The Online Photographer

'Cuba: A Grace of Spirit'

So, this day, two news items of equal import from my friend and friend-o'-TOP Peter Turnley, who visited me here in Upstate New York last week.

First, today is publication day for Peter's newest book, Cuba: A Grace of Spirit.

Peter's first self-published book (although he had many books published commercially prior to it, both with his twin brother David and alone) was French Kiss: A Love Letter to Paris, and TOP readers were instrumental in its considerable success. (It sold out its first press run, which was large for a photobook, and is now in a second printing.) Cuba: A Grace of Spirit is similar in a lot of ways: it's a premium production with a deluxe hardcover binding, fine reproductions, and a beautifully made slipcase. Every copy will be signed by the photographer and the book will not be available in bookstores.

More about the book in a moment.

The second item of news is something I find quite amazing: Peter is going to be the very first American artist of any kind since the Cuban Revolution to receive a major show at Cuba's most prestigious art museum, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana (the National Museum of Fine Arts of Havana). It will be a comprehensive career retrospective of his work.

This is undoubtedly a high point of Peter's ongoing career as well as a significant moment in the new epoch of Cuba's relationship with the United States and the world. I find it extremely impressive, and also, somehow, curiously encouraging...real "from life" photography getting some serious, respectful, celebratory attention on a major stage. The show, which is called "Momentos de la Condicion Humana" (Moments of the Human Condition) will run from November 13 through February 15th.

The curators at the Museo Nacional could not have made a better choice, in any event. Peter Turnley loves Cuba. He first went to Cuba to photograph Mikhail Gorbachev and Fidel Castro in 1989, and the new book is the culmination of half a lifetime of constant travel to the island. As some TOP readers know firsthand, he teaches workshops there. More recently, he became convinced that Cuba was approaching a turning point in its history and he intensified his travel schedule—he estimates he's been there, for different reasons but always to photograph, 20 times in the past four years.

My first reaction to the book was that it's the first time I've seen such a forthright portrait purely of the Cuban people. Cuba is picturesque, and so many photographers treat it like a "photo opportunity," mining the low-hanging fruit of its bright colors and signs of poverty and the obsolete '50s American cars for their quaint picturesque qualities in ways we've all seen before. Of course those elements are present (if subdued) in the new book. But what Peter calls "the vibrant, joyful, resilient, courageous, beautiful, and elegant spirit of the Cuban people" is what he loves best and respects most, and that's what you'll find front and center. It's really the subject of the book. (He also notes that this spirit "transcends politics and change," and signifiers of both take a back seat.)

I also think the book shows some interesting things about Peter's growth as an artist, but I'll leave those thoughts to another time.

Price
Last time, French Kiss was planned from the first to sell at a regular price of $85 (perfectly reasonable for a self-published book in a sturdy slipcase—self-publishing is more expensive than commercial publishing), and $69 was supposed to be a temporary, introductory price; but copies sold so fast Peter simply never raised the price. After the first printing sold out, he invested in a second printing, and there are still some of those left—still offered at that introductory price of $69.

So, the introductory price of Cuba: A Grace of Spirit is $69. And may stay there. Or might not. The edition is 3,000.

You can see some of the page spreads at the sale page, plus a video.

Oh, and if you missed French Kiss: A Love Letter to Paris, Peter is offering both books for a special price. (Saves on shipping and handling if people buy both at once.) Scroll down on the sale page for that. (Even if you already have a copy of French Kiss, you know what a great gift book it could be...for anyone you love, or for anyone you know who loves France.)

Every copy of both books will be signed.

And, any sales that come from here benefit TOP as well.

Photo by David Burnett

Congratulations to Peter, on both counts, and I look forward to hearing what people think of the new book. I'll present a "mini-portfolio" of my favorite pictures from the book sometime in the next few weeks. I might actually go to Havana for the show. When else am I ever going to get to Cuba?

Here's the link to the book again.

Mike
(Thanks to Peter)

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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Open Mike: Puffing and Printing and Other Odds and Ends

"Open Mike," my Sunday feature in which I gab on more than usual, is sometimes a day late. Like for instance this week.

Eclipsed eclipse: I was very disappointed last night. I had a vision of sitting on the balcony and watching the Super Blood Moon eclipse over the towering trees, and the day had been clear and lovely. But clouds moved in at exactly the wrong time and I couldn't see a thing. Rats.

Dew Drop Inn: This weekend I enjoyed a visit from my artist second cousin Elizabeth Claire Rose (check out her website) and her husband Eric. They moved to Pennsylvania from Montana two years ago. Eric worked ski patrol and wilderness rescue and was a wildland firefighter (he points out that it's not always forests that burn) in Montana; now he's a brain-trauma rehab nurse. Elizabeth and Eric were my fifth set of visitors since I moved in here on August 19th, which is more visitors than I'd get in any given year in Wisconsin. They are dynamic young people, accomplished and interesting, and I really enjoyed reacquainting. We had a campfire out back at the fire pit.

Intaglio etching by Elizabeth Claire Rose

My little stretch of East Lake Road is four miles from end to end, which means if I start at the house and go to one end and then the other and then back home again, I've gone eight miles. I biked that the other day and saw nine human beings the entire way, comma, yikes. That's only slightly better than one human-sighting per mile. At night you can hear the coyote howling out on the bluff; from the sound of that spooky nocturnal chorus I think there might be more coyote around here than human beings. Say what you like about Upstate New York, pro or con, one thing for sure is that there just aren't a whole lot of people here.

I might need every visitor I can get, is what I'm saying.

Big announcement! Tune in Wednesday of this week for some exciting photographic news from a good Friend-o'-TOP. You know him well, and he's back in a big way.

Puffer: I'm not a big fan of Nike, but I am a fan of its advertising agency. (Or agencies.) The company's latest ad amplifies on its "just do it" mantra in a nice way. It seems to say that just being in the race is a victory.

It's a sentiment I can get behind. Last Winter I went to the YMCA in Corning and did some sprints around their indoor track. Big mistake. Afterwards, my knees hurt so badly and for so long I thought I'd done permanent damage. Only then did I dive in and read up on re-entry running, and everyone says that when you're older and haven't run in a long time it takes a long, long time to strengthen your legs and bones enough to run and that you've got to take it slow, slow, slow.

So I started walking every day, sometimes twice a day, eventually adding very short sections of very gentle jogging. Again and again I'd feel my oats and overdo it (I like speed—a sprint is my reward), then get right back into it after laying off for a couple of days for recovery.

I'm happy to say all that groundwork has started to pay off. I'm now up to two miles a day, with more jogging than walking (pushing 60, I subscribe wholeheartedly to Jeff Galloway's run-walk-run method)—I'd say I walk no more than a third of my distance, sometimes more like a quarter. Yes, it's an open question how long my knees will hold out, but I'm hyper-conscious of my body as I run, and my form, and I'm in it for the long haul, so I'll be careful and continue taking it easy. It's certainly nice to huff and puff every day—feels great. I like running.

Print Offer: ...Coming right up. I'll let you know in advance about the date it starts, so you won't miss it. This one's a single print, a sweet treat.

Printer: I've taken the plunge and purchased an Epson P600 printer. Ctein's advice was enigmatic: "You're going to like the P600 for black-and-white printing better than any other inkjet printer on the market now. Whether you should buy it is another question," quoth the hirsute Gandalf-y Dumbledore-ish one. That was it. No further elaboration. Shall I cast rune-stones and scrutinize them for signs as to what he meant? No, no...tea leaves, it should be, of course.

If anything at all significant comes of this you will hearing more about it in coming days and weeks and wintry months; if nothing does, then you won't. Either way I won't gab on about it here. (You know, "just do it.") I purchased the P600, a box of 11x17-inch Canson Baryta Photographique paper (which features on the front of the box a photograph of a man who is worried about the high cost of the paper inside), and...well, a box. To put the prints in. I have high hopes, good spirits, and optimism.

See the worried man? He's thinking, 'Good Lord, this costs $2.50 a sheet!!'

Trubba: Mike got himself in trubba again yesterday. (I seem to be getting myself in trouble a lot lately.) This time, I said, "I could come up with a whole long list, a learning program if you will, of very specific exercises to help people to see better with a camera." This disappointed a number of people. Reader Ernest J. Zarate held my feet to the fire, writing, "Why offer that you have all this knowledge and skill, just to say, 'Well, I possess this knowledge, but, no, I refuse to share it with you'? It boils down to: you could, but you deign not to. What? Are the very people who support TOP via the mechanisms you've set up for that purpose not worthy?"

Um, ouch! That smarted.

Of course you are worthy. But what I had in mind would have to be a book. It's not top-o'-the-head knowledge. And, about researching and writing and illustrating a book, I feel somewhat the same way I feel when people suggest that I travel, or lecture, or teach courses, or visit foreign countries, or do personal appearances. Namely, that if I were doing all that, I would not be doing this. Most people who care one way or the other don't want to endure my silence for eight months while I go write a book. I blog, and that's what most people want me to do. Y'see how that goes? I could do all sorts of other things, but then I would not be writing TOP. I joke that my ankle is chained to the leg of the [sit-stand] desk, but really, that's as it ought to be.

You've got me right where you want me.

Right where I should be.

Right?

Mere decor: I've never decorated a house before, really. Turns out it's kind of fun. I only have about nine pieces of furniture to buy, and I'm not going overboard of course, but I feel like I'm getting everything just about the way I want it. It's like the house itself is a minor work of art: you envision, then reify. All about proportion and appropriateness. It's very satisfying the way it all seems to be coming together.

I can't find the comment in which a reader recommended Horning Chair Shop, a Mennonite furniture maker near here, but if it was you and you're reading this, thank you. They're very nice people up there—the shop is at a farm—and make solid, wholesome furniture. They will eventually be building me a game table and a couch.

What's your sign? Oh, and take a look at the sketch for the sign out front:

...Of course, I'm hoping we'll get the name spelled right on the actual sign. It's "Johnston with a 'T,'" as everyone named Johnston always has to say.

For some reason I'm very jazzed about the sign.

More anon, as ever. À votre santé.

Mike

"Open Mike" is the detectably more self-centered than usual weekly editorial page of TOP.

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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David Philips: "We had clear skies in Massachussetts last night and though you can see countless eclipse photos today I'll show you my sequence anyway:

"I also started running recently and though I only have 60% of your years the walk-run method made it possible for me to get into it without hating it. I still haven't learned to love running on roads but now that I'm able to run a few miles without stopping I've started going into the woods. There's something special about running through the forest."

Geoff Wittig: "Coyotes are one of the distinctive features of rural New York these days. They're so canny and elusive you rarely actually see them, but at night they're frequently heard. I listened to them for a while last night while shooting the eclipse, which was beautifully visible just 30 miles west of Keuka Lake as the crow flies (sorry!).

