The Online Photographer

The Sound of Ansel Adams

Curiously, I don't think I'd ever seen this short film before I stumbled across this other day. Written by Nancy Newhall, narrated by Beaumont Newhall, shot by David Myers, Ansel Adams, Photographer is a 1958 mini-documentary that features Ansel not only speaking—I'm quite sure I'd never heard his speaking voice before—but also playing the piano! I'm not sure that you can tell through all the layers betwixt it and thee, but Ansel was very particular about the tone of his piano, and went to great lengths to get the one he liked best.

Brought to us by:

DEVELOP Tube has collaborated with A/V Geeks to make this full 20 minute film available to you here. Ansel Adams, Photographer is just one of more than 24,000 16mm educational films rescued to be digitized by A/V Geeks. Please help A/V Geeks to continue their good work: http://www.avgeeks.com/wp2/avgeeks100... Watch DEVELOP Tube on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/channels/developphoto and on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/DEVELOPPhoto.

Charming little period piece from 57 years ago. Note that Director Myers uses the "Ken Burns Effect"!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2015 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:

scott kirkpatrick: "Lovely music, familiar images, but the most fascinating thing to me was to hear both Adams and Newhall speaking in the round tones that the movie studios taught all actors in the '40s. They sound like the voice-overs from 'Victory at Sea.' It is also fascinating to see just how much carefully organized stuff Ansel Adams could fit into his trademark shooting wagon."

Charles Cramer: "Some musical observations: Ansel asked his then photographic assistant, Don Worth, to compose the music for this documentary. Like Ansel, Don started off as a musician, attending Juilliard, and then getting a Master of Music degree from the Manhattan School of Music. That's Don playing the piano part. I got to travel with Don on several occasions in Australia about 30 years ago (yikes!) When a piano was available, our hosts would ask us to play. Don usually performed one of his own arrangements of big band tunes from the '40s.

"In the '80s, Don added a room to his home for his new prize possession—a 9 ft. Steinway concert grand! Like Ansel, he continued to love the piano. Ansel was renowned for the tone he created at the piano, and I find it interesting to observe his hand movements. Most pianists would keep their hands close to the keys, but Ansel's hands are often in the air, adding some visual flourishes and showmanship."

Mike adds: Our friend Charlie is a very accomplished pianist himself. I don't know if he's recorded any commercial CDs, but I very much enjoyed a CD he sent me. You can read a bit about his connection to music on the bio page of his website.

Kenneth Tanaka: "Way, way over the top even for 1958. But it was probably effective for Adams's brand-building strategy at the time."

Mike replies: ...As far as that went. Ansel didn't have much of a brand at the time. It would be 13 or 14 years until Harry Lunn more or less singlehandedly created the photography art market, and he did it with Ansel Adams—Harry's first Adams show, in 1971, created a sensation by selling $10,000 worth of Ansel Adams prints at $150 for a 16x20. Harry was known as the man who made Ansel a millionaire. Consider that in 1970, when Lunn opened his gallery, there was only one single gallery in the U.S. that concentrated on photography—and that one, Lee Witkin's, opened in 1969. Sotheby's didn't even have a photography sale until 1975.

Ansel certainly saw himself as an artist in 1958, of course, as many of the left coast art photographers did. But to accuse him of brand-building is too cynical.

Wayne: "Great film. I guess the greatest impact on me was the portion in which he is setting up for the beach rocks. The final image is, of course, pure art; but it impressed me, just how ordinary the the seascape, from which he extracted this bit of art. What an illustration of the importance of the photographer's eye."

Mike adds: And notice that he doesn't even look at the scene when he makes the exposure—he glances at it and then looks back at the camera for a few seconds, using the darkslide as a lens shade, before shooting (at about 7:26). Interesting in that the negative (at about 8:00) contains a breaking wave.

Incidentally the light meter he's using is an S.E.I. Photometer, an early spot meter.

Sony's A7 Lens Line

Looks like Sony is either getting serious about fixing its lens line woes, or else wants you to think it is. Dpreview is showing photographs of four beta samples of new FE lenses for the full-frame A7 lineup, all or most supposedly on the way for this Spring. The same mockups were shown at Photokina and then CES.

There's a macro lens, the FE 90mm ƒ/2.8 Macro G OSS (Optical SteadyShot, Sony's in-lens IS); one of those do-everything mega zooms toward which I have an untoward antipathy, the FE 24–240mm ƒ/3.5–6.3, also with built-in image stabilization; and an imposingly large- and heavy-looking fast 35mm, the Distagon T* FE 35mm ƒ/1.4 ZA.

But the most interesting is the compact FE 28mm ƒ/2 with not one but two matching bayonet-mount converters! The first is an o.75X, which turns the lens into a 21mm. The second converts the 28mm to a 16mm fisheye. Very neat. Nice to see Sony thinking outside the usual constraints and coming up with something cool.

Any by the way, converters have a bad rap derived from all-purpose cheapie aftermarket versions, but dedicated converters designed for the lenses to which they're meant to attach can be of excellent quality. A fun trio sure to draw attention and discussion (although I'm guessing just the 21mm converter will sell well). Here's a picture of the trio from Photographyblog.

Mike
(Thanks to Bernd Reinhardt)

Original contents copyright 2015 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:

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

Open Mike: Snooker! (OT)

Ronnie O'Sullivan

TOP has a lot of readers in the UK, so each time I write one of my OT posts on pool, a few people will politely request that I give snooker a try. Snooker (the "oo" is pronounced like "blue" or "flew," not like "look" or "book") seems a characteristically British sport, in that at first glance it seems a bit worked-up, a touch daft, with lots of oddities and contrivances; brought to you by the culture that thought "thirty-love" was a fine enough way of saying "two points to none." So in the past week I studied the rules of snooker, learned the basics of how it's played and scored, and watched several matches online.

In other words, I still know nothing at all about it. But I know a lot more than I did before.

Surprise: it's a better game than pool. It strikes me as a more just test of the relative skill and merits of two opponents. For all its contrivances, it has some of the same subtlety, the delicate balances, the "just-rightness," of baseball. It gets rid of the big problem of 9-ball and 10-ball, namely the luck of the break, by starting every frame off with what amounts to a safety battle. It requires mastery of most cue-sport skills, and requires tactical thinking. It seems capable of rewarding both patience and boldness at different times. A fine game to watch at the tournament level. If it's not as exciting as pool, it seems like it can be just as entertaining.

I confess that I get a little frustrated with the arbitrary quality of pool games (although I have a soft spot for one-pocket). Nine ball in particular seems to put too much weight on how the breaking player falls on the lowest numbered ball. Frustration with the natural shortcomings in the design of the games was what led, most recently, to the development of American Rotation.

I will say that snooker fans' superiority complex over its difficulty isn't very justified. Yes, the balls and the pockets are smaller, but when snooker players are actually pocketing balls they're essentially playing on a table that's 6x6'. The other end of the table is mainly used for safety play. So all you snooker fans should stop patting yourselves on the back over how easy pool supposedly is by comparison. Until you start playing 10-ball on snooker tables.

At the same time, it's true that the occasional long ball is another aspect of the variety that snooker offers. It's a nice mix of skills the game requires.

