The Online Photographer

Sony Question

Okay, I confess I know nothing. I am not a giant corporation that knows all, sees all, and tells little. I am not worth billions of dollars and I do not have minions strung around the globe doing my bidding every day. I am just one very little guy—that quaint thing, a photographer.

But Sony appears to have released three new primes while I was away. For me, a long-awaited and much hoped-for event, even though I have fallen away from actually shooting Sony. I have fallen away, but Sony is still an important "anchor" for me because my first DSLR was a Minolta, which became Sony, and I've used and loved the A900 and made the A850 my personal pick for Camera of the Year 2009 and have been waiting (albeit with fading hopes) for the A700 replacement, which would be (or would have been, as the case may be) the two-generations-on descendant of my old K-M 7D, and I still have some Minolta-now-Sony stuff kicking around the closet. Somehow I still regard my Sony apostasy as temporary.

Of the three new primes, one is a premium Zeiss (ZA) lens and the other two are consumer-grade (SAM) Sony lenses. The premium lens is a 24mm ƒ/2, and the other two, the SAM lenses, are a 35mm ƒ/1.8 and an 85mm ƒ/2.8.

So my initial thought was, well, fine, you can use a cheap 35mm on the A850. It's still fast. Even consumer lenses are pretty good in this day and age. I can deal.

But wait...oh, no...crap....

The Sony press release is not clear. Not clear at all. But I think that there is also a very strange mix with regard to formats. I think the beautiful, big, expensive 24mm is a full-frame lens, and the little slow consumer 85mm is a full-frame lens, but the lens in the middle is an APS-C-only lens.

Rub eyes with fists, do comical triple-take. Whaaaa?

Mind, I'm not saying the new lenses aren't useful, especially the 24mm. Many serious Sony shooters are going to love the 24mm. Well, at least, all those who use the two closely-related bodies Sony makes for serious shooters.

But if what you're after is a 35mm (like, well, um, me)  you can use the big WA as a 35mm on a reduced-sensor camera, an application for which it will be massively too big and too heavy, and in which application you would be throwing away at least three quarters of the capability you had to pay for—namely, it applicability as an ultra-wide on full frame. Or, you're still SOL. You do not have either a medium-sized, medium-speed 35mm to use on a full-frame Alpha camera or a smallish, light, reasonably-priced 35mm-equivalent to use on a reduced-sensor camera. You do have the option of cobbling together a mismatch between the high-grade 24mm lens and a consumer body. Meanwhile, the prices for used samples of the old Maxxum 35mm ƒ/2 AF lens continue to climb into the stratosphere on Ebay. Not much demand, but even less supply.

Photo via Photoclub Alpha

Would it be so hard to just reissue the old Maxxum lens? If I were a giant corporation worth billions of dollars with minions strung around the globe, I would throw that little batwing-sized bone to my poor, groveling, impecunious fans. They did it with a bunch of the other old Minolta primes. Why not this one? Which leads to my question.

Is the guy at Sony who is deciding what lenses to provide a) a super-smart but ruthless and heartless capitalist, who dresses like an evil Karl Lagerfeld and has a longhaired white cat in his lap which he strokes when he fires people, and knows what I need but just does not give a flying ninja kick; or b) the slightly cretinous nephew of the Vice-Chairman who falls asleep and drools during meetings and who has to work in someone's department and just please keep him the hell out of the PlayStation division, and never mind that he wouldn't know a camera from a 12-speed blender? 

It's not going to help with my depression to know the answer; but I'm still curious, in a listless, crushed sort of way.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by amcananey: "Okay, I'll venture a guess. The A900 and A850 are, as you surmise, the cameras that the new 24mm is most likely to be used on. The A900 and A850 are high resolution cameras without video. They apparently are inferior to the Nikon and Canon equivalents when it comes to high ISO work. Accordingly, these cameras are most prized by landscape photographers, who are likely to be more interested in a 24mm lens than a 35mm lens. As much as you want a fast, reasonably light 35mm full-frame lens, I'm not sure there is as much demand for it as you seem to think. The trend recently has been decidedly in favor of people using ever-wider lenses (e.g., the Nikon 14–24mm ƒ/2.8 and 16–35mm ƒ/4 lenses and the Canon 17mm T/S lens). Many see 35mm as a boring, in-between focal length. They either go wide, or they go for a 'normal' lens that is slightly longer. Thirty-five millimeter is probably most likely to be used by photojournalists, who would also be more likely to use a Nikon D700/D3/D3s (and yes, I know that Nikon is missing a modern 35mm full-frame lens...one is 'supposedly' coming 'soon') or a Canon 5D Mark II.

"And the 35mm ƒ/1.8 actually makes a lot of sense on a cropped-sensor camera. It is a fast 50mm-e. I disagreed with you when you complained about the Nikon 35mm ƒ/1.8, and I disagree with you now. The more I use the Nikon lens, the more I think it is a brilliant lens, especially for the price. Fifty millimeter was my favorite focal length on film, and now I have a digital equivalent.

"So I actually think there are strong reasons and solid logic behind Sony's decision to release these lenses in the form it did.

"Not that that helps you at all..."

Mike replies: Just two cavils with your sensible analysis. "Many see 35mm as a boring, in-between focal length" ...except for anyone who shoots an M6, M7, or M9 Leica (who are by necessity prime-lens shooters). For them it is the most popular normal lens. I'm just sayin'. Second, if the Maxxum 35mm ƒ/2 had been reissued, what would stop you from using that as your 50mm-e on your reduced-sized sensor camera? And why not kill two birds with one stone, instead of one bird with one stone?

Another solution to my dilemma would be for me to just not be so gol-darned cheap. I had an opportunity to buy a minty copy of the ideal iteration of the Maxxum 35/2 for I think $850, or just under 3X what it cost new. Many people could bring themselves to do that. Many perfectly sensible people. Me, on the other hand....

Featured Comment by jallu: "This was my reaction too upon finding that the 35mm is not a full frame. I would have bought an A850 a long time ago if the old Minolta 35mm ƒ/2 had been reissued at a reasonable price."

Featured [partial] Comment by Doroga: "They say that some glass types are not available now for 35/2, so it could not be reissued just like other Minolta lenses...."

Featured Comment by John Camp: "I've never understood this whole Sony/Minolta thing. It's like some sad cult based on the Yugo. Why would you even get involved? The Minoltas made my butt look handsome, and the Sonys managed to extend that aesthetic. The Sony cameras, I'm afraid, are like most other Sony products—a little tap-dancing, a big viewing screen on Times Square, and very little real interest in the product other than as something to peddle. I find it hard to scrape up any sympathy for Sony users; they should simply behave like adults, swallow their pride and move to Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Panasonic, Pentax, Leica, etc."

Featured Comment by Mark Hespenheide: "Twelve hours after first reading them, John Camp's comments still drive me to the closest I've come to fanboy anger in fifteen years of reading the internet. I don't have any great love of Sony the corporate entity; in fact, their reputation for poor support of old consumer electronics almost kept me away from the A850. I'm glad it didn't. In concert with a good lens, I'm getting 16x20" prints subjectively equal to drum-scanned 645 or 6x7. I thought I was being an adult when I rented a 5d2 and didn't like the splotchy shadows even at ISO 100. I thought I was being an adult when I realized I could get a 24mp full-frame camera for $6000 less than Nikon's. I thought I'd swallowed my pride when I realized a consumer electronics company made a better camera, with better handling and features more actually useful to me than the Canons I'd been shooting for a decade. Thanks for letting me rant."

Mike replies: Forgive them, they know not whereof they speak (although I took John's comment as being quite funny. After that same twelve hours, I was still chuckling). In my opinion the Sony A900 and A850 are among the greatest cameras of the new millennium, meaning, the whole digital era. For me the A900 comes out ahead of the 5D Mark II and the D700 by two and five lengths at the finish line, respectively, that is if we decide we're going to go ahead and think and talk of cameras in terms of horse races. Both those others are great cameras too, don't get me wrong. Yet, oddly, the Sony—Sony!—is more of a purist photographer's camera than either the Canon or the Nikon.

It would truly sadden me, but not surprise me, if Thom Hogan is right and Sony is moving away from full-frame sensors for good. I also really liked the K-M 7D/A700 and would have loved to see that genetic line continue to be nurtured and improved; but then, I also loved the F-505/707/717/828 line and was very saddened when it ended with the abruptly orphaned—and quite briliant—DSC-R1. A great tragedy that Sony doesn't have the tradition to respect or protect its own products as much as it should, and that, for whatever reasons, so many photographers don't experience and appreciate them either.

Mystery Solved! They're by Uncle Earl

Miriam I. Walton, Uncle Earl's niece, on Oakland's Channel 2 last night.

With all the publicity about the alleged "Ansel Adams" pictures bought by Rick Norsigian at a Fresno yard sale over the past few days, the real identity of the pictures may have come to light.

