The Online Photographer

The Photographer's Chair

The entirely surprising story of a photographic "meme," or leitmotif, through its history—"the Photographer's Chair."

Mike

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Paul Duncan: "Fascinating, but dang: yet another of my totally original ideas exposed as the subconscious purloining from the vast cultural meme-yard!"

Robert Newcomb: "Using a chair in a portrait is hard even when they're soft. The more conventional medium high backed sitting or dinning chair will often 'cut through' the subject in an odd place creating an extra appendage as the back extends from the sitter. In a soft plush chair the sitter will often be swallowed as he/she sinks down into it creating an unflattering bad posture slouching look. The very high backed wicker chair pictured serves as a way to seat the subject and act as a portrait background for their body and head without extra appendages. I spent the last 20 years of my photography life doing portraits. In the studio I usually had about a dozen chairs of different sizes, styles, and hues to match the size and style of the person. I hoarded old and odd chairs for these reasons."

Two Beauties

Just wanted to mention that the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 60mm ƒ/2.8 Macro has really nice bokeh. I've been impressed with its rendering again and again, over a long period. (It just happened again—saw a pic, was impressed with the lens rendering, checked the lens and it was this one. It's happened before, repeatedly.)

I don't personally know what I would do with a focal length of 120mm equivalent, but different folks have different strokes in that regard. Anyway this one's a beauty.

If I were doing portraits in a serious way, needed an optimal camera, and could have anything, I'd consider an odd couple: a Sigma 56mm ƒ/1.4 DC DN "Contemporary" on a Sony A7RIV for Sony's best eye focus and IBIS tech. Why the Sigma 56mm? It's a sleeper, a real gem, with wonderful, classic rendering. It's only flaw might be that even wide open it's too sharp. And why the Sony? You can assign APS-C mode to a custom function button for switching effortlessly, and 85mm-e and 26 MP is perfect for portraits. I'd prefer it over a 6000-series camera for its more optimal hand size and so you could have a resolution monster for landscapes and big prints simply by switching to a full-frame lens. A 6000-series camera would work too. The a6500 and a6600 have IBIS.

On Micro 4/3, the Sigma 56mm would be 112mm-e. Too long. I'd get one of the 42.5mms out there (from $89 to $1,597.99). But there again, YMMV.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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David L Glos: "I've had occasion to use several macro lenses over the years that exhibit great bokeh. My Pentax 120mm ƒ/4 macro (for 645) was incredible, and one of my favorite portrait lenses of all time, despite the minuscule focus throw at distance. A friends Leica APO Macro Elmarit-R 100mm ƒ/2.8 was perhaps the best I ever used. They also brilliantly solved the focus throw at infinity issue by requiring almost two full revolutions of the focus ring over the range. On the cheaper end, the 90mm Tamron macro is excellent, and available in several mounts. Recently, I just picked up the 60mm ƒ/2.4 macro for my Fuji gear, and it too has fantastic image quality. They can be found at bargain prices used too, as people complain about the AF speed, which is not a critical issue for my purposes."

Moose: "Re 'I don't personally know what I would do with a focal length of 120mm equivalent....' You are thinking normal distance photography. The lens designers were thinking Macro. It's about working distance. The Oly or Panny 30mm macros have the same FoV on a 4/3 sensor as a 60 mm lens on FF. But, they are still 30mm lenses. And, like all four Micro 4/3 macro lenses with AF, they are internal focusing. The way that works is by shortening the FL when focusing close (for example, the Canon 60mm ƒ/2.8 for FF is about 40mm FL at closest focus).

"Without trying to see if I can get a chart on Typepad, let me just show the far right columns, Working Distance, that is, the distance from physical front of the lens to focal plane at closest focus.

Panasonic 30mm ƒ/2.8: 22mm (7/8")

Olympus 30mm ƒ/3.5: 16mm (5/8")

Panasonic 45mm ƒ/2.8: 68mm (2 11/16")

Olympus 60mm ƒ/2.8: 89mm (3 1/2")

"Close focusing distances of under an inch are fine, when I'm working on a copy stand, with ring light or Lieberkühn reflector. Ordinary flash is also useless, as the subject will be in the lens shadow. For hand held use, even tripod, without artificial light, with things that move, that may be spooked by something so large, so close, they are useless.

"That's why 60mm."

Dumb Rookie Mistake

Have you ever done something dumb?

You remember the other day in the "Old Dreams" post that I bought that Voigtländer 40mm ƒ/2 SLII lens in the rare Contax (C/Y) mount? Well, I blew it. It came, but it immediately became apparent to me that the lens was fogged, so I quickly contacted the seller requesting to return it.

But check out what I missed in the description:

The seller replied to me saying, in effect, "hey, I told you"...and with complete justification. He did. I just missed it.

Damn! Dumb rookie mistake. He also said "Looks Mint"—emphasis mine—not "Mint." And it did look brand new in the photos, with pristine boxes. As indeed it looks in person.

I should know better—I've bought and sold more than 400 items on eBay since it opened for business in 1995. I was so excited to get an alert (after a wait) for the lens in Contax mount that I just clicked on it. I wasn't as careful as I usually am.

Wish I had not done that! Now I have to find a repair shop that will disassemble the lens and clean it. The total cost will no doubt be more than just waiting for a clean one. But now I'm stuck.

You can't step in the same river twice
This is a good time to say something I don't think gets emphasized enough: there's work involved in getting all your stuff set up to work. When you find something you like and that works for you, there's a lot of benefit in sticking to it.

I used to read a lot about audio. I recall one writer who recounted all the work he had done years ago to set up a system he was happy with. It consisted of tube equipment and electrostatic speakers and a turntable with a moving-magnet cartridge, and he described the sound as being "like a warm, wet kiss." Once he got everything matched and calibrated, he decided he was done. He listened to it for a few years. Then he got bored, and dove into the upgrade cycle again to make the system more "accurate." So the old system got dismantled and replaced piece by piece. But, years later, he realized he'd never been quite as happy with any of the subsequent evolution of his systems as he had been with that first good one. He spoke about it wistfully (and sure, his feelings might indeed have been inflected with nostalgia) but he said that from time to time he would wish, yet again, that he had just stuck with that system, the first one he got really right.

I've had to rotate photo equipment constantly, but that's because I write about equipment, so I don't have the luxury of keeping things. But over the years there have been multiple occasions when I've tried to re-buy stuff that I had sold off and regretted selling.

More often than not, those efforts fail.

They fail for a number of reasons—partly it's because the world changes, companies go out of business, what's new becomes old, your tastes change, etc. But they also fail because equipment isn't actually interchangeable. You can understand this in one way by reading Roger Cicala, who will make you aware of sample variation. Sometimes one lens that looks new is fine and another one that looks new has internal fog.

But sometimes it's more inscrutable than that—it's because you "click" (no pun intended) with a certain set of equipment, and learn it, and groove into its feel and its ways, such that when you leave it behind and then try to reproduce it years later it just doesn't feel the same. You've changed, it's changed, the replacement is subtly different than the old thing you bonded with because it's old and yours was new back then...whatever.

And sometimes, like now, it's just because there's a certain amount of difficulty getting set up with serviceable stuff that works. It can take time and effort, and involve frustrations.

To use my Rolleiflex 6008AF, I've had two of my Rollei 6000-series batteries rebuilt with new, tested NiMH cells, and I've procured a new charger that will charge the new cells to capacity. That involved a certain amount of research, discussion with vendors, and expense. It's not automatic, like just going to eBay and buying an old battery. (That's difficult too: because the battery housings are no longer made, they're in demand from 6000-series owners, and cost a fair amount even thought they might not even be working very well, or at all).

My point is that it just takes some doing to get rolling, to get your mojo working, and there's some sense in honoring and respecting the effort and expense of that, and not casually throwing it away later just for the sake of change, or just because you miss shopping.

That's all. Just something to think about. It made me feel a little less stupid to write about it. Signed, your humble[d] dumb-ass Ed.,

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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John Willard: "The enemy of good is better."

Christoph Meyer: "Buy and hold. When you have it fixed and enjoy using it, the trouble won't matter. I too own stuff that in the end became more expensive than planned. But then I am not a buy and sell shop that needs to move it with a profit. Just own it to use it."

Sunday Support Group: How Often Should You Weigh Yourself? (OT)

Topic this Sunday: weight loss.

Here's an odd thing. I'm sure if you've tried to lose weight you've seen various recommendations for how often to weigh yourself. The main one used to be (I'm not current with the Zeitgeist) that you should weigh yourself no more than once a week. To avoid discouragement.

Turns out that's wrong. When put to the test and looked at statistically, the people who lose the most weight are those who weigh themselves twice a day—once in the morning and once in the evening.

So I've been doing that. Started it very reluctantly, I must say. But...

Evening weight, December 18th 2019: 250.2
Morning weight today (102 days later): 221.8

That's pretty encouraging!

I have a good scale, which Amazon tells me I bought on Sept. 21st, 2013—that would have been right about at the apex of TOP in terms of popularity and income. You can tell from the price of the scale I had money burning a hole in my pocket. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the thing, but it's certainly consistent—when I was testing it, weighing the same test objects weeks apart never varied by more than 0.2 lbs. And even that much seemed to depend on where on the standing pad the objects were placed.

But here's the really weird thing: who knew that your weight varies so much from evening to morning? My weight last night before I went to bed was 225.4. And this morning it's 221.8! That's a 3.6 pound variance in less than 12 hours. It's not like my net weight loss every day is 3.6 lbs., but it's very consistent that I weigh two to four pounds more in the evenings than I do in the mornings.

Turns out one of the characteristics of plant-based eating is that you have a higher metabolism when you sleep. That might account for some or all of it. It still basically mystifies me that these differences could be so great, however. (I certainly don't pee away 3.6 pounds' worth in the night. That would be 55 fluid ounces!)

I'll delve into more detail about my current experiment in a future post. I just thought this was interesting.

