For years, the Magic Lantern firmware has been providing Canon DSLR owners with features their cameras were never meant to have; higher bit rates for video, focus peaking, on-screen audio levels, and more. The firmware is available for free and works on a variety of Canon bodies, from the T1i up to the 5Dmk2. Recently, a new version of the firmware has been made available to 5Dmk3 owners that allows realtime capture of DNG files, similar to the Black Magic Cinema Cam. Though there are a number of technical hurdles to overcome before this is what you might call “production ready”, it is fairly amazing what Alex at Magic Lantern has been able to get out of these cameras. One of the bigger hurdles, is bypassing the camera’s internal buffer and, instead, write directly to the card. According to Andrew at EOSHD, “The short recording time is limited by the size of the camera’s buffer. When the camera dumps the frames from the buffer to the card, it seems to debayer the raw frames for the image review causing the whole process to dramatically slow down. We need real-time recording of DNG to the card for all this to work as a video feature.” Despite the work still to do , the results so far are superb, as you can see in the gorgeous Genesis test footage below, by filmmaker James Miller. The footage was captured at 1920 x 720 @25p as a RAW sequence, converted to DNG and color graded in After Effects.

TIP: Watch this full-screen with good speakers.

Read the full story, and see more video samples, on EOSHD.

The post Genesis: Hacking The Canon 5Dmk3 appeared first on Faded + Blurred.

“What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?” - E. M. Forster

Over the past several days in Oklahoma, we’ve seen the heartbreaking results of the destructive power of nature. Entire neighborhoods have been razed, and 24 lives were lost as a result of an F5 tornado ripping a 17-mile path through a suburb of Oklahoma City. Estimates on the ground put the base of the twister at over a mile wide, with winds in excess of 200mph. When faced with such devastation, it’s often difficult to imagine that same violent force as a source of beauty. Franz Schumacher makes beautiful photographs of the drama of the natural world, from storms to sunrises, capturing those moments when sun and sky show us just how fragile we are.

Our hearts go out to those families affected by the tornado. If you are interested in helping, you can make a donation to the American Red Cross in a variety of ways. Individuals can go online to Redcross.org, call 1-800-RED-CROSS (733-2767), use your cell phone to text REDCROSS to “90999” or deliver or mail checks to 115 E. Pennsylvania Avenue, Southern Pines, NC 28387.

Donors should be sure to designate financial donations to “Disaster Relief.”

Books
The Complete Guide to Nature Photography
Nature Photography Photo Workshop
National Geographic Simply Beautiful Photographs

The post When Skies Open Up: Franz Schumacher appeared first on Faded + Blurred.

Every week, Jeffery Saddoris and Bill Wadman take on the art, science, and philosophy of photography and explore how they play out behind the camera in the process of making images. After you listen to the show, head over and join the On Taking Pictures Google+ Community. Post photos for critique and engage with other photographers in constructive discussions about making images and the creative process.

  Show Home on 5by5.tv
  Subscribe on iTunes
  Podcast RSS Feed

Show Notes

Big show this week as Bill and I question what happens when it’s the process used to create the art that’s interesting, not the result. Also, where do we draw the line between photo manipulation and photo journalism? Plus, questions from the Google+ group and listener-suggested Alec Soth is our Photographer of the Week.

“Ice Cream Cait” by Bill Wadman on Vimeo
The Pen Addict Podcast
Growing Concern that News Photos Are Being Excessively Manipulated – SPIEGEL ONLINE
Hansen’s World Press Winning Photo Not Fake… Just Unbelievable — BagNews
Photo Manipulation on the Fashion Pages – NYTimes.com
Google+ completely redesigned | The Verge
Yahoo revitalizes Flickr with huge images | The Verge
Just Start | Ed Dale’s Blog
Projekt 50 on Behance

This Week’s Sponsors
Shutterstock - Use code ‘PICTURES5‘ for 30% off.
Squarespace - Use the coupon code ‘OFFMYLAWN’ at checkout to save 10% on your order and get a free domain name.

