I. Moloney's 1923 Underwood. © Kevin Moloney, 2010

Writing on that machine — a few high school papers when my father wouldn’t let me on his IBM Correcting Selectric — was a physical endeavor with all the rewards of exercise. You swing fingers into the long throw of the keys, controlling the strength of a word through how hard you pounded the letters. The emotion of a word or line exploded into the act of typing.

Each line musically ended with a sweet ding and a gratifying swipe at the carriage return lever. Through the process your mind needed to stay three steps ahead of your fingers, plotting each word and paragraph in advance to avoid a retype of at least a page. When that page was done, you could melodramatically grab the paper and yank it out of the platen with a satisfying and final buzz of the ratchet.

Just over a year ago I pulled out the small portable Smith-Corona my father used in college. I thought my seven-year-old guests would be happily occupied banging on the keys and tangling the font the way I did. “Is this an old computer?” Zoe asked with a gasp of fascination.

1946 Meridian 45B with a Wide-Field Ektar in a Flash Supermatic Shutter. © Kevin Moloney, 2010

In photography I get the same pleasure from pulling a dark slide out from in front of a fat sheet of film, or from cranking a film roll into a Rolleiflex, or from cocking the shutter of an old Flash-Supermatic leaf shutter. I listen to the soft trip of a Leica M3 at 1/60 second and savor the polished roll of the advance lever mechanics. The sense of beginning in those actions is so much more palpable than in the slip of a memory card into a slot and the tinny ping of a DSLR.

In a darkroom I still relish the feel of a roll winding onto the stainless-steel reels, the sour smell of the hypo, the suds of the Photoflo. Watching an image appear as I tip the corner of an amber-lit tray takes me instantly back to age 15, a basement darkroom, and the excitement of discovery.

But I am not a Luddite. I am a master’s student in Digital Media Studies at the University of Denver as well as a working digital photojournalist and photojournalism teacher. I find sensuality in the visual and aural output of the digital age and the elegance of its engineering. But that’s another post.

My message is only this: Remember to embrace the process of your work and find joy in it the way you find it in your images. As le maitre Henri Cartier-Bresson excitedly giggled and growled:

“For me it’s a physical pleasure, photography. It doesn’t take many brains. It doesn’t take any brains. It takes sensitivity, a finger and two legs. But it is beautiful when you feel that your body is working or, like this, full of air… And in contact with nature… It’s beautiful!… Pow… Grrrettta… Arrruff! …You see?!”

The Jazz Loft (Linked from The Jazz Loft Project)

I was out of the country teaching photojournalism in southeast Asia when this series aired on WNYC and in edited form on NPR nationally.

The series first crossed my radar as a jazz head and grabbed me as a W. Eugene Smith fan. Of particular interest to photojournalists is episode two, “Images of the Loft.”

Smith has long been one of my heroes for his polishing of the photographic essay form, starting with his 1948 Country Doctor essay and on to Minamata, one of the most powerful pieces of environmental journalism ever done.

Between the two he beautifully photographed Dr. Albert Schweitzer, nurse-midwife Maude Callen, a village in fascist Spain, Haitian insane asylums and many others.

Between that famous work for Life magazine and the stunning Minamata book, he lost himself, barely able to leave a dingy loft on New York’s Sixth Ave.

W. Eugene Smith at his loft window (linked from NPR.org)

He continued to photograph — a personal and introverted essay shot entirely through his fractured window, “As From My Window I Sometimes Watch,” and thousands of images of the jazz musicians, such as Thelonious Monk, who came and went through the tenement at all hours of the day and night.

He also printed and collected obsessively, and tried to edit and reexamine his massive, beautiful and improvisational body of work from Pittsburgh.

At the same time, new technologies appeared that appealed both to Smith’s documentary impulses and to his undying interest in music — the tape recorder.

Late last year, Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies and WNYC produced an extensive audio documentary and book on The Jazz Loft where Smith lived. The program’s dual focus on Smith and the jazz musicians who jammed there is only possible thanks to Smith’s recorder, thousands of tapes, and his obsessive nature.

An exhibition of images will open at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts on February 17 and run through May 22, 2010. It will travel to the Chicago Cultural Center, Duke University and the University of Arizona where Smith’s archive resides.

If Smith captures your imagination, admiration and sometimes train-wreck fascination the way he does with me, see the exhibition. Also seek out the 1989 docudrama “Photography Made Difficult,” and the 2003 book on his three-year, 11,000-frame Pittsburgh project.

Crews of volunteers hurriedly unload donated food, beverages and clothing at a distribution site in Homestead, Fla., before an afternoon storm sets in on the heels of Hurricane Andrew. © Kevin Moloney, 1992

Haiti could be the story of the year, and scores of international photojournalists are there now, more than a week after the devastating earthquake. Their work has been powerful and has unquestionably influenced the amount of aid headed there in the aftermath.

