ku # 548 ~ some ins and outs

More rime ice above the West Branch of the Au Sable • click to embiggenContinuing with our POD theme, we move on to the blank page / content.

But, before going there, I would be remiss if I didn't mention one critical factor, in fact, the most critical factor in obtaining good results - your monitor and its calibration.

Simply stated reasonable monitor calibration is a must but notice that I used the word "reasonable", not "perfect". That's because, at least on the Mac side of things, there is a way to achieve decent monitor calibration without having to own a calibration device. For those of you using a Mac, that procedure can be found in your System Preferences / Display settings. It's a fairly intuitive process and even if you don't get it exactly right it will still be a lot better than not doing it.

Important Caveat: Monitor calibration - with or without a calibration device - should be performed in a darkened environment as should all image editing. The monitor screen should have little or no ambient light striking it. That's the way the "big boys" do it.

Workstation • click to embiggen
My workstation is on a countertop installed in an alcove. The walls/ceiling in the alcove are painted a neutral 50% grey. My monitor and keyboard sit on a large black desktop blotter. The room lighting is on a dimmer switch set to very dim.

I am certain that most of you will not go to these lengths but here's the important thing. Try to calibrate in the same light conditions in which you will do your image editing. In other words, DON'T calibrate in a room flooded with daylight and then edit at night with tungsten light. Try your utmost to keep the room light constant both in intensity and color temperature. Think of it as the correct "white balance".

Now, on to the blank page.

I do all of my book design and layout, to include typography, in Photoshop. Photoshop's type tools are pretty sophisticated at this point. No, they are not as good as InDesign but they are more than up to the task of the requirements of photo book design wherein pictures, not typography, is the feature.

Pro power-user that I am, I use the full version of PS. I believe that PS Elements has type tools as well. If you do not have either of these programs, in order to work with a blank page you must have a page layout program that allows you to work with type and images together and that also allows you to output / save the results as a PDF - although that PDF will have to be opened / rasterized in an image editing program in order to create a hires (300dpi) jpeg for upload to the service provider.

Leather cover with cut out window / first inside page • click to embiggenIn any event, I start in PS with a 300 dpi (ppi), white background, RGB file that is sized to the page size of the book I am designing. Typically, for me, that is either a 12×12 inch or an 8×8 inch size file. Therefore, as an example, my blank page is a PS RGB file that is 8 in. x 8 in, 300 dpi, and has a white background.

Copyright / Statement spread • click to embiggenAt that point, the real business of design/layout begins and, IMO, the guiding principle from here on out is keep it simple.

The first question a good designer asks him/herself is, "what's the point of this design exercise?" In our case, the answer is a relatively simple one, "to showcase pictures". The pictures are the thing, NOT typographic virtuosity or graphics wizardry. That is why in my books:

1. pictures are always presented with a white surround (essentially the equivalent of matting a picture for presentation).

2. type/text is (almost) always black or a shade of grey.

3. type/text is (almost) always relatively small.

4. graphic elements - lines, boxes, etc. are always small and subtle.

In short, because pictures are the thing, I like to keep all of the other elements of a photo book simple. The result of doing so will most always be a "clean" and "elegant" look and feel. Nothing gets in the way of viewing the pictures. They are allowed to speak for themselves. There are no distractions.

Picture spread with image title page • click to embiggenA word to the wise regarding pictures presented with a white background. I know that there are probably more than a few out there who listen to picture framers' advice regarding the color of matting when it comes to framing your photographs. IMO, and quite frankly that of the rest of the Art world, there is only ONE color for matting and that is NONE, aka - white (or any number of subtle shades thereof).

The reason for this is simple - and goes back to your workstation environment - any color that you choose to surround your picture(s) with will greatly influence the eye's perception of the colors in those pictures - the stronger the color, the stronger the influence. Colored backgrounds in photo books wherein the pictures are intended to be presented as Art (or even art) is strictly for amateurs. The same can be said for printing pictures right out the edges of the page, aka - full bleed. The exception here is covers where full bleed is most often the rule rather than the exception.