Crisis = dangerous opportunity*
Oh, and by the way—in case you're sheltering in place and working from home and you've wanted to try adding more plants to your diet, this could be an opportunity. The greatest impediment for many people who would like to try plant-based eating is their work schedules. So if you're at home and temporarily don't have to commute, this might be a convenient time to give it a try.

Unfortunately, you can't really switch to a plant-based diet whole hog (wow, pardon the expression!)—it takes your body time to adapt, not to mention the fact that you have to work out what you want to eat, find and test new recipes, etc. The best advice I've seen is to switch breakfast first, then give yourself three weeks to get used to that, then switch lunch, and so on. Beans can be problematic because they can cause flatulence and digestive disruption. The trick is to start very slow—a spoonful of canned beans on a salad, for instance—and then eat more or less the same amount every day, increasing or decreasing only gradually. I eat beans every day with no gas or gut problems.

So how many times in your life have you not had time for a good breakfast because you're racing around trying to get out of the house? You make do with something that's convenient but bad for you. Now that you're at home, you might have more time to develop one, two, or three good go-to plant-based breakfast meals that you can eat going forward.

Don't look to me for specifics. I eat a salad and a berry-and-kale smoothie every morning, varying the ingredient list of both. Most people would not naturally consider that to be breakfast food, although I have learned to love it (yes, really love it). But remember, no dairy, no meat, no oils, and no cheese.

There are lots of good plant-based cookbooks that might give you a start, but I'd rather not give cooking advice—I'm doing much better, but I'm a novice cook. (If you're worried about shopping and deliveries during the coronavirus pandemic, this might make you feel better.)

Bon appétit, but much more importantly, à votre santé—

Mike

*"The Chinese word for 'crisis' is frequently invoked in Western motivational speaking as being composed of two Chinese characters signifying 'danger' and 'opportunity' respectively. While the original meaning of wēijī is 'danger at a point of juncture,' and many linguists and native Chinese speakers highlight the errors in its Western reinterpretation, the term's 'danger-plus-opportunity' meaning has been so widely used by politicians, businesspeople, and in popular culture that its alternative etymology has been picked up all over the world, including by some native Chinese speakers." (Wikipedia, lightly edited)

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Jamie Pillers: "When my daughter prodded the family into going vegetarian about a year ago, I needed to find some recipes to get us started. By luck, we found Meatless by Martha Stewart Living. Easy recipes, no hard-to-find ingredients, relatively small amount of prep time. And everything we've tried from the book so far has made a vegetarian diet seem pretty much like what we'd been eating previously, at least with regards to tastiness."

Dan Khong: "Mike, I am one of those obsessive-compulsive types who weigh themselves twice a day, and I am able to keep my weight to a 67–68kg range +/– 1kg (BMI <22). Once I'm over, I keep my mouth shut."

Kirk: "Check your weight once a year. The waist band on your trousers or the notch on your belt should tell you when you are erring to excess consumption. Weight is secondary to fitness. I weigh myself once a year. It's always 160, 160, 160, 160. When it hits 161 I either swim harder or run longer. Then it goes away. I eat a vague vegetarian diet. I'm never too strict. If I am too strict the temptation to throw it all out is too strong. A burger a month is just about right...."

Mike replies: But Kirk, you and your buddy Rip are beasts and I am naught but a couch potato!  :-)

Rodger Kingston: "Mike, For quite a few years I've weighed myself once a day, nude, upon getting up in the morning. That's the only time each day when everything is the same. I record my weight once a week, and have been doing it since I had a stroke in August of 2016. I've lost nearly 60 pounds since then (75 pounds down from my highest weight), and kept the weight off within a range of five pounds or so during more than three and a half years. It's the first really successful weight loss in my life. I didn't do it by going on a diet, but by making a deep down life change.

"And by the way, I also have a Health O Meter 349KLX, which has been the best—the most reliable—scale I've ever owned. I bought it in 2011 when it was $145."

Mike replies: Good on you Rodger. Impressive.

Baker's Dozen: At the Museum (Part I)

Photo by Benjamin Kelley, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Photo by Rich Barbara, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Photo by Albano García, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Tired
I'll say a few words about each of the above pictures, but out of order. Last first.

The third picture here was hard to pick. Probably a dozen people sent pictures on the theme of museumgoers resting, from a variety of viewpoints, and I could easily have picked four or five others as great representatives of the submissions. All had their charms and points of view, none were poor.

I do recall reading that people in general (not just kids!) have a tendency to overdo it when visiting museums. There's a strong tendency to want to see everything or cover it all. We've set aside the day, we've made the trip, and most especially we've paid our admission fee, and we've got to get our money's worth! So we trudge around the museum until we've had enough, then we trudge some more because we haven't seen this section or that room. (This is an example of the Sunk Cost Fallacy according to Richard Thaler). So we typically wear ourselves out and make ourselves cross. I have vivid memories of time moving with glacial slowness when I was a kid. No memories of being bored in museums, but I do have a distinct memory of being stuck at the Milwaukee Symphony while the orchestra sawed and moaned on and on and on and on while I squirmed in my skin. I sympathize with this little girl (her eyes are open, you'll notice—she's not sleeping).

In picking this from the others I do think I was influenced by the fact that I'm familiar with a lot of Albano's work. He took this one [a year and] a couple of months ago at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, in Buenos Aires. "My daugher Margarita loves museums, but that day she'd had enough.  :-)  Shot on a Sony a6000 with 16–50mm kit zoom I bought from my dear friend Juan Buhler."

Essential transaction
When I saw the top picture I reacted as a photographer, not a viewer, which is a common mistake of mine. Having spent so many years as a photographer I became sensitive to what are called tonal mergers, where two parts of the picture that should be separated are the same tone and blend too much. An example of the problem I usually turn to is Portugal 1976 by Josef Koudelka...(click on the image at the link to see the larger version). I've seen prints of this where there's just the barest highlight between the nun's head and the man's jacket—crucial, in my judgement—and prints where there isn't. The latter would be a tonal merger. So if I were Benjamin Kelley I would have just moved to the side a bit to set his daughter's whole head against the lighter background of the wall.

But I didn't take the picture, and yes, there's a rim of highlight there, and no, it doesn't ruin the picture in any way, so...here's an example of where I shouldn't look at the picture like I had been the photographer, but rather just put my "viewer's hat" on and appreciate the picture that's being shown to me. You shouldn't react to a finished picture by thinking of how you might have framed it differently if you were the one taking it! That's not fair. One might as sensibly react that museums shouldn't hang paintings where they're struck by direct sunlight. That would be another first response to the photo that would interfere with seeing it for what it is. Anyway, once I let go of my first reaction, the photo grew on me more, and I found myself liking the obvious implication of childlike wonder and the contrast between the real sunlight in the room and the mysterious glow of the light depicted in the painting. And it's beautiful, and I'm just old-fashioned enough to believe that that never hurts.

It sums up the basic, essential transaction of museums. They display wondrous things, we look and wonder. Benjamin writes, "I’ve been photographing my daughter looking at art for a number of years now. She was newly four here, in 2015. This was taken at our local museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, with John White Alexander’s Isabella and the Pot of Basil."

Punctum

Punctum: A concept from Roland Barthes' book Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography.

1. To wound.
2. Denoting the wounding, personally touching detail [of a photograph] which establishes [for the viewer] a direct relationship with the object or person within it.

—Urban Dictionary

As for the middle picture, it's perfectly nice as a set piece, but then I noticed that whitish streak in front of the seated man. After a flash of puzzlement, I realized it's his other hand. That's something that would be considered an "imperfection" by some, but to me it's the punctum, the peculiar little odd detail that brings the rest of the picture alive. I realized the seated man is energetically gesticulating at one of the paintings, and from there I imagine his energized voice as he expounds on (enthuses over? Dismisses?) whichever of the paintings he's gesturing at, and from there I go to his rather mysteriously robed and apparently somewhat hunched hearer, and from there to their relationship and their possible history together as—what? Spouses, friends, student and teacher? Those thoughts brings the picture alive for me and draws me into its aliveness. From there I can appreciate the set piece, the nice formal qualities of the picture.

Rich took the picture at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a with an Olympus E-M10 and a 25mm ƒ/1.8 lens.

Photo by David Mackenzie, Bedford, New Hampshire, USA

Last in this first installment is this happy shot from Dave Mackenzie. I read a book about the Mona Lisa once...it's curious how the painting got the status it has. Dave relates: "We were running late one day in Paris and decided to visit the Louvre about half an hour before closing. Given the short amount of time we had we headed directly for the Mona Lisa. When we turned the corner into the exhibit space we were met by this. A docent told me were lucky to arrive so late so that the crowd was much thinner than normal. At least nobody was taking a 'selfie.'"

...Except I do see at least one person taking a selfie! At the top of the crowd above the striped hat. I imagine many people have taken pictures of this scene, but Dave's is a good one. I like it.

[Part II will appear on March 28th, 2021*.]

Mike

*Just kidding. Sorry I lost the thread on this. It got engulfed in my unmanageability and the oceanic disorganization of all the raw material (inside and outside of my head) that I trawl through to make TOP. I shouldn't say when I'll get to the other nine, but hopefully it won't take a year for Part II...though I never know...sigh.....

If you need a reminder (and why would you not?), I made a call for work on the theme of "At the Museum" an entire year ago (I think exactly, though I haven't checked) and then I very badly dropped the ball and just didn't come through with the edited picks. Now with more time at home, I decided to address the problem by chipping away at it a few pictures at a time. I apologize for the delay—the long delay—but if I'm honest there's really no excuse. I'm sorry. Mea culpa.

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Dogman: "Excellent choices to start off a new Baker's Dozen! Reading the article, I'm reminded how I no longer look at photos as a photographer but as a viewer. A 'consumer,' if you will, of photographs and images. When I looked at photos with the photographer's eye, I looked for errors and flaws. Then I came to grips with the fact that the photographs I like the best are candid moments and found objects, none of which are ever perfectly arranged subjects. I like the imperfect elements that make their way into photographs. They become Barthes' punctum for me."

