The Online Photographer

Photo Geekery

My head is just exploding with ideas for a "gallery," as I remember one thing or another that I have squirreled away here or there. I use the scare quotes because it wouldn't be a gallery in the conventional sense. It would be more like a 19th century museum, stuffed to the gills with curios and oddities and loads of stuff that would be ultra-cool to deep photo geeks.

I've never made a great effort to "collect" in the conventional sense, but I've come across things in my peregrinations through photography that are just too cool to throw away. Moreover, I know where a lot of cool things are. Larry McMurtry , who, besides being an author is an antiquarian bookseller prima inter pares, once told me that he tracks books around the country and the world in his head. He knows where things are. If he sold a book to X, he knows that X then sold it to Y who then donated it to K, but K isn't exhibiting it, so the book is in storage at K. Like that. He knows where thousands and thousands of books are. This is deep geekery—Al Kalmbach, the late founder of Kalmbach Publishing, which produces many railway and train magazines, reportedly memorized train schedules for the entire country for fun—such that, if he were driving through Kansas and heard a train whistle in the distance coming from the Southwest, he could tell you what train it was, and the time it had departed from its point of origin and the time it was due at its destination—to the minute.

I can't say my photo geekery runs that deep, but as I've been mulling it over these last 24 hours, I keep coming up with stuff. Things I know about. Things I could track down. For example, I know where the enlarger is on which Robert Frank printed the original prints for The Americans. Could I get that for display? Almost certainly not. But that's the kind of thing I mean.

I've been thinking about esoteric things such as, how would you display an extinction meter so people could see how it works? I have signed books, rare photos, personal items that once belonged to famous photographers, portraits of famous photographers, ancient equipment, equipment with provenance, ancient instruction manuals—all sorts of oddities that would delight and amuse fellow photo buffs.

Building up a little public museum/gallery would suit my way of working, too, because I could chip away at it. Some people are good at big, grand projects...I'm better at things I can do a little bit at a time, because historically I suffered from depression and had to learn to deal with inspiration and energy that was fleeting and intermittent. But as I think about this, each little item or display would be its own blog post—and in that way, I could get input on how best to present things, ancillary items I might need to add, other peoples' ideas for how best to display something, etc.—which would not only help, but be a lot of fun to talk about as well.

The local summer grocery store near where my new house is (by pure coincidence, it's called T.O.P., short for "The Olney Place") is open from May 1 to October 31st, so I'd probably have the museum/gallery open during that same time frame, staffed by either a student from nearby Keuka college or a local retiree.

My head overfloweth with ideas. This could really be a lot of fun....

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.

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Featured Comments from:

Dennis Huteson: "Life's greatest pleasure is to be Enthused."

William Furniss: "'Don't forget to write!'"

Roger Botting: "And what is wrong with having your mind filled with near-useless clutter? Knowing arcane details about long-obsolete colour processing times or knowing about the many tints and finishes of print paper that could only be bought in 1/2 plate size? Photo geekdom lives on that. That is what makes you the terror of every camera store staff person, the customer who really does know more than the staff person. And that is worth living for."

Blog Note

Regular readers might find this hard to believe, but...I'm moving again.

I know.

Remember Keuka Lake in Upstate New York, in the Finger Lakes region? I've sold my house in Wisconsin, which as you might remember was new to me only last Summer, and bought a small 1880 farmhouse a few hundred feet from Keuka's shores. The closings and the physical move take place late in July.

The situation is simple—I can relocate my work easily, and my girlfriend cannot. Neither one of us wanted to face another Winter traveling back and forth. (Delta Airlines stock ought to tick down a tad on this news.)

I'm going to call the new house "Eastlake," partly after the road it's on (East Lake Road), and partly in honor of Lady Eastlake, the first photography critic. (Hence yesterday's post.) A small portrait of her will adorn an unobtrusive spot near the front door.

Eastlake is beautiful, in a modest, rural, old-timey kind of way. It has a private boat launch but no lakefront, no dock, and no lake views. The reason for that is simple too—if the property were on the water, it would cost three times what I paid for it and would therefore not be mine. "Close enough but not too close" is a good thing in this case.

The move should be good for TOP in all kinds of ways. In the works are plans to have "print bins" on the porch with original work to view or buy, and, as soon as I can raise $30,000 or so (that might take a while, but I'll get there), plans are already drawn up for a separate gallery/museum building on the property that will be open to the public during the temperate months. The Finger Lakes are a legitimate tourist attraction as well as an outstanding destination for photographing, so Eastlake may host photography workshops.

Not the smallest consideration is that I get along very well with the area from a personal artistic/photographic/aesthetic perspective. I've known it was so ever since a wonderful photographing trip to Rochester several decades ago, when my brother Scott was working at the University of Rochester's Mt. Hope Family Center and I drove meanderingly up from D.C. to visit him. I might very well become much more of an active, working photographer again than I've been in recent years.

I'm personally excited to be nearer my girlfriend, of course, but I'm looking forward to many other aspects of the move as well. As I move I'm leaving my son (with his blessing and enthusiastic support—I wouldn't be doing this otherwise), a number of friends, and one brother and his family, but I'll be closer to my mother and stepfather, several East Coast friends, and our other brother and his family. And I'll be able to visit New York City more regularly to attend events and see museum and gallery shows and check out new photobooks.

I'm especially chomping at the bit to construct displays and exhibits in the postulated Eastlake Gallery. That will engage creativity, inventiveness, and resourcefulness, all of which I find immensely fun.

I'll post pictures for you once the place actually belongs to me.

So now you know why things haven't unfolded as I once said they would...life happened, and things changed for me, in a very big way. I'm going with the flow. On with the adventure! Life is grand.

Mike
(Thanks to Sherry, Linda and John, and S.)

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.

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

Chris Mielke: "I read almost every post, but very rarely comment. However the irony of this move is interesting enough to me. I live south of you across the Illinois border about 70 or so miles. You are moving some 70 or so miles from my In-Laws. I’m sure I will visit you there as much as I did all the years you lived north of me. Congrats!"

Mike replies: I hope to actually give people something to come see at the new place. It was almost embarrassing when people wanted to come here, because there's just nothing at all here to see. Hopefully I'll at least offer some fun distractions at the new place, once I get settled in.

Ed Hawco: "Actually, as a regular reader I don’t find this hard to believe at all. I think I can speak for many when I say we’ve seen it coming. Congratulations!"

Nicholas Condon (partial comment): "Hell, I moved to the other side of Chicago just last year to be closer to my girlfriend, and she was only an hour drive away from my previous place. "

Stephen Gilbert: "Jeez: I only recently recovered from the stress of the last move. :-) Congratulations and good luck."

Tom: "Now we know why Mike's kitchen was so neat and tidy.  ;-)  Best of luck."

Jerome: "Mike, I'm so happy to read about this. Of course it is ironic to move again, just after settling in—but the next move will be much smoother. And with such joyful things to look forward to, moving isn't a burden at all. Life is wonderful, isn't it!"

Olivier Anthony: "Now it all makes sense, and I can stop wondering why your kitchen was so impeccable on the picture you posted! Congratulations on the new adventure."

Marcelo Guarini: "WHAT?????"

David A. Goldfarb: "Moving twice in such a short period of time is crazy [yup —MJ], but it sounds like a great move. I love the Finger Lakes Region, and being close to Rochester, Eastman House, and everything up there (not to mention the girlfriend) can only be a good thing for TOP. Good luck!"

Yvonne: "As entertaining as your posts about disastrous travel in winter were, I'm happy that you will be spared those kinds of adventures in the future. Like others here, I can't say I'm surprised about your impending move, and I wish you much happiness for the future."

The Photography Critic

Lady Eastlake, traditionally considered the first photography critic

I have wonderful news for your ongoing photographic education: assuming you haven't already, you can read the entire corpus of one of the earliest critics of photography in one short go.

You have only to read "Photography" by Lady Elizabeth Eastlake, née Rigby, at A.D. Coleman's website, and Bob's yer uncle. (Er...Barb's yer aunt?) As a bonus, it's quite wonderful. Required reading for every student of the medium. (I first read it as, yup, a student.) Her 1857 essay is the only thing she wrote on the subject, but she ignited the conversation in a number of ways. A very interesting person.

