The Online Photographer

Time to Test a Medium-Format Sensor

Fuji GFX 50R

I decided a while back that my education is lacking and that I should try out a camera with a larger-than-FF sensor. The only one I've ever touched was a Leica S2 thanks to my friend Jack, but that was a long time ago now and my exposure to it was brief. Generally I've tended to stay away from them because I really didn't consider them to be mainstream products—they tended to be extremely expensive and thus only available to a minuscule percentage of photographers. I also wasn't really interested in being put into the position of recommending products that had such a high probability of causing money to evaporate. I lived through an era in which high-end digital cameras could cost $25,000 and then a handful of years later be worth essentially nothing. That struck me at the time as being, well, crazy, at least for private individuals.

Hassleblad 907X 50C with viewfinder and control grip

But that was then and this is now. Today, a Sony A7R Mark IV costs $3,500, a Panasonic S1R costs $3,700, and a Nikon Z7 Mark II costs $3,100, whereas a Fuji GFX 50R costs $4,500, a Pentax 645Z costs $5,000, and the new Hasselblad 907X 50C costs $6,400. The gap between the most expensive FF models and the least expensive medium format ones is just not that great any more.

I've never thought I needed a medium-format digital camera, but on the other hand it's good for me to know what I'm talking about, insofar as that's possible. So, it's time.

What do you think I should request? I'm leaning toward the Fuji 50R as being the most Mike-like, not least because there's a 40mm-e lens available for it (the 50mm ƒ/3.5).

But I'd be doing this more for you than for me.

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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Book of interest this week:

Picture This: How Pictures Work, By Molly Bang
(clicking on the link above takes you to Amazon from TOP)

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

AN: "I’ve owned the Pentax 645D, 645Z, Fuji 50S, and 50R. I think the 645Z is the best camera in the world in every respect (for my purposes, anyway), except it’s rather big and heavy. So I use the Fuji 50R with the 50mm lens. The 645Z is definitely better ergonomically, and I think the image quality is actually a bit better too, but the 50R with a pancake is delightful little package (and close enough to the 645Z otherwise). I never used the Hasselblad, so, since you are doing this for me, I think you should review the 907X. Just in case it might be the actual best camera in the world."

T. Edwards: "Try the Fuji GFX 50R please(because I am thinking of buying it....)"

Richard Parkin: "Hasselblad X1D Mark II, not that I shall buy any of them.  ;-) "

Tom Hassler: "Given your affinity for and experience with Fuji gear, this seems like a no-brainer. Having shot with a GFX100 myself, I found little to complain about (except maybe the heft and slow-ish autofocus.) The lenses are superb! I have to wonder though if trying out the GFX50 isn’t somewhat missing the point? Sure, you’ll get some of that 'medium format look' from the physically larger sensor and the different focal lengths associated with your accustomed angles of view. But a big part of that look is also the extremely fine gradations of tone that a whole lotta pixels gives you. As hot-rodders love to say, 'there's no substitute for cubic inches.' Since this isn't a case of you spending more money, I’d say try the GFX100 for the full experience. Go big or go home!"

William Cowan: "There are still a lot of V series Hasselblads about. I think that might have a lot of interest."

Pierre: "For what it's worth, the holding the GFX 50R feels like holding a tissue box. I found the GFX 50S far more comfortable - and for my money better looking."

Mike observes: So far, in the Featured Comments, the vote is one to one to one to one to one to one.  :-)

Jnny: "Test 'em all. Don't be a wuss."

Tex Andrews (partial comment): "Well.... This is a tough one, I think. Fuji has gotten a ton of press and comments from everywhere. The DPR 'medium format' forum is basically a Fuji forum now. It may be that it is the most Mike-like, but maybe not at all, really. Pentax is in the Rodney Dangerfield situation right now. Hassy is...Hassy. I feel like if you can't do them all, then don't do any.

"Finally, nowadays you have to look hard and carefully at the images to see differences (they exist), and to see the differences you need a really good monitor or need to be printing really large. You also need to be looking at certain kinds of images. I don't think 'general photography' cuts it in this regard, and I see images from lots of advocates of medium format and wonder why they bother. Full disclosure: I am an advocate of digital medium format (and film), and have seen the differences for myself closely compared to images from FF cameras. Those differences are quite meaningful to me in my work—but my work is niche as a pro and fringe (not nutty, though) as an artist.

Kenneth Tanaka: "Either the Hasselblad X1D Mark II or the 907x with the XCD 45p lens. Not to be a wise guy but I own the entire Hassy XCD system (my 'What I Did During COVID-19 Pandemic' school project), the Fuji GFX50s, and even a Phase One XF system. The Fuji is very well-known and very accessible. It's unquestionably the most versatile system but it's awfully well-known. No, I think if you want to look at something genuinely new-ish it would have to be one of the new Hassy bodies. Coupled with that lovely little 45p lens you can—dare I say—rule the world. It's more you than you may realize. Light, smallish, yes blind-hog slow autofocus but you're not a shooter of movement. I think you'll enjoy either and each has its own charms. As they share the same sensor system the colors are ooh-l-la nice. Plus if you have an old Hassy V camera you can strap that CFVII 50C (from the 907x) right onto it!"

Rob Campbell: "Don't do this: you'll end up wanting to keep it!"

Sobering Comparison (OT)

WWII: Total U.S. military and civilian deaths in WWII, in 3 years, 8 months, and 26 days: 418,500

COVID-19: Total U.S. deaths so far from Sars-CoV-2 in 11 months and 5 days, according to the Centers for Disease Control: 318,786; according to Johns Hopkins: 374,341

"Sarge" (played by Michael Conrad, 1925–1983) from Hill Street Blues: "Let's be careful out there."

Mike

Ed. Note: Figures are "best available estimates." Disparity between CDC and Johns Hopkins figures result from differing standards for counting. Among other causes, the CDC uses death certificates, a conservative method which causes its count to lag 1–3 weeks behind.

ADDENDUM: The cost for KN95 masks is now down to as low as $1.14 per mask (at Shoplet) (no affiliation). (They were in the $5 range a few months ago.) N95 is the U.S. standard; KN95 is the Chinese standard. According to 3M, it is "reasonable to consider" the two to be equivalent. Both capture .3 micron particles. Broadly speaking, the blue paper masks protect other people from the wearer; KN95 masks do that and also protect the wearer to a degree.

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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Book of interest this week:

Picture This: How Pictures Work, By Molly Bang
(clicking on the link above takes you to Amazon from TOP)

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

Picture This: How Pictures Work

Contributed by Ken Tanaka

As a lifelong devotee of color I bought The Secret Lives of Color in early 2018. It’s a wonderful little work that strongly reminds me of a class I took as a very young weekend student at the Art Institute of Chicago many decades ago. Becoming more aware of color’s influence in your daily visual life, beyond cameras, is such a fundamental step in visual literacy. I recommend this book for any TOP readers. But I strongly recommend giving a copy of this book to a young person—perhaps your children or grandchildren—as a special gift. I took the class I referenced, above, when I was 10 or 11 and I dare say it certainly altered my life’s visual trajectory. Kassia St. Clair’s book holds that same potential for a young person.

There are several other wonderful little books I could recommend for sharpening color and visual skills but one gem shines brightest in my library. Molly Bang’s Picture This: How Pictures Work is a tiny powerhouse that may help relax a tedious grip on all those silly "composition" rules chanted by photography buffs. Bang, an author and illustrator of children’s books, teaches 2D communication essentially through a series of figure-ground relationship lessons. Her book is aimed at a generally young audience of budding future artists and illustrators but it’s a perfect lesson plan for amateur photographers who may not have benefited from any formal aesthetic education. Don’t be put off by its elementary tone; give it your attention and work through it with your camera. It will probably reward you.

Kassia St. Clair’s The Secret Lives of Color and Molly Bang’s Picture This: How Pictures Work are perfect reads for photo fans to start a still-locked-down 2021 productively!