Benjamin Polidario: "The photographer's/viewer's dilemma: is it similar to a preacher's dilemma when he listens to another preach? I often critique instead of just basking in the message. Bad, Bad, Bad."

David Lee (edited comment): "Nice post. Your comments about people trying to get the most of their very expensive museum tickets are spot on. I was talking about this with my son not long ago. The Met used to have a policy that the price was 'suggested,' so you could either pay full price or whatever you could pay. Now that policy changed and you are charged full price. Not sure I agree with it. The Met has a lot of works that were given to them for free in order to give all the people a chance to enjoy them. The Gelman Collection comes to mind, for example. I think that people should be charged as in a parking lot, full first hour and then on 15 minute increments. A lot of people go the museum to get the selfie and buy a souvenir in the shop.

"I used to have a layover in Chicago. We used to stay in The Palmer House, not far from The Art Institute. They had the same policy as The Met and I took full advantage of it. Paying maybe a third of the suggested price and then going to see the four or five paintings I loved. In and out in about one hour. A visit to Central Camera in Wabash Avenue was also a required stop."

Mike replies: It was one of the great things about going to art school in downtown Washington, D.C.: a lot of museums are open to the public, so you can pop in and out. I would often do what you describe, just kill some time by "visiting" a favorite artwork for a few minutes, or find a peaceful corner as a place to read.

MHMG: "I do admire the first photograph in this Part I series. Great for the photo opportunity, but shame on the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for allowing direct sunlight to strike the painting. We're talking 40,000+ lux illumination levels on the lower half of that painting, and yah, the museum conservators could have filtered the UV radiation at the skylight/window source, but they will find out in just a few years how much fading can occur with blue wavelength radiation at such high intensity levels. Just sayin'...epic fail for museum staff, great shot by the photographer!"

[MHMG is an expert on light fading and image permanence—Ed.]

Rod S.: "The top picture by Benjamin Kelley is really quite lovely. My initial thoughts were surprise that direct sunlight was being allowed to strike the painting, but simultaneously 'wow, isn’t it beautiful.' I understand your point about the tonal convergence, but in this instance it is very slight. Benjamin has chosen to follow the more important principle of keeping his perspective true. If he had done as you suggested and stepped to his left, both the verticals and horizontals of the painting and floor would have been skewed out of their true relationship. The result would be ugly and 'unworthy.'

"Part of the success of this photograph comes from the gaze of the child, while another, perhaps under-appreciated, contribution comes from the inclusion of a child, with her expected animated manner, injecting an informal point of contrast into a structured and formal setting. Bravo, Benjamin."

Ben: "What a pleasant surprise it was to open TOP this weekend to find my photograph there—right after putting the subject to bed, in fact!

"Thanks to everyone for the kind words, and thanks to Mike for featuring the photo. It's a favorite of mine; obviously it carries personal meaning for me, so it's nice to read positive comments from others. Chris's comment echoes my own feeling about the composition, that I like how the top of her head continues the line of the shadow. Maybe I'll try to print it sometime, see how it turns out. And yes, the strong light on the painting is concerning. Perhaps they've corrected it...maybe once the museum opens again I'll go have a look! Thanks again, I'm quite flattered. Hope everyone is staying healthy and keeping up positive energies!

"P.S. Regarding Moose's comment and photo, my wife and I got married at the Worcester Art Museum.  :-)  Funny, the little coincidences...."

We Are Trooper Strong! (OT)

Dang, I missed the launch time. Sorry. Mea culpa. I woke up unusually late today.

Doesn't really matter...11:00 a.m. was just the time that the link went live for the first time.

Anyway, if you want a nice spirit-lifter, take 21 minutes and 12 seconds out of your day and let yourself get carried along with a small band of kids and their supportive hometown in "The City Behind Us: The Story of the Elmora Troopers," the brand-new short film by my friend the filmmaker Bob Burnett and his friends that had its premier this morning. (Longtime readers will remember Bob's short film about the house in the Edward Hopper painting, among other sundry appearances here.)

Just a great, great short. Yeah, there's more than a bit of the rosey glow on this, but heck, don't we need it right now? This is part of what we want to get back to, after the current crisis is over. It's real America, if you ask me. We're a people who come together. We need reminding right now. We are Trooper Strong!

Enjoy, enjoy. Sorry I was late posting this. I've been behind myself for days. More on it later today or later in the week when I get myself combobulated and catch up with myself.

Mike
(Thanks to Bob)

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Harry B Houchins: "Yah, that hit the spot! As an ex-pat Jersey boy (Passaic 1944, Clifton 1962) it moved me. Thanks very much! Made my day...."

Terry: "As a Williamsport resident I always try to explain what the Little League World Series is like and this explains that very well. Thanks for sharing."

Spirit-Lifter

So you say your spirits need a little lift? You'd like a little sunshine for a change? Have I got a nice treat for you coming up. Something you can enjoy with the whole family.

Watch this space around 11:00 a.m. on Saturday. I've got a line on something new that I'll bet is going to make you smile. (No charge, either, nobody's selling anything. And don't worry, you can't miss it.) It's going to pick you up.

Stay tuned for more.

Mike
(Thanks to BB)

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Old Dreams

My big frustration
One of my biggest and longest-lasting frustrations with camera equipment—hope I'm not being a broken record—was the fact that Zeiss never made the lens I wanted.

I chose my first "real" camera when I was taking a lecture course in optics at the University of Maryland, the better to learn more about lenses. (It was a great course—wish I could remember the prof's name, to give him due credit. He was a great explainer.) Halfway home I would get off the Washington Beltway and pop in at Industrial Photo, a large camera store on Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring, now long gone of course. There, I befriended a counterman named Ray. I was even a guest at Ray's spread once, a rural farm where he raised pot-bellied pigs for pets. Ray had quite a pot belly himself.

There was one big long counter that was divided by brand. Each brand had a section of countertop and a set of shelves behind it loaded with gear. I'd flit around like the gearhead nomad I was to become, pulled between East and West—Nikon and Canon to Leica and Contax. Japanese, or German? I almost bought a Leica—I could have afforded an M4-P and a 50mm Summicron—but I reasoned that it would be much more expensive to buy a second and third lens. I finally decided on Contax—a premium nameplate of Yashica at the time, before Yashica was bought by Kyocera—as being the best of both worlds: Japanese bodies, German lenses. Carl Zeiss made the lenses for the system.

All very rational. Yeah, right.

I couldn't afford the RTS I wanted, so I bought a 159Q that was to become my constant companion for years. At first, I made do with the Carl Zeiss 50mm ƒ/1.4 Planar. That kit took me through my first year in photography school—to get a longer perspective, I'd shoot portraits horizontally and then crop them to verticals. Never did quite "take to" that lens. In my second year at the school (the third year of the program—I transferred in as a "sophomore," although they didn't call it that), I decided to make the big switch to a two-lens kit—to sell the 50mm and buy a 35mm and an 85mm. It was a momentous move for me at the time. Mostly it was because of frustration shooting with the 50mm on D.C.'s city streets.

Zeiss/Contax 35mm ƒ/2.8 Distagon like the one I used in photo school

The Zeiss/Contax 85mm ƒ/2.8 Sonnar became one of my favorite lenses, and I made a lot of portraits with it over the years. But the 35mm frustrated me. Contax and/or Zeiss had made the decision to offer a fast lens and a slow lens and nothing in between. Nikon, which at the time was the leading company, like Canon is now, offered its AIS lenses in three tiers—slow and cheap at one end, fast and high-quality at the other, plus a tier that split the difference. So its lineup of 35mm's consisted of the 35mm ƒ/2.8 which was compact and inexpensive, the 35mm ƒ/1.4 (very fast for the day) which was premium in its build and optical quality but large and heavy (again, just in the context of the times), and expensive. Nikon's AIS 35mm ƒ/2 was in the middle in all the different ways...quality, size, speed, and price.

All Contax had was the high and the low, the fast and the slow, the big and the small, the too-expensive and the too-cheap. The middle tier was missing. No 35mm ƒ/2. Argh.

I did end up switching to Nikon when I graduated and joined a professional studio (after teaching for three years). But not before I'd spent years grinding my teeth over the absent 35mm ƒ/2 in the Contax system. It was really what I needed. Of course I got it in the Nikon system, in the form of the then-new AF lens which is still in the catalog.

Jump forward a bit. I owned a Leica for a few years, an M6, for which I had a 35mm ƒ/2 Summicron, the one now called the "Pre-ASPH." Next I switched to Olympus because I got infatuated with the OM-4T. For that system, I used the 40mm ƒ/2 pancake. I chose that for two reasons: one, because Sally Mann, who I had interviewed for Darkroom Techniques magazine (the review was never published—well, because I never finished it—but that's okay, because it turns out she can speak for herself very well) said she had used it heavily for assignments around Lexington, Virginia, when she was poor, and she thought it was "just about right"; and two, because they were going begging. They were very cheap. The OM Zuiko 40mm ƒ2 spent a lot of time languishing unwanted on closeout, listed in the ads in the back of the photo magazines at just $69 or something very close to that. There were only 3,000 made, and only 1,000 came to North America, but they couldn't give 'em away.

OM Zuiko 40mm ƒ/2 is a nice little lens, but don't believe
everything you read in photography magazines  :-)

I took care of that. I wrote several articles and online posts in praise of the lens just as they got scarce (and just as the Internet really got going), and the price immediately leapt five- to tenfold and has never come back down again. A lens I once bought for $45 and $55 used has cost $400 or more for years now. I learned my lesson—if I was on the lookout for something, I waited until after I bought it to sing its praises in print!