Photographer of the Week
Alec Soth
Magnum Photos Photographer Portfolio
National Portrait Gallery | Feature Photography

Books
Ping-Pong Conversations: Alec Soth with Francesco Zanot
Ryan McGinley: Whistle for the Wind
Tim Walker: Story Teller

The post On Taking Pictures #56 – “Then It Becomes RoboCop” appeared first on Faded + Blurred.

Earlier this month, street artist JR was in NYC making more than 6,000 portraits as part of the promotion for his new HBO documentary Inside Out: The People’s Art Project. Directed by Alastair Siddons, the film follows JR as he uses photography, specifically portraits, to create the world’s largest participatory art project. The film shows not only what a powerful medium photography can be, but also what the idea of the portrait means to different people across the world. For example, here in the United States, we are pretty narcissistic, so having a famous photographer take your portrait means a chance at celebrity. In areas like Haiti or Tunisia, it isn’t celebrity they are after, but rather a voice; these portraits allows them a chance to be seen, but, more importantly, to be heard. In 2011, JR was awarded the TED prize (watch the TED Talk), which he used to launch Inside Out. He asked for people all over the world to participate by sending in photos, which were printed and pasted in installations all over the world. “Art can change the way we see the world,” he says, “Art can create energy.” The film was an official selection at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival and premieres on HBO Monday, May 20 at 9 PM EST. Check out the trailer below, as well as this conversation with director Alastair Siddons.

“I wish for you to stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project., and together we’ll turn the world… INSIDE OUT.” -JR

[via Wooster Collective]

The post Inside Out: The People’s Art Project appeared first on Faded + Blurred.

There is something about the ocean that seems to cast a spell over me. I am both mesmerized and fearful at the expanse of it. The thousands of species of both animal and plant life are just as numerous and varied as the life on land. That world was opened up to me in a small way going to the zoo and Sea World quite often as a child, but it was a world I knew I would never enter, at least not completely. Yes, I can go snorkeling, but my fear will limit me to just that; I know I will never go scuba diving. What I find most fascinating about the ocean, however, is the fact that this world exists apart from me ever going there or even having any knowledge of it. In fact, it has only been fairly recently that the ocean floor has been explored. Up until that point the thousands upon thousands of sea creatures that exist were unknown to us. It is almost like a different planet, which very few of us get to visit. That is how the underwater photographs by Hengki Koentjoro feel to me, as if they were taken in some alien landscape that can’t possibly exist on earth. This world beneath our own, which I tend to think of in vivid colors, has been taken to a darker, more mysterious place. Koentjoro manages to make an already distant place seem even more foreign, casting a spell, pulling me in.

The post A Mysterious Place: Hengki Koentjoro appeared first on Faded + Blurred.

“That is the exploration that awaits you! Not mapping stars and studying nebula, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence.” – Leonard Nimoy

We first saw Julien Mauve’s work through his series, Back to Childhood. His latest series, After Lights Out, is just as fascinating. In these images, twilight has become the backdrop, with only one light glowing, which becomes, according to Mauve, “a beacon of hope”.

These stunning black and white images of the Windy City, taken by Japanese photographer, Satoki Nagata, really convey why Chicago was given that nickname. Called Lights in Chicago, Nagata uses reflections, the lights of the city, the freezing cold air, and the falling snow, to bring to this city to life. [via Fubiz]

Crowdsourcing has become one of the great benefits of the Internet. You can ask for help for just about anything, and usually get it. Steven Withey had this image of his 87 year old grandfather  (who was only 20 in the photo) and went to Reddit to get some help restoring it. Through the efforts of a few different people, he ended up with this beautifully repaired photograph. His grandfather was thrilled with the results. [via Laughing Squid]

These incredible works were all done by Iris Scott, who did not use a paintbrush, but instead, relies on her fingers. She says she came upon the technique “by chance and has not used brushes since”. She wears surgical gloves and makes quick movements, giving the paintings a very textured and impressionistic look.

The Perennial Plate is made up of Daniel Klien and Mirra Fine. The two have spent the last three years traveling and talking about food and the adventures of eating in a weekly documentary series they host on their blog. This latest episode is a view of the two weeks they spent in Spain, and yet, was condensed down to three minutes. Their composition and editing style is just wonderful. You’ll want to plan a vacation soon after seeing this. [via Vimeo]

If you have something interesting you think we should feature on an upcoming Five for Friday, let us know.

