civilized ku # 2364 / ku # 1191-1200 (rain # 34-44) ~ death, decay, and dormancy

Autumn color # 1 ~ in the vicinity of Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen
Autumn color # 2 • click to embiggen
Autumn color # 3 • click to embiggen
Autumn color # 4 • click to embiggen
Autumn color # 5 • click to embiggen
Autumn color # 6 • click to embiggen
Autumn color # 7 • click to embiggen
Autumn color # 8 • click to embiggen
Autumn color # 9 • click to embiggen
Autumn color # 10 • click to embiggen
Autumn color # 11 • click to embiggenIf I could be accused of "chasing the light", it would be attributable to the fact that there is nothing like a rainy day to get me out and about in pursuit of picture making. Although, truth be told, it's not the light to be had on a rainy that draws me out, it's the complete atmospheric package which tickles my eye and sensibilities.

The light on a rainy day is rather flat and not very conducive to rendering the features / details of the landscape. However, the rain itself transforms the landscape with a fine mist (during a heavy downpour, not so fine), occasional fog, and a saturating effect on everything it touches so that the colors of the landscape, natural and man-made, become deep/dark, yet muted. Plain and simple, I just like the way things look on a rainy day.

That written, I mentioned in today's earlier entry that I was out and about with the intention of making pictures of Autumn which avoided the generic screaming fall foliage genre. Picturing in the rain certainly provides a good head start on that objective inasmuch as it stands diametrically opposed to the ubiquitous sunny Autumn day pictures which we all know and love(?). But that's not the whole of it.

While most think of Autumn as a rather celebrate-the-color season, the fact remains that Autumn is as much about death and decay as it is about riotous color. Beneath the color, there is a natural process of shutting things down and the beginning of a slow slide into dormancy and it is that aspect of Autumn which I appreciate the most. IMO, it's just as joyous as the radiant color of Autumn, simply because it's all part of the wonder of life.

At least that's how I see and picture it.

FYI, this entry is comprised of only half of the pictures I made during my recent out-and-abouting. I'll post the other half tomorrow.

FYI # 2, for those of you interested in such things, unlike my normal / regular picturing M.O., a fairly inordinate (for me) number of these pictures - #s 1, 5, 7, 9, and 10 - were made using my Zuiko 50-200mm f2.8/3.5 lens. This lens is anything but small so mounting it on any of my E-Px cameras results in a look akin to the tail wagging the dog. Fortunately, the lens has a rotating tripod mount collar so I mount the lens to the tripod, not the camera. BTW, it's one of sharpest lenses (at all focal lengths) I have ever owned. And, picturing in the rain wise, it's also sealed against dust and moisture.

civilized ku # 2362 ~ night light

Street light, fog, and trees ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenI've spent a fair amount of time over the past 2 days, on Tuesday in particular, going out around the nearby environs and neighborhood in search of the non-cliché Autumn Color picture. The net result, picture wise, is a collection of 24 pictures which I will post later today.

That written, making non-cliché pictures isn't all that much of a challenge for me. In large part, that's because long before - in fact, decades before - I ever read Brook Jensen's Things I've Learned About Photography (a list of 131 tidbits Jensen has learned from his experience), my M.O. for making picturing was, and has been ever since, in the manner advocated by Jensen in 1 of his tidbits:

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

Jensen prefaced that notion with the idea that ... "Most people see good pictures and photograph bad ones" ... a true statement if ever there were one.

IMO, most people make "bad" pictures - well, not actually "bad", but rather, rote copies of pictures they (and everyone else) have seen before - for 2 primary reasons: 1) most people are followers, not leaders, and, 2) most of their "inspiration" comes from pictures they have seen in mass media sources and, like Pavlov's dogs, they have been conditioned to salivate at the sight of sugar-coated dreck.

Given that few would contest reason # 1, let's concentrate on reason # 2 .... Mass media sources have one primary function above all others, and that is, according to an age old industry adage, to "sell soap". Or, to be more precise, to sell advertising so advertisers can sell their soap. And, it's a numbers game - the more people you can attract to your particular brand of media, the more the soap sellers are inclined to hop on board your train (with pockets full of $$$$$$) and go for a ride.

So, you might wonder, what does that have to do with picture making?

The answer is really quite simple - having spent my picture making career making pictures for those who sell soap - Kodak, Xerox, Bausch & Lomb / RayBan, Corning, Heinz, Quaker State, RT French, to name just a few - I can tell you with high degree of authority that the pictures made for clients such as those mentioned, as artful as they might seem on the surface of things, are nothing, more or less, than sugar-coated representations of their particular brand of soap. Everything about those pictures must, indeed, be "picture perfect".

