The Online Photographer

Film Friday: 'Film' Baker's Dozen

St. Patrick's Day Parade, New York City, 1974
by John Custodio, New York, New York, USA

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Photo by Nick Depree,
Auckland, New Zealand

"This was one of the first pictures I took after getting back into shooting a lot more film in 2020. It's from Karekare beach, one of my favourite and most visited places. Something about the gentle colours and shape really grew on me, and it has been on my wall for a few years now."

Photo by Reg Feuz,
Wellington, New Zealand

"Thanks for the opportunity to re-visit an old favourite image from the wall: my Muddy Waters face shot from his Auckland, New Zealand concert, 19 May 1973.  Film loaded in my Nikon F2 Photomic was Kokak Tri-X rated at 400 ISO, and the lens used was the Nikkor 80–200 ƒ/4.5 zoom. Film developer was D-76.

"I developed the print shortly thereafter using Ilford bromide 10x12-inch double-weight paper in Dektol. It was the last sheet of paper in the pack, and the last print after a long night in the darkroom. And then I discovered that I had underexposed the print. Shucks! So, I did the only next best trick and flashed the paper under the enlarger light and ended up with this result. Never bothered making another print of that negative.

"Three years later, in 1976, I entered the print into The Dunedin Photographic Society's Autumn Print Exhibition, and much to my surprise, as well as to other longstanding club members, I was awarded The Pattillo Cup for best portrait by the club judge on the night.

"I haven't darkroom printed for two decades. Still got the gear though, and keep on threatening myself to mix up the chemicals and finish of those old unopened packs of paper."

Photo by William Barnett-Lewis,
Eau Claire, Wisconsin, USA

"This goes back to the fall of 2008 when my son was sitting in his first day of first grade at the neighborhood school in Madison. The bright Fall sun was pouring in through the east facing windows as he faced me so I'm sure I had the Summitar stopped a bit down on the Leica CL I think I was still using (may have been a IIIf by then), though the focus was still a bit muffed. I was a little bit close so that may have been the problem. Hard to remember after 16 years  ;-)  .

"I do know it would have been Fuji Reala 100 ISO film as it was one of the few color films that did justice to his looks. It is not the most technically perfect of images but it caught the feel of his excitement and the beginning of the new year so nearly perfectly that it still remains one of the handful of portraits I am pleased to have taken. I don't think I could duplicate this look with either my Leica M 240 or my Pentax K5 without insane amounts of luck and/or post-processing skills I don't possess. This, on the other hand, came from Walgreens' Fuji machines. That was, in the end, one of the great joys of the last days of the film hegemony...."

Photo by Pierre Charbonneau,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

"Ancient car show, near a local airport in the suburbs of Montréal.

"This photo is from around 2004. Despite the fact that I had already started to shoot assignments with a digital camera, I have kept the habit of shooting film for personal pictures. The Canon 1Ds of yore was a marvel at the time, but heavy and less nimble than a Leica M6.

"The pattern did not change much in the last 20 years. If the pro Canon has been replaced by a current model, I still shoot 30 to 50 rolls a year with the old rangefinder camera.

"There is something in the highlight rendering and smoothness of film that is distinctive from digital. Hard to explain for me, actually. But very often, I prefer my film pictures over the digital ones."

Photo by Gordon Haddow,
San Carlos, California, USA

"This is a combination of two film images taken in the early '90s—one by me and one by my wife, Jane. The overall image was taken in Bodie, California with a Wisner 4x5 camera and 210mm Schneider lens on FP4 film, developed in D-76 at N+3. The image of the little girl was taken by Jane at a party where the child was longingly looking out of the window at the festivities.

"This image has always been special to me because of the emotional tones and the fact that it was a cooperative image with my wife."

Photo by Bob Keefer,
Creswell, Oregon, USA

"I took 'Pelican at Malheur'  of a pelican resting in a marsh at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon around 2005. [Ed. note: Bob now thinks the image was probably made on the Oregon Coast.] It's shot on Tri-X in my Canon EOS-3 with the old 100–400mm zoom, developed in Rodinal, and printed on good quality fiber-based, matte-surface paper in my late home darkroom (I succumbed to digital in 2007).

"After making the B&W print I used traditional Marshall's Oil Paints to hand color the image, giving it some quiet color and an early 20th-century vibe."

Photo by William Schneider,
Athens, Ohio, USA

"As one of a series made for my MFA degree, this print suggests how a person edits from space and time when photographing. It is a combination of two different prints—a smaller one inserted into a cutout made in the larger one. The surface of the two dry-mounted prints is flush except for a thin, X-acto-made cut line where they adjoin. The central print nestles into an opening cut in a 16x20 print, and they are dry mounted together to present a flush surface. (A close-up of this in glancing light may be seen here.)

"The center darkroom print, made on air-dried glossy Agfa Portriga paper, shows the photographer’s preferred cropping. Surrounding it is another print, made on Portriga matte paper that was pre-soaked in a contrast-reducing chemical (potassium ferricyanide solution) before developing. The surrounding print’s purpose is to show what the photographer chose to exclude from the scene. The two prints were made from two different negatives, with two different cameras (a Hasselblad and an 8x10 Deardorff), exposed days apart."

Photo by David Lobato,
Baltimore, Maryland, USA

"This is my Grandfather, feeding hay to livestock. Taken in 1979 on his farm in southwest Colorado. Camera was a Nikon F2S, probably on Tri-X film."

Lovers and Seagull, Portugal, 2022 by Soeren
Engelbrecht, Valby, Denmark

"Spending nine days of family vacation near/on a beach in Portugal, I decided to make a small photo project out of it. Apart from my Olympus OM-D for general photography, I also brought my OM-2n with a 50mm ƒ/1.8 Zuiko and one roll of Ilford XP2.

"Out of that project/roll came a small 'zine with 28 pictures, titled 'Between Estoril And Cascais—Holidays 2022' (I couldn't resist the acronym BEACH  :-). This by far my favourite—initially, I was planning to take a picture of the seagull, who was literally walking around at my feet, feeding off tourist scraps. As I followed it around with my camera, this scene appeared in the viewfinder, and I instinctively snapped the shot."

776 Nicola Street, by Francis Sullivan,
Daajing Giids, British Columbia, Canada

"Taken with my newly acquired Kodak Retina IIc with Kodak Plus-X film, 1974, in Kamloops, British Columbia.

"Pic of my partner having a break (back when we all smoked?) while young daughter naps in the baby carriage. In the foreground are ripe apricots. A very warm summer day."