All of that said, here are a few time-saving tips:

Make a master page file that has repetitive elements on it - things like page numbers (I don't use them), titles, captions, graphic elements and guides for image sizing placement.

I like to present all of my pictures at the same size and in the same place on each page. Once I have determined that size/placement by dragging a picture (holding down the shift key in order that the picture will be centered on the page) onto my master blank page and playing around with it using the transform tool, I drag guides to the edges of the image (View>Snap ON). Then I delete the picture layer and re-save the master file.

Type elements like titles, page numbers and captions can be saved in position in the master file by creating any of the elements on the master page using the type tool. Make a separate type layer for each element and position the element where you want it to be using the typeface and size you want them to be - actually type in a title / caption / page number. Once determined, save the master file leaving the type as editable type.

Once you have a master page file, all you need to do to make a new page is drag (shift key) an image file onto it and resize it to the guides you have set up. Then highlight any text with the type tool and enter the appropriate info - new title / caption / page number. Then save the file with a new name.

Then start again on that file - delete the image, drag a new one in, redo the text elements, and save again with a new name. Keep repeating the same procedure to create as many pages as you need. Working in this manner means that you will have only one working file open at a time. This may be very important if you have a limited amount of RAM.

Once you are done making pages, you can open them one at a time. Flatten them and save them as jpegs for upload to the service provider. With both Shutterfly and SharedInk I save the jpegs with the Adobe RGB (1998) color profile embedded. To be totally honest, I do NOT know how important the Abobe RGB (1998) color profile is to the results I obtain. I live in an Adobe RGB color space world - I shoot with that profile, I edit with that profile, and save all my files with that profile. If you live in an sRGB color space world (a smaller color space world), you might want to ask the appropriate customer support for advice on that.

For those of you working with a page layout / design program to make your book (such as InDesign, Quark, et al) you are going to have to save out your book as individual page pdfs. Then you will have to open them in PS (or some other image editing program) as a rasterized file at 300dpi in order to save them as jpegs for upload. To my knowledge, there are no POD photo book service providers who accept whole document pdf files or pdf files with vector type embedded in them.

I hope this short-ish how-to helps answer some questions. I am sure many of you will have more. Ask away.

ku # 547 ~ 2 good reason to get the hell out of Dodge

Rime ice on a ridgeline above the West Branch of the Au Sable • click to embiggenRe; POD "standard" response, issue # 2 - the relatively confusing / non-intuitive nature of POD service provider's book making software.

What follows is directed towards dealing with Shutterfly.com's photo book making proceedures. To a great degree it also applies to SharedInk.com's preceedures as well.

FYI, SharedInk is my high-quality (high quality = high price) POD photo book service provider of choice. Their Professional Photographer program (which is "hidden" on their website - you must send an email request for info about it to get in) is really quite superb in features, options, etc.

The reason I use these 2 providers is simple. The quality of the product they deliver is consistently and predictably right on the mark. Up to snuff. As promised. No excuses. No hassles. Satisfaction guaranteed. Period. End of discussion.

Because of that, I have applied to become a member of Shutterfly's Affiliate Program whereby if anyone here on The Landscapist opens a free Shutterfly account through the link from The Landscapist, I'll make a couple bucks here and there.

I am also doing so because I will really be putting an emphasis on photo book making / sales in the foreseeable future here on The Landscapist. With the advent of the digital photography "revolution", there has been an adjunct revolution in heretofore unavailable photo book making that has been made available to Joe/Jane-the-anybody that could change the way pictures are being presented, preserved, and disseminated.

IMO, it's time that many more "serious" picture makers get with the program and I am going to do my part in making that happen.

