Posts Tagged ‘Galen Rowell’

Newer Entries »

A Credo For Mountain Photographers

May 7th, 2010

Melting Snow Pattern, Kings Canyon National Park, Sierra Nevada, California, 1951 By Philip Hyde. This photograph shows the influence of Cedric Wright, at least Cedric Wright made several photographs of the groves and pock marks that form in deep melting snow as much as a decade before this photograph.

Master landscape photographer Cedric Wright wrote poetry, prose and illustrated early Sierra Club books with his fine art photography. In Galen Rowell’s renowned 1986 Sierra Club book, Mountain Light: In Search of the Dynamic Landscape, Galen Rowell quoted Cedric Wright’s 1941 “A Credo for Mountain Photographers” from the Sierra Club Boook Words of the Earth by Cedric Wright with a preface by Ansel Adams, edited by Nancy Newhall:

A Credo For Mountain Photographers

The mountain photographer is interpreting the face of nature–that mysterious infinity, eternally a refuge, a reservoir, an amplifier of spirit; a mother of dreams; a positive though elusive voice in whose depth lies its subtlety. They will interpret best who are never so content as when under the influence of situations where silence is rich in the mute assurance and beauty of mountain surroundings. The quality of emotional knowing has a finer integration with our spirit than anything that comes from barren intellectual processes. This point of view only accumulates slowly, out of long experience and contact with wordless influences. Under the spell of solitude and of natural beauty the root system of this kind of awareness establishes itself. Great art is usually created under some such saturation of awareness. The work is then permeated with an inner perception of beauty and an inner personal philosophy. The hope for our photography is that it shall retain these high lights of more than beauty, that through it symbols shall be preserved of response to our mountains, keeping them to a flow, a golden thread, in our experience.

Words of the Earth by Cedric Wright was part of the Sierra Club Exhibit Format Series. Cedric Wright and Philip Hyde both contributed a photograph to the collection of now famous photographers who joined Ansel Adams in illustrating the book This Is the American Earth written by Nancy Newhall. This Is The American Earth kicked off the Exhibit Format Series, a mastermind creation by David Brower, Nancy Newhall and Ansel Adams. This Is The American Earth was made into an exhibition and toured nationally and even in Europe. Cedric Wright’s book, Words of the Earth was also one of the early books in the series.

This Is The American Earth and Words of the Earth contained all black and white photographs. Philip Hyde’s first several books in the series were a mixture of black and white photographs and color photographs. Philip Hyde eventually had more photographs in more of the books in the series than any of the other photographers. Eliot Porter’s book In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World with quotes by Henry David Thoreau was the first all-color volume and sold more copies than all of the other Exhibit Format Series Books, including This Is The American Earth. From then on the books in the series were all in color.

4 comments »

Posted in Photography Masters

Tags:

New Philip Hyde Releases At Mountain Light Gallery Exhibition

May 4th, 2010

New Philip Hyde Photographs Never Before Seen By the Public Make A World Premier In The Exhibition At Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light Gallery

Waiting For The Train, Oaxaca Train Station, Oaxaca, Mexico, 1990 by Philip Hyde. Never before printed or published.

(See the photograph full screen Click Here.)

Philip Hyde’s “Waiting For The Train, Oaxaca Train Station, Oaxaca, Mexico” photographed in 1990 will be part of the “Pioneer Photography of Philip Hyde Exhibition at Mountain Light Gallery” in Bishop, California opening May 8 and running through August 31, 2010. (See also the announcing blog post, “Photography Of Philip Hyde At Mountain Light Gallery” and the related blog post,  “Galen Rowell, Philip Hyde And Outdoor Photographer Style.”) The people photograph, “Men of Oaxaca” breaks the pattern of the typical Philip Hyde landscape photograph. Philip Hyde made a good number of people portraits but rarely published or printed them. “Waiting For The Train, Oaxaca Train Station” is also unusual for Philip Hyde in that it was photographed with a 35 mm camera. While “Waiting For The Train” can be viewed on the Philip Hyde Website, several other new releases in the exhibition are not even on the website yet and have not been printed or published for many years or ever.

