Carousel-worthy

Episode 83 - Carousel-worthy

Official transcript: https://www.cheynemusic.com/transcripts

Hosts: Jan, Rob, Dee, & Jim.

The goal of our vacation photographs? To be carousel-worthy; not to mention the gold standard: “America the Beautiful”-worthy. How our fathers approached family photography, how we choose what to shoot, the #1 image of vacation photographers in film days. Ansel Adams & Clyde Butcher, and the patience required to find a carousel-worthy photo.

Links:

Making Our Way is hosted through buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com

More information about Deanna & Jim Cheyne is here: https://www.cheynemusic.com

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Transcript

[Music]

JIM: This is an audio-only podcast about photography, so I do thank you for bringing in all the photos that you’ve brought. And, um, oh that’s a nice one. I didn’t know you met her. Oh, look at this. This one - isn’t that the grassy knoll? Does Oliver Stone know you have this? 

JAN: Oh my gosh. 

JIM: I mean he could have cut JFK’s runtime by seventy five minutes if he had known this. Now we know more. Do you remember the Seinfeld episode where Elaine is trying to determine which man she is dating is sponge-worthy?

[Laughter]

JAN: No, I don’t.

JIM: That phrase came to mind for some bizarre reason, but it had to do with photos that we take being “carousel-worthy.”

JAN: Oh.

JIM: And if I said a photo is “carousel-worthy,” what is it I’m talking about? 

ROB: A slide that’s worthy of the carousel, of being seen by other people. 

JIM: That’s right. The McMahons and Cheynes, after we’d take vacations, would get together and then we’d have a slide show. Everything would be in the carousel. And is a slide good enough to get into the carousel? But I want to go even farther. Not just “carousel-worthy,” but is it “America the Beautiful-worthy”? 

ROB: Oh, yeah. 

JIM: Now what am I talking about? 

ROB: A variation of America the Beautiful that was written by Bill Himes that we performed at a - was it a Thanksgiving concert?

JAN: Yes.

ROB: Yeah, it was. Dearborn Heights. 

JIM: Now let me check. Was this when women were allowed in the band?

JAN & ROB: No.

JIM: However, a woman did participate.

ROB: They were allowed to be projectionists.

JIM: What was your role in that, Jan? 

JAN: We had two slide projectors. I had to follow the score and show the slides in a way that matched up with what was happening with music. So, I was the projectionist. 

JIM: Well, we got together in our living room, Dave McMahon, Jim Cheyne, and Bill Himes, and everyone brought slides that they thought would be America the Beautiful-worthy slides.

ROB: Right.

JIM: From our dads, these beautiful iconic landscapes of American national parks and American scenes, and Bill brought pictures of garbage and cows, as I remember it. Because his piece of music was not just America the Beautiful, but he had some America the Not-So-Beautiful pictures.

ROB: Yeah.

JIM: And he had this 5-4 section that was very well done with little discordant things of “God Bless America” and the Star Spangled Banner thrown in with it. And Jan, you had a score that you had to follow, and Bill helped you time things out because it started off out of focus, right? 

JAN: Right, and I had to bring it into focus at just the right moment.

DEE: Oo, wow!

JIM: This was great multimedia. 

DEE: This was before the computer…

JAN: Yeah.

DEE: …programs that did those things for you. 

ROB: Yes.

JIM: This is when a computer would have filled half the sanctuary. So, Jan is there with the score of when to change the slides, when to hit the - because you had to do an out of focus back focus…

JAN: Yeah.

JIM: …at the end, right?

JAN: Yeah.

JIM: After it came out of that 5-4 melee. Bill is very good at this harmonic texture, this timbral texture, and the motivic stuff, and he did a great arrangement for that. 

JAN: We kept the whole score - the score with all the markings on it - and those two trays. We had to have that device in the middle to synchronize the two projectors. We kept that all together, but I have no idea now at this point what happened. 

JIM: So we had to find which of our slides were “America the Beautiful-worthy.” That’s the top shelf. That’s my goal as a photographer: a picture that is “carousel-worthy.” Why do I even care about that? It’s because of dad, right?

JAN: Yeah.

JIM: What…

ROB: And our our dads only took slides. I don’t remember them ever having prints. 

JAN: My memory is that our fathers took those pictures only on vacations really. They weren’t a daily thing like we do more today. They were a record of our travel. But one of the funniest stories I have is of Dave, because these guys are on the East Coast and they’re gonna go into New York City. But it was a rainy day, so Dave didn’t think it was worth their time to go into New York City because he couldn’t get good pictures that day. 

ROB: It wouldn’t be a good good day for pictures, so we’re not…

JIM: They would not be “carousel-worthy.”