KTVU Channel 2 in Oakland broke the story on its evening news last night. As soon as a local woman named Miriam I. Walton saw the pictures, she recognized them as her Uncle Earl's. Earl Brooks was a lifelong resident of Fresno, where the 65 negatives were found, and often photographed at Yosemite. Mrs. Walton has four of his prints, one of which is nearly identical to one of the Norsigian pictures, with the same shadows and what look to be the same clouds after a few minutes of movement.

The evidence is as yet preliminary, but I hereby place my "all in" bet that the Rick Norsigian glass plates turn out to have been taken by "Uncle Earl" Brooks. (Even if they aren't, I'll still bet they're not by Adams. They just don't look like him to me.)

You can read the story and see the video here.

I might add that KTVU Oakland has restored my shaky faith in the news media somewhat. Finally—a little actual reporting, instead of the endless repetition of a story that would be so very appealing if only it were true.

...Oh, and it looks like Uncle Earl is having a one-man show in Beverly Hills!*

Mike
(Thanks to Brian Vahey)

*I can't take credit for this great line. It's Brian's. Too good not to use, though.

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by john robison: "So...forty-five dollars is about it then?

"Here is a true story, not as dramatic and more common but still keen.

"Sitting at home and the phone rings. It's a friend who has bought a camera bag at a yard sale for $5 that has 'some old film camera stuff in it' and would I take a look. Sure, say I and drop by for a look. It's a Voigtlaender Prominent with 35, 50, and 100mm lenses and surprise surprise it works! There were a few light swipe marks on the front elements but I still managed to sell the kit for her for $600 to a guy who buys for Japanese collectors. You shoulda seen the look on her husband's face when I got back from the camera show and handed him the cash."

Featured Comment by Jeff K.: "I have been fascinated by this story all week. From what I have seen so far I don't believe that the images are Ansel's, but the Uncle Earl case hasn't been made too well yet either.

"One things that hasn't been talked about is how Ansel made a lot of money in the beginning of his career—selling large numbers of prints of Yosemite cheaply. In his biography (Alinder) it mentions that at one point he made $10,000/year selling prints of his work developed by an assistant out of the Yosemite lab. The price was just $1 each, or three for $2.50. (Can you imagine!!)

"Since we haven't seen any other work still in Uncle Earl's family or any actual negatives from him, another possibility comes up. Maybe he bought the print of the Jeffrey Pine on a trip to Yosemite and liked it so much he had it framed. Who knows, but it is possible.

"That said, the case made by Adams' grandson is the most compelling case against the negatives being Ansel's. You can see it on the official Ansel Adams gallery website. It was enough to convince me despite what I wrote above.

"It is also worth mentioning that prints done by an actual assistant of Adams are still being sold there for under $250, from Adams' original negatives. I don't care how unique they are; where does Norsigian get off trying to sell prints from these for $7500 apiece?"

Featured Comment by Patrick Alt: "I was and am one of the people who was contracted by Rick Norsigian and his law team to help in the evaluation of these negatives. I want to state up front that I have absolutely no financial stake in this work or subsequent sales and have only my integrity to base my conclusions as to the veracity of these negatives. Admittedly, I am somewhat perplexed as to the Uncle Earl print, but there is a great deal of additional evidence about these negatives that Uncle Earl's place in this saga does not overturn. I have held each one of the 65 negs in my hand, have examined them with knowledge of his equipment, the people he photographed in these negatives, all of whom were known by him, Virginia Adam's handwriting, the fire damage, and last but not least is they look like his work. The first time I saw them, I immediately and viscerally knew this to be his work. But this aspect of my evaluation is a subjective opinion on my part and could not be quantified. However, the rest of the evidence is overwhelming and it is still my opinion that these are Ansel's work.

"To clarify some misunderstandings, these pieces were not originally found in Fresno, Earl's home, but in Los Angeles by the original seller. Ansel's teaching at Art Center in the early '40s puts these negs where Ansel was. Did Earl ever make it to L.A.? That is but one question that needs to be addressed. What equipment and format was Earl's print made from? Also, was Earl a member of the Sierra Club at this time and if he was, he would have known Ansel, so perhaps they both went photographing together. After all, Ansel was only 20 years old when the Jeffries Pine image was made, hardly the master he would grow to become. There are several scenarios that could explain the similarity of these two images, but it does not cancel out all of the other evidence found to support the authorship of this work to be Ansel's."

Your Scanner Needs Cleaning!

By Ctein

No doubt some of you digital printers have been gloating at the hoops Mike has been jumping through to get himself established for traditional darkroom printing, as well as the myriad comments from all and sundry about the efforts they have to go through to control their printing environments. Problems with stray light, problems with light proofing, problems with safelights. All to make those unruly photons be where folks want them and not where they don't. How nice that digital printing is not heir to the same problems, don't you think?

Think again.

The truth about shmoosh
When was the last time you had your scanner cleaned? I'm not talking about the exterior surfaces like the platen on a flatbed scanner or the film carrier for a film scanner. I'm talking about the interior optics—the back side of the platen, the first surface mirrors inside the scanning head, the relay lens that's between those mirrors or between the mirror and the CCD array (see figure 1). If you've got a scanner that's more than a handful of years old, I can pretty much guarantee that stray photons are degrading your scans. And it's almost certainly crept up on you so gradually that you never even noticed.

Here's the thing. Even though all those internal optical surfaces are protected from direct exposure to the environment, the scanner isn't airtight. Dust creeps in, especially with a film scanner, which can't really be well sealed at all. In addition, the plastics, lubricants, and other synthetics inside the scanner outgas. You know that smudgy haze of plastic volatiles that appears inside your automobile windshield and can make it really, really hard to see when you're driving into the sun? Scientists call this "shmoosh." And, yeah, your scanner is like that. Or it will be. It just takes time.

Fig. 1. This is what the typical light path in a flatbed scanner and a film scanner looks like. The exact arrangement of mirrors and lenses will depend upon the scanner, but this gives you the idea. Shmoosh will show up on the underside of the glass platen, on the surfaces of mirrors, and on exposed lens surfaces.

What's the effect of that veil of deposits and dust that's coating mirrors and lenses? If it's prints you're scanning, it'll be something like figure 2. In mild cases, the veiling will be uniform and you may not even realize it's happened and that you're losing shadow detail. In severe cases, the deposits can be nonuniform, especially on the underside of the platen, and you see tonal variations in your scans that aren't in your originals but appear in the same place every time you do a scan.

Fig. 2. Shmoosh degrades shadows. At the least, it veils them; in severe cases, it may be a irregular enough that you don't even get uniform density, as seen in the lower third of this photograph.

In film scans, you may get the same kind of degradation as in figure 2, but the highly directional transmitted light and the high density range in some films (color slides and high-contrast black-and-white negatives) means you're also likely to see haloing, like in figure 3. When the highlights start bleeding, it's time for cleaning. Actually, it's way past time.

Fig. 3. Film scans can not only suffer a loss of contrast in dense areas but also have haloing when there is shmoosh in the light path. In positive scans, like what's shown here in the diagonal upper half, the halos will be light intruding into dark areas. In negative scans, it will be dark bleeding into highlights.

No help from me
Now here's the bad news. I won't tell you how to do this yourself. There are so many ways to go wrong and ruin your scanner. If you don't get it reassembled exactly the way it was when you took it apart, components may be out of alignment and you won't get sharp scans. The glass platen in a flatbed scanner is pretty durable, but the interior optics in any scanner aren't. The mirrors have their reflective coatings on top of the glass, not behind it, to avoid ghost images. Those coatings are very easy to scratch.

If you're good at mechanical assembly and disassembly and know exactly how to clean first-surface optics, go for it. If you don't, you need to hand this off to a trained professional. Don't email me asking me for tips or advice. I'm not going to be the "enabler" on this one.

Unfortunately, because I can do all the stuff myself, I don't know the names of good repair people to send scanners to for proper cleaning. Do any readers have recommendations?

Ctein

Ctein's regular weekly column appears on Thursday mornings. We're on summer hours, so for now that means late mornings.

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Maybe You Kids Hold These Nice Flowers Instead

So...I've been trying to write this little item for half of today, and I'm afraid I'm not doing very well. I have to watch what I say. It's a real tragedy, and a man is dead. I don't want to make light of that. But what would you think if you came across a headline that said, "Sicilian Wedding Party Accidentally Kills Wedding Photographer"? Something to do with a certain white vegetable that makes your eyes water when you slice it?

I'm sure there have been wedding photographers, in the throes of some particularly trying job, who've thought, "please, somebody just shoot me." But nobody means it literally.

Unfortunately, it's what literally befell Sicilian wedding photographer Calogero Scimeca, who was accidentally shot in the head while he was photographing the nuptials of 25-year-old Ignazio Licodia and 22-year-old Valentina Anitra, in Palermo. Details are sketchy. Scimeca might have been posing a shot—er, a photograph—of the couple holding loaded hunting rifles. Is this a tradition? A special request? One hopes the photographer wasn't actively improvising props, as metro.co.uk has it. It's unclear who was actually handling the offending firearm when it went off. It's possible some party or parties could be charged.