Allan's even briefer commentary is also wonderful.

Lady Eastlake, to quote the aforementioned critic, even "...considers the various photographic technologies, with their capacities and limitations, in sufficient detail to convince the reader that, if she did not herself have hands-on experience with the tools, materials, and processes as an amateur practitioner, she had read and understood the technical manuals, listened closely to photographers discussing their craft, and perhaps peered over their shoulders as they worked in the darkroom."

And apropos that, I was entertained to find her complaining about, you'll never guess, dynamic range: "The impatience of light to meet light is, as we have stated, so great, that the moment required to trace the forms of the sky (it can never be traced in its cloudless gradation of tint) is too short for the landscape, and the moment more required for the landscape too long for the sky. If the sky be given, therefore, the landscape remains black and underdone; if the landscape be rendered, the impatient action of the light has burnt out all cloud-form in one blaze of white."

It's as I've always said: the taming of contrast is the main technical concern of outdoor photographers. Always was, still is. (We're getting there, 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.

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

Jim Zietz: "Wasn't landscape photography even more difficult with the orthochromatic films of the day? Blue sky = white sky in print."

Mike replies: Actually that's a myth, as deconstructed by Prof. Joel Snyder of the University of Chicago in a Timothy O'Sullivan exhibit I saw once. The failure of the reciprocity law caused uneven mottling in overexposed skies, which the early practitioners then masked out. Hence the uniform white skies of many albumen prints—kind of a pretty effect because of the beautiful "paper white" of albumen emulsion. But that was later than Lady Eastlake's time.

Dan Gorman: "My favorite line from Eastlake's essay: '...[Photography] unites men of the most diverse lives, habits, and stations, so that whoever enters its ranks finds himself in a kind of republic, where it needs apparently but to be a photographer to be a brother.' Sounds a lot like TOP itself! Cheers (and congrats on the upcoming move)!"

Mike replies: Isn't that great? It's one reason I insist on first names around here, despite sometimes great differences in status. A few people have not been happy with that practice, most notably John Szarkowski, but with Lady Eastlake's imprimatur I think we'll keep on truckin' with it.

Open Mike: Inverted Snobbism

I'd like to post up with a brief vote in favor of reverse camera snobbism. That's when the value system is inverted, turned on its ear, such that the prism through which cameras are evaluated is changed to some criterion other than the obvious one. In the case of cameras, it's that good shooters are going to come back with better pictures than people who have better cameras but are worse at using them.

This is just snobbism, of course, only of a different kind. It's no more a necessary rule than good camera = good pictures.

Still, it's kind of fun. Edward Weston used a lens he bought for $5 at a flea market; Alfred Stieglitz's camera had a bellows that had been patched many times, and was so saggy he had had to hold up the middle of it with a piece of twine when he made an exposure. Closer to home, my old studio partner and former teacher Paul Kennedy ran a professional studio serving high-level clients using a beat-up old Hasselblad with only two lenses and a cheap monorail view camera that was so damaged I sometimes couldn't figure out the trick of getting it to work. (He also had a Nikon F3 with a giant motor drive he called "Darth Vader," which is why he named my F4 "Luke." All this is giving you clues as to the era in which all this took place.)

Of course the ultimate in reverse snobbism was when a guerrilla shooter with a beat-up old Leica and a single lens would come in and shoot the pants off all the pj's who had expense accounts and bags full of expensive Nikons. That won't fly any more, since Leica went all-in as a maker of status symbols. Not to mention that those formerly flush and smug pj's are enduring lean times themselves now.

And of course inverted snobbism didn't work very well in the early days of digital. Back then, the best digital cameras were barely good enough, and bad ones were, well, just plain awful. It's only lately that we're getting back to the point where knowledge and skill can accomplish more with a small digital camera than a bumbler with the lastest/coolest/bestest can.

Can't say I'm a big fan of snobbery in any form—I'll never understand, much less sympathize with, the bitter brand-based flame wars that we still see sometimes out in the Wilds of the Intertubes. It's never mattered much to me what someone else uses to take their pictures with, as long as I'm getting something out of looking at their pictures. But I guess I have more sympathy for inverted snobbism than the other kind.

Is that bad for my business? I coulda been Steve Huff....

Mike

"Open Mike" is the Sunday opinion page of TOP. It's been a day late enough times, I figured this week I'd post it a day early.

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.

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Featured Comments from:

Michael O'Donoghue: "And what do you mean by being Steve Huff?"

Mike replies: Just that I'd guess Steve he sells an awful lot of Leica gear through his links. And probably makes 2X as much money as I do. Sigh.

Dogman: "Having crappy cameras was something of a status symbol among several of the shooters at the two dailies in town back in the '70s and '80s. My own Nikons were pretty beat up but they hardly compared to some of the other photographers'. One of the shooters for the afternoon paper had a piece of twine holding the back and bottom plate together on a Nikkormat but he explained he only used the camera to keep handy a second lens for his main camera rather than carry a bag all the time. His main camera only looked marginally better than that Nikkormat. One of the new hires at the morning paper (where I worked) came in with two or three motorized Nikon F's that I swear were mostly greenish gold where they once were black or chrome. When he moved on a year or so later, they looked even worse.

"Most of our cameras showed finish wear but continued to function well with annual tune ups and occasional trips to Nikon Professional Services. However, lenses had failures due to daily wear and abuse. The glass elements on mine stayed in pretty good shape but some of the guys had lenses that looked as if both front and back elements had fought a few rounds with a sanding tool. Backlit subject definitely had a 'glow.'

"I did wear out a few lenses over the years. The focus distance scale on my 24mm was worn completely away and the lens finally loosened internally to the point it was unusable. My 35mm and 85mm both had loose front elements that required frequent retightening (a Swiss Army knife made for a great emergency tool kit). I had an embarrassing moment with my 180mm during an interview when I was trying to fill the frame with the subjects face. I kept moving closer and the lens kept focusing until the damn thing came completely unscrewed and I was left with the rear half of it on the camera and the front half in my hand. Nikon actually repaired that lens and I continued to use it for a couple more years. I sold it along with much of my other equipment when I left newspaper photography in the early 90s. The proceeds from the sale was meager to say the least."

Peter Barnes: "An emphasis on photos and photographers and life over photographic tools bad for your business? Not from my point of view Mike—it is exactly why I come here several times a week (and pay you a regular pittance for the privilege). You are a most refreshing change from what dominates most writing about photography—what I call the engineering approach, which is so popular because it is so much easier to write and talk about megapretzels and aperture speeds and The Rule of Thirds."

Mike replies: My rule of thirds—one third photography, one third music, and one third books. And the question, what's my spending money for?

Ann: "I took many of my best, most memorable images with a D70 (with good lenses, but still a D70), long after most people were talking about the D70 in the past tense. My current cameras are certainly more capable, and my current images have more pixels and less noise, but it's pretty clear to me that I could pick up pretty much any decent camera made within the past five years, and for good or bad, once the images were printed, one camera would be mostly indistinguishable from another.

"I shot a wedding with an RX100 once. I was a guest, the hired photographer was in the emergency room, and I had that camera with me. Except for the wider than typical DoF on some shots, it was hard to see the difference between those wedding shots and a wedding I shot with my D800. I'd still rather use the D800 to shoot a wedding, of course. Right tool for the job, and all that.

"I've had thoughts about starting a blog called 'it's not your camera, it's you,' where I use some really terrible early 2000s consumer DSLR to debunk some of the silliness that shows up on the Internet fora. Is that snobbery? I was thinking of the 'Bike Snob NY' blog when I thought up the idea, so I suppose it is."

Andrew C E (partial comment): "So when I use my $50 50mm ƒ/2 AI on my D810, can I be an inverse snob and a regular snob simultaneously? ;-) "

Mike replies: You nailed it.

100 Years of Leica

Or, "Dang I'm Old," Part II.

You might want to know that Eyes Wide Open! 100 Years of Leica Photography has finally been published and is shipping. I haven't seen this one yet, but these books are generally very pleasurable—tasty and fun, guilty pleasures, like chocolates to a person with a sweet tooth or catnip to cats. (Here's the UK link. They're almost out.)

