The Online Photographer

Process

This is about my writing project, but I think it applies, globally, to just about any creative project you're serious about.

It also announces a slight procedural change to TOP.

I think I've finally discovered the last component of my process for writing this book...I had already decided to try to "touch it every day," courtesy of writing teacher Joni B. Cole (a resolution interrupted somewhat by my hand/arm injury, which is now 95% resolved), but I still wasn't working comfortably.

Now I think I've finally put the final piece in place. For years I've been in the habit of getting up, taking care of the dogs, fixing my coffee, and sitting down at the computer right away. Then I work through the morning and into the early afternoon. Later in the afternoons my focus deteriorates and I spend a lot of time doing chores or errands, answering email, web surfing, and mucking about with this and that. So I originally figured it wouldn't be that difficult to carve an extra hour or two out of the afternoons to work on the book.

The problem was that my writing energy is strongest when I sit down in the morning.

So I've made just a little tweak to my routine—I get up on schedule, do my morning routines, then sit down at the upstairs computer and set my iPhone timer for an hour and fifteen minutes. I've been easily writing about 6–700 words in that time. I'm focused, it's quiet, and I've got plenty of energy.

It's going very well and it seems to be the last piece in the puzzle. Plus, it relieves the pressure on the rest of the day—I get the book-writing task out of the way early and then I don't have it hanging over my head, threatening to not get done as my energy ebbs throughout the day. I'm also trying to follow Ernest Hemingway's trick of not stopping until you know what you're going to write next, which means you know where to begin when you sit down tomorrow.

I think with any artistic project you have to be hardheaded and practical about both your method and your process. Until it's a habit, you have to be determined. Everyone's different, and everyone will have different "tweaks" they need to make to their process to solve whatever difficulties they're experiencing. But this stuff is important, and we need to take this kind of problem-solving seriously.

Anyway, expect new posts on TOP to begin appearing in the afternoons from now on.

And if you're good at setting goals and working toward them effectively in an organized, conscious way, consider that to be a skill and a gift. Not everyone can do it. And it's not enough to just make plans for our work—we also have to be willing to modify those plans as needed when we recognize that we're encountering difficulties or impediments.

Mike

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Ed Hawco: "No surprise here. This works like any priority that we don't take seriously as a priority, such as saving money for retirement. People will complain that at the end of their payroll cycle they just don't have any money left to set aside. It's exactly like your former routine of waiting until the end of your workday to write. By then there's nothing left. But if you do the priority thing first (whether it's writing time or slipping $100 into a retirement plan), then it gets done every time. At the end of the day or the pay cycle, you barely notice the reduced energy/pay because by then you're just phutzing around anyway, whether you had done the high priority thing or not. I wish I could claim credit for this brilliant piece of conventional wisdom, but it's been around for a while. It's one of those things that is, on one hand, so freaking obvious, yet on the other hand so hard to actually initiate."

Eamon Hickey: "Yep, two good lessons. It's been a big key for me in my own book project—to work on it first, in the morning, for an hour or an hour-and-a-half. Then I do the assignment work that pays the bills. And I also make a note for myself, at the end of each session, of what I'm writing (or editing) next. I've started doing this with all my projects, of almost any kind. Helps me a ton. By the way, on the energy waning in the afternoon thing. I largely cured that by mixing mostly decaf beans into my coffee (I drink the equivalent of about 1 or 1.5 caffeinated cups of coffee a day, but spread over multiple cups through the morning and afternoon). What I had discovered was that a strong dose of caffeine in the morning was leading to the classic coming-down-from-a-stimulant crash in the afternoon, just like what happens on the backside of a cocaine binge (so I hear)."

Your Photo Assignment for Today

I've been spending an embarrassing amount of time on dating sites lately, because I am a.) lonely and b.) evidently unteachable via experience*. I have learned a few things, such as, things are bad for a lot of people in the Philippines.

One of my standard jokes is that I knew I was getting old when I would see a pretty young woman walking a dog and I'd find myself admiring the dog. Well, one of the ways I know I'm getting even older is that I look at profiles on dating sites and I either want to critique the person's photos, give them tips on how to do better, or offer to come do their photos for them. (This last must sound creepy, because no one's ever taken me up on it. Their loss, however, because, seriously, I would do a splendid job and I'd work for nothing. Hmm, even that sounded creepy.)

I'm sorely tempted to show some of the worst examples, but I do try hard not to show negative examples on TOP, out of respect for either the photographer or the subject or both.

One young lady made a complete hash of a selfie in a mirror. The mirror only occupied about half the frame; the phone she was holding up was blocking half her face; she was looking at the phone screen rather than at the reflection of the lens in the mirror; and everything that was reflected in the mirror was out of focus.

She was cute (what little I could see of her), but my old-guy gene kicked in and I couldn't help myself: I wrote her a note offering some tips for how to do better selfies-in-the-mirror.

Strange to say, I have not heard back from that particular woman. There's a surprise.

But then I thought, hmm, wonder how hard it actually is?

So I self-assigned myself. (Was that re-redundant?) Here's my best attempt:

But I really had to work at this. On several attempts the lighting was atrocious; a couple of other times the excessive detail of the pitiless digital sensor and lens made me look like I was desperately in need of botox, when in actuality I am only mildly in need of botox; and, of course, the client here is recalcitrant and cantankerous and has an unrealistic self-image. (As I always say, I'm 35 from inside here.) And you really can't see the screen with the phone held out of the shot. It's pretty tough getting everything to line up.

