Wait. Who is that singing?

I take some pride in my early discovery: At Ribfest 2005, September at Five County Stadium, Zebulon, NC., while there to support the featured band – good friends, great band – and, oh yeah, eat some ribs – surprise – a magnificent voice stopped our tracks dead. Rhiannon Giddens – wow – who is that, and why have we not seen her before?

We got home and I started a search. Turned out Rhiannon was a recent graduate of Oberlin Conservatory now singing fiddle tunes – how curious, how awesome. I fired off an introduction email and began arranging a photo shoot.

Schedules being what they are, it wasn’t until the Carolina Chocolate Drops had formed and were well on their way national attention before we met for a photo session at Stagville Plantation’s Slave Quarters in Durham, NC.

Prairie Home Companion, Grand ol’ Opry, NPR interviews, countless magazine articles, appearance in the film, “The Great Debaters”, and a Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album – and 4 years later – I asked Rhiannon if she’d sit with Armand Lenchek and I for a video interview.

Here’s and edited 16 minutes of the 80 she spent answering our creative curiosity:

via Carolina Chocolate Drops website:
This is the story in a nutshell. Rhiannon’s father was a classically-trained singer whose legacy was a warning not to study voice before the age of 16. So Rhiannon waited until she was 16 and set off for choral camp. It was great, so she applied to Oberlin College and took on the deepest part of the classical vocal river, opera. “I did five operas and three main roles,” Rhiannon summarizes, “I got into it pretty hardcore.”

I thought this video was interesting enough to pass along even though it’s already been well viewed since yesterday.  The Soviet Montage press release is reproduced below the video embed.

HDR has a “look”.  For those who are unfamiliar, the process involves using two or more exposures from the same scene, making it possible to capture detail in extreme highlights and shadows that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.  Normally HD video probably captures about 10 – 12 stops of information, my guess is that this HDR video is capturing 13 – 16 stops.  This is a total guess but it illustrates the basic idea.

There’s more to the HDR look than numbers. Natural looking shadows and highlights appear lower in contrast; dark, dark gray and black are perceived as being closer in value than do adjacent midtones.  Our eyes are less efficient in low light so it feels natural when we view image shadows with less detail and contrast.  Same goes for bright highlights – think snow on a sunny day without dark glasses.

HDR images produce more midtones than we would expect to see in nature, that is why it can seem cartoonish.  In this video HDR appears to lift a “fog” from the scenic view of SF (no pun intended but I’m feeling clever), yet you can begin to see the “cartoon” effect when HDR records a person; the lighting looks “odd” but you just can’t quite put a finger on why.

My personal appetite is limited regarding HDR imagery; like having cake for breakfast, it’s fun on occasion.  Then again, like the early digital CD recordings that sounded overly brittle, photographers are beginning to finesse the HDR look so filmmakers will find an HDR comfort zone eventually.

I’m captivated with the advance of still and video imaging.  I wonder if we’ll ever hit a plateau the way we once did with film? If we don’t, what affect will that have on our creativity since every advance leaves a destructive wake.

Soviet Montage Productions releases information on the first true High Dynamic Range (HDR) video using DSLRs

San Francisco, CA, September 9, 2010: Soviet Montage Productions demonstrated today the first true HDR video sourced from multiple exposures. Unlike HDR timelapse videos that only capture a few frames per minute, true HDR video can capture 24 or more frames per second of multiple exposure footage. Using common DSLRs, the team was able to composite multiple HD video streams into a single video with an exposure gamut much greater than any on the market today. They are currently using this technology to produce an upcoming film.

Benefits of Motion HDR
HDR imaging is an effect achieved by taking multiple disparate exposures of a subject and combining them to create images of a higher exposure range. It is an increasingly popular technique for still photography, so much so that it has recently been deployed as a native application on Apple’s iPhone. Until now, however, the technique was too intensive and complex for motion. Soviet Montage Productions believes they have solved the issue with a method that produces stunning–and affordable–true HDR for film and video.