One release that is new to archival fine art digital prints is a 1968 photograph called, “Base of Havasu Falls, Havasupai Indian Reservation, Arizona.” Philip Hyde made only two dye transfer prints of this image that are long gone. It was never publicly exhibited as far as the records show. This will be the first gallery exhibition for this photograph. The restoration of this image was very time-consuming because the original Kodak E-3 transparency has deteriorated significantly. The raw drum scan of the original transparency had an orange-magenta caste overall with concentrated streaks, fingerprints and other blotches in the water throughout. Carr Clifton spent over 10 hours working on this one photograph. His process I will write up in another blog post, but suffice now to say that it involved a complex combination of the lasso tool, hue, saturation, color adjustment, color balance, select color, edit-fill, and several other general tools in Photoshop to get all of the flaws out and make the white water look right.

Another photograph that will appear in the Mountain Light Gallery Exhibition that Philip Hyde never printed but that was published by the Sierra Club is “Mt. Jefferson, Jefferson Wilderness Area, Oregon Cascades, Oregon” made in 1959. This photograph the Sierra Club published as a beautiful postcard in 1961. The original transparency and drum scan of it show large, dark forested areas. In the digital age, we were able to lighten the nearly black forests without changing the character of the photograph. As an archival fine art digital print this image has become more beautiful than ever. The lightening of the dark areas has brought out remarkable features in the finished print that could never have been achieved with any older printing process. Philip Hyde had a packer guide he and Ardis Hyde’s gear into the Jefferson Wilderness Area by horseback, while Ardis and Philip Hyde hiked in on foot. Philip Hyde went in to get photographs of the Jefferson Wilderness Area because it had been part of a proposed Oregon Cascades National Park that had some renewed interest in 1959 but not enough to go beyond speculation.

Pioneer Basin, Fourth Recess, John Muir Wilderness, Sierra Nevada High Country, California, 1970 by Philip Hyde. Never before printed or published.

Philip Hyde photographed “Pioneer Basin, Fourth Recess, John Muir Wilderness, Sierra Nevada High Country, California” in 1970. This beautiful photograph sat in the files and was never published or printed. In 2008 it was drum scanned and sat in digital form for another year and a half. Finally near the end of 2009, in search of more good California photographs, particularly of the High Sierra, and considering another image of Kearsarge Lake, I showed “Pioneer Basin, Fourth Recess” to Carr Clifton and he agreed that it ought to be prepared for printing. We printed an 8X10 proof that needed work. Carr Clifton is the Photoshop genius, but I sit in with him sometimes and make suggestions. We at times disagree, but that makes for good discussions and usually better results. I greatly respect him and his photography and he respects my work ethic and how dedicated I am to doing what my father would like. In the case of “Pioneer Basin, Fourth Recess” after we fixed a few technical problems and made another 8X10, it turned out beautifully. Then we printed an 11X14, Wow. We were so enthused about the image that I decided to put it in my 11X14 portfolio book that I take everywhere to show. I decided that we had to print a 16X20 and put it in the Mountain Light Gallery Exhibition. I put it on the website for a while but took it down to await a special announcement like this.

The three new releases that are not yet up on the website will remain off the website and only viewable at Mountain Light Gallery until the exhibition is over at the end of August. In addition to the four prints mentioned above that will be completely new, the exhibition will include 14 images that have never been exhibited before this Century. That makes 18 new prints that will be shown for the first time since Philip Hyde passed on.

Besides new prints, the Mountain Light Gallery Exhibition will include an original black and white silver print of Philip Hyde’s iconic “Minarets From Tarn Above Lake Ediza, Ansel Adams Wilderness, Sierra Nevada, California, 1950.” This photograph of the Minarets Ansel Adams said he liked better than his own. Also in the show will be an original color Cibachrome print of  “Ice On Continental Divide, Yoho National Park, British Columbia, Canada, 1992.” This newer Canadian Rockies image is of sheer rock peaks with forested foothills. Come see all of the new imagery.

Read a Recent Interview of this blog’s author by Richard Wong about Philip Hyde Photography Click Here.

