The Online Photographer

Sunday Open Mike: Dogs

So it looks like the Hand of Fate is moving.

It got set in motion when my old barber bugged out. Left the employ of the barbershop (which is called, insouciantly, "The Barbershop") altogether. I hadn't even gotten used to her yet; if I could, I'd have the same barber for life—I'm very barber-loyal—but recently I've been a nomad, as one after another shifts onwards in life. Nothing's permanent.

Conversation is important during a haircut, because it's awkward to read a magazine and it lasts just long enough that my mind can get bored. Of all my mundane fears, having nothing to think about is the most pervasive. I had auditioned a couple of replacement barbers. One was a great conversationalist but gave me a haircut that looked vaguely Millennial; another gave me a fine haircut but evidently considered communication to be outside her job requirements. Finally I found Emily. At first, I thought conversation might be a problem because Emily is beautiful, a curvy blonde with pretty features. Beautiful women sometimes erect a defense of standoffishness, by necessity, because they don't want to inadvertently encourage interest on the part of random stray men {*cough*}.

But I needn't have worried—Emily turned out to be a pet lover, which not only speaks well of her character but, as a topic of conversation, is plenty good enough for a hundred haircuts. Once we landed on the topic, we had an animated and increasingly friendly discussion about our beloved dogs.

During the course of which she recommended a dog food she had just discovered called Merrick.

I liked what I read about it. I do indulge in the best for my dog, I admit. My buddy Lulu was rescued from a breeder of fighting dogs. She was probably bred to be a "bait dog," meaning dogs that are sacrificed to the prizefighters as practice and to whet the latter's bloodlust. The damage inflicted on bait dogs is not pretty. Knowing Lulu, she would have been infinitely game—despite never having a chance, every encounter rigged—a thought that hurts me. So my guiding principle with her has been that she needs to live a good life to make up for the likely fate of her littermates. I can't help her brothers and sisters; but at least Lulu will be spoiled and loved and understood and treated with respect and care, and live a good life on their behalf. So, yeah, when it comes to food she gets the good stuff. Partly because I want her to eat well and be healthy. And partly it's symbolic.

Two words that make Lulu all excited are "pet store." I imagine it must be a cornucopia of luscious smells for her. I happened to remember the name "Merrick"—I don't always remember names—on our next visit to the pet store. I asked, and they had it. So we tried it.

Lulu loved it. And it didn't trigger her allergies, which is her ongoing health issue—if anything, it's made her scratching and self-biting behaviors subside.

It takes a number of days to properly switch a dog's diet, blending the new food into the old in increasing amounts to avoid any digestive issues or allergic reactions. Once we'd switched, I didn't want to go back.

So then I was left with the better part of two bags of the old food.

On our next trip to the pet store (this time to pay the squeaky toy tax, an ongoing household expense), I encountered an employee of the local HAWS (Humane Animal Welfare Society) shelter, who was apparently there as a public service. I remembered our extra food and asked if I could donate it to the shelter.

Next came a trip to the shelter to drop off the food, and that's when I finally realized that Fate was in play. I successfully offloaded the surplus food.

And then I figured I'd have a look in the dog kennels.

As long as I was there.

Uh-oh...

[TO BE CONTINUED]

Mike

"Open Mike" is the editorial page of TOP, occasionally off-topic. It appears only but not always on Sundays.

Original contents copyright 2014 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.

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

Ailsa: "I like where this post is going...."

Jim Hart: "After some searching I found the perfect barber. When I sat in the chair for the first time he asked 'How do you want your hair cut?' I replied, 'quickly and silently.' And so it has remained...."

Patrick Perez: "Mike, part two had better include photos.

"On a side note, my brother related a comic from the Funny Times to me yesterday. A cat is speaking to a dog. 'Wait, you're saying my intern is your best friend?'"

Jamie Pillers: "Don't give us that 'Uh-oh' thing!! WHAT HAPPENED?? How long am I going to have to wait to read the next installment of this saga? D**n...I hate waiting for the ends of stories like this!"

Mike replies: I have to wait for it to happen before I can write about what happened. More soon, promise.

And the Winner Is...(Yes, More About Pens)

Those of you who don't make and/or sign prints must be nearing terminal sufficiency on this topic, but let's face it, if you aspire to be an art photographer in the accepted sense you do need to make physical objects. A few more items:

1. To sign or not to sign, and where: I'm collecting some data on what the art market actually wants and expects with regard to the signing of artwork. I've sent a very short questionnaire to several museum curators, eminent gallerists, and serious collectors. I've already gotten two very useful replies, and if/when I get a few more I'll summarize the findings for you. A foretaste, though: in contrast to what I wrote yesterday, not everyone agrees with Ken that a recto signature isn't necessary.

2. Front-runner emerges: After signing many dozens more prints, it has emerged that my favorite pen of all for Canson Baryta Photographique paper is the Prismacolor Premier Illustration Marker Fine Line .05 black pictured above. This pen is almost always sold in sets of various colors or tips, so I thought I'd offer a direct link for the single pen alone. Here's the single pen and here's the page at Blick Art Supplies where you can find all the pens in the series. Hope this helps someone somewhere.

My endorsement is not a guarantee that the manufacturer's promise that "these markers contain premium, pigmented, acid-free, archival ink that is lightfast, permanent, non-toxic, and water resistant" is absolutely true at face value for your papers and your conditions. Just sayin'.

I'm also finding it's a good general-purpose writing marker, and it's not expensive ($1.61 ea. if you order 12), so I've ordered a dozen to have on hand. More working pens in the house is seldom a bad thing.

3. Ctein's take: Ctein was psyched that a recto signature isn't considered mandatory (we both came up in the era when it was), and he and I had a phone conversation about the various options for the back of the print: a stamp, a plate or label, and a third interesting option—but I'll let him tell you about it.