It wasn't all that. Decent, like most OM Zuiko lenses, but the filter ring was also the aperture ring, which I never liked, so it always seemed fragile. I never knew why the form-factor of the little OM Zuiko 50mm ƒ/1.8 would not have served just as well. Optically it was nothing terribly special.

But I was home. I loved the focal length and I was pleased at how the little lens rendered; it didn't call attention to itself. Capable, competent, but modest.

Old dreams come true
So fast-forward to now. Wouldn't you know, a reader sent me a very nice gift, a box of old disused film equipment that contained either a.) junk, if you couldn't care less about photography, or b.) treasures, if you're one of us. Treasures to me! Such fun. Thanks again, Fred. Included was a very nice Contax RTS II. And lookee what I just scored for it:

A Voigtländer 40mm ƒ/2 SL in Contax/Yashica mount. What I always wanted, at long (very long) last. Reminds me of a saying I heard a long time ago that has stuck with me over the years: you usually get what you want, it just takes a lot longer than you think it will. As they say in Maryland, true dat.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Steve Rosenblum: "I have the Voigtländer 40mm in OM Mount and it lives on my OM-4t. It's a wonderful lens and nearly impossible to find now outside of Nikon and M Mount. Enjoy!"

John Camp: "If you shuffled through your prints now, photos made with that variety of 35mms and 40mms, could you still pick out which was made with which?"

Mike replies: Well, I can, yes, but that's only because I have a strange ability to remember the lens I was using for almost all the pictures I've ever taken. I don't try; my brain just does it. But it was more a matter of utilty. The Contax was a handy, portable size, but not only was I shooting at ASA/ISO 80, lenses in that era did not perform as well wide open as today's. So ƒ/2.8 was just past the edge of being too slow. The fast lens on the other hand was really huge, and beyond my means anyway. So I was kind of stuck, at least in the Contax system, and at the time.

marcin wuu: "I hope you're gonna use it. I noticed that all the gear I once craved and finally, after many years, acquired is sitting on the shelves. And I use the things that get the job done. All the dream stuff is pretty much just that—the dream stuff. Scratches the itch, but not much use in it. It's kinda sad."

Mike replies: I almost said as much in the post, but then I thought, why be pessimistic? But you're probably right. That darned old expression: you can't go home again.

Dave Stewart: "Bought a secondhand Voigtländer 40mm ƒ/2 SLII for Nikon F-mount over nine years ago. Still a firm favourite. Amongst various reports and tests, this article was influential. Hope that you like and enjoy using yours."

Vijay: "Glad you finally got the lens in Contax mount! Your writings led me to the Aria and the same lens. Enjoy!"

A Confession

I find photographs in all sorts of places. And I'm almost radically egalitarian in how I'll prioritize their status.

I used to love "antiques" (junk) stores that had large collections of old snapshots. I loved to look through them and muse about what they showed, always aware that I could at any turn happen across that chance perfectly-imperfect one-in-a-thousand shot.

I seldom bought even those, though. I'm not a collector. I'd love to be, but I move around, I'm disorganized, and I'm not really a good steward of the objects I own. This pains me, but you're got to know your weaknesses.

This is what kind of collector I'd be. Extra credit:
know who this is? Hover over the image for a hint.

I've written a few times how fascinated I am by the "good" pictures people have on their smartphones—meaning, the ones that mean something to them and show things they want to show other people, and preserve. I like old postcards, Shorpy, collections of Kodachromes*, and so forth and so on. I especially like curated collections of ephemera...as an aside, I believe that editing and curation have recently become much more important in the culture of imagemaking. Our apprehension of this hasn't begun to catch up to the reality, but I think a lot of the creativity of the future might shift from the making of images to the collection and arrangement of them. There is just so much now, and it all gets lost in a sea of more and ever more.

Virtual tours
But I digress. Anyway, here's my confession...I love poking around on Zillow and on Google Street View. For the pictures. On Zillow you get to see inside peoples' houses—spit-shined and made presentable, mostly, but it's fascinating the way people can't quite entirely erase the traces of their lives and the way they lived inside their spaces. And I love interiors, as a genre of photography. Sometimes—not often, I'll admit—I come across an interior that looks as formally beautiful as a Vermeer. Of course, somebody photographed that, and that somebody might have self-described as a photographer or even been a professional. But just as often it was an anonymous realtor, or the owner, and the picture was meant to be utilitarian. Show off the nice garage.

On Google Street View you can virtually "walk" neighborhoods all over America—seeing what there is to see, and again getting a sense of how the (mostly absent) people occupy the spaces that are familiar to them. And just as with the old snapshot tables at junk stores, occasionally the random photograph taken automatically from the top of a moving vehicle magically arranges itself into a real photograph. It "arrests" me, that's the word—I stop, stilled, and stare. How did that happen?

I don't screen-grab it, though. My hard drive is already junky enough.

It's as close to the real magic in photography as the stuff I see in museums, the stuff that's presented with such great deference toward the status of the auteur, the curator, and the institution. Often, though, all that ego just gets in the way. The magic of photography is radically egalitarian—never plentiful, never easy to access, but open to all, anywhere, everywhere. Sometimes where you least expect it.

Mike

*I love how, at that link, the writeup has to start by explaining to people that "50 years ago, people used 35mm cameras like we use smartphones in the age of Instagram." Ha! I'm older now, and I'm a-living in the future....

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Marco Maroccolo: "The great Josef Sudek!"

Dennis: "A neat thing about Google Street View is that the view changes. Same with satellite views. They get updated every so often. A couple of years ago, three co-workers and I were walking to lunch from work and crossing a street single file when a Google truck photographed us. For a while, if you checked out the Street View, there we were doing an unintentional impression of the Beatles' Abbey Road cover. But that's been replaced by a newer set."

Francisco Cubas: "I couldn't agree more with your last paragraph. I see poetry exactly the same way. Borges wrote that poetry can appear in any simple conversation—it's not a prerogative of great books or great poets. As you say, its magic is radically egalitarian. Maybe all those institutions and powers just get in the way and make people think they're not worthy of art.

"About the shift from making to collecting images you may be interested in the late work and essays of Joan Foncuberta."

Ulrich Fraaß: "This is the famous photographer Josef Sudek (1896–1976) in his small studio in Praha. Unfortunately he lost his right arm during World War I."

Mike adds: If anyone out there reading this ever gets a chance to see Sudek prints in person, jump at it.

Mike Plews: "Sudek by Sonja Bullaty belongs on every photographer's bookshelf. Magic on every page."

Mike replies: I agree.

JG: "One other great thing about Google's Street View is that serves as a convenient, always and easily accessible time capsule. My father died in February 2017, yet no matter where I am, I can always log into Google Street View, scroll back to May, 2011, and see a photo of him in his car waiting at the stop sign a block from his house for the Google Street View car to pass."

Greg Heins: "The example of Sudek is especially pertinent now, in our shelter-in-place era. You could mount multiple exhibitions from the still-lifes he made in his tiny studio and then some more from the photographs he took of the window into his little garden with its solitary tree. Additionally, he lived from 1939 until his death in 1976 under either the Nazi or Soviet totalitarian regime. Many of his prints were made on whatever papers admirers in the West sent him. We are fortunate here in Boston to have a very choice selection of Sudeks available for viewing."

Martin D: "About a year ago you asked your readers to list their five favourite photographers. My list included Sudek. He is the odd one out in my photographic pantheon: the quiet voice of pure poetry amongst the prose of Hine, Evans, Abbott."

Kenny Rogers was One of Us

Kenny Rogers, Lincoln Memorial. Kenny Rogers died last Friday.
This was one of his five favorite shots. The figure to the left
almost feels like a symbolic cameo by the photographer,
doesn't it?

I never knew much about the singer Kenny Rogers, credited with bringing a pop sensibility to country—or a country sensibility to pop, whichever you choose ("I've always been too pop for country and too country for pop," he said in 2001). All I can recall is a song called "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town" that I didn't like when I heard it on my transistor radio walking home from school in 1969. The song turns out to be a cover—it was written by Mel Tillis, the country music star. It didn't seem to go well with the British Invasion and Motown stuff that made up a lot of the rest of what the station played. I confess that 12-year-old me didn't know what the lyrics meant.

What I never knew is that he was a devoted and passionate photographer who was just as talented at photography as he was at his chosen kind of music. He studied under John Sexton and the Canadian photographers George Hurrell and Yousuf Karsh, and made medium- and large-format landscapes and scenic pictures as well as portraits of his famous friends and other celebrity musicians. You can see his five personal favorite photographs (one of which is the posed shot at the Lincoln Memorial above) in an article at Sports & Entertainment Nashville. The article by Bill Hobbs is nice too.

"I am an impulsive obsessive," Rogers said. "I impulsively get involved with something, and then I get obsessed with it. So that’s what happened with photography." Know the feeling?

Another good article about his photography is at The Guardian. All the articles seem to repeat that he started out with "a 35mm Brownie Hawkeye." Repetitions like that are markers of the news getting the news from the news—the Hawkeye was a 620 rollfilm camera. Camera geekery aside, the Guardian author, Thomas Hobbs (any relation to the Sports & Entertainment Nashville author?), said his photographs have "real depth...it's as if he was suggesting that America, even at its most beautiful, had something sinister lurking in the darkness." He adds of one portrait that "arguably, Rogers captured the unnerving bombast of [Michael] Jackson’s eccentric celebrity more clearly than just about any other photographer." Jackson sang backup on one song from Rogers' 11th studio album, Share Your Love, produced by Lionel Ritchie in 1981.

There's a great portrait of Rogers in his prime by the proto-paparazzo Ron Galella at this link. I dare not reproduce it here.

He published a number of books of his work, including Kenny Rogers: This Is My Country (58 Stunning Portraits of Country Music's Heart & Soul), Kenny Rogers' America, and his book of landscapes, American Beauty. None are still in print as far as I can tell; American Beauty might have sold out just since his death, and might be available again.

