ku # 556 ~ sharp focus

Sunset light on birch and mountain • click to embiggenI must confess that I haven't felt much like writing about things photography for the past couple of weeks. The primary reason for that (as far as I can surmise) is a preoccupation with what seems like the major world events of my lifetime - this fine mess that we find ourselves in. Although, I am also quite busy with a couple large client projects as well.

Nevertheless, writing about things photography seem just a bit beside the point right now. Picturing does not - I am making pictures at about my normal pace although that activity currently seems to lack a bit of focus.

Maybe what I need to do is create my own SoFoBoMo project in order to shake out the cobwebs or whatever the fog is that seems to be enveloping me. Something completely new and different from what I've been doing. Maybe something that involves pictures of people. I am actually rather good at that and I haven't done anything that focuses on people in a long time.

Maybe it's time to haul out the studio strobe equipment and get to work.

civilized ku # 161 ~ standing in the comfort zone

A picture thought while eating breakfast • click to embiggenI was eating breakfast on Sunday morning when what to my wandering / wondering eyes should appear but a view that I never see from my customary kitchen table seat.

The house was quiet (the wife was at work), all the guests were long gone and I was in a reflective / contemplative state of mind which was mostly likely encouraged by reading about the latest economic train wrecks in the Sunday paper. My contemplation was mainly centered around a variation upon the immortal words of Oliver Hardy (as oft stated to Stan Laurel), "Well, here's another nice mess we've gotten ourselves into."

Round about that time is when I noticed the view and I thought almost immediately of the lryics to Keb Mo's song, Victims of Comfort -

No rocket's gonna fly that high,
There's no escaping the enemy, It's you I,
We've poisoned up the water,
We're chokin' on the air,
Let's stop before it gets too late,
Or is it already too late?
Is it already too late?

For the victims of comfort,
Got no one else to blame,
We're just the victims of comfort,
Connosuiers of pain.

It's a technological merry-go-round,
Dangerous illusions buried under the ground,
And everyone likes a party,
But know one wants to clean,
Well I'd like to see a change somehow
But I'm a little busy right now,
Just a little busy right now.

I'm just a victim of comfort,
I got no one else to blame,
I'm just a victim of comfort,
A Cryin' shame.

Oh and what do we got to lose?
Everything.
Yes and what do we stand to gain?
Everything, so lets try together,
Before we have to cry together,
It's too soon to die together.

I'm just a victim of comfort,
Got no one else to blame,
I'm just a victim of comfort,
Connosuier of pain.
We were victims of comfort
Got no one else to blame,
I'm just a victim of comfort,
Cryin' shame.

man & nature # 100 ~ symbols of reality vs reality

Fresh wet snow on a garden bed • click to embiggenWe here at our house subscribe to the monthly magazine The Sun. I can't speak for the wife but I like the magazine because its publishing philosophy is much like my own idea about / approach to picture making -

The Sun is an independent, ad-free monthly magazine that for more than thirty years has used words and photographs to invoke the splendor and heartache of being human. The Sun celebrates life, but not in a way that ignores its complexity ... The Sun has attempted to marry the personal and political; to honor the genuine and the spiritual; to see what kind of roommates beauty and truth can be; and to show that powerful teaching can be found in the lives of ordinary people.

In order to completely describe my approach to picturing, about the only thing I would have to add to that statement are the words "places, and things" immediately following the phrase "ordinary people".

In any event, in the most recent issue I came across this statement which I thought might be fodder for discussion:

As we increasingly connect with the world through computer screens, we're removing ourselves from direct sensory contact with nature. On other words, we're learning to substitute symbols of reality for reality itself. ~ from Computing The Cost: Nicholas Carr On How The Internet Is Rewiring Our Brains (The Sun • March 2009)

Carr goes on to state that this phenomenon "isn't something necessarily new, that it's just a continuation of what we saw with other electronic media like radio or television. But I do think it's an amplification of those trends." I would agree with that caveat (as I do with his aforementioned opinion) but me thinks he should not have limited himself to electronic media -

I mean, what is a photographic print if not a "symbol" of something from reality?

Unless one is possessed of a serious mental deficiency, there are very few who would mistake a picture of a thing for the thing itself. Obviously, no matter how you look at it, a picture of an orange is not an orange. It may conjure up feelings, emotions, and thoughts about an orange - it may even instigate a bit of salivation - but, in the end, if you actually bit into the print, that's where any illusion about it being an orange would come to an abrupt and distasteful end.

