The Online Photographer

OT: Live Music Is Not Better

A modern console stereo from Symbol Audio, $26,000.

Looks like this is "Off-Topic" week at TOP. Ctein's writing about tea again (see below); I've been deeply troubled by, and preoccupied with, the Massacre of the Innocents in Connecticut, and had to write about it twice (and I want to write about it again, but am going to refrain); and then, in the comments to the "Geeky Tweaker" post, Nigel had to go and ask this question:

Tell me, Mike. Do amazing hi-fi systems sound better than real instruments? If you had an acoustic guitarist in your living room would it blow your hi-fi away? If one goes to a concert, say an acoustic one, and hears a trio play, is it better than the most expensive hi-fi (like the one in the picture)? I don't mean to be sarcastic, but I am interested in the subjective pleasure of wonderfully reproduced music in a room.

This is the sort of question I'm powerless to not answer. Tiny claxons go off in the nearly empty corridors of my brain; audio question! Must be addressed!

Sigh.

The answer, Nigel, is that a stereo system, at its best, will most likely be an adequate simulacrum (especially with acoustic guitar music, which is relatively easy to reproduce well)—but the real thing, while it won't "blow your hi-fi away," will sound better.

The difference—and it's a large one—is that with the stereo system, I can listen to Andres Segovia, Leo Kottke, Chet Atkins, Robert Johnson, and Wes Montgomery in my living room, whereas the best I could theoretically do with a live guitarist would probably be a neighbor or relative who plays a bit, or a local guitar teacher who's available for hire. It's a big difference. Music first, sound second.

Beyond that, I can't fit a symphony orchestra in my living room, and some musical performances were never played live, from "I Am the Walrus" to 32-track electronica to Glenn Gould.

There's a huge body of conventional wisdom—conventional sanctimony might be more like it—which holds that live music is always better. That it's "the absolute sound," the reference to which reproduced music should aspire. Not to me. I've heard just as many poor-sounding live performances as I've heard poor stereos. Great-sounding music is rare—and just as rare either live or reproduced.

Live music might sound more realistic at best. But...

• The performances might not be the ones I want to hear: for instance, I once paid previously perfectly good money to see Neil Young perform one of his greatest guitar anthems, "Like a Hurricane," on solo organ. Right guy, right song, wrong night.
• The performers might be having an off night. I once went to see the great flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal, who insisted on conducting—badly—for half the concert. It was only slightly more relevant than watching him paint a house.
• The performers might be impaired. I had the misfortune to see the Pogues live once, and Shane McGowan was so blindly drunk he wouldn't stop raving into the microphone...and you were sorry when he did. The experience was such torture I haven't willingly listened to the band or the singer since.
• I might be uncomfortable in my seat or find the surroundings offensive: I saw the blues legend Freddy King once, while I was sitting next to a large table of very drunk, very loud servicemen who seemed to have been placed there by Satan specifically for the purpose of ruining everyone else's evening. And...
• Yes, the sound quality might be bad. I heard Dizzy Gillespie in a 40-table jazz club, and he had the trumpet and the drums miked. It was physically painful. Anyone who can't hear an unmiked trumpet and full drum kit in a room the size of a large living room really doesn't deserve to hear them, if you ask me. I actually complained directly to Dizzy about it, face to face, in person. My brushes with greatness are usually not what such encounters are meant to be, unfortunately. Big sigh.

That's not to say it's not worthwhile to hear real musicians playing live. It certainly can be. I stopped going to most concerts years ago because the music is too loud to hear, but I still go hear classical music or acoustic jazz from time to time. Occasionally, live performances can be transcendent—I got to see Lynyrd Skynryd play a 15-minute version of "Free Bird" in concert, before the plane crash, and that was fun. Sometimes you get lucky. And sometimes you just need to get out of the house.

For better or worse, though, recordings are the main form that music performance takes in our culture. It's the best way to listen to music, in my opinion.

Live music can be nice...but it's often just no substitute for the real thing.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

John MacKechnie: "That band may suck on Floyd, but I hear they do an Amazing 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps.'"

HT: "I discovered this far too late, but your typical rock shows are much more enjoyable when wearing earplugs. I know it sounds counter-intuitive. But as you point out, popular music concerts have the volume turned up way too loud anyway. Quieter volume would be ideal, but the next best thing is to wear earplugs. Rock show decibels will exhaust your ear after a few minutes but wearing earplugs will let you enjoy the show in its entirety and, yes, you'll still hear the music just fine. The only thing that will truly be muffled is the crowd noise of those nearest to you. (And that's a good thing.)"

Ed Kirkpatrick: "I have been to my last rock concert.

"I am a huge Mark Knopfler fan. I consider him a fabulous guitarist and songwriter, I have everything he ever released. I wanted to see him for years. So when he brought his show to Wolf Trap Park at the Filene Center a few years ago we paid a lot of money for great seats. A nice part about an evening at this venue is that you can bring a picnic and enjoy food and drink before the show at many lovely spots in this outdoor park so lots of people pay to lay around on the lawn area and party, me included. However, as soon as the music started the behavior of the audience just ruined it for me. Drunk fans in the house seats and the lawn area continuously hooted and shouted, some people in front of us decided it would be fun to stand up and dance and sing and we had to stand just to see the show. The lighting engineers blasted extremely bright lights called blinders directly at the audience and it did literally, if temporarily, blind us. I have been told by some who know that this is done to defeat unauthorized video recording. What the whole experience did for me is convince me to just stay home and listen to good music on my system. So I agree that recorded sound is better than live, at least in the rock concert world.

"Oh and the beer is a lot cheaper!"

Son of Tarzan: "Having had the truly distinct pleasure of hearing three of the acoustic guitarists you mentioned above about 30–40 years ago, Segovia...concert hall, Atkins...small club venue in Chicago, and Kottke in a coffee house in Milwaukee, I can attest to the fact that there is no comparison to the feel of live music.

"When you are caught up in the sights and sounds of the live experience, sound quality is but one of multiple sensory stimulation one enjoys. In the confines of your own 'listening chamber,' no matter the price of the equipment, the media, or the construction of the room, lacking the peripheral parts of the performance,  people, place, and presence can not compare.

"I listen to the three artists listed above and many other types of music that I have experienced in person quite often on my 15+-year-old system, sometimes from vinyl, sometimes from CD or even sometimes in the car. The detail of the sound is still not the driving factor in my enjoyment. Especially now, decades after seeing and hearing them in person, the most important part of the experience is the memory of the event."

Dennis: "Amen. Amen. I couldn't agree more. Live shows (rock at least) tend to be over-the-top loud now and you get the feeling that the performer is just running through the material. I too saw Lynyrd Skynyrd appproximately six months before the crash. That and the Who (with Keith Moon) and will cherish those memories until my dying day. There was something special there that doesn't come 'round anymore. Better the controlled environment of my living room, with DTS and HD video."

Joe: "I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania, and though my father loved classical music (especially Stravinsky), I never heard a live orchestra until I was away at college. My father did have a terrific stereo, and a great record collection, so I did grow up familiar with many great orchestral pieces.

"Then during my first year off at college, I went to see a performance one of my favorites, Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, my first time hearing a live orchestra. And I was totally blown away. I had never heard what real violins sound like, and it was like night and day. It was as if the instruments were breathing, like they were alive. I'll never forget it.

"On the other hand, I've had the opposite experience, like Mike describes. Hot Tuna played so loud it was painful. I've gone to see Keith Jarrett play solo improvisations at Carnegie Hall three times and one of those times he was in such a foul mood that I wish I'd stayed home. (The other times, though, were transcendent, and have not been released as recordings.)

"What can you do? You pays your money and you takes you chances."

Norm Snyder: "Growing up in Detroit, in the 'sixties, a close friend's dad owned a club called Baker's Keyboard Lounge, which only held about 110 people. There were a lot of great jazz musicians to be heard on their tiny stage. A few times, if an act had cancelled, my friend's dad would turn to his son and any friends who happened to be hanging around in their living room and say, 'Who would you guys like to hear?'—meaning, he'd see if he could book them. That's how we all heard Mose Allison, live, for the first time. Sonically, the club was great, but I also have recordings of his from that period and later that are good quality, and a pretty good system at home. Nothing can compare to the experience of being in the room, as the music was created. The phrase 'You had to be there' really applies.

"I think that's as true of recently enjoyed live performances by jazz and other musicians, as it was (admittedly in my memory) with Mose Allison that weekend long ago. Being in a small club, with live instruments/musicians involved a kind of participation and sharing of an energy that recordings can't ever really capture."