In his later years, he regularly posted his photos on Instagram. Including "Lincoln Memorial."

We're always diminished when one of our number succumbs, whether they're famous for photography or for something else or not. Kenny Rogers was 81. Godspeed, fellow photo obsessive.

Mike
(Thanks to many tipsters)

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP—too arty for the geeks and too geeky for the art world

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Dogman: "I met him many years ago during an interview for the paper where I was working. He was a very articulate man who seemed highly intelligent and not at all 'star-like.' I recall him saying something about considering his singing to be a business as much as an art. Later I found out about his interest in photography. I also recall seeing a fellow in the distance who looked remarkably like him photographing in Yellowstone National Park about twenty years ago. But I've been told I used to look like Kenny Rogers myself—tall, grey hair and beard—so who knows. Maybe just another lookalike."

Mike Ferron: "Extra points if you remember Kenny as a psychadelic rocker...."

John Sexton: "Anne and I were deeply saddened when we woke last Saturday morning to the news that our friend Kenny Rogers had passed away. My friendship with Kenny spanned more than thirty-five years. We met in 1984 when I conducted a private printing workshop in his darkroom. The workshop was his Christmas gift from his wife. Our mentoring relationship instantly became a friendship. His passion for photography, and his unstoppable attitude were inspiring.

"We shared many photographic adventures together over the years. Our first photographic trip together was when Kenny was doing a major concert tour with Dolly Parton. We would photograph during the day, and Kenny would perform with Dolly each evening. Early on during that trip I was teaching Kenny the basics of view camera tilts and swings under the seats at the sold out Tacoma Dome as Dolly was performing. Kenny was a moment late getting on stage for the start of his part of the show because he didn’t want to stop the view camera session!

"On more than a few occasions we would work in the darkroom together beyond 3:00 a.m.! He was a legendary entertainer, but most importantly he was a caring, generous, and thoughtful human being who loved his family...and a great and loyal friend. Anne and I will miss him a lot! R.I.P., Kenny."

William Schneider: "Back in the '80s, I recall seeing a magazine story about Kenny's photography. Part of the story showed how he enlisted the police to shut down traffic on a busy bridge so that he could set up a shot. Celebrity has its advantages."

Useful Pandemic Links

A few useful pandemic links:

• Here's the Johns Hopkins map of the Worldwide progress of the illness (number of confirmed cases, number of deaths, number of people who have recovered). (Start on the FAQ page at the link and then click the link at the top—that seems to be the most reliable way to get to the most recent update of the map.) New York City (!? They're breaking it out from the USA) has jumped onto the deaths list just in the past couple of days.
• For U.S. citizens, Kaiser Health News has a page with a county-by-county tally of the number of intensive care unit (ICU) beds, total countywide population, population over 60 by number and percentage, and number of citizens over 60 per ICU bed. The search bar is kinda tough to find (well, I didn't see it at first): it's at the top of the table, under where it says "ICU Beds, by County." For example, my county has 25,083 people, 6,750 of whom are over 60 (incl. Yr. Hmbl. Ed.), and 0 ICU beds.
• Mayo Clinic page that explains Donald Trump's personality disorder type.
• Fox Business page listing restrictions state-by-state (updated regularly).
• What kind of organism is this virus? Viruses are incredibly primitive lifeforms. It is "little more than a packet of genetic material surrounded by a spiky protein shell one-thousandth the width of an eyelash, and it leads such a zombielike existence that it’s barely considered a living organism." It's somewhere "between chemistry and biology," said Gary Whittaker, a Cornell University professor of virology, in the article. "It's switching between alive and not alive."
• Regarding the stock market crash, Julia is sick and is awaiting the results of her COVID-19 test, so she is quarantined away from husband Philip and their baby, who are also sheltering in place. But Philip goes lo-fi this week to explain the implications to ordinary investors of the bear market, on PBS's personal finance vlog "Two Cents."
• Simplified basic model of how viral epidemics come to an end. A development most devoutly to be wished and anticipated!

Know of another useful informational link from a page that's likely to be trustworthy? Send it to me personally by email, with the title "Possible CV19 Link," and please include some identifying verbiage in the body of the email so it doesn't get routed to spam. Please don't send more than one link URL in your email. Please don't add links in the comments, but you can provide enough identifying information (source, title) so other readers can Google for themselves if they want to.

Really, please don't put links in the comments right now*. Thanks.

Mike

*I do my best to vet links in comments so as not to unwittingly publish something objectionable. But it takes a lot of time. I worked on catching up with comments all day yesterday until 10:30 last night, a process that was slowed greatly by checking all the links. I'd rather spend less time doing that and more time writing!

Original contents copyright 2020 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.

Please help TOP keep on keeping on

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Jim Arthur: "If you have never worked remotely before you may want to check out the 'SANS Security Awareness Work-from-Home Deployment Kit' for data security awareness info on how to stay secure at home. Their 'Securely Working From Home Factsheet' on the above mentioned page is worth a read. The cyber-criminals of the world are always lurking and waiting for a new opportunity. SANS stands for SysAdmin, Audit, Network and Security. Wikipedia says, 'The SANS Institute sponsors the Internet Storm Center, an internet monitoring system staffed by a global community of security practitioners, and the SANS Reading Room, a research archive of information security policy and research documents. SANS is one of the founding organizations of the Center for Internet Security.'"

V.I. Voltz: "The characteristics of life are growth, metabolism and reproduction. Viruses do not have metabolism, they need a host cell's metabolism to power and organise their reproduction. Technically they are self reproducing but not alive. Confusing."

Quote o' the Day: A Story and a Heart

Tim Bradshaw shared this the other day: "At the darkroom I use (but probably won't use for a while given COVID-19), the person who made it has a bit of paper stuck to the wall which says (if I remember):

'It doesn't have to be perfect, so long as it has a story and a heart.'

"Which I think is just a wonderful thing to bear in mind in this era of too often perfect but soulless photographs."

-

(Posted by) Mike

Tim adds: "This should be credited to Sebastian Edge without whom the North London Darkroom would not exist. He's kept it running for a long time against extraordinary odds: I just hope that it can survive COVID-19. If you're in London and want to make B&W prints in a darkroom, please consider NLD: it's a lovely place and Seb has worked stupidly hard to keep it alive. He's also an interesting photographer."

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Blog Note

I'm critically behind on comment moderation again—more than 80 waiting (it happens periodically)—so I'm going to be working on that this morning. Considering that I'm at home with "nothing to do," yesterday was an extremely full day, and today looks like more of the same. There's lots to do when there's nothing to do!

Might I suggest not immersing too much in the news? Be realistic, know what's actually happening, yes, but try not to obsessively read article after article after article. Give yourself respites from the radio and the television and social media. Yes, there are good reasons for hand-wringing and anxiety, but let's keep our spirits up. Prepare, but do it calmly. Don't neglect courtesy now that it's really needed. Find compassion in your heart for those who are behaving badly—they will always be out there. Concentrate on gratitude for the things you have to be thankful for; don't focus too much on how things might have been different "if only"; remember that most people who contract this illness will recover from it; think of the ways in which this experience might be a useful wake-up call and help bind us together once it's over; and pray for the other people in your life who are at risk. Let your thoughts be full of concern and appreciation and love for them. Gratitude and thoughts of others are a powerful salve in times of dread and worry.

Check back for new comments as the day wears on! I do have new posts underway too (when is that ever not true?) but the next one might not go up until this evening or tomorrow. I will find my balance again soon, never fear.

"Flatten the curve,"

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston

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A Visit to Jenia's Farm (One Thing Leads to Another)

Photo by Jenia Fridlyand, from Entrance to Our Valley

In the life I lead, one thing often leads to another.

For example, in the Comments to the "Test Shots" post, two readers were discussing Michael Ashkin's recent book HORIZONT (one liked it, one didn't.) So I looked it up, just to see what they were talking about. Not on Amazon. I found it on the TIS Books website, here.

Not quite my own cuppa, didn't seem like*. But I had never heard of TIS Books before, so I poked around a bit on the website and discovered Jenia Fridlyand. (Not hard, since the publisher emblazons her book on its landing page.) Her book, Entrance to Our Valley, sold out its first printing and will be printed again in a second edition—reasonably rare for a photobook these days—in April. Turns out it attracted a whole lot of attention and won awards. That was news to me too.

You can see a video runthrough of the book here, but be sure to look at larger, better JPEGs first, to get a sense of the quality of the pictures—you can then apply that to the images you'll see in the video.

The backstory of the photos is fascinating too. But let her tell you about it:

Our main motivation for buying it [the farm] was to establish a multi-generational home: for our parents, who are now living more than five thousand miles from the place of their birth; for my husband and I, both first-generation immigrants; and for our children, so they could have the privilege of coming back to a place where they grew up. Both my husband and I are third generation Moscovites—our grandparents came to Moscow from Ukraine as students in the early years of the Soviet Union—so we grew up and always lived in large cities, with no experience of rural existence or farming; and, as I mentioned, there was no history of land ownership in our families going back centuries. It was quite confounding to find ourselves on, and in charge of, over 200 acres of land, in the middle of the Hudson River Valley, whose own rich history begins in the pre-Columbian era. Photographing there, intensely, was my way of getting to know the place and making it my own.

I read that and I just thought, cool.

Entrance to Our Valley's awards included The British Journal of Photography's Best of 2019, as well as my old friend John Gossage's "Photobooks of 2019," a top ten list. John is interesting in that his photobook collection is exceptionally large—or was, rather, when I knew him in the 1980s and early '90s—and it contained almost no "chestnuts" (standard accepted classics), and very few of what you might call "the usual suspects." For instance, in his many thousands of books at that time there was no Ansel Adams and no Joel Meyerowitz.

As you might know I like filing books in pairs where each seems to amplify or add to the other. I think I'd file Entrance to Our Valley next to Paula Chamlee's High Plains Farm. The latter is a sort of inverse of the Fridlyands' situation: she left the farm she grew up on and that had been in her family for generations, and photographed it (using techniques very similar to Jenia's) on return visits.

