Five Books Every Photographer Should Own

Man of Mayalan, Guatemala

I believe every serious photographer should have at least a few books that provide information and inspiration. Here's a basic selection of books that provide both. They are not basic in the sense that they are instruction manuals, but rather, they provide a foundation to help you learn to see photographically. They will not teach you how to operate your camera (that's what instruction manuals are for), but they will help you learn how to use your camera to express your vision. 

(Ranked in order by my opinion of their helpfulness.)

On Being a Photographer, David Hurn and Bill Jay

The Private Experience: Elliott Erwitt (Masters of Contemporary Photography Series)

Art & Fear, David Bayles and Ted Orland

Light: The Photojournalism of Don Rutledge, Don Rutledge

Witness in Our Time, Ken Light

Mostly small and concise, these books are important for developing the requisite mental attitude for doing effective documentary photography, whether you're documenting the life of your family or covering a major story for National Geographic. You should be able to obtain each of these for $10 or less, especially used, All should be available at amazon.com or abebooks.com.

Check out my prints at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you like.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Noticing Things. Wisdom from Tony King

 

Coconut stand on the road to Hana, Maui, Hawaii. 

If you've been reading this blog for very long, you will have noticed that a recurring theme is noticing things. Noticing things is the essence of the kind of photography I like, and it's the essence of Tony King's photography. 

As he says in his book Closer to Home, "My life has been consumed by wanting to show people things. My photographs are responses to what I am affected by. Every chance I got I used to ramble around the countryside. I was never looking for specific subjects so I was liable to photograph anything. Ordinary places and everyday objects were good enough for me. I photographed whatever touched me.

"Most of these photographs were made as I went about my daily life. (They are) about ordinary people doing ordinary things. I've never had to travel to photograph, because I have no trouble finding interesting things close to home."

Although they never met, the great photographer Elliott Erwitt sums up Tony's life and work succinctly: “To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place…I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.  All the technique in the world doesn't compensate for the inability to notice”

Tony's work has been very influential in my own approach to photography. I wish I could have known him better.

Check out my prints for sale at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you like.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Photographers You Should Know: B.A. King, Part III

 

Great Blue Heron

from Time and Quiet

(I call this fellow "The Assassin.")

 Although I think I've made it pretty clear that the Tony King photographs that most resonate with me are his simple, classic, black-and-white glimpses of life, it would not be fair to the man and his long and distinguished career to ignore the work that occupied almost the last third of his life. Tony was an environmentalist in the best sense of the word. Not a rabid tree-hugger, but one who believed the good and beautiful things in our world should be appreciated, and as much as possible, preserved.

For fourteen years, beginning in the 1970s, he created a calendar featuring his black and white photographs that was sold throughout New England and beyond. "Making calendars became part of my way of life. Trying to explain in pictures what a New England year is like made me more observant, in a way, more alive than I had been. I greeted each new month with curiosity and was challenged by it to find a way to express its nature with just one image.

"Every chance I got I used to ramble around the countryside. I was never looking for specific subjects but I was liable to photograph anything . . . ordinary places and everyday objects were good enough for me. I photographed what touched me, whatever stirred in me an admiring response."

But slowly, things changed: "I noticed that few places I revisited over the years had been improved in my absence. Fields were planted with buildings, wetlands were turned into parking lots, and beaches were strewn with unsavory debris. I began to worry about earth and water and animals and children, mine and everyone else's.

"Without planning it I stopped roaming the countryside in my happy-go-lucky way ready to photograph anything that charmed me. . . I began photographic studies of the places that had meant most to me in my early life, and I began to work mostly in color."

His emerging passion led ultimately to the publication, in 2001, of his Magnum Opus, the beautifully photographed, designed, and printed Time and Quite, a large format, limited edition book made to the highest standards. (I should also mention that all the photographs were made on film.)

I am very fortunate, I could even say blessed, to have a copy that Tony gave me, signed and inscribed with his warmest wishes.

 

Male Red-Winged Blackbird

from Time and Quiet

 

But although Tony's focus and direction changed, his basic philosophy remained the same: "The world is lovely and still marvelous and my view of life is still positive. Everything about nature tells me life wants to go on and I am dazzled by human potential. But we have, all of us have, work to do. That work is to take care of that part of the world we have some personal influence over -- our backyards, our neighborhoods and our work places."

