The Online Photographer

Items (Blog Notes)

A few procedural notes before I get going today. I've got busy days today and tomorrow (body as well as blog maintenance to address) so things might be a little quiet around here.

Item: First, I did enlist several longtime readers to assist in Comment moderation. Both, I suspect, are more knowledgeable and quite probably much smarter than Yr. Hmbl. Ed. Hopefully once we iron out how we're going to work together, comments you post will appear much more quickly than they have been lately. (Working alone, I had been letting this get more and more out of control, sometimes to a degree that made me feel mildly agitated.) Thanks, too, to those others who volunteered—I accepted the first two people who offered, both of whom are names long familiar to me through their own thoughtful comments on the site.

Item: A few years back I wrote an obituary of the protean working musician Leon Russell called "Blue, Teddy Jack, Tina Rose, Sugaree, Honey, and Coco," which are the names of his children. Well, the other day I got a lovely note from Blue Bridges-Fox, Leon's daughter (Leon's real name was Claude Russell Bridges) thanking me for the article. She didn't say how she had stumbled across it. It's always nice when these reverberations happen.

Item: I should really (really!) personally thank everyone who contributes to TOP, but unfortunately it's like phone calls, which I do not make...a 15-minute phone call seems like nothing, but 32 of them would fill up a whole eight-hour work day. Everything wicks minutes out of the day. Plus, I'm so disorganized. I can't keep track of things. It distorts my whole life, my lack of organizational ability (if you have that ability, count your blessings).

But I digress. Reader Jim A. sent a $50 bill* as a contribution to keep TOP's motor running and the wheels greased, and it came in handy. That very day, Honeybee Dave was coming by in his bee suit to remove a small paper hornets nest under the eaves. He discovered that the bald-faced hornets who built the place had been kicked out and replaced by opportunistic ground wasps—which explains why it was only as big as a cantaloupe melon: hornets build their paper nests as large as watermelons.

His charge? $50. How nice to owe a tradesman and find the payment for him waiting in the mailbox. The nest was uncomfortably close to the back door, and hornets, which is what I thought they were, can be nasty and aggressive. Thank you Jim. And thanks to Alan Z. and John C., who sent checks, and to every other friend o' TOP who has contributed recently. I apologize for not contacting you personally. But at the same time I'm very grateful.

By the way, the wasps were not killed, but relocated; as Honeybee Dave said in his taciturn manner, with a shrug, "wasps are citizens too."

Item: Speaking of nasty and aggressive hornets: Should you happen to be thinking about a new mattress, I have a warning for you. Never, ever open a single YouTube video of a mattress review, the production of which seems to be a minor cottage industry. For if you do, you will for aeons afterward be pelted and pestered by mattress ads of every description and from every direction, any time you innocently log on to the tubes of the Internets. How I wish someone had given me this advice before it was tragically too late!

Item: It's Print Sale season, and I have four possibilities in the way of plans, but have done nothing yet to bring them about. Hopefully I will get as many as two accomplished before Christmas. Several ideas are for multiple-artist sales, which might be touchy to organize. I'm not great at organizing these things, but I'm moving this from the back burner to the front one, metaphorically speaking.

Item: Last but certainly not least, I wanted to offer a word of tremendous sympathy and concern for any TOP reader (and, really, everyone) who has been affected by the heat and fires in the Western United States. This is a disastrous fire season...and in the US, normal fire seasons are pretty appalling. The stories coming out of the affected regions are dreadful. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.

Back to regular programming,

Mike the Ed.

*In the Learn-Something-New-Every-Day Dept.: I meant to illustrate this item with a picture of the $50 dollar bill Jim sent, with my fingers holding it and Butters in the bokeh in the background, but when I tried to open the iPhone snap of the bill, Photoshop refused to open it! Up popped a window that said "This application does not support the editing of images of currency...", etc. Or words to that effect. I never knew before that that would happen.

I wish the enlargers in the school darkrooms where I taught had had a similar function: "You are trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, having attempted to print this negative entirely too many times now. It's never going to work; no amount of labor and hope is going to make chicken salad out of chicken shit. Stop working on this and go make another negative, properly exposed this time." It might have saved everybody some time and anguish.

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.

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Featured Comments from:

Phil: " That last paragraph of your footnote had me laughing out loud! In every night-school darkroom class I took, the instructor would at some point politely and exasperatedly say to me 'maybe you should find an easier negative to work on.' If the enlarger would have just refused to print my badly-exposed negative (or in some cases badly-developed negative), I probably would have got further ahead in life.  ;-)  "

Help, Wow, and Thanks

According to Annie Lamott, there are only three kinds of prayers: Help, Wow, and Thanks.

I don't know what to say. (Me, at a loss for words?) I've been feeling massively grateful over the past two days, to be the recipient of so many kudos. As many of us are, I guess I've been under more stress than I quite realized lately. Demoralized. So Sunday's post and the ensuing affirmation and support was an occasion I'll value and treasure. I don't want it to end. I so much appreciated the outpouring of kind and supportive comments (and am surprised how positive they are), all the new and increased pledges. A great feeling.

I've printed many comments and put them in a folder, to use as a resource and a comfort for those inevitable future occasions when I'll be feeling down in the dumps.

It was more than I deserve, but at the same time just what I needed. Thank you, truly.

Mike

Sunday Support Group: Photo Bloggers Calling It Quits....

"Dance with who brung ya."

—Old American rural country saying

What with Ming Thein moving on, and Kirk Tuck going on hiatus again, and me suffering a bad bout of burnout these past two weeks, I've had to do some soul-searching.

