Scene on the Road

I've always marveled at the illusion of the moon appearing larger near the horizon than it looks when it's higher up in the sky. That was the case this past Tuesday at dawn. I drove around for twenty minutes as the sky brightened, but I was unable to put anything in front of the moon for a photo before the sunrise blew it away (exposure-wise, anyway).

So the next morning I was prepared. I drove to the Camden waterfront intending to shoot the Philadelphia skyline but, as anyone who has ever watched moonrises or moonsets knows, 24 hours makes a huge difference in when each occurs. On Tuesday, moonset was at 7:31 a.m. When I made my second try on Wednesday morning, it wasn't until 8:04 a.m. that the moon went down over Philadelphia. With sunrise at pretty much the same time as the day before (at 7:17 a.m.) the moon was still high in the sky when the sun came up.

The U.S. Naval Observatory is the country's authority for "precise time and astrometry," as well as distributing "Earth orientation parameters and other astronomical data required for accurate navigation and fundamental astronomy." You can find out when the sun or moon set or rose anytime from Jan. 1, 1700 to when it will rise or set anytime up until Dec. 31, 2100 - anywhere in the world at this link:

I had given up on the low-on-the-horizon idea by Thursday, but I was still looking at the moon, and decided to try shooting it with geese, or something, anything along the Cooper River in Camden. That didn't work out either, but I did make one or two frames through the trees - just for fun - as I got out of my car.

Then I forgot all about it. I was't thinking of it even as I walked back from an assignment near Rittenhouse Square later in the day and noticed the Christmas Tree ornament in the forsythia bushes. I shot the bulb, from a couple angles - wishing it were red or green - half-thinking I could make it my "Photo of the Day." It wasn't until later in the afternoon, when I saw the images flash by on my laptop as my card was downloading that I realized both globes were in branches. And the silver ornament worked even better than if it had been red or green!

That's how I ended up with the moon-globe diptych for my Daily Photo yesterday, January 24, 2008.

Saturday's Daily Photo was originally this one of a yellow VW bug that I saw in the Rite Aid parking lot. When I took a second look after sleeping on it, I didn't think it worked. So I swapped it out early this morning for the photo above that I also shot yesterday. I have been keeping an eye on the Cherry Hill water tower as they prepare for maintenance and repainting, and originally planned on using it for a future posting.

Photographer Rosemary Mackintosh - a contributor from last summer's Road Trips blog - reminded me that the tower - and gas station - is the very same "Petit's Mobil Station, Cherry Hill, New Jersey" captured by New Jersey fine-art photographer George Tice. It's the cover of his book, Urban Landscapes: A New Jersey Portrait.

(Click here and then scroll down about halfway to see Rosemary's photo, also from New Jersey, of her sons on the early morning beach at Ocean City).

When I first realized I was moving to the state almost twenty years ago, the Tice photo happened to be one of the images I had in my mind. But for some reason, I always associated the picture with the industrial, stereotypical non-garden part of New Jersey. Who knows, I probably even thought the tower was a fuel storage tank.

That water tower is such a prominent landmark, right between I-295 and the NJ Turnpike, that it's easy to spot from the air. I always use it to get my bearings while looking out the window, approaching a landing at Philadelphia International Airport.

I hadn't thought about it much until Rosemary commented that my Day Sixty One Daily Photo of the gas pumps at Wawa reminded her of his photo. I remember a few years ago when I pulled into the 7-11 adjacent to the Tice gas station and water tower and realized where I was. I looked up, and there it was, like some larger-than-life 3D image in an outdoor museum.

Speaking of museums, I'm sure many of you have made your own versions of famous photographs. I asked here before, but now I'm broadening my request beyond New Jersey sites. If you have a picture you've taken, either on a photo pilgrimage, or one of a famous photo scene you just happened to revisit, please email it to me as a jpeg attachment at roadtrip@phillynews.com

Over the years Tice's is not the only well-known photo-scene I've stumbled upon. Maybe, like me, you were walking along the sidewalk and stared right at the very same Flatiron Building Edward J. Steichen (and Alfred Stieglitz and many, many others...) photographed in New York. Send them along, and I'll post some in the coming weeks.

Back to George Tice's photo. I graduated from high school in Las Vegas the same year, 1974, he took the photo. One of my friends even had a Dodge Charger like the one in the photo. Just a couple reasons the image always stuck with me. Since moving here, I heard from someone (I can't recall who, when or where) that the car in the photo belonged to a wrestler at Cherry Hill East HS, which is still just a few pennies worth of gas away on the same Kresson Road - even with the average price of gasoline almost doubling that year, climbing from 37.9 cents a gallon to 55.1 cents (the Oil Crisis).

