The Online Photographer

Photographic Value System

Who is Bunny and what killed him or her?
A long time ago, some literary friends were arguing about what allows readers to get "pulled into" a book of fiction. They were arguing nuts and bolts—one was claiming that Hemingway's simple, declarative style allowed more readers "a way in" to the stories he was telling, because more of them could understand him easily. Here's an example of his prose, in case you've heard of him but never read him:

Manuel drank his brandy. He felt sleepy himself. It was too hot to go out into the town. Besides there was nothing to do. He wanted to see Zurito. He would go to sleep while he waited. He kicked his suitcase under the table to be sure it was there. Perhaps it would be better to put it back under the seat, against the wall. He leaned down and shoved it under. Then he leaned forward on the table and went to sleep.

That's from the short story "The Undefeated."

This was leading to some heated words about "writing down" to the audience and so forth, probably from people who were tired of defending their own more ornate or involved writing styles.

I thought about it, and I decided that what draws me into reading has nothing to do with nuts and bolts at all. It's in wanting to know what happens. What's called "the hook." As soon as I get the hook, that's when the word-by-word, line-by-line reading vanishes for me and I start speeding through it, propelled forward. Here's the beginning of Donna Tartt's The Secret History:

The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.

Who is Bunny and what killed him or her? Who's the us of "our"? Are they in the mountains? Is Bunny dead and buried or dead and unburied? The first thing that springs to mind is a plane crash leading to a survivalist situation, but at the same time I know that might be wrong. I want to find out all these things. Prose style be damned, I would read on.

(It's a famous one-line opener.)

Intrusions
My wonderful former psychoanalyst, Karen Maroda, who has written many books in her field, feels that everyone has a basic value system. (I got the idea she also feels that many people aren't aware of what their own basic value systems are. But I mustn't put words in her mouth.) My basic value system is essentially psychological—I always return to psychological explanations by way of first principles, as my way of explaining the world to myself.

Photographically speaking—to hop to safe ground—I do have a pretty distinct value system. I like pictures that get me to engage with the subject. For all my apparent preoccupation with it, technique is a means to an end for me. It's secondary, not primary. Like prose style. So I like technique that doesn't call attention to itself—more specifically, I dislike technique that pulls my attention away from engagement with the picture.

I'd like to discuss two very different photographs, both of black females, one a young woman, one a girl. Here's Scottish photographer Leanne Boulton's "Silver Lining." It's pretty simple, straightforward picture, a portrait in the genre of "people on the street," and could be effective in context. Here the young woman is girded against accidental contact in many ways: sunglasses hide her eyes, earbuds allow her to either not hear or pretend not to hear, her hair is hidden by a cap, her hands turn inward and seem to literally hold her own torso, her expression is blank in the mask we adopt in public that says don't mess with me, nothing to see here, pass on by. Even in the angle of her head we get the idea she's not looking at us—that is, at the camera—from behind those sunglasses.

Of course, all this could be exactly what the photographer is examining and wants us to look at. I'm not criticizing.

Airless
Understand, I'm not the authority over anyone but me, but I have a right to encounter photographs as myself and to honor my own reaction—one of my basic principles is embodied in a phrase I wrote decades ago, "I have a right to respond to art as if my encounter with it matters to me." So what I say only applies to me and my own reaction.

However, everything about the technique here, to my eye, intrudes. The tonal scale has that distinctly depressed midrange so common in digital. I call it (as shorthand) "airlessness"—that is, it fights against showing us a sense of atmosphere. It does this by making all the middle values darker. The light ends up not looking real—the light that might have been there got sucked out of the scene by the oppressive tonality. I can't tell what time of day it is except from clues. The background, though readable as context, is unpleasant because the bokeh is jangly and jumpy. It gives the picture an unsettled feeling. Detail is way too hyped-up—back in the days when I hung around with a lot of wannabe Ansels, a friend privately called the style "zippy-zappy zoner sh*t," and the phrase has always stuck in my mind as something to avoid. Of course we're long past the popularity of the Zone System, but Photoshop makes similar looks easier and faster to achieve. In this case the zippy-zappy look draws my eye to meaningless details, such as the fake-fur lining of the coat, the fabric lanyard around her neck that holds her her ID and the words on it. (Have you ever been sitting somewhere bored and find yourself reading gratuitous words that happen to be visible nearby, just because they're there? It always gives me the feeling that I've allowed a particle of junk to enter my brain against my will.) The zipper, the half-seen necklace, all the "cranial accessories" as Mitch Hedberg once called all the stuff we wear on our head. Even the photographer, with her title, seems to be drawing our attention to...the coat lining, which is emphasized by the excessive local contrast.

Or maybe the title's just a handy label. I'm not interested in the coat lining, in any event.

Just for fun I processed the JPEG as if it were my picture, and I tried to de-emphasize the coat lining. (I tried to contact the photographer for permission to show you my version, but she—perhaps wisely!—didn't reply. She's a good photographer, by the way—see for instance her 16 Questions, about a color photograph that's quite successful. She can't help it if one grumpy old former custom printer over in America happens to be allergic to the B&W technique she's chosen. Can't please all the people, etc.)

All of this might be intentional on the part of the photographer, but it all colludes in making the photograph unappealing for me. YMMV.

Natural
Now compare that with an even simpler shot—formally just a headshot—"Michelle [Happiness]" by Stefan Elf, who might be from Sweden given what little I can find about him. (His website doesn't load for me.) His Photostream shows a much less accomplished and less directed photographer. Leanne Boulton is much more intentional and directed. But as a single image this picture is coherent, integrated, and has much more life. It seems to show a real moment. It engages me in that it seems like a particular moment, and it makes me want to know more about what surrounds this moment—who is this, why is she happy, who is she responding to, what's outside the frame?

I'd be willing to believe that if there were eight frames shot, this one was the one, and none of the others would do.

Technically nothing distracts. There's nothing rote or static in the pose. I like the slight awkwardness—here the slightly off-kilter composition just adds to the sense of immediacy, of the picture's individuality if you will. I don't get the sense that this is just one more exposure among a bunch of similar but slightly different exposures. In "Silver Lining" all I sense is the transaction—"May I take your photo?" "What would you like me to do?" "Just stand there"—followed by six or eight frames from which none truly stands out. Can we help but note that all the young woman's efforts to go unnoticed have gotten her noticed? The best-laid schemes. (I'm being too hard on "Silver Lining," you perceive, just to make my points.) In "Michelle [Happiness]" nothing about the technique intrudes. The depth of field is fine, the tonality is natural, the light is plain, detail is neither unpleasantly etched nor ostentatiously suppressed. To me there's an effortless sense of wholeness about it.

That sense of naturalness, coherence, and integrity is what I like in photographic technique. It should be like ballet dancing—all the effort put into it is only meaningful if the result looks effortless.

I'm me and you aren't
Anyway, this whole thing is just to say—I'm only going by my own value system. Yours might vary considerably. You might hang out with different friends who value different things. You might think every picture is all about how exaggerated and vivid the detail can be, and you might not even think about representing natural light at all—the idea might not even be on your radar. You might be a B&W-hater (they're out there in digiworld.) I don't know. My values aren't the only values, they're just mine.

We are who we are, as viewers as in every other sense.

Mike

P.S. I believe I have the right, according to Fair Use, to publish both of these pictures here—Fair Use specifically allows for works to be quoted for the purpose of commenting on or criticizing them, and that's surely what I've just done. But on the other hand, we're a photography website, and we support photographers, so I like to get permission. I often do receive permission when I try to contact people through Flickr or other sharing sites—just not this month. And sometimes not even next month. Once, a guy took eight months to respond. By then I had long forgotten why I wanted to show his picture in the first place. It's awkward, in other words.

Book o' this Week:
Black in White America 1963–1965 by Leonard Freed, a new reprint of this classic from the Civil Rights era. I got to meet Leonard Freed once. <—This is a portal to Amazon; also available at the Book Depository for global delivery with free shipping.

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.

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

John Camp: "As you said, YMMV, and mine does. I think the first shot is terrific, and I'm more interested in this kind of work than any other kind of photography, except perhaps some portraiture. That first shot says everything about the world we now inhabit, and it's like a latter-day riff on Edward Hopper—this young woman is as isolated and alone as Hopper's characters, while at the same time she's passing through a busy world. The earbud and sunglasses and hand gestures are classic; she's in her own world, tight, defensive, possibly hostile. The second shot, I would treasure if it were a shot of my daughter. But it's not, so to me, it's a nice snapshot. In cases like this I think YMMV should be changed to EMMV—everybody's mileage may vary."