I confess I'm somewhat susceptible to the lure of pastoral myths and fantasies myself, so chronicles of a countrified home life (like Sally Mann's Immediate Family, still in print after all these years, or Larry Towell's The World From My Front Porch) appeal to me. I'll probably like Entrance to Our Valley. I'll let you know when it gets here.

Here's the publisher's page for preordering the reprint.

Snow and fox
It snowed this morning. I love that. A coating of snow the thickness of cake frosting can transform the land around the house from grim and bleak into a vision that charms the eye.

Another instance of one thing leading to another: when I was researching the "Bandana Republic" post, one of the many articles I read was "The Best-Case Outcome for the Coronavirus, and the Worst." Nicholas Kristof interviewed a number of leading epidemiologists and summarized the consensus in the article. If you need hope, he advises that you read the first half—about the best case outcome—only! Factoid from the first half: viruses do mutate, but they typically only get worse in the movies. In real life, they tend to get more moderate and less deadly. (The reason is a bit macabre: it's not good for their survival if they kill their hosts. Mosts colds are just coronaviruses that have learned over time not to kill us.)

Anyway, that article led me to Nicholas's and his wife Sheryl WuDunn's new book Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope, about the decline of low-income and lower-middle-income families in the U.S. Nicholas (does he go by Nick? I don't know) and Sheryl were the first wife-and-husband journalists to win a joint Pulitzer, awarded for their reporting of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.

So guess what? Tightrope turns out to be illustrated with photographs by none other than Lynsey Addario, the photojournalist who wrote the memoir It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War that we discussed back in 2015. (I still haven't read all of it, I'm ashamed to admit—I fear that photo-related reading often takes a back seat to books about things I know less about. Curiosity drives me. I should absolutely catch up with It's What I Do, however.)

But looking at pictures, that's something I can do. So even though I've already downloaded Tightrope for consumption on my iPad, I requested a paper review copy from the publisher. I'll let you know about the pictures if and when I get the book.

...A red fox just went trotting by right up the middle of the road! Smug as you please. Five years here and it's the first time I've seen that.

Mike

*Just going by the small sample. I haven't actually seen the work or the book, so I'll keep an open mind.

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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William Lewis: "Beautiful work. I am so jelly. It reminds me of David Plowden whom I have always loved deeply as well. His barn work has been especially influential on me. Thank you for sharing this."

Brad: "He does go by Nick. I have met him; sat at a dinner table with him once. I've even said hello to his mother a couple of times in our local grocery store."

Deal o' the Day: Electronics Storage

I'm actually kind of nostalgic for the old "deals of the day." When cameras were the hot ticket, occasionally B&H or Amazon would have a one-day sale on something great, and lots of us would pounce on it. But two things have happened...the single-item deal has turned into a huge cascade of items that are either on sale or supposedly on sale, and the kind of stuff we're interested in doesn't move the needle with the public much any more and is seldom featured. I don't even check the daily deals daily [sic] any more. Ah, for the good old days...not of 1992, of 2012!

But here's one that relates pretty well. I'm in the process of rationalizing my equipment cabinet again (a regular if intermittent activity), and I noticed that these are on sale for the next fifteen hours as I write this...electronic temperature- and humidity-controlled, dust-free storage cabinets for electronic equipment. They're available in eight sizes, for 33% to 46% off (depending on size), today only.

I've never used anything like this, but then again, I've had two digital cameras go wonky on me (including my Konica-Minolta 7D of sainted memory) and who's to say moisture or mold wasn't to blame? The writeup says the cabinet has a lockable, rubber-sealed glass door with two keys; a dimmable LCD that displays ambient temperature (in Fahrenheit or Celsius), relative humidity, and other settings; interior LED lights; padded shelves; near silent operation, without a fan or compressor; and they're dripless, with no water tray. If you have a camera for which you paid a s*-ton this might be smart.

Just passing it along. Sale is today only (did I say that already?).

Now back to work on today's real post....

Mike

UPDATE: Links fixed! Sorry.

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Tony Ayling: "Living in the wet tropics with high temperatures and humidity having one of these is essential. Mould grows very quickly in your expensive lenses otherwise. Here in North Queensland, Australia I’ve used them for years and have had no problems with my gear."

Joseph O Holmes: "I'm going to buy the big one, then climb inside and close the door until the All Clear is sounded."

Jeremy T: "We have a whole room doing just the same thing. We live in the tropics in rural SE Mexico and the heat and humidity destroy anything that uses rubber-based glues and anything with rubber coatings, as well as dry goods. So I built a pantry with aircon—just not before the mirror in my 5D had fallen off and the rubber on the strap of my camera bag had turned to dust. We also have to keep our shoes in the room as well: it is quite unnerving to have the soles crumble as you walk."

Sunday Support Group: Last Day

I have a nice post I'm in the middle of, but I don't have time to finish it because I'm off to go play pool with my friends.

Today's the last day I'll be playing pool with them, and the last day I'll be attending an in-person meeting of my recovery group—New York's latest restrictions take effect tonight at 8:00 p.m.

Not everyone I know is planning to follow the directives. However, I usually process decisions like this by considering what I am going to have to live with in the future; I know I have to live with myself. I just don't want to look back and feel that I contributed in any way to what's likely coming. So I'm going to isolate at home, apart from "alone" activities. That might include practicing pool alone, but we're being asked not to gather in groups of any size, so I won't. (I do think it's more than a bit ironic that liquor stores are on the "essential" list and recovery meetings aren't, but this is no time for new resentments.)

Remember: according to the models, the more people there are who minimize person-to-person contact, the better off everyone is. So everybody counts. Your efforts, my efforts, every single person's efforts—they're all meaningful. (And finally, everyone's being required to do something that we introverts are already good at. That doesn't happen very often.)

I can look at the bright side—more time for TOP, more time for working on my book, and more time for roving the countryside alone in my car taking film pictures! I'm going to use this interlude to get down to doing some work.

Blubber, Bub
Before I go galivanting off I wanted to mention, as far as the "Sunday Support Group" is concerned, some good news for me related to diet—on standard body mass index (BMI) charts, I've officially descended past the line between the "obese" category to the "overweight" category. Yay, I guess. Hey, it's progress. Still have a ways to go before I can be considered "normal," but some people will say that's nothing new! Rimshot, please.

I really like this way of eating. After almost seven long years of reading, researching, and self-experimenting, I feel like I've finally found the key to what's right for me. (Here are the detes again: video 1, video 2.) Even if I don't lose another ounce I feel like I'm going to keep eating this way for the rest of my life, which I hope will be closer to 30 years than three months. More about the details in a future post.

I'll finish that other post, about a photographic virtual visit, later in the day. In the meantime, how about a weekend virtual visit to TOP World Headquarters? Here's a nice video about the Finger Lakes. (Again, I don't know who will be able to see this and who won't—apologies to anyone who gets blocked.) I've personally been to almost all of the places they show—except I didn't know about the Tiffany church in Bath. Gotta get there someday, once it reopens to the public.

Mike

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Jim K (partial comment): "Congrats on your reduction of blubber! Me too! My BMI is down to 27, I'm down roughly 35 lbs., I'm enjoying my daily vin-'n'-tonics, and I have a healthy obsession with roasting Brussels sprouts. Like you, this new way of eating has really been enjoyable. I don't count calories, I don't obsess if I do a rare cheat, I'm enjoying what I eat, and I look and feel great!! Keep it up, and thanks for the motivation...."

Mike replies: It's amazing, isn't it? I've been eating salads and green berry smoothies with loads of additives in each for breakfast each day since December, plants other times, and I realized with a shock the other day that all my joint pain is gone. I was coming downstairs in the middle of the night, which used to hurt all over and a lot in several places, when it hit me—no pain anywhere. During the next two days I was hyper-aware of it, and yep, it's gone—joint aches and pains I thought were age-related and inevitable have just plain disappeared.

hugh crawford: "After consulting the BMI chart it turns out that I'm a little short for my weight."

The Bandana Republic (OT)

Health workers don't have adequate PPE.

That's something I have to be careful about when I write—explaining acronyms. If you know what a JPEG or an EXIF is, the terms communicate, and you don't stumble over them. But if I use the term DJST, say, and you don't know what DJST means, I've just tripped you up and interrupted your flow as a reader. It's certainly not acceptable for a writer to think everybody knows what DJST is and move on. You have to know your audience.

Anyway, I had to Google "PPE." I had been reading an article that introduced the acronym cold, so I went back to re-read the first part of the article to find out what the hell PPE means. As you probably know, the convention in short-form writing is that the first time an acronym is used, it is written out, with the initials it's thereafter to be known as in parentheses after it. Like this: "personal protective equipment (PPE)." And no, it's not proper to capitalize the words of the term just because you're going to make an acronym out of it, so you wouldn't write "Personal Protective Equipment."

...And technically, PPE is not even an acronym. It's an intialism, which is a term composed of the initial letters of successive words. Initialisms that are pronounced as words are acronyms, like POTUS or SNAFU. Initialisms are terms where the letters themselves are pronounced, like DoJ (dee-oh-jay) or USA (you-ess-ay). PPE is an initialism because we say it pee-pee-ee.

Shocked
Health workers don't have adequate PPE.

This is such a shocking scandal that I can't believe it's not what everyone is talking about. Here we are talking about projected shortfalls in hospital beds and ventilators, but what's the very most essential and most difficult to resupply link in society's medical lifeline?!

Personnel!

You think it takes a long time to test a vaccine?! Dear Lord. Try replacing an experienced. knowledgeable, highly trained nurse.

