Picture Stories by Stephen Alvarez

Halloween, Sewanee, Tennessee

A few photos from Halloween...

All shot with my Canon Powershot G10

All Hallows Eve Tennessee/Guatemala

This is another image from a friends party last week shot with the fabulous Canon Powershot G10 . I don't like to gush about cameras but it is a great point and shoot (the software on the other hand leaves a lot to be desired). Should I start writing camera reviews and putting them on a separate page?

Halloween has got to be my favorite holiday. I love the mystery of dressing up and roaming town after dark. I love the paganness of the holiday particularly living as I do in the middle of the very Christian South. Fundamentalist Christians are not terribly tolerant of other faiths. And I have to admit that it gets under my skin. I don't mind rude people or even mean people but the arrogance of demanding that yours is the only true faith grates on me.

In Central America the Catholic church has been much more forgiving with other beliefs (admitted much more forgiving after spending the first 200 years trying to eradicate other faiths). The Maya religion has existed-even flourished- within the Catholic church for centuries. 

In Santiago Attitlán, the religious fraternities that run to city's spiritual life are both Catholic and Maya. The fraternities care for the saints and the church but they also take care of important Maya rituals as well.

One Spanish Catholic Priest in Central America told me that the Maya ceremonies the fraternities held in their meeting halls was their business. He said "I don't know what they do there late at night, and I don't want to know! It is none of my business." Tolerance, seems like a healthy attitude we cold all learn from. 

Happy Halloween, eat candy, be safe, have fun.

-Stephen Alvarez

Rumble Room, Tennessee

As I write this I am preparing to reshoot a photo of this place, the Rumble Room in Rumbling Falls cave. Reshooting is always hard. Why would I want to go back over something that I have already done, and done pretty well?

The short answer is that there is always -ALWAYS- room for improvement. Since I made this image for Sports Illustrated in 2002 technology has come a long way. My digital camera has 21 million pixels. The resolution will be much higher than this film based image. There are portable HID lamps now that will let me see what I am doing even in a completely black room the size of an indoor football stadium. 

But more importantly I want to change things up stylistically. I think rather than shooting one frame, I'll shoot a series of 3 or 4 and piece them together like I did in this image. It will make for a more interesting composition and the resolution will be FANTASTIC.

An image like this takes a lot of manpower. I have 6 people lined up to assist and we are going to be in the cave for 15 or more hours.

I hope it goes well.

-Stephen Alvarez

Fall Creek Falls, Tennessee

Think Fixed Tech: Updates

In the last week there hasnt really been much news on the photo-digital highway wires.  I dont suppose there's an election or anything happening to drown out any new news.  But there were a few key updates:
Camera Raw 5.1 and Lightroom 2.1 from adobe add functionality and support to new cameras and maybe some other stuff.  Recommended.  Aperture 2.1.2 also came out and although it's aimed at non pro users, I think its a really interesting and important move.  It improves printing quality for the Apple products available from iPhoto and Aperture.  Now, before you scoff and tell me how you have all your printing done at some east coast elitist printing house or publisher, let me make this point: Its a cool and inexpensive way to impress your friends and family PLUS I think it may have a strong impact on younger, less accomplished photographers as it gives them a way to move away from snapshots and move more toward a thoughtful body of work.  Encourage its use and we will all be better off in the long run.

Geof Bowie
www.thinkfixed.com

Digital Railroad is gone

I pulled out of digital railroad a month or more ago. They shut down for good yesterday. This message appears on their web site today. 

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It was a good service but given what Flickr does for free I don't see how they could compete.

-Stephen Alvarez

Keith Loutit

The North Wind Blew South from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Keith Loutit is an Australian photographer who does these incredible time lapse films from still images. He uses a shift lens that makes images appear like scale models. His goal is to present Sydney as a "model city." Pretty cleaver.

Happy Halloween, Monteagle, Tennessee

With Halloween coming at the end of the week I thought I'd get a head start with this picture of my daughter's friends running though a field in their costumes from this past weekend.

It is so unusual for me to be here for Halloween. The past few years I've been off somewhere else and have missed the whole event. It is refreshing to be home in the fall, carving pumpkins and enjoying why I live in rural Tennessee in the first place. It is a wonderful place to raise a family.

-Stephen Alvarez

West 23rd Street, New York

Shoegasm, don't you love the name? 

I shot this on the way out of the New York earlier this week. I went to the city with my wife April to attend the Lucie Awards. What I didn't expect was to come away with a new camera. My friend Ira Block talked me into a Canon G10.

I've shied away from digital point and shoot cameras. With one in my hand I have always felt "under gunned." The sensors were noisy, the glass not wide enough, and by far the biggest problem wasthat the camera was always making decisions that I didn't want it to. Where to focus, when to go off, when to flash...

Not the G10. It has full manual control and fires when I press the button. Its 14 mp sensor is a little noisy, but not bad below asa 800. Looking like a tourist rather than a professional can be a real advantage sometimes too.

It won't replace my Mark III, but it fills a gap and lets me carry a camera all the time like I used to when I was shooting with a Leica M6. The glass is nowhere near the quality of Leica, or even Canon DSLR lenses, but a camera in hand is much better than one you have left at home.

-Stephen Alvarez

Politics

 There are two extensive photo essays on the Digital Journalist this month. John McCain is covered by Stephen Crowley from the New York TImes. It is the coverage that you would expect to see from a conventional, heavily orchestrated campaign. Crowley is a great photographer but there is no penetration beyond the photo op. He was simply not given the chance to see beyond the veil. In fact Crowley calls the McCain tour the "No Talk Express."

Contrast that with Callie Shell's coverage of Obama. Callie too is a great photographer -perhaps the best political photographer this generation- and she is able to give us a glimpse inside the campaign. That speaks to her skill as a photographer. Callie spent 8 years developing a style a technique to photograph behind the scenes as Al Gore's photographer. She is able to get to what is going on in politics, but only because the politicians are willing to let her.

The coverages make clear the differences in the campaigns. Do those difference translate into how the men would govern? Well we will never know because come the first Tuesday of November only one of them will become president.

I hope it is the man who is not scared to have his picture taken.

-Stephen Alvarez, Sewanee Tennessee

Lucie Awards

Aphotoeditor has a recap of last night's Lucie awards here

Jeff Jacobson, April Alvarez and Sara Terry before the awards. This was before the Lincoln Center tried to take the photographer's cameras away.

-Stephen Alvarez