Ken Tanaka

ADDENDUM from Ken: I obliquely recommended using Picture This as a kind of lesson plan with your camera. And I still do. But if you’re not currently disposed to using your camera you can still use the book’s lessons. Use a top-quality news site such as the New York Times that features the best daily collections of edited and curated images. (I don’t recommend wasting time with social media photo sites such as Flickr or IG; too much chaff and zero curation.) Line up two or three images that you find compelling and analyze them against Picture This lessons. After a few sessions of this I think you’ll recognize how the bones of a "good" image are constructed.

More important, I think you’ll also quickly recognize that figure-ground relationships are only the foundations of a good photograph. Gesture, color/tonality, inflection, emotional precedence, etc., etc., are the successive layers that really distinguish good camera work. And not just humanistic work. Top-quality inanimate work such as landscapes and architecture nearly always incorporates these properties, too.

Good, constructive, SAFE learning activities for a cold pandemic winter!

Original contents copyright 2020 by Kenneth Tanaka. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Book of interest this week:

Picture This: How Pictures Work, By Molly Bang
(clicking on the link above takes you to Amazon from TOP)

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

Rick Popham: "Thom Hogan recommended Picture This a few years ago. Time for me to revisit it. I wonder if there will be a run on the remaining stock of Secret Lives as there was with Molly Bang’s book. As I recall, they decided to print another run of Picture This."

Andrew Molitor: "Excellent book. I used it as the inspiration for the theme of the photos I take to illustrate my wife's blog posts. She's a financial planner (to a specific niche which you probably are not part of, so I feel comfortable that this isn't a plug) which you can see here. She gets a surprising amount of positive feedback on these fairly weird pictures."

What Was Under Your Tree?

So what'd ya get for Christmas? Or Hanukkah or the holiday you celebrated? Anything photo-related you're chuffed* about?

(I got myself a pool shed. Although not fundamentally photo-related, it's scheduled to be transformed into an exhibition space next Summer, or possibly the Summer of '22 if funds don't allow it this year. I think it counts.)

Mike

*Speaking English now. The word translates into American as "very pleased."

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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Book of interest this week:

Picture This: How Pictures Work, By Molly Bang
(clicking on the link above takes you to Amazon from TOP)

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

Sunday Support Group: Let Photography Be Thy Vocation

Friday:

Mani Sitaraman: Mike Johnston doesn't have a darkroom? Truly, we are living in the end times.

Well, we might be, Mani, but me not having a dark room is only because all the rooms in my small Gothic Revival farmhouse (built c. 1888) have windows. As for a darkroom, I don't think my lack of what my friend Nick Hartmann once called "the room-sized photo accessory" is quite as portentous as the rough Beast slouching toward Bethlehem or the birds flying backwards and like that.

Looking back, it's been the norm. I seldom had a darkroom in my life. I've used a parade of workspaces, from professional and school facilities (some of which were very nice, some of which were dank and cavelike) to the most crude and rudimentary workarounds.

Here's a brief sampling of a few of my actual own darkrooms:

When I lived in downtown Washington, D.C. I tried to press into a service the closet area of my tiny studio apartment, using a rubberized blackout curtain to keep out all the light (as well as all possible air circulation, which was a problem). A board across the tub in the adjacent bathroom served as "the wet side." I had to use a tiny super-amateur beginner enlarger because it was the only thing that would fit on the built-in dresser. The largest print I could make was 8x10. That attempt at a darkroom proved too crude and awkward even for me, and I got no work done there. Fortunately I began teaching shortly afterward and gained access to various school darkrooms.

In Oak Park, where I lived in a "vintage" apartment that a friend of a relative had saved from the wrecking ball, my kitchen was half kitchen and half darkroom. The wet side was a melamine-topped table; the huge Saunders 4500II enlarger sat perched precariously atop a freestanding single cabinet with a countertop. It would move with my footfalls on the floor, so I learned to stand very still for a minute or so before each exposure, to quiet down any movement. I counted off exposure times using an electronic metronome set to 60 beats per minute, so I worked to what sounded like a ticking time bomb.

When I lived in Woodstock, Illinois (where the movie "Groundhog Day" was filmed), I used a small patch of the basement that hadn't been finished. It was dark and dusty and had cobwebs in all the nooks and crannies past the area I cleared out for myself. The ceiling was so low that I had to sit down to work at the enlarger, which was right next to the furnace. I could only work after dark, which was easiest in the Winter months. Before doing any darkroom work I had to turn the heat way down, because when the furnace shuddered to life it made the enlarger table vibrate. In contrast to the one in D.C., though, I was reasonably productive in the darkroom in Woodstock.

In Forest Park, a near suburb of Chicago, I lived for a time in a beautiful rehabbed loft, in which my darkroom was the intended powder room with all the furnishings removed. The enlarger went on a cabinet I built in the doorway, so I had to turn sideways and suck in my gut just to get inside. However, it had a ventilation fan, and I could work at any hour of the day, and Xander was very young and going to bed early. So I was quite productive there too. When I sold the loft I had to remove the bathroom and turn the space back in to a powder room.

Backstory
There's one moral to this story which might so far be hiding.

Just out of curiosity the other day, I compared the pool money list to the one for golf. Briefly, here's a rundown:

The top money-earner in pool in 2020 was Dennis Orcollo (pronounced "or-COOLio") of the Philippines, who earned $84,000 and change. Top golfer: $7,344,000. Or, about 87 times as much. The top female pool player earned $10,000, the top female golfer $1,668,000.

In fifth place, pool: $40,000; golf, $5,100,000.

To get to the first golfer who earned less than Dennis Orcollo, you have to go all the way to Satoshi Kodaira of Japan, who is 214th on the men's list in golf.

The lesson seems to be that you shouldn't encourage your kid to play pool. If anything, nudge them in the direction of golf. The income ceiling is higher. (My own son's sport is rock climbing, but he arrived at that all on his own.)

Similarly, is it a good idea to encourage a kid to become a photographer? Peter Lindbergh and his like notwithstanding, I'm not sure it's the greatest choice of profession any more (if it even was then). Although some of you within the sound of my voice are examples to the contrary. At the very least, I would guess, if you want to make a living at it, you have to accept that it's a business and you need to treat it as such. A friendly local couple approached me recently to tell me that their daughter really enjoyed macro photography and was thinking of becoming a professional macro photographer. They were curious as to whether that was a good career choice.

Me: She'd probably do better if she decided to be a professional water-skier.
The man: But she's 36.
The woman: And she can't swim.
Me: Great, so the analogy fits even better.

(Okay, I didn't actually say that out loud. I was polite.)

I think I was in my 40s when it really hit me that a lot of the guys I'd grown up with could afford better cameras than I! That didn't seem fair. I was the one who had sacrificed to be a photographer. They had become stockbrokers and doctors, lawyers and engineers. That's when my standard advice to wannabe full-time photographers shifted: maybe it's a better idea to remain an amateur, and go make your money some other way.

That's probably what I should have done if I'd wanted a great darkroom. But I had fun, anyway.

Bug of the apocalypse
By the way, out of that wettish darkroom in Woodstock one day, quite improbably, across the carpet in the adjacent office, stalked the most outlandish insect I have ever laid eyes upon. It was some exotic sort of hard-shelled multi-legged creature about an inch and a half long. Vaguely resembling a multicolored miniature version of the AT-AT's in The Empire Strikes Back, it walked with its thorax well up off the ground and moved like the priest in a funeral procession. I captured it, examined it for a few hours, then let it go in a field, without, unfortunately, having the slightest idea what it was, or what its normal habitat was, or even if it was a native species, an escaped pet, or something sinister I would have been better advised to destroy. I've never even been able to find a picture that looks anything like it. Still one of the weirdest animals I've ever encountered in the real world. How it got into my house I'll never know.

Maybe it was an omen of the end times, I don't know. I certainly can't explain it any other way!

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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Book of interest this week:

PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice, Edited by Sasha Wolf
(clicking on the link above takes you to Amazon)

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

Crabby Umbo: "It's virtually impossible to make a living in photography these days. The paradigm has changed so much, there is no path to solvency. Even in the heyday of my self-employment in the '80s, I was living hand-to-mouth while grossing decent money, while my friends in the business were relying on spouses' medical insurance and 401k's to make sure they weren't going to live in a box when they couldn't work anymore. You could write a 40-page paper on why, but I'll just cover a few points.

