civilized ku # 139 ~ the eyes of a child

Santa's Workshop #6 • click to embiggenAs far as looking for photography-wise inspiration goes I am an equal-opportunity seeker. I really don't have any single guru, idol, or maestro who I consider to have the divine word regarding picture making. IMO, inspiration is where you find it and it can be found in many places.

In some cases, the seemingly most unlikely of places. Like, say, in the words of Jesus from the bible.

Last evening, I was reading an article in Harper's magazine - Turning Away From Jesus ~ Gay Rights and the War for the Episcopal Church - and I came across this passage from the author:

Jesus said that only those who could become as little children would enter the Kingdom of God, and I sometimes try to see these issues through the eyes of a child

I was immediately struck by the words "become as little children" as well as the author's desire to "see" things "through the eye of a child". Whether or not that was due to the fact that, coincidently or not, earlier in the day I was struck by the idea of trying to make a "pure" picture I can't really say. I was even thinking of proposing a Landscapist challenge to all of you to make a "pure" picture.

But, the problem for me for both ideas is that don't really have a firm idea of what a "pure" picture is.

As the day went by and as time allowed thoughts of making a "pure" picture rattled around in my head. A fair number of ideas about what a "pure" picture might be and how to go about making one came and went. A general notion was beginning to emerge but I never really came to any firm conclusion as daily events came to the fore and prevented me from further ruminations.

Then, much later as I lay in bed reading, there it was - become as a little child and "see" things through their eyes.

Can it get any simpler - or more difficult - than that?

I'll have more to say on the idea but I would really like to hear from you about the idea of a "pure" picture. Any and all ideas are welcome but I am most interested in knowing if you think that you have ever made a "pure" picture.

civilized ku # 138 ~ Jack Sprat could eat no lean

Jack Sprat's Snacks probably have no lean • click to embiggen

civilized ku # 137 ~ a Xmas surprise

A seemingly Viagra-enhanced North Pole • click to embiggenThis past Friday afternoon as I was returning home with Hugo in tow, the conversation eventually came around to Xmas, Santa Claus, and something called a White Future Mega Power Ranger.

I asked Hugo if he would like to visit the North Pole and see Santa at some point during the weekend. He informed me that the North Pole was too far away so he was a bit puzzled when I said that we could drive by it on the way to my house. Drive by it we did and his only comment was that he didn't think that Santa could be there because "Santa lives in an igloo."

As the weekend went by, I grew less and less enamored of the prospect of a visit to the North Pole. During our last visit 2 or 3 years ago, I came away quite depressed by the rather shabby state into which the place had sunk. It just seemed rather tattered and worn and on its last legs. It probably didn't seem so to the children but the wife and I found it to be a rather melancholy experience.

The place had been teetering on the brink of closing for a number of years - even after a new owner / investor had taken control of Santa's reins so to speak. And that would have been a shame. The Pole, as many in these here parts call it, has been around since 1949 and it is reputed to be the nations first theme park (Walt Disney sent out his spies to check it out). It was designed by Arto Monaco, the builder of The Land of Make Believe mentioned in my castle picture entry of a few days ago.

At its peak the park attracted a single-day record attendance of 14,000 visitors. It was a local "industry" in and of itself. Quite a few motels and restaurants popped up around it. The hamlet of Wilmington depended upon it for its economic survival. To this day, kids in my hometown don character costumes and perform other duties - as did many of their parents before them - at The Pole for their summer and Xmas season jobs.

In 1953, the federal government recognized The Pole by granting it Rural Postal Station status. So, if you want your Xmas cards to have a "North Pole" post mark just stop by with your cards or send them in a package to the North Pole. And, in a Miracle on 34th Street kind of thing, most letters mailed in the eastern US addressed to "Santa Claus" or "North Pole" are delivered to The Pole.

IMO, the only thing The Pole lacks is designation as National Historic Landmark. It really is a national treasure.

Reindeer Barn & Rudolph • click to embiggenSo, you can imagine my utter astonishment and delight last evening when it became apparent during our visit to The Pole that the place was literally aglow with renewal. It seems that everything in the place has been refurbished and renovated to, if not an absolute pristine state, a certainly fresh, clean, and lively one. The Pole seemed positively rejuvenated and reinvigorated. Even Santa's reindeer appeared genuinely healthy and happy. It was a joy to behold.

So, instead of an expected melancholy experience picturing something that used to be, I ended up with many pictures of something of value that still is.

Sweet!

Now if I could only figure out why the wife kept asking me, "does it vibrate?" ...

man & nature # 81 ~ what color is a night sky?

Letting the dogs in under a full moon • click to embiggenI'm still messing around with this night picture making thing and it seems that my nightly ritual with the dogs keeps bringing back to this scene albeit an ever changing view.

