civilized ku # 2782-83 ~ camp daze

screen hook ~ Rist Camp / Newcomb, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
great blue heron ~ Rist Camp / Newcomb, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenHugo's at another hockey camp and the wife and I are at Rist Camp (for 5 weeks). All is right with the world. Or, at least, all is right with our little corner of the world at this point in time.

That written, I read an article in today's NY Times which is a follow up to (or continuation of) a previous article, re: the "easiest" and "hardest"places to live in the good ol' USofA. The determination of easiest v hardest was based on an analysis - using an index of 6 factors including income, education and life expectancy - of every single county in the US. The propose of these surveys is to gather information, re: inequality (haves v haves-nots) in the US - how and where it's trending.

FYI, according to this survey, I live in an "easy" / doing better (than average) county.

Why, you might wonder, am I mentioning it here, on a photo blog? Well, the follow up article was headlined with this ...

In One America, Guns and Diet. In the Other, Cameras and 'Zoolander'.

... followed by this:

In the hardest places to live in the United States, people spend a lot of time thinking about diets and religion. In the easiest places to live, people spend a lot of time thinking about cameras.

This information was gathered by doing a study of web search words/phrases as used by those living in counties on either end of the easiest/hardest index. The differences are interesting, depressing / sad or scary / alarming (take your pick or, as in my case, choose all 3). To wit:

In the hardest places to live ... health problems, weight-loss diets, guns, video games and religion are all common search topics. The dark side of religion is of special interest: Antichrist has the second-highest correlation with the hardest places, and searches containing "hell"and "rapture" also make the top 10.
In the easiest places to live ... the Canon Elph and other digital cameras dominate the top of the correlation list. Apparently, people in places where life is good .... want to record their lives in images.

The article is well worth reading and its conclusion is a damning one for the USofA - For all the ways that the differences here may reflect cultural preferences, however, the main lesson of the analysis is a sobering one. The rise of inequality over the last four decades has created two very different Americas, and life is a lot harder in one of them .... [T]he different subjects that occupy people's thoughts aren't just a window into American life today. They're a window onto future inequality, too.

It seems very apparent to me that many of us are spending our time fiddling (and picturing) while our own particular brand of Rome burns.

diptych # 81 (delite / de light) / civilized ku # 2778 ~ rain

Donuts Delite / Blue Mountain Lake ~ Rochester, NY / The Hedges • Blue Mountain Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
main lodge porch ~ The Hedges • Blue Mountain Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen3 pictures, in light rain, made 200 miles and almost exactly 24 hours apart. In each instance, it was the atmospheric condition (and each referent) which caused me to stop my car and make the picture. As I have mentioned previously, I really enjoy making pictures in the rain.

PS In the past, I have consumed many a donut from Donuts Delite (when it was just a donut store) and have stayed at The Hedges many times - mostly likely nearly 100 times (but who's counting).

civilized ku # 2751 ~ everything you hoped a landscape could be

nightfall / Asgaard Farm ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

Sometimes - and it is of course a rarity, something to be treasured and remembered - a landscape becomes in front of your eyes everything you ever hoped a landscape could be. This is difficult to describe as an experience, let alone say how one might arrive at it. It is, of course, not something that can be engineered. Partly perhaps it is valuable because it is rare and can only be given, not sought or deliberately looked for. It is highly personal. All one can think is "Yes, for me, what I see in front of me, what I am attempting to record, is what seems to me like a sort of revelation. ~ Charlie Waite

Encountered, observed, and pictured while driving home from a get together on Sunday evening past.

civilized ku # 2750 ~ SOS (Shit On a Shingle)

Fire pit ~ Duck Island / Lower Saranac Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenRecently, I encountered a series of pictures which were all made out of focus. A few of the pictures were nice enough to be visually interesting, others were little more than diffused (soft focus) variations on Mark Rothko paintings, albethey made with the tools and techniques of the medium of photography. After viewing the pictures, the primary impression imprinted upon my eye and sensibilities was one of a ho-hum variety.

