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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

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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 October 1, 2009 - October 31, 2009

Friday
Oct302009

civilized ku # 239 ~ Boo

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Empire diner goblin ~ NY, NYclick to embiggen
The wife and I are off to Montreal for the weekend. I'll be back on Monday with some new pictures.

Friday
Oct302009

ku # 643 / man & nature # 255-57 ~ I've had enough of this crap

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Tree trunk with lichenclick to embiggen
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Weed + lamp poleclick to embiggen
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Damp treesclick to embiggen
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Weed + grassclick to embiggen
There's an entry over at TOP - a site that I don't read much anymore since it went to really focusing on gear - that addresses the fact that in the digital age ...

... mastery itself has become more fugitive. Where computer photography is concerned, everything has a time-stamp, a sell-by date. No matter what it is, everything seems to march past on a steady progression from cutting edge to mainstream to obsolescent to unsupported. As soon as you're used to something and begin to master it, it changes. It hardly matters what it is: sensor, file type, color characteristics, image editor, calibration issues, printer models, even papers and inks.

It's no surprise that, with TOP's increased emphasis on gear (which started, not coincidently,when the site started linking to camera stores), the entry has garnered responses along the order of:

... I find it a wonderful challenge ... it keeps changing, so I have to constantly be upgrading my skills. This massages my aging brain cells and keeps my thinking tack sharp.

A true gear-head response to which I would respond - hey moron, all that time you're spending to "constantly be upgrading your skills" in order to "keep your thinking tack sharp" could be spent making pictures. How about upgrading that challenge, asshole. You and your type - those who keep feeding the upgrade machine - are fucking it up for the rest of us.

It's a real shame that so many of the Johnny(s)-come-recently to the picturing making dance will never know the utter joy that can be had from having a long-term dependable camera (and a few lenses) that you know like the back of your hand with which to make pictures. And having a dependable process (both MO-wise and processing / darkroom-wise) that you know like the back of your hand with which to make prints. All of which allows one to just make pictures.

If I were to leave a comment it would be more along the lines of:

For the most part, the only people who are en-rich-ed by the constant stream of hardware/software upgrades are the makers and purveyors of such things. And most brain-dead, pavlovian, and slavish consumers (goods Americans all) lap it all up at the trough of piggish and wretched excess thus encouraging and rewarding the never-ending stream of "upgrades".

A pox on all their houses.

The most recent and egregious example is Adobe's latest Lightroom upgrade that will only work on Intel-chip Macs. Gone are the days of backwards compatibility. Now you need to drop $4-5k on a new computer/memory and other related software upgrades (Intel compatible). To which I have just a few words - FUCK THEM and/or KISS MY HAIRY ASS.

What I wouldn't give for a massive consumer boycott against some of these companies - a significant number of people who just stop buying this shit for a year or two in order to send them a message along the line of, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.

Thursday
Oct292009

tuscany # 87 ~ man & dog, man & bicycle

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Bicycle parking in front of a Medici residence ~ Frienze, Tuscanyclick to embiggen
FYI, in this picture you can see what happens to outdoor Renaissance-era art - the sculpture by the entrance - from the effects of both the elements and pollution.

Thursday
Oct292009

tuscany # 86 / ku # 642 / man & nature # 254 ~ poetry

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Sunlight at the bottom of the steps ~ Viliano, Tuscanyclick to embiggen
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Sunlight on the side of the road ~ Wilmington, NYclick to embiggen
Once again Matt Dallos has offered us an interesting comment in his answer to the question, has photography failed you? (FYI, his answer was, "yes"):

.... I have just run into too many situations in the past 12-18 months when what I was seeing in the world and what I wanted to show about the world just couldn't be done with photography... I have found a new place for photography. It will become my poetry, showing what cannot and should not be explained.

I have always thought that photography was akin to poetry. Like good poetry, pictures can be lyrical, complex, and seemingly inscrutable with meaning(s) that requires delving into the feeling(s) they traffic in in order to "understand" their meaning(s). Good pictures, like good poetry, can open the door to many interpretations and, as such, they often ask as many questions as they pose answers. And, as is true of the best of Art, the more "experience" (in life, in the Arts, etc.) the viewer brings to the proceeding, the more can be gained from it.

That said, as I have mentioned on many occasions, in the medium of photography (unlike many of the other Arts), there is the tradition of the artist statement, which can be an invaluable aid in "interpreting" pictures.

Many of the simple-minded in the crowd object quite strenuously to the artist statement, most often on the grounds that they do not want to be "told what to think" or that a picture(s) that "needs" an artist statement is somehow faulty in as much as the artist has not made his/her intent perfectly clear. That, my friends, is pure unadulterated BS.

An artist statement is intended to let the viewers of an artist's work have a peek into the mind of the artist - what was on their mind as they made their work. It is not intended as a how-to-view-this-art instructional manual. One should take the artist statement for whatever worth the viewer judges it to have and the viewer should always do what people with a brain do - think for yourself when viewing a piece(s) of Art.

