The Online Photographer

A Very Good Day (OT)

Well, I'm back. What an adventure.

Forgive the off-topic post, but I can't help sharing my happiness...my son Alexander H. Johnston, my only kid, was awarded his Bachelors of Business Administration from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh Business program last Saturday, with honors in marketing. Dad was high in the bleachers smiling on the inside and the outside. They say graduations are for parents, and sure enough. I've seldom spent a happier day.

Xander was not a good student in high school and had little interest in academics, or even reading (my kid!?!), so I decided not to push him to go to college. He worked as a waiter his senior year, then took a series of blue-collar jobs out of high school—a friend helped him get a job changing oil at Valvoline sixty hours a week, and then he unloaded trucks for Target in the middle of the night (he got fired for being late too many times—we all need "the firing experience," the sooner the better), and after that he worked a machine that made tiny little springs at a company called Wisconsin Coil. I remember he came home from Valvoline one day saying, "Dad, there are 40-year-old guys working with us at Valvoline, and they think they're our peers!" I told him to get used to it, because those guys were his peers—he was an adult, just like them, and they made their living changing oil, just like he did. The only difference was that a little more time had passed since those guys started. Probably right out of high school. Like him.

Making 1,600 springs a day gave him a repetitive stress injury, and he had to quit that last job. That happened at the beginning of Summer, and he settled in at home to recuperate—which very soon morphed into old Summer vacation habits. By July I felt it necessary to take him out to dinner and tell him gently that I wasn't in a position to stake him to a life of perpetual Summer vacation—he was grown, and it was either school full time or a full-time job, one or the other. He made his own decision, looked at his options realistically, and strategized his applications—Oshkosh, where his girlfriend was a sophomore, was his first choice; then community college, then vocational school.

You can do anything for your kids except motivate them. But his two years of working manual-labor jobs and his own determination not to have to change oil for the rest of his life supplied that. Xander is very quick, and great with people, but not a natural student, and he had to work hard at Oshkosh. So his high grade point average—he was in the top 10% of marketing majors—didn't come easy.

He worked as an intern his senior year for a great company called U.S. Venture, and they wanted to hire him after he graduated. Remember that job at Target, unloading trucks in the middle of the night? He also interviewed at several other companies, including for a great job in a management training program...at Target Corporation! Of course he 'fessed up to his earlier experience with them right at the beginning of the interview process. (Honesty is a Xander trait—I never caught him lying to me as a kid, and after a while never even worried about it. His great-uncle Bill, on his mother's side, was like that.) He starts in June with the title of Executive Team Lead with a very generous salary, outstanding benefits, and three and a half weeks a year of paid vacation.

Meanwhile, back on the Dad front, I was finally making some money by the time he decided to go to college (thanks!). My coffers are pretty well depleted right now (I'm sure a lot of you can sympathize with that as well), but my son will graduate with zero debt. So he gets to start his new career with a clean slate. I did my bit.

So Xander loved Oshkosh and had a great time in school, made lots of friends, did well, and got a great first post-college job. And I could pay the bills. I wish I could say I planned it all out on purpose, but I can't. However it happened, though, it could not have worked out any better. Sitting in the bleachers watching him walk for his diploma was a good day, a very good day.

Congratulations Xander!

Dad

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

What a long road it's been
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Jim: "Congratulations to Xander and he is so fortunate to graduate without student debt. I used to live in Oshkosh and worked summers of '61 and '62 at Oshkosh Manufacturing Co. I remember that at the end of my second summer there the boss tried to talk me into staying and not going back to college. I had to laugh, as it was because of that work that I knew I had to go to college.

"It is because of my education that I was able to retire early and spend the last 15 years traveling the world taking photographs. By the way the house we lived in when I was a kid was later torn down to build the dorm for the college. I stayed in that dorm years ago when I used to fly back to Oshkosh for the EAA fly-in."

Dave Karp: "Congratulations to both of you! As a college professor, I can tell you that Commencement is a high point of each year. Probably the highest. It is great to see the students finishing one experience and heading on to all of the rest of them! Ours is tomorrow night and I am really looking forward to it."

Jim Christie: "Congratulations Xander! Same to you Mike—as one who is also raising a boy alone, I've followed your occasional posts about him with interest. You've done such a fantastic job guiding him. Kudos to you both."

Mike replies: And back to you.

Josh Hawkins: "In my head he's still five, and for some reason there's a kid running around behind the counter. Why is there a kid behind the counter? Congrats to him, and you. I fully support his decision not to take a straight path, but a path filled with experience. Well done...(can I still call him little guy?)...Xander."

[As a late-teenager and early-twentysomething, Josh was a clerk and then the Store Manager at the old Oak Park Camera in Oak Park, Illinois, when Xander was little. I'd go in there all the time to look at all the used gear and shoot the breeze with the guys, starting when Xander was still an infant in his car seat basket. As he grew and became mobile, they let him have the run of the store when I came in—behind the counters, back to the staff area. He would motor around shooting rubberbands at the indulgent employees.

Josh now has his own family plus many years of experience as a photojournalist. When last heard from he lives in Las Vegas (still true, Josh?). —MJ]

Yvonne Cunnington: "Well done Xander and Mike! I still wish you would write that memoir about raising your son as a single dad."

Mike replies: It's been swirling around in my head for about a year now. I have the basic outline, the story arc, the "modus operandi" or mode, and I've done some research on similar books. I do have to get down to doing the work, though. It's funny, but basically the pursuit of writing can be summed up in the clipped phrase "get to work."

Yr. Hmbl. Ed. Takes a Break

Ah, the Finger Lakes

TOP will be off for a week starting May 10th while your humble editor attempts to stay away from the computer screen where he spends most of his life. I plan to force myself into encounters with what is known as reality, using only my God-given senses to perceive this "reality" directly. I am a bit trepidatious about this project, and suppose the coming week will not be the easiest, but we'll see. I was born into reality so I am not entirely a stranger to it.

That's not all. During this week I am also going to try to interact with others of my species face-to-face, using my vocal chords to form words instead of the normal, usual, comfortable thing, the keyboard. Forgive me if I do not answer my email.

Because blogs are notoriously difficult to search for past articles, here's a selection of old things written by moi or published previously on TOP which you might not have seen, which hopefully will tide you over:

"The Danger of Revisiting Your Work," by Roger Overall (2014)

"Preparing a Portfolio, Part II," by Mike (on MIR.com, 1999)

"Big Prints from 4/3-Format Sensors," by Carl Weese (2012)

"Sobel v. Eggleston: the Decision" (a dispute over limited editions), by Mike, (2013)

"The Liberated Camera, Part II" (about the advantages of face-detection autofocus), by John Kennerdell (2011)

"The Full-Frame Dilemma...and a Cure," by Mike (2008)

"Bill Jay's Vision," by Jim Hughes (2012)

"Pots of Gold" (originally titled "The Photographer's Lament"), by Mike, 2015

"Voja Mitrovic, Printer to the Greats," by Peter Turnley (2010)

"The Filter Flare Factor," by Mike (on Steve's Digicams, 2005)

"UPS [uninterruptible power supply] Is Your Friend," by Ctein (2013)

"Not now, Dear, I've Just Been Killed By a High-Powered Rifle" (a stain on the honor of Wisconsin), by Mike (2007)

...And that's just a very small selection. For more, you are cordially invited to visit The Archives.

Brooks Hatlen leaves home

In the coming week I am hoping I will not be too much like Brooks Hatlen, too accustomed to my normal confinement to find anything but bewilderment in the outside world*. I shall report back about how I fared when the normal order of things resumes here on Wednesday, May 17th.

With best regards,
TOP's chief shoeshiner, bottlewasher, and polisher of the verbiage,

Mike

*I'm just funnin', of course. No way my job is like prison. I have the third-best job in the entire world**.