"I remember reading a while back, that photography was now one of the worst-paying professions in the U.S., and that between 2004 and 2014, average income had dropped $10k! In my last management job, 2013–2017, my average photographer made $10k less than I was paying the average photographer on my staff in 1995! The 2017 staff were also less qualified and less skilled by a long shot!

"The majority of photography jobs available today in commercial and advertising photography are in e-commerce. Did you get into photography to take stuff out of box, clean it up, and shoot it on a white background all day? I didn't. And in fact, I know of situations where companies have hired temp people with no photo experience at all to do this.

"One of the key killers of the professional photography industry is the 'good enough' mindset. Forty years ago, no art director I knew would hire a pal to take a picture for a job, even if they were good. The attitude was 'I'm a professional, and I'm working with other professionals.' Now, if a millennial art director can have their cat press the button on their iPhone, without getting out of their chair, it's all good! I was chatting with a West coast food photographer one time, who was opening a gallery in fly-over for his retirement hobby, and he said: '...when the latest group of art directors decided they could push a table up against some windows, shoot a picture with their iPhone, and they couldn't see the difference a professional food stylist would make...well, it's all over, isn't it.' Yep it is.

"As for film, I'm a film guy through and through, and I would love to shoot more, but my current small apartment is impossible to process film in. It's also one of the sootiest places I ever lived. One day after cleaning my closed, sealed bathroom, by the next day, there was dust and soot all over the place, from I-don't-know-where. It's the craziest thing I've ever seen.

"I would shoot judiciously, and use professional labs, but it's almost impossible to find high-quality labs to just process and proof; they all want to process and scan. By the time some millennial has dragged your film through a film gate on some scanner, and scratched the living hell out of it, it's not worth the trouble and cost. Where are the pristine, high-end, high-quality process-and-proof labs? You can't imagine how many people have recommended labs as 'great,' who think nothing of scratching the hell out of your film. Almost any recommendation from the Internet is one of these labs! Vintage lab owners, where are you?!"

Gary Nylander: "I worked as a newspaper photographer for 41 years, working for three different small-sized newspapers in Canada from 1976 to 2017. It provided me with a good living and I thoroughly enjoyed my work. I wouldn't want to be starting out today trying to make a full time living as a photographer."

Afterimage

Here's a neat version of an experiment you probably already know about. Follow these steps:

Open this picture in a browser tab.

Open this picture in a tab next to it.

With the color version open, place your mouse on the tab with the B&W image.

Pick a spot on the color version of the photograph and stare at that spot for thirty seconds to a minute.

Without moving your eye, click on the tab with the B&W image.

Try not to blink. Hold your eyes on the spot on the B&W picture you've been looking at and see how long the effect lasts.

Final step: Marvel at the wonderful weirdness of the human body. (That's a terrific book, by the way.)

I believe this is an instance of what's called "retinal afterimage" or simply "afterimage," and in this case it imposes colors on the B&W image that are complementary to those of the color version for up to 30 seconds.

Cool, huh?

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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Book of interest this week:

PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice, Edited by Sasha Wolf
(clicking on the link above takes you to Amazon)

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

Dunccan: "Wow, very cool indeed."

Darin Boville: "Here's another cool version: If you have an old-fashioned flash, go to a dark room and let your eyes adjust. It should be very dark, you should not be able to see your hand in front of your face. Now keep your eyes open and fire your flash on full power into the room—don't blink, don't move your eyes! Just wait. After a few seconds a ghostly version of the room will appear. Very cool."

Mike replies: I really want to try that but I have neither a dark room or a flash.  :-(

Malcolm Leader: "Bryson's books are always great. The Body is a fascinating and somewhat sobering tour of the human body. I recommend it a lot."

Picture o' the Day

I'll just link to it, not knowing if I can republish it here....

Picture of the Day today

Gazing at this made me quite thoughtful. I used to be a freelancer in Washington D.C., and went everywhere in the city in my ratty little Mazda on a tremendous motley of assignments of all sorts, and I've photographed both inside and outside that temple on numerous occasions. It was the location of one of my biggest embarrassments as a photographer (ran out of battery power at the exact wrong moment in a Senate hearing room) and, on a separate occasion, of one of the only times I've been stopped by the police in the process of taking a picture. Of course it has deep meaning to me as an American citizen as well.

I find I'm quite deeply angry about what happened on the 6th. I might express that in written words eventually, but not here.

Thanks to Dave Sailer for mentioning that website in a comment.

Mike

UPDATE Friday evening: Thanks to V.I. Voltz for finding the link again after it temporarily went missing.

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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Book of interest this week:

PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice, Edited by Sasha Wolf
(clicking on the link above takes you to Amazon)

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

Photographs Everywhere and Anywhere

...So, time to take a deep breath after the shocking events of yesterday and get back to photography? It's one of the nice things about having persistent interests—as long as those interests are ethical and wholesome—they permit you some distraction or diversion during troubled times. I'm having some trouble this morning. But then I'm sure many of us are feeling disquieted one way or another. Even some non-Americans.

Anyway, one reason I found Peter Lindbergh's apartment a few days ago was because I wanted to write a brief post about finding photographs elsewhere. Other than on photography sites, I mean. I've enjoyed looking at photographs in all sorts of places. When I was young I'd go to museums but also archives and other collections, and a local gallerist (a mentor's S.O.) would let me look through portfolios in her storage room. And several times I got to wade around in large agglomerations of old snapshots, which is, if not exactly fun, certainly instructive.

Now I can find pleasure looking at photographs from many places, some of them where they're not featured as photography—where the photography's not the point—for instance, real estate sites.

We all have genres we like rather more or rather less, and I've always enjoyed interiors. There was a day not so long ago when it would have seemed like the most far-out fantasy to think that I could rove around virtually inside thousands of houses in cities and towns around the world. Not all of them of course, but a representative sampling in the form of those that are for sale. I sometimes take advantage of the opportunity.

A view from a Paris condo....

...And from a condo in Milwaukee, the city where I grew up. That's the War Memorial building front and center, designed by Eero Saarinen. Just to the right of it is the Quadracci Pavilion, known locally as the Calatrava addition, designed by Santiago Calatrava.

Not only do I enjoy interiors, but I appreciate being able to see the views from vantage points where I will never set foot in person. In the photos above, I like the way the photographers connect the views to the spaces, and tantalize us with the rich prospect of the visual feasts just outside the window. The feeling of "wouldn't you like to live here and look at this every day" is almost visceral.

I confess I also find it almost a relief to turn to the work of photographers who had a job to do. When you look at too many "test shots" like I do, you see a lot of "PCP"—pointless camera-pointing. That can exasperate me when I'm worn raw for some other reason. Real estate photographers have a no-nonsense brief to fulfill. They know what it is and we know what it is; everybody's on the same page.

How about you, is there anywhere you go to enjoy pictures that aren't being shown as art per se? Astronomy sites? Catalogs? eBay? Fashion magazines?

Just curious. And I wouldn't mind a little useful distraction.

Mike
(Photos courtesy Sotheby's, here and here)

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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Book of interest this week:

PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice, Edited by Sasha Wolf
(clicking on the link above takes you to Amazon)

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

Kenneth Wajda: "I like this site [Window-Swap] and you may too, Mike. Best on a large monitor."

Mike replies: That's wonderful. I do like it. I'll probably waste significant amounts of time there. Thanks.

MikeK: "I spent 14 years working as a designer in real estate (well, we just call it property over here). I have seen and edited countless images over the years—and mostly the incompetence of the photographers just depressed me. These weren't professional photographers—just anyone who could hold a camera. They say you can't polish a turd, but I shudder to think how much of my life I've spent in Photoshop trying to do just that."

Mike replies: It depends on what I'm in the mood for. Sometimes I just look at high-end properties, because the photographs were often taken by professionals and are anywhere from competent to beautiful. But sometimes the pure whimsical randomness of really bad real estate photos can provide some surprises, a few of them pretty startling!

