civilized ku # 952 ~ Andy and his SX70

Andy Warhol w SX70 camera ~ Union Sq. - NYC, NY • click to embiggenI wish I had had some Polaroid Sx70 film with which to make this picture.

civilized ku # 951 ~ any port in a storm

Chimay tricks • click to embiggenHere's a few tips for when you find yourself (with a number of college-girl's roommates and their parents) in a small (not much bigger than our walk-in closet at home) restaurant sitting elbow-to-elbow (literally) to everyone else in the place. Where the noise level necessitates conversations that constitute shouting matches. Where you are more than a little annoyed at waiting - standing outside - 45 minutes beyond your reservation time. Where you are also really annoyed that college-girl did not tell you that the place was BYOB and cash-only.

First thing you do is go across the street to the Belgium-themed bar and get 3 bottles of Chimay Trappist Ale - 1 each, Red Cap, Blue Cap, and White Cap (aka: Triple or Cinq Cents) - because trying to find wine is mission impossible. Of course, all the other parents have wine because their college-girl (none of whom were the recipient of the Meus Caput Capitis Est in Meus Ano award) had informed them to BYOB - they also had plenty of cash.

Next, return to the sidewalk outside of the restaurant and continue standing around. Then, after being seated in your reserved 1st grade grammar-school-butt sized chair, disentangle your elbows from your table mates, on the left and the right, and pop the cork from the Chimay of your choice. At that point, the waiter will appear with menus on which the food items are accompanied by cash prices which reminds you to tell college-girl to get her very expensively educated butt out on the street to find an ATM.

After that scene, proceed to pour yourself an ale and set about making a chair from the cap and wire thingy which holds the cork in the bottle. This activity has a number of benefits; 1) saves you from shouting-induced hoarseness in awkward attempts to make (inane) conversation - none of the parents were from Philadelphia which precluded the "How about them Phillies / Eagles / Flyers?" conversion opening gambit, 2) gives the wife several opportunities to say, "He's an artist", 3) relieves some of the boredom that sets in while having dinner with people you do not know (and who you may not wish to know if you actually conversed with, er ... make that, shouted at them), and, 4) you can never do too many dexterity-improving finger exercises.

After all of that, set about enjoying the fine ale(s) knowing that this too will pass.

ku # 908 ~ in ano est

Bloom (work-in-progress) ~ Cherry Hill, NJ • click to embiggenOver the past week or so, I have been playing around with the pinhole thing and a few BW images which has caused Sven W to write ...

Pin-hole cameras, B&W images ... Mark has found a new muse or re-discovered some old ones?

... to which he could now add, "flowers" - and live ones at that (my normal preference for picturing flowers is that they be of dead/dying variety).

In response I can only state that I am, at this point, just screwing around and having some fun, picture making wise. How any of it might eventually fit in to my picture making scheme of things is pure speculation. Although, the flower thing is undoubtedly a very temporary aberration.

The BW thing is, at best, an itch that required an immediate scratch. I can't see me forming an in-depth attachment to it. And the pinhole? - at this point, I see it as a fun thing although that doesn't necessarily preclude the possibility of a series or body of work emerging from its use.

In any event, once I am back in civilization - or is that, "away from 'civilization' (so-called)" - and I have time to think about something other than how humankind can so thoroughly screw up a good thing, the State of New Jersey as a prime example, I will be responding to all of the comments on those subjects, as well as others, made over the past week.

Today, it's off to coma-girl's graduation where I will personally award to her a sash that proclaims ...

Meus caput capitis est in meus ano

... an award and honor which has, at least temporarily, she has snatched from her brother's grasp.

civilized ku # 950 ~ not my usual vision

Secaucus Junction (work-in-progress) ~ NY, NY • click to embiggenSo I'm sitting around at the Secaucus Junction drop off / pick up area while the wife is spinning round 'n round (60 minutes thereof) the NJ Turnpike merry-go-round exit game o' chance, when the scene in front of my eyes strikes me as a picture making opportunity, re: my recent Robert Adams BW inspiration.