Safety Pants by Darren Livingston,
Prescott, Arizona, USA

"My image was made using my first camera, the Diana all-plastic model, that I obtained in 1968 when I was 10 years old. The photo was taken on the streets of downtown Denver, Colorado, in 1978. I cross-processed the Ektachrome 200 film using Acufine film developer followed by the C-41 process.

"The camera still sits on a shelf in my office today."

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And one more for good measure....

Upcoming Holiday Vacation (Blog Note)

I'll be taking four days off around Christmas this year. I think that's the max I can stand; anxiety and existential dread would overpower any sense of rest, recuperation, and recreation. I like to write. During those four days, however, I'm going to do my level best not to work on anything; just take the time off and relax and that's it. I did that once for two days this past Fall and it really was rejuvenating.

The other update is that the Baker's Dozen is coming along fine. I was hoping to have it done by today, but these things just need to percolate. The latest bread recipe I'm trying requires 17 hours of rising time, so that's a better metaphor, better than percolation: the point being, you can't rush it. Pictures need time to sink in. Spending time with pictures is never wasted.

Also better because what better metaphor for the Baker's Dozen than a baking metaphor?  ;-)

And that segues nicely to my last item for this update: thanks for all the wisdom, suggestions, and links about baking. I doubt I'll do a deep dive into bread baking, but it would be nice to learn how to make a good loaf. For most of the time I've lived here, the local grocery store made a nine-grain bread in its own bakery that was very nice, and it was my regular bread. But a year or two back they changed their formula and ruined a good thing. I've had to be a "bread nomad" ever since, unable to settle down on anything, any one brand or type. I keep looking. Don't ya hate that? Humans just do not like to leave well enough alone. I hope there are still traditional boulangeries in Paris, that make French bread the old way.

Please come back after my four days away! And forgive the interruption. All work and no play makes Mike a dull boy.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 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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Baker's Dozen Update No. 2

By exact count, there are 126 submissions for the Baker's Dozen (entries are closed as of yesterday afternoon). Here's an outline of the editing process:

• First I'll go through and flag what I think are the best prospects, maybe 25 to as many as 35. I've already looked through all the submissions three times and I'll probably make three more passes while doing this step. There are certainly some beautiful shots among those that are not flagged.
• Next I'll set aside the "must include" shots that absolutely have to be included in the final set. I'm guessing there might be four or five of those this time.
• Then I'll decide on the first and last shots in the set, a strong opener and a strong, or amusing, or appealing "thirteenth," with the other "musts" in the middle. But I'll remain flexible about where those go.
• From there I'll build the rest of the sequence from the remainder of the flagged pictures, which might be influenced by the stories and the meaning of the pictures and how they relate to the theme. I'll be looking for variety and balance in the set, which sometimes leaves out good pictures, and other times argues for inclusions. In this case a lot of people sent in pictures that specifically say "film"—for instance, people looking at strips of negatives or pictures with film cameras in them, pictures of contact sheets or with film edges showing—and I'll be looking to not overdo those kinds of pictures but also to include a fair number of more straightforward photographs that were simply made on film. I do look for for interesting techniques, though, and those have to be balanced as well—for instance, if there were three cyanotypes (there aren't!), I'd be likely to include no more than one.
• When I have a sequencing with the flow and variety that I'm provisionally happy with, I'll go back and take one last pass over all 126 submissions to see if there might be something I missed, or overlooked, or dismissed too hastily, or that has grown on me in the meantime, and see if there is something that might better fit the finished sequence as it has evolved.
• Finally, I'll add the captions and other verbal information. Then let it all sit overnight and come back fresh for one more proofreading, and post.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 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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Baker's Dozen Update: Deadline is Monday 2 p.m.

By a soft count, I've gotten about 99 submissions for the Baker's Dozen themed "Film" so far. That's accurate give or take about three. Here's the Call for Work post, which you should read before submitting. We're looking for photographs (still images, not motion pictures of any sort) that relate in some way to film.

I can tell you right now this is going to be an interesting one; in the submissions so far there is a wide variety of what you might call "meta" images that comment in some way on the film era and the specifics of its uses. Not that that's necessary—just pictures made on film are fine.

Thank you to everyone who has sent a picture so far. These are always fun times for me, as I get to see new pictures every morning (but no new ones this morning, boo hoo).

Anyway I'll keep the mailbox open through the weekend and at least half of Monday (Monday is a weak day for me on the site—I have another regular activity scheduled on the first half of the days on Mondays and don't have much time to write) then get down to work on the edit on Tuesday.

Mike

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DxO Is Sponsoring the Baker's Dozen

I'm happy to relate that DxO will be helping out with our "Film" Baker's Dozen by providing a prize. (One of the people who works there reads TOP.) We'll (somehow) choose one winner who gets a free copy of DxO's award-winning photo-editing and processing software, DxO PhotoLab 8 (currently $180 on seasonal sale). Or, the winner can choose several of the partial programs up to the same value. Their other applications include DxO FilmPack (currently $70 on sale), which supplies almost a hundred film simulations (full list here); DxO ViewPoint ($90 on sale), which allows control over geometry, shape, and perspective; DxO PureRaw ($90 on sale), a demosaicing and denoising application that provides powerful lens corrections—and which I believe is considered among the world leaders in that category, if not the leader. PureRaw can be used in conjunction with Adobe Lightroom. Finally, DxO still sells the famous Nik Collection of plugins for Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom and others ($110 at the moment). Here's a link to all of the above. I assume that if the eventual awardee already use DxO and wants to upgrade, they could accommodate that as well.

We'll figure out how to award this later. But of course the prize isn't the point of the group show, really; the purpose is to have fun with the theme and see what you and other people come up with. (These are a lot of fun for me too, by the way.)

As an aside, friend o' TOP Ned B., retired former president of Pentax USA, posted this on his Instagram the other day—a size comparison between a 4x5" transparency and his current "view" camera, one of his Ricoh GR's. (Currently all backordered on B&H, but Amazon has some.)

Maybe I'll just draw a name out of the hat from all of you who submit entries.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 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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Film Friday: A Film Baker's Dozen (Call for Work)

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

By Eadweard Muybridge

 

[Entries are now closed. Thanks everyone!]

We've had many "Baker's Dozens" over the years. The idea is that I suggest a theme, you send in work, and I curate a small "juried show" from the offerings—a dozen pictures, with one extra for good measure.