Mike replies: Norm, I hear you (maybe this post should have been titled "Live Music is Not Necessarily Better"), but you were luckier than most. Then, too, there's live and then there's live. In high school I used to travel to Chicago to hear music at the blues clubs, and enjoyed it hugely.

One of the most raucous and most fun was a wild set by Otis Rush, in a small club where the audience was in very high spirits and completely into the music. Otis chicken-walked the bar with his guitar, to great applause. Cut to college, when I was on a committee to bring concert artists to the 3,000-seat auditorium. We booked Otis Rush and his band, paid extra for their travel expenses. I was greatly looking forward to the event.

But apparently no one else was. Otis and his ensemble set up in the middle of the much-too-big stage looking like a small island in a big sea, and played to a house that was about one-third filled. Nobody sat in the front rows. And most people were sitting there quietly with an arms-crossed, "show me" attitude. No energy from the audience at all. The band clearly was not enjoying the experience either, although they tried their best.

Really taught me a thing or two about "music."

Jim Hart: "The Keyboard is still there, still operating. It is now the 'World's Oldest Jazz Club,' having first opened in 1934."

GH: "Live music is amplified and mic'ed in completely different ways than recorded music, so you're really at the mercy of the room and the engineers every night. I played in bands in Los Angeles for 10 years in just about every club around, and I don't ever recall the music sounding as good as a recording. Some rooms, like the Viper Room, tend to do a better job than others, but it's hard to replicate an album recording, especially if there are several members in the band. I'd say that seeing live music is about the energy and experience, but recorded music generally 'sounds' better."

Poagao: "I was fortunate enough to see Ennio Morricone direct music that he composed for films, and that sent a shiver down my spine. Yet even that shiver derived from hearing the same pieces played by cheap Italian orchestras on tinny TV speakers when I was a kid."

Player: "Recorded music is the idealized version of how the artist wants the music to sound; live performance tries to match that ideal but falls short. Recorded music is the standard; live performance is the reality."

OT: Tea and Placebos

By Ctein

Each of my tea columns generates a certain number of queries about my tea-brewing practices. I figure I should devote a column, then, to how I drink tea, not what I drink. Before I dive in I want to state that I think most of the import of personal tea rituals is psychological. That does not make it less real nor less important!

Partly it's the placebo effect. For a remarkable range of physical ailments, if you tell people you're providing them with a treatment that will address their illness, a surprising percentage of them show physical improvement or even a complete cure. This is solely due to the "power of suggestion," but it makes a real physical difference; convincing their minds that the body is being treated causes genuine and objectively-measurable physiological changes.

This is why medical studies are only trustworthy when they're done in a double-blind fashion, where neither the doctor nor the patient knows if the treatment is real. Many drugs fail to pass clinical trials not because they don't produce marked improvements in the patients, but because ordinary sugar pills produce nearly the same degree of improvement.

(Of course, it's really important to make sure you're using a genuine placebo—some decades ago, the researchers who used lithium carbonate as an "inert" stand-in for the compound they were testing got quite a surprise...and opened up whole new areas of psychopharmacology.)

It's also why you can never disprove the efficacy of physically-nonsensical things like homeopathy and magnet-laden bracelets. It's been shown beyond any question that they cannot and do not have any direct physical effect. But, if you tell people they work a certain number of people will show improvement, hence the ongoing testimonials in their support. For some percentage of people, there will be genuine physical change, because they believe there will be change.

Of course, a lucky rabbit's foot would have just as good effect...if the patient had equal confidence in it. That's not the point. The point is that placebos work.

What's that got to do with tea drinking? Just this: if you genuinely believe your method of making tea produces a superior cuppa, there's a fair chance that it will actually taste better to you. It doesn't really matter whether a double-blind study would show that there is no objective difference.

And then there's aesthetics. If you don't think aesthetics affect taste and palatability, engage the following thought experiment: imagine I take your fresh garden salad and douse it with food coloring so it is all mottled dark olive-brown, gray, and black. Will it taste as good? For a few of you, maybe. For most of you, definitely not.

So, category: tea ritual; subcategory: mine.

I use tap water. Can't speak for the quality of other people's water but our local water is pretty good, and I've not noticed any difference between tapwater, bottled water, and filtered water. I heat it in a Pyrex measuring cup in the microwave. I take some of the hot water and give the leaves a quick rinse, 10–15 seconds, and pour that off. Supposedly this "wakes" or "freshens" the leaves. Me, I have serious doubts that it makes any genuine difference that a few seconds difference in brewing time wouldn't account for. I figure maybe it cleans a little bit of dust, dirt, and detritus off of the leaves, if there is any.

I do it for a more important reason. I hold the tea up to my nose and take a nice deep breath of the rich fragrance from the freshly-wet hot leaves. Mmmmmm, lovely! Primes my head and taste buds for that first cup of the morning.

Then I brew my cup, sit down with the morning paper, and enjoy.

That's what works for me.

Ctein

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

James Sinks: "I always start my brew by sticking my nose in the bag/tin/tupperware and getting a good snootful of tea scent. I fill the tea bag with my fingers because I enjoy the feel of the tea leaves. I brew with tap water heated in an electric (and sometimes electrified!) kettle. I linger over the tea as it steeps, enjoying the smell of the strengthening brew. When it's done, I pull the teabag out, give it a gentle squeeze and either put it on a plate for a second/third/fourth brew or toss it onto the compost pile."

Mike adds: Generally I try to avoid sticking my nose too far into other authors' posts, since I get my own turn often enough. But I can't help recommending the Bonavita Electric Pouring Kettle, which I use for coffee. Seldom am I so completely satisfied by a product. A few buyers have complained of rust—Chinese metallurgy is always an adventure—so be sure to check yours while still in the return period. Mine has been constantly wet for a year and on close inspection shows not a speck of rust. This product works really well and is very convenient. I use mine every day and remain uncommonly pleased with it.

Peter Nigos: "Ctein states that (the effectiveness) of homeopathy and magnet labelled bracelets can never be disproved. As he enjoys his morning cup, perhaps he should consider the argument put forward by Bertrand Russell—that a rational man is not required to disprove nonsense. Russell famously suggested (probably in 1952) that there is a china teapot in elliptical orbit around the Sun somewhere between Mars and Venus. It is too small to be found by any telescope. You don't need scientific tests to disprove this hypothesis. As far as is known, Russell never considered whether the teapot was full or empty."

Andrew Molitor: "My favorite remark, usually applied to audiophiles but it works as well for pixel peepers and tea drinkers: Just because it's not there doesn't mean you can't hear it!"

Mike replies: Not sure which of today's posts this belongs under!

Bill: "A very interesting post. The placebo effect you describe applies as much to cameras as it does to tea. Take your sentence, 'If you genuinely believe your method of making tea produces a superior cuppa, there's a fair chance that it will actually taste better to you.' This can be slightly modified to read 'If you genuinely believe your Fuji/Panny/Leica produces a superior picture, there's a fair chance that it will actually look better to you.' Which is partly why we see so much partisan language on different internet forums."

Ever Heard of John T. Daniels?

Here he is, depicted in a bronze statue devoted to his memory:

And here's the lyrical and significant photograph he's famous for taking:

It's the very famous picture of the first manned flight of powered, heavier-than-air aircraft, the Wright Flyer.

Orville Wright lying down on the job

The propellers are moving almost too fast to register. Note the faint shadow of the propeller tip at the upper right.

John T. Daniels, a member of the Kill Devil Hills Life-Saving Station, wasn't a photographer when he took this—he'd never seen a camera before that day. The camera was a Gundlach Korona that shot 5x7 glass plates. It belonged to the Wright brothers. Later that day, Daniels was caught between the wings when the Flyer was flipped by a gust of wind and destroyed. From that day forward, he never tired of telling people that he'd survived the very first plane crash. With only minor injuries, fortunately.

It's hard not to love this photograph. Although it's entirely important for what it shows, when you take a minute to try to see it with "fresh eyes" it becomes apparent that it's a lovely picture as well. It was taken 109 years ago yesterday. (This is a day late—which is of course TOP's usual schedule.)

John Daniels died one day after Orville Wright did, in January of 1948.

Mike
(Thanks to Scott Kirkpatrick)

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Tom Judd: "I visited the Wright Brothers National Memorial in May, 2009 and photographed the Stephen H. Smith sculpture that contains the bronze statue that you showed. You might be interested in my photo that shows the context of that statue. It's quite a moving presentation—makes you feel like you were there."

William Barnett-Lewis: "I have a big print of this image on my living room wall and I never tire of looking at it. It is a great image technically, artistically and historically as you mention. But for me, the jewel in the image is over on the right—Wilbur running there in a mix of concern and joy as his brother lifts off for that first time. There is a tightly constrained energy there that is amazing to see captured. A decisive moment, indeed...."