As both of those guys pointed out, the world has indeed changed. Kodak is a shell of its former self; film and the darkroom are quaintly antiquarian; Bronica, Contax, Konica-Minolta (all brands I owned and used) and even Samsung are out of the camera business altogether; Olympus, after hanging in heroically, is headed that way. Digital cameras, among the world's hottest-selling commodities not even a decade ago, are in freefall, blasted by smartphones and the used market as well as by their own sufficiency. Very unfortunately, I can't sell iPhones on my site—that nice arrangement whereby I get a little spiff if one of you buys something through my links still works, but it's not as lucrative as it once was. Prices are way up and unit sales are way down. Canon is talking about market shrinkage of 50% since the peak.

So many paragons of the online photography are gone. Uwe Steinmuller, Michael Reichmann and Roger Hicks had the temerity to up and die; Rob Galbraith, Colin Jago and now Ming have moved on to greener pastures; Ctein departed from here, and Shutterfinger and Imaging-Resource have, well, shuttered. That's just the tip of a bigger 'berg.

And photography is no longer nearly as cool in the culture as it once was. Digital SLRs started out as unobtanium and gradually descended into the realm of the attainable, and everyone wanted one, even people who had never taken pictures on film. Every new development was revolutionary and exciting. Hordes of people were hanging on the news torrent, curious, interested, and ready to get involved. Early on, film-camera veterans, steeped in a mature culture, were admired and respected (sometimes resented, too) by people attracted to the science and convenience of digital. I wrote back then about neomania, the seductiveness of the new. It was a brave new frontier. Invigorating.

All done now.

In 1983 I took a beautiful picture by moonlight. It was a virtuoso trick; I had mastered darkroom craft and I knew my materials well. Walter Elisha, the Chairman of Springs Industries, at the time one of the staunchest supporters of the Museum of Modern Art's Photography Department, requested a print for his personal collection. (It was Walter who provided me with an introduction to the primus inter pares museum curator John Szarkowski.) Last year, my friend Kenny got a new iPhone 11. To demonstrate "Night Mode," he held his phone up and casually took a picture of a moonlit street scene. The tiny cameras (built into a device that will do a thousand other things besides) took a number of exposures and merged them into a single clear, appropriately exposed, noiseless image that was better than I can do with a single exposure with my large-sensor digital camera, much less with Plus-X and D-76.

And how's this now? After years of no problems, recently all of my Affiliate program checks from Amazons in Europe have been bouncing. Or not bouncing, exactly, but they're suddenly worthless. Apparently the issuing banks—the banks the checks are drawn on—are demanding fees to cash the checks in excess of the total value of the checks, or so my bank tells me, so my bank is declining to cash them. Instead, they send them back to me and charge me $35 per check for their inconvenience(!). Amazon in the U.S. tells me to call the Amazons overseas to straighten it out. But I can't call the Affiliate Program of Amazon Germany because I don't speak German. They do speak English in the U.K., but I don't have an international calling plan—on the plan I have it would cost me $125 to make one single call to Europe.

I don't know—I might be reading too much into this—but it seems a lot like Amazon Europe is suddenly saying, "Go away. We don't need you."

Some readers might be saying the same. At least if traffic is any indication. At its peak (which for the record was 2013), TOP was sailing along on 24,000 page views a day. Now, 10,000 is a good day.

And blogging itself is as uncool now as it once was cool. In 2004 it was the happening thing. On a World Wide Web that only a few years earlier had featured single, static pages that never changed, a website that was continually updated with new material was pretty enticing; in the beginning, I got a lot of attention just by existing. That was when internet was spelled with a capital "I," before ads were common, before videos were really possible. Good photo content and information on the web was scarce and valued. And back then, there was a lot of camaraderie between websites—we all supported each other, and sent our readers to interesting things on other sites, which benefited us all.

Now, blog have become...well, not quite antiquated, but old-fashioned. They're very 2010. Competition has proliferated wildly, way outpacing demand. Nothing ever "goes viral" any more—not just because there's too much out there to see and read, but because everybody makes money from affiliate spiffs and few want to lose a reader to another site even momentarily. And all the camera reviews have migrated to YouTube, where independent actors of their own volition act for all the world like PR people for corporate marketers.

Think it can't get worse? Well, it's not just that blogs have gotten outdated. It's that text has. Millennials and whatever the younger-than-Millennial generations call themselves prefer to get their information fed to them through videos. Who reads now? Even the President of the United States never reads anything—not even urgent briefings, apparently. His speech patterns, his very thought patterns, according to experts, are those of a functional illiterate. So he's the leader for our times, then, because the written word is passé. (Tossing French words into written text is double passé.)

So is the handwriting on the wall, my friends? A time of reckoning seems to be upon me. I've thought about it, wrestled with it, agonized over it, and made a fateful decision...

(Blog Note III)

After working for two hours this morning I've caught up with the comments on the last four or five posts. I apologize for having gotten behind on moderation again. I know this happens regularly now and I do realize it's far from ideal because it effectively "interrupts" the conversation. Anyway, I hope if you were interested in one of last week's posts you'll go back and look for newly added comments.

Mike the Ed.

(Blog Note II)

Sorry about the recent downtime and the radio silence...I'm fine, not sick, but I must take a few end-of-August days off to concentrate on some life-planning, financial, and life-transition issues. This weekend* and most probably Monday too.

Back Tuesday (September 1st!) with tasty new topics.

Have a great weekend and see you soon!

—Mike the Ed.

*Strange concept. Who does such a thing?