One thing that I have discovered after messing about a bit with the white balance settings is that the color of the sky is (duh) determined by the WB setting. In particular, that often hyper-saturated blue color is the result of a WB setting that tends towards the 3200K temperature setting. A setting that usually renders the colors of "artificial" light encountered in the night in reasonable fashion - not "accurate" but not out-of-balance exaggerated either.

In fact, this scene, when pictured using a WB that essentially resulted in the color rendition that you see here in all but the sky, caused the sky to render as a hyper hyper-saturated blue that, to my eye and sensibilities, was way over the top. The most accurate color rendition of the sky, which is pretty damn close to what you see here, was achieved using a daylight (5200K) WB.

So, I blended the 5200K sky with the (approximately) 3200K (with a bit of localized tinkering) earth-bound features to achieve the final image that you see above.

And, I should note that the tonal balance between the sky and the earth-bound stuff is very close to what actually existed. Also, there is no detail in the moon because it was obscured by a small cloud which created a soft featureless disk kind of look.

As mentioned, I admit to being a night picture-making "novice". I really don't know what the "standard" WB is for picturing after dark although I am certain that it can vary considerably depending upon the predominant artificial light source(s) in any given scene. However, it seems certain that dependent upon any given WB (other than 5200K) is the hue of the color blue that the sky will be rendered.

All of which tends to lead me to want to have neutral night skies in my after dark pictures rather than ever-changing blue ones (although, deep blue-black skies are OK). After all, it's the black of the night, not the blue of the night that I see every night.

How about it? Any of you Nocturnes out there care to comment?

civilized ku # 136 ~ Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

Everything is broken • click to embiggenOn the whole and in hindsight I'm relatively pleased to have found a collapsing red barn to picture on a recent outing. As it turns out, current events wise, it is the perfect color for a metaphor regarding the ongoing collapse of the party of the red states - for all of the foreigners in the audience that's the "grand old" Republican party.

We live in a world of unintended consequences - everything we do has consequences and not all of those consequences can be foreseen. That's why, at times, some bad things happen for all the good reasons and, conversely, at times, good things happen for all the wrong reasons. In general, things rarely go exactly as planned or hoped for.

Case in point - In the 2006 midterm elections the majority of the people who vote in the US of A began to rid itself of representatives of the grand old party. That trend continued unabated in 2008. So much so that in my region of the US of A, the NE, at the Federal level there is not a single Republican representative from any state. So much so that in my state, NY, the state legislature has passed into the hands of the Democrats for the first time since 1965.

And, in the race for president, the Reds were handed a fairly thorough trouncing, electoral college wise. Looking at the state results map, it appears that the Reds have been reduced to a primarily regional, the south, party. In what could be thought of as an unintended consequence, it seems that the Reds' "southern strategy" - has come back to bite them in the ass, leaving them only that region as a "core" constituency.

Unfortunately, there is another unintended consequence of which that southern strategy core is a key component.

In its drive to remove the Reds and their failed political ideologies from the Federal level, the American voting public managed to expunge only the moderate voices within that movement. The hard core ideologues remained, largely untouched, and, most deleteriously, apparently un-effected by the "message" that was being delivered by the voting public. If the "message" had any effect at all, it seems that it only strengthened the ideologues resolve to be ... well ... even more zealous in their unwavering devotion to their ideology. They are clinging to it like rats to a rotting carcass. FYI, I use the word "rats" instead of vultures, wolves, or hyenas because all of those creatures rank higher on the image scale than do stinking rats.

So, instead of Reds who are ready to engage the opposition in the art of day-to-day pragmatic politics - one could say the art of getting things done, we have come face-to-face with zealots who would rather sink the ship in the name of core "principles".

To wit, the auto industry "bailout". With a world economy teetering on the brink of utter disaster, these self-serving morons would rather push it over the edge than accept a "flawed" interim measure that would, if nothing else, keep us in a teetering position rather than put us in a plummeting one. An expedience that would buy a little time to at least try to start to put things in the right direction without vaporizing a gazillion jobs in the process.

But, the thing that really frosts my cookies in all of this is the plain unadulterated fact that the core "principle" that is being invoked here is nothing less than the ideologues' poisonous hatred for organized labor, which in this case is the UAW. When push finally came to shove, they unabashedly showed their hand - we'll kill this deal (and maybe everything else in its wake) unless we get an ironclad guarantee that we can drive a stake into the heart of our mortal political enemy.

This from the so-called party of the workingman. You know, the party of Joe the Plumber.

And, the fact that the principle invokers involved in invoking these "principles" are from "southern strategy" Red states that have subsidized foreign auto manufacturers / non-union auto manufacturing seems, at best, to be a gross disregard for conflict-of-interest appearances and, at worst, calls into question what interests they are actually advocating.