"Our local coyotes are actually quite different from the Western variety, as they're much bigger (up to 70 lbs) and sometimes hunt cooperatively, both ascribed to their possession of up to 20% wolf DNA. I really like them, as I find their nighttime 'singing' pleasantly haunting, and they've cut down on the numbers of racoons, which around here are more nuisance than 'Disney cute.' A lot of the older locals despise coyotes, sort of a lingering legacy of the urge to exterminate every predator not on two legs, I think."

Rodger Kingston: "I love your Sunday OT Features, no matter what day of the week they appear. With regard to Jeff Galloway's 'run-walk-run' training program, nothing new there. When I was in Marine Basic Training over 50 years ago, that was how we did forced marches, except they called the components 'march' and 'quick time' (with a third component, 'collapse,' often showing up at the end)."

benny_pea: "Any chance of finding out where one might get a copy of that etching? It really is rather beautiful...."

Mike replies: Elizabeth sells them in limited editions of usually somewhat fewer than 30. You should contact her, but might get a belated reply, as they are hiking in the Adirondacks. She charges in the range of $200–$500, so they're not expensive.

Scott L.: "Re 'I'm not a big fan of Nike, but I am a fan of its advertising agency,' The Onion said it best many years ago in an article called 'Nike to Cease Manufacturing Products':  'Citing creative confinement and a desire to focus exclusively on what it does best, the Nike Corporation announced Monday it will cease manufacturing athletic shoes and other sports-related merchandise in order to devote itself fully to the creation of state-of-the-art television advertisements. "The last few years, it became impossible to maintain our high standards of advertising while faced with the daily distractions of making sneakers," said Phil Knight, Nike founder and CEO. "By discontinuing our entire product line, we will ensure that Nike remains the world's leader in the field of incredibly cool TV commercials well into the 21st century."'"

Roberto: "Epson P600 and Canson Baryta? Did the same and very happy with it. I suggest you buy also a box of matte paper, like the Canson Rag Photographique (you need to use the matte black for something anyway). I got it in the Canson Discovery Pack and I'm quite impressed."

Jim Freeman: "The decor in the dining room looks somewhat Eggleston-like, probably just a coincidence. Your joy with the move to New Yawk comes through in nearly every post."

Joel Becker: "I love the outdoor sign, but please, please leave '.com' off of it. It looked bad in 1999, and it looks bad now. If you want to specify the web address (as opposed to the entity name), put it at the bottom sized to fit in one line."

Mike replies: Really? I don't have that sense. What do other people think of the ".com" on the sign? There's still time to change it.

David Dyer-Bennet: "You may have the extra 't's people keep leaving in my last name!"

Marshall's House Today

Words and photograph by Bob Burnett

My wife Susan and I spent a great week up here in the Truro area out on Cape Cod, staying in a house that was frozen in time in 1932 thanks to a watercolor by Edward Hopper. Our friend, the fifth generation of his family to own the house, has kept it fairly accurate to 1932.

We were out wandering around on a heavily wooded dirt road Susan had found that she thought I'd like for some footage (I'm a director). I had a Canon C300 and a 70–200mm lens on a tripod. I've been shooting footage of the house and the environs. I haven't figured out what to do with the footage yet, but feel some kind of short story will come of it.

A car came up the road, which was the only one I'd seen in hours. It stopped and the driver said hello. There were four other passengers crammed in. Everyone had binder notebooks with Hopper paintings. She apologized for disturbing me and said she takes groups on tours of Hopper painting locations in the region.

Imagine the glee when I said, "we're staying in Marshall's House."

Hopper used to drive around in his car and paint, often using the car as his studio for convenience but, according to others, also to avoid contact with people. He was a quiet man of few words who preferred his own thoughts and space to those spoken by others.

It took me two days of shooting before I started to see subtleties like the light, the mist, and the effect of the wind that he captured so beautifully up here. I'm fortunate to be doing it with a lens and not trying to do it with a brush. Here is a JPEG of the 1932 watercolor as well as a quick iPhone shot I made of the house.

Bob

Bob Burnett is Creative Director of GVI, a video and multimedia production company specializing in advocacy, educational and documentary presentations. Its latest short film is "The Art of Richard Thompson."

©2015 by Robert Burnett, all rights reserved

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Michael Matthews: "I've never before seen a video production with the impact of 'The Art of Richard Thompson.' Anyone who reads this post should take time to view it."

Quote o' the Day: Anne Rice

"Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."

—Author Anne Rice, talking about
what she learned from Franz Kafka

-

Posted by: 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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Henry Rogers: "That works fine for an artist, writer photographer or whatever working on their own. A lot of worthwhile human activity depends on teamwork. The attitude expressed in the quote makes teamwork more difficult. I'm sure we all know people who have, by pursuing that idea to extremes, blighted their own lives, and obstructed the worthwhile efforts of others, by refusing to compromise. It isn't a matter of surrendering integrity to compromise when by doing so the team is enabled to work towards worthwhile results. On its own that quote provides an excuse, not an ideal to work towards."

Mastering Photographic Technique

Some advice for newer/younger photographers. I'm going to tell you a little secret here.

The huge corpus of shifting knowledge known as "photographic technique" is usually understood to encompass all the mechanical, technical, nuts-and-bolts aspects of making pictures with cameras. Allow me to name just a very few of the many things you might think you need to know: exposure; focus accuracy and depth-of-field; camera handling; camera performance (everything from data throughput to focus tracking, from EVF refresh rate to weather resistance); what a hair light is and what a gobo is; color space; printer profiles; how to predict the phase and direction of the moon...in case you want to do evening or dawn landscapes including the natural moon within a limited time window; and how focal length relates to angle of view. This is but a tiny sampling. The commenters on this site and myself, given a day and the requisite gusto for the task, could come up with a list ten pages long...and even that would not include nearly everything there is.

But here's the big secret that people won't tell you often enough: You don't need to know all of it. In fact, you don't even need to know much of it.

All my life I've met, listened to, read interviews with, and talked to real photographers. And when in comes to mastering photographic technique, the lesson they collectively impart is this: you only need to know what you need to know.

Within that narrow band, though—however wide it is for you—you need to work hard at technique and keep working hard. I've seldom met a photographer who wasn't driven to master technique. But the catch is, they only bothered to master the technique that was required to do the work they were driven to do. One of my favorite photographers, Mark Klett, was a virtuoso of Polaroid Type 55 P/N film; no doubt he knew more about that film than some of the people who manufactured it. Bruce Barnbaum was a deep master of print bleaching, a process I'll bet 75% of active photographers today couldn't even describe. How does Nicholas Nixon photograph so astonishingly with large view cameras and extreme wide-angle lenses? It's a mystery to me. Charlie Pratt used to spend a week on a single print—now, some name photographers not only never make prints themselves, but never even have prints made.

And don't think this excludes "anti-technique" photographers, either. If you think someone like, say, Robert Frank didn't work very hard to cultivate accident and offhandedness—the casual glance at the telling indecisive moment—all you need to do is go try to do what he did. You'll soon find out that he only makes it look easy. And consider the cases in which "bad" technique actually is the only technique that fits the subject matter and its presentation.

When I was youngish, the model of what constituted the "pinnacle" of photographic accomplishment gradually shifted from the photojournalist to the professional. And of all the kinds of photographers, professionals are probably the ones who need the broadest, most inclusive level of technical knowledge, because professional photography requires two things above all others: entrepreneurial business skills and ability, and problem-solving. To solve a wide range of technical problems, you need a wide range of technical knowledge.

This has encouraged photographers to believe they need a base level of technical knowledge and competence that is much broader than they actually do need.

And the Internet has great expanded the illusion that there is a whole lot you need to know. People discuss and dispute such things as sensor fabrication, parts sourcing, the business health and marketing plans of camera companies, how fast a lens focuses in low light, on and on...I'm sure you could contribute to greatly expanding this list, too.

One thing people almost never discuss are visual techniques. In this era of rampant camera-pointing, there is a crying need out there for editing skills and training—more so than ever before by a large margin. Editing has become very conspicuous by its absence, yet is seldom discussed. And I could come up with a whole long list, a learning program if you will, of very specific exercises to help people to see better with a camera. I'm actually helped in this by not being an effortless talent myself—I've had to work at what I've learned. It has helped me be more conscious of how you learn, and made me much more aware of the practicalities and essentials of how to look and how to see.

Mike. Photo by Peter Turnley.

But back to my point. The point here is that you only need to know what you need to know. If you want to make prints at home, you have to pick a printer and then master it. Thoroughly, probably. Inside and out. If your work depends on subtle color, you might need to learn a lot about color theory and system calibration. If your work always involves people, then you need to work on how to interact with people. If you want to photograph architecture, it will help to become very familiar with the Lens Corrections > Manual > Transform tab in ACR or its equivalent in your editor, and the effects of the various controls on image geometry.

At this point you might be thinking, "but I need to do lots of things. I don't want to be limited." Hmmph. Maybe, and, as ever, your photography is entirely up to you. But generally I'm not buying that. The days are long gone when the jacks-of-all-trades impressed people much. For real photographers, subject-matter passions and their obsessions with the end results they're after move them in particular directions and away from others.

When Peter Turnley visited me here in the Finger Lakes on a gorgeous day, for example, what do you suppose was his reaction to being surrounded by gorgeous sparkling lake vistas and fall-out-of-the-camera landscapes? "If I were you, Mike," he told me, "I'd do a project on the Mennonites. Make friends with them, get to know them, find out who would tolerate being photographed...." That's because Peter's passion, photographically speaking, is people, and you aren't going to ever make him into a pure landscape photographer or tempt him into shooting a book of empty interiors.

For each of us, we are who we are, and we need to know everything about the techniques we need to do the work we're passionate about. And that's enough. Learn more if it amuses or interests you, but take comfort in knowing that it is not crucial to your success.

Mike
(Thanks to Peter Turnley)

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:

Richard Goodrich: "Mike: I'm sure you could come up with a long list of specific exercises to help us see better with a camera. The obvious question is when are you going to publish this list? You are preaching to the choir: I would be very interested in learning how to edit and see more effectively with a camera. If you feel that this is what photographers need in order to develop (and I agree), wouldn't it be more useful to actually write the exercises rather than simply telling us you could do it?"

Mike replies: The problem is that such a project would take a lot of work and a lot of time—it would be book-length, or half that—and that's not the business I'm in.

Blogging is a short-form format, and extremely insistent—this post was about two hours and fifteen minutes from conception to publication, for example, and I'll need to do that again tomorrow. Blogging and private correspondence soak up the lion's share of my "writing energy" and there's not much left over. Not a tragedy, and I am truly NOT complaining, believe me. But it's the situation.