The post Five For Friday #58 appeared first on Faded + Blurred.

We have a tendency to describe nature in terms of color; deep blue sea, fall colors, even green, green grass of home (apologies to you Tom Jones fans), which makes perfect sense, since, after all, we see in color. But, something wonderful happens to nature when we strip away the color. The mood changes, one set of details can become lost, while, at the same time, others rise to the forefront; photography lets us capture these changes, and mold them as we see fit. Fast shutter speeds allow us to freeze the spray of a crashing wave, while slowing it down renders the sea as an infinite plane, stretching endless to the horizon. Pierre Pellegrini brilliantly captures the austere beauty of groves and tree lines in his native Switzerland. Using ND filters and slow shutter speeds, the trees become bold, graphic elements against soft skies and haloed suns. From the forest to the sea, German landscape photographer Volker Birke captures strong shapes, often in silhouette, against the slow-shutter blur of water along the coastline. Both photographers seem to employ similar techniques, yet their results are wholly unique. It’s one of the amazing things about photography; we can use the same tools, the same techniques, even the same subjects, yet our results will vary wildly, hinging on each photographer’s unique vision of how they see the world.

The post From The Forest To The Sea appeared first on Faded + Blurred.

If you’re a photographer using Google+, the updates announced today at Google I/O, the company’s annual developer conference, are sure to put a smile on your face. The updates include dramatic changes to the overall UI and Hangouts (which I’ve yet to try), as well as a major overhaul to how G+ handles photos. If you’re not a G+ user, these new enhancements may just be the push you need to jump in. First off, the Stream has been retooled as a multi-column, Pinterest-style layout, with photos being featured more prominently. The persistent menu down the left side is gone, replaced with a single Home button that springs out the full menu on hover. Take a look at the video below for a preview of the new UI in action.

What’s new for photographers?
I was a little late to the G+ party myself, but I’ve found that, for me, it offers a much deeper level of engagement with other users, particularly the communities. Users are sharing their work, offering constructive criticism and discussion, and generally turning it into a valuable resource for those wanting to hone their craft, which both Bill and I regularly participate in. I can’t say the same for the other social network. Photographs have been moved front and center in the latest update, not just how they are displayed, but also how they are stored, sorted and even processed behind the scenes, which is great news for photographers.

The details according to Google:

• Auto Backup (aka Instant Upload). Too many pictures stay stranded on the phone, so with your permission, we’ll automatically back up your mobile pics as you snap them. Everyone receives unlimited free storage at standard size (2048px), and 15GB of free storage at full size (up from 5GB).

• Auto Highlight. Sifting through vacation photos to assemble the perfect album can take hours. Auto Highlight helps you find your favorites faster by de-emphasizing duplicates, blurry images and poor exposures, and focusing instead on pictures with the people you care about, landmarks, and other positive attributes. Simply visit the Photos page, and you’ll see your Highlights ready to share.

• Auto Enhance. Taking a good photo and making it great is a task generally reserved for professional photographers. That’s why, for example, we continue to support and improve tools like the Nik Collection. For everyone else we’re introducing Auto Enhance: a new way to improve brightness, contrast, saturation, structure, noise, focus… and dozens of other factors automatically. Simply upload some photos, then open the lightbox to see Google’s enhancements. And that’s it. (And of course: you can undo the changes at any time.) Here are some sample images to get you started.

• Auto Awesome. Sometimes we’ll create a brand new image based on a set of photos in your library. For example: if you upload a sequence of photos, we’ll try and animate them automatically. Or if you send us a few family portraits, we’ll find everyone’s best smile, and stitch them together into a single shot. Likewise with panoramas, filmstrips, and a whole lot more. We call these kinds of enhancements Auto Awesome.

Take a look at the video below for a look at some of the new photo-centric features in Google+.

You can see details of all of the new features and enhancements on the Google+ Project Blog. If you’re a current G+user, you should see these changes rolling out over the next week or so on your own Google+ account, if they haven’t already.

The post Google+ Gets A Facelift (And It’s Lovely) appeared first on Faded + Blurred.