Now, on to issue # 2 - Let's discuss choosing a POD service provider. As far as I am concerned, there are 2 key issues to address:

1). IMO, the absolute first obstacle a service provider must get by is the ability in their book making software to bypass their page layout templates. Or, more correctly, they must offer a page layout template that is a blank page (NO text boxes, NO picture boxes) with full-bleed (image printing right out to the edges of the page) capabilities. If they don't offer such a template, get the hell out of Dodge as fast as you can.

Why? Because a blank page template puts you in complete control of the design and layout process. That includes everything on the page - image placement, image size, number of images, text, text placement, typefaces, type spacing / kerning, background color(s), background textures/effects, and/or any other facet of page design. You take control. I don't know about you but I wouldn't have it any other way.

2). Once past that hurdle, the next issue is color - is there a method to obtain good consistent color results? In my experience, the best method is NO method at the service provider level.

Consider Shutterfly - they have as a default setting in their software their own idea of "image enhancement" called VividPics. This may be an effective enhancement for the uninitiated, but for those who know what they are doing relative to image adjustments (color, contrast, hue/saturation, and all of the other Photoshop or Photoshop-like image processing things) before they upload their pictures to Shutterfly, VividPics is NOT what the doctor ordered.

Shutterfly, as an example, recognizes this situation and provides for manual removal of this "effect". Good, in fact, very good, for them. However, I can not speak for other service providers other than SharedInk which, as far I can tell with their PP program, offer no image enhancement effects.

That said, the point is this - understanding what, if anything, is going to happen to your image files after they are uploaded to a service provider for book printing, is absolutely critical to obtaining good reproduction of your pictures. Just as in the blank-page layout scenario, the best results should be obtained by leaving you in total control of what the image looks like. As Shutterfly states in their FAQ regarding VividPics:

...if you have already edited your pictures for color, brightness, or contrast in an application such as Adobe Photoshop, we recommend that you turn off the VividPics setting for the edited pictures ... Pictures printed with this setting turned off will be printed exactly as they were uploaded...

Get it? "Exactly as they were uploaded" is exactly what you want. CAVEAT Be prepared. Because, without a doubt, what that means is that the old computer adage applies with full vigor - garbage in, garbage out. Of course, the flip side of that is something like - looks-like-a-rose in, smells-like-a-rose out.

Neverthless, my same advice applies to this issue - if a service provider doesn't offer info about their color management / "enhancement" techniques (if needed, contact their customer support), or, if they do but do not offer an option to turn it off, get the hell out of Dodge as fast as you can.

Now of course, I fully realize that having total control over page layout /design and image quality may be a form of absolute trepidation and intimidation for many. Without a doubt, my 40 years of experience in the photo, design, and printing industries makes these tasks about as difficult as falling off a log for me, which, in turn, with over 60 years of living behind me, is also a pretty easy thing for me to do.

I'll try in my next post to give you some simple tips on what to do with that blank page.

ku # 545/46 ~ attitude adjustment

West Branch of the Au Sable River • click to embiggenYesterday's entry received 2 of the "standard" response types that I have heard / read almost every time the idea of POD photo books arises - 1) that of "quality" (which usually considered to be quite questionable) and 2) the relatively confusing / non-intuitive nature of POD service provider's book making software.

Let me address issue #1 with a bit of a story from my experience, starting with this from Jörg Colberg @ Conscientious:

I have been thinking about landscape photography a lot lately. The problem with that type of photography is that there appears to be a sweet spot that is sandwiched between extremely decorative - some would probably prefer the word "kitschy" - work (everything you see in "National Geographic") and extremely boring work (think Ansel Adams). Both extremes typically spend too much time on technical details since they both resulted from a history in which the "combination of sharp focus, tonal richness, and clarity of detail [...] came more and more to be the subject of the photograph [...] rather than a tool for artistic expression." (Janet Malcolm, from "East and West", an article I found in her 1980 collection of articles "Diane & Nikon")

My first job as an assistant in a commercial photo studio was obtained because of my color printing skills and experience. The studio's most important client was Superba Cravats - at that time, the oldest and one of the largest manufacturers of neckwear in the United States. The account was a money-making machine - the company had several lines of neckwear (including the Johnny Carson Division) and every one of those lines needed advertising photographs for every season's new products. As long as the earth continued to spin and revolve around the sun, new neckwear spun out of Superba Cravats like calender clockwork.