Chris Hunt: "Question I asked myself while reading this post—so how would you feel about the two photos if the styles were swapped?"

Mike replies: Well, the tl;dr version of this post is that the technique of "Silver Lining" impedes or obstructs my ability to contemplate and appreciate what it shows, while in the second picture the technique seems (to me) to get out of the way. So if the styles were reversed I'd like the first better and the second worse.

In fact, after reading your question, I imagined the second photo with the look of the first imposed on it, and even though I was just seeing it in my mind's eye it actually kind of upset me a little.  :-)

Dave (partial comment): "Re: Who is Bunny and what killed him or her? I prefer the 'Bunny' prose to Hemingway's. Hemingway's example is too full of sentences with nearly the same length. It's just harder to get into a flow when I'm always encountering a period to stop my progress. Additionally, Hemingway has harsher words (hot, Zurito, kicked) which makes it seem more staccato sounding than the 'Bunny' excerpt.

"Re: Intrusions, the photo example with the harsh look surprised me. I had read the entire post before clicking on the photo links. Most digital photos on the web must have that look because I had to think about the points you made before realizing that indeed parts of the photo really were too sharp. The second photo is simply terrific. Great work by Stefan Elf!"

The Perfect Portrait Lens

Let's get this out of the way first: if you are worried about the subjective amount of bokeh you can get in a portrait—that is, you attach status to how much can be out of the depth-of-field (DoF): then you should shoot portraits with a 300mm ƒ/2.8 or whatever its angle-of-view equivalent is for your camera. This was a standard for professional model shoots decades ago. You do have to shout at your model to communicate, because she or he will be a long way away from you, especially if you're getting more than a tight headshot. But that's the way to blast the background into nothing but blurriness.

So now we've dispatched that issue. I don't want to get into arguments with people who believe in the imaginary concept of relative aperture.

Pictorialist portrait, from the book Quiet Opposition: Russian
Pictorialism 1900–1930s, courtesy Bronze Horseman Books

And of course there is no such thing as a "perfect" portrait lens. Well, amend that: there might be for any given particular photographer. In the age of pictorialism, portrait photographers wanted soft lenses that had exceptionally low resolution and were quite soft and blurry; many were made (mostly these were view camera lenses), and when a photographer found one they liked, that was just right, they often prized it greatly and sometimes wouldn't even reveal its make and model, lest competitors copy them and use the same lens.

Wire-sharp
That style isn't popular any more. However, one thing that's widely misunderstood these days is that a super-sharp, high-resolving lens is not necessarily the lens you want for portraits. "Uncle Arthur" Kramer, the ace advertising man who was by avocation the in-house lens guru for the now long-gone Modern Photography magazine, called such lenses "hard sharp and wire-sharp" in one article I recall. By wire-sharp he meant that it cut like barbed wire. Another friend uses two words to describe such lenses: analytical and clinical. I've sometimes termed them forensic, meaning (apologies if this is too graphic) that they flay their subject open to minute examination like a corpse on the autopsy slab.

What's a portrait but a sympathetic presentation of a person's appearance? When people go on dates, they stereotypically go to cozy little out-of-the way restaurants where the music is soft and the lights are low. They might dress nicely and make sure their hair looks nice. The woman might wear makeup. When you strive to present yourself favorably to someone you don't know very well, you don't go out of the way to point out your bloodshot eyes or bad skin or the texture of your makeup.

Is this creating an illusion? Maybe, but consider blemishes: a pimple is a prominent but transitory feature of a face. It's not inherent to the way a face looks. I believe that our minds naturally downplay such transitory features for the simple reason that we instinctively know they're not dependable as markers of recognition. But wire-sharp lenses reveal all these things: the texture of makeup, the pores of your skin, the blood vessels in your eye. On a date, you wouldn't want to blast the other person with the hard light of the interrogation room or see them they way they look when they roll out of bed with a hangover, would you?

In search of...less good lenses?!
In the 1980s, Nikon introduced a small series of budget lenses called Series E to go with the tiny EM beginner's camera. To Nikon's embarrassment, professional photographers began snapping up the simple 2X 75mm–150mm Series E zoom. The reason was simple: the lens had a smooth, pleasant look that made models look great. (Those were the days before Photoshop, of course.) It's not that it was unsharp, but it wasn't forensic. Now, cinematographers are snapping up old film lenses because new megadollar cinema lenses are too unforgiving. Perfection is appealing but not interesting.

Years ago I tried the Pentax 55mm ƒ/1.4 DA lens. It's an APS-C lens with an angle-of-view equivalence of 82.5mm in 135 terms. I didn't like it. I use lenses in that focal-length range for portraits, and this lens is too sharp for me. Hard sharp. Wire sharp. Clinical. Analytical. I found myself struggling to find ways in Photoshop to soften its pitiless gaze.

Lensmakers don't make portrait lenses these days, if you ask me. We're a culture of extremes: if something is good, more of it must be better. Recently I heard that people are beginning to complain that on American pickup trucks (which, if you haven't been paying attention, have gotten absolutely huge), the bed height has gotten so high that they're getting inconvenient to load. But hey, they're mas macho. And besides, the average pickup owner only puts a payload in the back four times a year anyway. Some pickup owners put a cover over the cargo bed and never take it off. Accordingly, the few "soft focus" lenses that exist aren't just lenses with the edge taken off, with a little more smoothness. They've got to be extreme. If a little soft focus is good, then a whole lot must be better. So these lenses tend to fish-slap you across the face with their blatant unsharpness.

That's not it. 

Ordinary commercial portraits from the 1910s struck a beautiful balance between not sharp enough and too sharp. We don't have portrait lenses this "good" today.

To make a good portrait lens would require finding the right balance in the middle: neither too sharp nor blurry. But, balance? Moderation? Subtlety? That is not the way current culture understands anything. Furthermore, a lens deliberately made for portraits would not be corrected for high performance wide open—it would be the other way around. It would deliberately have lower performance at the widest apertures, with progressively more sharpness as you stop down to the optimum aperture. That would give the photographer some control, a way to choose the level of performance needed in different situations. The old FA* 85mm ƒ/1.4 Pentax lens was excellent in this respect. Soft wide open with some visible aberrations, perfect for portraits at ƒ/2, and uniformly very sharp with minimal vignetting by the optimum aperture of ƒ/8. Of course now we don't care about vignetting because it's so easily addressed in software.

What's much better for pictures of people than that DA 55mm ƒ/1.4? Well, for me anyway: Pentax's 70mm DA ƒ/2.4 Limited "pancake" short telephoto.

A 105mm ƒ/2.5 Nikkor for today
One of the most famous Nikkors in Nikon's history was the classic 105mm ƒ/2.5. It has such a long and involved history, starting with the original Nikkor-P Sonnar-type rangefinder lens designed by Zenji Wakimoto and announced in 1953, that this post is not long enough even to sketch the outlines of it. In 1971 the lens was redesigned by Wakimoto-san's protegé Yoshiyuki Shimizu. It was one of the legendary Nikkors that made the company's name.

The Pentax 70mm ƒ/2.4 has the same angle of view on APS-C cameras and virtually the same aperture, and might be thought of as a lens in the spirit of that famous Nikkor for portraits. While plenty sharp, it also has a subtle smoothness, one might very subjectively say "a gentle touch," as well as non-jarring bokeh, that makes it better than many other lenses for portraits.

Perfect? No. Hard to argue that, anyway. There's no such thing, and there's not even a market for it because the flood of people who have come into the hobby in recent years are still uncritically in thrall to our cultural idea that more technical perfection in lenses is always better.

But it's the people lens I'd choose if I were getting a Pentax K-3 Mark III.

Mike

Book o' this Week:
Black in White America 1963–1965 by Leonard Freed, a new reprint of this classic from the Civil Rights era. I got to meet Leonard Freed once. <—This is a portal to Amazon; also available at the Book Depository for global delivery with free shipping.

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.

