NEW YORK PHOTOGRAPHER’S BLOG

The Kosher deli on second avenue is manned by Mexican workers.  I’ve been doing portraits of them when they come out for a break and sit on the stoop.

Check this out – on Lester’s site.

I don’t want to just embed the video – it’s worth reading what he says before viewing it.  I think that after viewing this you can see why Les and me have been friends for something like 35 years.

LESTER RAPS

My friend Lester has started a blog which at this point is filled with home movies (I think that camera was broken) and memories of growing up in Queens.  I’ve been enjoying it.

Here’s the link to the site: http://amolizgeven.wordpress.com/

I already told him that if he wants any visitors at all to change the title of the blog, which is now AMOLIZGEVEN which means “once upon a time” in Yiddish.  Sorry Lester, but I don’t expect that to show up in many google searches.  On the other hand, it is one of my favorite blogs with a title that I can’t remember.

This is the 1965 Worlds Fair in Flushing. Super-8 Photography by Lester’s father.

Lester (with my help) recently tried to start a fictional blog called The 11th man.  There are a lot problems with doing fiction in a blog, unless each post is self-contained, and simply written by a fictional character.  You can read more on this here.

The major problem is that you don’t currently have control, at least not with any way that I’ve seen in a wordpress theme, with where the current reader “tunes in.”  If readers were willing to login, then you could create a cookie to serve as a bookmark.  But so far – I haven’t seen that done.  If you have – let me know.

You could just publish all the posts at once – and keep them in an index and let the reader go from one to the next in order… but then you do lose the sense of each chapter being “published” as in the days or serialized stories which were the meat and potatoes of writers like Dostoyevsky and Dickens.  The books that we would later get as Great Expectations or Crime and Punishment were originally released episode by episode in inexpensive magazines.  Or stories with continuing characters like Sherlock Holmes were published one at a time in Strand magazine.

In the 30’s, one-reelers, cliff-hangers (as each episode ended with the main character in deep trouble) were very popular in the cinema of the 30’s.

And even now, many episodic shows are released on YouTube with a similar audience.

I’m just curious if anyone has seen this done with a blog.  I know that a few years ago Stephen King attempted something along these lines but I don’t think it worked out very well.

I’m not sure why this hasn’t been bigger in blogs.  They’re mostly used for news (uhm sort of), opinions, various entry points to media, but I haven’t seen it done in blogs, and I’m not entirely sure why not.

It’s tricky.  Even a short story would need to be divided into many posts and so you would need the blog to remember where the user was.  Wouldn’t like to read an O. Henry story and start at the end.

Doing a blog of a fictional character and his daily exploits which don’t depend on any order is the simplest.  More or less like picking up the latest cartoons.  Or maybe the plot needs to move as slowly as a soap opera.  You come back a year later and nothing much has changed.  In fact, the soaps are probably the most popular serialized stories on the air; and I bet a soap opera would be just about perfect blog reading since that sort of stuff is already so popular on the web (who’s sleeping with who, and who wants to break it up, and will Sally’s secret be revealed. I hope so.  The evil doctor has been threatening to reveal her secret for two years now.  But he’ll get his.)

Anyway – since there are lots of readers of this blog (or there were before I started scanning things) – if you’ve come across a fiction blog that you follow – I’d love to know about it.

Built a light-tight box to put around the flatbed; with a hole to shine a light through.  I moved the light around a bit as the scan was going on.  You’ve got everything you need to make a sandwich: two different mustards, olive-oil, hot pepper sauce, lemon juice (okay that doesn’t fit in), mayonaise… and balsamic vinegar.

Tossed Away

What – color?  It happens to the best of us.  Especially where there are flowers and an Eli’s bag.  And so, with the use of color,  it doesn’t feel like it was taken in the 40’s or 50’s.  Maybe it wasn’t taken yesterday – but it no longer feels nostalgic.  The use of color gives the image a contemporary look.

Jesus - Sleepy Hollow

I’m glad that a few people like what I did at Central Park and East Harlem yesterday (or maybe it was the day before) because the day before I badly sprained my back while I was turning the mattress and changing the sheet on the futon and I should have just stayed in bed but instead, while looking at the clouds out the window I thought it would be a good day for infrared and so, barely able to walk, I took a cab up to the park, and ended up climbing up and down Central Park hills, making grunting sounds with each step and making my condition worse to the point where today has been a totally lost day – mostly in bed with a heating pad and taking hot showers every few hours and barely being able to get my pants on.