Looking back on my experience with that account, it is very obvious that it was one of the most influential learning experiences I ever had in understanding both color picture making / printing and the reproduction (on a printing press) thereof.

As soon as a shooting session commenced - they could last up to 2 weeks - I was banished to the darkroom where I processed the 5×7 inch color negative films and began grinding out 16×20 inch color "C" prints under the demanding and watchful eye of the account creative director. To say he was "particular" about color is an understatement of gargantuan proportions. Over and over again, I would have to make prints with minutely incremental color changes in order to demonstrate / prove to him that the color of a given necktie(s) could not be reproduced given the constraints / limitations of the color negative / C print process.

Those constraints / limitations were, of course, one of the very reasons we were going the negative / print route - once we arrived a satisfactory print, it was off to the retoucher for corrections and further adjustments. With airbrush and dyes, a retoucher could obtain a closer color match on some of the more difficult to match photographically (if not impossible) product colors.

Once that was finished, the prints were off to the mechanical artist for final ad prep and from there to the pre-press bureau for the separations needed (insert here all of the constraints / limitations of the conversion to CMYK color space) for submission to the various publications in which the ads were running. Where, once they were on press, a whole other set of printing-press, ink-on-paper set of limitations were introduced.

What you ended up with on the printed page was an approximation of the original photograph, closer in some colors than others and, with some colors, really not very close at all. And, if you went to the aggravating extreme of laying a necktie from the picture next to/on the printed page, well, at that point, if didn't put a gun to your head, you'd have to wonder what the point, not to mention all the expense, of all the print fine-tuning and retouching actually was.

What I learned from this experience, aside form all the really valuable technical stuff about color photography / print reproduction (most of which I put to use every time I work in Photoshop), was that the client seemed to have missed the point of what we were doing. For all of his preoccupation with color, he seemed to miss the fact that nobody was walking into a haberdashery, printed page in hand, and trying find a tie that look exactly like the one in the ad. If that were the case, they would have never sold a single piece of neckwear.

So, here's the point relative to POD books - if you are expecting the printed page to look exactly like your pictures, get over it. Even allowing for medium to medium conversion differences, if you are expecting the printed page to be mistaken for a photographic print, get over it. If you are expecting it to look anything like what you see on your carefully calibrated monitor, get over it.

It's just not going to happen. It's not only not going to happen with POD book printing, it's not going to happen on an 8-color high-end non-digital press. That's because it's a reproduction of a printed picture. You need to think of it in the same way you do about the difference between the real world and the reproduction of it you get when you make a picture of it - neither reproduction is the same as the "real" thing. Similar, yes - exact, no.

On that note, let me also point out that I, as a viewer of a photo book (of any kind of printing), have absolutely no idea of what the picture makers original prints look like. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. Therefore, I am not comparing anything. I am looking at pictures, which, unless there is some obvious and visually obtrusive reproduction problems, I just look at them at face value.

There's also another way to think about it. A bit extreme perhaps, but instructive and valuable nevertheless. Again, from Jörg Colberg:

...you could show me a Diane Arbus photo reprinted in a newspaper and it would still be a fantastic photo. Maybe that would be a good criterion for What makes a great photo: If the photo still looks great if you print it in a newspaper it's a great photo.

So, IMO, you "quality" whiners just have to get over it. My experience with several POD photo book printers (Shutterfly in particular) is that, once you learn the in and outs of their particular system, they all (with blurb being the one exception that I know about) deliver pretty high level of what is known in the printing industry as commercially acceptable reproduction. In fact, the level of reproduction they deliver from an POD digital press is actually quite better than that generally obtainable from a standard press only a few years ago.