Pure speculation
I like snooker enough that I have to wonder why it isn't less popular. I'm going to venture what Ctein calls a WAG—a wild-ass guess—and wonder whether snooker's popularity might have been on the increase in the last couple of decades? The reason I ask is that this guy Ronnie O'Sullivan has the feel of a genuine phenomenon—when he's "on," watching him can make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. I'm wondering if perhaps he isn't a sort of Michael Jordan, one of those athletes whose brilliance raises the stature and popularity of his whole sport. Willie Mosconi did that for what was then called straight pool—he was such a huge draw, and commanded so much respect, that the whole game suffered a blow when he retired. In a sense straight pool (14-1) never completely recovered. Basketball was in the doldrums for a while after Michael Jordan got old and went away—attendance went down and basketball lost some of the cultural importance, the centrality it had enjoyed when he was playing. I really have no basis for saying this—it's purely a feeling—but I'd bet that some of snooker's popularity is due to the presence of such a defining player, and that its popularity in the places where it's popular could go a bit on the wane once O'Sullivan's career is done.

Perhaps I'm being ridiculous, though. As I say, just a WAG based on intuition.

Whatever. I like snooker; I'll be watching more of it. The fact that the sport as a whole seems a lot healthier than pool (or than pool here, at any rate) is a pleasant bonus. The dread, anomie, and demoralization in American pool is so thick you can cut it with a knife sometimes—which can get tiresome. Snooker might seem a little odd to Americans, but I think our UK friends are on to something where cue sports are concerned.

Mike
(Photo by DerHexer, Wikimedia Commons, CC-by-sa 4.0)

("Open Mike" is the Editor's weekly Sunday indulgence. And some people actually like reading these.)

Original contents copyright 2015 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:

Andrew Hughes: "Hoorah Mike, you have discovered the great game!

"Your conjecture about Ronnie O'Sullivan is interesting—he is indeed probably the most talented player of all time despite his mental issues (that included not playing any tournament between two world championships). Another current reason for growth is snooker's massive popularity in China.

"Over the last four or five decades snooker has been blessed with typically one stand out player in each 'generation.' Ray Reardon, Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry were all as successful as O'Sullivan although not always quite so charismatic/weird. Through good management the game has grown enormously since Steve Davis's time ('80s) and much of that is down to his manager, Barry Hearn, who now runs world snooker.

"Hopefully snooker will gain success in the US before too long although I believe one of the factors that slows progress is the sheer size and cost of a table—few can have one at home."

Mike replies: It would be extraordinarily exotic for anyone to have a home snooker table here, as so few people play it (or are even aware of it). And it's as you say—it's pretty hardcore for people to have a full-sized nine-foot table at home—a seven-footer "bar table" is much easier to accommodate—and much easier for kids and guests to have fun on, even if the owner would prefer a larger table. Eight-foot tables are still for the most part considered "full sized" for home use in the USA.

Tom Burke (partial comment): "Snooker in the UK—that is, televised snooker—is less popular than it was 30 or so years ago, in fact. At that time it was a TV monster. The story is that the game's popularity began when the TV channel BBC2, the first in the UK to go to colour in the mid-'60s, wanted a quick and easy program to show off colour TV, and they picked on snooker and created the program 'Pot Black.' Millions watched it and were hooked."

Ed: "Two of the greats playing against each other (the aim at this stage of the game is to pot each ball in a defined order).

"Snooker players need to be able to pull off such trick shots and have the tactical skills to position the cue ball after potting so as to require one to finish."

Mike replies: Position play is a big part of almost all cue sports games. It's the main skill in 9-ball and 10-ball for instance, which are also rotation (ordered) games. It's worth noting that when you see a top level player miss a straightforward shot in 9-ball or 10-ball, however long or difficult, it's usually not because they couldn't sink (pot) the ball if that's all they had to do, but because they were trying to do too much with the cue ball afterward.

That's a tremendous draw (screw) shot you've linked—and that's another very nice thing about Snooker, which is that the players often get an opportunity to have fun and show off a bit clearing the balls after winning their frame. In snooker there really are a lot of felicities to the structure of the game. I'm impressed with that.

Clayton Jones: "Thanks for posting this, I'd never heard of the game or O'Sullivan and enjoyed watching some of his YouTube games. I like your occasional pool posts."

Peter Vuksanovitch: "The small mountain town I grew up in had an old classic pool hall that was the center of the world for me. The ten tables within were regulation size snooker tables and I grew up playing that game. The click of the balls, an oiled wooden floor, hanging lights, smoke, and a barber chair in front all haunt me whenever I remember the years well spent on the greatest game. Rack 'em up Mike."

Brand Nomad

A couple of thoughts about the Apple Watch, pursuant to all the comments:

1. It's not a watch

and

2. If you think about it, it's only for people who don't currently wear a watch. If you already wear a watch, you're sort of excluded from the target market, right? You can't wear two watches without looking like a nerd. (Correct me if I'm wrong, those of you who wear two watches.)

So the comments got me to thinking about something else, which is: I'm an Apple loyalist. I probably wouldn't be a writer if it weren't for the Macintosh. I don't buy everything Apple makes but I tend to go along with the program. I'm on my second iPad and I absolutely love it, for example—I do 90% of my book reading on it, I use it to communicate with my girlfriend, and I love to look at pictures on it. Part of the reason I want an Apple Watch is because Apple is putting it out. And that's not irrational on my part—Apple products have been almost uniquely rewarding for me, over the course of multiple major purchases.

Apple, however, is one of only a few companies I've been able to be loyal to.

This is strange, because given my personality you'd think I'd be a brand partisan with everything. I got wrenched away from Contax, the brand of my first camera, more or less against my will—and of course you can't be a camera reviewer, which I was for years, and be a brand bigot. (I do notice glimmers of brand loyalty sprouting up towards Fuji these days. People keep asking me for a review of the X-T1, and I can't write one. Know why? Because I really love the X-T1. Wouldn't be fair to write a review in the state of mind I'm in. I need to wait till the shine wears off.)

I really wanted to be a brand loyalist with cars, but the car companies keep thwarting me. My mother had several Honda Accords, so when I went to buy my first car, I wanted a Civic—but, at that time, they were hot, and all the dealers were slapping a $3,000 markup on them. So I bought a Mazda instead. Then I tried to be loyal to Mazda, but I kept getting thwarted there too—not once but twice when I went to buy a new car, Mazda was temporarily out of products to sell to me. The second time, I was told all I'd have to do was come back in three months. Which doesn't help at all when you're coming off a lease and have to turn your old car in on a specific date.

Last year, I bought my current car, an Acura ILX 2.4. I absolutely love it—it's not perfect, because it's wrong wheel drive and Honda has a long and staunchly defended history of designing poor seats, a tradition which of course is carried over into my Acura—but the drivetrain is to die for, and the stick shift is like buttah. It's even built in Indiana, the State where I was born. The ILX 2.4 is a Honda Civic Si for old guys, so it fits me to the proverbial T.

I like the ILX 2.4 so much it's like they built a car just for me. And the better engine was available only with a stick shift! Yeah—finally, a car company that understands. So I figured maybe I was about to become an Acura loyalist.

Then what happens? Honda just announced that the 2016 ILX won't even offer a manual transmission option. Much less make it the only pairing with the better engine.

Damn. There goes that. I won't be buying another car till 2019 or so, but with the stick in the ILX so ignominously dumped, the takeaway is that Acura doesn't understand guys like me after all—which in turn means I'm probably fated to become a brand nomad again. Oh well. Maybe in 2019 I'll buy a GTI.

