Day to Night: In the Field With Stephen Wilkes at the National Geographic Museum

Tour de France, Paris, Day to Night, 2016 / Photograph by Stephen Wilkes

Via National Geographic

Photographer Stephen Wilkes is recognized around the world for his stunning image compositions of landscapes as they transition from day to night. Each of these dramatic images is meticulously crafted from more than 1,500 photographs taken from a fixed vantage point over the course of 15 to 30 hours, from sunrise to sunset. Stephen spent much of 2017 on assignment documenting bird migration routes for National Geographic magazine. This exhibition takes you into the field and behind the scenes, shining a light on the talent and dedication it takes to beautifully capture the passing of time. On exhibit February 13 - April 22, 2018.  More information here.

Talk

Day to Night: An Evening With Stephen Wilkes  Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Tuesday, February 13, 2018 

Get tickets here

National Geographic Feature Article: The Epic Journeys of Migratory Birds

Stephen Wilkes' Day To Night collection will be on exhibit at Monroe Gallery of Photography Oct. 5 - Nov. 18, 2018.

STEPHEN WILKES TED TALK

Stephen Wilkes: Coney Island, Day To Night

Via TED
Ideas Worth Spreading

"Photographer Stephen Wilkes crafts stunning compositions of landscapes as they transition from day to night, exploring the space-time continuum within a two-dimensional still photograph. Journey with him to iconic locations like the Tournelle Bridge in Paris, El Capitan in Yosemite National Park and a life-giving watering hole in heart of the Serengeti in this tour of his art and process."

See more of Stephen Wilkes' photography here.

"When People Can See Time"

Via NPR All Tech Considered
February 19, 2016
Nina Gregory

Of all of the arts, photography may be the discipline most accustomed to the nudge of technology, and photographer and artist Stephen Wilkes fully embraces the challenge. His latest project, "Day to Night," takes on the idea of showcasing, in one composite still image, the transformation of a place over the course of a day.

Take his photo of Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. For 26 hours, Wilkes shot 2,200 photos without moving the camera and while suspended in the air in a tent-like structure with a little window, so that animals wouldn't see or hear him as he photographed them coming to a watering hole from sunrise to deep into the night.

"I photograph by hand; this is not a time lapse. ... It's my eye seeing very specific moments," Wilkes says. "I like to describe myself as a collector of magical moments."

Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, Day to Night, 2015

Courtesy of Stephen Wilkes                     

Once Wilkes has all the images, he picks the best moments of the day and the night and creates what he calls a master plate. Those images then get seamlessly blended into one single photograph, where time is on a diagonal vector, with sunrise beginning in the bottom right-hand corner. That process of creating a single image can take about four months — though it's photographed in a single day.

I spoke with Wilkes in Vancouver, ahead of his TED talk, about the powers of digital photography, the experience of looking in the face of time and the challenge of sharing emotion through an image. Below are some of the highlights of our conversation.

---

Interview Highlights

On watching animal life unfold during the Serengeti shoot

Times Square, NYC, Day to Night, 201   

 Courtesy of Stephen Wilkes 

          

I'm changing time within the picture. As the sun is rotating, light is changing and all these animals, you can see time change on the light in the animals. It's all based on time. ... (At) sunrise you begin to see the watering hole is quiet and the animals migrate in as the sun rises. Wildebeests and zebras graze together; one has terrible eyes and the other has lousy hearing — the blind leading the deaf. There are meerkats. It was like watching the movie Jungle Book. As time is changing, you see the sun getting higher, you see the light begins to rotate and starts to go behind the animals. I'm watching them. Guess who else is watching them? A lion.

They have this whole process of coming in and going out, it's a rhythm. I'm telling the story based on time. It's such a complicated process and yet there's so much luck involved.

Pont de la Tournelle, Paris, Day to Night, 2013      

Courtesy of Stephen Wilkes             

On evolving as a photographer

I discovered digital in 2000 and started to realize, because I had to come through the process of analog ... I wanted to push the medium outward. So what I've been exploring is this concept of day-to-night, where I change time within a photograph. I'm really exploring the space-time continuum within a two-dimensional photograph. And it's really cool because I can tell stories that photographs could never tell before. Compressing an entire day into a single image, the best moments, allows me to share things on a narrative level that you just couldn't see.

On the power of seeing the face of time

The most exciting part of it really is how people respond to the work. It's an amazing, emotional thing. When people can see time, the face of time in a way, it's this thing we can never put our hands around. But yet, when you look at it, it makes you feel a different way and there's an emotional thing that happens and that's exciting. I just think it's the best time to be alive as a photographer, really. I think as technology keeps evolving the things you could only imagine or dream are at your fingertips now. It's just about where you want to go.

View from The Savoy, London, Day to Night, 2013      

Courtesy of Stephen Wilkes             

On the advantages of digital photography

When you can capture an image on a silicon chip versus a piece of film you can see it instantly, that's the first thing. For me, when I do one of my photographs, I can shoot 2,500 images in a single day. Now, if I was doing that with an 8x10 camera, which is the image quality I have in my digital back*, that would be 2,500 sheets of 8x10 film. It would be impossible to do what I'm doing, just the visualization of that would be impossible — and financially, to boot. And my assistant would probably jump out of the cherry picker!

