May 03, 2012 at 3:18 pm

May 03, 2012 at 2:48 pm

Apr 09, 2012 at 10:29 am

The 51st annual Concours d'Elegance car show was held Sunday at the Muny in Forest Park.

BY TIM O'NEIL • toneil@post-dispatch.com > 314-340-8132 Apr 02, 2012 at 12:05 am

A butcher bought the house in 1874 and turned it into his meat shop, where he and his partner made sausage.

Robert Cohen Dec 11, 2011 at 8:19 am

Robert Cohen Nov 27, 2011 at 8:27 am

Erik Lunsford Oct 06, 2011 at 7:24 pm

While the world mourns the loss of Apple visionary Steve Jobs, I remembered a commencement speech he gave a few years ago at Stanford University which reminded me how important it is to live life with passion and zeal for something you love. 

For me, that passion is photography, whether out making pictures or teaching it at the university. The art and soul of photography, the pursuit of it, is deeply satisfying. 

"Your time is limited," said Jobs, "so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

One day I may be forced to step down from the great job of being a newspaper photojournalist  -- it could be as simple as a budgetary decision for the paper or as epic as a dramatic shift in the newspaper industry -- either way, regardless of what happens, I will always love the art and soul of photography. 

Jobs quoted a magazine he used to read that signed off in the last issue with the phrase "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

Robert Cohen Oct 03, 2011 at 11:13 am

Name one urban city that would empty its city hall, bar the mayor from his own office and allow a bunch of college students to drive a city vehicle or two. 

It's an unlikely scenario anywhere but rural America...and I feel fortunate to have been among the gate crashers.

This past weekend budding photojournalists from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale produced the third installment of 'South of 64', a photojournalism project documenting small Illinois towns led by veteran journalist and SIUC assistant professor Mark Dolan.

Students fanned out across the Tri-C area just east of Carbondale, producing photographs that told the stories of the citizens of Carterville, Cambria and Crainville.  The young photojournalists spent time with high schoolers preparing for homecoming and with pumpkin farmers. They attended the Lions Club garage sale and a wedding.

They embraced a community that welcomed them with open arms - a community that literally evacuated its own city hall in Carterville to make room for a 'photojournalism command post', home to a dozen computers for picture editors and veteran photographers that were brought in from across the country to help the students tell their stories.  The mayor's office became a home for video interviews.  And the townspeople even fed us!

Erik M. Lunsford Sep 27, 2011 at 3:30 pm

Regular readers of the blog will know I have a warm spot in my heart for compact cameras. It isn't necessary to reestablish that relationship at this point. however, we seem to be at a sort of crossroads in the industry. The quality and technology of digital SLR cameras continues to integrate with smaller, pocketable cameras, bridging new classes of cameras into a hybrid of sorts, those commonly called mirrorless cameras, or EVIL for short (electronic viewfinder w/ interchangeable lens). These small cameras lose the pentaprism and mirror box found on digital SLR cameras, and integrate the electronic viewfinders and control layouts of point and shoot cameras. The end camera is a product that has a slightly larger sensor than that of a point and shoot camera, remarkably smaller than a full-frame digital sensor (which has remarkable imaging capability,) into a small and compact body wielding technology normally reserved for the larger SLR cameras. If someone asked me what their place is in the world of digital photography, I would say that it fills a gap between limiting point and shoot cameras and bulky DSLR cameras. With interchangeable lenses and lens mount adaptors, a new world of high-quality compact cameras with a wide variety of lensing options becomes available, and that has interesting ramifications for our work as photojournalists.

If you visit the site of Nikon's new mirrorless cameras, the J1 and V1 (www.nikonusa.com), you'll find pictures of happy kids and vacation memories. On first glance these cameras seem set for well-heeled amateurs and family snappers. But dig deeper and you'll find a remarkable list of technology:

1.  10 frames a second capture with full autofocus, but up to 60 frames a second at full 10mp resolution using an electronic shutter.

2. 1080/60i video capture (same as our high-def Canon XH-A1 video cameras)

3. the option to attach a microphone or dedicated flash unit.