I'll tell an embarrassing story on myself that might be indicative of something in my psyche—sometimes I look at "daydream" habitations and imagine what it might be like to live in them. But I won't look above a certain price range. For example, apparently I seem to think it's okay to imagine myself living in a $20 million condo in NYC, but I balk at looking at a $70 million one and I'll click right by it. Like it's out of my imaginary price range? This makes no sense but it makes me smile at myself.

Curiously, when Paul McCartney and his wife bought a place in NYC, just by chance I had already seen the listing so I had "been in every room" you might say. That hasn't happened with anyone else. 

You're going to think I look at R-E sites all the time, but I don't. Just now and then.

John Krumm: "Real Estate photography is interesting because these days so much of it is just a realtor snapping a few shots with a phone and you are probably more likely to find funny mistakes. If you spend time browsing Zillow you can find some amazingly bad examples. This website I enjoy uses it to find examples of particularly garish McMansions—it's called McMansion Hell."

Mike replies: You guys are really encouraging me to waste time today. I did ask to be distracted. Thanks?

Jeroen Pulles: "I like to take a close—photographer's—look at the photography in gardening books. Some books have a hodgepodge of images of various cameras and qualities (Phaidon Press's Landscapes in Landscapes), others have a consistent series from a single camera (Vivian Russell's Monet's Garden: Through the Seasons at Giverny with 1990s Velvia shots). As with architecture, part of the challenge is to visualize what the designer had in mind with the garden. And, a perfect garden photo needs to evoke the feel of the place; that needs to shine through in the photo as well."

Rob L.: "Aviation and automotive magazines are a great escape for me—some really great photography in there, often by folks who truly love their subjects. I've also had fun for the last few weeks reviewing submission for Photography merit badge—lots of technically limited, genuinely wonderful pictures. The way families, obviously stuck together a bit more than normal, are playing into the shots has me smiling a lot, as did the photo essay of 'The Cat That Ate Christmas Dinner.' I dunno, stop treating photography as art and more as conversation and it's a lot more fun."

Dave: "How about nasa.gov? Artful photos of space and technical photos of the equipment used on missions. Something for everybody!"

Ed G.: I'm a bird-watcher and I look at the photos in the Macauley Library often. There's a searchable interface at eBird. A lot of the photos are pretty bad because even a dark, blurry photo can often serve to identify a bird, but you can have it sort the search results by 'best quality' (based on crowdsourced ratings), which works pretty well. You can also choose a variety of search filters, to find (e.g.) birds feeding their young, or doing courtship displays, or in particular locations."

Alan Whiting: "Seattle's Fremont district has a weekly flea market, and at least one booth regularly had old, anonymous snapshots for sale when I lived there. Mostly they depressed me; these people meant something once, but no one knows who they are now. But one week I found a stack of 6x9 cm glass plate negatives of ships. I bought them and had them printed, and it turned out they showed the visit of the Great White Fleet to Puget Sound in 1908. I donated them to the Washington Historical Society (but kept prints)."

'Focus Breathing' in Thirty-Four Seconds

I like visuals—especially with visual things. I've never been terribly interested in theory. Back in the film days, for example, I never cared to learn the chemical components of developers or the explanation of how they worked—but show me examples of the effect they had on pictures and I'd perk right up.

The other day when learning about the Nikon Z lenses I came across a visual explanation of focus breathing in a Nikon promo video titled "NIKKOR Z Lens Technology." The relevant illustration starts at about the 1:25 mark and lasts a little more than half a minute:

That's it, in just a few seconds. It's not something we still photographers (formerly known as photographers) tend to learn about so I thought I'd pass this along.

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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Book of interest this week:

PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice, Edited by Sasha Wolf
(clicking on the link above takes you to Amazon)

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

Crabby Umbo: "'Breathing' is not only a problem that shows as a slight change of view, but might also as a change in edge exposure, and even distortion. Change the focus on any lens formulated for still photography while shooting video on a still camera, and all this could happen. I've seen still photography rigs shooting video, and just the focus change can show the background lines go from rectilinear to slightly bowed (just with focus, not zoom). There's a reason 'real' video and film lenses cost a wheelbarrow full of money, and that's because all this is corrected. That's why I'm very suspicious of all these Chinese lenses that are 'allegedly' for video. At that price, I'm sure all they have is a geared focus. They can't have the number of elements and formula to be focus-image neutral."

Can't Be Afraid to Be Flexible

Okay, okay, I'll admit it: For the kind of shooting that's most natural here in Finger Lakes country—driving around, and looking around, and finding all kinds of scenic tidbits, distant framings, slices o' life, cloud formations, lakescapes, critters, houses and buildings, deer, doggies, graveyards, vehicles (of various sorts!)—and even, occasionally, humans—a mid-range zoom is really the most appropriate lens to have on the camera.

Okay I said it. Please don't tease me, please.

(Although I recently learned, when trying out the Panasonic GX9 and the the slower 12–60mm lens not long ago, that a lens with the long end longer than 70mm is best. Hereabouts anyhow.)

You never know what you're going to
stumble upon up here.

I like primes best, and 35/40mm-e is my favorite focal length, but results are what count and one mustn't be afraid to be flexible. Even when it comes to settled habits of mind.  :-)

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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Book of interest this week:

PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice, Edited by Sasha Wolf
(clicking on the link above takes you to Amazon)

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

Grant: "Cool! An Amish F150."

Eolake Stobblehouse: "When I can't go above 100mm, I really miss it. I see so many compositions in the distance."

A Photographer's Home

I hope you don't think this is the online equivalent of being a peeping Tom, but I thought this was interesting...and note that this link might not last for long.

The other day, for obscure reasons, I was searching "Île-de-France," the north-central region of France in which Paris lies—searching, as I often do, visually, through the images tab—and I happened across an unusual real estate listing. It caught my eye because the house seemed to be pictured as it was lived in, as opposed to having been sanitized and leached of personality for the listing photos. Then I saw this—

The large prints on the wall (which I have to admit I didn't recognize—I should have recognized the lower one, because I've seen it before) were the first indication that this was a photographer's home, but the light on its stand, the copy of Klein Retrospective on the bookshelf, and, especially, the proof-prints taped to the back of the door, were the confirmation. As I clicked through to other pictures, it dawned: Whoa, this is Peter Lindbergh's house.

I didn't know he had died, or if I did I didn't remember (I can't keep everybody in my head any more like I used to). But a quick side-trip to Google revealed he left us on September 3rd, 2019.

If you don't know the name, Peter, who was born in Germany and lived in France, was a major fashion photographer, one who had a strong affinity for black-and-white and who is credited with ushering in the era, and the concept, of the supermodel. Here's his Foundation, and here's a link to a book that's a good introduction.

Photographer Peter Lindbergh in 2015

I hope you don't think it's creepy of me to clue you to virtually peek into the home he left behind. I thought it more like a unique opportunity to celebrate who he was—a creative powerhouse with distinctive taste and strong feelings. Rest in peace.

Here's the listing from Sotheby's Realty.

Mike
(Portrait from fanzineredwiki, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Book of interest this week:

PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice, Edited by Sasha Wolf
(clicking on the link above takes you to Amazon)

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

Dogman: "My favorite of the fashion photographers. I discovered his work late but made up for it by diving in deep and coming out feeling fulfilled. Beautiful B&W."

JOHN B GILLOOLY: "This is such an amazing find. He is my favorite of the fashion photographers and it is such a treat to see how he chose to display his work in his house. And TOP has me on a photography book path that is leading to my house being filled with large books like his! Thanks for this post!"

Urs Willi: "For me, Lindberg's masterpiece are his 'portraits' of some of Alberto Giacometti's bronze figures. They were on display in a Giacometti exhibition some years ago here in Zurich (Switzerland). Truly marvelous. There is a print volume, but I haven't seen it."

Rob Campbell: "The not knowing of Lindbergh's demise is not of itself surprising.

"Lindbergh and many other people of his ilk are famous within their universe as well as within the wannabe one too. However, there has always been a wide gap between the genres and they don't always overlap very much. For example: I've been in the business all my working life up to retirement, and I was in it before Peter became what he became. I watched some of his early stuff in the fashion bibles and liked some and disliked some. He was, to me, a mixed bag of great and horrible. Yet, I know and care even less about some of the apparently wonderful so-called art photographers some revere; you see the point?

