ku # 624 ~ I can't get no satisfaction

Tree branch w leaves overhanging Johns Brook ~ Keene Valley, NY • click to embiggenI have noticed (with a stunning degree of disinterest), that there has been a spate of new camera introductions of late. Canon, Sony, Olympus, and Panasonic (amongst others) have been dumping quite a bit of "new and improved" gear on the market over the past couple weeks. In particular, Canon has introduced a new flagship model for their "reduced-size sensor" camera line.

You got love the marketing wordsmiths (and their handmaidens in the gear review world) for their creative use of the language, i.e. - "reduced-size sensor". Now, in fact, with the surge of full-frame sensor cameras, APS-C sized sensor cameras could be considered to be a "reduced-sized" product, but ....

That nomenclature ignores the fact that, since APS-C-sized sensor cameras were once the largest sensors in the 35mm camera body segment, full-frame sensors are actually "up-sized" sensor cameras, but ...

There's nothing better for fanning the flames of desire than to label a product as "reduced-size" - a nomenclature that implies a sense of inferiority or, at the very least, not up to "full-sized" standards. The rather dismissive notion of "reduced-size" sensors, until quite recently, was reserved for sensors that were smaller than APS-C sensors - 4/3rds sensors, P&S camera sensors and the like. Now we have a whole new body of cameras (and a big body it is) that the soap sellers can label as "inferior".

Praise the lord and pass the ammunition, another fine way to separate the terminally unsatisfied from their money - what good news for the economy (please note that in the real world the phrase "good news for the economy" would be accompanied by the sound of a fart produced by sticking my tongue out between tightly compressed lips and expelling air).

Years ago, Henri Cartier-Bresson made a couple statements that are even more pertinent now than they were then:

I’m always amused by the idea that certain people have about technique, which translate into an immoderate taste for the sharpness of the image. It is a passion for detail, for perfection, or do they hope to get closer to reality with this trompe I’oeil? They are, by the way, as far away from the real issues as other generations of photographers were when they obscured their subject in soft-focus effects.

and

Sharpness is a bourgeois concept.

Then again, those 2 notions are not all that different from that penned and sung by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards nearly half a century ago:

When I'm watchin' my TV
And a man comes on to tell me
How white my shirts can be
But, he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke
The same cigarettes as me

Please hep me, hep me, I'm drowning.

ku # 623 ~ the one-eyed man

Beaver pond with fallen trees • click to embiggenOn the whole Americans are intellectually a rather lazy bunch. We love and clamor for easy answers - it doesn't matter if the "answers" actually make any sense, it only seems to matter that, right or wrong, they be easy to understand.

Whether or not this propensity for easy answers is the result of decades of the dumbing down of the American public by the mass media and advertising industry, I'll leave for others to debate/decide. But, that said, those in the dumbing-down business have done their job well - they have managed to turn most of us into spodas, as in, what I spoda do, massa?

It has been stated that the purpose of the mass media is to "sell soap". The best way to sell soap is to attract as many moths (consumers) to the flame (the purveyors of desire) as you can. And the best way to attract moths is to pander to the lowest common denominator.

Is there anyone in the room that doesn't think that mass media has sunk into the abyss of the lowest common denominator when it comes to what they feed the public?

And, is there anyone in the room who doesn't think that the result of all of this is moths buying soap by the truck load?

Except, or course, what never seems to dawn on the spodas is that the real bill of goods that they have been sold is the notion that a good economy is one that is based on consumption and not production.

What got me to thinking along these lines today were 2 statements by Robert Frank:

To produce an authentic contemporary document, the visual impact should be such as will nullify explanation.

and

When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.

I'll let you draw your own conclusions regarding those statements and my short bit on selling soap. But, that said, I'll leave you with this:

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. - Lycon - Seller of Black Inhalers / Blind drug-dealer in Minority Report

PS - it's all about pictures.

ku # 622 ~ creative thinking, pt. II

Johns Brook ~ Keene, NY • click to embiggenIn response to yesterday's APA topic, Stephen Connor commented:

.... there's a fairly large flaw in your plan for housing-specific expansion into protected land. Where does it stop? The "small expansion" of today will result (maybe) in a small drop in housing prices. As soon as that land's been sold off, prices will begin to rise again.