The fact that the pictures are exhibited in a large-scale architectural installation which creates what one writer describes as "a seamless transition between both 'spheres' — the pictorial space and the exhibition space, between the installation in the center of the room and the classical presentation of the works on the outside. Visitors can enter the work to become part of an 'unpredictable' universe" strikes me as a kind of carnival fun house cheap trick - providing a venue in which the Academic Lunatic Fringe, Photography Division, can have their art sauce cake and eat it too.

And, writing of art sauce, dip your utensil of choice into this heaping serving of the stuff:

Through his use of extreme soft focus as an artistic device, he searches the observational parameters for the perception of images .... he questions the basic principles of photography: sharpness and recognizability. By leaving these parameters out of the image content, he breaks with conventional ways of seeing .... The photographic medium is distilled into light and darkness, confronting the viewer with infinity. A paradigm shift is occurring in fine art photography, from the documentary and representational to a new abstraction that radically questions the medium. With his resolutely blurred photographs, he is positioned at the crux of this contextual and aesthetic renunciation of apparatus-led seeing in favor of a nonrepresentational perceiving of the world. He has succeeded in creating a photography that goes beyond pictorial representation.

After reading the above, I was immediately reminded of Susan Sontag's quote which states that interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Placed in a fuller context, that quote is an excerpt from:

Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of heavy industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities. In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art ... Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world - in order to set up a shadow world of 'meanings.'

Now, to be perfectly clear, the out-of-focus pictures made by the artist are are exactly what they appear to be - out-of-focus pictures - and that's OK with me. If making and/or viewing such pictures suits your eye and sensibilities, I say/write, "Have at it." And I mean just exactly that. As Julian's grandmother often uttered, "For every pot there's lid." Follow your own picture making path and be happy. But ...

... enough already - leave the lid on the pot - with the he searches the observational parameters for the perception of images .... he questions the basic principles of photography: sharpness and recognizability. Really? It seems to me the picture maker is simply making out-of-focus pictures and - note to ALF - there is absolutely nothing new in that. And, guess what ALF, every picture maker searches the observational parameters for the perception of (their) images to one degree or another.

RE: searching for the observational parameters for the perception of images - Seriously? Who doesn't recognize the simple fact that some observers of pictures have severely attenuated observational parameters for the perception of images while others have expansive observational parameters for the perception of images. All of which leads to a very simple conclusion - some observers will 'get it', some will not. Duh.

And the idea that this picture maker may be testing and trying to expand the limits of 'getting it' or not, is neither ground breaking nor paradigm busting. It is, in fact, SOP for many picture makers, especially so, but by no means limited to, in the fine art world of photography.

In any event, those who have employed out-of-focus picture making were rarely, if ever, (paraphrasing) radically questioning the medium. They were, to repeat, simply making out-of-focus pictures as a means of expressing their particular manner of seeing. Nor were they questioning the basic principles of photography. They were, in fact, employing one of the basic principles of the medium - the ability to bring the object of their attention into focus or not.

That particular "artistic device" has been around since the dawn of the medium. The idea that he has succeeded in creating a photography that goes beyond pictorial representation is utter shit on a shingle. That notion belies the history of the medium and all of those who have strived and succeeded in going beyond pictorial representation. And the idea that he is positioned at the crux of this .... renunciation of apparatus-led seeing merely adds to the pile on the shingle - as far as I can tell, he made his out-of-focus pictures with an apparatus (as indicated, a large-format apparatus) which, in fact, allowed him to make out-of-focus pictures (either in camera or with after-the-fact processing).

If he or a critic need to turn all of the aforementioned use of the simple basic principles of photography into a steaming heap of flapdoodle and green paint, so be it but it annoys the living hell out of me. Nevertheless, there it is in all its glory - the revenge of the intellect upon art .

