Author - Paul Schatzkin

Today in #GameOfThrones #GoT
Middleham Castle – Yorkshire, England

April 12, 2016
Paul Schatzkin
Digest, photography, travel
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Before I went to the UK in the fall of 2014, I spent a little time learning how to make 360º panoramic photos (via Skype) from a guy in Australia, John Warkentin. I haven’t done much with the files since, they’ve just been sitting on my hard drive and I’ve just about completely forgotten how the software that stitches these puppies together works (it’s kinda complex…).

Middleham-PA160269_A-HDR

Inside a ruined tower of Middleham Castle

But this morning as I was randomly, mindlessly scrolling through Facebook, I found a page dedicated to the English Wars of the Roses and Medieval Buildings. That got me to looking through some of the files I haven’t looked at for almost two years. First I found an image from the interior of one of the ruined towers of Middleham Castle, a large fortress in Yorkshire, England that was one of the redoubts of the Yorkist faction during the Wars of the Roses, that 30-some-year civil war when the Yorks fought it out with the Lancasters for the Throne of England.

Then I went looking to see what else I have, and found all the files I shot for those panoramas (with a special tripod head that rotates the camera round the front element of the lens). Then I dug into the software that generates the panoramas to see if I could remember how to make it work.

The final result is the image at the top of this post, taken within the main courtyard of Middleham Castle. The statue on the left side is of Richard III – he of “My kingdom for a horse” fame – who resided here for most of his life before usurping the crown from his nephew Edward V.

Edward V and his brother (also a Richard) were confined to the Tower of London, and once Richard ascended the throne, the boys – aged 12 and 9 – were never heard from or seen again, becoming instead the legend of “The Princes in the Tower.”

It was not too much longer before Richard III himself was dispatched in the Battle of Bosworth in August, 1485 – ending more than 350 years of the Plantagenet dynasty in England. Bosworth is often cited as marking the end of the ‘medieval’ period of English history. Richard and the Yorks were vanquished by Henry Tudor, who styled himself Henry VII and began the Tudor dynasty that ended a little over 100 years later with the demise of Elizabeth I.

Any resemblance between the stories of The Wars of the Roses and “Game of Thrones” is strictly intentional. George R. R. Martin has even said as much…

Y’All Are Gonna Wanna Get Hip
to Bonnie Bishop

April 8, 2016
Paul Schatzkin
"industry", celestial jukebox, Digest, music, music 3.0
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About 5 years ago, I was fortunate to be invited to attend the annual American Music Conference here in Nashville (little known fact: I was actually on the Founding Council that started the AMA back in like 2000).

After the conference, I sat down with the program guide from all the showcase and went on line (at the time it was LaLa.com) to stream/listen to some of the artists whose showcases I’d missed. One track stopped me in… well, my tracks. It was an artist I’d never heard of named Bonnie Bishop and the track was called “Lucky Ones.” Here, listen to it for yourself:

Bonnie has released a couple of records since then; visit her Spotify page to hear more. What you’re going to hear is one of the gut-wrenching-est voices this side of… well, Janis Joplin comes to mind…

I tracked her down later that year, and she let me photograph a showcase that she performed at one of Nashville’s clubs. She was still doing her level best to land a fucking record deal…

Over the past decade+, Bonnie Bishop’s career has seen all the vagaries typical of today’s itinerant, independent singer/songwriters – they who that travel and toil under the radar of the mainstream commercial music industry. They for whom the life of an “artist” is “mostly driving.”

Two years ago, she was on the threshold of throwing it all in.

That’s all going change with the release of her new CD, “Ain’t Who I Was” next month. The title track was released today:

And here’s what you need to know about the pedigree of this new record, which will be officially released on May 27:

  1. It was produced by Nashville’s hottest producer, the Chet Atkins/Owen Bradley of the twenty-teens, Dave Cobb. Talk about being on a roll: Dave Cobb is responsible for the breakthrough solo releases by Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson and 2016 multi- CMA, Grammy and ACM winner Chris Stapleton (all Spotify links). You just don’t get any hotter a hand than the one Dave Cobb has been playing over the past few years. And the Atkins/Bradley reference is not an overstatement – he recently took over the keys to Nashville’s fabled Studio A (sometimes referred to as Nashville’s Abbey Road), which was built by Chet and Owen in the 1960s and narrowly escaped a condo-developer’s wrecking ball in 2014.
  2. The release and distribution of “Ain’t Who I Was” is being handled by Thirty Tigers, a new-paradigm label services and distribution company that is one of the few companies that has cracked the code on the new digital business – and not coincidentally the same firm that handled the break out releases for Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson, among others.

RollingStone.com has got a great account of the kismet that went into the song selection and production of this new record:

The recording sessions were coming to an end when Cobb’s cousin, singer/songwriter Brent Cobb, walked into the studio with a track he’d co-written earlier that afternoon.

“Dave opens a brand new bottle of his favorite tequila,” Bishop remembers, “and we all take shots. Then Adam [Hood] and Brent play us the song they wrote. I have chills. I look over at Dave, who is nodding his head and grinning at me. Then I sing the words back to them while Brent plays the guitar and they sound so natural coming out of my mouth. It’s like I’ve been singing this song all my life.”

The song was “Ain’t Who I Was,” which became the title track to the new CD. When you hear it, you can’t help but think that the spiral has come back around, only at a much higher level, and that Bonnie Bishop is about to become, truly, one of “the lucky ones.”

Bonnie Bishop promo photo by Jason Lee Denton

Bonnie Bishop promo photo by Jason Lee Denton

It’s Nice to Have “Fans” …

April 6, 2016
Paul Schatzkin
photography
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…and even better to have “patrons.”