The merits of true HDR video are various. The most obvious benefit is having an exposure variation in a scene that more closely matches the human eye–think of filming your friend with a sunset at his or her back, your friend’s face being as perfectly captured as the landscape behind them. HDR video also has the advantage of reduced lighting needs. Finally, the creative control of multiple exposures, including multiple focus points and color control, is unparalleled with true HDR video.

“I believe HDR will give filmmakers greater flexibility not only in the effects they can create but also in the environments they can shoot in” said Alaric Cole, one of the members of the production team, “undoubtedly, it will become a commonplace technique in the near future. ”

Contact:
Michael Safai
Soviet Montage
201 Spear Street #1100
San Francisco, CA 94105
1 415 489 0437
mike@sovietmontage.com

Creativity is a near simultaneous encounter between our imagination, introspection and reality. The richness of imagination is fed through inspiration to encounter surroundings and cultivated with intense motivations. The value of our introspection is sustained by wisdom and experience; what is essentially you. Confrontation with reality is how creativity is birthed; it’s the final relationship with objectivity.

Artistic creativity is an act of intimacy or not;  it’s genuine art or it’s artifact.  Learn to manipulate tools and their crafty mechanisms so they become secondary or not.

Mechanization serving up uniformity, predictability, and orderliness (i.e. image capturing devices, signal processors, computers, or any fine apparatus) can either heighten the creative encounter or cheat it. Left to dominate with crafty mechanization and we cheat expressive intimacy.

Roughly, in the late ‘80’s, Mark Zimmer and Tom Hedges, founders of the Fractal Design Corporation, created Painter.  I recall passing photographs through a software “filter” to create a painting effect. Extending photography,  it instantly aped wrist skills without the hard work. Incredibly, Painter transformed every photograph into works of painted art.

Yet, it didn’t take long to realize painting filter presets produced artifacts, not art. Extraordinary turned less than ordinary within weeks as my employer’s entire creative department mastered the programmed keystrokes. What just happened? Amazement transformed into distaste within a few weeks.

Now the cheat is obvious, back then, not so much. We correctly felt the excitement in discovering a legitimate creative extension. What failed us was our loss of expressive intimacy; the new tool masked our art transforming it into a mechanistic artifact. There are no shortcuts.

Case in point: A camera is either an extension or protection from the creative encounter. Countless photographers feel defensive because they’ve cheated the encounter and lied to themselves and others about the intimacy of their works. Most recent democratization of the cheat is forcing photo artists and others to cope with the creative encounter that produces art rather than artifacts.

How many of us can say we are hiding behind the mastery of crafty mechanization?  Suddenly, there’s a need to pull up to the creative bar or be forced out of town. It takes courage to rediscover artistic expressive intimacy especially after producing artifacts for years.

“There are no accidental masterpieces in painting, but there are accidental masterpieces in photography” – Chuck Close

Here we go – Déjà vu all over again – into the world of vernacular photography. Like colloquial speech is to literature, vernacular photography is any type that isn’t intended as art: keepsakes, advertising, forensic, documentation for records, passport photos, etc. It was made possible by George Eastman when he invented The Kodak Camera and roll film.

The modern disparity is found in history; more specifically – there is a history.  When you bought The Kodak in the late 1880’s there was no strong artistic tradition; no best practices for the flock of newcomers.  Someone first introduce smiling for the camera. “Say Cheese” was unfamiliar.

It’s 1890, photography is suddenly accessible. There is always more film to be had, it wasn’t messy, and it was fun. There is no need to be serious, this isn’t art.

The camera can produce art with little more participation from the photographer than a button push.  The medium is generous and extremely democratic. Yet the product result of a button push can be elevated to an art often by accident.

Henri Lartigue is a great example of amateurism (he made a living as a painter) producing occasional brilliance while the majority of his large quantity of work reached art status merely through our draw to nostalgia. His work represented the vernacular of his time until they became documents of longing. His playfulness with photography brought us a new type of art.