"Later on, much later on, I began really to like what he was doing, though not always the women he chose to carry his dreams. For anyone not familiar with his work, the best way is to watch some of the 'making of' vids that abound on the Internet; a major one is of the shooting of his Pirelli Calendar (another case of a thing famous amongst some photographic groups but almost unknown to others), where he uses older actresses as well as some younger women. The videos, often, strike me as being better than the published photographic stills, but that could be because of motion and the build-up of a sequence to a climax that model photographers understand very well, but which can't be experienced from a single shot, however great that one may be.

"The best video interview that I can remember with him is on Nick Knight's Showstudio channel. I'm writing this on an iPad which is always a race with losing contact with TOP due to timing out, whatever that may be, so I won't risk losing this connection in order to provide a link!"

Those Z Lenses

I could have titled this "ThoZe Lenses." That's the value of restraint. And maturity. You're welcome.

Anyway, I feel like I've been unfair to Nikon. Have you seen the lineup of Z lenses lately?

The Nikkor-Z 70–200mm

In the past it's been fairly dismaying to survey Nikon's lens offerings, because age and the variety of its cameras meant that the system had become a formidable hodgepodge. It was (well, still is) all over the place. Chaotic. No coherence.

After 1987, when Canon abandoned its problematic old FD lensmount (after several previous changes—raise your hand if you remember FL- and R-mount Canon SLR lenses), it got to start over with a clean sheet. It was a big, bold change, and Canon took a lot of heat for it at the time from people who were invested in its older lenses...which meant virtually all of its existing customers. But the EOS System and the new EF lenses arguably began the process by which Canon climbed past the once-indomitable Nikon and became World Number One.

At the time (1990 maybe?), I researched and wrote an extensive article called "The EOS Revolution" for Camera & Darkroom magazine. Canon reprinted the article and distributed it widely for the next 18 months or two years. I got to meet a lot of Canon bigwigs in the U.S. and had access to virtually all the new equipment.

Well, with the Z lensmount, Nikon effectively gets to do the same thing. Clean sheet. New dawn. Starting over. Without, of course, abandoning its other lensmounts or its SLR line, it gets to start fresh and build a more coherent system of lenses—a lineup that makes internal sense. Like it had way back in the AI-S days.

This would have your wide-angle needs covered like a blanket. Unless maybe you shoot indoor sports professionally, or you're a high-end pro architectural shooter who does interiors. Even then I like your chances.

It begins with an aptly judged set of basic but optically very high-quality primes, 20mm, 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm. (In Mikey-land, all that any generalist photographer really needs. Er, well, since there's a 40mm coming.) For these lenses it chose a sensible maximum aperture of ƒ/1.8, which is ideal—fast enough, especially in the digital age, without being too heavy or too expensive. (They're professional Nikkors. They're not going to be cheap.) And actually you have a choice of three 50mms, including the statement ƒ/0.95 Noct. (With a fourth coming—a Micro*.) So take your pick. Now it's beginning to fill out the zoom range with fast and slow 24–70mms, the fast 70–200mm and 14–24mm that pros need, plus a few of the good-selling slow-speed consumer focal lengths. All intelligently chosen and dressed in consistent matching livery. The pro teles are all on the roadmap.

Know how we'll know if the Z System has really arrived? If there's an official corporate book. For the last 50 years, whenever a camera company is really and rightfully proud of what it has accomplished, there's a book. For example, Eyes of Nikon in the days of AI-S lenses. And if a camera company knows it's just limping along, or being me-too, or just scrabbling for its piece of the pie, there's never a book. But I digress.

It's a pleasure to watch this lens line unfold. But where's the sense of occasion? The hullabaloo and hubbub? The blaring of horns and blasting of fireworks?

Well, times have changed. It doesn't take a genius to chart the profound differences in the photography world between 1987 and now.

But still, I of all people should give Nikon a little credit here. The Z lens line is an exciting development. And it does look like Nikon's doing a very good job so far. And the lineup is growing very quickly.

Are the Nikkor** Z lenses worth getting into the Nikon Z System for? Comments on the performance of the Z lenses will have to wait till another day.

Mike
(Thanks to Albert W Erickson)

*"Micro" is Nikon's word for macro. "Macro" means the image of the subject is life-size on the sensor, although it's often used when the image is half life-size as well.

**For those who are new, "Nikkor" is Nikon's longtime brand-name for its lenses. This goes way back.

Book of interest this week:

PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice, Edited by Sasha Wolf
(clicking on the link above takes you to Amazon)

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

Christopher J May: "I recently decided that it was time to get a new digital camera, since my D800 was getting really long in the tooth. I debated about getting a D850 but really liked where Nikon was going with the Z mount and the lenses they've brought out thus far. I opted for the original Z7 since the changes on the Mark II version weren't worth the price premium for me.

"There's a lot of negativity around the Z cameras around the web. After using my new Z7 for a couple of weeks, I can tell you that it's completely unfounded. These are really nice cameras! Any longtime Nikon user will feel right at home. Additionally, I feel like Nikon's user interface is the most approachable for any would-be new photographers looking to upgrade from a cell phone.

"Much of the bad press on the Z's has surrounded Nikon's autofocus system. The problem is that Nikon's AF is a little more hands-on than, say, Sony's. If one takes the time to understand it (buying a ByThom User Guide is the way to go!), it actually gives very good performance with more user control. I always enjoy feeling a little more in control of my camera rather than trusting the algorithms that an engineer half a world away designed to discern what I'm focusing on, so this is a plus for me.

"In addition to the wonderful new Z lenses, the new mount geometry also allows the adaptation of almost anything to the Z mount. In addition to the basic Z7 kit I bought myself, I threw in an FTZ adapter to use most of my old F mount stuff until I can add the appropriate Z lenses. I also added something fun, an M39 adapter, and have added a classic Nikkor H C 5cm ƒ/2 to my Z kit. The Sonnar design lens gives a unique rendering with a decent close focus ability. It's a blast to throw this lens on the camera and go wandering. The sensor-based VR system and focus aids make shooting the classic Nikkor even more capable today than when it was brand new. I look forward to trying other classic lenses on adapters as time goes by.

"There's a lot of doom and gloom surrounding Nikon lately. I think it's only a matter of time before the Z mount really gets on track and photographers discover what a nice system it is and how wonderful the new lenses are. Nikon will be back before long."

Simon Miles: "Those of us who have already bought into the Z system know its secret. The glass is amazing. If you ask me, this has been Nikon's plan all along. They've always been an optical company first and foremost, but with the Z system they've gone all-out and are making the best lenses they've ever made. Not only that, they're making some of the best lenses anyone has ever made. If there is any justice in this world (and admittedly that's a big 'if') they'll reap the benefit of this in 2021. I hope so. It's a wonderful system and it deserves to do well."

Phil: "The EOS/EF series began in 1987 with the EOS 650 and 620. I was Canon tech at the time (the oldest model I had worked on was a III) so if you think it was a big step for the public...."

Dr_Nick: "I have a feeling that most of the non-legacy owners buying ILC cameras at this point are people who care about video primarily."

Photographers on Process and Practice

Contributed by Rob de Loe

I hope you had a nice Christmas with some snow. Unlike a lot of Ontario, which had a wet, green Christmas, we had a nice dumping of snow here in Guelph.

I have a book recommendation for you. Without a doubt this is one of the best books about photography I’ve read in a very long time. Paradoxically, it contains not a single photograph. Instead, it’s simply 12 questions answered by 40 photographers—like a Proust Questionnaire for photographers. Here are the first three questions:

1. What comes first for you: the idea for a project, or individual photographs that suggest a concept?
2. What are the key elements that must be present for you when you are creating a body of work? (Social commentary, strong form, personal connection, photographic reference…)
3. Is the idea of a body of work important to you? How does it function in relation to making a great individual photograph?

The editor, Sasha Wolfe, selected people who fit very loosely within the "straight" photography family, but it really is very loosely. Some I knew about beforehand, e.g., Robert Adams, Alec Soth. Others were entirely new to me, e.g., Kelli Connell, Lois Conner.