This one is for still pictures, as always. Ignore the fact that the horsie above is moving.  :-)

These are always fun. We've had all kinds of themes and ideas in the past, from "Yellow" to "Grandkids" to "Leica Lenses" to "Blur." I racked my brain and searched the site, but I don't think we've ever done one called "Film." We did do "Sheet Film" once, but that was specific to large format work.

So this time, it's just...Film. The (still!) picture has to be your own work or a picture you are sure you own or control the rights to. New or old, it has to utilize film in one way or another, or reflect the theme in some detectable/explicable way. Special effects, interesting mistakes, unusual or ancient departed materials, all fine. Partly digital or digitized is fine; you can be creative. Or, not—a phone snap of an old print is OK too. It can be the straightest of the straight or the weirdest of the weird. It can be something that reflects your current work or something you dug out of the bottom of the archive. It's up to you. Technical details are usually something other readers like to see, but aren't required. If it isn't blatantly obvious, be sure to tell me how the "film" theme figures in.

Specs: Please send me, by email, one (1) JPEG, 800 pixels wide (n.b.: wide), saved as sRGB.

Please include:

—Your name and address including country
—Short description of the submission including title or caption if applicable
—Anything else you want to say

Incredibly important: the subject line MUST say:

BDfilm

Exactly just exactly like that, exactly. No space, lowercase f. The reason is that after a hundred or so submissions, I'll search ye olde Inbox for "BDfilm," and if you got the subject line wrong your picture won't come up and I won't see it. Be careful of this requirement, it's mandatory. (And, thank you.)

My address is: [Entries are now closed. Thanks everyone!]

I think that's everything. There might be a prize—I'll announce that in a few days.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 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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Gary Merken: "What is the submission deadline? How many entries can we submit?"

Mike replies: No deadline. Past experience shows that sometimes it needs a longer "soak" so to speak, and sometimes the 13 spaces fill up pretty quickly. I guess you might say the deadline is whenever I post the set. 

But if you'd like a deadline, call it the end of next weekend. I certainly won't close it before then.

And, one entry per person. Again, past experience...when I ask for three, for instance, I notice that those who submit three usually do so because all three pictures are a bit on the weaker side. I'd rather have people pick the one they think is best.

Bottom line, this isn't important. It's just for fun. So, you decide which one you think is best.

This might be a good place to remind everyone that a contest isn't a judgment. Lots of times, I'll have many more excellent pictures than I can use, so I might have picked one that I didn't. Sometimes it's dictated by the flow of the set. Sometimes it's a matter of what other people submit. For instance, I just received a very nice shot of a giant tree, backlit with sunlight. Now, if another person submitted a nice picture of a backlit tree, I'd only pick one of them. That doesn't mean the one I didn't pick isn't good; it's just that I don't need two. Or, it might even be something that can't be seen in the picture—maybe I don't want all 13 to be by women, or maybe I don't need four selections by readers from Morocco. Simple examples, but you get the point, which is: there's no reason at all to take it personally if yours doesn't get chosen.

And by the way, I don't have problems with that. TOP readers by and large are remarkably mature. No one complains. Fortunately, usually the sets are so strong that people who don't get picked can at least see why I went with the ones I did. The category is sort of amorphous this time, and doesn't give people a lot of guidance, so I'll be curious to see how that affects the submissions. I've gotten some good ones so far!

Baker's Dozen Deadline: Midnight Sunday

I'll email this to all my Patreon supporters, in case the problems continue and people can't access the site.

However: the deadline for the Baker's Dozen will be end of day on this coming Sunday. Midnight between Sunday and Monday, Eastern US Time. That's 5:00 a.m. Monday in London and 2:00 p.m. Monday in Sydney.

Here's the "call for work" post with all the details.

"House" hasn't been a popular subject, as these Baker's Dozens go, but many of the pictures I've received so far are excellent. Each time I see a new submission I think, "well, I can use that."  :-)

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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Baker's Dozen Call for Work: House

Hills-DeCaro house, first floor. Initial
design by Frank Lloyd Wright.

For the next Baker's Dozen, let's try something I wrote about recently: houses. There's a long and interesting tradition of picturing houses, which we might talk about along the way.

Here's the game:

The subject should be a permanent freestanding built domicile (where people live, i.e., not a campsite, treehouse, cave, etc.). Mainly looking for a house you feel is particularly beautiful or harmonious, but it can be one that you feel makes an attractive picture (amazing light, elegaic ruin, lovely colors, etc.); that has special meaning to you; or one that you feel has any other specified kind of interest. Exteriors are generally what we're looking for, but interiors are fine if that's what you want to submit.

First prize (just for fun), with me as the sole judge (although I'll be influenced by readers' opinions and reactions): a mini-portfolio of your work posted here on TOP and a written introduction to you. (You can of course decline if you're Greta Garbo*.)

Anyone within reach of these words can play, amateur or professional. (We usually get about 100–200 submissions for 13 places in the portfolio, so your odds are pretty good. On the other hand, the standard is usually quite high.)

How to Submit

This is a call for your own work, and you must own the rights to it. TOP will make absolutely no claim to your rights now or ever; by submitting, you give me permission to publish your picture here at TOP, with credit, but not to make any other use of it.

To submit, please use the subject line:

BDhouse

Just like that...no spaces, spelled exactly like that, no variations. Lowercase "h" in house. The reason is that when I begin building the post, I will search my email stack (which is large and unruly) for that phrase as the subject, and if your email doesn't come up, then I won't see your picture. Pay attention to this, as each time I specify this I do get emails that don't have the proper subject line. Those inevitably either get lost or cause headaches.

I'll announce the deadline when we get near it, but it'll be more or less two weeks from now, so you have some time. As I did last time, I'll try my best to get the result posted reasonably promptly.

Email ONE (1) JPEG, 800 pixels wide, saved in sRGB. Make sure you don't have your email software set to reduce the size of attachments.

Include in the email a paragraph including your name, where you live (city or town and country), any technical details you care to share, your website URL if you'd like me to publish it, and whatever you'd like to tell other TOP readers about your picture.

Name
Location
Technical details
Story or description

My email address is [email protected].

Have fun!

Mike

*Swedish-American movie star active 1920–41 who famously retired saying "I want to be alone" and lived thereafter as a semi-recluse.

