The Online Photographer

Rob Spring's Picture: Childhood Revisited

Rob Spring of Barre, Vermont said of his picture from the Baker's Dozen mini-portfolio, "Here is a photo of my grandson, Waylon, with his dad, my son-in-law. This was the last ride on the swing that my kids used more than 30 years ago. The swing was attached to a limb of an ancient but dying Vermont sugar maple which was cut down the next day after standing in what is now our front yard for over 155 years."

This looks so much like one of my own pictures that I don't have to wonder why I like it. We don't even really need to know that this commemorates the last day of a long-standing tree, although it's a bonus. What it made me think of when I saw it was that there's a relatively short window for us, as children, during which a swing is good for playing on. How long it is, really? Six or seven years maybe, maybe less. But with most childish things that pleased you when you were young yourself, you get a chance to revisit them again when they make your children happy. It's really tough to say who's happier here, the child or the man; they both appear to be enjoying themselves equally. And I'm glad I wasn't imagining the resemblance between them. Their expressions are the same.

I just love pictures like this when they're my own—straightforward documents of people, places and times that were important to me. I would have loved to have taken this, if these were my family members. And it's a charming shot even though they're strangers to me. Great job, Rob.

Mike

Book o' the Week

The Atlas of Beauty: Women of the World in 500 Portraits. "Since 2013 photographer Mihaela Noroc has traveled the world with her backpack and camera taking photos of everyday women to showcase the diversity of beauty all around us. The Atlas of Beauty is a collection of her photographs celebrating women from all corners of the world, revealing that beauty is everywhere, and that it comes in many different sizes and colors."

This is a link to Amazon from TOP. The following logo is also a link:

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:

Jerker Andersson's Picture: Composition, Colors, Lighting, Love

Jerker Andersson of Lund, Sweden, wrote of his submission: "Early Fall, 2004. My father-in-law, Håkan, and his first grandchild Elsa have a conversation in the dining room. Over the years since then, my wife Åsa and I have had two more kids, a girl and a boy, and my wife’s father has five grandchildren in all. But this was in the beginning. Sometimes I find it hard to remember what life was like without the kids. Lots of time to spend, I suppose."

Formally this is a great candid—it uses a lighting strategy I've seen before but have never heard a name for. If you have two faces looking at each other, and the main light source is coming from behind one of the people and hence directed at the front of the other face, you can split the background and contrast the lit face with a darker background and the darker face with a lighter background. I know I've seen pros do it on purpose; I imagine Jerker recognized it rather than set it up, but it's marvelously effective here.

I suppose we can't help our personal responses to photographs. I've always been interested in what you might call "the ages of Man"—capital M, meaning humankind. This is a quirky thought, but in some ways I wonder if we sometimes aren't programmed to see people of much different ages as being a little like a different species, slightly alien almost, as a way of protecting ourselves. I've noticed that young, healthy people sometimes treat infirm and decrepit old people a bit like they are something "other"—not people who were once just like them. You can't quite get them to say they'll never be like that, but being honest, aging is alarming, so why think it if you don't have to? In our youth, we're somewhat blind to the inevitability of our aging. Conversely, I've sometimes observed that people have a way to talking about babies as not quite being us yet. Children, too, sometimes.

This is probably the most amateur sort of sociobiology. But it creates the wonderful tension for me here: an infant looking at an adult like she will one day be; a grandparent looking at an infant like he himself once was. And their obvious pleasure and contentment in regarding each other. They recognize each other. And yet I sense a touch of wonder, too, on both sides! Makes me smile.

This rises well above the usual family snapshot. Everything's in perfect balance here, composition, colors, lighting, love. Don't you wish all your family photographs could be this good?

Mike

Book o' the Week

The Atlas of Beauty: Women of the World in 500 Portraits. "Since 2013 photographer Mihaela Noroc has traveled the world with her backpack and camera taking photos of everyday women to showcase the diversity of beauty all around us. The Atlas of Beauty is a collection of her photographs celebrating women from all corners of the world, revealing that beauty is everywhere, and that it comes in many different sizes and colors."

This is a link to Amazon from TOP. The following logo is also a link:

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:

Jerker Andersson: "Thank you for those kind words! From August 1996 to June of '99 I studied photography as art, full time, at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. For a few years after that, I made a modest living as a photographer. But I grew tired of having to hunt for every assignment and then hunt the clients to get my money. I studied to become a teacher of the Swedish language for immigrants instead, and I've been working like that on different levels since 2005. Anyway; if I couldn't take decent family pictures, it would be quite embarrassing! Again—thank you!"

Monika Göhmann's Picture: Character Study

Monika Göhmann of Darmstadt, Germany writes, "In the image you see my parents with my daughter. My mother hated to have her photograph taken, but my daughter convinced her to sit down with her on this day, because we didn’t have any photo of the three of them together. My parents were 95 (father) and 93 (mother) years old at the time. Only four months later, they had to leave their house to live in an old peoples home; in 2020 they both died. So this image is a true treasure for my family!"

At first pass this seemed too plain, and I flipped past it pretty quickly. But it grew on me with repeated visits, and I long ago learned to appreciate it when a photograph has "legs"—staying power—for me. The more I looked at it, the more I liked it. First of all, I just love those wonderful faces—all three of them strong, interesting, personable, and (excuse me sir), beautiful. Then I noticed a certain consonance between the two women—notice how the colors of their clothing echo back and forth. Then the hands. Hands can reveal as much as facial expressions about feelings, and I love how the six hands are arrayed across the picture. Again the women echo. Notice how the man draws the group together, and also how different his hold is on each woman. The two older people are turned toward each other, almost folded into each other—you would guess they are long married even if you didn't know, I think. Neither looks at anything in particular, as if they are content and secure to be together. But the most marvelous thing is how the face of the daughter brings the photographer, her mother, into the picture. Her expression says a lot about their relationship, as well as how happy she is about the occasion. The picture is a character study even to someone who doesn't know the people; knowing the story enhances it. In a world that clamors for attention, there's still a lot of reward to be found in quiet, subtle pictures. I think Monika really got the moment. Sehr gut gemacht!

Mike

Book o' the Week

The Atlas of Beauty: Women of the World in 500 Portraits. "Since 2013 photographer Mihaela Noroc has traveled the world with her backpack and camera taking photos of everyday women to showcase the diversity of beauty all around us. The Atlas of Beauty is a collection of her photographs celebrating women from all corners of the world, revealing that beauty is everywhere, and that it comes in many different sizes and colors."

This is a link to Amazon from TOP. The following logo is also a link:

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:

Jens Ronneberger: "Ein schönes bild von zwei generationen." (A beautiful picture of two generations.)

Ernest Zarate: "Re 'At first pass this (photograph) seemed too plain, and I flipped past it pretty quickly. But it grew on me with repeated visits….' I don’t think I could have written a better response to the whole 'shoulder tapping' criteria as, at best, a limited (and limiting) metric for judging a photograph’s success. Any creative work (movie, music, painting, architecture, etc…) may seem too (plain, outrageous, etc…) at first pass. That’s the 'tapping' phase, which with this photo ended up with a 'meh.' I think as creators of works, we need to not insult those who view our work by making it so simplistic that a three second glance gives it all away. 'Nothing more to see here. Next!' We must not hesitate to demand a bit of effort from those viewers, provided we reward them with a pay-off for their efforts. I’m glad you gave this photo more than a passing glance."

Charlie Dunton's Picture: Seize the Day

Here's what Charlie Dunton of Yorktown, Virginia, had to say about his submission for the "Grandkids" Baker's Dozen portfolio:

"I took this photo of my granddaughter during a visit to a local Five Guys restaurant for lunch. I spent the entire time photographing her, ending up with over 200 images. This [picture shows] one of the few times she gave any indication I was even there.

"Once home, I imported all the photos into Lightroom and discovered I had a nice story board of our lunch together. I selected 35 images that best told the story and added captions to each from her perspective. The caption for this one is, 'Oh, hi, Dadada, you are getting this aren’t you?'

"The story in brief: dip your french fry in a small cup of ketchup and lick the ketchup off the fry; try the same with the end of a crayon from the restaurant followed by a big yuck face; Dad notices ketchup on your chin and brings out a towelette resulting in strong objections; notices she has dried ketchup on her fingers that’s hard to get off so sticks fingers in ketchup cup for a bit, then finds to her amazement that the ketchup now wipes off easily; decides it’s time to change her dress which immediately brings out the finger of doom from Dad followed by a terrible pout face; lays head on table dejected at how long grownups take; new idea, draw Mommy a picture with the crayon; then sing Mommy a song they just learned, 'The Itsy Bitsy Spider,' complete with hand gestures and facial expressions followed by a big high-five from Dad.

"I saved everything in a Lightroom collection and didn’t share it with anyone for over 13 years. Then I had them made into a hardcover book and gave it to her on her 16th birthday. I think she liked it almost as much as I because the first thing she did when she got home was call her best friend and share it with her.

"We still have lunch together on occasion, but I don’t bring my camera any more. She wouldn’t stand for it. But what if I pull out my iPhone and pretend to be playing with it like all the kids do? There’s an idea.

"Sorry for all the words, but how else could I share 35 images when only one was allowed?"

Having not seen the other 34, I'll venture to say that one seems to do nicely!

