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08/17/2016 08:30 AMThis is the age of the cell-phone camera: the ubiquitous selfie, the instantly gratifying vacation image, the anytime snapshot. But there is also photography, the trained eye’s capturing of image, shape, and form to make an indelible statement. That is what Michael Pressman does.
“Everyone takes pictures, but photography is an art form. It’s tricky to take a good picture,” he says. “When I see a good picture, I remember it for years. I ask myself why that photo is so good. That’s always my question.”
And he has an answer for that question.
“It’s all about form. I am always look for simplifications,” he says of his nature photography. “Lots of natural scenes are cluttered, but I am looking for just the right frame.”
Michael, who lives in Ivoryton, will show his photographs in the gallery at Shoreline Framing in Westbrook from Tuesday, Aug. 23 to Friday, Sept. 23.
The natural world provides Michael’s most dramatic subjects: eerie light filtering through moss-covered cypress trees to create an otherworldly natural image, the geometrical irregularities of undulating glacier ice, a montage of photos of the head of a lion on the African plains.
“Many people take pictures of the Grand Canyon or Death Valley,” he says. “The question is how to make them memorable.”
According to Michael, photography schools emphasize the rule of thirds. But for him, this rule is just a bit of academic rigidity.
“It’s all nonsense,” he says. “You cannot prescribe a photograph.”
Michael began taking photographs in his native Brooklyn with a Brownie camera his father had given him when he was six years old. (Classic baseball fans: Michael grew up a block from Ebbets Field, the old home of the Dodgers, who once hailed from Brooklyn.) His father had a darkroom in the family’s basement, where as he got somewhat older, Michael began to develop photographs for neighborhood children for five cents a copy. By the time he was 17, he had a single-lens reflex camera.
“It was a hand-me-down, but I always had a camera,” he remembers.
At Brooklyn College, he majored in geology and, upon graduation, became public school science teacher. Because the school didn’t have a music teacher and Michael played piano, he also took on that job, but he didn’t step away from photography. He actually widened his artistic horizons, taking filmmaking classes at New York University.
He first made three- or four-minute short films, then longer pieces of 25 to 30 minutes. He took a leave of absence from teaching and got a job on a public television science show for children, 3-2-1-Contact. Then, his leave of absence ended. He resumed teaching for one dramatic day.
“I went in to teach and at lunch I went to the principal and said, ‘I am resigning,’” he recalls. “I was an instant hero among the faculty, everybody saying, ‘Did you hear? Pressman quit.’”
The husband of an acquaintance who had helped Michael with his 25-minute films worked at NBC’s Today Show, at that time featuring Tom Brokaw and Jane Pauley. Through that connection, Michael got a job on the show, ultimately moving up to be one of two supervising producers as well as special projects producer.
In a 30-year television career he worked largely on shows featuring in-depth reporting including Dateline NBC and for the last 13 years of his professional life, ABC’s 20/20.
Michael never stopped taking his own pictures. In fact, the calm and concentration of his own photography provided an antidote to the world of television.
“There was always lots of pressure, going 24/7 and then 20 million people are going to see what you do,” he says.
He has done portraits and even such photographic classics as weddings, but now focuses primarily on nature.
“I didn’t want to stop someone on the street who had an interesting face for a photograph,” he says. “I spent a career convincing people who didn’t want to talk to talk. That’s the adversarial part of a [television] show and I am glad I am not doing it anymore.”
As for weddings, he has photographed three.
“It’s difficult; you have to be very sharp and very quick, but I am finished with that now,” he says.
When he takes trips to concentrate on photography, he does so with other photographers, not with his wife, Laura.
“It’s kind of a Zen experience,” he explains.
Still, when he takes walks locally, often in The Preserve, both Laura and his camera accompany him.
Upon leaving television five years ago, Michael and Laura, who had lived in Tarrytown for some 30 years, began looking for a more suitably sized home since their twin daughters were now grown. They started in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Then on the train into Manhattan, Michael met fellow Tarrytown resident Sam Tanenhaus, who told him that he and his wife Kathy had bought a house in Essex. Michael and Laura came to look. The area was halfway between where their daughters live: Brooklyn and Boston.
“We took a ride up here and we realized this could be it,” he says, and Ivoryton was.
One of the surprises that has most delighted both him and Laura since coming to the shoreline is the vibrant musical life of the area.
Michael does not look nostalgically at the days when photographers used film. He is enthusiastic about digital photography.
“Digital is a total delight,” he says. “I am sick of the romance of the darkroom, the smell, the solutions. Digital is so powerful and you are not locked in a dark room with the smell of toxic chemicals.”
Photography by Michael Pressman
The exhibit at Shoreline Framing, 1257 Boston Post Road, Westbrook, runs Tuesday, Aug. 23 to Friday, Sept. 23, with an opening reception on Thursday, Sept. 1 at 6:30 p.m. Shoreline Framing is open Tuesday to Thursday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Friday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.