10 Friday Feb 2017
Posted in 100 Strangers, 2 billion cell phone cams, A mastery of one branch of photography does not guarantee success in another area that may require a different set of skills., Pucker up!, Uncategorized
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Infrared flash photo – Hollywood street selfie. (Candid)
02 Monday Jan 2017
Posted in 100 Strangers, 2 billion cell phone cams, A color print will fade away in the light - they are made for dark storage.. Never display your original irreplaceable color photos for long periods. You display color copy facsimiles - not the origin, A photo is not like a video or movie. The photo must catch our attention and tell the story in one image., An artist is only as happy as their last masterpiece., An iconic photo never needs to 'age' to look good. You don't have to keep trying to sell yourself on it hoping it looks better over time. The great photo jumps right out at you!, archival, Art is the way we make sense of our world. A wordsmith writes a book - a musician composes a song - a poet pens a poem - an artist sketches a drawing - a photog shoots a pix - a sculptor forms a statu, Art relaxes the brain, Artists, Artists are always looking...looking at life and looking at art., artists' books, Artists’ are on a different wavelength than the rest., As long as the outcome is uncertain and decisions have to be made - there is art in the process - if photography was not an art then one photograph would be as good as the next., Color prints are just meant to be taken out and looked at once in a while. Never display your original irreplaceable color photos for long periods. You display color copy facsimiles - not the original, Curator…Archivist…Historian…World Leader in Circular Fisheye & Infrared Flash Street Photography…Landmark Artist's Books…Underground Social Documentary Photography…World Record Holder, Daniel Teoli Jr, Dye transfer prints are one of the worst color imaging media for archival dye stability., Fuji Crystal Archive color print fade test., I've fade tested dye transfer prints from 1950's to 1970's vintage and the test results are the same...very poor dye stability to light., museum studies, Never, ever display your original irreplaceable color photos for long periods. They are just meant to be taken out and looked at once in a while. You display color copy facsimiles - not the originals., Pucker up!, The Most Photographed Generation Will Have No Pictures in 10 Years!, Your color photos will fade away
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A color print will fade away in the light - they are made for dark storage.. Never display your original irreplaceable color photos for long periods. You display color copy facsimiles - not the origin, APUG, APUG Forum, archival permanence, archival studies, artists' book, available light photography, censorship, chiaroscuro, children of weegee, curator, d.teoli, Dan Teoli, daniel d. teoli jr, daniel teoli jr, decisive moment, documentary photography, dye stability, dye stabiltiy of color imaging media, dye transfer print, Dye Transfer Printing from the 1950's, Dye transfer prints are one of the worst color imaging media for archival dye stability., eastman kodak dye transfer print, Fuji Crystal Archive color print fade test., Hollywood, I've fade tested dye transfer prints from 1950's to 1970's vintage and the test results are the same...very poor dye stability to light., infrared flash, infrared flash street photography, los angeles, museum studies, night photography, photography, presenting photography to curators and museums, preservtion, Pucker up!, reviews, social documentary photography, street photography, The Most Photographed Generation Will Have No Pictures in 10 Years!, travel, you never display your original irreplaceable color photos for long periods. They are just meant to be taken out and looked at once in a while. You display color copy facsimiles - not the originals., Your color photos will fade away
Article Dedication
In honor of
Condé Nast & Mathew Brady
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Over at the APUG forum a photog mentioned how he was working on a corporate photo collection and much of the color work had faded away over the decades. Well, the APUG bozos banned me, so I will have to answer it here.
When it comes to color prints, you never, ever display your original irreplaceable color photos for long periods. They are just meant to taken out and looked at once in a while. You display color copy facsimiles, not the originals. All these expensive color prints collectors buy will fade badly if they are kept on constant display. And as the expensive color collector photos fade badly they will become more worthless over time.
The finest pigment inkjet prints wont fade in direct sun exposure for a year or more. But, give them 1-1/2 or 2 years of sun and they will start to fade a little. Now, if they are kept in dark storage then the prints should last for centuries.
Eastman Kodak Dye Transfer prints will start to fade in a few months of direct sunlight. They are the worst color imaging media out there other than some Type C color paper Freestyle used to sell in the ’70s…it fades away in dark storage. The best Type C paper I’ve tested is Fuji Crystal Archive. It is almost on par with pigmented inkjet prints, but is not as good as the best inkjet prints for dye stability.
One camera fondler on the APUG forum claimed that dye transfer prints were the best for archival stability. Dye transfer prints are one of the worst color imaging media for archival dye stability. Yet, I’ve seen dye transfer prints going back to the 1950’s (and one much earlier vintage example online) that were still vibrant…but they were in dark storage for most of that time.
What follows is taken in-part from my book: Dye Stability Testing of Color Imaging Media Edition II by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
Homage to Weegee – Cigarette Caught in Mid Flight ~ Hollywood, CA 1974
The image pictured above is from a scan of an 8 x 10 work print made in 1974 that was supposed to be trashed. The work print escaped the trash can by mistake and somehow survived 38 years hidden from sight as a bookmark.