...And who would want to? Sometimes I think it's harder not doing TOP than it is doing it.  :-)

(Blog Note)

It's a funny thing, but I found myself "written out" yesterday. After writing that 2,650-word post about the Detour on Wednesday, I was depleted. Didn't have enough left in the tank to write yesterday. Out of gas.

One morning is really just not enough time to write a 2,650-word essay. It really just takes longer to incubate. It's like baking a cake—you just have to wait for it to rise. You mustn't rush it.

Anyway, my reservoir is partially refilled this morning, and I'm back to normal and working on something new. About large-format digital (because really, there's nothing "medium" about it. Let's face it, we blew the terminology for sensor sizes. We had a chance to start from scratch and we created a total mess instead).

More soon.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

Dan Khong: "Sounds like a variant of 'writer's block' which can affect the best of writers and poets. Pat Butters and Lulu. They've got the right therapy to Man's woes of all sorts. Or fondle some shooting equipment—and that also include the billiard cue. Recovery can be instantaneous...until the next attack."

Peter Croft: "Only 2,650 words? I've just read the biography of Einstein by Walter Isaacson, about 550 pages plus another hundred of notes and acknowledgements. While reading it (at about an hour per session before lights out) I boggled at the detail and research in this book.

"Then I Googled the author and found that he's done the same for Leonardo, Ben Franklin, Steve Jobs, Henry Kissinger and several other major books. As well, he held top positions at Time, a partnership in a financial firm, a professorship and numerous other positions.

"This man is a powerhouse! When I think of the research he put into the Einstein book and realise he's done it for all those others, in his spare time so to speak, I surrender the canvas. Only 2,650 words? Buck up, lad."

Mike replies: Peter, I've written approximately 10–12 million words in my life, including 3–4 on this and my previous blog. I write every day of my life. I write when I feel like it and I write when I don't.

Different writers have very different appetites for the work. David Foster Wallace could write twenty-five thousand words in a day [Source]. That's somewhere between a quarter and a fifth of an everyday bookstore novel. Stephen King thinks anyone worth their salt should be able to write two thousand words a day, and if memory serves he wrote four thousand—until his "retirement," when he went on something like half speed, meaning he was still working harder than most writers. On the other hand, Hemingway toiled six hours a day producing a mere 600 words. That's fewer than your comment plus this reply. Is Stephen King better than Hemingway?

Dickens had a full life too but churned out novels in torrents, and he wrote more letters than most writers write anything, yet he pales compared to Trollope or Joyce Carol Oates. At the other extreme, Margaret Mitchell and Harper Lee each wrote essentially one book in their entire lives (I disqualify Lee's Go Set a Watchman—I'm in the camp who consider it the exploitation of a famous writer with diminished faculties, a set-aside first draft published to capitalize on her name). Some writers are miniaturists and toil over short-form pieces. Dylan Thomas drank copious amounts of liquor while producing sometimes no more than two lines of a poem in a day's work, while D.H. Lawrence once received a demand from his editor to cut 60,000 words from a manuscript and he returned it with 30,000 more added. (Or were the numbers the other way around?) Apropos of which, this reply started out as two paragraphs.

I'd wager that Thomas Pynchon covered as many words in a single book as Raymond Carver produced in his lifetime. Pynchon: Against the Day has 1,085 pages; Carver: "The bibliography of Raymond Carver consists of 72 short stories, 306 poems, a novel fragment, a one-act play, a screenplay co-written with Tess Gallagher, and 32 pieces of non-fiction (essays, a meditation, introductions, and book reviews) [Wikipedia]." Carver might win but it could be a close race. But if we had to trade the loss of all of Carver against the loss of one Pynchon novel, I know where I'd stand on that.

I have a middling amount of energy for the work—more than some, less than others. Probably less than the median, I will concede. Do I wish I had more energy, more capacity? Yes. But we each have the resources we have; we are what we are; we can do what we can do. And everyone has ups and downs. Every now and then a certain exhaustion sets in. I'm very familiar with it. I'm very familiar with the rhythms of this life. It'll pass.

Ideally, writing should not look like it's hard. But it can be.

Dogman: "I'm in awe of Belgian writer George Simenon, best known for his series featuring the detective Maigret. According to Wikipedia, he wrote almost 500 novels of various genres using numerous pen names. He was also known for his affairs with the ladies. I've read that he ended his affair with dancer Josephine Baker because he said she distracted him from writing. In the year they were together he said he "only" completed one novel a month. Well, I understand. She was quite a distraction."

anthony reczek: "Hi Mike, I'm not sure Peter's comment was to be taken seriously; I was surprised—though quite impressed—by your response. Oh well, such is the state of virtual/online communications in this day and age. Maybe someday I'll develop an app to address that (not), but in the meantime, we all do the best we can...."

Kye Wood: "Long time TOP reader here. Your writing has been at the top of its game of late (last few months, at a minimum). No sign of being forced. Better to take a break than grind out forced work. You'll lose more readers from reduced quality than you ever would from a well earned break—especially when you give notice. I second the call to grab a camera, take a trip (just a day trip) and fire up the visual cortex. OCOLOD (yep, one camera, one lens, one day.  :-)  "

Mike Chisholm: "If you don't know it, look up the word 'skeuomorph,' possibly the ugliest useful word (most useful ugly word?) I've ever come across. It may not explain our sensor-size confusions, but it certainly describes them."

Mike replies: Thank you! I didn't know that word, and it is indeed useful.