*Editor's Note: A digital back is a piece of equipment you can add to the back of a film camera to modify it to take digital images.

On the high level of detail in digital photography

So if I'm a storyteller, I love that, suddenly things that were insignificant are really significant now. And that's the power of what's happening now. Eventually photography is going to look like a window; you're going to have a visceral experience with my pictures on the wall. Because the way you'll see into my pictures is almost the way the eye sees, and that's the way it's going. For me, I want you to feel the way I felt when I stood there and took the picture.


On the future of photo printing
I work with a master printer in New York and I actually print on conventional photographic paper because of the depth perception. I really want to enhance that, but there are so many new technologies that are coming out in terms of 3-D printing and all kinds of different things. Who knows where we're going to be five, 10, 15 years from now based on what's happening and the speed of what's happening.



View the full Day To Night Collection here.

The Picture Show

Eerie Ellis Island, Then And Now

National Geographic PROOF Features Stephen Wilkes Day To Night Series

Photographing from the Desert View Watchtower, Wilkes made this image of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in 27 hours. This vantage point allowed him to see the scale of the people along the overlook.

Via National Geographic PROOF Picture Stories
January 5, 2016

Piecing Together Time in the ‘Ultimate Brain Puzzle’

"A single image in Stephen Wilkes’s “Day to Night” series is composed of an average of 1,500 frames captured by manual shutter clicks over a period of anywhere from 16 to 30 hours. During this process, Wilkes must keep his horizon line straight and maintain continuity, which means keeping his camera perfectly still.

He then spends weeks in postproduction, piecing the best frames together into a final composite of layered images, essentially compressing time. For Wilkes, the excitement is in showing people something more than a photograph, something that provides a multidimensional experience, a window, as he describes it, into a world where the full spectrum of time, light, and experience plays across the frame. We’re treated to a view we’ve never seen before—one our eyes could never take in on their own." Full post here.

 

Wilkes and his assistant spent 30 hours perched on a platform 18 feet in the air, behind a crocodile blind so the animals wouldn’t see them. The elephant family marched across the frame just as he and his assistant had resumed shooting after taking a break to backup their files (each shoot takes about 20 gigabytes of storage). Had they passed five minutes earlier, he would have missed them

Monroe Gallery will be exhibiting Stephen Wilkes’ "Day To Night" photographs featured in the January, 2016 issue of National Geographic during photo l.a. 2016, as well as selections from Wilkes' recent Remnants collection.



Related: Nationally recognized photographer Stephen Wilkes has turned his lens to our national parks, commemorating their 100th anniversary

             

STEPHEN WILKES DAY TO NIGHT FEATURE IN NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Stephen Wilkes Day To Night photograph of Yosemite National Park will be a special three-page gateway fold out cover for the January issue of National Geographic, highlighting a special tribute to the 100^th anniversary of the National Park Service. Inside, several other of Wilkes’ Day To Night photographs of  the National Parks are featured over 16 pages, including the National Mall and Memorial Park, Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park; and the Grand Canyon, as well as Serengeti, Tanzania.

Simultaneously, Wilkes stunning Day To Night photograph of Serengeti in Tanzania will be the cover for the January, 2016 issue of the International edition of National Geographic, an extraordinary double cover exposure for a photographer.

Day to Night is an ongoing global photographic project that began in 2009. Working from a fixed camera angle, Wilkes captures the fleeting moments of humanity and light as time passes. After 24 hours of photographing and over 1500 images taken, he selects the best moments of the day and night. Using time as a guide, all of these moments are seamlessly blended into a single photograph in post-production.

"Anything one can imagine one can create. Over the last several years, photographic technology has evolved to a point where anything is possible. I imagined changing time in a single photograph. I began to explore this fascination with time in a new series of photographs called: “Day to Night”. –Stephen Wilkes

Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, will host a Holiday reception celebrating the special feature of Stephen Wilkes’ "Day To Night" photographs in the January, 2016 issues of National Geographic. The public reception will be on Saturday, December 26, from 5 - 7 PM. A special selection of Wilkes’ Day To Night photographs will be on exhibit through January 10, 2016.

Stephen Wilkes: Photography is dead? Hogwash.

Via The Ottawa Citizen
Peter Simpson - The Big Beat

Published on: November 16, 2015

 

Still photography was dead, or so they said. Ubiquitous video would make still photography obsolete, anachronistic, unnecessary.

 

The photographer Stephen Wilkes knows otherwise.

 

“To me, this is the most exciting moment in the history of photography. The potential to explore things that we’ve never done in a still photograph are so great,” says Wilkes, by phone from his studio in Westport, Connecticut. “I’ve been very conscious of using new technologies in the medium to push the medium outward.”

 

His “Day to Night” images, which compress multiple frames of the same scene taken from dawn to dusk — but which are not time-lapse photography — demonstrate his drive to show familiar as anew.

 

To me, what Day to Night is, it’s changing the way you look at a still photograph,” says Wilkes, who will be at the National Gallery Nov. 19 for the U.S. embassy’s art-lecture series, Contemporary Conversations.

 

I chat with Wilkes for 51 minutes and, I confess, I’m not entirely clear on how he made the Day for Night photographs, most famously his image of Barack Obama’s first inauguration as president of the United States.