Time and Quiet may be ordered from Time andQuiet Press.

(Photographs copyright Judy and Tony King Foundation, 2020.)

 

Check out my prints for sale at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you like.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photographers You Should Know: B.A. King, Part II

 

Wonder  

Tony King passed away on May 13, 2017 of mesothelioma. Born in Canada, he spent most of his 83 years in Massachusetts. He was married to the artist Judith Stoddard King for 59 years, They had four children.

Beginning at age eleven with a Brownie camera given him by his mother, King quickly developed an interest in photographing and writing about the world around him. " My life has been dominated by one thing: a need to show people what I'm excited about. When I was a little boy, I was always dragging people off to show them the things that made the world wonderful to me." 

 

Church Window

Tony owned a small manufacturing company in Worcester, MA for many years, a family business which gave him the freedom to pursue only those professional photographic endeavors which interested him. Those interests led especially toward photographing and writing books, at which he was prolific.

Among his many books are A Place to Begin: The New England Experience, with text by Hal Borland; The Faces of the Great Lakes, with text by Jonathan Ela (both of these books were published by the Sierra Club); Ojibway Summer, My Maine Thing, This Proud Place: An Affectionate Look at New England, Criss-Cross Applesauce, Keep In Touch (an album of some of his best black & white postcards) A Year to Remember (favorite photos from the black & white New England calendars he published for many years), Versed in Country Things, with poems by Robert Frost, Snow Season, from Snow to Snow, and The Oak Behind the House.

 

 

The Rig

For the last decade of his life he published compilations of his photographs on various subjects in small, soft-cover booklets called Going Home Books and Look Around Books. His final book, Closer to Home, for which he compiled the photographs and wrote the text shortly before his death, was published posthumously in December, 2017.

Although most of his books are out of print, copies of many of them can still be ordered from Time and Quiet Press. The web site is timeandquietpress.com/ 

 

 

My copy of This Proud Place

 

My Maine Thing remains my favorite of his books, followed by This Proud Place, a book about New England. Tony has photographed in many places other than New England, but has mined most of his photographic riches from his own back yard.. He says, "Most were made just going about the natural business of living. Taking the carpool. Visiting my kids at summer camp. Taking my daughter to college. Moving my dad back and forth to his cottage on Lake Huron. Everywhere I go I leave a little extra time. I always have a camera with me. These things come out of my life."

 

Three White Hats

In the mid '90s, his concern about ecological issues gradually led him away from the black & white glimpses of life that I have found so satisfying and soul-enriching to concentrate on color photography of nature, culminating in the publication of the beautifully produced, limited edition book Of Time and Quiet.

While most of Elliott Erwitt's photographs contain people (Or dogs. Or people and dogs.), many of King's do not. However, they are alive with human presence. Even when no people are visible, their presence is felt -- as though they might have just stepped out of the scene, or were about to step into it. 

Hay Rake

Although he used digital cameras in his later years, Tony worked with Leicas for most of his career; also sometimes using a medium format camera which gave a square negative. I never asked him what it was. His technique is straightforward, as are his photographs. Most of his work, and certainly his best work, in my opinion, has been in black and white. Deceptively simple, spare, economical, yet always celebrating beauty and always with an undercurrent of mystery just beneath the surface.

To be continued. . .

(All photographs except for the photo of my copy of This Proud Place copyright Judy and Tony King Foundation, 2020.)

 

Check out my prints for sale at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you like.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Photographers You Should Know: B.A."Tony" King

The greatest photographer you never heard of (but should have): The long and productive life of B.A. "Tony" King (Repost from May, 2020)

Curling up with a good book at the Kennebunkport

Book Port (Now sadly no longer in business)

In 1982 my wife and I and our 14-year-old son hooked a Starcraft pop-up camper to our Mercedes 240D sedan and began a long, rambling trip from our home in northwest Georgia up through Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York City, and on up the coast, arriving late one afternoon at tiny Dock Square in Kennebunkport, Maine.

The wife and son headed off to window shop, while I was drawn as with a magnet to a small bookstore, named appropriately, the Book Port, located up a flight of stairs above one of the shops. Nosing around, I picked up a book of photographs by B.A. King. I had read about him in photography magazines the previous year, so I was immediately interested. The book was titled My Maine Thing, and as I turned its pages I was enthralled.

