urban ku # 74 ~ a violent afternoon storm

Afternoon thunderstorm • click to embiggenIt has long been said that, in the Adirondacks, if you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes. This adage has never been more true than over the last couple years. The weather has been very unsettled and changeable.

Yesterday started out extremely hot and humid with a clear cloudless sky. Around 3pm violent thunderstorms with winds up to 74mph swept into the area. At one point, between outbursts, the air was so thick and still you could cut it with a knife.

I really like to picture at times like that. There's quality of ominous expection and power that is very electrifying and charged.

Yesterday, I had just finished peeling the bark from the cedar logs we're using for posts on our new Adirondack rustic-style front porch when the weather moved in and, for several hours, put on quite a show.

urban ku # 73 ~ a walk in Wadhams

A walk at the Wadhams Strawberry Festival • click any photo to embiggen

As any of you who have been around for awhile know, I have always been a fan of picture series. Seems like I have been picturing that way since forever although my ku body of work is not organized in that manner. While many of the pictures were made in a 'mini-series' fashion - same location, same 'shoot' - they are all just lumped together under the ku banner.

I have created many triptychs from mini-series shoots. You can see many, but no means all of them, here. I like triptychs (mine and those of others) quite a bit, but, as my mill 'walk' series (more to come, just taking a break) demonstrates, there is nothing like employing an extended series of pictures to create a world/sense of place.

Today's pictures are from a very short walk in Wadhams where we spent some time yesterday afternoon at the strawberry festival. All the pictures were made within no more than 100 yards of each other. While they create a small sense of the place called Wadhams - it's really tiny - they also create a sense of the greater place called the Adirondacks by demonstrating how close a relationship man and nature have within the park.

urban ku # 71 ~ wherein I break radio silence

The Cottage • click to embiggenAs you know, The Landscapist is not about gear and technique. I rarely discuss it. This is one of those 'rarely's. The reason that I am breaking radio silence on the topic is simple - I want to give credit where credit due. In this case, to Olympus.

In my analog heyday, I was a Nikon guy (35mm-wise). Today, every once in a while, I glance over at the Nikon bodies and lenses (3 bodies, 6 lenses) and remember the good old days. There they sit, neglected and unused for going on 3 years now. Whenever I get the urge to shoot film, it's large format - 8×10, for me. 35mm color picturing just seems like to much hassle and too many limitations.

Once I made the leap to digital, I just became addicted to the speed, ease, and tremendous control of digital files in the digital darkroom. For the first couple years I pictured with a high-end 'prosumer' digicam - 7mp with non-interchangeable 4-1 zoom lens camera which could capture RAW files. A great camera which produced wonderful prints - keeping in mind that I am not a digital 'perfectionist'. Those early ku prints still stand up very very well when displayed side-by-side with those of made from my first dslr - an 8mp Olympus E-500.

I chose the Olympus because of the size of the camera and lenses (their 'pro' lens are optically superb) that result from the 4/3rds format,and the fact that the 4/3rds format is an "open' format, meaning that all lenses made for the 4/3rds format by any camera maker are interchangeable on any maker's cameras. Now that Leica has committed to 4/3rds, that is an exciting capability.

Yesterday, my new 10mp Olympus E-510 arrived and, halleluiah, it's a gem. The biggest benefit of the new camera is the fact that Olympus has put IS (image stabilization) in the body - now all my lens are IS. Halleluiah.

Last evening, after a very hot and humid round of golf, I retired to The Cottage in Lake Placid for some refreshing beer and gazpacho (the wife and kids are out of town). Out came the camera for its first exposures. All I can say is that I am very pleased with the results - very low noise at ISO 400 and very sharp detailed results aided by the IS (I balanced the camera on a railing at 1/2 second ss). FYI, the color balance is a bit on the warm side because I picture with only partially corrected WB under tungsten light - I like the warmth.

So there you have it - that's about a technical as I get. I posted this topic because I think Olympus deserves credit for bucking the 'system' with its commitment (along with Leica, Panasonic and Sigma [lenses]) to the 4/3rds format.