I wish I could be a brand loyalist. I'd love to have stuck with the same make of camera since 1980, the same make of car. Maybe I'll be able to settle down with Fuji. But, truth is, Apple is an anomaly in my life—a company I've stayed loyal to for years. The way things are these days, you just don't have that opportunity with too many things.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2015 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:

Roger Moore: "I think you're wrong about the Apple Watch. Some people who do wear watches will get it as a replacement for their existing watch. It isn't for serious watch fanciers, but it makes sense as an upgrade for people who wear less expensive watches. It's a quite logical upgrade for people who like gadgety digital watches, for instance. And some people who don't wear watches because they don't care that much about telling time might be convinced to wear them to get all the features you get with a smart watch."

Holger Fehsenfeld (partial comment): "As a collector of mechanical watches I always wear two watches. Surely some people do ask 'Why the hell do you wear two watches?' My answer: 'same reason why women wear two bracelets.'"

[To read the complete text of partial comments, please see the Comments Section. —Ed.]

Shelley Stallings: "I too have experience much joy and happiness every time I have purchased an Apple product. The first one an Apple II way back when (1984), since then 23 Macs (12 of these gifts to my wife, my daughters and grandchildren) five iPads (again four of these gifts) and numerous Apple Writers and LaserWriters. I am phone phobic, so have never bought an iPhone. But I find it quite amazing how Apple (thank you Steve Jobs) and its thousands of talented employees have succeeded time after time in designing and manufacturing such useful and quality products. No other brand has been able to do this for me over the decades. The closest camera company to providing this level of quality is Olympus with their original OM-1, OM-2, OM-3 and the beautiful OM-4T."

Mike replies: Olympus is one company that I could have been brand-loyal too over the years, if I had started there, all the way to the current E-M1. It has made cameras I've really liked all the way from 1980, when I got into photography, to now.

Bruce Rubenstein: "I started reading this piece and then all of a sudden it morphed into an Andy Rooney segment. Very strange."

Bron: "Personally, I wear a watch, analog face, as early training makes that easiest to read. Apple watch, is, as a watch, quite intriguing due to the vast amount of individual customization, both in faces and dial, but in complications that can be added or removed as suits. I think the basic design, similar to the 'Tank' design from early in the history of wrist watches, vey elegant. The possibility of a Wily Ethelbert Coyote, a Dumbo or a surreal, Daliesque face; I may have to learn coding. All that other stuff is interesting, but I'm delighted by the software driven watch faces."

Stephen Scharf (partial comment): "Regarding Honda car seats...well, yes and no. The fair share of car seats in Civics are pretty forgettable (with the exception of my '86 CRX Si), but the car seats in Acuras are actually very nicely designd and very comfortable. The seats in my 2007 TSX (original version) and my 2008 TL Type S are beautifully made and among the most comfortable I've ever sat in (including the Nissan Altima's Zero G seats). Unfortunately, the ILX is an exception with respect to Acura seats. I drove an ILX for an entire week through the Eastern Sierra when my TSX was in for an AC repair, and the seats in the ILX, unfortunately, are much more Civic-like than Acura-like."

toto: "If there's one brand that deserves loyalty, it's TOP!"

Mike replies: Thank you toto.

Almost Forgot! (OT)

Well, I never finished the 12 Songs of Christmas, and the last day of Christmas, January 6th, has passed us by already. But I did want to finish up with one more favorite.

This version of "Greensleeves" was recorded in Rudy Van Gelder's parents' famous living room, in Hackensack, New Jersey (although that sounds very primitive, actually the house was built to double as a recording studio—there's a rare photograph of the house here). The personnel are Osie Johnson on drums, Wendell Marshall on bass, Kenny Burrell on guitar, Ray Bryant on piano—and of course the great Coleman Hawkins on tenor saxophone.

The song itself it traditional, from the 16th century in England.

But now (four songs short of our goal) we leave Christmas music behind, mindful of the mantra of the marketers, namely that people don't want to hear Christmas music in January.

Hope you had a good one, though.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2015 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:

Lindsay Bach: "Simply gorgeous. Long a lover of Hawkins' work with from the '30s and '40s with the bass magus Oscar Pettiford—think 'Body and Soul,' 'Get Happy,' etc.—I am not so familiar with his later work. Now I'm reminded to visit. Thanks for posting."

mike plews: "Excellent end to your Christmas music project. It was also nice to see you give a tip of the hat to Rudy Van Gelder. The list of artists he has worked with is just staggering. I am especially fond of the work he did with producer Creed Taylor. Here's another jazz take on Greensleves. This by the LA 4. It is from a direct-to-disc LP which meant they had to do an entire side in one take. Being a vinyl guy I figured you would dig it."

Apple Watch (OT)

Oh, one more thing occurred to me that doesn't require me to put words together: I will be a very early adopter of the Apple Watch. Can't wait. I've heard almost nothing about it, and even if I had something to say about it myself, I couldn't say it today. But I'm definitely getting one. Do you have an opinion?

Mike

Original contents copyright 2015 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:

Will: "It took me only a few months with an iPhone, some six years ago, to convince me that I no longer needed to wear a watch. Now Apple's trying to convince me that I do?"

sporobolus: While I'm not particularly interested in owning an Apple Watch, I found a pretty good way to think about it (from the perspective of a technically astute person describing it to an average consumer) at this blog post by Neil Cybart (via Daring Fireball)."

Stephen F Faust: "I'm a fan of Apple's products, but I just can't figure out why I would want an Apple watch or what I would do with it. However, I said the same thing about the iPad until I bought one in 2013, now I couldn't live without it. So I'll probably be jumping on the bandwagon around version 4 in 2018 or so."

Earl Dunbar (partial comment): "...For many people and many needs, I think the information will be highly useful and relevant and, perhaps even critical and life-saving.

"I think the best way to think about the Apple watch itself is as a platform, not just a device. Think about this: Your doctor knows about a heart attack nearly before you do. Or—GM OnStar becomes obsolete. Your range or microwave knows exactly when to start cooking based on your location, route and traffic conditions as you make your way home. OK, that last one might not work completely reliably. For now. Yes, as a 1.0 device, early adoption will not be a good strategy for some, if not most. But the possibilities of building on and with the iWatch platform are pretty staggering."

Speed: "Building on Earl Dunbar's comments above...

The Microsoft Health platform includes a cloud service for consumers and the industry to store and combine health and fitness data to create powerful insights. Microsoft Health will be available for consumers from the new Microsoft Health app which launches today on Android, iOS and Windows Phone. Also launching today is the Microsoft Band, a smart band designed for Microsoft Health, for people who want to live healthier and be more productive.

"And from today's Wall Street Journal...

I thought I’d seen it all in my decades long practice as a cardiologist, but recently, for the first time, I had an ECG emailed to me by a patient, with the subject line, “I’m in atrial fib, now what do I do?” I immediately knew that the world had changed. The patient’s phone hadn’t just recorded the data; it had interpreted it.

"Academic and industry researchers have been working for decades on sensors and technologies to monitor physiological variables. Now that people are carrying tiny computers disguised as telephones, tiny sensors disguised as watches are advancing medicine into an era first glimpsed in Star Trek."

