Uncle Earl took them..check it out!

Roger Hicks said:
Fair enough. When I lived in California I used to listen to the BBC on short-wave radio (pre-internet days) in order to get some international news. As Frances said - and she's American - it was a bit like living in a totalitarian regime where the news was either suppressed or 'managed'.
Cheers,

R.
Click to expand...

The BBC is great, I listen to it on the internet sometimes. CNN used to have 'CNN International' on overnight here, which I gather is their European programming. Makes sense, as it's daytime over there so the news is truly '24 hours'. I used to watch it as it contained actual world news as opposed to simply a bunch of arguing.

They stopped doing that when we began these wars. They just replay their US daytime programming at night, now.

Unfortunate.

Cheers.
 
35mmdelux said:
Repeat: The only piece of art worth $200MM is a Rembrandt or Van Gogh. Maybe the Greek Parthenon so we can rebuild it in Las Vegas.
Click to expand...

I can see you're not familiar with the work of Ron Galella. A true "artist behind the lens". p.
 
If the age is correct, those are great images for that age...Respect :)

Eastman was another great man. I visited his museum in rochester and it is the history...That guy controlled what the photography is at his time...
 
LeicaFoReVer said:
If the age is correct, those are great images for that age...Respect :)

Eastman was another great man. I visited his museum in rochester and it is the history...That guy controlled what the photography is at his time...
Click to expand...

I kinda got the idea that "Uncle Earl's" photos might predate the work of AA. I worked for a company that Mr. Adams did business with. He would show up in his Ford sedan with his personal California "A A" license plates. Pretty funny. I some how don't think Ansel used a lot of glass plates. I think Earl may have been around before Ansel..ya never know.. I can see it now, Earl to Ansel: Kid be sure to level the bed and square the standards on that camera before ya start fooling around with the back..or you're gonna have to start all over again..and you'll miss the good light..p.
 
Last edited:
John Sexton's (I think he was a master printer for Ansel Adams) latest newsletter has his views on these glass negatives. He hasn't archived it to his website yet but it is an interesting read. I don't feel right posting it here without his permission. But basically in says there is not one 'photographic historian or scholar' on the panel of experts that examined these negatives, and that there are always holder scratches on old glass negatives which he or anyones else that knows anything about Ansel Adams' negatives could detect.

AND back to the thread, he does mention 'Uncle Earl' in his newsletter.
 
Last edited:
In this digital age where everything electronically published is up for grabs, nothing surprises me. I fight this battle constantly. The Kinder-Digi have grown up thinking that everything is free. And that a photo is worth $0.75, because that's what they cost on Flicker. Years ago I watched, over the period of a couple of years, a guy make glass plate copies of Edward Curtis photos. I didn't know what was going on until I had a conversation with him at the end of his production. His most popular image was Chief Joseph. He made many of these . I think they must have been 11 x14 glass plates. He sold this stuff. He made a lot of money and had no problem cheating the public. The world is so full of phony software, phony PhD degrees, I could go on. I listened to an interview with an "author" the other day.. only to find, (the interviewee divulged the info) that she was not the author.. "I'm not the author - I blog about the author" the blogger had become the author via a leveraged blog output. The interview went on with this women, who had never spoken to the author of said book, speaking for him. Too crazy for any more words. It's about money and fame. If you can't create it, steal it. And stealing it has become "acceptable" in today's new-age world.
 
Last edited:
I read the piece. The first thing that comes to mind is MIT. At MIT students entering a class room or hall for an exam enter with no calculator, no pencil, no paper.. They are provided with a formulary, paper and a pencil. They have what they need to pass the exam. Little chance of storing answers in a calculator or sending an answer across the room to another student's calculator via IR. The Kinder-Digi have actually scolded me for not having images on the web they want to use. I had one kid take me to task for not "blogging" my knowledge of the behavior of popular sensors used in high end cameras. I was told I had an unfair advantage. I told this kid to do some reading and get up to speed.. he said why should I do that when I can get it from you. i have to be careful not to treat them like the little sociopathic robots they are. It's a shame. These kids are all in their 30s and in business. It's funny, the younger ones, the ones in their early 20s are fairly normal. They have the same experience with this batch of 25-35 year olds. These kids are spoiled, demanding, impolite, and want money and fame ASAP.
 
PKR said:
I read the piece. no calculator, no pencil, no paper.. They are provided with a formulary, paper and a pencil. They have what they need to pass the exam.
Click to expand...

That's the way I took exams, and I don't understand why profs do not do it more. The exams are so much more easy to write that way. But to get back to the thread, I had a patient (a Greek immigrant) once whose daughter (half Greek) complained to me that her father wouldn't let her watch TV, he said in heavily accented English, 'Read a Book.' The point is use a light meter.
 