Though some journalism about the disaster (as usual) has been an embarrassment, overall the coverage has made me proud of my profession. Those photographers will eventually leave gratified, exhausted and permanently affected by their work.

But for the rest of us who are not there I suggest we support causes and charities that matter to us as photojournalists.

Here are a few photojournalist-related favorites:

L’Hôpital de la Communauté Haïtienne is a hospital run by an aunt of photojournalists Phillippe and J.B. Diederich, and the sister-in-law of their father, journalist Bernard Diederich.

Images without Borders includes sale prints by former student Tomas van Houtryve as well as other international photojournalists who have worked with Doctors without Borders.

Another one of very great importance is Internews, an organization that trains and supports local journalists around the world. Basic support of democracy, information and the Fourth Estate does not come from international journalists who parachute into the disaster. It must come from the locals who work the streets of countries like Haiti every day. And though those parachute journalists certainly help draw attention and support from the wider world, it is local information, delivered on the spot in local languages that can save lives immediately. Help Internews help Haitian and other local journalists get back up and running on their life-or-death jobs.

Read or listen to Bob Garfield’s interview last week with Mark Frohardt, the group’s vice president for Health and Humanitarian Media, on NPR’s On the Media…

…and then send a bit of help to any of the above.

–

To my readers I apologize for the sparsity of posts of late. Jobs of shooting and teaching now matched with study of my own has my schedule thoroughly filled. I hope you’ll stay tuned for monthly posts.

Leica M9, 21mm f/2.8 Elmarit ASPH. © Kevin Moloney, 2009.

Through the generosity of the Rocky Mountain regional Leica rep, I had the chance to take Leica’s new full-frame, 18 megapixel rangefinder with me to Southeast Asia this month. It was  a great chance to really use a camera thoroughly for evaluation. They loaned it to me mostly because I have one on order, and it wouldn’t be delivered before the trip.

I don’t write a camera review blog, but several students have asked for this. And rangefinder cameras (film, digital, old, new) have a deep place in photojournalism.

This will also not be an overly technical review. If you crave test charts, densitometer readings and firmware analysis, there are some great ones on Erwin Puts’ site and dpreview.

Reviews like this can also be very contentious as many photographers carry an irrational loyalty to certain brands or camera forms. I’m a fan of them all and find advantages in everything from a view camera to TLR, rangefinder, or high-speed DSLR. I’m camera agnostic. Please do comment, but do so knowing that these are simply my impressions from three weeks of use. This is far from the final word.

Form Factor, Handling, Construction

The reasons for using a rangefinder of any brand are often discussed. I’ll mention mine. There are quite a few rangefinders available, from Leica, Zeiss-Contax, some almost new from the recently defunct Rollei, also from Epson and Cosina/Voigtländer. There are classics still quite usable from Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Kodak Retina. Many… These are much different than a live-view compact camera though. By rangefinder I mean there is an optical coupled rangefinder focus device that projects overlapping double images within the viewfinder.

You see differently through them. The whole view is sharp and in-focus, and many photographers like me find that composition becomes more complex and layered when you see at very deep depth of field. With an SLR you only see with the shallowest depth of field, which can yield a different kind of image.

Layers of action in Old Havana. Leica M6TTL, 28mm f/2.8 Elmarit. Fujichrome Provia 100. © Kevin Moloney, 2000

Rangefinders are extremely quiet and subtle cameras, intimidating subjects far less with smaller size, less shutter noise, and by covering much less of your face when you shoot.

They are quick to lift, quick to focus (yes, even manually) and that makes them very stealthy on the street.

With all but the widest lenses, the photographer can see outside the frame while looking through the viewfinder. Once upon a time sports photographers preferred rangefinders because they could see the action coming and anticipate the moment very well. This has proven itself to me over and over. For example when using a long lens — a 90mm or a 135mm — I can see so much of the world outside the frame that catching a fleeting moment becomes simple. You know it is coming before it enters the frame lines. To get the same with an SLR you need that loud, fast, subject-startling motor. Why was le maitre Henri so good at catching those decisive moments? Perhaps because he could see outside the frame of his shot. My timing is much better with a rangefinder than it is with an SLR.

A fleeting bird enters the frame suddenly. Seen outside the frame lines of a Leica M6TTL with a 90mm f/2.0 Apo-Summicron ASPH. Fujichrome Provia IV. © Kevin Moloney, 2008.

Fast motor speeds are irrelevant with these cameras. First because timing is actually easier, and second because if you’re going to spray shots at eight frames per second you might as well use a big obtrusive camera with gigantic zoom lenses.