And finally, the Tice photo was also an album cover. That's jazz guitarist Bill Frisell's 2001 CD, Blues Dream. Click on the image to hear a sample.

This day sees not only the one hundredth Daily Photo I've shot - so far - this year, it also marks the ten year anniversary of that "inside the local section black and white photo thing" as many readers call it.

That's right, before there was a Daily Photo on my blog there was (and still is) a Weekly Photo in the newspaper. The City Life photo made its inaugural appearance on a Thursday, on page B-2 in the City Edition of the Inquirer on April 9, 1998 (it's since morphed into Scene on the Street, and appears in all editions of the paper, still inside the B-Section, now on Mondays). Click on the montage above to see a slide show with color versions of some highlights (it's a straightforward contact sheet - no need to squint as in a previous montage - to see the overall image formed by all the tiny ones. These don't do anything but just sit there).

There was a server/platform problem here that kept me from uploading any photos since last Friday. I ended up describing some of the pictures (see below) but otherwise, the Daily Photo here was nothing but words all weekend.

It was fixed tonight, so I was able to go back and upload all my photos from the past four days. Except now I had a new problem. After a few days had passed, I started having second thoughts about some of the pictures, and and entertained ideas about re-editing some of them.

On Friday night, I attended a rehearsal of the Orchestra Society of Philadelphia. This is what I saw when I arrived in the parking lot:

I liked the shadows more than the musicians, so I moved in closer to favor that element:

Then a bird landed on the head of the taller statue. This is how I described it here when I was unable to post only words, no photos:

A white statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, on the summer solstice, with a bird standing on her head. I took it just minutes before summer officially arrived at 7:59 pm, so the orange/red evening sunset was lighting the statue and the adjacent wall casting shadows from nearby trees. Inside, with Jack Moore conducting, The Orchestra Society of Philadelphia rehearsed Tchaikovsky's Symphony #6 ("Pathetique").

And here's the one I used my Daily Photo:

What I didn't like about this photo is that, even a few days later, all I could see is that I wasn't paying attention to my background. In my defense, I guess I was thrilled when the bird alighted. Then, after I recovered from my good fortune, I made a quick photo, and started thinking about whether I could capture the bird in the air when it flew off. It would have been a much better photo if I had just bent my knees and leaned a little to the left. The bird would have been positioned against a lighter area of the wall, instead of a shadow. But I didn't, and then it took off.

It's a matter of luck, timing and thought.

I also revisited my ballet photo at Rutgers/Camden's Gordon Theater on Saturday. There was another frame I'd liked from the finale:

And then leaving after the performance, which was the first annual Workshop Performance of the two year old Northern Liberties ballet school, I was drove toward the river as the sun was setting on this first full day of summer. I was stuck not just by the light, but by how empty the streets of downtown Camden are, on an evening, on a weekend. Not until I hit the old RCA Nipper Building on the waterfront - now The Victor - did I even see so much as another car:

While watching the Olympics, seated in front of the television with my laptop, I ended up with a pretty extensive set of bookmarked links to blogs from lots of great photographers covering the games. The closing ceremonies are a day away now, but I figure the blogs should be up for a while, and will still make for informative and entertaining reading. So here they are, all in one place. Click on the photographer's names, and please let me know if I've missed any (just blogs, not "Picture of the Day" sites or those that require registration).

Zach Honig, PopPhoto.com
Vincent Laforet, Freelance
Rod Mar, Seattle Times
Kevin German, Freelance
Dan Powers, Appleton Post-Crescent
Chris Faytok, Newark Star-Ledger
Nhat V. Meyer, San Jose Mercury News
Chris Detrick, Salt Lake Tribune
Jens Dresling, Politiken, Copenhagen (English translation)
Mark J. Rebilas, Freelance
David Burnett, Freelance
Mike Powell, Freelance
George Bridges, McClatchy/Tribune
Jonathan Newton, Washington Post
Kenneth Jarecke, Freelance
Jerry T. Lai, Freelance
Richard Lautens, Lucas Oleniuk & Steve Russell, Toronto Star
Scott Strazzante, Chicago Tribune
Donald Miralle, Freelance
Sol Neelman, Freelance
Larry Steagall, Kitsap Sun
Matt Detrich, Indianapolis Star
Michael Martina, Freelance
Eric Seals, Detroit Free Press
Kari Kuukka, Freelance, Finland (English translation)
Getty Images, Agency
Reuters, Agency
Jeff Swinger, Cincinnati Enquirer
Marc Aspland, Times of London

The Phillies win over the Dodgers in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series kept a photo of the latest drop in the Dow off the Inquirer's front page today, but a quick glance at newspapers around the country shows what it could have looked like.