Photographic artwork is rife with nostalgia – it seems impossible to take a serious fine art photo of something new. Our homesickness for the past lifts everything old to an artistic prospect; signs along old Route 66, peeling paint, abandoned warehouses, old general stores – even old people become fine art when recorded by a camera more frequently than those of living less than 4 years.

Mom at Museum - Hipstamatic Photo

An iPhone App called the Hipstamatic Camera gives us democratized digital nostalgia – “digital photography never looked so analog”.  Its whole purpose is to replicate faded films exposed through second or third rate optics.  The result is instant art.  I posted snapshots on Facebook and got excited comments eager to discover my magic tool.  Old meets new; our nostalgia is now digitized. Is camera art done if a digital “look” never passes for future nostalgia?

Gradually the camera became more generous; more accidental master-pieces are posted to Flickr sites. The beauty of old processes before The Kodak invention are now the sandbox of vernacular photography; Déjà vu all over again.

Below is a segment from a BBC presentation on The Genius of Photography.  It’s thought provoking in that we get a glimpsed reminder of how similar the introduction of The Kodak is to the adoption of digital imaging by the vernacular picture taker.

If you want to continue the series The Genius of Photography by the BBC go here.

Nate Sheaffer - Neon Sculptor / Author

Ten years ago, my life changed forever. Early in 1999, I lost my glassblowing business to offshore competition, followed eight months later by the suicide of my closest brother – my own Y2K meltdown. Losing the brother, some who knew him would say, was every bit as inevitable as having the company disappear in the ever-flattening world of labor distribution. In odd and very different ways, both losses eventually improved my life, also inserting an interesting speed bump, rather – a detour – in my creative life.

I’d been working myself sick – meeting deadlines for production neon sign orders and managing two dozen employees did nothing for my health, which I had been neglecting ever since graduating college. The first half dozen years, I pulled many more all-nighters bending glass than I’d ever done studying. The company grew into something so unrecognizable from the small sculpture studio and boutique glass shop I’d started thirteen years earlier, morphing into a hungry, ugly albatross with monthly overhead twice the size of the first year’s gross revenues – so much more a greedy burden than creative passion. Four months after shutting down production, friends told me I looked ten years younger. I certainly felt at least ten years less burdened.

The loss of the brother, well…what can I say in less than a hundred million words that might adequately convey my sense of loss? I grew up idolizing him the way younger siblings often do. Eventually, we worked together; in fact, he was employee number one when time came to hire someone, and so the two things – neon company and brother – are inextricably tangled in both glorious memory and flaming demise.

Garth was my brother’s name, and when he died, my creative energies turned to writing about him and the many adventures we shared. The cathartic aspects of the process – getting it all out, onto paper – put his life and death into a kind of manageable perspective allowing me to remember without breaking down every day into a puddle of sorrow.

During ten years, learning to express feelings and ideas on paper, a gnawing gap widened in my soul’s creative core, quite literally in the motor memory of my creative soul. Before the losses, I’d spent thirteen years making things with my hands, creating neon and steel sculptures, neon signs, animated displays, advertising prototypes – things. I value the creative process governing writing – constructing sentences and developing plots and characters – but my arms and hands ache to make things.

Not long after Garth died, I moved out of a space specifically designed to enable creation of sculpture. Then I moved again into another home with no workspace whatsoever, and then again and then once more this past year, making it difficult for me to even imagine assembling any of the dozens of sculptures for which I’ve carried drawings and parts longer than a decade. This spring, I put it out of my head that I needed to have a bona fide shop to create sculpture; lack of a perfect work environment had become my best excuse.

Though no one but myself had been keeping me from working, I actually said, aloud, inside a small storage shed, “You’re allowed to do this again.” In the corner, the only witness, a black and white illustration of a woman stared at me through ten years of dirt and grime. She was the last thing Garth created – an image he’d incorporated into a neon wall hanging modeled after the graphic on his favorite t-shirt. Her odd smile looked angry through the decade of schmutz; angry that I’d let her neon tubing become broken and paid her no attention since Garth died.