How would I know if I haven't even seen it? Because I have the one commemorating the 75th anniversary, from 25 years ago.

These books are generally treats, not meals, and they're sometimes scorned for not being coherent and deeply serious. But I have plenty of books like that, and I like photographic bon-bons. So sue me.

Another really great one along these lines—a collection of mostly Leica photography, in unserious box-o'-chocolate format to overwhelm that sweet tooth—is In Our Time: The World As Seen by Magnum Photographers. Yes, it's a collection, a compendium, and doesn't make complete, coherent arguments in picture essays. But as a chocolate box it sure has a lot of insanely great photographs all in one place. Fun to look through and savor. Maybe not all at once.

Mike
(Thanks to Robert Edelman)

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.

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Featured Comments from:

Ned: "Mine came in last week, still unopened like my new copy of The Decisive Moment [which I'm amazed to learn is already out of print. Or at least between printings. —Ed.]. Just like a Lecia fan to buy something and not open it!"

Norm Snyder: "I got mine a few days ago, and rather than sitting down and browsing, I put it on a bookstand I got along with a copy of the 'compact' version of Sumo. I turn one or two pages a day, stopping sometimes as I pass the hall table on which it rests, to read and enjoy the photographs (many of which are like visiting old friends). It will take considerable time to finish it this way, but I've found this an enjoyable way of slowly absorbing the content. It is like a box of chocolates, in a way...and I'll admit to having sweet tooth."

Mike replies: I (highly) approve. I love "reading" photobooks that way.

Dang I'm Old

In the only science fiction I ever wrote, years ago, one of the tropes that I fantasized I invented was something almost exactly like the new Amazon Echo. I called it the "conbox." And here it is already. I guess one of the (many) reasons I'm not a science fiction writer is that the reach of my imagination extends a much shorter distance into the future than I think it does.

Would you ever buy something like the Echo? I'm tempted to set one on my desk just to try it out.

Bookending this occurrence—the other side of the same coin, the other end of the same stick—a little story. I went to the garden center yesterday needing to buy a flower vase. A flower vase is a decorative ceramic or glass container meant to hold cut flowers. It will become clear in a moment why I felt I needed to define that.

I asked the clerk where the vases were.

"Vases?" she repeated, with a blank look. Mind you, we're in store the size of a supermarket just stuffed with flowers and plants of every description. "You mean like, for flowers?"

All right then, a flower vase.

"I'm not sure I'm really picturing that," she said, growing faintly alarmed.

That's when I defined "flower vase" for her, like I just did for you in the third paragraph above.

Does this ever happen to you? I can't say it happens to me often, but intermittently and occasionally it does, often enough that I notice it. I go somewhere looking for something that I think is completely obvious and no one knows what the hell I'm talking about. I mean, I used to work at a garden center, and we had an entire "Pottery Department" that was lousy with hundreds upon hundreds of flower vases. And isn't "vase" among the 3,500 words that constitute native fluency in English? I would have guessed it was.

She and I set off on what I call a "BLB safari," BLB for "blind leading blind," which is whenever you go off trailing behind a store employee who is ostensibly showing you where something is even though he or she has no clue. Retail clerks are evidently required to bluff to the furthest extent possible in preference to admitting any sort of ignorance, like George Costanza showing Susan's parents, the Rosses, his house in the Hamptons. (I supposed that's another dated old-guy reference, hmm?)

She finally decided that some of the products on sale were being displayed in these mysterious things of which I spoke called "vases," and she removed a handful of planty stalks from one such decrepit container to see if it had a price on it. It did.

"But it's all dirty," she observed. "It will have to be cleaned."

For my part, I had no idea where to go to buy a vase. (See there? I just admitted ignorance, and it didn't hurt.) So, back at the checkout counter, I asked the now-congregated clerks if any of them knew. (They had rallied round their compatriot to help her solve the impenetrable riddle with which I had taxed her.) One older woman said "GoodWill?" GoodWill is a secondhand store run as a charity. I must have looked askance at that—it is not a place where I shop, generally—because she added, "seriously, GoodWill has all sorts of things like that."

I whipped out the iPhone and asked Siri, and sure enough, GoodWill was open.

So, off to GoodWill.

Mirabile dictu, GoodWill did indeed have flower vases—lots of them. The prices amounted to pocket change. I chose three, and headed to the checkout.

(I'm getting to the point. Hang in there.)

Waiting for checkout, it occurred to me that GoodWill, since it had all sorts of old stuff, might have some stereo equipment. I like stereo equipment almost as much as I like camera equipment, and I'd heard urban legends about people finding treasures like pristine Thorens TD-124's missing only their bases, also for the equivalent of pocket change, at secondhand stores. So I asked the clerk. Do you guys have any hi-fi equipment?

"The term is Wi-Fi," he said, slowly and clearly, as if he were talking to an ancient toddler.

So there you go. The future is here, and we're in it, and it's great. Check out the conbox and see what you think.

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:

Wes: "When Amazon announced the Echo a number of months ago they made it available to Prime members for $99 so I bought one. And it slowly grew on me until I found myself relying on it multiple times a day. I can enter the room and receive useful information simply by asking: 'What's the weather today?' 'What's on my calendar tomorrow?' 'How do you spell...?' It can also play music from Amazon Prime, Pandora, TuneIN Radio etc. The speakers for playback aren't great but it works well for certain listening scenarios. Now, there's no need to turn on my computer or tablet, no need to activate Siri on the iPhone to do these things. Amazon continues to add functionality as well. I really, really like the Echo."

Robert Hudyma: "For me, the Amazon Echo is a troubling piece of technology. It hears every word that is spoken in the room and digitizes them and dutifully sends your words to an Amazon cloud server for voice recognition and semantic understanding. I for one do not want every spoken word that is uttered in my home sent off to an Amazon server for analytic processing. Furthermore, as a Canadian, any traffic that crosses into the USA is available to the NSA for analysis. There will be no Amazon Echo in my home."

Wes replies to Robert (partial comment): "The Echo does not record every spoken word. It only records what you say after waking the device with the wake word. And it only records for a few seconds after that. If you don't speak after waking the Echo, it will stop listening after a few seconds. And you can easily turn off the microphones with a push of a button. In addition, if you so desire, you can go to Amazon.com and delete the recordings you've made. [...] Disclaimer: I am not an Amazon employee; I'm just a fan of technology and of this little device."

Aubrey Silvertooth: "I feel your pain. Daily. I am a Social Studies teacher in a public high school near Houston. I have students who do not know how to read an analog clock. Many of them cannot read or write in cursive. When I mention anything about film cameras or analog photography in class, they sit mystified as if watching aliens from another planet land on Mother Earth. And these are the children in the advanced academic program. I am beginning to get nervous about the future. Very, very nervous."

BillH: "I'm still chuckling over this story. Thanks for noting the irony of your experience and describing it so clearly to us. Most of my interests are old-guy hobbies: sports cars, 'Hi-Fi,' classical music and photographing wildflowers and wildlife."

EZ: "We have been using the Echo in my house for a couple of months now. It's a great device. It's plugged in and serves as a bluetooth speaker, radio streamer, and several other day-to-day activities (weather, time, sports, etc). One thing I have not yet played with is their implementation of ITTT ('if this, than that') which opens up an entire suite of functionality...."

Dennis: "For your sequel, you can write about how the company behind the cloud service that makes the gadget work became the evil empire after inferring all kinds of useful/valuable/embarrassing information from what people say/ask it. It can be an adventure/thriller where your protagonist has to 'destroy the cloud' or a courtroom drama where our hopes rest in one attorney, fighting the evil empire's well-funded law firm, in the mother of all privacy suits."

Ken Tanaka: "The Clapper seems to have come a long, long way."

Ruby: "Will it make you feel even older if I tell you that you are the first person besides my dad I've heard use mirabile dictu in conversation?

"I'm actually only a few years younger than you are myself, but I first encountered this sensation of obsolescence at a GoodWill that had LPs hanging from the ceiling when my son, then five, said, 'Look at those giant CDs!'"