Mike Plews: "There are two frustrating experiences most of us encounter which drive home the need to master our craft. The first comes when you are looking a something you really want to photograph, have an exact idea of that you want to achieve but lack to chops to pull it off and know it.

"The second comes when you are holding a print that you just pulled (from a tray or a printer, no matter) that is absolutely perfect. It represents a mighty leap forward in your work. It's the best thing you ever did. The problem is you don't have a clue how you actually did it so the chances of repeat are going to be problematic."

Kenneth Tanaka: "'If you can't say what you mean, you certainly won't mean what you say!' Does that conjure memories of admonishments from a wagging-fingered high school English teacher?

"It took me many years to understand that most formal education was actually meant to broaden one’s awareness of subjects and tools rather than to build mastery in them.  I could, for example, learn to identify and apply a participial phrase from that English teacher, but she could not teach me what to say with it.

"And so it is with your simple but clear message here, Mike.  One does not need to master every aspect of photography to create imagery that captures and expresses one’s ideas.  William Eggleston’s work, referenced in a recent post, is a good example at-hand.

"But, as Darlene keenly noted in the Comments, 'you do, at the very least need to learn to see to use a camera most effectively.' And, in my observation, it is at this root level where the haves and have-nots get most keenly separated.

"The haves might simply have innate visual talent. But it’s far more likely that they’ve had some dedicated visual education such as in a collegiate art practice program. They have skills at organizing the elements of even the simplest of frames to express their mind’s eye. Such skill becomes like riding a bicycle for them. Using our host, Mike, as an example look at how he organizes the elements and proportions of the elements in even his casual images. Look at how he often waits for a good moment (oh, please, there is no 'decisive moment') to click.

"Meanwhile the advent (is a tsunami an advent?) of digital photography has ignited an enormous stampede of new photo enthusiasts who have not had the benefits of such visual grounding. Many (most?) come from (computer) technology backgrounds. They’ve financially pushed the entire technology of photography forward at at breakneck pace (compared to the glacial pace of its film era) but they’re generally not very skilled at basic visual organization (i.e. bike riding). They create frames that are planar and symmetric, their subjects are bulls-eyed, their scenes lack any tension, and they rely on post-capture manipulation to create synthetic emotion.

"So Mike, if you’re thinking about establishing the Michael Johnston Finger Lakes Institute for Photography may I make a small vote for the early part of your syllabus?  Help folks learn to ride that bike that you learned to ride so long ago. Get them past all the silly 'rules of thirds' and 'golden triangles' and 'inverse square law' crap and help them to learn to organize their frames the way you, and countless millions of others have learned to do it. Train them to see their image as a finished product, corner to corner, while it’s still in the viewfinder. You will produce some very happy students! If anyone can do it I believe you can do it."

Ernest J. Zarate: "I totally agree with your basic premise: you only need to know what you need to know. When I teach beginning digital photography, that is exactly what I tell my students. Then it is a joint discovery that semester to help them find that which they need to know.

"I also agree that learning to edit, to 'see,' to use the camera as a tool of discovery is essential. The raw material any one photographer, be it you or Peter Turnley or anyone else, must come from that individual.

"But I must confess that your response to Richard Goodrich (a terrific name, by the way) is deflating. While it may be a ton of work to create such a course work, all at once, the tease you offer, '...I could come up with a whole long list, a learning program if you will, of very specific exercises to help people to see better with a camera,' then deny having the time/energy/whatever to actually share such a list seems, at best, dismissive of your readership. Why offer that you have all this knowledge and skill, just to say, 'Well, I possess this knowledge, but, no, I refuse to share it with you'? It boils down to: you could, but you deign not to. What? Are the very people who support TOP via the mechanisms you've set up for that purpose not worthy?

"Mike, I like your writing, I like your approach, I like your philosophical approach to photography and much more about your blog. I like all that very much. This entry, in the end, was disappointing."

Mike replies: Ernest, I have no shortage of enthusiasm or generosity. The problem is that I can only do what I can do. If I had a better track record of finishing what I start, I might start on such a project. But I'm disorganized and distractable, unsystematic, unprogrammatic, divertible. I don't think I can do what you're asking. I'm all too familiar with my limitations. If I were a book writer I would have written books by now. We all come up short in one way or another....

Ghana Reflections

Words and photographs by Gordon Lewis

My wife and three kids and I recently returned from a two-week trip to Ghana. This excursion consisted of a week of volunteer activities in Lolito, a small village in the Volta region, followed by a week of sightseeing in Accra (the capitol) and Cape Coast, the former center of the slave trade. Not only was this our first trip to Ghana, it was our first trip to the African continent. This holds special significance for most people of African-American heritage, just as a visit to Ireland might for Irish-Americans.

We had researched and talked with Ghanian friends before the trip, so we had a good idea of what to expect. Nevertheless, there are always a few surprises when visiting a country so different from one’s own. One such surprise was that, despite heritage, we couldn't pass for African, at least not by Ghanian standards. Our skin wasn’t dark enough, we didn’t speak any of the local languages, and the English we spoke had a distinctly non-Ghanian accent. We were obroni—foreigners. This made me a lot more conspicuous than I expected, even more so when I had a DSLR slung over my shoulder and my multi-hued family in tow. My street photographer’s mindset of keeping a low profile was often useless. Instead, I had to resign myself to being the center of attention—not that there’s anything wrong with that.

This situation was most acute when I was anywhere near street vendors eager to make a sale, less so when I was visiting crowded local markets and could wander around long enough for my novelty status to wear off. Fortunately, and with few exceptions, the people I encountered were friendly and liked being photographed. Even indifference would draw a smile when I shared the results. Patience, mutual respect, a cheerful attitude, and humility are a universal currency.

Another pleasant surprise was that the continually overcast skies in Ghana, which I had expected based on prior research, did not result in drab, washed-out images. In fact, the reduced lighting contrast made it easier to record acceptable shadow detail in dark African skin tones without blowing out the highlights or having to resort to flash fill. Shooting in color added enough additional “pop” that I rarely felt the need to touch a saturation or contrast slider. Here's a very small but representative sampling of the images I got.

Lolito village boys, Ghana

 

Painter, Lolito, Ghana

 

Hot pepper vendor, Lolito-area market, Ghana

 

Bronze sculpture vendor, Accra arts and crafts marketplace, Ghana

 

Painted man on Oxford Street, Accra, Ghana

 

Late afternoon in Internet cafe, Accra, Ghana

My biggest regret was losing an SD card that had two days' worth of my best shots. I left my laptop at home for weight reasons and was well aware of the risk of not being able to make daily backups. Nevertheless, the constant activity of traveling, packing, unpacking, shooting, and card-swapping made keeping track of several identical-looking cards an even bigger challenge than I expected. I console myself with the knowledge that my family and I had a wonderful time and returned home safely, with no major mishaps, infections, or digestive distress.

As a final note for those of you who may be curious, the equipment I brought with me was nothing special: a Canon EOS 70D with 18–55mm ƒ/3.5–5.6 STM kit zoom, 28mm ƒ/2.8 IS USM, and 50mm ƒ/1.8 STM. The zoom was for daylight, the primes for low-light. Because of their quick and quiet focusing, all three lenses were equally handy for video. The 70D’s large battery capacity and low current drain were also a great comfort in a country where power outages are common. The combined weight was still under five pounds, which is my personal limit for travel.

If you like the photos that accompany this post and aspire to something similar, my advice would be that it's more important to be in the right place than to have the "right" equipment.

For more photos from Ghana, feel free to visit my online gallery.

Gordon

Friend and regular contributor Gordon Lewis is the author of Street Photography: The Art of Capturing the Candid Moment, published by Rocky Nook.

©2015 by Gordon Lewis, all rights reserved

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Featured Comments from:

John Garrity (partial comment): "Gordon Lewis's post is pertinent for myself as I'm currently in my wife's home city in China. Being tall and a 'long nose' I stick out. Am an object of curiosity—frequently at the receiving end of stares, which while often impassive are not hostile. I just smile back and say hello in Mandarin, while if at a suitable distance and appropriate, flap a hand in a gentle wave, and embarrassment normally melts. Photographing people here is easy if you are patient. Wait ten minutes and don't hide what you are doing, then you soon become a familiar if eccentric presence."

[For the full text of partially excerpted comments, please see the Comments Section. —Ed.]

Ken Tanaka: "A wonderful photo essay, Gordon. The best photographs pose more questions than they answer, and some of yours pose memorable questions. Was that man painting bars on his house's windows? Is that fellow the sculptor of those bronze pieces? And, best of all, what's up with that painted fellow walking near the car?! (I think he has a brother in downtown Chicago, by the way.)

"Your remarks about being an obvious foreigner in a country with which you might feel genealogically linked resonates with me. Although I do not have strong Japanese facial features I recall being rather a bit embarrassed while visiting Japan. In one incident a group of museum curators, guided by my name, immediately began assuming that I could act as translator for my party of fellow Americans. My slightly yellow face turned quite red.

"Thank you for your delightful notes, and for the reminder that being and seeing trumps the 'right' lens and camera."

Product Review: Epson SureColor P800 Printer

Written by Ctein

[Note: This is going to be longer than your usual TOP post. There's a lot to talk about. If you feel it's “longior, non legi,” don't say I didn't warn you!

P.S. Two important illustrations were missing from the first post of this article (under the nighttime snow photograph). If you didn't see'em before, refresh and scroll down. —Ctein]

The new Epson SureColor P800 printer (currently specially priced at $995 from B&H Photo after the mail-in rebate) is the 17-inch wide model in Epson's new line of printers that run from 13-inch wide through 44-inch wide. The print quality should be similar or identical on all of them. I reviewed the P800 because it's the direct successor to my current standard printer, the Epson 3880.

The big deal about the Epson SureColor P800 (hereafter simply referred to as the P800) is Epson's new Ultrachrome HD ink set. It's the same set of colors as in the x880 series—MK,PK,LK,LLK,LM,M,LC,C,Y—but they've been reformulated for an increased density range. More density range means richer blacks, more tonal range to work with in the print, and higher maximum saturation in the colors. This, of course, is what got me most interested in this printer. More on this anon; much more.

There are couple of other new features to the printer that I liked. You can tether it to your computer with the standard ethernet or USB cables, or it can connect over your Wi-Fi network. I didn't relish stringing another cable across my office, so I gave the Wi-Fi option a try. All of my testing was done on my 27-inch 5K retina iMac running the most current versions of Mac OS X (Yosemite) and Photoshop CC (2015). Wi-Fi worked perfectly. I performed the usual setup dance: first install the printer software on the computer, then turn on the printer. I next selected wireless connection from the touchscreen on the front of the printer. The printer looked for the Wi-Fi network, configured itself appropriately, and that was it! The printer was installed on the iMac and also accessible from any other computer in the house that was on that network. Easiest setup I've ever had.