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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Chris Kern: "Great subject idea, but unfortunately I will not be able to submit my favorite photograph of 'a permanent freestanding built domicile.' Not because I’m reluctant to share it, but because I didn't make it. It’s an 1895 picture of a stately home in Woodsfield, Ohio, that was shot by an unknown photographer, probably at the behest of my maternal great-grandfather, Wickliffe Ewing Mallory (he apparently always went by 'W.E.' and you can hardly blame him for that) to memorialize the house he had built two years earlier. It’s not the attractive structure that interests me so much as the remarkable tableau the photographer (or my great-grandfather) created of the extended family posed around it. The younger of the two little girls standing in front of the corner of the porch is my grandmother at the age of four. That’s W.E. himself watching the croquet game on the right side of the frame.

"My siblings and I knew nothing about the house until my brother discovered a scan of it on my father’s computer after my mother’s death; my father couldn’t recall why she had asked him to scan it or whose house it was. Years later, when we were clearing out their house following his death, we found an original print among a box of my mother’s memorabilia, which is the source of the scan in the link above."

Mike replies: That really is a wonderful picture. How great for you that it's in your family. By the way, you have quite a feel for architecture. You should give this Baker's Dozen a go.

Charles Rozier: "I thought Garbo said “I vant to be alone—."

Hans Muus: "Re the previous Baker’s Dozen: am I the only one who missed the 'honourable mentions'?"

Mike replies: Oh no, did I forget to add that? I'm sorry. I'll try to do better this time.

The 'Blur' Baker's Dozen Prizes

As announced, we're giving away three top prizes for the Blur Baker's Dozen, chosen by a guest judge, Hugh Crawford. (The full portfolio, if you missed it, is here.)

The prizes are:

$200 for First;
$125 for Second; and
$75 for Third.

Hugh mentioned to me that he wanted to wait a while after the contest ended and the thirteen pictures were presented, so that he could see which pictures he remembered the most after some time had passed. I'll turn it over to Hugh:

Photo by Alan Sailer

"Number one is the photograph by Alan Sailer. Not only is it a wonderful-looking photograph but it’s the one that I remember the most which counts for something. This photograph seems to be all about motion and light and presumably air; there’s a figure, there’s maybe a horizon so maybe it’s outside, but the light seems like it’s mixed; from there your mind fills in all the details. It sure seems like there’s some sort of a story going on, but it’s left to the viewer to just sort of make it up."

Photo by Francis Sullivan

"Number two is Francis Sullivan’s photo. There’s all sorts of formal stuff going on. First, there’s a lot of calligraphic paint stuff going on, two big gestures, the Pink Floyd text, and where somebody wiped the light-colored paint off their hands onto the wall. One of the things I always love about looking at Jackson Pollock's paintings is decoding the order in which they were painted, by what colors and drips overlap sequentially in a story of its creation. Here you can see that the sort of smeared area just above the running figure was probably painted first, along with the Pink Floyd, which seems to be very much aping the cover art for their album 'The Wall.' Of course Gerald Scarfe renders Pink Floyd in upper case and the anonymous graffitist presumably walked up to this wall and said, 'Oh look, it’s a wall. I think I’ll write Pink Floyd on it' without referring to the original artwork and chose mixed case which is absolutely fine. Later, somebody uses a brush to put up an arc of dark paint on the wall, it looks like it is just a pint or so of paint thrown against the wall, but you can see that there are brush marks in it, and paint is dripping from it, so it was fairly considered. Also, you get a sense of how tall the person was because it has the gesture of somebody extending their arm up as high as they can to paint with a little bit of an arc and walking simultaneously. Later after that dried and somebody did something similar with some light-colored paint and you can see where it is dripping down over the dried darker paint. Oh, and I can’t forget those light handprints up above Pink Floyd. Really this is more Shinichi Maruyama or Richard Hambleton than Jackson Pollock.

"So anyway, you’ve got this palimpsest of layered narrative and revisions that probably accreted over a few months. At this point, Francis Sullivan happens by, chooses a shutter speed appropriate for capturing masonry, and a kid with a bow runs through the frame—Time’s Arrow being too fleeting to be captured itself, but the hand of time is frozen. Pretty neat how random chance turns this into an allegory for the passage of time of both long and short duration. On a formal note, the arcs of the black and of the white paint are echoed by the curve of the bow. I would be remiss in not mentioning that this reminds me of William Klein’s work, which is a very good thing."

Photo by Kristine Hinrichs

"The third photograph is the one by Kristine Hinrichs. It reminds me of Robert Capa’s 11 D-Day photographs on Omaha Beach. There were lots of other photographs taken on Omaha Beach that don’t have the technical issues of Capa’s photographs and look like they were taken on a beach in June in nice weather. But which do we remember?"

I'll be contacting the winners to send them their prizes. Congratulations to Alan, Francis, and Kristine; grateful thanks to Hugh. Thanks to the generous donors of the prize money, and to the others photographers whose pictures were included in the portfolio. Last, but not least, thanks to the hundreds of readers who sent in submissions. This was a fun one, and I hope you enjoyed it. With any luck, the idea of "blur" stuck in your mind for a while as a possibility when you were out photographing.

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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Methods of Creating Blur

At the stroke of midnight last night I counted 240 ±5 submissions for the 'Blur' call-for-work (it's tough and time-consuming to count the number more accurately, for any number of reasons), and so far I've whittled it down to about 60 ±3 finalists. My seat-o'-the-pants feeling about it is that both these numbers are about double the usual, or almost. So this one is going to be tough for me to edit. Well, I guess they all are.

Many people are competing against only a handful of others. For instance, the birdwing-blur people are going to be competing against each other, and the out-of-focus abstract entries will probably be vying for one place in the final 13, and all the bicycle-panning-shot people will be competing against each other as well, most likely. So it goes in contests or in juried shows. With a final set of thirteen, you can't give everyone their due.

In a quick survey, I notice all of the following methods of creating blur: subject motion and camera shake, obviously, including intentional camera shake using deliberate motions; bokeh; deliberate overall out-of-focus; long exposures; long lens scenes through shimmering heat, called refraction; panning shots; flare; the deliberate use of very poor or broken lenses; double or multiple exposures; diffraction; software computational effects such as the iPhone's "Portrait" setting; pictures through frosted, fogged, or wet glass; pictures through multiple windows or panes of glass; soft-focus filters; soft-focus lenses (see illustration below); changing lighting effects, as at a stage show; pinhole images; blur of various types added in Photoshop; multiple images added in layers in Photoshop; pictures taken through dense foliage; and an intriguing picture taken in near-darkness in order to excite extreme sensor noise. Of course, there are many pictures in which two or more of these techniques are combined. And I'm sure I've missed a few!