Great Commenters (Blog Notes)

Whew—I've been reading a few medium format digital reviews here and there, and I just waded through the whole comment thread for one of them. Let's just say I came back here thanking my lucky stars for all the great commenters on TOP, who add to every post instead of dragging it through muck pointlessly and persistently.

Grateful for all y'all.

Mike the Mod.

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.

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No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

Should I?

Should I review a medium-format digital camera? I've never used one. In days of yore, I left medium-format digital to reviewers who used and have a need for such cameras regularly—like our late friend Michael Reichmann.

Throughout my involvement in photography, however, I've tried a lot of things just to try them—for the experience, and for reference points that could help ground my knowledge of the tools that were out there. I haven't done that so much in the digital age...for the most part I've been satisfied to stay within various fairly narrow bands. As an example, the 100–400mm Fuji lens I used recently, with its extreme angle-of-view equivalency of 600mm, was the longest lens I've ever used...ever. It was a great experience, and I felt like I learned a lot from it, even though I won't be shooting with such a long lens regularly. Now I'm wondering if I might feel the same way about trying a medium-format camera, even though I'm all but certain I wouldn't end up using such a camera in the long run.

Part of me says, if you're going to run a review of such a camera, enlist a writer who knows more about it than you do. Just wondering what you think. Does it sound like something that would be fun?

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Please help support The Online Photographer through Patreon

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Featured Comments from:

Kenneth Tanaka: "Well, with all due respect, I don’t honestly think that you could offer real value in trying to 'review' any medium format camera. I’ve been using medium-format digital camera systems for just about 11 years now, and have watched this segment shake out into two distinct classes of equipment: the Phase One / Hasselblad H commercial / studio class and the Fujifilm GFX / Hasselblad XCD prosumer-class. The GFX / XCD systems have been out quite a while and the Internet is swimming in 'reviews' by vloggers and bloggers. They all seem to make the same remarks after their usually brief experiences with these cameras. The folks who need and use Phase One or Hassy H gear rely mostly on direct experiences and dealers for their guidance, given the deep-five-figure costs of these systems.

"Nevertheless, I encourage you to spend a week or two with a contemporary medium format system, either the Fuji GFX or the Hasselblad XCD platform. Try both if possible! I think you’ll quickly discover these cameras have almost no relationship to your memories of medium-format film photography. You can see from readers’ comments that they’d like to read your casual impressions.

"Up until this summer I had been using mainly the Phase One XF and Fuji GFX 50s platforms. But idle hands are the devil’s playground, as the old adage goes. The odd coma of this year has teased me into deeply diving into the Hasselblad XCD system as well as the new 907X-50C system. I’m up to my waist in it as I write and it’s been eye-opening fun. As the XCD and GFX use the same Sony sensor it’s particularly interesting to compare the strengths and weaknesses of the camera package designs and the respective lens systems. I think you’d really enjoy spending time with both if possible."

Mike replies: "Casual impressions"...I like that. I should steal it as the rubric for my camera posts. I am unfortunately not interested in the modern internet "review" style which consists of exhaustive recitations of features and voluntary independent product promotion and PR.

Sroyon: "I think there are camera reviews and what we might call camera experiences. A conventional review, I'd say, should ideally be written by someone who has used several similar cameras in different settings, and has multiple points of comparison and reference. But a camera experience, which by the way can be equally or perhaps more interesting, can be written by anyone, even someone who has never shot a standalone camera in their life. For what it's worth, I think many of your reviews read like experiences anyway.

"I write for a couple of film photography websites, and I sometimes 'review' vintage cameras and lenses. But how can you review a 50-year-old lens or a 70-year-old camera based on one sample of unknown provenance, whose viewfinder may be dimmer or whose focus ring may be stiffer than it should be due to the ravages of time, overuse, or neglect? My solution is simply to write about my experiences.

"From what I gather, most readers are not reading my articles for the same reasons they'd read a traditional review, to help them decide whether to buy something. Likewise, I have neither the intention, nor, frankly, the budget to buy a digital medium-format camera. But I'd still read your post with interest, because you're an engaging and thought-provoking writer, and because your photography/gear knowledge, in my opinion, transcends things like brand, recording medium, and sensor-size."

Aaron Hines: "Why not? You have a unique perspective on cameras that many of us loyal readers appreciate, so your experience does have value! If I could vote for which medium format digital to review, it would be the Fuji GFX 50R with 45mm ƒ/3.5 lens. [I think the 50mm is the ƒ/3.5; the 45mm is ƒ2.8. No? —Mike] Because it's a camera I could see myself buying, if only because it's the lowest cost entry point into digital MF.

"Hasselblad and Phase One reviews are a bit like reading exotic hypercar reviews; fun for a bit of daydreaming, but so far out of reach as to be pure fantasy."

Sunday Support Group: What's On TOP?

Got some feedback from a reader this morning: there have been no thoughtful essays on TOP recently, he said, and way too many gear articles. He reduced his Patreon donation by a dollar. Which is really indicative of how fundamentally decent and thoughtful TOP readers are; he could have cut it off altogether, but he didn't. He also took time to give me his feedback, which was considerate of him. I'll take readers like that.

Funny, though. I kinda thought we'd been talking recently about Bill Jay, artist's statements, and early-in-life accomplishments/setbacks. And not enough about gear.

You're aware that most sites are all about gear, right? There's a good reason for that. It's what draws eyes. People are hounds for gear talk. It's what fires the machine, what stokes the furnace. And what keeps this particular claptrap steamship afloat. Back in the heyday, I could track it: traffic was a reliable bellwether of it. A decline in the daily numbers meant: uh-oh, time to get back to talking about gear.