Another feature I especially liked was that you can tell the printer whether it should be able to automatically switch between matte black and photo black inks depending on the print medium, or whether it will require you to manually initiate the switch (in which case the software will prompt you that the printer needs your attention). Why do I like this? Because I have, on occasion, accidentally chosen the wrong print medium, or decided to, say, print out an invoice that just came in while I'm in the midst of working on photographs, forgetting I'm set up for the latter. With the “convenience” of automatic ink swapping, I am rewarded by wasting five or more minutes of my time switching between inks, not to mention a few dollars worth of ink going down the drain. The first time I made this mistake with the P800, which happened pretty quickly (in my defense, I was making a lot of test prints under a lot of different conditions) I switched the printer over to manual. It's pretty good proof against the particular kind of fool that I am.

No doubt that there are a bunch of other features that will matter to other people. I didn't use them, so I won't report on them.

One negative change: the printer ships with smaller starter ink cartridges. Oh, they're not a whole lot smaller, probably 20%. The printer seems to require less ink to charge the system initially, so I'm likely getting close to the same amount of usable ink from the cartridges that ship with the printer as I did with the 3880. But, really, it feels kind of cheap on the part of Epson—would it have killed ya to have given me the full 80 ml cartridges? Really?

There, I got in my gripe. On to the prints, which is what we all really care about.

Print quality
The first thing I looked at was the ink droplet pattern, because that was really easy–– one test print. I was curious to see if the P800 was a big improvement over the x880 series the way the x900 series is. The pattern didn't look substantially different from the 3880, not in the league of the 4900. But, my particular review unit checked out at the high-end of the quality/uniformity range of 3880 printers that I tested a while back.

The dot pattern was very uniformly spaced, invisible to my eye even under the closest inspection. That is not true of my 3880, which falls in the middle of the quality distribution. I don't know if this is typical of the P series or if I just got lucky on this test unit. This could be a case where “your mileage will differ;” no way I could say without testing a couple of dozen of these printers. The P800's sharpness was slightly better than 3880, but that might just be due to more uniform dot pattern. (Any Epson people reading this, feel free to chime in with observations, on or off the cuff. Hint, hint.)

So much for ink droplet patterns and print sharpness. Let's talk about density range, what the fuss is about.

The short version: it is consistently better on all papers, both matte and gloss/semi-gloss, than the 3880. I don't have a reflection densitometer; to my eye it looks like about a 0.2 density unit improvement in the shadows. There is distinctly better separation in the lower tones (below value 20) but pretty much no difference in the midtones and highlights. It's an extended shadow range.

This is my standard grayscale test target:

You can download a variant of this for your own tests.

The following illustration shows an enhanced version of the lower half of the rightmost column in my test prints, which prints values from 0 up to 32, just the darkest shadows. I kicked the brightness and contrast way, way up in the scanner software, so there are lots of scan artifacts and blotches.

These comparison prints, on Canson Baryta Photographique (my preferred paper) give you an idea how much further down the blacks extend with the new printer. The black arrow shows the matching steps between D-max on the 3880 print and the P800 print (around value=15). The darkest steps, down to the last 2 or 3, are visually distinguishable in the P800 print under strong illumination, even though they merge together in the scan; the printer does hold separation in the shadows.

The improvement in density is especially noticeable with a paper like Epson Ultra Premium Matte, a lower grade matte paper with relatively weak D-max. A P800 print on this paper has better blacks that a 3880 print on Epson Hot Press Bright, a much better quality of matte paper. Of course, a P800 print on the Hot Press looks better still, but this printer is a great equalizer among matte papers.

What does 0.2 d.u. mean, visually? With a semi-gloss paper like my Canson, a typical high-end inkjet print has about the same density range as a high-quality darkroom print. A dye transfer print, the gold standard, would typically have 0.4–0.5 d.u. more density range than the best darkroom print (that can vary). The P800 pushes well beyond what one can get in a conventional darkroom print; it's about halfway to the density range of a dye transfer print. It's going to encourage me to try digitally printing some of my photographs that simply don't print well without the density range I could get out of dye transfer, notably my "Jewels of Kilauea" series.

I'm jazzed.

The higher density range also means you can print richer colors and a larger color gamut. The maximally saturated primaries can get more saturated. Understand that this does not mean that your print, overall, is more contrasty or more saturated. It's about the range you have to work with. Think of it as like getting a new digital camera with a longer exposure range than your old one had. Your photographs aren't more contrasty, overall, but you can capture more of the extreme brights and darks.

Will you see this in your prints? It'll depend upon the kinds of photographs you make. The improved density range has only a minimal impact on photographs that don't have important shadow detail. If you mostly photograph high key, you'll never see a difference. Similarly, unless your photograph has colors that push the limits of the color space or of saturation, the extra range this printer provides will be less important. In some of my photographs, I could see very little difference between the 3880 and the P800 unless I looked very carefully. In most there was some improvement.

In some, the difference was profound. Photographs like this one:

and especially this one:

...printed much better with the P800. When I made that series of nighttime snow photographs, I remember telling Mike that I had to work very hard to hold separation in the shadows and still print the photo down dark enough that it looked like a night scene. I was hoping that future printers would let me do a better job. This printer does. I was satisfied with the rendering I achieved on the 3880, but I like what I can do with the P800 a lot better.

These two scans enlarge a portion of this photograph near the right edge:

I've brightened the image and enhanced the contrast the same way I did with the gray scale scans, so you can see the difference in the shadow rendering between the 3880 (upper) and P800 (lower) prints. That is a subtle improvement in the print, but it makes a big difference in conveying the fine detail and producing a sense of depth in the shadows.

Am I going to go back and reprint my whole portfolio now that I have a better printer? Hell no. Better may or may not be the enemy of good, but it is certainly the enemy of deadlines and of making new work. I'll be selective. But, I will be reprinting some of my portfolio. It's worth it.

Now I move on to a more controversial subject (cue ominous music):

Color management and profiling
The main reason this review took so long to get done is that Dave Polaschek, Andrew Rodney and I continued our investigation of color management and profiles, and it turned out to be rather more complicated than expected.

Well, some weeks and well over 100 prints later (whew!), I've reached my conclusion. Printer-managed color is the way to go with an x880 or P-series Epson printer running under Mac OS. A majority of the time it produces better results than Photoshop-managed color with a good custom profile. Sometimes it's massively better. Otherwise, it's usually a tossup. A very small fraction of the time, the custom profile works better, but never fantastically better.

Why is this so? I have no idea. I can spout all sorts of logic and theory that says this should not work anywhere as well as it does. But as I repeat, ad nauseum, “Data trumps theory.” I've got an awful lot of data now.

If you're really obsessive, I suppose you can run out a bunch of test prints of each and every photograph you do, to compare printer-managed color to custom profile color (remembering that you need to try out both relative colorimetric and perceptual rendering intent). Am I going to do that?

Naaah. It'll be printer-managed color and that's that, unless I look at the print and decide something is wonky.

I will likely explore this topic in more detail next week in a column. I would prefer to not, repeat not, argue about it in this one, especially if it's a rehash of what we discussed before.

Here are the settings you need to know. When you pull up the printer control panel, choose “Printer Manages Colors” under Color Handling. Then click Print Settings… . Select the Color Matching submenu and click “Epson Color Controls.” Click the Printer Settings submenu and under Color Mode choose “Color Controls > Adobe RGB.” Choose the paper type that most closely matches the one you're using (it doesn't matter if there's an exact match—I rarely use Epson papers).

I reprinted one of my recent favorite photos on the P800 using printer-managed color. This photograph looks great with my usual custom profile on the 3880, but it's got a lot of out-of-gamut color (including pretty much the whole “sun” lamp) and it pushes the brightness range per print. Wow, was there ever a difference! It's hard to find a way to put into words (and it is, of course, impossible to illustrate here) but the P800 print is much more alive. The color is more accurate, there is separation and texture in the extremes of tone and color that's missing in the 3880 print. The latter looks flat, compared to the new print. I loved the old print. I love the new print.

Printer-managed color won't be good under Windows. Windows limits you to sRGB color space when printing in this mode, and that's just not enough. Stick with custom profiles for Windows. What about other printers, models and makes, on the Mac side? I have no idea; you have to run your own tests. Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chances.

Conclusion
I've put in a request to buy my review unit. Not because I'll necessarily save much money buying it that way, especially with Epson's current $200 rebate through the end of October, but this printer is performing well and, noting my earlier comments on product variability, I'm getting a nice tight dot pattern out of this printer. I don't want to leave that to chance. And I don't want to have to pack up and return a printer and then unpack and set up a new one. Because, really, I am replacing my 3880 with a P800 either way.

Don't misunderstand; there is nothing wrong with the 3880, and if the P800 hadn't come along I'd still happily continue to use it. If you can grab one (new or used) for, say, 50–60% of the price of a P800, do so. Otherwise, there's no question in my mind that the P800 is worth the extra money.

Ctein

[The P800 from B&H Photo is currently $995 after the mail-in rebate. The smaller 13-inch P600 is around $570 with the rebate. IMPORTANT! The P800 rebate offer is good through October but the P600 rebate offer ends September 30, so you've only got a week on that one.]

Ctein is TOP's Technical Editor and a longtime professional custom printer.

©2015 by Ctein, all rights reserved

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:

Bill Mitchell: "What is 'printer managed color'?"

Ctein replies: Bill, when the Print Settings control panel in Photoshop comes up, under "Color Management" there is a "Color Handling" setting. You can choose either "Printer Manages Colors" or "Photoshop Manages Colors" The latter lets you (well, requires you) to use a printer profile selected from the menu below that. The former shuts down Photoshop's control of the color and leaves it all in the hands of the Printer Control panel that pops up when you click "Print Settings...". In other words, it's a completely intuitive interface. Not.

Craig Arnold: "A wonderfully timely post. I've decided it's time to retire my older Canon dye printer. As my favoured print size is A3+ I don't have to have the P800, but it's not much more than the P600 and the bigger ink tanks make it a bit silly to go for the P600. However I am somewhat conflicted over the choice between the P800 and Canon Pixma Pro 1. Do you have any experience of the Canon?

"Also, there is much Internet angst over 'pizza wheel' marks on the P800 prints. I presume this is only with certain papers, but have you seen such a thing?"

Ctein replies: Craig, Sadly, no recent Canon experience. However, I just made a usage agreement with them for four of my photos, so I'm hoping they'll send me sample prints over time.

I've not experienced pizza wheel marks with any of my 3880's or the P800. I'm pretty sure the technical explanation is that the gods favor me and punish others because they are not so pure of heart and noble of spirit as I.

