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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 from February 1, 2009 - February 28, 2009

Friday
Feb272009

civilized ku # 162 ~ to just see is to be free

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Random rhythm, symmetry, harmony and organic organizationclick to embiggen
It seems quite obvious to me that success in picturing the real world depends a great deal upon possessing a nearly effortless - it just comes easy / don't even have to think about it - sense/awareness of shapes, patterns, natural rhythms, and spacial / organizational relationships.

A sense/awareness that most might call an ability to compose / create interesting composition in your pictures. However, I don't include myself amongst those who think of it those terms.

For me, "composition" is a construct that demands rather intensely thoughtful work or effort in order to make the 2-dimensional surface of a print visually interesting. IMO, if you have to work at it, there are only 2 possible outcomes:

1. you'll never get it right

or

2. you'll have to use the "rules" and thereby end up with ... well ... a picture that just looks like it was made by the numbers.

(Once again) IMO, "composition" can not be taught nor can it be reduced to a dictum of rules and guidelines. To my way of thinking, it can be learned by refining your way of seeing but, if a sense of "composition" is not native to your way of seeing, you've got an uphill battle on your hands when comes to making visually interesting pictures.

To be clear, by "visually interesting" I mean pictures that are not totally dependent upon their referent to create interest. Think Jackson Pollock here. One could reasonably say that his paintings were about "nothing" except, of course, they were all about visual energy, motion, spacial and color/tonal relationships. In a very real sense he made something very interesting out of "nothing".

It is well worth noting in the context of my positing that Jackson said of his technique:

"When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about. I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well."

This notion of "harmony" and "easy give and take" meshes well with 2 of photography's stalwarts - Edward Weston and Henri Cartier-Bresson - ideas about the subject of composition. Weston thought that "composition is the strongest way of seeing" and Cartier-Bresson thought that composition is " ... an organic coordination of visual elements."

And, along the same lines, I would be remiss not to mention Sir Ansel's thought, albeit more general in scope - "There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs."

What all of this means for me is that I consider myself to be truly blessed to mercifully free of the ravages of the rules of photography. Long ago, I discovered that the rules are an insurmountable obstacle to both "strong seeing" and an "organic coordination of visual elements" that are found in the real world.

And, I also discovered that, once you escape from the confines/constraints of the rules, there are pictures to be found almost everywhere you look.

Thursday
Feb262009

urban ku # 198 ~ Ali Baba and the 40 thieves

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Honk if you love Makersclick to embiggen
If I were ever to return to the land of un-square, I've found the perfect lens for making ku pictures without the attendant PS work I currently employ to obtain my vignetted look.

To be accurate, the glass in question is not a full-fledged lens, rather it is one of those hunks of glass that you screw onto the front of "real" lens in order to effect a change of focal length - in this case, expanded wide angle coverage. In the past, converter lens were of very questionable optical quality. More recently, some manufacturers offer some pretty decent wa/tele converters for their P&S cameras but, I am delighted to report that if you look for bargained-priced converter lens for use on a dslr, there a decent selection of glass that can turn any high-priced, high-quality lens into a piece of optical crap.

That said, it is not about the joys and delights of destroying the fine optical quality of a high quality lens that I wish to ruminate upon herein. Rather, it is the manner in which I "discovered" the aforementioned converter that I find to be much more interesting.

This entry was instigated by the recent disclosure of the bankruptcy protection filing by Ritz Camera - the largest dedicated camera retailer in the US, a chain of 800+ stores (operating under a number of names). Those stores have not exactly been a favorite of "serious" amateur photographers and certainly not so for pros, so the announcement does not exactly come as an earth shattering blow to many.

Although, Nikon Inc. (the US subsidiary) may not be quite so taciturn - Ritz has reputedly left them holding the bag for $27M - an amount that represent somewhere in the region of 20% of Nikon Inc's expected annual operating income.

Ritz had a business model based on a zillion locations dedicated to delivering 1-hour processed film with prints to the seriously amateur/casual/average-Joe P&S shooter - a market which has all but disappeared with the advent of digital picture making. Sure, they sold cameras including a fair number of entry level dslrs kits but their bread and butter was the high-volume, high-profit 1-hour minilab thing.

