Picture Notes

Underwater in Florida, looking up at fish swimming in the Florida Aquarium in Tampa. I don’t really have anything to write about, photography wise except that I visited the Newseum in Washington, DC on Saturday and saw every photograph that has won a Pulitzer prize. Photojournalism makes my work look predictable for so many commercial reasons; I knew who was paying the bill and they never paid me to capture sadness or human misery.

I only spent a few months working on a small town daily newspaper and it was the best job I ever had. I was covering for a person on leave. I hope that I’ll get to return to a small paper someday. While the large papers are loosing readers, the local papers should continue to do well, at least that’s my prediction. They just need to keep the local news off line.

Sure… I have a camera.

When some people believe that they are something, like a photographer, that’s good enough, that’s what they are. It’s not really a lie, because they believe this, until whoops - so sorry. There are others who think that loving something makes you what it is, like loving to read makes you a writer. Others think that having a good camera, or reading photo magazines or knowing famous photographers makes you a photographer. I can usually tell if a person is a photographer by how they hold the camera - but that’s not always reliable.

Part of my day job is to evaluate photographer’s portfolios and resumes and try to decide if there is a fit with what we do. The organization has many photographers on reserve and could have 3 or 4 out in the field working at any given time. Over the years I’ve come to see this process as kind of learning experience for me, a dance, if you will. I’ve finally decided that I need to ask direct questions in order to see if we have a fit.

Question #1 - Have you ever been paid to make a photograph or photographs? This could be the base line. I can’t train photographers to shoot while they are in the field, they have to have that, I have other things that I need to train them to do. Loving to take photographs and having a good camera really isn’t enough. Newspaper photojournalism experience works here and in many cases is preferred.

Question #2 - Do you have Photoshop knowledge, skill and ability? This is the digital age, if you don’t have Photoshop you can’t be on the team, we have to pass. I know requirements aren’t fun but we are all stuck with them. If you are a photographer and take courses to learn the program there is a good chance we would come back to you. Computer skill is a given, it’s not a question I ever ask.

Question #3 - Have you ever written a caption? This may seem like a funny question after asking Question #1 and it won’t disqualify a good shooter, we’ll just need to train them. Usually commissioned work for ad agencies and magazines don’t require the photographer to write a caption - commercial photography never requires a caption and magazines usually have people to write captions. We require a caption and we don’t have anyone to write it for you. We will give you guidance but it’s your job, it’s part of the assignment.

Next - the caption. The home page of bkoplitz.com has changed again. I just didn’t like my street photography, it not really something that I do.

Messages on top of messages.

I wonder how much money it would cost New York City residents to clear all graffiti and messages off public and private spaces from about 10 feet down. It’s like Times Square has spilled into the rest of the city in it’s own way. It’s a colorful and rich world full non verbal messages that can be ignored or studied - depending on circumstances.

I think of the sounds that the young can hear and older people are deaf to and I wonder if visually there might be the same thing going on in reverse. I like the way everyone knows what a font and a point is, and what kerning and leading does and that 10 years ago only printers and art directors knew and cared about type faces and what they brought to the page. This may be the golden age of communications and female folk singers.

There is a new flash movie on Instantpictures.net - a collection of city scenes that aren’t in the tourist brochures or in the stock agencies.

Sometimes
they move in slow motion,
as I watch the images
fly through space
so slowly, just one at time.
They float along
like balloons, reflecting
into the soft blueness of earth
in transparency.

I try to pick just the interesting pictures,
conveying an attitude or an idea,
a story, or simplicity it’s self.

Subway train, New York City.

Just Warm Water

We’re water creatures
softly solid at 98.6,
and always wanting to
share our liquids
with others, to
feel the warmth.

It’s nice to be in Florida and be reminded of all the good times I’ve had here. I think it’s the perfect weather of April and the open sky and the sea that brings it all back. This photograph is a great example of what I like about Florida. It’s people experiencing a part of Florida they may never see, although this is an artificial environment created by scientists and elected officials and people who see Florida as a way to make a living. I’m in the heart of of the City of Tampa which has Tampa Bay stretching out 30 miles to south until it reaches the open Gulf of Mexico. Tampa Bay used to be so full of fish that those who saw the area suspected you could walk across Tampa Bay on the backs of the fish. This aquarium was created and the water being used here doesn’t come from Tampa Bay but off-shore, in the deep Gulf of Mexico. It’s all good though and I’m sure most visitors don’t bother to snorkel or dive to see a reef and the diverse life that’s hidden from view. And now they can experience another alien world and not get wet or tired.

More time
And now
The memory of my awakening
has even left me
and I flounder, beating my
body against
A white page, with a pen,
In a desperate attempt to
Find a place where my memory
returns

Live Line Fishing

downward spiraling
luminescent spinning
silkworm threads of monofiliment
floating to the depths,
panicking life with
shimmering waves of
oblique memories,

finally settling,
a pillar of connectedness
between heaven and hell,
air and water, life and
death, within memories
of time - a riotous thing
living in someone else’s
memory,
scraping the bottom
of the world with bait.

I was born in Florida and spent most of my life there. I recently went through my files and found a folder called “Fishing Poetry” and it contained things I’d written when I lived there and spent all my free time fishing. Too much time in the sun, you ask? I don’t know, I thought I’d post the ones I like here. It’s part of the previous post, “Candy in our Lives”.

Another photograph of candy. I’m all about photographing things with color that are good to eat and these little guys are perfect. I put a photograph of gummy bears that I did in the 70s with a 4×5″ view camera in my istockphoto.com collection and am surprised by the sales. So I made this new one the other day with a Nikon digital camera. I know it’s spring and I should be outside photographing flowers. Yeah, like 2 million other photographers. How many bad photographs of daffodils are necessary before people quit taking snapshots of them? I’d prefer to try and fill photographic voids to concentrate on fresh subjects. Not that gummy bears are necessarily a fresh subject, but there are fewer photographs of colorful candy than there is of spring flowers. (That last statement was a guess.)

Here are spring flowers to remind me of the change of seasons, and you too, if you need a reminder. Spring is the best time of year, it’s rutting season on the ranch and in the mountains and storms roll across the US heartland creating some pretty interesting situations.

Once again we had little snow this winter and it was mild. I sound like the Farmer’s Almanac or something but what I really want to write about is love. I just finished season 1 of The Tudors and I want to understand Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. How did they become the people they became and why was Henry so interested in killing all his past wives. Anne kept him waiting for sex for 7 years, or so the story goes, that just seems crazy. Chopping someone’s head off is a kind of an extreme solution to a fairly simple problem. But this is just me speaking and I don’t live in the 16th Century.

We still have many of the same superstitions but they have been lessened by technology, mass production, science and health care. I’m glad the church isn’t still up in our grill the way it was then. I wonder if there really are any diseases that bleeding a person helps. I recommend the series even though it’s a bit salacious in spots.

And, oh yeah, America has reached it’s 4,000th battlefield death in Iraq.  These are just the American professional soldiers and it’s not a count of the contractors and mercenaries or Iraq civilians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.