Once more, our annual bacchanal, Saint Patrick’s Day. A kaleidoscope of color–lush blooming azaleas and marching bands; noise–bagpipes and DJs. 202 years, missing only 8 for world wars and Covid.
For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index
I pulled out an assortment of elephant photographs recently for a friend who likes elephants and was interested in purchasing a print. This was not the one he chose, but it is one of my favorites, now.
Our Botswana/Zimbabwe safari is one of so many trips or photo excursions for which I have never done a thorough edit. Looking for the elephant portfolio to show my friend led to me rediscovering this shot. Playing with editing helped me discover what I think I was “seeing” when I made it, although the original RAW, unedited file did not jump out at first.
We had previously done two safaris, both in east Africa (Kenya, Tanzania), so the trek to Botswana was very different visually. Where east Africa was mostly dry savanna, with really large herds of wildebeest interspersed with zebras, or mobs of Cape Buffalo, Botswana has wetlands, woodlands (and the Kalahari Desert), and what seemed like smaller herds, although that could be partly an effect of a more limited horizon line. That added another useful compositional tool, et voilà.
Using editing tools to illicit what I wanted from the original image reminded me of a recent conversation.
One of the most important benchmarks in a photographer’s career is when he/she understands they have acquired the technical skills and knowledge of exposure, processing, editing to be able to create a relatively accurate representation of the tones in the scene being captured. Today that means learning how to read a histogram.
The real revelation is even bigger and comes later–recognizing that those same skills can be used, not to mimic reality, but to make those tones whatever you want them to be. Why not? A photograph of a person, place, or thing is not that thing itself but, at best, a limited facsimile. The photograph is something new and can be interpreted any way the photographer should choose.
The great thing about Ansel Adam’s Zone System wasn’t just that it gave you the exposure and development tools to reproduce a midtone in the scene accurately as Zone V. It also gave you the ability and freedom to reproduce that midtone as any other tone you chose.
For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index.
“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.” Cicero
Last week, on February 23, the City of Savannah renamed the Visual Arts Studio 1 in the Dr. Otis S. Johnson Cultural Arts Center as the Bill Durrence Visual Arts Studio. It was an unexpected honor, for which I am deeply appreciative.
When I started working on this week’s post Barbara said don’t just document the event, say what you are feeling. Gratitude, certainly, but awkward as well, and I hope that does not seem to diminish my appreciation. I know a number of people whose contributions to this city deserve this sort of recognition, and being singled out is sobering for an inveterate skeptic. Never in my fairly long life did I imagine something being named after me. I am, by inclination and training, a watcher, a voyeur if you will. To be subject instead of observer is…Je ne sais quoi.
My understanding is this dedication was based on a combination of factors.
I am a native Savannahian. I became a staff photographer on our two daily newspapers in 1966, at the age of 18, where I routinely made many photographs, every day, from tragedy to sports to “society page” debutantes. At the time I had no idea of the education I was getting, but making pictures became a habit, and I’ve never stopped. I did not set out to create an archive, but the years rolled by, I got old, and all those negatives and slides and digital files became a collection.
For several years now I’ve been looking for a home for all those photographs after I’m gone, and I found it in the City of Savannah Archives, a historical collection that dates to the 1700s. I have gifted them my entire photo archive from over 60 years of shooting, and this recognition is a result of that, and having served on City Council for four years.
I want to thank Mayor Van Johnson, 2nd District Alderman (my old job) Detric Leggett, and City Manager Jay Melder for their support and kind words at the dedication. A special thank you goes to the City’s Archivist Luciana Spracher, who has gently led me through the trauma of moving all my slides and negatives out of my office and into hers, and created an approach to organizing and managing the files even though it is still a living archive, being grown and changed until I am no longer able do that.
I wish she had been my editor at some of the publications where I’ve worked after seeing how she laid out several promotional pieces for this event, including the above collage that hangs outside the studio and represents a cross section of the variety of work I’ve done over the years.
What I am most grateful for is knowing all those years of work are now protected and in the hands of someone who will take at least as good a care of them as I tried to do.
Meister Eckkhart, a 14th Century German Catholic priest, theologian, philosopher and mystic said, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ‘Thank You,’ it will be enough.” The English poet John Donne said, “No man is an island.”
To all the shoulders I’ve stood on, to all those who have shared their visage with my camera, to the family, friends, partners, lovers, colleagues, students, teachers, mentors, and strangers whose lives have touched my life, for the gifts you’ve given me and the ideas and insights I’ve stolen from you…
To Barbara, my love, my partner for over 40 years, wise counselor, ruthless editor, generous patron, unwavering cheerleader, the person who took me on my first international trip, showed me how to travel, and gave me the world…
Thank you.
For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index
At the end of last week’s post I suggested a couple of exercises that were essentially taking the simplest subject you can find and trying as many distinct variations in photographing it as you can. Someone wrote me asking for examples, but going back into the files from so long ago, and digitizing them, is more effort than I’m willing to make. However, I did have one example handy.