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

William Lewis: "This balance was best achieved in the old days with the big simple Tessars and it is why I dearly love my Nikkor 45mm ƒ/2.8 AI-P. It's a simple Tessar pancake and it is exquisite for what it is, just as they were at the turn of the century."

Mike replies: I might do the same if only I could focus them. Although my love affair was with the Contax version.

Al C.: "Still have my 105mm ƒ/2.5 Nikkor, the only Nikon lens I have kept. All the pics of my young daughter were taken with it. Looking at them now, the melted-butter background really is special. On the other hand, I'm embarrassed to see how often her face, too, is soft—not by artistic intent, but from missed focus."

Mike replies: That's actually a long-forgotten old photographer's trick. Just throw it slightly out of focus. Most people are none the wiser. I've never done it though because I notice and it bugs me too much.

David Dyer-Bennet: "Old portraits often give me a kind of eye-strain as I look at them—they're violating my visual expectations enough that I try really hard to see more detail, I guess. They feel detailed but anything I look at closely goes soft on me. It's kind of unsettling."

Crabby Umbo (partial comment): "I remember testing an 85mm Canon FD breach-lock (first series, multi-coated, for my old Canon FTb) with a model pal, and after looking at the transparencies, she said: "...don't ever use that lens on me again...." It was painfully sharp."

Not THAT Ross Cameron: "On a slight tangent, I’d suggest that there is growing interest in film-era lenses, in part thanks to most manufacturers moving to mirrorless, plus new tech like IBIS and various focus assist tools (zebra stripes etc), that help with the critical focusing of manual focus lenses. I’ve been slowly adding to my (ahem) 'collection' of Nikkor AI-S lenses (repeat three times to self, I am not a lens collector), over recent years, and saw the prices of that 105mm ƒ/2.5 double over the Christmas period. Places like KEH have been turning them over relatively quickly.

"I managed to pick up the 105mm P C Auto version, AI converted—just waiting for it to arrive in the mail. I don’t know if it’s part hipster, part exploration, part videographers etc., but whatever it is, used prices of the older Nikkors are going up."

Patrick Pope: "In a not-dissimilar way the megapixel race has some of the same issue. Photographing portraits on a 45+ megapixel camera can, depending on the portrait coverage, render every pore and blemish in startling detail. Moreover I've found many of the newer sensors give a more analytical rendering devoid of character. I much prefer the overall look of my old Nikon D3 images to the more technically correct images from the D850, even when the same lens is used on both.

"It's all a matter of taste, of course, but I feel it covers a similar vein as the topic of over-sharp lenses."

antipattern: "I really like the DA 70mm, even on full frame. It is tiny and has a magical rendering, and I agree—it is great for portraits."

Stephen S. Mack: "I guess my Barnack Leica Summarit ƒ/1.5 lens with the customary and obligatory careless cleaning marks might qualify as a portrait lens if you're looking for softness. I got the camera and lens about a month ago, and even though I cringe when I see the lens in certain kinds of light, it's still fun for me."

Mike replies: Yes, I've seen some beautiful work with that lens.

Thomas Walsh: "Honestly, if I never heard the word 'sharp' again in a photographic context that would be just fine."

Yonatan Katznelson (partial comment): "I think that the Pentax FA 77mm ƒ/1.8 has the quality you speak of, perhaps even more so than the 70mm ƒ/2.4...as I expect you will soon hear from a bevy of Pentaxians."

Darkroom Rat Riddle

[UPDATE: The answer is in the Featured Comments below. Look for Joel Entin's comment. —Ed.]

-

I spent yesterday posting some stuff on Craigslist and eBay. Trying to raise a little cash to help offset my taxes a bit before the big hit. (This is always a challenging time of year for the self-employed.)

I'm wondering how many people "get" my eBay handle. Probably not very many. You know how sometimes you'll see a car with a personalized license plate that seems to mean something, but you can't figure out what? I used to stop people and ask them. Sometimes the meanings were an "inside" secret, like a family nickname. My cousin used to have the plate "CSWY GRL" because Barry Manilow, the singer, customarily chose an audience member to join him onstage so he could sing "Can't Smile Without You" to her, and at one concert my cousin was the chosen one. For many years the plate drew numerous comments from other "fanilows," the name for Manilow's fans, out in public. But of course nobody who wasn't a fanilow would know what the plate meant.

Anyway, my eBay handle is:

txind76121

Anybody know what it means? Hint: might help if you're a former darkroom rat.

Mike

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.

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

Daniel (partial comment): "Pretty sure it is not your North Dakota Taxi drivers license number."

Mike replies: No....

MikeR (partial comment): "The d76 part may refer to Dektol 76."

Mike replies: Nope! Dektol was a print develop and didn't have numbers.

Ian Hunter: "FP4INID11!"

Mike replies: Made me laugh  :-)  . You must be from the UK.

Ian Hunter: "I am indeed from the UK! I have a fridge full of FP-4, ID-11 in stock and a darkroom with three enlargers. I am a bit of an eccentric I admit."

Mike: The good kind.

Emil Aaltonen: "If it weren’t for the hint, I would have guessed it was a reference to a taxation index...."

Mike replies: Right, it isn't that.

Dan Khong: "I'm guessin' tx = TriX in = in d76 = D76 developer 121 = 12 minutes, single use.....or perhaps this fellah Mike's assets in US$ millions!"

Mike replies: Close but not quite on the first guess, and as for the second, all my assets are intangible, damn it. Things like kindness to animals, the wisdom of many years, and my taste in B&W tonality.

Joel Entin: "Hello Mike, As a former darkroom rat as well, I couldn't help but chuckle at your eBay handle of txind76121. Has to be Tri-X film developed in D-76 diluted one-to-one. Most of my black-and-white film photography was with Plus-X film developed in D-76 diluted one-to-one at 68 degrees for 8 minutes. I still have the negatives from the 1960s, '70s, '80s and '90s."

Mike replies: You got it (as did a lot of others as well).

Working with students as young as seventh graders, I never used the x:x format for ratios...I always wrote "1-to-1" and if the numbers were different I always specified which one was water; for instance, "1 part developer to 2 parts water." Always on the lookout for possible ambiguity so as not to confuse....

c.d.embrey (partial comment): "Best California vanity plate I've seen recently was CLOKWRK. It was on an Orange Honda."

Mike replies: Funny. Just as it happens I was watching YouTube videos about Kubrick last night until late. Someone made the point that critics never liked his films when they came out but usually by the end of a decade they had reversed position. One said that Kubrick himself had made a chart logging various critics' changing reactions to 2001: A Space Odyssey over the years. On one side were pasted the original negative reactions and on the other side were later appraisals calling it a classic and a landmark and a masterpiece.

I never did see A Clockwork Orange. I was scared off by people calling it "shocking" and "violent."

Malcolm Leader: "Best plate I ever saw was UEVOLI—which only makes sense in the rearview mirror."

V.I. Voltz: "Tri-X film in D-76 developer diluted 1+1. It is quite arresting how quickly this has gone from being something anyone who is interested in photography would know to an esoteric piece of arcana."

Mike replies: I'll second that.

Mani Sitaraman: "It's brilliant, Mike! But, I must confess, the second it clicked in my mind, I was hit by a giant pang of nostalgia, in the original Greek sense, of a sharp pain felt for something left behind. I don't know why; I do miss it all. The formulas, the sometimes exhausting long sessions in the darkroom, the sense of slight disorientation when you emerge back into the rest of the world. I must be bonkers."

Mike replies: If you are, then I am. I have that νοσταλγία and it never goes away.

Luke: "Barry Manilow has fans?"

Mike replies: A great many, mostly women, most middle-aged, and many very devoted. I'm not one, but I could tell you stories, via my cousin. She paid $3k to meet him for 15 minutes, for example. And that did not include the plane ticket. That is far from the most extreme example.

Mike Plews: "Great idea. I may start going by txpinhcb."

Mike replies: Wouldn't that have to be txpinhc110b?

Street Photography: Andrew Kochanowski and Don Hudson

Photo by Andrew Kochanowski

Andrew Kochanowski left a late comment to the "New Pentax" post yesterday, which reminded me that it had been a long time and I should catch up a little with his recent work. I turned to Burn My Eye, the collective of which he's a member. There, you can see his Featured Gallery. I particularly like the one with the gun. And that last one, very subtle.

