The Online Photographer

Did You Appreciate the Choice of Print Sizes?

Ctein's Bird Impression sale is in its last hour (it ends at noon Wisconsin time). I'm curious as to how you felt about the print being offered in two sizes at different price points...whether you bought one or just considered it. Did you like the option or did it discourage you? (Another option is to present two different sizes for the same price. What would you think of that?)

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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Carson Harding: "I liked the different sizes. I bought the smaller print because of where it may hang and because I happen to have a couple of unused frames and mats sized exactly for it. The purchase seemed like fate."

D. Hufford: "I am not sure the lack of a price differential between sizes would affect any decision I would make in buying a photo. However, I have noticed that some believe the difference in material costs (and possibly labor time) is insignificant. If the photographer believes costs are insignificant, then the price should be based on the smaller size. Size itself does matter. I live in an average size Tokyo apartment, and there simply ain't no room for anything much bigger than A4. A3 is a stretch. Most Tokyo photographers will tell you that prints (of any size) don't sell in Tokyo."

Jack: "I like the offer of sizes. Joe, Mike, and I considered two sizes for the Leica S2 mirror lake image from June 2014, but did not offer smaller sizes because a large part of the motivation for the offer was to let other photographers see how a very high resolution 24x36" print actually looks in real life. A smaller print would not have demonstrated that, though I did have one TOP reader plead for smaller sizes because they wanted the image, but could not afford even the special one time only 24x36" price. We did consider offering an even larger print at 30x45", but the price point, shipping costs, and, importantly, framing costs would have gotten very high, even at a special offer price. I can report that that 30x45" is what I prefer to offer, but shipping is a challenge.

"As it was, because of the large 24x36" size, even though it sold well across four continents, we received no sales from Japan, where earlier comments suggest that even 8x10" is a challenging size to find room to display in small apartments. Mike, going forward, you will have not only these comments, but your data on orders to help you decide whether to offer dual sizes again. Regarding pricing, for my own work, I have previously priced each size purely on the ratio of print area."

How I Made That Bird Picture (and Print)

By Ctein

[Ctein's "Bird Impression" Print Sale ends tomorrow at noon Central time. —Mike]

Before I dive into this particular monologue, I want to remind you that the purpose of illustrations are to illustrate a point. They don't prove anything. Most especially, not when they're JPEGs plugged into some website and viewed in a browser. How much connection they have to reality is something one should question.

Furthermore, the point of this exercise is to produce a lovely finished print. What looks best in a big print is not always the same as what looks best in a small JPEG on the screen. Even a well-calibrated screen.

If you see something here that seems at odds with my words, ignore what you see. What you see is false. My words are true. If any of the illustrations here mislead you into imagining that some earlier version of the photograph is better than the final one, that is an erroneous conclusion and you are encouraged to stifle it.

Pictures do lie. Frequently.

Are we all on the same (web) page? Excellent! On with the show.

This was a tricky photograph to make. It wasn't going to work unless it was tolerably sharp corner to corner. Not being the sort to travel around with a view camera with swings and tilts I needed to stay reasonably parallel to the window glass. Unfortunately, I also needed to find a point of view that didn't include a distracting background. Those requirements were mutually incompatible. When I faced the bird impression head-on, there were visually intrusive elements in the background scene. When I completely eliminated the distracting elements, I was way too far off axis. Further making my life difficult, I could not stop down very far. If I did, the background became too sharp, and that pulled the eye away from the subject. I ended up working at ƒ/2.2., slightly off-axis. Not far enough, unfortunately, to be able to move the bright and dark bar in the background out of the frame. All I could do was hope that I could keep it from being so distracting as to ruin the photograph. I also had to hope that even though the edges of the frame weren't going to be as sharp as the center, they wouldn't be so unsharp as to distract the viewer.

Fig. 1.

I lucked out. The geometries could have been entirely incompatible. Once I got the photograph imported into DDB's computer, I could see that I'd solved these technical problems well enough. Unadjusted, the photo didn't have a lot going for it. Figure 1 is what the photograph looks like imported with my default settings in Adobe Camera RAW. All the elements are there, but it's not much of a photograph. I made some tweaks. I upped the Clarity slider in ACR to bring out a bit more separation between the dust and the tones in the background...but not very much, because it also increased the contrast in the background features. Another rock and a hard place. Then I did some judicious dodging and burning-in to even out the illumination and and bring the focus of attention more onto the body of the bird. You can see that in figure 2. There's also a careful amount of smart sharpening on the entire image, to separate the finest details of the feathers, with a stronger degree of smart sharpening along the edges to counter some of the out-of-focus issues. It doesn't eliminate them, but it prevents the eye from being drawn to them.

Fig. 2.

Okay, now I needed to bring up the contrast between the powdery impression and the background. I applied a fairly heavy dose of wide-radius unsharp masking filtration to a duplicate image layer. Then I added a mask to that layer, inverted it to black, and painted it white where I wanted to bring out the imprint. You can see the results in figure 3 and the mask I painted in figure 4.

Fig. 3.

Fig. 4.

And that was pretty much it!

All I did to get from here to the final version was make a minor curves adjustment that flattened out the midtones. That suppressed the background and kept it from being too distracting (figure 5).

Fig. 5.

This looked great on DDB's monitor. I had serious concerns, though, that when I got it home it wouldn't print well. Digital prints tend to suppress subtle tonal differences. One normally compensates for this when creating a file that will print well. It's good to have a little more local contrast than looks good on the monitor, and an extra bit of white-radius unsharp masking does the trick nicely in most cases. This photograph was such a delicate balancing act, though, between accentuating the dusty impression and suppressing the background. Who knew how much (or how) I'd have to tweak it to get what looked good on the screen to look good in the print? I wouldn't find out for a week.

And then, lo, a miracle occurred. The file printed perfectly. No tweaks, I left it just the way I created an DDB's computer. The very first print was a final print.

That was the last thing in the world I expected.

To make the same photograph look good in a smaller 11x14 print, I made one additional adjustment. I gave it an extra dose of the smart-sharpen function in Photoshop. Why? Because at that size, the finest detail in the photograph was pushing into spatial frequencies where the printer starts to lose contrast. Giving those ultra-fine details a bit of a kick compensated for that. It's only necessary for the small print. The 17x22 print comes out just fine without that extra dose of sharpening. In fact, it makes it look worse, as I can start to see unnaturally-enhanced qualities at the edges of the feathery imprints, just a little bit.

What about bigger? Well, one person has bought a print in 20x26" size, and it holds up very nicely.

Me, I like it at the original 17x22 size. You? Maybe not. So, two different sizes for sale this time. I hope one of them pleases.

Ctein

[Here's the link again. As I said up top, this sale ends tomorrow at noon. —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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B&H Photo's PhotoPlus Deals

B&H Photo has a large number of items on special sale through tomorrow, in honor of New Yawk Citay's own PhotoPlus 2014. That includes a Canon Pixma Pro-1 for only $400 (I believe the original price was in the $1,200 range, and the regular everyday price is $1,000).

You must use the promo code BHPPE14 during checkout, and some of the discounts combine with mail-in rebates for the total savings. (Please don't ask me to explain specific deals, because I dunno. Yer on yer own here Bub.)