And I know I look grim, but the ones in which I attempted to smile made me look like Peter Lorre in M:

But really. If you want a tricky little challenge this week, try doing a halfway decent self-portrait in a mirror with a phone, without showing the phone in the photo. Don't expect to knock it right out, either. It looks like a lot of non-photographer types on dating sites should be able to do better than they do, but it's not as easy as it looks.

The best way to get great portraits of yourself is still to hire a good photographer! You wouldn't sell your house without a realtor, would you?

Mike

P.S. This really is the last phone-photo post for a while—I got a notification from B&H Photo that the Sony A7III has shipped and is en route.

* Actually I was just being funny with "b."—in fact I've met several truly fine people on dating sites, who I liked a great deal even if we didn't have that essential "spark." Statistically the best way to meet a future partner is through a friend, by far, but eHarmony says that "20% of those in current, committed relationships began online and 7% of marriages in 2015 were between couples that met on a dating website."

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Larry Gebhardt: "Mike, I'd try this experiment but my wife would probably catch me and wonder what the heck I was doing. Then I'd probably need to really be able take a good selfie for the dating sites."

Jim Hamstra: "Actually you know you're old when you see a pretty woman walking down the street and you think 'I bet her mom is hot.'"

Euan Forrester: "When I was Internet dating, I didn't have a good horizontal 'cover' photo and since I mentioned in my profile I was into photography I thought I'd better take a nice one. I noticed lots of peoples' cover photos were of themselves in front of pretty backdrops, so I one evening I drove up a mountain road where I knew there was an overlook that I thought would be quiet. I got there a bit late, and it was darker than I hoped, so I set up an umbrella on a light stand, gelled my flash, and put the camera on a tripod with a radio trigger. Just as I finished getting set up, the local ski hill above my overlook closed and car after car started streaming down the hill right past my location. Then someone got their car stuck right beside me and a giant crew showed up to try and get them out. All the while I'm blasting away with my ridiculous 'ultimate selfie' setup. It took me almost 300 frames to get something I didn't hate, all while trying to not look too embarrassed in my photos, and then I sheepishly packed up my gear and high-tailed it down the mountain.

"I ended up meeting my now live-in partner through the site with that as my cover photo. I eventually told her the story, feeling very proud that I persevered through my embarrassment and had managed to find someone as wonderful as her. She replied that she didn't actually like the photo very much."

David Maxwell: "I suppose that as someone who primarily enjoys writing poetry, songs, and fiction, I ought to try to avoid writing comments on blog posts! Seriously though, I have lost track of the number of times over the years that I have started writing comments on your posts only to delete and walk away. I'm not sure what your ultimate goal is with the online dating, but I met my wife of almost 3.5 years online (she gave birth to our first child last Monday). I used OkCupid, a free site with a somewhat sleazy reputation. It was pretty interesting to say the least, and I encountered a bit of wackiness, but I met some really cool women, and, as I mentioned above, married one of them."

JG: "I always promised the women I dated that, if nothing else, when they eventually broke up with me—which they invariably did—they would have some great photos of themselves to post online when they go looking for their next boyfriend. And sure enough, whenever I would stumble upon one of their dating profiles afterward, many of the photos had indeed been taken by me. Sometimes many years earlier, but that was the next boyfriend's problem, not mine...."

Mike replies: I figured I'd better feature this one because we might never get another from you.  :-)

Stephanie Luke: "Nicely lit and exposed, goes without saying—although I just did. But I am intimidated by that guy and his unwavering stare. Also, what is in your hand, just out of the picture? An axe, perhaps, to go with the outdoorsy, he-man outfit? (Yes, I know it's a camera, but still...). I bet you have a nice smile, and from this female's point of view, it would be more inviting to see it!"

Mike replies: Thanks for the input Stephanie...just FYI, this is the mirror-selfie I actually use on the dating sites:

Yup, complete with, um, toilet. Oh well.That's where the mirror is.

Labeled with the date so people know it's recent. It's actually a more characteristic look for me, too, as I am usually smiling like a happy dog. But one very intelligent woman from around here complained that she hated selfies with the phone in the picture. "They're the worst," was her verdict.

Can't please all the people all the time...and most of those people are looking at my profile. Ba-dum-PAH.

(Another Mitch Hedberg joke, modified.)

Advice to Young Writers

Just a small piece of advice for any young person who thinks they might want to write:

You do have to practice a whole lot, and daily practice is really almost required. However—and this is my advice for today—

Be very clear about your goals and then practice exactly what you want to do. If you want to write novels, don't practice with letters. If you want to write nonfiction, don't practice with academic papers. If you want to write stream-of-consciousness, don't practice quatrains. Do a whole lot of exactly what it is you think you want to do.

The Commentariat will now think of 700 exceptions and modifications of this advice. But all I can tell you is that it's hard for a stuck-in-first-person blogger-type to write a third-person genre novel.

It's like the old Mitch Hedberg joke. He says he worked hard to be a comedian, and when he got successful, people from Hollywood came to him asking if he could write a script. "That's not fair," he said. "That's like working really hard to become a great cook and having people come up to you and say, 'hey, you're really good at cooking. Can you farm?'"