 

 

Presidential Inauguration, Day to Night, 2013, by Stephen Wilkes

 (Archival Digital Type‑C print. Courtesy the artist)

 

The inaugural photograph appears to be a single image of more than 800,000 people crowded onto the Mall leading to the steps of Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Far in the distance, the president stands with his hand raised, swearing fealty to the constitution.

 

Curiously, an orange dawn breaks on the right side of the frame, while dark night creeps on the left. The people on the right side may be only a few hundred feet from the people on the left, but they are also separated by 10 hours.

 

Wilkes was amid the vast crowd and 50 feet in the air on a scissor lift, and he shot as many as 2,500 frames from sun up to sundown on “a bloody cold day,” the entire time a slave to precision.

 

“If I shift my weight every time I take a picture, if my feet are not in the exact same position, then my horizon line changes,” he says, and describes how he had to put down tape marks for his feet, and for those of his assistant. It must have looked like a crime scene up there.

 

He then whittled the hundreds of frames down to 50, and made them into a sort of collage, “almost like a time capsule, on this day, in this place. . . . It’s like a giant puzzle I do in my head as I work.”

 

 

  Corridor # 9, Island 3, Ellis Island, 1998,

                             (Archival Digital Type‑C print. Courtesy the artist)

 

 

The only obvious hint that it’s a composite image, other than the weird dichotomy of light and dark, are the differing views of the president shown on huge video screens at the side of the Mall.

 

“Day to Night is almost a synthesis of all the things that I love about the medium of photography. . .  In a way I’m putting a face on time,” Wilkes says, and then talks of how we remember, together, a time that’s passed. “I’m very interested in the idea of what our collective memory is, as a species.”

 

I’ve already gone well over my allotted time for our interview — usually 20 minutes or so — but Wilkes, after two decades of work, remains infectiously enthusiastic.

 

He describes at length his experiences while photographing abandoned, decaying structures at Ellis Island in New York harbour, once the arrival point for millions of immigrants to the U.S., and at the Bethlehem Steel plant.

 

“There was a palpable sense of humanity in these historic places that, in a way, I never really understood or realized you could really capture,” he says.  “I think the greatest rewards have been when people see these multiple bodies of work that I’ve done and they say to me, ‘I can feel my ancestors in your pictures. I can feel the people in your photographs.’”

 

He talks passionately of photographing the effects of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill on New Orleans, and of shooting nudes for the first time, in a remarkable series, after 9/11. “Our lives were turned upside down. I felt like I wanted to go back and think about what the creation was like.”

 

He recounts going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first time, at age 14, and being deeply influenced by a Bruegel the Elder painting, the Harvesters. “I remember walking up to it and looking closely at these men in the field, and it was almost as if I could feel the sweat on their brow.”

 

Wilkes had been taking photographs for two years at that point, and says “nothing ever made me feel like that. I loved the idea of capturing a moment on film.”

 

Decades later, his belief in photography  as an catalyst for change is undiminished.

 

“I find that by creating images that have an inherent beauty, people will look at them for just a second, and if I get you for just a second, then I think I can make you think a little deeper about what I’m showing you.” And, emphatically, “The power of the single image is the way.”

 

As for the photography-is-dead crowd, let them be damned.

 

What: Stephen Wilkes, Contemporary Conversations

When & where: 6 p.m., Nov. 19 at the National Gallery. Tickets, free.

 

 www.gallery.ca/conversations

 

The fourth lecture in the 2015 series "Contemporary Conversations" will feature Stephen Wilkes

Via CNW

OTTAWA, Nov. 5, 2015 /CNW/ - The Embassy of the United States in Ottawa and the U.S. Department of State's Office of Art in Embassies, in partnership with the National Gallery of Canada (NGC), will welcome renowned American artist Stephen Wilkes for the fourth lecture in the Contemporary Conversations series on November 19.

Contemporary Conversations (#artconvoAIE) brings internationally recognized American artists to Canada for a series of public lectures at the NGC intended to stimulate conversation around issues that transcend borders, and topics that inspire, teach, and create connections. Works by the first four artists in the series are also included in the Art in Embassies exhibition at the residence of U.S. Ambassador to Canada Bruce Heyman and Mrs. Vicki Heyman. Wilkes' photograph Corridor # 9, Island 3, Ellis Island (1998) is currently featured at the residence, while another of his works, Presidential Inauguration, Day to Night (2013), can be found on display at the Embassy.

Wilkes, an internationally acclaimed fine art and commercial photographer, is well-known for capturing iconic images of American spaces and places – from Ellis Island to a Presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C. This latest edition of the speaker series will be moderated by U.S. Ambassador to Canada Bruce Heyman.

"Stephen is on the cutting edge of technique in digital fine art photography, and he uses his camera and talent to preserve memories and to conserve treasures. His photographs strike me first with their sheer beauty, and then I am drawn in deeper by the subtext of the work. Bruce and I have been fans of his work for years - we continue to feel inspired by the impact of his images and how they provoke conversations that can serve as an impetus for change." said Vicki Heyman.

"We are delighted to have Stephen Wilkes at the National Gallery of Canada as part of the Contemporary Conversations series, which has been so successful.  The conversation between this accomplished American artist and the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, Mr. Bruce Heyman, promises to be engaging," said National Gallery of Canada Director and CEO Marc Mayer.