However, and this goes quite a way in explaining my POD fever, I do believe there is a difference between viewing pictures online and viewing the same pictures in a printed book. And that difference is a big part of the point of Carr's article about how the internet is rewiring our brains - the internet promotes the ability to "jump around" (hyperlinks) in a field of vast quantities of information over the ability to concentrate and be contemplative:

I guess it comes down to what you value most about human intelligence and, by extension, human culture. Do you believe that intelligence is a matter of tapping into huge amounts of information as fast as possible - being "more productive" - or do you think intelligence means stepping back from that information, thinking about it, and drawing your own conclusions in a calm thoughtful way?

From which I would extrapolate this:

I guess it comes down to what you value most about looking at pictures. Do you believe that looking at and appreciating pictures is a matter of tapping into huge amounts of pictures as fast as possible - being "more productive" in your picture viewing - or do you think appreciation, understanding, and finding meaning means stepping back from that information, thinking about it, and drawing your own conclusions in a calm thoughtful way?

FYI, I value the ability to concentrate and be contemplative when viewing pictures and, as I have mentioned previously, I find the internet to be a very poor venue for such an activity. A book, on the other hand, is a very viewing friendly object. I can not only see it, I can feel it. The pictures become things, in and of themselves, in a manner that simply is not possible on a screen.

Ink on paper is a 1000x more real to me than an image on a screen. My connection to it is warm and human. I feel that a person, an actual person, was involved in a book's making in way that does not come through with an image on a screen. A book was made from a tree, a living renewable resource. A screen is cold and impersonal.

A book just feels right.

So, when I'm in the mood to substitute a symbol of reality for reality itself, I like to take mine "real".

civilized ku # 160 ~ SoFoBoMo pt. 2

Light fixture light on the powder room wall • click to embiggenIt has been opined that I should not have used the word "dumb" to describe the SoFoBoMo rule which I thought was .... well .... to be precise, dumb.

So I would like to reiterate, in no uncertain terms, that while I do think that the aforementioned rule is dumb to the nth power, I do not think that participating in SoFoBoMo is a dumb thing to do. I absolutely, without qualification, do not think that it is a dumb thing to do.

As a matter of fact, I wish the SoFoBoMo 2009 project all the success in the world. May their participation double or, for that matter, triple over last year's numbers. Seriously, I do. As far as I am concerned, anything that promotes the making of photo books is A-OK in my view.

god knows I've tried to get people to sh*t instead of just sitting on the pot but apparently I don't quite have the knack for it. I'm still mulling some ideas on the POD subject that I'll be hatching soon but I'm thinking that it will be a behind-the-scenes thing until it's up and running.

In any event, if SoFoBoMo tickles your fancy, I'd strongly recommend that you go for it.

civilized ku # 159 ~ SoFoBoMo

Afternoon light on the powder room wall • click to embiggenJust recently I received an email from Gordon McGregor with a mention that this year's SoFoBoMo event(?) had launched.

In case you are familiar with what a SoFoBoMo is, here's what the SoFoBoMo website says:

Each year, a loosely organised international group of photographers decide to stop procrastinating and make a real physical book in a month or less.

This is the second year of the event - I keep calling it an "event" because I don't know what else to call it. In its first year 60 people participated and the results can be viewed HERE. Although, in fact, you can maybe see them because clicking on the them leads to a wide array of results.

All that said, I was aware of SoFoBoMo last year but after investigating the event and its rules, I decided that it was not for me. Even though I make books and feel rather strongly that everyone who calls themselves a photographer / picture maker / artist who uses photography / et al should make books, the project (new word for it) had a few rules that felt rather camera-clubby.

To be honest, the project has very few rules but what there were/are I found to be rather dumb.

First and foremost on the dumb list was the rule that you did not actually have to make a finished, i.e. printed, book. Apparently the organizers believe that going through the effort to make pictures for and to design/layout a book, not an actual book itself, is the point of the exercise. That effort is/can be a very good thing but that effort is one very important step away from producing a good printed book.

It should go without saying that the rules obviously do not prevent a participant from going all the way. I have no way of knowing but I would imagine that many participants actually produced printed books.