**I've written about this before, but, in case you missed it, the second best job in the World is Billy Joel's. He lives in a big mansion on Long Island, and whenever Madison Square Garden in New York City has nothing going on, they call Billy. He gets into his helicopter, flies in, and puts on a rollicking three-hour show of all his old hits—which of course he could play in his sleep—in front of tens of thousands of raucous, adoring fans. He has a great time, and is back in his helicopter before the last of the cheering dies down. He then eats a late dinner in his own dining room and goes to sleep in his own bed. Take-home pay for the day: about a million bucks. This gig would be number one, except that [snarky comment about having to hear Billy Joel songs too many times deleted out of consideration for Billy Joel fans].

Number one best job, of course (who else could it be?) is Dan Castellaneta's. He's the voice of Homer Simpson (and Barney Gumble, Grampa Simpson, Mayor Quimby, Krusty the Klown, and Groundskeeper Willie) on "The Simpsons." First of all, he's the voice of Homer Simpson. How great would that be? You'd never shut me up. Second, he gets paid $400,000 per episode, which is 100% gravy...considering he sounds like Homer Simpson.

Honorable mention for Vanna White, who has the easiest job in the world. Hers is not exactly a good job, because it lacks any redeeming reward such as engagement, usefulness, or intellectual challenge. She is paid two million dollars a year to turn letters over on the game show "Wheel of Fortune" (she definitely won the real-life wheel of fortune). Incredibly, a number of years ago they made her job easier...now, instead of rotating the letters manually, which was already incredibly easy, she just touches the screen and the letter appears electronically. Never was labor-saving more gratuitous. It's doubtful anyone ever made more money at a regular job in return for less actual work.

Am I staying away from the computer yet? Sheesh....

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

Writing to be read
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Next Book Sale Will Happen This Month

Time to announce that I've been working with the prestigious Yale University Press for our next book sale. They supplied all the prospects pictured back in March in this post. If all goes well we'll first be offering three superb recent high-end books. As with the books we offered from the Nelson-Atkins Museum, the exhibitions theses books celebrate are over, sales have slowed at the Museum Stores where they have mainly been offered, and Yale has overstock and wants the books to find good homes where they'll be appreciated—which is where you come in, of course. Two are a matched pair and are cooperative publications, so we've still got some details to iron out with them, but I can tell you about the third.

It's special. It is Yale's reprint of the superlative retrospective of Paul Strand published in 2014 to celebrate the acquisition of the core of Strand's own archive by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

It was edited by Peter Barberie, Brodsky Curator of Photographs at Philadelphia's Alfred Stieglitz Center, with Amanda Bock who was the Assistant Curator for the project. An expensively produced, deluxe hardcover, it's the best single volume on Strand published up to the present moment, incorporating the most recent scholarship and including more than 250 illustrations. The scholarly apparatus is first rate (including an edited transcript of a roundtable discussion among leading scholars, which is unusual), and the excellent reproductions capture some of the magic of original prints and are cumulatively quite moving to look at in my opinion.

Even if you have only one book about Paul Strand in your library, this should be it—I think this hits on all cylinders. So the fact that we'll be offering it for less moolah than you could get it for up till now doesn't even need to enter into your calculations.  ;-)  Overseas shipping will be available and will not be as dear as last time.

Supplies will be limited (but not severely) so I'll give you plenty of advance warning about the start of the sale later this month.

Something to look forward to.

Mike
(Thanks to Jim S. and Keith D.)

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

Masters of the past and more
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Dave: "Looking forward to it! Awesome!"

MikeR: "The Paul Strand volume is excellent. We already own a copy, from the 2014 show, which itself was an eye-opener. I do believe he would have loved Photoshop!"

Fulvio Senore: "I have that book and I can confirm that it is an excellent one. The image quality is very high and the book contains a lot of interesting information about Paul Strand."

There's More than One Way to Hunt Wildlife Photos

We've covered the story of wildlife models and photography game farms before, but Quartz's authors and photographers do a thorough job of presenting the issue in a new article called "Love wildlife photos? There’s a good chance they weren’t shot in the wild." The "window-shade" illustrations are a nice touch too. Well done.

In principle I have nothing against the practice, especially considering that people do the same thing with killing animals; we've all heard the stories of big cats being chained up on "widlife preserves" so they can be safely shot as "trophies" by "big game hunters." (Scare quotes well deserved.)

Good for you, Great White Hunter

And yes, whenever humans are responsible for animals, there will be a range in the animals' treatment from ethical and humane to cruel and atrocious. I'm sure not every photo-game-farm wolf, fox, buffalo or cougar is well cared for. But it's not inherently a crime for animals to work for their keep, and all in all I'd rather have them posing to be shot with long-lensed Canons than with high-powered rifles.

As for the photographic results, well, we're learning to be skeptical, aren't we? Listen to what the human photographer says about any picture, and decide whether you want to trust what that person says about what you're looking at. Photographs don't lie; only photographers do. And then only sometimes.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, here at TOP rural HQ we're trying to be courteous to the mother robins who have built their nests under the eaves of the pavilion out back. At first, the dogs coming out the back door would scare them out of the nests and into diversionary tactics; but now they've learned that the canines down on the ground won't hurt them, and they sit there impassively, eyeing all three of us. I try to move slowly and stay out from under the pavilion roof.

My first Spring in this house I tried to dissuade the robins from building their nests on the patio, but robins are bloody-minded in their determination to build their nests where they want to build them: nothing will make them change their minds. So I figure we'll just do our best not to bother them until the hatchlings strike out on their own. It's not so bad. I feel a part of the project, in a small way.

The robins' nests with the mothers gone. It doesn't make for much of a picture, but I don't like to disturb them when they're at home egg-sitting.

Back to the photo game farms: I suppose they're harmless, all things considered. I know the subject is controversial, and any judgement I might make about about it open to challenge and criticism. But it doesn't matter what I think anyway. Different people have different feelings about animals and that's just the way it's always going to be. Check out the article and see what you think.

Mike
(Thanks to Jim Hayes)

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

This photo was not staged
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Ken: "To me, as both a nature lover and an amateur photographer, the biggest thrill of photographing wildlife is the experience of encountering and seeing the animals in their natural environments. Any pictures I get are bonus."

Dennis: "I have no conceptual problem with well run game farms or with photographers using them. I'm sure many specific game farms are problematic. But to me, it isn't wildlife photography; it's closer to zoo photography—maybe somewhere along a sliding scale—and as a result, ends up being something I'm just not that interested in.

"A picture of an animal is a picture of an animal; in and of itself, rarely exceptional as a two-dimensional image. Context is everything. It's not a particular arrangement of form and color that makes us react to a mountain lion cub one way or a snarling grizzly another. Wildlife photos rarely stand on their own as art; they're usually accompanied by some text that provides context. Captions at least or maybe a whole story. Without that, they're postcard pics.

"Ctein once argued on this blog that nobody cares how hard you worked to get the picture and there's obviously truth to that, but I think that with wildlife photography, viewers appreciate knowing that they're looking at something that was difficult to get. I know that reading about how Greg DuToit obtained his 'lion at watering hole' images made me appreciate them more. I looked into a wolf preserve while vacationing in Colorado last year, but my daughter wasn't quite old enough to join us in a 'work encounter' package. Maybe on a return trip. But I had little interest in actually photographing the animals. I'll take a mediocre photograph of an animal that I legitimately encountered in the wild over an excellent photograph of a captive animal any time. (Just like I prefer shooting candids over posed portraits). They're different 'animals' and to each his own."

Miserere: "I strongly object to these wildlife farms, in the same way I object to photographers using model agencies. If you want to photograph a human, book a safari to the nearest concrete jungle and take your chances. That human beings sell themselves and allow to be photographed in exchange for money is disturbing and inhumane (I mean, have you seen the lankiness of those human models? Clearly they're not being fed enough!)."

Mike replies: What an interesting opinion. And one I've never heard before, which doesn't happen often with photographic subjects.

Dave Elden: "Re robins: I have a nest in a similar location that I can watch from my desk. I am very happy to see the birds there because of the way they chase the squirrels off—a squirrel being chased by a robin hasn't got time to chew anything it I don't want it to! Plus the entertainment value of the chases is considerable. Robins, a sign of spring here in Ottawa—although it's snowing right now on top of extensive flooding."

