civilized ku # 2133 ~ his knowledge of photography is about that of your average chipmunk

J's Market ~ Plattsburgh, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenI have mentioned the author Jean Shepherd previously. He is (was, he is now amongst the dearly departed)) a truly American humorist / raconteur / radio and tv "personality". Most who are unfamilar with his writings and tv/radio work know his now classic movie, A Christmas Story. A movie which, in the Shepherd trademark style, is based upon bitingly humorous commentaries about ordinary life in America.

Although Shep (as he called himself) wasn't overly concerned with the Art World, he did, over the course of his radio and tv career, turn his attention to what he christened as (a brand spanking new art genre) Slob Art. Eventually, on his PBS program, Jeans Shepherd's America, he effectively appointed himself as the curator of his very own museum, the Museum of American Slob Art.

FYI, examples of American Slob Art would include such things as: obscene/erotic crocheted lace doilies, giant balls of rubberbands on the front lawn, colletions of crushed beer cans, Carhenge - like Stonehenge, only with cars instead of stone plinths, and the like.

So, with Shep's fascination with ordinary life in America and his interest in art, albeit Slob Art, it comes as no surprise to me that he would write so knowingly about picture makers ...

Of all the world’s photographers, the lowliest and least honored is the simple householder who desires only to “have a camera around the house” and to “get a picture of Dolores in her graduation gown.” He lugs his primitive equipment with him on vacation trips, picnics, and family outings of all sorts. His knowledge of photography is about that of your average chipmunk. He often has trouble loading his camera, even after owning it for twenty years. Emulsion speeds, f-stops, meter readings, shutter speeds have absolutely no meaning to him, except as a language he hears spoken when, by mistake, he wanders into a real camera store to buy film instead of his usual drugstore. His product is almost always people- or possession-oriented. It rarely occurs to such a photographer to take a picture of something, say a Venetian fountain, without a loved one standing directly in front of it and smiling into the lens. What artistic results he obtains are almost inevitably accidental and totally without self-consciousness. Perhaps because of his very artlessness, and his very numbers, the nameless picture maker may in the end be the truest and most valuable recorder of our times. He never edits; he never editorializes; he just snaps away and sends the film off to be developed, all the while innocently freezing forever the plain people of his time in all their lumpishness, their humanity, and their universality.

The wisdom found in that little bit of picture making folklore may be very prophetic - the time may indeed come to pass when "the nameless picture maker may in the end be the truest and most valuable recorder of our times." More so than Gursky, Wall, et al who are currently all the rage.

civilized ku # 2132 ~ it's a contest

Rain / FOR LEASE ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenNone other than John Szarkowski stated:

Photography is a contest between a photographer and the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing. The contest can be held anywhere ...

The phrase, "the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing" is, IMO, an exquisite descriptor of the manner in which most of the people on the planet drift through daily life, seeing wise. I am also of the opinion that the phrase could be modified to read, "living is a contest between a person and the presumptions of approximate and habitual thinking ...", in order to describe the "lazy" manner in which most people think (in this case, I use the word "think" in its most loose meaning), but that's a different story.

Fortunately for accomplished picture makers - that is to say, for those picture makers who have broken through the bonds of the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing - most on the planet are "seeing" impaired, thereby creating a rather large pool of potential viewers of fine pictures. Pictures which illustrate those things which the "seeing" impaired look at but never notice.

Unfortunately, that same potential viewer pool is peopled with a large number of those who are also swimming in the shallow end of the gene pool. Their desire/ability to make it to the deep end, or, in this case, to break out of "the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing" box (in life and/or in pictures), is close to nil. Unless something in their daily drift screams out at them, visually speaking, it is a visual non-starter. The same is true of their picture viewing habits - if a picture doesn't hit them in eye like a big pizza pie, that's a-morte.

All of that said, what can a picture maker do to break the bonds of the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing?