Erik Lunsford Sep 06, 2011 at 10:15 pm

Photographer Richard Misrach is used to photographing with a large view camera, generally an 8x10. As he documented the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Misrach carried a small point and shoot pocket camera, acting as a sort of visual notebook, to record the surrounding visual information for his 8x10 exposures. As he photographed, Misrach used the pocket camera to record streets and signs for later use, in the process photographing homes with phrases or markings that were indicative of the relationship victims had with Hurricane Katrina. 

In this video, posted by dvafoto, Misrach talks about his exhibit "Destroy this Memory," which was produced with the point and shoot photographs. Regular readers know how much of a proponent this author is to using point and shoot cameras not only for assignments and commissions, but as Susan Sontag would say, for "souvenirs of daily life." It is these souvenirs, this visual notebook, that Misrach produced into a tragic set of photographs. The idea that a humble pocket camera objectified the subjective view of the photographer into a stunning art exhibit is, at the very least, incredibly pleasing.

Erik M. Lunsford Aug 31, 2011 at 10:30 pm

At this moment, I’m looking for a specific number of photographs uploaded just today on the popular photo hosting site Flickr.

While I’m unable to find an exact number, I’m certain it’s probably in the seven figures. And, while that isn’t a problem – it’s rather exciting, actually – it’s disturbing to know those photographs that continue to live in a digital world may never enjoy the possibility of living life as a tangible print.

So, in a rather public service announcement sort of way, have you taken the time to print out your photographs? There is something wonderful about holding up a suspended piece of reality, enjoying the emotional response of viewing a print, whether it is a magnificent landscape or a loved one.

Now, take it one step further and mount the print on the wall – as Susan Sontag says in her book “On Photography,” photographs not only package the world, but themselves invite packaging. Have the photograph framed and place it in a location that will attract eyes. Better yet, have a good story on hand about the photo whenever passing visitors ask about its origins.

We may have memory cards that contain thousands upon thousands of photographs, and we may upload and share photos like it’s going out of style, but there just isn’t the same feeling from a digitized image as one printed out on paper. Go ahead, stick a thumbtack through one for the corkboard or keep one as a bookmark in a book. Either way, not everything needs to live online. The walls need love, too.

Erik Lunsford Aug 19, 2011 at 9:00 pm

Inch closer, it's okay. Closer, closer, watch your nose, there you go. Take a look at the linen-like latticework and the painterly watercolors of the roses and wood table. Notice the weathered edges of the household products improvising as a vase for the dozen flowers. Pretty good Photoshop work, right?

An editor asks if this was made using a texture filter in Photoshop. Conceivable, believable, but hardly correct. In fact, other than a few simple color corrections, there isn't anything Photoshop about this print. This is a DIY art project, pure and simple. First, a disclaimer:

To be creative in the newsroom, think DIY. Finding money to fund a conceptual photographic illustration is akin to the elusive search for water on Mars. 

Having said that, when Features landed a story in my lap about household products that could be used to possibly extend the life of fresh cut flowers, I was afoot with ideas. The first concept was to build a flower out of the household projects -- fun, but a little tired since we've done a few of these build-your-own illustrations recently. Next, we conjured up a plan to document the life of a rose from its humble cut beginnings to the faded end by photographing a string of roses in different stages of life. Try finding a dozen half-dying roses and you'll quickly find out that this is a path leading nowhere. Finally, the night before the shoot, a quick chat with idea-magnet and fellow photographer Laurie Skrivan helped solidify a champ of a concept -- use the household products as vases for a dozen roses. Aha, why didn't I think of that? Lesson learned, my friends, always bounce ideas off other creative minds.

On the day of the shoot, we arranged a dozen roses in emptied bottles of items ranging from Listerine to Clorox bleach, and photographed them in the Post-Dispatch studio using lighting that closely resembled -- which was my intent -- that of a Flemish still-life flower painting.

Erik M. Lunsford Aug 09, 2011 at 5:45 pm

Once in awhile, the proverbial photographic stars align for the perfect photograph that really emotes a photographer's style and vision. Working at a newspaper, finding photographs that meet that combination can be difficult, given time constraints and the fact that a large bulk of assignments don't lend themselves very well to the perfect marriage of content and form.