I answered the 12 questions myself before beginning (which was fun and instructive). Before I read the responses from each photographer, I’ve been checking out their work online.

I'm only up to Matthew Connors, but I’ve already learned more about my own approach, why I do what I do, and the constraints (good and bad) that I'm operating under than I have from the previous dozen books I've read. Some of the things I wrote in my own responses are already starting to look a bit shaky (which is good—mustn't be complacent!)

Of course I’ve also learned a lot about the photographers themselves—vastly more than I would have had I just browsed one of their books or poked around a website. I can only read a couple at a time because it's so much to take in.

There doesn't seem to be a Kindle version, which is unfortunate because it would be easier to read in electronic format due to the thin paper on which it is printed; the text on the reverse side of each page shows through a bit much in the physical copy, which sometimes is distracting.

In Light on the Landscape, one of the books recommended on TOP recently, William Neill suggests that once a year we should take stock of our past year's work and evaluate whether or not we've made progress. That's solid advice, but I'd go a step further: to really understand what's happening in your work, read PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice.

Best wishes for the New Year,
Rob

Reader Rob de Loë lives in southern Ontario, Canada, where he works at the University of Waterloo. A year ago he flipped the switch and closed down a thirty-year program of teaching and research on water governance so he could spend the remainder of his professional life teaching, studying and practicing environmental photography. His work can be found at Rob de Loë Photography.

Book of interest this week:

PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice, Edited by Sasha Wolf
(clicking on the link above takes you to Amazon)

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

robert e: "Thanks for the review, Rob. Sounds terrific! Did you know that Sasha Wolf continues on with PhotoWork in podcast form? (I presume without the thin-paper problem.)"

Thomas Rink: "I agree with Rob de Loe—this book is a very interesting read. Highly recommended to all those working in terms of projects."

Sunday Support Group: Negative Energy

You've heard the expression "negative energy." But what exactly is it?

A psychologist might say that someone is "getting someone else to hold their feelings." And what the heck does that mean?

Here's a totally made-up scenario. Let's say that Person A gets into a fight with a tradesman, person P. They've got differences over services and a bill, and instead of resolving it calmly and unemotionally—you know, "like adults" (another fanciful expression!), the discussion deteriorates and turns acrimonious. Afterward, Person A is left feeling angry, aggrieved, wronged. He's worked up. Upset. Person P has vacated the premises, but Person A "perseverates" on the situation (keeps going over his arguments in his mind again and again, without anything changing.)

He later goes to the supermarket. In the parking lot, Person L pulls slowly out in front of him because she doesn't see him. He's not inconvenienced; he was only going three miles an hour; he wasn't that close to her; he doesn't have to slam on his brakes. Normally, he would just wait for her to pull around. Person L might even wave in apology when she realizes what she's done.

Instead, Person A "sees red." (Another expression.) His mind seizes on his rightness and her wrongness. Ignoring the fact that his car will be blocking a lane in the parking lot that other people need to use, he slams it in park, leaps out, stalks righteously over to Person L's car as she's waiting to pull out into the roadway, taps on her window, and, when she lowers it, proceeds to rant harshly at her for "cutting him off."

Person L, frightened, puts up her window, stares straight ahead, and nearly pulls in front of a truck which blasts its air horn at her. Person A retreats—thank God!—and she successfully negotiates her way out into traffic, finally. A quarter of a mile down the road, she bursts into tears.

That's "getting someone else to hold your feelings." (If you've never read James Joyce's very short story "Counterparts," you should. A brutal and scarifying elaboration of the seemingly harmless little expression "kicking the cat.")

Person A had no real reason to confront and verbally assault Person L. But he's dumped his toxic feelings on her, the residue of his dispute with Person P, and he's certainly been a conduit for spreading negative energy in the world. She had been feeling sunny and friendly, and had just enjoyed a chat with the nice young checkout girl. She didn't have to have her morning ruined.

Just because one person is feeling shitty is actually no excuse for them to make another person feel that way.

Afterwards he doesn't even really feel better, except that maybe now he's perseverating on Person L's supposed transgression and his own feelings of righteousness about the situation—I had the right of way!—people like her shouldn't be allowed to drive!—instead of his dispute with Person P.

Emperors...not
The older I get, the more aware I am of "negative energy" and its various forms and manifestations. The other day, on my vacation, I was reading a forum (about pool, not photography), and came across a thread about a subject I wanted to know more about. One of the participants was a "deep expert" who also happens to be, in my judgement (judge not, and ye shall not be judged), an egotistical horse's ass. In the thread he was getting into it with some other personage who also couldn't be wrong. They proceeded to rub each other raw; and about four pages into the six-screen thread I was starting to feel agitated myself just from reading it. (...And if you've never heard Todd Rundgren's faux-operatic little lampoon "The Emperor of the Highway," give it a listen. Read the lyrics too. Makes me chuckle to this day.)

There was really no reason why the two of them couldn't simply have been polite. They could have disagreed just as much, and just as effectively. I had kept reading the dang thread because there were a few nuggets of good information in it.

About twenty minutes later, standing at the stove, stirring, I became aware that I was feeling stressed and tense. I've been in the habit lately of "interrogating my feelings"—another fancy phrase; I just try to become aware of what I'm feeling and then see if I can figure out why. Curiously, it's not always an easy riddle. This time, though, I quickly realized it was because of that nasty exchange I had read earlier in that forum.

Back at the computer later, I checked. That thread turned out to have been from March 2015.

So for almost six years that misbegotten little pustule of ugliness had lain buried like a time capsule waiting patiently for people like me to come along and trip over it. At which point it releases its vapors of nastiness anew to pollute someone else's air.  Maybe the better hyperbolic metaphor would be a forgotten and neglected but still-armed land mine? The antagonists could have been dead, yet there it stays, frozen in amber, preserved, to radiate its bad vibes indiscriminately into the future like a buried curse.

That's negative energy too.

Snark and scorn
I find I have a lot of resolutions this year! And I don't even believe in New Years resolutions.

One is, clean the house. Not for virtue; only because I suspect I will feel happier in a clean, orderly house. Second, I want to get most of the things I don't need out of my life.

That goes way beyond the two Micro 4/3 lenses to which I still cling. I hang on to all sorts of things. For instance, when I lived in Washington D.C., I taught myself Japanese four-hole stab bookbinding. I made two very nice Japanese-bound books back then, one of which is blank. That was, at a minimum, 30 years ago. Could have been more. Yet I still have the box of bookbinding supplies. I've carried it with me faithfully through a number of house moves, just as if it still belonged to my future. ...Which thirty-odd years of neglect have amply demonstrated it does not. I will harden my heart and let go of that box—this is that year!

Material resolutions are trivial, though. They're probably what give resolutions a bad name. Real resolutions should more properly be set in the spheres of wisdom and personal growth.

Real resolutions are behavioral and spiritual.

One of the reasons I started TOP more than 15 years ago is that I wanted there to be a little oasis where at least gratuitous negative energy was kept mostly at bay. Where casual and needless snark and scorn and casual provocation wither from lack of nourishment. By and large we do pretty darn well, you and I. But there is certainly no shortage of negative energy out there in the world.

So my resolution for this year is to work on improving tolerance. Although this is at root basically a spiritual goal, there are many concrete ways I can work on it. One, for me, will be to be as mindful as I can be of negative energy—not only to recognize when others are dumping it on me—and work on tolerating them when they do—but to be more aware of the situations in which I am tempted or led to dump it on the heads of others.

...And to clean the house. But let's not get carried away!

Mike

P.S. If you haven't yet, see the Update in the "Random Excellence I Dare Not Show You" post. We heard from the photographer.

Book of interest this week:

The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair
(clicking on the links above takes you to Amazon)

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

Dan Khong: "Talking of resolutions, for the first time in my life, I made three in 2017 that can never be broken, and I am still planning on doing these three this year: 1. Every month, to give some money to deserving people (who I don't know). 2. At least once a month, to invite different people (who I know) out for lunch and have conversations. 3. To journal."