I use SLRs too, and they have their advantages. Rangefinders just do different things for me.

Leica M8, 50mm f/1.4 Summilux, lens-mounted IR filter. © Kevin Moloney, 2009.

The M9 is certainly a Leica rangefinder. In the hand it only feels different from 50 years of M ancestors because there’s no thumb advance and the body is slightly thicker. The view through the finder is more than familiar. It feels almost exactly like my M8 and much like my M6s.

The construction of this one was fairly solid as I would expect — again, much like my M8. But I have three complaints. Starting with the M6TTL, Leica changed the way the rangefinder is calibrated. Now repairmen need a special tool. I think Leica did this so people would stop wrecking their cameras by trying to fix it themselves (a bit patronizing). But the aftereffect is that the calibration screw cannot be tightened as well even by a good repairman. The cameras are easier to knock out of alignment.

This one was no exception. It is a demo model that had been handled before I picked it up, and sure enough the focus calibration was slightly off. I couldn’t safely use long lenses wide open and be sure of a sharp image. For that I used my better-adjusted M8. On this slightly off M9 the wide angles were razor sharp wide open, but they are more forgiving than a 90mm f/2.0 for example

My other complaint with this one is that the twist latch on the camera’s bottom plate — where you put battery and SD card, and where you once loaded film — was a bit loose. The cover fit perfectly, but the latch handle sagged a bit.

The third complaint is that though my M8 will (albeit begrudgingly) use a high-capacity SD card, the M9 will not yet. I assume that will be corrected in firmware. But with these big files a 2GB card fills fast.

Image Quality

Here’s the important part. The shape of the camera, after all, is more than 50 years old.

Leica M9, 21mm f/2.8 Elmarit ASPH. ISO 160. © Kevin Moloney, 2009.

Resolution

Leica’s first digital rangefinder was the 10-megapixel M8. The M9 has now 18 megapixels. They did this simply with a 30-percent physical increase in size from the M8′s sensor. The pixels themselves are the same size and the same distance apart from each other on the chip.

Though in the digital age the first 8 megapixels were life or death, I have to say these last 8 megapixels make for a much smaller difference. You can see a bit more detail in the images from an M9 than those from the M8. But shooting the M8 raw makes images that can be very nicely interpolated to 25 megapixels and have an image only marginally inferior to one from a 25-megapixel camera.

Print both as large-format magazine doubletrucks and you will not see a difference. You won’t in 16X20 prints either. How much resolution do you need and what is it worth in terms of investment in camera and data storage?

Leica M9, ISO 160, full frame. © Kevin Moloney, 2009.

100% view of the above frame.

The great resolution is achieved in Leica’s cameras by using a much weaker anti-aliasing filter, which does a variety of geeky things including eliminating the moire that happens when photographing visual patterns like window screens.

Though you get a moire slightly more often (it’s not often a big deal) you do get much sharper images. And that sharp Kodak sensor paired with so-sharp-you-can-cut-yourself-on-the-pictures Leica lenses, you can enlarge much more. Pixels be damned.

Resolution is not only about pixel count, and the M8 started in a good place there. But then they made the M9 with 18 megapixels.

Leica M9, 28mm f/2.0 Sumicron ASPH, ISO 640. © Kevin Moloney, 2009.

Color quality

On both cameras the color quality and depth are excellent. It is slightly better on the M9 than the M8. There’s a very rich natural contrast range and good saturation. But the depth is there too, giving a raw shooter the ability to soften contrast, dodge, burn, correct shadows and highlights with as little damage as one finds in new high-end Japanese SLRs.

The M8 was good, though, and still is. I have no complaints about its color depth, though my three-years-newer SLR is a bit deeper. The M9 has caught that fine Japanese machine for color.

The M8 suffered at the beginning from too much infrared sensitivity. This was due to a thinner IR filter on the sensor — a necessary compromise to make the thing fit in such a small body. Leica caught hell for this, probably because with Leica most people expect the camera to start out perfect. And why not at these prices? Leica fixed that with lens-mounted filters, and they gave each M8 buyer two. Problem (almost) solved.

Though wearing a gray suit, the combination of artificial lights and synthetic fabric made Alberto Gonzales' suit turn purple from an excess of infrared light. Leica M8, 90mm f/2.0 Apo-Summicron ASPH, ISO 640. © Kevin Moloney, 2007.

To get the full benefit of that fix also required having the lens mount changed to sport a set of black and white stripes that tell the camera which lens you are using. The cost was $75 per lens (cheap for anything Leica) but took some time. It was particularly necessary with the wide lenses that would suffer a cyan-colored vignette from the filter. Problem exchanged.

