A New Feature

Some of you may have stumbled upon my blog expositions of my Very Limited Edition photographs, but many have not. I will be changing that here by occasionally featuring one of these editions as a main blog article. As I post these edition articles I will remove their presence in the "Very Limited Editions" static page, currently linked to on the right sidebar of this blog.

Bill processes a Very Limited Edition canvas

The reason for doing this is due to the limited nature and number of static pages allowed in this blog. As I add to my limited editions I would eventually run out of my ability to add new ones as static pages. So after some consideration of this situation I have decided to post all limited edition photographs (both current and future) as main articles.

This will also allow you to easily search this blog for all "limited editions" and get a full categorization and listing of them, OR, you could simply click on the label "limited editions" which appears in the "tag cloud" down on the right sidebar. Then, you can easily click on an edition in the listed articles for a view of the actual photograph as well as an article describing the image and any other interesting tidbits that relate to it.

Thanks again for reading, and you can now be looking forward to articles on specific photographs.

Parade of Artists, 2012

This coming weekend promises to be a wonderful time of getting to know professional artists and their work. For the second time, I will have the opportunity of participating in the Boerne Professional Artists' annual Parade of Artists.

This event will take place at multiple venues throughout downtown Boerne, Texas on April 13-15, and there is no charge for the event. The basis for the Parade is an "open house" of sorts for many of the several galleries in Boerne who will be hosting the works of many BPA members. There are also several "other venues" around town that will be hosting the works of other BPA members.

Some of Bill's work in the Limestone Grill/Ye Kendall Inn

Last year, I had the pleasure of showing my work during the Parade at Ye Kendall Inn/Limestone Grill, at the end of Boerne's main Plaza, just off Main Street. The management of the historic and landmark Inn so appreciated my art that they invited me to show my work there indefinitely. My work hangs in the limestone-walled fireplace room between the Grill and the Inn, where I change it out every several weeks. I will be on hand the entire weekend to speak with you about my work and anything else that might interest you.

For the Parade event, all artists (there are over 30) will be at their respective venues to discuss their work and engage in generally enriching conversation. All work shown is also for sale, and some wonderful pieces will be going home with their new owners. The fine art that will be available is first class, professional work and will encompass oil, acrylic, and pastel paintings, sculpture, photography, ceramics, and mixed media.

The Parade begins with Friday's "Art Collectors' Preview" evening from 6 to 9PM. If you want to find that "special piece" and reserve it before most of the public arrives Saturday and Sunday, don't miss Friday evening.

Saturday's Parade will extend from 10AM to 8PM, and is a collaboration this year between the Parade and Boerne's Second Saturday Art and Wine, so many of the venues will also offer complimentary wine or other beverages and hors d’oeuvres from 4 to 8PM (during this time, a free trolley will also pickup and deliver patrons to and from all venues).  <<<see artists Donald Darst and Pamela Gardner talk about it on Great Day SA>>>  Sunday will wrap it up with open hours from 11 to 5PM. Brochures (including a map to all the venues) are available at all of the venues, and at most other businesses in downtown Boerne. Or, you can print out the map below.

Come out to Boerne this weekend and enjoy seeing some marvelous art, and talk directly with the artists who create these pieces!

Parade of Artists, location of venues
Bill Brockmeier is at Ye Kendall Inn, #16

Also— don't forget that I will be drawing the name of someone from my email subscription list who will receive a free fine art panoramic photograph of mine. The winner will be able to choose one of four photographs in my wildflowers series. If you aren't yet on my email subscription list, you can easily sign up in the box in the right sidebar ("Follow Bill by email").

To Celebrate Spring!

This spring, some lucky person will receive their choice of one of four fine art panoramic photographs shown below from my "Oceans of Flowers" Texas wildflowers series. The winner will be drawn randomly from my blog's email subscription list to receive the photograph.

If you have not yet subscribed to my blog updates by email (and you can only do that here), you can do so by simply typing your currently valid email address in the "Follow Bill by Email" box in the right sidebar of this blog (don't forget to click on "Submit"). Or, you can click here. A verification email will then be sent to your address— when you receive it, just click on the link provided to verify you have received it. This will add you to my subscription list.

As a subscriber you will receive very brief excerpts of new articles I write for my blog. I take my readers' privacy and security seriously, and this email subscription list will never be made available to anyone else.

Remember, you won't have the opportunity to win the drawing if I don't have your email address. Good luck!

