The Online Photographer

I-R Is Gone

Imaging-Resource, which has been sputtering and dying for some time now, is finally completely gone. Thom Hogan has the whole story on ByThom, which is not gone.

The other of the Big Two major gear sites of the transition period, DPReview, Thom notes, is still on life support "for some reason."

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 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. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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The $20k Car (Culture Notes) (OT)

I had to un-stick the sticky. For some reason, sticky posts make traffic drop. I guess too many people look at the same headline on their devices and just assume that nothing new has been posted.

Just a little note in passing. In 1976, when I was 19, my Aunt Anne, who was an heiress but frugal most of her life, treated herself to an extravagance: a top-of-the-line Mercedes-Benz. It was a 450SEL, and it cost $20,000.

A few years later, my father decided to buy my mother a Mercedes like her sister's as a birthday or maybe anniversary present. I went to the dealer with him. He owned a 1971 Buick Electra 225, and he was fond of saying, when I asked if I could borrow the Buick, "son, that's a six-thousand-dollar automobile." As in, too expensive to risk with the likes of you. A Cadillac, which was what my father really wanted but which I had talked him out of because the writers in Car & Driver scorned them, was the only American car you could buy that was more expensive. When we went to the Mercedes dealership, my father asked to look at the second most expensive Mercedes, one down from the top of the line. My father did not approve of foreign cars, I should add, and he was frugal too, having been born in the year of the Crash with parents who were scarred by the Depression. He looked the car over on the showroom floor, skeptically, and asked his favorite question, "how much?"

I don't know what he expected.

"You won't spend more than twenty thousand dollars," the salesman answered. To express his high dudgeon at that, my father ostentatiously said not one more single word to the salesman, and walked out of the dealership in silence. He expressed his indignation rather more floridly at me on the ride home. My mother did not get her new car.

Inflation is a thing
An article at The Street, by Jena Greene, posted yesterday, points out that now, there are only three new cars left in America that sell for less than $20,000. She names them:

• Kia Rio subcompact sedan: starting at $17,875
• Mitsubishi Mirage hatchback: starting at $17,340
• Nissan Versa sedan: starting at $16,925

I read once, a long time ago, that peoples' sense of the value of money tends to calcify at about age 50. We're mentally flexible up till that point, but afterwards it increasingly starts to seem like everything costs too much. I don't know if that's true.

I'm off this morning to Syracuse, to help my neighbor and her daughter pick up the daughter's new Honda. I don't know what the sticker price is, but I do know it costs more in nominal dollars than my Aunt's fancy Mercedes. Time marches on.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 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. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Gary: "I don't know if it's true that a person's perception of the value of money tends to calcify at age 50. I do know that inflation of late has been very real. I have a phrase to describe the phenomenon: Everything Everywhere Twice as Much."

garlo: "According to the St. Louis Fed, median sales price of house sold in the US back in Q4 1976 was only $45,500. That is less than 1/10 of sales price by the end of Q4 2022. So I guess car price inflation is not as bad as that of housing cost? Thanks for your efforts to keep this educational site running. Much appreciated."

Stan B.: "I distinctly remember a professor in my second year of college complaining (circa '74) that "there's absolutely no way you can get a new car for less than $2,000!" That afternoon at the school library I saw a print ad for a new Beetle- '$1,998.'"

Mike replies: I took my first driving test days after my 16th birthday, but I had already been saving up for a car for two years at that time. My dad had said he would put me on his insurance, which in those days made insurance for an additional car cheap. As soon as I had enough for a decent used car, my dad changed his conditions—he specified that he would only add me to his insurance if I bought a new car (he didn't actually want me to succeed). So I buckled down and started saving for that sub-$2k VW. But that was the early '70s, one of the times in history when the prices of cars skyrocketed. Every time I started to get close to the cost of the cheapest new car, the cost of it would go up. My memory for numbers is poor, but I believe by the time I had enough for that VW, the cheapest car in America cost $3,600. Maybe it was $3,300. I believe it was a Toyota. Anyway the target kept moving, and I eventually gave up. I ended up not getting my first new car until I was about 30. I believe it cost about $7,500.

Lois Elling: "My parents were both pretty frugal, having lived through the depression. My dad had a good-paying job that he loved, but always bought used cars and worked on them himself. Until he retired, that is, when he took my mom to a Lincoln dealership. Being six feet tall, he wanted something with plenty of headroom. I heard later that she asked him while they were there, 'Herman, do you realize where you are?' Although he was thrifty, he also knew when it was important to spend money for quality—or comfort. He did come home with that Lincoln."

Lawrence Plummer: "But, but, a $20K car in 1976 is $108,574.10 in 2023 dollars!!!"

JH: "I've mentioned before that I've owned a lot of cars in 60 years of driving, so below is the list of all I can remember and the prices on the ones I bought new.

"But first, comments on some car prices. Back in the mid-1960s my brother ran a dealership in Nashville that sold Porsche, Alfa Romeo, Mercedes Benz, Ferrari and a few other European brands you never heard of like Borgward. I do remember some of the prices.

"Around 1963–4, an Alfa Giulietta Spider cost ~$3,000 and a Porsche 356 closer to $4,000. The first Porsche 911's were around $6,000 but the 912 came soon after at under $5,000.

"I think the Mercedes sedans were priced at ~$4,000–6,000 except for the 600 series. One year my brother sold two 600s to executives at Monument Records, both over $20,000. Coupes and convertibles of the 300 series were in the $12–15,000 range.
Ferraris were around $14,000 and my brother sold several each year, one to the son of an oilman who went to Vanderbilt U down the street—his father gave him one each year when he made Dean's List!

"In those days, auto transporter companies were reluctant to carry cars over about $10,000 so we often got a trip to pick them up at the docks and drive them back to Nashville. I drove a $14,000 Mercedes coupe from Mobile back to Nashville once—nearly got thrown in jail in Tupelo, Mississippi, but fortunately had enough cash to pay off the local cops and Justice of the Peace late on Saturday night.

"JH Cars (in order of acquisition), starting when I got my drivers license in 1962. Prices are approximate—memory fades...."

'55 Dodge two-door HT (family)
'57 Ford two-door Coupe (family)
'57 Mercedes Benz 219 long wheelbase/limo
'59/'61 Fiat 1200 (counts twice—became a '61 after being totaled and rebuilt in a donor body)
'62 Alfa Spider (co-owned with brother, raced, sold in ’68, recovered in '93, raced for nine more years)
'67 Alfa TI Sedan traded for first Duetto in 1971 ($2,421—dealer cost—college graduation present from Father)
'68 Plymouth Sedan (company car)
'67 Alfa Duetto
'69 Alfa GT Jr 1,300
'69 VW Type 3 SW
My wife bought a new VW Super Beetle in 1970 for $1,700.
'71 Chevy Monte Carlo (company car) $4,000
'68 VW Bus
'71 Alfa GTV (used, < one year old) $3,000 (sold for $4,500 three months later)
'68 Rover TC2000
'73 Mazda RX-2 (first rotary car in New England) $3,100
'60 GSM Delta w/Holbay Ford 105E
'67 Alfa Duetto (different one)
'75 Ford Granada $4,000
'79 Dodge Omni. $3,000
'84 Pontiac 6000 SW (company car) (leased)
'63 Alfa Giulia Spider $1300, sold several years later for $20,000
'86 Plymouth Horizon (totaled by 240Z) $4,000
'89 Chevy Beretta
'74 Alfa Giulia Sprint GTV
'59 Alfa Giulietta Sprint (racecar) (totalled at Mosport, '93)
'59 Alfa Giulietta Sprint (parts car)
'89 Mercury Sable Sedan (company car) $7,000
'84 Corvette
'70 Zink C4 FV (racecar)
'91 Jeep Cherokee (company car) Tow car too $9,000
'62 Alfa Spider (second time around—see above, sold in 2002 and is still being raced in SCCA and vintage—you would not believe what racing it for 12 years cost!)
'94 Jeep Grand Cherokee (company car, tow car too) $18,000 (leased)
'59 Alfa Spider (racecar)
'73 Alfa GTV
'91 Mazda Miata (used—three years old) $10,000
'57 Alfa Spider w/Pininfarina Hardtop (sreet/racecar) $8,000, sold five years later for $22,000
'97 Jeep Cherokee (company car) Tow car too. $16,000 (leased)
'99 Jeep Grand Cherokee (company car) Tow car too $24,000 (leased)
'59 Alfa Giulietta Sprint (racecar, sold unfinished)
'01 BMW 330i $42,000
'02 MINI $23,000
'99 BMW 323Ci
'04 Ford F150 $20,000
'04 BMW M3 SMG $54,000 (sold for $47,000 after 18 months and thousands of track miles)
'05 Nissan Maxima $30,000
'94 Mazda Miata
'06 MINI John Cooper Works $35,000 (broke even when sold 18 months later)
'08 Nissan Frontier $20,000
'09 Ford F150 $24,000
'12 BMW 128i $38,000 (leased)
'11 VW Jetta Sportwagen TDI Diesel $24,000
'16 Mini Cooper $25,000 (leased)
'16 Honda CR-V $27,000
'21 Honda CR-V $31,000"