In February 2015, Marie Watt was the first artist featured in the Contemporary Conversations series at the NGC in Ottawa. Nick Cave participated in second installment in May and Eric Fischl spoke in September.  

Registration for the Stephen Wilkes lecture opened October 19. Free admission: RSVP before 12 November at rsvp@gallery.ca to reserve your spot. Please note that guests will be seated in order of arrival. Empty seats will be filled 10 minutes prior to the start of the event. There will also be a live broadcast of the event in the adjacent Lecture Hall.

More information about the series can be found at www.gallery.ca/conversations/en.

About Stephen Wilkes

For more than two decades Stephen Wilkes has been widely recognized for his fine art and commercial photography. In 1999 he completed a personal project photographing the unrestored areas of Ellis Island: the ruined

landscape of the infectious disease and psychiatric hospital wings, where children and adults alike were detained before they could enter the United States. Through his photographs and video work, Wilkes has inspired and helped secure six million dollars toward the restoration for the south side of the island.

Wilkes' latest body of work entitled Day to Night embodies epic cityscapes with fleeting moments captured throughout the transition from day to the night.  His photographic process entails continuously shooting from one camera angle for approximately fifteen hours. A select group of images are then electronically blended into one photograph. Each photograph takes approximately four months to create.

 

Stephen Wilkes "Remnants" continues at Monroe Gallery of Photography through November 22.

Iconic photographer Joe McNally presented with the 2015 Professional Photographer Award.

Woodbury, NY—

The PhotoImaging Manufacturers and Distributors Association (PMDA) announced that Go Miyazaki , president and CEO of Fujifilm North America Corporation, will be receiving the 2014 Person of the Year Award at PMDA’s annual dinner on January 5, 2015 in Las Vegas. The distinguished award is being given to Miyazaki in recognition of his leadership of Fujifilm’s success in North America in both the output and capture sides of the imaging business.

Four additional awards will be accorded at the 4th Annual Imaging Night: Wataru Otani , head of New Business Development at Ricoh Imaging, will receive the Herbert Keppler Technical Achievement Award; John Clouse , former senior vice president of Sales for Nikon Inc., will be given the Norman C. Lipton Lifetime Achievement Award; Gabrielle Mullinax , president of Fullerton Photographics and a leader in creative photo printing and archiving, will receive the Visionary Award; and iconic photographer Joe McNally will be presented with the 2015 Professional Photographer Award.

"We’re pleased to be able to recognize these individuals for their accomplishments in the field of digital imaging,” said Dan Unger , president of PMDA. “Our event will once again shine the light on the many accomplishments and innovations that have kept the digital imaging business in the forefront of the consumer electronics revolution. And this year, we are celebrating both the capture and output sides of our business, which are both showing resurgences among consumers. It will certainly be a must-attend night.”

The awards will be presented at the 49th Annual PMDA Awards Dinner, which will take place on Monday, January 5, 2015 at XS Nightclub at the Encore Hotel in Las Vegas, on the eve of the International CES. The evening will include musical entertainment and a gallery of Joe McNally’s award-winning photography. PMDA has been recognizing individual contributions to the imaging industry since 1965. pmda.com.


Joe McNally's photographs will be on exhibit during Photo LA 2015 January  15 - 18 at Monroe Gallery of Photography, Booth #203.


Related exhibition: Joe McNally, Photojournalist

Stephen Wilkes' Day To Night Series Featured in Today's Newspapers

Via New York Daily News

Stunning! Timelapse photographs show city skylines in daytime and at night... all at the same time

Cities such as New York City and Shanghai get captured in unique images which show the glorious daylight and the glimmering night time lights.

CATERS NEWS
Wednesday, August 7, 2013, 7:21 AM

New York City’s Central Park during the day and at night.

Stephen Wilkes/Caters News Agency

 

These are the incredible images which show the world’s most iconic cityscapes by day and night — in just one picture.

The mesmerising images show the beautiful transition from day to night in some of the world’s most iconic cities from the Shanghai skyline to New York’s Central Park.

The unusual images were taken by photographer Stephen Wilkes who spent up to 15 hours and shot up to 1500 photos to create just one composite image.

 

Stephen Wilkes/Caters News Agency

Brooklyn’s Coney Island.

 

The collection entitled Day to Night features 15 images including works from Times Square, The Western Wall and The Capitol.

To create the images, Stephen, 55, from Connecticut, U.S.A., shoots across the entire landscape from sunrise to sunset — sometimes from locations that do not even have toilet facilities.

He then returns to his studio to blend around 50 of the best photographs to create one seamless image. Each piece takes around one month to edit.

Stephen Wilkes/Caters News Agency
Shanghai in day and night.

 

Stephen said he first came up with the idea of shooting multiple images across a landscape when taking the cast picture for Baz Lurman’s blockbuster Romeo and Juliet for Life Magazine, in 1996.
But it wasn’t until he was asked to shoot the High Line for New York Magazine that Stephen used this technique to show the passing of time.

Stephen said while he is fascinated by architecture, people and the cities of the world, what he really loves to shoot is history. And he has even shot Day and Night images of President Obama’s inauguration speech as well as New Year’s Eve in Times Square.