Doggedness

Robert Kalman, Jolie, 25

Unfortunately I have writer's block again today. I have a quotation from Boswell's Life of Johnson taped to my computer (it has been with me through several computers and has survived my move); it says "A man may write at any time if he will set himself doggedly to it." What Dr. Johnson fails to mention is that his maladies and afflictions left him lacking doggedness on many occasions. I don't mean to claim anything in common with Dr. Johnson, but my doggedness has deserted me this morning.

While I'm missing in action, you might try visiting Robert Kalman's work. I've enjoyed looking through these this morning, although you really need to look through, and read, a pretty good subset of them to get the experience. Marek Fogiel suggested it.

Robert Kalman, Another view of Sasha

Anyway, my apologies, but I am giving up for now; I'll re-apply myself this afternoon and see what happens and, failing that, will try again tomorrow.

All best,
Yr. Hmbl. Host
(Thanks to Marek)

Oh, and if you want to read Boswell, I suggest Osgood's abridgement, which can be had for the Kindle for a very well spent $3.03.

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:

Speed: "One good thing about Mike's writer's block—comments get posted quickly."

Steve L.: "Thanks for the Kalman link. Best flickr page I've seen in a long time. I passed it along to some friends."

Robert Kalman: "Two things, Mike:

—I'm honored to have you refer your readers to my work. (You have my permission to reproduce any picture that 'inspires' you). Many thanks.

—I think Dr. Johnson also wrote: 'No one but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.' Perhaps that is what is causing the 'block.'  ;-)  "

Mike relies: Illustrations added. Thanks.

Stan B.: "Mr. Kalman's portraits remind me of everything that HONY could be, should be...."

Glorioski!

If you're a fan of nature and travel photography turned up to 11, slathered with photogasmic goodness and dripping with sharpness and rich, deep, saturated colors, has Art Wolfe got an orgy of guilty pleasures served up and waiting for you.

You'll hardly believe it. There seems to be no limit to the lengths photographer Wolfe will go to for a scrumptious photo opportunity, no possibility left unplumbed, and this summation volume pulls out the stops and shakes the foundations. It can read like a parade of beauteous prettiness, a collection of ideas mined rather than any sort of personal viewpoint, albeit executed superbly; but turn page after page, give in, take it on its own terms, and just indulge—it's the dessert cart at the world's best pâtisserie.

Yr. Hmbl. Ed. lacks the buttons that work like this pushes, but many, many people love it, and no one is better at it. If this is your thing, even tangentially, prepare to O.D. time and again, a helpless toothy sated smile on your face. This one's over the top.

Here's the video promo. Here's the book. And in the U.K. And from the Book Depository (free International shipping). And for Germany and Canada.

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:

Kenneth Tanaka: "I salute Art Wolfe's work. The discomforts and patience that he must have endured to capture some of the remarkable scenes for which he's known are probably hard for most of us to imagine. No, I don't have any of his books or closely follow him. But that's not to say that I don't enjoy seeing such exquisite NatGeo-style work."

Klein and the Anti-Technicians

Written by John Kennerdell

From Life is Good & Good for You in New York by William Klein, 1955. Klein once described the book, one suspects not without pride, as "a crash course in what was not to be done in photography."

You might have seen him had you been walking the streets of New York City exactly 60 years ago this winter. Although trained as a painter, he was carrying a camera. And while he lived in Paris, he moved through the city of New York and photographed its people with the ease of a native son. His name was William Klein and he was 26 years old.

When Klein tried to find a publisher for his New York photos before returning to Europe the next year, 1955, the reaction could hardly have been less encouraging. He made the city look like a slum. His framing was random and incoherent. Technique? Fugeddaboutit. As Popular Photography described it on first sight of his work, "meaningless blur, grain, muddy exposures, drunken horizons and general sloppiness." Whatever his game might be, mid-century America clearly wasn’t ready.

Chet Baker, from Jazz by Ed van der Elsken. Dutchman van der Elsken's career ran in parallel to Klein's but increasingly fell under its influence, as seen in this superb 1959 photobook.

Back in France, Klein managed to put out a small volume of 120 of the photos, titled, with Beat irony, Life is Good & Good for You in New York. "I wanted to do [it] as a tabloid gone berserk," he later said, "gross, grainy, over-inked, with a brutal layout, bullhorn headlines." While the European establishment didn’t quite know what to make of it, young, avant-garde photographers loved its raw, anything-goes energy. It was largely through those young photographers, whose names included Ed van der Elsken and Mario Carrieri, that the style if not necessarily the substance of Klein's photography began to ripple out to the world at large.

Nowhere did this new sense of photographic freedom find richer ground than in Japan, a nation still grappling with the ravages of war and the search for a new identity. Restless young Japanese photographers immediately saw in Klein a visual language that they could apply to their own ends. Collectively, five of them became known as the Provoke group, after a short-lived magazine of the time, and described their aesthetic as "Are, bure, bokeh" ("Rough, blurred, and out of focus"). But individually they very much went their own ways. Shomei Tomatsu, the photojournalist of the group, took what he called a "subjective documentary" approach to social and cultural issues. By contrast, Takuma Nakahira's dark urban abstractions felt like equal parts sumi-e and radioactive nightmare. And then, somewhere between those two, Daido Moriyama, the most directly influenced by Klein and soon to become the best known of the group in the West. To this day he roams the back alleys of Shinjuku with a little digicam and wide-angle lens, a street photographer to the last.

From Chewing Gum and Chocolate by Shomei Tomatsu, 1959. The postwar Japan photographer par excellence, Tomatsu admitted to being "obsessed" with the U.S. Occupation and the cultural impact of the West on Japan.

And Klein? He still lives in Paris and seems to savor the role of eternal rebel. Fully 40 years passed before his Life is Good photos were put out in book form in the U.S. The expanded collection, titled William Klein, New York, 1954–1955, more powerfully than ever shows us a young man working at white-hot intensity, following his instincts as an artist rather than a trained photographer. Had his original book been published in the U.S. rather than Europe it's hard to imagine it would have had any less impact than Robert Frank's The Americans, which appeared two years later.

But in the end the point is moot, so ubiquitous has Klein's influence become. Whether in fashion, advertising, or documentary photography—never mind motion pictures—nothing has ever been quite the same since William Klein and that winter on the streets of New York six decades ago.

John

John Kennerdell writes two articles a year for TOP.

Original contents copyright 2015 by John Kennerdell. 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:

Chris Y.: "John Kennerdell should write a lot more for TOP. This was gold as far as I'm concerned. Thank you."

Mike replies: Yeah, but I don't look a gift horse. If ya follow.

Julian Love: "Tate Modern held a large Klein/Moriyama retrospective a couple of years ago. While the photographs themselves were wonderful to look at, full of visual interest, it was the large collection of first edition books that really stood out (most of them loaned by Martin Parr, who seems to own several copies of each). The dramatic layouts combined grainy full-bleed images covered in bold text and graphic shapes. The results were both chaotic and mesmerising."

H.R.5893: The Ansel Adams Act

Subtitled "To restore the First Amendment Rights of Photographers."

A bill introduced by Steve Stockman (Republican from Texas) in the U.S. House of Representatives on January 2nd.

Read it here. Won't take you long—it's short.

Mike
(Thanks to Jim Hughes)

UPDATE: It turns out that this bill was introduced on Jan. 2 and Rep. Stockman's last day in Congress was Jan. 3rd, which is also the first day of the 114th Congress. So the bill either needs to be reintroduced by someone else in the new Congress or it's already dead, since bills cannot be carried over from one Congress to the next prior to being signed into law.