Mike replies: Impressive. My life-list is as follows:

• Ancient 1960s rusted-out Toyota, late '70s. A Dartmouth assistant professor flat-out cheated me when he sold it to me. He told me numerous flagrant lies, for instance, that the radio worked when it was simply a faceplate with nothing behind it. I had various misadventures in it (some of which were actual crimes, I'm sorry to admit—I drove it without registration or valid plates). Abandoned in a fraternity parking lot where a tree fell on it.
• New Mazda 323, maybe an '87? Can't remember the year. My mother paid for half of it as a graduation present from art school. Kept it for nine years.
• Dodge Neon "Sport," bought because David E. Davis named it "Car of the Year" at one of his magazines. Worst car I ever bought. It ran well and was nice and tight when new, but after three years it had lost performance badly and was as loose, rattley, and rickety as a 15-year-old car. There's a good reason that you almost never see old Neons on the road today.
• Ford Escort ZX2. Bought new. Kept it for nine years. Mine was a great little car, although other owners did not have good experiences (I always asked other owners when the opportunity presented itself.
• Used Mercedes C-Class. Drove it for two years and it lost $11k in value! The maintenance expenses cured me of any further GAS (CAS?) for German cars.
• Used 2001 Mazda Miata, my only-ever second car. Kept it for three years while I had the Mercedes and the RAV4 and sold it to a TOP reader to help finance my move to the Finger Lakes—which was the exact wrong move, because it would have been perfect for the roads around here, and in fact you see a lot of them here in the summer.
• 2012 Toyota RAV4, bought new on model closeout on 0% financing. Most expensive car I ever bought at $26k. I lost a lot of money on this one too, because I set myself up for five years of ownership and bailed on it early because I missed having a stick shift. It's still the only SUV I've ever driven—not owned, driven—apart from a couple of dealer test drives.
• 2014 Acura ILX 2.4, which has the same drivetrain as the 2014 Honda Civic Si. Nine years later it's still going strong at 114,000 miles, and I intend to try to keep it at least until 200k miles. It's the only car I've liked better when it's older than I liked it when it was new.

So that's eight cars in 50 years of driving. The Mercedes, Miata, and RAV4 were purchased in an orgy of self-indulgence during the years that TOP was making a lot of money. After years of pent-up desire I went wild!

Dave Levingston: "Now at least you can say that you've written your AutoBiography. (Sorry...someone had to say it.)"

Lee and Maria Friedlander Meet Joel Coen and Frances McDormand

As regular readers know (and might be tired of hearing), I refer to The New York Times as "The World's Best Photography Magazine"...although, of course, its photographic content tends to be interspersed with a whole lot of other stuff. And I recommend subscribing. If you don't subscribe, you can access up to 10 articles a month for free. Another way of getting everything is to subscribe to the print version of the Sunday paper, if it's available in your area, as that comes with all digital access included.

Anyway, a number of readers (thanks to all) have tipped me about this: "Filmmaker Joel Coen Puts His Spin on the Photos of Lee Friedlander: Working in his California home 3,000 miles away during Covid, the director struck a sympathetic chord with the venerated photographer. A book and two gallery shows resulted." Not to be missed.

Joel Coen at Cannes, 2001. Photo by Rita Molnár.

Lee Friedlander is, in Yr. Hmbl. Ed.'s humble opinion, one of the two greatest photographers of the second half of the twentieth century, and at age 88 he has published more than 50 books. Joel Coen (b. 1954) is one-half of the famous Coen Brothers film-making team (although recently they have been working separately), whose works include Raising Arizona (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), No Country for Old Men (2007), True Grit (2010), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018). And The Man Who Wasn't There from 2001, which is my favorite...because it's in black-and-white (please don't kill me, please).

Lee Friedlander, self-portrait, 1994

The catalyst of their project together was the San Francisco gallerist and book publisher Jeffrey Fraenkel, who started his gallery, now on Geary Street, in 1979. His second show back then was Lee Friedlander. 

A couple of quotes from the article I liked. Lee says of Joel, "he says all kinds of nice things that I don’t recognize. Splitting, splintering. Evidently my pictures are that way, but I didn’t think, ‘I want to take a splintering picture.’ If you’ve done the same thing for 60 years, you don’t think of motive very much. I just walk and see something interesting [...] it's just a great game." Joel says, "I’m extremely sympathetic to Lee’s point of view in how he thinks about his own work. It comes up with any writer, photographer or filmmaker, because you’re always asked to analyze your own process or the obsessions of your own work. I’ve always been very much of the opinion that the obligation of the person who makes the work is to make the work, and the obligation of the people who view the work is to think about it."

Most of Jeffrey's books are terrific—some of them are faves. I need another Friedlander book like I need a hole in the head (only because I have no place to shelve books here, and it's a problem)—but I had to order this one from the gallery. Too cool to pass up. The cost is close to $100, after shipping and tax are added. But hey, once they're gone....

Check out the article. Worth a read, and some good links. Thanks to everyone who suggested it.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 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. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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The Jeff Keller Article

I managed to track down Jeff Keller, who told me that the article I remembered is actually on DPReview, where he worked for almost nine years, beginning right after he closed the Digital Camera Resource Page—which, by the way, was the very first camera megasite, and lasted an impressive 15 years. (TOP is 17 years, 3 months, and 26 days old). Which made me slap my forehead and say, "of course." Not only did I read it when it first appeared, but I wrote about it once before, too. The brain cells where that information was once stored are apparently among the ones now missing.

It's called "Throwback Thursday: the ups and downs of running DCResource."

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 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. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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The Earliest U.S. Veterans

Photo by N.A. and R.A. Moore (Nelson Augustus Moore and
his brother Roswell) of Hartford, Connecticut, 1864

I never knew this until robert e pointed it out yesterday: there exist photographs of Revolutionary War veterans. Some of the youngest soldiers lived into the era of photography. Evidently no one thought to photograph them in the 1840s, but the Reverend E.B. Hilliard wrote a book in 1864 called The Last Men of the Revolution that recounted the biographies of some of the last remaining veterans, and the book contained six albumen prints. The Library of Congress has a set, in the Prints and Photographs Division.

Lemuel Cook, pictured above, lived through the entirety of the Civil War and died just after it ended at the age of 106, the fourth-to-last living Revolutionary War veteran. He fought with the 2nd Continental Light Dragoons in the Virginia campaigns and at Brandywine, and was wounded more than once. He was present at the 1781 surrender of Lord Cornwallis to George Washington at Yorktown. His discharge papers in 1786 were signed by General Washington. Cook lived out most of the rest of his life in various counties here in Western New York State.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 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. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Mani Sitaraman: "This is simply extraordinary. Seeing the photograph and reading the account gave me the chills. Thank you, Mike.

"And thank goodness for the French photographer Disderi's brilliant idea; he patented the idea of carte de viste photographs in the 1850s, which were trading-card-like photographs of famous people, for people to buy, collect in albums, or trade. That innovation ensured that so many portraits from that early age of photography have survived, as the commercial incentive ensured that numerous copies of each portrait were printed."

