In the “old days” I would frequently shoot negatives on KODAK PROFESSIONAL Technical Pan Film using a Besseler Slide Copier when I needed slides for a presentation or critique. There is no shortage of info on the web about camera scanning negatives, so I made my first attempt at copying the negatives with my Fujifilm GFX 50r with a Pentax-A 645 120mm f/4 Macro Lens, Kipon P645-GFX lens adapter, Omega D2 645 negative carrier, Kaiser Slimlite Plano 5000K Lightbox, and vintage Polaroid MP-4 Copy Stand. I bracketed my exposure between f/11 and f/16 at both 1 and ½ second.

For this first try I simply inverted the files in Photoshop®, desaturated, and adjusted the levels. The results were promising enough for me to get prints made for the exhibit. In the future I will try using programs like FilmLab or Negative Lab Pro to see if I can refine the process and dive deeper into my archive of analog work. 

The above setup was put together with equipment I already owned, but, if I start doing more volume, I may consider Negative Supply’s products to speed up the process, particularly with roll film.

Arab Gentleman on Me’ir Rutberg St., Haifa, Israel, circa 1985 (left) ©️ Glenn Scott Egli, All rights reserved Copy setup with Fujifilm GFX 50r, Pentax 645 120mm f/4 Macro Lens, Kipon Pentax to GFX lens adapter, Omega D2 645 negative carrier, Kaiser SlimLite Plano, and vintage Polaroid MP-4 Copy Stand (right).

Kamba mother with her children, Machakos, Kenya, 1988 - ©️ Glenn Scott Egli, All rights reserved.

Arab Children playing in the Old City, `Akká (Acre), Israel, circa 1985 - ©️ Glenn Scott Egli, All rights reserved.

I had the pleasure of going to “Ansel Adams in Our Time” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston recently. An interesting juxtaposition of a previous and later generation of photographers shooting the same subject matter as Adams. While not a “landscape photographer,” Adams was a big influence for me with the craft of photography having been introduced to The Zone System through his basic photo series of books (The Camera, The Negative, The Print, etc.) early in my photographic carrier. I had the good fortune to attend the Ansel Adams Workshop in 1982 and 1983—the last two during his life.

More to come...

I was fortunate to catch Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings on its last day at the Peabody Essex Museum back in September. I’d long admired her work in book form going back to my days at the Maine Photographic Workshop—where I briefly met her in 1986—but had never seen her work up on a wall in a gallery setting.

If you are able I would highly recommend seeing the exhibit at one of the other venues:

• The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, November 20, 2018–February 10, 2019
• The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, March 3–May 27, 2019
• Jeu de Paume, Paris, June 17–September 22, 2019
• High Museum of Art, Atlanta, October 19, 2019–January 12, 2020

All photographs Copyright ©2018 Glenn Scott Egli. All rights reserved.

Summer means a trip to Maine, and—for two years in a row now—a trip to Maine means a side-trip to Woonsocket, Rhode Island, home of S.K Grimes. This year I brought three large format lenses up with me to take down to Woonsocket:

• Perken, Son & Rayment 3¼ x 4¼ “Optimus” Quick Acting Portrait Lens 
• Wollensak 10 Inch (254mm) f/4.5 (W) Raptar Lens LE-2(2) 
• Wollensak 10 Inch f/5.6 (W) Raptar Telephoto Lens

All three barrel lenses were mounted on lens boards for, respectively, a 5x7 inch “Competitor View” from the Seneca Camera Manufacturing Company (Rochester, NY), a Sinar Norma monorail camera fitted with a behind the lens Sinar/Copal shutter, and a Graflex RB Super D 3¼ x 4¼ inch SLR (Single Lens Reflex).