In most places in this here US of A, a "small expansion" often does turn into runaway sprawl. Not so, in the Adirondack Park of New York State. Setting aside the idea that a small expansion into public land in the Park is even possible, "protected land" within the blueline is protected by a 1894 amendment to the NYS Constitution. In article XIV it states:

The lands of the state, now owned or hereafter acquired, constituting the forest preserve as now fixed by law, shall be forever kept as wild forest lands ... They shall not be leased, sold or exchanged, or be taken by any corporation, public or private, nor shall the timber thereon be sold, removed or destroyed.

The beauty of this protection is that any attempt to change or amend this constitutional amendment is a long and difficult process. Unlike those states which allow constitutional amendments to be added / changed / deleted by a simple referendum at the ballot box, in NY the process is not so easy.

As I understand it in order to amend or change the constitution it requires an act of the legislature (a proposal to change/amend) which then must be passed by 2 successive sessions of the legislature followed by a referendum vote by the public. This long deliberative process basically prevents any "spur of the moment" or politically expedient measures from being adopted.

It is important to note that several threats to the forever wild amendment that were approved by the legislature were subsequently rejected by the public by using their veto power (the referendum vote).

All of that said, the forever wild clause/amendment is the reason that the APA can not actually grant/approve of the use of state lands (that might be adjoining hamlets, villages, and towns) for housing. It would require an act of the legislature and a referendum vote to allow that to happen - not a very likely scenario.

What the APA could give approval to is affordable housing development on some large tracts of private land that adjoin hamlets, villages, and towns. But chances are slim that the APA would do so without some form of a community land trust as part of the deal.

In answer to Stephen's comment, a community land trust is a legal vehicle whereby a non-profit tax exempt organization owns a parcel of land which they never intend to sell. Then (taken from yesterday's link re CLT) ....

... they provide for the exclusive use of their land by the owners of any buildings located thereon. Parcels of land are conveyed to individual homeowners (or to the owners of other types of residential or commercial structures) through long-term ground leases.

The CLT retains an option to repurchase any residential (or commercial) structures located upon its land, should their owners ever choose to sell. The resale price is set by a formula contained in the ground lease that is designed to give present homeowners a fair return on their investment, while giving future homebuyers fair access to housing at an affordable price. By design and by intent, the CLT is committed to preserving the affordability of housing (and other structures) – one owner after another, one generation after another, in perpetuity. (italic emphasis is mine)

FYI, the formula that is employed to give homeowners a fair return on their investment - the house, NOT the land - is typically tied to an economic index such as the cost of living index.

Truly enlightened and informed local business leaders / elected officials might also suggest the idea of deferred 2nd mortgages programs in order to assist low-moderate income individuals / families acquire a house on CLT land. These programs typically divide the mortgage on a home into to parts - a 1st mortgage and a 2nd mortgage.

The 1st mortgage might be for 1/2 of the purchase price of the house (or some fraction thereof) and would be paid for in typical long-term mortgage style. Payment on the 2nd mortgage is most typically deferred until the 1st mortgage is paid in full. No interest is accrued on the 2nd mortgage during the deferral period. If the house is sold before the 1st mortgage is paid in full, the full mortgage (1st + 2nd mortgage) must be satisfied unless the new purchaser meets the income guidelines for a deferred 2nd mortgage in which case the same deferred 2nd mortgage program stays in effect.

My point in all of this is quite simple - if local business leaders / elected officials are really concerned about economic development and affordable housing in the Adirondacks as the means whereby the flight of working class individuals / families might be mitigated or (gasp) even reversed - thus insuring vibrant local communities and economies - they need to get beyond mouthing the same tired platitudes and lambasting the demon APA as the root of all evil.

As per my usual M.O., I am not holding my breath.

ku # 621 ~ a correction

2 months of rain will do this • click to embiggenYesterday's entry, in which I mentioned Jeff "Foliage" Folger article (in the current Yankee Magazine) and his thoughts on that slider for saturation all the way to the right, contained a error on my part - I left out the word "not" in this sentence -

Apparently, in making the cover picture selection, the photo editor and/or editor did follow that advice.

That omission obviously changes what I meant to be my point. I have since corrected that mistake to read:

Apparently, in making the cover picture selection, the photo editor and/or editor did NOT follow that advice.