Again, to be perfectly clear, the pictures are what they are. Period. Use all of your observational-parameters-for-the-perception-of-images powers to determine whether you should like 'em or leave 'em. The choice is yours.

As for the ALF-led commentary surrounding the images, I leave you with this from Sontag:

The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

civilzed ku # 2747-49 ~ it's party time

curious dog / the wife ~ lock near Saranac Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
lock / lock master hut ~ lock near Saranac Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
Cinemascpaist's party barge ~ Duck Island / Lower Saranac Lake - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenThe Landscapist / Cinemascapist families went on an island camping trip this weekend. The island location was on Lower Saranac Lake, home to 50 islands and 80 campsites. Weather was great and the bugs almost non-existent.

The wife, as pictured above, was able to indulge her ongoing fascination - unnatural? - with locks. Both the lock master's dog and I were/are very curious about her behavior when encountering a lock.

It is both amazing and, at times, very surprising what you learn after living with a woman for 20 years.

ku # 1278-80 ~ testing, testing, testing

birch fragment on colorful rock ~ forest / Kiwassa Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
pine needle + detritus covered erratic ~ forest / Kiwassa Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
forest floor with raindrops ~ forest / Kiwassa Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenAnother part of my current journey into the future has been the acquisition of 2 new Olympus E-P5 bodies. I had been delaying the purchase until; 1) the price was right, and, 2) I was upgrading the computer.

Re: the right price - early last week I came across 2 factory refurbs with factory warranties for about 1/2 the regular price of a body. So, always wanting a backup, I grabbed 2 for the price of 1. Re: computer upgrade - needed to upgrade to a machine with the OS which could run the current RAW software - Iridient Developer (formerly RAW Developer) - for the new cameras.

The new computer switch over has yet to happen, so I am making some 'test' jpeg pictures with the E-P5 even though I am not a fan (understatement) of making in-camera jpeg pictures. Accordingly, the reasons are many - 8bit color (not 16bit), in camera sharpening (ok but not the best), no highlight recovery, to name just a few. That written, the jpegs are quite decent and they give a pretty good indication of what's to come, RAW wise.

WARNING: gear talk alert: In fact, this is more of a the-current-state-of-the camera-making-art critique than it is gear speak. To wit ...

I have using Olympus Pen cameras since nearly day one of their introduction (E-P1) and I must write that I really like the form factor, design wise, of these cameras - small, light, unobtrusive, robust construction, and, in the manual mode, easy to use and operate. All in all, a very nice package, and a true revolutionary trend setter in the now robust ICL mirror-less camera segment.

Admittedly, the µ43 sensor, in its first incarnation, was 'good enough' but not stellar. However, I was able, with good sharpening technique and highlight blending techniques, to produce very high IQ results. Results which allow for very nice - much much better than 'good enough' - 24×32 inch prints (or in my case, 24×24inch). I am certain I could go even bigger but I haven't given that possibility a try.

Over the years, I have added a couple back up bodies (E-P2/E-P3) to the ensemble while I waited for what I was certain would be a significant sensor upgrade. That upgrade finally arrived in the O- MD E-M5 camera. Tempting as it was to acquire that camera (or, even more so, the same-sensored but less espensive E-M10), I was also fairly certain the upgrade would arrive in a new E-P series camera. And even though it took a while, it did, in fact, happen.

All of that written, I acquired the new bodies for one single reason - the new and improved sensor. That's it, period - the sum total of my new-camera lust (such as it is). I could care not a bit for all the other 'improvements' and 'upgrades' and, consequently, I was a bit concerned about coming to grips with all of the added-on features of the new camera. That concern was the result of a number of reviews which complained about the new and complex menu system.

I now know, as the result of being a dedicated and unrepentant manual camera operator, that the 'complex' menu on the E-P5 is, for me, the same as it ever was. Within 5 minutes of removing the body from the box, I was up and running in exactly the same manner as with my other E-P series cameras. It helps that the menu system, expanded options excepted, is exactly the same as it is/was on previous E-P series variants.