Every week, Jeffery Saddoris and Bill Wadman take on the art, science, and philosophy of photography and explore how they play out behind the camera in the process of making images. After you listen to the show, head over and join the On Taking Pictures Google+ Community. Post photos for critique and engage with other photographers in constructive discussions about making images and the creative process.

  Show Home on 5by5.tv
  Subscribe on iTunes
  Podcast RSS Feed

Show Notes

Bill battles severe back pain to discuss whether or not people know good from bad and how Steven Soderbergh’s observations on the state of cinema may also reflect the state of art. We also wonder how we should go about judging our own growth. Plus, voracious street shooter, Garry Winogrand, is our Photographer of the Week.

Steven Soderbergh’s State Of Cinema Talk – Deadline.com
Video of Soderbergh’s Speech
A Final Embrace: The Most Haunting Photograph from Bangladesh – LightBox
Petition | Adobe Systems Incorporated: Eliminate the mandatory “creative cloud” subscription model.
Bleak Beauty
Ralph Gibson

This Week’s Sponsors
Shutterstock - Use code ‘PICTURES5‘ for 30% off.

Photographer of the Week
Garry Winogrand – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedi
Garry Winogrand, Who Retreated from Editing – NYTimes.com
Garry Winogrand: A look back at one of America’s most prolific photographers
Leica M4 Garry Winogrand
Garry Winogrand / Biography & Images – Atget Photography.com / Books
Larissa Archer: ‘We Have Not Loved Life’: Garry Winogrand at SFMOMA

Books
Garry Winogrand (SFMOMA)
Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light
Lee Friedlander The Nudes: A Second Look

The post On Taking Pictures #55 – “When Life Gives You Lemmings” appeared first on Faded + Blurred.

Despite the fact that last year saw a record number of Afghan civilians killed and the second highest death toll to coalition forces, stories about the decade-long war in Afghanistan accounted for less than two percent of the news content published in the US. Razistan is a website that provides a platform for freelance photographers and videographers living in Kabul to tell the stories that don’t get covered by the mainstream media. “A lot of these photographers and journalists haven’t been able to receive the credit they desrve,” says co-founder and New York Times Magazine contributor Luke Mogelson. While several of the stories capture the horrors of war, they are not exploitive, nor do they attempt to politicize the conflict. Instead, the Razistan photographers explore the stories of the people affected by it, how they cope with more than a decade of turmoil and a future that is still far from certain. As we see in the various stories, they attempt, as best they can, to establish a new normality, playing music, spending time with family and friends, even going to movies. I simply don’t have the tools by which to evaluate, or even relate to, what so many of these people have experienced, particularly the children who have never known a time without conflict. In his story, Surviving the Wreckage, photographer Majid Saeedi, attempts to capture the spirit of the people he photographs, writing that they possess “a kind of prideful insistence on living through whatever damage the war brings to their bodies and their homes.”

The post Razistan: Land Of Secrets appeared first on Faded + Blurred.

I’ve ben a fan of Leonard Cohen for years, both of his music, as well as simply reading his lyrics as poetry. In fact, if you’re not a fan of Cohen’s work, I cannot recommend his book, Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs, highly enough. The way in which he crafts words together, whether into poem or song is very rare indeed, though I must confess that I prefer the Jeff Buckley version of Hallelujah. Needless to say, when I saw that photographer Graham Miller used Cohen’s tune, Waiting for the Miracle, as the inspiration for an ongoing series of photographs, I was intrigued. Miller says the song came on the radio on his drive home and got him thinking “about the experience of living here in Perth, one of the world’s most isolated cities.” Using that and Cohen’s lyrics, which tell the story of an aging man looking back on a life spent waiting for a perfect relationship that will make him feel loved, only to live with the regret of not having found it, Miller is creating photographs to explore the fictional narratives of the inhabitants of his “coastal frontier town.”

While I love what he’s doing in Waiting for the Miracle, he has another body of work that I am equally, if not more, drawn to, called Suburban Splendor, inspired by a poem by Raymond Carver, called Tomorrow. I connect with these photographs on a very personal level, and I’m not really sure why. Perhaps because I’ve lived the majority of my life in the Sprawl that is southern California, where, from Redlands all the way to the ocean, cities blend seamlessly from one to another; never a break, nor any indication, aside from the occasional “city limit” signs, of where you are. Or perhaps it connects to something deeper, the idea that, on some level, I aspire to be somewhere (or someone) beyond the familiarity of what I know.