Carl Siracusa: "The closing exhibit of the Museum of the American Revolution here in Philadelphia, 'The Revolution's Veterans,' is a whole wall of photos of people who fought in, or simply lived through, that war. When I first saw it I had the same amazed reaction as most people, I assume—there are photos of them?!? Extraordinary, really. Worth visiting this excellent museum for that alone."

robert e: "Hi Mike, Just wanted to point out that even older photographs have turned up since the Hilliard book was published, including from the 1840s and 1850s. Some of them can be seen in this article. And I just learned today that Maureen Taylor, who calls herself 'The Photo Detective,' has published two volumes of photographs (and paintings based on photographs) of people who lived through the American Revolutionary War. The names of the over 100 subjects are on Taylor's own page about the project."

Michel Hardy-Vallée: "Reminds me of that comment by Roland Barthes about the photographs of the last surviving members of Napoléon's Grande Armée: 'these eyes have seen the Emperor.'"

Daniel: "One fact many don't realize is that until the invention of the permanent photographic image we do not know what anyone actually looked like. Many portrait painters through history did a good job but had to please the one who commissioned the painting. How accurate were these portraits? Maybe as accurate as many Photoshopped portraits being done now? Vanity interferes with historical truth."

Mike replies: Some of the Gnostic gospels refer to Jesus as being physically ugly, which might have been one of the reasons why those accounts were nixed at the Conference of Nicea and in St. Jerome's Vulgate.

Conspiracy Theory

Julian Ward, from the Hans Weston film

A couple of short video links this morning, both good.

First, meet Julian Ward, a photographer from Wellington, New Zealand, born 1948. The short film by Hans Weston, "Julian Ward: Gifts from the Gods," which shows him working both on the street and in the landscape, is informative and companionable. It introduced me to the work of the painter L.S. Lowry, too. Julian's pictures were mostly new to me; so far I've only recognized three that I've seen before. There's lots by and about him on the web, and he's published several books.

Second, a film about a comprehensive analysis to determine whether a notorious photo is real: "Why people think this photo of JFK's killer is fake," from Vox. The main expert consulted by the filmmakers is Hany Farid, one of the country's foremost experts specializing in the forensic analysis of digital images and the detection of manipulated images. He's at Berkeley now; the last time I wrote about him he was at Dartmouth. "The visual system didn't evolve over millions and millions of years to reason about about a flat piece of paper," Professor Farid says at one point. I won't give away the conclusion.

I also attempted to watch the 2020 Dutch film "The Forgotten Battle," alleged to be the second most expensive Dutch film ever made (I don't know what number one might be), because one of the plot points is a boy taking pictures that will be useful to the resistance, developing them in his basement. The film is so relentlessly brutal and gory that I couldn't take it, and had to bail on it halfway through. So, no further comment.

Mike
(Thanks to Allan Ostling)

Original contents copyright 2023 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. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Nico.: "World War Two, The Netherlands, Photography…

"You could try The Darkroom of Damocles. A classic, over here. Nico, Amsterdam."

Mike replies: Thanks Nico, I'll try that.

Tom Burke: "'Zwartboek'—Black Book—is apparently the most expensive Dutch film ever made."

Pierre Charbonneau: "The film on Julian Ward is most lovely. I found interesting that a man so charming and gentle has the boldness to photograph so close strangers on the street. How different from Bruce Gilden's approach. Of course, their respective photos are not the same."

Jim Simmons: "Thanks for sharing the Julian Ward movie. Julian is a treasure to New Zealand, with his decades-long dedication to recording our culture with his uniquely kind and curious vision."

Photo News

—> From The Virginian-Pilot: "Longtime Virginian-Pilot freelance photographer dies after fall from parking garage." No foul play is suspected in the death of freelance photographer of Jason Hirschfeld, 48. His editor at the paper said, "He had a loud laugh and he definitely had a big personality. He just exuded positivity and enthusiasm."

—> From The New York Times: "The Risks That Define New York Times Magazine Photography: In her own words, Kathy Ryan, the director of photography for The New York Times Magazine, unpacks some of the biggest challenges of the last year."

—> From PetaPixel: "Nikon is Doing Everything Right." Jaron Schneider didn't think Nikon would recover from its financial woes. Now, he argues it has come back from the brink the old-fashioned way: with superior products.

—> From Visual Science Lab: Kirk Tuck is "Reporting in from the Central Texas Ice Storm. Nasty out there." It doesn't stop him from exercising, even though it closes the pool. At the end he gets down to the real peril: "Sadly, when the weather gets really bad my resistance to shopping for photo gear goes down. I've found several items online that are battering my will to resist." You can go find out what those are; I need to not look.

—> From Fstoppers: "An Effective, Professional One-Light Portrait Photography Setup." Alex Cooke highlights a video by Jiggie Alejandrino. Portraits indoors are a great winter pastime.

—> From DPReview: Richard Butler thinks Sony's new A7R V excels at still photography in his in-depth review.

—> From lensculture: In The Editorial Portrait, Lucy Conticello, Director of Photography at M, the weekend magazine of the French newspaper Le Monde, is interviewed by Sophie Wright and shares some of her insights. This republication of a 2019 article is part of a recent slew of articles on lensculture about photographic portraiture.

—> From Thom Hogan: "Why Do We Speculate About Future Products?" Thom says he has to, because his readers all do.

—> From NPPA: "University of Missouri announces the 77th College Photographer of the Year competition winners." Congratulations to Vincent Alban of RIT. "Judges viewed nearly 10,000 images submitted by 570 students from a record-setting 127 colleges and universities in 47 countries."

—> From LensRentals: "How Front Element Scratches Affect Your Images." Spoiler: they don't, much. But these guys are among the few who can show you. If you want to test the general principle yourself, without scratching your lens, tear off a bit of a Post-It about the size of a small pea and stick it to the front of your lens. Compare the result to a frame shot without it. Interesting, no?

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 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. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Speed: "From PetaPixel: 'Nikon is Doing Everything Right.' But...Nikon's biggest competitors in the camera business, Canon and Sony, are very much in the amateur/commercial/professional video business...and Nikon is not. Big moves in our lifetime: Film to Digital to DSLR; DSLR to Mirrorless; Still to Video. It looks like Nikon won't be making that last move."

Tam: "There is nothing wrong with what one of my blogfathers referred to as an 'All Linky, No Thinky' piece. All blogs are, at heart, a LOG of things we’ve found on the WEB…A WEB LOG, if you will.  ;-)  "

Andrew Bearman: "Love these curated links; thanks!"

Mike Ferron: "The little city I live in borders Austin, Texas, to the northeast. It looks like a powerful hurricane came through with amount of tree limbs that came down. The last night of the storm was the worst. You could hear one crash after another all night long as the big limbs fell. Crazy. The local weather said it was the worst ice storm in 60 years. Two and a half days of rain with the temps just below freezing."

The Story of 'Grace'

A 1918 photograph goes viral in a big way. The story is interesting—even if the truth behind the picture might be a little disillusioning. But then, we all know that things are not always what they seem in photographs, right?

Interestingly, I'm not aware of ever seeing this image before Jay Townshend sent me this video a few days ago. (Thanks to Jay.)

Another link people have been sending me: "You're Pointing Your Camera the Wrong Way," by Margaret Renkl. A quotation: "My son and daughter-in-law, who are frequent campers, have seen people queued up at least 50 deep to take phone selfies at popular national park waterfalls and rock formations."

Mike
Flickr page / New Yorker author page

Original contents copyright 2023 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. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Jon Peterson: "We had it in our home. As a young lad just getting interested in photography (1970s), I used to joke with my mom that I wanted to steal the frame and put my own photo in it. Decades later, that same water-stained print in the same cheap, chipped frame hangs on my wall. Makes me think of my mom."

The Rest Is History

If you haven't seen this stunning animation yet, you need to. Not a big investment, takes only a few tragic seconds to look at. It tells a tale of many things. From Visual Capitalist, via Dan Carnagey.

Sadness and despond!

But I have my Sigma contraption (I need to name the blunt beastie) armed and ready for the return of the good light in the springtime. Never say die, never give up!

