Festival of the Photograph in Charlottesville

Neal- are you coming down to DF ? We’d love to have you! Thanks for the mention; more than one student is going to FOP then to FWP…

E

I’m planning to hit them both, although I’ll likely pull out of Eugene’s workshop and just do the review with Maggie Steber and MaryAnne Golon, before heading down to DF.

Eric, I have seriously debated whether to go to DF also. But I have concluded that, for an old dude like me, it might just be a little too much.

For guys like Charlie and others, however, it makes perfect sense to hit both. The FOP is also a marketing opportunity. From what I have heard FOP is now drawing a number of photo editors and other potential content buyers, so those contacts should be valuable as well. Foundry, on the other hand, looks like it will have the best and biggest lineup of teachers/mentors of any current instructional program, perhaps including the Eddie Adams Workshop.

So it seems to me that a serious shooter really needs to try to do both.

Get the wrinkles ironed out of Foundry (you will inevitably have some the first time out), and I’ll try to join you next year (there WILL be a next year I hope!).

Certain… um… professional and personal requirments may keep me from Foundary. I’ve pretty much become a permanent temp at a certain radio show and my family is planning some shing dig so I can meet my nephew.

The Gene Richards workshop sounds great but really fugging expensive btw.

Neal-
yeah the wrinkles..Im trying to botox those as much as possible!
Youve pegged it right on- it must be the educator in me, but Foundry is all about an all immersive, week long workaholic workshop, less a festival, though Im sure there will be some of that element as well. People going to both will have a pretty amazing, two week photo-j explosion. I wish I was attending FOP this year, but perhaps Ill plan better next year…yeah there will be a next year. There is no way Im putting this much slave labor in for a one night stand. We are thinking, for location, Bosnia/Croatia or Delhi…

Let me put in a very serious word for Delhi next year, or even Chennai!

I have said many times on this site what an incredible place South Asia is for photographers of all stripes. So please go for that region next year. I’ve got a ten-year Indian visa with five years still remaining! Or better yet, have it in Pakistan! All the folks who wanna shoot in a danger zone can get their chance! And the housing will be cheaper than India. :-)

And, Bill, you can’t get that kind of a workshop for that price elsewhere. In any event, people kill to be working for that radio how so you must be doing something right. If it means your shooting time is shrunken, so be it, you lucky guy.

Any luck with a place to stay Neal?

Andy (and any others interested), last year Sandra and I stayed in student housing, which was just fine (better than anything I ever lived in as a student!). I haven’t decided what I will do this year (I am not sure Sandra can come this year), but that option is still possible.

Last year the student housing was up on a hill a bit away from the downtown action, so a car was useful. There was a bus, but I only rode it once (seemed OK). I don’t know whether that will be the case this year, but I think a car might be useful. There is a fair amount of public parking in downtown C’ville, we discovered, so once you get into town you can leave the car in the lot all day (at rates a lot less than the Big Cities).

There is also a free trolley from the University area (where the housing is) to the festival venues on the Downtown Mall. This is run by the city of Charlottesville and is a good alternative to taking a car.

Hi… where does one catch the trolley from the uni… I arrive on a red eye flight from Hawaii just in time to speed drive to Charlottesville…Will hopefully make it by the skin of my teeth to the first talk…

Anyone up for sharing a place? Crashing on the floor would be just as good as those dorms, I can tell you that from experience.

Speaking of Look3, is anyone going from Charlottesville to Dulles on Saturday by chance? Flying to DF for Foundry and need to get to Dulles by 3:30-4pm.

Tamara! It’ll be great to see you! Sandra and I will both be there. Since you will have a car, you will also be able to drive downtown from the dorms and park in a municipal garage about a block from the theater where the interviews take place.

The dorms are as close to prison as you can get—you have to remember a code at 3am to get in the bathroom, or piss out the window…..

Neal! Will be lovely to see you & Sandra again!! After all-night travel on many modes of transport, I may ditch the car and find a taxi/shuttle in order to have a drink with old mates… See you soon!

Dunno where you stayed Andy, but in my dorm I could pee without a code anytime I wanted. I did need an entry card to get into the dorm, but I was glad as I didn’t want some drunked up Yooveeay student to run off with my kit!