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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The Oporopolist is a Papacolist (OT)

In the first two paragraphs of the second chapter of Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov uses eight words that I don't know the meaning of. Three are foreign words (two Latin, one apparently French) that he presumes (incorrectly in my case) that I, his reader, am educated enough to know; that leaves five words in English that might as well be Greek to me. And my vocabularly level is anywhere from the 92nd to the 97th percentile among American adults, depending on which test you trust. In most books, I won't encounter five words that are unknown to me in a whole chapter or even more, much less the first two paragraphs.

The more words a person knows in a given language, the better he or she can communicate...up to a point. As people get more and more high-vocabularied, the opposite begins to happen: they communicate less well with people, as, to more and more of the population, their sentences begin to resemble this one:

"It is noscible that the oporopolist is a papacolist."

Unless you have a much better grasp of obscure obsolete English words than most people, you won't know what that sentence says; and, indeed, words that are completely unknown to people read very much like words in a foreign language. You'll do better if you say, "You know, the fruit-seller loves the Pope." With simpler, more common words, that version communicates meaning to more people. Surprisingly, perhaps, writers, as a group, are not particularly high-vocabularied, and that's the reason. (Writers are much better that the general population, however, at using words precisely: they'll use the right word rather than what Twain called its "near cousin.")

Ezra Pound was one of the few people in the world who was as erudite and knew as many words as T.S. Eliot. Which is why Pound was supposed to have said, upon hearing the news of the death of Eliot: "Now who will get my jokes?"

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:

Dogman: "Sounds as if Nabokov's (and Rushdie's) book might be best read on a Kindle so those unfamiliar words can be easily defined by the built in dictionary.

"Back in the Dark Ages, when I took my first freshman English class in college, I distinctly remember how the instructor emphasized to the importance of communication. She lectured that communication is the purpose of language and communication is more important than precise grammar and a vast vocabulary. Her example sticks with me: 'If I pass out a written exam to the class and one student tells me "But I ain't got no pencil," that student has displayed remarkably poor grammar. However, that student has clearly communicated the fact that he has no pencil.'"

Mike replies: Ah, but that's not clear, I'm afraid. What if, say, the student who's speaking is one of the most intelligent and well-prepared students in the class, and another student nearby once came to a different exam with no pencil? It may be that all the students in the class have pencils for that particular exam, but the good student is taunting the poor student. I could think of other scenarios where that statement might not be communicating what your instructor claims it was.

Communication goes far beyond the immediate intended content of the message. For instance, when I met Gavin Donaldson the other day, his first words conveyed to me that he was from Australasia. Your instructor's pencil-less student, assuming the direct message is true and he's speaking naturally, has conveyed several indirect messages, such as that he is from a region where the particular ungrammatical construction he's used is idiomatic, and most likely either he has been under-educated or has no ability to adapt his style of speech so that it's appropriate for the situation in which he finds himself. And that he might be incompetent or minimally competent in that he has apparently come into an exam unprepared.

Discouragingly often, spoken and written words are intended to not communicate direct messages at all—for instance, an exceedingly long online document specifying terms and conditions, written in dense legalese—which you must accept before using certain software, for instance—might be specifically designed to get you to indicate that you have read it and understood it while actively discouraging you from doing either; or an opaque article of art criticism thick with specialized terms and/or terms with specialized meanings might be intended only to convey the message that the critic is smarter than you are and that you are not capable of understanding the insider expertise the critic is claiming for herself. The simple message of words is often not the only message, and communication is not always the goal of language. Communication is a complicated and subtle issue—which is what keeps linguists and semioticians busy, not to mention poets.

Minnow: "The original title for Speak, Memory was 'Speak, Mnemosyne' but his publishers dissuaded him to his later regret."

Andrew Lamb: "George Orwell had some useful rules for good writing. One was: 'Never use a long word where a simple one will do.' When Hemingway was criticized by Faulkner for his limited word choice he replied: 'Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.' 'Speak, Mnemosyne' sounds as awful as 'Trimalchio in West Egg.'"

Mike replies: Well, not quite. But almost. [g]

More Crack for Photographers

...Like we needed more things to want.

The 27-inch iMac with a 5k Retina display. Yikes.

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.

TOP's links!

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

BWJones: "I've seen one in person and they are amazing...think about this: the desktop wallpaper is equivalent to a 25MP camera sensor [actually just short of 15 MP —Ed.] ...most of the digital cameras being produced could not even render a full size wallpaper on an iMac 5k display."

John Krill: "I's looking for a used car and they're not cheap out hear in California but I bet it will be cheaper than that display. A lot cheaper."

Ed: "I've also seen one and they are stunning. Currently I believe the price is the same as a Dell hi-res monitor but the iMac has a computer attached."

Mani Sitaraman: "What's the use of having extra pixels in a monitor if my 56-year-old eyes can't see them? Increased resolution in displays quickly runs into the problem of diminishing visibility to the naked eye. Back in the day when 72 DPI was a standard screen dot pitch, increases in dot pitch were welcome because the increased sharpness in displayed images was easy to see, even if Microsoft's OS's did a really bad job of scaling other onscreen elements like icons and window frames and text (Apple, thankfully, never had this built-in problem). Nowadays, though, these increases in 'sharpness' are at the threshold of what good eyesight can resolve.

"What's the answer? Bigger displays? Well, you'll run into the problem of having too wide a field of view on the desktop, and not being able to take in a whole picture in one glance."

Brian Thomas and Seeing the Dead

One of the last and best photo essays from the Pile of Prints website—"Seeing the Dead," a photo essay about how people see the dead differently in Mexico and America.

(This is a surreptitious warning to the clueless that Halloween is tomorrow, and you need to be prepared for when the doorbell rings.)

Mike
(Thanks to Brian)

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:

David Zivic: "This post mentions that affluent people had a string attached to a bell above the casket. that is where the expression 'saved by the bell' originated, not in boxing.

"Having lived in San Miguel de Allende, near Guanajuato, I can say that The Day of the Dead, November 1, is a very big celebration day, similar to Halloween except everyone dresses up like a dead person. (Not this current zombie thing.) The whole town turns out for the celebration in the town square. Many small dolls of dead looking people are sold and the walking dead costume people and dolls are called Katrinas. Michael Reichman of Luminous-Landscape lives in San Miguel."

So, About That Bird Picture

By Ctein

[The bird picture is our current print sale print —Ed.]

It's not my usual thing. I don't make emotive, evocative photographs. My subject matter sometimes is awe-inspiring—total eclipses, space launches, aurorae—so I'm used to making photographs that elicit a "that is just so amazing" reaction. But they aren't deep.

That's fine. I'm not trying to be deep. If there's any message I'm trying consciously or unconsciously to convey in the assembled body of my work, it's "oh wow, look at that!" For me, that's a sufficiently profound artistic statement to make about the world, because the truth is that most people don't really look at the world. They see scenes in passing, they don't give them their full and undivided attention. The biggest compliment I can get about a photograph is when someone says (and they often do), "I never noticed that before" or "I never saw it that way before."

Then there's the photograph that TOP is selling this week. It's a whole different thing for me, maybe unique, certainly uncommon.

It didn't start out that way. DDB (David Dyer-Bennet, he of the Lincoln Memorial photograph) and I were walking back from a sushi lunch in St. Paul wending our way through the mazelike Habitrail that is the above-street walkways and parking ramps of downtown St. Paul. We were passing through one of those walkways. (I couldn't tell you which one—I've walked it dozens of times and it still confuses me. I only hope I never find the Minotaur.) There they were. Ghostly, dusty impressions of pigeons in the glass, backlit by the sun so they glowed against the shadowed buildings.