Recently, the need for a last-minute, last-ditch effort for a heat feature sent me to Six Flags. Here was the plan -- hatched over a year ago -- photograph an aerial view of a very crowded swimming pool of heat-relief seekers. Inspiration came from Joel Sternfeld with his cover photo from the amazing photo book American Prospects and Vincent Laforet's aerials. We tried for it last year but the busy news schedule just did not work out to our advantage.

Nevetheless, as I made the trek out to the Hurricane Harbor waterpark, I found a large funnel shaped water attraction next to the pool -- known as the Tornado from PR exec Melissa Vogt -- and it was love at first sight for a photographer with a penchant for color and light. With a striking yellow and blue pattern, it was easy to lose sight of my original goal and instead focus on the lovely Tornado (not that those two words go together like that, but in this case it does). Fifteen minutes later, about a quart of sweat down my shirt in blazing heat, and two dozen frames, and voila -- one of my favorite images this year. Since it took a bit of a crop in the paper, here is the unfettered frame with the exact framing I made over sweat-bleary eyes. Enjoy.

Erik M. Lunsford Jul 28, 2011 at 3:00 pm

Think back to your vacation photographs. The awkward compositions, stitled smiles at landmarks, or even moments of family and strangers caught in the latticework of time long ago. We remember them with fondness and intrigue, wondering what we were thinking or feeling when we released the shutter.

La Lettre de la Photographie, hands down one of my top five daily reads and favorite photography blogs, is on holiday (what we call vacation in the States). Much like the most of Europe, the staff has fled their offices for beaches and other venues of relaxation. In the meantime, they've compiled an anthology of holiday photographs from their readership, posting them daily. There is a thoughtful collection of memories and visual memoirs just waiting for your eyes. Have a look.

Having just myself returned from vacation in London and Paris, I already long to return without the responsibilities of daily life. That's the beauty of holiday -- it's a suspension of our daily rituals into a different life, even if  it is just a few hours or days. It's the perfect time to commit that different life to film.

J.B. Forbes and Robert Cohen Jul 23, 2011 at 3:45 pm

Please join Post-Dispatch journalists July 29 for a gallery show of images from the Joplin tornado, a benefit for the Community Foundation of Southwest Missouri. The one-night event will be held in the Loop at the Regional Arts Commission, 6128 Delmar, across from the Pageant.

While there is no admission fee, donations by cash and check are encouraged. There will also be a silent auction of the displayed prints and lots of door prizes!

This evening is brought to you by the RAC, who donated the space and wine; Schiller's Camera, who donated the printing costs in partnership with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; and the musical talents of our own Christopher Ave along with the Ruusukaali String Trio. We thank you all!

Look forward to seeing everyone next Friday July 29th at the RAC!

Robert Cohen Jul 07, 2011 at 4:15 pm

REUNION: A social gathering attended by members of a certain group of people who have not seen each other for some time.

Whether high school, college, military, family, or in this case the Girl Scouts, the questions and feelings are constant.

What will everyone look like?  Are my friends coming?  Will they recognize me?  Is there time to lose some weight?

In St. Louis alone, there were likely dozens of reunions last weekend.  So commonplace, it takes something really unique for one to get the newspaper's attention and warrant a story.

Thirty-five years ago Girl Scout Troop 1759 disbanded quietly after nine years.  Most of the girls headed to college, found jobs, started families.

Erik M. Lunsford Jun 30, 2011 at 4:00 pm

John Stanmeyer, a founding member of the VII photographic agency, wrote a detailed and absorbing blog post answering (in several parts) the often asked question:

"What's it like photographing a National Geographic story?"

Reading like a conversational instruction manual, Stanmeyer lays out his thoughts and insights into "demystify[ing] the experience, sharing insight and nuances on how such long-term projects originate until the magazine arrives in your mail slot..."

So, what is it like to photograph a NG story? Well, it's complicated, according to Stanmeyer, with research, research, research (and more research) along with successful pitches (see the email he wrote to the NG photo editor David Griffin) and, as if he couldn't have said it better, a dash of serendipity. Here are my favorite quotes to live by as a photojournalist. I'm very familiar with the first one...having ruined plenty of equipment in the course of photographic equipment in my short career.