Brian V.: "It is a really nice photo. I thought it was funny that you're basically 'pixel peeping' on at 109-year-old photo. 

"Those Rapid Rectilinears are hard to beat. Check this out on ebay. All you need is some glass plates."

C. T. Halfhill: "As a Life Member of the First Flight Society that pays for and plans the annual celebration of the first controlled powered flight by the Wright brothers, most of the comments are true. Daniels' granddaughter is still living and also a Life Member. We are good friends. I am a former editor of our newsletter and wrote about the 'credit' re this photo. The brothers gave John T. credit for squeezing the bulb at the right time. This became important during the 100th copyright claims."

We Hear from Keith Davis

It's always a treat for me when we hear from one of the people we've written about. I got a comment yesterday from Keith F. Davis, the curator who's responsible for the book The Photographs of Ray K. Metzker. I've added his comment to the original review.

If you'd like to know a little more about him, here's a brief article (too brief) called "Collectors' Roundtable: Keith F. Davis on Collecting Photographs." And here's his short-take bio:

Keith F. Davis received his B.S. degree in Cinema and Photography from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale (1974), and his M.A. (1979) in the History of Art from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. He has curated more than 70 exhibitions from the Hallmark art and photography holdings—shows seen in over 300 individual  bookings in leading museums across the U.S., and in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Great Britain, France, Spain, and Switzerland. He became the founding curator of photography at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in January 2006, following the gift of the Hallmark Photographic Collection to the museum.

Curators are, to a greater or lesser extent, institutional collectors. How great a job is that? After John Szarkowski retired from the Museum of Modern Art, he was hired to curate photographs for the PaineWebber Art Collection. He used to call me every so often (I'm sure as just one of a large network of contacts) to see if I could recommend any photographs or photographers he might be interested in. I'm pleased to report that three of the photographers I recommended to him sold work to the PaineWebber collection, including one who'd never sold any prints before. (My brush with institutional collecting.)

I told Keith we'd sold 52 copies of the book through our links, but that was wrong. Actually, 52 copies have been shipped: we cleaned out Amazon's stock. Another 68 copies were ordered that haven't been shipped yet.

I'd be interested in what others think of the book, if by chance you're one of the ones who bought one, and if you've received it already.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Ken Tanaka: "As Mike opined, the book is a winner: 'Not only is it the ideal Metzker retrospective, it's an exemplary photographic monograph, with a substantial, insightful text and superb plates, presented in a robust but no-nonsense, no-pretenses manner.' I can't say it any better. Keith Davis has produced a superb retrospective on Metzker. Having seen lots of Metzker's prints I can also report that the book's plates are spot-on. If you want to get one book that neatly packages one of the great 20th century photographic artists look no further."

Larry: "I am fortunate to live a few blocks from the Nelson-Atkins Museum and have seen many exhibits curated by Keith Davis over the years. First when he was with Hallmark and more recently at the Nelson. They have all been superb. He and his staff are to be commended for the excellent exhibits they have been putting on in the new dedicated photography space in the Bloch addition at the Nelson.

"I want to alert midwest TOP readers of their current show which is a retrospective of Terry Evans. It is an amazing show and will be there through January 20th. It is well worth a trip to the Nelson. Just as important to readers not in the vicinity is the Evans book produced for the show, which is equal to the Metzker book in every way."

A Small Confession

Speaking of geeky tweakers, I think I should confess to the latest idea that's been boring a hole through my brain—I really want to buy one of those glass display cases and create a small one-cabinet camera collection. There's just so much interesting stuff out there that's cheap right now.

This would have absolutely no purpose and it would waste money I don't have and take up room I don't have and no one comes to my house anyway, so no one would see it. But it appeals to me, so I've been mulling it over just the same.

Sigh,

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

David W. Scott: "You are not alone. The same idea has possessed me for a year. I can't decide if it would be less or more geeky than leaving assorted box cameras, folders, and classics laying about on the bookshelves."

John Frendreiss: "I completely understand. Whenever I run across a display case of olde tyme photo equipment, a similar urge starts to well up from somewhere around my fifth lumbar. Something about all the techy bits of metal and chrome and leatherette and etched numbers and whatnot.... So far I've managed to suppress these notions. Good luck."

Christopher Holland: "I was thinking about that exact thing as I was looking at my collection of cameras that is currently collecting dust on various book shelves in our home. A display case would be a nice thing and would put all of them in one place."

Jon Bloom: "'Appeals to me' is pretty much my motivation for everything. OK, I'm a hedonist, but aren't we all?"

Randy Cole: "A cautionary word to potential collectors of objects: choose something with an infinite set of possibilities. Years ago, I set out to collect something (a type of telegraph key) made for many years and available in several models and colors. I started with a modest goal, expanded it after some success, and ultimately 'got them all,' including one that is the only known example of a patented and documented model. I'm about to start the deaccessioning process, without any particular regrets. I have no regrets because I learned in the process that it's the process of collecting that's interesting and fun, and the experiences I had and the friends I've made are what is meaningful. The objects themselves turn out to be secondary, and I will be happy to see them in the hands of others who will (hopefully) enjoy them. A display case is simply a convenient way to summon the memories behind the objects. By all means, go for it, Mike."

Hugh Crawford: "By all means buy the cabinet first. Otherwise you won't ever have any sense of when you have enough. Don't ask me how I know."

OT: Apologia

I did a particularly poor job of moderating the comments for Saturday's "Open Mike," and I wanted to apologize to the TOP community for that. I just lost heart for the subject. Didn't want to pass along some of the more problematic comments I received, didn't have the energy to process the ones that needed modification, didn't have the stomach to read more. Mea culpa.

Ed. Note: What follows is off-topic and might be offensive to some. If you come to this site to read only about photography, understood! But don't click through. Your choice.

The Geeky Tweaker Conundrum

(I've told the first story before. Apologies for repeating myself.)

Case 1: Tony G., a master mechanic, owns a gas station in a prosperous Wisconsin suburb. Zoning no longer permits gas stations but he's "grandfathered in." It's a very lucrative business. (According to rumor, Tony eventually retired on an impressively large yacht in balmier climes.)

Tony spent three years restoring and rebuilding a beautiful old British sports car at his garage. Since it was a labor of love, he lavished time, patience, and craftsmanship on the car. The resulting automobile is better than new, perfect even in out-of-sight details, concours-ready.

A year after the project is finished Tony has it out for one of his infrequent drives. He's motoring down a residential road feeling...not unhappy, but listless, distracted, unfulfilled. Distinctly not enjoying himself as much as he thinks he should be. Up ahead of him, a truck kicks up a small stone. It hits the windshield, and with a loud TOCK! a small pockmark appears in the glass.

Instantly, Tony's mood brightens. Oh, good, he thinks, I get to replace the windshield!

Soon after, the restored car is put up for sale.

Tony has realized that he likes restoration work better than he likes owning and driving a fully restored antique, and that finishing his masterpiece was not the beginning, but the end. He's bought a new project car, another British roadster in very rough shape and in serious need of his expert ministrations.

Case 2: Bob S., a small business owner with a fastidious streak. As his company has grown he's gotten richer and simultaneously less busy, because the company can now afford employees to whom he can delegate some of the work that consumed all his waking hours in his younger years. A child of the rock era, for three years he has devoted nights and weekends to building the perfect stereo system. He wants the best, at which point he intends to forget about it.

He compulsively reads reviews, haunts dealers, tries, buys, sells, and refines. Each step is a journey; it's not just the "right" components, it's how they interact.

Finally he's gotten to the point that he's satisfied. He has the perfect amp, the perfect preamp, the ideal speakers. He's spent thousands on wires. His listening room is festooned with strategically placed pads and acoustic foam. Everything is in balance. Everything works together. And he loves it. It sounds just the way he thinks music should sound.

Bob feels "happy" that he's "all done," but at the same time vaguely discontented. As he listens to music, he fidgets, sometimes thinking, is this all?

A year passes, and Bob reads a rave review of a new amp...and feels an urgent need to know how it sounds...and can't help buying one and inserting it in his system even though it throws his entire system out of whack and ruins all his previous careful auditioning, system-building, and shopping.

Several years later, only a few details of his original system remain. Shopping has permanently recommenced, and components migrate in and out of the house. And yet often, Bob pines for his original, "perfect" system, thinking why in the world did I ever get rid of that?

Case 3: K is a photographer.... 