Ed Grossman: "Sorry, but this isn't for me. In the room where I'm typing this, the following are all competing to tell me the weather:

• Computer
• Smartphone
• Tablet
• Television
• Radio
• Newspaper
• Window
• Arthritis in my shoulder

I don't need another device informing me that it's about to rain. The novelty of talking to this to get a response isn't worth $180 to me. Several of the gizmos above already respond to my voice. Others only require a push of a button, click of an icon, or a change in the direction of my gaze.

"Yes, I know the Echo does other things. I already own devices that do those things. In my opinion, replicating existing function with a different interface isn't innovation. It's packaging. Let me know when Amazon builds something that can control the weather. There's a genuine innovation I can make use of!"

Hall of Shame

The exhibit is "Altered Images: 150 Years of Posed and Manipulated Documentary Photography" at the Bronx Documentary Center, curated by Michael Kamber and financed by photographer Phil Leonian (note the date on that link). It will open this weekend and run until until August 2.

"The exhibit, a selection of well-known images that have been altered, staged or faked, is an indictment of some modern practices, and practitioners, of photojournalism," writes James Estrin in the World's Best Photography Magazine, in an article called "Posing Questions of Photographic Ethics." At a time when veteran photographers are being replaced by newcomers or untrained 'citizen journalists,' it also raises important questions about the profession’s future amid increasing doubts about the veracity of images."

James Estrin quotes Michael Kamber: "I think the main reason is that photography is a lot more democratic today and I think that's great. But 20 years ago there were more staff photographers, and they knew very clearly that altering a photo was a fireable offense. Newspapers are laying off photographers by the hundreds, and there are all these young freelancers who have not been properly trained in what is or is not allowable or ethical."

The article assumes the show will be controversial. I don't see why. An altered photograph in a journalistic context is simply a lie told another way, i.e., in non-verbal form. Defenses of lying in that context—it wasn't that bad, it's just a little lie, you know what I mean, I had to punch it up for impact—while common, are all craven.

We've discussed many of the pictures in the show individually. I'd love to see them all gathered together.

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.

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Herman: "Altered? I always look this way."

Canon 5DS R Real World Review

Words and Video by Michael Tapes of LensAlign

When a new Nikon or Canon camera comes out I always pick one one up to test in the "LensAlign Lab" to check for any issues. I also like a hands-on feel so I can answer customer questions from my own experience. In the case of high-resolution cameras like the brand new Canon 5DS and 5DS R, I was particularly interested because the degree of precision in its autofocus would be so critical for these cameras to realize the true potential of their native resolution.

I purchased a 5DS R with the above intent in mind. No surprises in the lab. But after some real world shooting, I was impressed enough with how it performed in my own photography that I decided to put together a "Real World Review" video that your readers might find informative.

—Michael Tapes

[Here are the links for LensAlign and FocusTune. I think it's also interesting that this video shows you one reason why Michael developed these products...he clearly needed them for his work. As you might for yours...or you might just want them to optimize your system because you appreciate precision. —MJ]

©2015 by Michael Tapes, all rights reserved

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Speed: "I know. I'll sell my motorcycle to buy a new 5DS. The same motorcycle I promised to sell when I bought my 5D MkIII."

Mike replies: Made me laugh. We've heard about that motorcycle before. That's a very useful bike—it can be used to justify many cameras.

Stuck (OT)

[Off topic—if this isn't what you want to read about here, please skip this, and give me a couple of hours to write something new. Blogs are like the weather in Vermont...always changing. If you don't like what you find, just wait a bit. —Ed.]

Weight loss isn't my topic, but people have asked and I know lots of people are struggling with the same thing I am.

I'm down from 273 in early-ish 2013 to 228 as of this morning. That's where I am.

My weight loss was orderly for the best part of a year, with a target of one pound per week.

Then I got sick in January 2014. At that time I'd made it to about 238, and in less than five days I lost another 16 pounds due to the illness. But then, upon recovering, I started to eat again to make up for the rapid weight loss, and rebounded back to 235.

And there I stayed, give or take three or four pounds, all...the...way...through 2014. (If you read frustration into that, you've got that right.)

I just can't seem to shake this impasse. I'm exercising every day now, when I'm at home at least, and eating sensibly, but it's like my body just wants to hang on to this current weight for dear life. Nothing seems to work.

It's called a "plateau," and it's bitter, bitter, bitter. I have deep respect for people who have managed to overcome this phenomenon. It was hard enough losing the first 40–45 lbs., and those pounds have stayed off since early 2014, but getting any further—?

Did you ever overcome a plateau during a large-scale weight loss effort? If so, how did you do it? My goal is to lose another 30 lbs. and end up below 200, and I'm not going to stop trying until I get there. I don't want to carry excess weight into old age. I just don't. I want to live life to the fullest, and that doesn't leave any place for the ennui, lethargy, inactivity, lack of body awareness, negative health effects, and lack of mental focus that are all part of the package with obesity.

(By the way, the best "starting" weight loss strategy of the dozen I experimented with is to limit the number of hours during the day in which you eat. The clock starts when you take your first bite or sip of anything in the morning (except water), and then you stop eating—completely (except water)!—twelve hours later, or ten hours later, or eight hours later. Within that window, you should of course try to eat sensibly and on a schedule, but just limiting your eating window goes a long way toward triggering weight loss. If you're obese and haven't started weight loss, try it out.)

[I'd love comments, but please, don't tell me what to do—I'd like to hear what you did. Great stuff about the 5DS R coming up. Stay tuned. And if you don't like these OT sidetracks, my apologies.]

Mike
(Thanks to Marek)

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Jorge: "I dropped 100 lbs. between 3/1 2008 and 7/21/2009 (my daughter's wedding date). It was hard. But I kept the end goal in mind. I hit many obstacles and plateaus. The way I personally beat it was to fast. I'd have breakfast and lunch, skip dinner and nothing else to eat except herbal tea until breakfast the next morning. 'Usually' that did the trick to get my body kick-started. And yes it is safe to fast one day a week or so."

Geoff Wittig: "There are two traditional methods of getting past a plateau in a weight loss program; the first is a two-day fast, which will force a quick drop in weight that can get you past the discouragement that leads to a return of self-defeating habits. The other is to up your exercise program significantly. If you're doing 20 minutes of cardio before light weights, work up to 30 minutes instead. That will also generally break the impasse, but obviously requires a commitment and you have to avoid injuring yourself if you go too fast. I did that and got a fibular stress fracture about 15 years back. Major bummer. I did better using a smart-phone app to track my calories and progress. Its graphical display of the zig-zag progress of weight loss made me more tolerant of the occasional plateau because I could see that it was sure to be temporary."

Joe: "First of all I think what works is different for every body.What works long term is to change your attitude and psychology toward food. I went from 205 lbs to 160 with a plateau at 180. Exercise alone won't do it. Diet alone won't do it. You have to try different strategies to see what works. That means what works long term—clearly you will lose weight by starving but it won't work for long!

"I cut back on portion size. Little sugar and no added sugar in diet. No soda, fruit juice or cakes, cookies, etc. If you like pasta it must be accompanied with fiber and lots of it. Vegetables and fruit. Red meat: I don't eat it, but some can't live without it. I do like chicken and fish. Remember portion size counts.

"Lots of books and 'experts' but you must find what works for you by experimentation. And remember it you slip up a day it won't matter, just get back to good eating the next day."

Speed (partial comment): "From the Mayo Clinic...'Getting past a weight-loss plateau.'"

Gary: "I'm in the same boat and have been many times before.

"Left to its own devices my weight slowly climbs to about 238 lbs. (that's 17 big fat British stones!). I start to do something about it and it quickly falls to 210 lbs. (15 stone), but getting down to my target of 196 lbs. (14 stone) is really tough.

"I think the problem is lying and cheating! In other words from 238lbs to 210lbs I mostly play with a straight bat. But during that time I'm slowly accumulating a repertoire of artful and cunning practises. Most notably, instead of weighing ingredients, I estimate, and surprise, surprise I'm a generous estimator! Then there are the tiny little extras that just aren't worth recording on the diet sheet...which then become bigger and more frequent extras.