Pioneering Photography of Philip Hyde Exhibition
May 8 Through August 31, 2010

Talk and Opening Reception May 8

Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light Gallery
106 South Main Street
Bishop, California
760-873-7700

6 comments »

Posted in Collectors' Info

Tags:

Galen Rowell And Outdoor Photographer Style

April 30th, 2010

Galen Rowell, Philip Hyde And The Finding Of A Personal Outdoor Photographer Style

Lone Pine Peak, Alabama Hills, East Side of the Sierra Nevada, California, 1978 by Philip Hyde. This photograph is an example of Philip Hyde's receptive approach. He often went against the standard wisdom and made photographs in the middle of the day. He was in the vicinity at this time and had a hunch to turn off and visit the Alabama Hills because of the fresh snow on the Sierra Nevada peaks. He drove around and got out of the vehicle and walked around with his view camera. The picturesque parallel curves of the three boulders with the angular peaks in the background presented themselves to him. This image is in contrast to photographs by Galen Rowell, who lived in the area, could visit the Alabama Hills when lighting conditions or the alpenglow was at its best. Galen Rowell made a number of memorable images of the Eastern Sierra Nevada. Carr Clifton was the first to photograph the Alabama Hills' Mobius Arch with the Sierra Nevada behind in March 1983. Carr Clifton's photograph was first published in the 1985 Sierra Club Wilderness Engagement Calendar. Galen Rowell made a different photograph of the arch much later in 2001, but he may have made an earlier photograph of the arch. Since then the image has been copied over and over by subsequent outdoor photographers who rather than using Galen Rowell's visioning, Philip Hyde's receptive approach, or any creative method of their own, came to the landscape looking for a specific landmark to add to their checklist.

(See the Photograph full screen Click Here. To see Galen Rowell’s photographs of the East Side of the Sierra Nevada Click Here. To see Philip Hyde’s never before seen new prints on display at Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light Gallery May 8 through August 31, 2010 see the blog post, “New Philip Hyde Releases At Mountain Light Gallery Exhibition.”)

Galen Rowell and Philip Hyde differed in their process for choosing photographs. Galen Rowell observed certain elements in the natural setting and then visualized a scenario where those elements came together. By sheer will, attractive power and personal dynamic energy, he would very often vision into being the very circumstances for the photograph he had imagined.

Philip Hyde had a nearly opposite approach to finding photographs. His was a yin, receptive, and contemplative method.  He would still his own inner processes, tune into the land around him, and allow it to fill his being until a photograph came forward. He was interested in letting photographs present themselves by attaining a quiet composure and seeing carefully.

As can readily be seen in the work of these two outdoor photographers, either method can result in spectacular images. A developing outdoor photographer can experiment with these two differing styles, see which he or she prefers overall, or use each method in different circumstances. I’m sure that both Galen Rowell and Philip Hyde used an opposite approach to their standard one at times, or tried a hybrid sometimes too. In my own experimenting with the two ways, I have found that in most instances the two methods produce very different photographs, but there are instances when they produce the same photograph. Sometimes I find I am meant to make a certain image whatever process I use. At other times the two methods themselves can even end up feeling the same or merged, as opposites sometimes do.

Galen Rowell’s Vision And The Outdoor Photographer

Galen Rowell applied his visionary process when he made his most famous photograph, “Rainbow Over The Potala Palace.” He described it in his book, Galen Rowell’s Inner Game of Outdoor Photography. Galen Rowell for years studied atmospheric conditions in the Sierra Nevada, interested in discovering what caused alpenglow and how he could capture it more consistently. He also had studied the physics of light and how it affected conditions for the outdoor photographer. In the book, Galen Rowell explained that he saw the rainbow beginning to form, observed the water vapor conditions that cause rainbows and ran a great distance across the field knowing that odds were good that if he positioned himself just right, the rainbow would end on the Dali Lama’s Potala Palace. Getting these factors to line up this way not only took mental focus and determination, but also specialized knowledge and diligence in understanding the science behind the craft of the outdoor photographer.  “My vision came true as the sunlit curtain of falling rain stayed in place while the rainbow moved with me in relation to the sun,” Galen Rowell wrote. “I used a telephoto lens to magnify part of the bow as a spot of light came through the clouds onto the palace.” Galen Rowell described his whole process more in his book.