Daniel: "Don't really have a problem with those using handlers and game farm animals. What I do have a problem with is these photographers failing to label the images as captive/tame animals. Many of these photographers try to pass off the set up with tame animals as 'Wildlife' rather than quasi-zoo shots. At least places like Yellowstone, Ding Darling refuge and so many where photographers photograph the same semi-tame animals over and over are 'in the wild' without a handler. Animals so used to people that you can photograph with a normal lens at times—but still 'in the wild' as they are not being driven to a location and a handler helping manage the animal for the image.

"If you photograph it, label it correctly."

How Many Angels

How many angels fit in between a sensor and its protective glass cover?

I've learned over the past few days that there is a fair amount of disputation and conflicting opinion over the matter of whether the protective glass covering the sensors in various cameras makes a difference optically, and if it does, which lenses it affects and in what ways. Facts are in dispute, never mind their significance.

I have to reveal that it's not an issue that keeps me up nights, although I understand and sympathize if you're in a position to want to know about it. It's not like it's a small matter to everyone to drop multiple thousands of dollars on a camera. You want to know what you're in for and I get that.

My personal position, and hence, TOP's recommendation, has been that it's best to use lenses for any camera that the manufacturer intended for that camera. That was true 29 years ago when I started writing about photographic equipment. Things have changed a lot since then. In 1988, Sigma lenses had one single good property: they were cheap to buy. I was pretty convinced that a Sigma zoom could actively deteriorate just sitting on a shelf, never mind when it was being used hard. Now, Sigma is one of the world's best lensmakers, making lenses better than many of the lenses Nikon, Canon, Zeiss and Leica were making in 1988. So things do change. Also, of course, mirrorless came along and suddenly we have a situation we hadn't really seen since the days of Pentax (M42) screwmount and Leica screwmount (which Marc James Small dubbed "LTM" for Leica thread mount): we can use any (or many) lenses on any (many) bodies.

This spells f-u-n, and I know a number of photographers are happily exploring the look of old and odd lenses on their newfangled "digital backs" (mirrorless bodies).

I'd never discourage that. But I think as a recommendation it's still best to counsel potential camera buyers to plan on using whatever lenses each manufacturers makes for a particular body. The exception might be Micro 4/3 lenses, but in that case they're planned to be interchangeable and, because it's a shared standard, nobody in the consortium has to reverse engineer anything.

If Fuji doesn't make the lenses you want for the GFX-50S yet, wait 24 months. Fuji has a great track record of filling in its product lines; it's highly unlikely that waiting for them will be like waiting for APS-C primes or the D300 replacement from Nikon or more dedicated NEX-compatible lenses from Sony.

If you want to experiment with adapted lenses, that's great, but don't expect me to join you in fretting about the effects of sensor glass. It is what it is, the pictures will look like they look, and if you're reasonably flexible in applying optical aesthetics to real pics you'll appreciate what you get or move on.

And by the way: the answer to how many angels can dance on the head of a pin is however many God wants. It ain't up to us.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

/rant
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Bill Bresler: "I've used a Sony a6000 and NEX-6 for a couple of years now. Most of my work is made with the Sony-Zeiss 16–70mm. I have adapters for Nikon glass and shoot with older 24mm, 35mm, 85mm, and 180mm Nikon lenses. A Canon FD adapter is used to mount a Canon 50mm macro. I've had no problems with image quality and am pleased that focus peaking allows me to focus manually with my 62-year-old eyeballs. Whatever works."

Wayne: "It is not only low-priced lenses that actively deteriorate while not being used. I recall sitting in garage, looking at my Norton Combat Commando (motorcycle), when it sprung an oil leak right there in front of my eyes...I had to laugh."

Bill Owens: "Is there any evidence that the lens designers are optimizing their designs for the specific sensor (including the optical characteristics of whatever covering it has) or simply for the physical aspects of the camera, obvious things like focus distance and sensor size?

"I have no dog in this hunt, owning a single DSLR that in these parts would be considered worthy only to prop open a door; every other camera I have takes film (and many of them are M42). None of my lenses were manufactured in this century, much less matched to a specific camera."

Thom Hogan replies to Bill: "Yes, there is evidence that the lens designers are optimizing their designs for specific sensors. As I pointed out way back in 2003, both Canon and Nikon have patents regarding the 'optical characteristics of the sensor ensemble.' Film wasn't an infinitely thin film plane, nor were colors registered at all layers. Digital is actually an optical smorgasbord that attempts to deliver light focused on an infinitely thin plane to a deepish well in the sensor (at least pre-BSI; BSI is a bit different and really needs to be treated differently optically). Thing is, that 'plane' is often forward of the sensor's photo diode. What the Canon and Nikon designs attempted to do was realign the light so it hit the photo diode more telecentrically. Since those early optical systems in front of the sensor, things have gotten more complicated, with UVIR filtering, low pass filtering, microlenses, BSI, and photo diode walls all having some impacts on how the light rays behave before and at the sensing point. The Kodak SLR/14n was one of the first to really show what happens when optics aren't matched between lens and sensor: it had very visible side-to-side color variation on some lenses, mostly because of light pollution on adjacent photosites as you moved towards the edges with lenses that provide light at steep angles."

Open Mike: A Short Break (Blog Notes)

Keuka in the rain

It's visiting season here in the Finger Lakes again! Hallelujah. After a long, cold, lonely, long Winter. Did I mention long?

TOP will be off for a week starting this coming Wednesday and resuming again the following Wednesday. That's May 10th (first day off) and May 17th (first day publishing again).

I'll write a "what I did on my vacation" when I pull the starter cord on the ol' blog again.

I'm going to try to take three week-long breaks this year, for purposes of battery rechargement (rechargeation?). I'll leave you with some links to oldies but goodies on Tuesday. (Never make promises Mike, never make promises Mike, never make....) I will though.

Just a reminder: if you are planning on passing through the Finger Lakes, my friends Llewellyn Lafford and Laurel O'Donnell will be happy to give you a discount at their La Belle Vie Bed & Breakfast on Main Street in Penn Yan. (The town is named for its Pennsylvanian and Yankee early settlers. If you've read the outstanding book American Nations, one of the best books I've ever read about the U.S.A., we are in the old Burned-Over District, on the border between Yankeedom and the Midlands region.)

See the Amish horses and buggies passing by the front door, walk to Penn Yan's 19th-century downtown, and strike out into the countryside to photograph bucolic farmland scenes and local waterfalls. All the local restaurants are now open and Laurel and Llew can help you find them. Their gorgeously decorated 19th-century Italianate house (shown) features magnificent interiors and makes a nice base of operations. Plus, they'll invite me to join you for breakfast on the last day of your stay. We have had some epic, lively, and very convivial conversations on those occasions. Here's the website. I don't do formal portfolio reviews any more, but you're welcome to come by for lunch, meet Butters and Lulu, and bring some work.

The Finger Lakes of Upstate New York. That's Lake Ontario at the top. You can see the cities of Rochester at the upper left and Syracuse at the upper right, and the course of the Chemung River, a tributary of the Susquehanna, is at the bottom. My lake, Keuka, is the one that looks like a slingshot.

There is loads to do in the area. There's the Corning Museum of Glass and the Rockwell Museum of American Art in Corning, Mark Twain's house in Elmira, and the George Eastman Museum in nearby Rochester. Just down the road from me is the recently renovated Curtiss Museum, dedicated to the aviation pioneer and chock full of antique motorcycles, planes, cars, and boats (among many other things, including a horse-drawn sleigh and a Civil War field cannon and, curiously, a collection of artifacts from 1960s-'80s outer-space television shows, including the robot from "Lost In Space."). Whether you like spectacular scenery or cars, Watkins Glen is a must-visit. Although not in the Finger Lakes, Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame are halfway between the Finger Lakes and Albany. And of course the region is known for the more than 100 wineries, breweries and distilleries centered around Keuka, Seneca, and Cayuga Lakes, many of which have fine restaurants and offer free or inexpensive tastings.  Vineyard bus tours offering local knowledge (and a designated driver!) draw thousands of tourists every year from all over the world.