"After a few depressing weeks of stuckness I usually do the right thing and start recording absolutely everything I eat, at which point I discover it's way more than I was eating a few months before. I revert back to the original programme, feel hungry for a few days, then nature takes its course and I march down to the target weight.

"One other point, I was surprised to learn just how many fewer calories you need as your weight drops, I forget the details but maintaining my starting weight compared to maintaining my target weight is something like a 200 calorie difference. And you don't have to look far in the modern world to find 200 calories!

"Good luck!"

Mike replies: Very funny but probably very accurate. I think the "generous estimator" problem is part of my problem too. Thanks Gary.

Nikhil Ramkarran: "I think you'll find that a dozen people will have 14 different ideas as to how to fix weight loss issues. The key in evaluating everyone's experiences seems to be to look at not what works, but what didn't work. Very few people can truly account for all the factors that led to their success, whereas failure is usually easier to assess. Push come to shove, apparently there is an upside to the weight loss plateau :-) "

More Signs of the Apocalypse

You know the signs—violet sky, birds flying backwards, bones in a little low dry garret rattled by the rat's foot only, and a guy with a muskrat pelt on his head running for President. The usual.

But then certain things happen that are really unexpected. That really startle and surprise you.

Like this. Michael Reichmann has apparently switched to a new camera. Not an unusual event—Internet reviewers have to do that. But...a TLR? A film camera?!?

Holy cow. Mr. Digital?!? The man who long ago famously declared that the D30 [sic] had surpassed 35mm film, and thereby created a sensation on the Internet? Digital's greatest early champion?

So now I guess we need to be on the lookout for things like talking dogs, women giving birth to snakes, formerly rotund bloggers rock climbing, and nineteen-sixties rock bands whose members should all be dead giving concerts in Milwaukee.

(I kid, Stones fans.)

Seriously, kudos and best wishes to MR. Got me paying attention.

Mike
(Thanks to Nigel)

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Eric Rose: "If I were forced to sell all my cameras except one, the one camera I would keep is my Rollei TLR. It's a magical camera, wonderful things photographically seem to happen whenever I use it. Fortunately I have not sold off my darkroom. I think in the very near future it will be getting a workout once again. Not as a replacement for my digital imagery but as a mental and physical break from what has become a digital grind. I need a recharge and I think the Rollei is just the tonic needed."

William Lewis: "Beautiful article. Time to go shoot a roll in my Rolleicord III and get my hands wet again."

toto: "For me, the surest sign of the apocalypse is Mike considering not just a telephoto, not just a zoom, but a telephoto zoom!"

Mike replies: I did say that, didn't I. And yet there were two large, magnificent wild turkeys strolling across my back yard today...and I didn't have a single lens to photograph them with.

Bill Mitchell: "The most interesting thing about Michael Reichmann is not his pontificating about photography equipment, but that he is a really extraordinarily good photographer. I visit Luminous Landscape about once a week, or so, for the pleasure of seeing his latest images (and sometimes his older ones)."

Open Mike: Father's Day

I hope all you fathers out there had a nice Day (capital "D") yesterday. I had a full day. My son Xander's sport is rock climbing, which he's been doing for about a year after discovering that it's good for his shoulders, which he injured weightlifting. He's gotten good at it. The local climbing wall, Adventure Rock, had a "Father's Day Special"—dads climb for free—so I got to go with him. It was great fun. And astonishing to me to see what they can do.

I wasn't expecting to take pictures, but, in case this sport is as unfamiliar to you as it is to me, here are a few snaps:

Here Xander negotiates an overhang. He's using only the blue holds, which defines a single route.

The ropes are only for safety and don't provide any support. On the wall it's all you.

Success!

Xander and girlfriend Abby discuss a route...

...And Abby masters the "crux" (the difficult point—in this case, those smooth round blue boulders near the bottom) and "sends" the route (derived from ascend, a complete climb in one attempt without falling) for the first time. The last Level 11 route she needed to conquer before moving on.

As for Dad, well, I did my best. No route—I just grabbed for any old hold I could find and held on for dear life! And if you notice that sign above my head, dang straight I was clipped in.

Hands are the weak point for rank beginners, turns out. I made four or five attempts on different walls and, at my best, maxed out at 20 or 25 feet up before holding all that weight on the wall got to be too much for my hands. I'm not used to holding much more than leashes with exuberant dogs on the other end and lightweight mirrorless cameras.

Speaking of cameras, there was even a very nice photo exhibit at Adventure Rock, 4x5" film landscapes by William F. Lemke. Wonder if he ever visits TOP?

Later, Xander treated me to a steak dinner with Abby's family, all of whom I was meeting for the first time. It was a bit like meeting celebrities, I'd heard so much about them all.

Now I want to go back with one of these, which I've been coveting, once I can afford one. I've maxed out the camera budget for a while now.

Just great seeing my son in his element. Very enjoyable for me—I'm very proud of him.

Mike
(Thanks to Xander and Abby)

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Ctein Camera Watch and Other Tales

As you know, our old friends Ctein and John Camp a.k.a. John Sandford have written a book. Scheduled for release in early October, you can pre-order Saturn Run and read the first two chapters here.

For the book, John was paid a niggle, a pip—a palt, you might say, which would be the noun form of the adjective paltry—and Ctein was paid infinity dollars. The amounts were the same in U.S. currency, but that would be an inaccurate way of looking at it. As Albert Einstein—not the physicist, the bartender at Al Einstein's Smoothie Bar—liked to opine, "everything's relative."* John's palt and Ctein's infinity dollars are the relative amounts.

My guess. Version II. Before this date in August.

Being a scientist myself**, I've decided to sit back and merely observe. Because, with infinity relative dollars now burning a black hole in his pocket, Ctein can afford any camera. No, not the Softwood Box or the Ur-Leica, but any consumer digital camera. He has an Epson 99999000000000 which is approximately as long as a medium-range U.S. Navy cruiser; but his current camera of choice is an Olympus OM-D E-M5. I hypothesize (we scientists start out with hypotheses) that this will not be the case for long. I could be wrong. (Scientific hypotheses can always be wrong.)

So the current question of scientific not to say philosophical inquiry must be, what does a great printer with a great printer buy when he can buy anything? A Leica S? A Canon 5DS R? Something else with an "S" in it? How about a Sony a7R II or something else with a "II" in it? The Nikon D810 or D750? Something else with a "D" in it. (Probably not. No diss to Canikon, but "D" is getting to be an old letter...stale and unfashionable. Ctein, who contrary to rumor is not an alien but rather a Chinese immortal, is also old, but neither stale nor unfashionable—just look at his glasses. "S" and "X" are cooler letters than "D" now, although "X" is looking distinctly faddish. See how easily I can get off track even in the short stretch of a blog post?)

The watch starts now. We are taking bets on a.) how long, and b.) what. (We scientists always place bets on outcomes. Did you know that? Remember I might be wrong.)

How to spell Berekeley
Just put an "e" between all the consonants. There are all sorts of tricks I could give you to help you become a better speller.

Why you haven't read anything on the blog for a while
Because I'm working on a post about all the new cameras. Each increment of halfway to finishing takes just as long, and thus, theoretically, I can never finish. Science is hard. I think I'll quit being a scientist now.

Mike

*Actually he said "every-f---in'-thing's relative," but we observe middlebrow conventions of propriety here.

**Satire alert. I got A's in Biology, Oceanography, and Paleontology, though.

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jim woodard: "I'm pretty sure based on Ctein's scientific interest and knowledge and his interest in solar astronomy he will most likely buy the full lineup of Hasselblad Stellar, Lunar, and Lusso!"

Roger Bradbury: "I read the first two chapters of Saturn Run, but now I have to wait until October? Aaaaaaaaargh! I've been reading Sci-Fi since 1972 or so and I know the real thing when I see it. This is the real thing. I'm looking forward to reading the rest."

Alan Fairley: "I am particularly interested because Ctein is a printer (and one who knows how to get all of what is in a file out of it), not a pixel-peeping web poster."