Mike

ADDENDUM from Tech. Ed. Ctein: Personally, I'm delighted to find out that collectors [at least some —Ed.] would prefer that I don't sign and title my prints on the front. Decades of practice have made me very good at that, but it's the most nerve-racking part of the whole printing process. A slip-up can ruin a print. If it's an inkjet print, it's a nuisance and some wasted time and a modest amount of money. If it's a dye transfer print, many, many hours of work go down the drain. It is much easier signing in soft pencil on the back; I've never screwed that up.

Regarding the signing of inkjet prints, stamping with ink raises all sorts of concerns.  The inherent archivality of the stamp is the least of mine. Inks are notorious for penetrating, bleeding, or outgassing. You'd want to have  an ink that would adhere to the paper, would not smear, would not penetrate if you're printing on fiber-based paper, and won't transfer anything or outgas solvents to a sheet of paper below it  (whether or not there is an interleaf sheet between the prints—those are not impermeable barriers). These physical requirements are likely to be very different for fiber-based prints and RC prints.

Signing in soft graphite pencil (e.g., a retouching pencil) is an entirely safe practice. Signing or stamping on the back with ink is an unknown.

With one exception: rather than physically stamp, you can print the information on the back of the paper with your inkjet printer. At least in theory. You can even scan in your chop or your signature and print that as well.

There are two practical issues that arise here:

1. The first is whether the ink  would properly  adhere to the back of the paper and not smear or transfer to an adjacent sheet—not a problem with fiber-based papers, but it might not work with RC papers. You'd have to try it.

2. The second is that it requires running the paper through the printer face-down. That may or may not scratch the surface of the print. It will depend entirely upon the printer and inkset, the chosen paper path, and the kind of paper: RC  vs. fiber base, glossy, semi-matte/gloss, or matte surface. Matte surface papers, in particular, are notoriously easy to scuff and mark. Again, you'd have to give it a try with your particular paper and setup.

For what it's worth, I just ran the experiment on my current setup: Epson 3880 printer, rear paper diagonal feed, and Canson Baryta Photographique paper. I'm delighted to find out that front-side scratching is not a problem. I get an un-marred print whether I print the backside first or the frontside first (allowing a day of blotting and drying after printing the frontside before printing on the back).

I'm pretty sure your mileage will differ, but I'm a happy camper.

Ctein

Original contents copyright 2014 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.

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Featured Comments from:

Ming Thein: "We must have tested 30+ different pens over the last few months as part of the Ultraprint development process. I've found that either the Faber-Castell pigment markers (grey body, silver clip) or the dark blue bodied Pilot 'Drawing Pen Pigment Ink' pens work best—on both Canson Baryta Photographique and Canson Infinity Platin Fiber Rag (the latter of which is my personal preference)."

Kenneth Tanaka: "Just to be clear...I think people should 'sign' their photo prints any way that makes them happy, including potentially not signing them at all. My earlier remarks were 'observational'; I was reporting what I have observed having had the opportunity to closely inspect many, many prints of many of the most influential photographers of history. That is, I was not attempting to be prescriptive.

"Signatures are, of course, symbols of authentication and authorization. So to the extent that a signature represents an artist's authority it will naturally be desirable to a collector if all other factors are equal. But they often aren't 'equal'; that's the hitch. There are, for example, more than a few situations where a photographer never signed highly-desirable 'vintage' prints of his work, but did sign much later and poorer prints that often go unsold, or bought-in, at auctions.

"Then, of course, there is the whole issue of the authentication of the signature. One of the most famous cases of photo print fraud in our times was the case of the Lewis Hine prints which were signed. I am acquainted with someone who was burned by this incident, having purchased a 'Powerhouse Worker' print from an established dealer. Despite the Hine signature, an expert thought that the print just 'looked too pretty' to be authentic...which it was not. (The collector received a full refund, by the way.)

"But I digress. Few, if any, of us sell into the 'Art' market , so 'Forever Authentication' is not really a major factor for consideration. Marks made by pencils, pens, crayons will all last more than long enough to do the job. (In fact the 'lasting' nature of most marks is what gives conservators headaches.) Our signatures are principally marks of pride of authorship. So again I recommend that you sign your photos wherever and however it makes you happy to do so."

Mike replies: Good points all. Especially the observation that it's unlikely ever to be a serious issue for most if not all of us. What I'm learning from the other experts I'm consulting also seems to indicate that there is considerable latitude for preference—what the photographer prefers, what her or his customers prefer, what the gallery owners prefer. So the best thing is to do it your way—then that will become what is characteristic and expected of your prints, if and when anyone in the future is paying attention.

Terry Letton: "For what it's worth, the prize of my minuscule print collection is a portrait of the Indian poet Rabandrandath Tagore. It is not signed but is stamped on the back Studio of Edward S. Curtis. Good enough for me."

Richard Alan Fox [whose question started all this —Ed.]: "Super thanks Mike."

Clayton Jones: "I make B&W prints, but on matte paper. My favorite paper is Epson's Hot Press Natural, which accepts a signature beautifully with a #2 pencil. This means a light signature can be applied. My favorite pencil for this is the Papermate Sharpwriter #2, an inexpensive mechanical pencil that can be purchased at CVS and Walgreens (just about anywhere).

"During the short period when I used glossy papers, I used a Staedtler Marsmatic 700 refillable pen which was loaded with the same light gray pigment ink I used in the printer, so I knew it would last as long as the print. I have never liked bold, black recto signatures which pull the viewer's eye and compete with the picture. I like the signature to be there, but not draw attention to itself."

David Paterson: "Messing up prints while attempting to sign them is definitely an issue with me, so for some time now it has been my habit to print a digital signiature and abbreviated date in the bottom right-hand margin of each print. I don't sell a huge number of prints but I have never had a complaint since I started doing this."