For anyone who is considering a 10mp camera, the Olympus E510 and E410 (no IS) are very worthy competitors in the marketplace - especially when you consider the superb compact 'pro' optics.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

urban ku # 70 ~ transformation - more about truth

A life cycle of wood with dog tail • No Embiggen - it's a Polaroid

Mark Kingwell also wrote;

...The truth of the image is the truth of time: not its metaphysical essence, whatever that might be, but its presence; its inescapability ... The background lies (Ed. - untruths) here - the belief that the image delivers me to a captured slice of the world 'as it really is' - actually works to open up a different foreground truth; that time and light (Ed. - shutter and aperture) are how we make our worlds .... Responsible work is in the service of the world a photograph gives. Documentary photographers (Ed. - to include 'documentary' as Art), at their best, unfold both the truth of a time and place and the truth that there is no general truth, and hence, no single world out there ... a double-revelation: of circumstance, and our troubled relationship to circumstance. Otherwise known as mortality.

I realized/accepted quite awhile ago that my picturing/pictures are, in no small part, about my mortality. Maybe that helps explain my visual attraction to and fascination with decay. But I also realize that my picturing/pictures are about our (collective) mortality.

IMO, postmodernism in photography, stripped of all its academic pretensions, is, at its root, an acceptance of our mortality on a very human level. It rejects the fantasy-fueled escapism of romantic/sentimental notions of the world around us and I think that's why the pretty-picture gang so thoroughly rejects it - it rattles the bars of their gilded cages of disassociation, which serve as a remove from 'circumstance and our troubled relationship to circumstance'. Fiddling while Rome burns, so to speak.

Update on Thursday, June 7, 2007 at 09:51AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comments: Bret Kosmider asked: "Could it be possible to produce photographs in the romantic style but delivering a postmodernist message that is critical of society?"

my response: as opined by Mark Kingwell in urban ku # 68, pictures which '... surrender to an existing logic of aesthetic appreciation ...', tend to '... slide too easily the background of visual culture, lose their impact, [and] become mere ghosts of themselves ...'

I tend to agree, in principle, with this idea. There are exceptions, of course - Simon Norfolk's Afghanistan Chronotopia, read an article, see some pictures, is one that I like and own.

Norfolk has pictured the ravages and destruction of war in a manner that mimics/references early post-Renaissance art of destroyed structures, especially churches and palaces, bathed in gloriously golden twilight. Norfolk's pictures are sumptuous and classically beautiful in their style and presentation. They are seductive and alluring.

For me, part of the attraction of Norfolk's pictures is due to the fact that I must constantly remind myself that 'beauty' is not all it is often presented to be. Much evil hides behind the veil of a beautiful veneer - a notion that seems to be lost on much of society.

On the other hand, Gen. George Patton was claimed to have remarked, when talking about war, "God help me, I love it so."

PS - the book can be had at the lowest price on the internet through my Photo Books Link to Overstock.com - help support The Landscapist by buying from Overstock.com through this link.

urban ku # 69 ~ a band of brain-dead brothers

Everyday drama and beauty • click to embiggenIt never ceases to amaze me how many people never take the time to 'see' what is all around them. A case in point is the parking lot at our local supermarket - a place which I am picturing on a surprisingly regular basis. By scenic landscape 'standards', it would be ranked somewhere between ugly and more ugly - there's not much in it glamour-wise ... except for the sky, which on any given day can put on quite a show, albeit subtle rather than grand.

When I was picturing the above scene, together with another variation thereof, people were staring at me in confusion - they were even peering out of the front window of the supermarket. The camera was not obviously pointed at the sky so there was consternation regarding what in the blazes I was picturing. Apparently, they don't look up in this locale.

That said, I'd like to mention a somewhat similar phenomena - this by Janet Duprey, seconded by Teresa Sayward (both are Republican state assemblywomen representing different districts of northern New York), and a group of local citizens.

It was reported in the local newspaper that, at a town-hall meeting of sorts, Duprey/Sayward made points to M. Patricia Smith, the new New York state labor commissioner regarding the fact that "... the North Country has a set of problems, as well as a set of treasures, that are all its own ...", which, as a statement that plays fast and very loose with the words 'treasures' and 'problems', is true enough.