LAGOON OF BLUEBONNETS, © Bill Brockmeier, 2012, all rights reserved by the artist

PRIMROSE LAKE, © Bill Brockmeier, 2012, all rights reserved by the artist

SEA OF COREOPSIS, © Bill Brockmeier, 2012, all rights reserved by the artist

VERBENA SWELL, © Bill Brockmeier, 2012, all rights reserved by the artist

These photographs have been produced to my usual archival standards, printed on extra heavy archival matte paper (about 8" by 40") using state of the art pigment-based printing processes.

E. O. Goldbeck– The Final Frontier (Part 4)

E. O. Goldbeck led a remarkable life in so many different ways. He left a legacy of art, invention, pioneering, entrepreneurship, service, and family. On top of these numerous successes he lived a good long life of nearly a century. He almost had to have lived this long (94 years) in order to pack in so much.

I mentioned previously that I had obtained a signed and numbered copy of "The Panoramic Photography of Eugene O. Goldbeck." The fact that Goldbeck had signed this book just shortly before he died caused me to investigate the circumstances of his death. Online I was able to find the obituary that had appeared locally. As is customary, the obit recorded the details of his funeral and ultimate burial.

I was intrigued that his burial plot was located in Mission Burial Park South– near the San Antonio River and not more than a mile or so from the place I was mainly working at that time. I made plans to take an hour or so to pay a visit to Mission Park South, and attempt to locate his gravesite.

Driving in the cemetary's entrance, I stopped at the office and eventually found the folks who could help me out. I spoke with one of the ladys in the office and told her whose grave I wanted to locate. She entered the name into her computer and instantly had the plot's ID and location. She then circled a spot on a small xeroxed map of the pertinent section of the cemetary and handed it to me. After she gave me simple directions for driving to the section, I thanked her for her help and left the office. I could hardly believe how simple and quick this had been.

After driving for some distance (Mission Park South is quite extensive) I located the section and the approximate location of the Goldbeck family plot. I parked my car, gathered my photo equipment, and then made my search on foot for the gravesite. About fifty feet or so from the road, I saw before me a dark gray granite, upright simple memorial with the Goldbeck family name engraved prominently on it. I had found Goldbeck's "resting place."

Eugene and Marcella Goldbeck's burial plot, © Bill Brockmeier, 2010, all rights reserved by the artist

Next to the family marker was a flat granite rectangular stone, level with the ground, and engraved—

"Our Dear Dad

Eugene Omar Goldbeck

Nov 4, 1892—October 26, 1986."

Next to Gene's grave was that of his longtime wife, Marcella (interestingly, my own wife's middle name). Marcella lived an even longer life than Gene– attaining the age of 97 years. In the adjacent row were markers for some of their children who had preceded them in exiting this existence.

So– here lies the great, inventive master of panoramic photography himself. I thought out loud– "What could be more fitting than to compose a panoramic photograph of his gravesite?" I believe that Gene himself would have concurred heartily.

I assembled my gear and composed several different panoramic shots over the next hour or so. As I was setting up each one, I wondered how Gene might have approached such a challenge. Perhaps he would build a 200 foot tall tower and photograph the entire west section of the cemetary, including 2500 individual graves visible in a single photograph.

I finished my photographic exploration of the Goldbeck family plot and put away my equipment. Before I headed back to my vehicle, I thanked God for this man who so enjoyed stretching the limits of the photographic arts. What an example for myself.

Homage To "A Crazy Man," © Bill Brockmeier, 2010, all rights reserved by the artist

A final note– you'll notice my title to the image just above: "Homage To 'A Crazy Man.'"  This may seem a bit cryptic to you, but is a reference to Goldbeck's summary of himself: "You'd have to be a crazy man to do what I do." And superimposed on Gene's grave is my own shadow as I composed the shot, emulating a fairly famous photograph of him (below) waving his arms wildly as he enthusiastically directed a composition.

E. O. Goldbeck Directs a Shot
(authorship unknown)

The Grasshopper and the Gardner (Part 3)

Ralph and Laurie Cordero have been dear friends for well over a decade. Ralph is a talented photographer, and the two have appreciated the art of E. O. Goldbeck for even longer than myself, so I thought it would be of interest to interview Laurie about her experience of meeting the man and about his art.

_______________________________________

Bill:
Laurie, I've been exploring some of the uniqueness of Goldbeck's art here on the Revealing Light Photography blog . You actually met Goldbeck many years ago– what were the circumstances of your first contact with him?

Laurie:
Around 1985 I was at an art and photography shop near downtown San Antonio, Texas. While I was there this spry old man in his 70s (turns out it was Goldbeck) came into the shop and the owner tells him he needs to sign a pile of photographs. When he was done she told him "Here's another one.." and then "here's another one..." and "here's another one." She kept putting them in front of him and he kept signing them. I don't think either one of them was keeping track of how many he was signing. I don't think she was even paying him for signing them. It was obvious to me that he was really interested in the photography itself, and he wasn't really interested in the money.