Mike

"Open Mike" is the editorial, off-topic, and administrative grab-bag of TOP. It is supposed to appear on Fridays and sometimes actually does.

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

...Or continue to visit virtually
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Rick Popham: "Back in 2013 my nephew graduated from RIT and I went up for the ceremony. I intended to visit the Eastman Museum, but I ended up going with my brother, my nephew and his friends to The Strong Museum of Play. What a great place—and a real step back to childhood for me. A lot of the toys I remember as a kid are represented there, although the collection does date back to even earlier days."

Bill Mitchell: "It's Spring, and you live in one of the most beautiful places in the world. The best possible vacation would be to just stay home and enjoy it—forget schedules."

Mike replies: You are correct sir.

The World's Most Desirable Camera (Has a Slight Problem)

For a couple of years back in the heyday of digital, I nominated a camera as "The World's Most Desirable Camera"—which is absurd, of course. I meant the hottest of the hot newest products, the thing that everyone was talking about, the thing that had the highest or most widely shared degree of covetability.

Right now, that would be the Fuji GFX.

We should get used to calling it the "Fuji GFX-50S," because we'll have to as soon as another GFX camera model comes along. Remember "the OM-D"? When there was only one, we could call it that. Now we have to specify which OM-D. Pretty soon there will be another Fuji GFX (no, I don't have any information), and we'll have to call the first one the 50S.

So we might as well start calling it that now.

The fetching Fuji GFX, which we should start calling the 50S

I've decided I personally don't covet a Fuji 50S. I just do that sometimes—try not to covet what I can't get. It'll only drive ya crazy. I've gotten good at not wanting things.

A mote in the eye of Ye Paragon
Anyway it seems the Internet has reached its first small determination about the 50S—it works best with its own lenses. Lloyd Chambers of Diglloyd has figured out that Fuji put a piece of protective glass 9mm away from the sensor so that any dust on the protective glass would be defocused and become invisible to the sensor. That's fine with Fuji's own lenses, because it's taken into account in the design, but Lloyd has found that it causes increasing unsharpness toward the edges with adapted lenses shorter than 85mm.

This doesn't sound like a concern to me, because if I were coveting a Fuji 50S, I'd be coveting its own lenses to use with it. Let's face it: with all of Fuji's products, the glorious lens lines are one of the reasons to want the camera in the first place. Can you imagine buying one of the top-of-the-line Fuji X twins, the X-T2 or X-Pro2, and not using the XF lenses Fuji makes for them? I wouldn't be caught dead.

But your mileage may vary. There are lots of reasons people might want to use adapted lenses. Anyway caveat emptor.

If I were going to make a hobby of adapted lenses (and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that—quite the opposite, it sounds like more fun than the proverbial barrel full of monkeys) I'd get a Sony A7II or one of the other A7 series cameras. The A7II is cheap (for a full-frame mirrorless with in-body image stabilization [IBIS], important because IBIS works with adapted lenses too), it's full-frame, and there are heaps of adapters made for it.

Back to fabulous Fuji-land...
If only, I muse to myself, if only there were someone out there who could write a review of the coveted GFX-50S for us. In the rolling mists of my imagination I picture someone who lives high in a tower in a White City...someone with Japanese heritage, even, who is daily surrounded by many cameras like heaps of gold...someone who is himself a fine if as-yet little-known photographer of said White City, who is astute about the ways of art and knows great Museums down to the warrens and vaults of their out-of-sight treasures...how I would love to post a review for you of the World's Most Desirable Camera from such a shutter-clicking knight-errant*...am I merely dreaming?...very well then I dream....

Nah, I'm coveting stuff again, and that will never do.

Mike
(Thanks to Michael Perini)

*A knight-errant (or knight errant, or white knight) is "a figure of medieval chivalric romance literature. The adjective errant (meaning 'wandering, roving') indicates how the knight-errant would wander the land in search of adventures to prove his chivalric virtues, either in knightly duels (pas d'armes) or in some other pursuit of courtly love." (Wikipedia)

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

A k-nicht who says ni
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Featured Comments from:

Jeremy: "I've succumbed to the temptation and got the GFX last month, together with the 32–64mm ƒ/4 and the 63mm ƒ/2.8.

"I've been using Fuji cameras for a few years now and I really like the bodies, lens line-up, and image quality. Especially, the black-and-white conversions are somehow effortlessly nice. The GFX, compared to X-T2 (which it replaced for me) is like a premium version of the same car—everything, except for speed and video, is ever so slightly better: the build quality, the ergonomics, the color rendering, the exposure range, the high-ISO noise, the ability to shoot in more aspect ratios in live view with little resolution penalty, the battery life, the tilting viewfinder. All of this translates to a much more satisfying shooting experience overall, for me. I have large hands, and the GFX is actually much nicer to hold than the X-T series (but I still prefer the X100 for casual picture taking). I dislike 'unnatural' highlight roll-off characteristic of many digital cameras: the GFX renders highlights beautifully. I like using the camera at lower-than-eye-level: both the viewfinder and the LCD screen are tiltable. I like to use square and panoramic aspect ratios: seeing them before capture and having enough resolution to crop heavily is lovely.

"There are nice touches everywhere, such as the rotating information display on the rear screen when you're shoot in vertical orientation (X-T[x] has that, but only in the viewfinder), nicer dials, addition of the 'C' position to switch between dials on lenses and command dials etc., etc.

"The lenses are fantastic too, especially the zoom, which is very sharp and focuses very quickly. The 63mm is quite small for a medium-format ƒ/2.8 lens, and surprisingly light.

"There is one issue though: I'm an (avid) amateur and I don't need the GFX. In the same way as I don't need a top-spec car model. But I like and enjoy it so much that even on days when I'm not using it 'purposefully' I still pick it up and walk around the house snapping happily.

"I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but it is a great camera, and well worth considering if you're looking for top-notch image quality in a very versatile package."

Mark Kinsman: "So did Ken Tanaka respond to your thinly-veiled call out? 😊

Mike replies: Yes. He says he's working on a "a 'field notes'-style article rather than a full review of the GFX." Which sounds perfect. I can't wait! [UPDATE: See Ken's comment in the Comments section below.]

Bob Johnston: "If I had the money to buy a GFX would I buy one? You bet I would. Would it mean that I would produce better photographs? You bet it wouldn't."

Mike replies: I think I concur exactly.

Your Camera Is Too Slow

Where is Ctein when you need him? I shouldn't be writing this. Researchers at Lund University in Sweden recently announced that they have developed the world's fastest camera, capable of five trillion exposures per second, according to an article at IFLScience. I couldn't find an April 1st dateline. The article claims the scientists can photograph light itself, traversing a distance equivalent to the thickness of a sheet of paper. "The researchers could film events as short as 0.2 trillionths of a second, the fastest ever possible. This is fast enough to actually visualize the movement of light. You can see this in the video [at the link], which shows the movement of light in femtoseconds—one millionth of a billionth of a second...."

Things like this are why less educated people mistrust science. How is this less preposterous than alien flying saucers or ghost sightings, on the face of it?

Anyway, we're photographers, so no worries! Our usual reflexes tell us how to respond: "I need one." Your Sony A7R II, Leica SL Typ 601, Canon 5DS R or Fuji GFX-50S all just got horribly, pathetically inadequate. Sorry. Start saving now.

First guy who owns a 5-trillion FPS camera wins.

Mike
(Thanks to Steven Ralser)

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

Not fast, but good, but not fast
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Featured Comments from:

Zack Schindler: "Yeah the camera might be fast but how good is the bokeh? And some of the pictures are soft in the corners when I blow them up 2000%. Don't see any mention about how good the micro contrast is. Not going to buy the current version but will wait until the next one comes out because the rumor site says that it will be twice as betterer! Oh and the rumor site also says that Leica is coming out with one wrapped in unicorn leather rubbed with mermaid tears."