Bruce Hemingway, My Window. Photographed with the very rare
75mm ƒ/3 Pinkham & Smith Visual Quality Motion Picture lens.

One of the most unusual is a picture of a face seen through a translucent pancake of some sort being flipped in the air from a frying pan! Never seen that before. In fact that's one of a special little category of pictures that are very interesting because of the explanation of what they are or how they were made; I'm thinking of creating a separate post for those. My sense is that there are about five of them, maybe six. (Is it fair to add those to the running for the prizes? I think not, because that wasn't the deal that I announced. Contests are rough when you're not a rule-bound sort of person, as I am not. Because having rules and following them generally enhance fairness, whereas extemporizing can seem like changing the rules in mid-course.)

More soon,

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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'Blur' Baker's Dozen Deadline is Tonight...

...at 11:59.

The entries have continued to pour in without stopping. I'm pretty sure this one has received more entries than any other we've ever done. And I'm actually now getting entries that people went out and shot this past week specifically for the Baker's Dozen. With a great many of them, my initial reaction is, "Wow—well, that one has to go in the final set." I've had that reaction with a lot more than 13 of them. Lots of great stuff.

Final dust-has-cleared numbers for the prizes:

• $200 for First prize,
• $125 for Second, and
• $75 for Third.

That's thanks to Mark Banas, Anonymous, Anonymous, Richard Parkin, Anonymous, John Gillooly, James Weekes, Bob Burnett, and Christopher May. And TOP. Thanks to all the GoFundMe contributors! I'll save the overage for the next one.

Should help pay for a lens. Or at least a dinner for you and one or two photographer friends.

As previously announced, I will pick the final 13 that will appear here and Hugh Crawford will pick the prize recipients from among the 13. 

I think that's everything you need to know, except I should mention that I'm grateful, because it's a lot of fun to hear from you and see your work. I will have some thoughts about the aesthetics of blurry pictures in due course.

If you have any questions email me at mcjohnston at mac dot com. I'll close the comments on this post.

Mike

'Blur' Update (There Are Now Three Prizes)

First: an excellent recent panning blur, complete with the backstory: Mathieu van der Poel on the Poggio by Simon Gill. The tip came in from a reader in Wales also called Simon. Cycling fans can even buy a print at Simon Gill's website, for reasonable prices. For those of you who don't shoot professionally, the text gives a good example of what's involved in getting a shot when you have to.

Next: The "Blur" Baker's Dozen is proving popular. Entries continue to come in. If I were Ctein, I would have all the data on past Baker's Dozens and I'd be able to tell you where this one ranks so far in terms of the number of entries. But, being me, all I can tell you is that...entries continue to come in.

Finally: Thanks to a number of generous donors, there are now THREE prizes:

• First Prize $192.40 (so far!)
• Second Prize $100
• Third Prize $50

Woo-hoo! Wealth. The weird number for first prize is donations minus fees. I've set a new GoFundMe goal as of Wednesday morning, and added a bit to cover the fees. I'm sure the prizes aren't the most important part to you, but it's kinda fun and it's interesting to see how it works.

You've still got plenty of time to play with blur. The entry period doesn't close until the end of next Monday.

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 Formerly Sticky Post

[Ed note: This post is no longer sticky.]

Sticky!
This post is a "Sticky" post and will appear at the top of the stack this week. New posts appear below it, so don't be fooled.

Blurry!
Our "Call for Work" for the Baker's Dozen "Blur" Reader Portfolio is still live, through next Monday. We've gotten some fantastic blur shots so far. This one is going to be fun.

Passing the hat!
Want to help sweeten the "pot"? I set up a GoFundMe Page in case you want to throw a few more bucks into the prize fund (several people have offered). If we raise enough, I'll use the extra dough to add prizes to the next Baker's Dozen too.

I (Mike) will be editing the portfolio; the prizes will be awarded by our friend the Polymath of All Things Photographique, Hugh Crawford. Based on this recent photo he is obviously also a wizard:

I had suggested that he ought to wear a wig to be The Judge, but as you can see he already has all the hair anyone needs. Although he reports that the beard is getting a severe trim soon, for an upcoming trip. I'll have him send us an "after" picture if he's willing. People keep mistaking him for Rick Rubin.

Mike

P.S. Despite the disembodied thumb, the picture is not AI! It was taken with an iPhone in Pano mode.

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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Baker's Dozen Call for Work: 'Blur'

Vortograph of Ezra Pound by Alvin Langdon Coburn
(Study 2, 1917)

Our Baker's Dozens are simple: readers submit JPEGs of their own photos, and I curate a presentation of a dozen of them that seem to go together, plus an extra one for good measure.

There's a prize this time: a $100 B&H Photo gift card for first place and a $50 Amazon gift card for second place. Hugh Crawford will be the judge. (I haven't asked him yet, so that's provisional on his acceptance of the judge's robes and gavel*.) [UPDATE Saturday evening: Hugh has agreed to serve as the awarder of the prizes. No word on the wig yet.]

THEME

The only requirement this time is that the picture should use some sort of blur. It can be any kind of blur: motion blur, panning, camera shake, a pinhole image, a picture that is all or mostly bokeh or is deliberately defocused, a picture taken with a soft-focus lens or filter or a toy camera, or anything else you can think of. Blur can affect all or only part of the picture. I will tend not to pick pictures that happen to be blurred but that would probably have been as good or better had they been sharp. The only sharp picture admissible would be of the English band Blur.

Also new this time, you have to tell me whether your entry is an "old" picture (one that already existed before this notice was posted on Friday, April 28th, 2023), or "new" (created specially for this Baker's Dozen). On your honor. Prizewinners, however, will be selected from the "new" pictures. [UPDATE Saturday evening: on further reflection this seems unfair, so if it's all right with everyone I'm going to rescind this and let Hugh award the prizes to any of the pictures chosen. To be clear: I choose the shots for the portfolio, Hugh awards the prizes.]

TO ENTER

Email one picture per entrant to me at [email protected]. Note the "T" in JohnsTon; my name is not Johnson.

Very important: the subject line of your email must be:

BDblur

...just exactly like that. Uppercase-uppercase-lowercase, no space. The reason for this is that I will search my very considerable email stack for that exact term and if your email is not labeled correctly it will not come up and I will never see your picture.