Sure, there are menu items and options / settings galore. In fact, dizzyingly so. A fact which must make dealing with it incredibly complex and confusing for average amateur. It's no wonder that so many amateur picture makers find the digital picture making realm so intimidating. And that confusion / intimidation is, IMO, extremely exacerbated by the fact that the printed manual which comes in the box is a very distilled version of the complete telephone-book-sized manual which is only available online.

So, if one is out in the field making pictures and questions / problems arise which can only be addressed by accessing the full manual, one is screwed, so to write. That is, unless one has a smart phone and internet access with which to view the online manual. Of course, one could download the pdf version of the complete manual and take the time, effort and paper to print it out and take that cumbersome paper wad with you whenever one is out and about.

In any event, and in the interest of complete and accurate disclosure, I have used and appreciated one other upgraded feature on the E-P5 - the articulated LCD. In fact, I used it to make the birch fragment on colorful rock and forest floor with raindrops pictures in this entry. Other than that (and the new sensor), it's pretty much picture making business as usual for me - 5 minutes of camera set-it-and-forget-it setup and I'm on the road again.

Which causes me to wonder, will I ever see an Olympus µ43 camera set up for a dedicated manual camera user? That is, a camera with just the bare bones needed for still picture making?

civilized ku # 2729 - 2733 / ku # 1277 ~ impressive weather event wherein I abandon the square format

rainbow ~ Jay, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
storm front ~ near Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
storm sky ~ near Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
storm sky / variation 1 ~ near Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
storm sky / cows ~ near Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
funnel wannabe ~ near Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenLast evening as I was driving home from Hugo's baseball game in Saranac Lake, I notice a rainbow in the sky. The location for a picture wasn't right so I moved on to a more appropriate one. Even though that location was only a very short distance away, by the time I arrived the rainbow had shrunk to a rather small presentation. Nevertheless, I made the picture.

Moving on down the road, I noticed that the rainbow was returning to its former glory and I decided to proceed to another location. However, upon arrival, the rainbow had vacated the sky and was replaced by an approaching storm front which stretched across the NE-NW sky. The presentation was impressive, to say the least.

As I stood transfixed in a field watching and picturing the event, numerous mini-events were occurring all along the front. Sheet lighting and thunder was making its presence known and, other than that light and sound, the landscape was eerily quite and still. Goosebumps and standing hair on the back of my neck were also a part of the order of events.

After 15-20 minutes, I then noticed a light/cloud event happening just a short distance away - I got in the car and drove the short 3/4 mile (approximate) distance on a winding road where my view of things was obstructed by trees. That visual obstruction made the appearance of the next event all the more stunning when, after rounding a bend in the road, there it was - for all appearance to my untrained meteorological eye and brain, what seemed to a funnel cloud in the making.

After making a picture of the phenomenon, I didn't stay around to see what might transpire, as in, better safe than sorry. That written, I must assume nothing dramatic came to pass inasmuch I would have heard or read about it, news wise, this AM.

FYI, while I made a fair number of pictures, I was totally in the moment of the actual event. Except for the 4 frame panoramic picture, all of my other pictures were dictated and made by what was unfolding in front of me with no thoughts other than quick reactionary / reflexive point, frame and shoot responses.

I also consider myself lucky to have witnessed this display - a true f8-and-be-there if ever there was one.

diptych # 67 (civilized ku # 2722-23) ~ revenge

Spring buds ~ Jay, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
Spring buds / blossoms ~ Au Sable Forks, NY / Jay, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

idea 1 - I don't understand why people think everything has to have meaning. While painting the Mona Lisa did Leonardo Da Vinci intend for it to have greater meaning than a work of art that he made? ~ Devin J. Monroe

idea 2 Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art. ~ Susan Sontag