Michael Koerbel

My high school photo pals argued about Canon v. Nikon – this was 1974. His Nikkormat ftn had a split image on the grounded glass and my Canon FTb had some kind of grain thingy that broke up the image (not sure what the heck it was called). Of course quarreling was nonsense and still is except to camera makers Canon and Nikon.

My photo gear budget is the largest line item every year; mention the cost of one camera to a friend in passing and they look at you like your some kind of idiot. The jury’s still out on that one.

Saying that gear doesn’t matter isn’t completely accurate since context is key. A photographer who’s hired to get the best shot for any set, scene or circumstance needs the right tools.  No revelation that.

But here’s the big deal: restrictions are good.  Working within a box is good.  Read The Houdini Solution by Ernie Schenck. Having something to push against creatively is necessary.

A bad creative challenge: “take your camera with you today and shoot something.”

A better creative Challenge: “exactly 2 miles into your commute home today, stop the car the first safe place you find. Get out, and within 15 minutes take the best shot you can find.”

The second has a tighter box than the first. While the first may have higher potential because of the unlimited canvas, the second is a stronger creative challenge with a greater learning potential, a better chance for a less casual approach, and – because of that – likely to produce a better result.

Check out “Apple of My Eye” a short film shot and edited on the iPhone 4 by Michael Koerbel and crew.  It’s followed by  “behind the scenes” footage.

What is accurate is that a great story, a great photograph, a great piece of art has nothing to do with gear – necessarily. Don’t believe it?  How then was Ansel Adams not crippled because he didn’t have the latest digital wonder camera?  Or … how can you shoot a good story on a ef’ing iPhone?

You want to see more or enter a creative challenge? Try the iOscars [I have not read the terms on copyright so you might want to do that first].

Shot and edited entirely on the iPhone 4 / iMovie App (in 48 hours).

Directed by Michael Koerbel
Produced by Eric Edmonds and Rebekah Koerbel
Written by Anna Elizabeth James and Michael Koerbel
Photographed by Michael Koerbel
Edited by Anna Elizabeth James
Production Design by Leigh Koerbel
Original Score Composed and Conducted by Corey Wallace

Starring Greta Charness and Timothy Guest

Special thanks to
Allied Model Trains, Culver City, CA
Birns & Sawyer, Burbank, CA
Michael Rogers
Greta’s Parents

I saw a video of Graham Nash playing Buddy Holly’s guitar [embedded] and picked up on this quote:

“I think part of the process of this whole thing is to get as close to the flame as you can get without being burned” – Graham Nash

Buddy Holly died at 22 when Graham Nash was 17 – clearly it affected him deeply; you can feel the emotion of the moment as he holds Holly’s guitar and says, “Touching the Flame”.  The guitar isn’t the flame but is there any doubt about which fire Nash refers?

Every creative soul is capable of  a 5 minute monologue about their creative flame.  Odds-on it’s a semi-coherent ramble of disjointed thoughts spoken through a struggle to put feelings into words.  Go ahead, give it a shot: What is the flame and where do I find it? Is it passion, obsession or spirituality? Give me a definition please.

Independent of definition accuracy, I’m convinced that we can’t own the flame; no personal flame exists so it’s not ours to sell, only ours to find.  An artist’s most valuable time is spent seeking the flame and, if lucky, we’re allowed to feel occasional warmth.

Additionally, a great piece of creativity isn’t something that needs explanation. You react to it as a pyromaniac would to flame; drawn to it by curiosity, sensuality, warmth and fear.  Inexplicably, the feeling it gives you is like fitting an ocean through a straw.

All my adult life I’ve played the game of creativity for money: You pay me to add value to your idea of what a photograph should look like – I do my best. Together we’re capable of interesting surprises, but I’m fairly sure the “flame” isn’t warming us; we are simply using the memory of warmth to make a living. It’s as though the better we are at making money the less chance of getting burned, on the other hand, stay away from the flame long enough and you’ll go broke.

Execution is a commodity, yet the talented manage to add original value to an execution. Perhaps original value is the byproduct of near burns. Like internal scars on the imagination we execute personal originality that requires intense heat for renewal. No flame yields stagnation or – worse – a talent void.

Permission To Suck Manifesto Law #16 revisited:

Flame finding is your talent. Imagination is hot, execution is cold. The flame is illusive; if you must obsess about something, make it a flame search. “I think part of the process of this whole thing is to get as close to the flame as you can get without being burned” – Graham Nash

Saul Bass Professional years: 1954 — 1995

Saul Bass to his young daughter: “I’m going off now, you play with your toys and I’ll go play with mine.”  We’re being paid to play with toys.

