Elephant Tongue and Hypnotized Chickens

Mark Hobson

TOP reader Mark Hobson came by the other day for a visit. Mark was for many years one of the leading professionals in Rochester, New York, and now lives in his beloved Adirondacks, where he has worked as both a wilderness guide and co-producer of the PBS series "Adirondack Outdoors." "Lunch" turned into four hours without much effort at all.

Only one of his projects isn't naturalistic—it consists of grim Photoshopped confabulations showing what the Adirondacks might look like if they'd never been protected. To drive the point home, the same tombstone appears (in a half-hidden, "Where's Waldo?" way) in every shot. An innovative use of fakery for sure. The rest of his work is "as seen," and bears no trace of "the professional look"—he has a distinct artistic style. He works square, and all the work he showed me was in the form of printed books and cards.

Here's Mark's website, where you can see more of his work.

A spread from Mark's book Rain

One of the pleasures of getting together with professional photographers is hearing tales of the weird things they've encountered in their careers. Mark's best two: being encouraged to insert his arm into an Indian elephant's mouth to stroke its tongue (they like that), and learning how to hypnotize chickens for a shoot so they wouldn't run around like...run around like...well, like chickens.

We've already written briefly about Mark's son Aaron, in 2007.

Mike

P.S. For our non-U.S. readers, "the Adirondacks," as I've written before, is a lightly populated, mountainous region of New York State that corresponds closely to the boundaries of a huge park of the same name. The area covered by the Adirondacks Mountains is larger than the State of Massachusetts and larger than Switzerland. The park is about as big as Vermont.

The name also refers to a distinctive folk style of outdoor furniture, especially chairs:

Adirondack chair, showing the distinctive construction (picture courtesy Hayneedle). These are fairly easy to make yourself out of wood, and, as it's a folk form, individualized variations are expected. Many commercial ones these days are made of recycled plastic so they can stand up to the weather. Those are actually fairly pricey, but come in all sorts of colors. The "Red Chair" I've posted a number of pictures of is a cheap molded-plastic faux Adirondack chair. Ironically, and, I must confess, a bit distressingly, the cheap molded imitation is considerably more comfortable to sit in than the real thing.

The ex and I found an old "shabby-chic" Adirondack chair in the warehouse of an out-of-the-way country antiques store down near Elmira, still with its original, nicely worn dark green paint, and I was going to pick it up for my faintly steampunk family room. But it turned out it was 115 years old and they wanted $5,000 for it! Yikes.

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

David Comdico: "I admit to being a bit prejudiced against the iPhone-as-camera but his square iPhone shots are really great. Bravo."

Michael Perini: "Mike, each time you highlight one of your readers—or even just reading the comments on daily basis—I am reminded that with hard work, over considerable time, you have created, whole cloth, a community of interesting and interested people. You have maintained a civil and collegial atmosphere for people who would not otherwise get to interact. I think it is a wonderful accomplishment, and one for which I am grateful. Thanks."

Mike replies: I'd say you're welcome, except I'm grateful too! The community self-selected, and you're right, it's pretty wonderful.

Peter Mountford: "In Ontario, Canada, where I live, we also have chairs like the Adirondack chair. We call them the Muskoka chair, named after a region about three hours north of Toronto. Muskoka is Toronto's cottage/camp country. Parts of it are outrageously expensive and posh.

"I have sat in many Muskoka chairs, even in Muskoka, and they are without a doubt the most uncomfortable chairs ever produced. I think the only purpose they serve is photographic. They have nice lines and angles, and if the sun is hitting them the right way they produce some nice shadows. But I would counsel you never to sit in them."

Comments

[Eolake]

I’m confused, when I google “Adirondack”, I get either mountains or garden furniture!

[It's both, and also a park. I added a "P.S." to the post for you. --Mike]

[K4kafka]

First question...what phone is Mark holding...is that a flash hot shoe I see ?

[John Wilson]

Where in ADK PARK DOES HE WORK OR PREFER?

[Dennis Ng]

When I look at the picture of him and his "small" square, it strike me it is a real person sharing a real picture. No reason why. Just feel it is real.

Crop it to the web size showing the full details does not have that feel.

***

My second thought is wondering the small picture is silver (from digital) or real silver or ink-jet.

***

Then my rational mind kick in -- may be you have to very large for exhibit or very small for local view for intimacy ... unimportant ...

***

Then what is the camera did cross my mind ... can't be an iphone ba.

***

All in 1 minute of seeing that. First time have so many thoughts for one picture.

[Eric Rose]

Thanks for sharing such a wonderful artist with us. Maybe it's due to our similar ages but his art speaks to me in ways much of the new stuff doesn't.

[Peter Croft]

For this non-US reader, one of life's mysteries has been, how do you pronounce Adirondacks?

Is it Ad-iron-dacks, iron as in the element?

Or is it Ad-i-ron-dacks, four distinct syllables with emphasis on the first and third?

By the way, dacks is an Oz word for trousers. Not many people know that :-)

[About like "add-uh-RON-dacks." --Mike]

[Ernest Zarate]

“...all the work he showed me was in the form of printed books and cards.”

Except maybe the photograph Mark is showing on the phone in the accompanying snapshot of him.

[MikeR]

What is the name of the cafe where you met? (To keep in mind for my next visit to the Keuka area)

[The Flour Shop on Main Street. Not a good nowtech name, as Suri cannot get it through her electronic brain that when I say "call the Flour Shop" I don't want flowers, but a good café with good food and that's the important thing. --Mike]

[Kenneth Tanaka]

I like Mark’s work.

(Even though he seems to be a square.)

[Ed Hawco]

Fun fact: the exact same chair is known to *some* Canadians as a "Muskoka chair," after the Muskoka region of Ontario (AKA, Toronto's "cottage country").

[Chip McDaniel]

He bears a strong resemblance to the actor, Brad Dourif, who played the doctor in the "Deadwood" series.

[Will]

Chair looks like a Muskoka from here!

[Urs Willi]

The Adirondack Park covers an area of 9.375 sq mi, Switzerland one of 15.940 sq mi. In other words: the size of the park is almost 60% of our national territory. That's impressive. But we are still bigger...

[It's the Adirondacks Mountains that cover 18,702 square miles. Sorry for the error. —Mike]

[David Brookes]

Mike

This UK resident has actually made a couple of Adirondack chairs. I got the plans from Norm Abram's New Yankee Workshop show, which was shown on the Discovery Channel in the UK a couple of decades ago.

[robert quiet photographer]

I went through Mark's site, excellent pictures and interesting words.
I always find nice to know there is someone around who still shows photos in form of pictures or books :-)
robert
PS: I bookmarked his blog

[Doug C]

Not to be critical, but for my taste the photograph of Mark Hobson would have been more pleasing to me with less d-o-f and less sharpening, in other words something other than a cell-phone photo.

So the cell-phone was not as good as a regular camera in that instance, again, my taste, others might disagree.

[inaki]

It is much more interesting to see on any architectural or design magazine [glossy, for that] on how to see what the urban environment will hardly ever achieve to be true.

[Doug C]

So do you really think the d-o-f and sharpening look OK? I was trying to be tactful, but it really does ruin the photograph.

I see a lot of iPhone photos that don't suffer from this problem, but I don't take photos with mine so I know very little about how they work. A normal camera with a 35mm at f4 or 5.6 would have made the photograph look pretty OK I would think.

Or am I missing something?

[It's just a record snapshot, not a portrait. --Mike]