Mike

Illustration: System owner unknown. Nothing to do with Bob S. The speakers are Genesis Advanced Technologies 2.2's, at US$99,000 only the second most expensive speakers in the Genesis line. Photo nabbed from a forum thread, provided by Gary L. Koh, Genesis CEO.

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Craig: "Right, and the details of case 3 need not be described because we all know what K is doing. One thing that can be said, though, is that unless K is a huge Leica fan, he is probably spending a lot less in his relentless pursuit of the Perfect Camera than Bob or Tony in their respective obsessions. In a way this sort of stuff strikes me as stupid and wasteful, but on the other hand, it could be argued that keeping the money in circulation is better than just hoarding it. Tony, at least, finally came to the conclusion that his real joy was in restoring cars rather than just having them, so I'd say his pursuit of his obsession has led him to a greater degree of self-understanding, and his restoration work means that some nice old cars will once again be usable rather than just ending up in junkyards."

Andy: "I find it fascinating the way in which the desire to create manifests itself, whether it be creating an ideal sound system, or creating the sounds to play through others' systems. I guess in a way writers have it lucky, in that they don't need to buy expensive things in order to create. Ideally, neither would photographers, but we all know what happens there ;-) "

Mike replies: But writers need readers, and the search for an audience can be exhausting too....

Andrew Molitor: "Something I tend to lose sight of is that there is nothing wrong with doing this. I tend to yell at friends to stop buying new gear, and just go make some great photographs with what you have. This is kind of missing the point, and I try to rein myself in when I feel the urge to do this. With the emphasis on 'try' unfortunately. Some people genuinely take pleasure in the gear, some people take pleasure in the results, and some people enjoy both. Horses for courses, and we should all just try to get along!"

Rob: "I can't remember where I read it, or who even said it, but the phrase: 'Never ask a camera collector to show you his photographs' springs to mind more often than it should when browsing photography forums...."

David Dyer-Bennet: "I know one science fiction magazine collector who, shortly after completing his run of 'Amazing Stories' (I think, but anyway, one of the classic magazines) sold it and started over, because he figured out that it was the thrill of the chase that he really enjoyed. You probably even make a profit that way; a complete set sells for a premium to people who really know what they're getting, whereas he was finding individual issues in obscure little stores at low prices."

Robert Goldstein: "Both cases are examples of obsession, one healthy and the other unhealthy. In Case 1, the individual comes to the realization that he gains pleasure and fulfillment by a creative process and not by possession of material objects. In Case 2, the individual thinks that he will be made happy by possessing something rare and perfect, only to discover that he is not. Nevertheless, he continues his neverending quest for perfection. The analogies to how photographers relate to their craft and their gear could not be clearer. Case 2 is also an example of another truth: Perfect is the enemy of good."

Only Five Days Left!

It's December 16th, which means there are only five days left until the end of the world. The pre-Columbian Mesoamericans (principally the Mayans) stopped their calendar on December 21st, 2012—proving that they knew they wouldn't need it past that date, proving that there would be no more days after that.

As further proof (as if any more were needed!), I saw the weather report on TV last night, and they were only forecasting the weather until Friday. The 21st. For the 22nd? —Nothing. They didn't even mention next Saturday. This proves that they, too, know what the Mesoamericans knew. (Others have historically had a hard time predicting the future. Weather forecasters, though, are always right, as we all know. Because they predict the future for a living.)

But there's very good news. With five days left, there is still time to order something nifty for yourself or a loved one from B&H or Amazon, and have it arrive in time to enjoy it!! And do your bit to support TOP all the way until the end of time! That's right—order a present for someone else or for yourself through our links today, and you will get it before the world ends. What could be better?

Well, I guess having the world not end at all would be better. But go to our links page now! You'll be glad you did.

Mike, TOP Financial Inducement Delegation

Disclaimer: TOP has no ability to predict the future. Lack of Saturday not guaranteed. TOP may benefit from your generosity and kindness into 2013. For Bears fans, world may end today. 

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Richard Tugwell: "I guess most people saw this, but just in case...."

Our Coming Print Offer

At long last, another in our intermittent series of print offers....

We're now virtually certain to do a five-day print offer in January.

I'm toying with the idea of calling it "The Valentines Day Offer" even though it will take place a month before V-day, because the photographers we're going to feature are a dedicated husband-and-wife team who are both accomplished photographers with multiple books under their belts. Paula Chamlee works mainly in 8x10", and her husband Michael A. Smith works in many formats but primarily 8x20". Both make exquisite black-and-white contact prints using gelatin silver chloride contact printing paper.

We will offer a choice of two of Michael's 8x20" contact prints and a choice of two of Paula's 8x10" contact prints. All four prints will most likely be classical landscapes in the best large format tradition. (You can see many examples of their work at their website.) Paula and Michael sell their prints for a minimum of $2,000 and $3,000 respectively—and they sell a lot, too, as we'll talk about in greater detail in due course (their prints are in more than 150 museum collections)—but our prices, for the short duration of our sale, will naturally be only a small fraction of that. Unlike our earlier sales, though, these prints will come archivally mounted and overmatted and, if you wish, framed. Also in a first for us, the four prints will be retired at the close of our sale...the images will never be printed again.

The date for the beginning of the sale hasn't been finalized yet. I'll announce it several times before we commence, so that everyone who wants to be can be ready. And of course anyone who wants to be alerted at the minute the sale starts can sign up for our twitter feed at @TheOnlinePhotog.

This is going to be a nice one. More soon.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

Open Mike

 Why I'm NOT in Favor of Gun Control

Regular readers might know that one of my mantras is "editors needed everywhere." It's something I say when I run across a hilarious ambiguity or a howler of a typo.

A truly tragic case where an editor was sorely needed concerns the poor wording of the Second Amendment. There are actually several slight variants, but basically it goes, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Um, what?

That's just badly written, is all. Nobody knows quite what it means, and nobody has ever known what it means, exactly. "State" as in a whole country and its government, like when Louis XIV said "I am the State"? Or an actual U.S. State, such as, say, Connecticut? Does "people" mean populace (collectively), or persons (individuals)? How exactly does "shall not be infringed" interact with "well-regulated"? Those ideas seem to contradict each other. Some people think "Militia" is equivalent to "The National Guard"—but others dispute that. And so on.

Sometimes when words are inscrutable their ambiguity can be exquisite, pregnant with nuance—but this gabbled sentence is not worth all the close textual analysis it's been subjected to. It's just a mess. Any high school English teacher would have circled it in red pencil and scrawled "Vague" next to it in the margin of the page. Any editor would have gone to whoever wrote it and said, "Uh, we have a problem here. This is unclear. What exactly are you trying to say? Let's do a little more work on this."

This is why I'm not in favor of "gun control." I'm in favor of the repeal of the Second Amendment.

...But not permanently. What I think we ought to do is this:

1. Repeal the Second Amendment.
2. Draft five alternate versions that are well-enough written to be clear in their meaning—ranging from one extreme to the other. The NRA could draft the wording of one outlier and the other end could be an outright ban on any citizen owning or possessing any sort of firearm for any reason. The three options in the middle would range between those extremes.
3. Hold a single-issue national referendum. A vote. Make it one of those nifty "instant-runoff" votes (you can Google that) where every voter gets to signal his or her first and second choice, so that a vote for one of the extreme positions wouldn't necessarily remove a person's vote for one of the more moderate positions.
4. Re-insert whichever one wins into the Bill of Rights.

Then, nobody gets to complain. If we as a people (populace) decide we want to arm ourselves to teeth even if somebody's little girl gets shot in the face for no reason every now and then, well, fine. If we decide that anyone who ever lets a gun into their home gets thrown in jail till they rot, well, the people have spoken. (We wouldn't decide either of those things, of course.)

And if we decide that, hey, we're actually a sentient, reasonable, and essentially benevolent nation of humans who can actually do a decent job of balancing freedoms and rights when we set our minds to it, such that most of us will be reasonably happy with the result and as few people as possible will object....

Well, we are, you know. We're not bad people. We're decent people. We should act like it. All we need is a little more clarity, so we can at least all understand what our principles actually are.

The laws we enshrine in our foundational documents might not make everyone equally happy, but they should at least be clear.

Mike

"Open Mike" is the Editorial Page of The Online Photographer.

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Parick Perez (partial comment): "As reasonable as your suggested approach may be, implementing it would require first a new amendment implementing the process."

