retro-the-best....: Retro: Kimmer

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Retro: Kimmer

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? BY PAUL NATKIN
HANGING OUT WITH THE MODFATHER!
JOHN WAITE: IF YOU EVER GET LONELY
THE REAL GIDGET: KATHY KOHNER

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? BY PAUL NATKIN

Posted: 18 Oct 2011 07:49 PM PDT

Kimmer photo: Larry Leitner

A photographer I know sent me this article and I have to tell you it is such an eye opener! As a blogger I photograph and shoot video of lots of topics. Music, Art, News, and cool stuff that I think my readers would like. I do not ever have to ask for a "photo pass". If I had to... I would go shoot a different gig.. But the plight of rock photographers is not lost on me.

Even just 3 short years ago... I would go to a gig and I would be the only person shooting pictures or video. Not now... EVERYONE has a camera on their phones! These photos are blurry and grainy at best. They may get one or two good shots out of 30 pics.

It is infuriating when I am invited to shoot a band and the house demands that I turn off my nice video camera and then I see tons of amateurs shooting video off a cell phone UGH!!!

It is also so mean and greedy of people to swipe photos and share them on facebook as their own... I hang with a ton of photographers and all they ask is photo: credit.. Meaning just add their NAME under THEIR photos. Please read the full article.....

The Battle for Music Photography
By Paul Natkin

From early cave drawings to the digital cameras of today, civilization has been recorded. When anything happened, someone documented it, and these records have preserved history and culture for future generations.

In the 20th century, photography became a prime means of documentation. As culture became more interesting to the masses, photographers gravitated to it—it was exciting, and a lot safer than documenting wars. Music photography is seen as an exciting profession, but if we examine the monetary component, "exciting" takes on a different significance.

Today, I go to a shoot with about $20,000 worth of equipment. Another $10,000 in computer equipment waits for me at home. Most publications pay in the range of $50 to $250 per photo. Even today, shooting digital photographs, a photographer could make $150 for about seven hours work (including getting to the show early, waiting at the box office for a pass that is not always there and a few hours of computer time at home to edit, archive and email the shots). That's a little more than fast food workers make, and Burger King purchases and insures their equipment.

In the 1950s, music photography started to become an acceptable form of journalism. A group of photographers, most prominent among them Jim Marshall, Henry Diltz, Herman Leonard and David Gahr, began establishing the standards for the art form. Given unlimited access to musicians from all genres, they created bodies of work which will never be equaled. From live concert photography to formal and informal offstage work, they set the standard for any photographer.

In the late 1970s, the music business exploded. Musicians became Rock Stars, and publications started covering them more closely, especially magazines like Rolling Stone, Circus, Hit Parade, Teen Beat, and the best of them, CREEM.

These magazines had a limitless need for photographs, and more and more photographers leaped into that black hole to supply them with images, including west coasters Neil Zlozower and Jeffrey Mayer, east coasters Ebet Roberts, Lynn Goldsmith, Roberta Bayley and Laura Levine and Midwesterners Bob Alford, Ross Marino, myself and many others.

Typically, one or more photographers would befriend the new bands and "grow" with the band as they became well known. We built up a trust that would be broken if we sold an unflattering photograph, so we didn't do that.

The Ruiners photo by Retro: Kimmer

Publicists were friendly, recognizing that if they gave us access, whether a photo pass to shoot the whole show or a posed photo shoot, our pictures would make the band look good, and potentially turn a two-page story into a four-page story. It was our job to make the artist look good. Our work also helped many magazines put together special photo issues, publicizing the band even more.

As the '70s became the '80s, many more magazines started covering popular music, including People, Us, Newsweek and Time. Rock magazines, especially Circus, started to demand a certain kind of photography (Circus publisher Gerry Rothberg stated that all photos in his magazine had to be taken with a flash, so that skin tones would be normal).

Flash opened the door for amateurs who knew very little about photography. At times, magazine photo editors would obtain a photo pass for a friend, load a roll of film into a camera, preset all the settings, tape them into place and, after a short lesson in focusing and advancing the film, send their buddy to a concert.