One of the great peculiarities of human nature is that once something becomes a "tradition," it becomes almost impossible for people to simply let go of it and just...change. Even when the change would obviously be...uh, what shall I say—sensible? Logical? Urgently indicated? (I don't want to anger any Sicilians.) Anyone who has ever watched more than ten minutes' worth of wedding-video bloopers ought to know that loaded firearms might not be a good element to add to that general mix. Yet, in Sicily, according to writer Corky Siemaszko of the New York Daily News, which reported this story, "It's...a tradition for guns to be fired off at family events and not unheard of for partygoers to get hurt." 

So, stop bringing guns to weddings maybe? Does that make too much sense?

To make matters worse—assuming such a thing is possible—Scimeca was not even supposed to be photographing the Licodia-Anitra wedding. He was covering for a friend.

Ouch.

Let that be a lesson to you the next time one of your friends asks you to cover a job for them. Come to think of it, has any good ever come of covering a job for another photographer at the last minute? I've had at least one absurdly bad experience I can think of. None to remotely rival poor Calogero Scimeca's, very fortunately for me.

I'm completely winging this next bit, but I'll speculate that the fatal prop mishap probably happened after celebratory alcohol had started to flow. It has that vibe.

According to their Facebook pages, Licodia and Anitra are now married.

Calogero Scimeca was 45.

Mike
(Thanks to Bob Zimmerman)

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by John Krill: "Why was Robert Capa in Vietnam when he was killed? He was covering for another Life photographer, Howard Sochurek, who had to go back to the States for family reasons."

Featured Comment by Luigi Caponetto: "Mike, I perfectly agree with your argument...but I happen to be Sicilian...and mostly concerned not to create another example of 'how information takes on a life of its own' (citing Alex Vesey's comment on the Norsigian case you reported about).

"From what I can read from Italian news agencies, Scimeca (that was his correct name: not Scimea) [Thanks Luigi—I made the correction in the post —MJ] was video recording the party when 'someone' (apparently Scimeca himself) came up with the idea that having a rifle as a prop for his own video would be cool.

"A horrible mixing of lack of skills in handling a weapon, negligence, and of course complete irresponsibility killed Scimeca: the owner of the rifle is now charged with manslaughter.

"Game hunting is a quite popular activity in Sicily, amongst other various weird traditions which are still followed there...but shooting with weapons during parties is definitely in vogue only among fools."

Featured Comment by John Allen: "I was in Sicily when this happened, staying not far away in Trapani, and from reading the coverage in the Giornale di Sicilia I can confirm that this incident did not take place during the wedding itself, but in a video/photo session during the morning before the wedding, with the groom and the groom's parents. The photographer was making a video at the time. The gun was apparently taken out because the groom's father is a keen hunter and liked the idea of being filmed with a gun in his hand. Weddings are a major activity in Sicily during the summer and it is common to encounter couples being photographed in places that make good backgrounds. I am not aware of guns being a normal feature of Sicilian weddings—this was just a very, very sad one-off accident."

New Kindle Is Only $189

Sah-weet. And there's a WiFi-only, non-3G model for only $139.

Check out the killer bullet points at the link...or, if you don't wanna, I'll synopsize them for you:

• Better
• Better
• Better
• Better
• Better
• Better
• Better
• Better
• Better
• Better
• Better
• Better
• Potentially cool

I don't have $189 to spare at the moment, but I think I'm eventually a goner. Further resistance is now futile?

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Pavel Derka: "I pre-ordered the version two Kindle a month or so before it came out. As someone who likes to read literature rather than magazines, but who reads only in infrequent bursts, I really appreciate the Kindle. I've picked it up after three months and there it is—an 80% charge. Keep in mind as well that 80% charge on a Kindle is a week or so of constant use—so it is to me very comforting to have my library of books where I can trust I can read whenever I feel like it no matter how much I've neglected the device. The weak points of the Kindle such as the lag to refresh the page are non-issues with me and the lack of color probably a benefit. Simple and single purpose, just the way I love it.

"As soon as the cellular version of the iPad came out I bought one of those as well. It is a great device which needs a bit of second or third generation maturity, but very impressive nevertheless. I was going to sell my Kindle, as it seemed redundant and second best.

"To my surprise however I slowly started to pick up the Kindle more and more often as the first 'wow' blush of the iPad wore off. Little annoyances such as the glare and the way the flipping of pages became tiresome and especially how comparatively fragile the iPad seemed to me made me realize how the Kindle is not about flash, and it can't do all those other things, but that it does that one thing so so well—that now the iPad is gone. I sold it nicely for $200 more than I paid for it. The iPad made me feel even more appreciation for how great the Kindle is for me for the kind of reading that I do, so much that now I may buy the larger version and keep both for whether I want to go light or read in a somewhat better way with the larger screen.

"The iPad is a great device. I plan to get another when they iron out the little things such as the way the keyboard doesn't work as expected in many programs. I do know now however that no matter how great the next version of the iPad, the Kindle is staying, and it is what I will do most of my reading on. Sometimes simple and single-purpose is best. Why is it that it feels like camera companies can't spare a model or two with that ethos in mind?"

Monkey-Butt Numbers

The title of this post comes from a memorable quote by my brother Scott, who, after having an alleged statistic tossed in his face during some long-forgotten brotherly disputation, said, "Where did you get that number? Did a monkey pull it out of its butt?"—except he used a slightly less middlebrow term for "butt."

That's the first thing that occurred to my brain when I returned from vacation and found, to my amusement, that the old matter of the Norsigian plates has breathlessly burst into the public's attention again. This time, many articles are reporting ad nauseam that the prints and glass plates are "worth" $200 million.

Newsies luvva big number. And the public laps it up. That $200 million figure has already resounded across the web and the mainstream media—I'd tell you to try Googling "Ansel Adams $200 million," but you don't have to, because I already did—CNN, Fox News, the Beeb, HuffPo, boingboing, MSNBC, The Telegraph, on and on it goes—everybody's breathlessly repeating the nice glistening new monkey-butt number. Say it once and get enough echo, and you can manufacture truth out of anything.

Rick Norsigian. Photo by Andy Holzman, dailynews.com

If you're coming late to this, basically what happened is that ten years ago, an evidently perfectly nice man named Rick Norsigian, self-described as a "construction worker-painter," bought a bunch of old glass-plate negatives and some prints made from them at a garage sale, for $45. First he let them sit around for several years. Then he got the notion that they must be the plates Ansel Adams lost in a 1937 fire in Yosemite. So he took them around to all sorts of museums and auction houses and photography people, almost all of whom said, in effect, hmm, sorry, but we don't think they're by Adams. Now, the "news"—the new news, I mean—is that "experts" (who, exactly? Not photography experts) have concluded the truth of the claim and that, thus authenticated, the material is "worth" that gigantic magic number.

This controversy has been going on for years now and I still don't buy it. There are some things we have to take on faith, and sometimes the faith we have to accept is that we ourselves have not the faintest idea what the truth is. With other things, in areas where we have more expertise and confidence, we're less afraid to exercise our own opinion and intuition. I'll just say that I don't have any trouble making up my own mind about this based on the images I've seen, and personally don't believe the connection. I think the evidence is scanty and hopeful (how could Adams believe he lost a bunch of negatives in a cabin fire when he really hadn't? Just that one detail stretches credulity) and the visuals don't bear out the connection: I've seen Adams's early work in person and the ones I've seen of these just don't look like his to me. At best, this was the work of someone who went out photographing with Adams—a friend, photographing alongside him. At best.

But even if they are Adams's plates, that dollar number is still pure fantasy, concocted for the happy consumption of the hoi polloi. Art product has historical, associative, and novelty value, true, but it also has intrinsic value—its value as art—and if these are Adams pictures then they predate the epiphany he had with the red filter looking up at Half Dome, and they'd have to be judged as what they look like: early, tentative efforts, failed attempts. (Although that might in turn help explain why Ansel was so uncharacteristically casual about their disposition.)

Either way, take the big ka-ching with a grain of salt. In my opinion it's a new aspirant for the monkey-butt number hall of fame, like Donald Trump's alleged $5 billion net worth and the "three billion" people that supposedly watch the Academy Awards every year (if you look into it, the best real numbers for those two things are about $150–300 million and 80–100 million people worldwide, respectively). Until further notice, I'll continue to side with Bill Turnage and the Adams heirs.

Mike
(Thanks to Dan Gorman, David M. Allerton, and several other tipsters)

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Bill Stothers: "And then this, from the Chicago Reader. I should add that I found the link on the terrific Prison Photography blog."

Howard Simmons, then and now. Photos by Pam Rice (right)
and Saverio Truglia (photo of photo, left)

Mike replies: Yes, that's another not-new but still really great story. In fact, it probably deserves more press than the latest round with the Norsigian plates...except that there's no big number to attach to it. In any event, that's the best article I've seen yet about the Howard Simmons situation. Thanks Bill.