—Mike, who can write blog posts in his sleep but is apparently
crashing and burning attempting to write in a little backstory

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Eamon Hickey: "Exception & Modification #317: When I was a young writer, I thought I wanted to write one kind of thing, but when I got old enough to actually have something to say, I found I wanted to write a different kind of thing. And I reserve the right to change again! P.S. This comment has been my 14th successful attempt to avoid actual real writing today. Now, on to #15...."

Steve Jacob: "Mitch Hedberg's comment is a bit like asking a landscape photographer to take your portrait. It seems that all 'great' photographers were known for a very particular style, even if they didn't start out in the same genre. The mindset of a landscape photographer is very different from a sport or studio photographer. Is the key to becoming a good photographer to simply stop doing the things you are not good at?"

William Neill Book (Followup)

We heard from William Neill, whose beautiful retrospective book Geoff reviewed here a few days ago. He invites anyone from TOP who would like a signed copy of the book to visit his website.

Mike
(Thanks to William)

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Sunday Support Group: Sails Catch the Wind

Great news about my book project. I kept slogging, kept slogging, and it stayed in the mud, stayed in the mud. But now it seems that finally, finally, my sails have caught the wind. Scenes are tumbling to mind. The bow carves the waves: plot takes care of itself. Just gotta grab on, grab on, grab on! Hold the tiller hard against the heeling wind.

Otherwise, life right now seems full of...

...Waiting. Manuel wrote, "You know, Mike, all these articles about the iPhone are getting a little tiresome." Well, that's because I'm still waiting for the Sony A7III. Waiting. Day after day. Wait, wait.

Spring is elusive. Four mornings in a row now I've awakened to find the ground white with snow. Just a layering, and it evaporates as fast as frost, but Spring stays away. Wait for it.

Dreading Tax Day. Taxes are going to slaughter me this year. Stun me like a body blow from Joe Frazier. I depend on the holiday months to help with taxes and TOP had a terrible holiday season this year. Waiting for April 17th feels like sitting under the Sword of Damocles.

...Although that's not quite right as a metaphor. The tale supposedly comes down to us from Timaeus of Tauromenium through the Roman orator Cicero:

According to the story, Damocles was pandering to Dionysius, his king, and exclaimed to him that Dionysius was truly fortunate as a great man of power and authority, surrounded by magnificence. In response, Dionysius offered to switch places with Damocles for one day so that Damocles could taste that very fortune firsthand. Damocles quickly and eagerly accepted the king's proposal. Damocles sat down in the king's throne surrounded by every luxury, but Dionysius arranged that a huge sword should hang above the throne, held at the pommel only by a single hair of a horse's tail. Damocles finally begged the king that he be allowed to depart because he no longer wanted to be so fortunate, realizing that with great fortune and power comes also great danger. (Wikipedia)

But my sorry state has nothing to do with power. Maybe a better metaphor would be the condemned man waiting for the blow of the axe? Nope, hyperbolic. The tax bill isn't going to literally kill me. Am I just whimpering? Very well then, then I am*. April is the cruellest month....

I'm sure a lot of you out there are in the exact same boat. Some of the richest people out there and some of the poorest people out there. Nobody likes tax day. Most people don't. Some of you kept all your receipts and paid your quarterlies and had your taxes filed by the end of January, all signed and neat, but a lot of you are just like me, quivering heaps of terrified jelly quaking and weeping and waiting for the end to come, knowing you're going to be all bruised and desolate at the beginning of May and eating macaroni and cheese and so forth. Taxes knock us down flat.

Anyway, everything feels like waiting. Waiting. Something is imminent. Everything is. Wait for it. Wait. Hurry up please, it's time....

When the A7III comes, then Manuel can get tired reading about that. And we'll probably blink and a blistering Summer heat will set in, and we'll long for these refreshing Spring snows. Right now, though, everything's in a state of suspension.

...And you know, come to think, despite his great popularity with the people, who repeatedly protected him, Cicero was beheaded. His severed head was nailed to the Rostra in the Roman Forum, where Antony's vindictive wife Fulvia pulled out the tongue and pierced it repeatedly with her hairpin in revenge against Cicero's power with words.

(Maybe I should just say, "There is nothing proper about what you are doing, taxman, but do try to kill me properly." Paraphrasing from Cicero's last words to the soldier who slew him. Woe!)

Heh. I'm in a silly mood this morning. My thoughts are zinging around like a bullet in a metal room. So how's your project coming? I need to go "touch" my book. Today my protagonist is going to the city morgue, to see whether a bruised and broken body is the woman he loves...the wind blows....

Mike

*"Can't complain, but sometimes I still do." Heh.

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William Schneider: "For your initial Sunday Support Group post, I described how I was digitizing of all of my father's Kodachrome slides. That work concluded two weeks ago, and I purchased and mailed flash drives, with all the files on them, to family. I got a few heart-felt 'thank you' emails in return, making the effort worthwhile. I am a bit adrift thinking about what my next project will be though."

Trevor Johnson: "I have a few projects at present. Firstly, two systematic reviews in healthcare, one of which I am leading, now well over 100 pages. Secondly, I have been asked to record the keyboard works of Handel. The last time I played the six 'great' fugues live was in London, on a Yamaha CFX. IMHO a better piano than a Steinway Model D, which I grew up with. A book of photos in Paris, from film Leica, film OM to digital Ricoh GR. And a book set in the South of France, where Shirley, my wife, and I, spend our summer holidays. A story within a story, like Possession by A S Byatt or Das Glassperlenspiel by Hermann Hesse."