A street photograph is easy to love, if you love it. If a particular example happens to work for your eye/mind and your taste, it can seem like it's somewhere on the spectrum between lucky and miraculous. On the other hand, if a particular street photo doesn't grab you, it can seem haphazard, lame, even puzzling—it can be difficult to see what the photographer saw in it. It would be my guess that most street photographers have to shoot an awful lot to unearth that occasional gem that works for them. And it can be the same way for viewers, too—you have to look through a lot of what seems to you to be dross to find the ones that (again, to you) are golden.

I spent some quality time at Burn My Eye and looked at a lot of the Featured Photos. Check out Don Hudson's picture of the fans all reaching for the fly ball, the Photo of the Month for last January. That's one, for my taste, that has got it all goin' on—love it love it love it. Truly deserves the overused compliment "nice capture" (or as he says, a nice catch). At Instagram he is @Don Hudson. Doesn't hurt (yet again, just for me—you're getting that, right?) that it's historical and also B&W....

Photo by Don Hudson

Andrew has photos in a lot of places around the web. Fortunately, he also has a pretty good "Internet name"—he's pretty searchable. Try "Andrew Kochanowski photographer" and it will lead you to a number of street sites. Here's his website.

Mike
(Thanks to Andy and Don for permission to use their photos)

Book o' this Week:
Accidentally Wes Anderson, the group-sourced book of the Instagram trend, endorsed by the director. <—This is a portal to Amazon; also available at the Book Depository for global delivery with free shipping.

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.

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

Gordon Lewis: "Thank you for pointing me to Andrew Kochanowski's work. It was delightful. The number of people who call themselves 'street photographers' is countless these days. Andrew is one of the few who has a distinctive enough style and eye to reward those who take the time to explore his photographs, collectively as well as individually. Anyone who thinks what he has accomplished is trivial or easy has clearly never tried it themselves. It takes not just luck, but extraordinary vision, skill and timing."

[Ed. note: Gordon wrote the book on street photography.]

Kenneth Tanaka: "Bravo Andrew! I have admired his work, and that of the Burn My Eye group, for years. Skilled, patient, insightful, often ironic. Browsing their work induces more DIWITT spasms from me than nearly anything outside of a browse through a book of Haas, Leiter, Herzog, et al. A touchstone to remind us all that the pinnacle of photography is vision and capture reflex.

"DIWITT = Damn, I wish I took that."

Andrew Kochanowski: "Thank you Mike for a nice surprise! In case you want a brief note on my thinking about street photography, and even if you don't, let me add one: There is too much of it that doesn't grab my interest because in my view, the genre is too focused on the single, grabby shot. The easy, cheap snap, and the instant Instagram gratification, are addictive. If you make it dramatic, if you make it complicated, if you play with reality, yes, there are a lot of likes out there. Thousands of photographers (several Instagram street photo aggregators have followings of over 100,000 people) essentially copy each other over a few tropes to get that shot before a big aggregator and get 5,000 likes. It's a very different world from Joel and Gerry and Helen and, you know.

"I prefer the essay form to show street photography. I find that I unconsciously look for a few things and when I think I have enough, a photo essay springs to mind. I've put up a number on my site, www.akochanowski.net. While you're right, I can be found all over, I prefer that the viewer look at my work in the context that I present. Thanks again, and thanks for featuring Don Hudson as well. We're both Michiganders, disproportionately represented in our international group Burn My Eye. —Andy."

Blake: "Street photographers are a funny breed. A lot of chest-pumping and declarations, and arguing over what is or isn't street or which ones are good or bad or this or that.... Maybe this happens in other types of photography too, I'm not sure. But street photography seems especially prone.

"Anyway, for contemporary street most of the action is now on IG. I would recommend browsing there to get the lay of the land. Websites are OK too but more static and less relevant in my opinion. Wherever you browse, caveat emptor. It's a minefield of mixed quality, age, style, and promotion. But if one is patient there is much to see. Andy and Don's photos are among the best."

Skimpy Day (and, Pentax Lenses)

Today's that day I warned you about...cardiologist this morning and eye doctor this afternoon! In different cities (towns?). So TOP will be a little skimpy today. I'm already a little late.

But, in the meantime, does anyone even know of a comprehensive list of the lenses Pentax makes and sells new now, and the cameras they fit and work with? I tried to disentangle a list from various sources and I think I've failed so far. I'm not talking about the vast sprawling mess of all the historical lenses, which would require a Pentaxian version of the indefatigable Erwin Puts to catalogue. Just the ones you can buy new for new cameras. I think it's at least a challenge to make sense of it all. Assuming it can be done.

Gotta get going,

Mike

UPDATE noon: Got a clean bill o' health from the cardiologist. Blood pressure 112/62, EKG is fine, no changes since two years ago, no issues. "Keep doing what you're doing" was doctor's advice. One small annoyance: BMI is 26 and it should be 25 or below. To quote Snidely Whiplash (always loved that name), "Curses, foiled again!"

So take a look at Tex's long comment about Pentax lens information below. Looking over Pentax's offerings it seems like they tend to have small sets of lenses for every sort of camera, which each make internal sense, and then, when they have more it quickly becomes somewhat chaotic—almost like a new guy is put in charge of the lens lineup plans every two or three years, makes a bunch of changes and introduces a few lenses, and then he vacates and a new guy takes over and starts all over again. I guess that's what happens when you make lenses for almost every conceivable film and digital format from 110 to 6x7 over many decades. If you want the K3 III, for instance, you almost have to like the 21mm Limited or the 35mm Macro as your normal prime, or am I missing something?

Now I've got 14 minutes before I have to leave for the eye doctor's. That's an hour and a half in the car with an appointment sandwiched in the middle. Living in a rural area does have its consolations though: there was a headline in the free local newsletter this morning saying COVID cases are up...from one or two new cases daily to "three, four, or even five." Yesterday there were four new cases. I'm not saying that's good or anything like that; zero would be the best number, obviously. All I'm saying is, could be worse.

UPDATE late afternoon: Got a big pass and pat on the back from the eye doctor too. My partial cornea replacement is doing well and my vision has improved—"easily correctable to 20/20" quoth the newly-married Dr. Zoschg  (pronounced "zosk"). I got new driving glasses and plan to get new computer glasses too. Although the old ones still serve, the prescription has changed. I don't wear glasses most of the day unless I'm reading.

Only one more appointment tomorrow and I'm done with my busy week. The whole week has been good—best of all was Tuesday, with the tax lady, and the news is: TOP survived another year! I was tremendously relieved, as I'd been worried and stressed about it. As all you professional photographers well know, those self-employment taxes can be murder. My income was down sharply through the COVID year, but that meant the taxes were lower too. TOP marches on!  :-)

Book o' this Week:
Accidentally Wes Anderson, the group-sourced book of the Instagram trend, endorsed by the director. Go read about it! <—This is a portal to Amazon; also available at the Book Depository for global delivery with free shipping.

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.

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

Tex Andrews: "Here's the list at Ricoh: http://www.ricoh-imaging.co.jp/english/products/lens/index_list.html

"Here's the Feb 2021 roadmap: https://pentaxrumors.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Pentax-K-mount-lens-roadmap.jpg

"And: https://pentaxrumors.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Pentax-K-mount-lens-roadmap-2.jpg

"In the first one there's color coding down on the lower right. DFA and FA lenses are fully compatible with FF, while DA lenses are designed for crop. The second chart I think is showing how some DA lenses can work with FF.

"DFA lenses are weather resistant or weather proof. Lenses with a star are special high end lenses, and then there is the Limited series, both in DFA and DA which are a quirky Pentax thing, and only primes.

"There have been some lens announcements this year: a 21mm Limited lens for FF coming in the fall we thing, and there is a new DA zoom lens (16–50mm I think) to coordinate with the new K3 III camera about to hit the streets now, and there's word that this lens may be part of a kit with that camera. Also, some of the Limited series lenses will be updated with new coatings.