Thanks to my friend Bruce Katz for clarifying this.  —Mike the Ed.

P.S. Learning this does make me very curious, though—do exiting members of Congress do this sort of thing regularly, and, if so, what's the point?

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:

Ben: "I wonder if this 'Ansel Adams Bill' might have anything to do with this. Others would know the law better than I.... Anyway I would be surprised if the law doesn't increase significantly in length before it gets out of committee."

Mark Hespenheide: "Interesting. But I'm in favor of charging for commercial-use photography on public lands. I previously lived near Sedona, Arizona and came across some commercial full-scale photo shoots for new SUVs. They were a big production and intrusion. I'd hate to see a flurry of similar actions in Yosemite, Yellowstone, Canyonlands, etc.

"If we're talking about commercial use that has at least a potential to impact the resource, I think it's entirely appropriate to charge for permitting. As a photographer, you either pass those charges on to your client, or shoot somewhere else."

Gene Forsythe: "I am sure that many readers will jump on this as a positive action. I tend to disagree, for at least two reasons: First, the two exclusions in the bill allow security personnel to continue to act in just the way that they do now...threaten to stop photography or actually confiscate photography because it 'might' be related to potential terrorist activity. Second, the absolute prohibition on charging fees for commercial photography means that the taxpayer will be forced to pay the costs of private commercial movies and photographers who wish to use public lands in a manner that requires assistance and support from the responsible agency overseeing the land or buildings. We currently have acceptable and rational permit systems that require those commercial activities to pay for their costs, and that should continue."

Peter Lewin: "Simply excluding commercial photography and filming from the class covered by the bill would make it easy to support with enthusiasm. As it is written, it is hard to tell whether the bill is meant at giving photographers more freedom, or if it is a giveaway aimed at commercial businesses."

Geoff Wittig: "If you're a devoted amateur landscape photographer who's been hassled by Park Service employees in the past because you used a tripod, don't be fooled. This bill is not meant for you. Instead it's yet another subsidy to giant corporations, courtesy of the Republicans in Congress.

"The whole point of this bill is to forbid the Park Service from charging big advertising firms and their wealthy corporate clients any fees for their exploitation of our common property—the National Parks—in advertising campaigns.

"The Park Service is already billions of dollars behind on maintenance due to massive and relentless budget cuts dating back to the 1980s. Anyone who has visited the National Parks over that period of time has seen how shabby many of them have become as a result of this intentional, almost vindictive, defunding. Fees for commercial usage for corporate advertising provided one of the few alternate sources of funding for the Park Service. Now Rep. Stockman wants to further impoverish the Park Service by eliminating this revenue source, and, in a lovely Orwellian twist, puts Ansel Adams's name on it! That's like naming a bill to drown baby Chimpanzees after Jane Goodall."

Mike replies: I tried to find a YouTube clip of comedian Kathleen Madigan's bit about how, if she were in Congress, she'd name every bill the "Be Nice To Retarded People Bill." "I dare you to vote against that. And then if you run for re-election, I come out and make that one commercial, and go, 'look, I don't want to have to bring this up, but my opponent voted against being nice to retarded people....'"

Art Gross: "I'm a little surprised at the concerns photographers are voicing over this bill. Fees for photography in national parks are a pretty recent thing, and I don't remember there being a huge concern about commercial projects being a great threat to these resources. Even if there's no fee charged, there are still prohibitions on causing damage to a park. On the flip side, there seems to be an increasing problem with authorities both public and private trying to make photography in all sorts of public venues difficult or even illegal. Although photography around defense infrastructure may still be prohibited (which has pretty much always been the case), it sounds like this would apply to most photography in public areas. I would err on the side of photographers rights, so that sounds like a positive to me."

BH: "I was recently driving through the wonderful Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada. I'd never been in the area before, so I took a day to explore and photograph. For the most part it was a wonderful day.

"As I drove through the Park, in which I'd seen very few people, I came across a police officer blocking the road. He stopped me and told me to wait. He then got on the radio, talked with someone, came back and told me to hold on a few minutes. I figured maybe someone was on the run and they were scanning any vehicles that came through the area. After a couple of minutes he told me I was free to proceed, and I drove on. Soon I came upon a group of what had to be about twenty people, with various different types of unmarked cars and trucks, a load of camera equipment, and what I can only assume was some kind of concept car they had hidden under a tarp. They took up an entire designated parking stop in the park, and when I asked a man if I could park in order to get out and explore the area, I was told I had to park further on. I continued to the final parking lot, at the mouth of which was stationed another police officer.

"I got out of my car and went exploring and took some photographs I was very happy with. I didn't fail to notice the men with two way radios on top of the rock formations, stationed there to make sure you didn't walk over to the other side and take a peek at whatever magical vehicle was under that tarp.

"When I left the officer stopped me and I waited about five minutes before I was allowed to proceed. I assume they had to get the tarp on the car again before I drove by. As I passed the film crew and the covered vehicle, they all waved to me nicely and said hello.

"It cost me $10 to visit this Park, alone, for my own personal enjoyment. I can't see why a massive company with deep pockets shouldn't have to pay a decent fee for their intrusive use of public lands. To be honest it really ticked me off that I couldn't see everything in the park, and I made a modest effort to hike my way around the giant rock formations to get a peek at that car, just to spite them. I failed not because their security team caught me, but because my own fatness was no match for the monolithic rock formations of the Nevada desert."

Fuji X-T1 Cold Weather Test

With a wind speed of 19 miles per hour and a temperature of –2°F (–19°C), the wind chill (new style) here this morning is –24°F (–31°C). We figured this would be a splendid opportunity to test the Fuji X-T1 to see how well it works in the cold.

Alas, what we discovered is that the tester does not work in that kind of cold. (The Age Coefficient means you subtract one additional degree for every year you are past the onset of middle age, or 45. Thus to our staff tester it is –36°F.)

So, the test was a failure. However, that was no fault of the Fuji's.

We are glad to report that the X-T1 worked fine from
inside the living room window

Speaking of cold, I read an interesting article in The Atlantic yesterday about people who try to lose weight by keeping themselves cold. They use icepack vests and train themselves to sleep in the wintertime with no blankets. The idea is that the body will spend an enormous amount of energy (and hence, burn fat) to keep itself warm.

As behavior, this seems fringey, but the article did make one very interesting point, which is that for 99.7% of human history, human beings' two biggest problems were finding enough to eat and keeping warm. For most prosperous first-world people today, these things are no longer much of a problem.

I now have the indoor temperature turned up to 72°F, which is excessive, sybaritic, and indulgent (and higher than I usually set it). And I am burning approximately zero fat. But I am mighty glad to be inside my little warmed-up box.

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:

Dennis: "And this is why we come here instead of the blog of some gung-ho nature photographer who not only goes outside in the bitter cold, but camps in it to be up at daybreak on some remote mountain or who surfs in it. I'm going to remember that age coefficient, too (maybe I'll call it the age chill factor)."

Mike replies: Well I know Alex Buisse reads this blog and I hope he got a bit of a laugh out of it today.

Juha Haataja: Losing weight by keeping cold may not be such a good idea. Some new research points out that warm conditions may be better for losing weight: 'In fact, the researchers found that working out in the warmer conditions burned more calories as, they hypothesised, the body had to work harder in order to keep itself cool...additionally, the researchers found that, after exercising in the cold, participants felt far hungrier, piled more on their plates and consumed more carbohydrates.' The news item is available here.

