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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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BODIES OF WORK ~ PICTURE GALLERIES

  • my new GALLERIES WEBSITE
    ADK PLACES TO SIT / LIFE WITHOUT THE APA / RAIN / THE FORKS / EARLY WORK / TANGLES

BODIES OF WORK ~ BOOK LINKS

In Situ ~ la, la, how the life goes onLife without the APADoorsKitchen SinkRain2014 • Year in ReviewPlace To SitART ~ conveys / transports / reflectsDecay & DisgustSingle WomenPicture WindowsTangles ~ fields of visual energy (10 picture preview) • The Light + BW mini-galleryKitchen Life (gallery) • The Forks ~ there's no place like home (gallery)


Entries from May 1, 2009 - May 31, 2009

Saturday
May302009

getting around ~ raised to high art/fetish

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Frenched to the nth degreeclick to embiggen
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Bitchin' '57 Chevyclick to embiggen

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Pink Cadillacclick to embiggen
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Big Dogclick to embiggen
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Cowboy Hogclick to embiggen
Over the past 24 hours our area has been treated to a great display of Rolling American Iron, heavy metal style - and I don't mean music. Although, when all of those hogs fired up this AM on Main Street, I'm sure that it was sweet music to some ears.

This weekend Lake Placid is host to an annual custom/classic car show and auction. Hugo and I (that's us reflected in the '57 Chevy Continental Kit's spare wheel cover) stopped in at the '80 Olympic Arena, home of the Miracle On Ice, to see the cars roll in. Say what you will about these things, but one thing is certain - these guys know how to paint a car. The paint is flawless, looks liquid, and seems to be about 12 inches deep, especially the candy metalflake jobs.

Although not pictured here, one thing that some of the custom cars and many of the bikes have in common is a liberal display of skulls and crossbones. On the cars its things like gearshift knobs and steering wheel hubs. On bikes its usually applied with painted emblems and, of course, on the backs of leather jackets and on helmets. And, of course, there were plenty of painted flames on both cars and bikes.

Although I am not a Harley guy - I ride a Rice-Burner Crotch-Rocket - I was kind of impressed by Cowboy-Edition Harley - you gotta love all that rawhide fringe and those whitewall tires. The only thing I'd change is the saddle because I'd want a 2-seater so the wife could ride bitch.

Friday
May292009

hardscapes # 4 ~ if you want to grow apples, plant apples seeds - not orange seeds

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light, shadow, color, form, and beautyclick to embiggen
Things tend to come at me in bunches, so I am not really surprised that after yesterday's little foray into the world of photographic advice and wisdom the topic should come again today in response to more "advice" as offered up on T.O.P..

Under the banner of The Leica as Teacher, Mike Johnston states:

...if any young or beginning photographer of real ambition within the sound of my voice would like to radically improve his or her photography quickly and efficiently, I suggest shooting with nothing but a Leica and one lens for a year. Shoot one type of black-and-white film ... [P]ick a single-focal-length 50mm, or 35mm, or 28mm ... ©arry the camera with you all day, every day. Shoot at least two films a week. Four or six is better ... [T]he more time you spend shooting, the better ... [I] guarantee you will be a much better photographer after you finish the year than you were before you started.

Johnston goes on to offer advice on proofing, printing, and sundry other things.

Now, it should be noted that I believe that Johnston and I fall somewhere near each other's time-on-planet measurement and, photo history-wise, we both hail from a far distant point on Mr. Peabody & Sherman's WABAC (The Wayback Machine) time dial. That said, I can sympathize with his rather sentimental and romantic, one might even say, "nostalgic", notion of the best way to learn about:

... looking at light and ignoring color ... will teach you as much about actually seeing photographs as three years in any photo school, and as much as ten or fifteen years (or more) of mucking about buying and selling and shopping for gear like the average hobbyist.

However ... I find this little nugget of wisdom to look more like fool's gold than the real deal. IMO, it's akin to saying, "if you want to learn how to use a computer, you should spend the next year using only an old Smith Corona (non-electric) typewriter with paper and carbon paper. Doing so will improve your understanding of how to use words."

