Sunday Support Group: Judgement Practice

Picture by Mike, processing by Stan Greenberg

A big part of photo printmaking is what I call "judgement." It's well and good to have the equipment and the software, but ultimately you're left with the decision: which way are you going to go with it? I always smile an inward smile when commercial marketing of all sorts uses phrases like "flexibility" and "customizable" and "gives you choices" and "you're in control" and more verbiage like that, et cetera ad infinitum. As if all we need to be happy is limitless choice. But that just means you have more choices to make. And making the choices is the hard part. No one ever tells you what choice to make.

Reader Stan Greenberg of Western Galilee, Israel, took two of my JPEGs from the "Evening Walk" post and tried to reinterpret them. You can see his efforts at this link, and one of them is above. Funny thing is, several other readers sent me the same: their interpretation of my pictures.

Ned Bunnell's take

That's not only perfectly fine, I also think it's a good thing to do. I do it: I'll take someone else's JPEG off the internet and post-process it to my liking. In fact, that's how I learned to convert to B&W—with other peoples' pictures. I don't show such things, because they're not my pictures, and in fact I don't even keep them, although my hard drive is such a hodgepodge that doubtless some of them survive here and there. It's play. But it's good practice. It hones your judgement, and allows you to exercise interpretation on pictures you're not personally ego-involved with. It helps you develop an opinion about the way you like photographs to look. And because they're small JPEGs, you don't need to fuss and fret about perfection; you're just deciding on aesthetic effect.

I think it's a good thing to do. It's good for your own judgement. It can only help in developing your own...sorry for the overused word...vision. And it's fun.

Another really nice mix from DJ Kim this morning: It's called "Good Times," a quixotic title even by KK standards. I think of Kim's mixes as short radio shows. The music on offer in "Good Times" is ambient, quiet, and reflective. And, as he says, still interesting—Kim once quit a job because of the standard "classic rock" that was piped in over the intercom, the kind of thing normal non-musical people just tune out. I would have laughed, except he was out of a job. Anyway, perfect late-night listening. I just let myself float along.

Art
Speaking of music, the book I'm reading right now is Straight Life, the autobiography of Art Pepper that's the result of a collaboration between himself and his wife Laurie, completed not long before he died of a stroke at age 56. It's apropos of current events, because prison turned him at least temporarily into a bitter racist—the book is so unvarnished and politically incorrect it probably couldn't even be published now. Pepper was a criminal and a pervert, a neglected child and a drug addict, as well as a lovely, limpid, liquid, fleetly fast alto saxophone player whose music was beautiful and flowed like water.

Laurie and Art Pepper

The accomplishment of the book really belongs to Laurie, who is a photographer. Some of the great "autobiographies" are actually put together by de facto ghostwriters. They're his words—he spoke into a tape recorder—but she gathered the material and shaped it into a book over seven arduous years of work. The great jazz writer Gary Giddins, in The Village Voice, called Straight Life a better book on the topic of addiction than Junky, William Burroughs' famous debut novel, and better on prison life than Malcolm Braly's classic On the Yard. Which just made me want to go read those other two books, but never mind.

I'm also curious about Laurie's photography. She wrote her own autobiography after Art's death, which is called Art: Why I Stuck With a Junkie Jazzman. I tend to read books together with other books relevant to them, because I think they amplify and add to each other that way, so that one's most likely next for me.

If somehow you do not know Art Pepper, try Art Pepper meets The Rhythm Section, recorded with Miles Davis's group. Pepper was already playing with a nationally famous band when he was 17, and he never studied, never practiced, and never tried to mimic famous players. The opposite, in fact. He didn't want to be like anyone else. And despite a hard life, a fearsome drug habit and multiple stints in prison, the quality of his alto playing stayed at its peak from beginning to end—even when he was high or had the shakes onstage. (He resembled Charlie Parker that way. Bird's mood, troubles, and physical state never seemed to affect his playing.)

For both Straight Life and Art, you should go to Laurie's website for the book links, so she will earn the Amazon spiff for sales. She deserves them.

Pass the test
Still on the topic of music, but even more tangentially, Amir at Audio Science has reviewed the Audioengine 5+ powered speakers that I recommend from time to time for desktop listening. Improbably for a pair of powered computer speakers that retail for $399, they got a recommendation.

The Panasonic GX9 arrived and I took it on my walk on the hill today. I'll add a sample to this post later—the sun is too bright to really see my monitor at the moment.

Have a nice day. It's gloriously beautiful here—hope it is where you are too.

Mike

UPDATE as promised:

Looking up the hill—red-winged blackbird on a wire!

