The Isolation of Edward Hopper

When I was 19, I drove to Chicago and slept in my car for 2 nights so I could see "Nighthawks."

Direct link: youtube.com/shorts/tMOYpA__hf0?si=xFxv61EUQsTxosa1

Olympic Triathlon Photographer

Associated Press photographer David Goldman talks about the issues he needed to work through to photograph the Olympic triathlon and open water swims:

Direct link: youtu.be/YBz-uPDpUBs?si=INfAYqPUG_2wAP0Y

Camera-Wielding Skeleton Art

Here's a 0:30 video of a unique process for making some camera/skeleton art from CarlNeedsAJob on Instagram:

Direct link: youtube.com/shorts/Mt-cQYiHyd0?si=bT0fHbN5gN4pyYgG

Film Processing

We've had a few successful days of processing film in class this week:

Direct link: https://youtube.com/shorts/qkg7V4OjfbQ?si=5inWKXCouZtxjxFx

Using a View Camera in Public

This is 60 seconds of truth:

Direct link: https://youtu.be/8SQwxOBDplc

"Who taught you that word?..."

College of Visual Arts Identity Package

In the last days of the Werner Design Werks exhibition "Werk Ethic" at Concordia University, I maaaaaybe did something a little sneaky...

Direct link: youtu.be/8fjBrClyLXY

It actually contained original files from 1995 - a handful of years before I was a student there. Here are some more photos of that wild exhibition.

Processing Film

A few weeks ago, we had a very successful day in the darkroom. We had 2 groups go through and process film, and everyone's turned out. Here's a quick short I shared @PhotoStenzel on Instagram:

Direct link: youtube.com/shorts/DPgOlHa_FoY

Here are 2 videos from last semester in the darkroom of my boys making their first darkroom prints.

How Technicolor Changed Movies

This is just a bit of an interesting history of Technicolor, along with 3 "lies" (or just filmmaking tricks) with regards to the Technicolor usage in "The Wizard of Oz:"

Direct Link: youtu.be/Mqaobr6w6_I

Final Moments of the 4 a.m. Exhibition

I posted this reel on @PhotoStenzel on Instagram this morning:

Direct link: youtu.be/3uAiQ0Wox4w

And currently, the gallery looks like this:

Thanks for everything, Concordia Gallery! It's been a fun month!

Here's my post about the opening reception, and here are some images from the gallery's Instagram from the opening.

Instagram Reel from "4 a.m." Exhibition

I've started making reels. I feel like I'm 14 years old. Here's one that's a quick look at my 4 a.m. exhibition currently on view at Concordia University, and it's 16 quick videos from the show:

Watch on YouTube to go fullscreen.

Find me on Instagram as PhotoStenzel.

Bryant Lake Bowl Drone Video

You've all seen this. I know I'm late to the party. But I just HAD to make sure I shared this here, as it's fantastic.

Direct link: youtu.be/VgS54fqKxf0

This was posted on YouTube less than a week ago, and as of posting here, it has 1.2 million views there, as well as more on Facebook and Twitter. (As of 2 days ago, the Star Tribune was saying it already had a total of 2.8 million aggregate views. One of the original versions on Twitter has 6.8 million views as of today.)

This may be updated over time, but here's a link on the Bryant Lake Bowl website that shares some of the media attention that the video has recieved:

A drone video shot in a Minneapolis bowling alley was hailed as an instant classic. One Hollywood veteran said it “adds to the language and vocabulary of cinema.”

NEW YORK TIMES

KARE 11

FOX9

The VERGE

NEW YORK POST

PIONEER PRESS

GIZMONDO

BROBIBLE

DIGITALTRENDS

NEWS18

MSP MAGAZINE

INDY100

IRISH EXAMINER

BELFAST TELEGRAPH

GAMESPOT

BBC

I've been seeing it EVERYWHERE on social media:

"Guardians of the Galaxy” filmmaker James Gunn tweeted the clip to his 800,000+ followers, saying he wanted the filmmakers "to come with us to London later this year when we shoot Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3." And Elijah Wood commented "HOLY SHIT" in his retweet of the video to his nearly 1 million followers.

Nice work, Rally Studios! (Jay Christensen cinematographer, Anthony Jaska director)

"The Dawn of the Color Photograph"

I've been checking out photo-related books from my local library over the last 14 months. I recently learned about Albert Kahn and his undertaking of hired photographers in the book "The Dawn of the Color Photograph: Albert Kahn's Archives of the Planet" by David Okuefuna.

I had never heard of Kahn or his contribution to the world just after the advent of color photography. Here's a bit about Kahn and this book from BookForum.com:

In 1909, two years after the Lumière brothers invented the Autochrome process, French banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn initiated a twenty-two-year project (brought to an end by his ruin in the Great Depression) to photograph the world in color. Known as the Archives de la Planète, this astounding body of work, some seventy-two thousand images, captured life in more than fifty countries, many during moments of profound upheaval. Kahn’s hired photographers sat with French soldiers in the trenches, walked through a Smyrna razed in the Greco-Turkish War, and witnessed Emir Faisal’s campaign to free Arabia from Ottoman control. But the archive is particularly remarkable for its documentation of lands and peoples once little seen by Western eyes. The collection boasts what may be the earliest color photographs of the Taj Mahal and the Egyptian pyramids, as well as striking portraits of Kurdish women in northern Iraq, dancers from the Khmer ballet in Angkor, and itinerant Mongolian hunters on the steppes near the Russian border. But does the past change when we see it in color? In many instances, the vivid palette brings the images closer to our present moment, making the world—and the distance of history—frighteningly small.