JAN: Yeah.

ROB: So we’re not gonna go.

JAN: Yeah.

ROB: And we said, “Are you kidding? It’s New York City.” It’s the first time we’d ever been. “Yes, we’re going into town, even though it’s raining.”

JIM: Did anyone take any pictures?

ROB: Yeah, he took pictures. They probably weren’t “carousel-,” you know…

JAN: “Worthy.”

ROB: -worthy,” but they were put in the carousel because it’s part of the vacation. 

JIM: You can do some great city pictures in the rain.

JAN: Yeah.

ROB: Oh, sure, yeah.

DEE: Yeah, I was just thinking that.

JIM: You really, really can, especially if you’re working, like, black and white or something.

DEE: Mm-Hmm.

JIM: You can do some wonderful things. We have to remind our younger listeners that this was in the film days, and so snapping a shutter cost you money…

ROB: Yeah.

JIM: …and you had a roll of…

JAN: 36.

JIM: …36…

ROB: 36.

JIM: …exposures, right?

ROB: Yup.

JAN: Yup.

JIM: When we had those little Instamatic cameras, where you put a flash cube on the…

JAN: Yup.

JIM: …top and stuff like that? Those rolls,  were those thirty…? I thought those were like…

JAN: No, they were 12.

JIM: …12. Yeah.

DEE: Yes…

JIM: And a roll…

DEE: …‘cause I remember those.

ROB: Yes.

JIM: Remember that?

JAN: Yes. See?

[Laughter]

JIM: And it was a little plastic thing you just took your pictures and then you never knew how it worked until they were developed later and you got them. So…

ROB: Kodachrome.

JIM: Kodachrome, a beautiful film.

ROB: Yeah.

JIM: A beautiful film. A good archive life, great color. That slide that we put in the carousel was the actual film that was in the camera.

ROB: Right.

JIM: But in our family vacations, the completion of the vacation was meeting in the living room…

ROB: Yup.

JIM: …and going over those slides.

ROB: Yup.

JIM: And there were some slides where you’d go, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!” [excitedly] And then there were other slides you just go, “Oh, yeah” [pensively]. Those were the America the Beautiful-quality slides. Beautiful things. 

JAN: Dad and Dave took that seriously, being able to take good pictures. So one time when we were in the Rockies, they used to do these things in the National Parks where they’d call it “Picture…” well, in this case it was called “Picture the Rockies,” and it was done by Kodak. We went on this whole outing in the evening, up in a drive through the mountains. And, as we went, I can’t remember exactly how this went, but what I do remember is, they all got lessons in how to frame, how to take a picture, how to put somebody in the picture to give them, to make them stand out. You would wear certain colors. How to frame a picture properly. This is where the whole idea of having a dead tree in your picture…

ROB: The dead tree pictures.

DEE: Yeah. [laughs]

JAN: …became part of our traditions. 

JIM: Well, it’s an interesting shape.

ROB: Yeah.

JIM: So, that’s where I first learned about what framing a picture was.

JAN: Yeah.

JIM: If you can have a red jacket or something. Red was a a good color in the mountainscape  to contrast the greens and blues that were there, and the yellows. Put someone in red. Those were the two takeaways I had from that. And that’s also the the one where I learned that the Ponderosa pine smells like vanilla…

ROB: Yup.

JIM: …and so the ranger, who was doing this talk, had a woman come down and volunteer so she could smell the tree. And so while she’s smelling the tree, he’s telling, [whispered] “Take a picture…

ROB: Click, click, click, click, click.

JIM: …now. Taker her picture now.” 

ROB: When I think of my dad’s slides, I think of Kodachrome. ASA 100. That was his preference for shooting. Until we went to Carlsbad Caverns, and then he said, “No, no, I gotta get a higher ASA.” And he did a 400. I don’t know why I remember that.

JAN: Wow.

ROB: I know. 

JIM: Or if you’re gonna be outdoors all the time, I remember ASA 64. 

JAN: Oh I remember that.

ROB: That was another one, yup.

JIM: And it was just, this was they, uh…

JAN: This is so weird.

JIM: And ASA these days is called ISO. That was the rating on the film speed, the sensitivity of the film. The digital cameras, it’s not a sensitivity to it, it’s the way that it handles the, uh, transfer electronically. You turn it up. It’s like turning up the volume if the - if you’re listening to us right now and you have to turn up the volume, you’re adjusting the ISO of your camera.