Mike
Flickr page / New Yorker author page

Original contents copyright 2023 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. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Dogman: "I'm even more of a dinosaur than I thought!"

Greg Adkins: "Interesting, although it's important to note the inherent bias in comparing sales of dedicated cameras to that of a device with many features in addition to a camera. People choose and buy smartphones for a variety of uses that are unrelated to making photos."

Joe: "As long as Nikon keeps repair parts in stock for my Nikon D850, I'm happy."

Nick: "A smartphone camera is still a (very good) camera, and do we really care what sort of cameras are being sold to the masses, as long as the sort we want (flexible, controllable etc) are easily available? The advanced cameras and lenses available today are better than they have ever been, and the total number of photos being taken every day are more than ever before. I don't see anything tragic unless the major specialty camera manufacturers start to go out of business."

R. Edelman: "When I consider some of the tricks that my iPhone 13 can do, for example very low light hand-held images, I wonder why these tricks can't be incorporated in digital cameras. I understand that digital cameras and their lenses have image stabilization, and there are some with pixel shifting, but the iPhone seems to have software that enables it to perform photo miracles, such as taking a photo in very, very low light levels, that, if applied to larger digital cameras, would really add value to those cameras, and perhaps boost their sales to people who would like to move up to the next level of acquiring images."

Keith Cartmell: "Yes, smartphones have dramatically outsold both film and digital cameras. They have also outsold alarm clocks, portable radios, and other devices too numerous to name. But it's a bit of an apples to grapefruit comparison. Many of those phones are forced purchases because the completely adequate in most ways old one cannot run the newest software or is crippled by it, or the network was removed. (It happened to my wife and she's still cranky about it.) Or there is some new gewgaw offered that attracts the attention. (Look, shiny!) For many of them I suspect the camera is just one aspect of the overall functionality, but they didn't buy the phone because of the camera functionality. Maybe I'm wrong. Seems like most of the actual photographers I know are busy switching out their old DSLR for a new mirrorless camera, complete with new lens, and software that can already talk to our new AI overlords. Me? I'm happy carrying around my MMM cameras, metal, manual, mechanical."

Thom Hogan (partial comment): "...The thing no one is talking about in that animation is at the very end: smartphone sales peaked and are in an erosion pattern now. That's the reason why Apple wants to try to sell you a hardware subscription to the iPhone these days (yearly 'free' updates). What goes up, must come down. It's just a matter of time."

Ed. note: The full text of "partial comments" can be read in the full Comments Section, accessible in the footer of the post.

Eamon Hickey: "Miniscule point that nobody but me will ever care about, but the figures in that animation for periods before about 1980 are completely unreliable. The author clearly relied on CIPA historical data, because it's the only such data available, as far as I know. But it counts only Japanese cameras. Millions of cameras from American, European and Eastern Bloc manufacturers are not included. The graph shows 75,000 as the total cameras sold in 1951. That's way, way, way too low. Kodak by themselves would have sold many times that total just in the U.S."

I Don't Want to Farm

I was a Reedie* for a miserable year in the long-lost '80s, and met a Reedie when I was there who had developed a human developmental theory based in Gilligan's Island. The concept was that every human being can be explained by a major and a minor inflection of one of the Gilligan's Island characters. Gender did not have to match. So in his view I was a major of The Professor with a minor of Mary Ann. In other words, mainly distracted and remote, unbalanced in the direction of excessive intellectualism—too "heady"—but with a partially compensating dose of niceness and wholesomeness on the side. I hated to admit it, but....

An alternate theory of aggregated human wisdom is: there's a Mitch Hedberg joke for everything. The one that concerns us today is "Can You Farm?"

The video/stills divide
That's how I'm starting to feel about photography these days. (Oh, you like photography? What do you think of AI?) If you read behind the lines in the recent short interview with Panasonic's Yosuke Yamane published at DPReview (he gives a similar interview pretty much every year around this time), you get the sense he's being careful not to insult still photographers, while at the same time saying that Panasonic cameras will be ever more concerned about video. "Mirrorless, which has a strong affinity with video, is used in a wide range of applications, from professional video production, such as cinema production, to individual video production, such as YouTube. We believe that the need for individual video production will increase in the future." DPReview went on to comment that while there remain people who only take stills, "[Yamane] didn't make it sound like Panasonic would be the company to address that need."

You work your ass off to become a good cook. And then everybody wants you to farm. As Mitch put it, "that's not fair."

Mike

*Here's a recent article by Colin Diver, a past President of Reed College, about the oppressive consequences of the U.S. News and World Report college rankings and Reed's decision to buck the system.

Original contents copyright 2023 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. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

David Elesh: "As a Reedie myself, one of the things I am quite proud of was Reed's decision not to supply data to U.S. News. It may have been the first to make that decision. Stanford followed. I don't know how many institutions refuse now. When I checked the U.S. News formula some years ago, it placed significant weight on the percentage of alumni who contributed. I found that appalling and still do. It has little to do with academic quality. Yes, it is a significant factor in the decisions of those applying to college (and their parents), but so is the success of their athletic teams. At the university for which I taught, I saw that our basketball teams reaching the final four raised applications and fall enrollments by substantial amounts. I don't recall the exact percentage of the increase in applications, but I think it was around 20%. But the increase wasn't evidence of the students' academic ability."

Arg: "I grew up using Polaroid cameras and took perfectly photographic photos with them...only to discover that everyone wants me to go into a dark room and play with noxious chemicals. Don't want to. That's not photography."

Dan: "I’m going to sound like an old man yelling at the sky, but what improvements in still cameras do we need? They are already so good that even old ones far exceed artistic demands. Perhaps making then more fun to look at, fondle and use would actually be more effective at selling more units. Video is the next horizon and improvements there would be visible and marketable."

Peter Cameron: "I have little interest in video and, to he honest, I don’t even know if the video function worked on most cameras I’ve owned. Over the last 20 years I’ve probably taken fewer than 20 videos and most of those were B roll for the video department of the company I worked for. I realize wanting a stills oriented camera is niche these days, but I do appreciate manufacturers that let you reassign video buttons to other functions (or at least let you disable them so you don’t accidentally end up shooting video)."

Stephen S.: "For anyone chasing views/engagement on Instagram, it has been true for a while that the best way to do that is to forget about posting photos, and instead post short videos. That's right—Instagram is not for photos anymore."

Readings and Viewings

"Tony Vaccaro, 100, Dies; Photographed War From a Soldier’s Perspective," at the World's Best Photography magazine (the New York Times. You get ten free articles, but you should subscribe, because they publish a broad range of meaningful photographic content, from articles like this to original commissioned photojournalism and many other things besides). I had never heard of Tony Vaccaro before, but I like his work and I enjoyed this article. I especially liked reading the descriptions of his shooting technique. As an idle aside, if you had to choose between Karsh's photograph of Georgia O'Keefe and Vaccaro's picture of her looking through the piece of Swiss cheese, which would you choose? Those are two very different modes of what we call "photography."

# # #

An interesting picture of Dr. King from 1959. What's interesting about it is that it was taken by a Black photographer, Calvin Littlejohn, the chronicler of Fort Worth, Texas, who lived from 1909 t0 1993. A trope of modern criticism is the idea of the "gaze"—in other words, that the view cannot be separated from whomever is doing the viewing. To me it seems clear from the evidence that this was how Dr. King looked when he felt comfortable with the person who was taking his picture. Compare this with the more serious look we're used to seeing from Dr. King in his public role, when the ones doing the viewing were mostly representing the white-dominated media and, beyond them, the white world they worked for. For more about Calvin Littlejohn, see his bio at blackpast.org.

# # #

As long as I am on old pictures, readers of, er, a certain age will remember a famous picture from LIFE magazine of Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm returning from a North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp and being greeted by his family on an airport runway. The picture is known by the title "Burst of Joy." A print, signed by the photographer, Slava "Sal" Veder, brought in by Stirm's daughter, known as "the leaping girl" or "the jumping girl," was appraised on the most recent episode of Antiques Roadshow. This link should take you to the segment, but, if it doesn't, the segment starts at 36:26. Sal Veder won the Pulitzer for his shot.