Dr. Marcello Natali was a general practitioner who treated patients in the town of Codogno, where Italy's outbreak of novel coronavirus originated. He was a second-generation doctor. He died because his hospital ran out of PPE—disposable gloves, it is believed, in his case. (He had been reduced to using hand sanitizer to protect himself.) Like any doctor of his age, he was the product of years of medical school training and decades of experience. Can he be replaced with a snap of the fingers?

Italy, hard hit by the pandemic, lost 627 souls on Friday, up from 427 the day before. Gruppo Italiano per la Medicina Basata sulle Evidenze (GIMBE) published a report last Wednesday saying that more than 2,600 health workers in that country have been infected, amounting to 8.3% of all cases there.

And of all the countries in the world, the USA's trajectory with the virus so far resembles Italy's the most closely.

The supply of doctors and nurses is limited. And if they're not there, it's going to take a long, long time to refill that pipeline. That is, if anyone still wants to be a doctor or a nurse in countries where they aren't even provided with adequate PPE in dangerous crises. And you think running out of toilet paper is bad? STFU. (Okay, maybe I'm getting a little carried away with the initialism leitmotif here. Sorry.)

Abandoned
Marcello Natali died all alone, isolated in an ICU. He was 57. On Facebook, his friend Silvestro Scotti, President of Italy’s National Federation of Doctors and General Practitioners, said "I have no more tears."

As a former manufacturing powerhouse, it's pathetic that the USA now can't even supply doctors and nurses with enough N95 masks. Never mind ventilators for all the people who will, very soon, need them. As I'm sure you've heard, on Thursday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated, for the second time in a week, its guidelines for health workers concerning the use of face protection such as N95 respirators and surgical masks. As the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy too drily put it, "To the surprise of many, the guidance recommended that nurses, doctors, and staff fashion homemade masks out of scarves and bandanas if there is a shortage of face masks in clinics and hospitals."

So that's what America has become, then: a Bandana Republic.

Pathetic and sad. The more I researched this yesterday, the angrier I got.

Health workers don't have adequate PPE. Why is this not being treated as a matter of the highest possible urgency? What more valuable and critical resource do we have right now than our healthcare workers?

I don't know what we as private citizens can do. Agitate, I guess. All I know is, this isn't an afterthought. I don't know how we as private citizens light bigger fires under the butts of the idiots in charge, but we need to do something. Health workers are our front-line soldiers, our bastion of defense, our thin scrubs-green-colored line, and they might be your (or your parent's or child's or friend's) life preserver when you are drowning and literally can't breathe.

Agitate we should. However we can. Health workers' lives are at stake.

Don't just sit there! (Hey, there it is: DJST).

Mike

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JimH: "Don't forget the other workers who are keeping us safe—those who operate and maintain utilities like electricity, water, and the Internet.

"With everyone working from home, the Internet has become another critical utility. My doctors are doing phone and online consultations to stop visits to offices. Emergencies depend on wireless and Internet communications. We worry that the internet is going to be overloaded. Service providers are already dropping bandwidth caps and stepping up. But users can help too. If you are working at home, it's best to not stream movies in the middle of the day when workers are busiest. Wait till the evening when you usually do it. If you can, change your settings to regular video resolution not high definition—that reduces bandwidth tremendously. Watching video on your mobile device eats up cell phone bandwidth. Emergency workers depend on wireless devices to do their job. They use the same cell phone networks we do. And also conserve water and electricity. We really depend on these services, as do our healthcare workers."

Chris Kern: "(Somewhat off-topic even for an off-topic post.) Mike said: 'Initialisms that are pronounced as words are acronyms, like POTUS or SNAFU. Initialisms are terms where the letters themselves are pronounced, like DoJ (dee-oh-jay) or USA (you-ess-ay).'

"I don’t know whether you ever took a course with John Kemeny while you were at Dartmouth, but, as I’m sure you know, he and his collaborator, Tom Kurtz, invented an early, extremely easy-to-learn computer programming language known by the acronym BASIC. Kemeny was a brilliant man and an outstanding lecturer, and while English was his second language (he was born in pre-war Hungary) he had acquired a mastery of and great affection for it. Anyway, more than once I heard him opine on the proper way to concoct an acronym in his adopted language. It should not only be a real English word, he insisted, but the word must also be descriptive of the thing being named by the acronym. Anything else simply wouldn’t do.

"BASIC? It stands for 'beginner’s all-purpose symbolic instruction code.' Perfect!"

Mike replies: Now this is really off-off-topic (like off-off-Broadway), but I'll tell the story anyway. I was fortunate when I was at Dartmouth in that I got to have a number of personal, one-on-one conversations with President Kemeny.

It happened like this. I was all aggrieved about some issue of the day or another, and marched into the Administration building (actually I forget where his office was, although I have a visual mental picture of the inside of it) and asked to see him. I was told he had office hours at a certain time. Somewhat taken aback at the idea of actually speaking to him, I signed up for one of his office hours.

When the time came we had a very satisfying, far-reaching conversation, at the end of which his secretary tried to interrupt several times because he had gone too long. I think we talked for something like an hour and twenty minutes vs. the allotted hour. Then when we were wrapping up, he said something to the effect that it was nice to talk to a student, because frequently no one took advantage of his student office hours and he would sit there by himself! Well, I didn't need more encouraging than that—I figured if no one else wanted to talk to him during his open office hours, I would. So I went in most weeks and would talk with him if no one else was around wanting to see him.

He took to using me as a sort of casual, impromptu bellwether of student opinion, and several times asked me to sound out students about various issues of campus life. I would then bring up his topic, whatever it was, with friends, or at keg parties, or in the dining hall, and "report back" so to speak. We often talked about various ideas he had for changes and reforms to student and campus life and activities. He had lots of ideas, and the window he opened to me of the difficulties of running a college was fascinating. It was naturally much more complicated than I could have imagined.

The only problem was that his secretary very much didn't care for me, because often our talks went past the time allotted and she would have to interrupt and nag him with increasing insistence to get him back on his schedule. He would resist her for a while and then, with reluctance, bow to her wishes and bring the chat to an end—although sometimes he would conclude and then we'd talk for ten more minutes. I recall that I had read in a book some phrase like "shooting daggers with her eyes" or something like that, and had no idea what it could have meant...until I met Dr. Kemeny's secretary! She didn't look at me much, but when she did....well, "shooting daggers" was about it all right.  :-)

He was a fascinating guy with far-ranging interests. I never did draw him out much on the topic of Albert Einstein. I wrote more about him here.

I like to exaggerate and say we talked every week for the better part of a year, but being flatly honest with myself it's possible we actually spoke six times altogether, as few as that. Might have been a few more. I don't recall exactly. Still, I feel very privileged—felt so at the time, too—to have had those conversations with him.

robert quiet photographer: "Among the problems we have in Italy is that we do not have enough PPE because they are not produced in our country. They were believed to be a 'poor'" article and the production was left to other countries. Now we need them and they have not been available even for doctors, nurses, volunteers...robert, from north Italy."

Tim Bradshaw: "The PPE thing is shocking. Given plausible trajectories of the disease (if you have not read the Imperial College paper from Monday then you should) it's not surprising that countries are likely to run out of intensive care unit (ICU) capacity, or even ventilators: it's likely that the number of cases needing ICU care could be of the order of 10 times capacity, and it would be just hugely expensive to keep a reserve of a factor of 10 very expensive ICUs just sitting there in case of, well, this. Ventilators are probably much the same. But PPE is f***ing cheap (sorry for swearing, but no, not sorry): just keep enough of it that your effectively irreplaceable staff don't ever have to choose between doing their job and not dying.

"'Doing their job' is going to be awful for the next many months in any case: they will be hugely overworked and patients are going to die untreated, while they watch, unable to do anything because ICU capacity is not available. To expect them, for instance, to make the choice between offering palliative care and their own health is inhuman."

Fred Haynes: "Mike, in all the years I’ve been coming to TOP, this is the most important, powerful, and emotionally charged post I’ve ever read. Thank you, and God bless you! I made a quick list of friends, and sent it out to everyone! Monday, I’ll be calling senators Gilibran and Schumer’s offices. I got very emotional reading this, got teary-eyed telling my wife. I just hope it hits the mark with everyone who reads it. We really have to do what we can, and quickly!"

Rick Popham: "Yes, this is a huge problem. Much of the manufacture of this gear has moved overseas, and to China in particular. When the pandemic started over there, none of that equipment made it out of the country anymore. I found this story on NPR summed up the situation pretty well. It's going to take a national (Federal) effort to keep essential manufacturers going here at home. The government will have to keep a national stockpile going and buy this equipment regularly to keep production at a useful level so it's there when we need it. Hospitals CANNOT do this alone: they have neither the funds to spend nor the storage space."

Mike replies: That's a very interesting link for those interested in the problem. Thanks for that.

R. Edelman: "Thank you for your sentiments, Mike. I've been a physician for 42 years. I only heard of the term 'PPE' a few weeks ago. The problem that Italy had is the same one that the US had: politicians at the highest levels of government who denied to the public that there was an emerging pandemic threat, and who avoided taking drastic but necessary steps early to prevent a crisis that would occur only a few weeks later. This was a failure of imagination coupled with greedy politics. They didn't understand that they could not wish the problem away. Ethically, the worse cases were the two senators who knew of the evolving disaster and, instead of sounding a warning to the public, kept quiet and sold off stock for their own financial benefit. I also take great offense to a President who chides health care workers for being wasteful by not reusing protective masks which, when properly used, are single use only. This is an attempt to blame health care workers, who are risking their lives to help others, for the shortage of critical supplies that is the responsibility of this President and his administration."

Marek Fogiel (partial comment): "I am in Italy, locked down like everybody else. At this moment in time, it does not matter if Trump is incompetent and how many mistakes have all politicians made. What counts, is not to spread the epidemic around, and survive. Eventually, the elections will come and people will judge. Meantime: take this very seriously. Most infections come from people with no symptoms and most of them are kids. You also get infested from virus left over on surfaces—it can survive up to five days on hard surfaces.