DDB and I are both strong believers in the dictum that the camera you have with you makes better photographs than the one you left at home; we were equipped. We both took out our cameras. We both went to work. It was a challenging subject, technically. I'll go into that tomorrow or Friday morning, when I discuss the making of this print. For now, I'll just leave it with saying that it was not easy to get a photograph I was happy with.

Consequently, I wasn't thinking hard about the emotional connotations of the scene. The information was all there in my head—I knew what produced impressions like this, I knew the likely fate of the bird, I had all the pertinent knowledge. My attention, though, was concentrated on capturing the light, the composition, the photographic qualities that would make it a photograph worth looking at.

When I pulled it up on the monitor in DDB's studio, it started to hit me. It knocked me in two conflicting directions. It was gorgeous, an ethereal vision of the spirit of flight, angel wings, the dove of peace, of transcendence. It was there in the pale icy soft-blue glow of the light on the dusty impression of feathers, set against the mundane hues of the background buildings. Unquestionably it was a beautiful photograph.

But, it was...awful. A record of a thoughtless, unnecessary death. What had created this beauty very likely killed the creature who created it. It was creepy and ghoulish, a morbid voyeurism.

And it keeps flipping back and forth in my brain. It's the emotional equivalent of the optical illusion that either looks like a vase or two profiles, the staircase that goes up and down at the same time. It delights me and it disturbs me at the same time. I can't separate the feelings.

Of course I had to do my best to concentrate that essence and distill it into a print. I wasn't sure what had worked on the screen would work on paper. It did, better than I had any reason to hope.

I am entirely uncomfortable with the photograph. Along with experimental curiosity, that's the reason why I've offered it for sale here in two different sizes. Some people will want to hang this on their wall. Some won't. Some will want it to have a dominant voice, some will want it to be a disquieting little whisper in the corner or in a box.

Me, for myself, I don't know. The photograph unsettles me. I'm okay with that.

Ctein

Original contents copyright 2014 by Ctein. 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:

Mark Steigelman: "I can relate. I witnessed United Airlines flight 175 going into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. The thought of it makes me beyond sad, but at the moment of impact, before I even had time to think about what was happening, I was mesmerized by the beauty of the unfolding scene—the plane entered the tower like a sperm going into an egg and the sunlight shimmering glass explosion that followed. I went from awe to despair in a matter of seconds."

O Lawd Hep Me

First of all, here's the theme song for this post.

Secondly, readers can help: you can either post a comment that says, "Mike, the last thing you need is another camera," or else you could helpfully point out deficits, flaws, and shortcomings in the Sony A7s.

Thank you. That would be nice of you.

I got a chance to handle and shoot a little bit with the Sony A7S and the ZA 35mm ƒ/2.8 lens at Art's Cameras Plus in Waukesha. As soon as I had it in my hot little hands I thought, "uh-oh."

Art's Cameras counterman Gavin Donaldson, from New Zealand.
(Before you ask the obvious, his wife is from here.)

Yes, I know that gear lust is often just a substitute for actually working on photography and taking pictures, and I know that I can't afford a new camera now. (House poor for the foreseeable.) My go-to Sony NEX-6 is not even two years old yet.

And, I have enough cameras. Right? Everybody?

But man oh man, that is one sweet little device. The A7S with the 35mm lens on it just fits like a glove, and the AF is fast and positive and you could sell recordings of that shutter noise. I could take pictures with that thing all day and never get tired of just working the camera. Catnip. Catnip! Damn, damn and damn.

Please tell me I don't need this. I really don't need this. You know I worked all the way through art school with a Contax and yep, a Zeiss 35mm ƒ/2.8 lens. But I do not need....

I do need to stay away from Art's Cameras, that's what I need. I need to stay away. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful camera and lens.

Mike
(Thanks to Gavin)

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.

TOP's links!

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

Dave: "Two reasons not to buy it: 1. Your writing is better when you are not stressing about finances. 2. Your blog is more interesting when you are suffering from unsatisfied gear lust."

R. Edelman: "I love my A7. The Zeiss 35mm ƒ/2.8 is a wonderful lens. Together they make a great package with respect to size, weight, balance and, most importantly, image quality. The NEX-6 is becoming of less value every month. Why not sell the NEX-6 and the lens, and save some bucks with the A7, instead of the A7s."

Patrick Murphy: "The A7S's standout features for stills are the amazing low-light (high ISO) capability and the totally silent shutter mode. Expect a roughly three-stop gain over most DLSRs. In PASM mode without a flash, the shutter can be set to be completely silent. Unfortunately, some Auto and Creative modes, and flash mode, require the mechanical front curtain shutter to actuate. Its sound is roughly comparable, or slightly more noticeable, than current DSLRs.

"These features are important for weddings, events, street, etc. If you need them, you know it already!

"If you do not need these features, and like the A7 in general, consider the lower cost A7 which also features faster phase detection AF in continuous AF mode. The A7R and A7S only have slower contrast detection. By the way, the A7S is a low-light focusing demon. I do not use an autofocus illuminator and it still picks up focus down to –4EV.)

"The A7R has higher resolution (36MP with no anti-aliasing filter, vs. 24MP on A7 and 12MP on A7S). But its shutter sound is more noticeable—no electronic front curtain like A7 and A7S—and there have been reports of shutter shake around 1/100 second on a tripod. Plus it takes an excellent lens to fully resolve the 36MP sensor.

"I have an A7S and love it, but low-light and silent mode are more important to me than resolution and fast continuous AF. Finally, since you probably have lots of legacy lenses, you can use most or all on any A7 (in manual focus mode) with an adapter."

Mike replies: Excellent thumbnail review. Thanks.

Ruby: I see darr's comment [Darlene had suggested renting one —Ed.], and I agree. I had this with the RX10, so I rented one. It was fun, but not enough fun to spend the money to buy it."

tex andrews (partial comment): "When I first saw the A7/A7R online, I rolled my eyes because of the pentaprism hump. But when I first held one in my hands at Photo Expo last year, I was shocked. It was really wonderful in hand."

Speed: "I satisfied my last 'new camera fix' by using the proceeds from selling my motorcycle. Love the new camera. I still have the motorcycle."

Mike replies: Made me laugh. Sounds very familiar.

Roger Overall: "The A7S is a wonderful video camera. Enthusiast and professional filmmakers are raving about it. It has the sLog codec too. That alone used to cost more than this camera does. A great bargain from that point of view. And it records 4k too, though you'll need an external recorder. Still, it does superb 1080 and you'll get many years of filmmaking joy from it. You could change TOP to The Online Filmmaker. ...Is this helping any?"

Edward Taylor: "Mike—the A7s is a video camera. I owned one and returned it. It really cannot be considered a modern stills camera because even though 12 MP may seem adequate, it is a handicap in terms of ability to crop and it may limit the size of a print. I was not convinced that the high ISO potential was all that helpful on stills anyway. I have an A7r which I love, and I think the A7 would be a good choice also."

dave2: "I have been fighting the urge to buy the A7S since it came out. In my mind its the perfect all around camera/camcorder. For video it uses every pixel (except what has to be trimmed to fit the 16:9 format) which makes for amazing video. For stills it can handle every lighting condition you will ever encounter. The only people who should not buy it are people who want a lot of pixels or who are hung up on lenses. If I didn't have one kid in college and another starting next year I would have one. I hope this helped."