I have only a couple of comments: first, that photographing active children in motion is actually a pretty good exercise of shooting skills. I was once asked to photograph four small but highly energetic brothers playing in their enclosed but well-outfitted back yard, and since I wasn't being paid I decided to try to do it on the fly, without asking the kids to hold still or pose or otherwise help to make my job easier. It was surprisingly challenging—getting coherent pictures was like trying to swat flies. They were in continual motion and seemed to never pause for long. Pointing the camera seemed a signal to move away. I shot three rolls of 135, which was 105 exposures, and had to settle for a couple of dozen competent shots, five or six to please the parents, and one photograph I thought was really good. Lots of blurs and shots just after the visual peak of the action.

I do like the relaxed, candid quality of this shot; it's clear it's not formally posed and that Charlie wasn't going for formal perfection. I think that makes the picture stronger. Despite the natural, candid feel it's still formally beautiful. The cropping, which would be too tight for some pictures, works with rather than against the gesture of the body and cock of the head, which in turn works with the expression of the mouth; the light is lovely, and the colors are harmonious and complement the lighting in turn. But nothing's excessive or overdone. A nice shot of a happy child mid-flight.

Taking 200 shots of one subject is what I'd call "working a subject." It's quite possible to get a shot this good with one lucky shot with a smartphone, but it will happen only occasionally. If you want to do it on purpose you usually have to work for it, like Charlie Dunton did. As a big-name photographer once said to me, "nobody sees how many shots you throw away."

Children disappear quickly—I still find it hard to believe that Sally Mann's son Emmett, memorialized as a boy in a number of his mother's famous pictures, has lived his whole life and is dead and gone now. Seize the day, they say. While that might be literally impossible, every now and then you can seize a good picture, which, although also impermanent in the long run, will at least outlast the moment.

Mike

Product o' the Week:

The brand new 2021 Apple 10.2-inch iPad (Wi-Fi, 64GB) in Space Gray. My iPad is my least necessary but most-loved Apple device. I could get by with my phone and a desktop computer, but I use this constantly and I like it best. Check out that price.

The above is a link to Amazon from TOP—anything you buy while you're there benefits TOP. B&H Photo is closed for the rest of September for Succos.

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:

Sharon: "What an adorable child! Well done."

Charlie Dunton: "Mike, Thanks for the kind words. I must confess, this photo of my granddaughter was originally going to be the 'Oh, hi Grandada...' shot, but I had another that worked as well for that purpose and I decided the one I submitted made a much better final photo in the series. The caption for it is actually, 'Well, that's all from adorable moi. We had a lot of fun at Five Guys. TTFN. That's Ta Ta For Now, in case you didn't know.' If you would like to see the other 34, the full series with captions is here. Click the upper left image and then use the 'next' button on the site, or the right arrow key on your keyboard. Thanks again, Charlie Dunton."

Baker's Dozen: Grandkids

(Charlie Dunton)

(Rob Spring)

(Jerker Andersson)

(Monika Göhmann)

(Marc Vayssières)

(Kent McColl Wiley)

(Jeremy Fagan)

(Paul Martini)

(John Gordon)

(Chris Kern)

(Michael Gay)

(Craig P. Beyers)

And for good measure....

(William Schneider)

Honorable mentions (the other finalists, from the group I used to build this final set): Roger Bartlett, Lara Arnold, Jim Arthur, Terry Burnes, Roger Bradbury, Eric Peterson, Nick Cutler, Patrick Murphy, Rodolfo Canet-Castelló, and Marty Knapp. If you don't see yours or find your name above, no need to despair, as I have several other sets planned.

Details:

1. Submitted by Charlie Dunton of Yorktown, Virginia, USA. "I took this photo of my granddaughter during a visit to a local Five Guys restaurant for lunch. I spent the entire time photographing her, ending up with over 200 images. This was one of the few times she gave any indication I was even there." There's much more to Charlie's story, and it's pretty sweet, but I'll save it for when I do individual posts about the pictures.
2. Submitted by Rob Spring of Barre, Vermont, USA. "Here is a photo of my grandson, Waylon, with his dad, my son-in-law. This was the last ride on the swing that my kids used more than 30 years ago. The swing was attached to a limb of an ancient but dying Vermont sugar maple which was cut down the next day after standing in what is now our front yard for over 155 years."
3. Submitted by Jerker Andersson of Lund, Sweden. "Early Fall, 2004. My father in law, Håkan, and his first grandchild Elsa have a conversation in the dining room. Over the years since then, my wife Åsa and I have had two more kids, a girl and a boy, and my wife’s father has five grandchildren in all. But this was in the beginning. Sometimes I find it hard to remember what life was like without the kids. Lots of time to spend, I suppose."
4. Submitted by Monika Göhmann of Darmstadt, Germany. "In the image you see my parents with my daughter. My mother hated to have her photograph taken, but my daughter convinced her to sit down with her on this day, because we didn’t have any photo of the three of them together. My parents were 95 (father) and 93 (mother) years old at the time. Only four months later, they had to leave their house to live in an old peoples home; in 2020 they both died. So this image is a true treasure for my family!"
5. Submitted by Marc Vayssières of Davis, California, USA. "When my wife was dying of cancer a visit by our granddaughter was the only thing that could still cheer her up. Completely oblivious of the tubes and other medical devices Aveline would climb in the bed and cuddle with her Nana for a little book reading."
6. Submitted by Kent McColl Wiley of Earlysville, Virginia, USA. "A photo circa 1900 that contains many relatives on my mother's side of the family, by the Wadd Brothers. My grandmother, Jessie McColl Sclater, is the young girl with a lace collar on the front left. She is in front of her grandfather, John Cunningham MaClure, of the Royal Engineers who established the white settlement of Abbotsford, BC. His wife, my grandmother's grandmother, Martha MacEntyre MaClure, is to his left, and to her left is my great grandmother Susan MaClure McColl. Photo courtesy of Vancouver Archives."
7. Submitted by Jeremy Fagan of Liverpool, UK. "My Dad died about five years ago, in the early hours of a Sunday morning. We drove down to see my Mum, and by the time we got there, there wasn’t anything practical to do, so we went to Rockingham Castle, and my daughters played with their Grandma. Memory is a funny thing—I could have sworn that I took this picture that day, but when I looked for this picture for the Baker’s Dozen, I see that it was actually at the same place about six weeks later when we’d gone down again to help sort out Dad’s books and CDs. My Mum had cared for Dad for nearly a decade, and this picture shows her now being able to give them all of her attention, on a beautiful Spring day. She’s just been with us for a week this summer, and the three of them are still this close."
8. Submitted by Paul Martini of Bluff, Utah, USA. "My granddaughter Blaire in an approximately 800–1,000-year-old Anasazi/ancestral Puebloan kiva."
9. Submitted by John Gordon of Kalamunda, Western Australia. "Tabitha and Angus, my grandchildren, fooling around on the front deck at a beach cottage we rented at a small Indian Ocean coastal town several hours north of Perth, Western Australia, in 2008. They were both natural models and I was fortunate to get this with my then new-to-me digital camera, a tiny Nikon P5100 point-and-shoot. I love the pose and the colours. Tabitha later was in high demand as a model for several years and Angus was head-hunted for the junior squad of a professional UK soccer team. Today, she is applying to do her PhD at one of Australia’s most prestigious Universities and Angus is enrolled in an environmental science degree. Tempus fugit!"
10. Submitted by Chris Kern of Rockville, Maryland, USA. "This photograph was made in the backyard of our family home in Leonia, New Jersey, sometime during the summer of 1951 by my father, Gene Kern (1914–2010). The subjects are his father, Robert (1886–1963), and my sister, Robin (b. 1949). It was shot with one of the best film cameras I've ever used, a prewar Zeiss Contax II with a collapsible 50mm Sonnar lens, which my grandfather purchased in New York from a German-Jewish refugee—reportedly for an exorbitant price because he wanted to help the fellow out without embarrassing him by appearing to offer charity—and which I inherited many years later as a teenager."
11. Submitted by Michael Gay of Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. "While visiting our local botanical garden, my 'wood nymph' granddaughter exclaimed, 'Hey, Granddaddy, check this out.' She picked the setting, struck the pose, then BAM, I took the shot."
12. Submitted by Craig P. Beyers of Ashburn, Virginia, USA. "A picture of my grandson, taken with my iPhone on a Disney cruise with my daughter and family. Benjamin was impatient as we waited for lunch on the ship and was unable to stay still. His father placed him on the window sill (Porthole sill? Porthole surround?) where he stood, sat, and finally—at my urging as I visualized this photo—lay down and stayed still for less than a minute. This was the best of the multiple photos I took. I like it because of his look, the lovely clouds in the background, and the way the porthole and surround acts like a leading line to bring your eye into the photo. While the clouds are the whitest and brightest part of the image, the slight glow on Benjamin’s face also draws your eye. His curved body laying on the porthole surround complements the surround and the porthole. I printed this and a picture of his sister as gifts for my daughter, which she’s framed and has in her house. I’ve done the same and have both pictures in our apartment."
13. Submitted by William Schneider of Athens, Ohio, USA. "Not having any children or grandchildren myself, I'm glad that you offered other options for entry. This is a photograph of me in 1950 with my maternal grandmother. Readily apparent from my father's photo, he and my grandmother had a wicked sense of humor when they got together. Their personalities still live for me in this photo. When he died, I inherited his collection of Kodachrome slides and the 35mm Kodak Retina camera that he used. I spent about half a year working part-time to clean away mold and digitize the slides. It was a lot of work, but there are so many treasured memories in the pictures."

Thanks to everyone who participated! This was a lot of fun.