S.K. Grimes, “The Photographer’s Machinist,” 32 Mechanic Ave, Unit 222, Woonsocket, Rhode Island

Woonsocket Industrial Mill Complex

The Clock, S.K. Grimes Camera Repair

Joel Dau reams out a Sinar Norma lens board on a PROTO TRAK TRL 1440P Lathe in the machine shop at S.K. Grimes

The machine shop at S.K. Grimes

Woonsocket Industrial Mill Complex

Perken, Son & Rayment “Optimus” Quick Acting Portrait lens (Hutton Garden, London) mounted on a 5x7 inch “Competitor View” from the Seneca Camera Manufacturing Company (Rochester, NY) — “‘Optimus’ Quick Acting Portrait Lens. Aperture F-4. Specially constructed for short exposures in Portraiture. They are second to none, definition being maintained by their perfect optical qualities.”

Inverted view of the Sarah Farmer Inn at Green Acre Bahá’í School in Eliot, Maine, on the ground glass of the Seneca 5x7 inch “Competitor View”

Wollesak 10 Inch (254mm) f/4.5 Raptar Lens LE-2(2) mounted on a Sinar Norma 4x5 inch monorail camera

Wollensak 10 Inch f/5.6 Raptar Telephoto lens mounted on a 3¼ x 4¼ inch Graflex RB Super D SLR (Single Lens Reflex) camera

Barbara Morgan was an American photographer best known for her depictions of modern dancers and pioneering work in photomontage. She was a co-founder of the photography magazine Aperture.

Morgan is known in the visual art and dance worlds for her penetrating studies of American modern dancers Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Erick Hawkins, Jose Limon, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman and others. Morgan’s drawings, prints, watercolors and paintings were exhibited widely in California in the 1920s, and in New York and Philadelphia in the 1930s.

In her continuing quest to do more with photography, Morgan “began to feel the pervasive, vibratory character of light energy as a partner of the physical and spiritual energy of the dance, and as the prime mover of the photographic process. “Suddenly, I decided to pay my respects to light, and create a rhythmical light design for the book tailpiece.” She created gestural light drawings with an open shuttered camera in her darkened studio.

Although photomontage was enthusiastically practiced in Europe and Latin America in the 1930s and 40s, it was still alien to American photography and widely disparaged. Morgan’s knowledge of the European avant-garde, and her friendship with Lucia and László Moholy-Nagy, furthered her interest in montage. She was particularly stuck by how the genre could capture the multiplicity of modern American life. She worked with themes of social concern and natural and constructed environments.

Morgan’s life and art were both infused with this profound sense of energy and purposefulness. “I’m not just a ‘photographer’ or a ‘painter,’” she asserted, “but a visually aware human being searching out ways to communicate the intensities of life.”

Barbara Morgan was an instructor at the second Ansel Adams Workshops I attended in 1983. Shortly before the workshop she had fallen and sprained her ankle, and was in need of a wheelchair to move about the campus of the Robert Lewis Stevenson School, where the sessions took place. I ended up wheeling her to-and-fro throughout the week, and we had many conversations on mysticism and our respective Buddhist and Bahá’í beliefs. At the end of the week she graciously gave me a copy of her light drawing Samadhi.

Barbara Morgan: Doris Humphrey, “Square Dance for Moderns” (Waltz), 1938

Willard (with a Leica rangefinder) and Barbara Morgan at a Life Magazine Party

Barbara Morgan: Samadhi

Barbara Morgan: Artificial Life from the Laboratory

Barbara Morgan: Beaumont Newhall, Ansel Adams, and Willard Morgan in Barbara’s Studio

Barbara Morgan: Martha Graham - Letter to the World

“It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… they are made with the eye, heart and head.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early adopter of 35mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and conceived of photography as capturing a decisive moment. His work has influenced many photographers.

Cartier-Bresson was introduced to oil painting by his uncle Louis, and studied at the Lhote Academy, the Parisian studio of the Cubist painter and sculptor André Lhote. Frustrated with Lhote’s “rule-laden” approach to art, he began socializing with the Surrealists at the Café Cyrano, were he met a number of the movement’s leading protagonists, and was drawn to the Surrealist movement’s technique of using the subconscious and the immediate to influence their work.

Returning to France after a sojourn in Côte d'Ivoire, Cartier-Bresson was inspired by a 1930 photograph by Hungarian photojournalist Martin Munkacsi— “Three Boys at Lake Tanganyika”—to stop painting and to take up photography. He bought a Leica 35mm camera and began photographing relentlessly in Berlin, Brussels, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest and Madrid—relishing in the anonymity that the small camera gave him.