The Verso Stamp

"Manuscript" is a word that originated in 1590–1600, from the medieval Latin manuscriptus, meaning "written by hand."

Traditionally, penmanship was taught in schools and there were various matters of etiquette that pertained: personal notes and letters from gentlemen and ladies were properly written by hand, for example. Of course for centuries there was no alternative.

And of course a person's signature was her mark and affadavit in the days before magnetic strips and ID numbers. It was a sign attesting to personal attention and approval, a source-mark. The signature of Elizabeth the First of England was appropriately regal.

The colonial merchant John Hancock's signature was so admired that his name became a slang synonym for "signature." More recently, the U.S. Treasury Secretary's literally loopy signature got a lot of attention because it goes on all the money printed during his tenure. Many people like the idea of Jack Lew's loops on the money.

Handwriting itself is supposed to be a sort of fingerprint. There are handwriting analysts and forgers of handwriting (and of signatures) and charlatans who claim to decode personality traits from a person's handwriting.

Funny thing is, though—I don't have any handwriting.

Well, I sort of do, of course. But what I mean is that I don't write by hand and never have very much. When I was young I wrote letters constantly, but they were all (Emily Post turns over in grave) typed. I write to you more or less every day, but it's all typed into the ether and almost never becomes ink on paper at all. The byline at the bottom is typed.

I've been aware as I signed prints yesterday that there was something faintly contrived in that act. I'm not a Dickensian businessman whose signature is required on a hundred documents a day. I can go a year without signing anything other than a check, and I don't pay for things with checks very often any more either. Also, I have physical difficulty signing prints. My hand cramps up and my mind gets the yips (I could never write a signature like Jack Lew's, for instance—I'd constantly be making too many or too few loops). I ruined not one but two of Ctein's beautiful prints yesterday by simply messing up the signature. Ack, in the immortal words of Bill the Cat.

So I think I've decided that this last print sale is the last time I will sign any of my prints.

Peter Turnley has written eloquently here of the meaning, to him, of the act of signing a print, and how memorable it was for him when he first saw Henri Cartier-Bresson signing his. Anyone who signs their prints should continue doing so proudly and without apology. However, as Ken Tanaka mentioned in the comments yesterday (and which I've since confirmed with a couple of collectors I know), collectors now are just as happy with prints signed on the back (verso when referring to a sheet of paper, the front being recto), and a stamp is as good as a signature.

What's a stamp?

Fortunately, Luminous-Lint has collected many examples, and has a nice page explaining the various types.

Studio stamps, courtesy Luminous-Lint. The one in the middle
is Gertrude Kasebier's.

More about this later, but if a rubber stamp on the back will satisfy posterity and the market, I think, personally, that I'm going to switch over to a stamp as soon as I work out the details.

Pending further research. I'll keep you posted.

Mike
(Thanks to Ken Tanaka and Cal Amari)

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post got recto and verso recto'd and verso'd! Sorry for the mix up. —Ed.

Original contents copyright 2014 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.

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

Phil: Get one of these:

Winsor: "I for one treasure the 'AA' initials on a couple my hung prints indicating that he approved the prints made by an assistant. I don't know about collecting and debating the effect on value, but I certainly appreciate the connection to photographer of a real signature no matter how tortured or abbreviated. A stamp just moves away from that and seems to say that so many prints were made it is not a work of art, just a manufactured object. A stamp is sort of like a title page in a book. People still want a signed first edition."

John Krumm: "A stamp sounds about perfect for me as well. My handwriting is not very good, and my signature only OK. When I have signed prints in the past I can't get myself to relax and sign like I might a check. So I draw the signature slowly, which usually doesn't look so great. No fun. I suppose you could even stamp the paper on the back ahead of time, to avoid messing up the print later."

Steven Willard: "Another option is a 'chop' stamp which is the Asian version of a rubber ink stamp that are frequently seen on Japanese and Chinese prints or paintings. They are custom made and closely held and are used in place of a signature."

Stephen Gilbert: "Hey, if it's good enough for Walker and Weegee...I think the stamps are quite cool, in an old-timey kind of way. Maybe you could solicit designs?"

Jamin: "Well, it was a good story and I had to read more, but according to Wikipedia Jacob Lew changed his signature just so new money wouldn't have those loops."

Nick Rains: "I think signing demonstrates 'contact' between the artist and the print and it adds an analogue element in a digital world. I too am left handed and totally get your cramping and the 'yips' when starting to sign a print. I once got tangled up signing a 60x30" Cibachrome print and had to re-print it."

Mike replies: Ouch.

Pen for Signing Prints

Yesterday, Richard Alan Fox asked me what pen I'm using to sign my prints.

Complicated question.

You might recall that some time ago I told you that I'd some online research and bought a handful of different pens to try. I was after something that wouldn't damage prints, was considered permanent, and didn't smudge.

I then did various trials with the six or seven types of pens I bought from various sources. The one I ended up using the most is labeled "Kaiser CD/DVD Pen." I bought two of these, from different sources, one of which (if memory serves) was just advertised and sold as an archival marker for negatives and film.

Rather incredibly, I can no longer find this pen online at all—there's a different pen that comes up under that name, but it doesn't look like the two I bought. C'mon now! That was only six months ago. But the product I have seems either to have changed skins or gone extinct.

The Kaiser pens I have are probably made by Staedtler. They seem very similar to the Staedtler Lumocolor permanent CD/DVD 310. (Note that the pen at the link comes only in a .4 mm width. The ones I'm using are not marked, but have at least .6 and probably 1 mm tips. You might want to check out this one as well, which comes in three widths.)

This Pilot pen seemed to have the best writing properties on Canson Infinity Baryta Photographique fiber-base paper—although as you can see at the link, the performance information provided is neither very exhaustive nor very reassuring—closely followed by the Prismacolor Premier Illustration markers. The Sakura Pigma Micron pens smudged the most of all the ones I have, so I eliminated those early on.