"General rule is: wear a mask and gloves, if you have no mask, take a piece of cloth, it is for not spreading anything. Pretend that anybody who comes into your house does the same. Sanitize all your shopping or set it aside for a week before you touch it with bare hands, After you come back from a shop, take off the mask, gloves and shoes outside the main dwelling and wash your hands right away. Above all stay home and don't see anybody. Good luck!"

giulio: "I'm writing while at home, home working in Northern Italy, reading scaring bullettins every evening. It's quite descouraging, but I see the same mistakes repeating again and again…. No PPE even for health workers, days or weeks lost before closing schools, shops and factories hoping the virus run away on its own. First in Italy, now probably in Spain, maybe Switzerland, reading your post you looked set for the same path (hope I'm wrong!).

"Sure, closing everything in a country is a bold step, has serious consequences, panic is dangerous, but how it is possible that again and again countries get caught without PPE, gloves or testing equipment? Or how it is possible that health care systems everywhere are designed in a kind of just-in-time supply chain, with little resilience? Flu pandemics are rare, but hardly a surprise: it's the third in roughly a century; I'm not too pessimistic, sure we are getting smarter (Spanish flu, 20–100 millions casualties, Asiatic flu, two millions, this one hopefully a lot less), but it looks that, in general, we are not even ready to believe that things can go wrong.... Good luck!"

Mike replies: And to you.

A Few Tips for Working at Home

New York State, with more than half the nation's cases of coronavirus, just instituted strict new orders that take effect Sunday night. A lot of people are soon going to find themselves working from home.

I've worked from home for many years, and I raised my son alone, so I thought I'd share a few tips from my experience for those who suddenly find themselves working from home and aren't familiar with it.

1. If you're taking care of kids at the same time—it's difficult, yes. But years ago I lit upon a good solution that worked for us. I would work for 45 or 50 minutes, and then take a break by spending 10 or 15 minutes of focused quality time with my then two- to five-year-old son. As impulsive and demanding as we can be, humans are also time- and schedule-sensitive creatures, and you can take advantage of that. We "learn" schedules—intervals—even if we just sense them and don't understand them by the clock. I kept this 50/10 schedule strictly, studiously ignoring him while I worked (unless he hurt himself or really needed attention, of course) but then giving him all of my attention when it came time to. By keeping strictly to this schedule, what I found was that my son relaxed his demands on me during the time I was working, because he knew he was going to get his turn soon. (He also knew he wasn't going to get what he wanted when I was working.) I found if I played with him at indiscriminate intervals, he ramped up his demands on me if I turned my attention to work; on the flip side, if I left him to his own devices for too long (two hours, say), he would get peevish and tired and start to "lose it." It's very important, though, to give the kid your whole focus during his or her time. They'll learn. What would happen is that he would play quietly and happily by himself for the time I was working, and then we'd both enjoy the 10–15 minutes we spent together. Peaceful coexistence.

I found it's actually a nice way to connect with a kid, too, and get to know him better.

2. If you're not taking care of a kid, take frequent breaks anyway, and reserve personal tasks and activities for break time. You'll know your own proclivities much better than I do, but there are far fewer constraints at home, and some people find the lack of structure disconcerting. Some people can't keep at work—they go off and do laundry or make personal phone calls or other things they wouldn't have done at the office. But the opposite can be just as much of a problem—you'll sit at the computer for marathon sessions and only stand up for a stretch after many hours hunched over the screen. That way lies...well, not madness maybe, but eyestrain, carpal tunnel syndrome, back and neck aches, and that bleary, "underwater" feeling. Schedule your breaks, then take them—be sure to move around, stretch, drink some water, and stand up for a bit. Do some jumping jacks. Touch your toes. If you're fit enough, do the NYT 7-Minute Exercise.

3. Eat real meals, and don't snack at your desk. As I'm sure you know, our bodies take "set points"—weights our metabolisms seek to maintain. For years I weighed 240. Then I discovered that I could skip meals and eat cheese sticks by the wheelbarrow-full at my desk, without having to take a break from working. Very convenient. (Let's just say I was not into health food back then.) Big mistake, though. I "broke" my former set point and quickly headed for 260 lbs. I cut out the string cheese once I realized what was happening, but too late—260 became the new normal, for a number of years.

3. You'll find you are more attached to the phone at home, not less, so it's good to devise a contact protocol. Even if you're not at your desk, if your jacket is on the back of your office chair and you're known by one and all to be "at work," then it doesn't matter if you're in the bathroom or down the hall gabbing with a colleague or in the break room scrounging for leftover doughnuts. You're still "at work." And nobody's getting agitated about you. When you're at home, though, let the boss or a colleague call you once when you can't answer, and right away their imaginations will run wild—in their minds, you're off skylarking, eating bon-bons and binge-watching old HBO shows. Cat's away, mouse will play, that's the sort of thing that jumps into their jealous minds. So I'd suggest devising a sensible phone policy that lets you ignore phone calls when you have to, but that makes it clear you're working. (As a number of my friends know, I often ignore phone calls during the day. You can't both concentrate on writing or reading and talk on the phone at the same time. A 20-minute phone call might not seem like much, but there is only room for 24 of them in an entire eight-hour day.) If your boss is "home worker insecure," and contacts you frequently just to confirm that you're working, you might have to have a talk and gently remind him that you won't get much else done if you're always responding to him.

4. Be sure to "turn it off" when it's time to. Yeah, working at home is great because you're always at home! Yay. But you're always at work, too. I used to wake up at 2:00 a.m. with insomnia and think, well, I might as well work. I'd get up at 6 a.m., put on my robe, wake up my son, fix my coffee, and sit down to work. Then sometimes I wouldn't even get dressed until the UPS guy came in late afternoon! That's no way to live. The problem is that work leaks into every hour of the day and night. It's important to set limits and schedules and then resist working when you're not working. A friend who has worked from home for many years wouldn't even look at email on the weekends. He scheduled his "off" time as strictly as he scheduled his "work" time. It's not the easiest thing to do if you're overworked anyway, but be sure to reserve—and observe—"not-at-work time," too.

Working at home works...it just takes some getting used to. Even if you end up not liking it, or liking it far less than being at your workplace, you should be able to make it work just fine for however long the contagion crisis lasts. It feels worse at first than it really is. Hang in there!

Solidarity,

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Scott: "Required, hilarious reading for those of us who work from home."

Gaspar Heurtley: "A friend of mine is a web designer that works from home (he’s done it his whole life) and always tried to keep work and life as far apart as possible. A few years back he moved away from his little apartment to a much bigger house and set his office in a spare bedroom. He wouldn’t take personal calls, didn’t tweet, etc. while he was in there. When his daily hours of work were done, he got out and actually locked the door till next morning."

Mike replies: My friend Nick, after working at home for ten years, rented an office in an office building downtown and got dressed and arrived at his office every morning at the same time, leaving for the day on schedule as well. It was a corner office with great views and cost a pretty penny I'm sure, but work was work and home was home once again for him!

Lynn: "Timely advice for many Mike, thanks. I was listening to ABC Radio here in Sydney earlier this week on the same topic. A female presenter who often worked at home with young children in the house shared her technique: when the kids knocked on the door to her home office, she would ask (through the closed door), 'are you bleeding?' If the answer was yes, the door was opened. Otherwise it was wait for scheduled break time. Worked for her...."

Nigel James Robinson: "If you're two adults, and are taking care of more than one kid at the same time, split your days. One looks after the kids, the other works. You might get in half a days work each. Don't try working in parallel; the productivity then halves."

Mike replies: Great tip. Thanks.

This Too Shall Pass

These are certainly interesting times. (The old Chinese curse, they say.) My recovery fellowship is in turmoil. One of our major activities is to hold regular meetings open to the public, worldwide. The ones in my area have anywhere from two to 52 attendees, with five to 20 or so being the most common range—most in the middle somewhere. There are many older people, and health problems aren't uncommon. On the other hand, meetings can be vital to survival for many who are trying to stay sober. Many of our venues have been closing or closing their doors to us, and opinions vary as to what the best way forward might be. We are governed by "group conscience" decisions, so each group is negotiating its own solution. That's fair enough. But also kind of exhausting.

Which I guess is a microcosm of the whole world situation right now. I've never lived through anything like this. Of course it's not unprecedented in history—there have been many contagions before, some more dangerous than this.

The way I look at it is that it's an opportunity to work together, think of others, and keep in mind what's really important.

And also to try to figure out a way to use our burgeoning interconnectedness to good advantage. You don't have to make every connection in person. As we should know, here.

Moods
...I could stand some sunshine, though. The older I get, the more my outlook seems to walk in step with the weather. "Overcast" and "sunny" might as well be descriptors of my moods.

It's overcast today. But, in the words of the medieval mystic Persian Sufi poets, "this too shall pass."

It's been a full day here. I haven't been able to spend much time on TOP today. I hope I'll be getting back to some semblance of normal tomorrow. Or soon, anyway.

Mike

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Lynn: "I have a photographer friend living not far from Milan, at the epicentre of the unfolding Italian COVID-19 tragedy. He describes the virus as a sniper, picking people off at random. Personal mobility is severely restricted (you need an 'essential purpose' to leave the house, plus a permit to be produced on demand) so online connections have become much more important. Supplies of basics are becoming more difficult to procure. Home deliveries can be weeks away.

"So he and some mutual photographer friends from around the world are chatting more via email, sharing pictures and anecdotes of our youth and families. It's wonderful—we are getting to know our online friends much better than before, bringing sunlight into our increasingly restricted worlds. Now is a good opportunity to share our experiences and help others overcome the loneliness of isolation."

Random Excellence: The Last Conversation

I really liked this. I like its use of old photographs and home movies, but that's beside the point really. The subject is genuinely touching.

I hope everyone can see this and I apologize if some can't.

Watch this video on The Scene.

Is this too much about life? Well OK, as David Vestal used to say.

Mike

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