"Here's the list for medium format: http://www.ricoh-imaging.co.jp/english/products/lens/index645_list.html

"FA and DFA cover FF medium format, and DA supposedly only covering crop frame digital medium format (although there's a bit of argument about that—the 21st century 25mm lens that was produced for a few years may only have been a hood issue—fixed metal hood)

"Here's the last 645 roadmap: https://pentaxrumors.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Pentax-645-mount-lens-roadmap-2016.png

"This is the best I could find in a hurry. On PentaxForums.com there is a complete listing of all lenses, including legacy lenses: https://www.pentaxforums.com/lensreviews/

"Here's the most complete list of third party lenses (I think...): https://www.pentaxforums.com/userreviews/

"This last might be missing several lenses—the third party Chinese manufacturers still are coming out with new stuff that may not be in there yet.

"I'm now a forums mod over there. FYI, we keep a close eye on your website, as you've always seemed a 'friend,' which in our world means 'not openly or snarkily hostile.'"

Mike replies: Thanks, Tex. And, jeez, I'd better behave!

Srsly? The New Pentax

I have to admit I was shocked when I found out the price of the new Pentax.

For those of you not following along with DSLR news (more and more people, lately), Pentax has introduced a newly designed camera that unfortunately has an iteration naming convention because of where it falls in the lineup. And an awkward iteration it is—the K-3 Mark III, or K-3 III. I gather that should be pronounced kay-three-three. Pretty soon Porsche will get to the 911th version of the 911, I guess. I would love there to be a Porsche 911 Mark CMXI. (That's the roman numeral for 911 as you've probably guessed.)

But it's not a refresh, not the old model warmed over. It's all new.

Some intriguing improvements
What's so special about it? Well, I've not seen one, but according to everybody's go-to site for nutz 'n' boltz, Amazon's DPReview, it has a new sensor. An MB sensor. That stands for mo' bettah, which as far as I can tell is how every new sensor is trumpeted on release. Or 90% of them anyway. Maybe I've become inured to marketing hype.

The best glass pentaprism viewfinder ever on an APS-C DSLR. Okay, they've got my attention.

MB autofocus. Goes in the "I'm jaded, show me" bin.

MB IBIS. Okay, that tweaks my GAS a tad too. Wouldn't take much to beat the SR (shake reduction) in the old K-20, but then, that came out in April of 2008, Grandpa. (I was around back then, sonny!)

Big honkin' battery that lasts forever. I admit that this always appeals to me.

All-new, better, longer-lasting (300k actuations) shutter. Okay; like the sound of that.

There's video-y stuff. Don't care, don't care.

The camera looks the absolute business. Reminds me of the Jeep Gladiator somehow. Or the new Bronco. I am not supposed to care how a camera looks, but of course I do. This has always been a strength of Pentaxii; they tend to look like cameras are supposed to look.

It's Ricoh's flagship APS-C DSLR. DPReview thinks it's clear that a lot of genuine clean-sheet engineering effort has gone into this camera, and that is worthy of some respect unless and until we find out differently.

Maybe I should check that out
So I was just thinking, hmm, I used a lot of Pentaxes a decade ago, I should really catch up with them and see what they've been up to recently, maybe I'll request one for review. It can't cost that much, right? It's got a fixed viewing screen. As in, doesn't articulate at all. You know, like Grandpa's DSLR. Hey, at least you won't have to fret about flip-up vs. flip-out.

But then I got grumpy. I caught myself thinking, bah, they'll probably want fourteen or fifteen hundred for it, the way things are going these days.

Then I looked.

Two grand.

TWO GRAND?!? What? Seriously? That's the exact same price as a brand new in-the-factory-sealed-box K-1 II! Full frame, half again as many megapickles, fancy hydraulics all over the viewing screen so you can contort it however you want it K-1 II! That one. It's three hundred dollars more than a Fuji X-T4! That's like John Starks trash-talking Michael Jordan. Same price as the pro Nikon D500! Same price as the full-frame Sony A7 Mark III! Help, I can't stop typing !'s!

Corporations are not actually people, so they cannot actually lie around in the rec room feeling sluggish and useless and puffing one too many joints, but: Ricoh must be high.

Two grand.

Down boy
Well, calm down, hoss. I need to stop applying my price sensitivity level to cameras. It's a bad habit. And it's dumb. There are plenty of people out there for whom the difference between $1,200 and $2,000 for a camera body is not especially meaningful.

Pentaxes look the way cameras are supposed to look.

It occurred to me when I was contemplating the meaning of Erwin Puts's work and relationship to Leica yesterday that my primary allegiance isn't to brands, it's to the people who use the brands. Just because I've only ever owned one Canon doesn't mean I don't like Canon, because I think of Josh H. and Tom B. and all the people I know who have shot with and loved their Canons over the years. My primary attitude toward Leica doesn't link directly to the corporation or even the legend or the lore, it links to Jay B. and Jack M. who both love their very different Leicas. The meaning of Nikon isn't "what do you think of the D850," it's "just think of all the great work that's been done with Nikons by so many different people over the years" from Eve Arnold to Galen Rowell to Peter Turnley.

I haven't always liked Ricoh. (They stiffed me for $2,500 worth of advertising when they bought Pentax. Just said, nah, we're not honoring that, go stuff yourself. Refused to pay the bill.) But I've always really liked people who use Pentaxes. They're the nicest people. It's the users that matter, not the name on the top plate.

So I should just chill out. Two grand means it's out of my price range; it doesn't actually mean it's too expensive.

Here's the K-3 Mark III at B&H. So tell me, how do we feel about the concept of a "flagship APS-C DSLR" in April of 2021, in the era of full-frame mirrorless? Does it feel a little like "most popular mid-size sedan" in the era of SUVs and pickup trucks?

Mike

Book o' this Week:
Accidentally Wes Anderson, the group-sourced book of the Instagram trend, endorsed by the director. Go read about it! <—This is a portal to Amazon; also available at the Book Depository for global delivery with free shipping.

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.

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

Speed: "Broadly speaking, camera buyers come in two flavors—those that are already in the system and those that are new to the system. Low prices are designed to lure newbies while high prices are designed to net those with a bag full of lenses who don't want to start from scratch. Exception that proves the rule...useful new features and outstanding performance can demand a premium from everyone. A friend and life-long Canon user sold everything (Canon DSLR plus a bag of heavy lenses) and spent a boatload of money for small and light Sony mirrorless products. His chiropractor was the loser."

John McMillin: "Yes, it's a fearsome price. I paid that much for the K-1 when it came out, and was happy to do it, because other FF options were considerably more. For me, the big draw of FF was getting a full-sized OVF again. This new K-3 III promises a view almost as big, and possibly brighter. It will certainly be faster than the K-1, which suits itself to leisurely contemplation of the scene while the buffer writes to the card. So it will be a more versatile camera, for sure.

"The image quality difference between the two doesn't concern me; I can barely tell my K-1 photos from those of my old K-3 (v.1). Good enough is good enough. As with your truck analogy, we're all awash in excess capacity, with pickups that are too tall to load easily, sporty cars too powerful to ever drive hard, and cameras so rich in detail capture that we need to enlarge to ridiculous sizes to find any differences between them. There is something satisfying about doing the job with less, of having just enough and using it fully.

"The key spec I'm waiting to learn is just what the crop option does on the new K-3 III. The K-1's three-way crop gives me fast access to normal, 1.5x [? I don't know what this means —Ed.] and the classic, elegant 1:1 aspect ratios. I suppose the K-3 offers only a square crop, but if it gives 4:3, the artistic choice, I might sell my Micro 4/3 gear and take the plunge. But in a year or so, when prices have declined due to discounting."

Michael J. Perini (partial comment): "It is just so late to the party. I wish them well."

Steve Biro: "This is Pentax trying to do with DSLRs what Leica did with rangefinders. Leica could not compete with modern cameramaking, so they focused on their heritage at increasingly bespoke prices. And now Ricoh is taking a page out of that playbook. I fully expect the replacement for the Pentax K-1 II to be even more money. I wish Ricoh good luck but I'm not sure that it's going to work. They need a lot of conquest sales because the traditional Pentaxian (and I was one for a very long time) is a skinflint."

robert e: "I think the sticker shock is that much greater because Pentax used to be the value brand for the savvy student or amateur. Seems to me that pro-build SLRs are a niche market at this point, so shouldn't we expect niche prices? The price tag may be more harbinger than outlier. I imagine pentaprisms and mechanical shutters aren't getting any cheaper to make, especially at best-of-breed level. 'Why?' is a different question, and perhaps more salient, but not one I can address.

"The thing I miss most about DSLRs might be decent battery life."