So, can I recommend any of these?

No.

I mean, not necessarily. I don't have the ability to do adequate tests—I can't guarantee to you that they'll work the way the manufacturers say they do. All I did was try out their writing properties, evaluate the way they look, and test that they were smudge-proof on the papers I'm signing. That's all. I picked the pen I used to sign most of the prints (the Kaiser) because it was the most smudge-proof (I'm left-handed, so smudging can be a problem). Beyond that, I'm trusting that I wouldn't have bought these if the online description (which, in the case of the Kaisers, as I said, I can't even track back to, it turns out) didn't look appropriate, and I'm simply trusting that those descriptions were accurate and truthful.

That's not good enough for me to make a recommendation to others.

Good luck. When it comes to pens, it's truly a dense forest out there.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2014 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.

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Featured Comments from:

robert e: "Thanks for the report. Timely for me, as I mean to try out Canson Baryta in the near future, and I'm wondering if graphite will work on that. I'll report back in the event I have to try pens and find something interesting, but I'm hoping I can stick with graphite. I feel (don't actually know for sure) that it's the most benign option, and we know it's stable. Yes, it can be erased, but who's going to do that to a signed print they bought and framed? Plus, it's cheap. I just came across this: apparently archival standards for pens are covered by ISO 11798. Googling turns up at least a couple of European pen makers with certified inks. (ISO 18916 covers general imaging materials.) FEI, Mike's original pen hunt article is here."

Mike replies: Pencil doesn't work on the Canson paper Ctein used for my prints (a particularly beautiful paper, by the way—I think it looks as good as any light-sensitive paper I ever used in the darkroom).

I should have referred back to that original article myself. It appears my Kaiser pens were the "Kaiser-Schreiber film marking pen" recommended (but not endorsed, n.b.) by the Library of Congress Preservation Department that I referred to in that post. It also turned out that the "Hollinger non-fading black Pigma pen" that I got from Hollinger Metal Edge was the same pen. That pen now looks different: here it is from Hollinger. If you buy it from Amazon or B&H Photo you either have to buy a set of four colors or, if you want just the black color, a box of 40 pens.

Frank Petronio: "If it's an inkjet, I just add my name in small but contrasting type, a nice sans-serif like Frutiger Roman or Bold, over the image at whichever corner it is the least distracting. I adjust the translucency to be legible but quiet. Sacrilegious I know but it suits the medium and never smudges or gets cut off. For years I tried various pens and none of them were ideal."

Mike replies: That's too non-standard for the art world, but, interestingly, I used to do the same thing to add photographer's names to magazine covers. (Hey, a photo magazine should give the cover photographer credit on the cover itself, don't you think? It's what I thought, anyway.)

Short Break

I'm going to be taking some time "off." Today and maybe tomorrow, until I finish signing prints. If I don't, Ctein is going to put his philosophical pacifism on hold just long enough to kill me. 

Sorry for the interruption! Pretty much everything I'm doing right now is designed to give me more time for doing what I do best...writing. Ironically, however, the work of getting to that place takes time away from writing.

I was talking to Peter the other day and I mentioned the high and bitter irony of that. I'm getting to the point that I have so much work to do running my little business that I won't have any time for writing posts—which is, of course, the foundation of the business.

He replied that that's a very familiar situation for photographers in general—and he's right! It's quite possible to have so much work to do running a photography business that it crowds out most of the time available for actually taking pictures.

John Sexton solves this by taking photographing trips. It becomes easier to find time to shoot when it's just you and a 4x5 and you're living in a tent.

Michael and Paula used to shoot for six months a year and market prints for the other six months. I don't know if they still do that—I don't think so. But when they were, they were pretty strict about it.

This is one reason why, traditionally, many professional photography businesses were "Mom and Pop" operations. One spouse (not always the male) took the pictures and schmoozed with the clients, and the other ran the business.

The patron saint of the "woman behind the man" in photography is Tabitha May (Pritts) Kinsey, wife of Darius. She labored in the darkroom for half a century so that he could roam the West taking (and selling) photographs. They've got to be candidates for photography's hardest working couple.

I wish somebody would reprint the great two-volume set of Kinsey, Photographer. The single-volume paperback is still findable, but the two-volume set is rare now.

Tabitha was one of photo history's unsung great printers, too. She was one of my heroes when I was a custom printer.

What was this post about, again? Oh, yeah.

One more word and the ASA (able sale administrator) will blow his lid, so I'd better get to signing. See you in a few.

Mike

P.S. Oh, and a quote o' the day for today: David Vestal: "Do your work." This is taped to the top of my iMac. Okay, now I'm off to take David's advice.

Original contents copyright 2014 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.

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

Jim Hart: "Might as well take some time off; can't leave the house, there's a hole in the road...."

Brooks Jensen: "I'll put in a vote for my wife, Maureen Gallagher, without whom LensWork would simply not exist. But then again, I might be biased in this.  :-)  "

New Earthrise

NASA / GSFC / ASU

On February 1, 2014, as Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter approached the north pole, it rotated to catch a view of Earth rising above 180-kilometer Rozhdestvenskiy crater. Twelve such Earthrises happen each day for the spacecraft, which is in a polar orbit around the Moon. (NASA caption)

More information here.

Mike
(Thanks to Sam Grover)

Original contents copyright 2014 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.

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

Bill Wheeler: "There we are. What a wonderful photograph!"

Aashish Sharma: "I think I want a print of that hanging on my wall, because I can't stop looking at it!  :-) "

Print Sale Result

Well, I have to hand it to Ctein. His post yesterday was too hard a sell for my taste—I was uncomfortable with it—but it was just what was needed. It got the word around, and sales of Phil's print took off on the last day. Yesterday at noon (when the sale was originally scheduled to end) we had sold 80 prints. By the time it actually did end—today at 2—the count was 204.