Here’s a way to test who your friends are. Show them pictures and see how long they’ll last. In the old days, it was easy because you had a picture in your wallet or your purse, so you knew you were only going to have to look at one or two But if someone opens up their phone, “Here, let me show you the sandwich I just made. I took 40 selfies of me making a sandwich.” Now, a good friend, a true friend, the friend that you want to keep is the one who will keep looking at your pictures, not because they want to see the pictures, but because you want to show them. “Show me another one, that’s fine.” Of course, a true friend is probably the one that is not gonna make you look at all their pictures, too. 

JAN: Well, there’s that.

ROB: Well, that’s, yeah, but that was  not a McMahon and Cheyne thing. 

JAN: We just assumed everybody was interested.

ROB: And we loved it. We looked forward to that…

JIM: Yeah.

ROB: …because it’s reliving… That’s why I do what I do now with the video that I make every trip because it brings back so many good memories. 

JIM: And you’ve got the advantage of not putting a slide in upside down by mistake.

ROB: That’s true.

JIM: Those were always fun. You know, you watch everyone’s heads tilt as - oh! 

ROB: And dad used to get - I don’t know if your dad did do - he used to get those - he bought slides that had little comments in them like, “Whoops!” “Sorry folks,” you know, or…

JIM: I don’t remember that.

ROB: …or, um, yeah. He’d have them scattered in there every once in a while.

JIM: That sounds good.

ROB: And then also he bought slides for places that he couldn’t get what he considered good pictures. And we were relentless - the kids.

JAN: Yeah. You denigrated him.

ROB: “Boughten.” Every time one came up. “Boughten.”

JIM: “Boughten” was the word?

[Laughter]

ROB: “Boughten” was the word. [Laughing] “Oh dad, that one was boughten.”

JIM: Fun fact, trivia question, you can all try and answer this. This is a film versus digital question. In the film days, Kodak would say there’s one - in all the film they developed - there’s one image that is the most popular image. Anyone want to take a guess on what that one image is in the world?

ROB: The Leaning Tower.

JIM: It’s not the Leaning Tower. 

JAN: Okay. Is this a twenty questions? Is it a specific iconic place? Or is it a scene that we all…? 

JIM: There’s a number one picture…

JAN: [laughing] Okay.

JIM: …that Kodak says was their most popular. While Jan is googling it…

JAN: I’m not. 

JIM: Dee - Dee, do you have a guess? 

DEE: I’m gonna say maybe the moon landing. 

JIM: The moon landing. I’ve got pictures of the moon landing. 

DEE: I know, that’s the way I’m saying it. 

JIM: Yeah. I wasn’t there. I took them off the TV.

ROB: TV.

DEE: Right, yeah 

JIM: No, it wasn’t the moon landing. The number one picture of developed film was looking down Disney’s Main Street USA towards the castle. 

JAN: I’ll be darned.

JIM: When now that it’s digital, the first picture people take is not Main Street USA. The first picture people take now, Walt Disney World, is of the pavement where they parked their car. 

JAN: Oh yes.

ROB: Oh-hoh.

DEE: Oh.

JIM: They pull their phone out…

JAN: That is.

JIM: …and they say, “Okay, we are in Zurg 409.”

ROB: That’s true.

JIM: That shows you that digital pictures are expendable.

ROB: Yeah.

JIM: Just take a bunch of them. We could take 40 pictures of us making a sandwich and not care about it. 

ROB: We do that. Jan takes pictures a lot when we’re in Europe of the cross street at our hotel, or places where we have to meet back with the group, so we have a record of it. We might not be able to ever find it again, but you know. 

JIM: So a lot of photos are like what Lil does on your trips: journals.

JAN: Yeah.

JIM: Why else are you gonna pull out your camera? What type of thing would provoke you to pull out your phone to take a picture? 

DEE: A beautiful plate of food that…

JIM: Food.

DEE: …was unique.

JIM: Yes.

JAN: This is so true. Now that’s something I don’t think we ever used to do, but we do now that we have digital. We have our phones with us. And we just did this with our trip we took with Russ and Sandy. Well, we’ve done it with every trip, but Rob put together this whole video of just the food we ate on that vacation. So, it’s part of the memory, but it’s not the part that we used to think about at all. So that’s changed with digital…

DEE: Yeah.

JAN: …photography. 

DEE: The thing about digital is I think you’re more likely to get candid, real photos as opposed…

JAN: Yeah.

DEE: …to posed photos. 

ROB: I know that folks at home can’t see this…

DEE: Oh, wow!

ROB: …but these are enchiladas. What was the name of the restaurant?

DEE: Is that like the Mexican…?

ROB: I don’t even remember…

JIM: Taco Bell?

ROB: …the name of the restaurant. It’s the place my uncle took us to. 

JAN: In Tucson.