But that rule alone would not stop me from participating. No, the one that gets to me is this one:

How many photos do I need for the book?
At least 35 - large enough that it can't be flung together from a single afternoon's photography, short enough to be doable...

I'm sorry but that one's 2-parts dumb for me.

dumb - part 1 - what the hell is wrong with a book that features just, lets say, 10 really strong pictures? Is a book with 100 pictures better than one with just 10 (or 35)? I mean, what if you want to make a book titled, Portraits of the Most Important People in My Life and, lo and behold, you only have 10 people who qualify?

What if you want to make a book of staged/contrived pictures that are very time consuming to produce - planning, models, locations, etc.? With only 30 days during which both the picture making and the book design/layout must be executed, 35 pictures would be nearly impossible.

No doubt there are plenty of subjects/themes that could be accomplished within the time frame, but why impose an arbitrary constraint that limits what someone might like to do?

Which leads me to -

dumb - part 2 - the part that says 35 pictures minimum so that the project can't be "flung together" from a single afternoon's photography. What the hell is wrong with a book that documents an event that spans only an afternoon's (morning's, evening's) time? I can think of quite a few events that might be worthy of some serious picturing that are very short-lived.

A few years ago, I gave serious consideration to picturing my step-daughter's prom night from start to finish. If I had done so, 35 pictures would have been the tip of the iceberg. Then there's the small town, Friday night, under-the-lights high school football game ritual - the picture possibilities from that are nearly endless.

Of course, there is always the possibility that one might end up with only 23 strong pictures from either of those events ...

Let me repeat myself - No doubt there are plenty of subjects/themes that could be spaced out over/within the time frame, but why impose an arbitrary constraint that limits what someone might like to do?

To be honest, the idea of producing a book, start to finish, within a month's time is a perfectly valid rule/constraint and challenge for such a project. But proscribing constraints like the 2-part dumb ones above are a deal breaker for me.

Maybe my imagination is bigger than that. Maybe I just don't like being told how many pictures a book must have or that I can't make any number of good pictures in an afternoon's time. Maybe I don't cotton to the notion that any book with fewer than 35 pictures or that is made over an afternoon's time is something that is just flung together.

And, please, this is NOT a you-shouldn't-do-it rant. It is merely an entry on my blog about why I won't be doing it.

ku # 555 ~ life's magic moments

Browsing widlife • click to embiggenI had just walked out of the forest after checking my lines (hoping for for some opossum meat for dinner - the recession is starting to get closer to home) and I heard a faint rustling at my back.

I turned around and there they were - 2 deer browsing for their dinner. Fortunately, I was armed for (photographic) bear and I quietly mounted the big gun (with image stabilization turned on) and fired away. It was one of life's magic moments. Not nearly as magic as blowing them away with a real (big) gun and taking them home for dinner - no opossum on the lines - but I guess you have to take what you can get in these hard times.

It looked to me that it was hard times for the deer as well. They were so emaciated that I swear I could almost see right through them.

civilized ku # 158 ~ don't know whether to cry or wind their watch

The Saranac Winter Carnival King & Queen discharging some of their duties • click to embiggenBefore the plague struck we took the kiddies to the Annual Kiddie Parade at the Saranac Lake Winter Carnival.

The parade itself is a rather un-organized affair. Basically, a large clump of kids start out together and move as a large clump to the town hall where they move inside as a clump to gorge themselves on cake, cookies, soda pop. During the proceedings, the The Winter Carnival King and Queen assume the throne and hand out participation ribbons to the kids, many of whom are completely perplexed and bewildered by the whole affair.

In any event and for the most part, the kiddies seem to enjoy it and, heaven knows, I wouldn't have missed the hair-anchored balloons for all the tea in China. And, it would seem so as well for the King and Queen.

ku # 554 ~ wave after wave

A slide in late afternoon light • click to embiggenThe second wave of guests arrived last evening and the last of the first wave left this AM.

Unfortunately, a member of the first wave left something behind - a nasty stomach virus. So far it has claimed me, the wife, and Hugo. But, as they say, there's a first time for everything - the wife and I are sharing the same sick bed. That's never happened before and I miss her waiting on me hand and foot.

On the other hand, it's reassuring when you return from the bathroom to have someone in the same condition to share your misery with. Did I mention that the virus' main feature is wave after wave of ....