Gabe (partial comment): "I somehow don't think Ctein will splurge...doesn't fit my perception of the man. Here comes the big HOWEVER, however. If I was in his position, and in spite of having read his thoughts on how many (few) pixels one really needs, I'm thinking of a once-in-a-lifetime treat. And to me that means Leica S and a couple or three lenses, and minor accessories. Either that or a nice Porsche Cayman.

"In any case many kudos to him...well deserved!"

James Sinks: "I can't imagine Ctein buying a DSLR. He's referred to the prosumer size cameras as boat anchors in the past and seems quite happy with the tiny mirrorless setups. Also, don't forget that Ctein took a Phase One MF system out for a test drive at one point and decided it wasn't for him. If he gets a new camera, my first bet would be that he just moves up to the latest and greatest M43 body. If he jumps systems, I think the Sony A7R II would be the logical place for him to land, and if not that, then the Sony A7S (or even one of each)...but at the same time, the Sony compressed raw format might be a deal killer for him. I think the only thing that would move Ctein to buy a DSLR is if he suddenly decides to embrace studio shooting and he wants a dedicated camera to leave sitting on a tripod 24/7. The 5DS might be tempting at that point, but probably not."

Quote o' the Day: Mike

"Making a picture that's technically what you want is where
photography begins, not where it ends."

—Mike J.

(People seem to like this quote from the other day, but I think I prefer this wording.)

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Paul Emberger: "I tell a variation of that truism to my students. And interestingly, I met Ralph Gibson yesterday: he was giving a lecture at the college where I currently teach. He told the crowd nearly the exact same thing. He spoke about how he came out of the Navy as a photojournalist with really good technical skill (I believe his wording may have been perfect or great skills) but that he hadn't yet really learned how to see. He also remarked about his time assisting Margaret Bourke-White. He said she had a phenomenal eye, but her skills were lacking. I recommend going to hear him talk if you ever have the chance."

The Canon 5DS (Anarchic Thoughts)

I don't know about you (well, until you tell me, and now you can), but to me the new Canon 5DS is like the Mercedes S-Class (one of which I actually got to drive in, thanks to Juan Buhler. You might remember).

Mercedes S Class

The camera equivalent, the Canon 5Ds

A photo by Juan (not taken with the Canon 5DS)

Juan

I.e., big, bold, overbuilt, and rockin' it old school...the traditional idea of a car, and a DSLR, extended to the current iteration of utmost according to the current fashion. Do you agree?

Sorry to be so self-referential, but it reminds me of not one but two things I said in the distant past:

First, that you really don't need all those pixels unless you're going to print for absolutely the very highest levels of fine detail. The most pixels you can use for screen viewing is 14.7 million—that's what you need to completely fill the 27-inch viewing screen of the new Retina iMac (one of which, loaded, Ctein recently acquired for the Stationary Starship at No. 42 Skyline Drive, and which he will hopefully review for us in July). As for prints, you'll need a very refined eye to see the improvements this many pixels would supply.

The second thing is a bit more conceptual. In the '90s, I used to pose the following riddle to students who I thought were getting a bit too bogged down in technical perfectionism. It was a thought experiment. Imagine that you had a camera that can make a technically perfectly sharp, perfectly true-color photograph under virtually any conditions. What then? That is, technical problems aside, what are you going to do with a camera? What can you think to use it for?

Because making a picture that's technically okay is where photography begins, not where it ends.

I think it's kind of amusing that we're essentially there. The Canon 5DS is the camera from my 1990s thought experiment.  :-)  (The world we're born into is the way we expect the world to be; when we get older, we live in the future.)

And if you want to go all-in, and print big (or leave that option open, which is why I think a lot of people go for higher-megapixel cameras), well then, you could buy a Canon 5DS (and I would get the pictured lens for it, too—that lens is one of the world's best and all by itself a great reason to shoot Canon FF) and then not even have to think about cameras for the next six years or so.

Oh, and one more thing you might want to read about, re the 5DS: The Point of Sufficiency. Are we there yet? To quote the kids in the back of the car.

Mike

Commentary from TOP Technical Editor Ctein: On the "print big" thing, that doesn't scale up as fast as people think. Oh yes, there will be some people who will press their noses up against a 4x5-foot print, but that's not the usual way of viewing them. People do unconsciously expect larger prints to cover a larger part of their field of view, but only somewhat larger. Look at an 8x10 print on your wall from what feels like a close comfortable viewing distance. Now do the same thing for a 16x20 print. You'll likely be about 50% further back. Going to a 30x40-inch print? You'll be another 30% back.

These are average figures for average discerning viewers. There always exceptions. (E.g., you can do billboards with really low resolution cameras, because no one gets anywhere close to them—they need less actual resolution than a 3x5-inch print.) Good rule of thumb: for similar apparent sharpness, you need twice as many pixels for a 16x20-inch print as an 8x10. If you're going all the way up to 30x40, make that modestly more than three times as many pixels.

For readers who really want to dive far too deeply into the relationship between pixel counts and print sharpness and print size, they should reread this column and the links therein: Myths About Megapixels (...And, Does the D800 Have Too Many?).

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Mahn England (partial comment): "I like the car analogy. I would think of it in Range Rover terms: extremely capable off-road but never taken off the asphalt. I have one by the way and the IQ is brilliant. I often crop severely and all those pixels come in handy when you do that."

Robert Harshman: "I could not disagree more about adding pixels. But then I'm not your father's photographer. I deal in the new medium of computational photography. The one where algorithms rule. And we need all the pixels we can get so we can transform them into whatever we want. And extract 3D information, etc. from a 2D image.

"More pixels is the future, as is even more advanced computational photography that extracts and purposes image data in ways we can only imagine today. More pixels, greater dynamic range and context data from a growing list of sensors. The camera of the future will not only be capturing image data but a long list of other things. Photography is in its biggest change since it was invented. The next ten years will surpass the last 180."

Geoff Wittig: "I will confess to taking delivery of a new EOS 5DS R today, and it pretty much provides exactly what I'm looking for. I recognize this is contrary to the observations of most commenters hereabouts...and that's okay. Horses for courses.

"To their credit, Canon has emphasized that the 5DS/5DS R are basically specialized tools for a particular niche, rather than a Veblen good. A responsive small mirror-less ILC with a lens or two would be great for street photography and most general use. I shoot landscapes, and more specifically Eastern North American landscapes that generally have lots of high frequency forest details. I use a large format inkjet printer and make prints up to 8 feet long that you can walk into and press your nose against. Really good resolution of fine details is essential to the illusion. At least in my work, I'm painfully aware of the resolution limits imposed by the ~21 mp cameras I've been using. I generally have to work very hard to minimize these limitations with stitching and similar techniques.

"Yes, a medium format digital system would be great, but I'd have to sell a kidney to afford one. New lenses for the 'affordable' Pentax 645z are crazy expensive, and prices for good used lenses are spiraling upward. And I already have a closet full of excellent Canon glass. So for me, the 5Ds R is a bargain.

"I'm used to hiking miles with a heavy tripod, two bodies and four or five lenses, and I love the view through a good prism finder, so the lighter weight and smaller size of mirror-less systems are mostly lost on me."

Seen Dilbert Today?

Funny. Yesterday's is the lead-in. Sorry, I dasn't reproduce 'em here, I could get in trubba.

Mike
(Thanks to Benjamin Marks)

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Annie Leibovitz's Caitlyn Jenner Cover

Photo by Annie Leibovitz, courtesy Vanity Fair

A reader recently took me to task for not writing about Annie Leibovitz's Caitlyn Jenner cover. "I am trying to recall a photograph, at this midpoint of the year," he wrote, "that rippled the 24-hour news cycle (our culture) like the Jenner VF cover photo. And it was competing with—what?—about a billion (low estimate) photos uploaded/shot/shared on that same day? What is the place of photography in 2015?"

Here's the thing, though—though it resembles one, TOP isn't actually a magazine. I'm just one person. And being one person, sometimes I have things to say and sometimes I don't. Sometimes, you've no doubt noticed, I have rather a lot to say about absolutely nothing (getting stuck in traffic, for instance), and other times I have little to say about things that are significant to many. Shouldn't I write about Budd Lee's death? That strikes me as significant. And I could probably think of things to say about photographers who became as deeply involved with their local communities as Bud Lee did with Tampa—it's both an honorable course for a photographic life and something that's remarkable about Bud Lee. But I didn't know him. In fact had never heard of him before a reader sent me his obituary. And I'm not sure I know enough "locally significant" photographers to start bandying generalizations about.