The Publishing Project of the Century

...The last century, not this one, but still, this is going to be fascinating.

Bill Eggleston has been one of the most influential American photographers of his era, and the "democratic forest" project has long been his White Whale. An earlier version under the same name was a tepid collection of samplings, but the gist of the project is volume: legend has it that Eggleston, who is independently wealthy, used to hire an entire photo lab during its off hours, and he and his assistants would work in a frenzy to churn out thousands of work prints. The number of the pictures in the democratic forest project, in lore and rumor, has risen and risen.

Enter Steidl, the peripatetic, nearly compulsive German printer of overwhelming numbers of photobooks. If Gerhard Steidl has any flaw, it's inclusiveness: he likes to get everything in. Not for he the high points: he insists on the kitchen sink.

It's the opposite of my own tendency, which is to prefer well-cultivated representative examples. I don't want every record a band ever put out; I want the two or three best things, which sometimes means the two or three best songs, and that's enough. So, for Eggleston, I have the essential William Eggleston's Guide and Michael Almereyda's exquisitely judged and beautifully presented For Now in my own collection. That's enough for me: it gives the gist of him.

But for better or worse the White Whale and Ahab are meeting, folks (call Steidl the Pequod in my overextended metaphor), and there are going to be splinters flying before everyone dies in the end. (Way overextended now.) the new version of The Democratic Forest will be the real thing: more than 1,000 pictures from the 12,000 photographs that the original project consisted of.

In honor of this event, shall I try yet again to read Moby-Dick?

This is going to beinteresting...!

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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Crazy with a Capital Cray

See if you can wrap your head around this. Half tragic, half funny, and half absurd. (You see what I did there.)

In North Carolina (and I have to admit, this makes me shake my head about North Carolina—sorry, all you perfectly blameless North Carolinians), a teenage boy was found with nude pictures of a 16-year-old male on his phone. So he was prosecuted for sexually exploiting a minor.

Who was the minor? Himself. They were nude pictures of himself. Selfies, as we aging-out hipsters say now.

Mind you, this teenager did not post said pictures on the Internet. They were not available for public viewing. They were just on his own phone, apparently kept private as a personal matter between himself and his girlfriend, who is the same age and also shows up in several shots...and who was also prosecuted for exploiting her minor self.

The boy had to take a plea deal to avoid jail time and registration as a sex offender.

Oh, and about the "minor" bit? Sixteen is the age of consent in North Carolina. So neither of the two could have been charged with a crime for having actual sexual intercourse.

If that ain't cray-cray enough for ya, get this: the boy was charged as an adult. For sexually exploiting a minor. Even though when he took the picture (as the offender) of himself (as the victim), he was the same age as, well, himself. The trouble was, by the time the authorities discovered these (private) pictures on his (private) phone, he had turned 17.

So they had no choice.

Well, no, that has to be wrong. They did have a choice. The authorities could have thought about it for a minute or two and come to the conclusion that they themselves have mush for brains, and that they themselves should not be allowed to wield sharp implements or drive motor vehicles under the influence of their own richly evident inability to reason. They must have all been football players who took one too many shots to the head under the Friday night lights.

Sorry, I should stick to reporting.

But, you'll have to guess the race of the boy, I won't get in to that. (You can guess, though, can't you? Take a stab. And this isn't a rip against North Carolina in particular, but against the whole United States these days. We've been going backwards.)

The authorities in this case ought to be charged with malicious prosecution in my opinion. They themselves have done far more damage to these young people than the young people ever did to themselves. Is "causing completely pointless psychological distress to normal young people" a crime in North Carolina?

It clearly should be.

Mike
(Thanks to John Camp)

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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michael Ryan: "I am often particularly filled with ire when I frequently see the meme 'if you haven't done anything wrong you have no need to worry' on social media in relation to recent loses of civil rights in western countries and rights to privacy. No one should ever have seen his private photos on his phone nor had the right to see them never mind prosecute him in this Kafkaesque manner for a non-crime. I'll be quoting this story in future as an example of why your rights matter next time somebody quotes that meaningless nonsense to me. I've alway told them that the it's one of those things—you'll never know why they're so important until it's too late."

TOP's 10th Anniversary Coming Up

In a bit more than two months, TOP is turning 10. I started it on November 28th, 2005.

Just thought I'd mention that. We'll have to find some way to celebrate.

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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Rodger Kingston: "Congratulations Mike. I've been on board for most of those years, and I'll bet I haven't missed more than a handful of TOP posts in all that time. It's one of my daily favorites. Perhaps you could commemorate/celebrate by doing a series of 'Best of TOP' posts from over the decade. By the way, you're only one day off both my wife's and my mother's birthdays, Nov 27th."

Anthony Shaughnessy: "Congratulations! I remember when you were the Sunday Morning Photographer at the Luminous-Landscape where I first found your writing. In all the years since, believe it or not, this is still one of only four sites on the whole wide Internet that I visit regularly to see what's new. I've never found anywhere else so interesting."

Mike replies: *blush*

Open Mike: Portfolio Review with Mike Johnston

UPDATE Mon. a.m.: I've had lots of response to this, including a reader who wanted to swing by yesterday afternoon! It will take a while to sort through all the answers and get a calendar going, so you might not get a response from me right away. —Mike

Solitudinous, Secluded TOP World HQ

Are you in a rut? Doldrums got you down? Does your photography need a jumpstart?

If you happen to be passing anywhere near Out-of-the-Way TOP World HQ, why not stop and spend some quality instructional time with Mike, your portfolio, and your project plans?

Tailor what you want:

• First, tell me your level on a 1-2-3 scale, where 1 is casual and recreational and 3 is ambitious and experienced.
• Then, tell me the level of what you want to accomplish: 1, 2, or 3.
• Finally, tell me how hard you want me to go on you, on the same scale: if you're a 1 I'll take it easy and go gentle, if you say 3 I won't pull any punches.

If you're a 1-1-1 you'll get a very different review than if you're a 3-3-3. What are you? You decide. And you get to decide how thick your skin should be.

I'll talk to anybody on any level, including levels above my own (I'm actually pretty good at that). Bear in mind I won't be much good if you're a professional and you bring a portfolio aimed towards getting paying work from image professionals such as ad agencies or editors. I've been out of that world for long enough that I don't know the trends and fashions.

Cost: $100 per hour for up to 6 hours (but see bold paragraph below). And I'm very sorry, but I don't want to do this remotely. Part of the reward for me is in-person contact and the chance to view real prints. My life is too virtual already.

What you need:

• A finished, presentable portfolio of personal work, between 12 and 30 photographs
• 2, 4 (all in one day) or 6 hours (over two days), not including the meal we'll share.
• A filled-out Questionnaire, which I'll give you when you sign up
• Attentiveness and an open mind

Mike Johnston of TOP. Photo by Mr. X. Trans.

If you have future project ideas, by all means write a paragraph about each, and bring "seed pictures" if you have any—those early examples of what you'd like to do more of.

You can bring examples of additional work outside of the main portfolio if you like. We'll talk about your direction, what your strengths seem to be, how you might be spinning your wheels, and ways you can make the most of your opportunities.

One thing, though—camera talk verboten! We can discuss ways to improve your seeing and your shooting skills—I can even give you specific exercises—but we'll be talking about how pictures work visually and how your visual concerns come across. I will not discuss whether you ought to get a Canikon or a Nicanon. Just pics, aesthetics, goals, and vision.

If you will write up a post about your experience with me, showing some of the photos you brought and telling others some of the things you learned, I'll refund half the fee.

I'm within driving distance of New York City. Here and back in one day would be tough, but driving in one day and out the next would be easy, and there are plenty of nice places to stay overnight in the area, from B&Bs to hotels.

If you're flying, you'll come into Elmira, NY (ELM), or Rochester, NY (ROC). I'm one hour from Elmira and an hour and fifteen minutes from Rochester. If you're flying a private plane or charter, there's Penn Yan / Yates County Airport (KPEO) less than ten minutes up the road.

The Finger Lakes are a great destination for a photographing trip when the weather's amenable.

I can do up to two of these a week. Contact me for scheduling.

Mike

"Open Mike" is the Sunday Grab-Bag of TOP, covering many topics.

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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A Plea to Photography Teachers

16-year-old John DeReggi just moments before he was struck and killed by a train while posing for his portrait on the train tracks

Please: talk to your students and caution them against the tragically dangerous practice of posing people on active railroad tracks. It's an example of a situation where peoples' natural instincts fail them: what we automatically reason about being on railroad tracks is wrong. Everybody assumes that they'll know exactly where the train is as it approaches; everybody assumes they'll have time to get out of the way. Those assumptions just aren't true.

I quote the Washington Post article on the death of John DeReggi, Jr., age 16, struck as he and his girlfriend were being photographed on the tracks by his girlfriend's sister:

One thing seems clear: The train, estimated to be traveling at more than 70 miles an hour, was moving much faster than he realized.

Several factors could have been in play. Trains are quieter than people think; their size makes them look slower; if they’re coming right at you, gauging speed is difficult.

"There’s very little clicketyclack. They can really sneak up on you," said Robert Halstead, president of IronWood Technologies, a firm that reconstructs train accidents.

He likened the deceptive speed of trains to those of planes as they’re landing. Even though planes are going 150 mph, "it kind of looks like they’re just hanging there."

We've posted several times on this issue, but our reach is meager. Public consciousness of this issue really needs to be raised.

It's a safety issue that every photography instructor ought to discuss with his or her students.

Mike
(Thanks to several readers)

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Darlene Almeda: "I teach 'safety first' always whether train tracks, streets, studio lights, clients tripping over cords and stands, etc., etc. You can never ever stress 'safety first' enough times! So sad for this posting."

hugh crawford: "Trains are big, loud, hard to not notice from every direction except when you are straight ahead of one in its path. Then it's kind of quiet, doesn't seem to move much other than getting a little bigger slowly, and that's only if you happen to be looking at it. Otherwise it sort of suddenly just shows up.

"It should be noted that in a lot of these stories there is not just one person who fails to notice the train, but several. Three in this case. You would think that a person paying really close attention and looking for a train would see one coming, but that just means that the train coming from the other direction is going to be a real surprise."

Alex: "My spouse, a civil engineer, had to work on a bridge that crossed over some railroad tracks, and her entire work crew had to go take the basic safety training provided by the railroad to their own employees. The one thing that stood out was this little fact: if a Norfolk & Southern employee is found sitting on a railroad track, he or she is fired on the spot."

wts: "Welded rail (no clickety-clack), silent electric engines or almost silent modern diesel-electric engines, modern wheel bearings, almost no vibration, etc. produce efficiency needed by modern railoads. That's why the loudest sounds from the Boston MBTA D-line trains behind my house are the air-conditioning units on the roof. Every school should teach the dangers and specifically the quietness, speed deception, and the dangers not just of being on the tracks but even near the tracks (for example, steel straps on flatcars may come loose and strike anything within 10 feet of the tracks). Yes, there are noisy exceptions, like wheels with flat spots that do make click-clack sounds, but these are truly the exceptions that eventually will get maintenance."