Stephen Wilkes/Caters News Agency
The Flatiron building in Manhattan.

 

There are currently 15 images in the collection but he is currently working on images from Chicago, and hope to add works from London and Paris in the near future.

Stephen wants to add as many images as possible to his collection.

He said: “I remember saying that New York was very active and busy at lunchtime and very spooky at night.

Stephen Wilkes/Caters News Agency

Capitol Hill shown in the day and at night.

 

“I like to say it’s a labour of love for you to stay 15 hours and shoot 1500 images where most of the time there is no bathroom.

“I am a street photographer by training and Day to Night is essentially all the things I love about photography; my son describes it as my symphony.

“The images are so layered; there are so many elements that I love about the medium: Street, history, people environment, narrative, and storytelling.

Stephen Wilkes/Caters News Agency

The Western Wall in Jerusalem.

 

“I’m drawn to cities that have not only fantastic architecture, but also fascinating street life.
“The human narrative is the subtext is in a lot of my photographs, so more you look at it, the more you are going to discover.

“There is a layered effect so you will discover something new whenever you view it.”

Related:

The Telegraph: Day-to-night in the city: Stephen Wilkes documents a day in one photograph

Stephen Wilkes DAY TO NIGHT  Feature On CBS News Sunday Morning Show

Huffington Post: Day To Night In The World's Most Iconic Cities

The Daily Mail: A day in the life of the city: Mesmerising photographs capture 24 hours in just one picture

Stephen Wilkes, The Power of the Still Image

Via X-Rite Photo Blog


"A new video has just been released today featuring Coloratti Stephen Wilkes talking about The Power of the Still Image, his own projects to document parts of American life and culture that are fading into memory, some of his disturbing and compelling images of the Gulf oil spill, and his latest project called Day to Night. In this video Stephen talks about the “subtext” beneath his photographs. “The power of what’s underneath is much greater than what’s on the surface,” he says. “And I want you to go underneath what I’m showing you but the only way I can get there is to draw you in with beauty.”

 

Wilkes is an amazing photographer. His passion for the still image is fueled by his ardent belief that it is the still image that “burns” into our minds. “I don’t think that, in terms of memory, things stay with us unless we have the image,” says Wilkes. “I think there is infinitely more power in a visual than there is in anything that is verbal or even written.”

 

Seaside Heights, N.J
©2012 Stephen Wilkes

One of Stephen’s most recent projects was documenting Hurricane Sandy for Time. Stephen’s 22 image photo essay on the super-storm disaster is available on Time Lightbox. The aerial photos he captured are both beautiful and horrific. Here’s a quote from his words accompanying the photo essay: “On the Sunday after Sandy made landfall, I decided to rent a helicopter and fly over some of the most devastated areas, including the New Jersey shore, Breezy Point and Far Rockaway. It was a beautiful day to fly, but unfortunately that beauty quickly eroded into shock as we began to get close to the coasts. It was everything I’d heard about, but it was difficult to believe what I was actually seeing. Once we got above the shoreline, I really started to understand the scale of the destruction. The expanse of land it ruined, the totality of the devastation — it was like a giant mallet had swung in circles around the area. It was mind numbing.” Read more about the Hurricane Sandy project online and see all 22 photos in the essay at Time Lightbox."

Full post with links here.

See Stephen Wilkes Day To Night and Hurricane Sandy photographs during Photo la, January 17 - 21, at Monroe Gallery of Photograph, booth M-150.

Stephen Wilkes: Day To Night Exhibition Featured in La Lettre de la Photographie

Flatiron Building, Day To Night (2010) © Stephen Wilkes

  COURTESY MONROE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Via La Lettre de la Photographie

For more than two decades Stephen Wilkes has been widely recognized for his fine art, editorial, and commercial photography. With numerous awards and honors, as well as five major exhibitions in the last five years, Wilkes has made an impression on the world of photography. His most recent series features vibrant photographs of Times Square, Park Avenue, Coney Island, and Central Park, among other iconic New York locations, and capture, in a single frame, the transition from “Day to Night”. Using digital composites of images of the same site taken over a period of up to 15 hours, the photographs have a time-traveling quality, with the hustle and bustle in the afternoon sun giving way to the glow of city lights in darkening, cloud-streaked skies.

"Anything one can imagine one can create. Over the last several years, photographic technology has evolved to a point where anything is possible. I imagined changing time in a single photograph. I began to explore this fascination with time in a new series of photographs called: “Day to Night”. Photographing from one camera angle continuously for up to 15 hours, capturing the fleeting moments throughout the day and night. A select group of these images are then digitally blended into one photograph, capturing the changing of time within a single frame."

"Day to Night embodies a combination of my favorite things to photograph; documentary street photography melded with epic cityscapes. The work is a personal reflection of my deep love for New York. As this series has evolved, I discovered that the photographs began to highlight a form of emergent behavior within the daily life of the city. Studying the communication between pedestrians on sidewalks, cars and cabs on the street, these individual elements become a complex life form as they flow together to create the chaotic harmony that is Manhattan."

Full post and slide show here.