"Anyway, to cope with cold is mostly a matter of wearing the right clothes. And one gets used to cold. After some days at –20°C it feels that –5°C is rather warm."

Product of the Year 2014

This year's camera or product of the year in our field is an easy choice for me. Tastes vary, of course, but 2014 will be remembered (well, if camera products o' the moment are remembered at all, it must be added) as the year that mirrorless came of age. The Fujifilm X-T1 and the Panasonic GH4 joined Olympus's late-2013 OM-D E-M1 to form a triumvirate of top-of-the-line cameras. All are "right-sized" mirrorless cameras that are being used as only cameras by certain types of professionals as well as by their natural constituency, dedicated enthusiasts.

I still think the E-M1 is a better all-around recommendation, despite the "wrong" position of the on-off switch. Once learned (an important caveat with that camera and its "crapware" excesses!), it's faster to operate, the ergonomics of its two-position selector switch dual control wheels are superb (indeed, the ergonomics of the whole camera are excellent), and its effective 5-way IBIS is a big score over most competitors. Add the proliferating native lens options and it's a lovely design that "has it all."

2014 is the year the Nikon D750 came out, too—an important enough camera, we think, that it would have walked away with the prize in many years. (If you'd like to see more of our judgments on specific cameras, see our post "The Ten Best Digital Cameras" from December.)

The delicious Graphite Silver edition of the X-T1

Still, the X-T1 is just too...yummy. Technically it's very advanced, with just about every capability a stills camera c. 2014 could want. The big, beautiful viewfinder is better than an Olympus OM system OVF from back in the day; the size and weight are "Goldilocks" perfect; and the lenses are everything the most fastidious perfectionist could ask for.

I hear its video capabilities will send a videophile running to the open arms of the GH4, and, based on our user sample of one, the Wi-Fi cannot be figured out by middle-aged people. Other than that, the X-T1's worst shortcoming is that the thumbwheel, multi-way controller, and SD card access door are frustratingly mushy, frail, and cheap-feeling. In light of the excellence of the rest of the camera, this is like dropping a 300-yard drive four inches from the hole and then missing the putt—the rest of the knobs 'n' dials on the very same camera feel crisp and precise, and thumbwheels and card doors are not exactly hard to get right.

But never mind. The accumulated effect of the X-T1 is pretty addictive. It does what you want, when you want, and feels, looks, and sounds great doing it. I'm not saying it's even the best Fuji, because Fuji offers a wide choice of cameras and each choice has its fans. But it matches my own taste in cameras, and dovetails well with how I like cameras to work. (I've chosen the X-T1 to use for my OC/OL/OY project this coming year.) Your mileage may vary of course.

The sensor can handle even extreme subject brightness ranges amazingly well

And of course a big plus for any Fuji X system shooter is the expanding range of native lenses. The range includes absolute standouts such as the 23mm ƒ/1.4 (one of the best 35mm-e lenses I've used, and I've used a whole lot of 'em) and the 56mm ƒ/1.2 (for which I'm saving my shekels). And based on Fuji's track record, you can be pretty confident it will be following its own intelligently strategized lens roadmap, too—as this morning's introduction of the professional-level, weather-sealed, constant-aperture 24–84mm-e at CES indicates—the new XF 16–55mm ƒ/2.8 R LM WR.

The new XF 16–55mm, introduced today at CES

A friend in the industry told me a number of years ago that a Canon official had confided to him that Canon was only scared of one other company, and that company was not Nikon, or Leica, or Sony or Panasonic—it was Fuji. Since 2010, we've been seeing, more and more, what that meant.

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.

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

Ash: "It's great to see the X-T1 win. Completely deserves it in my opinion. I am a little biased though—the X-T1 and 35mm ƒ/1.4 go almost everywhere with me. Maybe this is the year for a project?"

The Basic Teaching Method of Photo Art Schools

An aspect of blog editing that I seldom talk about is what I call "energy." Certain topics take on energy, and certain topics don't; in managing the flow of conversation, the editor has to be sensitive to what people want to talk about. Some conversations get very animated, and excerpting those conversations for the "Featured Comments" gets very interesting, often more interesting than the original postings. For other posts, the Commentariat is just bored or fidgety, or (worse) negative. In those cases, it's best to move right on.

To my surprise, the conversation about my "snow" pictures from yesterday has taken on quite a bit of energy in the comments. People have had very useful things to say about them, especially the second image, both technically and aesthetically. I was going to post the "Product of the Year 2014" today, but the snow picture discussion has taken on energy. So, let it flow; the PotY can wait.

Elisabeth Spector's comment, most notably, puts me in mind of what's best about art schools. The basic method for understanding art-in-progress, working methods, and the aesthetics of created work is the "critique": students put work up in front of the group and the teachers moderate a discussion about it. The student, as the artist/creator, gets to be informed about his or her own work as he or she wishes, of course—but seldom in a good critique does the creator of the work fail to gain further insights about the piece and how it's working for people.

What I'll do when I print that snowfield image is to understand how I want it to work onscreen first, and then get as close as I can in a print; then I'd put the print up on the viewing board and look at it for a few days.

In the process of looking, one of a number of things might happen—the basic evolution being that I'd come to like the image more or less. Some pictures you think have a lot of promise fall away after a few days—you stop caring. It's like music that you can listen to a few times that then becomes boring. Other images have more sustained power, and your appreciation of them actually deepens with time (this is a lesson that Paul Caponigro's pictures taught me back in the '80s when I was starting out). 

But on a more practical level, living with and looking at the print for a few days will help clarify the direction you want to take it. Beyond the purely technical considerations, you'll gradually get settled about how you want the finished print to "feel," not so much in its appeal to the eye (although there is that), but in its emotional feeling-tone or intellectual fascination.

With most pictures, there will be a variety of different interpretations—different ways you could go with it. ElArteDePerder suggests a graphic, formalized interpretation; Elisabeth explains why she doesn't like that approach. That's where your own personal response comes in, and it's why you need confidence in your own taste and your own aims in order to work as an artist. You need to give yourself permission to go your own way and do your own thing. This is especially difficult sometimes when you have a picture that you know might appeal more immediately to more people if you went a different direction with it. "Selling out" like that doesn't work in the long run, however—it just results in conformist, pandering pictures with superficial appeal and no deep integrity. One big distinction between art photography and other photography is that you don't give the audience what they want, you lead them to see and understand (over the course of many pictures) what you want. You can't do that unless you're being true to yourself.

In the critique, the teacher might provide the response, or simply sit back and let the class talk; more often, it's some skillful blending of the two—the teacher is a moderator, guiding the discussion and helping it along when it starts to lag but not dominating the discussion or insisting on one "correct" viewpoint.

Where I went to school, critiques were led by not one but two teachers, and often they were teachers who didn't always see eye to eye. The student (or photographer) him- or herself has to be the final arbiter, and there's no better way to "get" that than to be in the presence of two authority figures who disagree. At the very basic level—and this indeed happened when I was in school—you have one teacher saying he loves a photograph, and the other saying she hates it, and the two of them argue. If it's your picture they're arguing over, that will really focus your own feelings about whether you want to defend it or let it go.

Of everything I've left behind in photography over the years, I think I miss critiques the most.