Singled out as a particular circumstance is the presence of the Adirondack Park Agency, which enforces rules designed to control development. Sayward noted the palpable drop in activity (Ed. - development-wise) when crossing the Blue Line (Ed. - the park boundary line as drawn on a map long ago with a blue pencil) into the park near Lake George and the resumption of activity when crossing the line again, out of the park, near Plattsburgh.

Duprey remarked on the difficulty people inside the park have trying to infuse life into a business or industry when the area is so regulated. The subject struck a resonant cord with the gathering, as Sayward was roundly applauded for making the point.

Not that Seyward or Duprey read this blog, but I would like to respond directly to 2 points.

1. re: ...the North Country has a set of ... treasures... - yes it does. Those 'treasures' are incredibly obvious to anyone with half a brain - the area's natural resouces and their undeveloped wilderness character together with the small-town character of its villages and hamlets. Those treasures are why, every year, millions of money-spending tourists visit the park. Those treasures are why, every year, a significant number of money-spending people retire to, move to, or buy second homes here.

Is there something about this that you (Duprey/Seward) don't underdstand?

The area is simply not suited for large-scale industrial development. The typography and the infrastructure (dictated by typography) will not support it. And, in case you haven't noticed, there is no ready labor force to support large-scale industry.

Get it? The only way with which to change the infrastructure/ready labor force situation is one that is sure to devastate the 'treasures' which are now the drivng force behind the region's only 'large-scale industry', i.e., tourism.

2. re: the Adirondack Park Agency, which enforces rules designed to control development ... - it's a very short and very simple set of connect-the-dots between the APA and the area's treasures. Eliminate the APA and, in very short order, the so-called free market will eliminate the treasures. Without a doubt, history, past and recent, tells us this.

IMO, Seyward and Duprey are glad-handing politicians who parrot a vote-getting 'populist' view - we'd all be rich and living like the famous, if only government would just leave us alone. In this case, the bogeyman, in the form of the APA, is alive and well.

What I want to know from them is simple:

Define 'treasure'.
Define 'industry', specifically, what kind of industry, do you believe is suitable for the area?
Define a detailed plan for attracting such industry.
Define an actual plan for working with the APA to protect the region's character. One that goes beyond your thinly veiled and oft-stated attempts to dismantle/neuter it.

If you can't do this, you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

Update on Monday, June 4, 2007 at 09:27PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comments: Tim Atherton wrote: "I think that's maybe topography not "typography"... ? - Okay, I'm trying to imagine some giant phrase in Times Roman being cut into the landscape :-) Rather like the Cerne Abbas Giant."

my response: Good one, Tim. I've been working like a madman for last 2 weeks on - guess what? - typography. Guess it was an typographic slip.

Brett Kosmider wrote (in part): "I dream of something like the APA to come into the area up in 'dese here parts known as Door County, undoubtedly Wisconsin's premiere vacation/retirement destination. I say "vacation slash retirement" because recent unchecked development of retirement homes, condos and high density housing is destroying the very character that makes Door so unique..."

urban ku # 68 ~ this just a test

This just a test • click to embiggenYesterday I mentioned the book Burtynsky - China. This book should be in the possession of anyone who considers themselves to be a "thinking" photographer if for no other reason than the introductory essay The Truth in Photographs by Mark Kingwell. This essay is one of three in the book that are must reads.

In all probability, I will be posting a future entry about the substance of the essay, but what I wish to bring to your attention today is a point the author makes about beautiful pictures of not-so-beautiful referents.

In this specific case, the thought is instigated by Burtynsky's beautiful pictures of China's march toward serious/monumental environmental impact of the not-so-good variety. Kingwell states, "... what impact remains if, let us say - in what is in fact a true instance - a large image of environmental disaster is used as artistic decoration ... at this point, though not via direct intention, the work has become inert or even disreputable in either or both of two sense: as mere wallpaper, the sort of well-meaning neutering liable to overtake any work via fashionable appropriation ...; or also, as worse, as slyly double avoidance-ritual to environmental awareness is offered and then as quickly withdrawn, or set aside, by the work's surrender to an existing logic of aesthetic appreciation."