NOTE: Exhibition has been extended through June 24, 2012

STEPHEN WILKES: DAY TO NIGHT

 

 

Coney Island, Day To Night

Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to present "Day To Night", an exhibition of large-scale color photographs (up to 50 x 80 inches) by leading contemporary photographer Stephen Wilkes. The exhibition opens with a public reception with Stephen Wilkes from 5 - 7 PM on Friday, April 27. The exhibition continues through June 16. 

For more than two decades Stephen Wilkes has been widely recognized for his fine art, editorial, and commercial photography. With numerous awards and honors, as well as five major exhibitions in the last five years, Wilkes has made an impression on the world of photography. His most recent series features vibrant photographs of Times Square, Park Avenue, Coney Island, and Central Park, among other iconic New York locations, and capture, in a single frame, the transition from “Day to Night”. Using digital composites of images of the same site taken over a period of up to 15 hours, the photographs have a time-traveling quality, with the hustle and bustle in the afternoon sun giving way to the glow of city lights in darkening, cloud-streaked skies.

 "Anything one can imagine one can create. Over the last several years, photographic technology has evolved to a point where anything is possible. I imagined changing time in a single photograph. I began to explore this fascination with time in a new series of photographs called: “Day to Night”. Photographing from one camera angle continuously for up to 15 hours, capturing the fleeting moments throughout the day and night. A select group of these images are then digitally blended into one photograph, capturing the changing of time within a single frame."

"Day to Night embodies a combination of my favorite things to photograph; documentary street photography melded with epic cityscapes. The work is a personal reflection of my deep love for New York. As this series has evolved, I discovered that the photographs began to highlight a form of emergent behavior within the daily life of the city. Studying the communication between pedestrians on sidewalks, cars and cabs on the street, these individual elements become a complex life form as they flow together to create the chaotic harmony that is Manhattan."

"Henri Cartier Bresson once said, “Photography is the recognition of a rhythm in the world of real things.” I am forever fascinated by the rhythm that is New York, the city’s relentless energy from “Day to Night”'.--Stephen Wilkes

Selected photographs from the Day To Night series were exhibited at 2011 Art Basel Miami, and just recently at the 2012 AIPAD Photography Show in New York to widespread acclaim. This exhibition will be the first time the full collection has been exhibited together.

 Photography has been Stephen’s passion since age 12, when his fascination with science led him to take photographs through a microscope. He began working on his own at age 15, attended Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications, graduating in 1980. In 1982, Wilkes opened his own studio in Manhattan.

 “Ever since I took my first pictures, photography has always been the joy of discovery for me,” says Wilkes. “The excitement not only lies with what I see and how I see it, but mostly when someone looks at the finished photograph and feels the same emotions I felt when I took the picture. There is something sacred about the right moment. The frame where all the energy comes together and, in one instant, a story is told.”

Wilkes' photographs are in the permanent collection of The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Dow Jones & Company, New York City; The Jewish Museum, New York City; and in numerous important private collections throughout the world. His work has graced the covers of numerous international publications, including Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, Life Magazine, and Time Magazine.

FILM vs DIGITAL: A Conversation Continues

Zodiac - © John Neel


Via Pixiq

Before I get too many people adding prejudiced comments about the pros and cons of digital imaging verses film, I want to emphasize that I am not putting digital down. Nor am I trying to make a point for film. I am a digital photographer as well as a film photographer. This is not a pro or con discussion about film vs. digital.


Rather, I am asking if there is a difference between the kinds of images that used to be taken with film in comparison to what we are seeing with digital from a spiritual point of view. I am not alone in asking the question.

In looking at the offerings of new technology photography, I am finding very few images that have a specific quality that dominates the works of the great film photographers of film technology. Most of what I see today seems sterile, vapid and trite, by comparison. There seems to be something significant that is missing.

Somehow there is a difference that many of my contemporaries as well as myself feel is missing from the current process. I want to find out what that something is.

When we look at the works of great photographers such as Robert Frank, Mary Ellen Mark, André Kertész, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Lee Friedlander, Gary Winogrand, Ansel Adams, Atget or any of hundreds of photographers who have given us amazing images produced with film, there seems to be a magical or mystical presence that is missing from most of what I would call rather trite and unimaginative images being produced by digital means today.

When a photographer really connects with his subject, there is a transformation beyond the obvious, beyond the likeness of the subject. There is a sense of something else, which is somehow conveyed in a surprising or magical manner. A metamorphosis takes place that we as a viewer can see, feel and understand because the subject has been transformed into something bigger and more profound. The subject becomes a metaphor or symbol for deeper consideration. For me this is a necessary step in the creation or capture of a powerful image. It is photography at its finest. There is much more to the image than appearance. A deeper message is formed. Communication and learning takes place. We become bigger and smarter because the image speaks to us in a deeply articulate way.

Yet, I find this quality scarce in the digital images that I have seen of late.

Is this because there is an - difference between the two technologies, which allows the magic to be captured more easily with one medium over the other? Here again, I am not discussing the differences in technique as much as I am in the ability of the photographer to capture the essence of the subject through either process.

Surely, digital allows a more economical workflow in terms of time and effort. But is there a difference in how a moment is captured. Does film allow the capture to be more transcendent? Is there a higher possible spiritual attainment with a film camera than with a digital camera? Does one technology provide a better capability to transport us to a higher level of understanding beyond the mere representation of a subject?