Rodger Kingston: "The camera and lens are $3,300! In an evolutionary environment where everything becomes obsolete almost as you buy it, spending that kind of $$ on a camera (one that you're not going to use for paying work) is like buying $300 shoes for a kid who will outgrow them in a few months."

John Masters: "Get the camera. Life is short and you only have one of them (lives, that is). Plus, love the look on Gavin's face. It's like he has just said, 'So, buy the #$%%# camera already, or just leave and quit wasting my time!'"

Norm Nicholson: "MUST HAVE PRECIOUS! I succumbed and bought an A7, and now when I go out the door...I still take the X-E2."

Duncan: "Here's what I hear you saying: 'Please don't throw me in that briar patch!'"

Rob L (partial comment): "I'm no help to you; the acquisition and disposal of cameras is it's own, fun hobby.  :-)  "

GRJ: "Did I see something in one of your recent posts—the one about the near miss while you were driving—about a new girlfriend in your life? If so, why not ask her what she thinks?"

Mike replies: Yes, I either almost killed her or saved her life, depending on your perspective. The A7S isn't an actual possibility for me. I really can't afford it, and in fact I can't afford the 12–35mm Panasonic lens I want for the E-M1. But I might try to save up for the A7 Mark II or A7S Mark II for 2–3 years out.

October Print: 'Bird Impression' by Ctein

Ctein came across this remarkable find in St. Paul, Minnesota, last year, and made of it a photograph like none you've ever seen before. And seldom have we gotten more requests for prints than for this picture.

Unlike photographs that "project," you might find yourself having to explain to viewers of the print just what it is—the ghostly impression of the impact of a bird into plate glass, rendered on the glass in remarkable detail. It hints of violence as well as beauty, mystery as well as pain, and yet still possesses an undeniable gesture of grace. A collision, literally, of the manmade and the natural world.

For those who wish a closer look at the photograph before purchasing, Ctein has a larger JPEG on his own website: http://ctein.com/TOP/Bird_Impression3.jpg . The detail below (click to see it at ~100%) shows the exquisite detail in the dusty impression.

The photograph is printed on Canson Baryta Photographique paper with Epson Ultrachrome K3 inks. We're offering the print in two sizes this time—11x14 inches (9x12" image area) for $95, and 17x22 inches (15x20" image area) for $175. The prints will be signed and titled in ink on the front, dated and signed in pencil on the back.

Shipping costs are $20 for the smaller 11x14" and $25 for the larger 17x22" print, anywhere in the world. California residents must pay sales tax. The PayPal order buttons below reflect the total price, including tax and shipping.

Ctein has generously offered to donate a larger than normal cut of the proceeds to the "Help TOP Move" campaign, so orders help Mike too.

As usual, we accept orders for four days only. Sales close at noon Central Time on Friday. Then the prints are made to fill the orders we've received. Prints cannot be ordered past the close date.

HERE'S HOW TO ORDER

[Sale has ended, 12 noon 10/31/2014. Here is Ctein's email and his address is:

Ctein
42 Skyline Drive
Daly City CA 94015

should you need to contact him about your order.

All prints will be delivered before Xmas. You will receive a shipping confirmation email with a tracking number from the U.S. Postal Service when your print ships. All prints ship USPS Priority Mail. Also, there will be a notice posted on TOP when they've all shipped. Please allow 45 days after your order before inquiring whether your order has shipped.

Many thanks to all the buyers of this print!]

Mike

UPDATE: If you'd like to help with the problem of stressors and dangers to bird populations, reader GKFroehlich recommends this informational page from the American Bird Conservancy. See his full comment in the Comments section. —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.

TOP's links!

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Robert Hudyma: "I saw this image when Ctein visited in Toronto, and the web image displayed does not capture the subtle nuances that the Epson printer can render. The link to the higher resolution image is better. The original image will evoke an emotional response when you see it."

Jim: "Have you seen this, which was coincidentally posted today."

Darr: "I had a window desk on the fifth floor of a big office building once. The view was spectacular until one beautiful Spring day birds began flying into the windows and falling to their death. It was a traumatic experience because I never knew how those types of buildings could bring tragedy to the innocence of nature. I purchased this print in part to bring remembrance to the tragedy, and to share it with others. When I first saw this photo it reminded me of the feelings I had decades ago when I first read James Dickey's poem, 'Falling.'"

James Liu: "Nabokov's Pale Fire contains a 999-line epic poem that begins,

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff—and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.

John Seidel: "Ah. This hit a nerve with me as well. It is beautiful and terrible at the same moment. GKFroehlich covered the problem well. I have noted the vast decline in birds over the course of my life. I'm 63 and the lack of birds now as compared to my childhood is striking. I would have been very pleased to have taken this photo and at the same time I still find it heartbreaking."

Kevin Purcell: "John Myers wrote in the Comments: 'Looks like a rock dove (urban pigeon) but how could such avian impact leave an image on plate glass?'

"Feather dust. Feathers wear and abrade in use. The edges tend to be the most fragile. When the bird hits the window the impact breaks the edges of the feathers leaving the feather dust attached to the window. Hence the ghostly outline of the feather edges. I think I can see the alula extended on the leading edge (together with the forward sweep of the wing through the primaries); I suspect this pigeon was in the process of taking off rather than colliding with the window while in free flight."

GKFroehlich: "For John Meyers (et al.)—this is a quote from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology: 'Found only in certain taxonomic groups such as pigeons and herons, powder down feathers are never molted. Instead, they grow continuously but disintegrate at the tips into something like a fine talcum powder. The powder permeates the other feathers, presumably to provide waterproofing, although the exact function is not well understood.' Most (all?) of my images of bird strikes on windows are of pigoens and doves, of various species. I'm guessing a heron would leave quite an impression."

Aaron Britton: "There is a glass, Ornilux by Arnold Glas, that can help with bird collisions. Ornilux is a glass that has patterned UV coatings which are visible to birds but not humans. What you end up with is a piece of glass that looks like any other glass to humans but to birds they see a net type pattern. Interesting stuff."

Sartorial Quote o' the Day: David Vestal

I'd be grateful for any help finding an actual quote—I think he said it on a number of occasions—but speaking of photographers' sartorial styles, the late David Vestal of venerated memory once said, and unfortunately I'm paraphrasing,

"I put on my camera in the morning and take it off at night, just like my shirt."

Incidentally, David had two Leica M2's that he shot with for many years, both of which seemed to go wonky on him at the same time. So, not caring a whit for camera-status, he got himself a pair of budget Olympus SLRs and proceeded to use those. But within a decade both of those had gone south on him and couldn't be cost-efficiently repaired. At that time, several of us—I don't know if I was the only one—convinced him that he should just get his old M2's repaired. He did, and they worked for him for the remainder of his life. I believe they were auctioned on eBay after his demise.

I was sorely tempted to acquire one as a photohistorical relic, but David would never have approved of that kind of sentimentality. (I once owned Jack Lemmon's Leica M6—sold it to Arthur Elkon—and I once had a chance to buy Lee Friedlander's Focotar. But I'm not a real collector, even of wonderful relics.)