I have a lot of people to thank here—photographer and master Kona-grower Phil Rosenberg, of course; TOP reader Del Bomberger, who in his "day job" is a high level fundraiser, who has been very kindly lending his advice; Ctein, for ably administrating the sale and for his "9th inning piece" which Del thinks was a big part of what made the sale a success; and of course the generous TOP reader who anonymously donated the use of his beautiful condo to help spur more sales and thus more income for my fund for a new office with a new abode wrapped around it. And, last but not least, hundreds of TOP readers! Two hundred and four, to be precise.

Next up will be a really beautiful classic landscape taken by my friend Jack Macdonough, who is one of the very few people I know who actually makes a good living selling prints (not easy to pull off, as many of you might know). The print will also serve as a nice example of what a Leica S-series camera with one of its SOTA* lenses can do. I've got that slated to start at noon on Sunday, June 8th. It will run for three days, until noon on Wednesday, June 10th.

We've also got something new cooking...an old bookseller friend of mine, Andy Moursund, has made some very attractive posters of old classic photo book covers. We're planning to offer these as regular catalog items (i.e., no time limit, they'll just be there for anyone to buy whenever they want to). These will cost no more than $50 and less if we can manage it. They're very attractive, and quite cool IMHO.

Mike

*"State of the art," as every audiophile knows.

Original contents copyright 2014 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:

MarkB: "Wow, I guess I took your assignment too literally...I certainly 'blew it' and even missed the extended deadline of that gorgeous print! Can't wait to see what comes of the sale, both in terms of future print sales and future habitations."

John Brewton: "I think the print sale was an awesome undertaking. While I appreciate the image it was not to my taste (not B&W). However, while I'm sure the vacation was enticing, Hawaii is not anyplace I'm interested in traveling to and is most certainly not on my bucket list. Sorry for this time around. Looking forward to the next offering."

Michel: "Outstanding. Congratulations. Can't wait to get my print. Now I have to save some money so I can get all these prints framed and up on the wall."

Neil Partridge: "Great result on the print sale. Please could you let us know how we'll be contacted regarding submitting our entries for the competition. Thanks."

Mike replies: You'll get a letter delivered with the print that will explain. Working on it now. [UPDATE: X that. You'll get an email from me. —Mike]

Craig: "Funny, I immediately recognized SOTA as a turntable brand but never understood it to mean State Of The Art. Probably too busy trying different sized shims under my Rega tonearm trying to optimize the vertical tracking angle to pick up on the reference."

Expressivity Axiom

Something the previous post brings to mind—generally, in photography, any technical flaw can potentially be used for artistic expression.

(Just sayin'.)

Mike

Original contents copyright 2014 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.

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

Jimmy Reina: "When I was in school, my professor put my (accidental) double exposure in the end of year student show, and it won first prize. In that instance, my real skill was as an editor—even a mistake can have good composition."

Dennis: "A weed is just a flower growing in the wrong place."

Leslie Quagraine: "We self-built our family home. Anything that came out a bit wonky, my wife dubbed a 'feature.' Long live features in the creative process."

Assignment: Blow It!

So...have you ever taken a picture that had a significant area of blown highlights, or, better yet, flared highlights? I'd like to see some.

I love the effect in Kim's picture below, but (strangely—maybe something is wrong with my brain tonight) other examples aren't popping into my head. Apart from some of the landscapes in Deep South and some of Atget's*.

Mike
(Thanks to Severian)

*It's so annoying having most of my books in boxes. To paraphrase Richard III, "My library, my library, my kingdom for my library!"

[Note: To post an image in the comments use the following code and make sure the linked image isn't wider than 470 pixels or it will be truncated. —Ed.]

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By Michael J. Perini

Blake: "Julián Barón's C.E.N.S.U.R.A. makes excellent use of this technique."

By Christian Davis

By Terry Letton

Here's a historical picture that I remembered: Lee Friedlander's 1959 portrait of Helen Levitt in New York City. I imitated this effect several times over the years.

Not a very good JPEG, but it was the best I could find:

I once asked Miss Levitt if she liked this, and she replied that she didn't like any photographs of herself. But then, she wouldn't sign some of her own books. —MJ

Trent Parke, White Man, 2001. (Suggested by Kevin Purcell)

By Jim Bullard

By Hugh Lovell (Sony 828, 2005)

You Gotta Be Crazy to Pass This Up

By Ctein

Seeing as the perks on Phil Rosenberg's Keck Observatory photograph sale got changed in a major way on Saturday, I managed (with some difficulty) to persuade Mike to leave the sale open for an extra 26 hours, until 2 o'clock tomorrow, Tuesday.

You can thank me when you're lying on the beach in Hawaii soaking up the rays.

I'm thinking some of you must not realize what a fabulous opportunity the Hawaiian Vacation Contest is. Don't get me wrong. The sale is going well, but I'd expect people to be totally beating down my doors with orders. It provides you entry to a competition with a major prize—a paid-for condo vacation in Hawaii, plus one of your photographs offered in a print sale here that ought to pay for the whole rest of the trip—and I'm pretty certain that there won't be a lot of entries. It's not like tens of thousands of school kids sending in their cereal box tops. A good print sale on TOP may sell 100 of a particular photograph (give or take a very large give-or-take). Only a small fraction of those purchasers are going to be interested in selling a photograph on TOP. So, I'm thinking a dozen, maybe two dozen entrants?

That's what you're up against. Pretty good odds, I'd say, considering the potential reward vs. the cost of entry. Honestly and truly, if I weren't administering this sale, I'd be buying a print just to get into the competition.

Don't think your work isn't good enough to compete. Most people are lousy judges of how good their photographs are. Mike is a pretty good judge (not infallible, but who is?) of what readers here will buy. More than one TOP print sale has occurred by him reaching out to a photographer and suggesting to them that they should sell their work here, when they never considered it.

