So you are wondering what is the flyover states thing?

It occurred to me that I need a very definite statement about the work and I have tried to do my best in the past, however the benefit of distance and time now lets me see more clearly what was going on.

Work begets work as Richard Serra says and in this fashion, the flyover states were born out of the Gowanus work that I started when I moved to the new neighbourhood in 2005. It also began out of a shift from film to digital that was taking place at that time. I had just acquired a Canon 10D and the miracle of that camera was the ability to change ISO freely, not being stuck with 400ISO all the time. It gave a me a freedom to shoot at all times of the day and night and with this I got inspired to photograph the Gowanus area as many photographers near here have, its desolation, broad horizons, all things that are somewhat different from the typical busy urban New York setting.

At the same time I had was still shooting film so doubled up, shooting the canon and the leica with a big bag of expired film I had collected in the freezer. It seemed a cheap and cheerful way of keeping the reflex exercised. I even shot transparency because that was what was in the fridge, and I’ve never really liked transparency.

The Gowanus work led to getting back in to street photography in 2006. This was a full on return to my roots in 1989 when I began to seriously pursue photography in Toronto. I stuck with the leica and bw film so there was a mix of things on the roll, street work and some Gowanus images all at that time.

After about a year and half I had more or less exhausted the Gowanus vein, so I was looking for a way to extend the work using the principals of street photography, looking for intersections, moments, new facts that aren’t always facts, the things that street teaches you, how the camera sees differently from the eye. So the confluence of that was this picture that showed up one day on my contact sheets:

The is the “Ur”-Flyover State. I think walking home from the R train on 4th Avenue I started to follow the jet and wondered how it would coincide with the aerial atop the car service nearby- it looked like it would fit right on top but the geometry worked out like this.

There was something about this picture that stuck with me, the fluffy innocuous cloud, the grain, the needle form, and silhouette of the jet. A game began for me at that point, perhaps it would be possible to intentionally stick that jet on the pin as if it was meant to be there. This is how photography takes something and makes an impossible fact possible.

Of course you could do this in photoshop in a quick second, but that was not the point, it was about creating this intersection and then seeing what it looked like. Not all of them were equal. Why some are better or worse is really what photography is all about, sometimes it is a picture and sometimes it is not. Sometimes I get the jet on the pin and most times I did not. It’s really harder than it looks.

After a while I gave up on that and started working with jet trails, intersections, shapes, etc. Extending the vocabulary of the idea. It was never about getting a big picture of an aircraft like you see those ones at the beach in St. Maarten, the behemoth form inches from the ground, for me it was better the smaller it got, the more it dissolved into grain, the more it just became a field of tone. The image you purchased was shot on the digital Leica M8, and the ccd sensor does have that quality of graininess that film does, only smoother. I was never into grain for grain sake either. I also feel that the size is important too, they need to be large, the 17×22 you have is about right, although larger would be great too.

The car service is gone now, the aerial moved to the south side of 4th Ave at 9th street, and is crooked. For all sorts of reasons it doesn’t work any more now for me, so effectively the series is over. It is an arbitrary way of finishing.

Flyover States July 2009

Anyway, I hope it finds a comfortable place in your home.

The “Run” project began in September of 2011 on Staten Island, as shown above. It is inspired by many of the usual suspects, Rineke Dijkstre being the most recent, but it all owes back to August Sander I suppose.

I have shot hundreds of portraits over my career, but this is very different from assignment work in that these people do not expect to be photographed until I ask them, so there is very short amount of time that they then set aside in their minds for this to happen. This expectation is interesting, it seems to have shrunk over the years or perhaps is due to the difference between being sent somewhere where the subject knows he or she will be photographed, and just showing up. But people assume it is just like a camera phone snap, yet I have a tripod, big camera, lighting sometimes, and I spend time trying to find a suitable background which doesn’t always work. Trying to keep their attention, and also trying to preserve what it was that I saw that drew me in the first place is very challenging. These are very cooperative portraits, or at least the best ones are, although I think sometimes the subject does not understand just how much control they have.

Full article here.

(I’m actually a dual citizen and not “a legal alien…”)

(yes Sting was there and it was all I could do not to fall all over myself and say something stupid. So I said very little. (“modesty propriety can lead to notoriety…”))

(Trudie asked me if I would like tea and I said (really) “ooh that would be lovely” (daft…) (I don’t drink coffee I take tea my dear…) so I was served tea in a china cup on silver tray. Milk and Sugar. Yes I am bad. Sting had two cookies with his tea. They looked like arrowroot cookies but I don’t think they were that exactly, they might have been ginger snaps.) It was ever-so lovely.