"For one thing, I tend to get very wet and ruin equipment."

by J.B. Forbes Jun 06, 2011 at 11:56 am

    Several people have asked me to blog about how I was able to photograph the end of the chase last week when Jefferson County deputies were converging on a suspect in his car. I've been so busy that I put it off until now.

    My luck started with a phone call from assignment editor Lynden Steele. I was sitting in Panera Bread Co. at Watson and Lindbergh working on pictures from a previous assignment. Steele told me that Jeff Co. deputies were chasing a suspect north on Highway 21 from Hillsboro. The suspect was wanted for injuring a deputy with his car. At that moment, the chase was passing Highway M heading north.

    I thought the chase would surely conclude long before I could get anywhere close. The one smart thing I did as I got in the car was to turn on my cameras and put them on the seat next to me. I started racing toward what I thought would be an intercept point.

    When I got onto southbound Tesson Ferry (which is also Highway 21)  I made it about a half mile to Schuessler Road where a St. Louis County police car was sitting crossways across the intersection. By now, my scanner was telling me that the chase had crossed the Meramec River and was coming my way. I decided to stop on the side of the road and see what the county officer was going to do.

    Suddenly, the county car pulled away from the intersection. I hadn't heard any traffic for several seconds on the scanner and thought maybe the chase had ended and I was missing out. So, I started driving south again. I hadn't driven a half a block when I saw the chase coming right at me. The suspect, in an old station wagon, was being followed by a parade of police vehicles with their lights and sirens going. The suspect's car had no front tires. He was driving very fast on the rims.

Erik M. Lunsford May 31, 2011 at 2:00 pm

If you read the Associated Press story on the dwindling production and consumption of photographic film, you might say yes; film is eventually leaving us.  And for all intents and purposes, it most likely is heading out the door, to be sorely remembered like Kodachrome once the film production lines stop running and the processors stop processing -- or developing, to be correct technically.

"For InfoTrends imaging analyst Ed Lee, film's fade-out is moving sharply into focus: "If I extrapolate the trend for film sales and retirements of film cameras, it looks like film will be mostly gone in the U.S. by the end of the decade."

Partly the fact that I learned photography by merging light and silver in sprocketed strips of emulsion that has its own distinctive smell when it comes from the canister, it's hard to let go and see it pass quietly away against the wave of digital cameras.

The proclivity towards digital, at least from a photojournalist’s perspective, makes perfect sense. Shooting film on assignment required an unmistakable lag on time as film had to taken back to the newsroom, developed, and scanned into Photoshop. Transmitting from the local coffee shop, park bench, or the front seat of a car wasn’t available. Processing film at stadiums and in bathrooms was a mess.  Moreover, digital camera batteries that take weeks to die or multi-gig compact flash cards that allow thousands of photographs mean photojournalists can shoot more and more (and more) until the heart is content. With film, there was a set standard of frames depending on how many rolls one carried, and it wasn’t uncommon to head out for a day with a box of 20 rolls of film.

“Eastman Kodak Co. marketed the world's first flexible roll film in 1888. By 1999, more than 800 million rolls were sold in the United States alone. The next year marked the apex for combined U.S. sales of rolls of film (upward of 786 million) and single-use cameras (162 million).”

Robert Cohen May 21, 2011 at 3:47 pm

The annual Bark in the Park dog festival in Forest Park offered a rare treat for photographers, an actual tent labeled 'Photo Opportunities'. 

So is this where we go for inspiration?  Or perhaps a snack?

Well, not exactly.  When the workers actually arrived to man the booth, this was the place to go to have your dog's picture taken alongside various things such as a real Budweiser clydesdale.

Oh well, back to finding my own pictures.  Here are a handful.

Huy Mach May 17, 2011 at 3:49 pm

Have you ever stop to think about the similarities between your camera and your eyeball? For instance, the cornea and lens in your eye focuses the images that enter as light just like the lens on your camera.  Your iris controls the amount of light just like the aperture of a camera. And your retina takes in the light just like the digital sensor of your camera.  In this article The differences between your eye and your camera, author Haje Jan Kamps explores the relationship. 