Since moving to the Adirondacks I have developed a kind of old-timey camera store relationship with our semi-local Ritz Camera store. That relationship was kindled by default - it's Ritz or nothing in these here parts. My main interest with them was in purchasing large format (24×24 inch) epson prints that were my "proof" prints. I would never use them for final high quality prints but suffice it to say that more than a few of them are hanging on my walls.

I found the staff at this particular Ritz to be friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable in a manner that was reminiscent of my old-timey experiences with "real" independently owned camera stores. Stores that catered to the entire spectrum of picture makers simply because they were virtually the only place one could purchase a camera (with the exception of the Kodak counters found in a zillion drugstores).

Those were camera stores where the person behind the counter was undoubtedly a serious picture maker who was very knowledgeable about just about everything in the store. In many cases they were people who actually made a career out of standing behind a camera store counter. After a few visits to the store they knew who you were and what your needs and interests were.

If you regularly used a film that they didn't stock, they would start to stock it for you. For pros like myself, if you were interested in a piece of equipment but wanted to test it out, no problem - take it for a spin for a day or two. If you purchased equipment and it broke, a replacement or a loaner was always available. And, amazing at it might seem, they delivered whatever you needed right to your door (no charge).

Unfortunately, most of those smallish independently operated camera stores are a thing of the past. With the advent of digital, camera manufacturers - who had previously depended upon these stores for their very existence - essentially abandoned these stores in favor of the big box discount electronic stores. Add to that insult the emergence of online sales and the result was a rather sudden and dramatic end of the line for small local independent camera stores.

More's the pity. One of the things I really miss, even though I am not a gearhead, is the ability to walk into a store and check out the stuff. Like the opportunity to hold a lens in your hand, put it on your camera, and take a look through the viewfinder. Like the opportunity to hold a camera in your hands and get a feel for it before you have plunked down your bucks and it arrives via FedEx. And, god forbid, actually get informed information about whatever it is you are interested in.

OK, enough of that silly old-timey stuff and onto the converter.

I discovered the converter after I was basically abducted from a NYC sidewalk in front of one of those quintessential small NYC "discount" camera/electronics stores. If you've ever been to NYC you know the ones I am talking about - they are invariably small and stuffed with stuff, have a display window(s) crammed with cameras / binoculars / telescopes / small electronic devices, and are owned and operated by someone who is of middle-eastern descent - a fact that creates an experience that I imagine is much like that of a true middle eastern bazaar.

If you aren't prepared to barter and bargain - (the more you can engage in theatrics or even histrionics the better), you'll get skinned alive. Hell, even if you do, you still might get skinned alive. FYI, I don't mention this as a "negative" per se - it's just the culture of such places.

In any event, there I was just looking in the window - I think I had a Panasonic DMC LX3k on my mind - when, in typical fashion, a "representative" of the store came out to greet me and, eyeing the Olympus E-3, started in telling about the new wide angle lens he had for my camera. And, again in typical fashion, he grabbed my camera and headed into the store where he set in on the counter and proceeded to affix the converter to my 11-22mm lens.

Finishing that, he again grabbed the camera and headed out of the store to the sidewalk where he actually handed me my camera back and said to point it up and take a picture. He then removed the converter and said to repeat the picture making process with just the 11-22mm lens after which he again grabbed he camera and showed me the results on the LCD as he headed back into the store.

At this point I informed him that I wasn't really interested in the converter and that what I was looking for in the window display was the aforementioned LX3k. No problem. He produced one almost immediately but, alas, he only had the silver body not the black body (k) in stock. No problem. He could get one and fast. "How much?", I asked, where upon he quoted a ridiculously low price - so low that the phrase "grey market" came immediately to mind along with an endless procession of extra-cost "options".

You know, options like a battery, a camera case, USB cables - all things that are suppose too be in the box - and. of course, the ever popular extended warranty. The costs of which would undoubtedly drive the price of the camera to that equal to or greater than that to be found at a place like B&H, Adorama and the like. At that point, I managed to withdraw from the proceedings and leave the store but not before he gave it one last try by yelling out even lower prices for the converter and the LX3.

Man, oh man, I was left pining for the good old days of the local camera store.