Bill Skones: "Milking the faithful with deep pockets. They almost all do it, and Pentax needs to do it. The price of the Pentax KP dropped almost 20% in the nine months from when it was introduced to the following holiday season. It's probably true most enthusiasts don't need a camera costing more than $1,200 and many would be fine with one costing half that. But every manufacturer needs premium, high-margin products, and for Pentax that includes an APS-C DSLR. I plan to buy a K3 III, after the price drops some if I can stave of the GAS. I like the appearance, operation and handling of Pentax cameras. Hope you will get a review copy and let us know what you think. Of course that would not be time well spent on your part, since it would not interest most readers or get many click-throughs to purchase."

Bill Pearce (partial comment): "If the difference between $1,200 and $2,000 is trivial to you, it's god's way of saying you have too much money."

Alex Sarbu (partial comment): "For me the difference between the $1,200 and the $2,000 camera is very meaningful: the $1,200 one would not give me what I want. Yes, the $1,200 camera would be 'cheaper' but it would be money wasted; the $2,000 one looks like a more cost-effective option (YMMV)."

Zyni Moë: "Think someone at Ricoh realises the end is coming and is trying to extract last profits from declining sales: GR III price was also much higher than GR II."

David Dyer-Bennet: "I guess maybe for an APS-C $2k is expensive. Nothing I've looked seriously at in 10 years has been that cheap, though, certainly isn't today."

Andrew Kochanowski: "You know I'm your Pentax guy, though this comment is late. I must have missed this yesterday.

"The K-3 III was obviously designed just for me. I can't wait to get one. I also think it's a pretty good move for them. With all the talk of DSLRs dying, I think I saw that they still accounted for half of all interchangeable lens camera sales last year. Half is a lot.

"I'd put the $2k price tag in perspective. They aren't going for the working press pros or the sports shooters who already have all the Nikon and Canon gear they need. They are going for the age 45+ amateur and occasional pro who grew up with film SLRs and who know how nice a proper SLR feels. They are selling a premium product like Leica at a still-significant discount from the Leica price of entry. I think the target audience can afford $2k, and think the price point is not a barrier at all.

"I've had the K-5, the K-3 and the KP since 2015 or so, and lemme tell you, they all feel great. Their viewfinders are nice and bright, and I can only imagine how nice the K-3 III will be. They get great battery life, even the smallish KP. If you care about such things (and boy, I do) the rubberized, knurled, and positive tactile feel knobs are great. All of them feel dense, like you're holding a chunk of magnesium covered in nice fake leather (because you are).

"The only knock against these that I ever really saw was the AF. I'm not a sports shooter, and imagine that you'd want the best tracking you could get if you were, but for me, on the street and doing candid stuff, the AF was fine. The new one is supposed to be far better; we'll see."

Erwin Puts is Gone

The world of enthusiast photography lost a friend and a unique individual when Erwin Puts passed away in March after a short illness.

Erwin was perhaps the greatest paragon of his type: the independent superfan of a camera brand or system. A great aficionado of the Leica marque, he worked tirelessly and performed truly Protean feats both to learn about the focus of his passion and to generously share what he knew with others.

A precursor of this type of passionate enthusiast was Ernst Wildi, who for many years was an independent expert and booster of Hasselblad. On the modern Internet our friend Thom Hogan has similar expertise with Nikon, although he is as much a gadfly critic as a fan of that company. The late Herbert (Burt) Keppler of Modern Photography and Popular Photography perhaps started out on a similar path as the author of The Pentax Way, but necessarily became more brand-agnostic as his editorial career progressed.

Personally Erwin and I had a regrettable reputation for a short while as what might now be called "frenemies," due to some overenthusiastic public arguments we indulged in many moons ago on the LUG. We had a fundamental difference of outlook: to put it overly crudely, but simply, Erwin venerated Leica optics and I considered Leica just another lensmaker. Those viewpoints could never truly be reconciled. But neither of us were happy with the relationship that resulted, so, in private correspondence, we "buried the hatchet." That was many years ago now. Since then we had a cordial, though not close, relationship. Erwin sent me several kind gifts of his work, including an inscribed copy of his magnum opus The Leica Compendium (Ken Rockwell wrote a review). He wrote innumerable other articles, books, and web and forum posts as well.

Leica, and Leitz before it, has inspired a great deal of supporting literature over the years, more than any other marque, and many of the books have been impressive and deluxe productions. Almost all are to some extent labors of love. Even for a brand that inspires such strong passions, and even with such vigorous competition, it seems safe to say that no one ever loved a camera marque more than Erwin Puts loved Leica in the film years. The Leica Compendium and Jim Lager's monumental three-volume Leica: An Illustrated History must be counted the twin peaks of Leica literature, and thus, perhaps, by logical extension, of all independent writings devoted to the creations of specific camera companies.

Don Morley has written a tribute to Erwin at Macfilos, which nicely hints at Erwin's warmth, enthusiasm, and generosity.

There will never be anyone quite like Erwin; he can never be replaced. His work will survive him and continue to speak for him.

Mike

Book o' this Week:
Accidentally Wes Anderson, the group-sourced book of the Instagram trend, endorsed by the director. Go read about it! <—This is a portal to Amazon; also available at the Book Depository for global delivery with free shipping.

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.

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

Kenneth Tanaka: "I was very sad to see this news. Mr. Puts was unquestionably the ultimate 'superfan' of Leica. But he was more than that. He was a tremendous educator and documenter of not just Leica products but also of lens and camera design. Puts's Leica Compedium is truly a magnificent reference volume for anyone who wants to study the science of photography as well as a bit of brand lore. During the past year I've dived deeper into Leica and, having spent more time with the Compendium, I've come to admire Puts even more. (I just randomly flipped my copy open to a page in the 'Lens Optical Design' section, showing a discussion of '5.9.14. Vignetting and the cosine-to-the-fourth-effect.' Nerd-max! I never met him, but understand from personal accounts that he could be a bit touchy and cantankerous. OK, me too. Still, I thank him for his tremendous work and offer my deepest condolences to his family and close friends."

Joseph Reid: "This is such sad news. Twenty years ago as I first considered buying a Leica, the Google led me to Puts' site. It was a trove of useful information as well as entertaining on an arcane level. How much, I wondered, could one person know about a brand? With Puts and Leica, the answer seemed to be, everything. His Compendium, which eventually became available as a PDF, remains incredibly helpful to anyone shopping the used lens market and faced with sorting through the overwhelming number of lens variants. I bought a hard copy of the Compendium at some point and when the PDF became available I could have sold the hard copy at an obscene profit, were it not for a dog with an itch to eat book bindings."

Reader's Books (OT)

Today's post will be a bit late because of a doctor's appointment breaking up the day.

Re the Easter post yesterday, I felt a little worried that people might think I recommend the Hart translation of the New Testament (that was the article link I included). I don't. I do have a recommendation—in my opinion the "New Living Translation" (NLT) is the New Testament reader's translation of choice these days. One of my little hobbies is comparing translations and learning about them, whether it be Don Quixote (I settled on Samuel Putnam) or the Tao te Ching (as with J.J. Cale albums, the one you're exposed to first will be the one you like best, which in my case was Gia-fu Feng with plentiful input from his editor Toinette Lippe). Especially since Amazon is often glaringly deficient in its differentiation of translations.

Bear in mind I'm not a Christian. I'm just one of those people who likes to read original sources and see for myself rather than get overly influenced by all the lobbying around it, whether it be Marx on capitalism or Mein Kampf (which I actually haven't read, but I would) or Freud or whatever. There are exceptions of course. I doubt I'll ever get around to Ayn Rand or Fifty Shades of Grey.

This does lead to some imbalances; for instance, I had to read three translations of The Iliad, and I still haven't gotten around to The Odyssey at all. Probably should have done that the other way around.

I don't think there's a New-Testament-only NLT; and I'm never going to read the Old Testament again. Once is enough. The version I read was an old "Reader's Bible" from sixty or eighty years ago that lightly regularized the King James Version (KJV) and modernized its formatting to make through-reading easier. But I've read the New Testament several times in different translations.

While there doesn't appear to be a New-Testament-only NLT, there's a wonderful volume I'd highly recommend for Bible readers—Tyndale's People's Parallel Bible. It lets you compare the KJV and NLT side-by-side as you read. Wonderful, and I love the concept. That would be the one to read if you ask me.