From Terry Burnes: Phone Photography Followup

Photo by Terry Burnes (not taken with a phone)

Terry Burnes wrote the post "On Phone Photography" last Friday. As a followup to that post, here's the key for the pictures on his website that were taken with a phone vs. a dedicated camera.

First, here's Terry's online album, 199 photographs.

Next, here are the ones that were taken with a phone:

• 11–22
• 76
• 77
• 79–89
• 97–137
• 140
• 143–186
• 188–190
• 193–4
• 197
• 199

That’s 118 out of the 199, by Terry's count.

Even if you didn't try to sort them out without knowing which was which, it might be interesting now to go look and see how much difference you can detect.

Finally, here is Terry's response to all the Comments on his post:

I want to thank everyone for the thoughtful discussion of phone photography. A few clarifications: Several commented on the phone's ergonomics. I just want to be sure that everyone knows that on most phones, pushing either volume control (up or down) will trigger the shutter. So, use the touch screen to set your focus point and adjust exposure if necessary. But then trigger the shutter with the volume buttons that feel more like the release on a traditional camera. Likewise you can plug in the simple ear buds that come with most phones and use the volume control on those to trigger the shutter. The Shuttergrip is quick to attach and remove and allows easy, stable one-handed operation of the phone, leaving your second hand free to shade the screen from direct sunlight if necessary. I sometimes use my second hand to shade the lens from sun too. I rarely take the kit pictured in my post with me. Mostly I just use the phone, but if I do want an accessory, like a lens or two or the grip, with me I just slip them in my pocket. The lenses are smaller than a ping pong ball, the grip a bit bigger.

Thanks again to Terry for sharing his experience in his post!

Mike

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longviewer: "I've chosen not to invest in a phone for its photo capabilities, so none of these images could be made at my price point. Glad it works for many, but it's not my cup of cocoa +coffee +Irish cream."

Herman Krieger: "In regard to phone photography, don't call me, I'll call you."

The Visual World Is a River of Change

You might remember a picture of my fallen oak that I posted a month or so ago:

Yesterday George Fisher turned up, was here for a few hours, and now look:

And look how different those two photographs are. Years ago I listened, in the car, to a tape (yep, right) of a lecture by Alan Watts, the British writer and speaker who was an interpreter and popularizer of Eastern religions and philosophies for Westerners. I remember where I was when I heard it and what car I was driving, but not what year it was or what the title of the talk might have been. But he spoke about the desire of people to "lean on the world," thinking that the world was mostly solid and dependable, and instead asserting that even the apparently solid world was a river of change. You think an apple is real and has physical presence, but in a hundred years, where is the apple? Even the mountains rise and fall.

Jay Maisel talks about this in relation to photography in his simple but excellent photography tutorial books, especially Light, Gesture & Color and It's Not About the F-Stop. The same picture seldom presents itself twice. In Watts' terms, the river has moved on. Permanence is illusory. It's one of my faults that I'm always thinking to myself that I can come back and take a picture later; Jay would not approve. I'd be better off as a photographer with the opposite mindset.

Well, let's not get too deep. I've been behind on the comments all week (I'm still not back up to speed here, if I'm honest), but note the tracks on the grass of the heavy equipment George brought in to move the fallen oak. And note that the title of Jay's second book named above is already becoming anachronistic—he meant that the things photo enthusiasts care about aren't as important as they think they are—but the majority of young photo mavens these days have only the faintest vague clue what an "ƒ-stop" might be. Still, we take the old Master's point.

Mike

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Wayne: "'Sooner or later...we have to risk everything in order to gain everything. We have to gamble on the invisible and risk all that we can see and taste and feel. But we know the risk is worth it, because there is nothing more insecure than the transient world.' —Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude (from the Thomas Merton Daily Quotes Facebook page, March 13, 2017)."

Peter Wright: "I have to say, I was surprised to see Thomas Merton popping up on TOP, even if it was just in the comments! But how very appropriate a quote—thanks Wayne! He has to be one of the most profound writers of the 20th century. Not many people know that Merton was also in later life, an enthusiastic photographer. I saw an exhibition of his work in Toronto some years back."

Francisco Cubas: "One of the first humans to talk about this was Heraclitus, with his famous quote: 'No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.' It was a favourite of J.L. Borges. I'm glad you are better Mike."

The Sad Fall from Grace of Nicholas Nixon

My friends and I have been following this story for several weeks. The news is that renowned American photographer Nicholas Nixon has been removed from his teaching position at MassArt for inappropriate and unacceptable conduct. All parties are tight-lipped as the lawyers presumably circle in the skies above.

Although not exactly the Terry Richardson of art photography, The Boston Globe reported yesterday that Nick Nixon had long been accustomed to "going too far" as the headline of yesterday's article suggests. "It felt like the conversation always led back to sex," one student said. After Nixon asked students to analyze pictures of his own penis, Robin Myers, a 2012 graduate of MassArt, told the Globe, "Artists are always pushing boundaries between provocative and inappropriate, and then that line gets crossed and it becomes very clear. The penis photo incident was where that line became very clear for me."