I put this collage together with images from the Newseum's daily collection of newspaper front pages. It's been this way most days since Wall Street has been on the brink of panic. I go to this site every once in a while, especially on a national story, to either see if everyone uses the exact same photo (this one by the AP's Richard Drew) or whether they all use different ones. Of course, that's one reason newspapers have staff photographers cover the news.

Want more economic photos? There's a blog out there, "Turning the economic crisis into one of those clever internet memes," created by an ad agency art director in Kansas City with pages after pages of...well, the name of the blog is Sad Guys on Trading Floors.

And don't forget to check out our images from the playoffs and individual player galleries on philly.com's new Phillies photos page. It will be updated throughout the NLCS, so keep checking after Game 2, all weekend - and through the World Series!
Phillies photos page">

To celebrate their 25th anniversary, Vanity Fair magazine’s editors have been making 25 best of lists. Adding to their lists of everything "from book covers and documentaries to parties and political one-liners," they just posted a slide show of their top 25 news photographs, including former Inquirer staffer John Paul Filo's Pulitzer Prize winning photo of Mary Ann Vecchio crying over the body of Jeffrey Miller, one of the victims of the Kent State shootings.

There are many of the usual suspects; the Hindenburg exploding, Joe Rosenthal's flag atop Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima and Malcolm Browne's, Eddie Adams' and Nick Ut's iconic images from Vietnam. But a lot of them are full frame, so they look a little different than the cropped versions we're more familiar with. Maybe to make it more VF-arsty? Like Harry Truman holding up an early edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune with the erroneous headline. This is W. Eugene Smith's version of the scene on the back of his railcar in the St. Louis Union Station as Truman took a victorious train ride back to Washington, DC the morning after his 1948 re-election.

You can also vote for your favorites elsewhere on VF Daily.

This is part two of a post on Inquirer and Daily News staff photographers coverage of the Phillies postseason. (Click for Part One) I was talking to Yong Kim and Ron Cortes about being in the team’s locker room in Los Angeles:

Yong Kim and Ron Cortes were both dowsed in the Phillies locker room during the beer and champagne showers. I already mentioned Ron’s protective gear, but he could have used some eyewear as well, like Pedro Feliz here as Utley pours it on. Ron said he could only shoot for a few minutes because he “got burned in my eyes from the champagne. It also eventually became almost impossible to shoot there as it was wall-to-wall people.”

Jerry Lodriguss wasn’t in Los Angeles, but I had to share this photo of him anyway from LAST YEAR, when the Phillies won the division. Jerry has the distinction of being the only photographer hired at either newspaper here specifically as a sports shooter. He was freelancing for Sports Illustrated at the time, and had worked before at the New Orleans Times-Picayune and for United Press International.

I thought his photo of Brett Myers scoring (with Jimmy Rollins behind him rounding third on Victorino's two-run single) in the second inning of Game 2 was shot with a remote.“Nope,” Jerry replied, “just happens we don’t have any…” He has used them before, and had a wireless remote at one time, but it broke and was never replaced. The Inquirer and Daily News photographers covering the series shot it pretty low tech, and without a lot of gear. They all use Canon EOS digitals, all 1D’s, either Mark III’s, II N’s or II’s. Most just use two bodies. Shooting on the field position they use 400mm f2.8’s and the 70-200 f/2.8. Sometimes for day games they might put a 1.4x converter on the 400. In California, the games started early enough that there was still daylight, but for the series now, they’re all scheduled for 8 p.m.

The single afternoon game at Citizens Bank Park for the NLCS gave photographers a chance to play with the light a little and shoot more than just game action. Mike caught Myers in a patch of sunlight running between first and second and Dave photographed him in deep shadow – at least compared to the sunny stands – while he was winding up on the mound.

I mentioned before the now-joint staff. Both newspapers used Ron’s photo of Lidge and Ruiz celebrating the pennant clinch on the front. The huge photo on the Inquirer’s wraparound “second front” photo was Dave’s. Behind the four shooters in L.A. were photo editor Alen Malott, photographer Michael Wirtz, filling in as an editor, and Michael Plunkett in the color lab. They were the ones here getting everything into the newspaper, and updating it as newer photos arrived from Mike’s laptop.

During the 1993 Series, the Inquirer had brand new color printing presses and was still working out a lot of the kinks, so deadlines were earlier than usual. So early that a lot of home delivery customers received newspapers on their front step in the morning that didn’t even have the final score of the previous night’s game.

No problems like that this time - everybody gets the latest news - except the few Inquirer readers in Harrisburg or Washington, DC. The front page on the left, the first edition, is what the out-of-town readers saw on the Thursday morning after Game 5.