Paul: "How many frames can this camera take before the buffer is full? I assume that the whole duration that can be photographed/filmed that way is less than a millisecond. And since most of our subjects tend to move or change very, very little over such a short time, you may as well make do with shooting a single frame instead of taking the same photo more than a billion times  ;-)  .

"Now on the other hand, if you average all of them, the result should be completely noise-free. Hmmm...."

Bill Tyler: "Here's a little background for readers who aren't chemists or physicists. That diagram is a take-off on phase diagrams used to show the states of matter (solid, liquid, gas) at various combinations of temperature and pressure. Here's an example, for water."

hugh crawford: "Re 'the fastest camera ever, able to capture an astonishing 5 trillion frames a second.' All true except that it's not a 'camera,' it can't take 'frames' (I assume if it is recording a single photon it has a resolution of one pixel?) and it can't run for a second, so no five trillion 'frames.'

"It's sort of like saying the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport can go 254 miles in an hour, except that you would have to stop for gas six times, replace the tires about five times, and replace the wheels once or twice. 'A set of the Super Sport’s special Michelin tires costs $42,000 and may last 10,000 miles if you’re careful, though they last only 15 minutes at the car’s top speed (at that pace, however, the 26.4-gallon tank is sucked dry in just 10 minutes, and there’s no place on Earth to safely go that fast that long anyway, so no worries). At the third tire replacement, Michelin requires that you also swap out the $69,000 wheels—coincidentally, the only wheels that fit those tires—to ensure a proper bead seal.'"

vijay: "And you thought editing was hard now...."

Norm Nicholson: "To overcome this problem, I am planning on working on a project that I am calling “BRAIN” (Binary Recursive Anal Intensive Nooks.) The concept is brilliantly simple, or perhaps simply brilliant. Say you take a photo of your friend Paul standing on the grass in front of your house. Sometime later you look at that photograph. Now who better to analyze that photo than you? My device scans your brain! (neurons, neuralgic synapses, hemispheric kinks, thought patterns, etc). When it finishes scanning scanning your brain, BRAIN quickly categorises your photo for you. With sufficient funding, it should be ready in a few months. P. S. Mike, can you direct me to a good Crowd Funding website?"

Mike replies: Can't you scan my brain for that information?

Stephen S. Mack: "Wins what?"

Mike replies: Ooh, now you're getting all bro-existential.

Nicholas Condon: "Okay, I am not Ctein, but I am an honest-to-Feynman optical scientist (who specializes in lasers and nonlinear optics), so I pulled the original paper and read it. This is amazingly clever stuff, but it's not exactly what you'd call a general-purpose camera. For one thing, its temporal resolution is provided by the exotically short laser pulse used for illumination, which puts some rather stringent limits on the sort of thing being imaged. It's also not exactly going to acquire a 10-second burst of images, either...."

Photo Library Management

No text

Mike
(Thanks to David Bostedo [and several other readers later])

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

If you don't get it
Try this

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Featured Comments from:

Kenneth Tanaka: "A cute and clever illustration! Related to your earlier topic on perfectionism, library management, whatever the materials being catalogued, is one place where a perfectionist is most welcome...indeed, required!"

Hwo to Cure Perfectionism

Here are a few suggestions for curing photo-related perfectionism.

First, a few words about the words. The other day in the "Level With Me" post, I wrote, "...a fair number of photographers are meticulous or fastidious (the more pejorative words might be fussy or picky)...."

It's tough terminology all right; a lot of the available words have negative connotations. And if not connotations, associations. To be technical-sounding—and also neutral—it's become common to refer to the characteristic as "OCD" or "obsessive" or "compulsive" or those latter two words linked together. I confess I've been guilty of this me own self.

Well, wrong, wrong, and wrong. The word is perfectionism—and "control issues" and perfectionsim are not OCD. I finally got around to reading up on OCD recently—at a reader's recommendation I read Judith L. Rapoport's The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Washing: The Experience and Treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. OCD is a serious (but curable, or at least manageable) mental disorder that manifests itself as extreme, insistent personal superstitions that the sufferer tries to cope with by means of private and personal ritual behaviors, usually concealed from others, the most common of which, in the early stages, are repeated washing (as of the hands) or repeated checking (to see if a door is locked or a stove is off, for example), but which can proliferate in all sorts of wild ways and can be extremely bizarre. It is a distinctive malady and is not in any way the same as being fastidious about level horizons or enjoying careful craftsmanship.

As an aside to my aside, In some outlier cases perfectionists deserve pejorative terms! I once helped a friend to sell a particularly superb example of a Leica M4—he had searched high and wide for it, and it was a survivor, without blemish or defect. We located a German collector who paid top dollar—er, deutsche mark—for it, and we shipped it off to Germany. A month or two later it was returned along with anxious importunings for a refund. Obviously with the use of a magnifying glass, the collector had identified a "pinhole" defect in the chrome plating of the top plate, which a.) was not visible to the naked eye at a normal eye-to-hand viewing distance, and b.) the collector admitted was very likely a factory defect—meaning, Leica made the camera that way and the pinhole was there when the camera was brand new.

Now that dude—er, der Kerl—had a problem! But it was a problem with perfectionism. Not necessarily OCD.

Anyway (a former editor of mine once said, "you do go on, don't you?"), maybe I'll try to find a different technical term.

I like persnickety.

Slider anxiety
Level horizons and rectilinear lines are hardly the only persnicketyness related to pictures. One I've written about before is "slider anxiety"—defined as the fear that you haven't pushed that slider hard enough, and that maybe a little more might help. Could that picture use just a little more sharpness/saturation/max black/vibrance/whatever? You're worried that people might think your picture isn't quite enough of something, and your anxiety and insecurity allows you gradually to creep over the edge of right reason into excess. Or, you find yourself fretting about whether your lens is sharp enough in all ways and in every situation. Maybe you replace a perfectly nice older Canon 50mm Macro with a Sigma 50mm ART and then replace the 50mm ART with a Zeiss Otus 55mm and then find yourself worrying that maybe, just maybe, the Leica SL 50mm is just a tiny bit better than your Otus.

Whatever it is, here are two ways to deal with persistent persnickety thoughts:

• Go the other way. Do the opposite. If you fret and fuss over whether your pictures are saturated enough, force yourself to shoot heavily unsaturated pictures for three weeks. If you worry over whether you have a big enough sensor in your camera, buy a 1" sensor camera and see what you can do with it. Put the Otus away and shoot with a Lensbaby for a while. Whatever it is that you find yourself anxious about, take the bull by the horns, confront the demon, and banish the angst!

Remember those Islamic mosiac-makers in the Middle Ages who would deliberately place one tile out of place because perfection was reserved for Allah.

And if you're persnickety about level horizons, be glad you're not my student. You know what your next exercise would be.  :-)

• Find a different outlet for the impulse. I learned this when I forced myself to photograph with a view camera (a beautiful Wista) for a Summer, for the experience. What I found was that my 35mm shooting suddenly got much more free and loose. I realized that I had been composing very carefully and deliberately with the 35mm camera—which I had not even been aware of before. When the view camera came into my life—a camera much more suited to careful and deliberate compositions—it relieved my 35mm shooting of satisfying those impulses.

If you recognize some photographic impulse that you know you're being persnickety about, find a way to embrace and indulge it outside of your main picturetaking or -making activities. It could very well help.

(Of course it's possible that your photography is already the outlet for some less-than-healthy impulse, as a way of diverting it from some other area of your life. In which case, carry on.)

The not always silent sufferers
I lived underneath a woman who had OCD once when Xander was a baby. I never met this unfortunate sufferer, but I gradually learned some of her habits. The first was that she had to sweep and mop all the floors in her apartment every evening, including moving all the furniture away from the walls. (The rumbling and scraping of furniture being moved every night at the same time mystified me for a good long while.) Another was that every morning she left for work with her briefcase in one hand and a large shopping bag full of clothes in the other. A neighbor who did know her told me that she dropped off the clothes at the laundromat every morning and picked them up on her way home. And this is what tortured me—although the clothes came back from the laundromat folded, every morning she re-folded each item of clothing on an ironing board in her kitchen and marched it individually into her bedroom to put it away in the drawer. Her bedroom that was directly above mine, that would be. Stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp. Every morning. Back and forth and back and forth. Starting at 4:45. And me with a baby to take care of, short on sleep anyway.