Ed. Note: In the case of partial comments, please see the Comments section for the full text of that reader's comment.

rnewman (partial comment): "Actually, the wording was much clearer to the readers in 1787. Remember the context. The Revolution had officially ended a few years earlier. Everyone (almost) owned at least one firearm. For many it was a need to get food by shooting it. For many more it was a means of protection against crime. The concept of a police force, as developed by Ben Franklin, didn't apply to most of the country. Each individual was expected to protect himself and his family with whatever force was needed. Further, in 1773, the British governor of Massachusetts seized all the firearms the redcoats could find in Boston to prevent any objection to his actions. Finally, remember that the term 'militia' meant something different than today. No national guard or army reserve. If called, every ablebodied free man was expected to respond, bringing his own rifle/musket, with ball and powder.

"All this was common knowledge and of recent memory to the people in 1787. I expect they largely understood that the amendment had a twofold purpose. It was to assure that one could protect family and home against threats, and it was intended to assure that no one could 'hijack' the government, and if a militia call was needed, that they could respond."

Steve Boothe (partial comment): "Actually, the meaning of the Second Amendment is quite clear and concise. A well-regulated militia is defined elsewhere as all able bodied males 17 to 45 years old. Organized militia consists of National Guard and Naval Militia; unorganized militia consists of everyone that meets the requirements that are not in the organized militia. There was no organized, federally funded militia (National Guard) until 1903. The State is the United States, all inclusive. 'The people' has been defined through numerous court rulings over the past 200 years as individuals in the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 9th and 10th amendments. There is no debate, only attempts at obfuscation by detractors. The right of the people (individuals) to keep (own) and bear (use) arms, shall not be infringed. Plain and simple language if ever there was."

Dave: "I have a kindergarten aged daughter. My sense of apathy towards our legislative process has quickly turned to rage. Thanks for the sensible idea."

Paul Amyes: "The sad fact is that to non-Americans it seems that the right to bear arms is more sacred than the right to live. It seems absolutely crazy that the murder of so many people can be seen as collateral damage for allowing an armed society. There seem to have been so many shootings where the death toll is in the tens to twenties and that doesn't seem provide any impetus for change. I wonder how many more will have to die before the average American citizen says enough is enough. America is a great country with so many benefits but the firearm problem is a huge blight."

David L.: "I am in favor of gun ownership having grown up with guns on a farm. However in my opinion, the problem is not so much the guns, but the gun culture. I see it too much in this country. There is a level of insanity in gun culture/doomsday preppers. Guns have fetish status to many people, they provide strong feelings of power and invincibility. I go to gun ranges and see so much zeal with weapons. Pick up any firearm magazine for more examples.

"Old taboos against guns targeting people are faded. When I was young it was inconceivable to point a gun at another person. Guns were for hunting, and for the army. If there was an intruder it was normal to persuade him to leave, while displaying one's firearm, sometimes unloaded. It was considered poor taste to use silhouette targets as I remember. People simply were not targets. Nor were innocent people. That was very taboo, but not today apparently."

T Bannor: "The reason for the Second Amendment was not, in part, because the founders feared a takeover of the government, as seems to be widely believed. It was because many of the founders did not believe in a standing army. Hence the 'security of a free state' verbiage. If you don't have a standing army, you need an armed populace to defend the nation. Switzerland has this arrangement today and has higher gun ownership than the U.S. The difference is, training and membership in the militia is mandatory."

Two More Books You Might Like

A few more recent books I think are tasty:

Looking at Ansel Adams: The Photographs and the Man by Andrea G. Stillman (here's the U.K. link) might fall as much into the category of "guilty pleasures" as "must haves." It takes an enthusiastic and involved look at Adams by telling the story of twenty of his photographs, including many of his most famous ones. Copiously illustrated with ephemera, it gives a window into Adams's processes and working methods as well as his everyday life, making him seem more like a real working photographer—and a real person—and less the avuncular dynamo of legend. And a nicely made book, too. (No accident—the author is an accomplished writer and editor and the venerable [founded 1837] Little, Brown is the official publisher of Adamsiana as designated by the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust.)

Andrea Stillman met Ansel when she worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. After working together for two years on a major show there, he asked her to come to Carmel to be his assistant in the spring of 1974. As his administrative assistant rather than his darkroom assistant, she did everything from taking print orders to editing his prose for the following six years. She has continued to contribute to his legacy since his death in 1984, editing books, helping with shows, and narrating a TV program.

Ansel and Andrea, Carmel, California, 1975. Photo by Alan Ross.

•     •     •

The Changing Face of Portrait Photography: From Daguerreotype to Digital by Shannon Thomas Perich is another yummy treat. It dives deep into the fathomless sea of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History's Photographic History Collection. There are obviously treasures there, and this book brings many out into the sunlight.

Rather than looking at individual photographs as a jumping off point, here we get to look at a succession of photographers. Happily, it's not just the "same old names" that (well, for old dawgs like me) are trotted out a bit too often. Yes, we get some heavies—Julia Margaret Cameron, Dorothea, and Avedon (a quirky look at the latter, and I like that too). But the book opens with George K. Warren (who?), and includes Henry Horenstein and Lauren Greenfield. Author Shannon Perich, an Associate Curator of the Collection, is showing some gumption, and I like that. This is not just a same-old-same-old type of book.

She also has a marvelous eye for what to show us. This is a guided tour of rare treats, beautifully and appropriately presented. You won't like all the photographers equally—remembering that most of us will differ in which we like better or worse—but all are interesting, and the sweep across time is a nice sampling.

There's also a valuable section on Nicholas Murray, a photographer whose name comes up far too infrequently these days.

Here's the U.K. link.

•     •     •

Neither of these books are indispensable, but both of them are treats—as fun as they are interesting. Bravo on both counts.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

Spectacular Deal on...@!#$!??

Look, I know there are a few people out there who are going to be steaming over this. I'm sorry, but don't blame me, I'm just the messenger.

B&H just announced a spectacular deal on the still-pretty-much-brand-new Nikon D600 with the 24–85mm ƒ/3.5–4.5G ED VR lens...along with a bunch of extras...for $1,996.95.

I will dodge now, while those who just paid full boat for a D600 attempt to pelt me with fruit through their computer screens. (That doesn't work.)

Others who might have been weighing a D600 purchase might want to go here.

Anyway, how do you think I feel? They also dropped $200 off the price of the D800....

Both deals are two days only.

[UPDATE: This is the last day for the big D600 deal. B&H Photo is closed until 5:45 p.m., but the same deal is available from Amazon. —Ed.]

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Trevor Buss: "B&H service is fantastic. I ordered my D600 through TOP links a few weeks ago, and B&H is exchanging that purchase for the current deal with the 24–85mm lens. Strangely, I do have to send the original body back to them and they are sending a new one. B&H has earned my business from here on out. By the way, the D600 is excellent. The AF leaves a little something to be desired, but not enough for me to justify the price difference for the D800 (believe me, I've tried)."

MarkR: "Horrors! Already my D600's pictures are starting to acquire the stench of the proletariat. I did a quick check of my photos in Lightroom, and it's true: my net photographic value with this camera has dropped by $200! (Thank god for the 'sort by $$' feature.) I may have to buy a more elite camera so my photos don't devalue any further. There haven't been any discounts on Leicas, have there?"

Giving the Gift of Vivian

Just in case you're not aware, there are two major archives of the work of Vivian Maier [UPDATE: Wrong! See correction below], the reclusive Chicago nanny whose sprawling photographic remains were auctioned out of her storage locker even as she lay dying. One is controlled by John Maloof, the other by Jeffrey Goldstein. Don't ask me to deconstruct how that came about. But both archives have mounted shows; both have "official" websites; both have published books (Vivian Maier: Street Photographer is John's, and Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows is Jeff's—or rather, it was drawn from Jeff's Maier archive, the book being the creation of Richard Cahan and Michael Williams); and both market Vivian Maier prints.

And both, unfortunately from my view, have been locked firmly into the "gallery model" of print distribution, whereby the volumes are kept low and the prices high, and neither one, it appears, can really adjust to comfortably fit the alternate model of a TOP Print Offer. I've tried. Well, sporadically. Just doesn't look like it's going to work. Seems kinda ironic, to me, but then, I have a distinct selfish interest in the matter. Both of these guys are working very hard (I mean that) to responsibly preserve this photographer's legacy, and they rightly get to decide what's best for her and for themselves.

However, if you should happen to want to give the gift of Vivian this Christmas or Hanukkah, you're in luck. Jeff Goldstein has produced a sumptuous and lovely custom-clamshell-encased deluxe edition of Out of the Shadows that includes the book and your choice of one of three original prints. Limited to a total of 165 copies (55 of each print). At $850 it's not cheap, but then, gift-giving is one circumstance in which it's rather bad form to cheap out. And, actually, it is the cheapest way (I think) to get an original silver-gelatin Vivian Maier print, at the present time.

Here's the link where you can go to buy the deluxe edition and, perhaps more interestingly, to see which three prints are being offered.