I met Nick Nixon only once, when I was a student and he was at the beginning of his fame; he's ten years or so older than I am. He came to the Corcoran to give a talk. I was impressed with the matchless virtuosity of his then-new style of close, candid photography using an 8x10 view camera and a wide-angle lens, and the idea that was impressed on me most strongly at the time was that he had initially determined to change his technical style every year...until, that is, he alighted on the right one, which he has stayed with ever since. I even owned a few of his prints for a while, thanks to cameramaker Keith Canham, although I was too poor to be able to keep them. (My Sally Mann prints I could keep, because she wrote letters on the back of them and folded them up to put them in the envelope!)

In fairness to Nick, no students brought complaints against him. The investigation was pursued by the newspaper. At the same time, it seems undeniable that his behavior was inexcusable. As the Globe article reports, "...some of Nixon’s alleged behavior astounded Lorie Novak, a professor of photography & imaging [sic] at New York University. 'To ask undergraduate students in your class to pose nude for you is unacceptable, and from my point of view one of the very definitions of sexual harassment,' Novak said. 'The student is powerless.'"

Agreed, full stop. Still, a sad story and a precipitous fall from grace for someone who had been one of the leading lights of American art photography over most of my adult lifetime.

The article is entitled "Sex, power, and photography. At MassArt, how far is too far?" and it was written by Kay Lazar and Malcolm Gay.

Mike
(Thanks to Oren Grad and others)

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Kenneth Tanaka: "Sad? Sure. I met Nixon briefly about ten years ago at a small talk/dinner. He seemed rather quiet, modest but secure. Seemed like a rather nerdy academic-type. I never connected well with much of his work with the exception of his Brown Sisters project (which I keep running into) and some of his Boston cityscapes. (His horror stories of making those from windy rooftops with a huge view camera were more memorable than the images.) Honestly, if the BG report is true, and it certainly seems to be well-checked, what the hell was Nixon thinking? I have never taught an academic class but his excuse about helping to get students out of their boundaries is just plain bull. I'm confident I could conjure at least a dozen better strategies for accomplishing that goal with students. I guess we just never really know what's in someone's mind or, worse, what some people will do when they have power over others.

"Just this morning I was reading the most recent recap of architect Richard Meier's antics which also went on for decades. A lifetime of some remarkable work largely becomes anonymous because this guy, like Nixon, couldn't control his urges. Frankly I have no sympathy for these men and their creepy peers; they can live in hell for the rest of their lives. I had to keep it in check when I was in control of many people in a bigger business. Hopefully we're turning a corner on people not tolerating various sexual and emotional abuses in their work places, although human nature never changes."

John Camp: "I have a hard time getting too upset about this level of 'transgression.' You gotta grow up sometime, might as well be in college. You don't like what the professor suggests, tell him to stick it. In the current climate, he'll get the idea, especially since tenure, or the prospect of tenure, is the Holy Grail in 21st Century academia.

"I'm not sure, exactly, why colleges hire serious artists to teach. There seems to be to be an essential conflict there—transgression has been a byword for artistic endeavor at least since the Renaissance, and sex was usually the major vehicle for that transgression. In a major reversal from the later 20th century, colleges now seem to be taking a much more protective attitude toward students and their delicate psyches. If you wish to protect them, why would you hire somebody whose stock-in-trade is transgression? I mean, Robert Mapplethorpe, Sally Mann, Jock Sturges, Helmut Newton, Jan Saudek, Ruth Bernhard, Man Ray, Edward Weston...you wouldn't want any of those perverts influencing your snowflake."

William Neill, Photographer: A Retrospective

Review by Geoff Wittig

Readers of Outdoor Photographer magazine in the U.S. may be familiar with William Neill’s work from his long association with the publication. He is probably best known for his beautiful large-format film photography, much of it centered around Yosemite National Park. He has lived adjacent to Yosemite for the past 40 years, which is certainly a nice backyard. But as this gorgeous book attests, his body of work over the decades encompasses as much broader range.

Art Wolf provides the introduction. Following this is a testament to Neill’s perfectionism and work ethic from John Weller, his former assistant and a highly skilled photographer in his own right.

William Neill is a sensitive writer in addition to his photographic skills, and in a short essay he articulates his artistic philosophy. The Hudson River School landscape painters of the 19th century explicitly sought evidence of the divine in the natural beauty of forest and mountain, and tried their best to express this in paint. Neill likewise has sought spiritual solace and connection to something greater in the beauty of nature, expressed through photographs and rendered with meticulous craftsmanship. Quotes from Minor White and Paul Caponigro nicely illuminate what he’s getting at. He also discusses the challenges of curating images to make a coherent statement from 40 years of work.

The first section of images is titled Landscapes of the Spirit, not coincidentally the title of Neill’s 1998 book. The photographs are gorgeously rendered color images ranging from vivid to delicate. I’m a sucker for impeccably composed moody forest images, and these are lovely.

The images range from older 4x5-inch film captures to recent digital images; the grouping is conceptual rather than chronological.

Next is Antarctic Dreams, which speaks for itself. One may be forgiven for thinking it’s difficult to take a bad photograph in Antarctica, but I’ve seen plenty. The images here are lovely, from glaciers and mountains to crystalline ice formations.

Next up is Meditations in Monochrome, a very nice selection of black-and-white images. William is of course known as a master of color, but he began exhibiting at the Ansel Adams gallery with Ansel’s approval, and he continues to work in monochrome with digital capture and digital printing methods.