In Search of An Outdoor Photographer Style

In the book Galen Rowell’s Vision: The Art of Adventure Photography, Galen Rowell wrote an essay called “In Search of Style.” In this essay, excerpted here, Galen Rowell shares some of the elements that bring out this elusive thread running through a photographers work:

Every photographer has a definable style, but I spent at least a decade worrying that I didn’t. If someone asked me what my artistic goals were, I would mumble platitudes about capturing my vision of the wilderness and pursuing light. I feared that my diverse work was adrift in an ocean of outdoor photography…. I also had a disdain for externally directed photographic styles, which continues to this day. For example, I was deeply offended by work that called attention to itself by some artificial device (such as an introduced color filtration, weird lens, strange darkroom twist, or exaggerated grain) to stylistically link photos that otherwise lacked an internal message. I liked deceptively simple pictures that drew more attention to honest vision than to technique…. Ansel Adams wrote eloquently about the difference between external and internal photographic events. The most meaningful photographic styles are always reflections of the internal. We react not so much to what an outdoor photographer sees, but to how he or she sees and renders the subject for us. Personal style comes from within, from a photographer’s unconscious and conscious choices. We usually pass over a photograph devoid of emotional reaction to its subject and say, ‘This doesn’t do anything for me.’ Of course it doesn’t. The photographer didn’t have his or her heart in it. Devoting personal energy to a photograph isn’t enough unless that energy is internalized. An easy way to block the internal message is to be overly concerned about results. For example, knowing their top images will be critiqued in front of the group, workshop participants out for an afternoon shoot often wander around shooting nothing because they have created unrealistic expectations for themselves…. Pros on a major assignment can easily allow externally directed cues to block the very style that caused the client to hire them…. One solution for a blocked-up photographer is to write an imaginary letter to an internal self: Wish you were here to see this. You wouldn’t take the boring photo I’m considering right now because you’d respond by… People avoid developing a personal style by emotionally distancing themselves from their work…. However, some sort of personal stamp does sneak through, even in the most banal photography. The balance of foregrounds to backgrounds and the choice of subject matter are among the subtle clues that the images were made by a thoughtful human being rather than by a monkey or some machine. The central process of art is not to render something exactly as it appears, but to simplify it so that meaning, clarity, emotional response, and a sense of wonder combine to create a style from within.

Besides being a great outdoor photographer, you can see that Galen Rowell was also a great writer. He put into words in more than 20 books, the methods, style and inner awareness that translated powerfully to the page and produced a body of photography and texts that will endure. The Philip Hyde exhibition at Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light Gallery is first time the two photographer’s work will be shown together in the same building, see the blog post, “Pioneer Photography Of Philip Hyde At Mountain Light Gallery.” To read more on Galen Rowell’s influence and how his choice of film changed landscape photography see the blog post, “Did Velvia Film Change Landscape Photography?”

Which of the two approaches does your own method most resemble for outdoor photography?

21 comments »

Posted in Photography Masters

Tags:

Photography Of Philip Hyde At Mountain Light Gallery

April 15th, 2010

Galen Rowell and Philip Hyde met only a few times in life briefly, but if they could meet again now, what would they talk about? Would they disagree about equipment and photography styles? Would they change the subject to something they had in common? Would they discuss their approaches to photography, that are similar in some ways and different in others? Both men were friendly and liked to tell of their adventures. Would they entertain each other with tales of their travels? Would Galen Rowell and Philip Hyde strike up a friendship based on their shared feelings about wilderness and the preservation of wildlife and the lands of indigenous peoples? For more on the methods of Galen Rowell and Philip Hyde see the blog post, “Galen Rowell, Philip Hyde And Outdoor Photographer Style.”

Throughout his career, Philip Hyde tenaciously stuck with large format cameras while Galen Rowell’s bywords were, “fast and light.” Philip Hyde pioneered color landscape photography, whereas Galen Rowell invented the adventure photography genre. Both men saw photography as the means for a life in the backcountry and a tool for preserving the natural state of wild places.

Today history is in the making again with the work of the two famous photographers on display together in the same building for the first time beginning May 8, 2010 and running through August 31, 2010 at Mountain Light Gallery in Bishop, California. For more information and a discussion of the exciting never before seen prints on display see the blog post, “New Philip Hyde Releases At Mountain Light Gallery Exhibition,” and visit Current Exhibitions–Philip Hyde Photography.

15 comments »

Posted in Events-Releases

Tags:

The Legend Of Dye Transfer Printing, Interrupted 1

April 12th, 2010

Misty Morning, Indian Creek, Northern Sierra Nevada, California, 1983 by Philip Hyde. The original color transparency went missing. As a result until 2008, this image had not been printed or published for over 20 years. With the digital age it can again be printed. The new large digital file came from a scan on a Creo CCD Flatbed Scanner of a Philip Hyde original dye transfer print. Most of the other photographs on the Philip Hyde Photography website are made from a drum scan of the original 4X5 color transparency, 4X5, 5X7 or 8X10 black and white negative, or a film duplicate of one of these.