# # #

Mystery Man: Who is this? Hints: his arrest was for possession of more than 650 grams of cocaine, and he served two and a third years in prison following the bust. And the guy was really a Dick. (I'll post the answer tomorrow.)

UPDATE Thursday afternoon: A lot of you guessed this. It's "Tim 'The Tool Man' Taylor," a.k.a. actor/comedian Tim Allen, who was born Timothy Allen Dick. He was also the voice of Buzz Lightyear in the Toy Story movies, and now has a net worth that Fox Business reports to be $100 million. Allen was the only comedian I ever saw in concert, and his language was so blue and his subject matter so filthy that I vowed to stick with clean comedians thenceforward. (Current favorite: Nate Bargatze.)

I guess this was an easier "Mystery Man" than I thought. I didn't recognize him from this picture and couldn't make it look like him even after knowing who it was!

# # #

"'Art is dead Dude'—the rise of the AI artists stirs debate," from the BBC. The quotation is from one Jason M. Allen, who went on to say, "It's over. A.I. won. Humans lost." Not sure if this really has anything to do with photography. But I'll just point out the famous quotation attributed to the French painter Paul Delaroche, who, upon first seeing a Daguerreotype in 1839, said, "From today, painting is dead." (Although one would suppose he said it in French, and I haven't been able to find that.) Curiously, Paul Delaroche's historical paintings looked a bit like A.I., don't you agree?

# # #

Photographers we lost in 2022: photojournalist Dirck Halstead, 85; fashion photographer Patrick Demarchelier, 87; art photographer Jerry Uelsmann, 87; war photographer Tim Page, 78; Letizia Battaglia, who bravely documented the Sicilian Mafia, 87; paparazzo Ron Galella, 91; editorial and advertising photographer Kurt Markus, 75; Fred Lyon, photographer of San Francisco, 97; advertising photographer Melvin Sokolsky, 88; art photographer and filmmaker William Klein, 96; celebrity photographer Douglas Kirkland, 88; and editorial portraitist Eamonn McCabe, 74—among many others. Consolations: everyone gets their favorite camera in heaven, the photo opportunities are limitless, and you never, ever miss a shot. R.I.P.

Mike
Flickr page / New Yorker author page

Original contents copyright 2023 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. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Gordon Lewis: "It might be that Dr. King was more relaxed around black photographers. It might also be that this image was taken in 1959, before all the major stressors in his life happened, such as the Freedom Rides, March on Washington, FBI harassment, violence in Selma, etc. To put it another way, as the years wore on he had a lot less to be relaxed about. He was assassinated nine years later, in 1968, at age 39."

Chris Kern: "Re 'As an idle aside, if you had to choose between Karsh's photograph of Georgia O'Keefe and Vaccaro's picture of her looking through the piece of Swiss cheese, which would you choose? Those are two very different modes of what we call "photography."'

"A better comparison, it seems to me, would be with Vaccaro’s 1960 photograph [here's a link —Ed.] of O’Keefe holding one of her paintings in a field in New Mexico, with its unorthodox, arresting composition: the subject in perfect profile, revealing the characteristic contours of her face; her hands cradling the painting to signify that she is its creator; the painted canvas bleeding into the left side of the frame; and the mountain in the background conveying a distinct sense of place. The image is also technically outstanding—well-illuminated, with wide tonality and excellent color, and with the figure and canvas in sharp focus and just enough bokeh in the background to keep the viewer’s attention on the subject. Offhand, I can’t recall seeing a superior posed photographic portrait."

ASW: "I'm sure others have already answered, but that's Tim 'The Tool Man' Taylor (aka the actor/comedian Tim Allen) in the mugshot. I hope he didn't drag his friendly neighbor Wilson into the drug world with him."

Winfried Heyland: "I can only recommend Tony Vaccaro's work. i.e. Entering Germany."

hugh crawford: "Re: Leap of joy There’s a whole lot of misery in that photo. [That's worth reading. Thanks. —Mike]

"Dick? I thought the guy was a tool.

"I’ve been playing around with AI art and I find it sort of like street photography crossed with surrealist art practices. You have a vague expectation of what you might get, but no control, and the outcome is something of a surprise. I don’t think that AI software like Stable Diffusion, which I am working with, is as much a threat to photography as Photoshop and the current generation of photo editing software."

Ed Hawco: "No shade on Karsh, but I’ll take the Swiss cheese shot any day of the week."

Steve Jackson: "Mike, I was kind of stunned that you didn't know about Tony Vaccaro. Although his B&W photos are better known, some of his color portraits are amazing. This is a link to one that I think really shows how to use environment and depth of field in a way that rivets you to the subject: Picasso. Compositionally and technically it is a lesson for all of us. Here is a link to that image (but I would suggest you look at all of them at Monroe Gallery)."

Mike replies: I did look at all of them, and I'm pretty convinced I've never seen any of them before. (I no longer think I can remember every photograph I've ever seen—I used to think so—but I usually get a sort of spidey-sense if I've seen a picture before.) I'm glad to find out about Tony.

Bruno Gonzalez: "Hello Mike, 'À partir d'aujourd'hui la peinture est morte.' The following is an extract copied from the French Wikipedia page about Paul Delaroche; the text says the quotation is probably apocryphal. 'Après avoir vu pour la première fois un daguerréotype il aurait prophétisé, selon Gaston Tissandier: «À partir d'aujourd'hui la peinture est morte.» Cependant, cette citation, sans doute apocryphe, est contestée par Stephen Bann, pour qui il n'existe pas de phrase plus ressassée et plus fallacieuse.'"

Mike replies: Thanks! For others, the French means, "However, this arguably apocryphal quote is disputed by Stephen Bann, for whom there is no more rehashed and fallacious phrase." (Google Translate.)

It's odd, but at some point, does it actually matter if someone said certain things or not? The quotation is so widespread, and so consistently attributed to Delaroche, that I'm not sure it matters if anyone can prove he said it. Also, I've noticed that quotes (and facts) that have a literary rather that oral origin tend to be much more readily accepted. For an example of oral transmission, take the famous "Serenity Prayer." The earliest recorded version is from 1933, by a student of Reinhold Niebuhr, quoting Niebuhr. Niebuhr himself might well have used it before 1933. He didn't publish a version himself until 1951, but he was known to have used it in many sermons and was quoted many times between '33 and '51. For this reason, many different wordings and forms came to be accepted as the "real" Serenity Prayer, and various sources are still modifying its wording. My thought would be, how do we know that Paul Delaroche didn't speak his famous quotation orally and that it spread the same way?

In any event, if he didn't say it, he might as well have.

Rod S.: "I'd already taken your advice to subscribe to the New York Times and had already read that obituary on Tony Vaccaro. Imagine one morning finding and photographing a fallen soldier's body mostly covered by fresh overnight snow, and then realising that it was your friend. Imagine being in a French town so delighted in being liberated from war that its women linked arms and danced in a circle around a little ceremony in which a small girl and a foreign soldier kneel on the ground and kiss. Hard to imagine? Tony Vaccaro photographed it."

darlene (partial comment): " I was once an New York Times subscriber but grew tired of their political undertones. It may go unnoticed if you like their politics, but it isn't very pleasant if you are an independent thinker."

John Camp: "Timothy Dick. Another photographer took a photo that is virtually identical to Sal Veder's. Veder won the Pulitzer for it, the other guy didn't. I think it had to do with which one went out on the AP wire first."

Mike replies: The Turnley twins have a version of that story. They both took the same picture, more or less, and one of them won a prize for it, the other one didn't. I'd have to look up the details. And according to one of my favorite books on photography, there were about 15 photographers present for the crash of the Hindenburg. The famous picture is the one that hit the wire services first; the rest are virtually unknown.

James Kirkpatrick: "The mystery man and I attended Seaholm High School in Birmingham, Michigan. He was year behind me so would have graduated in 1970. I only found this out years later looking in my yearbook. A very funny and talented man in later years."

Franz Amador: "From the article on Tony Vaccaro: 'Private Vaccaro improvised as he moved through Europe, finding his film and his processing chemicals among the ruins of camera shops in towns his unit passed through. He developed the film in Army helmets and hung the negatives on trees to dry when he wasn’t on night duty. He carried them in his backpack.' Dang!"