Well, as an example, how about the words of Eliot Porter when he stated:

You learn to see by practice. ... The more you look around at things, the more you see. The more you photograph, the more you realize what can be photographed and what can't be photographed. You just have to keep doing it.

Or, those of Stephen Shore:

I discovered that this camera was the technical means in photography of communicating what the world looks like in a state of heightened awareness. And it’s that awareness of really looking at the everyday world with clear and focused attention that I’m interested in.

Or, a bit of Henry Wessel + a bit of Sir Ansel:

... eyes open, receptive, sensing, and at some point, connecting. It's thrilling to be outside your mind, your eyes far ahead of your thoughts (HW) + ... I have found that too much concern about matters such as conventional composition may take the edge off the first inclusive reaction. (AA)

And, my oft-quoted advice (picture-making-as-a-result-of-fine-seeing wise) from Brooks Jensen:

Real photography begins when we let go of what we have been told is a good photograph and start photographing what we see. ...

... which I might amend to read:

Real seeing begins when we let go of what we have been told to look at and start looking, not just "with", but also "through" your own eyes.

In any event, speaking of seeing and contests, how many rectangles do you see in today's Rain / FOR LEASE picture?

civilized ku # 2129-31 ~ the unbearable LIGHT-ness of Spring

Backyard tangles ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenBathroom light ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenWooden spoon ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenSpring light has invaded my space and senses with a intensely palatable and palpable awareness. That light seems to be all-invasive and all-enveloping, inside and out, causing my must-make-a-picture buzzer to sound repeatedly in my head.

civilized ku # 2128 ~ how does this art look with my food

Peppers ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenLate tomorrow or early Thursday, I'll be heading out to NYC to attend an event at Baang + Burne Contemporary, which is self-described as an unconventional art gallery with the spirit of an indie rock band. Don't know what that means but I guess I'm gonna find out.

I'll also find out about Kris Graves and his work, who/which is featured at the gourmet dinner event at the gallery. I might also make it to the Cindy Sherman retrospective exhibition at MOMA. And, as always when visiting NYC, a gallery crawl in Chelsea is also on the itinerary.

civilized ku # 2127 ~ burning with desire

Burger King exit ~ Plattsburgh, NY • click to embiggenIn a recent entry, wherein I mentioned that I have 4,000+ un-categorized pictures in my "finals" folder, Carolyn (no link provided) asked: "What are the main reason(s) for a photo to be in your "finals" folder"?

I could make up some wordy (bloviated) response to this question about the rigorously demanding criteria I use to select from the pictures I make those which are worthy of inclusion in my "finals" folder, but do so would be rather disingenuous because the simple fact is, 99.5% of the pictures I make go into my "finals" folder.

However, to be perfectly clear, that is not to state that every exposure, aka: "frame", I make goes into my "finals" folder. In the making of any given picture, with exception of "live action" events, I often, but not always, make a very few ever so slightly different takes of a scene / referent which has caught my eye. It is from those variations that, during the viewing of the RAW files in my RAW converter software, I edit which exposure / frame is suitable for processing and therefore, most likely on its way to the "finals" folder.

Occasionally, about 0.5% of the time (assuming the accuracy of my 99.5% success rate), I do not process a picture making effort due to some technical problem - missed focus, unintentional camera motion / blurring, or the like - but rarely do I reject a picture because I did not "get the shot" - i.e., a picture which captures and conveys that which caught my eye. Suffice it to state, my rejects are few and far between.

To what, you might ask, do I attribute my "get the shot" success rate? Dismissing out of hand those who might state that I am easily amused by my own picturing results, I would suggest my success rate is the result of several factors:

1) I keep it very simple, gear wise - 1 camera body with a 20mm lens, 1 with a 45mm lens. When something catches my eye, I simply put one camera or the other to my eye - as determined, rather intuitively by the referent at hand and the knowledge of exactly what each body+lens combination will produce, visually wise - and make a picture. If I decide, after taking a quick glance at the resulting image on the camera LCD, that a little adjustment would be advisable, POV/exposure wise, I will make another exposure/frame until I've got want I want.