Funny, with apartments hard to get in the near suburbs of Chicago at that time, the one I got happened to be sitting vacant. Coincidence? Unfortunately not.

Well, I do go on. That's enough about this—this should have been a short post. Butters is getting very antsy to go out and chase down his tennis ball...

...Which—oh, all right—he is obsessed with.  :-)

Mike

P.S. That old Canon Macro is one heck of a sharp lens.

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

This post needs an illustration, but I'll try not to
obsess about it.
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Larry Gebhardt: "Was the spelling in the title intentional?"

Mike replies: I experimented with different misspellings. I originally put the mistake in the word “perfectionism,” but then I thought that people might be searching for that word so I’d better not screw that up. No one would search for the post with the word “how.”

Had to get it just right.  ;-) .

Roy Feldman: "See last sentence: 'Surrealism lies at the heart of the photographic enterprise: in the very creation of a duplicate world, of a reality in the second degree, narrower but more dramatic than the one perceived by natural vision. The less doctored, the less patently crafted, the more naive-the more authoritative the photograph was likely to be.' —Susan Sontag."

Mike replies: I've always thought that the best photograph is one that looks like it just fell out of the camera, no matter how hard you worked to get it. The best art looks artless, in my view.

SteveW: "This column has struck a chord with me. I avoid editing photos like the plague. I shoot JPEGs in-camera, and that is that. Once in a blue moon I will crop, but only to send out for a print. This column provided a kind of revelation for me, in that my avoidance of the sliders is to avoid anxiety brought on by indecision and uncertainty. I don't like to go there. Perhaps the best medicine would be to rock and roll with the sliders and just let it rip. Thanks Mike. P.S. I also obsess a bit regarding lens quality, but I thought that was normal, haha."

Mike replies: It's certainly common, but I don't know how normal we are.  :-)

Hans Muus: "Beautiful piece. And so recognizable. The (very) late hours in the darkroom spoiled with endlessly reprinting the same image with very small changes—changes so incremental I couldn't tell the prints apart in daylight the next morning. And then there is 'backwards perfectionism,' the urge to re-do all your earlier work in the style/technique you practice now, thus not only exerting your present energy in the wrong direction, but also denying your former self."

mike plews: "Twenty two years ago I witnessed a murder. After the initial shock wore off I was left with a pretty solid case of depression. I was sad, anxious and felt like my body was encased in cement. Just getting out of bed was a colossal challenge. And there were nightmares right out of Hieronymous Bosch. I recognized my condition for what it was and decided that if it did not pass in a reasonable period I was going to seek help. In a month I was OK but it left me with a deep respect for people dealing with chronic depression. Since that time I have never said depressed when I really meant sad or frustrated. Same for OCD. This stuff can hurt just like a broken bone."

Mike replies: Yes. Depression is an extremely serious disease; it kills a lot of people. There's a very good 52-and-a-half minute summary lecture about depression by Stanford's Robert Sapolsky on YouTube. I like the way he balances the physiological and psychological components. It takes a certain genius for reductionism to create such a comprehensive overview, and he does an excellent job. (I was originally tipped to the video by a TOP reader.)

Andy Johnson: "Re 'I lived underneath a woman'—that must have been very uncomfortable...I prefer to be on T.O.P."

Nick Hunt: "Mike—firstly, I have to correct you. It's 'pernickety'—no 's.' (Well darn me—autocorrect has just told be it has got an 's.' Wretched thing must be set to US English.) Secondly, my slider anxiety is different. I am fearful of moving the slider too far. What if I go over the top? What if my photos are thought of as (oh, horror!) gauche? Your 'aversion therapy' approach—apologies for another misappropriated and abused medical term—won't work. If I use less colour or less contrast or whatever for a week, then at the end of it I'll be...perfectly happy. Less is more. I love working in monochrome. Maybe I need to go super-saturated? But then there's the gauche thing, remember? Oooooph...."

Mike replies: Your aversion therapy would indeed be to make over-the-top, boldly gauche, crass photos for a week. But remember you only need aversion therapy if you are trying to cure yourself of a behavior that troubles or impedes you. If it doesn't bother you, then it's just the way you are. No cure needed.

Mus: "____________LEVEL HORIZON____________"

Bruce Gerencser: "I am a perfectionist. The why I am would take too long to explain. The short answer is that I spent most my life in Fundamentalist Christianity, both as a member and a pastor, and certain beliefs I held drove me towards perfectionism. This perfectionist tendency, of course, has filtered down into my photography work. There is no such thing as a perfect picture, and that poses a real problem for perfectionists. 😀 When I am editing photos, I have my definitely-not-a-perfectionist wife help with deciding which photographs I keep and which I delete. I've found she tempers my perfectionist tendencies.

"Forty plus years of walking the perfectionist trail has resulted in what my counselor calls Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD). OCPD has OCD simularities, but is not OCD. Here's a link you might find interesting."

Alberto: "Reading your articles is always a great inspiration for me and I'm so amazed from your ability to find so many interesting arguments, not only strictly related to photography. I find your 'Hwo to' article very funny to read and inspiring. I will follwo your example and I will let my photography to be more forgiving to small deffects."

alex-virt: "Another great article I can relate to! I am obsessed with sharpness and compulsively view my each picture at 100% and check sharpness in every corner. To cure this, I bought Nokia Lumia 1020, a 40MP phone whose lens is woefully unsharp in the corners. Have been shooting with it for about a month almost exclusively. I am thinking of doing a 'One Camera, One Lens, One Year' exercise with this phone.  :-)  "

Richard Skoonberg: "I like this point you made: 'Remember those Islamic mosiac-makers in the Middle Ages who would deliberately place one tile out of place because perfection was reserved for Allah.' It reminds me of beautiful Afghani carpets. When you compare these beautiful, handmade carpets to similar versions manufactured by machine in Europe, the difference is found in the imperfections created by handwork and manual looms: the borders aren't square, patterns don't repeat properly and there are flaws caused by the loom. The European versions are perfect and square. But it is the imperfections that delight the eye and reflect our humanity back to us."

Mike replies: I like your last sentence very much...well said.

Bob Rosinsky: "I have OCD. As did my mother and maternal grandfather. Unfortunately, my grandfather, a pharmacist, self-medicated. My mother spent half of her waking hours ritualizing, and I suffered from age seven up to age 35. I did not ritualize so much as suffer from intrusive thoughts (obsessions). Imagine a radio blaring horrendous words, awful sentences, and toxic content nonstop. Tourette Syndrome often accompanies OCD. I've had long bouts of Tourette; not fun.

"For me, the onset of OCD started around age seven. My first severe bout started in the fourth grade and persisted, nonstop, for a year. Eventually it receded. OCD is an anxiety disorder, so for many, it ebbs and flows.

"My intrusive thoughts were terrifying. Not until age 35, when I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, did I seek psychiatric care.

"My first visit with the psychiatrist changed my life. Within five minutes he diagnosed my condition as OCD. Furthermore, he told me about a class of drugs (SSRIs) that are effective in the treatment of OCD as well as certain other anxiety disorders.

"I was relieved to learn that there were other people who suffered from OCD and that I was not a freak, not alone. On the other hand, I was ambivalent about taking a psychotropic drug.

"After a lot of soul searching, revealing my 'secret' in gory detail to my wife, and two or three more sessions with the psychiatrist, I consented to begin drug therapy. It took a year or two, along with weekly sessions with a licensed mental health counselor, to find the correct drug and dosage and acquire coping skills.

"My quality of life skyrocketed. By my 37th birthday, my mind had quieted down and the Tourette Syndrome receded.

"I am 58 years old. I continue to visit a psychiatrist every other month. I have a weekly session with a CBT therapist.

"In graduate school, I became interested in neuroscience and sensation and perception. I am especially excited about the rapid pace of progress in brain science.