It's true that the Jenner story is superficially an example of "American Irony," in that a person once celebrated as a superathlete—one basic stereotype of the male—should turn out to have been psychologically a woman all along. The public's reaction, though it ranges from approval and sympathy all the way to excoriation and condemnation at the extremes, is probably mostly one of titillated fascination—i.e., isn't she weird? So the intersection between Caitlyn culminating her lifetime's internal struggle and integrating herself and proudly coming out as who she really is, on the one hand, and, on the other, the public's uneaseful attitude about the far edges of gender identity politics, and the triggers to the lizard-brain you find among the troglodytes...that's the core subject. This yoking of disparates together (to misquote the metaphysical poet John Donne) is a stock-in-trade of celebrity-mongering, but something I'm seldom particularly interested in. It doesn't move me. And although my own attitude is one of support (she's lucky, in a way—most people never get to do that much work on self-integration), I also don't know much about gender identity struggles and I don't have anything much to add to that conversation—that's all.

And then there's the fact that I've kind of decided to not write about Annie Leibovitz. I seem to have a particular lack of sympatico for her work—one might even call it an animus. Rather than continue to belabor that, I feel I should write about work that I like by photographers I like, or at least that I'm processing and engaged with and haven't made up my mind about (today it's Dennis Church, a "pure color" photographer suggested by Dave Reichert). So, the Jenner cover photo: it's good; it serves; but it's probably the opposite of Elliott Erwitt's quote yesterday that photography "has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them." This cover photo has everything to do with its subject and very little to do with the photograph itself or the photographer whose phalanx of assistants and helpers made it (see? There's that animus again). I could have made a portrait that would have served pretty much just as well. Should I write about how photographers in the top echelons get to be the go-to people in their specialties? I could do that, I suppose. That's a topic.

I could write about the declining influence of the magazine cover as a cultural visual touchstone, and how we need shared public images approved by gatekeepers as the pennants atop the mast of photographic culture. Maybe someday.

As far as self-integration is concerned, I've been working a lot on that lately myself. I'm working my way through an absolute masterpiece of a book, a milestone of a book, Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, a gem of a recommendation from yet another reader. (Who I won't name, but thanks!) The book is meaningful to me in all kinds of ways, not least because it reflects on something someone near and dear to me does for a living. The whole process of integrating past trauma into the stories we tell ourselves about our lives, and placing it in the past instead of a neverending present, is utterly fascinating.

We do have some control over our own identities and our own communities, and I'm glad Caitlyn has become herself; but I don't know her, and I'm very far from an expert in the ways individuals merge their outer and inner lives, their heads and their bodies, their feelings with their genders and so on. I'm not the person you need to listen to on that facet of this subject.

Added to the uncomfortable distance between Jenner's presumed agenda and the public's reaction (pleased self-actualization vs. slyly veiled freak show), and Vanity Fair's interests in between the two, is the issue of money, which is never far from anything and everything surrounding what's known as "celebrity." Is it significant that Jenner wasn't paid anything for the Vanity Fair cover? Is that a topic? What about the fact that she stands to reap $10–15 million for a book deal? How does that relate to the happy coming-out aspect of the story? Again, I got nuthin' of particular interest to add.

All things considered, I'd as soon write about Rachel Dolezal passing as black. [UPDATE: This link wasn't working earlier but is fixed now. You might have to refresh your page. —Ed.] I have a lot of thoughts about volitional communities—I'm all for people picking the community that works for them. My nephew recently converted from Catholicism to Mormonism, for instance. I'm about as far as you can get from a Mormon—I'm naturally a rationalist materialist (though I fight it sometimes), and I'm particularly allergic to the stories of religions (even though Jung and James George Fraser found such richness there), and the more preposterous they are the less I like them. Mormonism's stories.... But Dave's an adult, and he gets to make his own choices and run his own life, so good for him. He's at least forthright and courageous (if a bit of a true believer by type). I think Rachel Dolezal should be embraced by the black community, not kicked out of it. She self-identifies as black, and apparently quite sincerely so. So, to me, she's black. Why? Because I'm all for integration—of individuals with communities, of communities with each other, and of peoples' inner lives with their outward, public selves.

And that's all I'll say about that.

Mike
(Thanks to Stephen Gillette)

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Benjamin Marks (partial comment): "As for Jenner, if there is anyone in the world who has been at the eye of the 'reality'/self-exposure paroxysm that has gripped the U.S. for the last ten years, it is Jenner. I guess I see Caitlyn's self-promotion as understandable strategy for handling a transformation that might make its subject the victim rather than the author, if not actively managed.

"...As for Dolezal, I don't even know how to begin think about her story. There are so many facets to it: the parental angle, the race angle, the question of her self-perception, the essence of white privilege, and what 'passing' means. I almost feel like it is a fun-house mirror to America's twisted relationship with race. A true Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot moment. Let me think about it for about thirty years and get back to you."

Stephen Gillette: "Mike, let me personally apologize to TOP readers for luring (goading? I hope not!) you into the Jenner/Leibovitz end of the photography pool. But... Your post in this, a not-magazine, was thoughtful and went in directions that many readers will find helpful and certainly interesting. I did. Having done enough damage to your agenda at TOP this week, I will step back into the shadows and await other comments to your post.

"Oh, one more thing...(images of television detective 'Columbo' come to mind)...you have very economically restated and clarified the current TOP mission statement, aligning it with the path you are taking in your personal life. Something all of us should do now and then...right?"

Mike replies: Right, and if you'll notice, I got to mention Bud Lee, Annie Leibovitz, Dennis Church (I would have posted one of his pictures except he doesn't want me to), Bessel van der Kolk's great book, Rachel Dolezal, my nephew, and one of my favorite science columnists, Chet Raymo. What's not to like?

John Haines: I haven't been following this story other than noting its existence and the fact that it seems to be 'hot.' But also that, so far, I haven't noticed in the few reports I've read any reference to another sex change scandal that occurred back in 1975, that of tennis player (and ophthalmologist) Richard Raskind, who also quite late in life became notorious tennis star Renée Richards who sued the USTA for the right to play as a woman, and won. For those interested in that story, Richards has written three books about her experience, Second Serve, No Way Renée, and Spy Night and other Memories. Full disclosure (as they say): The reason for my interest in this topic is that Renée, now 80, is a friend and fellow golfer at Centennial GC and my ophthalmologist—a very good one too.

Random Excellence / Quote o' the Day

Photo by Dave Jenkins

Triggered by my snapshot of the TransAmerica building the other day, Dave Jenkins sent me this photo of the same motif that he took 25 years ago with an Olympus OM-2 and Zuiko 85mm ƒ/2 lens.

Dave writes, "I found what I think is the perfect summary to all the talk about clichés a week or so ago. On the back cover of the February, 2000 issue of Popular Photography is an ad for Minolta light meters. It shows a photo of Elliott Erwitt holding a large, framed print of one of his best-known photographs. In the caption, he is saying 'To me, photography is an art of observation...I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.'"

I managed to find the ad:

This is the quote I felt related to Ctein's two photos, the one of the plane wing and the one of the leaf.

Another relevant quote is probably mine, something Ctein says I told him 20 years ago: "We should never be so insecure as to avoid cliché at every turn."

Ezra Pound said "make it new"; I say "make it yours." Half the battle.

Mike

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Idea o' the Day: The Dwig Decree

Reader Dwig left a good thought in the Comments the other day: "[I] NEVER EVER close the card door on a camera when there is no card. I also do this with the battery compartment."

I assume he means being prepared to put a fresh card or battery in whenever you take the old one out.

Great idea. I'm big on habits, especially with camera procedures, because they save your posterior from time to time. Never closing the door on a cardless card compartment or a batteryless battery compartment would be a very good habit for me to get into. I'm going to adopt this. (It's been a disadvantage to my habits that I didn't take digital imaging very seriously when I first got into it twelve years ago.)

"Process hygiene" always needs maintenance and vigilance. Thanks to Dwig for the smart suggestion.