A final word on Bible translations was something I heard on TV many years ago. A "woman-on-the-street" was being questioned about the issue of whether immigrants should be forced to speak English. She said, "The Bible is in English, and if English was good enough for Jesus it's good enough for anybody!" That settles that, then, once and for all. Heh.

Why is it that when I write a post to announce that there will be no post, it always turns into a post? Oh well. Gotta go get ready for my appointment! Back later when the shadows lengthen, when I shall discuss Cindy Sherman and Erwin Puts.

Mike

Book o' this Week:
Accidentally Wes Anderson, the group-sourced book of the Instagram trend, endorsed by the director. Go read about it! <—This is a portal to Amazon; also available at the Book Depository for global delivery with free shipping.

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.

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

robert e: "Been meaning to thank you for the link to the article on the Hart translation, which I am excited to read (the Hart, that is). Secular/cultural/personal interest here as well. My favorite Bible edition thus far is the Oxford New English Study Edition. King James for the poetry, of course. I'll check out NLT if the Hart doesn't serve as a modern-ish 'reader' edition. Please keep those book recommendations (and non-recommendations) coming!"

Aaron: "I have the translation linked in your post. It’s worth a read. Luke was an educated man. John was not. This translation captures that difference, for instance."

Stories of the Resurrection

Wishing the Christians amongst ye well on this holiest of Christian holidays.

When I was a small child, the folk traditions of Easter thoroughly stumped me. Even at age five I was aware that bunnies don't lay eggs, and the idea of decorating food only to destroy the artwork a day later seemed wrong somehow; and the hunt for hidden eggs didn't seem to have a payoff, to a kid with a sweet tooth, because once you've eaten a hard-boiled egg or two, that's enough of that. None of it made sense to me. I liked Halloween and loved Christmas, but Easter was puzzling.

From there it was almost a relief to discover, later on, the Biblical and religious significance of today. 

If you're a reader of the Bible, the stories of the resurrection can be found at Matthew 28:1–20; Mark 16:1–20; Luke 24:1–49; and John 20:1–21:25. (All available online. Here's an article I thought was interesting about a new translation. A postmodern Bible?)

Happy Easter, if you celebrate it! And if you don't, have a nice day anyway.

Mike

Blog Notes

Two brief notes: When Bill T., TOP's unofficial and occasional but still highly valued proofreader (thanks Bill!), alerted me to some formatting errors in the "Official Check" post, I opened it to find all sorts of wayward gobbledegook in the HTML. The assistant editor does not know how that got there. It should be set right now; but I was away from the computer for quite a while yesterday and I wanted to apologize for leaving the undies out on the clothesline while I was gone. I'll get on the assistant editor's case about it. He's a distractable scalawag.

Second, I'm due for a series of medical appointments in the week upcoming. Here in the sparsely-peopled interior of Western New York State we're obliged to drive all over L and gone for such things, so the Chief Writer and Bottlewasher's (not to mention the assistant editor's) hands could seem a little too light on the controls in the upcoming week. Apologies in advance if you get the feeling here and there that there isn't anyone manning the barricades.

Mike

If you don't mind I'll close the comments to this post since these are just announcements.

Landscapes in Oz

Charles Conder, A holiday at Mentone, 1888

Not THAT Ross Cameron writes:

...As a PSA for those TOP readers living down under, especially in Melbourne, there’s an exhibition of Australian Impressionists at the NGV [National Gallery of Victoria]. Turns out COVID was a good time to take paintings off the wall and give them a clean. Disclaimer, I’m not employed by or affiliated with NGV in any way shape or form. I don’t even live in Melbourne (though I lived there for nine months about a decade ago for work).

As a landscape photographer, I find these works inspirational. I might even have to buy the book of the exhibition.  ;~)

Ross
(from a comment)

From this video, I found this nice quote from Guest Curator Anne Gray: "Friendship between artists is so, so important."

Australians will want to buy the book from the Museum, but if any Americans are interested it's available from Amazon, and for those elsewhere in the world, from The Book Depository.

"She-Oak and Sunlight" kicked off yesterday and runs through August 22. Thanks Ross! (And by the way, around here you are the Ross Cameron.)

Mike

P.S. A "she-oak" is "Any of various Australian trees in the genera Casuarina or Allocasuarina."

Book o' this Week:
Sugar is the silent nutritional crisis that is hiding in plain sight. The best book about it might be the prescient 1972 classic Pure, White and Deadly by the British scientist John Yudkin. Recommended. <—This is a portal to Amazon; also available at the Book Depository for global delivery with free shipping.

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.

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

Bruce Hedge: "Hi Ross from here in Central Victoria—thanks for alerting me to the NGV's Australian Impressionists exhibition...just a quick note to say that the NGV's current 'Triennial' is simply sensational—I've been twice; but I must go again before it closes on April 18...it has a Steiglitz and a Weston (or Steichen?) in the small photography display as part. I'd never seen a genuine print before, and they were illuminating! Sorry to all of you in the rest of the world, but it has been a life-saver here. We are indeed fortunate to have such an extraordinary gallery here when we can't travel to the other great galleries around the world."

Open Mike: Official Check

["Open Mike," the Editorial page of TOP, usually appears on Wednesdays, but I had to drive to Thompson Hospital in Canandaigua yesterday to get my first vaccine shot, and that, plus lunch while I was there, took up most of my afternoon.]

-

We've had an unusually mild late March, especially since the "official" first day of Spring, with several deliciously warm and windy days. But this morning I raised the shade to find that a layer of sticky snow about the thickness of cake frosting had been artfully applied by the wind in the night. The sun came peeking above the ridge in back in about the same spot where the full moon rose a few nights ago. Its light glittered on the new-fallen snow. Beautiful.

Wasn't Spring just here? Fooled again.

The old iMac
Not long ago, I got my old computer back from servicing and put it on Craigslist. Immediately I got a message from a nice woman who said she had researched computers and mine was just what she was looking for. One small problem—she lives in the area, she said, but she's on vacation, and could I please accept a cashier's check, deposit it, and then hold the computer for her movers, who would pick it up for her?

She offered $500, and I accepted. I had paid $177 to the Macintosh specialist to check its functions, physically clean it, wipe the hard drive, and install a fresh operating system. So I won't be getting much in the balance. But then, it's old.

At least it sold quickly. Isn't that nice?

And she followed through! That was a pleasant surprise.

When the check arrived, however, I was surprised to find it was not for $500 as we had agreed upon. She had sent me $1,950.

No problem, though—she had simply included the payment for her movers; her idea was that when the movers picked up the computer, I would pay them, on her behalf, in cash. It won't be a problem, because I will already have successfully deposited the check.

So I'll deposit the check in my bank account, and then some stranger will show up at my door and I'll let that person walk away my computer and $1,450 in cash. That was the plan at that point.

Sound smart to you?

Sure.

Just a few wee "flaws in the ointment," as my brother used to say when he was a kid (the expression is flies, of course. But I like "flaws"). The first doubt I had, believe it or not, was that a supposedly local buyer who talked me down from $550 to $500 would then pay someone $1,450 to pick the computer up for her. That did not compute. Wouldn't she just have a friend drive over and pick it up, for nothing?

Turned out I had quite a few additional questions. Like, how she managed to purchase the cashier's check from a small bank that only has branches in Central Pennsylvania, and then mail it to me from St. Louis, Missouri. Where was she vacationing, anyway, the little-known state of Pennsylvania-Missouri? Also, why the return address in St. Louis doesn't exist. Why there is no name in public records associated with the telephone number she was using. Why the bank branch named on the check didn't match any of the branch locations on the bank's website. And so on. Little things like that.

At least I knew the check was official, because at the top it is emblazoned with a badge that says "OFFICIAL CHECK."

This type of Craigslist scam is made possible by the fact that banks will accept fake cashier's checks at first, lulling you into thinking the money is safe in your account. The bank's assumption is that you've only accepted checks from people you trust. Your assumption is that the bank will only accept for deposit checks that they trust. The space in between those assumptions is where the scammers weasel in and find room to operate.

Some time later, your bank will contact you to tell you the check wasn't good after all and that it will be deducting the money from your account again. To add insult to injury, it's even possible that you could suffer legal consequences for having submitted a fake check to them!