“I never intended on it being art. I tried to make a communication.”

Saul Bass

You’re work is unappreciated. The price tag hung on well crafted work is approaching zero. Fiscal efficiency dominates. The truth is, you can get an answer quickly if you don’t care about beauty and, I’m sure you’ve heard, time is money.

I believe the universal question that’s rapidly approaching the tunnel’s mouth  is: how are we going to live our lives? New graduates polled reveal that money is less important than to previous generations. Good thing I think.

There is too much evidence to deny that it takes 10+ years to master a craft. Who has that kind of commitment and patience for anything these days?  Mastery is a brutal journey and one easily dropped at a convenient turn.  Yet there is a common thread running through anything we abandon throughout the journey.

How long does it take to master aesthetics?  While not a craft, aesthetics is the “other” component of all commercial and fine art. Aesthetics is lifelong and mastering it is probably unattainable but it is often sacrificed in the money trade.

“Time is short, art is long” – Saul Bass

Everyone has to learn too much in too short a time.  The only way of learning is to do it.  There is no shortcut.  You need to do a lot of things over and over to get better and better.

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Saul Bass’ advice to students was “learn to draw” since without hand skills you’ll contort to discover a work-around solution.  I believe this is still true but when then do we find the time to master Adobe Illustrator? Aesthetics must be the answer; study the essence of beauty and apply whatever tool you own.

Viewing Saul Bass I understand that whether beauty is worth anything or not, it is worth a lifetime pursuit.  “Do the work, get paid or spend time to care about beauty. Don’t live under the illusion that anyone else cares.”

Unmistakable artistic signature is found in this “Catch Me If You Can” Title Sequence:

Saul Bass bio [via Wikipedia]

Saul Bass (May 8, 1920 – April 25, 1996) was an American graphic designer and Academy Award-winning filmmaker, but he is best known for his design on animated motion picture title sequences.

During his 40-year career he worked for some of Hollywood’s greatest filmmakers, including most notably Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. Amongst his most famous title sequences are the animated paper cut-out of a heroin addict’s arm for Preminger’s The Man with the Golden Arm, the text racing up and down what eventually becomes a high-angle shot of the United Nations building in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, and the disjointed text that raced together and was pulled apart for Psycho (1960).

Saul Bass designed the sixth AT&T Bell System logo. He also designed AT&T’s “globe” logo after the breakup of the Bell System. Bass also designed Continental Airlines’ 1968 “jetstream” logo which became the most recognized airline industry logo of the 1970s.

“Let the gun do it’s thing.”

All Creatives will relate to artist Ube Urban. I got an immediate warm feeling when I watched him paint a bicycle in Jake Wiens’ video; I know what it’s like to be immersed in the flow of creating. The idea has been captured so the remainder is letting the gun do it’s thing.

In the end, the finished product is his calling card. “It’s my network, my business card, it’s me.”

Photography at its root is honest.  Its analog legacy is documentary, authenticity, and accuracy.  Digitally transformed, the honesty of image capture is questionable.  Regarding truth, however, photography’s quality has remained unchanged.  Each capture is a story and the storyteller is the purveyor of truth.

Consider the photograph as a frame. It’s a rectangle into which the artist decides what is included.  Ideally, each element in the frame contributes; nothing is irrelevant.  What’s more, it’s the purposeful judgment at the decisive moment of capture that edits the story.  Conceivably, two inches to the left or 5 seconds later and the story has a different moral.

Artists can make pictures, but to take them with the purpose of supplying unfiltered truth is intuitive as though thought is bypassed and feelings drive the moment.  Realistically, however, a story remains the responsibility of the teller and not the medium, the context, or even the events themselves.  We decide where to point the camera.

Photographs can feel more truthful than documentary films because they have lesser opportunities for editing.   Yet in contrast, Robert Capa’s famous “Falling Soldier”, under scrutiny for fabrication, may be just as truthful regardless of a less than honest foundation.  Many great photographers fabricate images prior to capture or post capture so. in the end. truth rests with the photographer not the photograph.

Excusing context or assigning responsibility colors photographs as well.  Those with greater experiences gain a perspective that makes it harder for those without to relate; a soldier returning from war or the photographer covering events outside our routine experiences risk becoming isolated.  Consequently, a storyteller must create an honest yet accessible relationship with the viewer.  They must pry open the receptors of the viewer through emotional connections; make them relate to the un-relatable.