The original negative to the image as well as any final silver gelatin prints I had made were all lost in a flood. So the work print was all I had to work with to recover the image.
When I found the work print I was able to get a usable digital image from scanning it and some Lightroom adjustments. But the original work print was of poor quality and had mottled shadows and blacks….that was why is was headed for the trash can.
Many digital photographers I talk with tell me they seldom make prints. They just view their work on the monitor or on digital photo frames. This ‘no prints required’ method is one of the benefits digital photography can provide us.
But, this benefit would also work against the digital photographer if they would ever lose their digital masters. The lack of a physical negative / chrome is one of the shortcomings of digital imaging when it comes to preservation. But, we can come close to the benefit of film with a 4 x 6 (or optimally a letter size) master print.
With a high grade scan of our master print we can always recover 90% of the original image if we would ever lose our digital or film master. The master print for the digital photographer is what the physical negative is for the film photographer.
Here are a few of my photos that were lost in a 2001 flood. The only reason I can show you these is that I had some small 2 x 4 to 3.5 x 5 inch snapshot prints of them stored at my mom’s house. I was able to recover something with a scan of the prints.
When scans are done correctly, they can yield excellent results.
The above photos show a scan of an original Eastman Kodak dye transfer print. I then made a second generation inkjet print from the scan of the dye transfer print.
I married the original dye transfer print and the second generation inkjet print and scanned them to show comparison results. I didn’t use a high priced scanner or printer to do the tests. I used a consumer model Canon printer from Wal-Mart costing about $80 and a $200 Epson scanner.
Now, no scan is as good as the original. But, you can see for yourself, it is hard to tell which is the original dye transfer scan and which is the scan of inkjet copy print made from the dye transfer print.
Top Photograph – Dye Transfer original is on the bottom half.
Bottom Photograph – Dye Transfer original print is on the right side.
This test tells us 2 things:
1) Scans can recover about 90% of the image quality from an original.
2) Inkjet printers can equal or surpass Eastman Kodak’s dye transfer process when it comes to image quality. (In addition, dye stability tests I’ve run show pigmented inkjet prints will outlast an Eastman Kodak dye transfer print when it comes to dye stability by leaps and bounds.)
For the dye stability tests photos in this post, I cut or masked the media in half. One half of the media was put in sunlight for 6 months. The other half was stored in total darkness. After 6 months of sun, the 2 halves were married and scanned. The half exposed to the sun was marked with an ‘S’. The half stored in the dark was marked with a ‘D’.
Below: Eastman Kodak Dye Transfer Print fade test of vintage 1954 prints.
Test results show Eastman Kodak’s dye transfer prints to have very poor dye stability when exposed to light. Dye transfer prints will start to show notable fading in just 2 to 3 months of exposure to sunlight. But they do have very good good dark storage dye stability. As best as I could tell, the vintage dye transfer prints used in this test showed no noticeable fading in 65 years of dark storage.
I’ve fade tested vintage dye transfer prints from 1950’s to 1970’s and the test results are the same…very poor dye stability to light. I don’t do bullshit estimates either. I do actual fade tests as taught to me by the master dye transfer printer Bob Pace whom I worked with in Hollywood, CA in the 1970’s.
The oldest know dye transfer I’ve come across is a pre-commercial production piece about 80 years old and still looked good. But when it comes to dye stability, the king is the pigmented ink jet and laser print, possibly surpassed only by the old Cibachrome prints. Bob Pace had some old Cibachromes in his lab’s display window. The emulsion was all cracked up from the sun – but the colors were still vibrant.
Dye transfer prints shown are by: Dean Child, US Color Print Portland, OR
Below is a metal print on aluminum, something that is very popular nowadays. The sky faded a good deal after 6 month of sun.
Below is an Epson inkjet print exposed to 1 year of sun with no noticeable fading. I use a lot of gloss optimizer in my printing and wondered about its archival characteristics. I decided on giving Epson’s gloss optimizer a 1 year sun stress test, not 6 months.
Here is a quick shot of the test results with my P&S Sony.
After the 1 year test period was over I married the 2 halves for comparison. The black lines show the edges where the gloss optimizer extends. One year of sun produced no change to the gloss optimizer that could be seen with the eye. The results area also a testimony to Epson’s Ultrachrome archival pigment based ink.
Here is the original digital file.
The point of fade testing is to show you that different media has different dye stability. So choose a media that is fade resistance for your master prints.
Additional color imaging media fade tests:
http://fadetesting.tumblr.com/
21 Thursday Apr 2016
Posted in 100 Strangers, artists' books, As the old saying goes...if I knew how to take great photos I'd do it every time., At a New Year's Eve party I shot about 200+ pix...I only got one great shot, commentaries, Out of these tens of thousands snapshots I may have found 200 to 300 I liked enough to acquire., These were no ordinary snapshots either., Uncategorized, When I was acquiring photographs for my archival collection of found photography I would sometimes look through 40000 to 50000 snapshots in a month.