When I told my sister what I had done, she called me an idiot.  And I had to agree with her since even in the cab going uptown, each bump caused me to groan.  I had something like this about 20 years ago, but since it happens so rarely, I wasn’t really sure how bad it was or how to treat it; and at first took Tylenol which didn’t do anything; and even though I had an ice pack in the freezer, I didn’t use that either.

So those shots of Central Park cost me the big relapse, and although I have three print orders to get out, and they’ve been printed, it’s been so painful to even stand up, that I’ve gotten behind with getting them out.

To make matters worse – this morning when I was trying to make it down the stairs – picture Tim Conway doing the shuffling old man – there was a move going on and there were three guys with heavy boxes on their backs behind me – while I tried to navigate the steps.  One part of me saw it as a good comedy; if it wasn’t me I would be laughing; but it hurt to laugh so don’t write anything funny in response to this.

Yes – I know a chiropracter nearby but I don’t believe in those guys.  I’m going to just play it easy for a few days and my suspicion is that it will heal without seeing a chiropracter at the same speed – though having used chiropracters once betore – my experience was that it helped for a while after you saw them – but then it came back again.

I’m sure this is a weird thing to say, considering how much pain I’ve been in, and how difficult it was to bend down and clean out the cat’s box – but I do find it funny not to be able to do the simplest things.  I suppose it’s because I know that in a few days it will be over; and I sometimes see my life as part of a one-reel comedy.  So all I can say right now is: ouch and tag this with sprained back.

Of course if you think about it – it’s not so strange since so much comedy comes out of watching other’s painful experiences.  Watch someone slip on a banana peel – ha -ha.  You slip on the peel – not so funny unless you can sort of laugh at your own pain.  Funniest short film: THE DENTIST with W.C. FIELDS.  Similar situation, MARATHON MAN, the dentist scene, horrifying because you identify with Dustin Hoffman.

NOTICE: The blog is  a tightrope walk between what is private and what can be made public, and to be frank, to write a diary in public, is  difficult.  When I began this project in 1999, I was inspired by Weston’s journals.  I realize now that he could sit in private and write to his heart’s content, knowing that at some point he could go back and change names, or edit as he wished, and the very last thing was to publish.

The blog as a diary is completely different as people are reading it as you go along.  Not only are they reading it, but if you allow it, posting comments.  It is a weird thing for sure.

Anyway – I’ve decided to review all comments before they get posted so that they hopefully add something to the blog.  If they don’t make it in it can only mean that I didn’t think it was a propos, or didn’t like the tone or just didn’t feel like including it.  This will make it easier for me to write openly and honestly to you.

BTW – you don’t always see comments that I quickly delete for reasons mentioned above.  But this will give me more safety when writing about things that probably should be kept private until someone writes my biography or I’m too old to give a damn, or I’m famous but still in need of money.

Read the rest of this entry »

One thing I can tell you – I don’t think there’s a one of these filters that are in the original container.   I’m not going to look up current prices for all of these.  First come, first served.  First e-mail with a reasonable offer and I’ll put a cross-out mark through the item until it’s paid.  All payments through paypal to davebeckerman@gmail.com

Other stuff:

Only in the U.S.

Unless I send you the wrong filter, no returns.

Not a single one is mint or unused.  But I won’t sell any that are scratched (though frankly I doubt if it would make a difference.  It’s scratches on the back element that matter the most).

Please don’t send Paypal until we’ve gone back and forth with e-mail once and I say I still have it etc.

If you want a couple of them – make the offer for the bunch.  A lot of these are for the Leica M series (which I no longer use).

You can lookup current prices, and info about the B+W filters here.

39mm

B+W / 39e / 102 / 4x  (nd filter)

B+W / 39e / 022 / 2x (light yellow) Read the rest of this entry »

I’m writing this very quickly after just waking up to try and remember…

I was back in college.  Which one, I don’t know.  But I was late for class.  I entered the classroom, already in progress, and slinked over to a seat.  Immediately the professor began to call on me.  Frankly, even in the dream I had no idea what the class was about, but that I needed it to graduate.  The professor asked an assortment of questions that didn’t make any sense.  First he wanted to know the name of the three sisters in King Lear.  Then something about the third principle of physics.  And finally he called on me again to count in Spanish.