Translation - Burtynsky has stated that his pictures address ... an urgency to make people aware of important things that are at stake ..." and, that ... the mass consumption these ideals (happiness through material gain) ignite and the resulting degradation of our environment intrinsic to the process of making things ....

In addressing these issues, Burtynsky is making beautiful pictures. Pictures that find homes in galleries, books and collections (public and private) where they are coveted for their 'surrender to an existng logic of aesthetic appreciation' - either or both of a postmodren view of things and a photographic aesthetic.

Kingwell's point is that, whatever Burtynsky's political intent, it can very easily get lost in the artistic wash - "Outside the gallery setting, the works can slide too easily the background of visual culture" (ed. - there's the 'flow' at work) ", lose their impact, become mere ghosts of themselves."

This notion has been on my mind regarding my works.

What to do? What to do?

Any ideas?

PS - the book is available (although the Sellout warning is very high) at a great price on Overstock.com. Just click on the Photography Books and follow the link to Overstock.com. The Landscapist gets a small piece of the action only if you follow this link.

Update on Thursday, May 31, 2007 at 03:31PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comments: Eric Fredine wrote; With respect to Burtynsky (and many others) another thing that I often ponder is the reliance on spectacle. He seeks out the most fantastic and extraordinary examples - they make for compelling imagery to be sure.

The approach is similar to that of the legions of nature photographers who seek out iconic locations at optimal times. And the compositional devices Burtynksy employs are very conventional and traditional as well (though I think he is very good at it).

(One of the overpasses from China that Burtynksy photographed is even something of an iconic spot - popping up in the work of several well known photographers.)

And just look at the flurry of photographs we got from Katrina...

urban ku # 67 ~ 'the flow'

Layer upon layer of meaning • click to embiggenIt has been stated, regarding photography, that, in the 'digital age', analog is about traces, digital is about flow.

This notion popped into my head last evening as I was stroking, caressing and viewing (an analog experience) a new batch of photo books which arrived in the mail over the past few days. Two of the books - Burtynsky's China and Breuer's Poles - are particularly exceptional books.

Both create worlds which just suck you in and hold you in an embrace that's seductive and intriguing. Neither my hands nor my eyes wanted to let go. Most pictures had the quality of an essay - my mind could construct paragraphs and paragraphs as the pictures took me through layer upon layer of connections. The descriptors such as, deep, complex, rich, detailed come to mind, not just to convey the visual character of the pictures, but their meaning as well.

As I was waltzing to the music on this substrata of pictures, it occurred to me that I was dancing in a manner that I rarely, if ever, do when I'm connected to 'the flow' of photography on the digital highway.

Maybe it's a generational thing - I have no real emotional connection to a screen (monitor) and, for the most part, I want to disconnected from the flow of information (or disinformation) which can all too readily suck you in and drag you under in a soup of mind-numbing overload of (in this case) pictures.

On the other hand, I must admit that I am a contributor of sorts to 'the flow'. Blogging is certainly about a constant flow of stuff. It makes me wonder what my following would be if I only posted once a week - one picture and a more lengthy essay. Something which requires that you slow down, observe and contemplate.

It seems to me that we live in a culture which encourages the unthinking consumption rather than the thoughtful engagement of pictures. In fact, I think that the very existence of our consumer culture is dependent upon that notion.

What to do? What to do?

Any ideas?

Update on Thursday, May 31, 2007 at 08:36AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comments: Just in case you didn't catch the Reference posted by Jason Thompson - Consumption Vs. Engagement

Tim Atherton also posted this link on his thoughts re: Traces

urban ku # 66 ~ beauty/melancholy

Spring color on a perfect spring evening • click to embiggenI had to make a grocery run last evening before a late dinner. Instead of taking the BasketMaster (because a zillion pound bag of dog food won't fit on the BM), I decided to take a car and venture well outside of the village to see what there was to be seen. After all, it was a 'picture-perfect' spring evening.