"I have always been a fastidious photographer. Many photographers, designers, engineers, chefs, craftspeople, tradesmen, and others are fastidious, and they are often held back over smallish details at the expense of losing sight of the big picture. I believe perfectionism is stifling. However, I think there are distinctions between perfectionism and paying attention to details. Perhaps perfectionism and an eye for detail fall along a spectrum. I can only speculate.

"I've read that OCD will be excluded from the next revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It is being reclassified as a neurological disorder rather than a psychiatric illness. Hmm."

A Gem of a GEM

Volunteer docent and photo-history expert Jim Ulrich next to the Museum's lunar module camera in the History of Photography Gallery at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York

I had a red-letter weekend this past weekend. I had a date on Saturday (I felt a bit like Mrs. Hughes in "Downton Abbey": "I'm astonished that at my age..."), which was a lot of fun. I drove to Rochester—her backyard—and we went to the George Eastman Museum (GEM)—a little patch of my territory. She knew her way around Rochester but not the Museum, and I knew my way around the Museum but not Rochester. So we complemented each other in that regard like Jack Spratt and his missus.

The GEM cannot quite decide what its name should be. I grew up with it as "The George Eastman House," or GEH, which is how I still think of it. I can't parse its naming history for you, but at some point its full name was "George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film."

The genteel facade facing East Avenue in Rochester might make you think it's some sort of quaint decaying house museum with just a bunch of some dead guy's random old things lying about. Don't be fooled. The sprawling mansion comprises a whopping 35,000 square feet and contains vast underground vaults and a 500-seat theater (which shows classic movies among other things). And even that facade is a fooler. It's (appropriately) in the Georgian Revival style, designed by the famous architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, but George E. was more than a bit of a nut—the whole mansion is constructed like a massive bunker, with walls of 14-inch-thick reinforced concrete. Even the roof is thick concrete underneath its demure shingles. Altogether, including George's eccentric renovations, the house cost more to build than the magnificent main building of the National Gallery on the Mall in Washington D.C.

And of course the photography collection is one of the world's best, with more than 14,000 photographers represented and numberless treasures. I think our tourguide said there are more than 450,000 pieces in the collection (films, photographs, objects, and ephemera), although with my innumeracy affliction you should please take that figure as provisional.

Pilgrimage
We were looking at the strange documentary work of objects by Robert Cumming, which is full of humor and at the same time emotionally barren, an odd combination (and not particularly date-friendly), when we were buttonholed by an affable docent named Jim Ulrich who was doing a sweep of the galleries rounding up people for his lecture on the history of photography. In the history gallery they were showing examples of Mexican photography, and Jim warmed to the Daguerreian era, which was fun. I will say that the GEM does a better job than any museum I know of showing equipment along with photographs—the cameras in the little history of photography room were awesome. Just the lineup of Leica rangefinders from first to latest was probably worth well into six figures, if not seven.

Later we met up with Jim again in the house, and he regaled us with more stories and even played the massive pipe organ for us. The pipe organ that serenaded George for an hour as he ate breakfast every morning was destroyed by fire in 1949, but the current replacement is the largest residential pipe organ in the world. Surround-sound, too!

George Eastman's famous suicide note under glass in the children's
classroom that used to be his bedroom. "To my friends /
my work is done / why wait? / GE."

Can anyone recommend a good biography of George Eastman? I get more curious about him every time I visit the GEM.

Long story short, the GEM is a gem, and worthy of a pilgrimage at some point in your life. Come in the temperate months when you can see the gardens and grounds, and check that the show on view at the time you'll come is something you want to see. It's a lot more than just an old mansion—it's a major photography museum on par with the best in the world.

As if that weren't good enough for one weekend, on Sunday an old college buddy from Dartmouth was in the area with his wife and several members of his far-flung, charming, sociable family—Scott was definitely one of the cool kids in school—and they invited me to join them for dinner at one of the best winery restaurants in the area, called Veraisons. We had a great time.

Despite all the activities on my date on Saturday, I do have to say that the best part of it was sitting in the near-deserted café for an hour and a half, just the two of us, chatting.

Oh, and one more thing—Jim Ulrich told me that "ordinary people"—that would be me—can request to view original prints from the GEM vaults, to look at up close and personal with white gloves on, just like I used to do all the time at the Library of Congress.

So if you never hear from me again, now you know the reason.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

Make a date
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Huw Morgan: "I would heartily second your opinion. GEM is a gem. For people who can afford it, I would recommend taking one of the excellent courses at the museum. Not only will you learn a new skill, but you'll also get to spend three days hanging around in the museum soaking up the atmosphere."

Mark Hobson: George Eastman: A Biography by Elizabeth Brayer—a magnificent, painstakingly researched book—702 pages—about a very interesting man. It is an absolute must read."

Bryce Lee: "All too many years ago was able to spend at day at the GEM. That was over 50 years ago; suspect it is no less impressive now. Mind it's not every residence that has a 'proper' non-digital pipe organ in-house...."

Speed: "Innumerate or not, you were in the ballpark.... 'The photography collection at the George Eastman Museum, among the oldest and best in the world, comprises more than 400,000 photographic objects dating from the introduction of the medium in 1839 through to the present day. It encompasses works made in all major photographic processes, from daguerreotype to digital, includes work by more than eight thousand photographers, and continues to expand.' From the Museum's website."

Stephen Voss on Trump's First 100 Days

Photo by Stephen Voss

Longtime TOP reader Stephen Voss, a photographer who lives and works in Washington DC, has been "documenting the upheaval and psychological tumult of the Trump Administration here in DC on both a local and federal level," as he says, and now has a major portfolio published at Politico.

Politico's introduction: "For anyone who lives in Washington, it was clear Donald Trump campaigned against the city in two ways. He ran against 'Washington,' the metaphorical seat of unchecked government power, and also against the actual city of Washington, a multicultural, Democratic stronghold that embraces immigration, marijuana and seemingly every other progressive policy Trump voters rejected. Since the inauguration, photographer Stephen Voss has been documenting the city’s uneasy relationship with its highest-profile new resident."

Outstanding documentary photojournalism, well worth taking a look from a photographic perspective regardless of your politics. Big congratulations to Stephen.

Mike

P.S. Here's Stephen's website.

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No tumult
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Level With Me

So I want to talk about leveling the camera. Or the world. Well, actually, both—because when you tilt the camera, of course, you tilt the world in your picture, too.

It amused me that the Earth and the skies in this scene seem to be tilting in opposite directions.

I don't always use the leveling feature of cameras that have them. I usually leave them on, but I find it easy to ignore them. I've always been of the opinion that it's better to get the picture to feel right than it is to get it to be right. The apparent "tilt" of the clouds and the tilt of the horizon line in the shot above oppose each other, so if you corrected one till it looked more or less "level" you'd make the other look completely wrong.

This was just coincidental, of course—an accident of perspective and a gently sloping hill. In this shot, I did use the camera's leveling index—the camera was perfectly horizontal when the exposure was made.

Horizon uncertainty
Up here in the Finger Lakes, I've noticed that I've had more trouble leveling the camera than I used to have. I can't quantify that; it's just a feeling I have. It's not as easy, somehow, to get the picture to "look right" purely visually.

Here's a good example. Does this look straight to you? This was taken very late, just before twilight. I saw the clouds approaching from the top of the hill as I was driving home and drove to a hotel parking lot at the head of the East branch of the lake knowing I could get an unobstructed view from there. I wasn't out photographing and only had my iPhone. Curiously, this sky lasted for only about five minutes before it dissipated and became ordinary again.

It was dark enough that I could see the viewing screen perfectly well, but I couldn't easily figure out how to angle the device so the scene looked right. The shoreline on the right is at a steep angle to where I stood, but the shoreline to the left is more perpendicular to my sightline. In the middle of the picture we're seeing more than eight miles down the East branch of the lake to the south. The actual waterlines are all but hidden in the dark reflections of the land. Again, as in the top picture, the striations in the cloud formations look like they're slanting upwards from left to right. It looks like the whole picture needs to be tilted down at the right, doesn't it?