That said, Jeff "Foliage" Folger stopped by and left, in part, this comment:

... Do you jump on all those hdr photos because they create images whose colors are all over the color wheel? or are they just art and in the beholders eye ... [I]f people like and enjoy the cover then all is good, if no one buys it because the photo is of poor quality then it is self correcting and they will learn ... [T]hank you for reading the article.. oh! did you like it? :-) Also you did review my photos to tell me they are too over the top?

Yes, I read the article and it certainly makes clear why Jeff's middle name is "Foliage" - it's a very appropriate moniker for someone who has made 50,000 or so pictures of autumn foliage over the past 5 years. Jeff also seems to take seriously his own advice re: "colors that Mother Nature just didn't create" - the pictures that accompanied the article (and others of Jeff's that I have found) seem to be quite restrained when it comes to the use of color. Jeff's foliage pictures are quite definitely pictures that are well placed in the natural-color side of things - very assuredly NOT over-the-top.

Re: HDR pictures - a precious few picture makers are using the HDR technique to make extended-range pictures that are quite natural looking. Most are making freakish unnatural looking pictures. These are not at all my cup of picture-making tea and they most definitely fall into my "jump on" category.

I do disagree with Jeff's assessment that "If people like and enjoy the cover then all is good ..." - Unfortunately, eco-porn and/or nature-porn is far from "self-correcting". Rather, it is at the forefront of creating and maintaining a false and misleading conceptualization of the natural world.

A conceptualization that generally operates well below the sensitivity threshold of conscious public awareness. Consequently, the vast majority of the public has come to accept, or at the very least prefer, pretty but not so true pictures of the natural world.

This pretty-but-not-so-true conceptualization of the natural world is so widely accepted that many a corporate advertisement that extols the company's environmental record or policies - usually by a company known to rape and pillage the environment as often as possible - use this "acceptance" to try and create a public image of environmental responsibility.

That said, and as an addendum to yesterday's entry, man & nature # 209 ~ sizzling hot, I would like to point out that, despite the use of an eco-porn cover picture, virtually all of the pictures used to illustrate a variety of articles inside of the magazine are quite natural in their use of color. There is no evidence of the over-the-top color, saturation, and contrast manipulation that is the defining characteristic of the cover picture.

FYI, for those wishing to see more of Jeff "Foliage" Folger's foliage pictures, you might start here.

ku # 620 ~ it just feels strange

Bog River rapids below the lower dam • click to embiggenI find myself in the extremely odd situation of not having made a picture in over a week. Well, not exactly true in that I did make Decay # 31 a few days ago (when I was asked to clean out the refrig) so I should probably add the phrase outside of my house in order to be more precise.

As is my normal habit, I have been venturing forth with cameras in tow but, for whatever reason, nothing has caught my eye. This could be due in part to the fact that I am currently much more occupied with printing some of my pictures - large prints for presentation to a couple galleries, the aforementioned folios - than making them.

Nevertheless, it is extremely odd that nothing "out there" has called my name and demanded that I picture it. Not that I am in any way worried / concerned about this, it's just very odd and somewhat disconcerting.

ku # 619 ~ my name is Friday, I carry a badge

Flowers on a portage ~ Bog River • click to embiggenThere was a bit of a brouhaha recently over at the NY Times, specifically The NY Times Sunday Magazine.

They published what was essentially a photo essay about real estate ventures gone bad in the current economic dilemma we find ourselves in. I liked the pictures quite a bit and nearly wrote about and posted a link to the essay but, by the time I got around to it, the NYT had pulled the piece from its website.

The reason given for the withdrawal was that the photographer had mislead the NYT because they were under the impression / understanding that he made his pictures with "long exposures, but no digital manipulation" and the NYT stated that as part the intro to the essay. As it turns out, there were, in fact, several pictures that had been altered in the essay - not "little" alterations but big ones.

The photographer had created some pictures wherein he cropped the original image in half and then duplicated and flipped that half in order to make a perfectly symmetrical picture - one side was a perfect mirror of the other side. The NYT said that they were deceived by the photographer. The photographer said, "no, you just don't understand my work as presented".

Having done quite a number of magazine editorial assignments in my time, it's difficult for me to understand how this misunderstanding / deception occurred. In the normal course of events, there are pre-shoot discussions between the parties in which basic shoot parameters are laid out and agreed upon. Apparently some things got overlooked.

That said, you can see the pictures on the photographer's website - click on the letter "p" and then click on "RUINS OF THE GILDED AGE". The pictures that were altered are pretty obvious and I am left wondering how an experience photo editor would miss it (the alterations).

