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The Essential Edwin (circa 2001)
Favorite Photographers, Writers and Music

Photographers

Who influences me? Which photographers capture or create images so riveting that I pay attention and wonder in amazement as to their creativity? Here is a list of the ones that I admire and sometimes try to emulate while still trying to retain my own identity and style (such that it may be).

Ansel Adams is a saint among landscape photographers and with good reason. He does seem to have as many detractors as he does admirers but there is no denying that the man had great vision and supreme technical skills as a darkroom artist. His images can be cold and distant to others but for me they are the epitome of artistic expression in landscapes. I will admit that his Moonrise over Hernandez is not one of my favorites despite the consensus that it is his finest image. I prefer the images from Yosemite and in particular, the ones of Half dome. I recall one image that was so striking that I marveled at how it seemed to just capture a perfect moment. I do not recall the name of the image but it was of a snowfall in a forest and the framed print hanging on a roommate's wall was so pristinely clear and vivid that I had no idea at the time that it was a black and white image. The highlights were pure and the shadows subtle enough that it seemed to me like a typical snowstorm image in color.

Galen Rowell is the first major photographer's work I discovered and amazed at. Mr. Rowell is a writer too and he is quite a well-researched one but sometimes comes across as arrogant, aloof, and a bit high-minded. However, his images speak for themselves and they are superb. He seems to have particular mastery of morning light scenes and leads the kind of adventure lifestyle many dream of. Who wouldn't want to work for National Geographic Magazine for their first kick at the can as a full time photographer and who wouldn't want that first to be the lead cover story too? The man is getting on towards his sixth decade of life but he remains a formidable photographer, one who is not afraid of using the newest digital techniques in scanning and printing to bring his vision to life.

Galen Rowell and his wife, Barbara, passed away on August 11, 2002 in a tragic plane crash. For the photographic world Galen Rowell needs no introduction given his decades of work showcasing the world’s landscapes. It hits me especially hard since Galen Rowell was the first major photographer whose work I discovered and was inspired by.

Rowell had phenomenal success as a photographer. His first major assignment when he decided to turn pro three-decades ago, was for none other than National Geographic Magazine. He parlayed that initial success to become one of the foremost nature photographers in the world, bringing his own idealism and humanity to his work, as all artists do.

He went beyond mere photography to try to understand the physiological and psychological motivations to what made him and in turn, what made us tick. Why is that we enjoy certain scenes and not others? What was it inside of us that compelled us to seek out the natural world?

It was often the case that what Rowell wrote about was far beyond the everyday technical talk of most photographers and that in turn left him open to criticism by those who were less interested in the esoteric discussions Galen introduced to his readers. Guru was often thrown at him in an uncomplimentary fashion and I myself have been critical of these writings and poked fun at his status as an adventure photographer. However, Rowell’s photography has always been beyond reproach and perhaps the criticism had more to do with jealousy that he was able to earn a living doing what he loved best and what so many of us would love to be doing.

John Shaw was another major photographer I discovered early and through his excellent books, I have learned much of the technical aspects of outdoor photography. His book on macro photography is still the seminal book on the topic for nature photographers. His images have an understated elegance to them that grow on you the more you expose yourself to them. He seems to be a no-nonsense type of person who quietly but effectively gets the job done with a minimum of the hype of Moose Peterson and none of the "guru" status of Galen Rowell.

Daryl Benson is sort of Canada's Galen Rowell, great images without the attitude. A topnotch landscape photographer who recently had a book published (with co-author Dale Wilson) about the great Canadian landscape. Regular contributor to Photolife Magazine, he has a fine sense of self-deprecating humour. You read his articles and you feel as though you have known him for years thanks to his very relaxed and informal writing style. He is another photographer unafraid of the cutting edge of digital technology and regularly massages his images in Photoshop for a wonderful new look and emotional feel.

Richard Martin is another Photolife Magazine contributor and one that I did know anything about until I subscribed to Photolife. His imagery is wonderful with a great sense for lines and shapes. His articles for Photolife are rarely technical in terms of equipment used other than the focal length of the lens so that the reader knows how the image was taken in its basics. His articles are much more about developing your internal artistry and creativity and he seems to have extensive knowledge of art (background in architecture). I would love to see as well as he does.

