squares² # 5 ~ common beauty / beauty in common

ku + civilized ku + food together • click to embiggen

civilized ku # 2403 ~ griddle / aftermath

Griddle, egg, grease ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenMany picture makers picture patterns found in nature or made by humankind and label them "abstract". However, IMO, and that of Sir Ansel ...

In a strict sense photography can never be abstract, for the camera is incapable of synthetic integration. ~ Ansel Adams

civilized ku # 2402 ~ frost

Frost ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen

When you began viewing the world through a camera lens, your senses sharpen as your mind and eyes are forced to focus on people and things never before noticed or thought about. I discovered that even if I didn’t always take a picture, the simple act of carrying a camera and searching for something to photograph greatly sharpened my powers of observation and allowed me to experience much more of life. ~ Kent Reno

ku # 1223 ~ quietening things and not enhancing them

Mountains ~ Jay, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen

While photography is often seen as the amplification of something, it is also good at doing the opposite, quietening things and not enhancing them, and then perhaps you want to look at the picture, or study it, more. ~ Stephen Gill

civilized ku # 2400-01 / diptych # 16 (ku # 1221-22) ~ no apologies necessary

Parsley, garlic, onion & sugar ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenPorch with vine ~ Keeseville, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenBlue Ridge Falls ~ North Hudson, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenOn more than one occasion, I have taken note of the fact that a number of Landscapist followers, who subscribe to the notion which postulates (in the words of Colin Griffiths) that "too many landscape photographs are of pretty subjects" portrayed "in an over saturated and exaggerated mirror of the truth", have found it necessary to add a disclaimer to their posted pictures which, in a manner of writing, apologize for making and posting a picture which might be judged to be a "pretty picture".

A most recent case in point can be viewed on an entry, River Cononish, Dalrigh, Scotland, on Colin Griffiths' blog, The "Rich Gift of Lins".

Most likely, this apologetic tendency stems from my ongoing crusade, re: freeing oneself (picture making wise) from the constraints of making pictures of (and in the manner of) what one has been told is a good picture. Or, my crusade could also be described as engaging in the activity of trying to win, as John Szarkowski put it, the "contest between a photographer and the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing"

That written, it was never my intent to instill a sense of picture making guilt in anyone. Rather, my intent has been to instill a sense of confidence in those seeking to find their way out of the pretty picture making morass. To help them understand that it's OK to head down the road not taken by most "serious" amateur picture makers and (once again as Colin wrote) to feel "very strongly that it is important for me to faithfully illustrate my responses to what I witness".

And, I most definitely did not mean or imply that responding to nature's manifestations of beauty were in any way out of bounds for that response. However, I do believe that, in responding to beauty in nature, one do so, as Markus Spring wrote in his response to Colon's disclaimer, in a manner that looks as though "the saturation slider was certainly not at eleven, and it doesn't look like too much HDR makeup or gold-blue polarizer ... When a landscape offers its true beauty like this one, there is no reason in the world to not record it as best as possible in all its facets. For me the problem arises with those consumers, that won't have a look at an image unless it slaps its saturation or exaggerated contrasts in their face".

IMO, as I wrote in a recent entry, the contest between a picture maker and the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing can be held anywhere ... be it on kitchen counter, a viney porch screen, or on the edge of a roaring wilderness river. It's all good.

And, BTW, a very nice picture, Colin.

civilized ku # 2399 ~ reflected light / ra ra, sis boom bah

State football playoff game ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenAt yesterday's NYS high school football playoff game, Saranac Lake HS vs Hoosick Falls HS (held at Au Sable Valley HS), I was privileged to hear one of the all-time classic football cheers - as the Hoosick Falls cheerleaders were passing in front of the Saranac Lake stands, a few female voices (student aged) were heard to chant, "I slept with your boyfriend last night."

Which reminded me a bit of one of my high school's chants. I went to an all boys (at that time, 99.9% white), elite/effete, Jesuit college preparatory high school, a school with very high academic standards / requirements. So, on those relatively rare occasions when we were about to lose an athletic event, our favorite cheer - a cheer which was very well received, especially when we were playing against an inner city school with a predominantly black student body - was,

"That's alright, it's OK. You'll be working for us one day."

Ahhhh. There's nothing better than a fine expression of school spirit.

civilized ku # 2398 ~ swimming in the shallow end of the gene pool

Exotic chicken ~ Asgaard Farm / Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenAs America's Quadrennial Bacchanal of the Cult of Personality comes to a close, the batshit crazies are coming of their caves ....

As seen on the Letters page in this morning newspaper:

Forces of disjunction

TO THE EDITOR: Can this nation, half free and half Marxist survive the forces of disjunction?