As I was clicking about, here and there, some NPR (Nat'l Public Radio) program or another was airing on the car radio. I was intent on watching, not listening so I wasn't really paying attention .. until I heard this - 'We haven't seen a blue sky in 20 years.'

Now I was listening.

Turns out that it was a Chinese woman speaking (through an interpreter) about the effects of Chinese industrialization on her village. Her story was simple - a little over 20 years ago, quite a number of coal-burning factories sprung up in and around her village. Now, the air is acrid and black. Everything is covered with a fine black ash. Respiratory deseases are commonplace and death rates per 100,000 have skyrocketed.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who hasn't been living deep down an unregulated free market hole in the ground - China is about to pass the U.S. as the world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases but I think we still hold the honors in the carbon dioxide emitter race. Be sure to raise your arms in 'victory' and hold your heads high, fellow Americans.

China surpassed Canada in the first two months of this year as the largest exporter to the United States. In an interesting counterpoint of sorts, an official from the aforementioned woman's village noted that the U.S. has, for all intents and purposes, exported its industrial pollution to China. Still want lots of stuff but none of the mess that comes from making it (or the expense of cleaning it up)? Send the jobs offshore and let somebody else live with it.

But of course, the earth 'lives with it' no matter where the stuff is made.

In any event, as I was picturing last evening, all of the above was on my mind (more so than it usually is). It made it quite difficult to enjoy the moment knowing that people are suffering and dying because 'market forces' are demanding more and more stuff.

Follow that up with a piece in this AM's newspaper about the demand for ever-bigger homes (dispite shrinking household family size) in the U.S. - and I quote, 'Our kids have more stuff. They need more living space.' said Valerie Astle. And this - ...the growth in big houses is fueled by suburban home buyers seeking luxury, rather than big families needing space. And, American homes, on average, are nearly twice as large as in many European countries ...

In case you're wondering why I can't just take 'pretty landscape pictures' and be done with it, there it is. Every time I point my camera at the natural world around me, I know that what I am picturing is literally fighting for its life from the ever-increasing onslaught of human 'desire'.

Call it 'market forces', 'climate change', 'the economy', or whatever. Pick a rationalization of your own choosing, but I can't look at it any way but this - Death by desire - people killing the planet and each other over the 'right' to have more stuff.

PS - enjoy the pictures and, oh yeh ... have a nice day.

Update on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 12:17PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comments: the wife wrote; "A hundred years ago, Freud wrote in Civilization and it Discontents (I think this was the book where he explored this idea) that the two main drives for humans were to attain eros and thanatos - love and death. It didn't make much sense to me in college, but it seems to play out in real life..."

Update on Thursday, May 24, 2007 at 10:18AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comments: Paul Maxim wrote; "... While we've disagreed on what constitutes relevant artistic (or personal) expression, we are in complete agreement on this topic ... I must admit that I'm very pessimistic when it comes to the "problems" you describe. I don't see the world in general recognizing the inevitable consequences any time soon or even before it becomes too late to do much about it. People - especially Americans - will always believe that someone "in charge" will fix things before it actually does become too late. After all, we do still enjoy blue skies here, don't we? Not to worry - the government will do what's right and take care of us ... And if that doesn't scare the beejesus out of anyone with half a brain, I don't know what will......"

My response - Paul, it's comforting to know that we can cross artistic party lines and agree on something really important. But, regarding your 'beejesus scare', and since we are both fellow New Yorkers, keep an eye on the just created NYS Office of Climate Change, which is tasked with 3 primary missions: cleaning up energy-generating plants and reducing transportation and home/business energy consumption.

The department is headed by Jared Snyder, former assistant attorney general in environmental protection. He stated (yesterday at the Adirondack Research Consortium conference in Tupper lake) that, "... climate change is something that should keep us all awake at night ... we need to take aggressive action and in New York it starts with the governor."

I don't know what political side of the aisle you are on, but I will state that, with Eliot Spitzer at the helm, things will get very 'interesting'. And I welcome the fact that some states are taking matters into their own hands and dealing with issues that the current administration in Washington won't.

PS - and don't forget Bill Clinton.