After the roll was used, the "photographer" would sit back and enjoy the show. He brought the camera back to the office where the editor would unload the film, have it processed, and end up with three or four usable shots.

The magazine's bonus was that the photographer/pal knew nothing about copyright or ownership, so the magazine would have three or four photos to use multiple times, free.

Circus established a policy to "buy" one or two rolls from a photographer for $100, which yielded many photos to be used over and over.

READ THE FULL STORY IT IS FANTASTIC!

HANGING OUT WITH THE MODFATHER!

Posted: 18 Oct 2011 05:59 PM PDT

Modfather...Mark Boone

The Modfather (Mark Boone)
PICKS 3 VIDEOS FOR RETROKIMMER TONIGHT...

FROM THE MODFATHER:

Everyone can relate to this song because we're all ass*oles at times... please try to understand...

For me I landed at age 14 and never got past it....

This reminds me that I am not the only guy who gets mistaken for a chick sometimes!

JOHN WAITE: IF YOU EVER GET LONELY

Posted: 18 Oct 2011 05:14 PM PDT

British Blues/Rocker John Waite

A request came in tonight for me to feature John Waite and his latest song "If You Ever Get Lonely". So I ran over to You Tube to check out this new song and John blasts it out of the park! I have always loved his voice and of course his main hits "Missing You" and "Every Time I Think of You".

I chose this video below over his official one as he looks so much prettier in this one....

John Charles Waite (born 4 July 1952) is an English rock singer and musician. He was lead vocalist for The Babys and Bad English. As a solo artist, he scored several international hits, including 1984's "Missing You", a top ten hit on the US Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart, reaching #1 in the US.

Waite was born in Lancaster, England. He first came to attention as the lead singer and bassist of The Babys, a British group which had moderate chart success, including two pop hits that both coincidentally peaked at #13 on the Billboard Hot 100, "Isn't It Time" (1977) and "Everytime I Think Of You" (1979),[ and a solid following for their concert tours. Over the course of five years, the band produced five albums ending with the final album On the Edge in October 1980, after which the group broke up.

Waite subsequently launched his solo career with his 1982 debut album Ignition, which produced the hit single "Change". The Chrysalis 45 failed to chart on Billboard's Hot 100 during its initial release but was a top track on AOR radio stations as well as a very popular music video on MTV as the 'new' cable channel celebrated its first full year of operation.

The pulsating track was written by Holly Knight (The song was originally recorded in 1981 by Knight's band Spider) and in 1985 was included on the Platinum selling Vision Quest soundtrack. (The single was reissued and this time it reached the Top 50 on the Hot 100.) "Going To The Top" was released as the original follow-up single to "Change".

In 2011 the title track from his tenth solo album " Rough and Tumble " went number one on Classic Rock radio...

THE REAL GIDGET: KATHY KOHNER

Posted: 18 Oct 2011 07:54 AM PDT

Sally Field as Gidget

One of my favorite tv shows was Gidget with Sally Field. It was a light weight, fun and entertaining show. Funny thing... until today I never knew there was a "real" Gidget! I stumbled across this video about Kathy Kohner the surfer girl of the mid 1950's. It would appear that after Kathy's book came out and then the release of the first Gidget Movie in 1959... the billion dollar Malibu/surf industry began...

Kathy Kohner-Zuckerman

Widely recognized as a pioneering female surfer and an inspiration to generations of surfer girls worldwide, Kathy Zuckerman is the Real Gidget. She was ranked seventh among the 25 most influential surfers of all time in Surfer Magazine's 40th anniversary issue.

Kathy Kohner Zuckerman was born in 1941 and grew up in Southern California. She also spent some of her childhood living in Ketchum, Idaho, and Berlin, Germany. Kathy's Father, Frederick Kohner, was a screenwriter, and her mother, Mimi, was an outdoor enthusiast.

As a teenager in the mid 50s, Kathy spent several summers surfing near the Malibu pier with a group of young surfers who dubbed her "Gidget," meaning "girl midget." Kathy conveyed many of her experiences on the beach to her father, who, in 1957, went on to write the landmark novel "Gidget." The novel spawned a series of movies and TV shows for Columbia Pictures, and Gidget became an American icon. Full Story Here