Featured Comment by Geoff Wittig: "Valuation in the art world is always a dicey proposition, as it's dependent upon all sorts of nebulous characteristics of a piece, from perceived scarcity and provenance to plain fashion and 'group-think.' But I have a very hard time accepting anything like those stratospheric values for early Ansel Adams glass negatives. The primary artistic virtues of Ansel Adams' work are embodied in the æsthetics of the interpretive fine print. We've all read his dictum: the negative is the score, the print is the performance. Even assuming they're genuine, these negatives are merely the score; like digital raw files, they're really just 'potential' photographs. Moreover, they're from Adams' early work, before he had found his voice. John Szarkowski argued that this early work may have been more lyrical and 'pure,' artistically superior to his more dramatic mature work; but that's certainly not how the market for Adams' prints sees it. Prices commanded by his 'greatest hits' from the late 1930s to 1950s are much higher than for his quieter early prints.

"And just look at the difference in the price of an original Ansel Adams print, versus a print from the same negative made by the extremely talented Alan Ross. They may look pretty similar (indeed, Mr. Ross's print may well look better), but the prices are orders of magnitude apart. And Alan Ross worked in the darkroom side by side with Ansel Adams for years. It's very difficult to imagine unauthorized prints from these 'bootleg' negatives, by a no-name printer, going for huge prices.

"Finally, I'd argue that the Ansel Adams name does not guarantee colossal prices all by itself, without some sort of æsthetic basis. His color photographs are widely considered to be quite ordinary, and as a consequence one can still buy original Ansel Adams Kodachromes for a few hundred dollars. While a fragile, soot-stained glass negative (that may or may not have been exposed and developed by Ansel Adams) might be an interesting tchochke, I'd argue that it's not a photograph."

Featured Comment by Alex Vesey: "I literally jump-start my brain with this blog and a cup of coffee in the morning (not always in that order, but close enough).

"I was hoping Mike would address this topic. Aside from the questions over the content of the find, the story offers a fine example of how information takes on a life of its own, and those passing it along never bother to verify its content. The news process that feed the Iraq invasion is of a similar nature. I see this in student exams as well: they will form study groups, and divide the creation of review materials to different people. If one gets the review material wrong—they all get it wrong and since I see the pattern when I grade the exam, we have to have a little chat on the value of cross checking.

"The diffusion of misinformation is actually quite viral when you think about it."

Mike replies: Alex, I'm floored by this aspect of this story. We definitely have to discuss this more on the site in the future.

'I Shall Return'

Gone Fishin': I hate leaving TOP alone for as much as a day, much less a week, but I'm taking some time off to recharge my batteries and, cliché of clichés, work on my novel. I've given myself a deadline of one year to finish my attempt at a thriller, and, despite being a preposterously front-loaded work project with a ludicrously low prospect of ever paying off, I've decided to do it, just for the experience. Like seeing the Grand Canyon. Which I have also never done, unless seeing it from 28,000 feet on the way to L.A. counts.

It's possible that when I get to the second draft I'll post it here, chapter by chapter, so I can get feedback. (That presumes I'll get the first draft draft done, though, which is a big presumption. As we used to say when I was a kid, don't hold your breath or you'll turn blue and die.)

So, anyway, TOP will be quiet for a week. But, like some sort of Socialist-Internationalist-Environmentalist* MacArthur**, "I shall return."

Note that comments will not be posted in the interim. I have to go cold turkey, albeit temporarily.

Photo by Vanessa Winship

Vanessa Winship: Regular readers might recall that Vanessa Winship is one of my favorite contemporary photographers (based mainly on her book Schwarzes Meer [Black Sea], which still can't be purchased in the U.S. but is now available in the U.K. and can mostly be seen online [see "Black Sea: Between Chronicle and Fiction" parts 1 and 2]). Amazingly, she's having her very first U.S. show in the city right next door to me, Milwaukee, at Deb Brehmer's Portrait Society gallery. The opening is on Friday, July 23rd, from 6 to 9 p.m. I understand Vanessa will not be there, although she might come for a visit during the run of the show.

The Portrait Society is located in Milwaukee’s Third Ward on the fifth floor of the Marshall Building, 207 E. Buffalo Street, Milwaukee, Wis., 53202. Call 414/870-9930 for information, or see the gallery's blog.

Also opening the same night is John Shimon and Julie Lindemann's "Real Photo Postcard Survey." I don't really know a great deal about this interesting pair of artistic collaborators, but I own, and like, their quirky, thoughtful little book of portraiture, Unmasked and Anonymous (available in the U.S. and in the U.K.).

BP Propaganda: AmericaBlog has been following the dispiriting but oddly entertaining saga of BP's hamhanded attempts to create plausible propaganda photographs to illustrate its narrative of the "American Chernobyl" it created in the Gulf of Mexico. I could do a better job of Photoshop than this, and I'm no good at all with photo illustration techniques.

Quick, how many submarines in Idaho? Did you know Stan Banos got an Amex Grant?

Photo by Phil Davis

Phil Davis online: Fred Newman, who is truly a nice man, has put up a small portfolio by our late mutual friend Phil Davis, of a selection of the environmental portraits Phil did in and around the town of Dexter, Michigan, mostly in the '70s. Phil was mainly known as an educator, textbook author, and the developer of Beyond the Zone System, which takes Ansel Adams and Fred Archer's fairly crude Zone System to a much more rigorous level as sensitometry. But he was also quite a talented and certainly an accomplished photographer, a fact that is too little known because his philosophical stance was that the pleasure in photography was in the process rather than the result. His commercial advertising photographs of Detroit automobiles from the 1950s and 1960s were wonderful.

Quite coincidentally, as a professor of photography at the University of Michigan he taught Peter and David Turnley.

Piff Paff Puff: I saw a really nice little movie a few nights ago, streamed from Netflix. The title in English is "Everlasting Moments," a phrase which refers to photographs. Photography plays a very prominent part in the story, although it's really a feminist film in the best sense. It recounts the true story told by Maja Larsson, an elderly and distant relative of the director, about her parents, especially her mother, Maria, who, despite heavy domestic responsibilities and an abusive husband, attempted to "find herself" as both a creative and an independent individual by learning and practicing photography.

Stories that are true can have a bracing effect on movies, because reality is a bad writer. Revenge is never quite satisfying, bad characters have their good sides, longed-for events never come about, characters persist in not doing what we can very plainly see they should do, latent romances are never fulfilled, and the wrong people die in the end. Any screenwriter worth his union card wouldn't have been able to resist torquing this story around into sentimentalist piffle. Reality insists on throwing wrench after wrench into the plotline. It keeps the film from falling into formula, gives the narrative a useful awkwardness. I like that.

"Everlasting Moments" (the original title is "Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick") is a 2008 film by the Swedish director Jan Troell, in Swedish, with subtitles. It will seem European to people used to Hollywood—especially Hollywood lately. One internet troglodyte I encountered called it a "mopefest," which presumably means that although it has explosions, carnality, and violence against women, it doesn't have enough explosions, carnality, and violence against women. It does indeed move at a slowish pace, though, and takes time to linger on the purely photographically beautiful, which many directors would dare not do these days. The film was shot on 16mm converted to 35mm to heighten the period feeling, but I think it adds to the photographic interest of the cinematography.

Anyway, assuming you typically don't lack patience for langorously-paced movies with subtitles, warmly recommended. It would probably make most anybody's list of the top ten movies about photography or for photographers.

László Kovács

Addie and Mose, one more time: And finally, speaking of cinematography...purely on a whim, I watched Peter Bogdanovitch's "Paper Moon" again last night. It remains a curious movie, a genre-bender, but I've always liked the fact that it is sentimental, humorous, lyrical, and elegiac while at the same time remaining resolutely amoral. (Such a movie today might be the opposite—harder, more bitter, much more graphic, but sanctimonious.) The combination is just as odd—and as oddly satisfying—as it ever was. A highly structured meander, it never resolves half its story lines, never relinquishes its McGuffins (we never do find out for sure whether Addie is Mose's illegitimate child), and never implies a well-adjusted transition to adulthood in store for Addie, who is, really, a harder criminal at nine than her guardian has the stones to be.

It's also as amazing as it ever was to see an entire movie carried by the virtuoso acting performance of such a young child. To this day Tatum O'Neal remains the youngest-ever winner of a major acting Oscar—and one of the most deserving.

(If you want to read more, there's an informative review at DVD Verdict—although, naturally, it talks about the no-longer-current Paramount DVD.)

I might insert something here like "I wish they still made movies like this," but of course they never did. Even Bogdanovitch's other movies most like this one—"The Last Picture Show" and his attempted reprise with the O'Neals, "Nickelodeon"—are nothing like it.

The reason for photographers to watch it? For the cinematography of the great László Kovács. (Himself the subject of a movie I want to see, called "No Subtitles Necessary.") Although a trifle overlit in spots—possibly the result of the director's intent to mimic the look of real '30s films—generally it is coolly elegant, influenced more by Dorothea Lange and the FSA than by the excesses of film noire. If you have any fondness for the great American interior or harbor any nostalgia for the 1930s, "Paper Moon" is surely one of the prettiest movies ever put on film.

