urban ku # 190 ~ a mini rant & a question

Main Street - Lake Placid • click to embiggenJust because it was so damn pleasant last evening, the wife and I went out for a light dinner and a bit of walk on Main Street and I must say, it was delightful. The weather, the food, the views, and the wife's company were all together near perfect.

There was, however, one fly in the ointment.

As is my wont, I was adorned with 2 cameras. The only difference being that now, those 2 cameras are of the "pro" model variety - each with a battery grip attached. Which means that I can no longer float like a butterfly and sting like a bee since I have 2 anvils draped from my neck and/or shoulders. Other than a small amount of physical discomfort, the most annoying side effect of toting these behemoths around is the propensity for complete strangers to feel that they must comment on them - "Whoa! Those are some cameras you got there!", is the most oft heard exclamation.

This would not be a totally bad thing if it helped me to pick up chicks, but, alas, it's almost always men who comment. I'm still waiting for the sound of a Mae West type voice asking, "Hey big boy, is that spare batteries you're carrying, or are you just glad to see me?"

That said, what all this set me to thinking about was another of my gripes about digital dslrs, especially "pro" dslrs.

I used to think that my trusty Nikon F3 with motor drive attached was a big thing. Not so, when compared to a pro dslr. And, my Nikon FM with motor drive looks like some kind of mini-cam by comparison. What's up with that? Aren't we living in the wondrous age of miniaturization?

Let's consider my Olympus cameras. Olympus makes some of the smallest dlsrs on the planet. In fact, they claim that their new 420 is the smallest and the about to be introduced full feature-ladened 520 is not much bigger. So, it's readily apparent (and not just from Olympus) that good things can come in small packages. I mean, the 520 has all the goodies one could ever want - a flawless dust removal feature, in-camera IS, live view, a nice size LCD, programmable everything, etc., etc.

So why is it, when Olympus (and others) makes a pro dslr, it becomes the incredible hulk?

Sure, it's weather sealed and built to demolition derby survivable standards. And (I think this is a big part of the problem) it has a computer brain in it - if the Nikon F3 in its day had the same computer power, it would have required an 18-wheeler to move it around - that can do everything but butter toast.

Sure, but here's the rub - as a photo pro, I don't need or want a computer brain in my camera that can do everything but butter toast. I'm a pro. I can work miracles with a light sensitive surface (film or sensor) and manual shutter, aperture, and focus controls. That it. That's all I need. In fact, that's all I want so that I don't have to muck around through a veritable rat's nest of features and options.

It seems to me that, not unlike every other electronic device on the market (don't get me started on cell phones), camera manufacturer's design departments are run by their marketing department. Everything must be loaded up with every conceivable option (and gimmick) on the planet just to impress the rubes and, I suspect, just because it can be done..

I also suspect that there are a fair number of pros and advanced amateurs out there who would be very willing to pay a fair amount more for hell of a lot less - a rugged, semi-compact, 'stripped-down' camera that has the best feature of all, the capability to just do it.

How about you? Would you prefer a simple, compact, pro quality dslr?

Now you'll have to excuse me. I have to go drive around in my car and communicate with a satellite that is orbiting the earth just so I can find the exact GPS coordinates of place to get a manicure.

Update on Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 09:54AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Anil Rao wrote: "Why on earth were you hanging two cameras around your neck during that outing? Wouldn't just one be enough?"

My response: One camera would, indeed, be enough but; a) I was deep in the comparo mode - Oly E-3 v Pentax K20D, and, 2) how else would the wife recognize me if we were to be separated?

man & nature # 14a ~ what I saw last evening

A truly weird vision • click to embiggenTo be more accurate, the entry title should read - what I saw last evening but was unable to picture.

But ..... in fact, this representation is almost exactly what I saw. It couldn't be any more true if I had actually pictured it. The reality of it seemed quite unreal. Strange. Surreal. Other-worldly.

And, credit where credit due - my thanks to the wife. If I had not gone to the kitchen, where I was greeted by this spectacle from the kitchen window, to answer her phone call, I would have never witnessed a thing. Weirdly enough, as I said "hello" and my mind was boggling at the sight before me, the wife said, "I'm driving home and looking at the most intense rainbow I have ever seen." To which, after I immediately adopted my of course I'm an ever-vigilant and prepared photographer guy persona, I coolly and calmly replied, "Yep. I see it too."

After which I scrambled my ass off getting gear and making it to the 2nd floor porch.

man & nature # 14 ~ what a ride

After the storm • click to embiggenOver the past few days I have used the phrase "hot and humid" in a couple entry titles because, well, it's been very hot and humid - part of the stifling heat wave that has enveloped the east coast of the US of A.

