This is a housekeeping message for blog readers. Normally, as you know, blogs appear from me frequently, sometimes daily, but on average maybe one every other day or so.

Many posts relate directly to series of mine or bodies of work that are on the site. Well, if you go to the Gallery you'll see I haven't added any new work to the site since the Chartreuse Rocks series from Iceland shot last summer. This is far too long. So the blog will take a short vacation while I work to bring the Gallery up to date.

What's missing? Some Iceland work printed but not seen, the results of a road trip I took last fall along the tnorthen edges of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, some new work from Martha's Vineyard, aerial work along Route 2 in Massachusetts called Route 2 Trilogy, several portfolios from my month in California this past winter , including Tafoni, Skate Park, Sacramento River Vallery aerials, and a portfolio titled Before and After Aerials, and some new work from Fitchburg, MA. 

So, please stay tuned. Check the site for the new additions and I will bring the blog back soon. I promise.

Quilts? What? You thought this was a photo blog, didn't you? Well it is but when something remarkable happens it's important that I bring it to your attention.

I've learned from past experience that when my friend Peter Vanderwarker says to go see a show, he means it and I should follow his recommendation. In his recent email he was very excited about the show at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts called  "Quilts and Color" up now through July 27. These are quilts from the Pilgrim/Roy Collection, by the way.

So I went. It is downstairs in the new wing, under the cafe'.  This is where they tend to put contemporary shows as the galleries are new and very state of the art. The Quilts show reminded me right off why the MFA is a world class museum. 

Because these magnificent creations are displayed with wonderful light in dark rooms that are quiet, meditative spaces, perfect for looking and really seeing the quilts. No  glass over them, no frames, just hung on the walls, mostly with black around them but sometimes with a complimentary color:

Like color? This show is color. Like design? Ditto. Like form? Same. Like texture? Yes. Complexity and simplicity, crucial and soothing, loving and warm, these are descriptions that come to my mind. Think about how these were made, what the quilt's function is, what it means to its maker and the family that owned it. Then think about how this art form comes from every day people and where these quilts hang now. Most of the quilts were made in the 19th century but let's be clear this is an American art form and these incredible quilts were made by women.

The collector, Gerald Roy, quotes one of the quilt makers. She says, "I make my quilts as fast as I can so my children won't freeze and as beautiful as I can so my heart won't break".

"You will not see a more beautiful show anywhere in New England. What a bliss-out."—The Boston Globe

I got very bad news yesterday just before going to see this show. My application for a Guggenheim Fellowship was denied, once again. The application is a great deal of work and it requires four recommendations from top people in your field. There were 3000 applications and 178 winners. My application was as good as I could make it and the people who wrote on my behalf were very important people in photography. I was bummed. I went to the  "Quilts and Color" show and things were okay again, they really were.

Go see this show.

I wonder. Will you read this post through to the end? Will you skim it in a few seconds? Or dismiss it outright?

I have a friend who's an ex-advertising guy. I can hear him now, answering the question about whether people actually read a blog or do they just skim it? And he's saying, "Get in, get it done and get out."

I wonder. At any rate, the story is the message. Is this post photo related? Well, yes, but you could be doing anything creative in front of a computer. Artistic? Well, again yes, in some ways. There's lots of decisions to make; editing choices, color, tonality, vibrance, size, sharpness, paper choice, which to make a print of, on and on. Meditative?  Yes, it can be in that you do get into a groove when working this way.

What the hell is Neal talking about? Well, I am simply referencing where I am right now and sharing with you the experience of  being in a place where I am doing a whole lot of printing, day after day, in fact. This is the production part of being a professional artist. The time when you make the work. No more initial ideas, no more: go back there to complete this one thing. Partly painful, partly joyful, this step is when ideas turn into reality, where inspiration meets the road. 

Here it is mid afternoon, cold and raw outside, the last day of March as I write this, working on files at home, taking a break to make tea:

and then going back to work. It is very simple, as many things truly are. Not seeing the simplicity in things can deny their inherent worth and needlessly complicate a world with way too much going on all the time anyway.

No phone, some music low in the background, no real distractions; not even the shade on the window I sit in front of is open. Just me and the stuff I shot last week or last month. Remembering coming around the corner, the turning down into the valley, stopping, getting out with the wind on my face, the smell of the air and the complete absorption in "is that a picture or not a picture?" God!  What a long time I've been asking that question and making that decision! On the other hand, what a privilege to be able to ask it throughout a whole lifetime.