See you in a week, and thank you for reading my site.

Mike
(Thanks to Oren Grad, Bob Burnett, and Art Elkon)

*John Camp's fond (?) epithet for me.
**Only without the shades, cool hat, and corncob pipe.

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Peter Turnley's Paris

Many years ago, a young man from Fort Wayne, Indiana followed his muse to Paris, and stayed for a quarter of a century. Paris became home base for Peter Turnley's worldwide travels as a top-echelon photojournalist. But even at home, he never stopped working—for three decades, Peter has photographed in the streets, bistros, and bars of his adopted city, along the banks of the Seine, from high windows, wherever he found himself. He photographed rooftop vistas, forgotten details, and, always, the people—friends and strangers, the famous and the unknown—people working, playing, traveling. And, everywhere, lovers—keeping company, flirting, kissing, holding hands, walking together, drinking together, laughing.

A portion of his extensive body of black-and-white work from Paris was published in 2000 in the book Parisians, with forewords by Robert Doisneau and Edouard Boubat. Recently, Peter's been planning a second book from this large body of work.

I'm really hugely pleased to tell you that three of the most famous and most romantic of Peter Turnley's pictures of Paris will comprise TOP's last 2010 Collector Print sale, this coming fall.

The master printer
But that's not even all. Decades ago, when I first learned that Henri Cartier-Bresson didn't print his own photographs, I heard that his prints were made by a master printer living in Paris. When Josef Koudelka began exhibiting and selling prints, the same man was chosen to make the prints. The man was Voja Mitrovic. Apart from being Cartier-Bresson's printer for very close to thirty years and the main printer of Koudelka's work, Voja (the "j" is pronounced like a "y") printed for, among many others, Rene Burri, the Eugene Atget archive, Sebastiao Salgado, Marc Riboud, Edouard Boubat...

...And Peter Turnley. It turns out that Voja is one of Peter's oldest friends in Paris. How they first met is a great story, but I'll let Peter tell that story himself at a later time—in fact, we'll publish a couple of posts about Voja before the print sale starts.

Voja retired in the late 1990s (Peter also has a wonderful picture of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Josef Koudelka begging Voja not to retire, and we'll publish that here too, eventually).

The good news for us is that, as a special favor to Peter, Voja Mitrovic has agreed to make the prints for the TOP fall Collector Print sale.

Voja Mitrovic and Peter Turnley

Peter himself is a living link to the great photographers of the city. He's known or befriended a great many of the most famous names in French 20th-century photography. He started out as an assistant to the lyrical Paris photographer Robert Doisneau; he knew Cartier-Bresson, and was great friends with Edouard Boubat. Although his eye is distinctly his own, his work is very consciously part of the grand tradition of the photography of Paris.

The exact pictures we've chosen won't be revealed until the sale starts, and I'll give you all the details at a later date. The important thing to say here, now, is that the pictures represent the very best of Peter's long photographic love affair with Paris. They'll be archival fiber-based black-and-white silver prints in the standard European collector size, signed on the front by Peter and on the reverse by both Voja and Peter.

And in their own way, they'll be every bit as much of a bargain as our past sales have been—not quite as inexpensive in absolute dollars, but still very significantly less expensive than you could buy them for any other way.

We're currently planning the posts about Voja for mid-August (and you should look forward to those), and the "Peter Turnley's Paris" print sale will start sometime in the middle third of September, and run for the usual five days.

I'll keep you posted, of course.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Another Take

TOP reader Mark Muse's portrait of Benita, the subject of Patricia Dalzell's portrait that we talked about in this post. (No one has ever told me Benita's last name—maybe she has just the one, like Cher or Ctein?)

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Mark Muse: "Keller."

Doctor My Eyes (the Coda—and a Caution)

By Christopher Lane

Previously in this series:
Part I
Part II

The other day I went to the optometrist for my final post-operation follow up. I was disappointed to discover that my vision had changed during the healing process. I knew that I would need glasses for reading since the procedure would not rectify that, however, I expected that I would not need glasses for any other purpose. Unfortunately, I am still left with a double astigmatism which keeps me from having the perfect vision that I want. There are lenses that could have been implanted that would have corrected that problem; however, my co-pay would have been $1,500 per eye. The insurance company's reasoning is that you can always continue wearing glasses.

...And so I will. While my vision is good enough to have the restriction removed from my driver’s license, it is not what I anticipated. When I saw the difference a prescription could make and the minimal expense, I chose to continue wearing glasses. Just a cautionary tale for all of you: many doctors will hint that the surgery will leave you with 20/20 vision; just be aware that your mileage may vary. Lens implantation is, regrettably, not a "magic bullet."

Chris

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by R. Edelman [responding to "se" in the comments]: "Optometrists do not perform eye surgery. They are not physicians. Cataract surgery is done by ophthalmologists. Ophthalmologists are graduates of medical school. Look for the 'MD' (Medical Doctor) or 'DO' (Doctor of Osteopathy) after their names. Ophthalmologists are physicians who specialize in the eyes and the visual sensory system.

"While I am on the topic, there are some ophthalmologists who are also very talented photographers. Off the top of my head I can think of two. One is James Brandt, M.D., who is Director of the Glaucoma Service at the University of California at Davis. Dr. Brandt's photograph of a brown pelican is featured on a United States postage stamp. The other is Howard Schatz, M.D., who was a highly regarded retina specialist before he became a highly regarded professional photographer. My apologies to all of the others that I did not mention."

'Digital Restoration' on Sale

I mentioned in my brief review of Ctein's book that he was planning a sale soon, and that I'd post the alert when it started. For the next month, to celebrate the publication of the second edition, Ctein will be selling autographed copies of Digital Restoration From Start to Finish at a substantial discount. The following prices below include Priority Mail shipping and California sales tax (if due): $39.00 for California; $36.00 for the rest of the U.S.; $43.00 for Canada; and $46.00 for all other countries.

For ordering details, please go here and scroll to the bottom of the page. The sale ends August 15, 2010.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

OT: We Hear from Martin Mull

"Writing about music is like
dancing about architecture."
                                   —Martin Mull

The other day we got to talking about the origin of this famous quotation when a commenter attributed it to Sonny Rollins (who has indeed said a great many wondrous and memorable things, but with a saxophone*).

As I sometimes do when things like this come up, I did a little poking around. According to Alan P. Scott, the earliest appearance of the phrase in print was in an October 1983 interview of Elvis Costello by Timothy White entitled "A Man Out of Time Beats the Clock," in Musician magazine no. 60, p. 52. However, Costello himself denies that he is the originator of the quotation, and attributes it to Martin Mull (right), the actor and comedian....

...Who, it turns out, is also a painter. So one of the lines I threw into the water was an email to Martin's art dealer, Carl P. Hammer of Carl Hammer Gallery in Chicago. Carl contacted Martin for me, and Martin confirmed that he is indeed the originator of the famous one-liner.

Not Frank Zappa
As happens to many famous quotations of uncertain provenance, this won't stop it from being attributed to many different people—among them, in this case, not only Elvis Costello, but Thelonious Monk, Steve Martin, William S. Burroughs, John Cage, and George Carlin. But at least now you know. (Instead of passing forward bad attributions, you could do as I sometimes used to do with mystery quotes, and attribute them to "not Frank Zappa.")

The most frequently encountered misattribution is to Laurie Anderson, because she used it in her 1986 video "Home of the Brave." Alan Scott thinks Laurie Anderson's riposte is itself quote-worthy: she added, "How about a square dance?"

Mike
(Thanks to Carl and Martin)

*This is off-off-topic, but if you're a jazz fan I highly recommend the RVG Complete version of "Night at the Village Vanguard." I've had the cooking single-disc version since forever, but the two-disc RVG version takes a useful couple of ticks upward in sound quality and adds great richness to the selection. Just make sure you get the two-CD version or the downloads labeled "RVG" and "Complete." And if you're not yet a jazz fan but would like some vintage, top-quality Sonny, I'd recommend starting with the short-but-oh-so-sweet "Saxophone Colossus" or the latest version of "On Impulse"—to get the correct versions, the former should say "Rudy Van Gelder Remasters" on it, and the latter should be from the Impulse "Originals" series. All three of these are available as MP3 downloads from Amazon or from iTunes.

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

The iPad as Portfolio

Ed Hawco mentioned in the comments to Ctein's last post that PDN has an article in this month's issue entitled The iPad: A Portfolio Revolution? by Jacqueline Tobin. I haven't seen it, and it's not online (except for PDN subscribers), but I did have a brief encounter recently with an iPad as a portfolio. I mentioned having lunch with Jack Macdonough, who showed me his Leica S2. I wrote about that encounter already. Jack also handed me a book across the table that he said was "two portfolios, old and new." The small book had paper prints bound into it. At the end, past all the prints, stuck into the back pocket of the binder itself, was an iPad.