With long lenses (50mm and up) that vignette is not noticeable if there at all, so the lens mount change was not as necessary. I skipped it on lenses from 35mm and longer. But then the camera creates image thumbnails that look a bit green and a bit weak on some image browsers like Photo Mechanic that just use them straight from the camera’s file. The images themselves are lovely, but the thumbs can be uninspiring.

By fixing this IR problem in the M9 you gain a couple things. You don’t need the filters anymore and you don’t need the lens mount coding if you can’t afford it.

That 6-bit lens mount code does still have function. It helps the camera correct aberrations and vignettes, and records the focal length in metadata. But who cares? You can fix the very rare lens problem in many raw converters, and only absolute camera geeks care about that level of metadata detail.

The M9 does suffer from one color issue. With extreme wide angle lenses you may see a magenta shift on the sides fading over 1/4 of the frame. It’s annoying. It’s a tricky thing to fix in editing either raw or in Photoshop.

Leica M9, Voigtländer 15mm f/4.5. Note the red/magenta shift on the left side of the frame caused by light striking the pixels at an extreme angle. © Kevin Moloney, 2009.

This is caused by the extreme angle at which the light rays hit the sensor when coming from a super-wide. I see it when I use my inexpensive little Voigtländer 15mm lens. This may be something corrected by the firmware in the M9 when using a Leica branded and coded lens, like their 16mm.

If you like extreme wides, you might think twice, or cash out for the Leica lenses. I use that lens rarely in full-frame shooting. I got it so the cropped-sensor M8 would have a 21mm perspective. It worked very well for that. I doubt I’d use it on an M9 except in emergency.

Noise

Low noise is not the realm of the Leica M8 nor M9. If you want the best quality at insanely high ISOs, have a look at the Japanese models.

But the M9 is a one-stop improvement over the M8, now making shooting at up to 1600 fairly pleasant. Pair that with a series of lenses that are one to four stops faster than a Japanese zoom and you’re fine.

This camera uses a CCD sensor designed for optimum sharpness. They also apply far less firmware noise correction than the high-end DSLRs do. So though they are noisier, the images are sharper. And if I need to fix noise, I’d rather have full computer control myself than leaving it irrecoverably to the camera.

Many have praised the noise of the M8 (and now the M9) as looking more like film grain than other cameras. I love film grain for what it is. But it’s crazy to think of paying $7,000 for film grain. I’d rather have noiseless images at every ISO and add it later if I’m feeling nostalgic.

Leica’s “film grain” noise is not an advantage to praise. But correcting that noise is very easy to do thanks to the sharpness of the images. The M8 or M9 shot raw and processed delicately through Noise Ninja or another software solution yields images as noiseless as a high-end DSLR even at extreme ISO.

I have not posted high-ISO images here because doing so at such a small size is fairly meaningless. But here is a link to a raw file at ISO 1250, the highest rating I tried. Play at your leisure. The camera will go to 2500, but I hadn’t planned a detailed review and rarely shoot there on my own. Other reviewers have nice examples.

Leica M9, 35mm f/1.4 Summilux ASPH, 1/40 sec. at f/1.4, ISO 640. © Kevin Moloney, 2009

Should you get one?

Here’s the deal. The camera body is $7,000 ($5,200 for students). That’s a chunk of change. It’s a couple trips overseas to shoot a story or two. It’s some big Japanese glass. It could pay for lots of things. New lenses start at about $1,300 and shoot to $10,000 each. Used they are half that, but half that is still a lot. I have taken more than 20 years to put together my kit from mostly used gear.

There are great cheaper lenses available from Voigtländer, Zeiss, and Rollei if you can find them. The cameras use almost every Leica lens made since 1955.

But the price is something to think seriously about.

If you have no Leica and want a digital one, I’d say the M9 is your machine. You’ll get happy use from it for years. Get new lenses and you’ll benefit from all that the Leica firmware can provide.

It might be $1,500 better than the M8.2, assuming you could still find an M8.2 new.

It is not $3,000 better than the original M8 if you can find one of those new.

It certainly is not $5,000 better than a used M8 camera.

The older M8 is still a great machine and the differences in practice are very small between it and the M9.

If you’re poor and you REALLY REALLY want full frame, get an M6 or earlier body. The price difference between a used M6 ($1,000) and an M9 would buy an awful lot of Kodak’s amazing new Ektar 100 film, with processing, or many other great films. Buy a Voigtländer camera with their good lenses and save even more.

And if you’d just like to try a rangefinder camera for fun, haunt ebay, flea markets and pawn shops for a 1960s-vintage Canonette, Olympus Pen F or XA, or a Russian or Chinese Leica knockoff.

When you’re sure you are a rangefinder shooter, then the M9 is worth every penny.