David Lee: "I really enjoyed this. Except for the word 'tolerance,' which I don’t like because it gives me the impression that being tolerant is a way of telling myself that I am a much better human being than the rest and because of that I have to understand their limitations and try to, well, tolerate them."

Mike replies: Except that that's the core of the problem. Perhaps without the value judgement (your "much better than").

Aren't we all in actuality little egotists whose Universes center on our own heads and whose interests are more important to us than those of the strangers we rub up against in the world? It's a decidedly human tendency to think everything's "all about us." I do think tolerance is a matter of consciously trying to understand and have patience for other viewpoints. I've been trying to remind myself on a daily basis that a.) I'm no better (but also no worse) than other humans; b.) that other people are dealing with their own challenges and resentments and "understanding with their own understandings," which may cause them to behave in ways that are distasteful or disagreeable or simply mystifying to me, and that I need to let them be themselves; c.) I should resist the urge to try to control others, because I'm not in charge and nobody appointed me to be their policeman; and d.) to remind myself, when other people do things that I don't like, that I also have behaved badly at times in the past so perhaps I shouldn't judge. All of those reminder-thoughts, I would argue, as they become habitual, increase my tolerance and help me take it easy.

Tolerance has a real benefit, too, one that's frequently hidden from our concept of it. We humans naturally tend to internalize things  and exaggerate in our minds the significance of our own actions, status, standing, etc. Accepting that it's not "all about us" makes it more clear to us that it's actually all about them—! In other words, we can more naturally or habitually "not take things personally." If Person L in the example above were truly tolerant, her reaction might be along the lines of: wow, this fellow has had a bad day. He's lost control of his emotions and he's acting crazy. Poor fellow. He's going way overboard in defending his selfish interests. He really must have a lot of stress in his life, etc., etc.—and perhaps then she would not be upset by him at all! So (in the context of the post topic) she'd be immune to his negative energy.

Anyway it's been my observation that the most tolerant people I know are slow to anger and aren't easily upset or nonplussed. Tolerance helps them be steady and calm.

The Secret Lives of Color

Dick Barbour writes: "I got The Secret Lives of Color on your recommendation and am really enjoying it. I got the Kindle version but am thinking about also getting the hardback, just to see all of those beautiful colors on the printed page. The author is a historian and she has some great stories about historical and artistic figures and their relationship with the colors. Good reading. Thanks for pointing it out!"

Anybody else get this book? What do you think?

I think it's a lovely thing. I'd be thinking about getting the hardback too, except for belt-tightening (budget overruns on the pool shed...). I should think color photographers whose work relates to color would be all over it. It's just a good book for reading, too, although it's certainly not a practical necessity. (The Book of This Week will be changing on Sunday, that is if Mike the ADDled Editorial Assistant can keep one plan going for as long as three weeks.)

Published in 2016, Secret Lives has gotten attention from all over since then. A few blurbs collected by the publisher:

"The history of colors, it turns out, is the story of science as well as art. Kassia St. Clair’s entertaining book brings them both into vivid relief." (The Wall Street Journal)

"The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair presents readers with [an] opportunity to relish in otherwise mundane aspects of reality.... An engaging mix of aesthetic analysis and optical science, it could make anyone a keen observer of our kaleidoscopic world." (Popular Science)

"A kaleidoscope of charming, discursive essays.... A light and lively guide [that] offers plenty of fresh clues for the brain’s colorful calculations." (The Economist)

"Beautifully written and thoughtfully produced.... Full of anecdotes and fascinating research, this elegant compendium has all the answers." (NPR's Best Books of 2017)

"What The Secret Lives of Color offers really is, in some sense, a flash portrait of human civilization, a zigzagging and unpredictable exploration of how significantly color has shaped histories and disciplines, fueled empires, changed the nature of war and caused species to flourish or face extinction." (Chemistry World)

"A work of art in its own right, The Secret Lives Of Color is a beautiful tactile book." (The Pool)

Mike

Book of interest this week:

The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair
(clicking on the links above takes you to Amazon)

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

Jim Couch: "Went to Amazon just now and ordered the book. The hardbound is on sale for [a low price]! Could not pass that up..looking forward to reading the book."

Ed note: Sorry for the awkward edit but Amazon does not like me mentioning prices.

Michael Badalamenti: "I really enjoyed The Secret Lives of Color. I had no idea there were such interesting stories behind each one. Seeing the colors in the physical book adds immensely to the enjoyment. I checked it out at my library.  ;-) "

Santasimage: "If you have an iPad get the Apple Books version...the color is wonderful!"

Mike replies: Kindle version works on the iPad too.

Ray Hunter: "I bought the book (hardcover) on your recommendation and am really enjoying it. There are some publishers and individuals whose taste I've come to respect in a manner that amounts to 'blind faith.' David R. Godine was, and is, an example of this quality. I have added M. Johnston to the list, as I have not been disappointed by any of your book recommendations. Thanks!"

Mike replies: You're welcome, and thank you, and I hope I can live up to that!

A 'Random Excellence' I Dare Not Show You: Johan Peijnenburg

[Insert illustration here]

As you know I have an irregular but persistent feature here I call "Random Excellence." The idea, originally, was to show pictures I came across randomly in my surfing of the Web that strike me as excellent.

I started this blog in 2005. Things sure have tightened up since 2005 where still photos are concerned. Apparently anyone can repost a whole song or an entire television show on the Web with no consequences, but God forbid you grab the most trifling offhand snapshot to repost without wading through a tangle of dire warnings as to what's going to happen to you if you dare.

I kvetch.

Anyway this is far from a trifling snapshot, but I took one look at the photographer's Terms & Conditions page and decided in a flat second not to step into that minefield. The guy must be a lawyer. And the "chilling effect" descends. Like a wet blanket. Happens more often than you could imagine to me now. It's his right. But ah, the trials and tribulations of being a 2005 blogger marooned in 2021....

You can still look at the picture. Apparently that's legal. It's called "Stepping Stones, Lake Geneva and the Alps, Préverènges, Switzerland, May 2012." (Do I dare name the photographer? Not sure. Need to read those terms and conditions...but then I'd feel like I should read them again....)

The thing I thought was interesting about it—well, this is anticlimactic now—is that you couldn't actually step across these "stepping stones." It's common knowledge that one of the ways representational images function is the way they invite you into the picture or obstruct your eye from entering, and then how the eye is led around in the image. Here we have a picture that has a very strong invitation to the eye—rock, rock, mountains, one, two, three, step, step, step—where there's an obvious tension with the fact that you couldn't actually enter into the scene in that way if you were physically present before it. I'd drown long before I ever reached the mountaintops.

That's all. Nice picture. Forgive my griping.

Mike

P.S. I'm kinda being tongue-in-cheek here. I'm not actually anything like angry. I do feel a little put-upon since the rules for still pictures, as practiced, are kind of suffocating, but it's just the culture.

UPDATE Sunday morning from Johan Peijnenburg, the photographer:

"Dear Mike, First of all, many thanks for the positive feedback on the picture. It's appreciated! I am very sorry to read that the T&C 'turned you off.' I get it. Obviously, that's the last thing that should happen, and I will revisit the way they were written. Regrettably, you didn't contact me to see if you could use the picture as intended. The answer would have been 'Yes, of course, please do!' I would have asked you to link back to my site and mention my name, as many seem to forget that nowadays. Each publication actually helps me to do a bit of good since all the print and license sale revenues generated by the site go to charity via a foundation.

"Some commenters suggested that I 'stole' something or 'copied' things. Why someone would write something like that, without knowing a person or checking the facts, is beyond me. Should a high-quality site like this actually allow comments like that? I do really appreciate it when people share or blog about my work. Hence the sharing options that come with each published image, the relatively large size of the images, the lack of watermarks and the missing right-click protection. I guess I should make it even clearer. So in the future, feel free if you happen to stumble into another excellent one :-) .

"Kind regards and happy New Year, Johan Peijnenburg."

Mike replies: Thanks, and thanks for remaining good-natured! I actually looked for contact information on the site and never found it, although it's obvious enough when I go back and search again. I was distracted by the License page FAQ and the T&C, which seemed like pretty stout fencing.