Mike

Camera of the Week:
The full-frame mirrorless Canon EOS R6 features the same 20-MP CMOS image sensor and image processor as the EOS-1D X Mark III, and most of the up-to-the-minute features that anyone but a dedicated specialist could want. Plus native access to Canon's latest R lenses.

The above is a link to Amazon from TOP. Here's the new edition of our most recent Book of the Week, Bystander, as a link to The Book Depository. The following logo is also a link:

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:

James: "I am guessing that anyone with grandchildren would pick the same number 1. Well done Charlie Dunton! And one out of two hundred is not a bad keeper rate.  ;-)  "

Mike replies: Oops. With all the care I took in editing and formatting this, I still kinda messed up. Originally I had numbered the pictures 1 through 13 just as a key to connect them with the corresponding verbal matter below. But then I got the idea of putting a thumbnail next to the writeups, which obviated the need for the numbers. Then a few comments and emails made me realize that it was too easy to associate the numbers under the pictures with a ranking, i.e., best to worst. That's not what I intended. They're in a visual order I thought was effective, but it's not a ranking. So now I've put the name of the person who sent the picture in parentheses below each picture...but it's too complicated to remove the numbers from the formatting below (in the TypePad compositor, once you start a number series it becomes automatic), so I've left those in. I'll learn to do this blogging thing someday.

JOHN B GILLOOLY: "I really enjoyed this process and then seeing the final images. I also find it fascinating and instructive that on first pass through the images, some seem quite 'regular.' Nice photos but not necessarily photos that might rise to the top. But in context, with the small anecdote that accompanies each image, it all comes together. It pushes me again to remember that doing more with fewer images is crucial. Thanks for this BD—looking forward to additional iterations of this set and the next BD."

Mike replies: This is one of the things I'll talk about when I write about some of the individual pictures.

Martin Doonan: "As an outside observer, number 5 really struck me the most—it is the one picture here that told the full story by itself without me needing the accompanying text."

Stipulated!

Sent in by Roger Bradbury. Read more below.

Final 21: I'm down to 21 in the Baker's Dozen selection, and it wasn't easy. Should have it finished up today or tomorrow. For some reason I'm afflicted with heavy procrastination with these things. Maybe I just don't like being judgmental.

A pleasure: This has been the most fun for me of any of these so far. I like families, I like kids, I like pictures that show relationships, and I like pictures that show emotions. And I like pictures that respect photography's relationship with both time and the vagaries of access (more about that below). I feel privileged that people are willing to share some of their favorite family pictures with me. So as you might imagine, it's been a lot of fun to engage with these 112 submissions.

99 nos: I've been worried, however, about what I might inadvertently have done to my own poor blog! Only dedicated participants in the "life of this site," if you will, would submit their pictures for a Baker's Dozen—and what I've done is to ask them for deeply personal and meaningful pictures that involve some of the most precious people in their whole lives. And then I'm going to reject 99 out of the 112 submissions, and leave 99 readers smarting? Is that smart?

No losers: If the screenwriters whose TV shows and movies I've been watching all my life have it right, then "stipulated" is a legal term for something that's going to be accepted without argument—"an agreement that a certain fact is true or uncontested," according to upcounsel.com, a legal site. So let's just stipulate this: all of the pictures submitted are pretty darn wonderful, and, in almost every case, I can see why you treasure them. So, no losers. If yours isn't chosen, no hard feelings, please? It doesn't mean it's not wonderful. It's just that 112 doesn't fit into 13.

Subsets: I've been toying with another idea...that I might present first the Baker's Dozen, but then also a couple of other groupings. For instance, the black-and-white submissions could make a strong subgroup...I'd even be leaving good ones out of that. And individual portraits of kids could make another subset. One or two of those will make the top 13, but there are more good ones than that, for sure.

Discussion: I'm also going to do a few posts talking about a few of the pictures I'm choosing and why I think they succeed as photographs, technically and aesthetically. I'm finding I have a lot to say, which is ground zero for any writer.

About the illustration: See what I mean? Anyone but a sociopath can see why this family loves this lovely shot. Sent in by longtime reader Roger Bradbury of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England (I forgot to ask people to indicate whether it's their own picture or not. Some of them obviously aren't). "Brothers Conal and Edan with their Grannie Vera at a family gathering, twelve years ago," Roger writes. "The boys are my nephews, and Vera was my mum; she passed away three years ago."

...And Yr. Hmbl. Ed. sneaks another extra in (this Baker is being especially generous). And now I'll say what I meant by "the vagaries of access" and its relationship to time: no one on Earth can take that picture of Conal and Edan and Grannie Vera now; nor will they ever be able to again. That's part of what makes the 112 submissions I've been looking at so special.

Back to work on it, and more soon.

Mike

Roger Bradbury replies: "It was a nice surprise to see the photo of my mum and nephews when I came to TOP and yes, I did take this photo. When Mum passed away I became the keeper of the family photos. She had sorted the photos into albums and captioned them with names and dating information. The largest album is 'Photographs From 1959.' I was born early that year, and some of the pictures on the first page are 'Roger 10 weeks, me and Whisky' (our dog). That would be March '59. The last photo in the album is of my brother Alan (with a beard!) in October 1985. Without Mum's captions we would be guessing about dates and who some of the subjects were, and I think she was looking ahead; one day it would be too late to ask her. I now realise that I haven't shown the photo above to anybody else! There's a family gathering coming up so I'll make some copies and give them out. I'll make sure there's a caption to go with it."

Camera of the Week:
The full-frame mirrorless Canon EOS R6 features the same 20-MP CMOS image sensor and image processor as the EOS-1D X Mark III, and most of the up-to-the-minute features that anyone but a dedicated specialist could want. Plus native access to Canon's latest R lenses.

The above is a link to Amazon from TOP. Here's the new edition of our most recent Book of the Week, Bystander, as a link to The Book Depository. The following logo is also a link:

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:

Sunday Support Group: Pictures with Heart (and the Baker's Dozen Deadline)

Photo by John Gillooly Sr.

I mentioned earlier that I'd announce the deadline for the current Baker's Dozen (here's the link) as we got closer to it, and it's time: I think the deadline should be a week from now, next Sunday, the 15th, end of day.

I've enjoyed this past week a whole lot, and I feel honored. (I sometimes think I do these baker's dozens simply for my own pleasure.) It's been a privilege to see so many personal pictures, mostly of people who are precious to you. So much warmth and love and affection. It shakes me to think that I'm going to have to pick thirteen; how do you tell someone that his or her favorite picture of one or more of his or her favorite people isn't going to make the cut? I think I need to stipulate that ALL of the photographs I'm seeing are each wonderful in their way, and that the finished dozen+1 is only a sampling of the submissions as a whole. We'll kick questions of good/better/best to the curb.

Take this photograph by John Hunter:

I live in the beautiful rolling hills of Northumberland county, just north of Lake Ontario, a stone's (vigorous) throw from Keuka Lake. My grandson, Hikaru, is seen here celebrating his seventh birthday at Grandma and Grandpa's house in the country. Though his legs were too short to reach the pedals, he insisted on trying to drive the lawnmower and then, once he got the hang of it, he just took off over the field at full speed, laughing uproariously. I like that it so clearly shows the wonderful exuberance of being so young and happy. What a great joy it is for grandparents to be a part of that experience.

It's not by most measures a great or even a good photograph, and it's not going to win any prizes, figuratively or, in the present case, literally—this won't be one of the final 13. It's blurry, indifferently composed, a little too dark, and Hikaru's face is almost turned too much away from the camera. Yet how can you not like it? I can see easily why John loves it. It's got important things going for it that so many "better" pictures don't: it's got heart, and meaning. John has described what it means to him perfectly well, so I need add nothing. What Hikaru is feeling is there to see. It's an authentic moment. Add in that it's a grandfather's-eye view and the element of affection comes into stronger focus too.

We're seeing Hikaru's mastery of the machine as well—although he can't reach the pedals from the seat, he's got it down. I like that element. I was struck recently to learn that the late Prince Philip said the purpose of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award, conceived by himself and his former headmaster Karl Hahn—I had never heard of it till he died—is to enable young people to experience the feeling of success. "If you can get a young person to succeed in any one activity," HRH said, "then that feeling of success will spread over into many others." What a compassionate and flexible goal: simply to help another person experience success, no matter the way. It's essentially for young people to experience failure, because the earlier and more often they have to deal with failure the better they'll learn to cope with it, but we shouldn't forget that it's equally important to let them feel the good feelings of success, mastery, and agency too.

Jamaica Plain
So let's turn to the old snapshot by John Gillooly Sr. at the top of the post. It's another photo that's not going to get past the final cut for whatever that's worth. But now read what his son, also named John (a frequent and good commenter here), tells us about it:

The Gillooly grandchildren in a running race in front of 20 Edge Hill Street in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston in August 1973. The photograph was taken by my father, John Gillooly, Sr., when he was 26 years old. He was the ninth of the 11 kids that grew up in the three bedroom house on the far left. His father died when he was 10 in 1957.

The organizer of this "race" is the oldest brother, Ed Gillooly, Jr. who was a prominent sports writer for the Boston Record American and Boston Herald. He was at least the third generation of sportwriters in the Gillooly line and one of the first to travel full time with the Celtics and Red Sox in the 1950s and 1960s.

The participants in the race were all born in the 1960s. (I was born in 1971 and was probably on someone's lap with a bottle during this race!) This image, like most of its kind, has taken on new meaning throughout the years. Uncle Ed, the eldest, was the first to go. Aunt Honey on the stoop and her baby sister Susan, seated, both passed away at relatively normal ages. But in recent years we have lost three of the runners quite prematurely.