(See the photograph full screen Click Here.)

The stuff of myth, legend and dreams, dye transfer print making helped bring color to the silver screen in 1922. Hollywood called it Technicolor and it resulted in the best and brightest color that films have ever offered. It was the most widely used motion picture technology until 1952. “Everything else is a pale comparison,” said Brad Miller of Technicolor Labs in Grass Valley, California.

During the 1940s, Kodak released the process for still photography print making. It was the method taught in photography schools and the honored child of famous photographers such as William Eggleston, Ernst Haas, Ctein, Eve Arnold, Beaumont Newhall, Galen Rowell, Cole Weston, John Ward, Eliot Porter, Philip Hyde and others. Then in 1994, Kodak abandoned the process and the many photographers, famous or not who were producing the prints. There was outcry across the land, even the world.

I remember my father, fine art landscape photographer Philip Hyde, regularly being mad at Kodak about something. Kodak notoriously favored the mass market and made decisions from a strictly bottom line numbers perspective that often hurt the professional photographer to make the hobbyist happy. Dad used to rail about corporate greed and breaches of trust with those who like him, were working full-time, Kodak’s loyal volume supply buyers. However, nothing compared with the day the music died first in 1991 with discontinuation of the matrix film, then in 1994 with Kodak discontinuing the remaining dye transfer materials. After the dust settled, I don’t think Dad ever recovered completely from the loss of dye transfer print making. He bought up supplies like many others but refused to spend his life’s savings on large stock piles of materials at age 73. As it was, he gave what he had away to another dye transfer printer when he lost his eyesight in 1999-2000.

With these influences, the 1990s marked a change of direction in Dad’s life. After pinching every penny and saving all of them he could, he had invested small sums in the stock market for years. His modest stock portfolio had done so well that by 1994, he had become an avid reader of the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s. He was a highly conservative, buy and hold, blue chip stock investor. It had been working for him quite well and he made far more in the stock market than he ever did in photography.

He was still smarting from his crowning book achievement, Drylands: The Deserts of North America published in 1987, being remaindered, re-published in 1990 and remaindered a second time. He was disappointed because the accountants had taken over book publishing and if books sold more slowly they were remaindered. He seemed down about the influence of corporate decision makers on photography in general and he was not one to get down about anything. He experienced more demand for his time by environmental activist groups and organizations like the Museum of Northern Arizona and Ansel Adams Gallery asking him to do more workshops. The workshops rekindled his photography spark some, but for a few years he went into semi-retirement. Dye transfer and desert landscapes were the two reasons Dad converted to color in a long, gradual process during the decade of the 1970s. More on that in another blog post and in my book. He did in time begin printing again in earnest. He made beautiful color Cibachrome prints, but it was never the same as dye transfer print making. What was it about this elusive process that captured the minds of famous photographers and darkroom techies alike?

One of the photographers famous for his dye transfer prints is Ctein, one of a few still making dye transfer prints today. He wrote on his website:

Dye transfer prints are simply without peer. They have a richness, depth, and fidelity unmatched by any other kind of photographic print. They can show extraordinary subtlety of tone and hue, combined with a brightness range of 500:1 from blackest black to whitest white. After 70 years, dye transfer printing has become a nearly-lost art…today only a few dozen people in the entire world still make dye transfer prints… Dye transfer printing is very time-consuming and expensive. Making the first 16″ x 20″ dye print from a negative costs me over $100 in materials and several days’ time. Dye transfer printing also demands extraordinary skill, understanding, and good artistic judgement… In 1991 Kodak discontinued a special film called Pan Matrix Film which I need to make prints directly from color negatives. In 1994 Kodak abruptly and without warning ceased production of Matrix Film (used for printing from separations) and all other dye transfer materials… As an artist, I couldn’t stand the idea of spending the rest of my life thinking, “Gee that’s a pretty nice print… it would have been so much lovelier as a dye transfer.” I mortgaged myself to the hilt and packed a large amount of this unique film in a deep freeze… I stockpiled enough chemicals, dye and paper to allow me to continue printing. I went deeply in debt, but I can continue creating my art for at least several more years. Those few of us still making dye transfer prints survive on such hoarded supplies. Kodak’s decision to kill dye transfer constitutes an artistic loss of the highest order.