Therefore, if "quality" is your excuse, let me amend yesterday's proclamation to read:

"Bullshit! Get over it. Just suck it up and get it done."

And, to walk the walk, and not just talk the talk, I will design and print, at my expense, a standard 8×8 or 8.5×11 POD photo book of the work of one lucky Landscapist contestant who can convince me (money is NOT accepted) why I should do their book over all others.

Just click on the "Email Me" link in the right column and start seducing me.

ku # 544 ~ say what?

Cold, icy West Branch of the Au Sable River • click to embiggenI must admit that while viewing Tom Gallione's pictures, especially the aforementioned Noon series, I was nearly overwhelmed with the need to go out and make some "pure" ku pictures. So, on my way into and return from Lake Placid to pick up my new $1,000 (read below) eyeglasses. I was actively on the lookout for picture making possibilities - something that is not my usual MO.

I must say that it felt extremely odd and almost "wrong" to be looking for picture making opportunities so intently. It seemed rather "forced" and "unnatural". In fact, afterword, I wondered what I might have missed and not seen by looking so intently.

However, on the way home, I was seeing much better than on the way in to Lake Placid - I was wearing my new zillion dollar eyewear after all. FYI, I must state that I am not a thousand dollar eyeglasses person at heart.

However, I now own such a pair due to a "perfect storm" set of circumstances. In a bit of a mad rush to take advantage of a reimbursement program from the wife's firm, I needed to buy a new pair of glasses (which, BTW, I actually needed) by year's end. To that end, I made an appointment for an eye exam at a family owned and run optometrist / eyewear place in Lake Placid.

A bit of a "trendy" place in fact but a place at which I knew I could get a short-notice appointment. Also a place at which I knew I would be paying a bit of a premium in but, what the heck, it wasn't coming out of my pocket, right? Well, surprise, surprise.

After the eye exam, where I discovered that my prescription had actually changed for the better, I picked out a pair of low cost ($250) frames - that is, 'low cost" in this establishment where frames were as expensive as $600-$700.

Next step was to order the lens and I was pitched rather vigorously regarding new "digital" lenses which promised a much bigger "sweet spot" for distance correction with the progressive lens that I needed (progressive lenses = seamless progression bifocals). This was an exciting prospect for me since I had never really been comfortable with my last (and first) set of progressive lenses, the sweet spot was way to small resulting in a lot of head turning since the peripheral vision was very limited - this was particularly bad for me whenever I wanted to ogle a babe while the wife was on hand.

Once I was assured that I didn't need batteries for the "digital" lenses, I decided, sure, why not? A few measurements later, I was presented with the bill ... $970.00!!!! Say what? I nearly wet the bed. Calling upon a reserve of inner strength that I did not know I possessed, I managed to maintain an outward appearance of calm and dignity and casually (outward appearance wise) asked if I could see the cost breakdown. The "digital" lenses were the main culprit - $580.00 alone.

As I sat there trying to recover and reconcile my economic senses, the one thought that kept running through my head was that the last lens that I purchased for my Olympus cost only marginally more than that. How in the hell could a pair eyeglass lenses cost that much? I mean, come on now, think about it - 2 pieces of plastic versus 10 glass elements with 2 aspherical glass lens elements, multi-coating, auto-focusing, weather-sealed close-tolerance construction, and, by comparison to eyewear lenses, extremely limited production.

How the hell can a pair of eyewear lenses cost so much - even considering the $140 premium cost for the "digital" lenses? Am I missing something?

Update on Wednesday, January 7, 2009 at 03:18PM by gravitas et nugalis

Trés chic, sont ils non? • click to embiggenAs per request here they are.

What else can one say except, "mais oui!"

FYI, the title of this picture is, New eyewear with juice press, wine aerator, and napkins on the kitchen table # 1

God help me if there's a # 2.

