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This blog is intended to showcase my pictures or those of other photographers who have moved beyond the pretty picture and for whom photography is more than entertainment - photography that aims at being true, not at being beautiful because what is true is most often beautiful..

>>>> Comments, commentary and lively discussions, re: my writings or any topic germane to the medium and its apparatus, are vigorously encouraged.

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BODIES OF WORK ~ PICTURE GALLERIES

  • my new GALLERIES WEBSITE
    ADK PLACES TO SIT / LIFE WITHOUT THE APA / RAIN / THE FORKS / EARLY WORK / TANGLES

BODIES OF WORK ~ BOOK LINKS

In Situ ~ la, la, how the life goes onLife without the APADoorsKitchen SinkRain2014 • Year in ReviewPlace To SitART ~ conveys / transports / reflectsDecay & DisgustSingle WomenPicture WindowsTangles ~ fields of visual energy (10 picture preview) • The Light + BW mini-galleryKitchen Life (gallery) • The Forks ~ there's no place like home (gallery)


Entries in in situ (3)

Friday
Sep162016

FYI 

All of my blogging activity is on my new blog site, lifesquared.squarespace.com.

Tuesday
Apr122016

civilized ku # 3075-76 / diptych # 211 ~ there and back again

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Apple Store ~ Montreal, QC, CA • click to embiggen
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umbrellas ~ Manhattan, NYC, NY • click to embiggen

From 1 week ago Friday past to this past Sunday (10 days), I have spent 3 days in Concord, NH, 2 days in Manhattan , NYC and 2 days in Montreal, QC, CA. Needless to write, I haven't had much time for posting entries. However, I have had time to think.

Much of my thinking has been on topics, photography wise, instigated by 2 primary factors - 1) "...Many contemporary photographers lament the “lifelessness” of digital images. We look at the picture, admire its vibrant colors and sharp lines, and still can’t help but feel nostalgic for the photographs of the old, pre-digital age." (Pavel Kosenko, author, LIFELIKE:A Book on Color), and 2) my recent acquisition (in NYC) of the book, SAUL LEITER: Early Color. And, to my way of thinking, items 1 and 2 are very closely related inasmuch as one is nostalgic for pre-digital age color and the other is a tour de force of pre-digital age color.

Pavel Kosenko's nostalgic lament is somewhat understandable to me inasmuch as I still believe that some of the pre-digital C prints I made were indeed beautiful, color space / tonal wise. That standard / benchmark of representational color and tonal value is still the one I aim to replicate in today's digital era. In doing so, I am very much de-digitalizing my digital picture files and have been doing so since my early digital picture making days.

My issue with the current standard / benchmark (for so many) of tack sharp, noise (aka grain) free and somewhat over-vibrant color is, to my eye and sensibilities, rather plastic or not lifelike as in the sense of not real or sincere. While many who ascribe to that picturing M.O. would state that they are trying to make "realistic" pictures, in fact (again, to my eye and sensibilities) they are making pictures which appear to be hyperreal as in the sense of something fake and artificial which comes to be more definitive of the real than reality itself.

You know, like the Nexus 6 replicants manufactured by the Tyrell Corporation which were made to be more human than human.

Inasmuch as Kosenko seems to think that replicating the look of analog film is the answer to introducing "life" to color pictures - he advocates for a RAW developer that is at its heart an effect app-like program with many presets for various types of analog films - I would disagree with his rational / nostalgic longings for "photographs of the pre-digital age".

Are pre-digital photographs more real (or less real) than digital era photographs? I think not. Are they more pleasant to the eye than the current crop digital picturing 'perfection'? iMo, unquestionably so. They are, to my eye and sensibilities, 'softer' and more gentle to behold.

Perhaps that is what I am experimenting with adding 'grain' (monochromatic digital noise) to my pictures - like those in this entry's diptych.
Thursday
Feb042016

in situ ~ the book

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Yesterday evening, I made it just under the wire, re: In Situ ~ la, la, how the life goes on, in order to get the limited-time 50% + 20% discount. Those discounts took the cost of the book from $125.00USD down to $56.00USD. Good deal, and, it is worth noting for those who are in a POD book making frame of mind, Shutterfly, my POD book source of choice, regularly follows one expired limited-time discount with another discount offer within 24hrs. I can't remember the last time I paid the full ticket price for a book.

FYI, as mentioned in yesterday's entry, most of my picture making is done with my 20mm f1.7 Lumix lens. Re: the pictures in the In Situ ~ la, la, how the life goes on book, all but a very few pictures were made with that lens. The ones that were not were made with Olympus 4/3 cameras/lens combination before I got into the Olympus µ4/3 world.

The non µ4/3 pictures were made with my 4/3 11-22mm f2.8-3.5 lens on 4/3 cameras. The lens was zoomed out closer to 22mm rather than 11mm. That made the angle of view very similar to the 20mm µ4/3 lens I now use, resulting in a unified look, field of view wise, for all of the pictures.

While I can't speak about other camera makers, Olympus has maintained a nearly identical color palette in all of their "serious" cameras over all the years - a decade or so - I have been using them. Once again, that characteristic has made it possible to mix pictures from various times and cameras without an obvious difference in the color palette. iMo, that's a very valuable characteristic which creates an visual integrity across a body of work.