        

My well-worn copy of My Maine Thing.

My wife is descended from an old Maine family, but her parents had moved to New York when she was quite small, and then on to Miami when she was six. This was her first time back, and my first time ever in Maine. I found the whole experience enchanting, and the book became symbolic of my own "Maine thing." King's simple but elegant, mostly black-and-white photographs resonated deeply, and still do more than 40 years later. Although I had read about him, this was my true introduction to the relatively obscure man whom I came to consider one of the very greatest American photographers of his era.

In a time when so many photographs scream "look at me!" Tony's pictures, at first glance, don't look like much. Most of them are quiet, few have what we would describe as impact. Like the man himself, they are full of unsuspected depths, insight, and wit. Many have a gentle mystery about them. Yet, almost all of them came out of the everyday fabric of his life. I could talk about them endlessly, but you really have to see them. I have a print which he gave me, which is at once both one of the simplest and yet one of the most satisfying photographs I have ever seen. It is a young girl's white party dress hanging on the bare wooden interior wall of a New England beach cottage. That's all. Just a 35mm available light shot, probably on Tri-X. How can it be so good? You have to see it.

The White Dress (from My Maine Thing)

Needless to say, I bought the book. Then went on, over the years, to acquire most of his other books. It was not, however, until 1990 that I first contacted King, beginning a sporadic conversation by letter, email, and telephone which lasted until his death. He was gentle, soft-spoken, and unfailingly gracious. In my book Rock City Barns: A Passing Era (Silver Maple Press, 1996) I credited him as one of the four photographers who have taught me to see beauty in the commonplace. (The other three are Fritz Henle, Elliot Erwitt, and Robert Doisneau.) My pictures don't look anything like Tony's but his example has helped me learn to see and photograph both the beauty and the mystery of our world.

The Wind Harp

Tony says this a wind harp. To me, it looks like someone

just abandoned a harp to molder away in a field.

(from This Proud Place)

 

 (All photographs except for the photo of my copy of My Maine Thing copyright Judy and Tony King Foundation, 2023.) 

To be continued. . .

 

Check out my prints for sale at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you like.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photographs and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

The Horned Tree

 

The Horned Tree

I found this dead tree one August morning in 2010 on Lookout Mountain, just at the point where Daugherty Gap Road comes up from McLemore Cove to the top of the mountain.

I photographed it first on Fuji Provia color film with my Minolta twin-lens reflex (TLR) camera, which makes square pictures. Then, just for fun, I set my new Olympus E-PL1, my first mirrorless digital camera, to make square photographs and photographed the tree again. Because this is a very strong, graphic shape, I converted it to black and white in Photoshop.

The Horned Tree in living color.

I like the richness of the tones in the color version, but to me the stark, graphic strength of the tree comes through much more clearly in black and white. What do you think?

 

There's really no right and wrong involved here. Some pictures work better in color, and some in black and white. They are both tools in our artistic toolbox, and it's up to us to select the tool we want to use to give the effect we desire. 

 

 Software programs are available to make B&W conversions, and are probably the best way to do it. If you don't want to pay for software, it's easy to find instructions for making conversions in Photoshop on the Internet. 

If you're really into black and white, you can set most digital cameras to shoot two files at the same time -- a jpeg in black and white, and a RAW file in color. An advantage of doing it this way is that the image in your viewfinder will be black and white, so you can see exactly what you're getting.

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photographs and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

More about Black and White

The Harville House: A Magnificent Ruin

 

Built in 1894, the Harville House in Bulloch County, Georgia has been allowed to become a ruin, but its former magnificence is still very evident.  

My publisher, W.W. Norton, asked me to create a new, additional chapter for the second edition of Backroads and Byways of Georgia. After putting more time and expense into it than almost any other tour in the book, the chapter was abruptly cancelled. Budget reasons, they said. I was disappointed and angry that all that extra work was not reimbursed. I have my own budget problems, y'know? But I did get some photos that I like, and this shot of the Harville House ruin was one of them.

 Did you happen to notice that the photo is in black and white? 

Here it is in color. Which do you prefer? Does the color add anything? Does it take away anything?

For well more than 160 years from its birth, "the colors of photography," as someone said, "were black and white." As color film became widely available in the 1950s and 60s, generations of happy snappers turned out gadzillions of color prints. (I'm convinced my sister kept Kodak in business a year or two longer than they would otherwise have survived.) But "serious" photographers, with a few notable exceptions, continued to work in black and white right up to the onset of the digital revolution, when color began to totally dominate.