By Nature’s Design is a collection of details and abstracts, ranging from a 1976 image taken with a Pentax Spotmatic to exquisite large format and digital captures. My own experience tells me that creating a worthwhile photograph from this kind of subject is a lot harder than it looks.

Sanctuary in Stone focuses on Yosemite, and includes many of Mr. Neill’s iconic photographs from the Park. Interspersed with grand images of El Capitan and the valley are delicate close-ups of dogwoods against moving water. The range of photos digs a lot deeper than the customary ‘tunnel view’.

Finally, Impressions of Light is a collection of experimental images, most captured with intentional camera motion to yield soft colorful abstracts. Easy to do; very hard to do well. I was immediately tempted to head outside and try some of this myself, which can’t be a bad thing.

Wrapping up the book is a full set of thumbnails identifying technical details and dates for all the photographs. I found this fascinating, partly because it is difficult or impossible to tell which images are from large format film versus digital SLR capture, so consistent is the technical and aesthetic quality.

As an aside, this book is an apparent swan song for Triplekite, based in England, a small publisher of high-quality photo books that has ceased operations. They previously printed Dav Thomas’s beautiful With Trees and Charlie Cramer’s modest but lovely Yosemite.

William Neill, Photographer, A Retrospective:

Amazon US / Amazon UK / Amazon Germany and Canada / Book Depository

Geoff

TOP Contributing Editor Geoff Wittig is a rural family physician with interests ranging from health care quality improvement, medical informatics, and integration of health care delivery to photography and landscape painting. Photo books are a particular area of interest; he admits he has far too many for his own good.

© 2018 by Geoffrey Wittig, all rights reserved

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Random Excellence: Lawrence Schiller

Described as a "Limited Edition Headshot of Marilyn Monroe by Lawrence Schiller," this is being offered for sale for $4,500 at the (I think) decidedly creepy size of 26x30 inches. (The seller advertises on AllMusic, which is how I encountered the photograph.)

I've only ever seen Marilyn Monroe in one movie—Asphalt Jungle, one of my favorite noir films—and I don't think I'm big on celebrities, especially deceased ones—although I have not interrogated that. But I question who would want this ever-so-slightly motion-blurred portrait at that huge size...I think I'd be embarrassed, as such prominence would seem to betoken obsession. I'd much prefer a more modest 8x10. But then, what do I know—maybe M.M. is appropriate larger than life. Her cultural status deserves the much-overused word "iconic."

Lawrence Schiller, of Brooklyn, is 81 now. He has had a remarkable career. You can read his interesting bio on his website here. A brief excerpt:

Perhaps nothing in Schiller’s career proved more remarkable, though, than his collaboration with Norman Mailer—a friendship unique in American literary history. For nearly thirty-five years the two worked closely together, on books including Marilyn (1973), The Faith of Graffiti (1974), Oswald’s Tale (1995), Into the Mirror (2002), and The Executioner’s Song (1979), for which Mailer won the Pulitzer Prize. Schiller, who did much of the legwork, interviews, and research for Executioner’s Song, outmaneuvered numerous other reporters to gain exclusive access to the book’s subject, Gary Gilmore, and went on to produce and direct the award-winning television miniseries based upon it, starring Tommy Lee Jones.

It's a beautiful picture.

Mike

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Ken Tanaka: "A beautiful picture, yes, but perhaps too much so for the subject. Marilyn was so over-photographed her beauty became trite. She became an icon of herself. This 'portrait' looks as if it was cropped from a larger movie scene. Naw, not my favorite.

"Personally, the MM images I find most engaging are the 'tweeners.' That is, the snaps grabbed between moments when she wasn't posing, when the light wasn't perfect, when the lens wasn't quite perfectly focused. So among Schiller's MM images offered for sale on that site this is the one I would most enjoy having:

"At first glance you don't realize who it is. But unlike Richard Avedon's famous 1957 MM tweener, Schiller hasn't captured her in a sullen, dark moment that saddens the viewer. Here on the set of the 1960 film 'Let's Make Love' she appears on top of the world, as though someone's just made a clever quip. She's a person who's with you. You can almost hear her laugh.

"Yes, Lawrence Schiller did some nice Hollywood work, often outside the same ol' mold."

Paul de Zan: "You have never seen Some Like It Hot? Oh my."

Joe: "You've never seen Some Like It Hot? Holey smoke, Mike, get on the stick!"

What's Adequate?

Way back when, I had a Contax. The camera was made by Yashica in Japan, which had a cooperative agreement with Zeiss in Germany. It was not really a true collaboration: originally, Yashica had to order lenses from Zeiss, which manufactured batches of them to fulfill the order. Yashica paid for them and then resold them to customers. Later, a factory was built in Japan (note passive case, since I don't know the particulars about who built, paid for, or ran it), and the companies told customers that Zeiss expertise—and, supposedly, inspection and supervision—was used to build Zeiss lenses there. So Contax was a Japanese camera with German lenses, at least originally. "Contax" was a former model name of Zeiss.

Kyocera, which by then owned Yashica, left the camera business in 2005.

In those days "motor drives" were add-on devices that cost a fair amount, so they were high status among hobbyists. I took a class in optics at the University of Maryland, and I remember sitting in the lecture hall before class where two fellow students had brought their cameras, each with impressive high-end motor drives. With no film in the cameras, they had a showdown. They synchronized the shutter press, and the cameras started firing in unison. Then, the rate of one student's motor drive began to fall more and more behind the other's. He was humiliated, and the winner was exultant. (Humans love wins and losses.) The cameras probably fired around 5 frames-per-second (FPS), which was fast in those days. One was a little "better" than the other.