When he was finally finished signing the photographs he left the shop and got into his little blue Dodge Dart (or whatever it was) that was parallel-parked in front of the shop. It was obvious that the cars in front and in back of him were way too close for him to get out– but that wasn't a problem for him. He just banged! into the car in front of him and then banged! into the car in back and then banged! into the car in front again, until he had enough space and then he just pulled out and drove off– just as happy-go-lucky as he could be!

Bill:
You mentioned that this took place about 1985- since he was born in 1891 or '92 that would have made Goldbeck about 93 or 94 years old at the time.

Laurie:
Are you serious?! He sure didn't look it...I would have guessed he was in his 70s! That's amazing! He was the fastest moving "grasshopper" you ever saw!

Bill:
So how did you end up meeting him a second time?

Laurie:
Well, it just made me mad that the shop didn't seem to be paying him for his signature, so I thought I'd try to call his studio and buy some photographs directly from him. I looked the phone number up for his studio and called him up. I said I was interested in getting some of his work and he said: "Well just come on over to my house!"

He lived down in the "King William district" (of San Antonio). His house was a big old colonial style place, built pretty high off the ground with a flight of steps going up to the front door. I knocked on the door and he came to the door and said: "Yeah...come on back to my studio and I'll show you a bunch of pictures."

He was just so happy and personable– he was just the sweetest thing! But once he took off from that front door through his house, he was running! I'm telling you what– it was everything I could do just to keep up with him! His studio was behind the house, so he ran down the flight of stairs in back of the house, and then ran up two flights of stairs to the upstairs studio. He was taking those steps two and three at a time, and never slowed down-- he was flying! After the first flight of stairs going up, I was huffin' and puffin,' but he was just all chipper and talking a mile a minute. I've never seen anything like it. He was so full of life!

Goldbeck just loved photography and loved life. He wasn't in it for the money, he was just in it for the photography. He just loved it!

We got up to his studio, which was plain and simple, and it was absolutely filled with piles and piles of photographs. He showed me photos of this and that– he' d been all over the world– you'd think he might have been kind of prideful of all that he'd done, but he was just as personable as you could imagine. He just wanted to take me around the world by showing me his pictures. He was just full of life.

Bill:
So, did you end up buying some of his work?

Laurie:
Yes, I bought a "bathing beauty" shot for my Dad, one of the Alamo for Ralph, and one of the Big Bend area.

ALAMO PLAZA, 1916, San Antonio, Texas, © E. O. Goldbeck, 1916, all rights reserved
(green rectangle highlights detail of gardner shown below)

Bill:
Didn't you once mention to me that Goldbeck told you an interesting story about the Alamo photograph you have?

Laurie:

detail of Goldbeck's ALAMO PLAZA, 1916,
showing gardner in hat tending landscaping
© E. O. Goldbeck, 1916, all rights reserved

Yes he did. He said that he took numerous shots of Alamo Plaza from the building across the street, about once every ten years to record how the Alamo and things around it were changing. But he said that although these photographs spanned several decades, he got to noticing that a gardner, wearing a hat, showed up in every one of them, tending the flower beds and such. He showed me every one of them and there was the gardner in each one. In one of them he was kind of working and moving– and kind of blurred due to his activity. In another one he was down in a corner of the photo. But in each one, there he was!

Bill:
Was this always the same gardner?

Laurie:
That's what he implied.

Bill:
What do you appreciate about Goldbeck's work in general?

Laurie:
It's all about life. And he was all about life– he had a fullness of life, he had a love of life, and it came out in his photography. He loved people, he loved landscape, he loved architecture. He loved the changing scene around the Alamo– he loved the new and the old. He wasn't stuck in one era or one thing. He loved all of it. And he had definitely discovered the "Fountain of Youth!"

Men At Work (Part 2)

E. O. Goldbeck assembled thousands of human subjects to paint truly monumental insignias upon the Texas landscape. This was a unique achievement but it wasn't the only enduring mark Goldbeck left on the history of the photographic arts. He has probably been most known for his singular and signature capture of American men and women at work.

Goldbeck cut his panoramic teeth in his recording of the extent of the WWI American military. He developed his techniques while capturing their personal and corporate portraits as they were surrounded by and immersed in their considerable tools and hardware: tents, buildings, trucks, tanks, and planes. Goldbeck's underlying motif in this corporate portraiture was to use the work environment itself as the setting– even the canvas– on which he would "paint."