That said, I should mention that I was previously very pleasantly surprised by a visit to B&H in NYC. The experience I had there, if you can ignore the football field-sized display room, was actually rather delightful. Fast, friendly, relaxed, and very knowledgeable service from a rather chatty (in a good way) counter person that made me feel like I was in one of the aforementioned local camera stores.

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B&H ~ NYCclick to embiggen

No hassles, no hustles, and they seemed to have everything photographic ever made in stock. I wasn't rushed in any way as I tried out a few lenses for my Pentax K20D. I was in the store to purchase memory card for the Pentax but I ended up leaving with both that and a 14mm wide angle prime lens for the camera.

What I found amazing was the ease with which the counter person was able to call up my entire online buying history with B&H and from that have a pretty damn good sense of how he should deal with / relate to me - it felt remarkably like we had been dealing with each other personally for quite a long time.

Next time you're in NYC, I would recommend a visit to B&H even if you're just window shopping. And speaking of window shopping, I would also recommend doing so at at least one Times Square camera "bazaar. And don't hesitate for a moment to allow yourself to be "abducted" - everyone should have that experience once in lifetime.

Wednesday
Feb252009

ku # 556 ~ sharp focus

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Sunset light on birch and mountainclick to embiggen
I must confess that I haven't felt much like writing about things photography for the past couple of weeks. The primary reason for that (as far as I can surmise) is a preoccupation with what seems like the major world events of my lifetime - this fine mess that we find ourselves in. Although, I am also quite busy with a couple large client projects as well.

Nevertheless, writing about things photography seem just a bit beside the point right now. Picturing does not - I am making pictures at about my normal pace although that activity currently seems to lack a bit of focus.

Maybe what I need to do is create my own SoFoBoMo project in order to shake out the cobwebs or whatever the fog is that seems to be enveloping me. Something completely new and different from what I've been doing. Maybe something that involves pictures of people. I am actually rather good at that and I haven't done anything that focuses on people in a long time.

Maybe it's time to haul out the studio strobe equipment and get to work.

Tuesday
Feb242009

civilized ku # 161 ~ standing in the comfort zone

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A picture thought while eating breakfastclick to embiggen
I was eating breakfast on Sunday morning when what to my wandering / wondering eyes should appear but a view that I never see from my customary kitchen table seat.

The house was quiet (the wife was at work), all the guests were long gone and I was in a reflective / contemplative state of mind which was mostly likely encouraged by reading about the latest economic train wrecks in the Sunday paper. My contemplation was mainly centered around a variation upon the immortal words of Oliver Hardy (as oft stated to Stan Laurel), "Well, here's another nice mess we've gotten ourselves into."

Round about that time is when I noticed the view and I thought almost immediately of the lryics to Keb Mo's song, Victims of Comfort -

No rocket's gonna fly that high,
There's no escaping the enemy, It's you I,
We've poisoned up the water,
We're chokin' on the air,
Let's stop before it gets too late,
Or is it already too late?
Is it already too late?

For the victims of comfort,
Got no one else to blame,
We're just the victims of comfort,
Connosuiers of pain.

It's a technological merry-go-round,
Dangerous illusions buried under the ground,
And everyone likes a party,
But know one wants to clean,
Well I'd like to see a change somehow
But I'm a little busy right now,
Just a little busy right now.

I'm just a victim of comfort,
I got no one else to blame,
I'm just a victim of comfort,
A Cryin' shame.

Oh and what do we got to lose?
Everything.
Yes and what do we stand to gain?
Everything, so lets try together,
Before we have to cry together,
It's too soon to die together.

I'm just a victim of comfort,
Got no one else to blame,
I'm just a victim of comfort,
Connosuier of pain.
We were victims of comfort
Got no one else to blame,
I'm just a victim of comfort,
Cryin' shame.

Monday
Feb232009

man & nature # 100 ~ symbols of reality vs reality

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Fresh wet snow on a garden bedclick to embiggen
We here at our house subscribe to the monthly magazine The Sun. I can't speak for the wife but I like the magazine because its publishing philosophy is much like my own idea about / approach to picture making -

The Sun is an independent, ad-free monthly magazine that for more than thirty years has used words and photographs to invoke the splendor and heartache of being human. The Sun celebrates life, but not in a way that ignores its complexity ... The Sun has attempted to marry the personal and political; to honor the genuine and the spiritual; to see what kind of roommates beauty and truth can be; and to show that powerful teaching can be found in the lives of ordinary people.