Mike replies: I was struck by that too. And have you ever photographed with an Argus? Very awkward camera, but Georgia O'Keeffe was impressed with the speed with which Tony Vaccaro used it.

Keith B: "Can I choose the portrait of Georgia Ansel Adams took with her and Orville Cox at Canyon de Chelly?" [Sure. Here's that one. —Ed.]

Dan Gorman: "The 'mystery' man is Tim Dick, otherwise known as Tim Allen. My in-laws knew his family—he grew up in suburban Detroit."

Jerome: "AI can't create art, because AI has nothing to say about anything. It can imitate what humans have said about something, but that's like repeating a poem in a language you don't understand. AI is a pattern-matching machine. It will recognise patterns and re-arrange them, but has no idea what it's doing."

At the Limits of tl;dr: Sam Abell at B&H

I don't usually post on Saturday, but I also usually leave you on Friday with something tasty to occupy some of your free time on the weekend, and I didn't do that yesterday. So, this video, suggested by Josh R.:

(Here's the link to it on YouTube.)

Some of you will no doubt remember the book, which was a bestseller through our links. The book is still in print (and quite inexpensive—it's a nicely made hardcover [UPDATE Monday the 26th: it apparently sold out after I mentioned it. Only used copies available now]). If anything, the talk is even better than the book, because you hear Sam's voice and get some measure of his character. Although of course you see the pictures better on the printed page.

The video is probably pushing the limits of "tl;dr"—"too long, didn't read." You might have noticed that YouTube recently has started pushing "shorts"—little micro-videos that possess the depth and profundity of greeting cards. Perhaps the apotheosis of society's collective attention-deficit disorder*. Not for Sam Abell such truffles. His talk goes firmly in the other direction, clocking in at just under one hour and fifty minutes. 

And yet it's engaging the whole way through, and not difficult to watch. You get into it. He does something in this video that I have long thought would be an invaluable tutorial about shooting—he shows the evolution of a number of shots, starting with what initially attracted him, and then how he works it to end up at the final result. I don't know about you, but that's how I shoot. You see his "visual thinking" visually, with voiceover. Very valuable.

I haven't watched even a large minority of the videos that were suggested here recently, so I'm in no position to declare where this one ranks relatively speaking. But it's excellent.

And really, it's no longer than a movie, or a football game, whether American football** or World football. And we watch that on weekends. So perhaps this is something for a change.

Mike
(Thanks to Josh)

P.S. I got out photographing yesterday! Didn't get anything, but back in the saddle again. ::thumbsup::

*I did hear a good Dad joke on one: "My wife asked if I'd seen the dog bowl. I said I never knew he did."

**I watched "Thursday Night Football" the other night, which now streams free with Amazon Prime. First football game I've seen in several years. Naturally, this is dwarfed by the fact that the U.S. Open starts in only 16 days!! I know, you can't wait. Me neither.

Book o' the Week

Migrant Mother, by Sarah Meister. "Each volume in the One on One series is a sustained meditation on a single work from the collection of MoMA." Forty-two pages with many illustrations. An engaging guided tour of the history and lore of "American photography's Mona Lisa."

This book link is a portal to Amazon. You're very kind use our links, as they help support the site.

B&H Photo

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.

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

Ken Bennett: "We were super lucky to get Sam Abell to speak when I hosted our conference of professional university photographers a few years ago. He gave a similar presentation, working through well-known images and showing how he got there. (Yes, he was sponsored by Canon, and many thanks to them.) I had seen Mr. Abell back in the late '80s or so, at a news photography conference at the very beginning of my career, and that presentation had a huge influence on my work.

"At the conference that I hosted, Mr. Abell gave a great presentation, then came to the hospitality room and stayed talking with our members all night. He was super easy to talk to and I'll never forget that."

Bob: "It is a fascinating talk! His advice is obvious and valuable, yet I don't think I've encountered most of it in all the way-too-many how-to videos I've watched. Thanks for sharing...."

Kenneth Tanaka: "Ah, Sam Abell’s semi-autobiographical 'The Life of a Photograph' talk (and 2008 book). His book has been a bit of a touchstone for me for a long time. Abell’s work straddles what’s become familiarly known as the 'Geographic' style (skillfully constructed but often overly sentimental and scenic) and a more conceptual 'fine art' style, pretty much where I usually aim to live! And while I’ve not yet seen this B&H presentation of his talk, I have seen him give mostly the same presentation in a more formal venue (a Nat Geo Live! presentation, I think). His style of presentation hasn’t changed; a bit slow and a bit too artificially dramatic and important for me. But containing plenty of nutrition. That aside, I have tremendous admiration for Sam Abell’s work. Anyone who could make a living for over 30 years shooting Nat Geo assignments has big chops as both a craftsman and as a politician. And his father’s guidance of 'compose and wait' became a primary strategy of my own work since first hearing it from Abell. So thank you for highlighting Abell's B&H talk! It’s on my watch list for Sunday."

Rohitha Gunetilleke: "I spent five days in a Sam Abell workshop. His teachings changed my photography. These days my rangefinder window lingers on a shot until the micro focus elements fall into place, often a frustrating and finally a satisfying experience."

The Ten Best YouTube Videos for Photographers?

I sat down to try to compile this the other day and so far have failed. I realize I keep a "mental list" of a lot of things, including remarkable YouTube videos that impressed me with their excellence—but I haven't kept track of such a list of videos relevant to photography.

But it seems to me that we should be able to do this as a community, with contributions by visitors as well. If we take the recently-mentioned video by Henry ("Hank") Wessel as a starting point, what other outstanding videos do you know that would together make up a list of videos that photographers can learn from, or greatly enjoy?

We need to keep variety in mind, and include lots of different things from different eras. I'm sure I'm forgetting some that we've already discovered and discussed.

Can you think of anything you'd like to nominate?

Mike

Book o' the Week

Migrant Mother, by Sarah Meister. "Each volume in the One on One series is a sustained meditation on a single work from the collection of MoMA." Forty-two pages with many illustrations. An engaging guided tour of the history and lore of "American photography's Mona Lisa."

This book link is a portal to Amazon. You're very kind use our links, as they help support the site.

B&H Photo

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.

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

Ed. note: Rather than post featured comments, since I can't review all the suggestions so quickly, I'll just leave all the comments in the Comments section. If you're suggesting a video, please leave a short description with the link to help guide other readers. Thanks!

Photographic Links regarding the Late Queen

I've learned a lot about the royal family this week. I'm not a royal-watcher, nor do I identify with them in any significant way. Although of course you pick up a certain amount about them by osmosis, as it were, and I did learn the story of Diana at the time of her death (it involved photographers, after all).

But I've read a lot about the late Queen this week, including a biography I'm partway through. Of everything I've come across here are the three not-to-be-missed tidbits for photographers:

First, this lovely story from the former Queen's Police Officer, Richard Griffin. Various outlets have been rewriting and rehashing the story in written form, and people have been sending me links to one or another, but the original is this video. A lovely little anecdote.

Next comes the article from Popular Photography called "A closer look at some of Queen Elizabeth II’s favorite cameras."

Lastly, the most important one, IMO, from The Guardian, "The story behind the portrait of the Queen the palace used to announce her death," by Luke Dodd. I think this is the original; similar articles have appeared elsewhere. At any rate this is the best telling of it. Although it's a short little article, it's a rewarding read—it's like a little photography lesson from Jane Bown (note no "r." It's not "Brown"). Jane (1925–2014) is one of my very favorite photographers, a touchstone. I love her work, her methods, her thoughts about what she did. And I'm pleased she existed.

Mike

Book o' the Week

Migrant Mother, by Sarah Meister. "Each volume in the One on One series is a sustained meditation on a single work from the collection of MoMA." Forty-two pages with many illustrations. An engaging guided tour of the history and lore of "American photography's Mona Lisa."

This book link is a portal to Amazon. You're very kind use our links as they help support the site.

B&H Photo

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.

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

Explore Today

Flickr's "Explore," a brightly-lit shop window for selected high points from among their users' work, is all B&W today. (Google "Flickr Explore.")

