Philosophy of brilliant artists dept, part 1: ansel adams

Philosophy of brilliant artists dept:

Ansel Adams was known to have said, “The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score, and the print the performance.”

This thought has always stuck with me. It’s something that when applied to the traditional dark room holds very true on many levels. I can expose two consecutive prints at the same exact settings, for the same amount of time, and still come up with two different prints. The reason? Human error (or creativity). I say human error because, if I am burning in a particular area of a print for ten seconds, I am literally holding my hand or an object over the rest of the photo to block light to it while exposing this one particular section longer. I might let light in from a slightly different angle, I might expose less of the object than I intended. I might even expose it for longer or shorter than ten seconds by an accident. That’s the human touch. I think this is harder to come by now with the digital age.

When I needed a reprint of a particular photo in the past, well I would just set up all the trays and chemicals, stick the negative back in the enlarger and re-set up and focus everything, and then if I was smart enough to write down previous exposure times and settings, I could go by those and see how it works. Of course, I am lazy, and I tend to not write down such nuances, and so I have to start the whole test strip process again, switching in and out filters, opening and closing the f-stop, etc. I could be using different paper this time, my chemicals might be brand new or nearly wasted, any number of options can cause a “performance” to be better or worse than past performances.

Of course it is possible to have varying prints in the digital age- you just play with settings in photoshop. It’s also possible to produce 25 carbon copies of the same image, and have them shoot out of the printer looking exactly alike. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. What kind of performance is that? It’s like when a popstar lip-syncs. It’s still a performance I guess, but the human element has been somewhat removed.

It’s like when performers of a concert put on a giant show, to the point when the music takes a backseat. The “score” is still there lying underneath, but the performer may feel his “score” is not up to par, and so he is trying to hide this under CGI special effects and laser light shows.

That’s not to say I don’t enjoy some heavy photoshop work- when it’s done well I definitely appreciate it- but for the most part….I think I would rather have my performances….well…performed live, acoustic, raw- without all of the bells and whistles attached.

pleasure beach

A strange thing happened to me Sunday.

A friend and I traveled to Pleasure Beach, the soon to be demolished abandoned beach community on the Connecticut coast, and made the long journey along the two-mile sandbar in roaring wind in search of the somewhat unknown- I had been here one night 3 months prior. We arrived around noon, and my friend was ecstatic, saying how the neighborhood felt like a ghost town, then it started snowing, and to me it felt more like nuclear winter. We started at the amusement park and worked our way back.

I was disappointed to find how trashed the community was since I had last been there. Every window on nearly every house had been systematically shattered, contents of each building thrown about as if the howling outside wind that day had entered each cottage. Vandals. I had come to this island with such excitement of being able to capture hundreds of amazing shots in these houses, and instead all I was seeing in front of me was destruction in the name of suburban teenage boredom. I was crushed.

But then my friend and I were shooting in one of the cottages when a middle-aged couple approached a shattered window. “Hi, how are you, taking pictures?” I answered in the affirmative. They must be more people wandering the grounds, poking around, like the dozen or so others we had encountered that afternoon. News of the recent sale of the land had been in local papers recently, and people were curious to check out the grounds before the community was razed. Only I was way off. This man then began to give us a stern lecture about how we were breaking and entering and trespassing in what had actually been THEIR house, and that the land and cottage were now the property of Stratford, and no one should be in there.

I felt like the biggest asshole at that very moment. 45 cottages on the island, and we had to be in the exact one this exact couple owned at the exact moment they were to walk up to it. Glorious.

“Sorry,” I muttered, and stared at my feet. I waited what seemed like eons for my friend to pack up her lenses, and we shuffled out the shattered glass back door, wife and husband staring at us. The wife was sobbing.

“You want to take a picture?? Take a picture of our FACES!!” she sobbed, red faced, losing composure. I don’t think I could have felt much worse at that moment.

This house belonged to these people. It probably held years of fond memories of sunsets on the beach, evenings on the boardwalks, days in the water. And now everything they owned in this house of theirs had literally been torn to shreds. Clothes were ripped from the closets, beer cans littered the floor. Broken glass was everywhere. Personal paperwork was strewn about the rooms, shopping list still on the fridge. Strangers had invaded their territory and basically pissed on it.

And here I am, some asshole with a camera, going through their memories and the destruction and disrespect for their lives, taking pictures of their misfortune, dancing on their losses.

Sometimes when in these places taking pictures of restraints in a mental hospital, or looking through patient files or rifling through old rotted clothing I forget that these things actually had a human attached to them at some point. Somehow running through an institution is different to me though. Those things belonged to the state, or most of them did, such as the medical equipment. No one really had an attachment to them. But that torn baby photo tacked to the wall in that cottage, that had a memory for someone. That collection of seashells all over the table and floor, somebody too the time to pick each one of those, and held onto them for a reason. I don’t know, I can’t explain it, but it’s just different. If I would have been in a mental hospital shooting in a room and somebody randomly walked in and said, “I used to live in this room!” I’m not sure that I would have been as affected as I was by that poor married couple.