At any rate. It is good. It is actually really really good. Much better than before. Before was having to conform to a schedule to teach a class, endless meetings to sit in and deadlines to meet that were mostly useless BS.

There are issues, of course. There are the wrong paths that I follow, then retrace my steps to begin again later when I've discovered my wrong way. That happened to me at the Salt Point Park in California last month photographing the rock formations called Taffoni. 

The first cove I parked at I hiked down to the shore, pretty far and pretty steep, only to find when I got to the shore, it wasn't right. All the way back up, in the car, I drove to next cove and that one was the right one. Another one, perhaps more internal than the above example: there is the danger of attributing significance into what does not have it. This is where "over wrought" comes into play. I've been guilty of this before. I wonder if you have. It's easy. Work hard on something  and you're bound to attribute it to some major revelation, epiphany or "the heavens opening up". I know I have. Does it always work out that way? Does it have significance and substance just because you think it should? Not so much. Makes me think those artists that say we only have a few really good pieces inside us are probably right. 

At any rate, it is back to work. There is boredom too, of course. Doing the same thing over and over can build complacency. The editing is brutal. Editing is certainly one of our toughest steps. We make so many pictures now so easily. Click click click at no cost, except that we pay when it is time to choose which one to print. This one? No, is it this one? I am working on a few posts concerning this very big topic and will share my experiences in editing, both the way I worked in analog days and also now how I work in digital. Hopefully,  you will find it helpful.

Stay tuned.

Maybe this is just an old timer's reminiscing but I know why I am thinking about this one as I've being  going to some events that involve architecture, architects and architectural photography in the past few weeks.

Ezra Stoller is universally recognized as the dean of American architectural photography. His effect upon the medium and upon architecture itself cannot be underestimated.

Ezra Stoller was born in Chicago in 1915, grew up in New York and studied architecture at NYU. As a student, he began photographing buildings, models and sculpture; in 1938, he graduated with a BFA in Industrial Design. In 1940-1941, Stoller worked with the photographer Paul Strand in the Office of Emergency Management; he was drafted in 1942 and was a photographer at the Army Signal Corps Photo Center. After World War II, Stoller continued his career as an architectural photographer and also focused on industrial and scientific commissions. Over the next forty years, he became best known for images of buildings.
Many modern buildings are recognized and remembered by the images Stoller created as he was uniquely able to visualize the formal and spatial aspirations of Modern architecture. During his long career as an architectural photographer, Stoller worked closely with many of the period’s leading architects including Frank Lloyd Wright, Paul Rudolph, Marcel Breuer, I.M. Pei, Gordon Bunshaft, Eero Saarinen, Richard Meier and Mies van der Rohe, among others. Stoller died in Williamstown, Massachusetts, in 2004.

Source: Esto Photographics

A few days ago I went to a wonderful panel discussion at the BSA (Boston Society of Architects) in which Ezra 's daughter Erica showed us some of her father's iconographic photographs from the 1960's and 70's. One of the things that came out of the evening was the sense that, as photography became so crucial for architects to show their designs, and in particular, that Ezra Stoller became known as THE architectural photographer of the time that architects were designing their buildings so that they would look good in an Ezra Stoller photograph! Remarkable. What an oddly powerful position to be in.

At any rate, my story is considerably smaller.

The first couple of years after finishing with an MFA at RISD were difficult. Those years, 1974 and 1975,  I couldn't get work. I was trying to teach photography at the university level and applied for a few jobs but didn't get any. One rejection came particularly hard as I'd interviewed to be the one full time professor in photography at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. I'd gotten all the way up to being interviewed by the president of the school and meeting key board members but was too young, too green and didn't get the position.

As I hadn't been getting teaching jobs I thought I might become an architectural photographer. I had some skills as I'd worked with a 4 x 5 view camera for a few years and owned one. But I didn't know what it took to be an architectural photographer. So, naive young man that I was, I called Ezra Stoller. He agreed to meet with me and so I arrived at his firm called ESTO outside of NYC at the agreed upon time and date, thinking that maybe he'd let me assist him. Right away he established who I was and what my qualifications were (or weren't, as it  turned out). He said he hated all "these MFA's" as they were pretentious, superior and too good "to push a broom" or "go out to get coffee". He told me his ideal assistant was some high school kid with a good work ethic and no desire to learn anything at all about photography. Did I think I was too good to push a broom and fetch coffee? Absolutely. Did he cut me down to size? Sure did. I left that interview properly chastened and humbled by the experience. Thanks to Ezra for that.