That said, the photographer, Edgar Martins, has apparently felt the need to explain / defend himself / his work. And so - warning: academic lunatic fringe alert, read at your own risk - he has written a piece wherein he elaborates on his recent realization that ...

... history was no longer linear. In the pulsating world of binary number systems that we live in, history is made, negated and reinvented, all in the space of one minute ... [A]s fraught and as contradictory as much of the information being portrayed often is, it reveals a polymorphic and multiform reality, a world of flux and flow that is in a perpetual state of uncertain transformation ... [I] accept the probabilistic nature of the universe as a fact ...

... and so on. Obfuscating bloviation aside, I understand what he's getting at - in order to make a point, he likes to alter his images, he likes to severe the link between photography (as a cohort of/with) and the real. Fine. No problem. Have at it.

However, unlike when I visit an art gallery where I often enjoy a certain break with the real in order to make a point, when I pick up a newspaper (even the Sunday supplement when it deals with news), I really do expect to be presented with something more closely aligned with the real.

When one is given an assignment by a news organization /publication to picture / describe / represent, in this case, the actual realities of an economy gone bad, one might think that a picture maker might realize that what a news organization wants (in fact, requires) is, in the words of Officer Joe Friday, "Just the facts, ma'am" and nothing but the facts.

Unless so specified by the publication, a picture maker should leaves his/her academic theories and ruminations in the bag and just show us the pictures.

ku # 618 ~ folio FYI

Sun dappled sand bank and ledge ~ Bog River • click to embiggenA few of you have opted in to the folio sales/swap endeavor. A few of you have questions and suggestions -

Martin Doonan mentioned "the fear that my work isn't halfway good enough to participate". I suspect that more than a few have the same "fear". My advice relative for that "fear" is to make a folio, submit it and let the audience be the judge of whether or not your work is halfway good enough. Many picture makers are the worst judge of their own work - it's a very common fear / worry amongst artists of all persuasions. I also suspect that quite a bit of work that is more than halfway good enough never gets to see the public light of day due to that fear. More's the pity.

The only solution for that fear (aka - the fear of rejection), aside from years of very expensive psychoanalysis, is to just let it all hang out and see what happens. As the saying goes in hockey terms, "shoot the damn puck" - 100% of the shots not taken don't go in the net. If you want to score, you've got to shoot the puck.

Mary Dennis mentioned that "waiting around for a bunch of people to say they are on board with you" was a not good idea. I agree so I am plowing ahead regardless.

Mary also asked, "Would this be a site unto itself with an identity separate from The Landscapist? The answer is, "yes". It's already set up and waiting for folios at squarespace.folios.com

No One asked, "Will there be any cost involved?" The answer is, "yes". There will be a 1-time (very nominal) fee of $15 US per folio to cover page creation - each folio will have a gallery page on which to display the folio pictures and a brief description (folio/print size, print type, paper type, folio box type, any other pertinent folio info, and an artist statement).

>At this time the site will not take a commission on sales. The only cost to the artist is the page / gallery set up fee.

>All fulfillment and payment arrangements for folio sales are solely the responsibility of the individual artist. A "Contact The Artist" (email) link will be provided on each folio page.

BTW, any and all photo genres are welcome and folios will be organized by category (with artist names) on the front/home page.

That's about it for now. Please feel free to ask questions and/or make suggestions - this is truly a work in progress.

ku # 615-617 ~ kids today

Bog River sandbank and ledge • click to embiggenOn the recent entry, man & nature # 188 ~ incredible, simply incredible, "Tracy" (no link) asked:

Has Hugo got a camera yet? looking forward to his pov

2 years ago, I gave Hugo a camera for Xmas. His dad, The Cinemascapist, has been less than consistent in making sure the battery is charged and in putting it in his hands on a regular basis. Shame on dad.

Nevertheless, Hugo has a rather incredible visual sense and sensitivity so when he's with me and the wife, he asks to use one of my cameras on a fairly regular basis and, at times, the result can be quite freaky.

That said, today's Bog River sandbank and ledge picture is a case in point. On a recent multi-day canoe trip, I was busy picturing away on a sandbank when Hugo approached and asked to use a camera. I complied, stepped aside, and one of the pictures in this triptych is by/from the eye of Hugo.

Anyone want to make a guess as to which one? If you do, please let me/us know the reason(s) for your choice.