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000 snapshots in a month., 000 to 50, As the old saying goes...if I knew how to take great photos I'd do it every time., At a New Year's Eve party I shot about 200+ pix...I only got one great shot, camera fondler, cartier-bresson, daniel d. teoli jr, henri cartier-bresson, I would sometimes look through 40, keeper rate, Out of these tens of thousands snapshots I may have found 200 to 300 I liked enough to acquire., social documentary photography, street photography, The bottom line is street photography is like fishing - you can throw you hook in the water but there are no guarantees you will get anything., These were no ordinary snapshots either., what is your keeper rate, When I was acquiring photographs for my archival collection of found photography
Article Dedication
in honor of
Jeanloup Sieff & Cecil Beaton
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That is a perennial question the photo forums. It varies too much for me to say. We all have different values, likes and dislikes to say anything definitive on this subject.
I aspire to put photos in museums, artist’s books or my portfolio. As such, I trash a lot of junk that is not going to be museum, book or portfolio worthy. In the old film days sometimes I would go for weeks or months and not produce a keeper. Digital makes it easier.
At a New Year’s Eve party I shot about 200+ pix…I only got one great shot for my infrared flash project Piercing Darkness.
Infrared Flash Photo
For A Day in the Life of a Drag Queen project I shot enough in 4-1/2 hours to make a small book of say 35 to 40 pix.
https://danielteolijr.wordpress.com/2015/10/21/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-drag-queen/
The 4-1/2 hours also included travel time to multiple locations. Being a doc photog I work very, very fast.
For the drag queen project I was lucky the transgal could pose, as I am not glam photog. My expertise is in street and doc photography. I had a time limit but still had to make the book, so I tried to get enough decent pix for the book within the time offered. But not the pix are all masterpieces. Maybe will have a 5% to 7% keeper rate for that shoot.
For my ‘Gay Bar’ project I shot enough in 45 minutes to make a small artist’s book. But they are not all masterpieces. With it, they just have to be decent pix, as the bars kept throwing me out.
Infrared Flash Photo
I was shooting in Times Square and got 1 keeper that night…Sad Buskers. (no one wanted to hire them for a photo of their bare boobies)
Infrared Flash Photo
I could go back to Times Square for a week and not get anything great.
I was shooting almost an entire weekend. I only got one great shot…The Lost Princess
I was shooting on the Staten Island Ferry. Took 2 trips and only got one great shot…
As the old saying goes…if I knew how to take great photos I’d do it every time. I find if I put in the footwork hopefully things will happen for me. For Piercing Darkness infrared flash photography, I may shoot multiple sessions and get nothing.
Infrared Flash Photo
When I was acquiring photographs for my archival collection of found photography, I would sometimes look through 40,000 to 50,000 snapshots in a month. These were no ordinary snapshots either. They were distinguished as noteworthy from dealers that had hand picked through the garbage to find them. Out of these tens of thousands snapshots I may have found 200 to 300 I liked enough to acquire.
When Robert Frank shot Pull My Daisy, I read they shot 30 hours of footage. Out of the 30 hours (1800 minutes) they kept about 20 minutes for the film. That is a keeper rate of 1.1%. Now, they did all staged, bullshit shots with full cooperation. For my on- the-fly work, with no cooperation for the most part. I’d be happy if I was guaranteed a 1% keeper rate.
The bottom line is street photography is like fishing, you can throw you hook in the water, but there are no guarantees you will get anything.
23 Tuesday Feb 2016
Posted in 100 Strangers, 2 billion cell phone cams, A photo is not like a video or movie. The photo must catch our attention and tell the story in one image., An artist is only as happy as their last masterpiece., An iconic photo never needs to 'age' to look good. You don't have to keep trying to sell yourself on it hoping it looks better over time. The great photo jumps right out at you!, archival, Art is the way we make sense of our world. A wordsmith writes a book - a musician composes a song - a poet pens a poem - an artist sketches a drawing - a photog shoots a pix - a sculptor forms a statu, Art relaxes the brain, Artists, Artists are always looking...looking at life and looking at art., artists' books, Artists’ are on a different wavelength than the rest., As long as the outcome is uncertain and decisions have to be made - there is art in the process - if photography was not an art then one photograph would be as good as the next., Fuji Crystal Archive color print fade test., museum studies, Pucker up!, The Most Photographed Generation Will Have No Pictures in 10 Years!
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archival permanence, archival studies, artists' book, available light photography, chiaroscuro, children of weegee, curator, d.teoli, Dan Teoli, daniel d. teoli jr, daniel teoli jr, decisive moment, documentary photography, dye stability, dye stabiltiy of color imaging media, Fuji Crystal Archive color print fade test., Hollywood, infrared flash, infrared flash street photography, los angeles, museum studies, night photography, presenting photography to curators and museums, preservtion, Pucker up!, social documentary photography, street photography, The Most Photographed Generation Will Have No Pictures in 10 Years!