Landscape photographer Charles Cramer described his experience on his website:

When I started making color prints in the late 70s, things were fairly primitive, but there was one process with a mythical reputation that offered tremendous control—dye transfer. I had no idea how all-consuming making dye transfer prints would be. To create one print required the precise exposure and development of approximately twelve sheets of film. The colors are literally disassembled into B&W, and then reassembled in a process akin to silk-screening. With all the steps involved, it offered tremendous control—but also the possibility for things to go terribly wrong. I labored mightily for more than fifteen years with dye transfer. When all the planets aligned, a beautiful print could emerge. But you didn’t know how it would look until the final step of “rolling” out a print. I started making dye transfer prints in 1981. In 1994, Kodak, the only supplier of dye transfer materials, announced they had ceased production. Any remaining inventory was divided up amongst existing customers. I scraped together as much as I could afford to get a decent stockpile… By the time I started in dye transfer, most everyone else had quit. The biggest obstacle was getting good information. There was very little in the literature, and I tried to collect everything I could. There are so many steps to making a print—so many variables— combined with the fact that there’s no feedback until you finally make the print, that it’s hard to isolate exactly what does what.

Charles Cramer taught dye transfer printing for the Ansel Adams Gallery Workshops starting in 1987. He teaches at the Ansel Adams Gallery to this day. Upcoming blog posts will describe how Philip Hyde learned dye transfer printing and will include Philip Hyde’s description of the process, as well as my memories of him singing along to his big band jazz records as he printed.

CONTINUED IN THE BLOG POST, “The Legend of Dye Transfer Printing, Interrupted 2“

11 comments »

Posted in Philip Hyde Methods

Tags:

Backpacker Magazine Interview: Conservation Photographer Philip Hyde Part 1

March 17th, 2010

Upper Iceberg Lake, Minarets Wilderness, Now Cecile Lake, Ansel Adams Wilderness, 1950 by Philip Hyde. The Minarets were one of the first places Philip Hyde backpacked with his father Leland Hyde and brother David Lee Hyde in the early 1940s before World War II.

In Keeping with the vision of publisher Bill Kemsley, Jr., Backpacker Magazine writers interviewed landscape photographers who were significant in the fledgling modern environmental movement. For background on Bill Kemsley, Jr., the founding of Backpacker Magazine and on how the original Backpacker Magazine became a force for wilderness conservation and a voice for environmental photographers, read the blog post, “The 1970s Backpacking Boom, Conservation and Photography.”

The following interview helped inspired Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Jack Dykinga to leave photojournalism and the city of Chicago, move to the West and take up landscape photography for conservation. The interview was first published in the Spring 1975 issue of Backpacker Magazine. Interviewer, Gary Braasch is an environmental photojournalist who went on to attain the Sierra Club’s Ansel Adams Award for conservation photography, “Outstanding Nature Photographer” from the North American Nature Photography Association and “Legend Behind the Lens” from Nikon. He was also a Founding Fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers of which Philip Hyde and Galen Rowell are the only honorary members. Click Here to read about his latest book, Earth Under Fire, and previous books he has written about nature photography and the environment. The following article is republished with the permission of Gary Braasch and Bill Kemsley, Jr., founder of Backpacker Magazine.

BACKPACKER MAGAZINE:  The world is so full of beautiful places. How do you, with a drive to photograph them all, decide when and where to travel?

PHILIP HYDE:  My trip planning evolves out of a combination of wanting to go back to places I really liked where I find a lot of subject matter, and the need to see new territory. Sometimes when I go to a new place I get certain images that I will never again get just because of the newness and the excitement of being in a place that’s different.

BACKPACKER MAGAZINE:  What kind of kit do you take backpacking?

PHILIP HYDE:  This is always a great debate. Should I take the Hasselblad and have a lot of 2 ¼ X 2 ¼ inch exposures, or should I take the view camera and make a few good 4 X 5s? It depends on the situation and the place and how vigorous I feel. If I backpack the view camera for three or four days, I can carry three or four film magazines—36 or 48 sheets—and two or three lenses. My tripod weighs about five pounds. By the time I have it all thrown in I’ve got 30 pounds. The Hasselblad, with a lot of rolls, will add up to about half that.