Michael Yamashita is primarily a National Geographic contract photographer but he is another excellent photographer who seems to lead the romantic lifestyles of a foreign correspondent. He spends months at a time in the field obtaining his images and always seems to be on assignment, primarily in South East Asia. There was one assignment though in the US that really struck me as to how creative Michael Yamashita is. It was an assignment in Vermont, one that took Michael away from his normal photojournalistic and documentary approach to imagery and more towards the artistic and landscape images. They were of course, excellent. Simple concepts but powerful in the way that Michael presented them. Michael has a book published based upon Vietnam's Mekong River, which was a result of an article for National Geographic magazine.

Philip Greenspun is not a professional photographer like the others listed here but is instead a successful professor of Computer Science at MIT as well an entrepreneur for web publishing and consulting. Philip is on the cutting edge of thought as to the potential of the Internet and what it might mean for us as the Internet evolves. However, it is not his day job that I want to talk about but his sideline hobby (?) and semi-professional photography. More than any other photographer that I know of, I would most want to see the way Philip Greenspun sees. His ability to take everyday subjects and make something of them in a creative and artistic way is wonderful, perhaps exceptional. I have no doubt that he shoots a damn huge amount of film or digital captures to obtain the images he posts on Photo.net but let us not forget that a photographer must have some ability and creativity in the person in order to consistently create fine images. Philip Greenspun has been my biggest influence since discovering this neurotic pastime in not only imagery but in his words from all the articles, he has posted on his site, which in turn inspired this website to a degree.

Michael Weber is a photographer who I found in search of Nikon-related equipment reviews. After reading pretty much everything he was reviewed, I went and looked at his photos and they are wonderful. What really struck me about Weber's photography is that he crosses so many genres, from classic landscape, to sports, to wildlife and nature, to architectural, to weddings. Weber seems to be the jack of all photographic trades with only photojournalism as the one genre not mentioned or referenced. I consider myself a generalist too and I would love to be as skilled as Weber is in so many genres. Many photographers are skilled at one type of photography and some are only known for one type of subject matter, e.g. Art Morris is an incredible bird photographer, but is not known for any other type or style. Moose Peterson is a wildlife photographer and though he has taken some different types of photos, they lack the supreme skill he has with creatures large and small. Weber seems to do it all and unlike Art Wolfe, he is equally skilled in urban settings, as he is in outdoor environments. As an equipment reviewer, he is at first glance incredibly lavishing on Nikon, but he is not a Nikon sycophant, as other photographers seem to be, and writes he very honest reviews about what is good and what is bad from Nikon.

There are other photographers I admire but the above are the ones I love to look forward to seeing something new. They are not all outdoor nature photographers or photojournalists/documentarians but each one has something about their imagery that stokes the emotions in me.

What moves me? Push comes to shove I will say that I still have a preference for natural wilderness scenes, landscapes if you will but I am not so moved by images of birds or wildlife. This is rather unfortunate for me, as I no longer have justification to buy a huge, honking super telephoto lens. My wife and bank manager will be relieved I'm sure.

I would however, prefer to be called a generalist, one who is competent at many aspects of photography but I probably only have the ability to really hone my skills at one or two other types of photography beyond landscapes. I like certain types of urban landscapes, in particular ones taken during the cool morning or twilight hours of the day as these offer the best colors and provide the city a sense of cleanliness and a fresh start.

I would love to be called a great portraitist but not of the generic studio photography look but of the emotional portrait that reveals a glimpse of a person's soul or being. Of all the photographic styles out there, I think effective portraiture is among the most difficult. This is my weak spot and one that I work at and try to improve whenever I can. An effective portrait need not be perfectly studio lit nor placed unnaturally in an exotic environment. I think my favorite portraits are taken by documentary photographers, people who have spent a lot of time with their subjects and know who they are. The more you know your subject, the greater the ability to pierce into the essence of the person. I'm not talking about some idle banter that puts a person at ease in the studio but of a deeply researched knowledge into the person, the history, and the person's environment.

I recall one image published in a Camera Arts Magazine issue of a Cuban farm worker drinking from a cup. The photo was B&W and the photographer caught the man looking straight into the lens. The impact was incredible on me of how a simple image of a sweaty man drinking from a cup could reveal so much of the person and his environment. The shot was tightly framed around the man's head but given his sweat, his toiled dirtiness and the weathered hand holding the cup, you could see that the man has had a hard life. Looking at his eyes spoke volumes of the years of toil the man had endured and way of life in a third world country.