These little irregularities meant the buyer and I had, ah, a little more to discuss. After several more exchanges, here's the last text I wrote to her/him:

Finally, I would like you—the real you—to take a little time and reflect that you are wasting your life. Doing evil and victimizing others might seem convenient to you now, but you only have one life to live on earth, and your time and your actions cannot help but be visited upon you. You will be deprived of the joy of spiritual fitness and you will never know the clarity and freedom of righteousness and decency, of holding your head up and meeting others with forthrightness and sincerity. You're probably young--one day you will need to make amends for your own sins. They will weigh on your shoulders increasingly as you go through your life. Back up, be willing to change, and decide who you really want to be.

I'm quite serious. Think about this. The way you are following is not the way. Ultimately the real victim will be you.

My would-be scammer thinks he is safe (probably it's a he) because he is covering his tracks and no one can figure out his location or identity. He's hidden. But there is one person from whom he can hide nothing. One person who will always know that he has been a shifty little rat in a hole who preyed on his fellow human beings. One person who knows every detail of what he did. One person from whom he cannot hide and from whose judgement he will never be safe.

That person is himself.

Good in the world
Will my little attempt to reach through do any good? Probably not. If the scammer is a sociopath, then certainly not.

But I try anyway, sometimes. Most people have both good and bad in them; few people are all one and none of the other. Self-awareness is an attribute of increasing maturity, and can change over time. And many people who have fallen into bad habits of outlook are susceptible, at some level, to the tug of conscience. In my recovery program, where we share our stories with each other, I have heard many times of people who were awakened by a seemingly small encounter, event, or realization, or a few choice words. So it can happen. I myself was started on my long journey to sobriety—at age 25—when the phone rang and the caller, who first asked for me by name, said, brusquely, without preamble—"When are you going to go get help?" It turned out to be my parents' marriage counselor, whose name I have long since forgotten. Our entire conversation lasted maybe two minutes.

"Who is this?" was my actual answer at the time. But the real answer to her question turned out to be, in about three weeks. By calling one of the numbers she made me write down. I never spoke to her again. My journey to sobriety would take eight more years, but she gave me the shove I needed to get going toward change.

Thanks, by the way. Whoever you are. Or were.

I can actually feel grateful that the Universe threw that Craigslist scammer into my path. Why—? Because writing that little perhaps overly optimistic note gave me an opportunity to reaffirm to myself the values I aspire to, and to remind myself of the lessons I had to learn. Maybe my suggestion doesn't do him or her a lick of good, but the attempt to reach another human does me some good.

So every now and then, when I have an insight, I'll just toss it out there. It can only hit home if the words are what the hearer needs to hear. But you never know when, or where, or how something you say might do someone, somewhere, some good.

Mike

Book o' this Week:
Sugar is the silent nutritional crisis that is hiding in plain sight. The best book about it might be the prescient 1972 classic Pure, White and Deadly by the British scientist John Yudkin. Recommended. <—This is a portal to Amazon; also available at the Book Depository for global delivery with free shipping.

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.

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

c.d.embrey: "During the 1970s there was a head-shop across the street from Pasadena City College. They sold art-prints as well as smoking accessories. I bought as couple of Dali prints from them. They had a sign on the wall that read 'Shoplifting F*cks Up Your Karma.' Every time I hear as story like yours, I think of that sign."

Lee Rust: "Quite a story. We definitely have to be on guard these days. But yes, every little bit helps...you hardly ever know exactly how much, but the bits do add up."

Thomas Mc Cann: "About 35 years ago weighing over 20 stone [280 lbs. —Ed.] I decided on a diet and realised as long as I still took a drink I was never going to lose weight as the alcohol would lower my inhibitions. That was about November, so I elected to stay dry for six months. Coming up to the Christmas break I proudly announced in the office I had been dry for two months. An employee, who I barely knew, sneered at me and said, 'You think you've got it beat.' It annoyed me intensely. What did this guy know about me and what problem did he assume I thought I had beaten? I had been thinking about a wee drink at Christmas but his comment tightened my resolve. I didn't take that drink. Two months later I realised I was a better person for being dry and I haven't touched a drop since. I am eternally grateful for that man's few words."

Mike replies: Great example. Over the years I've come to believe that's how insight works. It requires the incisive outside perspective (whether deliberate or by happenstance), but it needs a recipient who's willing and open to hearing it. Sometimes the latter might be even more important than the former. I've found I have to be willing to let an attempted insight fall on deaf ears. Not only because I'm sometimes wrong, which happens, but simply because sometimes they just don't "land." The person it's meant for isn't ready to hear it. If you tell someone something that's true but they're not ready to hear it, however, they'll just forget about it. What this means is that there's no real risk in trying. You haven't done any harm. To them it just becomes more noise in the air that sifts out of memory and consciousness in no time at all. I've also had to learn that it's not necessarily my place to share an insight just because I have one. I try to consider whether it might be none of my business. In the example I related in this post I didn't have that problem—the scammer made it my business, by attempting to rob me!

Tom Burke: "Good to hear about the vaccination, Mike—I'm sure that's the way back to something like how we used to live. And we are having very variable weather here in northern England—sunny enough to sit out until sunset last week, freezing nights over the coming weekend. My daughter reports much the same from her home in Mississippi.

"Honesty—the cultural norm that 'you don't steal'—seems to be fraying, sadly. And a planned theft (actually, I suppose, fraud) seems especially shocking because of the knowingness of it all, the intent—that wasn't an opportunity that just presented itself; they prepared for it. I don't think my response would have been as measured or as thoughtful as yours! I've never been the victim of an online fraud—my experiences with the great auction site in the sky have all been good, in fact very good—but over the years we have suffered two actual burglaries of our home and they were deeply upsetting."

Keith: "Scammers get by with this stuff because there are hardly any consequences. It would seem to me that there would be a branch in law enforcement that investigates some of these type of crimes. Maybe they could be at your house when the 'movers' arrive to pick up their check. At least maybe they could get the identity of some of the individuals involved and question them a bit. Oh wait, we de-funded law enforcement...darn it.

Mike replies: Except I'm pretty sure there would never have been any "movers." What probably would have happened next was that the scammer would have waited till I thought the money was safely in my account, then "she" would tell me that the movers had wanted payment up front and "she" had to pay them, so would I mind please reimbursing "her" by returning the excess money...probably via a cashier's check sent by mail, same way I was supposed to believe I had been paid.

Or something like that, something that kept their exposure to zero.

Note that they didn't actually want my computer—what they were after was that wad of cash, the supposed "moving fee."

JOHN B GILLOOLY: "Funny you should mention that scam. I had a similar scam attempted on me in the photography space so maybe of value to folks on TOP.

"Sometimes my LinkedIn page pops up with job opportunities and one looked good a couple months back—especially in the bleak year of COVID. It involved a fashion shoot in Boston for Esquire magazine of two models and had details and pay presented and organized. The contact was one Avidan Grossman from Esquire. The job, while paying what I would typically charge, just seemed to be too easy. I've been doing this a long time and jobs don't typically just fall out of thin air—at the rate and terms you are comfortable with. It involved a strange arrangement like your Mac. They are going to send me $6,000 immediately. Of that, $2,000 is my deposit and $4,000 will go to the talent agency. Once I complete the job I will get my remaining $2,000. So a total of $8,000—$4,000 to me and $4,000 to the talent agency. After I sign a 'contract' a check arrives from 'Esquire Magazine' and I deposit the check and it appears to clear for a day or two. Of course I was never going to actually make arrangements and pay the talent agency until I knew I was using their money. After two days, the check bounced and I incurred a fee.

"Avidan Grossman is a real person at Esquire and his name appears on many articles. But he seems to have little to no social media presence, so maybe that's why this scammer latched on to his name? I actually left a message at Esquire saying that the name of one of their employees is being used to scam, but never heard back.

"People are sick!"

A TOP World Exclusive

What are the qualifications for trustworthiness in a photograph? Here's something you haven't seen anywhere else.

Mike

Book o' this Week:
Sugar is the silent nutritional crisis that is hiding in plain sight. The best book about it might be the prescient 1972 classic Pure, White and Deadly by the British scientist John Yudkin. Recommended. <—This is a portal to Amazon; also available at the Book Depository for global delivery with free shipping.

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.

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