I had purchased, not one, but two Robert Adams books at my favorite little bookstore in NYC. In his book, The New West, I found the Forward by John Szarkowski, the pictures, and the reproduction thereof to be positively revelatory. Not that I am unfamiliar with the pictures of Robert Adams - I already have 3 of his other books - but the printed visual quality of the BW pictures in The New West was exceptional.

That visual quality resulted from the absolutely superior reproduction of Adams' capture in his prints of the radiant and luminous brilliance of the bright midday sunlight found in all of the pictures in the book. The captured quality of that light creates an amazing sense of revealed detail and an almost tactile sense of air and atmosphere.

In any event, there I sat, listening to the in-my-head conversation with myself, when the scene in front of me just seemed to proclaim, "Get off your butt. Set your camera to "monochrome" and make some pictures." As I normally do whatever the in-my-head conversation with myself tells me to do, I did as directed.

The Secaucus Junction picture posted herein is, of course, a work-in-progess effort. As John Linn has suggested, upon my return to my hi-end wringer setup, I will post this week's work-in-progress pictures together with their finished variants.

Stay tuned. Comments appreciated. Although, I am now out the door for some sunny South Jersey golf.

pinhole # 6 ~ handlebar series # 1

Handlebars # 1 (work-in-progress) ~ E 5th Street / 500 block - NY, NY • click to embiggenI took a walk around the block early last evening and made a bunch of pictures on / through / around bicycle handlebars. Just about every solid upright device had bicycles chained to it.

On my way to South Jersey. More NYC pictures to post and I'll also answer a couple comments.

life in pictures # 16 ~ good questions

1st Ave & E 4th Street (work-in-progress) ~ NY, NY • click to embiggenOn the entry civilized ku # 947, John Linn wrote:

Many fine artists (painters) use photography as a tool to work out subject and composition ... many painters WOULD selectively use the bits and pieces they find work best for their art ... they are creating a vision that is an interpretation of the scene. I have a artist friend who talks about seeing with his "minds-eye" which is different that his in-fact eyes.

In your opinion is this the essential difference between a painter and a photographer? A photographer should be responsible for interpreting reality without distortion?

... is there a place in the world for the photo illustrator who can pick and choose his/her images as long as there is no intent of misrepresentation?

Re: "the essential difference between a painter and a photographer" - as I have stated many times, the unique and defining difference between painting (and other non-photo visual arts) and photography is photography's relationship to / characteristic as a cohort of the real. No other visual medium / art possesses photography's ability to capture a moment in time with such precision and accuracy.

While painters may base their art on the real, photographers have the ability to instantly, directly, and accurately depict the real. In both instances, the resultant picture is a representation of the thing pictured inasmuch as neither picture is the thing itself. However, that said, a painting is a much more "interpretive" representation of the thing than is a "straight" photograph of the thing.

And, while a painter gets to select (what they "see" with their "minds-eye") which elements of the real he/she wishes to include in their interpretation of a thing/scene, a "straight" photographer only gets to select what part of the real (what they "see" with their "in fact-eye") he/she wishes to include within the frame. It should go without stating that these 2 acts of selecting are entirely different disciplines.

Re: "...should (photographers) be responsible for interpreting reality without distortion? ... is there a place in the world for the photo illustrator who can pick and choose his/her images as long as there is no intent of misrepresentation?" - there is no licensing authority for photographers which gets to state what a photographer may picture or how they may picture it.

One could argue that, in the Fine Art World, there are picture police - critics, academics, gallery owners, museum curators, et al - who try to enforce picture making strictures. However, with the exception of those who make pictures with the picture police as their primary audience, most picture makers follow their own vision and let the chips fall where they may. However, in the Fine Art World (as opposed to the anything-goes Decorative Art World), most picture makers are acutely aware of the medium's relationship to / with the real.

With that defining characteristic firmly embedded in their "in fact-eye", they (photographers who are artists) set out to depict the real in a realistic, yet interesting and engaging, fashion or, in some cases (artists who use photography - akin to Linn's "photo illustrators"), use that characteristic to realistically depict what is in their "minds-eye" (staged pictures, as an example). In either case, the medium's readily apparent visual ability to accurately record the real is one of the major hallmarks of successful picture making / photo pictures.