Really different for the playoffs this time is the web, especially for photos. Jennifer Musser-Metz, lead systems analyst for Philly.com and web developer Nadya Harvey had been working on a newer template for slides shows, taking them out of Adobe Flash Player. The Phillies played their way into the postseason before it was completely automated, so Inquirer director of photography Hai Do and media editor Karl Stolleis have been hand-tweaking most of the photos in the galleries on the Phillies photo page. Hai is on his way to edit the game photos from St. Pete.

It has been a huge success. Last Thursday, the day after the clinch, the top four most read "stories" on the website were ALL Phillies photo galleries! Readers looking at Game 5, the fans celebration, the team's airport arrival made up 33.5 percent of the total site traffic.

Meanwhile, here in Philadelphia, photographers were out shooting action as well.

John Costello said he “wanted to do something with live tv,” ever since the first time he saw the high definition video screens in the atrium lobby of the Comcast Center.

John called in advance of the game, and they let him get up in the bucket truck they use for washing the windows. Unfortunately the broadcast format didn’t match, so they couldn’t get the game to show on the full 83 by 25 foot LED video screen and there weren’t very many baseball fans around to watch. But…on his way out he did photograph some fans watching from outside, before heading to South Philadelphia for the victory partying on Broad Street.

At the same time Steve Falk was documenting the fan action in Mayfair...

...and David Warren had South Jersey covered. Steve photographed the police arresting overzealous fans, while John said they mostly had a laissez-faire attitude. Around 1 o’clock in the morning though, he told me they starting saying “hey, I gotta get up in the morning…and so do you. Now break it up.”

Then, with a full week to first wait for Game One of the World Series begins, it's on to feature stories about the fans getting RED-dy!!

Senior photographer Clem Murray photographed Sister Elizabeth Anne DeWaele, who teaches fourth grade at St. Thomas Apostle School in Glen Mills.

Inquirer photographer Eric Mencher just told me about Gen. Colin Powell citing a still photograph in his endorsement of Barak Obama over the weekend. Powell told Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press he saw the picture in a magazine "photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan." I asked Eric if he knew what the photo was. He didn't but said Maureen Dowd had a column on it in the NY Times today. After reading her column, and learning Powell had seen the photo in the New Yorker, I knew right away it was the work of Platon, a part of his portfolio “Service,” about men and women who volunteered to serve in the military and were sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. I was just looking at the whole set of photographs myself just last week.

Powell said it was the crescent and star denoting the soldier's Islamic faith that touched him, and he was troubled by Republican's falsely suggesting that Obama is a Muslim and therefore associated with terrorists.

Wow, I was thinking as Eric mentioned it to me. It's always great to hear about a photographer influencing world events. I have to confess though, I was hoping the picture was shot by some unknown newspaper photographer toiling away somewhere shooting photo essays nobody wants to publish, but are subjects that are important and deeply personal to him or her…

Back in the late 90's while still an art student in London, British Vogue named Platon the “best up-and-coming photographer.”

His debut book, “Platon’s Republic” was a collection of portraits of powerful Americans. The most familiar picture is the one that became known as the Bill Clinton “crotch shot” after it appeared on the cover of Esquire in 2000. The New Yorker also has a podcast interview with Platon about his subjects and his pictures.

As Eric said to me as we walked in the Inquirer hallway, "It shows people do pay attention to still photography and it does matter."

I read yesterday that Cecil Stoughton died Monday at the age of 88.

He was the White House photographer who shot the iconic image of Lyndon B. Johnson taking the oath of office in the cramped cabin of Air Force One with Jacqueline Kennedy at his side.
The AP story quoted his son Jamie Stoughton saying, "He was under tremendous pressure, If his camera had failed, who knows what would have happened. It was the only proof that Johnson had been sworn in."

Photographer Peter Tobia just told me the story about how that almost actually happened. Margalit Fox says in the New York Times obit today that after barely making it to the airport, almost getting shot by the police as he rushed the tarmac, switching from color to black & white film (newspapers weren't using color then) as the swearing-in began, and standing on a couch at the back of the plane - nothing happened when he first pressed the shutter on his Hasselblad. But then he "jiggled" the camera.

I hadn't heard that story before.

The New York Times didn't have their "Year in Pictures" site up yet over the weekend when I compiled all the links in my previous post, so I'm adding it here now.

The photos are just outstanding.

But what's even more extraordinary is the newspaper offers up such a marvelous, interesting, entertaining, enlightening and unique view of our world - all produced by staff photographers and freelancers working on assignment.

That is especially impressive these days when any newspaper, magazine, or website can fill themselves entirely with all the exact same photographs as every other newspaper, magazine or website. It makes you appreciate what exclusive content really means.