That could be you. Besides, the least you're getting for your money is a really, really fine photograph, printed by moi. Not to mention the comforting knowledge and good karma that comes from helping Mike find a new home for the TOP HQ. You can get behind that, can't you?

A wonderful photograph. A vacation condo. A print sale to raise the money to get you to that condo. And karma points!

How can you pass that up?!

Ctein

©2014 by Ctein, all rights reserved

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Eric VV: "I've stayed at these condos (when they were brand new) and they're really, really nice. We were on a ground floor and it had a sliding glass wall (no, not just a door—the whole wall opened up!). This is also one of the very few places on the Big Island that we've seen that's right on the beach. Also, they have a keiki (kiddie) pool that's fantastic for little ones (under three years old).

"This is a princely donation. You got me, I'm in!"

The Camera Used by 93.9% of News Photogs

...Sixty years ago this month, in May of 1954.

You can see the whole article at the link, but it begins, "A CAMERA of great versatility, the Speed Graphic is used by 93.9% of the nation's news photographers."

The page is from Marc Bergman's "60 Years Ago—May 1954" posted over at Photo.net. Marc provides a number of articles from 60 years ago this month.

The Speed Graphic article, from Modern Photography, is by Arthur Rothstein, the Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographer.

Here's Arthur Rothstein's most famous photograph, Farmer walking in dust storm, Cimarron County, Oklahoma, taken in April 1936.

Mike
(Thanks to MM)

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Random Excellence: Kim Kirkpatrick

It is possible to take beautiful cat pictures:
Georgie and Glen Coco by Kim Kirkpatrick

Very likely this is the spiritual endpoint of TOP...that or a sign of the apocalypse...

...I'm posting cat pictures. Gak!*

But really, this one's wonderful.

Mike
(Thanks to KK)

*Very longtime readers will know that I used to make a running gag of an exaggerated prejudice against cat pictures and flower pictures. Not so much in recent years, because, hey, there's nothing wrong with cat pictures and flower pictures.

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Out Front (Random Snap)

So do you remember this photo? I posted that when I learned the local Public Works Department was planning to re-pave our street.

Just thought you might be interested in seeing what the same scene looks like today.

Me, to the guy seen holding the ladder in this shot: "Big job!"

Him: "No it ain't."

Here's what's down at the bottom of that hole:

These are the two water mains, one to each side of the street, originally laid in the 1930s. They'll be replaced with plastic pipe with a wire embedded in it for electronic location.

Here's what the top shot would look like if it were a Mike picture.

It's frustrating—I want to watch, but I have work to do. That's everyone, though, huh?

Mike

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Last Chance: Sale / Contest Ends Today!

Don't forget our current sale, of Phil Rosenberg's Observatory print, ends today at noon.

[UPDATE: We have decided to extend the sale. More details at noon. —Beleaguered Ed.]

If you're just catching up on this, it became a contest on Saturday, when a generous anonymous reader donated a week at a Hawaiian villa as a prize.

To make it legal in Wisconsin (pure lotteries are against the law) we had to make it a contest of skill. So here's how it's working: print buyers will be invited to compete to have their own print sale.

The winner also gets the week in Hawaii.

The sale is scheduled to end at noon Central Time, so...well, I guess this sounds a lot like an ad but...hurry!  :-)

Mike

P.S. If it seems like this is all piecemeal and we're just extemporizing as we go along, it's because that is exactly what's happening.

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Open Mike: No. 1 in Murder

Speaking to fans, May 9th, 2014

Regular readers will probably recognize the name John Camp. A former reporter, John's now a committed amateur painter who's made himself quite knowledgable about art. He's also built a very successful career as a novelist, writing thrillers (at the gruelling pace of two per year) under the nom de plume John Sandford. He's been reading TOP and writing comments for a number of years now, and we've corresponded by email for a long time. (He's also currently collaborating with Ctein on a novel.)

I got to meet John in person a couple of days ago, finally. He was passing through town for a series of book signings. He's a vegetarian, and Google helped me find a heretofore undiscovered-by-me vegetarian restaurant (they're not common in Wisconsin). The conversation was as every bit as good as I expected it to be and the food was much better than I expected it to be.

Then I got to observe him in action.

We arrived at the Barnes & Noble at Mayfair Mall to find a crowd* of very enthusiastic people waiting, many of them in a long rope line. The manager of the store told me they no longer have facilities for author talks because some of the new toy displays can't be moved ("they fall apart"), but John gave a short talk anyway, giving the eager audience some inside information about his upcoming plots and answering questions.

Example question: Why are some of the counties he mentions in the books real and some fictional? The answer makes sense: he mentioned a book on his in which a local school board votes, during a regular official meeting, to murder a journalist. Couldn't exactly pin something like that on a real school board in a real county!

Later, as he signed books—"the trick is not to use your wrist," he told me, "use your whole arm"—I had some very nice conversations with a number of his fans. You might not guess it based on the sometimes lurid character of the genre, but thriller readers turn out to be very nice people, genuine, open, and interesting—at least according to my very small sample.

And the same might be said of thriller writers, at least going by my current sample of one.

The author as gentle critic: John, whose new book Field of Prey was at
#1 in "Murder" when I checked on Amazon this morning,
holds up a competitor's book.

A very fun afternoon and evening abroad for Yr. Hmbl. Ed., for sure. Thanks, John.

Mike

*The man with the beard at the right is the German-born American archaeologist Egon H. E. Lass, author of The Seasons of Tulul.

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richardplondon: "The cover of the book being held in the photo may be reason enough alone to hold it as he did. It is an honoured tradition in (for example) cycle racing, if assigned a '13' number ('113,' '213,' etc.) to be sure to fix that on upside down. This simple technique (as luck has it) is sure to deflect disaster, albeit not provably."