Much of it is "B&W for special effects," and a lot of it exhibits what Oren trenchantly called that "characteristic low-key, gloomy-theatrical look." Actually he was talking about B&W from monochrome-converted sensors when he said that. But that's a good description of the palette, all right.

I've added four more shots to the Sigma FP samples on Flickr, too. I screwed up, though. You can read about it in the captions there.

"Farm Field," my picture that was featured on Explore, got 6,635 views! [UPDATE: 7,668 as of Saturday, and the big increases seem to have ended as the picture is no longer on the Explore page.]

Mike
(Thanks to ChrisC)

Book o' the Fortnight

Chromes is an edit of more than 5,000 Kodachromes and Ektachromes taken from 10 chronologically ordered binders found in a safe in the Eggleston Artistic Trust. This archive was once used by John Szarkowski, who selected the 48 images printed in Eggleston’s seminal book William Eggleston’s Guide, while the rest of the archive has remained almost entirely unpublished. Three volumes, slipcased.

These book links are your portal to Amazon. Please use our links; they help support the site.

Go to B&H Photo

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.

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

KeithB: "In my photography class in college, we were to have one shot that illustrated depth of field. I had a young cousin pose in a field like yours with a fairly large aperture. So I used a field to illustrate depth of field!"

Mike replies: I heartily approve.

Michael Elenko: "Eliot Porter has been in my photography Pantheon for a long time. About five years ago, I was in my doctor's waiting room. His personal photographs of nature scenes on the wall are OK. In perusing the images, one popped out and I did a double take: it was an Eliot Porter original. When I got to see my doctor, he explained that he won it in a benefit auction and didn't know anything about Porter. I filled him in and offered to relieve him of the photograph if, when he retires, his home wall space becomes maxed out."

Sean: "Re 'T.S. Eliot said April is the cruellest month, but August is the saddest month.' And blue is the saddest colour, but you'll be golden if you remember that Keats said autumn is the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness."

Jack Mac: "I have In Wildness..., first printing, and the printing is as amazing as you say."

ChrisC: "I've never quite worked out what the criteria are for being featured on the Flickr Explore page (except perhaps for being a Pro account holder). At times I do find myself questioning why a photo may have been featured. However, that is probably due to the uncertainty in Flickr's purpose. Some people use it as a gallery, others simply for picture hosting with the display/discussion taking place on other sites, some people seem to treat it as an online backup and simply dump everything they shoot, and others still play the social media game of collecting followers/'likes.' As for the black-and-white featured images, I think John's earlier comment sums up a lot of thoughts about them—there are certainly several that fall into the 'Why B&W?' category, as well as several 'Why featured?' Despite this, I still find myself regularly browsing through the Explore page on a regular basis."

Mike replies: Well I'm glad you check it—I never knew it existed before now, and if you hadn't told me my picture was on it I probably never would have known. Thanks again.

Open Mike: Your Card Just Left the Deck (OT)

I have a definite love-hate relationship with YouTube, as I'm reminded every time I find myself watching "Idiots in Cars" at 1:00 a.m.

The "love" is mostly that I get to watch pool and snooker matches to my heart's content (and I have a pretty robust appetite for them), which otherwise would be thin on the ground. And expensive—Accu-Stats used to charge for DVDs, and you can now see theirs for free on YouTube. I also love being able to dial up random songs for free. As opposed to ten years ago, when I would pay Apple a dollar it didn't need every time I found a new song. So, for instance, I can hear Lutan Fyah on XM Radio and then go listen to "Game Is Over" a hundred million times on YouTube. (I totally love that song at the moment.)

The "hate" (not actual hate) is when I get temporarily addicted to some random category of video and watch too many of them.

Right now it's David Blaine card tricks. Oh, em, gee. I think I like watching them as much as he likes doing them. He's so good that he actually freaks people out. They can't believe it—almost like it was real black magic. Watch him play a simple but astonishing trick on Tyra Banks on the street (the video only takes a minute and a fifth to watch), or on Harrison Ford in Ford's kitchen. Harrison's reaction is priceless (and funny).

Here's another magic trick that totally freaks out Jamie Foxx and his family. I have no idea how he did this.

A little diversion for you for a Sunday.

Blessings
The weather here is just gorgeous today. We have lucked out this summer, enjoying the perfect summer weather that the whole rest of the country wants. Right now it's brilliantly sunny, so clear it makes the opposite side of the lake seem close, 67°F (19°C) with just enough breeze to gently stir the leaves on the trees. But it will rise to 78°F (25°C) this afternoon, before cooling off again tonight. Don't think I'm not thankful. We're being blessed.

Mike

Book o' the Week

The Mindful Photographer by Sophie Howarth. I only know of Sophie Howarth from her time as a curator at the Tate Modern in London, but my impression then was positive. Her brand new book (it only came out a few days ago) is about slowing down as a means of enjoying photographing more. It's said to contain a curated collection of photographs along with anecdotes and explanation.

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'Napalm Girl' from Two Perspectives

This is an excellent pair of new articles that fairly treats the story of one of the most significant photographs of the 20th century, colloquially called "Napalm Girl":

"A single photo can change the world. I know, because I took one that did," by Nick Ut, from The Washington Post, June 2, 2022. Nick is a thoughtful guy and a good writer.

and

"It's Been 50 Years. I Am Not 'Napalm Girl' Anymore," by Kim Phuc Phan Thi, from The New York Times, June 6, 2022. The child who became a symbol is a woman whose life was deeply affected by her experience.

Together, very eloquent.

Mike
(Thanks to Steve Rosenblum)

Book o' the Week

 All About Saul Leiter. The Amazon writeup for this book says "Photography lovers the world over are now embracing Saul Leiter"—and oh boy, is that ever true of me—"who has enjoyed a remarkable revival since fading into relative obscurity in the 1980s." One of my favorite photographers. Beautiful photopoems. Saul's Early Color (which you can still get for around $300) was one of our all-time bestselling book links. (I bought two, one to thumb and one to not touch!)

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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.

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New All-Time Record Set for a Photograph

There's a new "most expensive photograph ever sold," for the first time in 11 years. Like eight of the top ten most expensive photographs, it was sold by Christie's, the auction house founded in 1766.

The original of Man Ray's much-reproduced Le Violon d'Ingres sold for $12.4 million last Saturday in New York in its first-ever appearance at auction. The pre-auction estimate of five to seven million was more than the previous high record for a photograph, the $4.3 million set by Andreas Gursky's Photoshopped riverscape Rhein II in 2011.

The Man Ray was the top offering from the collection of Melvin and Rosalind Gersten Jacobs, art collectors who had connections to the surrealists. They bought the work directly from Man Ray himself in 1962. Melvin was a former CEO of Saks Fifth Avenue. After his death in 1967, Rosalind, who had been an executive at Macy's, continued the collection.

Man Ray has a strong auction record and an obvious appeal to major collectors, having sold several other works for multi-million dollar prices. (Elton John, who paid the then-world-record price for a Man Ray in 1993, says "If I'm going to die, I'll be killed by a falling Man Ray," because the picture hangs above the headboard in his bedroom.) Wikipedia tells us that "le violon d'Ingres" is a French expression for a hobby or pastime; apparently the French neoclassical painter Ingres (roughly pronounced, according to Jeff in the Comments, "ANG-ruh") played the violin when he wasn't working on his art. And as James Sinks pointed out in the Comments, "The title and the image itself also reference 'The Valpinçon Bather,' one of Ingres' most famous paintings," Valpinçon having been the name of one of the painting's owners.

The auction battle was between two anonymous bidders on the phone, one represented by Christie’s New-York-based photographs specialist Darius Himes, and the other by its Paris-based photographs specialist Elodie Morel-Bazin. Her bidder won, but it hasn't been announced who either of them are.