His goal wasn't to have his photographers make "art," but more to simply "document" the world. As the book states, the images his photographers produced "were not works of reportage or ethnography, nor an attempt to produce works of art. The aim was simply to record human beings in all their diversity, living humble lives worthy of respect."

Here's a bit about some of Kahn's project from 2007 on BBC Two:

Direct link: youtu.be/nWeU5OexIls

The Evolution of Camera Shutter Sounds

Here's a short video sharing different shutter speed sounds over the years:

Direct link: youtu.be/dukzCYaUTV8

The 3rd one took me back: I had an old TLR that sounded a LOT like that!

Also, I didn't know that TIME Magazine produced a crappy looking SLR at one point.

Video of the "International Exhibition 2020" at the Glasgow Gallery of Photography

Below is a Facebook video from the Glasgow Gallery of Photography that shows a walk through of the International Exhibition 2020 (or IE2020). I have a print visible around the 0:05 mark (actually, directly above the play button in the cover image of the video below):

IE2020 EXHIBITION

Quick tour of the IE20 Exhibition. 👀

Posted by The Glasgow Gallery of Photography on Saturday, August 22, 2020

Here are some photos of the exhibition if you missed it.

Monthly Challenge 5 of 12: Bits and Pieces

May was 3 little pieces.

ONE: As mentioned at the end of April's "monthly challenge" post, I figured I'd spend some more time watching Lynda.com videos for May. I did that, but not very much. I officially completed the 13 hour "fundamentals" video that I wrote so much about last month:

And I started watching and bookmarking more. I'm part way into another Photoshop video, but this is starting to feel pretty dry - not this new course specifically, but just watching all these videos on Photoshop functions. I'm going to need to start mixing it up with something more engaging soon.

19% into another Photoshop course with a different instructor.

TWO: We had a "stay at home" order recently lifted, and I got out last week to make my first set of 4 a.m. photos in a few months. They're not great, but here are 2 photos from where George Floyd was killed:

Here was the caption I posted on Instagram:

Memorial where George Floyd was killed 36 hours ago, photographed at 4:15 this morning.
.
I’m used to having the city to myself when I photograph at 4 a.m. Today, I encountered more people than I have in the previous few years combined. There were police officers across the street. There was a handful of national media getting ready to report (large, generic rental conversion vans with tech guys setting up, not the local branded vehicles). And two people walked up as I was getting ready to photograph. One stood in silence with her head down. The other kneeled down, and then ended up laying down in the wet street where Floyd was killed. I could hear him quietly praying about “change.” He sat up, pounded the pavement twice with his fist in frustration, and then they quietly walked away.
.
#GeorgeFloyd #ICantBreathe

And here's a more recent one since the memorial has grown:

Side note: if you'd like to hear my perspective on what's been happening in Minneapolis and St. Paul over the last few days after Floyd's death, check out this link on my other blog. I was up most of the night for 2 days in a row, and just yesterday I realized I could have been watching some Lynda.com videos, but I wouldn't have absorbed any of it - my mind would have been elsewhere.

THREE: I also "attended" a Zoom-based lecture by Dr. Rebecca Senf entitled "Even Ansel Adams Had to Earn a Living". That was very insightful, and quite interesting. CCP just put the hour-long lecture online (cutting off some of the casual chit-chat before it had officially started), so here's what I was a part of:

Direct link: youtu.be/FFDPlwnFfY8

For June, I'd like to bust into some lighting equipment that I recently acquired. We'll see if I can do some work with that, and I'll post about it in a month.

Bad Time to Forget Your SD Card

We've all misplaced a memory card before. But at least we haven't had it this bad:

Direct link: youtu.be/jqpblqC9SUI

Pink Panther: Smile Pretty, Say Pink

Here's a fun Pink Panther cartoon from 1966 about photographing in a National Park. Lots of camera gags:

Direct Link: youtu.be/0YFq1048yNc

Trade River Retreat Video

When I was making photos in a northern WI cabin a few weeks ago, I would occasionally take some peaceful video clips of the Trade River behind the cabin with my phone. Here's 70 seconds of peace to help me remember my stay:

Direct Link: youtu.be/dibss5SC2ao

Here's more on my stay there, along with why the university where I teach funded it, as well as a lot of photos.

Accidental Public Art

Watch how this Australian public artist's "practice piece" was made permanent... by a man who used to work removing graffiti. This is just great:

Direct Link: youtu.be/jmccJgw66vA

Last-Minute Drone Save

This last minute Drone catch from 2015 might be a bit more epic, but this one posted on YouTube yesterday when Dave's battery died was pretty dramatic too:

Direct Link: youtu.be/72OhmRGrLLE