I think the problem with a lot of these kids is television, schools that can't keep good teachers and parents that are too busy making $$ to deal with their kids. I guess a lot of the parents are as bad as the kids. A pal of mine, another photographer complained that with the newer digital cameras it was hard to take a bad picture. I don't agree, but i told him the camera still had to be pointed in an interesting place to produce a good photo. The processor in the camera won't do that for you. I think that is one of the barriers some of these kids have.. talent.
 
PKR said:
A pal of mine, another photographer complained that with the newer digital cameras it was hard to take a bad picture.
Click to expand...

Maybe yes on the exposure side, but really all it does is make it easy overall to take a less than mediocre picture. (no DOF control, no shutter speed adjustment for effect, no EI for back light, etc.) And if you don't learn these disciplines you will never became an accomplished photographer. So when you are 50 years old and have basically been shooting P&S (and/or doing the latest PS trick) with an SLR or a DSLR and nobody wants your services any more because you are no longer hip. Well, you will go to work somewhere else and hope you can make it to retirement in a secure job.
 
Last edited:
We were talking about professional photographers. Kinder-Digi with $20K in camera gear. These are generally somewhat computer savvy people who have become photographers. They are the product of the local art schools. Most have never used a film camera professionally if at all.. maybe when they were in high school. They have also, never worked in any format but 35mm digital. If faced with a Phase One they couldn't play. I've been through this bit before: for the most part they are lazy. There is a lot of "move over - this is our turf now" attitude going on. They usually rent their lighting equipment as they can't afford it. They don't understand large flash generators well, so they higher assistants who have some experience with the equipment. Many famous photographers have made it working this way. These kids aren't in that category yet. Mom and dad likely paid for the digital gear. The ones who have earned the money for their gear are usually a better group. Don't get me wrong, there are some younger photographers doing really good work. Look at Brad Trent's stuff; mostly if not all, digital.
 
Last edited:
A few years ago, some engineering courses at the U of Manitoba were "open book." You could bring all your textbooks, all your notes, whatever you want.

Still, some people failed the tests. If you don't know the material, there's no way you'll learn in the couple of hours you're given to write the test.

The great thing about "open book" tests is that it solves the problem of cheating. Let 'em cheat, if you don't know the stuff it won't help!
 
To make it real-world-like, they should allow internet access too. I'd want my doctor to be checking facts and procedures in books and on-line, rather than relying only on memory in order to arrive at a diagnosis.
 
antiquark said:
A few years ago, some engineering courses at the U of Manitoba were "open book." You could bring all your textbooks, all your notes, whatever you want.

Still, some people failed the tests. If you don't know the material, there's no way you'll learn in the couple of hours you're given to write the test.

The great thing about "open book" tests is that it solves the problem of cheating. Let 'em cheat, if you don't know the stuff it won't help!
Click to expand...

I agree anti Hadron. The idea is to produce a grad with skills. Cheating doesn't impart the course work. I didn't know about the IR calculator communication until a couple of years ago. I guess both HP and TI will link.

Back to the photos.. I hope we see a site selling Uncle Earl's pictures at a reasonable price. I would buy one if the cost was reasonable. The Valley doesn't look like that any longer.
 
Last edited:
I wonder if all this fuss is complementary to that Uncle Earl... I mean, the first time I read about the news it said that the photos were like trial runs of Ansel Adams or something like that.

nevermind... I'm just thinking out aloud... "my photo's are like Ansel Adams' trial photos, what are yours like?":D


oh and about that side topic you were talking about:

I don't think the younger generations are really that lacking "up there" compared to the older generations. I do agree that there's an intellectual decadence but it's not really that much. It's just that the saturation of everything is blowing it out of proportions.

For example, the DSLR camera market is saturated. What do you get? A whole lot of people who don't have deep understanding of what they have and what they're doing! And because there's so many of them, they shape culture!

From the point of view of photography, saturate the SLR market of 1960's. Sell a whole lot of people Nikon F's... I bet you'd see the same proportional number of craps taken.;)
 
Let me add a couple of varibles.. My observations: They have almost no mechanical skills, no understanding of electronics (didn't take physics in HS, or math), throw money at a reoccuring problem, rather than look for understanding and a lasting solution. They resent someone who is not in there generation, understanding computers, PS, as well or better than they do. When I was a kid, I had jobs all summer long and on weekends when in school. These kids, not all, but most that I delt with, never worked at anything before going into business. Some, the bright ones, assist for a decent photographer. Most think the current pros are on the way out, so it's not worth the time. Then when you see one of these kids land a big account (one, a year or so ago got $30K for a one day shoot for Visa), they think they all can do it. Throw that into the equation and grind it out. I have hope, as I said, one of the young ones really was on top of the game. And he was 23 or so. p.

These kids are all from the local art schools. Very expensive.. one is the same cost as Stanford Univ. And, no Art History. Only knowledge of current, living photographers, in their age group...
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top