Ah, shoes!
Maybe I just haven't written anything about the gear that guy is interested in, is all. Gear talk is like advertisements. Ads are just a nuisance...unless you happen to be interested in what's being advertised. Then you're all over it.

The same thing goes for shopping in general, actually. I fell in love with a woman long ago who loved shoes. She had forty pairs of shoes to my three, well on her way to being Imelda Marcos*, and when we were out on the town we had to stop at every shop that carried shoes. This greatly surpassed my interest in the subject, which was H—>0**. So I'd go around saying that I hated shopping. But that wasn't true; all I meant was that I had to spend an inordinate amount of time standing around in shoe stores***. But cameras were another story. They bored her, but if I could tack on to the end of my life the amount of time I've spent shopping for cameras, it would be quite a bonus.

I hated ads on TV so much I got rid of my TV. Haven't had one for seven years now, a fact that my cable provider is completely incapable of comprehending. I resist ads on YouTube as best I can. But if there were commercials for pool tables, I gotta be honest, I'd be riveted. It all depends on what ignites your endorphins, right?

Hubris
So anyway, on the topic of TOP content, just a couple of warnings in advance: someday, I'm going to write an article about how to buy a pool table. This will have 97% of you rolling your eyes (a figure which I will endeavor to reduce to 92% by striving to be entertaining), but it's bound to happen so I'm just giving you fair warning. Sorry! I'm also going to write a post—one post—about the American election before it happens, because I have a thoughtful perspective to offer. That will not violate the rules of the website: the rule is "no gratuitous political provocations," not "no politics" at all. It's a long, well-established principle for the press to endorse political candidates in editorials, and I'm gonna latch on to that even though it's hubris to imply that my little blog is a part of "the press."

My dilemma on that score is that silence is irresponsible, from a civic participation perspective.

But don't worry...there will be only one post about the election, and only one about buying a pool table. And you've already been warned once that they're coming, and you'll be alerted again. Both posts will be well flagged, and both will be hidden behind a page break. You'll easily be able to skip them if you prefer. So neither will assault your eyes or your sensibilities against your will. No harm, no foul.

Oh, and by the way...two other readers increased their Patreon donations today (and thanks to them), so all is well. The claptrap steamboat steams on along down the river, for now.

In the end, a blog's a blog. Don't like something, skip it and wait...something new will always be along. And one thing does tend to lead to another. For instance, this post started out talking about complaints regarding our content, and is just about to end up at...the Bible. Take that, other photo sites.

Of course, there's nothing really new under the sun****, and the good thing that comes along will be broadly similar to what has come along before; it's like the weather that way, in that it changes in innumerable and varied ways and yet the changes are always broadly the same and the same sameness is always coming back around. Same as it ever was.

Enjoy your Sunday! Now then, back to gear.

Mike
(Thanks to David)

*Wife of a now-historical Philippines dictator who notoriously enriched himself from the public treasury. (A term for that is "kleptocrat," a cool word even though it describes a disreputable thing.) When they fled in disgrace the wife famously abandoned a vast wardrobe and 1,220 pairs of shoes, exaggerated in the public stories at the time to 3,000. My girlfriend could relate.

**I shouldn't use terms from calculus given that I'm innumerate. But I think what that means is that you take the distance of a point from zero, divide it in half, and then divide that in half, and keep on doing that an infinite number of times; what you end up with is very close to zero but never precisely zero. Thus, as close to zero as you can get. I learned this in a long-ago class called, no kidding, "Math for Poets," so of course I could be remembering it poetically and not mathematically. If so I'm sure I'll be corrected, which means I'll learn something today.

***And if that woman who liked shoes was still in my life I'd be counting my blessings every day, and I'd buy her a new pair of shoes every month. Every week if I could afford it. I'd squire her to the shoe store and stand around without complaint while she shopped, and even tell her she could take her time. With the passage of time comes gratitude. Not to mention regret.

****If you've never read Ecclesiastes*****, you really should. Seriously. It's wonderful.

*****"Ecclesiastes" is a Latin transliteration of the Greek translation of the Hebrew word "Qoholeth," which means a speaker to the assembled throng, i.e., a preacher.

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.

Please help support The Online Photographer through Patreon

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

Bruce Appelbaum (partial comment): "In 1983, during the Marcos years, I spent some time in Manila for business. The joke going around at the time was:

Q. How did Imelda Marcos come by all her money?

A. Mining.

Q. Mining?

A. Yes, that's mine, that's mine, that's mine.... "

Bill Tyler: "So about calculus—and nothing to do with photography. You're talking about the notion of a limit—something you approach but never reach. Photographically, it's the perfect print—the one you are striving for, but can't quite ever reach. No matter how good the last one is, there's always something that could be better. The mathematical definition is a little subtle. The idea is that for any number you care to pick, no matter how small, as long as it's not exactly zero, the thing approaching the limit will get closer than that. There's a sort of relationship to fractions themselves. What's the next bigger fraction than 1/2? Is it 2/3? 3/5? 17/33? 63/128? 10000/20001? There is no next fraction. No matter what you pick, there's something else in between, closer to the goal."

Peter Wright: "I did a lot of calculus back when I was doing post graduate research. I developed sets of simultaneous non-linear integro-differential equations with six unknowns and time variant coefficients. Once I got the hang of it, solving them was quite straightforward. I didn't immediately recognize your calculus expression, but I knew you meant to say that your interest was asymptotically approaching zero. (When it comes to women's shoes mine does too.)