TC: "It's frightening that, even after reading this story, there are still comments claiming that you have to be uncommonly stupid to be hit by a train. This, in my opinion, is exactly the kind of thinking that ends up in people, thinking of course that they personally are not uncommonly stupid, to do these kinds of things. Just stay away. Thanks for the reminder, Mike; I plan to make this point to my students tomorrow."

Quote o' the Day: Josef Koudelka

I think it’s wonderful that everybody can take photographs, just like I think it’s wonderful everybody can write. But there are very few writers and there are very few photographers.

Everybody has a camera, everybody can press the button. Everybody has a pencil, everybody can make a signature. But that doesn’t mean there are many great writers and it doesn’t mean there are many great photographers.

—Josef Koudelka

from a conversation with Laura Hubber and Annelisa Stephan
at the Getty Iris

Like many others, for example Harry Callahan and Elliott Erwitt, Josef Koudelka has steadfastly made a refusal to construct verbal scaffoldings around his photographs. I think back to what Mark Power told me once (not in so many words): that you have only a certain amount of creative energy and you have to apportion it accurately to where you need it to go. (Mark told me my writing had too much energy, and suggested I stop writing and put my energy into making pictures; it helped me decide to be a writer and stop putting so much energy into being a photographer.)

Josef Koudelka is an example of someone who puts all of his creative energy into making photographs.

Mike

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Michael Perini: "To be sure, great photographs, like great visual art of any kind, do not need words or explanation. And great writing does not need photographs or illustrations to be great. But I also find that I very much enjoy work by people who skillfully combine words and pictures. Sometimes, I like knowing a little more, and if an artist does it with words and pictures, I'm fine with that. I enjoy it. If words or pictures can be great individually, I never understood why they can't be great together. Not as a requirement, but at the artist's option."

Herman Krieger: "In many of my photo essays, the captions are part of the photos."

Shared Photographs

It's a commonplace of connected culture that we can share things instantly. I can take a picture in one minute and my friend a thousand miles away can see it that very same minute. I can post a picture here almost as quickly.

This is supposed to connect us and make us closer, allegedly, and it does in a way. Sharing is a nice way to link a few people and communicate something visual between individuals.

What's ironic is that the more we share, the less shared experience we have. The more choices we have of things to look at, the fewer and fewer things we all see...for some value of "all": everyone, or a majority, or a large minority of those in a culture, country or community.

Gods and Heav'nly Essences
When I was at Dartmouth, everyone in English 5, freshman English, read John Milton's Paradise Lost. It was a tradition—they'd been doing it since 1492. (Whatever. Dartmouth was founded in 1769. Force-feeding Milton to hapless freshmen probably dates from the mid-1800s. Somebody knows, but not I.)

Before I was a critic I was a critic. I protested to Mary Hill, an English teacher in high school, that Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter was a ridiculous book to have high school students read. None of us had been married and most of us—more than would have admitted it—hadn't even had sex. So what did we know about the complications of adultery and affairs? At Dartmouth I protested Paradise Lost. What a silly book to make everybody labor through. Couldn't they pick something better?

Maybe my attitude had something to do with the fact that I was an English tutor, and had to tutor a physics scholarship student from China who spoke only limited English. It would have been hard enough trying to help her understand Raymond Carver or William Carlos Williams, but the difficulty of Milton's poesy on top of her difficulties with English was almost insuperable. (The experience shook my confidence in my abilities as a teacher, too.) Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that I'm naturally a rationalist materialist by cast of mind, and get exasperated with invented cosmogenies.

O Prince, O Chief of many Throned Powers,
That led th' imbattelld Seraphim to Warr
Under thy conduct, and in dreadful deeds
Fearless, endanger'd Heav'ns perpetual King;
And put to proof his high Supremacy,
Whether upheld by strength, or Chance, or Fate,
Too well I see and rue the dire event,
That with sad overthrow and foul defeat
Hath lost us Heav'n, and all this mighty Host
In horrible destruction laid thus low,
As far as Gods and Heav'nly Essences
Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains
Invincible, and vigour soon returns...

Sure it does. Yawn and yawn and yawn it goes, that book.

My English 5 professor, Darrel Mansell, who later proved a bitter disappointment to me, explained that the college simply wanted to provide something that constituted shared intellectual culture amongst all, or most, students—some common basis or foundation not only that everyone knew, but that everyone knew everyone else knew. He claimed it didn't matter so much what it was.

This later hit home to me when I and some friends were lolling around in the hall of Middle Fayerwether, our dormitory, late one weekend evening. There were six or seven of us sitting listlessly on the floor holding plastic cups of tepid beer, all of us nearly terminally bored. We couldn't find anything to talk about. When the conversation had stalled into complete silence, one girl, Allison, piped up and said, "I know. We could talk about Milton!" We then, and I'm not kidding, talked about Milton. Let's hear it for shared experience.

My friend Jim Schley extended Milton the credit he deserved and read him closely and sensitively, and found many felicities in Paradise Lost. Jim is a surpassingly compassionate reader. Bull-headedly, I skipped the book and winged it on the quizzes.

To compensate, I read Caxton's Malory on my own:

It befell in the days of Uther Pendragon, when he was king of all England, and so reigned, that there was a mighty duke in Cornwall that held war against him long time. And the duke was called the Duke of Tintagil. And so by means King Uther sent for this duke, charging him to bring his wife with him, for she was called a fair lady, and a passing wise, and her name was called Igraine.

So when the duke and his wife were come unto the king, by the means of great lords they were accorded both. The king liked and loved this lady well, and he made them great cheer out of measure, and desired to have lain by her. But she was a passing good woman, and would not assent unto the king. And then she told the duke her husband, and said, I suppose that we were sent for that I should be dishonoured; wherefore, husband, I counsel you, that we depart from hence suddenly, that we may ride all night unto our own castle. And in like wise as she said so they departed, that neither the king nor none of his council were ware of their departing. All so soon as King Uther knew of their departing so suddenly, he was wonderly wroth. Then he called to him his privy council, and told them of the sudden departing of the duke and his wife.

The heck with God leading th' imbattelld Seraphim to Warr; this is a story. Made-up BS makes me wonderly wroth. There's little enough time in one life to learn about the real world and things that exist.

Sharing vs. shared
When there were only three television networks and broadcast TV was all there was of moving pictures outside of movie theaters, television constituted shared culture. Ed Sullivan and Disney came on on Sunday nights, and a third of America watched. Nobody didn't know Ed Sullivan. Maybe there wasn't an endless menu of choice, but at least the whole society was largely in it together. Britain wisely extended this state of affairs with the BBC.

It was one of the nice things about the old print culture, too. For a while, it was important whose face was on the cover of Time magazine, and, at its zenith, there was one copy of LIFE magazine printed for every 15 people in the United States. It constituted a de facto shared visual culture. It was important what was in those issues because everybody saw it. TV eventually snuffed the life of LIFE.

In an ideal world there would be one—one is all I'd ask—deliberately shared venue for original photojournalism. (Shared in my second sense.) Because we all would agree that such a thing had value, not just the potential for profit. Everyone would get it every week, probably in their in-boxes, and we'd each pay a little something. And original photojournalism, and future history, would get made, and there'd be one thing lots and lots of people all saw and shared. Pie in the sky, I know. The conditions for it don't exist.

There is less and less truly shared culture today, if you take "shared" to mean things that we all experience. There were 1,715 TV series aired in 2014, of which 352 were scripted; you could watch TV all day every day—speeded up—and not see more than a small fraction of it all. LIFE is long gone, the Devil now owns National Geographic, and no picture stories are seen by more than a tiny fraction of the population.

We share everything these days, but there is little we all share.

Mike

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Nigel: "You ought not to be so dismissive—after all, Milton coined that very word."

Jim Natale: "Bingo. Very fine writing. You've very accurately described the disorientation of a generation. Fragmentation. Nothing in common around the water cooler. (Plus, ​speaking for many old English majors​, any zingers directed at Milton are appreciated. Difficult to top Dr. Johnson, though: 'Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.'​)​"

Timo Virojärvi: "I believe TOP is the most shared experience for photographers nowadays."

Mike replies:  :-)

Charlie Ewers: "Point well taken about shared experience, even when it's a bad experience. If you think Paradise Lost is awful (and it is), try Milton's Areopagetica. Although I myself am an oldish English professor, I would never force my students to read that crap. But whenever I encounter somebody who was in my Master's program, one or the other of us always brings up that monstrosity (which we were all forced to read by an otherwise humane and reasonable rhetoric professor), and some of us can even quote from it. Shared experience indeed."

Edward Taylor: "We do all share in the experience of having nothing in common. At least, we have that in common."

Jason: "On the other hand, it has become easier to find people who share whatever obscure interest you might have."

John Camp: "Ed Sullivan was a shared experience in only an odd way—that is, we all sat in front of the tube, watched him, and only later talked with other people about it. But I'm so old that I can remember a time before television, when people on my street had poker parties, and my mother and father belonged to a ballroom dance club, and there were three or four parades every year that nobody wanted to miss, and everybody went to the All-Iowa Fair at Hawkeye Downs...because we didn't have electronic (TV) sharing. We had a physical, face-to-face 'after work' society when people sat outside to talk, or went for evening walks.

"There was also the fact that most adult males and quite a few of the women had been in the military during WWII, another serious shared experience.

"Sometime in the early to mid-50s, a critical mass of people got TVs, and that face-to-face society disappeared almost overnight. People simply shut themselves away to watch 'I Love Lucy' and 'Ed Sullivan' and 'What's My Line' and all the rest of it. I can remember hardly any of that TV—but I remember that time before TV, running around in the evening, playing war and having apple fights and learning how to talk to people, face-to-face."

Henry Rogers: "I've never tried to read any Milton so can't comment, but I have read both Iliad and Odyssey several times in more than one translation and found the story telling in both such fun that, after retiring, I was prompted to sign up for a beginner's course on Ancient Greek as a result. Although I found it very hard work tackling even short extracts of the original, that was even more fun. Homer, whoever he or they was or were, certainly wasn't using 'the Gods' just as an easy way of explaining happenings for which people didn't have a scientific explanation. They are real characters in the stories and they interact with each other and the mortals in ways which can sometimes be hilarious and sometimes moving. And both mortals and immortals are shown behaving in ways which are not very different from the ways of people running around loose in our world!