Mike replies: Maybe he can tell us for sure, but I'm going to guess John knew that....

Albert Erickson: "Currently reading his new book now. It is clearly a page-turner and one I would recommend if you want a quick and entertaining read. Love his work; I have read or listened to every one of his books. Thanks for sharing."

John Camp: "Mike, nice to meet you at last. That moment with the Fuji X-T1 you were using may turn out to be an expensive moment for me—that thing felt like a camera should.

"I wanted to comment about Egon Lass. He is one of the more famous of the older generation of Israeli archaeologists (although he's neither Israeli nor Jewish.) Been everywhere, done everything. A man much like Egon turns up in one of my novels...anyway, his book, Seasons of Tulul, fascinated me. Egon spent several digging seasons actually living with a group of Bedouin workers near Jericho, and his life with them gives a seriously interesting peek into the lives of typical Arabs. Egon makes some judgments, but not intrusive ones: he mostly simply reports what he sees and experiences, and not all of it is pleasant. In fact, some of it would probably horrify typical American readers. But, it's the way things were—and still are, in many places. For anyone interested in other cultures, the book is a powerful experience.

"By the way, we got lucky with that restaurant. A lot of vegan places simply pour some fake cheese over a carrot and call it a meal; that place actually had some pretty decent food. I'm not really a philosophical vegetarian—I'm doing it because I would like my heart to keep working a bit longer. Okay, a lot longer. Anyway, I find a lot of vegetarian/vegan restaurants intolerable. The food just isn't very good, by any standards. Purity of motive isn't enough. The Chinese, Thai and Indians have excellent vegetarian dinners—so why can't vegetarian restaurants? Why do vegetarian restaurants also have to take on the extra burden of being health-food places? Why can't they have Cokes? As far as I know, Cokes have very little beef in them...[end of rant.]"

Mike replies: Well, if you get an X-T1, I just discovered one of the shortcomings of the 23mm lens...the indents on the aperture ring are very gentle, and if you inadvertently let the aperture ring slip off "A" just a bit, the camera will stop everything down to ƒ/16 and all your indoor pictures will be blurry until you discover it. I'll give you a hint how I learned this—it was at a Barnes & Noble.

And I'll add to your Chinese/Thai/Indian list that my favorite Japanese restaurant has some very tasty vegetarian rolls. I've been trying them one by one.

Saturday Joke

-

"There are two types of people in the world.
1. Those who can extrapolate from incomplete information."

-

(G.K. Froehlich, quoting his daughter)

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darr: "An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first one orders a beer. The second orders half a beer. The third, a quarter of a beer. The bartender says, 'You're all idiots,' and pours two beers."

Very Cool News! (Hawaiian Vacation Contest)

Big news! One of the buyers of Phil Rosenberg's Mauna Kea Hawaii print is going to get a WEEK for FREE at a luxury condominium in Hawaii! Located 45 minutes up the coast from Phil's coffee plantation.

Seriously—it's the gift of an anonymous reader who wants to help with the New TOP HQ fund drive.

Everybody who buys one of the prints from the current print offer (either signed or unsigned) will be invited to participate in a competition. Competitors' work will be evaluated for its suitability for a single-image print sale on TOP. The winner of that competition will receive the week for free at the luxury villa in Hawaii pictured above, and they'll have their own print sale on TOP in the fall—which, if the gods are smiling, should pay the rest of their vacation expenses.

There will be some "fine print" (the other kind)—for example, the winner will have to use the condo before November 2015, and it's subject to availability. But the above is the gist of it.

Cool, huh?

Mike
(Big thanks to Anonymous)

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A Tip for Food Photographers

"Tips" used to be a regular feature of old-timey photography magazines. You don't see them so much any more.

I've never been good at coming up with them. An editor once suggested I write a column of tips, "because readers enjoy them"—and all I could come up with was one*. Which is lame. And not enough for a whole column**.

But anyone who does something for long enough occasionally discovers something—some little trick—that both works and helps: a tip.

So anyway, humbly offered, a tip for food photographers, something I've noticed in passing. (Yes, I realize no food photographer may ever read this, or, if one does, never try it. Hence the humility.)

Here goes:

If you run a Behmore 1600 coffee roaster in a small small room for one cycle—even "dry," sans beans—it will temporarily suck so much moisture out of the air that it makes hot food and hot liquids steam like crazy...in a very picturesque way.

There you go—a veritable tip, my second original contribution to the genre and the canon. No charge.

Mike

*Take two of the little plastic containers that 35mm film comes in (we used to call them "film cans," because they originally were cans, made of metal), one Kodak and one Ilford. Cut the bottom off the Kodak one and cut a small vertical slit in the now open bottom end. Then jam the Kodak container down into the Ilford one. You can add a drop of glue if you want to—cyanoacrylate*** (CA) would probably work—but the two halves will stay together nicely even without glue. You've just made a handy light-tight and (if glued) waterproof container for 120 or 220 medium-format film. You're welcome, world.

**But enough for a whole blog post.

***More familiar by various trade names such as Super Glue and Krazy Glue. Fittingly, Eastman Kodak had a hand in its development.

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Steve Barnett: "Or...you could buy a roll of Rollei or Adox 120 film and get a properly made re-sealable snap lid film can free, because that is what the film comes in."

Mike replies: That's considerate of them. That old "tip" of mine was published in the 1980s, though, and nothing like that existed then that I knew of.

Eamon Hickey: "Food photography is one of the sub-genres of photography with the most cool and unusual tricks, in my experience. A body of arcane knowledge built up over decades by highly skilled craftsman. I once spent an enjoyable couple of hours learning some of them from Lou Manna, at the launch of his book Digital Food Photography, which should be available on Amazon through TOP's affiliate links for anyone interested. Did you know that there are fake (acrylic) ice cubes that greatly ease the job of shooting drinks? Lou clued me in to that. These are also available on Amazon through TOP's affiliate links!"