Sitting several rows behind them, I thought, how silly—I never need to shoot that fast.

So I bought a "motor winder" for my Contax 139Q. It was just what I wanted—at 2 FPS, it added a small amount of weight and size to the camera, which was too small for my hands by itself, and it saved me the effort of cocking the camera manually, which was all I wanted it to do. Each time I took a picture the camera was ready to take another shot in half a second.

From then on I've had this idea...what's enough?

You can look at every feature of a camera this way. What features are "must have," which are optional for you, which do you not need? And in terms of the technical capabilities, what's adequate? Personally, I value good viewfinders, image stabilization (IS) or in-body IS (IBIS), shutter silence, and responsiveness—how fast the camera focuses and, especially, how quickly it shoots when you tell it to, that is, by pressing the shutter. I want to capture the exact moment I want, and I practice that skill. I've never cared too much for frame rate specs.

But my preferences aren't unchanging. Sometimes the tech capabilities improve to the point where I start using them and learning to like them. Now, for instance, I use continuous high (CF) on my Fuji quite often—I still pay close attention to firing the shutter at exactly the right moment, but on CH I shoot several shots quickly instead of just one. It saves me from things like blinks and momentary awkwardnesses like a waving flag or a waving hand looking not quite right in one particular exposure.

Ten years ago I would say we all were really eager to have the latest and best. Now I would say we're well into the era of "adequateness"—where people are saying no, I don't need the ultimate—this is enough. I heard from my friend Dennis the other day, who used to shoot with a high-end Nikon. Now he's using Micro 4/3 for everything. Why? I guess because it's adequate.

It's a nice way to look at product purchases...not what's "best," and thus "wins," but merely what's good enough for you.

Mike

P.S. I do have to add an addendum, being rigorously honest: and that is, that even though my personal value system is to choose what's adequate, sometimes I cannot help shopping for, and coveting, what's best. Even though I don't really want to, and even though I don't really need it.

I guess that's human nature.

Mike

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Gordon Lewis: "It's funny how the word 'adequate' can have a slightly pejorative implication these days, as if adequate really isn't quite good enough. I guess it depends on what noun it modifies. It's one thing to describe a camera or lens as adequate and quite another to describe one's spouse or lovemaking skills the same way."

iPhone Fail

I want to say first that I can have fun with most any camera.

I did my first serious photography project with a Kodak Instamatic 104, at Gettysburg Battlefield; I was twelve and on a seventh-grade trip to Washington, D.C. (Gettysburg was a day trip. I was mad about the Civil War in my youth.) I did an art school project with the same Instamatic 104, printing the color negatives on B&W Panalure paper. That was called "The Great Pigeon Safari," since the only requirement of the series was that each of the pictures, made around urban D.C., had to have at least one pigeon in it. I would call this project—ahem—a bit bird-brained. I had a 5x7-inch tailboard camera called "Frankencamera" that the great sensitometrist Phil Davis adapted the back for in the basement workshop of the house he built himself, mainly out of Spancrete, outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan. I've used an 8x10 Deardorff (for one single picture, just to say I'd done it), a Mamiya 6 medium-format rangefinder with all three of its lenses when it was new, a new Leica M6 and an ancient beat-to-crap Pentax Spotmatic with pieces missing from both the body and the lens. I once spent $5,500 on a camera system (RZ67) and I've taken lovely pictures with an Olympus Zuiko lens I bought for $10. I've taken pictures contentedly with both a Nikon D800 and a nearly antique 1950s Zeiss Contessa I inherited from my Aunt.

So please don't bust my chops, please. I'm just not one of those people whose identity is tied up with the camera they use. Yeah, I love cameras, but in a totally doofus-y kinda way. I'm kind of the ultimate dilettante hobbyist.

So here's my thought for today. In 2003 it seemed a little radical to buy a camera made by an "electronics giant." What, buy a camera not made by a camera company?! The idea seemed both progressive and transgressive at the same time, somehow. Of course that attitude seems quaint today. There, there, grandpa.

But as I read Curt Gerston's Featured Comment under the "Terry Burnes on Phone Photography" post, I caught myself wondering whether my camera in the future—my main camera—won't be made by Apple, Google, or Samsung.

It's not really that crazy. The reason is that I seem to visualize pictures better on the phone's viewing screen than I do using any other kind of viewfinder. I do better seeing the image in two dimensions rather than three or a virtual three.

...Except in sunlight. This is a grabshot I made a few hours ago of the rear of Birkett Mills, which makes the town where I live "America's Buckwheat Capital." I show it to you because not because it's an example of the iPhone camera succeeding, but because it's an example of the iPhone camera failing. It's a fail for two reasons: because he focal length I needed was somewhere in between the phone camera's 28mm-e and 56mm-e lenses, and the strong sunlight made it difficult to see the viewing screen. I kinda had to guess at composition.

But here's the thing: phones are a huge business these days, and cameras are one of the front-and-center flagship features of the phones. I have no idea if this is true, but I'll bet there are more camera software engineers working at Apple than there are at Canon and Nikon combined. With maybe a few more old-line manufacturers thrown in to boot.