I have one of these chez TOP (albeit temporarily), and I can attest that it is a pleasing, solid little package. The craftsmanship of the clamshell is very good, and the presentation is excellent and elegant, even to the signature printed on the stoutly made outer cardboard box. I can't imagine anyone with an interest in Vivian Maier not being delighted to tear the wrapping off this.

Mike

Correction: Actually, I'm wrong. There are three major archives of Vivian's work—the one I left out is Ron Slattery, who was the first person to purchase her work at the storage auctions. This "Chicago Tonight" video will allow you to meet all three of the known current custodians of Vivian's work—John, Jeff, and Ron.

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Pamela Bannos: "Hello—I am the person who responded to Stephen Daiter's comment in the first 'Chicago Tonight' program and am featured in the video link in this post. I've been teaching photography at Northwestern University for twenty years. My Vivian Maier research has continued since the TV program aired in August and I will be speaking more about the developing project soon."

'The Photographs of Ray K. Metzker'

Philadelphia, 1963. Photo by Ray K. Metzker, courtesy Laurence Miller Gallery.

Ray Metzker (b. 1931) used to be a little too "outside" for my taste, like Sun Ra or Anthony Braxton. (Plus, I wasn't interested in his printing style, when I had a professional interest in such things.) As time has gone by, his influences—the Chicago school, you might call it, Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind, with some of the formerly radical street photographers such as Lisette Model and Louis Faurer thrown in—have become much more clearly revealed, and Metzker, as black-and-white has plummeted out of fashion and the old gatekeepers whose ramparts he sneaked past have been whisked toward irrelevancy, has dated rather too quickly.

The process has made his work seem both more brilliant, in my judgment, and more important. He is a superlative, original, questing, endlessly inventive shooter, a photographer's photographer—derivative in some ways, but greater even than some of his influences, taking their suggestions and finding further richness in it, like Hendrix playing the blues.

The curator Keith F. Davis, who is responsible for this book and the show it accompanies, is similarly one of photography's quiet treasures. He "gets" photography, which cannot be said for all the major curators right now. The book is The Photographs of Ray K. Metzker, published just a couple of months ago by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. (Here's the U.K. link.)

I think Metzker's stature will increase as time passes. If it doesn't, Keith Davis has at least done a very persuasive job of explaining, and showing, why it should. He has made some very fine contributions to the photography lover's bookshelf. And this might even be the best. It is a glorious book, stuffed with masterpieces dynamic and brilliant. Not only is it the ideal Meztker retrospective, it's an exemplary photographic monograph, with a substantial, insightful text and superb plates, presented in a robust but no-nonsense, no-pretenses manner.

I can't put the darn thing down. It has re-ignited my faith in photography since it arrived.

Mike

P.S. This is the first post I've built at my new standing desk. Do any of you Mac experts out there know how to control the brightness of the screen on a mirrored display? The control on the iMac only works for the iMac display, not the mirrored display.

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

David: "Yeah, excellent, Mike. For the first part of this post you built, I thought you were going to take Ray K. to task. The guy's work is brilliant. Nice to see one of my all-time favorites on the TOP pages. Huge influence and someone whose work continues to blow my mind. The photo you featured here is one of my favorites, it's like an opera."

struan: "Ray Metzker's Landscapes book has been a huge influence for me. As with many of my favourite landscape artists, he is best 'known' for other work, but his mix of formal rigour and free association is a heady one. That he breaks so many of the ossified rules of B&W photography, and breaks them so well, is just a bonus."

Keith F. Davis: "Mike: I've just discovered this piece, and very much appreciate your kind comments on the Metzker book. Thank you. I first saw Ray's work in something like 1971 and was deeply impressed at the time—but it all looks even better now, in hindsight. I genuinely love the way he has loved photography over all these decades."

OT: Teas, Please!

Ti kwan yin bricks are one of my regular special treats. When nothing else is striking my fancy in the morning, this tea always satisfies.

By Ctein

As promised, dear readers, I'm back on the subject of teas. Those of you who are fearful of being induced to part with more of your hard-earned pesos may want to skip this column.

This time I'm going to tell you about two of my favorites. The first is well-known: ti kuan yin, a.k.a. Iron Goddess. I was introduced to this delight on my very first foray into the realm of high-end teas, when I visited Aroma. During our tasting session, Haymen, the proprietor, served us up a delicious Iron Goddess, which was possibly my favorite tea of the whole session. Unfortunately, it was also the most expensive; I recall it being in the range of a dollar a gram, which at the time was extremely expensive for tea. Very regretfully, I declined to purchase any, explaining that it was beyond my budget.

I did purchase some $200 worth of tea that day—as I've explained previously, while that seems extravagant, it was more than a year's supply. I could tell that Haymen and his wife Ying were pleasantly surprised by the amount I spent. Haymen gifted me with the Piao I Perfect Infusion Tea Pot, which has been my preferred brewing method ever since. As we were packing up to go, Ying proffered a small package as an additional thank you for my purchase: about 25 grams of the sublime Iron Goddess.

Now, that's what's known as building customer relations! I'm not at all a frequent visitor of their establishment (it's been years, and I'm really due for another trip), but the number of customers I've referred to them has paid them back tenfold, I'm sure.

(Those of you involved with customer-oriented businesses, keep this in mind.)

Ti kuan yin comes in a variety of grades and at least two different forms, most commonly as tightly furled pearls, each about the size of a kernel of unpopped popcorn. A scant, level teaspoon of those in the infuser is quite sufficient, and good easily for four or more brewings. It's quite amazing; every time I brew it I don't believe I put anywhere enough tea in the pot, but the leaves swell up astonishingly. This is a tea where a very little bit goes a very long way. It also takes a substantial brew: 5–7 min. with 90°C water is a common recommendation, and it's really not too much. This produces a remarkably delicate beverage; Iron Goddess does not let go of its flavor easily.

I suggest you skip the cheap stuff and spend as much as you can afford; it will be worth it. I haven't tried it, but I suspect the "under the table" ti kwan yin from Aroma will be spectacular.

Currently, my staple ti kwan yin comes from TeaSource (a small chain of independent tea stores in the Minneapolis area that also does mail-order) in the form of small bricks (top illustration). It's one of the favorites in my cabinet, and less than half a brick carries me all day in my infuser. It's looser than the pearls, so it takes less brewing; 3–5 min. is sufficient. Compared to some of the teas I've mentioned in the past it's a little spendy (~$2/day) but it's a lovely indulgence and you can always buy modest amounts if you want to be frugal.

Rare in the West
Last spring, TeaSource also introduced me to something brand new: "dark tea." It's a category of tea that's been essentially unknown in the West; when I bought a brick, the clerk said they were the only U.S. source for it at that time. What caught my attention was that it looked much like a pu erh (below) but tasted very different. It was not smoky but complicated, tasting both rich and light at the same time.

Dark teas look like pu erhs and are prepared and brewed like pu erhs, because it turns out pu erhs are a regional subset of dark teas.

It looked like a pu erh and brewed and behaved like a pu erh, demanding boiling water and welcoming multiple pours that changed from cup to cup, but it wasn't a pu erh. Most curious.

On my next visit, enlightenment was forthcoming. Dark tea is not a variety of pu erh; pu erh is a variety of dark tea! Pu erh is a regional designation, indicating dark teas that are prepared in or near Pu Erh county in China. Other dark teas come from other regions; the dark teas that TeaSource carries are primarily from Anhua County, I believe.

If you're intrigued by the idea of pu erhs from my last tea column but put off by their often heavy and smoky flavors, you might give these anhua dark teas a try. I've bought few, starting with that "Fu Cha Whole Leaf Brick" that was bargain-priced and, in my opinion, worth many times what I paid for it—what's pictured on the right-hand side in the photograph above are the remnants of what had been a fairly substantial brick, on top of the card that came with it. I drank a lot of this! None of the ones I've tried taste like pu erhs; if I tried to categorize them, I would say they have the floral quality of oolongs, but they're deeper and richer.

Unfortunately, I can't locate these teas on TeaSource's website. I don't know if they don't sell them by mail or if I simply haven't searched properly.

[Ed. Note: I spoke to Bill Waddington, the owner of TeaSource, and he freely acknowledges that the dark teas on his "old and creaky" website (which they're now in the process of revising) are not in the right place—most of them are hiding under Shop for Tea > Black Teas > China Teas > Hunan. Here's a link.]

Next time, more on the art and indulgence of tea-drinking from your effete, intellectual columnist.

Ctein

Regular columnist Ctein has been doing a year-end catchup on off-topic columns, having stayed too much on topic for months on end.