Personally, I believe that there is a major difference and worth an investigation. For many photographers, film seems more genuine as a medium because to them, it has the ability in the right hands to capture something we could refer to as soul. To me, soul is an essential part of a higher form of image making. It makes the difference between a simple rendition of a subject and one that rises beyond the subject. To capture soul means capturing something deeper and much more meaningful.

It may be possible that with digital, we have not yet made the leap to a spiritual connection with our subjects. If so, could it be because we are still in the early phases of digital imaging and that "thing" will become more evident to us as we become better digital photographers? Is the task of digital imaging too easy or possibly too difficult or distracting that we fail to connect with the subject? Do we pay more attention to the camera and the technology of digital rather than the subject itself? Is it possible that we are better able to become “one” with our subjects with a less complicated medium such as film?

I believe that it is a combination of these and perhaps other circumstances that results in a failure to touch the soul of the subject. And I should say here that film alone does not produce the magic. But, there may be a valid reason that the magic is more prevalent with film.

Personally I think that it is a matter of connecting with your subject in a meditative manner. Awareness and anticipation as well as having genuine concern for the subject matter allows for a better opportunity of becoming one with your subject. I believe that this can happen with either media. It just seems to be less prevalent and more difficult to achieve with digital.

I sense a difference.

© John Neel

Is any of this important to you? If not, why not?
How do we get soul into an image? This will be a topic for another post.

SPECIAL HOLIDAY BOOK SIGNING AND EXHIBIT WITH JOE McNALLY

Joe McNally: Water Polo Boys, (U.S. Water Polo Team, Long Beach, California) 1996


We are pleased and excited to welcome Joe McNally for a very special book signing and exhibition. We will celebrate Friday, December 17, from 5 to 7 PM with a public reception during which Joe will sign copies of his newest book: The LIFE Guide to Digital Photography: Everything You Need To Shoot Like The Pros (256 pages; $29.95). A special selection of Joe's photographs will be on exhibit through January 30, 2011.

Just in time for the holidays, Joe McNally, one of LIFE's master shooters and the most recent in a long line of distinguished LIFE staff photographers, has prepared a fool-proof guide that covers tips of the trade; step-by-step instruction on focusing, lighting and composition; and features photos from his personal portfolio.

In The LIFE Guide to Digital Photography, McNally walks readers carefully through the do's and don'ts of shooting digital and concentrates on five fundamentals: light, the lens, design elements, color, and composition. He offers his expert advice on everything from shooting fireworks and family portraits, to telling a story with texture to choosing color or not — framing all discussions with his own personal experiences as a photographer.

Joe says: “The LIFE Guide is just that–a guide. It can take a newbie right from opening the box containing the new digital picture machine right through composition, light, lenses, and color.

I wrote this book for my alma mater, LIFE magazine. What a long strange trip photography is. I shot my first job for the magazine in 1984, and managed somehow to survive editor changes, shifts in format, style, and even the change of the physical size of the magazine to keep shooting for them right through the nineties. Just about 1995 they asked me to become their first staffer in 23 years, which also meant I became the last staff photographer in the history of the magazine, as it is no longer publishing. As I always point out, being the last in a series of 90 staff shooters at this illustrious picture magazine probably means that someone writing the history of this field will probably associate my name with the death of photojournalism :-)" --Joe McNally

Joe McNally: Rooftop Ballerina (Nadia Grachevo, Prima Ballerina), Bolshoi Ballet, Moscow, 1997

Please join us Friday, December 17 for a holiday book signing with Joe McNally, along with a very special exhibit of his photography, during a reception from 5 - 7 PM. Or contact the gallery now to reserve a signed copy. Also be sure to check out Joe's highly acclaimed workshops, including his Santa Fe Workshop.




Related: Joe McNally: Faces of Ground Zero

Joe McNally: Faces of Ground Zero: Louie Cacchioli, Firefighter, Engine 47, FDNY, 2001

JOE McNALLY "THE REAL DEAL"

Via Joe McNally's Blog

November 8, 2010
Joe McNally

Taught again this year at the Santa Fe Photo Workshops, as I usually do. I really enjoy my occasional visits to the Southwest. Over the last few years, I’ve regularly brought my classes to the Monroe Gallery, run by Sid and Michelle Monroe. Great people, and close friends. They are the real deal.


I am very determined about this (especially when I teach young shooters who’ve never had a whiff of dektol) as a way of acquainting folks with work that is really the shoulders upon which we all stand. Digital photo fever is at an all time high, which is a great thing. It’s just important to know where we came from.

And, I have to admit, there’s the curmudgeon in me who’s determined to avoid much of the rest of the chic, super heated bubble that constitutes the Santa Fe spa/art scene, which, at least occasionally, makes me chuckle. I mean, there are so many galleries on Canyon Road, and such a cacophony of art that it veers damn close to outright tragic. I’m sure this is my own demented imagination at work, but I can conjure a day for the cognoscenti down there beginning by putting down the lemon scented loofah, removing the cucumber slices from the eyelids, rinsing off the sea salt scrub laced with all natural oatmeal and tinged with the scent of free range apricots, and chugging through gallery after gallery. In those shops are mult-hued Kokopelli statues, intricately fashioned wind chimes, and fantastically bent pieces of metalwork, many of which, to me, look like the product of a welder having a seizure. It’s all okay. Art is many things to many people.