In order to completely describe my approach to picturing, about the only thing I would have to add to that statement are the words "places, and things" immediately following the phrase "ordinary people".

In any event, in the most recent issue I came across this statement which I thought might be fodder for discussion:

As we increasingly connect with the world through computer screens, we're removing ourselves from direct sensory contact with nature. On other words, we're learning to substitute symbols of reality for reality itself. ~ from Computing The Cost: Nicholas Carr On How The Internet Is Rewiring Our Brains (The Sun • March 2009)

Carr goes on to state that this phenomenon "isn't something necessarily new, that it's just a continuation of what we saw with other electronic media like radio or television. But I do think it's an amplification of those trends." I would agree with that caveat (as I do with his aforementioned opinion) but me thinks he should not have limited himself to electronic media -

I mean, what is a photographic print if not a "symbol" of something from reality?

Unless one is possessed of a serious mental deficiency, there are very few who would mistake a picture of a thing for the thing itself. Obviously, no matter how you look at it, a picture of an orange is not an orange. It may conjure up feelings, emotions, and thoughts about an orange - it may even instigate a bit of salivation - but, in the end, if you actually bit into the print, that's where any illusion about it being an orange would come to an abrupt and distasteful end.

However, and this goes quite a way in explaining my POD fever, I do believe there is a difference between viewing pictures online and viewing the same pictures in a printed book. And that difference is a big part of the point of Carr's article about how the internet is rewiring our brains - the internet promotes the ability to "jump around" (hyperlinks) in a field of vast quantities of information over the ability to concentrate and be contemplative:

I guess it comes down to what you value most about human intelligence and, by extension, human culture. Do you believe that intelligence is a matter of tapping into huge amounts of information as fast as possible - being "more productive" - or do you think intelligence means stepping back from that information, thinking about it, and drawing your own conclusions in a calm thoughtful way?

From which I would extrapolate this:

I guess it comes down to what you value most about looking at pictures. Do you believe that looking at and appreciating pictures is a matter of tapping into huge amounts of pictures as fast as possible - being "more productive" in your picture viewing - or do you think appreciation, understanding, and finding meaning means stepping back from that information, thinking about it, and drawing your own conclusions in a calm thoughtful way?

FYI, I value the ability to concentrate and be contemplative when viewing pictures and, as I have mentioned previously, I find the internet to be a very poor venue for such an activity. A book, on the other hand, is a very viewing friendly object. I can not only see it, I can feel it. The pictures become things, in and of themselves, in a manner that simply is not possible on a screen.

Ink on paper is a 1000x more real to me than an image on a screen. My connection to it is warm and human. I feel that a person, an actual person, was involved in a book's making in way that does not come through with an image on a screen. A book was made from a tree, a living renewable resource. A screen is cold and impersonal.

A book just feels right.

So, when I'm in the mood to substitute a symbol of reality for reality itself, I like to take mine "real".

Saturday
Feb212009

civilized ku # 160 ~ SoFoBoMo pt. 2

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Light fixture light on the powder room wallclick to embiggen
It has been opined that I should not have used the word "dumb" to describe the SoFoBoMo rule which I thought was .... well .... to be precise, dumb.

So I would like to reiterate, in no uncertain terms, that while I do think that the aforementioned rule is dumb to the nth power, I do not think that participating in SoFoBoMo is a dumb thing to do. I absolutely, without qualification, do not think that it is a dumb thing to do.

As a matter of fact, I wish the SoFoBoMo 2009 project all the success in the world. May their participation double or, for that matter, triple over last year's numbers. Seriously, I do. As far as I am concerned, anything that promotes the making of photo books is A-OK in my view.

god knows I've tried to get people to sh*t instead of just sitting on the pot but apparently I don't quite have the knack for it. I'm still mulling some ideas on the POD subject that I'll be hatching soon but I'm thinking that it will be a behind-the-scenes thing until it's up and running.

In any event, if SoFoBoMo tickles your fancy, I'd strongly recommend that you go for it.

Friday
Feb202009

civilized ku # 159 ~ SoFoBoMo

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Afternoon light on the powder room wallclick to embiggen
Just recently I received an email from Gordon McGregor with a mention that this year's SoFoBoMo event(?) had launched.