I organized the shed and began assembling neon and aluminum bits and pieces into my first thing in a long, long time. Between taking care of my children full-time and writing, I spent the next month working in two-hour bursts – every third day or so – until the magic moment arrived when I plugged the piece into a drop cord draped seventy-five feet across the yard to the shed.

In terms of the sculpture itself, the result was what I expected; one or two elements not exactly as intended, but mostly it represented a fully fleshed-out version of my ten-year-old sketch. What caught me off guard was how allowing myself to create (even in a less-than-ideal space) flipped a maniacal switch whose contacts had rusted years ago. Within days, I repaired Garth’s last neon piece, hung it in my home, and began a daily routine of gathering and sorting materials for the next projects.

It’s been a difficult, long decade, living with the idea of creating sculpture relegated to memory and imagination and now, suddenly – thankfully, it’s just as difficult to imagine stopping.

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.

[[Show as slideshow]]

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.”

Appreciation of an object by aesthetic judgment comes from discriminatory taste, emotional empathy and intellectual passion honed as a result of experience and deep consideration.

Warhol believed art is contextual; put something in an artistic location and it becomes art.  This agrees – somewhat – with Tolstoy who maintained that artistic value is one of viewer empathy not the consequence of a creator’s intent.  If true,  it must follow that artistic creativity is in direct proportion with an ability to engage the audience’s aesthetic sensibilities.

Defining art has never been all that controversial;  it’s the “good” part that carries the debate.  New tools have made discernment tougher still. It’s not all that hard to make the work appear good through imitation or mechanized craft and then assert its worthiness.

Straightforward printed reproductions of famous paintings are not in themselves kitsch, but objects that adapt high art images from one medium to another are paradigmatically kitsch, for instance ….. repainted versions of historical masterpieces that are adapted to the aesthetic expectations of the modern eye (a copyist once told an interviewer that his paintings of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa improved on the original by ‘taking a bit of the chill out of her expression’). – Denis Dutton

Like a TV Dinner that exceeds expectations; gourmet isn’t gourmet if you must peal back foil.  A sofa sized reproduction enjoyable enough for a downtown Marriott or a Barry Manilow cover band singing “Mandy” is part of the modern Kitsch experience.  A printed photograph made to look like a painting using the latest digital tools updates the modern Kitsch experience; there is a heavy draw of nostalgia and comfort while avoiding surprises except for how it was made. “Wow, that’s a photograph?”

Ironically, more and more gallery portrayals display pride that the artist used “real film” for a show, in a clear attempt to move the work to higher ground.

Generally the Modern Kitsch experience is possible when:

1. There is no distinct author of self expression, or no individual placing value on copyright.
2. It’s primarily the artifact of money and desire with the solitary aim to comfort and please.
3. It’s point of view is pure nostalgia, void of conflict , not disruptive or avant-garde.
4. The artwork’s creation is perfunctory or only modestly mindful; a spurious exercise designed to entertain.

Historically, Kitsch has been reserved for gaudy shallow inauthentic efforts that, in spite of a dubious origin, maintain an air of pretension.  And while this remains true, high design within easy reach has moved the needle – Wal-Mart is boasting a new aesthetic – the Kitsch experience is demanding expanded territory.  What looks like Italian handmade tile was a gratuity for subscribing to a magazine and drop shipped from China.  The new commodity position of creative artifacts is diminishing authentic uniqueness.  In its place is a modern Kitsch experience with both fine and applied faux art that – while no longer as overtly gaudy as a black velvet Mona Lisa – perpetuate a shallow inauthentic effort precariously indistinguishable from a higher aesthetic.

Beauty is comforting and we are drawn to comfort, but one job of the creative mind is to move us away from comfort even if not so abruptly that we reject the newness of it out of hand; the expression of familiarity and surprise together.

Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) suggested that “expression” is central in the way that beauty was once thought to be central.

Mid 1820 we saw the first photoetching and heard Paul Delaroche’s “death of painting” proclamation.  The death of painting was actually a fading of uniqueness for some artists as photography democratized art through technology.  From a distance, it’s easy to see that photography didn’t kill painting but liberated it.