After serving in the French military and underground during World War II, Cartier-Bresson, along with Robert Capa, David Seymour, William Vandivert and George Rodger founded Magnum Photos in early 1947. Capa’s brainchild, Magnum was a cooperative picture agency owned by its members.

In 1952, Cartier-Bresson published his book Images à la sauvette, whose English-language edition was titled The Decisive Moment. It included a portfolio of 126 of his photos from the East and the West. The book’s cover was drawn by Henri Matisse.

In a 1957 interview with the Washington Post, Cartier-Bresson note that “Photography is not like painting—There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative… Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.”

Cartier-Bresson died in Céreste (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France) on August 3, 2004, aged 95. No cause of death was announced. He was buried in the local cemetery nearby in Montjustin and was survived by his wife, Martine Franck, and daughter, Mélanie.

Cartier-Bresson nearly always used a Leica 35mm rangefinder camera fitted with a normal 50 mm lens, or occasionally a wide-angle lens for landscapes. With fast black-and-white film and sharp lenses, he was able to photograph events unnoticed. He believed in composing his photographs in the viewfinder, not in the darkroom. He insisted that his images be printed full-frame, including the first few millimeters of the unexposed negative around the image area, resulting in a black frame around the developed picture.

Find a Leica M3 Rangefinder Camera on eBay: https://ebay.us/15l0I1

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Surplus Camera Gear is happy to be able to assist The Guntersville Museum in their restoration of portrait photographer Leon Kennamer’s Folmer Graflex Century Master Studio Camera by providing reference images of our own late model camera. We look forward to the camera being on display a the museum before long.

Elton Leon Kennamer, American photographer. Master of Photography and Photographic Craftsman, Professional Photographers of America. With United States Navy, 1951-1955. Member Professional Photographers American, Professional Photographers of Mississippi-Alabama (director 1960-1967, president 1967), Southeastern Professional Photographers Association.

Fig. 1a — Portrait photographer, Leon Kennamer’s Folmer Graflex Century Master Studio Camera front view showing Ilexpo shutter (no lens).

Fig. 1b — Graflex Century Master Studio Camera front view showing Kodak 8-1/2 Inch f/6.3 Commercial Ektar Lens in No. 3 Ilex Acme Synchro Shutter in recessed lensboard.

ILEXPO Pneumatic Shutter
The ILEXPO shutter, manufactured in Rochester, New York by the Ilex Optical Company, was an accessory shutter that could be mounted on many portrait cameras at the time that used a 9x9 inch lensboard, like the Folmer Schwing (later Folmer Graflex) Century Master Studio Camera or the similar Agfa Ansco 8x10 Portrait Camera. Barrel style lenses, like the Wollensak Verito Diffused Focus Portrait Lens, would be mounted on a 6¾ inch board that would fit into the face of the ILEXPO. The shutter was air controlled (pneumatic), had two settings (“Instantaneous” and “Bulb”), and in some models was synchronized for flash photography.

Fig. 1c — Ilex Optical Co. “Ilexpo” shutter for Graflex Century Master Studio Camera.

Fig. 2a — Folmer Graflex Century Master Studio Camera (side view).

Fig. 2b — Late model, battleship gray painted Graflex Century Master Studio Camera (side view).

Fig. 3a — Folmer Graflex Century Master Studio Camera showing rear standard with ground glass back removed.

Fig. 3b — Graflex Century Master Studio Camera showing rear standard with ground glass back removed.

Fig. 3c — Graflex Century Master Studio Camera rear camera controls labeled.

Rear Camera Controls

1. Back retaining/release clasp

2. Sliding Carriage control lever

3. Mask retaining clip

4. Fine focus knobs

5. Rear tilt control

6. Rear swing control

7. Fine focus lock knob

8. Course bellows extention locks

Fig. 4a — Folmer Graflex Century Master Studio Camera rear control knobs.