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:

John Gillooly: "Did a workshop with Jay Maisel a couple years back and the 'critique' was by far the greatest and most value part of each day. Sometimes just walking in the room and seeing the image(s) that you selected for the critique was a lesson unto itself. Your own critique of yourself might sharpen at that moment. 'That image shouldn't have made the cut' or 'I think this image will hold up.' I loved that daily process and miss it. There seems to be no online equivalent of a good critique?"

Richard Newman: "I have a problem with critiques. And not specifically re my photos. Its the competence of the critics to critique—or lack of it. Not only with amateur photographers, but some who photograph for a living. Evidently doing it doesn't necessarily mean you can be a good critic. I have seen some egregiously dumb critiques, where the critic didn't understand the technical aspects, but criticized them, or just spouted inanities and aesthetic platitudes, usually clearly wrong. Yes, there are good critics out there, but finding them outside schools—or even in them—seems to be a crapshoot. Good criticism is a skill that requires both technical and aesthetic knowledge, and the ability to understand how to apply them to a given photo. My experience with amateur club critiques has not been good. The one group where I felt the critical level was high consisted mostly of commercial/industrial photographers and art directors, with a bias towards how well the image supported the product. It would be nice if there were more groups like that (bias aside) where knowledgeable commenters could be found."

Mike replies: I do think it depends on the capabilities of the teacher(s). My experience with unmoderated groups hasn't been good, and, ironically perhaps, guest speakers at gatherings don't seem to be particularly good at running critiques—the guests tend to want to be complimentary to their hosts. My sample size on that isn't the best, but it includes situations where I myself was the guest speaker! There's a reluctance to risk hurting peoples' feelings when you're a one-time guest and don't know the personalities of the participants.

Richard Skoonberg: "I attend a monthly crit here in Atlanta at the Atlanta Photography Group. It is such fun. It is led by Chip Simone, who was a student of Harry Callahan and is a wonderful, accomplished artist and teacher in his own right. The conversations are always interesting and opinions go flying. In this group, people are all attempting to create art and explore what that art-making with a camera is all about. Chip does a great job moderating and I am always learning something. Every time you put your prints up in front of thirty or more people, it is a bit intimidating. But I have found it builds confidence.

"I have also learned a lot about printing. I have been shooting for the computer so long that I had really forgotten what a precious object a beautiful print can be. I really feel that I am growing from this experience. I count myself lucky. One more thing—at these crits, people never, ever discuss gear."

Jernej: "Don't know about your days as a student or as a teacher, but in our case it's nearly impossible to get more than 'I like it' or 'everything was fine' out of the students. No why, no how...nothing. In 95% of cases it seems explaining why they (don't) like something is as painful as giving birth.

"I can understand why they don't want to hurt someone by saying it's crap work (even when you can see it in every face in the classroom) but why is it so hard for them to say what they like about the results? Why is it so hard for them to point out a very obvious mistake that could be easily fixed (like a bunch of typos in the title sequence of a documentary or a mistimed cut between two clips)? Must be a cultural thing...."

Snow

We awoke this morning to one of those "white frosting" snows that coat even the smallest twig with white. As I might have mentioned before, my brain's Pavlovian response to this kind of snow is that it's a mandatory photo opportunity, and that thought has to be obeyed. I never take any good pictures in the snow, but that doesn't stop me.

I did think you might like to see what the field in back of the house looks like today, though:

I need to learn to stop calling it the soybean field, because, according to the neighbors, soybeans and corn are rotated every other year, and '15 is a corn year. So I guess, come the warm weather, it'll be the cornfield. It's bleak today, whatever you call it.

Hope you're staying warm, wherever you are.

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:

anurag: "My reaction is, how lucky you are. We don't get any snow here in Mumbai. Don't call it a bleak day for gods sake. It must be feeling as lovely as it looks."

Mike replies: It was really lovely this morning, I will say.

Mim: "I love the 'soybean' field. Great minimalistic shot with just the bare trees on the horizon."

Mike replies: Thanks Mim. Do you like this one better, or worse?

(Processed more in accordance with Ctein's recommendations.)

Elisabeth Spector: "The second shot is nice, but I find I much prefer the first image.

"One of my favorite elements is the sky in your first image, where I can actually see the subtle gradations of the clouds that (at least on my monitor) appear to be absent in the second image. The first sky conveys perfectly the feeling of a January day, with its persistent shroud of featureless clouds filtering the weak winter’s light. In the second image, there are no cues to tell me more about the sky and the light, but that bright expanse of nothingness suggest perhaps even a cloudless day, resulting in quite a different and (for me) less compelling mood.

"I also love the tones you've achieved in the trees in the first image—gentle gradations and variations that give the individual trees some real texture, dimension and personality. I find myself trying to 'read' the tree line from left to right and back again. In the second image, the processing has rendered the trees all with a certain sameness and flatness that doesn't invite my closer scrutiny or interest.

"I also prefer the lack of overhead branches in the first image. In the second image, those branches divide my attention too abruptly between the foreground and background and my eye doesn’t really know where to settle, whereas in the first image my eye travels naturally from the foreground to the background in a very pleasing way.  And with the foreground greatly truncated in the second image, the tree line is in danger of playing second fiddle to the overhead branches, which don’t seem nearly as interesting.

"Speaking of the foreground, the stubble poking through the snow in the first image seems every bit as important as the other elements.  That stubbly field completes a nice set of 'three' in terms of the content (field, trees, sky) and gives my eye some pattern to follow as I look deeper into the image toward the trees. Like the clouds, the stubble provides an element that is instantly familiar and characteristic of winter, and it also gives some clue as to the depth of the snow. I can imagine traipsing through that field, with the sounds of crunching snow and dead grasses underfoot. I also like the fact that your rendering of the snow gives it some welcome texture; it reads as snow and not just as empty white space.

"All in all, the second image feels (to me) as if it might be trying to achieve more of a 'fine art' look, but in doing so it has lost a certain amount of soul. It has a cleaner, more abstract and two-dimensional look that might have a certain reflexive appeal at first glance, but for me it doesn’t wear nearly as well as the first image. I’m still enjoying my leisurely, contemplative viewing of that first image, with its deceptively quiet (but actually quite rich) level of detail and depth and because of the sensations and emotions that it evokes.

"Thanks so much for posting these. I've enjoyed looking at and thinking about them both."

ElArteDePerder: "I like the first one a lot more. I've taken the liberty of tuning it a bit (actually, quite a bit). I hope you like it."

Mike replies: Aha! The Gursky version [g]. It would be against my basic principles to alter a horizon line like that, though. Here is my latest version (different frame):

Song Eight (OT)

Reader Paul Pickard recommended this one. Big thank you, Paul!

And there's a first time for everything—I (me!) actually bought an album of Christmas music, which goes to show you that even the reprobate can be redeemed.

It's Nick Lowe's Quality Street. I'm mystified by the title, which seems calculated to help the album not make money. But it's delightful to catch up with Nick Lowe again after many years—I remember hunting down the European vinyl version of Jesus of Cool many years ago. The years have been good to Nick's voice and musicianly skills; Quality Street is a gem.

Here's Nick talking briefly about "Rise Up Shepherd":

It's kind of comical that I possess two Christmas albums, and one is by Low and the other by Lowe.

And both happen to contain "Silent Night," which is the "Yesterday" of Christmas songs (Nick says there have been more than 3,000 covers). "Silent Night" is best when it's played straight, as it's a beautiful song and deserves to be played as such, but I just love Nick Lowe's uptempo rockabilly version. Nick himself calls the arrangement "irresistable" and I agree. Here's the link if you want to hear that one.