Mike

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Rogues Gallery

Three major contributors to The Online Photographer—

Peter Turnley signing books for fans at the Leica Store in San Francisco last night (despite the complications of the World Series). Photo by Ctein.

Ctein and John Camp in Bloomington, Minnesota. If the man on the left looks like a photographer-physicist and the man on the right looks like a novelist, you probably should ignore that. Photo by David Romm (used with permission).

(When I first met Ctein in the '90s, I asked how I would know him, as we were meeting on the street in San Fran. He said something like "You can't miss me. I look like a radical gay Jewish cross between Rasputin and Jesus Christ." And sure enough, when I saw him from a distance coming toward me on the sidewalk, I thought, "that must be Ctein," and it was. He now looks very different, more like a lifelong hippie scientist crossed with Galdalf. John to me looks like maybe a "star professor" at a major University, those academics whose fame reaches past their departments to spread campus-wide and maybe further. Or do you have a different take based on first-blink appearances?

I don't know what a photographer looks like, unless it's a guy in a Domke vest with three DSLR bodies hanging off him at various points, at least one with an enormous telephoto. I remember hearing when Walker Evans was at Yale that the "uniform" for the serious acolyte was faded jeans, an army surplus jacket, and a worn used Leica.

Alfred Stieglitz, seen here in 1934, didn't quite fit the stereotype, although he favored capes...hard to know exactly what that meant, since styles have changed so much. It would be an affectation today—was it then, too? Or as much?

I seem to remember an early photograph of Edward Weston in both a cape and a beret, although Weston habitually dressed casually after he went bohemian.

This is probably quintessential photographer style, eternally:

Lee Friedlander by Richard Avedon. Speaking of whom, this is how Avedon dressed:

...The style telltale being the second button undone (de rigeur for male fashion photographers everywhere?) and of course the partly rolled-up sleeves (always cracking the nut, as Avedon would say—his studio operating expenses ran to $60,000 a month in the '90s).

And that's not even getting into the distaff side. I'd nominate Dorothea Lange as the quintessential female photographer style icon, for her particular mix of dashing artiness and frumpery. Although you can't fault this look:

That's Imogen Cunningham in 1967, and I believe the photo is by Jim Alinder. Now there's a lifelong hippie, and, if you Google her, you'll see she did have a wonderful sense of photographer style.)

Mike
(Thanks to John, Ctein, and David Romm)

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Patrick Dodds: "This beautiful photograph [contains nudity, albeit inoffensively—it was the first "full frontal" nude published in LIFE magazine —Ed.] of Imogen Cunningham was recently referenced on Zack Arias' blog and should be shared widely—it's delightful."

Mike replies: Yes indeed, it is wonderful. It's been shared widely since it was taken in 1974 by Judy Dater—her best-known photograph. The model is Twinka Thiebaud, who posed for a number of prominent photographers, and who is now nearing 70 and living in Los Angeles. The photograph is thought to be based on Thomas Hart Benton's "Persephone," in which he paints himself as voyeur peering around a tree trunk at a nude woman, in a clever play on an artist painting a model.

R. Edelman: "I visited the Leica San Francisco store today to view Peter Turnley's photos that were on display there, and to check out the book French Kiss. I did not meet Mr. Turnley as he was out on a Master Class. The photos on display were wonderful in all respects: subject matter, composition, lighting, and printing. The book is of a technically high production quality, and the photos therein contained more of the same wonderfulness that characterized the photos that were on display. Henri Cartier-Bresson has nothing on Peter Turnley, my friends. I ended up ordering two of the French Kiss books; one for myself, and one to be used as a gift for my beloved aunt, who is herself a fine photographer and a Leica enthusiast."

The Conservation of Image Theory

By John Camp

[Originally submitted as a comment —Ed.]

The photograph of René Burri Mike posted on Friday reminded me of a conjecture of mine which I think generally holds true, but which some people may find spurious and possibly even absurd.

That is, the more a person looks like an "artist," the less likely he is to do work of genuine merit. This idea first occurred to me when I was hanging around with a lot of art students in college, and it seemed to me that the more a guy looked like an artist, the weaker his actual artistic efforts were.

The question then, was, why would this be? I concluded that really serious artists tended to heavily focus on art, and not so much on dress or grooming or their social life. Guys who ostentatiously looked like "artists" were actually less interested in art than in other things—status, fashion, attracting desirable partners, etc. There's nothing terribly wrong or unusual with all of that, but it takes time, thought and effort to pull off, and that's time, thought and effort not put into the actual making of art. The really serious guys tended to look like nothing in particular—jeans, ordinary shirts, and so on.

I've found this is also true in other fields. There's a magazine called Modern Farmer aimed, I don't know, I suppose at some species of yuppie, and the people in it look like they just got their farm clothes at the Working Man counter at Barneys/New York. And don't even get me started about young white blues musicians who wear those narrow-brimmed hats on the backs of their heads....

A further question would be, does this idea really apply to photographers, whose whole aesthetic involves the capture of appearances, and who might then be extremely and legitimately interested in appearance in all of its forms, including their own? If you look at the Burri photo—the dramatic turquoise shirt vibrating against the orange-ish face, the whole surrounded by the dramatic blacks of jacket and hat—you see a man who is deeply interested in the image he projects. Is it possible that this interest subtracted that few percentage points of quality that would make (in your eyes) his photos compelling?

John

©2014 by John Camp, all rights reserved

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Gabe Bandy: "Seriously? While your thesis is funny and cynical (two things I greatly admire), to judge a man, a French man, who fancied a fedora and scarf by his mode of dress? From one picture? The more you dress like the 'popular conception' of an artist the less talent you 'may' have? The Jackie Gleason theory of relativity? So you're collaborating with Ctein—a man I consider one of the most intelligent and literate people I've had the pleasure of learning from. He's certanly of unique appearance—he may look like the popular conception of a somewhat mad scientist, or an aging hippie, or???

"I believe none of those stereotypes fit or define the man, just as a narrow, momentary glance at Burri would throw him in your pretentious artist category."

Michael Perini: "A very interesting point. I think we have all known people who might be so described. Poseurs to a degree. I believe that there is something to your thesis. However, most of us have also known people for whom style is effortless. I would stipulate that such people are rare, but I know I have known some. Poor or well off, some folks have a grace and style that seems innate. So while I also believe your conjecture to sometimes be true, it might be dangerous to assume who is which. Thanks for an interesting thought."

Richard Tugwell: "Worth mentioning that René Burri was Swiss, and thus part of a heritage that includes Robert Frank and Werner Bischof among many others. [And René Burri married Werner Bischof's widow, I believe. —Ed.] Photographers whose strength doesn't depend on one-trick-pony iconic images, but on the cumulative effect of a body of work. I met Burri briefly at a retrospective in Zürich some years ago. Charming and self-effacing. I'm not sure he would have considered himself the artist stereotype that JC wants to fit his amusing and, I'm assuming, tongue-in-cheek hypothesis."

Andrew C E: "A thief with a guilty conscience (or an unsecured bag) recently left me a John Sandford novel under my bike, after making off with my bike lights. So, after reading this post, I unexpectedly looked up to a picture of John Camp staring at me from across the room. I'll admit that he fits all of my preconceptions of what a modern masculine author should look like. The 'Cormac McCarthy' look. Will this have any bearing on the quality of the novel? I doubt it, but I'll find out when I read it."