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

steveH: "Since the last tea post, I've been enjoying a silver needle and a jasmine black dragon pearl tea using the Piao i. Thought they were expensive, but a little goes a very long way. Very nice, and thanks to Ctein for pointing them out."

Ben: "I heard Bill on NPR a while ago, and he was talking about dark teas. We've been meaning to order some but haven't yet...I think we will now! Thanks for the recommendations."

Martin Doonan: "While I have absolutely no interest in tea drinking (I really don't like the stuff, apart from occassional Japanese brews), I'm finding this whole series fascinating. Who'd have thunk there was so much to tea!?"

Bill Waddington, owner, TeaSource: "Hi Ctein, what a wonderful article and photos, written with accuracy, clarity and panache. I don't always see that in articles about tea. And you are right, Dark Tea is an amazing thing. I first found Dark Tea about 10 years ago while wandering around a wholesale tea market in western China, and at first I thought it was puer. However, the old Chinese gentleman at the display table emphatically pointed to the tea bricks on his table and said, 'No puer! Dark tea!' And that was the extent of his English. I spent the next 10 years learning about Dark Tea. Another cool thing about this tea is it was deliberately designed/manufactured around 1300 years ago to be an everyman/inexpensive tea—so it's always affordable.

"Also great writing about TKY and oolong. Strongly suggest folks try out Taiwan oolongs also. They are doing some amazing things.

"I'm new to the blog, so I apologize for the length of this comment. But what wonderful articles etc. I'll be browsing for awhile. Thanks to all involved."

'Horizonless' Set No. 2

If you haven't checked in with the original "Horizonless" post, check it out: there are now 19 reader pictures posted there.

The dust has cleared somewhat, and in toto I think I got about 350 to 400 responses to my call for work yesterday. I admit I tended to like best the pictures where people were playing with the whole idea of horizons. Although nobody beat Juan Buhler at that:

...answering the question, when is the horizon not the horizon?

There were a whole lot of nature pictures, pictures with fake horizons, pictures where the horizon is obscured by fog. There were a lot of pictures that really didn't have anything to do with the idea of horizons. And even a few pictures with horizons in them!

Does this picture by Bill Stormont have a horizon or not? It sort of does, but it sort of doesn't.

Re•ac•tions
But anyway, here are a few of my thoughts about exercises like this, thoughts I thought as I was working on editing all the submissions:

1. It sort of makes me into the world's most hard-hearted club bouncer. I don't like that. What you're primarily doing is saying thanks, but (shades of The Soup Nazi), no publication for you! It's not like anybody sends in their bad pictures. Everybody sends in their good pictures. So who am I to judge? You get favor—you don't. It's all pretty arbitrary. (This is a way to say, again, thanks to everyone. I enjoyed seeing all the pictures, including the pictures I didn't post.)

2. Then there's the conflict between me and thee. That is, I have this subterranean tussle going on between what I like and what I think other people are going to like. I don't want to just please myself. Lots of people will see the post. Got to try to be fair—not to the people whose pictures I pick as much as to the people who are going to be looking at them.

3. Then there's "contest syndrome." After a while, trends emerge. Lots of people, for instance, sent in pictures taken in the woods. The first one you see you think, yeah, that's good. Then you see eighteen more, and you have a basis for comparison, and you pick a few. They're maybe not the "best," but they're representative. Then that sort of takes care of pictures taken in the woods. Then you get thirty more pictures taken in the woods. And you can't really use any of them even though some of them are perfectly fine just because you've "already got some of those." But it's not as if some of the ones in the last thirty wouldn't have worked just as well as the ones I picked.

Another aspect of contest syndrome is that after seeing a lot of same sort of thing, you need a picture with something special or different that sets it apart. So you pick something that's...well, if not turned up to eleven, maybe turned up to ten and a half.

4. With me, there's also passive-agressive anti-contest syndrome. As I see more and more standout pictures, I dig in my heels and think I ain't giving in to that. I'm going to pick something that's quiet and subtle and requires a little contemplation...that's just me.

5. I'm biased a little by names I know. I don't necessarily favor them, but I give them a little more attention.

6. Finally, timing. Early bird gets the, er...well, you know what I mean. 

'Again, daddy'
(You know how little kids say that.)

Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment (these posts are a lot of work, much more than it probably looks like), but I think I'll do this again. Next week, I'll put out a call for work on Sunday afternoon, and then post the pictures on Monday. That way, people will be at home, and people in other times zones will get the word.

Here are some more "horizonless" pictures from TOP readers.

Heavily stratified limestone, Gole di Breggia, southern Switzerland. Photo by Julian Barkway.

By Bill Schneider

By Jamie Pillers

By Jim Simmons

Han River, Seoul, South Korea. Photo by Alejandro Martinez.

By Paul Wicks

By Terry Letton

By Paul De Zan

By Paul Marriner

By David Rea

By Ken Royce

By Marcelo Guarini

By David Blanchard

River entering the sea in Iceland. Photo by Jeff Grant.
(Aerial photo, taken from a helicopter)

By Carsten Bockermann

-

Thanks again to everyone who sent in pictures.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Jim Simmons: "Yes, I got a lot out of viewing all the posted images, but where this exercise really benefited me was going through the past few month's folders of images with Mike's 'horizonless' filter in my mind, considering each image's relationship to that word/concept, and making all kinds of mental connections that helped me see my own work in new ways. Yeah, it was a thrill seeing one of my pictures on TOP, but nothing compared to the discoveries I made last night looking at some images I'd completely forgotten about and then working them up on Photoshop to send to Mike. Thanks for the invitation and encouragement to spend some time with my own pictures in a thoughtful evening of exploration!"

Bahi: "Very strong set—loved it!"

James Sinks: "I've really enjoyed this, and I'm looking forward to seeing more, but I have an odd request—please don't do it too often. I enjoyed seeing these photographs and the Tejas collection, but I think that a regular Mike Johnston Photo Contest (which is what it is, in spite of all your protestations) would get very boring very quickly. Especially for Mike Johnston. Keep it irregular, keep it rare, and keep it fun, otherwise you might have a hard time keeping it alive."

Bill Jay's Vision

Jim and Evelyn Hughes, 1981. Photo by Bill Jay.

By Jim Hughes

More than three decades ago, Bill Jay jotted some words in the left-hand margin of a print from a photograph he'd snapped of me and my wife Evelyn at an SPE conference (I discovered the image itself only recently on a website devoted to Bill): "Jim is now editor of the photo-magazine Camera Arts. (I was amazed to find that I was listed as contributing editor although I had never been asked.) Jim is a refreshing change from the typical academic artist—he is irreverent, opinionated, direct, and speaks simple English. I like his writing for the same reason—I can understand it, and I agree with most of his opinions. I only wish he would reply to my letters......"

I had known Bill since 1968, when he had just been named editor of the British magazine Creative Camera, and he and his publisher, Colin Osman, were touring the States. They were looking for photographers who might inspire their readers back home and paid me a visit at Camera 35, which I was editing at the time. Bill and I had a lot in common; I came to like and respect him enormously. (Later, Bill and Colin had a rather acrimonious falling out and Bill started his own magazine, Album, which published only 12 issues that quickly became classics.) Eventually, Bill resettled in the U.S., became a distinguished educator at Arizona State University, and authored untold numbers of uncommonly intelligent articles and books.

My uncommunicative nature notwithstanding, I did publish that article of Bill's I'd been holding, in the third issue of Camera Arts, April/May 1981. I titled it "The Petrified Forest." Bill retitled it later, on his 2007 website, "Incest in Academia."

In it, he wrote:

Ten years ago, I was ardently engaged in a continuous and seemingly hopeless battle to establish 'photography as art.' The battle was being waged on many fronts in many lands by scores of committed individuals. My own particular frontline was England, where commentators wrote that I 'led a crusade rather than a campaign' and waged it with 'missionary zeal.' Others were no less zealous for the cause throughout Europe and America. In the past few years, the greatest rout occurred in the U.S.A.; photography has decisively stormed the art establishment. Here, at least, the battle is won. But...if I could have predicted the results of the victory I am not so sure that I would have been such an energetic fighter in the cause.

Photography-as-art has led us into a morass of problems that denigrate the medium. I am thinking of the fact that galleries—and not the photographer's peers—are now the arbiters of taste and photographic merit; that 'success' is equated with fame and not with an individual's struggle to transcend self; that photographic journalism is riddled with pompous, unintelligible art-jargon and that clear, informative prose is hard to find; that photographers' egos have become so inflated that the individual's integrity has floated out of sight; that differentness, perversity, and slickly presented banality is touted as photography of the highest quality; that gallery and media hype has replaced a long-term committed paying-of-dues and that instant 'stars,' created by publicity and comprising nothing more substantial than hot gases, have diverted attention from the serious worker who has quietly struggled to maintain his or her vision and faith over many years; that something inexplicably yet intrinsically photographic has been killed in the fight for art acceptance.

