civilized ku # 144 ~ Ho Ho Ho

Caroling at the marshmallow roasting fire and Saint Nicholas Chapel at Santa's Workshop ~ North Pole, NY • click to embiggenHappy Holidays - May whichever Spirit of the Season that you hold near and dear be with you and yours.

picture window # 18 ~ it's cold outside

Fresh snow and bone-chilling cold • click to embiggenSome say that the act of making a picture removes one from the experience of the moment. Those who think so are heard to proclaim that, on occasion, they put aside the camera in order to more fully experience whatever moment it is with which they are engaged.

This notion has always left me a bit puzzled because I have never really felt that particular conflict of interest. I suppose that is because I don't make a big deal out of the simple act of making a picture - bring camera to eye, adjust exposure if needed, look, and press the shutter release, return to "reality". How hard is that?

And, if your looking comes in the form of being really attentive to your surroundings, how the hell can a heightened state of awareness detract from a given moment?

Although, it does seems to me that most who are picturing / experiencing conflicted are those whose looking is bloated with thinking. That is, thinking about things photographic - looking for leading-lines, thinking about composition, et al (aka, the rules) - in short thinking about what kind of picture you are trying to make.

For me, thinking instead of looking ruins everything - it ruins both the moment and the chances of making a good picture. Ansel-the-Magnificent said it best:

There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs

It has been opined by some that the "rules for making good photographs" are, in fact, little more than after-the-fact extrapolations made from good pictures. To be totally cynical about it, that could mean that those who are the keepers of the faith in the "rules" just make up rules after seeing a good picture in order to create a "good-picture" making coda for those without imagination who wish to repeat the already observed fact.

IMO, the single most destructive notion to the act of making good pictures is to fall victim to the idea that "you need to learn the rules before you can break the rules", which, IMO, is akin to the need to spend a year in a Nike sweatshop making sneakers before you start working on your jump shot. And, just to make matters worse, keep thinking about that year making sneakers every time you attempt a jump shot.

man & nature # 83/84 ~ I need a chuckle ... or two ... or three ... or ....

A cold and snowy Adirondack winter evening • click to embiggenDid you ever think about having your pictures psychoanalyzed?

Which, of course, would basically be the same as having yourself psychoanalyzed. But instead of sitting / reclining around in an analyst's office for hours on end, why not just convert all those hours spent picturing into psychoanalytical material - prints - and send them in for an in-depth reading? I mean, if as artists, we are tapping into our inner-selves and letting it all hang out in our prints, I don't see why a good psychoanalyst couldn't tell us a lot about our selves just by looking at our pictures.

For many personal reasons (which I will not get into at this time) I have been thinking about this idea recently. However, one non-personal thing that I have noticed, and you'd have to be either blind or totally isolated not to notice, is that there is a proverbial ton of pictures out there being made from a very personal POVs. And, if there is one monumental effect from the digital "revolution" photography-wise, it has to be the ease with which a picture can be made and, consequently, the number of people making pictures.

What I am struck by as I make way around the picture-making world on the internet is the sheer number of pictures being made with a my own very personal relationship to the world POV - a kind of photographic variation on Jame Thurber's My World and Welcome to It. Except, of course, Thurber's weapon of choice was humor whereas most of today's picture making observationists seem to be of the deadly serious variety.

Found in their observations, there is irony, cynicism, and cool detachment / observation aplenty. However, in my experience it seems that humor is in very short supply and, IMO, more's the pity. In my most fevered imaginings, I would dearly love to attend a gallery show opening (photography division) where everyone was standing around laughing and chuckling rather than just sipping wine and somberly contemplating the work at hand.

So, I have 2 questions - 1) is anyone out there aware of a picture maker whose stock in trade is humor, or, at the very least, a bit of levity? Hell, I'll even settle for some wry observations, as in, dryly humorous often with a touch of irony, and, 2) do you have a humorous picture or 2 that we could see?

Update on Tuesday, December 23, 2008 at 08:31AM by gravitas et nugalis

Thanks to all who offered links and suggestions for humorous pictures. I've started to check them out and will continue to do so. Thanks again.

civilized ku # 143 ~ coming home to roost

Which came first? • click to embiggen'Round these here parts you can never be sure until you're sure regarding the idea of a white Xmas. Snow can come and go with amazing speed at this time of the year. It's not uncommon to get a 8-10 snowfall followed by 2 days of rain that manages to wash it all away.

That said, unless we have a rainfall of biblical proportions, a white Xmas seems very assured - by the time this weekend draws to an end, we will have accumulated about 2 feet of new snow from 2 distinctly different storms. It's truly a beautiful Winter Wonderland outside.

But the unusual thing about this weather event is the bone-chilling temperatures that have accompanied the snowfall. It has been single digital numbers since Friday and last night it was -9F at our house. Even during the bright sunny day yesterday it hovered around 9F - which was the the temperature in which the wife and I went out for a brisk 5km XC ski workout at the Olympic Sports Complex - we did a modified Three Trails Loop. We skied during the break between the 2 storms.

This morning we awoke to the start of the 2nd storm which is forecast to be the more severe of the 2 storms. It's snowing quite heavily and there is a travel advisory in effect. So I thought it was a good day to just hang out and count my chickens before they hatch.

civilized ku # 142 ~ a sign of the times

I am not closing • click to embiggenAs promised, or, depending upon your POV, as threatened, here's this week's socio / economic / political words of wisdom / rant / puerile crap. Feel free to mix and match or even add words of your choice to describe how you feel / think about this Landscapist "feature" presentation.

One of, if not the mess, that our new president faces is that of our economic predicament. It is a total train wreck of nearly unprecedented proportions. The challenges facing Obama are incredibly difficult in terms of dealing with (and redefining) cultural wisdom, socio-economics, and things political.

IMO, that is because some long clucking chickens have come home to roost and, to make matters even worse, they're crapping all over the place. And the biggest chicken on the block, in fact, the mother of all roosters, is the one that needs to have its head removed. That would be the one that wears the one ring and is also the one that has been constantly crowing (for the past 4-5 decades or so) that most seductive crow of all - you can have it all, you can have it now, and don't worry your pretty little head about the consequences.

It's gonna take some doing to gut that chicken.

But here's the thing. That chicken is going to live to a ripe old age and keep passing his/her siren-song DNA down through the ages if we don't learn how to re-think the very notion of our "economy". One of the best pieces that I have encountered lately on the subject of re-thinking that notion can found by following this link to Jonathan Rowe's article, Our Phony Economy.

I highly recommend the read because if we, the people, can not wrap our pretty little heads around the concept presented therein and learn how to recognize and support those in government and business who understand the idea, we better start learning how to talk to chickens because they'll be the ones ruling the roost.

Now, on a photography-wise subject, does anyone wish to discuss (ad nauseum, ad infinitum, ad captandum vulgus) which would be the "best" camera to use to picture chickens?

civilized ku # 141 ~ enjoy your meal

Choking • click to embiggenI have always found it to be just a bit off-putting to encounter this sign every time I enter a restaurant (at least here in NY State).

man & nature # 82 ~ through the eyes of a child - an addendum

a shared vision • click to embiggenOk. That's it. My brain is officially and completely fried.

After reading today's entry Hugo's dad sent me a few of Hugo's just plain stuff pictures that he made this past Sunday evening. His is the one on the right.

The one on the left is a picture that I made this past Tuesday and, honest to Betsy, I had not seen Hugo's picture until just 30 minutes ago.

OK. That's it. My brain is officially and completely fried.

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.