BACKPACKER MAGAZINE:  But what kind of sacrifices to you make in the rest of your dunnage to survive the weight when you’re going into the wilderness for any length of time?

PHILIP HYDE:  Everything else is minimal. We backpack with just a piece of plastic for tent, tarp and groundsheet combined. A down bag. We survive on stuff like muesli, and the cooking is pretty simple. I find that if I carry too much, I just don’t have the energy or inclination to take pictures.

BACKPACKER MAGAZINE:  One answer, of course, is to go to a smaller camera. Why do you continue to use a 4 X 5 primarily rather than a 35mm, which is so much lighter?

PHILIP HYDE:  The basic reason is that I can’t get the detail I want on 35mm. A 35mm original boosted up to 20 X 24 inches or even 8 X 10 doesn’t have the sharpness I’m looking for. I’m always trying to compromise with the Hasselblad because with it I can go farther, faster and lighter. But then I get something I really like on the 2 ¼ X 2 ¼ inch film and wish I had taken my view camera along and done a little more struggling to get the picture on 4 X 5. Maybe that’s pure stubbornness, but I still think there’s a difference, and the difference, as far as I’m concerned, is crucial. There’s something else too: the view camera is a terrific discipline. I don’t have nearly the discipline with the Hasselblad because I know the film’s cheap and there’s a lot of it. Expense-wise, I can shoot only about two exposures of 4 X 5 for a roll of 120 film or about 20 exposures og 35mm film. If I get one or two really good 4 X 5 pictures, I’m way ahead of the game because I often don’t get that many on a roll of Hasselblad film.

BACKPACKER MAGAZINE:  The discipline you talk about—is it mostly a discipline of time? Waiting, walking around, getting the right angles and the right light?

PHILIP HYDE:  What I do is form a scene with my eyes and mind before exposure, rather than inside the camera. As an art-school-trained photographer, I have an axe to grind about getting people to look harder. I don’t think the small camera does much for that because it’s too easy. As for waiting, I don’t wait. In fact it’s almost always the other way around. A fellow who was here the other day looked at a photo of a meadow with a cloud up above it. He remarked, “Gee, you must have waited a long time until that cloud got just the way you wanted it.” I had to laugh because that wasn’t what happened at all. The cloud was already there when I saw it, and I had a hell of a time getting the view camera set up before it was gone. There are photographers who claim to work the other way. They know there’s going to be a picture at a certain place and certain time of day, so they go there. But I can’t imagine doing that, because the world is too full of pictures to wait a long time for any one of them. Also, it’s very difficult for me to visualize a picture if it’s not already there. It becomes something that’s kind of put together—constructed. And if I were going to do that, it would be much more efficient to be a hand artist and paint the scene. Photography is the art of getting what’s there, not creating something.

BACKPACKER MAGAZINE:  Are you saying that photography isn’t creative—isn’t a fine art?

PHILIP HYDE:  What I want to say about creativity in photography is that it is analyzing what is there, rather than constructing something out of one’s imagination. Analysis consists of seeing strongly. If you define creativity as the expression of individuality, then the kind of photography you’re talking about is “creative” when it communicates the maker’s viewpoint and individual vision. This may be more subtle than in other mediums, and our audience, despite Marshall McLuhan, still isn’t very educated about appreciating photographs, which explains why there are still people around asking, “But is it art?” It’s safe to say that photography can be art, and I see more and more evidence of individual expression by a growing number of photographers.

(CONTINUED IN THE BLOG POST “Backpacker Interview: Conservation Photographer 2“)

To hear from Paul Strand and other photographers about creative photography and how a photograph becomes art, see the blog post, “What Makes A Photograph Art?“

5 comments »

Posted in Interviews

Tags:

The 1970s Backpacking Boom, Conservation and Photography

February 13th, 2010

What is your favorite place to hike or backpack?

The Role of Landscape Photography and Backpacker Magazine in the 1970s Backpacking Boom and the Combined Impact on Conservation

At the Celebration of Philip Hyde’s Life in May 2006, Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Jack Dykinga said a 1975 article in Backpacker Magazine by Gary Braasch about Philip Hyde called “Conservation Photographer” began Jack Dykinga’s journey to leave photo journalism in Chicago, move to the West and become a landscape photographer.