Add to all of that blather, the fact that I consider the making of good/great/interesting pictures without resorting to "distortions" - cheap tricks, gear gimmicks, fanciful effects and manipulations, et al (aka, "misrepresentation", intentional or not) - to be the most difficult thing to accomplish in the picture making world. And, FYI, I do not consider doing so a "responsibility" but rather an act of respect for "what is", aka - the real, instead of a fanciful interpretation of what I wish it to be.

That challenge and respect in picture making is why I hold those who resort to picture making "distortions" in such low picture making esteem. They are aesthetic simpletons (OK, that's a bit harsh but ...), no matter how technically challenging or difficult the making of their pictures may be. But, that said, what they make is art and there is "a place in the world" for them. That place is in the world of Decorative Art (looks nice on the wall above the sofa, matches the colors in the room, makes one feel "good", and so on) but rarely in the world of Fine Art.

civilized ku # 949 ~ the color red. the color yellow (work-in-progress)

Red and yellow pipes (work-in-progress) ~ Broadway / 700 block - NY, NY • click to embiggen

civilized ku # 948 ~ testing, testing

WE GRIND OUR OWN BEEF (work-in-progress) ~ West Village - NY, NY • click to embiggenFor the past couple years I have been festering about how to post daily entries with pictures that I make when I'm on the road without spending a small fortune on a new laptop computer. A new laptop that would also require an new (updated/ $$$) version of PhotoShop and some other ancillary software (my RAW converter, to name just one).

Currently, the way I make entries when I am on the road - such as yesterday's civilized ku # 947 - is to resize, upload and make thumbnails of some current existing pictures onto the blog platform before I leave home and then post one or two of them, a day at a time. There's nothing wrong with that way of doing things but I must admit there are times when I wish I could post a picture made when I'm on my travels. However, that desire is not a need and therefore does not justify the considerable expenditures it would take to scratch that particular itch.

But that said, I was particularly vexed at the prospect of being away for a full 7 days - knowing that I would be making lots of pictures during that time - and only being able to post pictures made last week. So I investigated the possibility of finding a really good used laptop deal on eBay. There were a few decent but not spectacular deals to be found, none of which got me off the mark.

an aside - it should be noted that I have found an app for the iPad that can do a very reasonable job of processing my RAW picture files - square crop, corner blur and vignette, add a (un-feahered) black border, and exposure / highlight / shadow adjustment if needed - but to date I have not been able to find an app, including the app from SquareSpace, that allows me to upload a file, create a thumbnail, and add a caption for posting on SquareSpace. That situation, of course, is another fine example of cross-software / platform babble that is problematic in the tablet world.

In any event, it was with great trepidation that I turned (by literally turning in my chair) to my 10 year old Apple iBook - OS10.2.8, 500MHz G3 processor, 384Mb RAM, and Photoshop 7.0 - that has been sitting unused on one of my work surfaces for the past 6-7 years. Just for the pure hell of it, and despite the probability that what was once a pretty decent machine would now be relegated to permanent paper weight status, I fired it up and ran a few files through PS to see what it might do.

Surprise, surprise - while it wouldn't recognize, much less process, my RAW files, it actually performed reasonably well if it was presented with jpeg files (programmed the E-P1 to record RAW+jpeg). Well enough, in fact, that I didn't see any problem with posting the results with a work-in-progress advisory attached. That is to say, a work-in-progress picture close enough to what a final picture - RAW converted and PS processed on my home desktop machine - would eventually come to look like after I put it through my hi-end wringer.

Of course, the "ancient" iBook did not have WiFi so I have to copy the work-in-progress file to a flash drive for transfer to the nearest internet connected machine available. In most cases, that will be the wife's work laptop (a PC that I believe can perform as an upload device without throwing a Microsoft hissy fit). In this specific case, it was my friend's iMac. In either event, I can upload a file and do the SquareSpace thing as per normal working procedures.

All of which is exactly what I did with the WE GRIND OUR OWN BEEF picture that I made this afternoon. All of which I accomplished without spending a dime .... well, to be perfectly accurate, I did have to spend $15 to buy a flash drive. But the way I figure it, that's about $1,975.00 less than I would have to spend if I went the new laptop + et al route.

WARNING: Avoid the use of hallucinogenic compounds when viewing the popup of the accompanying picture.