The picture should be a JPEG, 800 pixels wide (yes, wide), saved as sRGB. Include it in the body of the email and please, make sure your email program is not set up to automatically reduce the size of inclusions or attachments.

Please include:

• Your name
• Your address (or where in the world you are, city or town and country)
• A short single paragraph describing the work. This will be published with your picture when you win. You can say whatever you want about it, but what makes it blurry might be a point to consider. Not required though.
• The word "New" or "Old" as explained above.

(Note: if you screw up and need to submit again, please make a whole new complete submission. Do not send additional information in a separate email and ask me to add it to an earlier email, because although that ought to be simple, experience predicts that it will not get done.)

The deadline is Monday, May 8th, at one minute to midnight in the Eastern U.S. Time Zone. I'll remind you.

Untitled Photo by Hugh Crawford

THE FINE PRINT

You must own all rights to the picture you submit and it must be entirely your own work. 

You retain all rights to your picture at all times, except that you grant me one-time permission to publish it on TOP if it's selected (as of course yours will be).

I cannot think of anything else offhand.

EXAMPLES...

...Of past Bakers Dozens:

Cameras

Objects of Affection

Grandkids

In the Museum

Yellow

"It Must Be Color" Part I, Part II, Part III

Black-and-White

Pictures Taken with Leica Lenses

Have fun, and have a nice weekend. Remember the subject line

BDblur

!!!

Mike

*And wig, because our judge will perforce be bewigged, as they are in Blighty. It's a great look.

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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Baker's Dozen: Camera(s)

[Dedicated to the memory of Jeffrey Goggin,
a.k.a. JG, camera-builder extraordinaire.]

-

Carsten Bockermann

"I'm from Bonn, Germany. Here's my website.

"When I received this custom-made camera strap from Hyperion, it immediately occurred to me that I needed to photograph it on my Fuji X100F, wearing a bowtie in matching red."

Bob Rosinsky

"The posterior of my erstwhile Olympus E-M5 Mark II (it was a great camera). The photo was taken with an Olympus E-M1 in 2015 at Siesta Key beach in Sarasota, Florida."

"I currently live in Boulder County, Colorado. I do not miss the ocean."

Pal Kossowski

"I live on the outskirts of Tokyo.

"I always carry a small portable camera with me to capture these unexpected and fleeting moments as they may play in front of our eyes. They later serve as mental remainders…tacks on the map of time…this one being a self-portrait taken in a harsh light with a Nikon 1 camera and a 10mm pancake lens back in 2013…but I still remember the exact place I took this picture while walking some short distance to a car parking after Sunday’s lunch at Denny's."

Mark Hobson

"I live the Adirondack Park near Lake Placid, New York, USA. My web address is: lifesquared.squarespace.com.

"a r g o f l e x Seventy-five—A picture of the making of a picture from the picture maker's point of view."

Richard F. Man

"I live in Palo Alto, California.

"The short version of the story is that our car had a catastrophic failure and fire consumed the car in minutes. No one was hurt but I left my Leica M9 and the iPhone 10 in the car. More photos and a bit more detail at my website. The Summilux was my first and favorite Leica lens. I doubt I can afford to buy another one.

"While I was cleaning whatever is left of the camera, I made up fictional sales descriptions:

My conservative rating for this camera is near mint. A CLA will make this back into a formidable shooting machine.

This M9 has slight sensor corrosion, but Leica should be able to replace it for free.

The Summilux 35mm produces lovely images with great bokeh. Slight coating damage but that adds dreamy signatures to your images.

The shutter curtain is rated for 200,000 actuations and is as precise as when it left the factory 12 years ago.

"Taken with a Hasselblad 203FE with CFV II 50C digital back."

T.C. Lin

"I'm from Taipei, Taiwan.

"A Leica M3 I borrowed from a friend, c. 2008. I was experimenting with Sigma's new DP1 at the time, and took a shot of the Leica on my office desk in the afternoon light. Always loved the Sigma's rendering, even if the camera was frustrating to use."

Irene Burnes (submitted by Terry Burnes)

"I live in Gardnerville, Nevada, USA. Here's my website.

"This is a self portrait taken by my mother Irene with her Speed Graphic in the 1940s. My parents met at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, Colorado, during WWII, where my father was an Air Force photography instructor and my mother was a civilian student of his, having come there from her home in North Dakota looking to help with the war effort. When my father was later deployed to the Pacific, my mother moved in with her parents, who had moved to San Diego. She started a photography business there that ended with the war, while also working at Convair Aircraft.

"My father was a good technical photographer but I think my mother had the creative gene. My interest in photography and whatever ability I have is directly attributable to them. There were always cameras, and occasionally darkrooms, in our homes."

Barry Prager

"From San Fancisco, California, USA.

"This photo was taken of a camera obscura which resides where San Francisco meets the Pacific Ocean near Seal Rock. There is a lens mounted in the top of the camera which rotates 360 degrees every six minutes and reflects down to a 150-inch mirror which is mounted to an observation table, which gives an oddly beautiful image.

"The photo was taken with a Sony NEX-7 and ƒ/3.5–5.6 18–200mm zoom lens which was converted to shoot in infrared."

Marco Alpert

"From California, USA. Here's my website.

"Shot in Central Park, New York City in pre-plague days."

Bruce Walker

"Where: Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. URL.

"Title: Portrait of a self-portrait.

"This studio shot is from a creative I did in 2015. Camera in the shot is a Kodak Junior Six-20 Series II. Shooting camera is the Pentax 645Z, and the lens is the wonderful 645 90mm ƒ/2.8 Macro at ƒ/11, 1/125th second, ISO 100. A single strobe is suspended directly overhead in a seven-foot silver umbrella. Model is Molly Fassbender."

Chris Bertram

"I'm in Bristol, United Kingdom.

"This is a shot of the inside of a camera, or, more exactly, an accidental camera obscura caused by my poor fitting of the curtains in our bedroom. We were astonished one morning by the patterns on the wall and then realised they were the inverted image of the houses opposite.

"My photography."

Willem Numan

"I'm in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

"This is at the annual market for all things camera-related in the town of Doesburg in the Netherlands. Image was made with an iPhone SE on 20-08-2017."

Gary Nylander

"I'm from Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. Here's my website.

"This is my Tachihara 8x10 view camera with a Schneider 300mm ƒ/5.6 lens. I made this photo to illustrate some of the different film cameras (including digital) that I use as part of my overall work on my social media accounts. That's me under the dark cloth. I had set up my digital camera on a tripod with a set of low wattage lights, the exposure time was 25 seconds allowing me plenty of time to walk behind the view camera and stay as still as possible while the digital camera was recording the image.