Among other things, Jack showed me TOP on the iPad—very sporty!

But mainly, it was indeed impressive as a way to look at pictures. The screen is very nice, albeit effectively even glossier than Cibachrome, which I found a tad disconcerting with black-and-white pictures. At first. I'd probably have to invest ten minutes to get used to that. Nicest, of course, is the effortless manner of "flipping" from one picture to the next with a swipe of the finger (although, predictably, the device didn't like my finger and didn't always flip when I asked it to. That's the story of me and computers, ever since Kemeny and Kiewit, right there).

Jack showing off his work on his iPad. He likes a narrow white border around his pictures, as did I.

Of course, it's not just for formally showing portfolios—the news there is just that it's good enough to serve that purpose, without risking making a professional look less-than-professional. But the broader news is that it's a great way to show your pictures to anybody, in many situations—or just to look at them yourself.

Jack mentioned that if Apple wanted to build an iPad that was larger by half, photographers would go for in a big way. I agree, although by that time we might be pulling away from the mass market needed to support the product. Maybe, with millions sold already, an even larger "photographer's model" (the "iPad Pro"? And that one would have an SDHC slot) might be in the future—which would be icing on an already very nice cake.

Mike
(Thanks to Jack)

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Jeffrey Goggin: "If Kindle can find a market for its plus-size reader, then surely Apple can do the same for a plus-size iPad?"

Mike replies: I'm not really the best person to talk about this—I don't even use the laptop I have, and an iPad is not in my future—but I guess what I'd really like to see is an iPad specifically for photographers. Start with a larger size, and add a large enough hard drive and suitable card slots that it could double as a storage drive, like the Epson P-6000....

Print Sale Follow-Up

I want to thank everybody who participated in the recent print sale, Ken Tanaka's "Summer Storm, Chicago." We originally had no intention of running the sale in three parts, but the first 50 prints sold out in a mere six hours, which left a lot of people without even a reasonable opportunity for ordering. In the second sale, we offered 50 more small prints and 10 large ones; the large ones sold out in 22 hours and the second fifty small prints lasted for 28 hours, giving everyone around the world at least a theoretical opportunity to buy one if they wanted to. So the sale was a huge success....

...Not least because of the way Ken and his wife have enthusiastically worked so fast and furiously to fill all the orders. All of the prints from the 7/7 sale have already shipped; many purchasers have already received theirs. The 7/10 orders are being filled now, and Ken will begin printing the large prints next week—he's gotten as far as making the final decision on the packaging for the large prints, after investigating several options.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch house...
It rained utter torrents night before last—we got more than 4 inches in about 14 hours, and areas near us got up to 5 inches—so die Dunkelkammer is full of water again. I spent a grueling three and a half hours yesterday fixing a serious problem with my email connectivity. Or perhaps I should more accurately say, it took me three and a half hours to discover an incredibly quick and simple fix to what appeared to be a serious problem. Anyway, if you ordered a "Summer Storm" large print and you either have not heard from me or for any reason are waiting to hear more from me, please contact me—there's a possibility that some of the emails I've sent recently never got to their destinations, and a smaller but still very real possibility that emails sent to me never arrived.

The next TOP fine print sale—our last of 2010—will be coming in mid-September, and will not be limited in number. Now that Ken's sale has concluded, I'll be telling you a lot more about the September sale (who it is, what the work is, prices, etc.) this coming Monday morning. It's an incredibly cool opportunity on several levels, as I think you'll agree when you read about it.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 1994 by Mikhail Evstafiev

Finally, I'm going to be taking a week off in the last third of July, during which time TOP will be online but not active. Just a short vacation. Although I'm not sure I need it. Truth be told, running TOP is one of those jobs I just feel I don't need time off from—like Freud, or Solzhenitsyn (well...*), both of whom reportedly worked seven days a week. I enjoy it a lot. Still, all work and no play makes Mike a dull boy, and I don't want to start seeing Arbus twins at the end of hotel corridors if you know what I mean....

Mike

*I don't much resemble Freud or Solzhenitsyn in any way, but any excuse to run a cool black-and-white picture.

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

UPDATE on Print Sale Fulfillment from Ken: At this writing all U.S. orders for the 11x14 prints of "Summer Storm, Chicago" have been mailed (with the exception of one order who requested we delay his shipment briefly). By the end of Monday all of the international 11x14 shipments will have been mailed.

As Mike noted, the large prints will be moving out next week. I plan to ship them all by July 23rd. These will ship flat, packed in 20x24 Uline padded sandwich mailers just like the small prints. This is more expensive than using shipping tubes but it delivers a print that is immediately viewable, requiring no un-curling.

Thanks, again, to everyone who participated in this sale.

ADDENDUM: Pete Gerba's portrait of Solzhenitsyn.

Important! Note About the TOP Dinner

When I mentioned the possibility of having a TOP dinner gathering, here, I mentioned a specific date as a possibility. Bad blogger! Bad! Never do that. My mistake, and I'm sorry. We are not meeting this weekend.

That said, we will do a TOP dinner gathering. I will announce it clearly and definitively, several times, starting well in advance, so anyone who wants to come can plan on it. (It will be open to anyone who reads TOP and wants to come, and their friends, spouses, S.O.'s, or family.) But it is not happening this weekend. Again, I apologize for any misunderstandings I've caused.

—Mike, TOP's Egg-on-Face Supposedly Experienced Editor

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Why I Needed an iPad (and You Might Not)

My laptop screen is sporting the same arrangement of Photoshop palettes as I use at home when I've got it connected up to my large Apple Cinema Display. The iPad is sitting in landscape orientation on its iSee stand with the Pogo pen in front of it.

By Ctein

As soon as I read the detailed specifications for the iPad, I had a suspicion that most people were ignoring one of its more notable features: namely, that it was likely to be sporting the best display that had ever been put into a portable device.

The day they came out, in early April, my friend Mark Richards bought one. He showed it to me that weekend. I pulled up some difficult-to-render photographs from my website and pixel-peeped like mad. The iPad had a near-studio-quality display. (Truth is I've seen studio displays that were worse; I'm just very fussy.) The iPad held gamma well with changing viewing angle, and if it wasn't running full 24-bit color with no dithering, it was faking it well enough that I couldn't tell.

I commented that if only there was a way to run Photoshop on these things, I'd buy one in a minute. When I'm away from home, I'm stuck with doing my photographic work on a laptop computer. Laptop computer displays suck. I don't understand how people can do serious photographic work on them. I make do when I'm in the field, but only for rough editing and corrections; it's impossible to see exactly what's going on in a photograph. The iPad was so much better.

Mark then told me he'd heard that there was a way to tether an iPad to a laptop as a secondary display. I cursed him loudly; that bit of information might cost me mucho dinero. How well a $10 app worked would determine whether or not I'd buy many hundred of dollars worth of hardware.

I finally had a chance to try out the Air Display app on another friend's iPad (thank you, Chris) over my vacation last month in Minneapolis. It turned the iPad into a usable secondary high-quality monitor while running Photoshop on my MacBook Pro. The next day I went to the Apple store and bought one.

The low-end $500 model, with 16 GB of storage and no cellular network capabilities, would have been sufficient. After consideration, though, I ended up buying the 64 GB, 3G model. Why? First, this is more than merely a display. It's a self-contained computer, and it has never, ever made sense for me to buy at the low end of hardware. Second, as someone who hasn't had experience living in the being-connected-everywhere world, I didn't know whether I might care about that. It seemed foolish to get the model without cellular capability lest I discover later that I really want it and wind up replacing the whole computer. Several people impressed upon me that I'd likely find this a mighty useful feature, and they've been proved right. My price ended up nearly doubling, but whatthehell, it's only money.

Then there were the incidentals. An extended warranty (I am very bad with equipment care), a conductive foam Pogo Sketch stylus (fingers are just too fat for working directly on a photograph), and a Contour iSee for iPad (a hard clamshell with a collapsible stand that lets me prop up the iPad in landscape or portrait orientation).

There went a grand, but what did that get me? A portable dual-display rig with a studio-quality display that's touch sensitive, so I can brush directly on the photo I'm working on. Definitely worth it to me.

It's not as functional as a 12" Cintiq; there's no pressure sensitive stylus for the iPad (yet), and screen update is sluggish. But the cheap iPad's half the price, half the volume, a third the weight, and self-powered, and I'll bet the display's a lot better.

Here I'm taking advantage of the touch-sensitive screen on the iPad to do some burning in on a photograph with a masked curves adjustment layer.

The combination works well enough. It has occasional idiosyncrasies; most significantly, one has to get used to the lag time in the display update. It's not a problem in Photoshop when using brushes or working with adjustment layers—it can refresh small areas of the screen rapidly. It takes more than a second to do a full display update, so you wouldn't want to use it for anything that requires a decent frame rate or for presenting a slideshow. I do think there's a good chance that performance will improve in the future, as slow response time is the primary complaint everyone has about this category of apps. In the meantime, you should probably do as I did and try before you buy, to make sure you're comfortable with the screen update rates.

iPad color out of the box is acceptable. Not as good as a studio monitor, but close enough for serious work, and much, much better than anything I could get in a portable device before. I can use it for making serious refinements to a photograph, which was, after all, the point.