However, one of the unintended consequences of their actions that may come back to bite them in the ass is the fact that their actions may be come to be viewed as a form of suicide bombing - in addition to whatever else they may destroy, they are blowing themselves and the current remains of the Red party to smithereens.

They may never be able to put Humpty Dumpty together again.

BTW and FYI, in our current perilous times I feel a responsibility to post, on a once a week basis, an entry regarding the ongoing state of affairs. I sincerely hope that you don't find this too annoying. I will, however, always try to accompany that entry with a picture that is, at the very least, a metaphor for that of which I am writing.

civilized ku # 135 ~ mindlessly sucking up whatever they spit out

The color of reflected light • click to embiggenOK, OK. I get it but let me say one thing first - this entry is NOT a knock against Mike Johnston - the hardest working blogger in the photography blog-o-sphere - of The Online Photographer. Mike seems to be doing what is required of him by his audience and, in doing so, he has craved out quite a niche for himself. Good for him. But ...

I have been resisting this topic for quite a while now because:

1. I risk beating a dead horse to death ...
2. I risk just singing to the choir (at least a good part of the choir found here on The Landscapist)...
3. I risk annoying the pig - never try to teach a pig to sing. It's a waste of your time and it really annoys the pig and ...
4. I risk (as previously mentioned) making an unintentional barb aimed at M. Johnston

Nevertheless, here is a continuation of ...

Another reason why I dislike photographers.

Over the past few days on TOP, MJ has made two back-to-back entries - one titled The Canon 5D Mark II: In the House, the other labeled MOCA in Peril (MOCA = The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles) along with its companion piece Here’s How to Rescue a Museum at the Brink. The first entry was accompanied by numerous comparo pictures of the Canon 5D Mark II and the Nikon D700. The second entry had a picture of the MOCA.

Obviously, the former entry is about gear and the latter is about a "civic cultural treasure" in peril that has become "one of the essential windows on the restless, searching, cosmopolitan creativity of this city's 21st century spirit."

In case you don't know where this is headed, I'll make it plain right now - the number of comments posted on the gear entry, 48. Number of comments on the MOCA entry, 3.

Another outstanding example of the Be quiet, Benson. Show me more, Benson. Show me, show me, subscriber trunk dialing. I must know everything ... philosophy of what it means to be human. Or you could view it as just another attempt to acquire the most fabulous object in the world.

Is there any wonder why camera manufactures are so f**king wrapped up in such a new-model-intro frenzy that seems to have at its heart only the craven desire to dip deep into the pockets of what I would label as the dumb-ass gear-headed suckers?

Does anyone else out there, other than me, think that this frenetic endeavor has reached a level of near insanity? I mean, so many (99.9%) of these "new" camera models (from the simplest P&S to the ultra high-end dslrs) offer little more than minutely incremental "improvements" or, worse yet, "features" so dumb as to be nearly useless - the recently introduced Smile Detection feature as an example. That's right, smile detection, not face detection - which itself is quite frankly about as dumb as it gets.

Sure, sure. The camera manufacturers are just trying to apply modern technology to George Eastman's marketing genius - "You push the button. We do the rest". George knew that the trolls would never be able to tell the difference between the opening of an aperture and that of the dark smelly opening that their heads are buried in. So, in order to sell his product, he had to dumb it down to their level.

I can deal with that marketing objective with no real problem except, of course, for the absurd level to which it has been elevated in today's crass-consumption culture.

And therein lies my core issue. What's going on in the camera market is the exact same thing that has been going on in so many other market segments, the same thing that has driven us to the brink of economic ruin - the blatant desire on the part of the business class to amass as much money as possible within the shortest amount of time as possible by any means possible - no matter the consequence(s).

Without a doubt, the term responsible long-time growth and development has nearly vanished from the lexicon of the business class and, perhaps even more importantly, the consumer class trolls and suckers have bought into the supporting belief - quite literally and figuratively - that they can have it all now by any means possible (easy credit and unsustainable debt) no matter the consequence(s).

The unprecedented mess in which we currently find ourselves is no less than the total unraveling, failure and collapse of both of those premises. And have no doubt about it, there will be a collapse in camera market.

The signs are already there. One obvious sign is plummeting prices as manufacturers and merchants try to unload unsold inventory. Once that is accomplished merchant inventories will stay at very low levels which means that manufacturers will be cutting back in production and so-called "development". There will be consolidation of model lines and, in all probability, the consolidation and liquidation of camera manufacturers as well.

My only regret in all of this is that I will never get to be the Camera Czar who heads up the bailout and restructuring of the camera industry in this country. If for no other reason than the fact that there is no camera industry in this country. A fact which is another sad chapter in the saga of industries invented and founded in this country that no longer exist because we can get it cheaper elsewhere - but don't get me started on that topic.