Content is king, yet what’s in front of the camera, how it’s framed, and the decisive moment of capture is what tells a story.  Editing can add power to the delivery while simultaneously altering content hence reducing the truth of a story in unskilled hands.  The compassion of a story teller and the way he seeks excellence rather than pursuing excellent results, is the ultimate truth and power of the photographic medium.  - Bruce DeBoer

[all photography copyright Ryan Lobo]

In his TED presentation, photographer Ryan Lobo shares this remarkable insight and relates a few stories.

via Ryan Lobo’s Portfolio Website:

Ryan Lobo has achieved worldwide visibility through his photography, films, exhibitions and editorial magazine work.  For the last 10 years, Ryan has traveled extensively all over the world to make pictures and films that reflect a high degree of humanism, empathy and sensitivity. He is recognized as one of India’s most respected and well-known photographers.

In 2001, Ryan co-founded Mad Monitor Productions, a film and photo production company based in Bangalore and Washington DC. His films have aired on the National Geographic Channel, National Geographic Channel International, Animal Planet, The Oprah Winfrey Show and PBS among many other networks and Mad Monitor productions” currently manages and produces film and photo expeditions internationally.

His images/writing have been featured in magazines like Outlook traveler, Marie Claire, Elle, Tehelka, Better photography, The Wall Street Journal, GEO magazine, Time Out, National Geographic Magazine, the Boston review, Chimurenga, Onzeweruld, the Wall Street Journal and Glamour magazine amongst others. His art prints have been exhibited all over India and in Europe and he is a photographer with “Tasveeer.”

Today (11/26) is a good day to take off; Thursday is a day I typically post but this one will probably not get much traffic so I hadn’t scheduled anything.  Nonetheless, it’s a day of reflection; one where we count our blessings.  A friend of mine passed along the name of a photographer and a collection of his images recently that seemed fitting for a day of appreciation.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  I hope AP doesn’t mind that I did this.

Photographers learn early to capture contrast.  Most serious photographers – pre digital – started seeing frames in black and white so the word “contrast” is etched into our professional consciousness.  Yet, contrast is more importantly seen as paradox.  In this group of images we are confronted with some of the most profound examples.

Horror.  Beauty. Culture. Destruction. Precision. Chaos. Danger. Security. Humanity. Brutality. These men appear super human then again fragile.  Clearly the photographer was in tune to all paradox at the moments he captured because he’s not only trained to see it and feel it, but moreover, his simple attendance is it.

Photographer Collection: David Guttenfelder in Afghanistan

David Guttenfelder is AP’s chief Asia photographer based in New Delhi and a recipient of the top still photography award in the National Press Photographers Association, the 2006 Best of Photojournalism Award for Large Markets.

Via DenverPost.com Media Center:

For the past seven years, David Guttenfelder has witnessed and documented the changing landscape of Afghanistan. Although mostly embedded with coalition troops, he has also covered the presidential elections, bodybuilders in Kabul, the state of Afghan prisons and daily life in the country. Guttenfelder is the chief Asia photographer for The Associated Press and over the past seven years has offered the general public a close-up, intimate look at the lives of troops fighting in the mountains and remote regions of Afghanistan.

I believe you can break photographers down to two categories, “the makers” and “the takers”.  I would put Rodney Smith into the former; he’s a maker.

This isn’t a value judgment, only an observation, but wait, there’s more.

If you’re a maker, you tend to relate to your work as a device through which you communicate with your audience.  If you’re a taker, you may communicate through your images but the predominating muse comes in the form of emotions drawn out of the viewer.  Photojournalists and documentarians are takers.

That’s not to say Mr. Smith’s work is emotion free.  The opposite is true, yet the emotions drawn out of the viewer are more closely connected to the artist rather than the subject.  Rodney Smith wants you to feel something but prefers you share his vision through those emotions.

Takers, on the other hand, deliver your feelings to yourself though their imaging.  Each is powerful when elevated to the mastery that Mr. Smith has shown throughout his career.

He reveals this through statements on his website:

“In order to say something outward, something universal, you must first look inward.”
“To say a photographer has a vision is to say the photographer has something unique to say to about the world.”
“Therapy, and the resulting introspection, allowed me to become sensitive to the parts of me that were hidden, or repressed, or unavailable to me consciously”

There’s more great insights into the work of Rodney Smith on the website featuring his new book, “The End.”