Personal Style
The evolution of my personal style and requirements of my less than stellar digital darkroom has meant that my medium format system is the one I grab most often nowadays. An auto focus 35mm SLR system still has its place but there is a certain joy I receive when working with the Bronica SQ-Ai. For sure, it is slower and for sure, I have missed some shots I could have gotten with a 35mm AF body and lens but it certainly rewards me better for my efforts. Viewing puny little 35mm slides and then trying to eke out the best in them for enlargements is currently a frustrating process and almost futile. The more I become involved in photography the more I see medium format as my ideal format when shooting film but I foresee a day in the not too distant future when I will be fully digital and eschew film altogether.

The range of lenses I own now is satisfactory for most of my needs but that does not mean I would not mind having lenses that are wider, longer, and closer focusing, but to quote Clint Eastwood in the movie Heartbreak Ridge, "You adapt, you improvise, you overcome!" The big, sexy telephoto lenses are a Siren's call but one that would have limited use for my personal style. A style that continues to evolve and be influenced by the many excellent photographers doing this day in and day out.

Music

Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
Ludwig van Beethoven’s 9th Symphony – Can there be another more awe-inspiring piece of music in all of classicdom? Inspiring in Beethoven’s heroic efforts to continue producing music while stone death, music so vital, so complex and so moving that hearing it causes one’s tiny little hairs at the back of the neck to stand on end. There are obviously so many choices available to the music lover from so many different recordings but this one stands out for me because everything about it seems so perfect in performance. Not the best of recordings in technical quality (meaning audiophile-approved) perhaps but the music should move people from being audiophiles to simply music lovers.

Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra
Is it politically correct to like a “pops” orchestra and the types of music favored by such groups? Just about anything recorded by this conductor and orchestra is excellent despite the sometimes-lighthearted repertoire. Everything from movie soundtracks to Saint-Saen’s Danse Macabre has been covered by this group and every time it has been excellent. The sonics produced by the group is the stuff of which audiophiles love to use to demonstrate their equipment and indeed on some recordings, Telarc warns of damage to a sound system due to the high levels of high frequency information. Wonderful dynamics with bass wallop that will move floors with every strike of the mallet on the timpani and kettledrums.

Connecticut Early Music Festival Ensemble – Igor Kipnis Director
Antonio Vivaldi’s Le Quattro Stagioni (The Four Seasons)
I first heard this group’s rendition of Vivaldi’s overplayed classic on a Chesky sampler CD. I bought the CD for its technical test tracks and didn’t think much of the music tracks because previous experience with audiophile labels and their choice of recording artists left me wanting in terms of musical fulfillment. Most times the artists (and I’m being overly generous here) though adequate singers and musicians, are severely lacking as performers of their original music. Much of the Chesky sampler fit the stereotype and it does seem cruel that second and third rate performers (*) should have their fare recorded with the highest quality while more favored mainstream artists have second or third rate recording quality. But one track stood out on this sampler and that was Vivaldi’s opening L’Inverno (Winter) track by the CEMFE.

This group utilizes authentic period instruments to play the music as the performers would have in Vivaldi’s time and this adds a very different perspective or signature to the sound that is not available from more modern groups. Add to this authenticism, a vitality in playing the music and the overplayed Four Seasons becomes a new and refreshing experience. Highly recommended!

(*) Some dogs that I’ve bought in the past were Chesky’s Rebecca Pidgeon and Sheffield Lab's Amanda McBroom (of The Rose fame). Audiophile labels should stick to safe recordings of jazz and classical groups rather then trying to seek out so-called talented contemporary artists who would never, ever be offered a recording contract with a major label – for good reason.

Sir Neville Mariner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields ensemble
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
A little night music anyone? This Phillips recording is perhaps not high on any audiophile’s play list but it is an interesting recording, a part of Phillips budget priced package of 5 CDs of some of Mozart’s best-known pieces. The recording of this group is intriguing in its very romantic and very lush overtones. The sound is slightly distant but never harsh and in some sound systems that tend towards too much warmth, it may sound turgid but played back on a lean system, it could be something.

Klaus Tennstedt and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Richard Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries – Music from the Ring Cycle
My vote for the best use of a classical piece of music in a movie? Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (*), the scene in which Robert Duvall’s Air Calvary swoops down on a Viet Cong village with Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries playing in the background. This piece of music is the epitome of the Romantic era of classical music in which the huge modern day orchestra had its major development and so many pieces written for it were hugely dynamic and bombastic.

