Picture Notes

I used this tripod for years in my studio. One day I saw this face smiling at me and started laughing. This is the head of an aluminum Saltzman tripod that was manufactured in the 1950s or 1960s and I bought it when I bought a color laboratory in Florida in 1978. I kept this piece of equipment for over 23 years and sold it a couple of years ago when I realized that I’d never photograph with large format - 4×5″ or 8×10″ film again. Other photographers have had their photograph taken with this tripod and camera head combination. This is the best platform for a photographing with large format cameras in the field that was ever manufactured and it will still be around when most of the equipment that was used with it has disappeared.

This photograph was once displayed on my color laboratory office wall, I was looking for something to shoot one day and put this broken light bulb on a green background. I photographed it as a horizontal and then put it on display as a vertical, just because it fit the space. Someone came into my lab and saw it and asked what it was and started laughing. He saw the face while I was still looking at a broken light bulb.

Not seeing this face makes me wonder how much visual information I fail to recognize each day and think it must be enormous. I’m going to spend the next few weeks looking for things that are right in front of me that I’ve missed. Just the volume of visual information that we receive every day makes sorting through it all a challenge, not just trying to see what is right in front of my face. I’ll post my findings here.

When my children were young they reached a point when they wanted to know the how and why of everything. It wasn’t just why are we having this for dinner but why is the grass green, how does television work, why do trees grow, how tall will I be, why did my toy break. The exercise usually started out simple and then became a serious test of knowledge when they would ask things like how do airplanes fly, how many stars are there, how do automobile engines work, or why is grandma sick. Explaining how airplanes fly was always easier than than trying to explain the reasons for anyone’s illness, with illness there is always uncertainty.

Why do I like this photograph? I did this photograph in the late 70s and has been in and out of my portfolio and I just found it again in a slide box. I don’t know why I like it and it might be because I connect with this mask on some emotional level. I’ve seen art directors have strange and different reactions to it also. This masked performer was trying to annoy me and I responded by making a series of photographs of him/her and this one became my favorite because it was unexpected.

What are you thinking? I’ve decided the next few photographs in this blog are going to be of people’s faces, sort of. I’m going to start out with a mask collection while I’m asking permission from everyone. To warm up to the subject, because I have thousands of photographs to choose from, I’m presenting this metal/glass face. This diver’s helmet was in a display at the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival last summer. Don’t we all sometimes wish that this was the face we present to the world, a face that hides what we are thinking and yet is still attractive and functional while being alien. I was told at a workshop that 93% of personal communications is non verbal, I’m not sure how that is broken down between body language and facial expressions but would guess that most of our communication is with our face. If we could look like this when playing cards we could all become champion poker players.