He showed me around the place. He ran a photography business at ESTO, which employed other photographers besides himself and was a full photo lab, processing film, and making prints for clients as well as the in house photographers.

Towards the end of the time I had with him, he asked, "What's your last name again?" I told him, "Rantoul" and he said "Rantoul Rantoul. Come with me." And we went down the stairs, as the building had been a bank in a previous life and in the basement was the vault. In it was where he kept his archive of negatives and proof prints.  He shuffled through a few files, labeled by year, and found 1946, the year our house in New Canaan, CT was built. He pulled out a print with "Proof" stamped across it that was a black and white photograph of our living room in the house where I grew up. He had photographed the house for a magazine called House Beautiful. He handed me the 8 x 10 print saying I could keep it. I still have that print somewhere. Thanks to Ezra for that too.

I kept up with him over the next few years, calling him occasionally to let him know I was still hungry. He never had anything for me, as an assistant, and to be truthful, within a year or two I was very busy teaching. But I respected his being straight with me as he'd woken me up to the reality of my position; too young, too pretentious and too inexperienced.

A couple of years later he called and said he was shooting a new building at Dartmouth College (Ironic: the same school that had shot me down for a teaching position a few years earlier), and asked if I wanted to drive up for the day. I did and got to watch a real master at work; setting up lighting, working his assistant (and me) hard, for a full day of shooting that were photographs of mostly interiors, balancing outdoor light with indoor florescent and incandescent light sources, being sent out to pick up a take-out lunch with yes, coffee too. Pretentious is never good, whether you're 27 or 67. Finally, thanks Ezra, for a few a lessons that I still practice today.

So now I've been back from California a few weeks and much is happening. I met with Mary Virginia Swanson, known as Swannee, for two hours one morning in Boston at her hotel. Swannee is probably the most well known and highly regarded consultant to photographers. Her site is: here. It was a productive session. I am still digesting what she said and am already acting on some of it, but much of it will take time. Significant time.

I also had lunch with Phillip Prodger in Salem and had a great time. Phillip is the Photography Curator at the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM). I brought a print to go into the Museum's permanent collection. This one:

which seemed to please him very much. The image is from the first year I made wheat field pictures, in 1996. Philip is leaving PEM ( in late May) to be the photography curator at the National Portrait Gallery in London. And yes, he's pumped.

At any rate, he told a few stories and so did I. He thinks I should write here about Harry Callahan when I got back from Europe on a long shoot one summer and I was disappointed in the work I'd made and what Harry said when I told him. And I will tell that story, but not in this post. 

I want to tell another one.

This one is called:

The Talbot Rantoul Story

This story contains a reference to my father. He plays a very small but very crucial role in the outcome. It also concerns my two teachers: Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. 

Need help with who they were? 

Look them up. 

The story doesn't concern me much, or only peripherally, however, I did benefit from the outcome. But let me start at the beginning.

It is 1970:  I am a senior undergraduate student studying photography at RISD (Rhode Island School of Design). My dad is the president of RISD. Unbeknownst to me, Harry goes to my dad and says he wants to bring Aaron Siskind from Chicago to teach at RISD. Now, I actually don't know this part of the conversation but I assume if my dad was being straight with Harry, he would have said something like, "That's great Harry, but who's Aaron Siskind?"(My dad didn't know much about the art of photography.) Harry would have then explained that Aaron was the greatest thing since sliced bread and it would be a real coup if RISD could get him. This was true, of course. Then my dad said something along the lines of  "That's great Harry. I wish we could bring Aaron back east to teach with you but we simply don't have the money to pay him." Doubtless, Harry had thought this through and, as the story goes, he then said to my dad, "Talbot, we can create the needed revenue by doubling the size of the graduate MFA in Photography to 20 from 10 students." The story ends with my dad agreeing and in one conversation, it is understood that Aaron will move back east to teach and live until he retires and, Harry gets his long-time friend back to teach with him. In actuality, Harry saves Aaron's butt because Aaron really didn't have a job anymore in Chicago, and needed the income.

Oh yes, and me? I applied to continue my studies as a graduate student in photography at RISD. I was accepted into this now larger class. The following September I began studying for my MFA at RISD with Aaron Siskind as my teacher. 

Nice story, eh?