An Experiment (Leica Fan Alert)

So I'm going to try an experiment. I'm going to do a print sale every month for a while, offering only one picture each month.

Why? It will allow me to offer a greater variety of work and include some more offbeat stuff. Plus I think it might be fun for readers to see what we come up with every month, as a feature, even if they're not interested in buying. And there are a lot of practical reasons that are more arcane and involved. But I won't go into all that. (It's "longer than it is interesting," as my Dad used to say.)

But this isn't permanent. Necessarily. One lesson I learned in my magazine days was that whenever you did something, people assumed you were going to keep doing it from then on. Not so in this case. I just want to try it for a while, and see how it goes. Who knows? It might dissolve into a big yawn. It might gather more and more fans and take off. So, let's find out.

When we get into a groove, I'd hope that each installment will come along in the first third of every month. For the time being we'll keep doing what we've done in the past, keeping the ordering period open for five days, then printing to fulfill the orders. Once people get acclimated, I'm going to change the ordering window to three days. And maybe make some other changes.

This might not be permanent, is what I'm saying. I'll probably do it for the remainder of this year and then reassess, based on what we've learned. Because we're always learning.

We have the next four offers lined up already. The next one is for Leica fans. Please stay tuned.

Mike

P.S. Oh, and if you're curious—the orders for Phil's Keck Observatory print are running about 1/2 unsigned, 1/2 signed.

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Hugh Crawford: "Oh great, you issue a Leica Fan Alert, with no advice on when to expect them, and you offer no Leica fan mitigation plans. Will a Kodachrome mailer nailed to the doorframe fend them off, or is this a film-tongue trimmer, bottle of single malt and a Tiltall at a crossroads at midnight sort of affair?"

Mike: No, I meant...oh, never mind!

 

Street Photography: Wrong!

I enjoyed this recent post by Blake Andrews*.

It does point out a real source of inspiration: breaking rules. Doing what you're not supposed to do can be an excellent source of ideas. I wish there were more rules, so there would be more to break. Which is why Blake's post resonates, I guess, duh.

Photo by William Klein. Commentary added.

Mike

*I've been trying to create a short list of sites to visit regularly. It's hard. There are many worthy ones, yet I know if I let my list grow too long then I won't visit any of them. But how do you winnow all photography sites down to eight or ten? Not easy.

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JL: "Do you know this painting by John Baldessari? Very famous in art circles: not sure if it is in photography circles too."

Benjamin Marks: "I don't know whether this will be helpful or not, but my general criterion when evaluating any artwork (could be photography, could be music, could be ballet) is, 'Does this touch me, distract me, or make me feel something?' If the answer is yes, the next question is 'why?' Sometimes that answer is a triumph of technique, sometimes it is independent of technique. Sometimes my response is caused precisely by a rule being trounced in a delightful way. And sometimes a 'rule' is really just a practice that all of us sheeplike nudniks fall into because it is the received wisdom. Man, is it great when someone shines the bright light of a creative mind on that state of affairs.

"I guess the distinction I would make is that when rules are broken—compositional rules, rules related to narrative structure, grammatical rules, whatever—is that the 'breaking' has to work. In all of the cases cited by Mr. Andrews they do. I'll note that Mr. Klien's successful prosecution of that image of the kid with the gun has not inspired a lot of copycats, at least none of which I am aware.

"The other thing about 'rules' is that their breaking sometimes comes during the act seeing the raw image and sometimes comes in the editing process. The genius of the Gare St. Lazarre picture has always seemed to me the ability to see the final image in the original frame. If I am honest with myself, I don't think I would have seen it. I might well have looked at the contact page in the loupe and said—in my 1/4 second evaluation, 'Too bad. The subject is out of focus,' and moved on to the next one. This is a great example of the difference between 'looking' and 'seeing.'"

Mike replies: Maybe this is the editor in me speaking, but I think we get into trouble in this argument because of the word "rule," which suggest a dictate by some authority with power. It's like the phrase "laws of physics," in which "laws" is simply and flatly the wrong word.

Street photography rules are actually rules of thumb. Wikipedia defines "rule of thumb" as "a principle with broad application that is not intended to be strictly accurate or reliable for every situation." They suggest comparing it to heuristic, which means "experience-based techniques for problem solving, learning, and discovery that give a solution which is not guaranteed to be optimal."

In other words, street photography rules are really...suggestions.

And in fact, when I read all the "rules" that Blake is lampooning, I think they're all pretty good guidelines. For example, it's true that a lot of street photographers are satisfied photographing peoples' backs, and this is probably because they're too polite or too reticent to confront their subjects and let their subjects know they're photographing them. If this is a constant (or at least consistent) in someone's work, it is indeed something he or she would be better off being aware of, hopefully to try to overcome.

It doesn't actually mean that anyone is prohibited from photographing anyone's back, or that photographs which prominently feature a subject's back can't be good ones (since we were just discussing Karsh, his portrait of Pablo Casals comes to mind. Google "Karsh Casals" if you don't know the picture. Of course that's not a street photograph).

Rules/suggestions are meant to be helpful, so if we dismiss them then it seems evident that we're cutting ourselves off from any help they might offer. Which might not be the best course, for those of us who are not geniuses.

The best overall suggestion might be "know the 'rules' and break them knowingly."

Marcus: "Start with TOP, see where it leads."

Mike replies:  :-)

Jimmy Reina: "I think I have posted this before, but the issue of rules never seems to die. One evening at my camera club, someone showed a picture of a rowboat on a body of water, with the setting sun on the horizon in the background. As I recall, the image was well composed and exposed. As you would expect, the setting sun was pretty colorful, both in the sky and reflected in the water. Someone commented, 'you should never point your camera into the sun.' It was a picture of a sunset—where else could you point it?"