Huy Mach May 17, 2011 at 12:26 pm

Photographer tells how he got photos of arrest.

Erik Lunsford May 12, 2011 at 7:45 pm

Now I'm confident that my editors are happy when they browse and select my work for publication. They probably feel a tingle of joy, a spark of love, even a smidge of exultation. It's official, friends, looking at art -- beautiful art, I add -- makes you happy, evidenced in this video backed by scientific research on the authorative Guardian newspaper's site. Even more, "looking at art induces the same feelings of pleasure as being in love." Despite my satirical indulgence above, I must say -- wow.

The question I pose now is:

Does looking at photography make you equally as happy? There are camps on both sides that would say photography is and isn't art. And if you agree with me, in which I believe photography can be art because we apply aesthetical judgments shaped by our style and vision with a democratic tool into a tangible form of reproduced reality, does looking at a photograph (art) make you equally as happy?

Or, am I opening up a can best left with the lid screwed on tight?

And while the latter part of the video talks more about a new Art Pass card, it's at least informative and entertaining enough to have a look. 

Robert Cohen May 11, 2011 at 4:14 pm

I know I've mentioned it before on the PICTURES blog, but there is nothing better in photography than stumbling upon the unexpected and getting away with a picture of it.

This past weekend, I was joyfully assigned to cover Cinco de Mayo on Cherokee Street.  A sucker for Hispanic culture, it was the type of assignment that made my day.

Arriving early for both getting the lay of the land and an actual parking spot, I settled in and allowed my senses to guide me to the pictures.  The smell of barbacoa led to a nifty image of Jose Sotelo working the grill at Taqueria El Bronco.  The sound of Mike Stasky's bass guitar helped me find Mike and his buddies jamming in the parade, outfitted in stocking masks much better suited for a bank robbery.  And of course my eyes observed Che Guevara carved into the scalp of Alex Zepeda.

Wait...what the?

Can't say I'd ever seen the Argentine revolutionary anywhere but on a T-shirt.  But there he was, carefully carved by Alex's mother Amanda as both a gift to her husband's favorite Marxist as well as a promotion for her Cherokee business, the Latin Beauty Shop. 

Emily Rasinski May 11, 2011 at 1:35 pm

Oren Black lives in Parkwood Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. But the night of the Good Friday tornadoes he was with his wife Lois in their Maryland Heights home. When the storm hit, their home came down around them. The couple came out relatively unharmed, but their home and most of their possessions were destroyed. Despite this, the only thing Oren asked for when the when Belfor Property Restoration sent a cleanup crew to his home was his miniature harmonica.

I met Oren Black a couple weeks ago with reporter Joel Currier. We had been on assignment following around FEMA as they assessed the damage in the area. On our way back to the office Joel asked if we could stop at Parkwood Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center which had been closed and evacuated after the storm damaged the building. While we were there the last van of returning residents pulled up. We got permission to photograph and interview them. The last person off the van was Oren. When Joel interviewed him, he told us about his harmonica- his "little lady" -and how he thought it was lost forever. He looked sad and kept saying "I'm not good."

The photo of Oren getting off the van ran in the paper the next day, but they decided to hold the story for the upcoming Sunday community section. We were doing a series on things that were lost in the storm. For photos, they decided to use diptychs, two images presented side by side to tell the same story. One photo would be a portrait and the other would be a picture of what was lost. Oren was going to be one of the people featured.

I went back to the Rehab Center to take a portrait of Oren. Since his harmonica was still missing, we decided that we would pair his portrait with a picture of his destroyed home.

When I pulled up to his Maryland Heights neighborhood, a police officer asked me what house I was looking for. When I told him "Oren Black," he replied "Oh the harmonica man! Did you hear they found his little harmonica?" He told me Belfor Property Restoration had found it in the rubble of the home earlier that day. I got Belfor's phone number and started calling them, first talking to their national office, who connected me to the local office, who transfered me to the building and finally Dan Huser, a senior estimator for Belfor. They were closed for the day so I arranged to meet them the next day.