"Goldbeck," curated by Bolognesi and Bernado

In 1998 The University of Texas (the final repository of Goldbeck's extensive catalogue of photographs) collaborated with Bolognesi and Bernado to curate a large retrospective exhibition of Goldbeck's work for Actar in Barcelona. An extensive selection of photos from the exhibition was ultimately published as a book, titled simply: "Goldbeck."

The book is not only a wonderful introduction to Goldbeck's work, but it is a unique view into the lives of American workers of the early twentieth century. Though for decades scores of very talented photographers have attempted to capture the working man and his worth to society, Goldbeck is one of the very few that has been able to properly and completely place his subject within the workplace itself. Only his unusual method of panoramic photography has a wide enough field of view to capture the full scope of the working ambience.

These explorations of the workingman's world that especially fascinated me were Goldbeck's images of the Holsum Bread delivery men, the U.S. Army Quartermaster shoe shop, the Postal Union Messengers, and the preachers baptizing believers in the San Pedro springs before thousands of onlookers.

MESSENGER FORCE, © E. O. Goldbeck, 1929

Though not recorded in this book (or the other two that have been compiled), one of the most unusual instances of Goldbeck's portraits of working men was actually a fortuitous accident. Or I should say a string of fortuitous accidents. The story was related by Goldbeck himself to a long time friend of mine. My interview with her concerning this previously untold Goldbeck story will appear in my next post.

______________________________________________________

A bibliography of books on Goldbeck's life and images:

• "Goldbeck," curated by Kitti Bolognesi and Jordi Bernado, 1999, ACTAR, Barcelona.
• "The Panoramic Photography of Eugene O. Goldbeck," Clyde Burleson and Jessica Hickman, 1986, Texas University Press, Austin. 
• "The Unpretentious Pose. The Work of E. O. Goldbeck," Marguerite Davenport, 1981, Trinity University Press, San Antonio. 

This past year I was fortunate enough to locate a pristine, numbered and signed (3 of 100) special edition of Burleson and Hickman's work published by Texas University Press. These books are Goldbeck's very last signed work, as he died shortly before the book had reached the public. It is a wonderful book delving into the details of Goldbeck's extensive life (he lived to a few years short of a century) and contains many of his most iconic panoramic photographs, most of which are reproduced in nearly the original size. 

No Fear of Heights (Part 1)

One of Goldbeck's temporary towers
(Photo authorship unknown)

He stood in a large military parade field in the unrelenting sunlight of south Texas. Over two hundred feet above him he could barely make out the small platform to which he would climb. Grabbing the rails of the scaffold's ladder and placing his left foot firmly on the first rung, he began his trip skyward. Thousands of uniformed men around the base of the scaffold murmured and pointed as they watched him deftly make his way  into the blue summer sky. As he reached the peak of the scaffold and stood atop it a thunderous cheer went up from the throng of soldiers far below.

Eugene Omar Goldbeck was not a man of ordinary thoughts or pursuits. He was baptized into the fellowship of serious photography at the tender age of about nine, having taken his first auspicious photograph– a candid shot of President William McKinley on the streets of San Antonio. Even as a professional photographer his sights were not set on the commonplace. He was not content to capture the small, the usual, or the mundane. Gene was always on the lookout for the larger picture.

Gene was born into the waning years of the nineteenth century and came of age in the brand-new twentieth century. This was a period of incredible development and ferment in the arts and sciences of photography– not unlike the photographic climate of today. Gene's inventive nature and adventurous spirit were perfectly suited to this vibrant photographic milieu.

E. O. Goldbeck (as he became known professionally) entered the day-to-day life of a working photographer in the U. S. Army during the years of WWI. He distinguished himself as an archivist of the preparations for war– training camps, the gathering of equipment, and the graduation of trained troops. The graduating classes of men who had completed basic training were large, and Goldbeck realized that the use of panoramic equipment would allow him to capture an entire class in a single pose and photograph. His use of this unusual photographic format would serve him well, not only to simply capture large groups of men, but as a whole new medium, quite distinct from conventional photography. This would be a new canvas, his canvas, to paint images never before dreamed by other men.