My efforts to color manage the iPad had mixed results. Profile Mechanic Monitor didn't work at all; every time I ran it I got an entirely different result and it was always bizarre. ColorMunki worked pretty well but not perfectly. The hues and the values are very good in the profile; the color-managed iPad's rendering of B&W photographs matches my prints exactly. But, the chroma is too high. Not by a lot—if I add hue/saturation adjustment layer and drop the saturation by 20 points, it looks just about right.

If I can't figure out how to get a better profile built, I'll just start adding a –20 point hue/saturation adjustment layer as a visual filter whenever I'm working in Photoshop in the field. It may be that I'm being too fussy about this. My Apple Cinema Display, fully calibrated, is about 10 points too low in saturation.

So, I'm a very happy camper and after three weeks I'm still not suffering from buyers remorse. I've got a much, much better portable digital darkroom than I ever thought I'd have.

Oh yeah, and let's not forget that it is an iPad, not just a portable monitor. Maybe it'll even prove useful in other ways. Ya nevva knows....

Incidentally, if readers know of any other large-screen portable devices with near-studio-quality displays, I would like to hear about them. (But please don't tout some netbook or other portable device with the usual lousy screens; sure, they have their uses, but not for my kind of work.)

Air Display creates a wireless connection between the iPad and my laptop, so I don't have to actually be seated at the laptop unless I need the big screen. I did my sorting and editing of photographs in Adobe Bridge and Adobe Camera RAW sitting on the comfy bed.

Ctein

Photographs copyright 2010 by David Dyer-Bennet. DDB made these photographs to illustrate this article while we were on a two-day photo trip over July 4 weekend up to Lake Superior's North Shore. They were posed for the sake of clarity and aesthetics, but they are not staged. This was my working setup and these were my working conditions.

Ctein's regular weekly column appears every Thursday morning. TOP is currently on summer hours, which means late morning for the time being.

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Steve G, Mendocino: "Ctein: Once again, my Thursday morning is enlivened by useful and relevant information, well presented. That being said, curse you—I'd dismissed the iPad until now."

Featured Comment by Bahi: "Very informative column—thanks. And I really like the pictures…there's something Old Testament about them. Prophet, tablet, etc. :-)"

The Wet Side

The other day I posted an update on The Dry Side of my darkroom, and promised an update on the wet side soon. Here it is, again mostly in pictures. All of the following work was done last weekend.

Incidentally, some of the doubters got me feeling a little paranoid about the solidity of my dry-side enlarger bench, so I ended up putting small angle brackets on the top side of the tabletop and larger ones underneath. The resulting bench feels solid as can be. It is completely unaffected if I pull or push it in any direction except up (the front of the tabletop is not attached to the legs), and I can hoist my entire 250-lb. frame up and sit on it and it remains completely unperturbed. However, when I whack on it with my fist, the metal shelf does absorb some vibrational energy and feeds it back to the tabletop for a second or two. I might take Pak's advice and load up the bottom shelf with a couple of boxes full of books; Or, I might remove the wire shelves altogether and install two 4x4" wooden legs on the front corners. It would be easy to do. I even have some nice big brackets on hand, left over from a past project.

But back to the wet side. Here's the "before" view from the dry side looking back into the basement. This is significant mainly because it shows where the water is—the laundry sink over by the washing machine (underneath the light). That will be getting some substantial modifications eventually, but here you can see where it is relative to the rest of the darkroom.

I hired local carpenter Jim Shoemaker to do the construction. Here he is putting up the studs.

The wet side of my darkroom is simply an 8-foot section of wall in the middle of nowhere. It doesn't enclose anything; but I needed something to put a counter against, something to hang shelves on, and something I could pound nails into if I wanted to put anything up. Still and all, this is really just a fancy, built-in version of...a table. Don't laugh; I've worked happily in darkrooms where the "wet" side was simply a table with trays on it.

The wall is sheathed on one side with half-inch plywood. Doesn't really need to be, but this way I can pound a brad or screw a screw-hook in anywhere, without having to worry where the studs are.

In this picture the 8' Formica countertop (38" from the floor) has been installed, and Jim is putting up the beadboard.

The finished un-wet wet side. The ventilation intake vent is installed but doesn't yet lead anywhere; we'll get to that eventually. The height of the shelf was also carefully chosen to be just below my standing eye level, so I can see the top of it without straining.

Another view from the opposite corner. The beadboard was a beat-up sheet I've had sitting in the basement for ten years; I think Jim would have preferred I bought new, but, as I explained earlier, I want to fight the impulse to be overly fastidious about this project.

The counter height of 38 inches was very carefully chosen, however. I actually built mock-ups using my kitchen counters until I found just the right height. Reason: I have chronic low-level lower back pain. If it hurts my back at all to stand there rocking trays, I think it would make me use the darkroom less.

Finally, a view of the back side of the wall, showing shelves where I'll store developing equipment and chemicals and so forth. The shelves have been left unattached for now so I can work on the ventilation system.

Next up: power and lighting.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

We Hear from the Photographer

Some things are easy to talk about, and some things are difficult to talk about, and we talk about the easy things too much and the difficult things not enough. If I can make one last little "meta-comment" on the Economist cover discussion without antagonizing you too badly, there are two major issues that pertain. One is ethics, and the other is content. As far as the content is concerned, one aspect we were talking about is "reading" photographs. This is a large and fascinating area of photographic aesthetics or philosophy (one might almost call it "photographic epistemology," although that's laying it on with a trowel) that interests me greatly, and yet even here on TOP we hardly ever get around to talking about it (although someday I will finish up my great magnum opus post "Approaches to a Photograph" which has been perpetually in progress for about a year now).

Where the Economist cover is concerned, my "reading" of Obama's stance—his body gesture—is that he's listening to someone talk. Now, that could be right or it could be wrong. But the presence or absence of the person next to him pertains to that interpretation. As it happens, it reinforces it; and the absence of the "possible talker" deprives me of that interpretation, or makes it less likely, and makes me look for another one. It's quite possible that the woman next to him was not speaking and he was not listening—one commenter said that maybe he's just noticed his shoe is untied, and the picture doesn't positively refute that. But that's their reading. I can't get all the facts from a picture, but I feel I deserve to have all the facts that were actually in the picture. Because it helps with my reading.

Patricia Dalzell, Benita at Home, Hagerstown, Maryland

At any rate, I thought it was curious, in light of this aspect of the Obama cover discussion, that Ken Tanaka, whose print sale has just concluded, offered, in the comments, an extensive "reading" of the Patricia Dalzell picture above that I reported recently adding to my collection. This isn't usual, either for Ken or, in fact, for anyone on TOP, including me.

...And then, a few days later, I got an extensive reply from Pat, responding to Ken's reading of her picture. I should mention before we go on that I personally don't quite agree with all of Ken's reading in its entirety, and I have had disagreements with all sorts of people in the past about readings of all sorts of photographs. A reading of a picture is just one's personal interpretation of the likely reality; it involves intuition, experience, some detective work or responses to clues, interpretation, and maybe some educated guessing or informed speculation. Maybe even a little imagination. One thing I'm convinced of that is that some people are much better at this—at reading photographs, I mean—than others. I can tell you for sure (he said wryly) that some subset of the public insists on seeing photographs with relentless, overpowering superficiality. I even know of one critic-who-shall-not-be-named who pretty consistently "reads" photographs in ways I personally feel are always wrong! I just always find myself disagreeing. But there's no absolutely right answer with any reading: photographs are evidence, not proof.

I'll repost Ken's reading of Pat's photograph here, followed by Pat's reply:

Ken Tanaka comments: [Pat Dalzell's 'Benita'] has some overtones of the peace/love/beads/bells/communal living era. But if you look more closely a bit longer you realize that it has absolutely nothing in common with that impression. In fact it quickly descends into a rather dark mystery.

Here are the subtle elements of this image that distinguish it from the casual snapshot portrait that a three-second glance might suggest it to be.

First, that's no hippie-type thrown-together fence. It appears to be a skillfully crafted and nicely-maintained fence. It looks like there's laundry hanging to dry in the area behind the woman, suggesting a rural setting. The plantings in the lower left corner suggest that the photograph was taken in a well-tended garden/yard.

Now there's the woman. This is where all the little peripheral details culminate, as they should, to either anchor the persona of the subject or, as is the case here, to create mysterious ambiguity. She's wearing a casual working-in-the-yard-drying-laundry dress. But her shoes look too fussy for such ground work.