(See photograph full scree: Click Here.)

David, Ardis and Philip Hyde on Drake's Beach, Point Reyes National Seashore, California, 1972, by unknown bystander. The last photography visit to Point Reyes before the Sierra Club re-issued "Island In Time: The Point Reyes Peninsula," in 1974 in the Exhibit Format Series. The first issue was released in 1962, the same year as Eliot Porter's "In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World," and Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring." Eliot Porter's book consisted of all color photographs and Philip Hyde's book contained half color and half black and white. The second edition of "Island In Time" had more color plates including the most well-known image of Drake's Beach. "Island In Time" played a significant role in the campaign to make Point Reyes National Seashore. The Sierra Club published the second edition in 1974 to celebrate the creation of the National Seashore and announce that more funds were needed to complete the purchases that would make the final boundaries. On backpacks, Philip Hyde carried mainly photography gear and the campfire grate or cook stove, while Ardis Hyde carried most of the food and related supplies. This was about the age that David began to carry more of the food too. Hence the glum facial expression.

“We were delighted that Philip Hyde was willing to do an interview with a virtually unknown magazine at the time,” said Bill Kemsley, Jr, founder of Backpacker Magazine. “We were still at the beginning of the current environmental movement. Virtually every issue of the magazine was a soft-sell promotion of conservation. We carried an article stating our position on the role of the backpacker in conservation.” The article was titled “Backpack and Camera: the Battle Tools of the Conservation Movement.” In the first two years Bill Kemsley said they worked hard “at building a constituency for the environment.”

The first issue of Backpacker Magazine came out in spring 1973, which took three years to put together. Bill Kemsley, Jr worried that America in the early 1970s did not have a backpacking community large enough to support a magazine. He wanted Backpacker Magazine to support itself through subscriptions rather than through advertising. By 1973, the Baby Boomers had taken up backpacking. “The number of new backpackers alone in that year exceeded the total number of all backpackers on the trails just four years earlier,” Bill Kemsley said in “How the 1970s Backpacking Boom Burst Upon Us” in Appalachia Magazine. The total number of backpackers between 1968 and 1973 nearly doubled in just four years to more than 15 million. It took another 24 years until 2007 for the total number of backpackers to double again to 31 million.

In 1963, Bill Kemsley had observed a group of teenage backpackers leave their camp without putting out their camp fire. He went over to put out their fire and discovered they had “scattered tin cans, paper plates, cups, forks, spoons, scraps of food, assorted plastic containers and wrappers all about their campsite.” It took him nearly an hour to clean up the mess. Bill Kemsley began to ask himself the question, “What could be done to get newcomers to be more respectful of our backcountry?” He had mixed feelings because he was glad more people were enjoying the outdoors, but many of them were “careless and inadvertently despoiling the backcountry I loved. It struck me that one way to influence newcomers would be to fuel their fantasies with heroes they would like to emulate.”

“One of my heroes was David Brower,” Bill Kemsley, wrote recently in an e-mail. “One of the main influences for my including photo interviews in almost every issue was David Brower’s use of coffee table books for promoting the preservation of wilderness. I had lots of cooperation from nature photographers because of our mission.” The second issue of Backpacker Magazine featured Eliot Porter and the list went on: Galen Rowell, Ed Cooper and many others. Besides the Spring 1975 article on Philip Hyde, Backpacker Magazine featured Philip Hyde interviewing Ansel Adams in the June 1976 issue. You will see this article by Philip Hyde and the interview of Philip Hyde by Gary Braasch in future blog posts.

Bill Kemsley, Jr sold Backpacker Magazine in 1980. It went through several owners before Active Interest Media, the current owners, bought it in 2007. Active Interest Media, based in Boulder, Colorado, also publishes Yoga Journal and American Cowboy Magazines.

For the story of Ardis and Philip Hyde backpacking a decade before the trend on the Navajo Reservation in Northeastern Arizona from Rainbow Lodge down to Rainbow Bridge see the blog post, “The Making Of ‘Rainbow Bridge From The Upstream Side.’” For more about landscape photography and wilderness travel and living see also the blog post, “Backpacker Magazine Interview: Conservation Photographer 1” and the blog post, “Backpacker Magazine Interview: Conservation Photographer 2.”)

What is your favorite place to hike or backpack?

18 comments »

Posted in Conservation History

Tags: