Michael Tallman Photography Blog

This past week I was in the Aspen, Colorado area attending a workshop at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center.  This is a busy time for me but I recieved a scholarship for the workshop which made it an opportunity that I could not pass up.  I love taking workshops - they are a great way to learn a lot in a very short amount of time.  The last workshop I took was with John Paul Caponigro at his studio in Maine.  That workshop elevated my work to a new level, so I have been trying to figure out how to fit workshops in ever since.  This week’s workshop was called “Medium Format Digital: Untethered” and was taught by Jim Stone, a well published and collected author, photographer and professor of photography at The University of New Mexico.  The concept of the workshop was to take medium format digital cameras out of the studio to see what they can do in the real world.  Dan Cuny from Leaf America brought out a few cases of Leaf Aptus 65 and 75 digital backs, and a Leaf Afi - all of which run from about $14K to $30K.  I’m not really in the market for a system like this but I was eager to work with the state of the art in digital camera equipment.  Dan cut us loose with these 30+ megapixel cameras and here are a few of the images I came up with:

This one really shows of the way the Leaf backs handle color - the files from these cameras are rich with color and detail and are very flexible to work with.  The future of digital photography looks good - I think that cameras of this capability will be a lot more affordable in just a few years.

These cameras are much bigger than what I am accustomed to using lately, and are much better off on a tripod.  I decided to shoot something other than people so that I could slow down and take more time to consider my pictures.  Jim gave one of his great slide show lectures on how many great photographers used their frames to describe space and depth.  I feel like I have been especially aware of this lately in many of the portraits I have been making, but seeing so many of these famous images with Jim’s insightful observations made something click for me.

One thing a large 30 megapixel sensor will do for you is make every technique error painfully obvious.  Any vibration or slight focus error is magnified.  This one was very sharp though, so I made a 30″x40″ print of it:

This one did not fare quite as well in the sharpness department when enlarged (although probably not apparent on the web), but I always like the way the colors play in the twilight:

I was torn between wanting to explore the technical possibilities of these cameras and wanting to find something interesting to photograph.  I had a lot of great conversations with Jim about finding a subject for my personal photography work.  I am still developing my vocabulary in photographs and looking for clues in those rare pictures I make that really speak to me.  I did make one photograph this week like this - it has stories to tell and history behind it.  The irony is that I did not have to go past the front door to get the picture - it was on the refrigerator in the house I was staying.  My friend Claire’s parents were kind enough to put me up for the week and I found their family history on the refrigerator:

Michael and Ann thought I was pretty odd for photographing their refrigerator three mornings in a row but it was worth it to make this image perfect.  It had a great time with Jim Stone and all of the other workshop participants.  We all got to know each other very well over the course of the week from working together and eating the delicous food at the Ranch’s cafe.  I would definitely recommend the Anderson Ranch workshops to anyone.

I started laughing immediately after I clicked the shutter on this one in Sugarhouse Park last night. That’s our dog Sage with the tennis ball, and the crazed looking brown blur is her friend Lady. I was taking pictures of Sage and Lady sitting together in the grass when Lady suddenly decided to launch after something. I love this kind of accident!

When you have a phone? I went to the Denver Art Museum on Saturday to refresh the visual data-bank with a little Cezanne and Degas. My back was a little tweaked from hauling all of my heavy professional lenses around on my shoulder all day Thursday and Friday, so I left the big camera behind. It was the first time I had seen the new Denver Art Museum expansion, a fantastic building designed by Daniel Libeskind. The way the faces and angles of this building play with light is amazing - notice how the surface of the wall in the second photo down looks like it is curved (it’s not). I had to take a few pictures and all I had was my phone, but I think the prescence of this structure still comes through in a megapixel.

I automated a process to make these cell phone pictures look decent in photoshop - you just need to blur out the ugly low quality digital texture and replace it with a more organic looking texture.

Leah and I had a very rare free weekend off together - so we took a short trip down to Moab. Leah kept calling it a “vacation” but I had to remind her that other people just call it a weekend.  We went hiking in Arches National Park and in the Island In The Sky district of Canyonlands National Park. This part of Utah is so strange but also very beautiful. Every time I go I feel like I’m on some other planet. Leah and I spoke about how amazing it is to be able to visit places like this just a few hours from our home in Salt Lake City. Although there is still plenty of snow up in the Wasatch for skiing, April is a great time to get out to Moab. Temperatures are perfect for hiking during the day, and reasonable for camping at night. I took a few photographs on our hikes with an eye for the wide view - take a look at the slide show.

Our sweet yellow lab Sage celebrated her third birthday today. I’m convinced that Sage is the best dog on earth. I managed to get her birthday portrait in the last of the twilight tonight.

Sage likes: chasing balls, mud puddles, swimming, rolling in snow, greeting visitors at the door, bathtubs, food, other dogs, kids, car rides, bicycles

Sage dislikes: vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers, baths, sleeping in, grooming, small yippy dogs

Sage is my favorite subject to photograph. I dug through the archives and put my favorite pictures of Sage from the last three years together in this slideshow. I even dusted off the scanner and scanned a few frame from Sage’s first swim as a puppy.

A blog post is long overdue. It’s been a while, but it’s not because I don’t have anything to post - these are from a trip Leah and I took to southern Utah a few weeks ago. We checked out Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon, and Escalante/Grand Staircase National Monument. This is a really spectacular state we live in! I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

I was invited to provide a photograph for a group portfolio show by Mia and Adriana, who photographed my sister’s wedding. The theme of the show is “RSVP”, an acronym for a French phrase meaning “please respond”. I chose to print this image, “Torn Propaganda, Maputo 2007″. I shot this in Maputo this past spring at the Mercado Municipal. This is my favorite image from the past year - the kind of picture that grows on me. When I made my first large print of it, I saw a few faces that I had not even noticed before. Sorry, I’m not going to upload a high resolution version to look at. You’ll have to buy a print or get yourself to Paris, France where it will be shown this month. The portfolio show will also be exhibited in Columbia next spring. I had to write a brief statement to go along with the print - it’s the first time I’ve written an artist statement for a single image. Here goes:

“Torn Propaganda, Maputo” includes fragments of a poster promoting the celebration of “Heroes Day”, a national holiday celebrating the founders of Mozambique’s independence movement. This invitation to celebrate places Armando Guebuza, the current president and leader of the dominant Frelimo political party, front and center. Guebuza is placed among the two “Heroes”, Eduardo Mondlane and Samora Machel. The response to this message is ambiguous - the cause of the defilement is unclear. It could be read as an angry act of protest by a disillusioned Maputian, struggling under difficult economic conditions. On the other hand, the poster may have been torn by chance as the crowds of people stream in and out of the Mercado Municipal where the image was found.

The absence of physical depth gives way to the dimension of time that is central to the image. Time has painted much of Mozambique’s history onto this wall. The faces of its people are scattered and obscured within the remains of messages posted upon its surface. Like many of the old colonial buildings in Maputo, the wall of this building is crumbling. Years of civil war, opposing cold war influence from the Soviet Union and the west, disease, poverty and natural disasters have allowed the process of decay to take its course.

Often when I am photographing a wedding, someone will ask me what I really like to take pictures of. The truth is that I love taking photographs at weddings - I really have a blast. But what about on my own time? I have a hard time answering this. In short, it depends. Sometimes I will have a concept for a series that I shoot for over a period of time. Sometimes I am just inspired when I find things, like this vintage photograph covered with years of crumbled plaster. I’m not sure how to properly explain that. Often I use my camera to simply keep a visual journal of my life. Lately it has been really hot here in Salt Lake City. The dogs I know just want to stay cool, and it doesn’t matter to them whether they jump in a lake or a plastic kiddie pool. They just want to get wet - this makes me smile every time. And no, I wouldn’t recommend getting your lens that close to a dog in a pool!