I can't say that Bill Jay softened his position in the decades that followed. In his acceptance speech upon receiving an Infinity Award in 2008 from the International Center of Photography, he declared:

Almost everybody I have met in photography I have a photograph of. I can look at that picture and hear the tone of voice of the photographer in that picture and recall clearly the subject matter of our conversations. But I have no desire to be considered a photographer. I got into photography because I loved the medium and I admired the people who became photographers.

Since photography has been hijacked by the art market I am feeling more and more alienated from the medium of photography that I first fell in love with. Where I came from, the term Artist was something that was bestowed on a person after a lifetime of achievement. So for a student photographer to call himself an Artist was ludicrous. I'm not against the idea that photography can be singled out as Art but only after a body of work, over a long period of time, has entered the pantheon of high achievement, rather than a 20-year old MFA student touting wares around the New York gallery scene.

And my big fear is that the histories of photography in the future will be based on the photographers who were saleable through galleries, not through the best photographers in the medium.

We need people who understand the history of the medium and have standards, who are saying 'photography has something extraordinarily important to say about our culture, our society, our political system'—these are the things we should be looking at and caring about.

Where are those people? I mean I don't read them, maybe they exist and I am just too isolated. But—and you say am I angry? I don't think I'm angry, I'm just sad…the medium just doesn't seem to exist in the form that I originally loved.

Writing for the Saturday Arts section of The New York Times ("An Art World Gathering, Divided by Money," Dec. 8, 2012), Patricia Cohen termed the recent Art Basel Miami Beach a "celebration of wretched excess." As Cohen reports, "Prominent art writers and critics...have been attacking the art world, arguing that the staggering sums of money being spent on works are distorting judgments about art and undermining its long-term cultural significance. [...] In its special edition for the opening day of the fair, The Art Newspaper asked whether 'the art world is facing a crisis of values' because of the 'pernicious influence of the market on art.'"

I regret to say that photography, now for the most part elevated to at least stepchild status in the heady world of fine art, has fallen prey to the seductress called Commerce. There is no denying it. And we can place at least some of the blame on no less an eminence than Bill Jay, the iconoclastic editor, writer, critic, scholar, historian, and teacher of photographic values who passed away too soon only a few years ago.

As you may have noted a few paragraphs earlier, he admitted as much himself.

Years ago, probably at about the time Bill photographed us, Evelyn and I, Charlie and Regina Reynolds, David Lyman and Kate Carter, and Bill Jay—I don't think he had a companion that night—all went out to dinner after a long day of portfolio viewing at the annual meeting of the Society for Photographic Educators. I think this was in Colorado.

Charlie entertained us with card tricks (besides being a picture editor of note, he was an accomplished magician who rarely performed in public; he preferred designing stage magic for the likes of Doug Henning); David and Kate regaled us with stories of miscreants who tried to pass themselves off as serious students at the Maine Photographic Workshops; after dessert, Bill, who evidently fancied himself to be something of a graphologist, asked to see samples of our handwriting. I showed him my driver's license, which contained my nearly indecipherable scribble. He nodded knowingly, and asked if I had an earlier example. Turned out I did: an ID card I'd signed when I was in grade school, and had transferred from wallet to wallet as they disintegrated over the years. Every letter in the painstaking script of my youth was clearly legible.

After some intense study, he announced, "Jim, you are trying to disappear!"

"What does that mean?" I demanded. "You obviously want to be a hermit," Bill answered, laughing, his hands gesturing with a flourish toward some sort of distant infinity.

Actually, I told the group after some introspection, his prescient observation was not entirely inaccurate. I had recently purchased a dilapidated old fishing camp on a pond in Maine, and was driving up for long weekends and vacations to make it at least habitable. It was about as far away from my workaday world in New York as I could imagine. But it wasn't until spring of 2009—close to the very day that Bill died in his sleep at his new retirement home in Samara, Costa Rica—that we finally sold our Brooklyn brownstone after 42 years, and moved to the Arts and Crafts bungalow we'd purchased for our own retirement a few years earlier.

"Snowed in" at our hideaway in Maine, 2012. Photo by Jim Hughes.

Another far more famous writer now lives in our former Brooklyn home. His name is Martin Amis (yes, the novelist, Kingsley's son). Based on what little I've read about him lately, he seems as comfortable shining in the spotlight as I am made uncomfortable by the very thought of it, shunning the attention it brings whenever possible. Like Bill, Amis is now a transplanted Brit, as they say in the tabloid press that seems to dog his every step.

Bill Jay in 2002. Photo by Burk Uzzle.

But I think that's as far as any comparison can be stretched. Bill Jay wrote fact, not fiction. And he clearly saw the dangers of chasing fame and fortune. Bill was a genuine visionary in the art we all love.

Jim

*The JPEG of the finished print of Jim and Evelyn reproduced at the top of the post is from the BillJayOnPhotography website referenced in the opening paragraph. The original written-upon workprint can be seen at the website of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago.

Ed. Note: "Pond" is what lakes are called in Maine.

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Steve Rosenblum: "The book On Being A Photographer by Bill Jay and David Hurn influenced me more than any other prose I have ever read about photography. Required reading."

[The paper book is available as a POD on Lulu, and there is a Kindle Edition. —Ed.]

Readers' Dozen: Horizonless

I doubt this is going to become a regular thing here, but I rather enjoyed seeing everybody's Texas pictures a while back. So, since we've been talking about Eliot Porter and Charlie Cramer, both of whom often shoot "horizonless" photos, I thought I'd ask to see if anybody has what they think is a cool picture with no horizon. (Mike Chisholm, you'd better send something!)

If you'd like to play, send me 1–3 JPEGs, 800 pixels wide, saved in the sRGB colorspace, and I'll pick a baker's dozen of them and post them below. Don't forget to tell me what you want your byline to be, or I'll just use the sender name on the email. The only condition is that it has to be horizonless.

[UPDATE: Could be I'm just being selfish. Wanted to look at some pictures today; got my wish. I've gotten about 200 pictures so far and I could post almost any of them. I should mention that this is not a contest and the ones I'll throw up for public delectation are just things that grabbed me for some reason or looked good together, or provided variety, and aren't necessarily the "best" ones, whatever that means. Thanks to everyone for sending!]

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Potomac. Photo by Sandy Rothberg.

By Tim Parkin

Vosges Mountains, France. Photo by Arne Croell.

By Tyler Wescott

By Kazi Ushioda

By John Krumm

By Gus Ginge

By Rob Atkins

By Ken Rahaim

By Bronislaus Janulis

Václavské Place, Prague, 2006. Photo by Zoltán Istvánffy.

By Michael Trupiano

By Ed Cornachio

By Jon Shiu

By Michael Frye

By S. William Bishop

By Peter Pflasterer (Polaroid transfer)

By Brendan M. Devlin (Palladium contact print)

Tippecanoe Riverbank, Indiana, 2005. Photo by Karl Knize.
(Shot with a Graflex Series C with a 165mm ƒ/2.5 Cooke lens.
Karl says, "I look at this shot and it does/doesn't have a horizon
depending upon how much I've been drinking....")

 

[Are we up to a dozen yet? Well, there are still more to come....]

[Continued here]

Unfortunately...

...The staff is still significantly under the weather, so we're going to give the slacker the weekend off. But we'll be back first thing Monday morning. See you then, and hope you have a great weekend.

TOP Dept. of Mostly Human Resources

Bruce Springsteen / Sandy Relief

There are still three days left in Backstreet's Bruce Springsteen Sandy Relief Project. It's very simple—for a donation of $25 to the Community FoodBank of New Jersey to help people displaced by Hurricane Sandy, you'll be automatically entered in a drawing for one of 21 large, signed original prints of favorite son Bruce Springsteen. The photographers include Eric Meola, Lynn Goldsmith, Danny Clinch, and Annie Leibovitz.

Not only do you have a much better chance of winning than that big Lotto a few weeks ago, but you'll be helping a deserving cause either way.

Find out more—and see the portfolio of donated Springsteen photographs you could win—at the website.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Andrea B.: "Woo-hoo!! I'm in for four chances. Good cause—and maybe my little photo collection will grow by one. I have eight very cool photos in it now—mostly from TOP's amazing offers. This Jersey Girl would love to have a Springsteen hanging on the wall from any one of the 'togs participating in this raffle. And I really like supporting food banks."