Above, that’s my friend and patron Chuck Cavalier, and on the wall behind him a beautifully framed print of my photo of Carnton Plantation that was taken at about 4PM on November 30, 2013 – exactly 149 years to the minute from the moment the Battle of Franklin started. Chuck is a history “Civil War buff,” and this Carnton print is just one of four that Chuck purchased from me to adorn the walls of his home in Franklin.

Accounts of the Battle of Franklin say said the sun was setting into a blood red sky as Confederate descended from Winstead Hill south of the village of Franklin toward Federal emplacements. That’s exactly how the sky looked 149 years later….

Carnton Plantation at ~4:30 PM November 30, 2013 - exactly 149 years 'to the minute' from when the Battle of Franklin commenced under a similar sky...

Carnton Plantation at ~4:30 PM November 30, 2013 – exactly 149 years ‘to the minute’ from when the Battle of Franklin commenced under a similar sky…

This image was used for the cover of The 1861 Project – Volume 3: Franklin. Listen to it via Spotify:

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Go See “Machisma”

April 6, 2016
Paul Schatzkin
Digest, photography
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File this one under “Paul attempts to review an art show”:

Karen Renee Robb and Nina Covington

Karen Renee Robb, one of the subjects of “Machisma” and Nina Covington, the photographer/artist who created the exhibit.

I want to encourage all my readers (well, those that live in or near Nashville) to hasten themselves down to The Arcade in downtown Nashville [Google Maps]. On the ground floor, next door to Manny’s Pizza (best place in Nashville for real New York street-style pizza) you’ll find Corvidae Collective Gallery. Climb the stairs, go around the corner, and behold Nina Covington’s marvelous photo exhibit, “Machisma.”

What you will see is a stunning collection of black-and-white-on-metal prints of women Nina has photographed over the past two years.

I think “Machisma” is a word Nina coined herself. I’m going to go out on limb here and surmise that the term is a feminized version of the word that the spell-checker on my laptop keeps wanting to correct it to, the more familiar “machismo.”

My dictionary defines “machismo” as “strong or aggressive masculine pride.” I believe what Nina has captured in this riveting portrait series is the feminine equivalent, which is actually something very different. Both genders can be “strong” but where the masculine version is “aggressive” the feminine version is more, “I’m not coming after you, but I’m not taking any of your shit, either.”

What Nina Covington has assembled over a period of two years is a series of black and white portraits of women from all walks of life, all of which show women at both their most vulnerable and their most powerful.

nina+3-notpixed

Nina Covington with three of the prints from “Machisma” – her mother, herself, and her grandmother. Photo © Kirabelle Frabotta

They all posed… I’m at a slight loss for words here, because to say the subjects are “topless” engages all manner of pop-culture stereotypes and invokes a certain risqué and daring – which is not what these photographs are about. So let’s just say that all the subjects, regardless of body type, have posed for Nina’s camera “without the burden of clothing” over their torsos.

And, perhaps a bit oddly in light of all those cultural stereotypes, that is precisely how/where the images derive their impressive power. “Machisma” captures the infinite variety of female body types apart from the hyper-sexualized, impossible-without-makeup-and-Photoshop “ideal” form.

Nina’s secret for capturing these compelling images? I overheard her at the opening last Saturday (April 2) telling a visitor, “I spent an hour with each subject just talking” before she even opened her camera bag or set any lights.

I have been learning in the course of my photo work that finding a rapport with your subject is infinitely more important than all the technical details like camera settings and light angles. As a photographer myself I was duly impressed with the technical excellence of all these portraits, but I am even more impressed with the character that is captured in each image.

I’ve said enough. Go see the photos, they do a much better job of speaking for themselves than I can do speaking for them. And better yet, take your daughters.

(If you’re not near Nashville or otherwise not able to see the show, click the banner below to see the images on the Corvidae Collective Gallery website:

machisma

New Installment to “Time Capsule: 1969”
Port Huron Revisited

April 5, 2016
Paul Schatzkin
commentary
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The whole time I have been rummaging around in the “Time Capsule” that I sent myself from 1969, I have been thinking that part of the justification for the exercise is that we are seeing a resurgence of some of the rhetorical underpinnings of the period in the candidacy of Bernie Sanders for President of these (somewhat) United States.

So it was inevitable that I would scour the web (“scour” being an overstatement since it wasn’t at all hard to find) to take a fresh look at what was arguably one of the seminal documents of the 1960s, the organizing manifesto for the Students for a Democratic Society, aka the SDS.

That is precisely what I have done in the latest installment,

Port Huron Revisited

…which I have just published to Medium.com along with the other chapters I’ve published so far.

Incidentally, have been writing and compiling all of this material with the aid of a tremendous but little known ‘word processor on steroids’ that is engineered for writers called Scrivener.

Scrivener tells me that I have so far posted about 25,000 of the 75,000 words I intend to write and publish (the equivalent of ~225 printed pages). Assuming that’s the goal, I’m roughly 1/3rd of the way to completion.

Back to work then…

I Can’t Believe We Survived Our Childhood!

March 25, 2016
Paul Schatzkin
commentary, Digest
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Don’t bother clicking on the “play” button in the picture above. It won’t do anything.

This damn video is embedded into Facebook, which does it’s level-best to make sure you never actually see anything that is not in Facebook. A YouTube search failed to come up with the same thing. But if you grew up in the 50s or 60s and haven’t seen this, it’s worth clicking through. You’ll relate:

Childhood
If you were born in the 1950s, 60s or 70s, you have to watch this. It sums up childhood perfectly…

Posted by Omeleto on Thursday, March 10, 2016