To my way of thinking that makes no sense whatsoever - in large part because this "old school" idea places too much emphasis on a gear-based approach to picturing - the notion that equipment can teach you how to "see".

The Art of "Seeing" is in your head, your heart, your soul - not in your camera.

It has been stated by David Hurn (and many others) that:

... the photographer is, primarily, a subject-selector. Much as it might offend the artistically inclined, the history of photography is primarily the history of subject matter. So a photographer’s first decision is what to photograph.

A sentiment with which I totally concur. And, as an adjunct to that idea, it has also been stated that once one decides what to picture, one will find or "invent" the means to do it. As the American Artist and educator, Robert Henri, wrote in his wonderful book, The Art Spirit:

First there must be the man. Then the technique.

...or, with a bit more depth ...

The technique of little individuality will be but a little technique ... [H]owever long studied it still will be a little technique; the measure of the man. The greatness of Art depsends absolutely upon the greatness of the artist's individuality and on the same source depends the power to acquire a technique sufficient for expression ... [T]he techique learned without a purpose is a formula which when used, knocks the life out of any ideas to which it is applied.

Now, if you want to take a stroll through photography's past as a method for learning how to "see" (and I think that's a great idea), spend your year looking at the actual pictures made by past masters. But, even that trip has to augmented by a considerable amount of time spent looking at what's happening now, photography-wise, in order to have a well-balanced view of the medium and its possibilities.

All of that said, here's a practical case in point - my son, Aaron The Cinemascapist, has never pictured with film and a film camera. Even though I was acutely of his artistic inclinations at a very early age, try as I might to encourage / foster it, before the appearance of the digital domain (photography-wise), he just wasn't interested in making pictures. I think that it was just too much of a "hassle", all the technical / technique stuff, that is.

However, when he acquire his first-ever camera - a "crappy" reconditioned Olympus E-300 - less than 3 short years ago, he quickly leaned how "match the needle" (in a sentimental / romantic manner of speaking) for good exposure and simply let the camera do the rest (focus, etc.).

Long story (by his standards, short for the rest of us), short - he had his first solo NYC gallery show within the first year and has in the intervening 2 years had solo shows in LA, London, and NYC (again). Feature articles about his work have appeared in numerous international Art/photography pubs and online photo "magazines". His work has been reviewed and written about in 20 different languages all around the planet. He was a nominee for Best Fine Art / Personal Series at the 2008 NY Photo Awards and he also received an Honorable Mention for Fine Art Category and Deeper Perspective Category at the 2008 International Photography Awards. He has gallery representation in San Francisco and NYC. His pictures are being acquired by international collectors.

Amongst many accolades, La Repubblica - Italy's leading daily newspaper, said; "... is a small masterpiece of technique and visual writing as are the other works of this artist, who is one of the best talents in America."

Now, here's the point - Aaron just got right down to making pictures with the tools that he intended to use. As per part of Johnston's advice he did make a lot of pictures in a short period of time during which he decided what it was he wanted to picture and how he would do so. How to do so depended as much upon his digital darkroom skills as his camera skills but, no matter how you look at it, he was discovering and learning how to express his inner vision, the individuality of the man, and the technique to do so just "fell to hand", so to speak.

IMO, he had a head start on all of this stuff, especially the inner vision thing, because he did spend a good amount of time while festering as a youth paying attention to my significant collection of past and current photo masters photo books as well as - I am extremely happy and pleased to say - some of my work that greatly influenced and inspired his search for what to picture (also see here and here).

It's also well worth noting for the gearheads in the crowd that, to this day, he is still picturing with hand-me-down equipment - my "old" Oly E-500 and E-510. It's also well worth noting that he has never made pictures with anything but the "kit" lens that came with his first camera.

It's also very well worth noting that, if his very life depended upon doing any of this with old-timey photo skills, I'd have been visiting his grave site (instead of his gallery shows) a long time ago.

So, my advice to young / beginning picture makers of real ambition - get a camera, any camera and start taking pictures, lots of pictures, all the while looking at lots of pictures made by others (past and present) and think long and hard about the man/woman within and how that relates to the real world - most definitely NOT the photo world.