Well, it all came to a screeching, crashing, thunderous halt yesterday - literally. A cold front entered the region around noon bringing severe thunderstorms with nearly continuous lightning, torrential downpours, golf ball sized hail, and 80 mph winds. The front came in 2 -3 waves, lasting until around 8PM last evening. Downed trees and electric wires, power and communication outages all over the place - many still continuing this AM.

After it was all over and I was enjoying a very refreshingly cool breeze in the gloaming, nature reared its head with a dazzling display of light and color. So, at precisely 8:33:16 PM & 8:36:46 PM (EXIF data), I pictured these two scenes.

My only disappointment was the fact that I was not able to capture the occasional streak lightning that was going on as a backdrop to the rainbow (right between the rainbow arch) - something I had never seen before.

FYI, the color in these pictures is straight from the camera (via RAW) and very accurate, although, I do admit to moving the H&S slider 10 points to the desaturate end of things.

picture window # 13 ~ it's still hot and humid

trying to keep it cool-ish • click to embiggenOk, it's not NYC hot and humid, but, everything is relative, is it not?

FYI, this picture is essentially the same view as this picture - the picture that launched the picture window series.

As I have been pursuing this project, and as I mentioned yesterday, an idea for another series came to mind - a kind of picture windows II. While I have been picturing from the inside out, it has occurred to me that picturing from the outside in would be very interesting indeed.

To date, my picture window pictures have been made in places in which I found myself by invitation or work - places of friends and associates, as well as my own home. While continuing on this path, my next step is to knock on the doors of strangers, explain myself and my project, and ask to picture one (or more) of their windows. I don't anticipate too much of a problem with this approach.

I am not as certain that asking strangers to be allowed to picture into their homes would be as well received. On the hand, I think it would be well worth effort to find those who would allow it, especially if they would also agree to be in the pictures.

ku # 521 ~ POV

Blossoming bush • click to embiggenFor whatever reason of late, I have been "seeing" a lot of possibilities lately, photography-wise. I attribute most of this awareness to just the change in seasons. Spring and the life it brings is busting out all over - it's quite a change from the monochromatic paradigm of winter.

All of the possibilities that I am seeing, I see as series of pictures - i.e., bodies of related work. In a way, this comes at a bad time for me in as much as I am fully committed to my decay & disgust and picture windows work - not to mention shaving a few more strokes off my golf handicap - 6 is better than 8). I really don't have the time for a new series or two. So, maybe I can pass along a few ideas for those of you looking for something to sink your teeth into.

The Art world is always looking for a fresh or new and interesting take on things. Sometimes that means a body of work gains attention even though, over time, it will not possess much staying power. Usually that is the case because the 'new take' owes more to technique than content. But, often enough, someone will come along and adopt/adapt the technique and match it to good content and something really worth looking at and considering emerges.

In any event, if I had the time, I'd be putting a ladder (instead of the usual canoe or two) on my car's roof rack. The idea of picturing any number of referents from an elevated POV seems worth trying. To my knowledge, this approach is somewhat novel and, IMO, there quite a few "things" that could be interesting to see, in a series, from that POV.

A POV that is rarely explored - photographers in droves have squatted and/or put their cameras at ground level but only a handful have reached for the sky. And I don't mean picturing from rooftops or upper floor windows. What I mean is an elevated perspective that is visually just a little "off" from usual waist to eye-level height that is so common.

As for what to picture, if anyone likes the idea, pick what interests you .... but .... it's worth keeping this little bit of timeless wisdom in mind:

Everything has it's beauty, but not everyone sees it. - Confucius

Now that I think about, a 10 ft. ladder and a canoe can easily fit on my roof rack.

Update on Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 09:57AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: several commenters mentioned that St. Ansel had a car top camera platform from which he pictured various scenes - a fact that I know to be accurate. One commenter, Tom Frost, suggested that therefore picturing from an elevated POV was not "new".

my response: Let me be more precise re: elevated POV - Adams, I'm sure amongst many others, did picture from an elevated POV but what he did not do is create a body of work that specifically focused on that technique. Nor did he, as my picture entry from yesterday suggests, elevate his POV in order to picture in a downward direction - a semi-bird's eye POV.

What I was suggesting was/is simply this - a slightly elevated POV with camera pointed downward towards near/close-in 'intimate' scenes / objects. A sort of look at what's at your feet if you were 10-12 feet tall kind of thing.