In any event, while on the one hand I wish to cast no aspersions at Mike Johnston, on the other hand the adage - if you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the problem - does come to mind. And fanning the flames of desire and consumption is definitely part of the problem. In fact, and IMO, fanning the flames of desire and consumption is the problem that is at the root of it all.

That is why, here on The Landscapist, I am focused on the medium and its possibilities for exploring what it means to be human rather than on, as so many others do (consciously or not), what it takes to be a human consumption machine (photography -wise).

Update on Friday, December 12, 2008 at 11:19AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Paul Maxim wrote: "The point is, to transition from a "consumer" economy to some more reasonable and rational business model is going to be very, very painful for everyone. Personally, I don't think Americans have the stomach for doing it. I don't think the majority want to give up the lifestyles they're used to, even though it landed them in hopeless debt. Sooner or later, the economy will "come back", and it will still be based on the consumer model. In America, sadly, that's what it means to "be human"."

my response: Without a doubt, unless we (and our children and their children, ad infinitum) want to endlessly repeat the cycle of irrational exuberance boom and horrendously unbearable bust - which in this day and age will come with increasingly rapid frequency - we must transition to a "more reasonable and rational business model". We must figure out how make things (not just money) again as opposed to just consuming the things that someone else makes.

To accomplish this will require a herculean effort (from everyone, top to bottom) to engage in new ways of thinking and living. Americans may not have the "stomach" for it but, in fact, they may have little choice in as much as most of the "lifestyles they're used to" may be literally taken away from them as they "transition" from boom to bust in the form of foreclosures, bankruptcies, and job loss.

There will be "pain" - some real, some imagined - involved in the transition. However, call me crazy, I would like to think that, with the right leadership in government and the business class, a variety of programs and initiatives might be forthcoming that could ease the way.

My biggest worry, whenever I think about "the right leadership in government and the business class", is the dulcet strains of the Everly Bothers' song, Dream, playing softly in the background of my mind:

Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream
Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream

I hope I don't turn out to be Cathy's Clown - or is that Barrack's Clown?

Update on Monday, December 15, 2008 at 02:18PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Charlie wrote: "You do seem to have it out for TOP and the "gear posts" Just curious...how many cameras have you purchased in the past 3 years?"

my response: No, I don't "have it out" for TOP or Mike Johnston. However, I am fairly sick of all the gear discussions / comments that seem to prattle on and on and on and on ... ad nauseam to point of inanity. However, the point of this entry was two-fold: to disparage the endless parade of so called "new & improved" cameras, and, the fact that, given a choice to comment on gear or a topic related to the survival of an institution of the Arts, photographers overwhelmingly choose the former.

My new camera count for the past 3 years is; 3 dslrs, 1 high-end P&S, 2 mid-level P&S.

And, sure, sure, I did do some research before I purchased the cameras but .... my research did NOT include reading a sea of totally irrelevant comments on photo forums or sites like TOP about those reviews.

To be honest, I don't put a whole lot of faith in reviews themselves as well simply because, in the digital domain, so many of the results of camera testing are based upon the image qualities obtained by RAW conversion software and those qualities can be all over the map from any given camera depending upon the conversion software used by the reviewer.

So, all I really do when I research a camera is to do a quick google search with the camera make and model, find a few reviews, and skim the conclusions just to get a sense of the camera that I am interested in.

man & nature # 80 ~ here today, gone tomorrow

Castle at the Land Of Make-Believe ~ Upper Jay, NY • click to embiggenOK, OK. I get it. Not only do you not want to entertain the notion of responsibility in your picture making, you have no opinion on what kind of pictures, in these perilous times, might be more appropriate than others. So, let me give at least one suggestion about what kind of pictures might be called for.

It seems to me that over the next couple of years there will more than ample opportunities to make pictures of things that are disappearing. Things that used to be. Heaven knows we've got lots of examples of those things that are already littering the landscape here in the good ole US of A but I have a sinking feeling that their numbers are about to dramatically increase.

Take our village hardware store - part of a NE chain of hardware stores - that was there on this past Sunday but gone on Monday. It was Main Street's biggest "anchor" tenant. The wife and I patronized the place on fairly regular basis, even to the point that during our recent home renovations we regularly received thank-you cards in the mail signed by the local staff.

The hardware chain's home office - the chain did not fold, just our store - has promised that they have not abandoned our village and that they will explore the possibility of opening a smaller store. Only time will tell regarding that pledge.

However, that said, the problem will be that of a big hole on Main Street because the chain owns the building and has announced its intent to sell it. That may be a bit of wishful thinking in the current state of real estate affairs so we may be looking at a big hole that just sits there for a long time.

In any event, you can read about the castle pictured in today's entry here.

I'm hot!

My ex was hot for one of my best friends

Just in case someone has just fallen from the sky, landed here on The Landscapist and has read only the last 2 entries, I feel compelled to point out that at times I make pictures just for the pure fun of it.