Every Sunday, we bring together a collection of easy reading articles from analytical to how-to to photo-features in no particular order that did not make our regular daily coverage. Enjoy!
Shooting at the White House on August 25, 2016, for New York magazine, Dan Winters was given five minutes of President Obama’s time for a cover story. He spent at least five hours carefully pre-setting each shot: “Each setup had its own camera and tripod, [was lit and dialed in] so I could just jump from setup to setup quickly, 45 seconds on one setup.”
Winters got to the final shot (back cover photo above) — where the president was instructed to gaze out the Blue Room window. There, Winters discovered in a panic: that his wife Kathryn had separately called his first assistant and asked him to take some souvenir shots of Winters at work with Obama. The assistant had changed all the camera settings when he dashed off the shots that Winters’ wife wanted and “casually put the camera back without restoring my settings.”
Winters took his final frame, checked the camera’s monitor, and found the image over-exposed — almost completely white — from the light through the window.
“While I was lamenting the predicament and trying to guess the exposure, the president was like, ‘I don’t hear any clicking. Dan, I don’t hear any clicking.’ He said it twice. And everybody was on me, his handlers were giving me the stinkeye,” the Austin, Texas-based Dan Winters recalls. “But I think I nailed that shot on my second frame.”
Five years later, Obama himself selected the photo to be a prominent part of the historical record that A Promised Land will portray, which has already sold a record 890,000 copies on its first day. Winters’ portrait, which was printed in black and white for the October 3, 2016, issue of New York, appears in full color for the first time on Obama’s memoir on the back cover. This will eventually end up being his first photo to be printed over 10 million copies for Winters!
Notable: The magazine’s [New York] photo director actually called my wife while the shoot was going on and said, “Your husband is bossing around the president of the United States!”
Treat every assignment as if it’s your first one. I think there is a misconception, especially that students have, and I really make a point when I speak at schools to talk about the fact that you never really arrive. You are always working towards something, but you never stop. I think there is this crazy idea that you get somewhere, and then everything is cool. – Dan Winters
The pandemic overwhelmed National Geographic photographer Ami Vitale, and she knew she had to do something. COVID-19 was devastating conservation efforts globally as tourism and economies have collapsed, creating increasing pressure on nature. Driven by desperation, poaching and deforestation were on the rise.
Vitale tells PetaPixel, “I reached out to photographers that I deeply admire to ask for their support. I was surprised by how enthusiastic the photographers have been. They are checking in with me, asking how the sale is going, and sharing it with their own audiences.”
Vitale created Prints for Nature as a fine art photographic print sale offering collectors the chance to own work from some of the most impactful names in the photography industry and contribute to conservation. It includes eighty-five fine art and nature photographers who have generously donated prints for this cause.
The collection includes images from a diverse group of artists, many of whom are National Geographic photographers, like Joel Sartore who contributed an image from his National Geographic Photo Ark collection, Academy award-winning ‘Free Solo’ director Jimmy Chin, Emmy Award-winning artist Beverly Joubert, Ami Vitale, Anand Varma, Bertie Gregory, Brent Stirton, Charlie Hamilton James, David Doubilet, David Guttenfelder, Danielle Zalcman, David Liittschwager, Jasper Doest, Keith Ladzinski, Michael Yamashita, Steve Winder, Vince Musi and many more inspiring photographers.
Images are crafted by Paper & Ink and will be printed at 11×16 inches and sell for $250. The price per print will increase to $275 after Black Friday, November 27, 2020. The sale ends December 10, 2020.
Graciela Iturbide, who was born in Mexico City in 1942, set out to be a film director, enrolling at the Film Studies Center at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México at the age of 27. But while traveling with her mentor, the Mexican modernist Manuel Alvarez Bravo, she realized how drawn she was to photography and travel.
Iturbide photographs everyday life, almost entirely in black-and-white, following her curiosity and photographing when she sees what she likes. Iturbide’s Photos of Mexico Make “Visible What, to Many, Is Invisible,” said the New York Times in quoting Kristen Gresh, curator of photographs at the Museum of Fine Arts, who has worked closely with Ms. Iturbide. Iturbide eschews labels and calls herself complicit with her subjects. She became interested in the daily life of Mexico’s indigenous cultures and people (the Zapotec, Mixtec, and Seri) and has photographed life in Mexican cities and on the Mexican/American border (La Frontera). She uses photography as a way of understanding Mexico, combining indigenous customs, assimilated Catholic practices and foreign economic trade under one scope.
Photographs by members of the Düsseldorf School—a group of German photographers that studied under influential photography duo Bernd and Hilla Becher, including Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, and Thomas Ruff—were snapped up by collectors like actor Leonardo DiCaprio for millions. One London hedge fund reported The New York Times purchased five of Gursky’s stock-exchange photos to decorate its trading floor.
These days demand for the extra-large works has diminished. In 2011, work by contemporary German photographers generated a combined $21 million at auction. Last year, that total fell by almost 50 percent, to $10.6 million, according to the Artnet Price Database. In the first half of this year, sales shrank further to just $3.9 million at auction.
How can three artists with impeccable collectors, museum presence, and curatorial attention fall into such a rut on the auction block? Experts attribute the dynamic to a combination of factors, starting with oversupply. Another is that these huge mounted photos are difficult to move and relocate as they are not as forgiving as canvas.
Notable: Gursky carefully digitally removed [from Rhein II] any intrusive features – dog walkers, cyclists, a factory building – until it was bleak enough to satisfy him. The 73×143 (image size) chromogenic color print face-mounted to Plexiglas sold at Christie’s in 2011 for a record $ 4,338,500.
Images on the Apple iPhone 12 Pro display good exposure and color rendering in most conditions. Photo courtesy DXOMARK.