In case you are familiar with what a SoFoBoMo is, here's what the SoFoBoMo website says:

Each year, a loosely organised international group of photographers decide to stop procrastinating and make a real physical book in a month or less.

This is the second year of the event - I keep calling it an "event" because I don't know what else to call it. In its first year 60 people participated and the results can be viewed HERE. Although, in fact, you can maybe see them because clicking on the them leads to a wide array of results.

All that said, I was aware of SoFoBoMo last year but after investigating the event and its rules, I decided that it was not for me. Even though I make books and feel rather strongly that everyone who calls themselves a photographer / picture maker / artist who uses photography / et al should make books, the project (new word for it) had a few rules that felt rather camera-clubby.

To be honest, the project has very few rules but what there were/are I found to be rather dumb.

First and foremost on the dumb list was the rule that you did not actually have to make a finished, i.e. printed, book. Apparently the organizers believe that going through the effort to make pictures for and to design/layout a book, not an actual book itself, is the point of the exercise. That effort is/can be a very good thing but that effort is one very important step away from producing a good printed book.

It should go without saying that the rules obviously do not prevent a participant from going all the way. I have no way of knowing but I would imagine that many participants actually produced printed books.

But that rule alone would not stop me from participating. No, the one that gets to me is this one:

How many photos do I need for the book?
At least 35 - large enough that it can't be flung together from a single afternoon's photography, short enough to be doable...

I'm sorry but that one's 2-parts dumb for me.

dumb - part 1 - what the hell is wrong with a book that features just, lets say, 10 really strong pictures? Is a book with 100 pictures better than one with just 10 (or 35)? I mean, what if you want to make a book titled, Portraits of the Most Important People in My Life and, lo and behold, you only have 10 people who qualify?

What if you want to make a book of staged/contrived pictures that are very time consuming to produce - planning, models, locations, etc.? With only 30 days during which both the picture making and the book design/layout must be executed, 35 pictures would be nearly impossible.

No doubt there are plenty of subjects/themes that could be accomplished within the time frame, but why impose an arbitrary constraint that limits what someone might like to do?

Which leads me to -

dumb - part 2 - the part that says 35 pictures minimum so that the project can't be "flung together" from a single afternoon's photography. What the hell is wrong with a book that documents an event that spans only an afternoon's (morning's, evening's) time? I can think of quite a few events that might be worthy of some serious picturing that are very short-lived.

A few years ago, I gave serious consideration to picturing my step-daughter's prom night from start to finish. If I had done so, 35 pictures would have been the tip of the iceberg. Then there's the small town, Friday night, under-the-lights high school football game ritual - the picture possibilities from that are nearly endless.

Of course, there is always the possibility that one might end up with only 23 strong pictures from either of those events ...

Let me repeat myself - No doubt there are plenty of subjects/themes that could be spaced out over/within the time frame, but why impose an arbitrary constraint that limits what someone might like to do?

To be honest, the idea of producing a book, start to finish, within a month's time is a perfectly valid rule/constraint and challenge for such a project. But proscribing constraints like the 2-part dumb ones above are a deal breaker for me.

Maybe my imagination is bigger than that. Maybe I just don't like being told how many pictures a book must have or that I can't make any number of good pictures in an afternoon's time. Maybe I don't cotton to the notion that any book with fewer than 35 pictures or that is made over an afternoon's time is something that is just flung together.

And, please, this is NOT a you-shouldn't-do-it rant. It is merely an entry on my blog about why I won't be doing it.

Friday
Feb202009

ku # 555 ~ life's magic moments

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Browsing widlifeclick to embiggen
I had just walked out of the forest after checking my lines (hoping for for some opossum meat for dinner - the recession is starting to get closer to home) and I heard a faint rustling at my back.

I turned around and there they were - 2 deer browsing for their dinner. Fortunately, I was armed for (photographic) bear and I quietly mounted the big gun (with image stabilization turned on) and fired away. It was one of life's magic moments. Not nearly as magic as blowing them away with a real (big) gun and taking them home for dinner - no opossum on the lines - but I guess you have to take what you can get in these hard times.

It looked to me that it was hard times for the deer as well. They were so emaciated that I swear I could almost see right through them.