Peter Turnley at the Leica Store SF

If you find yourself in San Francisco, my friend Peter Turnley will be giving a talk and signing books at the Leica Store, where his work is currently on exhibit. It's at 6:00 tonight. The Leica Store San Francisco is at 463 Bush Street, and the phone number should you need it is 415/801-5066.

Say hi for me.

Photo by Peter Turnley

Mike

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Andy Sedik: "A couple of months ago I read that Peter was coming to San Francisco to teach a Leica Master Class and I signed up right away. After the Giants made the World Series I thought about skipping Peter's lecture on Friday night and just focusing on the remaining days of the workshop. I then realized it would be silly of me to miss Peter's lecture and figured I wouldn't be too bad off if I took BART (our regional railway system) into downtown. I thought I might listen to the game on my AM radio or occasionally check the MLB app on my phone while Peter was talking, but in the end I decided I should give Peter my undivided attention, which turned out to be the correct decision."

René Burri 1933-2014

René Burri died on October 20th. (Magnum Collection/Magnum Photos)

I'm not the right person to write an appreciation of Magnum photographer René Burri, who died last Monday. He was just the sort of photographer I should like, and I always thought of him sympathetically, but in trying to engage with his work I never caught enough friction to make contact. I still don't quite get him, although I've always thought I should. Along with the rest of the world I admire his most famous pictures.

I heard of him as a younger gadfly of Henri Cartier-Bresson's, who measured himself against his older and more distinguished colleague, provoking and inspiring and perhaps sometimes irritating Henri, through a shared affection. And over the years I heard intriguing stories of how Burri refused to take certain pictures because they were too obvious or too exploitative—and how could I not like that? "One of these days I'm going to publish a book of all the pictures I did not take. It is going to be a huge hit," he said.

But with artists I don't know yet, "meeting" them is always a possibility for the future. René Burri is well served by in-print books—one a "how I worked" memoir called Impossible Reminiscences [now back-ordered —Ed.], another a major retrospective book of photographs. I haven't seen either one (have you? Tell us what you think if you have). There are numerous obituaries on the web. I'm sorry I don't have more to add, but I would welcome comments from others who do.

Mike

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Bill Pierce: "this is a comment I made earlier on another website that had a thread on René Burri. René Burri died on Monday. A lot of you know he was an exceptional photographer. He was also an exceptional human. He had a few years on me and still outran me. When my airplane flight got rescheduled and I had no place to stay when we were covering Tiananmen Square, he shared his hotel room. As an extra bonus I got a guided tour through his book The Germans. I spotted one picture that was actually a print comprised of two adjacent frames. He laughed and said I was one of the few people who realized what it was, that Cartier-Bresson hadn’t spotted it. I finally got my plane out. René stayed to rewalk the mountainous part of Mao’s Long March. As I said, he could outrun me.

"Every time we crossed paths, it was an exceptional pleasure. I suppose there are a lot of good photographers in the world. There are few that had his kindness, his generosity and his genuine love for the people around him. The cliché 'he will be missed' is an understatement."

Clive Evans: "Met René at Les Rencontres d'Arles in 2010—a really warm generous nice guy."

Next Print Sale

Next Monday, TOP's next print sale begins. This time we'll be offering one digital photograph from Ctein. As an experiment, he's offering the picture in two print sizes—11x14" and 17x22".  It's a strange, evocative, and strangely beautiful photograph. Of special interest to animal lovers. And a jaw-dropping print—people almost can't help staring at it a long time.

Please come by to see the picture on Monday at noon, Central USA time. The sale will run for four days, and Ctein guarantees all orders will be delivered before Christmas (he calls it Xmas).

Mike

P.S. Ctein  reports he has just finished the first draft of the novel he and John Camp are co-authoring. Expect to see some new columns from him soon.

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Camera All the Time

Who really carries their camera all the time?

I left the house to walk the dogs tonight and immediately faced the two large trees in the neighbors' yard across from the end of the driveway, their leaves turning orange, fully lit by the setting sun—and it actually made me go back into the house to get the camera. By the time I got back outside the light had already faded and the trees were partly in shade. That's what you see here. Still pretty nice but not as spectacular as a few minutes earlier.

Do I have to carry the camera all the time again? I've seen half a dozen things just wandering the neighborhood that I would like to have photographed, including a dramatic, vivid and highly improbable zigzag cloud formation that I'd for sure never see again if I lived three lifetimes.

We've had a beautiful Fall here—to continue what has been visually the prettiest year I've ever experienced in Wisconsin. A fair number of people haven't liked the weather this year, because it never got hot. But to me it was ideal. I've always liked weather that looks good over weather that feels good.

Mike

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Pak-Ming Wan: "Who carries their camera all the time? I do! Just ask my amazingly forgiving girlfriend who puts up with that. I drop my M-E into my satchel bag everywhere I go, with my passport, my keys, and wallet. I've decided reality really is enough: the beauty of what's around us everyday is worth savouring. It also helps that my daily life presents me with so many events that are so interesting and so different every day. It also helps that it's my current photo project. So, I carry my camera."

Robert Roaldi: "Well, sometimes you just miss a shot."

Phil Maus: "I so miss living in the Midwest! We even took a trip from Texas up to New York recently, just to enjoy the cool weather and the changing leaves of Autumn there and along the way. Going through all those little towns and experiencing the sights, sounds and smells of this beautiful fall filled me with a bittersweet nostalgia for my youth in Minnesota (and simultaneously made me dislike Texas just a little more). Cameras and photos all aside, there's just nothing like Autumn in the Midwest. I'm happy to hear you're having an enjoyable one."

Thomas Paris: "Couldn't agree more regarding weather that looks good. I'm in love with Nordic winters because the light (whatever little light they do get...) is gorgeous."

Jim in Denver: "Um, hello...iPhone? The new camera is completely good enough (actually quite good) for shots like that. Anyway, as much as I love the idea of carrying around a nice camera all the time, (and did, at one point in my life) the iPhone camera has let me get a good number of the shots that would have gotten away."

Rube: "I do, everywhere, all the time. Which is why I prefer smaller cameras. One camera, one lens, but all the time. And in the streets, on my way to work or anywhere else, the camera is in my hand, with a wrist strap. I don't drive, and I don't have a cell phone, but I do always have a camera to hand."

Dave Jenkins: "I do pretty much always carry my camera with me. My family refers to it as my 'growth.' In 46 years as a photographer, I have never yet taken a good picture at a time when I did not have my camera with me."

David Saxe: "Everytime I walk out of my house without my camera, I see something that make me wish I had brought it. It has been going on for over 40 years. This is nothing new, and I have more or less gotten used to it."

susan: "Well, I don't carry my camera with me all the time, but I do have my iPhone 6 in my pocket!"

bill emory: "I have a permit to carry always."

Mike replies: Nice to catch up with your blog again, Bill.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb...er, the iPhone

Apple iPhone 6. Camera lens is at upper right.

I learned a lot the other day from the people who commented on my iPhone grouse. Er, post.

(For those who think I'm behind the times, I left out one important item of news out of the "Close Call and Other News" post. I'm no longer a GBG—grumpy beardy guy. Off went the beard the other night. I am now cleanshaven and boyish, light on my feet, light-hearted, light-headed [wait...] and hardly even grumpy. So there.)