We lost Joanne, the redhead in the middle, with outfit to match her hair, in her 50s almost a decade ago.

We lost Jim, far right in the green, two years ago at the age of 53. And the birthday boy on this day, Mark, in the brown pants and vest, passed away at just shy of 50 about three years ago. I was an only child until the age of nine and we were all very close growing up.

This has long been one of my favorite images. Such a genuine record of a very specific moment in time. So many stories rest within this photo. Some very difficult lives captured in this fleeting instant. Like most big families, the trajectories of the kids vary widely and that trajectory greatly impacts the generations that follow. For all of the trials of the decades, those 11 siblings remained very close for their entire lives and produced dozens of grandchildren.

Through my eyes, this will always be a photograph of the "grandkids." At this point in 2021, four of those grandkids in the photo have grandchildren of their own. I've thought about re-enacting this image many times!

Thanks for the prompt Mike!

See what I mean? A description that's full of heart. It lets us see and feel what the photo means to John and his family.

Anyway, these are good examples of why all the pictures I'm seeing this week are good even when they're not fated for the final dozen+1. And why nobody should feel dismissed or disrespected even if they don't get chosen. Because I do respect and accept the love and affection in them, the life, the heart, and what they mean to you.

Pixels on the head of a pin
Years ago there was a large-format guru (long dead now) who had strong opinions and intolerant demands about tolerances. Such-and-such a film and developer were best, 8x10 was better than 120, stout tripods were needed, everything had to be just so. He himself took only pictures under conditions strictly controlled to be optimal; never of people unless they could stand stock still and be described by the tested-and-approved lens as exactly as statues. Yet when he held a contest once, the winner he picked was a 35mm shot of a few kids in the back of a pickup truck. I guess it had some elusive quality, some elusive feeling. Of life, maybe.

Today all the specifics are different, but we still want to argue good/better/best in terms of all sorts of things that just aren't the most important things. Corner sharpness, fractions of an f-stop, how many pixels on the head of a pin. The pictures I'm seeing this week matter to people, and have meaning to people. I'd rather aspire to pictures that have heart first and foremost, and let all those other things follow if I can manage them, than the other way around.

Here's the link to the Baker's Dozen again. Send yours!

Mike
(Thanks to John Hunter and John Gillooly)

Book of the Week

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk M.D. "Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence." A tough slog of a read, but full of revelations. And it reviews many strategies, both conventional and alternative, toward relief and healing.

This is a link to Amazon from TOP. The following logo is also a link:

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:

David Dyer-Bennet: "One of the good things, socially, about how heavily people submit to these Baker's Dozen 'contests' is that, with such a low acceptance rate, it's easier not to take being left out as a total slam. It merely means some others of the hundreds of photos submitted were at least a hair better."

Mike replies: And often it just means I chose one picture rather than another one I might also have chosen just as easily. Which should provide further comfort....

John Hunter: "Thanks for your kind remarks for a picture I knew was not even sort of good, but sent anyway. You've caught the idea behind the thing, and I'm glad more people now have had the opportunity to see this hilarious and dear moment. Shot while running downhill through the hay at dusk with my venerable Fuji X10, it had no hope of having any compositional or technical quality. And yet...."

Kye Wood: "I think the photo of the footrace is fabulous. How is it an automatic cull?

Mike the sly Ed. replies: Well, you'll notice it did kinda get featured. It's a trick I have of adding a few more than just the "one extra for good measure."

JOHN B GILLOOLY: "Always a thrill to open up TOP and see a submission featured. Thanks for sharing that image that my father shot and the story with it."

New Baker's Dozen Call for Work: 'Grandkids'

Me and my beloved grandmother, ages 71 and 15. This picture would not make the cut even though I love it.

A "Baker's Dozen" is a portfolio of a dozen pictures by readers, with one extra for good measure, juried from your submissions by Yr. Hmbl. Ed.

Each time we do this we have fun and create a nice little virtual group show. If you'd like to see older ones, click on the "Baker's Dozen" category in the right-hand sidebar.

I promised we'd do 'grandchildren' as the next subject, and here we are.

Your submission (please, only one) may be taken with any camera and may be of any vintage, as long as you either took the picture yourself or it is a family picture belonging to your family. Anything relating to the theme is potentially fair game, as long as you know the relationship for certain.

How to Submit

This is a call for work. By submitting, you give me permission to reproduce the small JPEG of your picture on TOP and that's it. Any and all rights remain where they are.

To submit, use the subject line:

BDGrandkids

Just like that...no spaces, spelled exactly like that, no variations. Capital "G" in "Grandkids." 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.

Deadline to be announced when we get close to it. The results will appear in (ahem!) less than 856 days (I'll get this here egg off my face real soon now).

Email ONE (1) JPEG, 800 pixels wide, saved in sRGB. Include in the email your name, where you live (don't forget that), and, briefly, what you want to tell other TOP readers about your picture. Technical details aren't needed unless they're especially interesting.

Lots of people write a short 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" if it gets 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.

So, five components:

"BDGrandkids" in the SUBJECT LINE;
PICTURE, 800 pixels wide in sRGB;
NAME;
WHERE YOU LIVE;
Your brief COMMENTS about the shot.

And please, put everything in one email. If you forget anything, start over...don't send anything in a separate email please. Also: check that your email client is not reducing inclusions to thumbnail size. I need to see a full 800-pixel-wide JPEG.

Have fun picking! I know it could be tough.  :-)

Mike

Book of Interest:

Photographs Not Taken: a collection of photographers' essays, edited by Will Steacy (Daylight Books; Second Revised ed. edition, 2012). Recommended by Mike Chisholm, who has good taste. This is a link to Amazon from TOP.

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:

Gordon Lewis: "Not to pick nits or split hairs here, but aren't any children someone's grandchildren, even if said grandparent is no longer among the living? That being the case, this seems to me to be a distinction without a real difference. Does a grandparent therefore need to be visible in the photo? Your example would seem to imply that but your stated requirements aren't clear. I suggest you do yourself and potential entrants a favor by being more explicit about what you are and are not looking for.

Mike replies: If a TOP reader tells me it's his or her grandchild, I'll believe it. 

In light of the previous post, however, I'd want to give readers the latitude to be inventive with the theme if they want to be. I assume most submissions would be of the reader's own grandchild(ren), although that's not required.

I'm not conceited enough to think I can know all of the ways somebody else might interpret the theme. For instance, one thing that popped into my mind as I was mulling over the concept is a picture I think I saw in LIFE magazine many decades ago, showing the man who would have been King of America at that time if George Washington had decided to become King. The guy was a farmer in some Midwestern state and was pictured standing out in the middle of a field. Does that meet the theme? I think it does, but it's a matter of interpretation.

In a contest like this, one way to approach it is to make the best picture you can of a grandchild. Another way entirely is to see how creative you can be with the concept of the designated theme. My guess is that most submissions will be the former, but I'm interested in seeing the latter too, if anyone cares to go that way.

As far as your counterexample of any picture of any child (actually any person of any age would do just as well), the problem is that nothing in the picture would indicate a grandparent-grandchild relationship, so I would think that all such entries would fail at the theme, unless there was some pertinent explanation.

Phil Thomas: "Mike, your post has done two things, both of which were very valuable. Firstly it made me look back over old pictures of my children with their grandparents when my children were much younger (they are now both teenagers). Secondly it made me realise that I haven't taken any photos of the kids and grandparents together recently, and this needs to be redressed. So thanks, on both counts."

Baker's Dozen: In the Museum (Complete)

Photo by Benjamin Kelley, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. "I’ve been photographing my daughter looking at art for a number of years now. She was newly four here, in 2015. This was taken at our local museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, with John White Alexander’s Isabella and the Pot of Basil."

Photo by Rich Barbara, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. "I had to set the camera down on a bench to keep the ISO fairly low. Was afraid they’d move before I got the shot but I figured when the man sat down on the floor I had a bit of time. Taken at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh with an Olympus E-M10 and a 25mm ƒ/1.8 lens."

Photo by Albano García, Buenos Aires, Argentina. "I took this photo a couple of months before your call for work at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes here in Buenos Aires. My daugher Margarita loves museums, but that day she'd had enough.  :-)  Shot with a Sony a6000 with 16–50mm kit zoom I bought from my dear friend Juan Buhler."

Photo by David Mackenzie, Bedford, New Hampshire, USA. "We were running late one day in Paris and decided to visit the Louvre about half an hour before closing. Given the short amount of time we had we headed directly for the Mona Lisa. When we turned the corner into the exhibit space we were met by this. A docent told me were lucky to arrive so late so that the crowd was much thinner than normal. At least nobody was taking a selfie."

...Except the guy in front just to the left of the painting. And maybe one guy on the opposite side, just to the left of the end of the DSLR lens. Hard to tell. —MJ.

Photo by Stelios Karouzakis, London, United Kingdom. "This is a picture I took in 2015 outside the British Museum in London, with my new to me then (secondhand) DSLR. I'd been shooting for years with nothing but a rangefinder and a 35mm so that was an all-new setup for me. I remember I was determined to get a picture I liked that day for no particular reason, just to please myself. I was paying particular attention to the sun. I like the soft light and the gestures of the children. I have it printed and framed in my living room."

This is a particular favorite of mine Stelios. —MJ

Photo by Leon Droby, Uxbridge, Massachusetts, USA. "Being a local, I usually go to this museum a couple of times a month. And no matter how many times I go, there’s always something interesting there. Taken at the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts, with a Fujifilm X100F."