"Ecclesiastes is my favourite book of the Old Testament. My wife gets it mixed up with Ecclesiasticus (strictly speaking part of the apocryphal or deuterocanonical books that not all denominations acknowledge). But Ecclesiasticus is now renamed Sirach (no doubt to avoid confusing people like my wife). I endorse your suggestion to read Ecclesiastes; it is as relevant today as it was 2,500 years ago. For anyone looking for a good introduction, I suggest When All You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough by Harold Kushner. (The author is more famous for When Bad Things Happen to Good People.) Kushner uses Ecclesiastes as the foundation for his book.

"That's what I love about TOP. It sometimes covers things close to my heart, that I normally never come across on the internet, least of all on a photography blog!"

Workin' on It... (Blog Note)

I'm trying to sort out all the emails about the Fuji stuff...it's a bit slow because I need to hear back from people before I can tell anyone else the item is sold. I'm trying to do everything strictly first come first served, but it's being complicated by the various trades and offers. If you're awaiting a reply from me, please hang in there, I'll answer everyone, just maybe not tonight.

Thanks!

Mike

Blog Note: Outage

Looks like the blog was down this morning. When this happens (as it does occasionally) all I can do it wait for TypePad to fix it. They have a Twitter feed (@typepad) on which they give updates as to what's happening. They're usually pretty good about it. I think the worst of these outages lasted something like six hours (but my memory for such things is poor).

I actually know very little about the mechanics of web publishing or programming, so I barely know more than any of my readers on this score, and I'm sure I know less than many of you do. Thanks to those of you who sent me a heads up.

Anyway, sorry for any inconvenience.

—Mike the Alleged Webmaster

Blog Note: Aaugh!

...As Charlie would say. Sincere apology for the breach of promise today. I have zero excuse, so I'd best not make one. I shall return!

—Mike the shamefaced Ed.

(Blog Note)

Your 'umble 'ost and majordomo of daily deliberations a.k.a. Mike needs to take a bit of personal time to sort some irruptions and smooth some snarled SNAFUs*. Back Friday, when everything will return to normal. (Well, not normal everywhere but normal here.) See you soon, and sorry for this small power outage.

—Mike the Ed.

P.S. Thanks to all and I do not need any more photos of Central Camera! Illustrations by Leo Kawczinsky and Ken Tanaka have been added to the Central Camera post. I've made a donations to Central Camera and a symbolically larger donation to Black Lives Matter—because George Floyd's life really does matter more than an old store—and I'm trying to make a small donation to the National Association of Chiefs of Police as well, because I know for a fact that many Chiefs across the country have been working hard to try to prevent further violent incidents from happening.

P.P.S. I've got many more comments to post tonight so please come check those out.

*Actually there's nothing FU'd, I just liked the way that sounded. I just have to go out and take pictures.

Need Some Video Advice (Blog Note)

I'm not a video guy and I don't know video and don't do video. So, please speak at me as if you were talking to a dummy.

I see videos on YouTube that appear to have been made with a camera strapped to the person's forehead. As they speak the camera seems to follow their eyes and swing this way and that with what appear to be head movements. For instance, this video (made by an individual who is crazy, but happy).

Is that a thing? The camera-on-your-head camera I mean? Can someone out there school me about that? I don't even know what such cameras are called, so I can't even Google it.

I need a camera that aims where I look and simultaneously records what I say. Is that possible? If it is an actual thing and not just something I'm imagining is real, could you recommend one?

If you think it might be too complicated for a dummy, warn me.

Thanks for any help!

Mike

UPDATE Saturday evening: Okay, got it! Thanks everyone. Closing the comments now because 'most everyone's saying the same thing.

P.S. By the way I just want you to know that it snowed here yesterday and it's snowing right now and there was dew on the grass this morning that turned out to be ice. (I checked it out because when I walked on it, it crunched.) Spring here this year was apparently one day—May 3rd, when it was 74 degrees with balmy breezes and so clear it looked like another planet. Clear days in the Finger Lakes are intensely clear. Glorious Spring day, much gratefulness, but the next day we were back to gray, cold and wettish...and now this.

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UPDATE no. 2: Here's the Comments Section, in a nutshell:

Almost everyone: "GoPro! How could you not know that?"

Me: Okay, okay.

Gone Fishin'!

That's totally metaphorical. Although one of my friends has reportedly been fishing a lot on lockdown. I'm not going near a hook. But I'm in the midst of taking a few "mental health days" off...and might need tomorrow too. Actually that makes it sound serious, which it isn't at all. Just got distracted dealing with a few things. I'm fine; nothing's wrong. Sorry for the hiccup, but you know what MacArthur said—"I shall return!"

—Mike the temporarily absent majordomo and all-purpose editorial functionary

My Film Project Suspended

Friends, I've arrived at the conscious decision to suspend my back-to-film project for now. I intended it as an opportunity to make pictures of people—and the thought of spending money, time and effort reviving old cameras to make B&W photographs of lonely scenic views and incidental features of the wayside I happen across on my wanderings, such as falling-down houses, signs, and old farm equipment left out to rust, dismays me. I haven't the heart for such a substitution under the conditions that prevail. So until the stay-in-place orders are lifted and the danger has passed and people can congregate again, whether it takes three months, or six, or a year, let the idea be on hold. It just doesn't feel like the right time right now.

I apologize if anyone is disappointed. But don't worry. Time passes like a walker on a road and is gone by before you know it, and there have always been plenty of good things for us to talk about.

—Yr. Hmbl. Ed.

