Louis Seaman and his friend, Joseph Polacek, Perth Amboy, NJ.

Louis Seaman and his friend, Joseph Polacek, Perth Amboy, NJ.
I took this photo of my uncle Joe and his friend Louie with a Holga.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

My Uncle Joe and his friend Louie, Perth Amboy, NJ


That's my Uncle Joe on the right, at his friend Louie's house in Perth Amboy New Jersey. The picture was taken sometime in the late 1990's with a Holga. I had to do quite a bit of repair work to the file after scanning the negative, which was in pretty bad shape. So I'm not sure whether using the Holga in that instance was a good idea -- they create a distinctive look to the images but if you're not willing to work a lot with what you get on the negative, the results are usually very muddy and, for some strange reason, full of spots. I probably spent a good half hour in PhotoShop just getting rid of the spots. If you're not familiar with Holga images, notice the way the focus falls off around the edges, and the vignetting in the corners.

Of course all of this technical stuff is skirting the main thing to be discussed about the picture, namely my Uncle Joe. He's the reason I became an artist. I'll be editing this post with more of that story when I get some time. I recently set up my new digital studio, with a film scanner, printer, etc., and I'm looking forward to posting more Holga images scanned from film, along with wide-lux shots and pictures taken with several other cameras.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Erol Morris NY Times Blog about Photographs

Documentary filmmaker Erol Morris has begun an interesting blog for the New York Times about the hidden truths of photographs. He discusses the now-famous image of the hooded man from Abu Graib prison in Iraq as well as family snapshots, photographs of the Lusitania, etc. Hundreds of Times reader comments follow Morris's essays.

Morris's documentaries include The Fog of War, Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, Mr. Death, Gates of Heaven, The Thin Blue Line, and A Brief History of Time.

http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/10/pictures-are-supposed-to-be-worth-a-thousand-words/