I learned a) I'm 2.5 generations behind the times, which b) is unacceptable; c) you can swipe open the camera without unlocking the iPhone, which is a morsel of information I basically knew but had been pridefully ignoring; and d) it's best to throw caution to the winds and go naked (that is, I might indeed have been making my use of the iPhone more unweildy with my well-liked little leather case, and I should just be daring and use the iPhone without any iCase at all).

So I headed to the iStore...er, the Apple Store to look at an iPhone 6. I tried to mail some sample pictures to myself, but Apple was ahead of me and that didn't work. (Curses, foiled again.) Then I had a most interesting conversation with the nice young person with the Apple logo on her shirt:

She: So anything I can help you with?

Me: Yes. Can I buy one of these, please?

She: No!

Me: What? Why not?

She: So we didn't get any in today. [Making goose-egg symbol with her hand.] Not a one. Zero. Nada. Nothing!

Me: Today. Do you mean you get shipments every day?

She: So, yes, almost every day! Except today.

Me: Does that mean you'll be getting more in tomorrow?

She: No clue!

Me: What do you mean?

She: So we have no idea what they're going to send us. We don't know how many, and we don't know what we're going to get.

Me: Then how am I supposed to buy one?

She: So, then, you want to buy one here?

Me: Well...it's an Apple product, and this being an Apple store....

She: ...So if you want to buy one here, you can just come in every day, and hope you get lucky!

Me: That's not very practical for me. This is a long drive for me. Can I get on a waiting list?

She [sadly]: So there's no waiting list.

Me: Why not?

She: So, we don't want to give people false hopes!

Etc.

She did eventually tell me that the best way to buy a new iPhone is to order it online and then just wait. Then, at some point, they'll contact me and tell me that they're thinking of sending it to me sometime soon. This sounded vaguely existential; I pictured Samuel Beckett curled in the fetal position, wearing James Joyce's shoes and weeping, but I didn't go there.

In any event, I practiced holding the phone to take pictures and tried all the controls—the ones I could discover, anyway—and my impression was positive. I like the larger screen and the thinner body. I talked to three people altogether, and all of them were absolutely certain that the iPhone 6 was much, much better than the iPhone 4s although none of them could tell me specifically why. Just that it is better in every way that smartphones are already good. It has goodness heaped on top of goodness.

I did like it, I have to say. If I get one, I think I may actually work at learning to use it.

Could take a while, though, from the looks of things, so don't hold your breath.

Mike

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Rick Popham (partial comment): "It's weird: cameras are getting smaller—sometimes too small, and phones are getting bigger—sometimes too big."

Rob Rogers: "We just returned from a trip on which my wife carried her 4s as her camera. In the Amsterdam Apple Store we tried taking the same photo with the 4s and the iPhone 6. We framed it to contain both the store interior and the sunny street through the open doors. I was impressed by the new phone's ability to show tones in shadows that were not visible in the 4s photo as well as the fact that highlights in the street were not blown out. My son recently upgraded from a 5s to a 6 and reports that the faster focusing and wider-aperture lens on the 6 results in fewer missed/blurred shots of my fast-moving grandchildren."

Mike Chisholm: "So that 'so' thing is beginning to drive me so, so nuts.... It's become a mandatory verbal tic for academics here in the UK, for some reason."

David Dyer-Bennet (partial comment): "I was scared once by an Apple in my youth and have never fully recovered, or something."

Searching for the Right Word

Because the word "small" has proven so bitterly controversial in the "Small Cameras We Love" List, I'd like to change it to something else, but my normal fecund vocabulary is failing me. Handy Cameras We Love? Ergonomic Cameras We Love? (Eww.) Handholdable? Practical, Utilitarian, Pleasing?

(I kinda like "Pleasing Cameras We Love.")

Something that conveys the idea of good design and effective operation along with good object quality and desirability, with a modicum of pride of ownership thrown in. Okay, not all those things exactly.

Anyone got any suggestions? Do try to hold the wiseacrey to a "small" torrent....

Mike

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Ben Shugart: "Seems that 'Cameras We Love' might suffice."

Joel R: "Satisfying. Satisfying Cameras."

Robert Hudyma: "Right-sized cameras."

Close Call and Other News

Downtime: I'm just back online after some gnarly downtime...no Internet or email on the computer for almost a day. Ya hate that. But after several pleasant hours on the phone with my new friends Tanvi in New Delhi and Edward in Arizona and multiple reboots of the modem as mysterious tasks and functions were allegedly performed remotely, all is copacetic again.

But I could get email and Internet on the phone, which is cool. I'm finally coming around to the smartphone era—what, five or ten years late? BlackBerry introduced its original RIM 850 in 2003, and the first iPhone was introduced to great fanfare in 2007. I bought my iPhone 4s in 2011 to use essentially as a walkie-talkie with my son Zander, who connects to his friends via texting. (Cellphones, I must say, are a huge boon to parents of teenagers—you can reliably hear from them if you need to, which reduces those traumatic incidents when they're out of touch when they should not be, for instance when your 14-year-old has an 11 p.m. curfew and still hasn't shown up at 2:35 in the morning. The kind of thing that gives parents white hairs.) Recently, with my new phones not hooked up yet, it's been my only means of phone communication.

More about the iPhone issue soon—I have more to report.

Metzker books: John Hamann at the Nelson-Atkins bookstore reports that all the extra copies of Keith Davis's The Photographs of Ray K. Metzker have been sold. They got lots of requests. If you didn't get a reply, it means they can't supply you with a book.

Close call: We had a brush with death the other day. I was going to Ten Chimneys with my new girlfriend—that's the estate and house museum of the '20s-through-1960 Broadway actor stars Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne, a real gem of a tour for visitors to this area (I've actually done the tour three times now and enjoyed it each time)—when a car came careening across the centerline at full speed heading straight toward us, dragging a large construction cone halfway under its front bumper. I was able to detect quickly that its course was constant—the thought flashed into my mind that the driver must have fallen asleep at the wheel—so I could plan and execute evasive action in a second or two, and we missed the oncoming car and also managed not to hit anything else as we went off the road.

That'll wake you up. I looked it up, and the average reaction time you get before an automobile accident occurs is well under three seconds. It turned out the driver was having an epilectic seizure, meaning he was most probably driving illegally. He careened off the road and managed to come to a stop in some bushes, semi-conscious and drooling blood. A number of people stopped to help. Another car pulled up that turned out to be the man's sister, who had just happened by and saw the accident. She wasn't surprised that it was him and who didn't seem terribly alarmed by the event, which indicated to me that this was nothing new to her. Nice of the guy to take risks with my life and my friend's life as he blithely takes risks with his own—I hope they throw him in jail. (And I might try to follow up on the story.) We left after the second Sheriff arrived, none the worse for wear but considerably shaken.

Migrating: The soybean field in back of my house must be right on the migratory route; the Canada geese are using it as a stopping-station. This morning I was out in the back with the dogs when a cacaphony of calls and honking arose from the field, and waves of birds took to the air. My best estimate was that there must have been eight hundred to a thousand in that flock, but the flocks come and go all day and night. I went out just now with a camera, but the field was deserted. I should take a camera out with me each time I let the dogs out—even though I'm just going to my own backyard.

Admitting failure: Reader Andy Sheppard took personal offense at my "Small is Relative" post yesterday and went on to excoriate the entire enterprise (TOP, that is), and so I apologize to Andy.