If, at the end of year, you still haven't figured out what to picture - or at least have a hint about it - maybe you need to consider taking up ballroom dancing or twittering as your passion.

Thursday
May282009

man & nature # 153 ~ lush greens of an Adirondack Spring

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Spring rainclick to embiggen
I don't know if it's even possible to convey in words or pictures what it feels like when, after 6 months of green-free environs, it suddenly seems so lush and green in these here parts. Especially so when, like today, it is overcast and rainy.

The greenery seems thick, the air seems thick, and the many-hued green colors are rich and vibrant - a veritable verdant oasis.

On a photographic note - the garage interior has a "misty" black look, not a deep dark black one, because of the atmospheric "compaction" of a long lens. That said, if you look carefully at the garage interior, you can see light-toned streaks created by raindrops.

Thursday
May282009

man & nature # 152 ~ Forest Gump rules

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Woodpile and deflated mini-basketballclick to embiggen
The over simplification of matters photographic is oft times simply dumb. Or, if not dumb, then how about, way too simplistic.

One such case in point that always gets under my skin each and every time I hear/read it - and I've heard/read it about a zillion and half times - is the simplify rule of picturing. My most recent encounter with that adage went like this:

The greatest challenge that we as photographers face is how to translate the jumbled real world into a simplified iconic representation of what we see in our mind's eye.

GMaFB. Where does this stuff come from? I know this "advice" has been hanging around for quite some time so it's hard to pass it off as another example of the recent dumbing down of America. But, whenever / wherever this simple-minded idea evolved from, it seems to be based on the notion that people are dumb / simple-minded / dim-witted - keep it simple, because people can't think.

A kind of Hollywood blockbuster approach to picturing - a plot so simple (with lots of noisy exploding things) that even a simple-minded dimwit can "get it" (not that there is actually anything to understand). And, oh yeh, NO THINKING ALLOWED. Subtlety? Complexity? Meaningful / literate dialog? Nope - a virtual guarantee of box office failure.

But, then again, if you consider / practice picturing as a form of entertainment with the desired result being to make pictures that turn the brain switch to the "off" position, then by all means possible, simplify.

Wednesday
May272009

picture window # 21 ~ how sharp is a rat's ass?

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Round window at the Binghamton Regency Hotelclick to embiggen
Now that the 7800 is up and printing, one "issue" with which I have been struggling ... well, not exactly struggling - more like contemplating and experimenting with - is the uniquely digital domain notion of sharpness. Or, perhaps a bit more accurately, the notion of sharpening.

One of the characteristics of digital image capture and subsequent processing is the fact that sharpness is a very fungible construct. No longer is a picture's sharpness determined solely by optics and film choice - both of which are predetermined by someone other than the picture maker. The only choice a picture maker has in the analog picture world is that of which film / optics (camera and enlarger) to use.

In the digital world there are a zillion options that determine "final" sharpness- everything from a wide variety of sharpening techniques to a host of sharpening software choices, which, in turn, have a host of sharpening techniques. With the exception of the in-camera anti-alias filter, it's up to the picture maker to decide how sharp he/she wants a picture to be.

As seems inevitable in the digital domain, the idea of sharpness has been taken to fetishistic extremes. The pixel peepers in the crowd are positively obsessed with sharpness at the most extreme levels of magnification - truly nose-on-print viewing distances. Viewing distances that have absolutely nothing to do with the practical practice of looking at pictures.

However, from my long and varied experience, it is quite obvious that, with the exception of a very noticeable lack of sharpness in a print (bad focus, camera movement, etc.), the picture viewing public doesn't really give a rat's ass about sharpness. And that includes even the viewing public typically found in the rare-air Art World photo galleries and museums.

Simply put, given a decent level of sharpness - which would be judged by many picture makers to be unacceptably low - the viewing public is much more interested in a picture's content and meaning than they are in its technical merit.

