Queen of Spades

Eva as the Queen of Spades

She wanted this one to be creepy.

Queen of Hearts

 Never mention an idea to your kids unless you are actually going to do it.
After reading a post on B about a deck of playing cards he had made through printerstudio, I thought "hey! that would be cool." What if I made a deck of cards with my kids and dog playing all of the royalty?" I was discussing the idea with my wife and as soon as I mentioned that maybe it would be too involved because we'd have to have them dress up in various costumes, Eva heard "dress up" and "costumes" and that was it. Sunday afternoon she decided we would do the queen of hearts and picked out a dress from her dress-up box. We took the photo in the bathroom, which actually has white and yellow stripes, but Eva wanted them to be pink. So we went into the man cave and watched "Barbie: A Fashion Fairy Tale" (featuring a song with the injunction to "Get your sparkle on." We also learned that "when you're in doubt, glitter it out." Words to live by.) while I retouched the photo. Next up will be the queen of diamonds. The tricky part is to do the photos with whatever we have on hand. I don't have the budget to do a Philip Lorca diCorcia or an Erwin Olaf production.

Revisiting old photos

The theme this month is "revise, reshoot, refine," but I can't help but add "revisit" to the list. If you've been reading this month's posts, you know that the theme is inspired by the writing process. When it comes to writing academic papers, I have a fairly tedious method. First, I cast the net wide. Let's say, for example, that I want to write about scientific instruments in the 17th and 18th centuries ("Why would anyone want to do that?" you say, and yet I did). I don't like to know exactly what I'm going to say in advance because it doesn't seem very honest. So I read book after book and take notes. I feel like I have to reach some sort of critical mass before I stop collecting notes and actually start writing. One of my best experiences in the "casting the net wide" phase of research was when after a couple of months in the same French library, the librarian let me browse the hidden stacks of not-yet cataloged rare books. For me, it was as if I had tamed the fox in The Little Prince. This is a complete digression, I know, but before I start making things apply to photography, I have to say that going through neglected books, papers, and ephemera is hands-down my favorite part of research (Don't get me started on my week at the Cooper-Hewitt with 12 boxes of papers related to the origins of industrial design or I'll never get this post done.) I like to think that it's the same feeling William Eggleston (one of my favorite photographers) has when he takes a picture of a ceiling fan or a stack of garbage bags.

Did I lose you yet? Let me bullet point my tedious research/writing process and then skip to how this applies to revisiting old photos:

• The initial phase leads to perhaps 100 pages of typed notes
• I then move on to the "notes of my notes" phase, where I pull out possibly relevant quotes and get it down to maybe 36 pages.
• Finally, I write the actual academic article (that will be read by far fewer people than this hasty blog post) and use only a fraction of those notes.

The parallels with photography seem clear, don't they?

• First, I take way too many photos (unlike Eggleston, by the way, who thinks that if you take more than one picture of the same thing, then it's just too painful to have to choose)
• Next, I rate my photos in Aperture. One star means "Why am I keeping this? I should really just delete this. Help! William Eggleston was right!" Two stars—i never use two stars, what's the point? Three stars means the photo has no major technical flaws. Four stars means I think this could be the one, but I don't want to commit until I have seen all the options. And five stars means I think the photo is worthy of actual post-processing attention.
• Post-processing doesn't mean I'll ever bother to print. A very small fraction of photos end up on my wall or in an album. And the ones that make it aren't always the best ones; they're just the best ones for a certain context.

But what happens to the rest? Are they worth revisiting?
This struck me when Becky from "Life with Kaishon" included the following photo of mine in her interview of me:

I actually love this photo, but I had completely forgotten about it. I took it two years ago as Eva was sleeping on my chair. She's five now, and the blanket is still a huge source of comfort for her, although most of the time it has to stay in her bed.

In my hunt for the original file in Aperture, I opened a folder of photos I took for her birth announcement and there it was—the blanket, making its pink and pristine début as a backdrop for our equally pink and pristine baby girl. I immediately made a diptych of the two photos:

There's an empty 8x10 frame on our wall that I have never gotten around to filling. Now, thanks to some digging through forgotten photos, these two become part of a printed composition.

The moral of this story is that a new context might give you a renewed interest in some images that would otherwise fall into oblivion. Take a little time and open one of those folders of neglected images. Wander the uncataloged stacks of your photo library. See what inspires you now. See what a little cross-referencing can do. Give something a chance to make it into print.

The body and things directly attached to it...

Eva with her "nibbley blankie"

Trying to clean up my hard drive and found this photo of cuddled up to what she calls her "nibbley blankie." We bought an identical one as soon as we knew how attached she was to it, but that one remains pristine, pink, and neglected while this one apparently gets better as it gets more ragged and dingy.

This is pushing my definition of "fragmentary portraiture," but I will argue that it fits into "the body and things directly attached to it" part of the definition.

Think about ways to portray someone through something that is always attached to their body. A piercing? a ring? a pencil they keep behind their ear? a name tag they have to wear at work every day? Try it and post your results.

Eva 24/7: The first Criterion-style text + photo

A couple of days ago I did a post about how the design of Criterion DVDs might inspire you with ideas for this month's text + photo theme. In order to show you how easy it is to take inspiration from a design and adapt it to your own needs, I plan on doing a few and walking you through the steps.

Since I just got back from driving my wife to the airport (Her sister just had a baby so she's going to visit and help out for a week), I thought I'd do a quick rendition of the Cleo from 5 to 7 cover in a way that suits my circumstances (i.e. dealing with the ever-needy Eva by myself).

So here is the Criterion original:

And here is my message to Michelle:

It was very easy once I gave up on the idea of trying to use the brush tool (on the trackpad of my laptop!) to copy the font. Here's what I did.

1. Found a picture of Eva and converted it to black and white.
2. Tried to draw my own version of the font using the brush tool.
3. Failed again and again.
4. Checked out 30 pages worth of free handwriting fonts at dafont.com until I found one (OK, actually two—I used a different font for the "E") that satisfied my now-lax standard of similarity to the Criterion original. FYI, the "E" is from a free font called Jellyka—Estrya's Handwriting, and the rest is a free font called Phontphreak's Handwriting.
5. Used the text tool to type in the text (like I showed you in the text+photo starter).
6. Flattened the image.
7. Decided I had better add a small white border, so I made the canvas larger (as I taught you to do at the end of the grid tutorial).
8. Added a thin black stroke around the outside (under blending options).
9. Ate a chocolate chip cookie.
10. Noticed that even though it's 12:30, Eva is awake and crying in her room.
11. Wondered if I will be getting any sleep this week.
12. Wondered how much a nanny would cost.

Steps 3 and 7-12 are entirely optional, although I would advise you to keep step 9.

Eva at the Centre Pompidou

A quick post before I get back from California:
Although not quite a photo within a photo, I couldn't resist putting up this image of Eva looking at an art installation last year at the Pompidou Center in Paris. I took a series of her while she was inspecting and then imitating the projected image of a man dancing. I keep meaning to print some of them out.

The broader point, along the theme of the August Monthly Special, is that a photo (or in this case, a film) within a photo can be a way to show a person interacting with art.