“Dreams flow across the heartland. Feeding on the fires. Dreams transport desires. Drive you when you’re down. Dreams transport the ones who need to get out of town.” – Neil Peart

The post The Ambiguity Of Images: Graham Miller appeared first on Faded + Blurred.

One of the things I love to do when I’ve got some down time is to visit  sites like 500px or Fotoblur (two of my favorites) to see how other photographers let various tags or keywords inform their work. We all have our own unique grid or filter through which we view the world, and sometimes seeing how other people interpret words, phrases or themes is just what I need to send me off in a different direction, often one that I hadn’t previously thought of. Of course, what ends up happening is that I get sucked into looking at “just one more image” and, before I know it, I’ve spent an hour looking at image galleries instead of grabbing my camera and getting out to shoot. That being said, sometimes getting lost in other photographers’ work is just what you need to get your own creative juices flowing. For the images here, I visited both 500px and Fotoblur and used the search terms “smoke” and “dust” and these were some of my favorites. What constantly amazes me is just how much fantastic work is out there, by people just like you, that you’ve never heard of, but all share a love of chasing down that next great photograph.

Links
Caras Ionut
Marina Cano
Andreas Resch
Besim Mazhiqi
Khirul Azmil
Gunnar Gestur Geirmundsson
Ryan Kasak
Leanne Staples

The post Smoke & Dust appeared first on Faded + Blurred.

“It shouldn’t be easy to be amazing.  Then everything would be.  It’s the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth.  When something’s difficult to come by, you’ll do that much more to make sure it’s even harder – or impossible – to lose.”  - Sarah Dessen

Idilko Neer started shooting as recently as 2009 and yet, she has a beautiful gift of being able to capture the enchanted forests she loves so much in her country of Hungary. The light and colors are radiant and incredibly serene. [via My Modern Met]

Self-taught Iranian photographer Hossein Zare uses his camera and Photoshop to create these magical, surreal worlds. Although they seem somewhat lonely and isolating, they also somehow evoke a sense of hope. All is not lost; there is something worth reaching for that is beyond us.   [via cuded]

Living the dream with his wife and kids in the Caribbean, French photographer Pierre Carreau spends a lot of his time in the ocean. He has to take hundreds of images to get just the right moment, but it is all worth it. These images of the ocean waves look like they are made out of blown glass, almost like a turquoise sculpture.  [via Colossal]

The $100 Portrait is an idea started by Malcolm Brown in 2012. Asking people to bring three changes of clothes (one outfit that you wear a lot, one that stands out, and one that has sex appeal) and a hundred dollars cash, he spends two hours shooting “a grand picture of you”. His goal was to start local, but to have it go international this year, which he seems to be on-track for. His first exhibit opens Friday, May 3 at Poor John’s in Toronto, Canada, and runs through May 31.  [via PDN Photo of the Day]

If you have ever wanted to know the history of cameras and photography, this video is a great (and brief) explanation. [via Totally Rad]

If you have something interesting you think we should feature on an upcoming Five for Friday, let us know.

The post Five For Friday #57 appeared first on Faded + Blurred.

The only reference point I have for family-style resorts in the Catskills is from the movie Dirty Dancing. Not being Jewish, and not having grown up in New York, these places are completely foreign to me. Popular from the 1920s through the 1970s, the area was known as the Borscht Belt. Resorts such as The Concord, The Pines Hotel, and Laurel’s Hotel and Country Club were frequented by middle and working-class Jewish families every summer for years, only to be abandoned when air travel replaced the family station wagon (you could argue that the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 also contributed). Seeing old photographs of these places makes me nostalgic for a time that probably never existed, other than how it is portrayed on screen. A time where families spent their summers together; swimming, dancing, and playing games; you know, happy. Adults could do their thing, while kids went off on their own, but then they would all come back to enjoy each other’s company in the evenings. I know it is probably romanticized, because there really are not any “good old days” and one of the reasons these places existed was because Jewish families were not welcome in other places, so they had to make their own. Despite their current state of decay seen in these photographs, there is still a sort of wonderment about them. We can almost hear the voices of people laughing and playing in the abandoned pools, walking down the boardwalk, or dancing in the ballrooms. Photographer Marisa Scheinfeld has a deep connection with these places, having spent summers in them growing up. Wanting to revisit her childhood, she has started photographing some of the hotels and resorts she was so familiar with. Taking old photographs and postcards with her for reference, she “rephotographs” those images, as well as other places that catch her eye. She sees not only the destruction of what was, but also the beauty in the strange newness that has taken its place.