That is why I have a rather cavalier attitude when it comes to the technique of sharpening. I don't own or plan to own stand-alone or plug-in sharpening software. I do apply sharpening in my RAW conversion processing and as a final step in PS processing (always on the Lightness Channel in LAB color space) but I tend to apply it so the final result resembles that of the look of film sharpness rather than that of digital sharpness.

Film sharpness that, by digital sharpness standards, would be considered rather "soft". However, because I view my prints as a member of the viewing public, my prints look much better than fine ... but that's because I am more concerned with the big picture (literally and figuratively).

How about you? How do you look at/view sharpness?

Wednesday
May272009

decay # 32 ~ sometimes life is not ...

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Cherry pits and fuzzy fruit saladclick to embiggen
... a bowl of cherries. While it's certainly true that I did eat a bowl of cherries yesterday, life (computer-wise) was anything but a bowl of cherries. Sometimes life is just the pits.

A very long story, short - I spent the entire day wrestling with the installation of the Epson 7800 software. There actually was a point at mid-afternoon that I seriously began to contemplate a return to film and the wet darkroom. That was right about the time that I discovered that the print driver /software for my Epson 2200 had somehow been modified to something I did not recognize. That was after: a) 3 phone calls to Epson support re: the Epson 7800, b) 1 phone call to Apple support after Epson support informed me that I would have to re-install my system software in order for the Epson to work, and c) a trip to Plattsburgh for a USB cable because their was a known issue with the 7800 and firewire.

At that point the Epson 7800 still wasn't working - some kind of "communication" error - and to discover that my Epson 2200 software had morphed into something unusable ... well, you can pretty much guess what I was feeling at that point. And, not to mention that it didn't help at all that my playoff beard is at the stage where it's getting kind of itchy.

So, 1 more call to Epson support wherein I was informed that I had to download an older driver for the 2200, do an uninstall on the previous (now changed) version, install the new (old) version and pray. Then it was on to yet another uninstall of the 7800 stuff and 5th reinstall of the new driver and, once again, pray some more. There were, of course, about 10,000 computer shutdown / restarts along the way and 1 system software update thrown in for good measure.

Long about 5:00PM - I started this adventure at 9:00AM - my prayers were answered - both printers were up and running and everything was working just as it was suppose to work. Only the computer gods/gremlins know why, after repeatedly repeating the same steps over and over and over again, the damn things finally decided to work.

Sunday
May242009

it's finally arrived

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Small, it ain'tclick to embiggen
The printer has finally landed although yesterday I did have to retrieve it from 120 miles away. Long story short, the local machine was, through some screw-up, sold to someone else. So, this one came from the Buffalo, NY store which is bit of blessing in disguise - that store was the worst performing store in the region and this machine is very lightly used.

The next couple days will be spent just firing it up, installing software, and get things sorted out. So, I will keep the doors open for last minute submissions for the Free Print Offer.

Thanks to all who have submitted so far. I'll be choosing the "winners" early next week.

Friday
May222009

man & nature # 151 ~ ever so slightly "off"

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Birch and giant compressor - 1980 Olympic Ice Arena • Lake Placid, NYclick to embiggen
When it comes to picture making, I really like these 2 quotes that seem to me to be quite complimentary:

One of the major changes in attitude that occurred in the world of art as we moved from the nineteenth into the twentieth century was that the twentieth century artist became more involved with personal expression than with celebrating exclusively the values of the society or the church. Along with this change came a broader acceptance of the belief that the artist can invent a reality that is more meaningful than the one that is literally given to the eye. I subscribe enthusiastically to this belief. - Jerry Uelsmann

My gift to you is that I am different. - Duane Michals

IMO, I don't think that an artist has a snowball's chance in hell to invent a reality that is more meaningful than the one that is literally given to the eye unless he/she him/herself is different.

I think it's a really simple equation - one can't see differently if one can't think (and feel) differently from the "norm". And I'm not talking about being different for the sake of being different. I'm talking about being different at the core of your very being - always was, always will be. Couldn't change it without mode-altering pharmaceuticals even if you tried.

You probably know what I mean - someone out there near the fringe, on the edge of things. Doesn't run with the crowd. A different drummer and all that stuff.