ROB: Kind of a different slant on Mexican. And it just was a beautiful presentation. There are four chicken enchiladas and it’s a green - verde sauce. 

DEE: Is this an appetizer or somebody’s meal? 

ROB: This is a meal. 

DEE: Oh my goodness.

ROB: Yeah.

DEE: That’s a lot. 

JIM: Is that your Uncle Tom?

ROB: Yes.

JIM: Your Uncle Tom? 

ROB: My dad’s youngest brother. 

JIM: ‘S he have a cabin? 

ROB: He does not. [laughs]

JIM: Okay. There’s a professional photographer, and I was following him for a while, and then I found out he lives right here in Tampa. I mean he’s internationally known. His name is Scott Kelby. The K-E-L-B-Y. One of the things he’s talking about when you’re traveling, make sure you take a picture of the food. 

DEE: That also gives you more of the cultural aspect of where you’re visiting, and maybe that’s the difference between digital and film. You’re more willing to take more pictures, which then gives you more sense of the culture. 

ROB: Mm-Hmm. Another thing that I think of I want to take my phone out take a picture is a beautiful sunrise or a beautiful sunset. And we get a lot of those in Florida. 

JIM: Well, on Facebook, one of my favorite photographers is Walter Coles. California. Do you know Walter?

JAN: Uh-uh.

JIM : His, uh, son, Richard the drummer in Fortress, and his daughter is Lisa Guerrero, the reporter, does inside edition stuff, things like that.

JAN: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

JIM: Yeah. He’s retired now. He used to do development work with The Salvation Army. He’s in Huntington Beach. You talk about sunsets. You wanna see great sunset photos, just go on the Facebook for - and look for Walter Cole[s] - and he’s uh um I was asking him once, “How do you do these?” And he was talking about this high dynamic range photography that you do. You’re working with a tripod and you take bracketed shots, and your camera takes one that’s a little brighter and one that’s a little darker and then you can blend them into a - an HDR photo. 

DEE: Don’t you have another friend who specializes in planets or sky? 

JIM: Well Tod Markin is always posting. He has an attachment for his telescope. 

DEE: Right. 

JIM: Other than Tod, I don’t know who we’re I’m you’re thinking of. 

DEE: Okay. Well maybe it’s one of my friends. 

JIM: Or it could be Duncan who’s always taking pictures of the Northern Lights. 

ROB: The Northern Lights.

DEE: Well he’s my brother in law. He takes…

JIM: He’s no friend, he’s a relative.

ROB: He takes some beautiful pictures.\

JIM: He does.

DEE: Yeah, no, he does take nice photos.

JIM: He does.

ROB: I know we’ve got a, in our back bedroom, we’ve got a lot, several prints by one of my favorite photographers, Ansel Adams.

DEE: Oh yeah.

ROB: And then there’s Clyde Butcher who is a photographer who takes pictures in Florida - Everglades and some really neat things there. My friend Linda Bacon loves Clyde Butcher. She’s got lots of prints of his, too. But those are a couple that, when I think of great photographers…

DEE: Mm-Hmm.

JAN: Are iconic.

ROB: …besides Jim Cheyne and Dave McMahon. 

JAN: Well, yeah, minus those two. Those photographers are - why I’m drawn to them specifically is that they are about nature and the outdoors. And that’s where I’m most likely to take pictures is out of doors in nature. I’m less talented in capturing the perfect picture than I am in - and it’s not talented, but my goal is to journal our experience. So I’ll remember this scene and remember where we were. It’s like I’m the picture equivalent of Lillian who’s journaling every night and writing it down. I can go back and match my pictures to our experience, and that’s how I remember. Because I wouldn’t remember these moments without capturing them with my phone.

JIM: I don’t know if I like Ansel Adams because I like National Parks, or if I like National Parks because of Ansel Adams’ photography of them. He was hired by the Interior - was it called the Interior then? - to take photos of iconic lands that the Interior Department, as it is now, owns, so that they could be displayed in government buildings. And he’s also a musician.

JAN: Ah!

ROB: Oh! Okay.

JIM: This is why I like him. Just thinking of all the things he and I have in common. It’s a very short list. But one of them is, he played piano, but by the time documentary cameras got to him, his hands had already done what my hands have done, and they just don’t work right anymore. And so if he’s gonna play some Bach, just be patient with it. But he’s a musician. And he also considered his photos to be th’equivalent of a composer writing a score. And that’s the negative, because he was taking negatives. So he did a lot to create the negative exactly the way he wanted it. So all the work that you have to do in camera is creating the negative. And then the second part, the processing part, the Photoshop part, is where you make the print from it. And for him, he called that a performance of the score. And he saw his work as being stored, because these negatives, if properly handled, will last for a very long time, giving them to future photographers to make prints, and interpreting the score differently, the way performers interpret scores differently.