 
[via NY Times Lens]

The post Borscht Belt Revisited: Marisa Scheinfeld appeared first on Faded + Blurred.

“My pictures must first be beautiful, but that beauty is not enough. I strive to convey an underlying edge of anxiety, of isolation, of fear. ” – Gregory Crewdson

Few photographers have had such a dramatic impact on photography as Gregory Crewdson. Like Richard Avedon or Henri Cartier-Bresson before him, Crewdson fundamentally changed not only the photographic language, but also the process of creating images and, in doing so, established himself as one of the most visionary photographers of the last decade. His photographs hang in museums, galleries and private collections all over the world and can sell for upwards of $100,000, but seeing him on the set of one of his productions, you might think he looks more like a film director than what has traditionally been the image of a photographer. In fact, he rarely even presses the shutter button. “I prefer not to be behind the camera,” he says, “because I want the most direct experience with the subject as possible.” Creating one of his photographs means dozens of crew members, unbelievably large budgets, and magnificent environments that require sets to be built or streets and neighborhoods to be temporarily shut down. Large in scale and obsessively detailed, they are made even bigger by what the viewer doesn’t see. “In all my pictures,” he says “what I am ultimately interested in is that moment of transcendence or transportation, where one is transported into another place, into a perfect, still world.”

Gregory Crewdson was born in 1962 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY. His father, a psychoanalyst, had an office in the basement of their brownstone, where Gregory watched as patients came and went. He was always told to be quiet and to stay out, though he says he would try to listen to his father’s sessions through the floorboards, which lit his imagination. Who was his father talking to? What were they saying? The questions were there, but there were never any answers. He has said that his father had a profound influence on his development and that his photographs are “grounded in a kind of psychology.” We don’t know what his images mean, and, according to Crewdson himself, neither does he. He wants the moment to exist as purely that moment, with no backstory, no narrative. “From day one, I have been interested in taking that limitation and trying to find the strength in it,” he says, “Like a story that is forever frozen in between moments, before and after, and always left as a kind of unresolved question.”

His first experience with photography was at the age of ten when his father took him to see a Diane Arbus exhibit at MoMA. Even today he speaks of that visit with a sense of awe, as if he is seeing again, for the first time, the effect a photograph can have on people, “Certainly, for the first time, I understood the psychological power and urgency that a photograph could have, that sense of awe and terror.” Not knowing why his father took him, since they weren’t the type of family to visit art museums, he credits that trip as being a pivotal moment in his life. It planted the seed for his future, although he wouldn’t realize that for a long time to come. Growing up, he thought he was going to follow in his father’s footsteps and go into psychiatry, but undiagnosed dyslexia made studying very difficult for him. He found an escape from the stress of school in music. Joining the band called The Speedies, playing guitar and writing songs became a creative outlet for him. Ironically, the band’s one and only hit (written by Crewdson) was called Let Me Take Your Foto, and, 25 years later, in 2005, was featured in an HP commercial.

After graduating high school, the band moved on to other things and Crewdson went on to college. Having no real interest in photography, he ended up in a photography class because he had a crush on a girl who happened to be a photographer. He fell in love with the medium straight away, saying that the order of making images “just made sense” to him. Photographs became a way to communicate for him in a way that words never could. That class changed the course of his life and he went on to get a BA in Photography at SUNY Purchase and an MFA at Yale University.