Consider buying the CD, as Nick's a working musician.

Mike
(Thanks to Paul Pickard)

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:

Mike A: "Another selection enjoyed at Christmas called Quality Street. I think just about everyone in the UK would get it!"

Mike replies: Ah, so it's a UK thing. I get it. Thanks.

Bob Zimmerman: "Nick Lowe is a working musician and a damn good, if lazy one, at that. His solo career, particularly throughout the '80s, was wonderful in that his records always sounded like they were done in one take and then released, warts and all.

"My favorite story (and I think it's more story than fact) is Nick going to the mailbox one day in 1994 to discover a royalty check for a million bucks. Curtis Stigers recorded a dreadful cover of 'What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Understanding' for The Bodyguard soundtrack. Since Nick The Knife was the composer he scored on the songwriting royalties. The album has gone on to sell 45 million copies worldwide. I'm guessing he's gotten several more of those million dollar checks. Sometimes the good guys do win!"

Mike Chisholm: "On Low/Lowe, I presume you know Nick Lowe brought out an EP in 1977 titled 'Bowi,' as a response to Bowie's album 'Low.' Heh.... Don't think they'd let you do that, these days."

Steve P.: "Among other gems Nick Lowe wrote the classic song 'The Beast In Me' for his then-father-in-law Johnny Cash. For this alone he deserves his place in the rock and roll hall of fame."

Mike replies: I never knew that. Thanks, Steve.

OC/OL/OY

A few years ago my New Year's resolution was to stop making New Year's resolutions. (And a few years before that, it was to stop worrying about resolution...i.e., of the photographic type.)

But I'm pretty serious about following my own advice and doing a one camera, one lens, one year (OC/OL/OY) project, starting sometime in 2015. I'm now 99% decided on using the Fuji X-T1 and XF 23mm ƒ/1.4 for the project, doing B&W only, and printing on 13x19-inch Canson Baryta Photographique paper. (You can order a Canson paper sampler to see all their options for yourself).

  Reader Christian Kruppa has collected everything he needs to begin his OC/OL/OY project. He's chosen the same camera and lens I have.

Epson has thrown a small wrench into the works however, by introducing the first in what will very likely become its next generation of inkjet printers and inksets. Indications are that it will be worth waiting for. The new printer uses "next generation" UltraChrome HD inks and is called the SureColor P600. It's said to offer signficantly greater black density that either older inkjet printers or traditional silver halide photo papers, making it especially appropriate for black and white. Trouble is, the new printer isn't shipping yet (although you can pre-order one). I believe Ctein is in line for a review unit.

I'm really not sure if I can do a proper OC/OL/OY yet, but I'm aiming to at least take a running leap at it.

Mike
(Thanks to Christian)

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:

Hugh Smith: "One Camera, One Lens, One Year.

"Walden Pond redux.

"Henry David Thoreau remarked 'Simplify. Simplify,' and that's exactly what my shooting partner/life partner/wife and I began a year ago on our travels to Ireland and France. We tired of carrying (I should say lugging) our Canon equipment all over God's green earth and opted for the FujiFilm X100s. Never did we feel under-gunned and actually felt freed to enjoy the trip and the photography. So, Michael, for once, we beat ya to it. My two pesos."

martsharm: "Good to see the OC/OL/OY idea is gaining traction with its proponent, and that there might be a gang of us doing it in 2015. I decided on my camera and lens combination—Panasonic G1 and PanaLeica 25mm ƒ/1.4—on the fateful day of your post about it (11th November 2014), kicked off the project three days later, and have done my best to stick to it ever since. I haven’t shot absolutely every day, and I have occasionally reached for the big kahuna (D700, 24–70mm, SB-600) when it was absolutely needed—but it’s been OC/OL/OY more than 90% of the time. If that’s not an oxymoron....

"I took your more stringent advice and went for 50mm-equivalent, and I’m glad I did. Far from its occasional reputation for being a boring focal length, it's proven to be extremely versatile, handling landscapes, portraits, and everything in between. Anything wider or longer wouldn’t be as good an all-round companion. If I was working with 35mm-e I'd always pine for an 85mm to go with it.

"I've just got to the printmaking stage. Epson 3880 with Canson Photo Satin A4. All B&W. Hopefully I’ll learn as much about printing with the Epson as I've learned about shooting with the Panasonic. Keep us posted. And thanks for the inspiration."

Song Seven (OT)

I'm not quite keeping up with my program of 12 Christmas songs over the 12 days of Christmas (this is the eighth day of Christmas). And this one could keep you busy for a while, depending on how far you go with it.

It is Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248, performed by the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner. It's nice to have the lyrics translated on the video.

Bach had a little bit the same problem bloggers do...his composing was episodic and occasional, tied to specific church services and sermons. Scholars generally agree that he intended the parts of the Christmas Oratorio to go together as a coherent larger single work, but they're not quite agreed at to how he went about it. He pulled it off, though. It's one of Bach's most genial and appealing choral pieces.

The Christmas Oratorio is not the most famous classical Christmas composition. That (dubious) honor probably has to go to Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker, which I did not like even when I was ten years old. (Mine isn't the majority opinion. Wikipedia informs us that "major American ballet companies generate around 40 percent of their annual ticket revenues from performances of The Nutcracker." Yikes.) I also have to admit I've never cared for Handel's Messiah either. I just don't like that piece of music*. It's popular despite being overtly religious; it's a curious fact that all of the top 15 Christmas songs overplayed on the radio at Christmastime are secular songs. None are religious.

(That fact comes from a wonderful history and deconstruction of the science of Christmas music sent to us by reader Speed [Jim E.], for which many thanks. I really enjoyed that. Written by Walt Hickey of FiveThirtyEight.)

But you can't go wrong with Bach. Each time I start this string of videos I can't turn it off again. I've listened to the whole piece about three times now.

Mike
(Thanks to Speed)

P.S. Set aside fear, banish lamentation.

*For me I'm sure it's partly due to that huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh vocal flourish that Handel uses ad nauseam; what's it called? I know it was standard fare in the Baroque but I think it's ugly.

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:

Mike Chisholm: "Re Handel, I think the word you want may be 'melisma.' It's the same idea as that mannered, arpeggiated style that Whitney Houston et al. pour all over songs like syrup, as a substitute for 'expression'... Stevie Wonder does it best. Happy New Year!"

Tim Auger: "Whenever I feel that the world has gone insane, I find a solid slice of Bach very reassuring. It's so sensible, like very good fruitcake. One never tires of it, I think because there is a lot for the brain to follow, with all that counterpoint. As I was listening to some of this earlier today, it seemed remarkable to be able to connect so directly with the mind of Bach some three hundred years ago.

"Maria Carey Syndrome, a form of melisma (see earlier comments), is an easily spread condition that must be rigorously controlled, and ideally eliminated."

Shot of the Day (OT)

...No, not that kind of shot. But you gotta see this.

Back in '03, the great Buddy Hall, one of the early greats of the game of 9-ball, is playing Keith McCready, who played the part of Grady Seasons in the movie The Color of Money. Here's the situation:

Start the action at about 21:50 and watch Buddy get out of a tight spot. I could do that shot too...if I had about 20 consecutive tries to practice. Fun shot.

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:

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!