(Down by the water I met a nice couple from Pennsylvania who were staying at the hotel. They asked me to take a portrait of them using their phone with the dramatic skies as a background. I moved them where I wanted them and took several and then asked them to check that they liked it, offering to take another if they didn't. They looked at it and the woman exclaimed, "Ooh, look at you, all creative! You're hired!")

I was holding the phone almost perfectly level when I took this, but the reflections of those two distant lights tell me that the right side of the picture should even be a tad higher than it is...even though it already looks a little too high to me. I've played around with the picture in Photoshop and found I couldn't tilt it such that it would snap into "looking right" as often happens with all sorts of corrections.

Anyway this is just an example. With our steep hills, long, narrow lakes, and turbulent, changing skies, this sort of "horizon uncertainty" seems to happen to me a lot up here. I notice because I find myself looking at the leveling line in the camera viewfinder more often, just out of curiosity. Then I'll level the camera according to the index and think, "really? That's leveled? That doesn't look level."

A photo by Garry Winogrand from the quixotic project Women Are Beautiful

Squared and true
A number of photographers, most notably Garry Winogrand, deliberately tilted the camera as part of their compositions. Winogrand used tilt as part of his strategy to make pictures that didn't look like what people expected photographs to look like. I know from long experience that a fair number of photographers are meticulous or fastidious (the more pejorative words might be fussy or picky) about leveled horizons, and are "bothered" by camera tilt. Especially horizons on water. I'm not, although I do typically hold the camera level. How do you feel about it? There was one camera—I forget what it was—that I naturally held at a slight slant for some reason; the viewfinder wasn't right when the camera felt right. I found I often had to correct myself. It does depend on the camera you use, of course. Large format photographers, who typically set up very carefully, often use spirit levels, which are sometimes built into the camera body, to get the camera squared and true. Winogrand, on the other hand, used a Leica one-handed.

A horizon leveling index line in a camera viewfinder is one of many camera features that are new since the film era. I like 'em; it never hurts to know when you're on the level. And, lately, as I say, I find myself referring to it more than ever.

Mike

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Always on the level.
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Geoff Wittig: "Hah! I find the in-viewfinder leveling feature essential. Even when I'm composing on a tripod, somehow I always manage to have the left side sloping down unless I consciously correct myself. It did help somewhat when I finally got a tripod tall enough for me.

"Here in the Finger Lakes, part of the problem is the bizarre topography. The hills around the lakes all get taller and steeper as you head south, and the shale/limestone strata are all gently tilted, so if you match your frame to (say) the rock ledges at a waterfall, it will often be a tad off for the horizon, and nothing looks right. I painfully discovered this when I proudly showed a slide of the waterfalls on our property at a critique led by the estimable John Shaw. To my dismay I saw the entire crowd tilt their heads to the left in unison in an effort to square my image with reality. In my defense, the rock strata did not match the horizon. But it still looked 'off.' Now I try to make sure the image looks true, regardless of where 'level' really is. And oddly the viewfinder level helps a lot with this."

Michael Poster: "I’ve always thought of camera angle as a way to promote an 'active' frame or a 'settled' frame. So a tilted camera (fore and aft and/or side to side) is more likely to contribute to an active picture while a level camera helps settle a picture.

"I also find 'level' removes yet another set of decisions that get in the way of the kind of pictures I want to make. As in: should I tilt? fore or aft? side to side? should I zoom in or out? Should the picture be horizontal or vertical? By the time I’m through with all those decisions, I’ve lost the image. I try to shoot level (mostly) I shoot square, I use a 35mm (equivalent) lens. But almost all my pictures are portraits in one way or another so the question of how to shoot unpeopled pictures rarely comes up."

Stan B.: "Tilting the horizon is but another valid tool, that can either make or break a particular photo compositionally—and yes, like anything else, can be overdone.

Stan Banos, Grand Canyon

"Curiously, some who proclaim someone 'anal' because they do not crop, are themselves adamant about level horizon lines. Decades after Winogrand, you still have people who furrow their eyebrows when confronted with a tilted horizon.... Egads!!!"

Craig Beyers (partial comment): "I find I mind when a clear horizon line is tilted slightly as it implies (to me) a lack of concern or carelessness—OK, laziness—quite a bit by the photographer. When it's clearly tilted by choice like the Winogrand example, I know it's an intentional compositional technique, not a mistake, carelessness, or laziness."

[The full text of partial comments can be found in the Comments section. —Ed.]

brad: "When talking to a younger photographer, who's quite good and a successful pro, the term 'horizon management' was used. I knew what he meant but had never heard the term. He's well educated, and I think it came from his East coast school's photo department. He was saying that among the prerequisites for image-making, you needed to properly master it. I agree...but never thought of it in such an academic sense. I wonder if there's a bot...scrubbing the web collecting photo data for a statistical analysis of Horizon Management Failure? A workshop will surely address this serious issue."

DavidB: "I encounter this issue photographing scenes here in the Southwest—especially the Grand Canyon. Both the North Rim and South Rim of the canyon are not level but gently rise and fall several thousand feet over the length of the canyon. Furthermore, the North Rim is over 1,000' higher than the South Rim so a photograph that includes both will look wrong. Getting the camera level results in tilting horizons—but that's just the way it is."

Michael: "The photo in Stan Banos's comment is a super example of how a tilted horizon can improve a photo's truthfulness. It conveys that feeling of vertigo that you feel (or at least I do) when I suddenly stand on the edge of that awful / awe-ful space, that stupendous drop."

Paul Van: "I have found that using a focusing screen with a grid has helped me immensely to organize both vertical and horizontal lines within the frame. Mostly, I suppose, by giving me a reference line for important elements within the composition."

Random Excellence: Takashi Kitajima

Takashi Kitajima, Entrance to the Exit, Ebisu, May 2015

Sometimes Random Excellence points to a particular single photograph, other times to an entire set, still other times to a photographer. Takashi Kitajima plays with effects like focus and bokeh and motion blur in his work, and everything at his website is of interest. It's creative and sensitive work, wide-ranging yet with a sense of individual viewpoint. "Crosswalk" is a very successful use of multiple exposure, for example.

"Entrance to the Exit" is from the series "Myopia Hyperopia."

Mike
(Thanks to Lubo)

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Elementary, my dear Watson
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New Word

John Lehet, Beech Buds and Pine Bokeh, 2017. Clearly, the center of interest in this otofokasu photograph is the out-of-focus pine needles in the upper right, and the way the beech twigs point up to it.

-

I wish I could propose a new photographic term in English:

Otofokasu, n., 1. a photograph in which the deliberately blurry parts are intended by the photographer to contribute to the overall aesthetic impression or effect; 2. a genre of photography that concentrates mainly on the creative use of blur.

The reason this would be funny is that ōtofōkasu, as John Kennerdell explains in his new comment to the recent "Funniest Thing" post, is the Japanese rendering of the English "out of focus." We borrow the word "bokeh" (or boke or bo-ke) from Japanese meaning "out of focus blur," rendering the Romanization the way we like; and then, instead of using their own term for it, they borrow the English phrase "out of focus" back from us to mean the same thing. Which is hilarious. So what I propose is that we borrow our loaned words back from them while adding another layer of meaning on top. Omitting the macrons over the o's as being too hard to type.

Pretty soon, this is going to be linguistically complex and obscure enough to be included in actual art criticism. Lol!

Mike
(Satire alert! And thanks to John K. and John L.)

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Not always complex and obscure
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MarkB: "I'm sure satire was intended, but watch out; there will be an English-language social networking phenomenon called "otofokasu" in the time it took me to type this comment. And now, to make this a self-fulfilling prophecy, I've gone and registered the domain otofokasu.top and will set it to redirect here. Enjoy!"

Mike replies: Hey, thanks. I hope you're right. Maybe there will be a groundswell of viral buzz for us out in the connected world.

emptyspaces: "I love all this because it underscores how the same we are, no matter the cultural details."