2) Re: when something catches my eye. Simply put, I trust my eye in the sense of trusting my senses, aka: living in the picturing moment. That is to say, I know when I see something which, to my eye and sensibilities, will make a good picture. I also trust my eye and sensibilities to capture, in an interesting visual manner, that which has caught my eye. Both manners of trusting are part and parcel of my vision - the physical manner in which I see things - and my other vision - the manner in which I wish to represent what I see. Id est, vision 1 + vision 2 = Vision.

3) My Vision is driven, not by the desire to make "greatest hit" pictures but rather, as I have stated many times, by the burning desire to create a coherent body or bodies of work. With that in mind, not every one of the pictures that make it into my "finals" folder is required to be a stand alone greatest hit. FYI, there are quite a few such pictures in my "finals" folder but they are the result of picturing with a singular Vision as opposed to the pursuit of the "perfect" picture.

4) I would be remiss in not attributing, in part, my success rate to my 4+ decades of picture making experience. Although, truth be told, I began making my living - based solely upon the strength of my portfolio (no photo education / training) - and winning awards (photo competitions / trade recognition) within 6 months of picking up a camera. In that sense, "success" has always come relatively easy to me.

And, last but not least, 5) I am sufficiently confident in my picturing abilities - the making and the results thereof - to not be crushed or deterred by unfavorable criticism of my work. That is not to say I do not welcome honest and informed, positive or negative, feedback of my work because, in fact, I do.

My picturing intention is not to work in a vacuum, making picture only to please myself, but rather to illustrate and (hopefully) to illuminate - to capture and convey to others - some aspect of those referents which capture my eye and sensibilities. Feedback, in any of its forms, is always appreciated and, at times, instructive.

civilized ku # 2125-26 ~ color

Spring color through a screen ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenSpring color through a patio/deck door ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenLike the "miracle" of the swallows of Capistrano returning every Spring, over the past week color has begun to return, a little ahead of schedule, to my little part of the planet. And, FYI, so too have the birds who nest in the exhaust fan cavity over our kitchen sink. No waiting around for St. Joseph's Day (March 19th) for us.

The return of color is very welcome and particularly noticeable this Spring in as much as, with a mostly snow-less Winter, the world in this neighborhood has been rather uniform and rather drab shades of brown for what seemed like an eternity. The only question unanswered, Spring wise, is how rainy the Spring will be and how the Irene flood ravaged and damaged rivers and streams, not to mention our basement, will handle what nature throws at them. Only time will tell.

Ain't Climate Weirding grand?

civilized ku # 2124 ~ random peas

Peas in a pod bowl ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenFYI, the left side of the bowl was illuminated by tungsten light, the right side by daylight. And, the pea arrangement is purely random / as found - don't know how they got there. It's interesting how they ended up in groups of twos.

decay & disgust # 46 ~ great weekend in the kitchen

Peppers, egg shells,and cornbread ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenThis past weekend it seemed I couldn't walk into the kitchen without being confronted with a picturing opportunity. In 48 hours time, I managed to make 6 pictures for my the life in my kitchen series + 1 for my decay & disgust series. And, there is another decay & disgust on the way - along as the wife lets me keep the live mouse around long enough for the pepper debris in today's picture to age a bit more.

Although, I'm still pondering about how to work with /contain a live mouse on a still life picture set. I know from my previous experience that putting insects in the frig or freezer slows them down to the point of being nearly motionless (without actually killing them). I also know how to hypnotize a chicken*, once again so that it remains rather motionless. In both cases, the idea of being motionless is a great aid in keeping them in place for the purpose of making a picture, when, otherwise, they'd be all over the place.

However, I don't know how to slow down a mouse. Any suggestions?

*a great party trick as long as you can pull off showing up at a party with a chicken or two.