Looking down the hill

Looking down at my feet

All taken with the Panasonic GX9 and 12–60mm ƒ/3.5–5.6 kit lens.

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

Weekes James: "Art Pepper was a sublime musician. Such a shame that the rest of his life was such a train wreck, and ended so early."

Jamie Pillers: "Had a listen to the Art Pepper album...bought it immediately. Thanks yet again for an intro to new sights and sounds."

Comments

[Dan Khong]

Mike,

The pictures of the dog (lemme guess, it's Butters) [No, it's the lab who belongs to the farmer's son's family --MJ] and the silos have been nicely tweaked into monochrome. There is something magical about monochrome images.

They are timeless, do not have the distractions and frustrations of colour, and when imaging people (or even the dog), it brings out their souls.

Dan K.

[Eric Peterson]

Couldn’t agree more on “Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section”. In constant rotation on my planet. Another great one is as a duo with pianist George Cables “Tête-à-Tête“. If you like tie-ins, I believe Laurie Pepper was cousins with Eve Babitz, who played chess with Marcel Duchamp in a wonderful if slightly smutty photo by Julian Wasser. A few more degrees of separation and we’ll have Kevin Bacon!

[Rob de Loe]

If you want to see an interesting documentary about a photographer who can't deal with choice, watch the Netflix documentary about Platon Antoniou (part of the 1st season of their "Abstract" series).

I didn't know about Platon, even though (with hindsight) I've seen his work everywhere. You'll know what I mean as soon as you do a Google image search....

In the documentary he says he's severely dyslexic, so he can't deal with complexity. His portraits of presidents, celebrities, and unknown folks you'll discover with a quick search were mostly made with the same camera (Hasselblad 553 ELX), same lens (120mm Makro-Planar), same light (Profoto), same films (Porta 160 and TMY 400) and same white or black background. Everyone sits on the same box in his studio.

To see an artist who also needs things to be consistent in his work life, yet produces work of incredible variety, watch the first documentary in the series (Christoph Niemann, an illustrator whose work you're also probably familiar with, if not consciously). Where Platon's pictures are endlessly the same in their design, Niemann's work is endlessly different. The contrast between these two very creative people is delightful.

[Robert Roaldi]

I like Ned's take. Really like how that almost white cyclone sticks out between the taller silos.

I often wonder if some of the junk photos I threw out couldn't have beeen improved but that I just couldn't figure out how.

[Paul McEvoy]

I'm not super familiar with Art Pepper but I'd take issue with the idea that he never practoced. It's just not possible. There's no human evolutionary fundamental ability to play music or the saxophone. Perhaps he didn't practice 'as much'. Perhaps he was lying. But you don't just grab a sax, be a genius and get on the bandstand. Not possible.

Certainly playing and practicing are on a spectrum. If he played a gig every night for 10 years, well that's 4 hours of practicing. He's keeping the ball in the air, more or less. But at some point I think every great musician had their instrument in their hands non-stop.

I think it's important because it sets up an unrealistic idea about talent.

[MikeK]

Part of my job is editing photos (of property, primarily) before they're reproduced and I find it much easier to work on those than I ever do my own files. It's almost like I know what I want other people's pictures to look like, but not my own.

Incidentally, the band Therapy? had a song called Straight Life on their 1997 album Semi-Detached, inspired by the Art Pepper book.

[Luke]

OK, so you weren't exaggerating. It really is a hill!

[Soeren Engelbrecht]

Two points:

(1) I also really enjoyed the Netflix documentaries on Elsa Dorfman and Platon (the latter being part of the "Abstract" series, which has plenty of other interesting people)

(2) Lately, I have been reading Hi-Fi gear reviews in search of a new Amp. The Audio Science forum/site strikes me as "pixel-peeping" to the extreme, given how much they are focused on measurements and data. One comment that I read was (paraphrasing): "I was considering the purchase of amplifier NN, until I saw that it had a Slew Rate of only XX volts/microsecond. That's a no-go for me". What really shocked me, though, was the review that you linked to. The reviewer only had the left speaker available for his review. How in the name of (insert favourite deity) does reviewing a single loudspeaker out of a stereo set have any shred of credibility ??

[KeithB]

I don't know if it is intentional or not, but that image of Laurie and Art Pepper looks a lot like Adam's image of Georgia o'Keefe and her ranch foreman (IIRC)

[Richard Parkin]

I do like both the versions of the silos but each time I look I am distracted by what looks like the dog’s leash (I am a dog person) but is a path. Doesn’t happen with your original.