Neal, I stayed up on the hill, I can’t remember the name of the particular dorm, but it was full of photographers both upstairs and down, and trust me, the bathrooms were locked by code…..there is no wireless, so bring your own ethernet or USB connection if you stay at those dorms as well.

I stayed in the Dorms last year… and the Dorm is just fine since you will not spend much time in it, considering the festival packed program… basically, you get there in the middle of the night, crash, and leave first thing in the morning (after you take a piss)... plus, my wife and I could pretend we are 20 years younger… hmm, too bad we can’t be there this year… wish you all lots of fun.

I’ll bet whether there is a lock depends on whether you are in a dorm that is normally dual sex. Perhaps Sandra and I were in a dorm where only well-cultured southern chicks normally reside, and thus there was no risk that raunchy male co-residents might raid the girls’ bathrooms, or walk into them while in a drunken stupor. You therefore might state a preference when you register, if you will be needing to pee a lot. :-)

Yes, Andy is right, do bring that ethernet cable. Thanks, Andy, for the reminder.

Welcome of course, I am going to try and make it I am dealing with Formosan termites right now…..

Great! Sorry about the Taiwanese termites. See if you can get some Mainland China termites to control them, or maybe some US-Allied termites.

I fooled them last night by turning off the lights in the apt and turning on the porch light, and they flew out, so now I have to decide whether to move. They are living in the old wood of the house, and then drop down from the ceiling to swarm. Its part of life here, but a bit much.

Still working on C’ville, I want to try and make it…

can’t believe you boys want to go back to Virginia after the goatfuck last year. come out to China. other than this horrific earthquake (which i just finished covering), you’ll have a lot more fun here than in that Confederate haunted central Virginia countryside. people don’t have guns, are generally nice, and there are so many potential subjects and stories to photograph and investigate that you will never be bored. i’m a bit sorry to be headed back to NY next week, but duties call. Forget Charlottesville. Try Chongqing or Changsha…

Alan, you got a nice camera there, lighten up!

Hopefully, we’ll all get to China before long….all 25,000 Lightstalkers (ha ha)!

Alan, I liked the Cuban restaurant on the mall and want to see some of my old friends…..but a huge rainstorm here ruined my Roland RD-150 keyboard and I have been battling Formosan Termites. My pockets are a bit thin…glad you are coming back because Mardi Gras is just around the corner.

neal, you remember that?!? yeah, i got a Canon FTBn with a 28mm f/2.0 for $100…what a nice lens…much better than the EOS version I’m using now on the 5D…

andy, despite scandalous school construction which killed a lot of kids and an initially slow local bureaucracy in Sichuan, the Chinese have handled at least some aspects of this awful tragedy better than the USA did Katrina. The army was out in hours, not days, the prime minister was exhorting rescue workers with a bullhorn, and the Sports Stadium that i saw in Mianyang, with more than 20,000 homeless refugees, was clean and well supplied with food, water, medicine, and volunteers. No Superdome here. Looting has been minimal compared to NOLA and you cannot even spot a single soldier or policeman with a gun.

none of that alleviates the lack of helicopters, specialized search-and-rescue teams with good equipment and training, and so on…but those are systemic problems…the Chinese government may still be a one-party state with a lot wrong with it…but at least the leadership realized that appearances, if nothing else, are important and they have made a big show of caring. Which is more than the Bush Administration did for NOLA and the Gulf Coast…

I mean, I remember sleeping on a balcony in the Quarter a block from Jackson square at least ten days after the levees broke, and they came and closed off the whole area for a night so Bush could speak towards emptiness. Nobody in town could even see him face to face. Whereas Wen Jiaobao, apparatchik and bureaucrat that he may be, was telling survivors hours after the fact that help was on the way. More like LBJ in the Lower 9th, 1965. And a lot less like the China I thought I knew of years past…

you can see a few of my pix in newsweek this week and also on their website at:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/137784

sorry to hear about the loss of the keyboard and the termites…but i hope you made a bundle during jazzfest…

$850 including the $99 admission fee…I think I’ll wait for the movie version. And a Canon FTB?! Damn, I thought I was the only one here that retro…

Alan, as for making bundle, I might make on the best Jazz Fest what you get for one wedding….this year it rained for two of the three days, so I basically broke even. But its a longterm thing and I am happy to take part in it. Its part of being “local,” or perhaps “loco?”