"I'd defend Chaucer from Hugh Smith's criticism in much the same way. I first met C's pilgrims around 1951 (in school, of course) and was struck then by his vivid descriptions of people. I'm English and I live in London. Those pilgrims are still around today even if they wear different clothes and use different 'props'! Try the doctor, the poor parson or pardoner.

"I'm not an English Lit type by the way, I'm a techie, a land surveyor to be precise."

The One Thing You Can't Replace

This is not off topic...in fact it still shocks me, as a person who treasures photographs. He asks, "How f----d up is that?" And the answer is very, very, very f----d up.

This contains some swear words so don't listen at work or at school. Hope everyone can get it. If you can't, search for the title on YouTube, maybe there's another version.

John Mulaney used to be a writer for "Saturday Night Live."

Mike

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Stephen Gilbert: "It took a while to get there, but was definitely worth the trip. Thanks."

gary isaacs: "Horrors of the First World...."

Ken James: "Could not, cannot listen to such vulgarity. Why do people laugh at such stuff?"

Andrew Molitor: "I thought the story was hilarious. Awful too, obviously. But I laughed and laughed. Humor's funny like that."

Mike adds: Although I sympathize—it's never pleasant to be offended, no matter what offends you—I wonder if those who are offended by John Mulaney's vulgarity listen to much stand-up comedy. (I enjoy it, so I hear a lot of it, although I don't think there's much that's very good.) He doesn't really even peg the middle of the scale on the Vulgarity Meter. Seems kind of clean-cut and PG by comparison to a lot of comics, actually....

Michel: "That is indeed f----d up. As is this story. Back up your stuff people."

Mike replies: That's really troubling. Sincere condolences to Jacques.

mike plews: "Over the years I have interviewed people [Mike is a TV cameraman —Ed.] who have lost their homes to floods, fires and tornadoes and you keep hearing 'we saved the pictures, we can start over.' I've seen people standing in a field of rubble no higher than their ankles clutching the family photo album and weeping with joy that it was spared.

"I'm sure many TOP readers have good photo restoration skills. If you are one of those folks it might be a nice idea to drop by the fire department or Red Cross and offer up those skills as a volunteer. You could do more good than you know."

Thanks

The last two posts have reminded me how much I get out of my own blog. In the previous one, a number of readers suggested interesting links; the one before that thanks John Krumm for introducing me to the 7-Minute Workout.

Carl's post about special modes is something I'd never thought about—I tend to be very casual about camera operation—and I'm going to start using that strategy right away.

It's just such a pleasure to have daily access to so many smart and well-informed people. I'm very grateful for it. Thank you so much.

Mike

P.S. Perhaps this might be the right place to mention that the name "The Online Photographer" was always intended to apply to you, not me. That is, photographers who come online.

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Around the Web, Briefly

Courtesy Meagan Abell

Who is that? "Woman" as an archetype has a very powerful hold on human beings' imaginations—for all people, perhaps especially men. We did a post about this in 2007. Stephen Edgar, in Ireland, was trying to find out more about an unidentified woman in some old slides.

Now, another Mystery Woman has surfaced. Who is she? Everyone seems to want to know. Meagan Abell found the 120 negatives in...well, what else, a thrift store, and is asking people to use the hashtag #FindTheGirlOnTheNegatives on Twitter to share information.

The mystery woman is more an idea, isn't she?

Although it's curious that, after reading Don Craig's link about The Life of Frederick Jury on Sunday, and following up on Alan Hill's recommendation of Herodotus, I learned that the Greek word "historia" (ἱστορία) literally means "inquiry," or "knowledge acquired by investigation." Maybe trying to find out about the mystery woman is just how history is done.

Ilford sold: "Harman technology, manufacturers of the famous Ilford Photo range of monochrome photographic products, have been purchased by Pemberstone Ventures Ltd. for an undisclosed amount." (From the press release.)

Peter Elton, Managing Director of Harman, said "Film has become an interesting medium for young photographers to work with again.We are seeing this very clearly. Our new owners will assist us to connect more effectively to this younger generation in the future, and we will prioritise this as our main goal over the next five years."

It never does to parse press releases too closely, so take my advice, don't think about that paragraph very hard.

Most expensive Pentax camera case: Ned Bunnell is selling a Pentax K-01 case for $99, only a third of what it cost new, and he discusses it on Facebook. It costs as much as some Pentax cameras because it was designed by Marc Newson, who also designed the K-01, one of the few future collectibles among digital cameras. Newson now works for Apple. See Annie Leibovitz's fine portrait of Newson with Jony Ive here.

Wasted ink: Ars Technica has published some findings. What they've found is that when their 9900 says an ink cartridge is "empty," it's still pretty full...namely, that a 700ml cart stops printing when it still has 100 to 150ml left. That's awkward when you're being charged more than $120 per liter for the stuff.

The change has just begun: Hold on to your hats, folks, it's starting already at National Geographic, previously one of the world's leading voices of environmentalism.

Allow Photos NEIN: "Camera Restricta is a speculative design of a new kind of camera. It locates itself via GPS and searches online for photos that have been geotagged nearby. If the camera decides that too many photos have been taken at your location, it retracts the shutter and blocks the viewfinder. You can't take any more pictures here."

Tell me
Seen anything interesting on the Web lately? Tell us about it.

Mike
(Thanks to Eric Kellerman, Roger Bradbury, Ned Bunnell, John Camp, Doug Thacker, and psu)

Ctein adds, re the printer ink: I have officially spent way too much time thinking about this ink business.

First thought: where have these guys been for the last 10–15 years? Unused ink left in cartridges? That was news around, oh, 2000. Not so much, since.

Second thought: but, wait, Epson fixed that in later printers. It was common in earlier printers like the 2200/2400, because engineering couldn't monitor ink consumption really accurately, and they didn't want the cartridges to run dry—potential for trouble like air bubbles in the system and dry heads overheating when they fired. Later models suck every bit of ink out, like my 3880. I've checked. So I'd have expected a 9900 to do the same; it's an even a later generation. (I am not certain about my 9800: I think I've cracked an empty cartridge and it really was empty, but it was long enough ago I don't entirely trust my memory.)

Third thought: this is backwards thinking. Ink isn't sold in standardized defined units like quarts of milk. Every model of printer uses a different cartridge size. Customers have no expectations whatsoever. So there's no percentage for Epson in selling 700 ml cartridges that withhold 20% of the ink instead of selling 550 ml cartridges that use all their ink. Customers would pay exactly the same price for a 550 ml cartridge, because the price is entirely arbitrary (it's still relatively cheap per milliliter, compared to smaller printers and smaller cartridges). Epson would just be throwing money away on additional ink and larger cartridges unless there were good reasons for this.

So it's gotta be an engineering thing. I just don't know what.

But the whole notion that customers are somehow getting “cheated” out of 20% of their ink? That's just silly.

Mike replies: I think it's at least a truth in labeling issue. If you buy a box of cereal and it settles so it looks like the box is half full, they'll explain that to you by saying there's still 13 oz. of cereal in the box (or whatever) like the label says. Even if Epson still charges you the same amount of money for it, the label should say 550 ml if that's all that's available and usable.

Dishonesty in marketing and labeling is a pretty slippery slope, and a pretty difficult thing to excuse, in my opinion. The whole issue of "forced wastage" is a dirty little secret of many kinds of marketing (even if it's not happening in Epson's case). A lot of pretty smart people spend a lot of time and money figuring out how they can get us to waste what we buy.

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I'll Be Back in Seven Minutes (Thanks to John Krumm) (OT)

In a post about diet called "Stuck" last June, John Krumm wrote:

One thing I'm happy with, even though I think it has little to do with my weight loss, is my exercise routine. I've used the New York Times 7-minute exercise program since December and it has been life-changing. I have more energy, better leg and arm strength, more patience for physically difficult tasks, feel safer on my motorcycle, and my bad knee is less of a problem. My blood pressure is better too. It's surprising just how much exercise I can cram into seven minutes, and how winded I can get. Seems just short enough not to make it so unpleasant that I talk myself out of doing it the next day. So now I'm a 7-minute proselytizer.

Life-changing indeed. It's gotten me unstuck, and I just passed a milestone—50 lbs. (three and a half stone) lost since my peak of unhealthy fatness.

It was John's phrase "life-changing" in his comment that piqued my curiosity. So now I figure I'll help John proselytize.

Funny—some reviews of the 7-minute workout written by exercise and weightlifting buffs—people who are already very healthy and fit—say it's no big deal, no magic, won't be much help. True dat...for dem. But if you're sedentary and haven't exercised since Maggie Thatcher was in office, I guarantee it'll kick your ass—you'll be so winded when you finish you'll think you just ran a sprint.

And those are the people it's for: people who haven't been exercising and need to start. Because it's only seven minutes and doesn't require any equipment (you need a chair you can stand on, and a wall), you might actually do it.

Try it. Here's the link to the phone app. See how long it takes you to work up to doing it every day.

I'm off to do it right now. I have another post to write—two, actually—but it's okay. I'll be right back. It's only seven minutes.

Mike
(Thanks to John K.)

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John Krumm: "This must be my seven minutes of fame (sorry).

"Great to hear it's making a difference, and congratulations on sending that stored energy into the universe. I've reached something of a plateau with the routine, but it's a good plateau, now able to do thirty OK push-ups in thirty seconds, good-form squats, etc.

"My doctor, who is the same age and must weigh about 40 lbs, also uses the routine and keeps on asking me how many times I did the workout, how many reps, but then of course it would be the 14- or 21-minute workout. I like seven.

"I do need to try something with a group a couple times a week, for motivation. That's the plan anyway."

Mike replies: Really, thanks for introducing me to it, John. It's helped me a lot. I will work up to 14 minutes (two repetitions) eventually, but I'm not ready yet.

Dave: "I've been a fitness person my whole life; running, weight lifting, swimming, biking, and hiking. I'm 40 now. Three years ago a buddy of mine introduced me to high intensity interval training (HIIT) and it's been fantastic. For the first couple weeks I was sore all over, but then I started to feel great. I remember, about a month after starting the new routine, I was climbing up a concrete wall to get in position for a photo, and I felt like I was 18 again. When I was younger I injured both my knee and my shoulder.

"Surprisingly, the HIT workouts also seem to help both these old, achy injuries. I think they strengthen the support muscles and relieve stress on my aging tendons."

Special for You: Custom Modes

Shop Window, Chickasha, OK, 2012. The sort of color picture I make when exploring with a handheld digital camera. Usually I have it set to one of several Custom Modes.

-

Words and pictures by Carl Weese

For more than four years now, most of the time I have my digital cameras set to a “custom mode,” not the the usual M/A/S/P modes on the dial. Most references I’ve seen recommend this feature—which many digital cameras now have in some form—for managing groups of different in-camera JPEG settings. I’m sure it's useful for that too, but I always shoot RAW captures and yet I still find custom modes extremely useful.