[James]

"I do it: I'll take someone else's JPEG off the internet and post-process it to my liking."

Me too. I have never admitted to doing it before now, but I guess it's just a form of critique.
The ones that can't be fixed though are where they have had the 'Upright Tool' applied but the camera wasn't held square to the subject.

BTW. I really like 'Looking down at my feet'. A good shot.

[Chuck Albertson]

Sorry to be pedantic, but I think an extra "e" crawled into "judgment" when you weren't looking.

[Either spelling is correct. --Mike the Ed.]

[Dan]

I remember a Michael Connelly Bosch novel in the early aughts having that Art Pepper album playing in the book. Checked it out and have been a big Pepper fan ever since. The Art Pepper West Coast Sessions albums are a real treat for any Art Pepper fan. They were Japanese recordings if I remember correctly, when Pepper either didn't have a record contract or had a dispute. Either way these recordings are excellent.

Looking forward to your GX9 impressions. Time to move on from my GX7, but have been hesitant to replace. The sensor improvement alone is what I am after.

[Dori]

"How in the name of (insert favourite deity) does reviewing a single loudspeaker out of a stereo set have any shred of credibility ??"

You may not be familiar with ASR, but that's not really the review. The review is the graphs produced over hours of measurements with a $100K+ NFS. The subjective review is more of sprinkled sugar on top which you can feel free to ignore if it bothers you.

[John Krumm]

I do know what you mean about books leading to other books. I've been on a Gore Vidal kick lately, someone I passed over a lot when I was young, probably because he was over my head and I couldn't google his vocabulary and references. Just finished his enjoyable, gossipy memoir, Palimpsest, and then moved on to The Selected Essays, and learned about the author Italo Calvino, and ordered a collection of his short stories, The Complete Cosmicomics, which sound up my ally, recommended by Le Guin.

[Peter Baglole]

I would like both pictures much better if the white line entering the dogs nose and exiting the back of his head wasn't there.

Good article.

[Moose]

I do not understand the appeal of these monochrome conversions. They strip all the richness away. The rich greens of leaves and grass in late light are replaced with blah.

It's like biting into my favorite, deep, rich chocolate - and getting a bite of saltine.

Just a data point.

[Moose]

I still prefer color for this subject . . .

[JOHN B GILLOOLY]

I usually refer to your "judgement" as "taste." And I have come to believe that it is THE most important skill or ability. In regards to printing and bw conversion, I have been using a borrowed Leica Monochrome for a couple weeks and absolutely love the tone of the bw that is rendered by this camera. I am trying to discern what part of my attraction is due to the 35 and 50mm 1.4 lenses vs the 40mp monochrome sensor and the way they have calibrated the tonal range. But either way, it seems to have greatly altered the way I am viewing the conversion process on images from my Sony cameras. I usually use Silver Efx for bw conversion and in the past almost always preferred the Kodak tri-x, plus-x, Ilford HP5 looks. After shooting with the Leica Monochrome, I find myself liking the Scala 200 tone. I'd love to hear your take on what I am liking! The Leica seems to have very little black and white and a huge, smooth range of gray in the middle, particually in skin tones. That's sort of my layman's description.

[Allan Ostling]

I use my GX9 mostly for dragonflies and birds. For these I need the focusing spot to be minimized, and at the center. In the field the spot often migrates (thanks to the touch screen). To re-center I simply touch the screen anywhere, then hit the DISP button. (I suspect you know this, from your previous Panasonic experience.)

[Moose]

". . . the spot often migrates (thanks to the touch screen)"

Allan, an innovation in the GX9 is the ability to keep touch operations on for other uses while turning off "touch focus". This is a game changer for me, compared to GX7, 8, 80/85.

How to do it is not intuitive, perhaps even obscure:

In the [Custom] Menu ("C" in front of wrench), set 'Touch Settings' and 'Touch Tab' to "ON" [Manual p 213]

The next two settings, 'Touch AF' and 'Touch Pad AF' may be whatever you like, and will be turned on/off elsewhere.

Now, pant, pant, out of the menu, touch the middle tab on the right of the screen "<", then touch the icon of a hand with index finger sticking out. It cycles through three settings. When it is accompanied with a big "X", Touch AF and Shutter operations are off. Hooray! [Manual p 53]

I hope that helps!

[Dennis Ng]

I think the subject looking at the wrong direction and the line behind him is too distracting. Then I find the original color one (but cannot comment). I think the photo would crop him out ;-( and in stead concentrate on the tree. If would be a good 8x10 pic for Ansel kind of pic.