...And that's the end of "Morning Comment" and the short and rocky experiment with a regular autoposted morning comment. Some things I'm good at, lots more things I'm not, and I'm not too proud to admit that something's not working when it isn't. Having finally made a positive virtue of the mercurial aspect of my interests and my chronic lack of an ability to plan, I hardly see why I should regularly set myself up for failure on purpose. The very core of TOP is to make readers feel welcome, not the opposite.

Moving: If I had known how much work it was going to be to move, I wouldn't have attempted it. It just never ends, and it's wearing me down.

Current experiments: The Jesper sit-stand desk has arrived, and I'm standing as I write these words. As a preliminary review, you do not want the "Value Desk"—you want the regular "Prestige Desk" in whichever flavor you think will work best for you (the 47" model would be just high enough for me—I'm 6'1"—and the 63" model provides plenty of leeway). If you can't afford the Prestige, take a pass. The Value Desk I got is more cheaply constructed and a false economy, although I guess I'm stuck with it now.

In more major self-experimental news, the Soylent has arrived! It's been a long wait, thanks to a New Yorker article that jump-started interest in the product and left the company scrambling to catch up.

Soylent is a food replacement that many readers consider crack-brained, but I think it's interesting and worth a try. For those who haven't heard of it, it's an attempt to create "human food" that contains all the nutrients necessary for a healthy and balanced diet, like futuristic science-fictional "food pills" that eliminate the need to eat. Lunch becomes a glass and a half of a vaguely malty-tasting, sandy-textured liquid. I guess I don't see this as being as insane as some others think it is, because it's intended to replace unhealthy meals in your eating schedule—that is, instead of having Doritos and a pint of ice cream for dinner, you have Soylent instead. If you're cooking from good ingredients, that's when you take a pass on the Soylent. It doesn't need to replace any of the good meals you normally eat. So its healthiness is relative. And really, who among us eats good, healthy meals three times a day, seven days a week? Those people must be the exceptions now, rather than the rule. I plan to go ahead and eat food whenever I can prepare good food from ingredients, and replace the extemporized, unplanned, blatantly unhealthy meals with Soylent.

(I've been experimenting on myself with multiple diets in the past two and a half years, so this is just one more. I've managed to drop 35 lbs. over that time, and at a recent doctor visit all of my health indicators had improved.)

The biggest downside to the name? Not the deliberately controversial connection to "Soylent Green," but the implication that it contains a lot of soy. It does have a little, but most of the protein is rice protein.

I'll keep you posted as to how it goes.

Parting advice: Stay vigilant in your cars, friends; things seldom go wrong, but when they do, they go wrong quickly.

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.

TOP's links!

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

Bill Tyler: "Your close call brought back an experience I had about a year ago. I was driving home after an exhilarating morning out with a group of elephant seal researchers on the beach. It was a bright, clear crisp autumn day, traffic was light. I was approaching a group of bicyclists, and planning to swing a bit wide to give them plenty of room. Just then, a car coming the other direction swerved across the road, across my lane, up a dirt embankment to my right, and started down again, headed towards me. My attention was completely focused on avoiding a head-on collision. After our cars had passed without contact, I saw the bicyclist. He was lying motionless on the road, on a beautiful fall day, dead.

"The aftermath has not fully played out. Apparently the driver fell asleep at the wheel. I'm not sure what consequences he has suffered beyond a badly damaged car. For me, the experience was deeply disturbing. After calling 911, I had a hard time processing what I'd just seen. It's hard to describe how it's affected me. In one way, it's worse than the deaths of my parents because it was so sudden, so meaningless, so avoidable. Your driver was lucky. If he goes to jail, he'll still be lucky. It doesn't always happen that way."

Stephen Scharf: "When I read the description, I was skeptical about the concept behind 'Morning Comment.' What the point of it was wasn't clearly defined, and what value it would have brought to the TOP Community-At-Large wasn't clear either. I have to admit that thinking to myself, 'Not sure how this is going to go over...'

"On a positive note, however, I really enjoyed very much your Morning Coffee series of columns, and hope that you continue with those, in addition to the 'classic' TOP content. Just my 2¢."

Darr: "I am waiting on my sampling of Soylent, so please let us know how it goes for you. I am like you in that I purchased it for those times when I run out of prepared food. I am a vegetarian and do not always find the time or energy to use my juicer ahead of time for those busy days and tend to grab too many carbs."

IanM: "Moving. Things will improve, though it takes time. How much time? Think one and a half cycles through the seasons of the year. Then things will be normal (not the old normal, the new normal). The new place looks great and your writing about it tells good stories. It seems that the move to a new home has put you in a generous place in life. Relax into it and keep up with the thoughtful writing which makes TOP a premium blog."

Joe Holmes: "I'll be keeping an eye out for your updates on how it feels to work at a standup desk. I've had my Ergo Desktop Kangaroo Elite for about a year and a half (it's worked out really great), and I give two pieces of advice for those about to take the plunge: First, get a desk that does up and down easily. Days when I've been out walking for miles and miles, I come home and drop my desk to its sitting height. I might even keep it that way for a day or two. Then, up it goes. A good desk should go up or down in 30 seconds or a minute. If it takes too long, you'll never bother to change it. Second, a good foot mat is absolutely essential. I swear by my WellnessMats brand mat (I got the SmartStep Supreme). My back feels so much better since I switch to a standup desk."

10/20/14 The Morning Comment: Small Is Relative

Good morning!

Welcome to the Morning Comment—the replacement for the Morning Coffee. Every morning I'll talk about one reader comment from the last day or three. My responses are just my opinion. Even if I argue, I'm not necessarily claiming that I'm right and the commenter is wrong.

This morning's comment, from andy sheppard: "Whether you like it or it has wonderful image-making attributes or not, the [Leica] S would still seem to fall outside the remit of a list of favourite small cameras."

I didn't really mean for people to get hung up on what "smallish" means. I just meant, y'know, reasonable...not the hugest.

And size is relative. A small 4x5" camera is still a small camera, even if it's bigger than an Panasonic GM1.

Here's the case for the Leica S as a smallish camera:

...From the camerasize.com website of course.

The Leica S is 6% lighter, too. Yet has a sensor that's 30x45mm, vs. this Nikon's 24x36mm.

I guess the scoffers are right, though. The Leica is a big camera. It's just not that big.

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.

TOP's links!

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

Michael Bearman: "Reminds me of the 1970s joke that the Soviet Union was pleased to announce that with Soviet know-how and expertise, the CCCP had developed the world's largest microchip."

Ranjit Grover: "You wrote 'from andy sheppard.' I am amazed. This is the very first time I am coming across a lack of proper capitalisation in your page. I am sure it was not intentional."

Mike replies: Site style is to use commenter names exactly as the commenter types them. Andy didn't use capitals, so I don't use them when referring to his commenter name.

Chris: "That comparison reminds me of the old Mamiya ad where they compared the size of a Mamiya 7 and a Nikon F5 and likewise compared the size of their respective negatives/postives. It was a powerful bit of advertising."

Tony Roberts: "Tried the Olympus OMD-EM1, Fuji XT-1, Sony A7r. Loved them all for their smallness but ended up getting a Nikon D810. Sure it's heavy, especially, with the Nikon 24–70 ƒ/2.8 but oh those beautiful files. Beats all the others. It also has the finest shutter button action I've ever used."