Back in 2011 on a shooting expedition, for the second time in a couple of days I grabbed the camera from the car seat, jumped out and began shooting, only to find the ISO had switched to 3200, which was not an acceptable level for the Lumix G3 I was using. I got the settings back where I wanted them, made some pictures, found nothing I wanted to shoot with my large format cameras, so got back in the car and decided to figure out what had gone wrong. It didn’t take long. The camera’s control buttons were softer touch than I’d like. If you pick up the camera and hit the ‘right arrow’ button on the controller, it opens the ISO dialog. You see that in the finder as you raise the camera and can quickly dismiss it. But if you bump the right arrow button twice, the second hit sets ISO 3200. When I got to my hotel room that night, I called up the PDF of the instruction manual on my MacBook and looked up the custom mode function. I’ve been using it ever since.

A custom mode memorizes a whole suite of camera function settings. If an accidental button push sends ISO through the roof, just move the mode dial from C1 to C2 and back again, and your whole custom suite of settings is restored in a split second. You don’t have to figure out exactly what got changed. You don’t have to remember what your favorite settings are, or what menus to find them on. So having custom settings can bail you out on an accidental button push. Also, what if you are trying to work with a situation and decide, first that you need to dial in –.66 exposure compensation, then realize it would be better to switch to single-point AF, etc. When you move on, flip the dial, or turn the power off and when you actuate the camera again it will be at your custom settings.

Examples
There’s much more. I just want to give an idea of how useful this is, not tell everyone how to set up their cameras, and I can’t address the many camera-specific variations out there, but here are a couple of examples. The Lumix GX7 cameras I’m using now have three “custom” positions on the mode dial, and number three can open to a menu with three choices, for a total of five suites of custom settings. I won’t bore you with all five of my suites, but I’ll illustrate how useful they are by detailing my most and least often used sets.

C1 is my default for walkabout shooting, which is what I do the most with a  handheld digital camera. AE is set to aperture priority; ISO is auto, top-limited to 3200; in-body stabilization is active; AF is multi-point with touch screen AF disabled (too easy to actuate accidentally with a camera over my shoulder); drive is single frame; and all the other functions that I never change are sitting at default.

  Touch AF is really useful when the camera’s on a tripod
(here in multi-point AF mode)

When a subject calls for a tripod, for me it’s usually also calling for a large format film camera. When I actually want to use a tripod for digital capture, the camera will perform better with a very different suite of settings. So, in C3-3, aperture priority AE remains, but ISO is locked to base level; in-body stabilization is switched off (important, and oh so easy to overlook); AF is switched to single point, with touch screen AF active; drive is two-second delay.

Even though it requires a menu call and tap, switching from C1 to C3-3 doesn’t take two seconds, and I can do it while I’m mounting the camera to the tripod head, so it really doesn’t take any time at all. I’m not always in a rush, but anything that speeds up camera handling is helpful when speed is important. When the tripod shot is done, it also takes effectively no time at all to return to C1 (or C2, C3-1, C3-2) without having to locate and execute half a dozen settings scattered across four or more menus buried multiple levels deep—or having to remember what all those settings and menu positions are anyway.

  Macricostas Preserve, Washington, CT, 9/13/15

Spending the time to work out a group of custom setting suites that work well for the ways you make pictures simply makes your camera a better tool. I recommend it.

Carl

TOP Contributing Editor Carl Weese is a photographer, writer, and workshop teacher based in Connecticut. There are many online galleries of his pictures at his website, and he publishes a daily picture blog.

©2015 by Carl Weese, all rights reserved

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 Matthews: "This could be the most helpful suggestion I've run across in years. We know the custom settings option is available, but how many use them in this way? I'd always thought of custom settings to mean unusual combinations for very precise needs. It's finally clear to me that this may offer the cure for my ham-handed mishandling of Micro 4/3 cameras which seem to keep changing their settings spontaneously. At last—the 'lock all' button which has eluded me."

Tim Wilson: "Carl, I have used this extensively on the OM-D E-M1. You can assign any of the mode dial positions to a custom function set. My two main configurations are for hand-held aperture preferred (Image stabilizer on, plus other stuff) and one for tripod shooting (IS off, two-second delay from exposure). I have put the tripod mode dial name on labels on the top of my tripod to remind me to reset. Works great."

Open Mike: The Fate of Stories (OT)

The comedian John Mulaney has a bit in which he ridicules the emotional reticence of  the Irish. “I'm Irish,” he says, “and Irish people, they don’t tell you a thing. Irish people keep it so bottled up. The plan with Irish people is, ‘I’ll keep all my emotions right here’”—he clutches the middle of his chest—“‘and then one day, I’ll die.’”

Which is good comedy, but also the fate of stories.

I like people, and I’m sad when they die, but I also fret about the wholesale death of stories. It's like the extinction of the birds. Almost all stories die. Or rather disappear, when the people who know them expire. It gets to me every time I pass an old age home or come across a nameless carte-de-visite portrait in an antique store. Everybody has a story, but some peoples’ stories are astounding. They disappear anyway.

Historians don’t help; historians just give us a sense of false security, like someone’s paying attention—you know, it happened, after all, so it won’t just be lost. We live our little lives thinking known things are just known. And yet you probably can’t even name your own great-grandparents. They’re that far forgotten to you. And you’re one of the few people by whom, to be fair, they really ought to be remembered. Never mind if something really intricate and astonishing and memorable happened to one or another of them. Each one of them lived a whole long rich life, replete with events and struggles and successes and failures, and all you probably know about them is that they all each had at least one child.

Almost all stories die. On the other hand, some bad ones never do; I’ve read the freakin’ Iliad three times. I’m like Charlie Brown kicking Lucy’s football with that book. For some reason I think finding a better translation is going to make it a better story. But they can translate that thing a hundred times and it’s never going to be as good a story as it was to people who truly believed the gods were in charge.

And that’s another thing about stories—sometimes even the people they happened to don’t know them, entirely. Because we can only understand with our own understandings. Homer thought that when it rained a lot it was because Poseidon was angry. Q.E.D., according to Homer. That was all he knew, that's how he explained storms that thwarted human will, so that’s all he could report: we can't put out to sea; Poseidon must have not wanted us to. If you really look into things, though, you'll find there’s always another dimension of a story left to discover.

Homer wasn’t much for coincidence. If Achilles got struck by a deadly arrow in the heel, well, it had to be because the goddess made his body invulnerable everywhere else, right? Legend has it that the arrow that killed Richard the Lionheart made so paltry a wound that the King plucked it out, cast it on the ground and kept walking. It wasn’t the gods that made the flesh wound turn gangrenous and, eventually, mortal. But the chroniclers of Richard’s time knew nothing of septicemia or the germ theory of disease. The teller of tales can only chronicle what he knows. We each of us can only track the paltry arrows of our own thoughts.

I'm sympathetic to Mulaney's Irish. It's sometimes better, as they say, to let sleeping dogs lie. (Is that an Irish expression?) When Keith Richards wrote his autobiography, he said he had to spend two years immersed in reliving his own life, and you got the impression that wasn't exactly easy. Still, I think everybody should write an autobiography. Otherwise, the stories that you know the best, the stories that are so important to you, will only go away, lost like a bird falling out of the sky.

Mike

"Open Mike," the whimsical editorial page of the always mutable TOP, appears only, but not always, on Sundays.

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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a top reader: "Mike, I agree with you that everyone should write an autobiography. And regarding Keith Richards, I say that people with demons especially should write autobiographies.

"And when I say, 'write an autobiography' I actually mean, 'tell stories.' Storytelling is a powerful therapy. I've had my own troubles. My adolescence was dark, troubled, and deeply traumatic. For years I couldn't go out in crowds, I couldn't go to new places, I couldn't meet new people, I couldn't do new things. I could only live my routine. I could only sit with my back to a wall. I could only socialize with the people I knew. I could only eat at the restaurants I knew. I could only sleep in my own bed, with the door closed, the windows blacked out, and every source of light--down to the LED clock--extinguished. I still couldn't make it through a day without nightmares or a night without flashbacks.

"Even living my regimented routine—living the same day every day, no matter what—there were ghosts everywhere. Everything I heard was an echo of something darker. Everything I saw was reflection of the worst moments of my life.

"The thing I did was write. I wrote short fiction. I wrote long fiction. I wrote tall tales. I wrote short novels. I wrote critiques. I wrote histories. I wrote biographies. I wrote autobiographies.

"I told stories.

"From thirteen to twenty-five, I wrote three or four pages a night, five nights a week, and I rewrote it all on top of that. Doing the math—Courier New 10pt, single spaced, 1" margin, I come up with something like 16,000,000 words. I'll be the first to tell you that most of those words were garbage. I'm not a very imaginative story-teller and I'm not a very good writer, but I did it anyway. I wrote for myself, and for the most part, my audience was one. Sometimes it was two, occasionally it was three, and once or twice it became hundreds or thousands of people—but one was my target, and that was liberating in its own way. I could tell the same stories over and over again, picking away at little bits and pieces of my past. I could tell them in whatever form seemed best—sometimes my past came out as autobiography, sometimes as fiction, sometimes as dialogue, sometimes as poetry, sometimes as history, sometimes as simple chronology.

"Over the course of those 16,000,000 words I gave my ghosts names. I wrote down all those echoes. I described the reflections. I took the incomprehensible overwhelming mass of my trauma and...didn't exactly explain it, but I explored it, I explicated it, and I came to know it, to accept it, and to manage it.

"I still carry ghosts. I still hear echoes. I still see reflection. I still have bad nights. I still have bad days. I still have bad weeks. I've even had a few bad months recently. But the bad years are over, and have been for a long time. I can go new places. I can sit with my back to a crowd. I can sleep in strange beds. I credit that to story-telling. To autobiography. I recommend it highly."

Don Craig: "So here's a story about finding a story by finding an old luggage tag while mud-larking (sifting through the mud near the river banks at low tide) on the Thames in Greenwich. It takes the internet and some interested helpers to assemble the tale, but it's remarkable how much was retrieved from that luggage tag."

Carl Blesch: "The problem with the stories that my deceased family members told is that I didn't listen. Oh, I remember hearing some, but I was too full of my own life to want to really listen and prompt them to elaborate. Several times my father talked about how he used to spend his university summers working at Glacier National Park. But to this date, that's all I know. Why did he work there? How did he get the job? Who did he work with? What did he do? What did the workers do after hours? (Now there's a loaded question!) After he passed away, I found a leather-bound album of photos from those summers. Now I sure wish I'd listened.

"I've already started writing my stories for my children, knowing that they aren't interested now (and believe me, I can't blame them), but at some point in time, most likely after I'm gone, they may be."