And once again, forgive my griping.

In any event, here is "Stepping Stones" at last (and I added your name to the post title):

Johan Peijnenburg, Stepping Stones,
Lake Geneva and the Alps,
Préverènges, Switzerland, May 2012
(here's the photographer's website)

It's extremely rare that I would censor a commenter—everyone has a right to react to art the way they actually react to it, the way I figure it.

However I didn't get a Michael Kenna vibe from Stepping Stones myself. The two pictures it put me in mind of were one by John Paul Caponigro and one by Marcelo Guarini. John Paul's was one we did a print sale of, in 2013 when it was still a little edgy to offer a cellphone picture as fine art, and Marcelo's was a picture he submitted to a "Baker's Dozen" feature called "It Must Be Color" two years ago. My brother loved Marcelo's picture and badly wanted one, so I contacted Marcelo offering to buy a print of it, and he very kindly gifted a beautiful print to my brother (who is ill with Parkinson's), for which we remain grateful. 

Stepping Stones doesn't have the same form or elements either of those other pictures. Rather—for me—it echoes them, or recalls their feeling-tone, in the way almost all photographs do for me...I hardly ever see a photograph that doesn't remind me of another. Stepping Stones has its own individuality and its own magic.  

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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Book of interest this week:

The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St Clair
(clicking on the links above takes you to Amazon)

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

John Holmes: "Glad you linked to his blog rather than just his picture. Looking through his blog I see lots of great images. I'll be continuing following his blog."

Big, Bold Bad News

I have to admit that I'm a little worried about Nikon in 2021. Thom says there's little real significance to the recent announcement about Sendai that you've been reading about, and he's the expert, but what I worry about is something slightly different—it's that once again Nikon seems to have demonstrated a tin ear for perception, and casually dosed itself with self-inflicted harm without even seeming to realize it. It might be true that the Sendai plant was merely a test bed for ramping up manufacturing of new models, and that centralization in Thailand makes good business sense. But jeez, the great wash of news that ripples outward from this little dance move is "Nikon ends camera production in Japan"—after 70 years—Google the phrase I put in quotation marks and you get page after page of results from all over tarnation. If it's not actually a worrisome thing, then what's worrisome is that Nikon doesn't seem to care about the symbolism—the appearance of all those headlines and the misperception they no doubt are creating. Nikon seems unconcerned. They're Nikon. What, me worry?

The world grabs on to simple stories, not subtle ones. You have to be cautious about spreading big, bold bad news. And hasn't this happened before?

Not in the top ten
Meanwhile, back in the badly-buffeted USA, for what it's worth: at Lensrentals, which as far as li'l ol' me can discern is the leading rental house for higher-end photo gear, the top ten most-rented items in 2020 were all Canon and Sony. The Nikon name doesn't show up till the sixteenth slot.

Nikon isn't worried. That's what worries me.

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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Book of interest this week:

The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St Clair
(clicking on the links above takes you to Amazon)

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

Niels: "On the premier Japanese price comparison site Kakaku.com, the Best Selling Interchangeable Lens Cameras list shows that Nikon has 10 cameras, Sony has 7, Canon 6, Olympus 3, Fujifilm 2 and Panasonic 2 cameras in the top 30 spots. Canon takes the first three spots, but Nikon dominates the list, interestingly mostly with DSLRs. Canon has no DSLRs in top 30. (Pentax show up at #31 with the KP DSLR)."

gary bliss (partial comment): "I bought my first Nikon in 1979, but shot with them the previous decade; my SLR/DSLR systems have been Nikon since then and they have worked well for me. Still, it has been hard not to be struck by Nikon's major missteps going back the AF transition. When they get a leg up on the competition (DSLRs) they find a way to blow it (lagging FF transition). Who thought we needed a one inch sensor system (Series 1)? Or another junky video 'action' camera (KeyMission)? They even managed to mess up a retro-DSLR (the Dƒ). All of these examples took significant enterprise resources to bring to market. Cumulatively they sink a firm by diverting management focus and squandering resources as well as, maybe more importantly, the careers of some of their best talent. Firms rise and fall on a road that looks like this (IBM, GM, etc.) and Nikon has been on the managerial downslope for quite some time."

Zyni Moë: "Very unclear why you think 'Nikon seems unconcerned.' Here is a quote from their financial report for fiscal year ending 31st March 2020: 'As a result, revenue for the Imaging Products Business decreased by 23.7% year on year to 225,894 million yen, and restructuring costs and impairment losses on non-current assets were recorded, resulting in the operating loss of 17,153 million yen (operating profit of 22,069 million yen was recorded in the previous fiscal year).' That is nearly a decline of one quarter in revenue, in one year, almost all of it before COVID. And a look at the quarterly figures since then is really alarming. Some of this is COVID, some not. Nikon are staring death in the face and they fully know they are: Nikon is very, very worried indeed. They probably have decided they must move production out of Japan or they must die rather soon. They have chosen not to die, or not to die yet. That is the decision I would have made, too."

Robert Roaldi (partial comment): "I'm not at all worried about the geographical location of assembly plants. It's mostly myth-making so far as I am concerned. Truth is we have no idea where almost anything is made anymore. When you go on company websites, it's almost impossible to figure out where their head office is or in what countries they operate. Are Japanese cars still Japanese when they built them in Tennessee and in Ontario, Canada? Are Toyotas from Ingersoll, Ontario, not Toyotas? Is a manufacturing robot in Mexico really less reliable than one in Bavaria or Malaysia? We still mentally operate based on 19th and 20th concepts of nation states."

Thom Hogan: "Oh, Nikon is indeed concerned. The internal debates this past year, as reported to me by a few in Tokyo that have been involved, have apparently been intense. There's a sense of urgency at Nikon HQ I haven't seen before with regards to the Imaging group. I would characterize that not so much as 'survival urgency' as 'relevance urgency.' The frightening thing to Nikon appears not to be whether they'll stay in business, but rather whether they can hold the #2 position in ILC and be perceived as a leader.

"But you're correct, their public face doesn't show this intensity or urgency. I've pointed out for years that Nikon's customer communication and interaction has been sub-optimal, and today is no different (though it's even more important today to get this right).

"As for Lensrentals, I've mentioned this before (and in conversations with Roger): Nikon users tend to buy what they need/want, not rent. More so than Canon users did. That's true of everything from books to exotic telephoto lenses. Moreover, a business like Lensrentals tends to be self-enforcing over time. If most of your rentals were Canon, you cater to Canon."

Craig Yuill (partial comment): "A number of people at various sites have pointed out that a significant percentage of rentals (approximately 36%) were for dedicated video cameras. Canon and Sony make those—Nikon does not. Also, several of those top rental items listed are top lenses for video. When it comes to stills cameras and lenses, Nikon is doing relatively well."

Happy New Year!

I'll be back with a new post tomorrow. Wanted to wish you well today.

Regarding 2020, two jokes I liked: one, on a billboard: "2020 needs to pull over and just let me out...I'll walk."

And a meme from the Internet: "I can't believe I'm smoking weed at a family gathering and the illegal thing is the family gathering."

My thoughts are with all those who lost loved ones to COVID-19 in 2020. (I notice that Dawn Wells, "Mary Ann" from the old sitcom Gilligan's Island, succumbed to the virus two days ago. With the exception of The Wizard of Oz, Gilligan's Island was the first TV show I ever watched with live actors in it. I remember clearly where I was. I was so struck by their predicament being marooned on an island that I failed to notice at first that it was a comedy and not real (in my defense: I was six). Previous to that I had mostly watched cartoons, and the live shows I had seen on television were serious: Walter Cronkite, the funeral of President Kennedy, and astronaut John Glenn orbiting the Earth.)

Regarding 2021, may this be the dawn of a new day. I was up this morning in the dark, and watched the moon setting as the dawn arrived. I hope the New Year will be better for you, for me, and for us all.

More mañana.

Mike
(Thanks to Stan B.)

Original contents copyright 2021 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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Book of interest this week:

The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St Clair
(clicking on the links above takes you to Amazon)

From The Book Depository (free shipping worldwide)

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