Crosswalk No. 46
For the past few weeks I've been using the Sharpening brush in Aperture on the subjects of the Bus Stop and Crosswalk shots to make them pop just a bit…
For the past few weeks I've been using the Sharpening brush in Aperture on the subjects of the Bus Stop and Crosswalk shots to make them pop just a bit…
Before discussing the photo, let me offer a few thoughts on transportation policy. Actually, no. Yesterday's screed garnered a fair bit of attention, mostly positive (or at least the negative…
The Domino's Sugar Refinery in Williamsburg has not produced sugar for about 6 or 7 years. It's demise is not the result of economics. It is the result of government…
As much as I hate to draw attention away from the subject of this photo, in the background you can see the guy who was the subject of yesterday's image.…
Here's a minor mystery - this guy will show up in tomorrow's image taken a few minutes later and a few blocks away.
I'm extremely busy today and if I do not just post this without really writing anything about it, it will not get posted. So, here it is. Any questions, feel…
OK, I found one more like yesterday, where one person is giving me a look and everyone else just goes about their business. My favorite here is the woman resting…
Another shot where one person sees me and everyone else is oblivious. I kind of like these.
Williamsburg has a variety of ethic groups and cultures living in close proximity but often not understanding each other. Here is a story of the occasional tensions between two such…
I'm getting a little tired of my usual bag of post-processing tricks, and I have several images in my publishing queue that are pretty much HDR-processed, but with no additional…
Summer is just about over and I', still posting images from before the weather turned warm.
Yesterday I walked through Williamsburg Brooklyn with a simple kit: my D700, a 50mm f1.4 prime, and a 24mm F2.8 prime. Also - no tripod. I shot mostly with the…
Smoke is evocative, mysterious, moody, and unpredictable. It can both interfere with and enhance a photograph. It is also the title of my favorite photography movie, even though it is not really a movie about photography.
There is no definitive list of best photography movies. Some people think of documentaries or biographies of real life photographers. Others focus on fiction, where there is not much to choose from. Almost everyone includes Blow Up, most include Rear Window, and after that the lists disperse, and are not very impressive. In my quick research, I only found one list that even included my favorite photography movie, in a discussion forum on Flickr. It is no surprise to me that a discussion among amateur photography enthusiasts was the only one to include this film, because Smoke celebrates exactly that type of photography. It also includes a scene, in the first clip below, in which a photographer sees one of his photographs elicits a response in his a viewer that most photographers would pay to evoke.
Photography actually only occupies a limited portion of the movie. In fact, I think every scene involving photography is included in the YouTube clips that are in this post, yet they are an integral part of the story of the central character, Augie, and the topic of photography and cameras also closes the movie. Actually, Smoke is one of those movies with no single topic or plot. It is a group of interconnected yet separate stories centered around a single character, Augie, who manages a tobacco shop at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Third Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Since finding these clips, I have watched and rewatched them several times, but it has been a few years since I watched the entire movie, so forgive me if I misremember a few details.
This scene introduces us to Augie’s photography project, shows him sharing it with a friend, and eliciting the extreme reaction that I mentioned above.
Everything from here includes spoilers, so it’s going below the fold and consider yourself warned, but if you watch the clip I don’t really add anything new.
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