Next, look at her posture. Most of her weight is on her right leg, with the left receded into the shadow. This is a common, and very old device, to establish to create slight visual tension. Now look at her left hand. She's gripping that fence very tensely with one hand as if she's straining to restrain herself from some action. Her other hand is in her dress pocket. What's in there? A vibrating cell phone? A knife? A gun?

And then there's her expression that really puts the cherry on the sundae. That cocked eyebrow on an angrily confident expression is chilling. I don't want to get any closer to this woman.

No, this is no happy snap. This appears to be a carefully crafted portrait of a woman prepared to convert potential energy to kinetic energy. Perhaps she's listening to the response from her just-asked question, 'Where you been all night?' Perhaps she's confronting a pesky salesman and is seconds away from 'Shoo!' But we're left wondering what's about to happen.

The best portraits, photographic or painted, are very carefully built to use our knowledge/assumptions of human nature and/or the sitter to suggest something just outside what we thought we knew. Little haunting mysteries that tattoo our minds.

These days (the past 15+ years) women seem to have been far more skillful at such portraits than men. Men tend to shoot blunt-force-trauma sports and celebrity portraits with no more skill or depth than a beer ad. Women, by contrast, seem to generally have a far better sense of subtle ambiguity and humor. They often shoot for someone who's willing to really look at the image.

Patricia Dalzell replies: I thought the comments made by Ken Tanaka about Benita are so interesting. He is right about so many things. August Sander has been my hero since I first saw him in The Family of Man when I was 18. Of course, then I didn’t know who he was, just as I didn’t know any of the other photographers. That book was my photo education; when I went to college, women could be teachers, secretaries, or nurses, so I made my photographs in my head, and I didn’t get a camera for another 15 or 16 years. But I knew then that I wanted to make pictures that made people feel the way I felt when I looked at that book.

Benita and I met in graduate school at the University of Maryland where we studied with John Gossage. It was there I met Anne Truitt, who instructed me to look at Renaissance portraiture and sculpture at the National Gallery of Art. Art history was the turning point; it was then I began to really understand not only composition, but also how a work of art was made.

I was lucky; I lived only 20 minutes from the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and one summer I went there almost every day. A professor at Maryland suggested I look at the 1903 edition of Henry Rankin Poore’s Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures. In that book I learned for the first time about the Golden Mean; at the Gallery I found the Dover Publications reprint of Composition in Art. On the ground glass of my camera I made a grid of the Golden Mean.

Sculpture began to interest me because I could really look at a piece from all sides, something that is awkward to do with a subject just standing there. My favorite piece to this day is the larger-than-life size terracotta bust of Lorenzo de’ Medici at the National Gallery. I could look at him from all sides, wonder about his broken nose, feel his strength, think about his drapery, and consider how I would do his portrait. My daughter began to tease me and asked, "Mom, are you in love with him?" When we went to Italy, I looked at the Florence statue of David in the same way. I liked the contrapposto stance and later began to ask my sitters to assume that gesture. It puts a person at ease.

An important photograph for me was Alfred Stieglitz’s portrait of Paul Strand as a young man. Before, I had only seen pictures of him in later life. This young image not only showed how he looked when he was in his prime, but his clothing in the 1919 portrait was not so much different than today’s; it could be that a viewer wouldn’t know when it was made. I could see how a viewer might be influenced by old or new clothing, look at a portrait and dismiss it and the subject as, "Oh, that was then." I looked more closely at pictures of my parents from the thirties, and began to see them as young talented people with rich potential, rather than as family saw them as the grandparents they were. I wanted to make portraits of people that were timeless; to be a witness to the uniqueness of a person and at the same time form a connection with each of us in turn.

These are all the ideas I take with me when I do a portrait. I always like to go to the sitters' own environment because what is around them tells something about who they are. Benita asked what she should wear, and I told her timeless, not trendy, nothing with writing on it.

It is so much easier to just talk, rather than get down to the scary business of actually getting the camera gear out. That means going to work, and not every photograph turns out. First, I made some pictures of Benita and her five-year-old daughter; those first shots are never the best. And then I moved to the fence. Benita said her daughter had hung the wash up and she couldn’t take it down because it was so cute. I love the fence because it creates that important diagonal line. I like a person’s eye to have something to do in a photograph and that line lets one enter the photo, if the gate were closed we'd be blocked out.

She said no one could take a good picture of her because her face is asymmetrical and her eyebrows are not in line. I told her to lean against the fence, get comfortable and take that contrapposto pose. There is always the problem of what to do with hands, but I take so long with this process that most people just give up and wait. That's when the real portrait comes. She put her right hand in her pocket, but I didn’t notice the tension on the left hand until I made the contact sheets.

I don’t like smiling pictures because the smile becomes a mask. This whole process takes at least two hours and by then no one is smiling; the relief comes when it is over. It's interesting about her shoes: they have always been a little jarring to me, but I didn’t know why. If I were doing this today, I would probably have her go barefoot, and since then, I have asked people to take off their shoes if it is appropriate.

I love the whole darkroom process from developing the film on. In my first darkroom when I took the cap off the stopbath I got chills down my back, it was so exciting. Agfa has stopped making my paper; Polaroid is out of business so I can’t do emulsion/image transfers.

Benita is a strong person, she went to Cuba when it was illegal, smuggled film out of Africa, and was imprisoned in Moscow for taking pictures. Her students love her. Since this portrait was taken she has completely changed her look; short magenta red hair, and vintage clothing. I'm going to do her portrait again this summer. Hope it works.

Ken sure got it right. —Pat Dalzell

(Posted by) Mike

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Sean: "The moment I saw the fence in the portrait I thought of Paul Strand, so I was interested to see that the portrait of Strand is an important one for Pat. I noted that nothing in the portrait suggested the era in which it was taken; that approach is one of the reasons why I love the work of Mark Steinmetz. Again I think of strand when I see this shot of Steinmetz's:

"I read Pat's photograph in my own way and have ideas of my own about the portrait. Ideas that I feel might fall apart as I try to explain them as if trying to recall a dream."

Featured Comment by Ursula: "Patricia Dalzell is my cousin, and I have had the good fortune to be her subject on at least two occasions. The portrait she did of my daughter Lisa in the lawn chair is imprinted on my mind. My favorite thing, next to watching her at work, is to hear the story of a shoot where I was not present. Thanks, Pat, for letting us in on the way you work."

The Dry Side

We made a lot of progress in die Dunkelkammer over the weekend. Carpenter Jim Shoemaker was here both days and completed most of the wet side—I'll show you that in a few days. In the meantime, here is a brief report of progress on the dry side, mostly in pictures.

Jim bolted two 2x2's to the west wall for me. Here, a section of the wall is taped off for painting.

Painting completed. I didn't worry about all the little voids and pinholes in the concrete—you know what they say, "the perfect is the enemy of gittin' 'er done." Maybe that's not the right expression, but that's what it should be for me.

For the enlarger bench, I'm using the bottom half of a cheap wire shelving unit I bought at Menard's, the local building supply superstore (similar to Lowe's, Home Depot, etc.). It cost $60, made in China (thank you, Chinese persons), and I chose it mainly because it is about the right height and it has adjustable feet, which makes leveling easy. Er. Easier. Anyway, here I'm working on getting it level before putting the top on.

So here's the enlarger bench. For the top, I used an old piece of 2' x 5' butcher block I had stored away. The shelving unit on the left is also a leftover, pilfered from elsewhere in the basement.

Wondering what that black- and cream-colored box on the shelving unit is? It's a paper safe. As you can see it has three shelves, each of which accommodate 11x14" paper (that's some old lightshot 8x10 in it now). The door is hinged on the bottom and has rather stiff springs to hold it shut. Of course it's light-tight.

The reason it's out at this early stage in the construction is this. When I'm standing where it's natural to stand while removing paper from the safe, I like the paper safe to be positioned so that my body is in between it and the direct light from the safelight. A small detail, but exposure is cumulative, more or less, so I like to be conservative when it comes to protecting the assets in the safe.

Finally, I'll tie the tabletop to the wall, via angle-brackets screwed into it and to the 2x2's. Despite the heavy tabletop and the solidity of the wire shelving base, attaching the tabletop securely to the wall is crucial for stability. Before actually doing this, I'm going to wait a few days to let the bench "settle" and then do a last check on the leveling. Here I'm just holding the bracket where it will eventually go, for the picture.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Ctein Workshop in Minneapolis

Our own Ctein will be teaching a one-day workshop at the Mpls Photo Center (2400 North Second Street, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA 55411) on Saturday, October 9: "Introduction to the Art of Digital Photo Restoration." See here for full details.

Ctein is the author of Digital Restoration from Start to Finish. If you have any interest in learning how to restore old or damaged photographs in particular, or in improving your digital processing skills generally, Ctein's workshop could be for you.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Martin Doonan: "If the workshop is anything like the book, then it should be excellent. After buying a copy of the book a couple of weeks ago, I've read it pretty much cover to cover. It's not so much the tools covered as the new and precise ways to employ them that make it useful (and this coming from someone who's philosophically opposed to 'how-to' books). Highly recommended."