America would not be divided equally in disunion, but torn asunder by the whirlwind. War would not be limited to the 1 percent who volunteer but could become the new normal for us all. Survivor would not be on television, but the looter at your doorstep.

To trust your fortunes to the benevolence of socialist promises is to place your soul into the hands of ice. For the first time in history, the future of America is not a bright shining city on a hill but a deadly valley of dark shadows.

Obama makes it worse, and Romney makes it better, but only a return to the first principals of our Constitutional Republic can make it go away. The process must be democratic but the results constitutional, regardless of the will of the mob.

LEO J. SENEY
Dannemora

And, as heard from Bill Riley during election night coverage on Fox Faux News:

“Obama wins because it's not a traditional America anymore ... There are 50% of the voting public who want stuff, they want things. And who is going to give them things? President Obama ... The white establishment is now the minority ... And the voters, many of them, feel the economic system is stacked against them, and they want stuff ... People feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them things?”

Batshit fucking crazies.

But all I want to know is, where's the queue to get free stuff and free things from Santa Claus Barrack Obama? And, does he have a Porche 911 Carrera S available? Or, lacking that, maybe he might have some pitons, a climbing harness, some rope, and a lightweight LED lantern so I can at least climb out of the deadly valley of dark shadows.

Batshit fucking crazies ... as brainless as a metal chicken scratching at the dirt in a rusted cylinder.

BTW, 6 billion+ dollars later, we're exactly where we were last week, give or take a seat or two in the Congress. The only possible difference is that, maybe, just maybe, Obama might pull up his socks, grow a pair, step up to the plate and swing a bat upside the heads of the Republican obstructionists in the House of Representatives. Maybe. Then again, I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

civilized ku # 2397 ~ experience is everything

Jersey Shore ~ Stone Harbor, NJ • click to embiggenOn a recent entry, ku # 1219, wherein I wrote about my 8×10 view camera picturng MO, John Linn commented/asked:

The image capture area of 8 × 10 is order of magnitude larger than the full-frame 35 and of course full frame is order of magnitude larger than most digital camera sensors. At these scales the quality of optics is super critical, but still, is 8 × 10 quality really possible with comparatively tiny digital CCD and CMOS sensors?

my response: In a sense, pictures made with an 8×10 view camera ain't all that they're cracked up to be. Resolution / sharpness wise, upon close inspection, they are not all that sharp. That's because: a) lenses for the 8×10 format tend to not be the sharpest tack in the lens makers box, and, b) color negative film (my film of choice because of their extended exposure range / latitude and the fact that prints were my final destination) is layers and layers thick, which works against ultimate sharpness, and, c) making prints from a color negative involves the use of another lens.

That written, there is no question about an 8×10 film's ability to be enlarged, overall quality wise, to print sizes that would not be possible with smaller format film. Although, I would venture that up 16×20 or, alternately, up to the point where the image falls apart due to the limits of smaller format film, a print from a Hasselblad using a Zeiss lens would be sharper than that made by an 8×10 view camera. Then again, large format digital files, sharpness wise, blow 8×10 film put of the water at virtually any size.

However, IMO, the real reason to use an 8×10 view camera, at least in the analog/film days gone by, was the incredible smoothness of tonal and color transitions. There was just so much more grain acreage on which to spread the light that, on a print, the color and tonality are visually very "liquid"-like - a visual characteristic which can only be experience by viewing an actual print, as opposed to a reproduction thereof.

Now, all of that written, "is 8×10 quality really possible with comparatively tiny digital CCD and CMOS sensors?"

Never having done a side by side comparison, but relying upon my years of experience shooting and making prints from 8×10 negatives, not to mention having viewed quite a number of Shore and Meyerowitz (I have met and talked with both), et al prints, my answer would be, up to a point (i.e., the limits of enlargeable-ness), "yes".

I am consistently amazed by the print quality I get from small sensor files - keep in mind that I use µ4/3 cameras/sensors. Part of that is due to the fact that I know exactly what a C-print made from a large format color negative looks like and, in my file conversion and processing, I am tailoring the end result to closely resemble the look of a traditional C-print made from a color negative. My primary concern in converting / processing a digital file is to avoid the over-sharpened, over-saturated, overly contrasty look of the typical digital print.

By over-sharpened, over-saturated, overly contrasty, I do not mean taken to wretched excess, but rather, by comparison to the look of a traditional C-print made from a color negative. A look which is much "softer" than that of what many in today's digital realm aspire to obtain. Unlike the look of traditional transparency films (which digital developers seem to want to emulate), color negative film was superb / unsurpassed in its ability to capture and subsequently reproduce subtle colors and delicate tonal values.

That is the look I strive to attain. And, I am constantly amazed that the digital domain processing tools are, in the right / experienced hands, in fact, able to replicate. Exactly? No. Very close? most definitely, yes.