FYI, I am not claiming that this idea is "new" in the it's never been done before sense of the word. What am suggesting, though, is that I am not familiar with any bodies of work that specifically exploit this technique - which, of course, does not mean that they don't exist, just that I am not familiar with any.

Victor Bloomfield's link to Dave Beckerman's camera elevation doohickey thingamajig and his pictures using it are much closer to the idea I had in mind. Thanks Victor.

And, thanks for all of your comments and feedback.

still life # 8 ~ it's hot and humid

A little strange • click to embiggen A couple good quotes to think about on a hot humid day here in the Adirondacks.

A Ming vase can be well-designed and well-made and is beautiful for that reason alone. I don't think this can be true for photography. Unless there is something a little incomplete and a little strange, it will simply look like a copy of something pretty. We won't take an interest in it. ~ John Loengard

Buying a Nikon doesn't make you a photographer. It makes you a Nikon owner. ~ Anonymous

urban ku # 189 ~ it ain't easy being green

Plattsburgh, NY • click to embiggenIf not the first, one of the first celebrity photographers - that is a photographer who, while picturing celebrities, becomes a celebrity (think Annie Lebowitz) - was David Bailey - a British photographer who not only captured but actually help create the "Swinging London" scene of the 1960s.

The lead character, a London fashion photographer, in the 1966 movie Blowup was based almost entirely on David Bailey. The movie was writer/director Michelangelo Antonioni's view of the world of mod fashion, and an engaging, provocative murder mystery that examines the existential nature of reality through photography.

In any event, I found this quote from David Bailey:

It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter, because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the ordinary.

The quote set me to thinking about yesterday's entry, re: "those who lack in mind and sight" - It is entirely possible or, actually, entirely probable that, while there are undoubtedly a lot of people with nothing interesting to say, many people with cameras are making pictures with nothing interesting to say, not because they are shallow people, but because they just can't get past making pictures that they have been told are good pictures rather than picturing what they see.

Now it seems to me that the first step towards picturing what you see is the desire to make pictures that don't look like what every other picture of (insert your chosen referent here) on the planet look like. This just might also be most difficult step as well. I mean, who doesn't want to be loved and one of the steps towards that goal, according to conventional wisdom, is to be ... well .... not too different from the "norm". Being different from what conventional wisdom dictates is the norm just sets up barriers to acceptance or understanding from the masses who believe that they get "safety and security" by adhering to the norm.

So, IMO, if being different as a person doesn't come naturally, it's going to be difficult to be different as a picture maker. It's not easy to defy the prevailing cultural wisdom of what society at large deems to be beautiful or interesting, especially here in the good ole US of A, where an addiction to and preoccupation with the next big thing / spectacle is the prevailing norm.

Shock and awe, flash and dash are the order of the day. Gone from public life - and, I suspect, from a large segment of private life - are the appreciation and understanding of qualities such as subtlety, quietness, delicacy, and introspectiveness. And, worst of all, if it ain't easy to "understand", it ain't worth understanding.

The surface of things is everything. First impressions are the only impression. Nothing, except money, is worth "working" for. Everyone wants to live on Easy Street.

So be it, but guess what - it does take a lot of looking - both inside and out - before you learn to see the ordinary for what it is - the very staff, and the stuff, of real life.

picture window (sort of) # 12 ~ let the howling begin

Covered bridge • click to embiggenWhile reading some quotes about photography, I came across 2 - under the heading of "Anonymous" - that, IMO, are related:

The type of photographs you make, the subjects you single out, reveal the person inside of you.

Of what use are lens and light to those who lack in mind and sight?

IMO, the reason that overwhelming majority of pictures made - by those trying to make art/Art - are trite, boring, repetitious, imitative, smaltz-y, unimaginative ... (pick your own "poisonous" word) is simply because .... (CAUTION: here comes the elephant in the room that no one talks about in the photo blog-o-sphere) .... well, "the type of photographs you make, the subjects you single out, reveal the person inside of you." and, just by taking a look at the state of human affairs, it seems quite obvious that there are lots of persons who "lack in mind and sight".

In a rather ironic way of looking at Art, it could be said that, if the best of Art deals with "what it means to be human" - and, increasingly, it seems that the sine qua non of humanity is avoiding reality - then all those ubiquitous (and brain-dead) pretty pictures of blazing mountain sunsets must be the real Art of our times.

Or, so it seems to me but, then again, maybe I'm just in a foul mood 'cause the Pens didn't win The Cup.

Update on Friday, June 6, 2008 at 12:20PM by gravitas et nugalis

Hey people - some absolutely great comments from everyone.

For those who are just cruising my pictures or my words, take the time to read these comments.