2018 – The Year in Review

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In the past I’ve included a lengthy section detailing places we’ve visited; friends who’ve visited us; events we’ve attended etc. However, this site is devoted to photography and this type of content isn’t photography related so I’ve decided to no longer include this section.

My photography continues to be rather opportunistic i.e. I always carry a camera with me and most of my photographs arise because I see something interesting while doing something else. Nonetheless I did go on a number of excursions where I anticipated that I would find “photo ops”. These included: A walk around Croton-on-Hudson; A visit to Las Vegas (first time for me); A walk around Carmel, NY; A foggy morning walk around our neighborhood; Muscoot Farm with the Grandkids; A few hours in NY City; A walk around Rockwood Hall; Some old buildings in Poughkeepsie, NY; Another visit to the Northgate ruins near Cold Spring, NY; A walk to the river through Ossining, NY; A visit to Stuarts Farm; Greater Newburgh Symphony at Boscobel; Beacon Flea Market, Bannerman’s Island and the Strawberry Festival; A walk around Yorktown NY; Hudson Valley Hot air Balloon festival. Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome Museum; A walk around Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown; A quick look at the former Belevdere Mansion; A walk around Mahopac, NY; Military re-enactment day at scenic Boscobel; Another visit to the Chuang Yen Monastery near Cold Spring, NY; Peekskill Harvest Festival; A walk around Glynwood Farm Center; A walk around Brewster, NY; In and around the Peekskill Brewery. All things considered a pretty busy year.

I made a 2017 New Years Resolution that I would try to 1) limit my old camera purchases; 2) use the cameras that I have more often. In 2018 I didn’t do particularly well. I acquired 17 (actually 24 if you count the bag of old point and shoot cameras that a friend gave to me) old cameras and two lenses in 2018. On using old cameras I didn’t do too well either – using only three rather than the twelve (i.e. one per month that I aim for).

I added quite a few items to my photography library including: Andreas Feininger: Photographer by Andreas Feininger (1986-10-03); Photographic seeing. Feininger, Andreas; Believing Is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography. Morris, Errol; Minor White: Manifestations of the Spirit. Martineau, Paul; The Art of Landscape Photography. Hoddinott, Ross; Aaron Siskind: Another Photographic Reality. Mora, Gilles; The Black Trilogy. Mora, Giles; Sergio Larrain:Valparaiso. Sire, Agnes; Joel Meyerowitz: Where I Find Myself: A Lifetime Retrospective (An Elephant Book). Meyerowitz, Joel; Zen Camera: Creative Awakening with a Daily Practice in Photography by David Ulrich; Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous by Christopher Bonanos; The Ansco Automatic Reflex Guide by David Anderson.

I continue to update this site, which now has 2,579 posts since I started it. About 518 posts were added in 2018. To focus some attention to some of the more interesting (in my opinion) posts I’ve added a series of portfolios: Street; Portraits; Abstract; Landscapes; Black and White. More will follow.

I’ve also started to contribute to another site: 35mmc. So far I’ve done three posts in the “Five Frames with a ….” series, each one on a different camera: Bell and Howell Focus Free; Kodak Retina IIc; Vivitar 35es.

All things considered it’s been a full year with much to be thankful for.

Happy New Year.

Vivian Maier. A Photographer’s Life and Afterlife

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In the unlikely event that you haven’t heard of Vivian Maier this is what Wikipedia has to say about her:

Vivian Dorothy Maier (February 1, 1926 – April 21, 2009) was an American street photographer. Maier worked for about forty years as a nanny, mostly in Chicago’s North Shore, pursuing photography during her spare time. She took more than 150,000 photographs during her lifetime, primarily of the people and architecture of Chicago, New York City, and Los Angeles, although she also traveled and photographed worldwide.

During her lifetime, Maier’s photographs were unknown and unpublished; many of her negatives were never printed. A Chicago collector, John Maloof, acquired some of Maier’s photos in 2007, while two other Chicago-based collectors, Ron Slattery and Randy Prow, also found some of Maier’s prints and negatives in her boxes and suitcases around the same time. Maier’s photographs were first published on the Internet in July 2008, by Slattery, but the work received little response. In October 2009, Maloof linked his blog to a selection of Maier’s photographs on the image-sharing website Flickr, and the results went viral, with thousands of people expressing interest. Maier’s work subsequently attracted critical acclaim, and since then, Maier’s photographs have been exhibited around the world.

Her life and work have been the subject of books and documentary films, including the film Finding Vivian Maier (2013), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 87th Academy Awards.

This excellent book (Vivian Maier. A Photographer’s Life and Afterlife by Pamela Bannos) does a terrific job of describing Vivian Maier’s life and work while at the same time covering the more recent events after her death and her increasing fame.