(*) Great use of the Door’s The End too at the climax of the movie when the jungle peasants butcher the ox at the same time as Martin Sheen’s character butchers Marlon Brando’s Kurtz, both groups in a seemingly orgiastic ritual.

Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra with Rutgers University Choir
Karl Orff’s Carmina Burana – this piece is of the modern era but I can’t think of any other music that is so medieval in nature. Although the movie Excalibre used it during the scene when King Arthur, after sipping from the Holy Grail, regains his strength and leads his knights into battle against his incest-born son, I found the scene to be not good enough for the music. This music cries out for a bloodthirsty battle scene with horses galloping and stomping on hapless foot soldiers and the hero of the scene wielding and swinging his sword mightily and then finally vanquishing his foe.

Sometimes though the best movie battle scenes require no music, indeed no sound at all. Akira Kurasawa’s Ran has one of the most powerful battle scenes I’ve seen in the second act when the old Daimyo is trapped in his castle while his two oldest sons surround him to usurp his status as Great Lord of his lands. Hundreds of samurai soldiers swarm upon the hapless few meager warriors still serving the Great Lord and the blood flows in a dark and foggy battlefield. If you want to know where Steven Spielberg got his inspiration for the opening battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan, this is it right down to the soldier holding on to his decapitated limb.

Loreena McKennitt – anything by this Celtic influenced artist
A Winnipeg-raised but Stratford, Ontario residing singer-songwriter who was heavily influenced by Irish themes in her early career. Successive recordings saw some Spanish influences but Loreena McKennitt has this wonderful ability to meld indigenous and classical instruments with modern ones for a sound that is uniquely hers.

Enigma
This group hit the big time with a recording that utilized Gregorian Chant before Gregorian Chant actually got its big 15 minutes of trendy fame (overrated IMO). I’m not sure how you would classify this group’s music, whether you could call it techno new age or intellectual dance music (as oxymoronic as that may sound). It’s just good and at times very sensuous. The movie Matrix used track number two from Enigma’s second CD for its advertising trailers even though they didn’t actually use the music anywhere in the movie (at least not that I could hear).

Pink Floyd – the best for last

Why do I love this group’s music, in particular the songs written by Roger Waters? Hard to say. I finally discovered them when I started my descent into audiophilia-nervosa in 1992 and went after everything they put out like a drug addict finally discovering his narcotic of choice. Although I enjoyed discovering all phases of Pink Floyd’s musical output I can’t say that I truly relished much of Sid Barrett’s offerings from the early Floyd era. But Roger Water’s songs really hit me and to this day I can’t think of a more profound and perfect complete disc then Dark Side of the Moon. Wish You Were Here and The Wall come close and you can track Roger Water’s own descent into musical megalomania and near Barrett-like self-destruction in the late 1970s from these two later recordings..

Perhaps I fancied myself at odds with the world much as the Pink Floyd character in The Wall did though I think my anger at the world had more to do with the Baby-Buster generation’s frustrations in trying to stake out a piece of the world for themselves from the Baby-Boomers. The early 1990s were not particularly kind to university graduates trying to strike out on their own especially for Arts Degrees such as myself – worse yet a History Arts degree. Qualified to do absolutely nothing except debate whether or not history did come to an end in 1989 with the end of the Cold War (of course not, how ignorant) while flipping burgers at the local hamburger house.

I probably figured the world owed me something and thought of the Boomers as a bunch of lousy hypocrites who talked a good game about revolution and anti-establishment in the 1960s but when it came time to make money and raise families, they cut the shag hair and beards and fell into the cesspool that was the 1980s “greed is good” culture (the 1970s should just plain be forgotten). Okay, I’ve over-generalized everything here but I’m just trying to reveal the frame of mind that a lot of young twenty-somethings were feeling in the supposedly kinder, gentler and environmental 1990s. The Reagan-Bush years giving way to the Clinton-Gore years did little to reconcile my own feelings regarding the Boomers as Clinton just happened to luck into the biggest Bull Run of the stock market while revealing himself to be a man of low moral character and very questionable ethics. Not exactly an auspicious handing over of the reins of power from the Golden Era generation to the Boomer generation.