Photo by John Denniston, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. November 16th, 2018—A wall being painted in readiness for a new exhibition at the Equinox Gallery in Vancouver, B.C.

Why I liked this... —MJ

Photo by Sergio Bartelsman, Bogotá, Distrito Capital, Colombia.

Photo by Nick Van Zanten, Grand Haven, Michigan, USA. Shot with a Nikon D700, 1/250 at ƒ/4. "Two of the potential voters in Art Prize 2010. Launched in 2009 as an experiment, Art Prize was designed to be a bottom-up rather than top-down art contest. Offering the largest cash prize in the art world, the venue, downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan, was open to any artist. Any visitor could vote via the internet for their favorite piece. The experiment worked. ArtPrize has continued to grow and evolve."

Photo by Maggie Osterberg, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. "This is in the pelagic pool viewing area at The Monterey Bay Aquarium and the odd fish you see is an Ocean Sunfish, or Mola Mola. The giant tank held a variety of fish and mid-sea invertebrates, including a young Great White Shark. What I love about this shot is that it reminds me of 'Mystery Science Theater 3000,' with phone-toting tourists standing in for Joel, Crow, and Tom Servo. The kids in the lower left, putting their hands on the glass are endearing and, if I’m honest, a little bit creepy."

In the submissions there were a number of creative departures from the conventional idea of a museum—an "old village" museum of historical structures (Ronny Nilsen), a permanently docked warship (Kristoffer Tripplaar), the exterior of an alternative museum on the streets of an old town (Ray Maines), even the interior of a huge freight elevator at SFMoMA (Saul Rosenfield).

Photo by Markus Fischer, Germany. "This is entitled 'Inside the Camera'—which is where it was created, inside the room-size camera obscura located in The Photographers' Gallery in Central London. Hope that passes for a museum…great place by the way."

Photo by Mark Hobson, Adirondack Mountains near Lake Placid, New York USA. "My grandson in the Canadian War Museum, Ottawa, Canada. Over the past year I have been 'converting' hundreds of my pictures into an 'old' snapshot format/look. The purpose is to amass a large body of 'snapshots' which I then place in POD (print on demand) photo books. My intent is to create legacy books which have the look and feel of the traditional/classic family photo album. Enough copies of each album/photo book are printed to distribute to immediate family members. In addition, I put 20–15 individual 5x5" prints into boxes and leave them around my house so family and visitors can handle and look at them."

As for the "good measure" 13th picture, it's humorous, but a little risqué too. I don't think it will offend anyone, but perhaps you should consider it NSFW. Therefore I'm hiding it behind this page break. Proceed if appropriate.

Baker's Dozen: At the Museum (Part I)

Photo by Benjamin Kelley, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Photo by Rich Barbara, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Photo by Albano García, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Tired
I'll say a few words about each of the above pictures, but out of order. Last first.

The third picture here was hard to pick. Probably a dozen people sent pictures on the theme of museumgoers resting, from a variety of viewpoints, and I could easily have picked four or five others as great representatives of the submissions. All had their charms and points of view, none were poor.

I do recall reading that people in general (not just kids!) have a tendency to overdo it when visiting museums. There's a strong tendency to want to see everything or cover it all. We've set aside the day, we've made the trip, and most especially we've paid our admission fee, and we've got to get our money's worth! So we trudge around the museum until we've had enough, then we trudge some more because we haven't seen this section or that room. (This is an example of the Sunk Cost Fallacy according to Richard Thaler). So we typically wear ourselves out and make ourselves cross. I have vivid memories of time moving with glacial slowness when I was a kid. No memories of being bored in museums, but I do have a distinct memory of being stuck at the Milwaukee Symphony while the orchestra sawed and moaned on and on and on and on while I squirmed in my skin. I sympathize with this little girl (her eyes are open, you'll notice—she's not sleeping).

In picking this from the others I do think I was influenced by the fact that I'm familiar with a lot of Albano's work. He took this one [a year and] a couple of months ago at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, in Buenos Aires. "My daugher Margarita loves museums, but that day she'd had enough.  :-)  Shot on a Sony a6000 with 16–50mm kit zoom I bought from my dear friend Juan Buhler."

Essential transaction
When I saw the top picture I reacted as a photographer, not a viewer, which is a common mistake of mine. Having spent so many years as a photographer I became sensitive to what are called tonal mergers, where two parts of the picture that should be separated are the same tone and blend too much. An example of the problem I usually turn to is Portugal 1976 by Josef Koudelka...(click on the image at the link to see the larger version). I've seen prints of this where there's just the barest highlight between the nun's head and the man's jacket—crucial, in my judgement—and prints where there isn't. The latter would be a tonal merger. So if I were Benjamin Kelley I would have just moved to the side a bit to set his daughter's whole head against the lighter background of the wall.

But I didn't take the picture, and yes, there's a rim of highlight there, and no, it doesn't ruin the picture in any way, so...here's an example of where I shouldn't look at the picture like I had been the photographer, but rather just put my "viewer's hat" on and appreciate the picture that's being shown to me. You shouldn't react to a finished picture by thinking of how you might have framed it differently if you were the one taking it! That's not fair. One might as sensibly react that museums shouldn't hang paintings where they're struck by direct sunlight. That would be another first response to the photo that would interfere with seeing it for what it is. Anyway, once I let go of my first reaction, the photo grew on me more, and I found myself liking the obvious implication of childlike wonder and the contrast between the real sunlight in the room and the mysterious glow of the light depicted in the painting. And it's beautiful, and I'm just old-fashioned enough to believe that that never hurts.

It sums up the basic, essential transaction of museums. They display wondrous things, we look and wonder. Benjamin writes, "I’ve been photographing my daughter looking at art for a number of years now. She was newly four here, in 2015. This was taken at our local museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, with John White Alexander’s Isabella and the Pot of Basil."

Punctum

Punctum: A concept from Roland Barthes' book Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography.

1. To wound.
2. Denoting the wounding, personally touching detail [of a photograph] which establishes [for the viewer] a direct relationship with the object or person within it.

—Urban Dictionary

As for the middle picture, it's perfectly nice as a set piece, but then I noticed that whitish streak in front of the seated man. After a flash of puzzlement, I realized it's his other hand. That's something that would be considered an "imperfection" by some, but to me it's the punctum, the peculiar little odd detail that brings the rest of the picture alive. I realized the seated man is energetically gesticulating at one of the paintings, and from there I imagine his energized voice as he expounds on (enthuses over? Dismisses?) whichever of the paintings he's gesturing at, and from there I go to his rather mysteriously robed and apparently somewhat hunched hearer, and from there to their relationship and their possible history together as—what? Spouses, friends, student and teacher? Those thoughts brings the picture alive for me and draws me into its aliveness. From there I can appreciate the set piece, the nice formal qualities of the picture.

Rich took the picture at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a with an Olympus E-M10 and a 25mm ƒ/1.8 lens.

Photo by David Mackenzie, Bedford, New Hampshire, USA

Last in this first installment is this happy shot from Dave Mackenzie. I read a book about the Mona Lisa once...it's curious how the painting got the status it has. Dave relates: "We were running late one day in Paris and decided to visit the Louvre about half an hour before closing. Given the short amount of time we had we headed directly for the Mona Lisa. When we turned the corner into the exhibit space we were met by this. A docent told me were lucky to arrive so late so that the crowd was much thinner than normal. At least nobody was taking a 'selfie.'"

...Except I do see at least one person taking a selfie! At the top of the crowd above the striped hat. I imagine many people have taken pictures of this scene, but Dave's is a good one. I like it.

[Part II will appear on March 28th, 2021*.]

Mike

*Just kidding. Sorry I lost the thread on this. It got engulfed in my unmanageability and the oceanic disorganization of all the raw material (inside and outside of my head) that I trawl through to make TOP. I shouldn't say when I'll get to the other nine, but hopefully it won't take a year for Part II...though I never know...sigh.....

If you need a reminder (and why would you not?), I made a call for work on the theme of "At the Museum" an entire year ago (I think exactly, though I haven't checked) and then I very badly dropped the ball and just didn't come through with the edited picks. Now with more time at home, I decided to address the problem by chipping away at it a few pictures at a time. I apologize for the delay—the long delay—but if I'm honest there's really no excuse. I'm sorry. Mea culpa.

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.

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

Dogman: "Excellent choices to start off a new Baker's Dozen! Reading the article, I'm reminded how I no longer look at photos as a photographer but as a viewer. A 'consumer,' if you will, of photographs and images. When I looked at photos with the photographer's eye, I looked for errors and flaws. Then I came to grips with the fact that the photographs I like the best are candid moments and found objects, none of which are ever perfectly arranged subjects. I like the imperfect elements that make their way into photographs. They become Barthes' punctum for me."

Benjamin Polidario: "The photographer's/viewer's dilemma: is it similar to a preacher's dilemma when he listens to another preach? I often critique instead of just basking in the message. Bad, Bad, Bad."

David Lee (edited comment): "Nice post. Your comments about people trying to get the most of their very expensive museum tickets are spot on. I was talking about this with my son not long ago. The Met used to have a policy that the price was 'suggested,' so you could either pay full price or whatever you could pay. Now that policy changed and you are charged full price. Not sure I agree with it. The Met has a lot of works that were given to them for free in order to give all the people a chance to enjoy them. The Gelman Collection comes to mind, for example. I think that people should be charged as in a parking lot, full first hour and then on 15 minute increments. A lot of people go the museum to get the selfie and buy a souvenir in the shop.