"This is a camera that I have owned since 1991. The 300mm lens I bought a little earlier, around 1990. I wanted a short telephoto lens for my 4x5 view camera; I didn't realize when I bought this lens over the phone from a camera store in Vancouver, British Columbia, that it would be so big, and that it actually covered 8x10 format. Since I now had a lens that covered the larger format I figured I might as well get myself an 8x10 camera. Easier said than done in my part of Canada.

"The first 8x10 camera I purchased, which was used and also a Tachihara camera was through a mail-order ad in the back of a photo magazine for a camera dealer in California. It was listed as 'mint' and priced a couple of hundred dollars less than a new one. After several weeks it showed up at my door and I excitedly unboxed it only to find it was hardly mint, but well used. I sent it back and got my money back. Then I ordered the new one from a popular camera store in New York City. The new one was perfect of course.

"Although I don't use it that much these days, as I often use my more practical 4x5 camera or my digital camera, I still enjoy hauling out the big rig to make a few photographs now and then. It's fun to use and gives me a unique view of my subjects that I would not normally get with my other cameras."

-

And one more for good measure...

Rob de Löe

"I live in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

"My friend Jeffrey, whose passing in early April of this year was noted in a column on TOP, was a person who viewed any object produced by someone else as a starting point for his projects, rather than an ending point. Over many years of conversations, I absorbed that ethos, and now run with it for my own camera building projects.

"This ugly creature is my enormously functional 'MAB Camera.' The foundation is a Mamiya 645 Auto Bellows (hence 'MAB'). I'm sure that Mamiya's engineers considered their product 'done.' For me, it was the starting point. My MAB Camera lacks the huge range of movements available on my Toyo VX23D, but it has the ones I need to do most of what I need to do. It weighs only 780 grams, and it can mount my Pentax-A 645 ƒ/3.5 35mm lens, my two Mamiya G lenses, and various enlarger and technical lenses. Jeffrey, whose finished 'FrankenKameras' always had a professional and polished appearance, would have politely appreciated my dedication to 'function over form.'"

+   =   +   =   +   =   +

Thanks to everyone who participated! As always, if your picture didn't appear, I should remind you that it's not a contest. I'm just doing my best to create a varied and entertaining set. Many other pictures would have done just as well, but these are the ones that looked right together to me.

A few honorable mentions (the other selects that I shuffled and diced to create the final set): Terry Letton, Jonathan Hayes, Mark Gregg, Rodger Kingston, Bruce Polin, Larry Sumners, San Warzoné, Reese Robinson, Rolf Behrends, Stefan Kassel, Richard Alan Fox, William Harrison, Greg Heins, Sean Felhofer, and Rich Beaubien. If your name didn't appear here, it might simply be because I got several submissions with a similar motif or that I thought would serve the same function in the set, and I had already chosen another one for the finalists' cut.

As I said earlier, I especially appreciated the stories and the memories.

"Good light" to you—

Mike

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!)

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

Link to B&H

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Last Call!

Don't forget the deadline for the "Camera" Baker's Dozen is today (Saturday, May 21). It went very well; we've gotten a lot of quirky, interesting, and varied submissions. Lots of good "camera portraits" and lots of pictures featuring smartphones, when I'll only have space for one or two, maybe three, of each. That's not to say yours can't be one of the chosen ones. But those are the overpopulated categories where the competition will be toughest, in case you're still deciding what to submit.

If you could get yours in by, say, noonish, EST, good enough.

By the way, my favorite camera picture I've ever done is the one of my friend Kent's M4 which I posted here. But I doubt it would be special and different enough to be part of this Baker's Dozen! A picture of a camera for a contest needs a little something extra, to stand out. (I wonder if there's a post there...the effect of contests on what and how one might shoot. Because contests do have different standards than purely personal artistic direction. And obviously not all the effects are good. Sorry, just thinking out loud.)

This one is pretty light, just fun. But hey, this is the place.

Last chance!

Mike

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. 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.

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

Link to B&H

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Featured Comments from:

Baker's Dozen Deadline

Happy to say that I'm getting some excellent submissions for the "Camera" Baker's Dozen already.

The deadline will be next Saturday, May 21, at noon Eastern U.S. Time, because Saturdays are the slowest days of the week around here and it will be fun to be able to do the first pass through these on Saturday afternoon. I will accept late submissions, but not too late.

I'm certainly seeing some very interesting cameras already. This is going to be a fun one for sure. Here's the information again.

Mike

This is Actually a Different 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. 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.

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

B&H walks the walk.

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 Baker's Dozen Call for Work: 'Camera'

This is either going to be wildly popular or be a total flop, or something in the middle.

(Sorry, it's an old Mitch Hedberg joke.)

Our next theme for our lovely little readers' pictures portfolio is: "Camera." Any picture that has anything to do with a camera is fair game. Hopefully we will have some fun here.

How to Submit

This is a call for your own work, and you must own the rights to it, so please don't send me anything but that.

By submitting, you give me permission to reproduce the small JPEG of your picture on TOP and that's it. Your copyright remains yours.

To submit, use the subject line:

BDCamera

Just like that...no spaces, spelled exactly like that, no variations. Capital "C" in "Camera." The reason is that when I begin building the post, I will search my large email stack for that phrase as the subject, and if your email doesn't come up, then I won't see your picture.

Please pay attention to that. Last time, people really did...almost nothing got lost. Which I appreciated.

A dog does not have to appear in your picture. Although my philosophy is, it never hurts.

I'll announce the deadline when we get near it. No promises when the results will appear...I've learned from experience that these features just take time to build, so it'll get done when it gets done. There's only one little man behind the curtain pulling all the levers.

Email one or two JPEGs, 800 pixels wide, saved in sRGB. Include in the email your name, where you live, any technical details you care to share, your website URL if you want me to publish it, and whatever you want to tell other TOP readers about your picture.

Lots of people write a paragraph explaining their picture (see the "Yellow" portfolio for examples), so if you don't, just be aware that your picture might seem a little "naked" after it gets picked. (Because of course yours will get picked.)

My email address is mcjohnston at mac dot com. Replace the "at" and the "dot" with the proper symbols and get rid of the spaces. This modest attempt at disguising my address will not fool the web-crawling bots, but oh well.