With that backdrop, I think I had a loner attitude and discovering Pink Floyd was the right music at the right time for me.

How many versions of the Wall is enough?

Update January 2003 - I was watching a DVD concert of Roger Water's In the Flesh concert from 2000 (those of you who have taken the time read about me at this website will know that I am a big-time Pink Floyd fan, especially the Roger Waters era). It struck me how much Roger Waters looks like Galen Rowell in their facial features, of course Roger Waters is tall and skinny whereas Galen Rowell was short and immensely fit. Anyway, it seemed Roger Waters in the 2000 concerts out Pink Floyd, Pink Floyd as led by current front man David Gilmour. The concert was super polished and the muscianship was even better than the original Floyd. It was not a super huge spectacle like the real Floyd's concerts, being more intimate; however with Roger Waters providing the key vocals, the concert seemed more "legitimate". Curiously, they even played Comfortably Numb, which has Roger Waters' lyrics but Gilmour's music and was not originally a part of the Wall concept. Only when the Wall producer Bob Ezrin threatened to leave did Waters sulk off for a day and come back with a completed song - incredible talent.

Literature

I’m not as well read as I should be and though I own a number of classics that I bought to enrich my knowledge and appreciation for fine writing, it seems I never have the time to sit down and just read. And when I say sit down and read, I mean to sit uninterrupted and really be able to get into a book and discover its hidden jewels. A household with two young children does not allow for that to happen very often if at all, why else would I be typing this web page late at night when everyone else is in bed, it’s the only time I have for myself and my thoughts.

Fine writing is the same as fine music (classical variety for me), it is a solitary endeavor that allows me to gather my thoughts and instill a small bit of order into my life. They are a window into a deeper level of consciousness, a transport to times and places that we can only imagine. I still hold out hope that one day I can write the great Canadian novel, a novel that reveals the experiences of myself (or my alter ego) and my culture and really when one reads great literature what are we really reading? The intimate knowledge and experiences of the author whether it be Saul Bellow or Mordecai Richler and their Jewish upbringing and culture or Earnest Hemmingway and his “lost generation” (or later on his love of hunting and fishing). I think I might have a few things to say about the Chinese-Canadian experience but perhaps I should wait for more maturity before embarking on such a project (note that I am in no way inferring that I have any talent as a writer though).

Umberto Eco – The Name of the Rose, Foucault’s Pendulum
An Italian academic who writes complex novels woven with much history. A challenging read and requires a fair amount of devotion to get through the works. Some may recognize The Name of the Rose as being the Sean Connery and Christian Slater movie and yes it is based upon the book and although fairly faithful not wholly so to the novel.
Foucault’s Pendulum is a conspiracy theorist’s ultimate book with the ancient Knights Templars behind all the ills of the world and keepers of its most fantastic secrets. Speaking of which, there is now speculation that the Knights Templars may have found the Ark of the Convent and/or the Holy Grail during their medieval crusades and hidden them in a Baltic area island. Pretty heady stuff.

Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenin
What an amazing book thought I when I first read it. A book that I just couldn’t put down and read every moment I had and I had to given its immense size. Tolstoy is great the first time go around but trying to slog through War and Peace was painful. The characters of the Russian aristocracy that Tolstoy revealed are a pathetic lot and wholly lacking in sympathetic qualities that I was annoyed to read of their follies in Anna Karenin but having to continue to read about them in a thousand plus pages in War and Peace was too much for me and I abandoned the epic.

Tom Clancy
Okay, Tom Clancy will never be considered as literature or even competent prose but I must admit I like his stories despite his rather rustic language. His penchant to over analyze the technical workings of a nuclear bomb or the Ebola Virus can be painful to read and his characters are slightly wooden (okay, so they give Pinocchio a run for his money) but I just like his action and the geo-political nature of the plots at the highest levels of government. He got a bit over the top with Executive Orders when he killed off Congress and the President and made his alter ego Jack Ryan the Man but I guess it was his way of editorializing how to resolve the ills befalling America.

Arthur Clarke – 2001 through to 3001
I’m not so sure that Arthur Clarke can also be considered literature too as his last couple of books in this milked for series bear more resemblance to pulp fiction then to a real statement on humanity. I get the impression that Clarke is more interested in writing about his ideas of the future and simply dressing them up with the Poole and Bowman characters from so long ago. But easy reading fare that will preoccupy a day or two per book.

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