Article Dedication
In honor of
Robert Crumb & Justin ‘Binky Brown’ Green
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From the Large Format forum…
The Most Photographed Generation Will Have No Pictures in 10 Years!
Cameras.
They’re everywhere. In your phone, on your tablet, you have your point-n-shoot, and maybe even a DSLR. A few might even own a film camera. You can’t escape the selfies, Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook. People are deluged with photographs. And today, people are taking more pictures than ever before. It’s been estimated that in the past 5 years, more photos have been taken than all the prior years combined.
The sad part is that few of these photographs will survive beyond a year. To many people, a “picture” is only good for the moment. Moms and Dads want to snap every little movement of that new baby. Grandma wants to see everyone one of those too. When you want to show off the new puppy, you pull out the phone. And in a week, none of them have any real meaning and might even get “deleted” just to make room for more pictures that have little meaning as well inside of a couple of weeks.
So what will become of all the pictures that are being taken today? Here is the reason that 99% of the photographs being taken today are soon going to be totally gone – digital images are no longer important enough to most people to actually keep them in printed form!
Yes, I started in a film only world. We bought a roll of film and took our vacation photographs. We had them developed and printed. They were put in photo albums or photo boxes. We looked at them and cherished those memories with great care. They were a slice of our life and for many, if disaster struck, those photographs were the one thing we would try to find first. Wedding albums and photographs represented our LIFE and we salvaged all we could.
It is estimated and less that 1 out of 100,000 photographs taken today actually ends up being a printed photograph. The digital world means you can look at those on some computer screen and without one, you have nothing. You probably have countless pictures that are just randomly stored and has no organization or way to locate them. Perhaps you have made some effort, but even that can seem overwhelming a task when you decide to tackle the task.
Add to this, over the years, the technology has changed so fast, that many photographs taken 6-7 years ago are stored on a type of media that is no longer supported. I have boxes of floppy discs and not even a computer that works to view them. In 5 years or less, your DVD is going to be obsolete as will your USB drives. File types are going to change as well. And the technology of tomorrow may not support these “older” file types.
Many today have older cell phones with countless pictures on them. Maybe you “shared” some on Facebook or Instagram or uploaded to your photo storage website. But none of these are “permanent” solutions to viewing your photos and sadly, many of your memories you captured today, aren’t going to be around tomorrow. So where is that old cellphone today? In a drawer someplace, your not sure where, but you know it’s around here somewhere!
There are also countless memory cards filled with photographs. Each of those represent a small slice of you or something that was a part of your life. Some are older and you have fewer options to view them as technology simply outpaces their usefulness. Does anyone remember the 256mb SD cards when today, a 4 gb is considered tiny?
Perhaps you go to a Professional Photographer and all you want is someone to “take some pictures and give us the disc”. After all, it IS a “digital world” and it shouldn’t cost you very much. You can “take them down to the 1 hr place” and get prints really cheap. No film. No prints from the lab needed to “see” them. So where are your discs today? Probably in that same drawer you haven’t found yet where that old cell phone is “lost” in. I doubt you have your DVD’s or old floppies on your wall! And when Mom asks if you have that adorable photo of your now 16 year old son or daughter- you know the one when they were 2- and you have to answer, I do, but I have to find it. “It’s on a diskŠsomeplaceŠI thinkŠ.maybe we still doŠhoney, where did we put that disk again?”.
In my home, you will find photographs. Real, honest to goodness prints. Nothing fancy in most cases and most are just plain snapshots of family at holidays, on vacation, or doing something silly or even important. These are the slices of our lives where we can open the old “self sticking” album and find out it no longer sticks. Where memories of our life unfolds before our eyes. We laugh. We cry. We tease each other. Our life is right there. It’s in that printed image that anyone can see. There is no wondering “if this file type is still supported” or does my “machine still have a DVD drive”. None of that is needed. Even the older, not quite as sharp as they used to be eyes can see them and feel the emotions of that instant in time as if it happened yesterday. These are the things we protect with everything we have should some disaster strike and the ones we start looking for first if it does. All of a sudden that $250 DeLonghi Coffee maker isn’t all that important. Nor is the fishing boat. Or the 72″ big screen TV with all the bells and whistles. It’s always the memories of our lives that become the thing we search for first.
So if you are part of this “digital revolution”, let me ask you- where are YOUR photographs? Stuck on some disc or stored out there is cyberspace someplace, hopefully, perhaps? Why didn’t you actually purchase that $500 canvas to display in your home that your Professional photographer worked so hard to produce for you? That was a “one of a kind” work of ART and an heirloom piece for your family to have and remember that little slice of their life. It is something that will be passed from generation to generation and the only visual way your heirs will see what you looked like and the love and emotions you expressed the instant that image was captured.