For all of my photos from Sunday go here and here.

making the amazing….mundane.

Sometimes I think I shoot better with mundane subjects. Because when faced with an object that is unusual, I often lose sight of my goal of making a creative and interesting photograph, and I just photograph the object for what it is, straightforward and unoriginal.

While going through a batch of photos from the past weekend the other day, I noticed how disappointed I was with some of my photos. Sometimes when shooting an object, I seem to shoot it from the most unoriginal, boring, documentary-style humanly possible. I don’t know why I do this.

Then I was looking at some shots later in the set, when I started experimenting with things like shallow depth of field and coming in very close and tight on my subject, and I was very pleased with these photos. This is style I enjoy putting to use in my work.

But then it dawned on me what’s going on here. Take this photo here of this amazing gurney from Sunday:

Boring as anything. Uninteresting angle- straight ahead. Garbage in the left corner that detracts from the subject. Semi-distracting background.

And then I have this shot of a bed which I also took Sunday, later in the day:

What’s the difference between these two subjects? It’s so obvious. That first subject, the gurney, is amazing. It’s amazing to see such an old and rare piece of medical history in person. Patients were strapped to this cart and wheeled around from place to place. I can
imagine attendants holding down patients in the middle of a psychotic episode on this cold metal platform. And now here it sits, completely quiet, rusting, aging peacefully after so many years of turmoil.

This piece of equipment is amazing.

And in my excitement and enthusiasm, I take a picture of this object- forgetting to apply myself just slightly more and get a visually more interesting photo. I’m too busy marveling at this piece of history.

Then I have a shot like this:

Which is fairly mundane subject matter. A rusty file box filed with old employee time cards, out on a desk in a coalbreaker. What to do? And because the object is much more unoriginal…every day…I think I am not distracted by it, and so my creative wheels turn just a little more to get a better exposure, a more interesting angle….something to
make the photo captivating.

Now that I am aware that I do this, I’m going to start trying to take a step back when working with unusual subject matter, and throw out the first couple ideas for a photo that are obvious approaches. Hopefully my results will end up better.

missing out

“You want to go swing by Danvers on the way home so you can see it?” my friend asked from the driver’s seat. Sure, why not. Unfortunately, I am part of a class of urban explorers who got into the hobby entirely too late, and we missed out on a boatload of amazing and breathtaking locations. Not a day goes by that I don’t kick myself for not getting into this years ago.

Another explorer sat in the back seat. We were exhausted from a day of running around at a high security location and ready to call it a night. But still I wanted to see just one more thing before ending the day. Down the highway we drove, and my friend pointed out Hathorne Hill. Both of them marveled at the fact that you can now see what’s left of the Kirkbride from the road, lit up in the night. When it was abandoned, all was dark.

Off we turn at the exit, and we make our way along the curving residential road up the hill. Both of my friends repeatedly pointed out memories and observations. This is where the cattle fields for the patients were. This is where the Bonner building stood. This is where the security trailer was.

Up the hill until we finally came upon the front of the Kirkbride.

It was amazing and depressing at the same time.

I’m sure it was much more emotional to my friends than it was to me- they had spent years exploring the hospital’s halls and tunnels. I had never set foot in them. The building was beautiful, lit up with ambience in the evening sky….but it was also disgusting at the same time. This corporation came here and bought this property, demolished just about every building but the Kirkbride, then proceeded to gut it
until it was a shell, and now people are living in ridiculously expensive apartments and condos, and I bet half don’t even know or care about the building’s past.

And Avalon is laughing all the way to the bank.

I had always known I missed out on something amazing in Danvers. But fogging up the windows of my friend’s car, staring, with mouth agape, the final point was driven home.

I missed this. Fuck.

“You want to get out and take pictures?” my friend asked.

What’s the point.

historic photo from wikipedia entry, 2nd and 3rd shots from the photobucket of reddragon, roof shot from rana-x.com.

happy birthday to me!

It was just supposed to be a walkaround.
A leisurely stroll around the outside fences, camera in hand, because I had never seen it before. This was probably the closest I would ever get to exploring it.
I know my limitations. Im not stupid. I cannot negotiate that fence. I am okay with this. There are other locations to explore. So the three of us took a walk around the outside of the beautiful kirkbride whose view was marred by a beyond industrial sized behemoth of a fence designed to keep out would-be trespassers. Today, it was doing its job quite well.

That was until we saw the entrance.

No way.

So the recent rumors really did hold some truth.

After a little convincing of the third member of our party who stood to lose their job if we were caught, off we went to cvs for camera batteries, and back to the location.
The three of us walked briskly to the fence, repeatedly glancing in each direction for any other eyes that might be watching.

One by one, we each entered as quickly as possible, and sprinted like our lives depended on it. My legs and lungs were burning from fatigue.
Up the debris pile and into the large broken first floor window. And that was it. I was in a place I never in my wildest dreams thought I would ever be able to explore.