(I can see by the timestamp on the pictures that tea was at 3pm on the dot.)

(we finished shortly thereafter and as I was packing up Sting was snoozing on the couch. I tried to be quiet like a mouse. (“If manners maketh’ man as someone said…”) )

“A gentleman will walk but never run”…well, I still like running.

I said, do you just want a self portrait?

Rod (not Rob) is a music producer and that is the lovely window light on Graham Avenue.

If you see him poking out the window as he is wont to do look up and say hi. He is very nice.

I wish I could say I had the wherewithal to understand the significance of this woman and her work, that would come later, for the moment it was all about the practicalities of a night shoot in Times Square, a girl, a gown, and a horse. We even had a curfew of sorts, they used to turn the lights off in Times Square, many of them, around 2am to save power, and we wanted the full blaze going, so it all had to happen between 11 and 2 as I recall.

We met before the shoot to go over the details, the lighting, which was pretty simple, an overhead light on a high boom, and I can’t even remember what it was, HMI, 2k, something like that, not a whole lot of light but just enough, on the margin, and then Lillian would take those negatives and do her thing in the darkroom.

Somewhere I have a very ordinary polaroid of me standing in. I was probably worried about exposure, shadow detail, etc, things that did not matter.

Lillian was great, she was excited, happy to be shooting, happy to be in the circus that is photography. It was a cold April evening, damp, windy. I wish I had a charming anecdote but it is so long ago I can’t remember all that much, it just makes me think, how did I get there? What credentials did I have? Scant I assure you.

I do remember her talking about the difference between the old days and now, then, she had to show the dress, it had to be clear, it had to be lit, you had to see what it was. Things that over time bored her and ultimately that is why she destroyed all those negatives. It would take a fresh eye and the distance of time to see what they could be, and she had the power to re-visualize her own work which is pretty remarkable. Absent the demands of selling a product, you could make an image, and the damage that the negs had suffered all those years in garbage bags and the ceiling leaks and water had begun to suggest a way. She just pushed them all that much farther until they were finally hers.

I guess there is a truth to saying we all have a few pictures in us that we tend to make over and over or remake over and over. If given the chance would you take everything that you have made, destroy it, and out of that waste make the same picture anew? It’s a brave thing. Of course we can all look at the work now and it seems to be obvious, but is it really? And would you have the courage to do it?

Lillian did. Bravo.

New York Times Magazine “Assignment Times Square” May 18 1997. Lillian Bassman photographer. Styled by Frans Ankone.

Pierre is also coincidentally a runner and this helps him fit into those nice Jill Sander suit pants. This was an assignment where I went in to the location and immediately knew I was going to have difficulty making something I liked, it was a long tube, and lighting in a tube is very difficult, plus all the walls and tables meant you couldn’t stand just anywhere, the relation of camera to subject was going to be not totally of my choosing.

When I saw this next pic I knew that I would at least be able to get somewhere- it has a graphic quality and humour.

Except for those pesky drum pendants I knew that it was about the glasses and the charts. And his silhouette. But the ceiling is really annoying.

So maybe change from hi key to low key, better but still all bunched up in the middle. The chart at left is driving the whole picture, so maybe its time to lose it. Still attached to the girl in glasses. She must have thought I had a thing but it’s an anchor, it injects a small twist into the picture.

Ok so the chart is still driving the picture but if it is going to drive why not let it take over? Still those pesky lights overhead. But I like the hedgehogging idea of just seeing over the partitions. But now he doesn’t look good in the suit.

Starting to move into parody. I’m projecting all sorts of things onto this picture. I mean, I’m letting the camera and the light do what they do just to see what happens. Its very easy to go down this road but ultimately it does not tell they story as far as I know it, which basically is about power. So as much as I like weirdness it doesn’t have a place here.

ARGH another row of those frickn pendant lights. You’ll  notice that also its warm balance, this is what I was seeing while shooting, it was only later that I decided on the cool white balance. And I’ve lost my muse in the background.

This is what ran in the paper. Get on a chair and shoot down to eliminate the ceiling. Swap the ladies out in the background. Get a little tighter than perhaps I usually get (65mm). But the whole thing is simpler, more direct, and not leaning on parody as much, although the lady in glasses for me indicates a kind of intelligent ruthless efficiency that I think works here. It is a business, but it is a style business also. Looks are very important.

In the picture at the top I have pushed the print even farther, made the window light bluer that it was, the interior dimmer, the spot on him warmer and more circular. Because this is for portfolio and not for print I’ve also removed a light from behind his head.