So, five components:

"BDCamera" in the SUBJECT LINE;
PICTURE (must be your own!), 800 pixels wide in sRGB;
NAME;
WHERE YOU LIVE;
Any COMMENTS you care to make about the shot.

Hope you are up to the challenge! Have fun and don't be afraid to be creative. Total dweeby gearhead geekishness is not required but is certainly not discouraged. You're among friends.  :-)

Mike

Book o' the Week

Jay Maisel: Light, Color, Gesture. This was suggested by Moose. 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.

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

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:

Baker's Dozen: Objects of Affection

Stephanie Luke
Cottonwood, California, USA

"This image is part of a series I'm currently working on called 'Asphalt Beaches.' It consists of random things I've discovered on the sides of the streets where I live. Generally, I find a lot of debris and trash, but once in a while there is something new and pristine. This balloon drifted by as I was taking my daily walk, so I grabbed it and then destroyed it, in the name of art of course! All pictures are taken outside in the immediate surroundings with my iPhone 13 Pro Max, using a Lightroom app and post-processed with Photoshop."

Wolfgang Gressmann
Germany

"Internally displaced boy with tire in Amran, Yemen, 2011. Leica M6, 28mm, Tri-X @ 200; here's my website."

Douglas Martin
Santa Rosa, California, USA

"This object is my wife’s hiking hat. Of course, she is under it, but I think of this as a photo of a hat, with a few clues to let you know something about the hat."

Ken Ginn
Wakefield, Quebec, Canada

"Found object. Mourning dove feathers. I noticed a flash out of the corner of my eye one day while working at the kitchen sink. When I went out to see what might have happened, I found what remained of the dove after a hawk swooped in for its dinner. I simply placed these on my flatbed scanner to make this image. I've scanned and continue to scan found objects. Not every camera is held in hand."

David Kee
Westmont, Illinois, USA

"I was recently diagnosed with leukemia (the good kind, my oncologist tells me, that won't affect me for a while). Coincidentally, I then read an article about the ancient phrase memento mori ('remember that you will die'). Although I didn't need reminding, I Googled the concept which, in brief, is that thinking about the inevitability of your death forces you to savor each of your days and thus enjoy the time you have left. The search results included an ad for a skull ring that I thought would give me a constant prod to do exactly that. This is my macro shot of my ring that for as many days as I have will reside on my left index finger."

Satyan Devadoss
San Diego, California, USA

"This object is a polyhedron lamp, shown during sunset, that I randomly came across a few months ago. It's now sitting in my office. Remarkably, this polyhedron was the basis of my math Ph.D. dissertation more than 20 years ago. The small wooden block is also the same polyhedron as well, crafted by a student of mine 15 years ago while in Massachusetts. (This student went on to become a drummer for the remarkable band Darlingside, then a carpenter, and finally a photographer.) Pixel 3a."

Peter Van Dyken
Duluth, Minnesota, USA

"The John Boland ore carrier which I sailed on as a deckhand in the 1970s showed up at dusk as a discreet object in the fog in my front yard this past shipping season. Taken with a Fuji X-H1 and the 55–200mm."

Mark Gregg
Michigan, USA

"This small sculpture was a gift from my wife and has become a real keepsake. My whole life has been involved in photography, first as a hobby and then as a vocation, and this little guy reminds me of all the wonderful times I have had in my career. The sculpture is less than six inches in height and made of wire."

Jim Simmons
Masterton, New Zealand

"This is called 'Tomato Figure.' To photograph a misshapen vegetable is to work beneath the immense shadow of Edward Weston. 'Nothing new here.' But I'd like to think I'm expressing the joy that he'd find in colour, not to mention the forms as shaped by the light."

Michael Ryan
Shanghai, China

"I had a nice opportunity to do some personal style photos with my middle daughter last week. Pandora just started learning the cello.

"We originally chose the violin but each school we went to for a trial lesson suggested the cello. I was pleased, as I love and prefer the sound and look of the cello, but after the same thing happened at four different schools, I had to ask why everyone was pointing us to the cello. They told us that it's because she's six. She's too old to start learning the violin—she should've started when she was four! That’s living in China."

Daniel Speyer
New York, New York, USA

"Photo of a canoe I had from age 14 to age 70+ (lost in a fire then). It is a rather uncommon ultralight aluminum canoe (a 13-foot tandem canoe weighing only 44 lbs.). A real 'friend' that I normally paddled solo—with it I had weathered wind and waves and it never let me down. The picture was taken in the Adirondack Park, Whitney Wilderness Area, where I canoe extensively. The photo was taken with a Pentax Q and the 35mm-equivalent (so-called 'toy') lens."

Len Salem
England, United Kingdom

"My seaside bucket.

"I was born in London in February 1939, a few months before the outbreak of a World War which continued for six years. For 24 hours a day, factories produced nothing but munitions and other essentials for the country's war effort. For most, it was a time of great austerity. Knowing no better, I did not feel deprived, but new toys did not exist then and, even on birthdays, I received only hand-me-downs or other second-hand things. Until the end of the war I had never tasted a banana, or any other fruit not grown within our own shores. I had never been on holiday.

"In 1946, the year following the ending of the conflict, my parents took me with them to the seaside for their first holiday for very many years. It was of course my first-ever holiday and at that point probably the biggest event of my life.

"I remember the feeling of great excitement when I became the proud possessor of my very own new bucket and spade. I made endless sandcastles and watched, fascinated, as they afterwards vanished with the incoming tide.

"I remember the spade had an unvarnished wooden shaft and a bright red handle. Maybe I'm imagining the red handle, for it was lost many years ago. But the bucket, a drab grey galvanised steel pail about the size of a small flowerpot, somehow survived.

"I look at it now and see myself as a child at the beginning of his life. It is my oldest possession."

And one more for good measure:

New Baker's Dozen Call for Work: Object of Affection

[TOP publishes on Mon./Wed./Fri.]

The next Baker's Dozen, with the title "Object of Affection," will be of pictures of objects. Inanimate ones.

Object, noun,

/ˈäbjekt/

A material thing that can be seen and touched.
   "She appeared to be holding a small object"

It can be any kind of object. Perhaps of a sort you have some kind of affection for. I'm loath to give examples, even verbally, because I don't want to risk directing your creativity. Points given, however, for being mindful of the inherent descriptive power of photography.

I'll pick a dozen of the most interesting ones to post, with one extra for good measure. Search the site for "Baker's Dozen" if you want to see past examples.

If you'd like to play, click past the break for instructions.