I prefer the simple white walls and the largely monochrome environment at Monroe. Their gallery is like an oasis of unflinching, heartfelt reality in the midst of the ephemeral, land of enchantment swirl. What hangs on those walls makes a connection. Some of it entertains the eye in a delightfully kinetic way. Other pictures stir memory, nostalgia, and an echo in your head and your heart. (Where was I when this happened?) Other images up there are like a punch in the gut.

What I truly believe about a powerful picture is that after viewing it, you are never the same. You have been changed, forever. You might not realize it at that moment, but you are. There’s been an interior, seismic shift in your emotional substrata. The plates tilted, just a little bit. These pictures linger, like a persistent thought. Or, like someone shouting to you in a rainstorm, it gets your attention, even if you can’t completely make out what it’s saying. Sometimes, they’re like a wound. Photographic scar tissue.


The Monroe’s concentrate their eye and their gallery on historically important photojournalism. Even a quick pass through one of their shows is like looking at your memory of the last 50 years, right there, in one place. Currently, they have a show of Carl Mydan’s work. Carl, a diminutive, gentlemanly sort, was a giant, and a tiger with a camera in his hands. Under that affable exterior was steel. How else could he have withstood the firestorm of ego and bluster that was General Douglas MacArthur to get the pictures that he did?

Also up this fall was the work of Bill Eppridge. (Very appropriate to look at Bill’s work during campaign season, and remember that once upon a time, images of politicians had some grit, and were the product not of “photo opps,” but of real access and relationships.)

Saw Bill at Photo East, still carrying a camera. Still crusty as ever. He’s earned the right to be crusty, I can tell you. He’s done it all, and his work remains a benchmark for all of us who have ever picked up a camera with serious intent.

I won’t make a history lesson out of this, but the story of the picture above, which was on the walls of Monroe, might not be so well known. What is well known is that Epp covered RFK’s run at the presidency, and grew close with the Senator. He was there in the hotel kitchen when he was gunned down, and made that awful, famous frame of the busboy cradling the Senator’s head as he lay dying. Given the dicey light, it was a thin negative.

The Time Life photo lab, now no more, was the stuff of legend. They pulled from this neg a master, elegant print and copied it. It was from this copy neg, derived from that one print, that many, many reproductions of that moment came.

When Bill’s tenure with LIFE ended, and the weekly mag folded, he was asked if he wanted the master. In the interests of storage space, they were taking 16×20 prints and cutting them down to 11×14’s, as hard as that may seem to believe. So of course, he said yes. They said, okay, where do we ship it? Bill said nowhere, and got on a plane. He took physical possession of this legendary print, but with a profound sense of ambivalence. The night of the assassination, he did his job, magnificently. But at that terrible moment, his job entailed photographing a man he had grown close to, dying in front of him. So the print did not go on his wall. He put it out of sight, behind his couch in Laurel Canyon, California home.

Wildfires came to the canyon, and destroyed almost everything in their path. Bill’s home burned to the ground, along with just about everything in it. Except the master print, charred, as you see it above.

Some pictures just stick with you. More tk….

©Joe McNally

Related: The Albuquerque Journal: Bill Eppridge: An Eye On The Times

The Historic Master Print of Robert F. Kennedy Shot

Joe McNally: Faces of Ground Zero

JOE McNALLY: The LIFE Guide to Digital Photography

Time Home Entertainment Inc. recently announced the publication of The LIFE Guide to Digital Photography: Everything You Need to Shoot like the Pros by Joe McNally. Just in time for the holidays, Joe McNally, one of LIFE's master shooters and the most recent in a long line of distinguished LIFE staff photographers, has prepared a fool-proof guide that covers tips of the trade; step-by-step instruction on focusing, lighting and composition; and features photos from his personal portfolio.


In The LIFE Guide to Digital Photography (256 pages; $29.95), McNally walks readers carefully through the dos and don'ts of shooting digital and concentrates on five fundamentals: light, the lens, design elements, color, and composition. He offers his expert advice on everything from shooting fireworks and family portraits, to telling a story with texture to choosing color or not — framing all discussions with his own personal experiences as a photographer.

Joe says: “The LIFE Guide is just that–a guide. It can take a newbie right from opening the box containing the new digital picture machine right through composition, light, lenses, and color.

I wrote this book for my alma mater, LIFE magazine. What a long strange trip photography is. I shot my first job for the magazine in 1984, and managed somehow to survive editor changes, shifts in format, style, and even the change of the physical size of the magazine to keep shooting for them right through the nineties. Just about 1995 they asked me to become their first staffer in 23 years, which also meant I became the last staff photographer in the history of the magazine, as it is no longer publishing. As I always point out, being the last in a series of 90 staff shooters at this illustrious picture magazine probably means that someone writing the history of this field will probably associate my name with the death of photojournalism:-)" --Joe McNally

Please join us Friday, December 17 for a holiday book signing with Joe McNally, along with a very special exhibit of his photography, during a reception from 5 - 7 PM. Or contact the gallery now to reserve a signed copy.

MONROE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

112 Don Gaspar
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505.992.0800


Related: Joe McNally: Faces of Ground Zero