CityArt art

My wife Lisa looking at "Fowl Ball" by Lee W. Badger.

A couple of weeks ago I was assigned to shoot the installation of the CityArt Walking Sculpture Tour in downtown Mankato and North Mankato. 25 sculptures were placed in the two cities for a year for walkers to enjoy.

My wife Lisa and I took advantage of one of the few spring days without rain to look at the sculptures. We both definitely had our favorites, and no, we didn't really agree. The good part of the sculptures selected for the walking tour is that they are so varied in style and substance that everyone should find a piece they like.


Our excursion took place on a Sunday morning after going to church downtown. While my cameras are in the truck nearly all the time, we took Lisa's car that morning and all I had with me was my relatively new iPhone. Now, much has been made of all the photography apps available on the iPhone and how handy the little gadget has become. Since the photography bug hit me that morning I thought I'd put it through its paces.

I had a good time taking various pictures of the sculptures, exploring their angles, details, and the way the changing light fell on each sculpture. The iPhone's camera performed pretty well, though it was certainly not my trusty SLRs. I chose not to use any of the App Store's many photography programs to process the images. They're pretty much straight out of the phone. Of course, being a gadget freak, if anyone has any recommendations on a favorite camera app for the iPhone, I'll listen!

I didn't shoot a picture of every sculpture. I did include one photo shot with my D300 from my installation assignment. Any idea which one it is?

We're back!

"The Blink of an Eye" has returned! After a nearly year-long hiatus from blogging we're back with a new design and new features. Take a few minutes to look around and see what's new.

We've added informational links across the top and renamed our "Photos of the Week" feature "The Week in Pictures" to better reflect what it is: A look back on the images that caught our eye in the past week. Click on it each Tuesday after 5 p.m. to see a new slideshow of images from local, state and national photographers.

Most of the posts will be by me. John Cross will be making occasional posts as a contributor, but I'll be doing the heavy lifting. We hope to turn "The Blink of an Eye" into a place to share some of our personal work and continue to give insights into the stories behind the photos we shoot every day.

Check back with us a couple of times a week to see what's new!

The last roll of Kodachrome

Award-winning National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry shot this photo of an Afghan girl for the magazines cover in 1984. The photograph is one of the magazine's most recognized pictures. What isn't as widely known is that the medium the photograph was shot with is perhaps more iconic than the photograph itself: Kodachrome slide film.

Immortalized in a Paul Simon song, Kodachrome has been used by professional photographers for decades for its color saturation and archival qualities, until now. Last year Kodak discontinued the film in favor of concentrating on its digital offerings. There is only one photo lab in the world processing the last rolls of Kodacrome in circulation, Dwayne's Photo Service in Parsons, Kan.

McCurry was given the last roll of Kodachrome ever to come off of the production line. The roll was recently processed at Dwayne's, but it's contents are a closely guarded secret until next year, when it will be the subject of a National Geographic documentary.

National Public Radio did an interview with McCurry last week after completing his shoot. Take a few minutes to read or listen to it. It provides some great insights into McCurry's thought process. What got my attention was how nervous he was shooting assignment. I guess it's good to know that even very accomplished and successful photographers like McCurry still get nervous once in a while.

Vacation?

While we're on vacation my wife often asks me if what we're doing is really vacation if I'm taking pictures all the time. I usually tell her it is, and try to tone down my tendency to wander off with the camera, at least for a little while. It can be difficult to separate work from play sometimes when your vocation and your favorite hobby are one in the same. While I've taken "photo vacations" where I specifically go somewhere to take pictures, I do my best to not spend an entire vacation behind the viewfinder.

This weekend, while camping in Lake City, I didn't shoot a frame. Not one. Not with our point and shoot. Not with my professional-level cameras. Not even with someone else's camera. A very rare thing indeed, but sometimes a welcome one. The long Memorial Day weekend came at a perfect time for me to recharge before the spring high school sports tournaments start. In this case, recharging meant putting the camera down and walking away slowly.

Most of the time, I'm pretty good at keeping my work-style shooting separate from my recreational-style shooting. I can usually take time here or there as we do things to pull out the camera and explore something I find interesting, but not let shooting dominate our precious vacation time. Of course, there are times when I can't resist. Let's face it, a lot of the places my wife and I like to go are very photogenic. But I work pretty hard to not follow around someone else's family on vacation because I really need a person in a photo.

(Ok, there was that one time at Gooseberry Falls with the dad and his daughter on his shoulders walking through the water, but it was just that one time!)

In Praise of Life magazine

One of my favorite things to do is to page through a vintage Life magazine.
The magazine may be unfamiliar to anyone younger than a baby-boomer but in it's day, it was the weekly magazine to subscribe to.
The whole basis for the magazine which first was published in 1936 was as photo-journalistic endeavor where words and photographs, especially photographs, brought the news of the week, of lifestyles, features, to the American citizenry.
It was a fixture in millions of other households during the 40s, 50s and 60s.
The list of staff photographers found in the masthead over the years read like a who's who of famed image makers: W. Eugene Smith, Alfred Eisensteadt, Larry Burrows, Gordon Parks, Margaret Bourke-White, just to name a few.
And it's a fair bet that if you conjure up some vintage iconic image, odds are good it first appeared in Life.
At its peak in the 1960s, the weekly magazine had a circulation of more than 8 million.
In its day, Life was a gold mine from the ad revenue it earned for its parent company, Time, Inc.
An ad in Life was considered the gold standard of advertising. Nowadays, you'll see an item hanging in a store aisle touting "As seen on TV!" but back in the 50s and even into the 60s, the mantra was "As seen in Life!"
As a photojournalist I enjoy the editorial content of a vintage Life magazine, but even more entertaining is the advertising that was replete in its pages.
The advertising provides a revealing peek into the way things were. Or in some cases, the way people wished things were.
How about pink appliances? No doubt there were a few folks who wound up regretting their early 50s purchase of the pink refrigerator and matching stove they saw advertised in Life by the time avocado-green and copper-toned appliances became stylish in the early 60s.
And the shine of a '58 Packard automobile that was glowingly spread across two pages of the Sept. 22, 1958 issue of Life may have dimmed a bit for anyone who purchased one and just a year later, the Studebaker-Packard Company then decided to drop the Packard name plate.
Life magazine folded in December, 1972.
I was a photojournalism student at the University of Minnesota when the announcement was made that the magazine was ceasing publication due to rising postal rates and declining ad revenue.
I and several of my classmates indulged in numerous libations that evening as we discussed the significance of the magazine's demise. Life magazine was, after all, the photo-journalistic summit to which we all aspired.
From 1978 to 2000, Life was revived as a monthly publication and arguably, it still published some memorable images by talented photographers.
But I think some of the luster of Life, a grandly formatted weekly magazine that arrived without fail in millions of American households was lost in the transition to a smaller, monthly version.
And today when I find one of those old copies of Life, whether it's in pristine condition or moldy and mouse-nibbled like the one I carefully paged through the other evening, it's always like finding a treasure.