"I used to have a layover in Chicago. We used to stay in The Palmer House, not far from The Art Institute. They had the same policy as The Met and I took full advantage of it. Paying maybe a third of the suggested price and then going to see the four or five paintings I loved. In and out in about one hour. A visit to Central Camera in Wabash Avenue was also a required stop."

Mike replies: It was one of the great things about going to art school in downtown Washington, D.C.: a lot of museums are open to the public, so you can pop in and out. I would often do what you describe, just kill some time by "visiting" a favorite artwork for a few minutes, or find a peaceful corner as a place to read.

MHMG: "I do admire the first photograph in this Part I series. Great for the photo opportunity, but shame on the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for allowing direct sunlight to strike the painting. We're talking 40,000+ lux illumination levels on the lower half of that painting, and yah, the museum conservators could have filtered the UV radiation at the skylight/window source, but they will find out in just a few years how much fading can occur with blue wavelength radiation at such high intensity levels. Just sayin'...epic fail for museum staff, great shot by the photographer!"

[MHMG is an expert on light fading and image permanence—Ed.]

Rod S.: "The top picture by Benjamin Kelley is really quite lovely. My initial thoughts were surprise that direct sunlight was being allowed to strike the painting, but simultaneously 'wow, isn’t it beautiful.' I understand your point about the tonal convergence, but in this instance it is very slight. Benjamin has chosen to follow the more important principle of keeping his perspective true. If he had done as you suggested and stepped to his left, both the verticals and horizontals of the painting and floor would have been skewed out of their true relationship. The result would be ugly and 'unworthy.'

"Part of the success of this photograph comes from the gaze of the child, while another, perhaps under-appreciated, contribution comes from the inclusion of a child, with her expected animated manner, injecting an informal point of contrast into a structured and formal setting. Bravo, Benjamin."

Ben: "What a pleasant surprise it was to open TOP this weekend to find my photograph there—right after putting the subject to bed, in fact!

"Thanks to everyone for the kind words, and thanks to Mike for featuring the photo. It's a favorite of mine; obviously it carries personal meaning for me, so it's nice to read positive comments from others. Chris's comment echoes my own feeling about the composition, that I like how the top of her head continues the line of the shadow. Maybe I'll try to print it sometime, see how it turns out. And yes, the strong light on the painting is concerning. Perhaps they've corrected it...maybe once the museum opens again I'll go have a look! Thanks again, I'm quite flattered. Hope everyone is staying healthy and keeping up positive energies!

"P.S. Regarding Moose's comment and photo, my wife and I got married at the Worcester Art Museum.  :-)  Funny, the little coincidences...."

Editing the Baker's Dozen

I now have about 300 submissions for the Baker's Dozen, so it's off to work on that.

Here's my process:

• First I search for "BDMuseum" in Mail, which brings up all the submissions.
• I've looked at most already when they came in, but I'll go through them again slowly and look again.
• After waiting at least a few hours and maybe till tomorrow, I'll go through and flag all the ones I think are prospects. With that many submissions, there will probably be 30–60 that I'll flag.
• Then I'll go through the flagged ones again. At this point the pictures are already familiar to me, so I'm looking for which ones seem to have "legs," staying power. I'll be pretty aware of which ones I like more than when I first saw them, and which ones less.
• Then I'll pick the ones I think have to be included no matter what the final set looks like...the "shoo-ins," to use an old expression. I might have to choose between repeated subjects. For instance, in this batch I got a number of pictures of museumgoers sleeping or resting, at least three of which I already know I like, and a number of "abstracts" of architectural details. I probably wouldn't include more than one of each in the final set (if that).
• At that point I'll have a nucleus, so the task becomes to fill in around the main picks to make a coherent, balanced set and a pleasing sequence. I can't tell you how I do this or what I look for; it's mainly done by "feel" you might say. Does anything look out of place? Do two pictures have echoes of each other and need some space between them in the sequence? This is the stage that I'll also check for unintended related elements...for example, do multiple pictures feature strollers, or one particular dominant color? I might choose to mitigate that, but maybe not. On the flip side, there may be something I need to balance out some choices I've already made. One thing I don't consider is the sex of the photographer or where they come from. If three pictures in a row are by women or there turn out to be four pictures by photographers from Italy, that won't bother me. I also don't play favorites with readers who comment a lot, or who I've met, or who might be friends. Well, friends might have a little higher bar than the rest of you. Otherwise it's a pretty level playing field.
• In sequencing I like to start and finish strong, with a strong picture in the middle. But that's not written in stone; maybe there could be some other path, like distant views moving slowly to intimate ones. The pictures sort of tell you what sort of sequence they need. Also, it's not absolutely critical, so there's no sense getting crazy about it. Sometimes one ordering works as well as another.
• Once I have a pretty good fix on the choices and the sequence, I'll review what I have for written material and consider how to present it. For example, in the "Yellow" portfolio I wanted all the pictures close to each other, so I put the written material at the end.

How long will this all take? Well, until I'm satisfied with it—until I feel like I've made the most enjoyable post I can out of the material I have to work with. If that takes four hours total or fourteen, I don't really care. Nobody cares how hard you worked. :-)

Have a nice weekend!

Mike
(Thanks to everyone who submitted)

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(Not) everything must fade away

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'At the Museum' Update

I've gotten about 230 submissions for the Baker's Dozen portfolio. I'll be doing the initial edits no later than this weekend, so if you still want to submit something, plan on doing it before the weekend.

Lots of great stuff so far. This is going to be another tough one to edit.

Mike

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Everything must fade away

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New Baker's Dozen Call For Work: 'In the Museum'

Xander at the Corning Museum of Glass. iPhone snap by Mike.

It's been a while since we had a "Baker's Dozen"—a dozen JPEGs of readers' pictures, with one extra for good measure, curated by moi, AKA Yr. Hmbl. Ed.

Each time we do this we have fun and create a lovely little virtual group show. If you'd like to see older ones, click on the "Baker's Dozen" category in the right-hand sidebar.

I promised we'd do "grandchildren" as the next subject, and we'll get to that someday. But now, inspired by the lovely lead picture in Mark Power's post and the dueling frames in Moose's, I thought we'd try JamesM's idea of "In the Museum."

Any picture taken in, of, or about a museum or art gallery (or anywhere you go to look at art) is fair game.

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:

BDMuseum

Just like that...no spaces, spelled exactly like that, no variations. Capital "M" in "museum." 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, as each time I specify this I do get submissions that don't have the proper header. Those inevitably get lost.

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.

Email ONE (1) JPEG, 800 pixels wide, saved in sRGB. Include in the email your name, where you live (people keep forgetting that), 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 steenkin' web-crawling bots, but I hafta try.

So, five components:

"BDMuseum" 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 get arrested by a museum guard. They're really bored.  :-)

Mike
(Thanks to JamesM)

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Want to help?

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Featured Comments from:

Lynn: "Nice to see the return of the Baker's Dozen! One quick question—does an art gallery qualify as a museum? Methinks it does, as its function is to collect, preserve, curate and display objects of cultural significance; and to educate."

Mike replies: Sure. Feel free to be creative with the idea. One reader submitted a picture taken on a museum ship—an old ship in drydock open to tourists.

Robert Roaldi: "Be fun if there were a bakery museum somewhere."

The End of Yellow

Richard Gonet wrote,

"I really enjoyed viewing this collection. Thank you for initiating this project and curating it. Since we all have different tastes in art, I suspect there are some hidden gems in the ones that were not selected. Is there a way to present the 'runners up' so we can see more of the entries? Even a collection of stripes and rubber duckies would be fun to see."

Do people want to see the "yellow" pictures from the "It Must Be Color" entries? Those are what inspired the yellow idea, and I ended up using none of them in the Yellow post. After that we must move off of yellow, though, because I'm getting a reputation. (For being yellow.)

Mike

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Comments About the 'Yellow' Pictures

Photo by David Stock

I want to thank everybody who participated in the latest "Baker's Dozen" call for work—we received a large-ish number of submissions (about a hundred and sixty) and there were a lot more good ones than were included in the final set.

As usual I could have gone any number of ways with the edit. For example, the three most common subjects among the submissions were road stripes and markings (a number of great ones, but David Stock's simple and whimsical design above won by a whisker for me), flowers, and...little yellow rubber duckie bath toys. At first I thought I would pick a "winner" in all three of those subject-matter categories, but ended up jettisoning that idea in the end as being too programmatic.

The reason was that I was paying attention to sequence. To my mind, the yellows either needed to harmonize or contrast from image to image as you scroll down. The Pressman-Vincent-Poole-Smith sequence (3–6) was decided on pretty early on because they make such a nice progression to the eye, and they're all such super examples of mainstream strategies* that I thought people would identify with. From there we segue to Rich Reusser's picture of daughter Molly—she was a beautiful child and you can almost feel the fatherly adoration emanating from Rich behind the camera, but to me the punctum of that picture is the alarming whatever-you'd-call-it blue of those garish clashing gloves—it took me a long time to acclimate to that! (Additive secondary cyan or aqua is as close as I can come to naming it; the color manages to clash with both Molly's raincoat and Molly.) In Kurt's bathroom picture below Molly, there's a subtle echo of the blue gloves in the not-quite-matching blue of the towel on the rack. I don't think you see that consciously, but try to unsee it now that I've mentioned it.  :-)

As always in editing a set, the problem is flow vs. variety. The cop-out temptation is to pick a set of pictures that are all stylistically similar, but that's almost an affront to the great variety of approaches and subjects you get in any randomly-gathered "group show" (which is really what this amounts to).