And where do those clients place their picture-perfect pictures? In the most popular media (which is itself picture perfect) they can afford. How does that media become popular with the masses? I'm here to tell you that it's by catering / pandering, picture wise, to the lowest common denominator, aka: pretty pictures (National Geographic magazine, included) . Pictures in which everything is perfectly pretty - the light, the color, the saturation, the composition, et al, all of which are most often amped up to 11* on a scale of 1-10.

With the number of advertising impressions an average American is exposed to on a daily basis, estimated to be from a low of 300 to a high of 3,000, what all this pretty picture saturation (picture perfect media + picture perfect advertising) amounts to is a very effective campaign / indoctrination of telling people what a good picture is, which in a nutshell is very simple ...

.... if a picture doesn't slap you upside the head, kick you in the ass, sear your eyeballs, or immediately leave you breathless - with either its spectacular subject matter or its spectacular amped up execution (preferably both) - then it's just not a "good" picture. As the media machine keeps telling us, quiet, subtle, thoughtful stuff, picture wise and otherwise, is for pinheads, suckers, and wimps.

So, if imitating what you have been told by the mass media is a good picture - your rote model, so to write - have at it. As I have often stated, picture making wise, do whatever floats your boat. Don't let my picture making opinions get in your way, under your skin, or, take it personally. Just do it.

As for me, I have been lucky enough to see, and pay attention to the man behind the curtain, Picture Making Division. One might even say that, at times, I was the man behind the curtain, picture making wise. However, (WARNING: Elitist Alert) I was so much younger then, I'm wiser than that now.

*The concept of "amped up to 11" comes from the movie, This Is Spinal Tap, a send up of rockumentary films from the 70s and 80s. In an interview segment in that film, the band leader characters, David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel are revealed as competent composers and musicians, but they are also dimwitted and immature. Tufnel, in showing his guitar collection to DiBergi (the fictitious film maker), reveals an amplifier that has volume knobs that go to eleven; when DiBergi asks, "Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?" Tufnel can only reply, "These go to eleven."

civilized ku # 2361 ~ resuscitating a dead horse, aka: Pucky

Food / Ice Cream / Sunoco ~ near Keeseville, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenThere are those who think - quite obviously using the left side of their statistician besotted brain - that by posting the 10-millionth camera-club / calandar-art, sunup/down version of a tourist-trampled picturing hot spot, they are making the case that "it's the light, stupid". Whereas, right-thinking (literally and figuratively) picture makers know, as Brooks Jensen wrote:

There is no such thing as “good” or “bad” photographic light. There is just light.

Or, as CSN&Y ventured:

...if you can't be with the one you love (light wise) ... love the one you're with (light wise) ...

Light - in all of its many guises - is, after all, what a picture maker makes of it. And, IMO, it's much better to control the light (make the most of whatever light one encounters) rather than letting "the light" control you.

I mean, really, I just don't get the point of running / spinning around like a monkey chasing its own tail, even if the tail is "the light", out West somewhere, on a "nice" pile of rocks.

Update on Monday, October 1, 2012 at 12:49PM by gravitas et nugalis

BTW, relative to the "10-millionth camera-club / calandar-art, sunup/down version of a tourist-trampled hot spot" notion, Pep Ventosa, in his The Collective Snapshot body of work, has created a visually and intellectually (if you chose to go there) look at tourist pictures of famous landmarks / tourist-trampled picturing hot spots. Ventosa's pictures are comprised of 100s of overlapping tourist pictures (all found on the web and made from very similar picture making vantage points) of popular tourist picture making locations.

To my eye and sensibilities, Ventosa's pictures are visually interesting and suggestive of the fact that, if one were to view all of the individual pictures which make up one of his pictures, the effect/affect would be a vision-blurring and mind-numbing repetitiveness to the viewing experience. Not to mention the resultant boredom of seeing essentially the same thing over and over and over again.

IMO, and setting aside the perfectly legitimate activity of personal memory picture making, if the results of most your picture making endeavors could fit into one or more of Venturso's overlapping templates, perhaps (if all else fails) a psychoactive Psilocybin fungi induced trip or two might be beneficial in loosening up your un-imaginative picture making oeuvre - FYI, I hear tell, if you're out West, a visit to the Dakota Badlands in search of the mushrooms which grow out of / in buffalo dung is well worth the trip.

civilized # 2358-60 ~ look what I found

Mountain Drive-In ~ near Windham, NY - in the Catskill Park • click to embiggen
Mountain Drive-In ticket booth ~ near Windham, NY - in the Catskill Park • click to embiggen
Mountain Drive-In sign and screen ~ near Windham, NY - in the Catskill Park • click to embiggenLate in the day, while driving on a secondary road in the Catskills, I came across this ruin/relic.