Otherwise, pick your poison, C’ville or the NY Photo Festival, I think I am going with C’ville right now, although I am hopeful that the organizers will make changes next year and steer the DUMBO event into a more documentary place, open things up a bit.

Either way, any festival is better than none—that the work from The Human Condition was not better promoted in C’ville was unfortunate, but I think that anyone who has seen it would agree that it was a loss all around.

akaky, i thought it was well known on LS that i am the resident Luddite and advocate of film and traditional photography…the manual focus Canon SLRs were clunky and heavy, without the heavy metal elegance of, say, a pure Nikon F. but my father had a FT and also later a FTBn as well. The FT had his name engraved on it, i don’t know what happened to it…if you ever see a chrome FT with “FOW SANG CHIN” engraved under the advance lever, let me know immediately…the FTBn i lent to a friend in college and it was stolen out of his car. So all these years later these relics cost less than a halfway decent meal, and will outlast us in their mechanical sturdiness and reliability. Among other cameras on this trip and assignment I’ve been using a Rolleiflex 3.5F, made in the early sixties, and a Leica-mount Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens from the same era. Nothing like these marvels will ever be made again, not even by modern Leica, not even with their current astronomical prices.

andy, of course you’re right, i’m just teasing you as you know i love to do. go to the Fairgrounds, study the form with Abram, and make some money on the horses. and with your winnings book the nicest suite in Charlottesville, you know, and enjoy yourself. you and neal can chat up some co-eds….

As far as coeds you had some luck with the one that you talking to last year, didn’t you?

easy, tiger! i was talking up the Human Condition Lightstalkers slideshow to everyone! which, yes, was a very solid endeavor that should have gotten more play. it’s too bad you guys aren’t doing something like that this year…maybe you and Neal could show a selection from our Mardi Gras 360 workshop?

Alan… speaking of the “heavy metal elegance of a pure Nikon F”, I hope the kit is working out for you. It served me well, never breaking down. Do kind of miss it but…whatever.
G.

Hmm. It would be a bit difficult for me to chat up many coeds with the delicious Sandra beside me…she warms my heart and naturally draws me away from my more base instincts.

Though of course those smart Yooveeay coeds would be a mental temptation to almost any intelligent hetero male…. I am sure they could outthink the likes of me, Andy or Alan.

But wait! There’s more! Good news for the single male hetero contingent at LOOK3. That’s the likely presence of the exotic Tamara Voninski, surfer and accomplished shooter (and, I might note, easy on the eyes and charming as well), coming all the way from Sydney.

I like the QL thingy Canon put in the FTB too

Chin vs. Levin: Enter the Co-Ed Dragon! :))..that’s a project I WOULD PAY TO SEE! :)))))))))))....

and Ms. “Exotic” Occuli Surfer Voninski will be visiting me and Marina after Look3, and she’ll be giving me a report, and i except to here how UV co-eds (im mean male and female) deal with LS photographers (male and female)! :)))...

sadly, we couldnt make look3 this year do to the financial cruch this year :(((...BUT

(shameless self-promotion plug warning):

I WILL HAVE 10 PICTURES SHOWN AT LOOK3 at the David Alan Harvey Projection (idiotic me, i dont even know the day, but i believe it is day 1)...10 pics from part of my work on Korean immigrants and immigrant students…usual abstract, weird shit, but i’ve put it with some lovely music…so if y’all are interested: i’ll be there in spirit!...

CHEERS Y’ALL

running
bob

Here, under MASTER TALKS, david alan harvey

http://www.festivalofthephotograph.org/2008/schedule.html

“and David Alan Havey who will discuss and show their latest projects. David Alan Harvey will also announce prize winners of his Emerging Photographers Fund…”, of which i was a winner…and the Top Emerging Photographer David Alan Harvey/Magnum Cultural Foundation Award Winner, Sean Gallagher, will be at Look3 and at the projection (as I believe will some of the other winners)...so, if you want to meet Sean and some of the others, and see a great projection, GO! :)))...i only regret we cant go this year…

hugs
running
b

Does anyone know how the dorm check-in works… Is there a check-in time limit or can I roll up at midnight or so and expect to find someone who can give me a key…. Thanks in advance!

Tamara,
E-mail the housing people (conferenceservices@virginia.edu) with that question. If you need to have someone pick up your key and entry card, Sandra or I could do it.