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Featured Comments from:

Bernd Reinhardt: "I think this is a terrible idea. Look, I understand all of the reasoning behind it. I also understand that you are not in the mood to make work. Trust me, I am in the same boat. I feel completely uninspired. But I doubled down on everything. I mail ordered film and chemicals to support my local vendor and I am forcing myself to play. This is the time to rally more than any other. This is the time to go out and find the beauty in nature, no matter how hard you have to dig for it. This is the time to slow down and use film. This is the time to go through the meditative steps of processing.

"Please Mike, do yourself and all of us a big favor, forget about 'testing the film cameras' but just take them out on a walk one at a time, and walk until you can see. Share the process with us, the good and the bad, in writing and in pictures. We all need this right now."

Kenneth Tanaka: "As a matter of perspective, Mike, you're looking at two years before it's not only generally safe to be around people but before people generally feel safe being around people. That is, a vaccine for this virus must be developed, tested, and then manufactured for worldwide distribution. Politicians generally don't want to acknowledge facts (as we're vividly witnessing) but it's likely to be the Summer/Fall of 2022 before we can twist again like we did last Summer. And that's if a vaccine is developed soon, not a solid assumption at all. You appear already invested in the retro gear for your back-to-chemicals photo project. Surely you can take swings at reorienting the initiative temporarily? Try. Waste film. You might surprise yourself.

"P.S. I have my own ridiculous-waste-of-time-and-(much)money retro project that's been stalled by this pesky pandemic. So I understand your frustration. But I've no intention of letting it go idle until we're all happy and healthy again. Life is far too short. Use it or sell it!"

Spirit-Lifter

So you say your spirits need a little lift? You'd like a little sunshine for a change? Have I got a nice treat for you coming up. Something you can enjoy with the whole family.

Watch this space around 11:00 a.m. on Saturday. I've got a line on something new that I'll bet is going to make you smile. (No charge, either, nobody's selling anything. And don't worry, you can't miss it.) It's going to pick you up.

Stay tuned for more.

Mike
(Thanks to BB)

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Blog Note

I'm critically behind on comment moderation again—more than 80 waiting (it happens periodically)—so I'm going to be working on that this morning. Considering that I'm at home with "nothing to do," yesterday was an extremely full day, and today looks like more of the same. There's lots to do when there's nothing to do!

Might I suggest not immersing too much in the news? Be realistic, know what's actually happening, yes, but try not to obsessively read article after article after article. Give yourself respites from the radio and the television and social media. Yes, there are good reasons for hand-wringing and anxiety, but let's keep our spirits up. Prepare, but do it calmly. Don't neglect courtesy now that it's really needed. Find compassion in your heart for those who are behaving badly—they will always be out there. Concentrate on gratitude for the things you have to be thankful for; don't focus too much on how things might have been different "if only"; remember that most people who contract this illness will recover from it; think of the ways in which this experience might be a useful wake-up call and help bind us together once it's over; and pray for the other people in your life who are at risk. Let your thoughts be full of concern and appreciation and love for them. Gratitude and thoughts of others are a powerful salve in times of dread and worry.

Check back for new comments as the day wears on! I do have new posts underway too (when is that ever not true?) but the next one might not go up until this evening or tomorrow. I will find my balance again soon, never fear.

"Flatten the curve,"

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston

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This Too Shall Pass

These are certainly interesting times. (The old Chinese curse, they say.) My recovery fellowship is in turmoil. One of our major activities is to hold regular meetings open to the public, worldwide. The ones in my area have anywhere from two to 52 attendees, with five to 20 or so being the most common range—most in the middle somewhere. There are many older people, and health problems aren't uncommon. On the other hand, meetings can be vital to survival for many who are trying to stay sober. Many of our venues have been closing or closing their doors to us, and opinions vary as to what the best way forward might be. We are governed by "group conscience" decisions, so each group is negotiating its own solution. That's fair enough. But also kind of exhausting.

Which I guess is a microcosm of the whole world situation right now. I've never lived through anything like this. Of course it's not unprecedented in history—there have been many contagions before, some more dangerous than this.

The way I look at it is that it's an opportunity to work together, think of others, and keep in mind what's really important.

And also to try to figure out a way to use our burgeoning interconnectedness to good advantage. You don't have to make every connection in person. As we should know, here.

Moods
...I could stand some sunshine, though. The older I get, the more my outlook seems to walk in step with the weather. "Overcast" and "sunny" might as well be descriptors of my moods.

It's overcast today. But, in the words of the medieval mystic Persian Sufi poets, "this too shall pass."

It's been a full day here. I haven't been able to spend much time on TOP today. I hope I'll be getting back to some semblance of normal tomorrow. Or soon, anyway.

Mike

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Featured Comments from:

Lynn: "I have a photographer friend living not far from Milan, at the epicentre of the unfolding Italian COVID-19 tragedy. He describes the virus as a sniper, picking people off at random. Personal mobility is severely restricted (you need an 'essential purpose' to leave the house, plus a permit to be produced on demand) so online connections have become much more important. Supplies of basics are becoming more difficult to procure. Home deliveries can be weeks away.

"So he and some mutual photographer friends from around the world are chatting more via email, sharing pictures and anecdotes of our youth and families. It's wonderful—we are getting to know our online friends much better than before, bringing sunlight into our increasingly restricted worlds. Now is a good opportunity to share our experiences and help others overcome the loneliness of isolation."

Sunday Support Group: So Nice to See

I yam what I yam and dat's all what I yam.