Previsualization – more or less – remained even though art took physical form with new tools; technology brought with it options, opportunities, freedoms and a new diversity.  Ignited with this discovery was a love – hate affair between artists and technology.  Undeniably technology leaves a strong wake out of unyielding innovation; the response to a good idea is a better one.

Film delayed gratification long enough so those behind a camera needed to see the image in their minds eye and exhaust possibilities to make it happen at the moment of exposure.  Particularly in color, manipulation was limited. Technology has changed that – call it postvisualization.

We’re familiar with digital imaging yet in relatively short order it will be possible to record segments of life in such detail that post capture choices of lens focal length, depth of field, and even a crop of the smallest section of the frame will yield unimaginable resolution and variety.  Perhaps generations ahead of us will record their whole life enabling a search for the art of life’s moments years in the past.

Editing nightmare aside, an artist’s intent alters with postvisualization.  Her imagination is dormant until possibilities explode post capture.  With no previsualization a prime dimension is removed.  As obvious as this seems, nuances in the moment of capture editorialize the visual communication.  A story of imagery starts with the eyes and the intent of the photographer; there is no “fix in post”.  For similar reasons, video and still visualization can’t reliably alternate.

Ansel Adams was a pioneer of previsualization; it’s what we see as the magic of his photography.  He created a system born of technology that eliminated variables that might interfere with his vision.  It was a mastery of craft but his clarity of vision is what we see.  [[Show as slideshow]]

Go here for more:

The Ansel Adams Gallery

Roy Firestone interviews Ansel Adams

Rangefinder Interview with Ansel Adams part II

Skill is math already proven.  Not only are skills easy for culture to appreciate, our education from pre-K is about skill development and learning the rules.  We have standards, objectives and tests.  Skill is linear, owning them isn’t unique except to say one has more than another or that their skills are good.

Exercising skills is pure joy – it keeps us focused and present. Honing our skills is a gratifying obsession, we feel accomplished, connected, validated, invincible.  Einstein may talk of a space time continuum, but when chasing a skill, creatives know a space of time suspension.

Expertise in a medium awards us the key to static free communication.  Yet, just because we have a clear channel doesn’t mean we sit in silence expecting to reveal a meaningful message, insight or emotion. An intangible “non-skill” aptitude is involved – a capacity that is near impossible to define.

Skills can also be camouflage as if to say, “No need to be vulnerable, my skills will blow them away.” The judgment we inform is the true value add, nonetheless it follows that once we start thinking beyond our dexterity we risk paralysis: “if only I was better, I could express myself”.  It’s like using unproven math; the danger of being discovered false is dreadful.

An accomplished photographer carries skills that allow him to improvise –results aren’t fully conceived until they are – adding value occurs along the journey to completion.  Yet, as a less than accomplished musician, when I pick up a guitar and play tunes that I’ve learned – this finger here, those  fingers there – the end result at best, is predetermined. Variation is disappointing for its lack of skill.

It’s not until I achieve enough skill can I deviate from my note by note progression.  Once I do though, the result is my version of a tune or my interpretation of a scene in the case of photography. With good judgment, I have not lost the emotional connection intrinsic to the song but enhanced it so the audience feels mine and not an imitation of the composer’s expression.

Do we really need to “go beyond” or break rules?  Perhaps we can’t have too much skill; yet, on balance we can lose what is creatively vital to our work – i.e. Aesthetic judgment.  Breaking rules can simply mean breaking your individual pattern or combining thoughts, experiences or offering a feeling through merging old tested skills.

Being discouraged because of a lack of breakthrough creativity is to fail completely.

All this is to say, don’t let skill get in the way of expression but rather, use skills to gain access to spectators. Be sure you have something to say. The genuine value is in the message but without delivery it’s harder to discern your voice.    -by Bruce DeBoer

Can I make a big deal out of a simple thought or what?  I included the Rembrandt because I simply can’t fathom the skill of his brush.  I included the video of Charlie Rose talking with Chuck Close because he touches on a pivotal point I’m trying to make.