Tag Archives: charlie

Events

Charles Cramer Lecture in Palo Alto Tomorrow

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Landscape photographer Charles Cramer is presenting a lecture in Palo Alto tomorrow (Wednesday, January 26) evening – free and open to the public. Highly recommended…  I’ll be there. Say “hi” if you see me!

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

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Commentary, Ideas

A Difficult Question, and Thinking About Feedback

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There is a lot to say about the subject of feedback – what constitutes useful feedback, when it is and is not appropriate to offer it, when to be “direct” and when to be diplomatic, how to offer it, and so forth. I’m thinking about this today – though I think about it often – after a thought-provoking experience I had yesterday.

Yesterday I visited Charles Cramer’s beautiful solo show at the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel – for the third time! I made a point of dropping in one more time because a) this was the final day of the show, b) I’m a huge fan of Charlie’s work, c) I knew that he would be there in the afternoon, and d) it gave me a perfect excuse to photograph on the Monterey Peninsula yesterday before and after visiting the show!

Charlie asked several of us two questions – one merely difficult and the other very difficult. The former, merely difficult question was, more or less, “Which are your favorites?” This wasn’t too difficult, since there are some very specific photographs in this show that “speak” to me very powerfully. In fact, I basically responded to this question by pointing those out and trying (with varying levels of success) to say something about what makes those photographs “work” for me. But there are so many that work in so many different ways that I could really do the question justice. Some work “as photographs” alone, there are others that I probably see differently because of my affinity for the subjects, some require some time to understand, and so forth.

But the second question was the really tough one: “Which photograph(s) would you leave out of the exhibit?” Really? You are asking me, Charlie? :-)

But then I thought about this a bit more and decided to attempt an answer. I’m not going to write about which photographs I would leave out – frankly I would add more of his photographs rather than removing any – since my selections are not the point. But I do want to think out loud a bit more about the question and the value of asking it and trying to answer. Continue reading A Difficult Question, and Thinking About Feedback →

Gallery, News, Photographers, Shows

Charlie Cramer at the Center for Photographic Art

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It is a rare and special thing to be able to view large collection of a wonderful photographer’s best work. We visited Charlie Cramer’s show at the Center for Photographic Arts again yesterday while visiting Carmel. If you can get to Carmel to see the show, I don’t think you will be disappointed! The show is in it’s last week, so go now…

Commentary, Ideas, Photographers

Two Photographers: Two Videos

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I came across a couple of interesting videos of photographers on the web today.

The first is a wonderful video of Michael Kenna photographing in the snow in Hokkaido, Japan. The video is partly an interview, partly a visual narrative of Kenna at work, and partly a collection of interesting scenes and images associated with some of his photographs. There is a lot to think about and consider in the video, and it struck several chords for me. Among many was his use of the word “hunt” to describe the act of looking for and finding photographic images, and not perhaps just in the sense of tracking and capturing an image, but also, I think, related to the need to be patient and to understand the “quarry.” I often have thought about the “hunt” aspect of looking for subject. (Link originally seen at George Barr’s Behind the Lens blog.)

The second video is rather different but also features a very talented landscape photographer, Charlie Cramer. Unlike the slow moving and rather poetic video of Kenna with its long silent shots and occasional sparse music, this video interview (on the Marc Silber show)  is pretty “straight ahead” – basically a record of Charlie talking about his ubiquitous framing guide, a sheet of mat board with a 4 x 5 cutout that he uses to help him visual photographs while he is in the field. This is interesting and Charlie makes a compelling case for using this “tool.” (I’ve thought about it, but never “gone there.” Perhaps I will now…) More interesting to me were a few side comments that Charlie makes in the course of the interview. For one, he refers to the frame as a “blood pressure meter,” and suggests that he more or less “just knows” when a scene is going to work because when he views it in the frame he feels his blood pressure rises. (In another context he has spoken of hearing the scene whisper, “Take me!”) The point, I think (and forgive me if I have this wrong, Charlie!) is that all of the rules of composition in the world won’t help you that much in the end – essentially you need to be able to look at the subject and “just know” that it will work and how.