Forgotten Photographer: Vivian Maier

I love taking photos.  I have thousands that will never be seen beyond the preview pane in Lightroom but there are a handful that I think are good enough to share.  I have Flickr, 500px and Facebook accounts as well as an online portfolio and this blog.  Combined they are a great way to get my images seen without having to spend too much money and time.  My Flickr photos, for example, have amassed over 40,000 independent views since I opened my account:

Imagine then what is it like to be a photographer who never shared any of their images.  Despite taking hundreds of thousands of images Vivian Maier (1926-2009) was not recognised as an amazing photographer until after her death.  Working as a nanny in the 1950-60's she filled her spare time taking candid images on the streets of France, New York, Chicago and dozens of other locations.



In 1949 Vivian took an interest in photography and started shooting with a Kodak Brownie camera.  In 1951 her work as a nanny brought her back to New York and the following year she bought a Rolleiflex camera in order to improve her images.  Several years later she made the switch to colour film and started using a Leica IIIc.  The move into colour also marked a change in photographic subject.  Her images became less about people and more abstract.  Found objects such as rubbish and graffiti became her focal point.  Her poor financial state in the late 1980's meant the she struggled to pay for film processing costs.  Despite this she continued to shoot but the rolls of undeveloped film began to mount up.  Many of her possessions, including her negatives and films, were put into storage as Vivian temporarily became homeless.  In 2007 the locker containing her photographs was sold to John Maloof to cover unpaid rent bills.



Vivian was taken to hospital in 2008 after slipping on ice and injuring her head.  She was expected to make a full recovery, but instead her health began to deteriorate forcing her into a nursing home. Vivian died in the nursing home in April 2009.



Maloof was working on a book about New York and was after images showing the city through the ages.  He was not aware of the photographic importance of his purchase until he started posting some of the images on his Flickr pages.  Feedback started to pour in and the artistic world sat up and took notice.

A Chicago broadcast station was one of the first to tell the story of Vivian Maier and they have several videos about her.  The first was aired in December 2010 and can be found below.

They revisited the story in August 2012 with two more interesting pieces:

 

Various news agencies have picked up on the Maier story but the BBC World News has one of the better articles.



The story of Vivian Mayer and the Maloof Collection has recently been turned into a documentary film and is currently in the final stages of production.  A short segment of the film has been released on CBS and can be found here.  I'm personally not sure if I'm a fan of the cheesy American voice-over, but hopefully that won't be present in the final release.



For those seeking to own any of Vivian Maier's work it may be possible to buy limited edition prints from the Howard Greenberg Gallery.  As there are no prices listed then I dread to think how much the prints actually are!




For a more realistically priced purchase you can try one of the two books of her work that are currently available.  Vivian Maier Street Photographer is currently selling for around £23.  A book containing alternative images from a separate collection is Vivian Maier Out of the Shadows £30.  These images are from the Jerry Goldstein collection of 20,000 of Maier's images.  Although the print quality of this book is considered to be higher than that of the Maloof book it seems from reviews that the cheaper book contains the strongest images (and Maloof has almost 100,000 source images to chose from!).




All images are Copyright the Maloof Collection 2013.

Liverpool Street Shoot

Liverpool Street Shoot

I went to Liverpool on Saturday, principally to visit the Open Eye Gallery, but also to try some more street photography.  The gallery itself was a bit of a disappointment but I really enjoyed wandering around a new city grabbing shots as I went.

The image shown above was taken minutes after arriving in the city, it's the stairway in large underground car park.  Some children were playing on the semi-transparent roof and it created a strange abstract image when I looked straight up at it.

Currently I'm drawn to capturing images of the older generation.  This group caught my eye as I walked between two shopping centres.  The postures and interactions between the two pairs was appealing.  The lady with the legs crossed in the 'wrong' direction serves as the focal point for the shot and I was lucky that they were sat under a stairway as this created a relatively neutral background for me.  I love that each of the subjects has a different facial expression, I wish the lady on the left hadn't caught sight of the camera.  The camera, my GX1, worked as brilliantly as ever at capturing detail - you can even see the support sock on the lady second from the left. 

This street performer was keeping a large crowd enthralled.  I just caught the end of his first drum solo and put some money in his bowl.  This made me more confident about taking photos of him and I tried several different positions and angles until I thought I had something usable.  One of the bad habits I'm trying to overcome is 'chimping'.  This is where you take a photo and then, straight away, stare at the LCD screen and make 'ooh ahh' sounds.  It's a bad habit as you can guarantee that the 'decisive moment' will occur as you look at the screen and you will miss it.  I am also trying to shoot at the 14mm end of my telephoto lens as it forces me closer to my subjects and gives a more personal feel to the images.  As with all my black and white images I converted this using the truly amazing Silver Efex Pro 2 software.  For this shot I had to use individual control points to lighten the drummer's face very slightly to improve it as a focal point at the top of the bucket-bottle-face triangle. I was lucky that in this image two of the bystanders were looking straight at the drummer and this helps to bring the viewer's eye back into the frame.