Update on Wednesday, January 7, 2009 at 06:15PM by gravitas et nugalis

Truth be told, I got them because I thought they were a kind of Lennon / Costello hybrid but what the hell, I'll go with the Stieglitz connection. And, FYI, the wife thinks that they are the perfect compliment to accent my beady eyes.

ku # 543 ~ through the eyes of a child

Ice patterns and erractic • click to embiggen
Mom, dad, and grampa • click to embiggenMy recent ruminations regarding "pure" pictures may have had an instigating circumstance that I really hadn't thought about until I viewed the 2 pictures presented here (on the left).

These pictures were 2 amongst many made by Hugo (he's 4 years old) on the day before I encountered the previously mentioned become as little child bit. He made these pictures at a restaurant while we were waiting for our dinners (after our family visit to Santa's Workshop). His modus operandi was simple - he just roamed around the restaurant dining room and the adjoining barroom and snapped merrily away making pictures of whatever caught his interest. After each and every "snap", he beat feet back to our table to show us what he had pictured and once the chimping was complete, off he dashed to look and picture some more.

What struck me at the time was how fun he was having to be making pictures and how excited he was to share them with us. What I also found interesting was what he found interesting enough to make pictures of. With the benefit of hindsight it has become obvious to me that Hugo, by means of his picturing and pictures, was giving us a glimpse into his "hidden" personage in a manner that he is not now capable of doing with words.

I have known for quite a while that Hugo has a very active "life" inside his head - the kid's brain is constantly working, working, working. He internalizes so much of what he sees and experiences and he has expressed what seems to me to be a very heightened curiosity and desire to understand it all. I must admit that, at times, that characteristic in him scares the hell out of me.

Nevertheless, that is the reason that I gave him a nice camera for Xmas a year ago. I had a sense that Hugo, if dad consistently fostered the idea of putting a camera in his hand, would just naturally start showing us what he was interested in / curious about. And those pictures, in turn, could tell us much more than words ever could (at this stage of his life) about the person Hugo is and is becoming.

While it can literally be said that Hugo is seeing things through the eyes of a child, I absolutely believe that his picturing responses to things visual is directed by things internal that are very much a part of his unthought known. Even at his young and tender age, he is making choices about what to picture and I can not image what is dictating these choices other his "pure" connection to what he finds interesting.

And here's the thing, I find his pictures very interesting and engaging - not so much the 2 presented here, but some of the other ones of just plain "stuff". I am acutely aware of his desire to show us what he finds interesting - an activity that he can not possibly consciously understand as an attempt to tell us something about who and what he is. In that sense, his pictures are quite "pure".

And, if there's a picture-making lesson in all of this (and I believe there is), it's that, if we care to listen to and try to understand what he (and, by extension, many other picture makers) is telling us, the world just might be a better place.

BTW, the other lesson one could come away with it's that the rules of composition don't mean s**t when it comes to making an engaging and interesting picture.

ku # 542 ~ then again ....

Decaying, hanging fruit • click to embiggen... as Groucho Marx once opined on the subject of art:

Well, art is art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.

Update on Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 07:30PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Matt wrote: "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

my response: Sure, sure. But ... time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

ku # 541 ~ that which stands in the thin shadow of what I know

Ice, twiggy things, a few leaves, some leftover grasses and some things that lie beneath the surface • click to embiggenPicking up on the "pure" picture thing, Andreas Manessinger left this comment regarding seeing with the eyes of a child:

...For me it means to see things without their attached meanings, seeing them pure, without context, without any judgement that is beyond the realm of the visible ... if my meaning of "pure" correlates with yours at all, then seeing "pure" is only a beginning. I see something, bereft of meaning, but when I make it an image, I put meaning into it, and that can be completely unrelated to what normally would be associated with the subject ...

Well, let me state, right out of the gate, that Andreas' meaning of "pure" does correlate to a great extent with mine.

Without a doubt, when I am out and about making pictures I do respond almost exclusively to the world around me in a cognitive manner that is purely in the "realm of the visible" - on a cognitive level, I make pictures of things because of how they look. On that level it really is that "simple".