And yet, the manufacturer's name on the grill of the truck, as well as the license plate number, are clearly visible in the file, and the color was perfect out of the camera, and so was the exposure. I'll wager it shows more detail than 35mm Tri-X and as a single exposure it was free both in terms of money and the time needed to muck around with it. And I have at least as much fun with it as I did with the little Kodak Disc camera, or the plastic pre-Holga Diana, or the Canon Xapshot still-video camera I once happily distracted myself with.

Phones are far from perfect. But 2003 was 15 years ago, and I'll bet that 15 years from now, people will be looking at legacy SLR-o-types and texting to the friend sitting next to them: srsly?

They will look about as up-to-the-minute to them as the cannons and caissons at Gettysburg seemed to my Civil-War-besotted 7th-grade self.

...And note the pigeon in the Birkett Mills picture. Some habits die real hard.

Mike
(Thanks to Curt Gerston)

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I'm Back (Update) (OT)

Just a brief health update: I appear to be better. I still have some tenderness in my wrist but my arm has recovered.

I have a large "port wine stain" vascular birthmark on my right hand, arm, and shoulder—very difficult to grow up with, but merely a cosmetic disfigurement as an adult. It's an odd thing, though...medicine doesn't really know a lot about these kinds of birthmarks. Only about one in 10,000 people has one (only lottery I've ever won), and they're not fatal. So they just don't get studied.

Actually they are fatal in one way—there is a higher than average suicide rate among us in adolescence.

But I've noticed various oddities in my body over the years, even away from the site of the birthmark. For example, my right leg is stiffer and cramps more easily than my left. And it seems like it must be having some sorts of effects that aren't immediately obvious. My supposition is that the irregularity in my vascular system in my right arm had something to do with the atypical pain I experienced in the weeks following the angiogram procedure.

Looking back on it, I wonder if my cardiologist might have thought I was fishing for narcotics when I complained about the pain. I meant to tell him that as a recovering alcoholic I'm exactly the opposite—I wouldn't accept much in the way of painkillers even if they were offered. Hospital painkillers trigger a lot of relapses among addicts. That's what happened to me the last time I relapsed—came home from an operation with a bottle of Percocet, and when that was gone I craved alcohol. That's the relapse that eventually led me to rehab, and lasting sobriety, in 1990. It's another reason you want to avoid addiction.

Oddly enough, my primary physician seemed to have the best handle on it—he diagnosed carpal tunnel syndrome as a result of swelling and internal bruising and clotting. He gave me some simple exercises and treatments to try, and the first exercise I did caused extraordinary discomfort followed by immediate relief. So I think he was probably right.

As you know I get interested in everything, but this is not a big deal. My problems don't amount to a hill of beans in this world. (Casablanca reference.) Lots of people go through much worse things than this all the time. My issue was a minor thing; it just happened to impact the way I make a living—and my ability to post here! Thanks very much for your patience while I recovered.

I'm still a little reluctant to type a lot—I can definitely feel tingling and discomfort in my right hand when I do—but the worst seems to be over and things are definitely improving.

More TOP coming up soon. Geoff has written a nice review of William Neill's important new retrospective book that I'll post tonight or tomorrow. And I think we'll do the "It Must Be Color" by ones or twos...I need some kind of help, some kind of mechanism for getting over my blockage with that. I don't know why I can't get it done.

Mike

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Happy Easter

Fra Angelico, Resurrection of Christ and Women at the Tomb, 1440–2,
at the Museum of San Marco

I tried to write a combination April Fools / Easter post, but, fortunately, my head exploded. If it hadn't, I would have offended all sorts of people, only vaguely even knowing what I was doing.

The big news today is that Thom Hogan is abandoning Nikon and switching to Sony. I think a bunny made him do it....

Because, would that really be so foolish?  ;-)

Speaking of Sony, the 55mm Zeiss lens arrived here, but the A7III, not yet.

Did you know you can hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir online at BYU-TV.com? What a treat. I heard President Nelson of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recite "Abide With Me, 'Tis Eventide":

Abide with me; ’tis eventide.
The day is past and gone;
The shadows of the evening fall;
The night is coming on.
Within my heart a welcome guest,
Within my home abide.

O Savior, stay this night with me;
Behold, ’tis eventide.
O Savior, stay this night with me;
Behold, ’tis eventide.

Abide with me; ’tis eventide.
Thy walk today with me
Has made my heart within me burn,
As I communed with thee.
Thy earnest words have filled my soul
And kept me near thy side.

O Savior, stay this night with me;
Behold, ’tis eventide.
O Savior, stay this night with me;
Behold, ’tis eventide.

Abide with me; ’tis eventide,
And lone will be the night
If I cannot commune with thee
Nor find in thee my light.
The darkness of the world, I fear,
Would in my home abide.

O Savior, stay this night with me;
Behold, ’tis eventide.
O Savior, stay this night with me;
Behold, ’tis eventide.

It's a hymn that was written during the American Civil War, with music by Harrison Millard and lyrics by M. Lowrie Hofford. Certainly given gravitas by the grievous suffering and loss of that war, which claimed more American lives than all of America's other wars combined. (When we turn on each other, things can be dire indeed.)

It's a glorious day here. Snowflakes this morning (!), and it's chilly, but sunny and Spring-like.

Personally, many of my relatives are at the home of Stan and Teresa Noyszewski in Chicago today, and I dearly wish I was with them.

Happy Easter to all!

Mike
(Thanks to David B. Elesh)

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