This final image was taken whilst I was grabbing some calories in a fast food restaurant.  I was sat in the window so I could try and take pictures of people gawping at a large menu board.  I happened to notice that a second menu board was splitting the harsh midday light into two distinct beams.  I waited patiently for someone to sit at the window and was lucky enough that this guy came along.  He was setting up his meal and very distracted and so I grabbed two frames as he dipped his head into the light beam.  

There are a few more images from the day on my Flickr pages and you can see them HERE

Lumix GX1 Test Shoot

Shrewsbury flooded

First Shots with Lumix GX1

If you saw my last post you will know that I have recently bought a Panasonic Lumix GX1 with the 14-42mm power zoom lens.  I decided that I would take it out for a test run and see how it coped with some street photography.  I have a Canon 5D Mk2 but trying to shoot subtlely with this beast is impossible and so I needed a smaller camera (but couldn't afford an X-pro1!).

I decided to see how good that camera would be in its iAuto mode - it looks at each scene and chooses an appropriate shooting mode based on what it thinks it is taking.   All of the images shown have been tweaked in Lightroom 4.1 to try and get the best from them.  If you click on each image you should be able to see a larger version.

Speeding Cyclist

The shot of the cyclist was taken with me standing stationary and panning as the cyclist shot past.  The image seems dark overall but this is because the clouds were gathering and it was about to rain.  

Flick the Vees

For this image I was walking towards the group of lads and gave the camera about a second to focus before pressing the shutter all the way down.  There is a little bit of blur at the feet but the shot is definitely usable and prints well at 8x10 size.  The conversion to black and white was done by simply desaturating the image in Lightroom so more work would be needed if I was using this image properly.

Grocery Store

The camera handled all the colours of these bright shelves really well and only some very minor tweaking was required to get this to an acceptable level.

Newspaper Sellers

Another B&W conversion but for this image I used Silver Efex Pro 2 to give me much more control over what was happening.  Once I was happy with the conversion I added some film grain to give a slightly more retro feel to the image.  I took this shot by shooting between passing groups of pedestrians but despite the tricky conditions the camera did really well.  For future shoots I am going to look at setting one of the custom functions to work in iAuto mode but with a black and white LCD display (still capturing in RAW).

Smoker BW

Silver Efex again to adjust this image.  I've included the original shot as it appeared when imported into Lightroom as a comparison.  I had to remove a few distracting light spots but you can see just how much detail this little camera is able to capture.  I was walking past the doorway at a normal walking speed and gave the camera barely any time to focus and shoot.  There is some blur visible in the image but I think it is perfectly acceptable.  If I needed a sharper image then all I would need to do is halt briefly mid step and the shot will be sharper.

Smoker original shot

Passengers 

I have taken quite a few shots of passengers as they travel and I know how tricky this can be.  My Canon G9 would never be able to handle it and even some of my 5D shots were pretty poor.  This shot was taken as I waited in my car at traffic lights.  The bus pulled up alongside and so I wound down my window and fired off two shots.  I had to increase the vibrancy and contrast in Lightroom to pull out all the details but the camera coped well.  The sensor has a dynamic range of 18EV and so it is easy to shoot dark and recover highlights later - the clouds in the top left of the frame appeared 'blown' but reducing highlights in LR easily recovered the hidden detail.

Summary

I love this little gem of a camera.  I took 102 photos during the two hours I was walking through the streets and after importing them into Lightroom was delighted to discover that 80 were usable.  A similar test with my G9 last year gave me about 10 usable shots out of 100!  Although it was initially hard for me to trust the camera in iAuto mode it actually works very well.  Since taking these shots I've discovered an iAuto+ mode that does all the hard work but allows some additional control over depth of field, focus point, exposure and white balance.  

The power zoom kit lens worked well and was fast and responsive.  It is possible to set the zoom into a faster mode but the level of fine control is lost so I stuck with 'standard' speed.  A lot of the images appeared to have problems when bright reds were captured.  This problem was less obvious when looking at the same shots on an iPhone and MacBook Air, so it may be time to buy a calibrator for my monitor (although none of my G9/5D shots have this issue).  

I had the camera in my pocket without a strap attached and it definitely cost me a second or two to get the camera out.  I would recommend a neck or wrist strap if you were trying to capture street candids but the benefit of keeping the camera in my pocket is that it wasn't on display and so didn't alert my subjects.

The camera is not weather sealed and there are warnings all through the documentation about this.  I was shooting in drizzle for some of the time and this caused me some concern.  When the camera is powered down the telephoto lens retracts and this drags any rain droplets on the lens into the lens housing so use with caution!

The battery is still showing a full three bars after the shoot and I'm using a genuine Lumix battery pack.  I have ordered a third party battery as an emergency back up and I'll report on that later.

More of the images from the shoot are on my Flickr stream and can be seen HERE