That said, let me be perfectly blunt - with one caveat: in my experience - those who object mostly vigorously to the idea of an artist statement, are generally those who could not write even the simplest of one for themselves.

BTW, I almost always read an artist statement after I have viewed any given work. That said, I always read an artist statement when one is available.

Wednesday
Oct282009

civilized ku # 237-38 ~ the grand canyon

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Near ground Zero ~ lower Manhattan, NYCclick to embiggen
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Wall Street ~ lower Manhattan, NYCclick to embiggen

Wednesday
Oct282009

man & nature # 253 ~  raindrops

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Raindrops at the drive-in ~ Pottersville, NYclick to embiggen

Tuesday
Oct272009

ku # 632-41 ~ a damn good question

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Rainy day # 1click to embiggen
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Rainy day # 2click to embiggen
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Rainy day # 3click to embiggen
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Rainy day # 4click to embiggen
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Rainy day # 5click to embiggen
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Rainy day # 6click to embiggen
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Rainy day # 7click to embiggen
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Rainy day # 8click to embiggen
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Rainy day # 9click to embiggen
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Rainy day # 10click to embiggen
Coincidental to an recent ongoing rumination I have been engaged in, Matt Dallos asked on man & nature # 252:

Have there been times when photography has failed you? .... in that you had something inside that you desperately needed to express or share and it couldn't be done with a photo. I guess I'm asking are there ideas/thoughts that haunt you that you cannot translate into photographs?

On one level, the easy answer is simply - no, never. On that level, since I rarely set out with any ideas/thoughts that I want to translate into pictures other than my standard desire to picture what I see - especially the beauty in the commonplace, I am rarely disappointed in the results. I have no trouble at all translating ideas/thoughts into pictures, which is distinctly different from the fact that I do have ideas/thoughts that I want to translate into pictures but simply have not attempted to do so and that fact does, indeed, haunt me.

That said, consider the 10 pictures that are part of this entry. I was out and about on a particular non-picturing mission. It was raining cats and dogs and we were in the very last stage of autumn foliage, a time that appeals to my eye and sensibilities. There were lots of dead leaves, half bare trees, and a thick rainy mist - one of my absolute favorite times / favorite weather conditions of the year.

Within a very short time, 20 minutes at the most, I made the 10 pictures that you see here and I am very pleased with the results. There is not a single picture that I would not be very happy to hang on my wall. And I have to say that this is a very typical picturing experience for me. In fact, if the wife and I were not not on a specific mission, I could have made 30-40 pictures to include a fair number of man & nature pictures as well.

However, that said, my recent ongoing rumination is concerned with just that issue. I really do not believe that my "standards" for what constitutes a very good picture (talking about my pictures here) are that low. At the risk of sounding immodest, I am very good at what I do.

Over the past 10 years or so I have made thousands of very good pictures - approximately 1,500 of which have been posted here on The Landscapist over the past 3 years . Sure enough, if I did a particularly critical edit, I might end up with "only" 500 or so "ultra-keepers" but that's still a lot of pictures.

So, on another level - that of sharing my ideas/thoughts - that's precisely, rumination-wise, where I do fear that either photography has failed me, or, quite possibly, that I have failed photography. In either case I am simply overwhelmed by the number of pictures. It seems at times that I have constructed a photographic Tower of Babel, too many voices all speaking at the same time. The result being that, perhaps, my ideas/thoughts are; 1) not clear, 2) too diluted, 3)too fragmented, 4) too weakened by too much information.

All those pictures can convey a sense of lack of focus in the work- and I'm not talking about my new 25mm f2.8 shallow DOF pictures.

That said, nearly 2 years ago I had hit upon the idea of discursive promiscuity as a viable approach to this "dilemma". To repeat my rationale for a discursive promiscuity presentation:

The conceptual point of the project / exhibit is multifaceted. Some, but by no means all, of the topics I wish to address are (in no particular order at this time):

1. The discursive and promiscuous nature of the medium of photography
2. The discursive and promiscuous nature of my body of work
3. The apparent casualness / randomness of my individual images v. the apparent casual / random arrangement in their presentation
4. Does the ease of digital capture and the resultant volume of images tell us more or less about the world we inhabit?
5. Complexity and chaos
6. The medium's narrative possibilities
7. Information saturation in a information media saturated culture
8. My discursive and promiscuous view of the Adirondacks v. the eco-porn calendar view
9. Fact v. fiction
10. The nature of beauty
11. Why I just flat out like saying the phrase "Discursive Promiscuity"

The longer I have ruminated about this, the more I am inclined to go for it. At the very least, making the effort to pull this together will ameliorate my feelings of / doubts about failure.

BTW, I mentioned that Matt's question was a damn good one. Even though the question was intended for me, feel free to give an answer here for yourself - and that includes Matt - has photography ever failed you?

Tuesday
Oct272009

tuscany # 85 ~ a tuscan house

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Rectory door ~ Bagnoro, Tuscanyclick to embiggen