This is from my days as a student in a Photographic Design course sequence. Our assignment was to shoot a “High Key” image. That means all tones in the photograph are at or lighter than a mid-tone. For the non-photographer, a mid-tone in this instance is very specifically halfway between black and white. For photo nerds, depending on one’s generation, it’s Zone V, or 128 on an 8 bit tonal scale.
I shot the eggs on a white ground with soft lighting. Something this simple might give a little idea how much you can do with changing camera position and/or lens, changing the lighting, or varying technical settings like aperture/shutter speed/ISO. And all that is before doing any editing of the photograph.
Then I made a standard print from the 35mm negative. (Remember this is in the chemical darkroom days.) Most photographic printing paper is “negative-acting” so when I printed the original negative onto photo paper I got a negative of a negative–a positive–the top photograph. Just as one example of the many directions you could go, I took that print and printed it (contact print) back onto another sheet of photo paper, creating a negative of a positive, getting a negative image–the bottom photograph. The texture picked up in that print is mainly from the fibers of the paper in the original print.
In today’s digitized, AI world, something like the above would be easy to create out of nothing, but the value of the assignment, regardless of medium, is not in finding the “right” answer (there is no right or wrong answer), but in what might be learned in exploring, experimenting.
For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” Henry David Thoreau
One of our regular stops whenever Barbara and I are in Paris is the Rodin Museum, and it looks like there has been some significant deterioration of this statue in the intervening eight years, between our last two visits. Not really.
The photograph on the right with the cracking torso was shot as a reflection in a large mirror that has some reticulation happening in the glazing. By careful movement and positioning I was able to isolate those lines on the statue, flipping the final image horizontally to get the correct orientation.
My Nikon School colleague Michael Schwarz and I did some small group photo workshops several years ago that combined some classroom, shooting excursions, and critiques. It frequently happened that when we were going through students’ work we might see 2-3 photos of the same subject as the photographer was starting to explore it, but then looking for the “next” shot in the evolution we’d find they had just stopped shooting and moved on, often just short of getting a really good composition.
Never stop looking for a new variation. In several visits before 2016 I’m sure I photographed this guy. In 2016 I did at least 4 variations, and again in 2024 at least 4, finding, at last, a different view. In a crowded place like this, a lot of patience is also necessary, to stand in position and wait for the other visitors to move out of the frame, or at least to a place that minimizes their importance.
If you want to test your ability to recompose the same scene or subject in different ways, try one of the assignments I had in school: take a plain white coffee cup and saucer, on a plain solid tone background, and changing nothing but framing and lighting, see how many distinct versions you can find. If you want a real test, do the same exercise with only 1 or 2 white eggs.
For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index
Certain photographs I have made stick in my mind. Sometimes it’s because the photo is so good; the Fates conspired to put me in the right place at the right time, and I didn’t blow it. Sometimes it may be a personal connection to the person, place, and/or moment in the picture. Sometimes I don’t know why.
I like this photograph, some impromptu merchandising on a storefront in Prague, but I expect many people would be, “Meh.” I suspect most photographers have favorites from their files that no one else gets.
This image exemplifies an answer I give when asked, “What’s your favorite subject?” For me making a photo is a design exercise; subject matter is secondary. My job is to take the various visual elements presented to me, shapes, tones, and colors, and find an arrangement of them that is interesting and cohesive, and, if there is a narrative, inform and support that.
For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index
If you randomly wander the streets in alien places, as I am wont to do, you will encounter things you do not understand. Discovery is the point, and pleasure, of travel.
For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index
We were at an annual oyster roast for a group of long-term friends last Saturday evening. The oysters were singles, big and juicy, steamed perfectly, and I ate more than my fill. The top photograph is from that evening, and this is the group I mean. (With busy schedules, there’s always one or two missing from various group photos over the years.)
Over 40 years ago, this group of young, professional, smart, good-looking women, from a variety of careers, came together somehow, and stuck. They eventually made room for a few men, and some children. The bottom photograph is one daughter’s wedding, a young woman “blessed” with so many surrogate moms, plus her own, standing on the left, in black.
They’ve been through so much together, always with laughter.
For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index
“Walking the Dog”
Repetition and symmetry can be strong compositional tools, up to the point where they become predictable. Once a pattern has been established there needs to be an interruption, a hiccup, to keep it interesting.
The Frame is also a primary tool, the edge of what the photographer allows the viewer to know about the scene, selected from an infinite number of choices. Within any scene there may be numerous, visually interesting points of view, some similar, some dramatically different. For example, the sidewalk, curb, gutter, and reflections of the trees here, on a different day, were the subject of last week’s post.
For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index/all
“Walking the Dog”
A little pollen, a little rain…another world.
For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index