Fig. 4b — Fine-focus lock knob for Graflex Century Master Studio Camera

Fig. 4c — Fine-focus lock knob for Graflex Century Master Studio Camera (disassembled)

Fig. 5a — Folmer Graflex Century Master Studio Camera showing rear standard with ground glass.

Fig. 5b — Rear view of Graflex Century Master Studio Camera showing the Sliding Carriage with 5x7 inch ground glass spring back.

Fig. 6a — 4x5 inch ground glass back for Folmer Graflex Century Master Studio Camera.

Fig. 6b — 5x7 inch ground glass spring back for Graflex Century Master Studio Camera

Fig. 7a — Graflex Century Master Studio Camera showing dark cloth, or focusing cloth, in position on camera back.

Fig. 7b — Inverted image on the 5x7 inch ground glass focusing screen of a Graflex Century Master Studio Camera.

Ground Glass
In photography, a sheet of ground glass is used for the manual focusing in some still and motion picture cameras. The ground-glass viewer is inserted in the back of the camera, and the lens opened to its widest aperture. This projects the scene on the ground glass upside down. The photographer focuses and composes using this projected image, sometimes with the aid of a magnifying glass (or loupe). In order to see the image better, a dark cloth is used to block out light, whence came the image of the old-time photographer with his head stuck under a large black cloth. A ground glass is also used in the reflex finder of an SLR or TLR camera.

Fig. 8a — Inserting a 5x7 inch sheet film holder into the spring back.

Fig. 8b — 5x7 inch sheet film holder in position behind the ground glass focusing screen.

It was treat to accompany photographer Eugene Richards and co-curators Lisa Hostetler (George Eastman Museum) and April Watson (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art) as they guided visitors on a tour of the exhibition The Run-On of Time. Running June 10 through October 22 at the George Eastman Museum, this is the first museum retrospective of Richards’s work.

Had a wonderful evening at the preview of the new exhibition “Eugene Richards: The Run-On of Time,” at the George Eastman Museum. I was first introduced to Richards’ work in the 1980s as a student at the Maine Photographic Workshops. The Eastman exhibit is the first museum retrospective devoted to Richards’s work, and explores his career from 1968 to the present through 146 photographs and three moving image works. The show will run from June 10 through October 22, 2017.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a major retrospective of the photographs of Irving Penn to mark the centennial of the artist's birth. Over the course of his nearly 70-year career, Irving Penn (1917–2009) mastered a pared-down aesthetic of studio photography that is distinguished for its meticulous attention to composition, nuance, detail, and printmaking. Irving Penn: Centennial, opening April 24, 2017, will be the most comprehensive exhibition of the great American photographer’s work to date and will include both masterpieces and hitherto unknown prints from all his major series.

I am very grateful that I was able to slip into New York City on a recent trip to New Jersey and see the Penn Centennial at The Met. A photographer who’s work I have long admired, I first became aware of Irving Penn when I was studying the platinum printing process with Alan Newman at Parson’s School of Design fresh out of high school in 1980. In addition to his many accomplishments, Penn was instrumental in the modern revival of platinum printing in the early 1960s.

Irving Penn: Centennial is co-curated by Maria Morris Hambourg, independent curator and the founding curator of The Met's Department of Photographs, and Jeff L. Rosenheim, Joyce Frank Menschel Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs at The Met.

Irving Penn: Centennial—Curatorial Selection Process In September 2015, Jeff Rosenheim, curator in charge of the Department of Photographs at The Met, and Maria Morris Hambourg, independent curator and former curator in charge of the Department of Photographs at The Met, were filmed at The Irving Penn Foundation making their selections for the Irving Penn: Centennial exhibition.

Irving Penn Darkroom Technique: Platinum-Palladium Prints In this animated video of Irving Penn's darkroom, Vasilios Zatse, who was an assistant to Penn from 1996 to 2009, explains the artist's innovative process for making platinum-palladium prints.

Irving Penn on Location in Morocco, 1971 This 8mm film footage, shot by Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn in 1971, shows Irving Penn at work in his portable studio on location in Morocco.