This is another version where I’ve emphasized a different balance, made the flash like the exterior widow light, and the interior is down and warmer relative. I’ve spotted her face a little and task lamp is the “practical” source although it does not actually light her face. But the exposure was the same for all the pictures, just different toning.

I’d be lying if I said I knew how it was all going to go together as I was doing it, I really was just keeping on keeping on and hoping that something would happen as it usually does. I didn’t have the “one” in the bag but it didn’t bother me. I knew that it couldn’t get too dry or perfect or it would be a boring business portrait. So I knew I basically had to give up when it got really normal. That would at least mean I had tried all my lame ideas out and had finally gone for safe. Somewhere in that spread was the moment where it was safely between the two poles.

I hope you enjoy the series as much as I have enjoyed meeting the individuals.

http://www.robertwrightphoto.com/projects-run.html

new work from “Vale of Cashmere” Prospect Park Brooklyn.

Its supposed to go in an iPhone- its called “Square” and it allows you to accept credit card payments over your iPhone which are then deposited nightly to your account. They take 2.5%, which I think is low compared to standard merchant services accounts in the major banks.

I’ve often thought and written about how the whole financial model of professional photography is busted, if you think about your daily life, you rarely if ever get to walk out of any store, professional office, toll booth, school, even church without laying down you hard earned CASH in one way or another for something you received. The kid at the local neighbourhood lemonade stand ain’t gonna take credit either. And there are so many ways now to pay, banks have made it incredibly easy to move money around online and with direct deposit. All for a fee yes but time is money too.

I’ll let you know how it works out, right now I just got it (and its free to sign up and the reader is free too) because I have had now a few occasions where I have been asked or when it might have been more expedient just to accept a credit card.

Maybe the next 5DmkIII will have it built in. Just remember you saw it here first.

 -a toothy grin courtesy Andrew Hetherington…

The first couple you run it’s new and it’s a challenge and you want to see if you can improve. So that’s good enough for numbers one and two. Three is where you know what you are getting in to and you realize that there is a limit to how fast you can run a marathon given the amount of time I wanted to commit to it and where I was physically at my age, the amount of capacity I had to stay healthy and train and not get injured.  And of course you do get injured every year, something starts getting creaky no matter how much you try to avoid it. Its not like I have been running for years, the body takes a long time to respond to training if you consider that against a lifetime of not training.

So going back to the basic question- why run this marathon, if I wasn’t getting any faster, and if I had nothing really to prove to myself, is it just about fun, is that enough? Aren’t there easier ways to have fun?

I knew I could do it, although the any given sunday rule applies, anything can happen while you are doing it. And I didn’t really know how my knee was going to fare. But you don’t go to the start line and think of 26.2 miles. You just think about getting warmed up, finding your comfortable pace, getting to whatever miles your friends are at, seeing whatever landmarks, halfway points, bridges, etc, you piece it out. You are just going from one place to the next.  And that’s how it gets done.

I really didn’t actually think about running a marathon and finishing until 400m from the end, when all efforts to stave off a cramp were failing, I think your body knows exactly what you are asking of it and at that point it is saying, ok, really now, this is enough. This is why in military training you’d do whatever stupid thing it was and they would let you think for a half a second, now we are done, and then they say, ok, now do it again…just so you understand that limits are all mental.

The last 6 miles I really pushed hard, doesn’t mean I was going any faster, but my splits were not tanking into the 9′s either. Mile 26 was actually my fifth fastest mile overall, (8:08!) so I was gaining ground, and I knew that slowing down would mean cramping so it was all about pushing harder not less.

And in that effort I found something strange, I kind of started to welcome the pain, it meant I was doing it right, that I was actuallygoing to finish the marathon…it was a surprise to me. As the legs got more and more leaden, I just pushed harder and harder and I think I realized that there is a whole other side beyond when you think you are done. I don’t want to get all mystical about it, as soon as I crossed the line I was incredibly happy to not be running but for those last 6 miles and especially the last 400 meters which for some crazy reason has to be uphill, the tightening of my right quadriceps into a vice-like cramp was not the real issue, even as it was happening it was not happening, it was over already, as long as I didn’t really focus on it. In reality, yes, it was real, probably another mile and it would have dropped me, but that’s not what had to happen, I just had to get to the top of the hill and that was alright by me.

So why run a marathon, the answer is so that you can experience pain in a different way. You want to lean into it. It means you are closer to succeeding than you think.

At least that is what I learned this year.

That and I’ve got a great bunch of friends and neighbours who supported me on and off the course- thank you all!