—Popeye the Sailor Man, my favorite
cartoon character when I was five

Followup on the film question: I've finally gotten up to date with all the comments from Thursday. That took a while—not because there were so many, but because there were so many good ones. Thank you for all the thoughtful and interesting responses. I'm sure I got more out of that post than anyone else did!

I agree with the commenters who suggested that it might be a matter of printmaking (I don't currently print black-and-white). As the issue has sorted out in my mind, I've provisionally decided that it comes down to whether I want to a.) make B&W prints the old fashioned way, with an enlarger, or b.) commit to mastering B&W digital printing. I don't want to do both. (Well, maybe when I retire. But "my retirement plan is to keep working.")

I need to let it percolate some more in my brain. In the meantime, I accept the advice I got that getting out and shooting is critical at this point. I need that input. Recall the Mark L. Power Principle: "Think, Shoot, Think." That is, you first conceptualize your working method and your ideas or project (think); then get out with the camera in your hand and engage with the world, guided by your ideas (shoot); then appraise your results and edit and redact and shape the work you actually got (think again). Rinse and repeat.

Mindless random shooting alone doesn't work. But "think think" all by itself doesn't work either.

Thank you for your support: I only make a direct appeal for support once in a while. My birthday is coming up, so here goes. Skip this part if you like. No, actually, please don't.

I guess we all go through life with the aspiration or ambition to be someone else, or to be ourselves, only better. But we are what we are. I'll never write novels. (Every kid should want to be an athlete or a dancer when they're young, so they can learn how to give up unrealistic ambitions. It's good practice for later.) What I do is serve photographers and photography enthusiasts by writing for you, attempting to entertain or inform or enlighten you or at least be thought-provoking. That's who I get to be. In 2005 my ambition was to write something almost every day for one whole year, and that ambition seemed preposterous, far-fetched, highly unlikely—as unrealistic as many of my other idealistic pie-in-the-sky notions. And I've been doing it ever since. Not too shabby! I've written the equivalent in word count of 15 full-length novels here since 2005, and published countless wonderful comments from you and your fellow readers. That's a lot of words in virtual ink on screens. It requires a certain doggedness from me, and an interactive, responsive audience in you.

If you'd like to support me and these efforts, you can start a recurring donation through Patreon, or increase the amount of your current donation. Would you consider the price of a Starbucks coffee every month, or a magazine subscription, or a pack of cigarettes a day? That would be extremely kind of you. This whole shebang would sink like a big rock without you!

Me. New glasses again. February 2020.

Sight and other miracles: I got a birthday present!

I'm excited. My newest glasses just arrived—in time for my birthday (number 63), so I've decided they're a birthday present. They're real old-fashioned glass; I guess my prescription is too wacky for Trivex. My old prescription from six and a half months ago had been drifting so far from accurate that I didn't know whether to leave my computer glasses on while I worked or take them off. Either seemed uncomfortable, but in different ways, so I would continually take them off and put them back on all day long. My one eye has continued to improve (and the other has continued to deteriorate) since I got those last August.

These new ones are AMAZING. At reading distances everything snaps into perfect crispness! I can see each pixel on my monitor. Reading an actual printed book is a joy. It's the clearest and cleanest and sharpest I have seen the world in many a year. 'S wonderful.

There's a small fly in the ointment I guess...suddenly everything rectangular is a trapezoid. And not subtly, either, but emphatically enlarged at the right side. It will be interesting to see if that goes away as my brain adapts to it.

But (as long as I'm deploying old aphorisms) I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. Not only do I no longer need glasses for driving, even at night, but with my right eye, my surgically fixed eye, I can see the beautiful optical viewfinder of the old-fashioned Contax RTS II perfectly with no glasses and no correction. How lucky is that, to have young eyes as I'm getting old?

Very lucky. And I'm very grateful, too—to God, science, Obamacare, Dr. Holly Hindman MD MPH, the deceased person whose cornea I get to use (God bless your soul, anonymous friend), good fortune, all of you who have supported my writing and this site...and anything else that might have played a part.

It's so nice to see.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Dave Hodson: "I wonder if digital killed the art of photography. Must be something about the age. I hit a similar funk at 65 (I'm 69 now). I still have my digital stuff but managed to scrape together a darkroom and some large and medium format film cameras. Turns out I like learning new (old?) processes a lot more than actually taking photos and it didn't take long to discover alternative processes like kallitypes and salt prints, glass plate negatives, homemade paper and film, pinhole cameras...there's no end of re-discovery and every day's a new gem. Amazing what we used to be able to do and how many people are out there doing much of the same. I don't think I have the time left to master any of this but I'm happy to get at least to a functioning level. Good luck with whatever you do."

Bruce McL: "I think most people here want to see you deeply committed to your own photography, not just to photography in general. For you to write about photography without writing about what you are doing in photography is not enough, in my opinion. If what you really want to do is to shoot with an Instax SQ6 Taylor Swift Edition camera, then embrace it and tell us about it."

Clay: "I've been thinking about this dilemma for a while, and to me it boils down to analyzing the image-making sequence and determining which part brings you the most satisfaction. In my specific case, I decided that I really liked to deep dive into the end-product of the print. More specifically, I love to make ink and paper photogravure prints with polymer plates. So I have attempted to streamline all the intervening parts of the imaging chain to allow me to maximize the time I spend either making images or printing them on a press. From there it was a no-brainer to decide to go almost all-digital at the front end since it shortens the shoot-instantiate-evaluate-shoot-again cycle and keeps the inevitable deceleration from occurring quite as rapidly as it might if I were bogged down in intermediate steps that bring no joy."