The artwork was first published in the French surrealist magazine Littérature in June, 1924. The model was Alice Prin, a.k.a. Kiki de Montparnasse, an artist's model and libertine who became a celebrity of the Années folles (crazy years) of Jazz Age Paris. She and Man Ray had a tempestuous eight-year affair, and he took hundreds of pictures of her. "It bothered me a little to take off my clothes," she wrote in her memoirs, "but it was the custom." Le Violon d'Ingres, whether or not it was intended as a sort of sneering dirty joke (play her like a fiddle, or, perhaps, she's my hobby), or merely a comment on the similarity in form between a stringed instrument and a woman's body, is one of the best-known works of surrealist photography, and a symbol of the movement.

Mike
(Thanks to James Sinks)

Book o' the Week

It's Not About the F-Stop by Jay Maisel. Jay was suggested by Moose and this book was suggested by Albert Smith—it's actually my favorite too (I got mixed up before). I got to meet Jay Maisel once. Everybody should meet him in his books, if they haven't already. Might help; cannot hurt. Jay's is some of the most positive, hopeful, and generous picture-taking advice you'll find.

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B&H has this!

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.

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Neils: "There are a couple of interesting TATE-produced videos of Elton John's photography collection on YouTube. One scene that stuck to my mind was the one where he proudly points to a Man Ray photo for which he paid a world record price in 1993. His response to the question of why he paid a record price was (besides 'I love it') that it was with this purchase he realised he was a serious collector (at 2:15).

"I first thought it strange to see his pride in having paid a record price—after all, how hard is it to place the highest bid if you have a lot of money? Upon reflection, my most expensive book purchase two years ago, was a special edition of Elliott Erwitt's 'Pittsburgh 1950' signed with a signed silver gelatine print for GBP 750. A significant amount of money for me and probably, in retrospect, also a time when I had to accept I was not just a collector of random photo books any more.

"Elton John's comment above makes it clear that nothing in collecting is logical and value is only relative to what you have available. Another good video of EJ's collection."

Mike replies: The top item on my admittedly very short bucket list—I'll never see Patagonia—would be to visit Elton's photograph collection. I'll never get to, but I sure would like to.

Mark Sampson: "When I worked as a museum assistant at the Phillips Collection a few years ago, they held a major Man Ray retrospective. As my job required me to stand all day in the galleries, I became very familiar with a great deal of his work (including 'Le Violon d'Ingres'). I'll admit that I didn't spend any time wondering about the sale value of any of his works, but I did (and still do) wonder if the print on the walls at the Phillips was the only example ever made. Given the astronomical price it sold for, it might very well be. If not...."

Dogman: "Whoa! Big money for the Man. I downloaded a low-res JPEG of this photo back in February—actually on my birthday. Maybe I'll print it and proclaim myself as the winner of the bidding as a birthday gift to myself. I think Man Ray would appreciate the gesture."

Mystery of a Missing Camera

Who really climbed Everest first? Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary did it in 1953, but George Mallory (right) and Andrew "Sandy" Irvine perished in an attempt in 1924. The key question is, did they die on the way up or the way down? Whether they summited before dying has long been one of the greatest mysteries in mountaineering.

It's been speculated that the answer could be contained in a missing camera they carried with them. It was one of various models called a Vest Pocket Kodak (VPK), a folding camera made from 1912 to 1926 that was among the first to use 127 film. If they reached the top, surely they would have commemorated it with triumphant photographs of themselves celebrating. Mallory's body was finally found in 1999, which caused a sensation. But Sandy Irvine's remains were not found—and neither was the VPK.

Mark Synnott is a mountaineer and author who participated in an expedition to search for Sandy Irvine in 2019...a search that failed. And there might be a reason why. He thinks there's evidence that Chinese climbers found and retrieved Irvine's body, and perhaps the VPK. The first ascent of Everest's North Face is a treasured national feat in China, and if the VPK showed that Mallory and Irvine did it first, it would rob their nation of that accomplishment. Synnott speculates that the Chinese could have found the VPK and that Chinese technicians either bungled the development of the film or that the Chinese government is suppressing the discovery to preserve national honor. Either way, if they did find Irvine, they're keeping it a secret. Mark Synnott has written a book about the mystery called The Third Pole. (Outside magazine said, "If you’re only going to read one Everest book this decade, make it The Third Pole...a riveting adventure."*)

Salon has Mark's short article giving the outlines of the mystery....

Mike

*I'm "scared of heights" and the highest mountain I've climbed is The Gonzen at 1,829m in the Appenzell Alps in Switzerland (Everest is 8,848m). Armchair adventure is enough for me now. The linked article is a good read. If you're not up for it, maybe have a listen to Tennessee comedian Nate Bargatze's take on his personal Mount Everest. Less than a minute of your time. (I'm a fan of clean standup. Nate's Dad was a clown for the first dozen years of his life, and his recent album has a great title: Yelled At by a Clown.)

Book of Interest:

Hank O'Neal, Ed., A Vision Shared: A Portrait of America 1935–1943 (Steidl, 2019). The reissue of the best overall survey of the work of the FSA photographers of the 1930s. Every public and school library should have a copy, for one thing. Thanks to Andy Moursund for turning me on to this book many years ago. Originally published in 1976 by St. Martin's Press.

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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.

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Mueller Alois: Dear all, I live for ten years at the base of Mount Gonzen (Sargans), and have yet to be at the peak and have a look down."

Nick Vincent: "It's precisely the (sub)plot of the French animated film (or anime, rather, as it was adapted from a manga by Jiro Taniguchi). It's called Le Sommet des Dieux (Summit Of The Gods) and was released last year. It should be available on Netflix by now. Here's the link to the Wikipedia article."

First Pitch (OT)

Best first pitch ever: Kim Ye-Lim of South Korea. Retire the trophy. (She's a figure skater, can you tell?) And although the spin is the main attraction, that's an elegant throw she made, too. Obviously a talented athlete.

And this must be one of the worst. This is more like what would happen if I did it!

There should be a name for the opposite of a "bucket list": all the things you know absolutely for certain you will never do. Bungee-jumping, own a jet, do a backflip on solid ground, read Proust—and to those, I could add "throw out a first pitch."

Carly Rae Jepson is a singer, I found out, and also a good sport. She was laughing at herself. And apparently she was nailing it in practice; she just tightened up at showtime and failed to release, that's all.

Mike

Book o' the Week:

Ernst Haas: New York in Color 1952–1962. "When Haas moved from Vienna to New York City in 1951, he left behind a war-torn continent and a career producing black-and-white images. For Haas, the new medium of color photography was the only way to capture a city pulsing with energy and humanity. These images demonstrate Haas's tremendous virtuosity and confidence with Kodachrome film and the technical challenges of color printing."

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

Today at B&H Photo

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.

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Jim Arthur: "I walk around my local park almost every day and over the years I’ve found a few baseballs rolled up under bushes, etc. I kept the first few but now I just chuck them out into the nearest diamond to be found by some lucky kid. Eventually it occurred to me that I should try my hand at pitching again since I have these few baseballs stashed in the back of my Jeep. (I was the star pitcher of my Little League team when I was 10 years old.)

"I unearthed an old softball glove from the back of a closet and began using one of the pitching practice areas in my local park...and as a potbellied graybeard I’ve received a few double takes.  :-)  These practice areas have a mound, home plate and a large rubber sheet covered in chain link serving as a backstop. I started extremely slow because my arm is now 50 years older and I’m in sad, sad pandemic shape, but I found that my accuracy came back almost immediately.

"I’ve fallen into the habit of throwing balls once or twice a week as a fun distraction and now I think I’d be pretty good at throwing out a first pitch…if I was famous. This new bit of activity and break in my routine has prompted me to restart my old habit of daily stretching and light weight training. I must say, I feel great. I don’t know why I wasn’t exercising throughout the pandemic. For anyone who like me just sank into their couch or computer chair over the last few years I can highly recommend a little spring time activity. Just start very slow. My approach was to design an exercise routine that assumes I’m ten years older than I am."

JTK: "Re 'There should be a name for the opposite of a bucket list.' There is Mike, there is. And it rhymes perfectly with bucket list."

John Cecilian: "Dont know if this link will work for you but don't give up on the possibility of throwing out the first pitch. My business partner loved the Cubs her whole life and circumstances came together for her doing just that in their World Series year, and you can see the joy she had being on Wrigley field and throwing out a first pitch. Thought you might like this."

Mike replies: Impressive!