Air Training Command, Lackland Air Base,
© E.O. Goldbeck, 1947

Although Goldbeck would accomplish enduring images of incredible scope with his Cirkut cameras over several decades, his most unique addition to the pantheon of great photographs was his singular invention of composing images built of living men. Having an almost unlimited pallet of tens of thousands of soldiers waiting to obey his orders, he developed an exacting mathematical and logistical process that painted immense military logos and insignias across the open landscape of south Texas. These insignias were so large– composed of thousands of individual men (over 21,000 men in the photo to the left)– they could only be appreciated and recorded by cameras a hundred or more feet in the sky. This day, he would climb the highest scaffold of his career (212 feet) and record the greatest artistic assemblage of men ever composed.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The family of E. O. Goldbeck still operates the same panoramic-based photographic business that he began in San Antonio, Texas so many years ago. To this day, students and faculty in San Antonio schools still look forward to having their corporate image recorded by the rotating Goldbeck cameras.

Photographic Purity– (Distortion or Not)

Panoramic photographs have their own brand of geometric subtleties (some would call this "distortion"). Much of these effects are because of the extremely wide angle of view (as much as a full 360 degrees) that panoramics rely on. When photography was relegated to capturing a view that simulated looking through a window, the geometry was narrow enough to keep geometric effects below the surface.

As long as a panoramic photo is captured in the "conventional way" (with its plane of rotation parallel to the horizon) so-called distortion is minimal- maybe even undetectible. When that plane begins to tilt away from level, distortion begins to be perceived. If a full 360 view is captured, any planes or lines that are parallel to the horizon appear as a sinusoidal curve.

HARVEST WAVE, © Bill Brockmeier, all rights reserved

This curving of features that otherwise should appear as lines is entirely a consequence of geometry, rather than a deficiency of the imaging system. Imagine that the rotation of a panoramic camera setup sweeps out a cylindrical view of space as it rotates through 360 degrees. If a planar feature in the view (the earth's surface/horizon, for instance) is perpendicular to the cylinder (the rotation is level) the plane will trace out a feature on the cylinder that is a straight line when unwrapped (which is what happens when the pano photograph is printed on a flat sheet of paper).

But if the plane (the horizon) is tilted with respect to the cylindrical view, and the cylinder then unwrapped, you will see that the traced out pattern is now a complete sine curve. The amplitude of the curvature (distance from peak to valley) is a function of the degree of tilt between the plane and the cylinder.

Well, enough on this. I believe I've beaten this dead horse more than sufficiently, and I think you can see that "distortion" is really a matter of personal perspective. What one person might consider a distortion of physical reality is merely one of the myriad (NOTE for Michael: "myriad" is a Greek word meaning, specifically, "ten thousand") ways of reasonably mapping or interpreting the real world onto a finite piece of a two dimensional surface. I don't believe anyone can categorically or authoritatively state that any one particular mapping or interpretation is to be absolutely preferred over another.

I believe it is ultimately important in the arts (of which photography is certainly one) to remember the treachery of images– that the image (the artistic creation) is NOT the reality which inspired it. And it is good to remember that photographic "purity" is more a phantom than a reality...that "distortion" is really the foundation of the photographic arts rather than its bane.

Photographic Purity– (Building a Panoramic)

We've seen that distortion is built into the process of producing a conventional photographic image. If we take a few regular photographs from the same location, slightly rotating the camera for each frame, we effectively cover a greater field of view with the shots. If the shots slightly overlap each other at the sides, we ought to be able to easily combine  them to produce a single wide-angle image.

Unfortunately, this process will not work because the built-in distortion of the camera lens causes all features in the view to change shape when the camera points in a different direction. When a particular feature is on the right side of the field of view it's one shape, and when on the left side of the field of view it's a slightly different shape. So, when the right side of the first image is overlaid on the left side of the second image, the shapes do not match. This results in either ghost images, missing information, or otherwise mismatched overlaps in the final pano image.

For a proper, undistorted blending of conventional camera shots into a wide angle panorama, the built-in distortion of a standard camera lens must be eliminated, or at least minimized. Once the distortion has been removed the separate frames may be simply overlaid on each other, with the overlapping parts of the images matching well and the images blending into one.

Panoramic sequence of nine frames that have been geometrically remapped to remove camera lens distortion

In the days before modern digital computing, this distortion elimination was nearly an impossible task. Now, this process has become not only possible but even fairly simplistic to the user. Although it seems easy from the outside of the computer, there are actually many billions of calculations and transformations being carried out for a single panorama to be compiled.

Looking Up

The conventional format for a panoramic photograph is a "landscape," or horizontal, layout, and perhaps this is due to the fact that we humans possess binocular vision, with the two eyes paired in a horizontal arrangement.  This arrangement causes our field of vision to be spread out left and right, taking in as much as possible of the horizon and, in fact, the horizontal plane on which we stand and walk.  This mostly horizontal orientation to our vision (and much of our life) becomes the main reference from which we tend to view and understand things.