Some Christmas cheer. Listen to it more than once at your own risk. If you do it’ll be hard to get this tune out of your head.

Hanukkah post here.

Happy Holidays to all!

I thought the red coat was a bad choice. It looked great but it looked to be too light weight. I was sure it wouldn’t be warm enough. I was sure we would end up having to buy another new winter coat along with it and this second coat, bought out of parental pragmatism, would never get worn.

But I was one lone male voice in a house full of females. A voice after the fact since the red coat had already been purchased. And what did I know?

I think one of my New Year’s resolutions should be to be less practical.

John Askin Jr., vice president of finance for The Standard Group, photographed this past October for a cover story.

Isabel, Leah, and Bix; making latkes. Princeton, NJ, December 12, 2009

Kelev tov means “good dog” in Hebrew. If you are looking for a nice story of understanding this holiday season look to Miky, the rabbi, and the policeman – a Western coming soon to a theater near you.

It may give you some ideas on what to do with that B roll…

Seen via aPhotoEditor.com.

For you still photographers, now shooting video, who came back from the field with not quite enough coverage.

Seen via a link over at The Way We Watch.

I have posted reports on both of Canon’s new TS-E lenses (aka tilt/shift), the 17mm f/4L and the 24mm f/3.5L II, and I have been using them full on since receiving them earlier this year. They’re great optics. It’s clear how much of an improvement they are and how much they stand out the first time you use them.

Now, architectural photographer Rainer Viertlböck has posted two tests comparing them with his medium-format digital back, a 33mp Sinar e75, coupled with Rodenstock’s high-end view camera lenses; the 23HR, 28HR, and 35HR. Rainer used the Canon lenses on a Canon 5D Mark II.

Canon 17mm TS-E F/4L compared to Rodenstock 23HR + Sinar e75

Canon 24mm TS-E f/3.5L II compared to Rodenstock 28HR & 35HR + Sinar e75

Many are in agreement about how great these new Canon lenses are but I don’t know that anyone, myself included, expected them to compare so favorably against a medium-format digital back when used with view camera lenses. In the 17mm TS-E test, the Canon doesn’t have quite the detail or resolution of the medium-format kit but it comes awful close. This holds true even when the Canon files are res’d. up to match the Sinar e75 resolution.

In the 24mm TS-E II test, the Canon does a much better job than the Sinar/Rodenstock combo in controlling flare from tungsten light sources.

Every digital kit is a compromise of sorts. With a DSLR you have flexibility but loose in sharpness; with a medium-format digital back you gain in sharpness and resolution, but are more limited in workflow, operability, and the cost of entry is orders of magnitude higher.

It used to be that one of the main factors in digital architectural photography tipping the scales toward medium-format digital backs was the ability to use view camera lenses. This combo offered a photographer image quality which a DSLR with SLR style lenses could never attain. Well, never is broken and that compromise is looking less like a compromise and more like a choice based on style and needs.

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My Canon 17mm TS-E and 24mm TS-E II posts:

• Quick Look – Canon 17mm f/4L TS-E Lens
• Longer Look – Canon 17mm f/4L TS-E Lens
• Live View is My Friend (features the Canon 17mm TS-E lens)
• Canon’s TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II Lens
• What’s It Take to Fill a Space and Make It Your Own? (features the Canon 17mm TS-E lens)

I spent most of this week shooting portraits in Williamstown, MA. It was fun to be up there and out of the usual locales. Williamstown is wedged into the upper left corner of Massachusetts. Ringed by mountains, its a place of great beauty, and quite isolated considering that it’s part of the denser populated Northeast.

One of the gems in town is the Williams College Museum of Art. I hadn’t been there in close to twenty years and I’m glad to say it didn’t disappoint. One of my portrait subjects, Mike Glier, has a show of landscape paintings exploring environments from the arctic to the equator which happen to fall on the longitude line which passes through his studio in Hoosick, New York. The paintings are rich and engaging. I liked how each location was clearly distinct, while still working together as a whole. His New York body of work has shades of Stuart Davis underneath it. Very nice.

January 23, 2008: Afternoon at Haulover Bay, St. John, Virgin Islands, 83°F; ©2009, Mike Glier/Artist Rights Society

Mike’s work is shown along with another Williams faculty member, Amy Podmore. Amy’s got a range of work from sculpture to video. What got me the most was her video entitled, Disappearing Acts – Powder and Milk. One half of the screen is Amy in what can be best described as a white, plaster looking, breast dress. It has fifty or so breasts on it arranged in four rows. Amy spins in a circle as milk spots out of the nipple on each breast. The other half of the screen finds Amy in the same location. She is wearing a white loose fitting pants outfit with many pockets, each filled with white powder. Amy jumps around and bats at the pockets creating a large white cloud. She’s clearly having fun on both sides of the screen and it’s infectious. What could be forced is funny, and odd, and you can’t help but watch it.

Disappearing Acts - Powder and Milk, video still, © Amy Podmore

In other galleries at the museum are works by William Morris Hunt, Alec Soth, and Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle. Hunt and Soth are in a Niagara smack-down. Hunt painted the falls in the nineteenth century. Soth photographed them in the twenty-first. Hunt’s work is impressionism and it felt dated and blah. It was clearly skilled but it was no match for the beauty of Soth’s best work. I’ve been reading about Alec Soth for years and have seen his work in print and online. Neither matches seeing it in person. It’s beautiful and the key pieces are stunning.

Niagara Falls, 1878, by William Morris Hunt

An image of the falls, shot in winter, 4′x5′, is just glorious. The web can’t do it justice. There are tourists on overlooks, there’s a richness in layers of mist which is impressionism today. Unfortunately, much of the show is Soth’s motel work. I think someone needs to pull Soth aside and say, no more motels, no more motels at night, no more motels with old cars in front, and no more motels with brides (you can see a gallery here.) It’s not that this work isn’t attractive, I just feel like I’ve seen it before and that it’s a cliché.

Falls 02, 2005, © Alec Soth

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s work is one video, Juggernaut, projected in HD on a large wall (~18′ high by 32′ wide.) It was shot at the salt flats of the El Vizcaino Biosphere Reserve in Mexico. The blurb on the wall had some gobbley-gook curator speak about how the reserve is actually for whales and that by Manglano-Ovalle choosing to work with the salt flats and not the whales there is some connection to the whales. That did not ring true for me, it sounded like a leap, and it wasn’t needed. The video is engrossing enough on its own. Just over five minutes long, it presents a bleak white, flat landscape. The camera is moving slowing to the right while industrial trucks are moving slightly faster to the right. You see the trucks from the tires down but it’s clear these are huge machines. The sound is a layered combination of noise, static, and voices.

Juggernaut, video still, © Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle

The installation is large enough that if the gallery is empty you can walk into the scene.

Me watching Juggernaut, Series of 4, December 1, 2009