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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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Entries in oddly exalted (2)

Friday
May152015

diptych # 132 (oddly exalted) ~ process / iPhone camera

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Freshine / iPhone picture • viewfinder look ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

Today on LENSCRATCH, there an exhibition of cell phone pictures - 5 pages worth - which Aline Smithson prefaced by writing:

Cell Phone photography has entered the fine art arena kicking and screaming and making so much noise that eventually the photography world is paying attention. With apps that replicate just about every photographic process and accessibility to every man, woman, baby, and dog, cell phone photography is a force to be reckoned with.

It should come as no surprise that cell phone picture making has enter the art world (fine or not so fine) inasmuch as, in the past, all manner of "non-standard / main stream" picture making instruments - as examples: Polaroid, Holga / crappy cameras, pinhole, and outdated cameras of all kinds - have had their picturing results accepted into the art world. Cell phone cameras are just another manifestation in that procession.

I am enjoying my messing around with the iPhone, not so much with the push-the-button camera apps - apps with a limited number of "canned" effects which any man, woman, child, or house pet can use. Instead of using the camera apps, I have been making "straight" iPhone pictures and then applying my own process-replication looks.

My process-replication looks are created in PS. I make "master" files for any process / camera I care to replicate. Those files are multi-layered, each with infinitely variable possibilities which can be used to customize the look of the replication depending upon the characteristics of the picture used in its making.

In the case of the viewfinder picture in today's diptych, I was able to adjust the intensity of the corner vignette and focusing screen "fog" to best suit the visual characteristics of the "raw" iPhone picture of the blue liquid. The other capability I have, exercised here, is to make a split-focus effect in the center of the viewfinder. In development is a focusing screen scratch / dirt layer and a viewfinder frame made from a picture of an actual TLR viewfinder to include the surrounding mechanicals as seen in a typical TLR viewfinder.

Why am I doing all this, you might ask? Simply, in a word, fun.

The only clitch I foresee is the possibility of getting sucked up in a gear race - I'm using an "ancient history" iPhone 4S and, of course, both the 5S and 6S are incrementally superior, camera-wise, not to mention the 7S and the 8S and the 9S and the ...........
Wednesday
Apr292015

oddly exalted (still life) # 2 ~ beyond the basic hard cold facts

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vase + flowers ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
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vase + flowers / wood camera•iPhone ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

Yesterday on LENSCRATCH in the entry, DENNIS WITMER: THE STATES PROJECT: ALASKA, Dennis Witner stated

While some claim that a place doesn’t exist until it has a poet, I think the same can be said of photography—a place doesn’t exist until someone has created the defining photographs of it.

Upon first reading, my reaction was simply that the statement is a fine example of artist / art speak bullcrap and hubris. After a bit of reflection, I believe it to be discussion worthy inasmuch as ....

.... I would certainly agree with the idea that the understanding, appreciation or knowledge regarding a place / person / thing can be enhanced, at times greatly so, by the work of a poet or a picture maker (photography, painting, illustration). Hell, I would even throw in the work of authors, film makers, and song writers as well. In the best of work, the result(s) can be an iconic representation(s) - a thing regarded as a representative symbol of some place / person / thing.

However, whatever the source of inspiration for a given work, it most definitely existed prior to the work derived from its existence. In the case of a place, Alaska for instance, I am certain that the people populating that place, had no trouble whatsoever knowing, without the help of a poet or picture maker, that Alaska existed. And, seriously, even before there were people, the place we now know as Alaska existed, in point of fact.

That written, I am reasonably certain that the word "exist" as used in Witmer's statement is employed with a dash of metaphoric / symbolic meaning. If not that, then employed, not in the literal meaning of "actual being", but in the sense of not "existing" in the mind beyond the basic hard cold facts of a place / person / thing.

Some poets and picture makers are capable of injecting honest and true emotion and feeling, as adjuncts to fact, into the perception of a place / person / thing. In a sense, making it more completely "real" than a merely visual / word depiction of something. Imbuing a place / person / thing with a richer perception of a place / person / thing's identity and place in the scheme of things.

And, IMO, that's what separates the men/women from the boys/girls in the world of art.

As for making the (pronounce it, with emphasis, like "thee") defining pictures of a place / person / thing, get over it. No single picture or group of pictures can completely define anything. The best picture(s) can add significantly to perception of something but experiencing a place / person / thing, aka: personal experience - despite its inherent self-limiting prejudices, is the still best way to fly in the cause of trying to fully understand a place / person / thing. Although ....

.... there is most definitely something to be said for the quite contemplation of a poem or picture