This is now one of my favorite hospitals, trumped by only greystone and maybe Norwich. But Norwich is only a maybe.
The colors were amazing- vibrant yet pastel. Pale yellow chairs sitting next to pastel violet walls, cracked teal paint on heavy wooden doors, dark stained woodwork at the entrance to each patient room.

Large cavernous hallways that seemed to go on forever. And just when I reached the end of one, a turn to the right yielded yet another. On and on.

The further to the edges of the kirkbride we traveled, the more security measures were exemplified. By the time we reached the outermost wards, the windows actually had 3 separate pains of glass on each one.

That was another feature of this hospital I loved: the windows. Huge old glass windows nearly running from floor to ceiling, comprised of small panes of glass divided by wood. The midday sun bursting through the tiny holes created amazing patterns on the floors and furniture.

Administration was nothing but a complete pile of rubble. A 2006 fire had taken care of this area of the structure, sadly. Another line on the list of things I never got to see.
We crept around the hallways quietly, trying to remain near the walls so as to be less obvious to the active buildings situated right next door. They could look right through the large windows at the end of each hall.

The tunnels were amazing. Every hospital I have ever been has used a tunnel for exactly what you would expect a tunnel to be- quick transportation and piping. But these tunnels were beautiful, with arches for support, walls and floor completely of brick instead of smooth gray cement. The floors had track laid down for transportation carts. But I have never been in such beautiful institutional tunnels in my entire life. I regret not taking a single photo in them.

This place was more than I ever could have asked for on this day. We had originally planned to do a couple small easy locations. But instead I got to see the interior of one of the most beautiful hospitals still standing on the east coast.

Happy birthday to me, indeed.

Complete gallery of 33 photos at designedbreakdown.

rip, greystone.

one of my very near and dear locations which i hold very close to my heart is currently slipping from its foundation and heading towards that giant asylum graveyard in the sky. greystone park psychiatric center, founded in 1876 in new jersey, is in the process of being demolished for…..nothing. thats right, nothing. open park space. yaaaaaay.

workers are currently dismantling the clinic building, with the curry complex not too far behind. i have heard the kirkbride is being saved for now, but they are sealing off and removing the wings. so i guess it will end up with the appearance of the clocktower at worcester state hospital in massachusetts (which is also coming down soon), where it is this giant tall ornate building that appears to have had its arms hastily ripped off.

i have not ventured to the complex since demolition began. i cant bring myself to do it.

the first time i visited greystone was at the beginning of 2007. i had been wanting to venture inside its walls for months, and had a friend who kept telling me we would go eventually. after about 3 months of this i got fed up, called my girlfriend’s best friend and informed him we were going, with no entrance plan, and come hell or high water we were getting in.

after walking nearly three quarters of the way around the giant curry complex, we finally found an entrance. every inch of the building, down to even its chairs and tables, was covered in approximately 4 coats of paint in varying hues. it was beautiful. And there were things to photograph. old records, bed frames everywhere, cabinets, couches…..it wasn’t completely empty, like some places i had visited in the past. this was love.

it was late in the day when we reached the top floor, and i was not looking to get lost in tunnels, so we vowed to return for other buildings another day.

about 2 months later i made plans with that same guy and a handful of other explorers to first meet in the curry complex and then move on to the medical clinic building, the building we had not previously explored. the tunnels were packed in aging and rusted medical equipment. but the clinic itself was where the real treat was.

an entire room filled with ancient medical equipment, grouped together like siblings in various piles throughout the cavernous hall. these three gauges reminded me of strange alien beings as i took their photo. i didnt even know what the majority of the equipment was used for.

i always loved this shot of the barber chair with a bedframe in the next room. im not even sure what it is about it- something about the lines, the chair, the door frame, the bed frame, and the light fixture on the top. and the range of color.

six months later in september of 2007 the hospitals impending doom was imminent. the cafeteria had already been razed, and the grounds were filled with bright yellow construction machinery. i had a photo friend who wanted to go on her very first adventure. i knew greystones days were limited. time for an encore.

i had been through these halls two times prior, but somehow it all felt different. i was approaching my photography differently, and since my friend was taking a long time setting up and shooting photos, it gave me ample time to really analyze each shot i framed. i consider this day to be one of my most successful photographic outings.

notsomuch because i came up with millions of photos, but because i came up with a few i really, genuinely liked. its not very often i can look at a photo of mine and just be content with it. actually it hardly ever happens. i can almost always find at least one thing wrong with it, one thing i would change. but on this day i really had a handful of photos i was just content with.

it amazes me that some of these photos came from the same building as the first few photos in this post. they look like two completely different locations. but in the total of 8 months between both visits, i had grown so much as a photographer that i was now seeing shots i never would have seen before, framing things differently, working and engaging with my subjects more.

rest in peace, greystone. you will be sorely missed.