On another level, I am also very comfortable with my purely subliminal unthought known regarding what it is that I find interesting about the way things look - those things that I am seemingly preternaturally attracted to during the act of picture making. In other words, I don't think about why I picture the subjects I picture, I just picture them. To use Andreas' words, at the moment of picturing, my referents are essentially "bereft of meaning".

Andreas also stated that "...when I make it an image, I put meaning into it...". I tend to agree with that idea in as much as when I make an image, I have, at the very least, elavated the particular referent in question to a status of being worthy of my attention.

In a very real sense, I am randomly collecting "specimens" for later study and inspection. And, for me, that's where the medium of photography gets really interesting.

Sure, sure. I really do like to just look at my pictures. I find them to be very visually engaging, interesting, and attractive. To be, in fact, quite beautiful. They look very nice hanging on a wall or in a POD book. But, of course, as I have frequently stated, I prefer pictures that both illustrate and illuminate. So it should come as no surprise that it is the illuminating qualities of my pictures that I find quite interesting.

It is on that level, the one in which I start to discover meaning(s) in my pictures "that can be completely unrelated to what normally would be associated with the subject" that I begin to really connect with my pictures. It is becoming increasingly obvious to me that, the more I can be engaged in the process of discovery of meaning in my pictures, the more I think that I have made a "pure" picture. It seems that way because any given picture that so engages me seems to be drawing me in because it is telling me something about my self and and my self's relationship to the world.

All of that said, it appears that my notion of a "pure" picture is coming a bit more into focus.

FYI; Lest you think that I am engaged in photographic form of extreme narcissism, it should clearly understood that I find many of the pictures made others to hold the same pureness that I find in my pictures. Their pictures often engage me in a similar process of discovery in ways that are every bit as illuminating as any of my pictures are to me.

An outstanding example of pictures made by others that engage me - in this case, those of Michael Lundgren - can be found here. Be certain to read the his statement.

ku # 540 ~ in the garden of the world of appearances

Interrelated complexity • click to embiggenOk, I get it. No one wants to contemplate the notion of responsibility in picture making. So let me try to address it in another way.

We are living in, as they say, interesting times. I would opine that here in the US of A we are living in kind of end times - at least as far as the notion of super-capitalism is concerned. And, as many have come to learn the hard way, an economy fueled by super capitalism is self-cannibalizing - it not only eats its young, it consumes anything and everything in its path leaving only a gouged-out husk in its wake.

To use a metaphor that would make Chancey Gardener (go to 1:05 for my point) proud, it seems that the once healthy tree that was life in these here United States has had the life strangled out of it by a creeping vine of consumption. In order to save the tree much careful pruning and nurturing is required. We are in need of a very talented, resourceful, and, most importantly, a very creative gardener-in-chief and an actively engaged body of creative cohorts.

Maybe you don't see it that way but that's how I see it. Maybe you think the thing to do is to just coast along the fringes and see what happens. Just put on a smiley face and hope for the best.

In any event, if you consider yourself to be in the camp of actively engaged assistant gardeners who can also make pictures, what kind of pictures do you think should be made in these interesting times?

I used to think that photographs were "composed." This made photography sound very unexuberant, as if it was primarily a deliberate act. Such a notion suggests that a photographer stands in front of an inviting landscape, arranges a composition, and then takes the picture. And it's true that many photographers work that way. Of course, if photographs can be composed, then there must be rules of composition, such as: the subject should never be dead center. But why not? I used to think you could learn how to be a photographer by learning the rules of composition and how to use a camera. Now I think just the opposite: if you have to learn rules, then it's already too late. The elements of a design can make a photograph bearable and inoffensive, but they will not make a photograph compelling. We are compelled by photographs which, within the limits of an objectively appropriate form, manage to offer us something that touches on authentic concerns - our happiness or unhappiness, our fidelities, our modern war with perplexity. The balance between design and content must be there because design by itself is not interesting and pure content is merely assertive. - John Rosenthal