2025. You just found that DVD you had in that drawer you couldn’t remember which one it was. Along with 9 old cell phones that no longer will work with today’s new technology. Your 3 inch by 3 inch cube computer no longer has a DVD drive since in 2015 they were totally phased out. Your 3rd grandchild is sitting on your knee and asks to see pictures of their Mom- and all you have to show them is this piece of round plastic that is pretty much worthless. Not to mention dusty and scratched from all those old cellphones moving around every time you opened that drawer. And since Instagram had been merged with another company, and they started charging, you let that go 8 years ago.
I guess that makes you one of the “most photographed generation that doesn’t have a photograph in 10 years”. I guess it wasn’t that important then. Digital was cheap.
Cameras were everywhere. It just didn’t seem that important.Lost memories are expensive.
Wilhelm (Sarasota)
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Infrared flash photo – Pucker up! (Candid) Hollywood Blvd street selfie 2015
from Piercing Darkness artists’ book.*
*Piercing Darkness (infrared flash photography) along with my project The Americans…60 years after Frank are under joint consideration for a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship.
Well, Wilhelm makes a lot of valid points. Once a person loses their digital memories they may give their preservation more thought. I’ve lost over 2 decades of my photos and related artwork. But it was due to a flood and not digital impermanence.
What follows is taken in part from the chapter on Dye Stability Tests for Color Imaging Media from Volume 12 – Chapter 3 of the Encyclopedia of Photographic and Fine Art Ink Jet Printing Media by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
Homage to Weegee – Cigarette Caught in Mid Flight ~ Hollywood, CA 1974
The image pictured above is from a scan of an 8 x 10 work print made in 1974 that was supposed to be trashed. The work print escaped the trash can by mistake and somehow survived 38 years hidden from sight as a bookmark.
The original negative to the image as well as any final silver gelatin prints I had made were all lost in a flood. So the work print was all I had to work with to recover the image.
When I found the work print I was able to get a usable digital image from scanning it and some Lightroom adjustments. But the original work print was of poor quality and had mottled shadows and blacks….that was why is was headed for the trash can.
Many digital photographers I talk with tell me they seldom make prints. They just view their work on the monitor or on digital photo frames. This ‘no prints required’ method is one of the benefits digital photography can provide us.
But, this benefit would also work against the digital photographer if they would ever lose their digital masters. The lack of a physical negative / chrome is one of the shortcomings of digital imaging when it comes to preservation. But, we can come close to the benefit of film with a 4 x 6 (or optimally a letter size) master print.
With a high grade scan of our master print we can always recover 90% of the original image if we would ever lose our digital or film master. The master print for the digital photographer is what the physical negative is for the film photographer.
Here are a few of my photos that were lost in the flood. The only reason I can show you these is that I had some small 2 x 4 to 3.5 x 5 inch snapshot prints of them stored at my mom’s house. I was able to recover something with a scan of the prints.
When scans are done correctly, they can yield excellent results.
The above photos show a scan of an original Eastman Kodak dye transfer print. I then made a second generation inkjet print from the scan of the dye transfer print.
I married the original dye transfer print and the second generation inkjet print and scanned them to show comparison results. I didn’t use a high priced scanner or printer to do the tests. I used a consumer model Canon printer from Wal-Mart costing about $80 and a $200 Epson scanner.
Now, no scan is as good as the original. But, you can see for yourself, it is hard to tell which is the original dye transfer scan and which is the scan of inkjet copy print made from the dye transfer print.
Top Photograph – Dye Transfer original is on the bottom half.
Bottom Photograph – Dye Transfer original print is on the right side.
This test tells us 2 things:
1) Scans can recover about 90% of the image quality from an original.
2) Inkjet printers can equal or surpass Eastman Kodak’s dye transfer process when it comes to image quality. (In addition, dye stability tests I’ve run show pigmented inkjet prints will outlast an Eastman Kodak dye transfer print when it comes to dye stability by leaps and bounds.)
For the dye stability tests photos in this post, I cut or masked the media in half. One half of the media was put in sunlight for 6 months. The other half was stored in total darkness. After 6 months of sun, the 2 halves were married and scanned. The half exposed to the sun was marked with an ‘S’. The half stored in the dark was marked with a ‘D’.
Test results show Eastman Kodak’s dye transfer prints to have very poor dye stability when exposed to light. But they do have good dark storage dye stability. The oldest know dye transfer I’ve come across is about 80 years old and still looked good. But when it comes to dye stability, the king is the pigmented ink jet and laser print, possibly surpassed only by the old Cibachrome prints.
Dye transfer prints shown are by: Dean Child, US Color Print Portland, OR
Below is a metal print on aluminum, something that is very popular nowadays. The sky faded a good deal after 6 month of sun.
Below is an Epson inkjet print exposed to 1 year of sun with no noticeable fading. I use a lot of gloss optimizer in my printing and wondered about its archival characteristics. I decided on giving Epson’s gloss optimizer a 1 year stress test.
Here is a quick shot of the test results with my P&S Sony.
After the 1 year test period was over I married the 2 halves for comparison. The black lines show the edges where the gloss optimizer extends. One year of sun produced no change to the gloss optimizer that could be seen with the eye. The results area also a testimony to Epson’s pigment based ink.
Here is the original digital file.
The point of fade testing is to show you that different media has different dye stability. So choose a media that is fade resistance for your master prints.
Additional testing:
http://fadetesting.tumblr.com/
13 Saturday Feb 2016
Posted in 100 Strangers, A photo is not like a video or movie. The photo must catch our attention and tell the story in one image., A society without jaywalkers might indicate a society without artists., Always let the photo op tell you yes or no…don’t let yours or anyone else’s prejudices ever stop you., An example of push processing a digital image., Artists’ are on a different wavelength than the rest., Breaking the rules – There are no GD rules…there are only great photographs!, By the time the photo forum snobs run all their pet prejudices through their head the photo op is gone., Charles Waldrum, Don’t try to be an artist unless you can work and live in isolation without any thanks., Grunge HDR, hdr, I first learned about Hyper-Real / Painterly HDR from Les Krims., I wonder what America will look like…100 years after Frank?, I’m not a big fan of grunge HDR, Ignore rejection and move on. The life of an artist is chock full of rejection…so get used to it., moondog, Moondog Wheeling, Moondog Wheeling WV, ohio valley, Wheeling Moondog, wheeling wv, Wheeling WV Post Office
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Charles Waldrum aka ‘Moondog’ a long-time fixture of Wheeling, WV – 2014
From The Americans…60 years after Frank artist’s book by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
Photographed in front of the main Post Office on Chapline Street, Wheeling, WV.
I’m not a big fan of grunge HDR, I prefer less extreme hyper-real aka painterly HDR. I shot Moondog with the sun behind his head and didn’t have a working flash with me. Grunge was the only option to allow his face to have decent detail…so grunge it is!
An article about Moondog…
Raleigh County Blues – November 1, 2014
By Steve Novotney
“Why?”
It’s his favorite question, and he asks it with charmingly sincere curiosity.
That is why, if you see him and proclaim your love for him, he will ask you, “Why?”
At that exact moment, you possibly could develop countless reasons – he’s an icon, a mascot, a protector, the perpetual grand marshal, a survivor, a free spirit, a gentle soul, a bodyguard, a legend, and a tradition.
In fact, the Wheeling Nailers honored him in March 2008 with his own bobblehead night at Wesbanco Arena, and the game sold out.
Some, however, choose to believe his impact on the “Friendly City” is a negative one. These people say they see an unkempt man with an overgrown beard, longer-than-usual finger nails, a menacing flashlight, a beat-up bike, and a rough appearance. They also question others’ fascination with him. One person, several years ago, even took a shot at him in the Warwood section of Wheeling.
“That didn’t scare me. It wasn’t even close,” he said with a smile. “Won’t go back there, though.”
What IS Charles “MoonDog” Waldrum to this city of nearly 30,000 residents? His friends believe he is the last pure, innocent soul in Wheeling, W.Va.
“I have never seen him hesitate to give a kid his leftover change to buy a piece of candy or a bag of chips,” said Jessica Yost, the daughter of the owner of the 16th Street Convenient Store in East Wheeling. “He always lends a hand at my dad’s store and never asks for anything in return.”
Jessica’s husband, Jeff, is also a former employee of the store and is currently battling cancer. “Charles, as he so eloquently says it every time I see him, is like a brother to me. He asks me every time he sees me how I’m feeling through all of my treatments and stuff,” he said. “He’s a great man, and he takes pride in his city and the citizens of it.”
Now, who IS he? That is a completely different story.
Waldrum is not homeless. He was born in Wheeling – one of 11 children – and raised in East Wheeling. The 56-year-old shaves twice a year, but never down to his bare face. He did not graduate from high school and has never held down a regular job. He lives in East Wheeling and has a record as a juvenile fire-setter, but he has not been suspected in a single fire investigation over the last four decades.
He pays his rent with the monthly Social Security check he has received since his father died more than 30 years ago. He has suffered his own health issues, too, yet he donates to charitable causes in which he believes.
And he does not like his nickname.
“They started calling me, ‘Moondog’ a long time ago,” Waldrum said, “because I go out at night a lot.
“I go out at night because it’s cooler. That’s why,” he explained. “But I ain’t no dog. I look for stuff that ain’t right. I try to help because there are some bad people in this world.”
Former Wheeling fire chief Steve Johnston served as a firefighter for more than 30 years before his retirement in 2009, and he knows Waldrum better than most. “He looks homeless, but he’s not,” he explained. “People may think he’s a bad person, but he’s not a bad person. He looks the way he looks because that’s the way he wants to look, and he helps the (fire) department and the police when he sees something.
“His appearance allows people to think that he’s living on the streets or that he’s not mentally well. It’s hard to explain Charles – he’s not a genius who has decided to live this kind of life, but he’s also not helpless either. He does what he does because that’s what he wants to do, and you see what you see because that’s what he wants you to see. His bike tells a lot of his story.”
Although he assists others, there have been local citizens who have committed crimes against him. Most often, they involve that signature bicycle. “Someone stole my bike in July near Dairy Queen,” Waldrum said. “I reported it, but the police never find them when someone steals them.
“I think they throw them in the creek, and that’s stupid. That’s a waste,” he continued. “I don’t like those people, and I don’t like the people who call me names.”
Bum. Loser. Moron. Fool. Freak. Idiot. Scumbag. Weirdo. Retard. He says he’s been called that, “dirty n-word,” too.
“I don’t care what they call me. They don’t know me,” Waldrum said. “When they call me the ‘n-word,’ they’re being racist. Doesn’t matter who says it. They’re a racist.
“They hate … don’t know why,” Waldrum said. “They must hate themselves, too.”
Charles Waldrum roams many more neighborhoods than his native East Wheeling, and he also visits several cities, towns and villages during the course of each year. Last year alone he appeared in Christmas parades in Ohio, Marshall and Belmont counties, and he’s consistently met with smiles, waves and applause.
How does he get to each event?
“Ride my bike,” he explained. “Those places aren’t too far for me – even in the snow. The worst is going up and down that hill (along U.S. 40 near Blaine, Ohio). It’s hard going up it and it’s cold coming down.”
But does he own a clue as to how most folks feel about him in Wheeling? Or that several people have created fake Facebook pages and Twitter accounts using the nickname he loathes? Or that many have purchased his “Meet Me in the Alley” portrait from Wheeling photographer Bennett McKinley?
“There is a difference between the person and the (Moondog) character,” Johnston said. “But I don’t think he cares if people recognize him as any more than the guy on the bike with all the flags.”
So he doesn’t care the masses see him as iconic?
“Don’t even know what that means,” Waldrum admitted. “I’m me. Charles. That’s who I am.
From: http://www.synrgetic.com/moondog/
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Selection from ‘Girls of the Beat Generation’
A forthcoming 6 volume artists’ book series by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
https://danielteolijr.wordpress.com/2016/04/21/girls-of-the-beat-generation-artists-book/
A complete list of artist’s books by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
https://danielteolijr.wordpress.com/2016/03/07/artists-books-by-daniel-d-teoli-jr-2/
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18 Sunday Oct 2015
Posted in 100 Strangers, 2 billion cell phone cams, A big part of the success in anything is to not quit before you start and to show up and do what needs to be done., A meeting of lesbian separatists…they didn’t like me shooting there., A photo is not like a video or movie. The photo must catch our attention and tell the story in one image., A society without jaywalkers might indicate a society without artists., Always let the photo op tell you yes or no…don’t let yours or anyone else’s prejudices ever stop you., An artist is only as happy as their last masterpiece., An iconic photo never needs to 'age' to look good. You don't have to keep trying to sell yourself on it hoping it looks better over time. The great photo jumps right out at you!, artists' books, ‘Gay Bar’ project, In the 1970's gender bending was underground. Nowadays it is becoming more mainstream., infrared, infrared flash, Invisible Flash sheds new light on photography in the dark.
≈ Comments Off on ‘Gay Bar’ project update
Tags
artists' book, big breasts, chiaroscuro, children of weegee, d.teoli, Dan Teoli, daniel d. teoli jr, documentary photography, drag queen, gay bar, Gay Bar artists' book, infrared, infrared flash, infrared flash social documentary, ir flash, lesbian, lesbian seperatists, lgbt, lgbtq, low cut, social documentary infrared flash, social documentary photography, T girl, Teoli, trans, weegee, yoshiyuki
A transwoman and her friend.
Infrared flash photography from Gay Bar project.
Principal photography for my artists’ book Gay Bar is complete. I found it very difficult to shoot in gay bars. The doorman sees my cam and wont let me in. If I hide the cam and pull it out inside I am stopped as soon as I get started. Other bars tolerated photography for a few minutes before pulling the plug. The longest time I was allowed to shoot was for 15 to 20 minutes before I was asked to leave. Of course, this is exactly the scenario for the expert documentary photog who’s job it is to bring back the photos in tough shooting conditions.
Infrared flash photography.
I was at a group run by lesbian separatists. One lesbian that did not like me shooting the gals started pushing me around and was very abusive. As I was leaving, I was surrounded by a group of 5 or 6 lesbians that demanded I delete the photos I had just shot. First thing I do when confronted is to get my pepper spray in hand. I knew I had some good material, so I refused to delete a thing.
I could see the talking was getting nowhere and things would only get worse, so I told them the conversation was over and walked away. They followed me around the building and kept harassing me, but it was an all-talk, verbal attack with nothing physical. But, if things escalated, the hot Tabasco was ready to be served. When you are a social documentary photog, beside button pushing, self-defense must always be on your mind.
https://danielteolijr.wordpress.com/2015/07/27/self-defense-for-the-street-photographer/
Being a very fast worker and with about 45 minutes of shooting time at various bars, I was able to amass enough photos to make an artists’ book out of them. My book will possibly hold the world record for how short a shooting session was used in making a social documentary photography book.
The photography of Gay Bar is an offshoot of my work with Piercing Darkness and was completely shot with an infrared flash and camera. It is book number two in my infrared flash photography projects.
https://danielteolijr.wordpress.com/2015/08/17/piercing-darkness-update/
Pro-forma schedule for printing of Gay Bar is 2017/18
14 Friday Aug 2015
Posted in 100 Strangers
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Tags
100 strangers, chiaroscuro, children of weegee, composition, d.teoli, Dan Teoli, daniel d. teoli jr, daniel teoli jr, decisive moment, documentary photography, infrared, infrared flash, ir flash, mike busey, mike busey show, piercing darkness, social documentary photography, Teoli, weegee, yoshyuki
I posted a 100 strangers project previously offering candid photographs.
https://danielteolijr.wordpress.com/2015/08/10/100-strangers-candid/
Here are my 100 strangers that are not so candid. Most of these persons were asked for permission. Others were not asked, but knew they were being shot and just didn’t care. Some knew and DID care like the guy giving me the 2 fingers. Some of the IR flash pix are borderline. When I shoot in the dark I never know if they think I shot them, so it is a toss up…I don’t ask.
My M.O. for social doc work was “meet on the street – shoot at the home”. Most of the interior shots were done like that…strangers I met and subsequently was able to shoot at their homes.
Nowadays that is kind of tough to do. People are too paranoid to let me go home with them. Also the cell phone cam has ruined it for me. People don’t need me to take pix for them, they are already overloaded with their own pix. Give them a cell phone + $40 inkjet printer from Wal-Mart and they are self-sufficient in the photo department.
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10 Monday Aug 2015
Posted in 100 Strangers, social documentary photography, street photography
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100 strangers, 50 candids, 50 strangers, candid, chiaroscuro, children of weegee, d.teoli, Dan Teoli, daniel d. teoli jr, decisive moment, documentary photography, infrared, infrared flash, ir flash, ir street photography, one hundred strangers, Paul Gonsalves, piercing darkness, social documentary photography, Sonny Rollins, street photography, trans, transgender, transsexual, transwoman, weegee, yoshiyuki
Article Dedication
in honor of
Sonny Rollins & Paul Gonsalves
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Shooting 100 strangers is a popular subject on the photo forums. The photog goes up to a stranger and asks if they can shoot a pix of them.
One guy on the forums finished his ‘ask project’ and was on his way doing another 100 strangers. I would suggest he does his second hundred strangers at night or with some other added twist, or it can get boring, at least for me.
While I do street portraits, I’m more interested in candid photography. For this post I’m putting up 100 candid stranger shots.
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From Girls of the Beat Generation
A forthcoming 6 volume artist’s book series by social documentary photographer Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
https://danielteolijr.wordpress.com/2016/04/21/girls-of-the-beat-generation-artists-book/
A complete list of artist’s books by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
https://danielteolijr.wordpress.com/2016/03/07/artists-books-by-daniel-d-teoli-jr-2/
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05 Tuesday May 2015
Posted in 100 Strangers, 180:The circular fisheye at large., boys like girls
≈ Comments Off on Boys like girls!
Tags
boys like girls, circular fisheye, clubbing, decisive moment, gathering of the juggalos, juggalette, juggalos, social documentary photography, street photography, Teoli
As the girl pushed her butt in his face, someone yelled out “lick it!”
Well, I think he is a little young for that business.
From 180: The circular fisheye at large! artists’ book by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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02 Saturday May 2015
Posted in 100 Strangers, 180:The circular fisheye at large., Las Vegas, You make friends fast in Vegas!
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180 the circular fisheye at large, A homeless Hispanic guy thanked me for taking the shot., booby, breast, circular fisheye, Dan Teoli, daniel d. teoli jr, decisive moment, escalotor, fast friends, fisheye, From 180: The circular fisheye at large! artist's book by Daniel D. Teoli Jr., Getting to be good friends by the time we get off the escalator., girls, He said he hadn't seen a live booby in some time., las vegas, making friends, social documentary photography, street photography, street portrait, Teoli, vegas, You make friends fast in Vegas!
Strangers going up…
Cross the bridge and we meet going down.
Getting to be good friends by the time we get off the escalator.
A homeless Hispanic guy thanked me for taking the shot. He said he hadn’t seen a live booby in some time. Vegas has a very large homeless population. I was happy to be able to help him out.
From 180: The circular fisheye at large! artist’s book by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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From Girls of the Beat Generation
A forthcoming 6 volume artist’s book series by social documentary photographer Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
https://danielteolijr.wordpress.com/2016/04/21/girls-of-the-beat-generation-artists-book/
A complete list of artist’s books by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
https://danielteolijr.wordpress.com/2016/03/07/artists-books-by-daniel-d-teoli-jr-2/