DEE: Oh, that’s nice.

JIM: It’s a very nice idea.

JAN: Yeah.

ROB: Yeah.

JIM: And I think some have done that. And you look at it and say, “Oh, they’re trying to be Ansel Adams.” Well, it’s his negative.

ROB: Yeah.

JIM: So, it’s his composition. 

JAN: One of the things I think you learned from somebody like that, and I’m going to use Dad as an example here, is the patience and time it takes to take the right picture. You know, we’re in a world where we walk around with our phones and people can snap pictures everywhere all the time and frequently don’t even really pause long to take that picture. But when you see somebody - I’ll use Bernie as an example, our friend Bernie in the park is a great photographer. He does wildlife and he’ll - sort of like what Jim’s saying with Ansel Adams; he can take a picture and he can process it or adapt it in certain ways that’s gonna bring it to its ultimate glory, so to speak. We leave him in the park every morning as he’s staying in one place to take these pictures. Well, we’ve gone on. And that’s how he captures the image of the owl that’s not just stuck up in the tree, but it’s right there standing there. He waits for it to face the light. He waits for it to turn its head just the right way. And I’ve learned from people like that, that sometimes you just have to stop for a minute and observe and think about what you’re doing in a different way than most of us do when we pick up our phones. 

JIM: Well let’s tell that story. And you tell that story. I don’t need to because I don’t need to. But it we’re in Rocky Mountain National Park and Dad sees a picture that is about to happen. We’re at Sheep Lakes, looking to the west…

[Music starts]

…and it’s late afternoon. The mountains that are there, the valley he’s looking through up to the mountains is clouded over, but he’s gonna sit there and wait. And we’re in the car just waiting for him. 20 minutes?

JAN: At least, yeah.

JIM: He’s waiting. Well, I’m sorry. No, I was gonna say you tell this story. 

JAN: No, I like your telling better. 

JIM: The clouds start to part. I mean this is Charlton Heston, Moses, Red Sea time. The clouds start to part, and the way the sun streams down those mountain slopes, that was an America the Beautiful-worthy picture. In fact, that was in the slideshow.

ROB: Yes it was. That was the, the culmination of the slideshow.

JIM: It was an amazing shot, and we were there waiting for it. Now, Dee is a very patient person. When we were in Rocky Mountain National Park, I went to Sheep Lakes, and I’m looking up the valley, and it’s kind of overcast. It’s late afternoon. But I’m thinking, “Do we have some time?” And this is true. I put on the slow movement of American Journey.

JAN: Yeah.

JIM: And just as the music did, so did the clouds. Charlton Heston, Red Sea-like, they part.

[Music ends]

DEE: It was longer than 20 minutes.

[Laughter]

JAN: That’s true. 

JIM: It was. I tell you one that was a lot longer than 20 minutes. We’re driving back from Newfoundland, and I asked, I’d like to stop at the National Cathedral. We have Brigus with us. Brigus can’t go in the National Cathedral, so I said, “Is it okay if I just go in for a few minutes?” And then I come back out. I said, “What time is it?” I had been in the cathedral for two hours. And what did Dee say? Dee said nothing. She said nothing. She said that was fine.

You guys mentioned about preparing for a trip of what you’re going to see. Prepare a trip for what you’re going to take pictures of.

JAN: Yeah.

JIM: So research. Okay, if I’m in Prague, what is it that people take pictures of? And you can find these things. There’s a nice site called Nature TTL - through the lens - nature through the lens, and you’re saying, “Okay, I’m gonna go to Carlsbad Caverns. How do I do it? What do I do? And you’ll find people that’ll give you help on how they did their pictures, what pictures they took, and say, “Boy, that’s a nice angle. I would never have thought of that.” In fact, when Dee does take pictures, I look at what she’s done and say, “I - I never saw that picture. We were standing at the same place. I never saw the picture she took.” 

DEE: And I never took any classes. 

JIM: No, you don’t have to. The idea of the picture is not to put it in the carousel so much. It’s just the joy of doing it.

DEE: Mm-Hmm.

JIM: There’s joy in the in the process of doing it and this satisfaction you get of, “I just took a picture.”

JIM (voice-over): And so, our quest for a carousel-worthy photo continues in our next episodes, with visits to the Louvre in Paris, the Art Institute in Chicago, and the Dali Museum right here in St. Petersburg - intriguing images, created with our words and your imagination, as we continue Making Our Way.

Take care of each other.

Until next time.

[Music ends]