You may have noticed that I keep coming back to this issue. I'm a color photographer; have been from the beginning of my career. Yet, black and white intrigues me, always has.

We'll talk more about this next time.

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

It's Empty!

The Garden Tomb, Jerusalem

This is it! The tomb. And the most important thing about it is that it's empty. I walked inside, just to make sure. Yep, empty. Jesus was here once, but no more. The tomb couldn't hold him. 

He was killed by one of the most painful methods of execution ever invented -- crucifixion. The death scene was about 150 yards away, on a small hill called Golgotha, "the place of a skull." You can still see it today, and the cliff still looks like a skull. 

After his death his body was brought here to a new tomb in a garden by two friends and a great stone was rolled across the opening. The stone is gone now, but you can still see the trough where it ran.

All the accounts indicate that Jesus went to his death voluntarily. Which begs the question: why would he do that? Again, all the accounts agree that Jesus knowingly took upon his own self every sin I've ever committed, everything that separated me from God. And then he did the same for you. And for everyone who has ever lived, or ever will live. One payment for all sin, for all humanity, for all time.

And then, on that Sunday morning, he arose, threw back the stone, and walked out. His sacrifice was accepted before God. And when you and I accept that sacrifice for ourselves we are given the gift of eternal life with God. Our sins can never again be charged against us.

The Lord is risen.

(Photo made with a Canon 5D Classic on a trip to Israel in 2010.)

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Looking for New Targets

                                Abandoned Maverick and trailer, TN 108, Marion County, Tennessee

Blog note:

Sorry to miss a post or two. Something hit me like an avalanche on Saturday evening with heavy sinus and chest congestion, a low grade-fever, and such great lassitude that all I've wanted to do is sleep. My covid test was negative. I'm just enough better today to write, but I'm not looking for any dragons to slay!

Anyway, that's not what this post is about. It's about adapting photographically to a new environment. We lived for 45 years in Georgia. And now (I'm still not exactly sure how it happened), we find ourselves living in Tennessee.  

Georgia, at least for me, offered an abundance of photographic targets, resulting in two books (plus a second edition of one of them) and many, many pictures of the kind you see when you're out and about if your eyes are open. Tennessee? Too soon to say. I think it will be okay. I've made many photographs in Tennessee over they years, but never a concentrated effort such as a book.

I do have a book offer on the table from my publisher, W.W. Norton. It's tempting,  but I don't think I'll do it. A state book is more than I want to take on at this point in my life. Besides, Louise is opposed to it, which ought to settle the matter! If the publisher knew that I'm soon to be 86 they would probably withdraw the offer anyway.

W live in town now, which makes things a little more difficult for me, because I'm not an urban photographer. Perhaps we'll finish settling in soon and I can take my camera and check out some countryside. I saw some interesting things in Tennessee when I was working on the Rock City Barns book, so there's hope!

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Settling In

Our new home: 8943 Wesley Place in Knoxville.

My apologies for missing last Friday's post. We've been busy settling in to our new home. As you can see from the picture, it's the end unit in a row of four townhouses in a very pleasant neighborhood of similar homes. It was the first one we looked at, and although we looked at others we kept coming back to this one. With its large windows and light, airy look, we both immediately thought "This looks like home!"

The previous owners had been a very old couple who had passed on, and the property was being sold by their children. So lots of things needed updating. So far, the interior has been repainted, the carpets in the bedrooms have been replaced, and this week we had new wood floors (actually some kind of wood-looking composition) installed. There are still some smaller things to be done, but those were the biggies.

We are now carrying things in from the garage that were until recently in a storage unit near LaFayette. I expect that process to go on for a while -- in fact, I hope I live long enough to see enough room for two cars  to park in our two-car garage!

Since all our furniture was sold in the estate sale two years ago, we were very fortunate that the sellers were willing to include many items of furniture that were in the house for no additional charge. All-in-all, we feel very blessed.

Next on our agenda is selling our truck and trailer and replacing them with a smaller trailer and a light truck or SUV so we can get back to the footloose traveling we love this summer and fall. 

We have great plans, but we never forget that "man plans, God laughs!"

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.