After the class, students were hanging around in the corridor, near a large window.  There was just slightly open, maybe a couple of inches.  One of my old friends from college appears, and just as quickly, he jumps through the crack in the window (a physical impossibility) hit the ground (we’re on the first floor) and comes back in the door grinning.  Just something I picked up he says.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been doing a spring house cleaning.  Trying to give myself as much room as possible.  It’s not exactly rational – more like the salmon taking their last trip  upriver.

Anyway – the big thing was to get up to the loft and start cleaning that out.  What I found there – crazy.  It hadn’t been dusted in ten plus years and it was the cat’s home for at least 7 years.

There are many darkroom prints that I thought would one day be valuable.  But their time hasn’t come yet.  And no – they aren’t better than what I’m printing now.  Many are worse.

It was like going back through my sordid history:  there was the folding table that I used when I sold prints in front of the Metropolitan Museum, along with all the other crap I would drag over there early in the morning.   Out all that crap  goes.  What a miserable way to try and make a living that was.  Of course, when you’re desperate, you do whatever you can.  I remember my first day out there – feeling low to be selling on the street when my sister and her friend stopped by to pretend to buy something.  They made me feel even worse.

I remember days when nothing would sell.  I’d be out there before dawn (first come first with the best spot) – and the entire day would go by – without a sale.  I remember that the guy that did the best did the Chinese- or maybe it was Japanese- script for the tourists.  And it was all for the tourists.  And they all wanted the same thing at the cheapest price.  I learned a few things, I guess – but I don’t like to remember those days.

For example, the law was (and as far as I know still is) that you had to be the creator of the art to sell it.  That was and is a laugh.  Most of the pictures were stolen (scanned) from books of other photographers, and reprinted on cheap paper with cheap frames and managed by the Chinese, or in some cases the Russians.  It was all a racket.

I did deeper.

Here an old Epson printer box which rattles when you shake it.  I had taken the trouble to label it: Darkroom Things.  There were reels, and probably tanks in it.  Out out out.  I didn’t even open it.  I didn’t try to donate to anyone that wants to learn chemical photography.  Out.

And then – there were the small gift boxes.  Tons of them.  From the time I was going to make my money selling gift cards.  Out, out, out.

There was a scsi card?  Remember them?  And a Jazz drive?  Out.  And what’s this – an ancient Thinkpad laptop that I bought used a few years ago after it was already a few years old.  In the big black garbage bag and out it goes.

With all the cleaning – I’ve made the cat very happy because all that is left is one carton that I’ve made esp. for him, and he just loves because it’s just the right height for him to either curl up in it unseen, or look out over the edge and watch me.

I suppose this all has something to do with my getting ready to travel – but so far I haven’t made much progress there.  My bags are packed.  I’m ready to go.  I’m standing here.  All alone…

But it won’t be a jet plane.  It’ll be a low-budget, compact rental.  The only thing is – you folks are still sending in orders, and one of them if for a negative and I can’t find the damned thing.  That’s the worst.  Alright – I took a break while the 7800 was doing it’s big print and it’s done and now I’ve got to go through some stacks of negs.  I haven’t had to do that for a long time and forgot how annoying it is.  But someone bought a print that I’ve never sold – and it was a color negative that I’d turned to b&w, and I think I left it with some of the color negs in the closet… I hope that’s where it is…

Oh, the one thing I did keep was the carrying case from the ancient thinkpad – that fits this laptop perfectly…

People can now pull your photograph from your site, post it at vi.sualize.us and the owners of the site can profit by building up an audience and selling ads; all without either the photographers’ knowledge or permission.  That annoys me.  It annoys me but it’s not new.  It’s just that this is for photography only.

Anyway, I just happened to find myself at: http://vi.sualize.us/search/all/beckerman/

I guess it’s not different than other linking places, where you get to post the good stuff you’ve found, but somehow, this one seems different.  I’m not sure why.  In other words, I never had problems with StumbleUpon or Digg because they give you traffic back in return; and so does this site.  I don’t know.  I can’t explain why this site annoyed me.  Nope.  All mysterious to me, why this discovery should annoy me and the others don’t.

If you post your stuff on your web site and you say, copyright Dave Beckerman, cannot be used for any purpose without written permission… that doesn’t mean anything to anyone… and anyway – you want the publicity – don’t you…?  Well – don’t you, punk?   You’ll be happy with any posting of your images so long as they spell your URL right.

Just feeling grumpy.  Better get to bed before I write something that should’ve been saved as draft first.