At the time Crewdson was attending Yale, the photography program was heavily based on documentary photographers like Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange. Crewdson found himself being more inspired by the work of photographers and artists in the galleries of New York. Seeing exhibits by Cindy Sherman and William Eggleston, he realized that photography could be more than just documentary. The David Lynch film, Blue Velvet, also had a profound effect on his work and inspired a shift in his tone and aesthetic. He began developing a new photographic language, using light and color to tell a story. His images took on a sort of tension, a sense that there was something not quite right. He returned to the small town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts again and again, establishing relationships with the residents and photographing them. At one point, he hit a wall and felt unable to make the pictures he wanted to make. He returned to the family cabin in Massachusetts, where he proceeded to dig up the back yard, photographing small piles of dirt. These exercises eventually led him to build his first tableaus, created with taxidermy animals and sets built in his studio. This new work started to get noticed and Crewdson began showing in galleries. Unfortunately, it was also during this time that his first marriage began to fall apart, which was reflected in the morbid quality of his work. He says he began having dreams where he was floating, which led to a series of pictures called Hover, shot from a crane elevated above the streets.

After Hover, Crewdson began thinking about the next body of work. He wanted to use lighting in a way that would give the work a more cinematic or theatrical feel to it. He met cinematographer Richard Sands, who, not only added the ability to use movie lighting into the productions, but also began a collaboration that has lasted for nearly 15 years. Their first project, Twilight, was Crewdson’s most ambitious project to date, and was his first body of work that really established his current cinematic production and aesthetic. “It’s using light to not only establish a world, but to tell a story,” he says. Despite the increasing scale and complexity of the productions, however, every tiny detail matters and nothing escapes Crewdson’s attention. It all has to come together to create a world that is complete and lived in. He wants his photographs to feel outside of time and place, generic and nondescript. There are secrets in his photographs, barely held at bay by the fragile surface tension of a false sense of normality. “There are two possible interpretations,” he says of his work. “One is the possibility of impossibility and two is the impossibility of possibility. I know there’s a sadness in my pictures. There’s this want to connect to something larger, and then the impossibility of doing so.” His images are voyeuristic and yet they make us look at ourselves. He shows us a view of suburbia, how there is a veneer of perfection, but there is so much beneath the surface, unresolved questions, no completion. Each image is beautiful and yet there is an underlying tension and sadness. “The suburban landscape is alien and strange and exotic,” he says.”I photograph it out of longing and desire.”

In 2012, Gregory Crewdson’s life and process were documented in Ben Shapiro’s wonderful film, Brief Encounters. Filmed while Crewdson was making his series, Beneath the Roses, the film presents an unvarnished look at the artist as he tries to reconcile family, art, and his own obsessions. “…ultimately I’m looking at what lurks in my own interior,” he says. “I make photographs because I want to answer the question of what propels me to do the things that I do. But that always remains a mystery.” The mystery extends into not even getting to know the “actors” or “subjects” in his photographs (he can never decide what to call them), preferring, instead, the distance of not projecting who they are into the purposeful lack of narrative or backstory. We see a small slice of what is happening, an entire story in a single frame, and we are left to draw our own conclusions as to what the photograph means. Each of his images has dozens of interpretations, and every person who looks at it will come up with something different.

Reactions to Crewdson’s work and process are dramatically polarized, especially at his taking on the title of photographer, but does the title matter? However, just like Scorsese, Spielberg, or Hitchcock (whom he cites as one of his influences), he is the visionary behind the work. Yes, there are dozens working behind the scenes to make his pictures happen, and Crewdson is quick to acknowledge that the productions are a team effort. “I quite honestly am not particularly good at any one thing, and I am not attempting to be modest. I know I could never light a photograph as well as my cinematographer; I could never construct these totemic structures that I make,” he says. “I think what I am good at is creating a situation. I think that is what I am good at. I know how to create a situation through various relationships with my crew and my surroundings.” The camera is is merely the final piece of the puzzle that is his art. Whether or not he presses the shutter is inconsequential to the art. He is involved from the initial sketches down to the tiniest detail of what the final image looks like. He decides exactly where and how his subjects should stand, the expressions they make, what every object on the set is and precisely where it is placed. It is his vision, his life experience and his obsession that gives these pictures life and allows the rest of us to look on, wondering what they mean.

Behind the Scenes

 
Video clip of Gregory Crewdson shooting The Madison, from Brief Encounters

Books
Twilight
Beneath the Roses
In a Lonely Place
Gregory Crewdson
Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters (DVD)

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