And related to that heading, just so you know how much I care about your experience (and my responsibilities), let me just mention as an aside that I received exactly 13 of the aforementioned rubber ducky pictures. [Inset photo by James Hengst.] Do you even know how tempted I was to present all 13 rubber ducky pictures as the entirety of the final 'Yellow' set—as a joke? A joke that would have appealed greatly to the devilish part of my subversive B&W-maven heart. I thought about that idea for three days before I was able to get rid of it. Still kinda makes me chuckle.

Anyway, sequence, and the eye's pleasure in going from one picture to the next with minimal interruption, is why I put the emailed comments from the photographers (if there were any) at the end. I like looking at pictures next to each other, seeing how they play off their neighbors, and to me that's worth the modest inconvenience of separating the texts from the pictures.

Thanks again to everyone who sent work. Honorable mentions include, but are not limited to, Larry Angler, Mike Peters, Bob Gary, Craig Stocks, Marcelo Guarini (loved that one), Scott Campbell, Steve Goldenberg, Cathal Gantly (liked that too), Ricardo Cordeiro, Rod Locket, John Tellaisha, Al DaValle, Douglas Houk, Collin Orthner, Mark E. Johnson, Chris Kern, Ron Mayhew (don't think bringing Ernest Withers into it didn't catch my attention, Ron), Anurag Agnihotri, Animesh Ray, B.D. Parks, Terry Burnes, Randall Teasley, Richard Fox, and Harry Weide. All of their pictures were in the running to the end. There were many more nice ones than that, too.

All much fun for me, so thank you for that.

Finally, in David Stock's picture at the top of this page, do you see the faint faded remnant of an earlier yellow line on the manhole cover? Photographs often show us details we would not have thought to invent.

Mike

* Faux abstract, centered subject, woodsy landscape, critter pic

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Featured Comments from:

Lois Elling: "I was a kid when I saw my first manhole cover with the painted stripe in the wrong position and got such a kick out of it. I still do!"

Matthew O'Brien: "First of all I am not a pixel peeper. I like the Bakers Dozen concept…other than I lose interest between its inception and realisation.

"Aside from that I am curious. I was about to admire the subtle extra line (1<–>1) when I suddenly noticed. The main yellow paint on the manhole cover has a remarkable physical property. It is capable of painting the empty spaces within the grating as well as the cast iron structure. The only elements which should be yellow in the white box below should be cast iron. The gaps should be dark and may contain a few splashes, but should not be the full colour. Maybe there is an interesting explanation. I never would have noticed this if I had not first spotted the 1<–>1 diagonal."

Mike replies: I thought about that too at first (wondering with my reflexive suspicion if there might have been a little Photoshop going on there) but I've observed a road-striping machine in action, and the line, which according to Wikipedia is a sort of thermoplastic resin that has to be pre-heated, goes down onto the road in a thick sort of ribbon, sort of like wet tape. Having seen it, it makes sense to me that it might have enough body when it's new to span small gaps in a grate. If the manhole cover actually is a grate, which I suppose the photo doesn't actually prove. We're getting very geeky here!

Another phil: "Re the manhole, it is unlikely to be a grate, more likely to be indentations to provide a bit of grip for tyres, rather than flat metal which is very slippery when wet. The yellow paint is (as you say) a resin which arrives in blocks and is melted, poured into a 'box' on wheels with a slot on the underside through which the resin flows.(I was a highways civil engineering tech). Longer lines are normally nowadays done with a vehicle which does all the above in one operation. That's also why the original paint still shows in the indentations."

Richard Gonet: "I really enjoyed viewing this collection. Thank you for initiating this project and curating it. Since we all have different tastes in art, I suspect there are some hidden gems in the ones that were not selected. Is there a way to present the 'runners up' so we can see more of the entries? Even a collection of stripes and rubber duckies would be fun to see."

Mike replies: Here are the submissions by Marcelo and Cathal that I mentioned above.

By Marcelo Guarini

By Cathal Gantly

Philomaphos: "Thank you, Mike, for the Baker's Dozen and for your commentary on how you arranged your final choices. I now can't unsee the blue gloves in Richard Reusser's photograph, and I agree with the comments praising Melissa O'Shaughnessy's photograph. I really like the bonus picture by Marcelo Guarini for its quiet, contemplative colour and the mystery it suggests. I agree with Dave Jenkins' comment regarding the photograph by Darren Livingston—it is a striking, unsettling picture. It's been a pleasure to see them all."

Baker's Dozen: Yellow

-

"There is a sun, a light that for want of a better word
I can only call yellow, pale sulphur yellow, pale golden
citron. How lovely yellow is!"

—Vincent Van Gogh

-

By Darren Livingston ¹

By Jim Arthur ²

By Jeff Pressman ³

By Nicolas Vincent ⁴

By Keith Poole ⁵

By Marshall Smith ⁶

By Richard Reusser ⁷

By Kurt Kramer ⁸

By Mark Kinsman ⁹

By Melissa O'Shaughnessy ¹⁰

By Mark Sirota ¹¹

By Gilson Topfstedt ¹²

-

And one more for good measure....

By Rodger Kingston ¹³

-

(Thanks to Jim Arthur for the Vincent Van Gogh quote. —MJ)

Notes

1. Darren Livingston: "This photo was made 40 years ago when I was in Art/Photo school. Tech info: Mamiya 330f with 80mm ƒ/2.8, Ektachrome 200."

2. Jim Arthur: "From last year's office Halloween costume contest. I found this crop in a crowd scene where all the contestants were standing around watching and waiting to be judged. I like the juxtaposition of the happier looking Day of the Dead face with the ceramic tragedy face, and the fact that both chose to line their eyes in yellow. FYI, the mask is mounted on a large cardboard disk that is held up to the face using straps glued to the back. I used a Canon 6D and a Canon 135mm ƒ/2 at ƒ/6.3.

3. Jeff Pressman: "A number of years ago I was in Melbourne, Australia with my family for a wedding. We were just walking around and near the rail station we passed a painted weathered wall when the Aaron Siskind in me screamed out to take a photo. The colors and patterns to my eye worked perfectly as a kind of impressionist work, and this is still one of my favorite 'still life' photos. I had my trusty Fuji X100 with me at the time, which is still a great carrying-around camera for traveling."

4. Nick Vincent: "A straightforward, no-fuss photograph I took last October. Every year, there is a quinta (vineyard) celebrating the end of the harvest season not far from where we live in Portugal. It usually coincides with the most astonishing weather and beautiful autumnal colours in the countryside. This is the first year our hosts had prepared these decorations for the celebration. I could have have gone for more contrast and saturation in the leaves and flowers but I thought I’d let the yellow paint take over the whole of the composition."

5. Keith Poole, Glendale, Arizona: "This was taken at the base of the mountains behind Flagstaff, Arizona (Weatherford Trail), maybe a half mile from the parking area. This was my first real outing with my first real DSLR (Canon 20D) back in 2004. It was a really nice shooting day, I just remember being caught up for hours shooting away at amazing scenery, completely thrilled seeing the photos right away on the screen (film shooter since the '90s), thinking 'these frames are costing me nothing' (ha ha, how little did I know how much I'd spend after that on gear), but in the moment such freedom. I don't even completely recall taking the photo. It's one of those shots that jumped out at me afterwards when viewing on my computer, like 'I TOOK THIS?!?'"

6. Marshall Smith from Stamping Ground, Kentucky: "Northern Flickers are beautiful birds at any time, but a backlit wing is something special...in yellow. Taken over our local park pond with a Canon 5D Mark IV, 1/2000th sec., ƒ/8, ISO 640."

7. Richard Reusser: "Buried among all the yellow taxis and daffodils I found a picture of my daughter, Molly, hamming it up in the leaves. My stalwart Canon 5D Mark I would've only been a few months old back in 2006—and Molly half of her twenty two laps around the sun."

8. Kurt Kramer: "I have a friend in his mid-70s. He lives in the same six-flat building in which his parents lived when he was born. His apartment is a time capsule. When you enter, you feel as if you are going back in time by 50–60 years. This is the bathroom in the apartment. Data: Olympus E-M5 Mark II, M.Zuiko Olympus 12–40mm lens, 1/125th sec., ƒ/3.5, ISO 2500."

9. Mark Kinsman: "I took this on while at the local mall with my family. As we entered a new addition to the mall I noticed the escalator had yellow outlines steps and then noticed the women on the down ramp wearing a purple coat. Only had time to shoot two frames, this one in focus. Shot with a Canon 5D Mark II and 24–105 ƒ/4 lens."

10. Melissa O'Shaughnessy: "This yellow revolving door at the Standard Hotel in the Meatpacking District in New York City is a spot I frequented many times several years ago in an attempt to make something even more interesting out of an already eye-catching architectural detail. I have pictures of people coming and going in this spot in many configurations, but it was in this split second, when the morning light was ideal and a man of exactly the right height pushed his way through the door, that I knew I had my shot. I've returned to the locale several times since, but so far have not improved upon this simple—but to me delightful—moment."