Mike

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KeithB: "The problem with this habit is that it directly conflicts with my habit of keeping everything closed up tight as possible to prevent dust."

Mike replies: Oh, I didn't even see it that way at all. What I assumed Dwig meant was that whenever you take out a full card, you put an empty one in at the same time, and whenever you remove a spent battery, you put a fresh one in at the same time. It didn't occur to me that anyone would leave the camera empty with the doors open.

I added a sentence in the post to clarify this—thanks.

FK: "What's a fail-safe routine that ensures I never leave for a trip without the camera? I did that once, left the camera on the bed and consequently have fading memories of Glasgow."

Ctein and Clichés (Visit to Ctein Part II)

So I promised you a picture of Elmo the African Gray. Here he is with his [choose one: a.) pet human; b.) "friendbeast," in the words of The Oatmeal; c.) doting owner]. Who knew that a parrot would kiss on request? But only if he feels like it.

As I mentioned at the end of the last post, we looked at many pictures. In a hurry, because I was trying to miss rush hour. (Or rush fivehours, which is what they have in San Francisco—two rush fivehours with a small window in between of traffic that's merely heavy.)

Something that struck me as I was looking at Ctein's prints is that two of them—which he's looking at in the photo above—are forthrightly of subjects that were on our list of The Worst Clichés the other day. I'm sure somebody mentioned sky pictures with plane wingtips in them (a genre of which I never tire personally, not that that matters), and another person mentioned single leafs. But consider Ctein's:

Ctein, Sun Country Wing

Ctein, Browning Oak Leaf

Don't you love that spectral "S" on the winglet? And the colors in the leaf are very rich and variegated in the print. Both pictures have greater presence in the prints. Both are very Ctein-like treatments.

These are perfect examples of "the cliché exercise" I suggested days ago, of making a list of clichés and then working away at it until you're able to make pictures of each subject that are truly "yours." So, see, this is exactly what I was talking about. You make from clichés the opposite of clichés.

This brings to mind a great quote from Elliott Erwitt another reader supplied, but I can't find it. I'll insert it when I manage to find it again. [UPDATE: It was Dave Jenkins who sent the quote, which I posted here. Erwitt said photography "has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them."]

The way back
Ctein, Paula and I had a nice lunch in Pacifica, I got a nice tour of the splendiferous new lower level of No. 42, and he and I talked TOP business for a while. I hadn't been at his house since either '94 or '96 (quoth Ctein, "I could figure it out if it was interesting enough, but it isn't"). Then I got back in the rental Jetta and headed innocently home.

I say innocently, because I was unconscious of my coming fate. But then, I was much younger then.

O mortal Wisconsinite, O piteous Cheesehead; abandon hope all ye who enter the wait for the Bay Bridge. As I approached the Bridge, first traffic began to slow, then Time began to slow. At first I was content to measure my progress in whole blocks—then car lengths—then feet—and finally in mere thoughts of movement, for those had become rare. The Universe poised still and in perfect equilibrium as I attempted to get through simulacra of traffic lights: unmoving traffic filled the far side of each intersection until the light turned red, at which point the traffic on the far side would move slowly forward creating room for a few more cars, then traffic from the side streets would fill in all the available space and the light would turn green. The intersection transmogrified into a perfect Kafkaesque stymie of neverending green-yellow-red, green-yellow-red, green-yellow-red until I began to forget my credit card number, my phone number, and eventually my name and age and all the things I once hoped to achieve.

Siri kept flashing never-before-seen things like "Road on route has now closed; tap to dismiss," and "You should have kept going straight at the last intersection, it's now four hours faster than turning right; but too late." Later she began reflecting on her good fortune in neither being human, nor actual or real. I crept closer toward not caring whether I was.

The sky darkened. Night fell. I began to get disoriented from hunger and dehydration; at two in the morning, with Venus and Mars shining pitilessly from the bright black sky, Siri began listlessly quoting long sections of Kierkegaard. I passed car models long out of style with the bleached skeletons of San Francisco drivers festooned fantastically in grotesque positions on the rotting drivers' seats. My regrets in life began to flood my thoughts. And then we hit the bridge and traffic started to flow fine again and I got back to Berkeley.

At home, our host said, "Oh, you got caught in traffic? How long? Only thirty-six hours? That's nothing. That's nothing. Some people take that long to get home every day." With a dismissive wave of his hand.

It was not nothing. It was a stretch of my youth I have lost eternally.

So, Northern California, on the good side: delightful food; fantasyland landscapes; moderate temperatures; laid-back citizens; social consciousness; friends; lack of insects. On the bad side, a wee tad of traffic from time to time that can make watching plants grow seem helter-skelter by comparison.

Still, it was great to see Ctein in his native environs. I hope to stop back much sooner than another two decades. Next time I should consider returning to the landward side of the Bay via San Jose.

Mike

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jsmidt: "Audio books were invented for Bay area traffic."

Bahi: "There's often a slightly otherworldly look to Ctein's work, I think, intended or otherwise. It's not quite Earth as we know it. Even though I'm not a fan of science fiction, I very often like his results. Both the leaf and the wing are good examples. For me, the latter is the view from a spacecraft assessing the surface of a potentially inhabitable planet that has clouds and potentially Earth-like terrain.

"In 2013, my car broke down in a car park next to a familiar-looking Scottish castle. It was only a few months later, safely back home, that I realised I own a fabulous Ctein print of that very same castle; Ctein's rendering appears, of course, as if from another green world, devoid of car parks and tourists and ignition wires that fuse together on a scorching summer's day.

"All of which to say that the mental state you experienced after visiting the great man, and which you describe so well, was entirely appropriate. I suggest taking exactly the same route next time."

Ctein In Situ

Siri guided the rented Volkswagen to "Answer to The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything," Skyline Drive, number 42. In Daly City, inspiration of the old Malvina Reynolds folkie song:

Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

(Of course they don't all look just the same. The original little boxes are now valued as "midcentury modern" architecture and cost three times what my house in Wisconsin does. As I learned in several ways on this trip, people who bought in California decades ago and stayed put for a long time were very astute investors.)

The old "temporary darkroom" which lasted (...how many years, Ctein?...) is gone, replaced by Ctein's printing room. The whole room is one giant color-corrected viewing box—the lighting is ideal in color temperature and evenness, and the walls are a perfectly neutral gray. See that light tan tile floor? The ceiling is ever so slightly blue to counteract the warmish influence of the floor. Too subtle for the naked eye.

Also too subtle for the naked eye? The alleged ocean. Ctein is on a bluff overlooking the ocean, or so he says. He took me to the back window and all I could see was a sea of white fog. Shall we take his word for it?

The Internet says it's there.

I met his African Grey parrot, Elmo. Elmo declined to talk to me much, except when Ctein said "Let's count—one, two, three..." and Elmo the parrot said "...four." Trust Ctein to have an arithmetical parrot. He likes to hang from his bell and have his red tail pulled! (Elmo, not Ctein.)

I saw many gorgeous Kate Kirkwood prints being pressed and blotted and awaiting shipment. Including mine...I bought the "rainy road," although "cow looking back" is a particularly impressive print. We really do need to do at least one more KK sale...and she should hire Ctein to print her exhibit...he has a particular feel for those files. Prints of her pictures look as good as prints of his pictures.

...Which we saw a lot of. I think I'll continue this in Part II, but I have a bit of Photoshop work to do first.

Home again
I got back from California late last night in the rain, and the last part of the trip was the most expensive! I missed the last bus (barely), and had to take a cab from the Milwaukee airport to Waukesha (Xander was at work and couldn't give me a ride). $70! Yikes.

The driver was a Syrian man who is struggling to get his 79-year-old mother out of Syria even though he can't get back into the country himself. He's trying to get her as far as Lebanon, where it will be safe for them to meet. All of his property in Syria was bombed into rubble by the Syrian government. (In case you think you have problems.)

Parrot picture coming up, and some thoughts triggered by some of Ctein's photographs. Please stay tuned. More soon.

Mike

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Geoff Morgan: "I trust the parrot is also neutral grey. A little like having a flying white-balance target, I suppose?"