11. Mark Sirota: "I photograph fireworks, generally large commercial displays like you see on the Fourth of July. Given that it's coming up, it seems apropos. I usually use a wide angle and try hard to include the crowd in the foreground, because the crowd is why we have fireworks displays, but sometimes for a change of pace I try something a little different. This is a photo of an aerial firework, shot at 180 mm-e with a focus pull during the 1.4 second hand-timed exposure (focused near at the beginning, shifting towards infinity at the end). Adjusting the focus by hand causes camera shake, which is what causes the wavy lines at the ends. I come away from a typical 20 minute fireworks show with about 100 exposures, of which maybe 20 will be salable and two will be great. I often sell as triptychs by color—for example, one that’s primarily red, one primarily green, one primarily blue. Or three purples. You get the idea. This is one of my favorite yellow ones. Normally yellow doesn’t stand alone well as a primary color in a firework photograph; it’s not bold enough. A big yellow burst over a great foreground often looks a little weak…. But thanks to the focus pull and the fortunate timing, the yellow is quite powerful in this one."

12. Gilson Topfstedt contributed from Germany. "Shot taken in January 2018 in Fuerteventura (Canary Islands) on an evening with nice sunlight, highlights, and shadows, and nice colors. All we need for a nice picture. Camera: Fuji X-T1."

13. Rodger Kingston: "Empty Gallery, Museum of Fine Art, Boston, Massachusetts, 2018. The color here is strictly from the warm lights on the neutral white walls. I suspect that work of Edward Hopper may have taught me to see this scene."

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Featured Comments from:

Kenneth Tanaka: "Excellent. Simply excellent."

Nature Lover: "They just made me smile. Blue, green, red, they just will not make me as happy."

Ken Owen: "Kurt Kramer's photo of his friend's bathroom is my favourite. The details are fun."

Charlie Didrickson: "Very nice set of photos. I'm partial to #10—Melissa O'Shaughnessy."

Dave Jenkins: "The leadoff picture by Darren Livingston is the most striking photograph I've seen in a long, long time."

Yellow Crack

Photo by Phil Gianatasio

I'm kinda sorry I had that idea about "Yellow" for the Baker's Dozen...ever since then, I've been seeing yellow out in the world, and of course whenever I see it I somehow have to take a picture of it. It feels just slightly like addict behavior.

Like getting a pop song stuck in your head.

By the way, the Yellow deadline is today! I've gotten lots of really cool stuff and it will be a great feature with lots of interesting variety.

The next Baker's Dozen subject will be: "Grandkids."

Mainly, your own. (This is a way of focusing our attention on the work of our readers who have, shall we say, attained a certain level of maturity.) Don't send 'em yet, I'm just giving you advance notice.

 

Don't        Send        Them        Yet

 

So as not to close the door on people who do not yet have grandkids (yo!), you can submit an inter-generational portrait of grandparent/s with grandchild/-children, but only if they're relatives or family friends and you know them and you know they are in fact related—no fair showing pictures of random oldsters with kids who are strangers to you and who you're just assuming are related. You're on your honor here.

But mainly, just pictures of your own grandkids.

The first requirement is that the picture be a good picture...i.e., one that will delight/impress/interest other photographers or meet with their approval. Some of the "Yellow" submissions are yellow, all right, but otherwise they're snapshots, which doesn't quite fit the bill. Even though they're yellow.

And consider being creative about the concept...for instance, a then and now, or a picture of a kid paired with a picture of a grandparent when the grandparent was the same age. Or...something like that, but that you think up. Anyway, points for creativity with the concept. But it's not required.

Again, please do not send any grandkid pics yet. I ain't ready. I'll tell you when.

Yellow. Gaaah!

Mike

UPDATE or P.S. or whatever: Woke up from a catnap on the couch today, looked up at the ceiling fan...

See what I mean? Yellow is everywhere now....

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Featured Comments from:

Dave Stewart: "I'm often trying to keep yellow out of the frame, which isn't always easy...."

Mike replies: Ha! Yes, I can see how that would be difficult for you.

Baker's Dozen: 'It Must Be Color' (Part III)

Photo by Stan Banos

Photo by David Morse

Photo by Mark Kinsman

Photo by Mike Knowles

-

Stan Banos sent his photo without comment.

David Morse of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania writes, "I took this photo at the annual fourth of July parade in Philly with a Nikon D7000 and a 16–85mm lens. Although the image works in B&W because of the strong composition, the red and blue stars and face paint definitely make the photo sing and define the event as patriotic. Converted to B&W, the stars have exactly the same grey value and you lose the dynamic rhythm the colors provide."

Mark Kinsman says: "I live in the suburbs of Chicago—Glen Ellyn, Illinois. Taken in Millennium Park, Chicago, Illinois, on a summer day. This one caught my attention because of the combination of colors along with her gesture—sitting with feet in a wishing well stream that runs along this area, reading a real book. Without color? No way."

Mike Knowles (whose work also appeared in this post) writes: "This is a photo of a Crimson-Rumped Toucanet (although his rump is sadly out of shot). It was taken near Mindo in Ecuador in 2016 with an Olympus EM-5 and Panasonic 100–300mm lens. I recently stuck a copy of this on the wall next to my desk at work, along with about nine or 10 other photos of various things and places, and it always captures my eye more than the others, which I didn't expect when I stuck it up.

"This was a tough choice...."

Thanks to everyone! The thirteenth photo, which makes the dozen into a baker's dozen, usually appears at the end of the set of twelve. Just as a reminder, Chester Williams' "The Goodbye Kiss" (last picture on this page) was the thirteenth photo in this series. (And by the way, Chester and I are talking about possibly offering that picture as a fine print.)

Looking forward to your comments as always!

Mike

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Featured Comments from:

MikeK: "How very nice to be featured here—especially on a day when I was feeling pretty downbeat about my own photography (having looked through over 800 photos I took on a recent trip and found them all to be pretty unremarkable). This wasn't actually my first choice for a submission, but I wasn't sure how essential colour was to my original choice—though the more I think about it, the more I think it is.

"I suppose, ultimately, it must be colour if the author of the work decides it must. It's a creative choice, along with aspect ratio and any aspect of exposure. A given picture may work equally well, or better, with a different crop, for example, but it's the creator's prerogative to choose. I have tried to evaluate my own photos on whether colour, or lack of it, adds to an image. And 'adding' could really mean anything—perhaps just the evocation of a memory related to the photo, which means nothing to anyone else. It's also interesting how different the print I have on my wall looks to the on-screen version. The print seems to have a more yellow tint to it—it's probably not a massive difference in actual values, but it changes the look of it quite noticeably (for the record I prefer the on-screen one)."

Frank Lehnen: "I'd have preferred the first one in B&W...still a great photo though."

Mike replies: Fair enough, but then you'd miss that counter-arguing "blue," which puts the finishing touch on the picture as I see it.

Baker's Dozen "Yellow" Deadline...

...Is end of day Thursday. Thanks for all the submissions! It's going to be a good one.

Mike

 

New Baker's Dozen Call For Work: Yellow

We're in the middle of the current "Baker's Dozen," featuring 13 (well, actually I cheat a little) readers' pictures on a certain theme.  This theme, which was interrupted midstream by some personal issues I had, is "It Must Be Color," a difficult and, it turns out, contentious concept. I've published seven so far (including Chester Williams' "The Goodbye Kiss," which is, effectively, the 13th selection), and will publish the remaining four later this week.

This is probably overcompensating/overreacting, but the next Baker's Dozen will be very simple:

Yellow.

That's it. Yellow.

If you want to submit, send an 800-pixel-wide JPEG saved in sRGB to me at mcjohnston at mac dot com with the subject line "BDyellow." Just like that, exactly:

BDyellow

When it comes time to edit, I'll search my email stack for "BDyellow," and if your email doesn't have that subject line, I won't see it. So please make sure you use that exact subject line.

Photo by Robert Heller

This new theme was suggested by Robert Heller, who said about his "It Must Be Color" submission above: "For the last several years, I've given myself the assignment to shoot the color yellow—not just lemons or daffodils, but in a more sophisticated, thoughtful way." If you were one of the more than fifteen people who submitted a "yellow" picture for "It Must Be Color," your entry will be considered for this new Baker's Dozen—you don't need to resubmit unless you want to, although you may. I'll be looking for variety and originality in building the set (in addition to sophistication and thoughtfulness).

If you want to play, maybe get into the mood by listening to Coldplay's "Yellow," the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine," The Innocence Mission's "Bright As Yellow," the Raconteurs' "Yellow Sun," Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi," Tangerine Dream's "Hunter Shot by a Yellow Rabbit," Dolly Parton doing "Tie a Yellow Ribbon," Wiz Khalifa's "Black and Yellow," or, if you like jazz, Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington doing "Yellow Days." If you're in a dippy mood, you might even venture into my favorite song from when I was in fourth grade, Donovan's "Mellow Yellow" (but beware all the potent flower power in that one). Especially because he's a major photography collector, we should give a nod to Elton John for "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," too. Which means we also need to include Captain Beefheart's "Yellow Brick Road" of course...

...Okay, I should stop.  :-]

Mike
(Thanks to Robert)

P.S. A new "Baker's Dozen" call means some real fun for me, because I really enjoy seeing your work. To paraphrase something Thomas Jefferson said of reading, I have a canine appetite for looking at pictures. Thanks very much if you sent me something for "It Must Be Color," and thanks again for your patience waiting for the other shoe to drop.

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Featured Comments from:

David Aiken: "Another getting into the mood musical suggestion for jazz lovers: Eberhard Weber's 'Yellow Fields' from the album of the same name. I really like Robert Heller's photo."

Eolake: "Oh! 'Bright As Yellow' is one of my favorite songs of all time! The video is beautiful too. And amazingly they managed to make it without showing a speck of yellow, which I could not have managed."

Peggy C.: "Or, how about yellow movies? My favorite, the 1949 John Wayne movie, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon. Hmm, I think tonight will be movie night. Off to make some popcorn."