The Online Photographer

Temporarily Closed for Repairs, Back Soon (Blog Note)

Okay, I'm going to be off for the next few days getting a new ticker, literally—just the bit that ticks and turns the motor over. It's been immensely satisfying hearing from so many people who are willing to school me about pacemakers! Among other things, I heard from an engineer who used to work for a company that makes pacemakers, an eminent electrophysiologist (the people who actually perform the procedure), cardiologists and cardiac surgeons both active and retired, and a friend who once had dinner with Earl Bakken, founder of Medtronic, the manufacturer of the pacemaker I'll be keeping close to my heart after tomorrow. Bakken, who died in 2018 after a long life (January 10th would have been his 100th birthday), invented "the first external, battery-operated, transistorized, wearable artificial pacemaker" in the year I was born, 1957. Various doctors explained to me the workings of the heart, the ins and outs of pacing, and the finer points of IPGs (implantable pulse generators). It's fascinating. While I'm on the subject, take a look at the product that TOP reader Jon Peterson is working on developing now. And of course many readers who have pacemakers generously shared their experience. As a result I'm really looking forward to the procedure and am hopeful it will help. Thanks to everyone. What an interesting journey. The collective wisdom of TOP readers on virtually any subject is awe-inspiring. Each time I innocently unlock another little area of specialized expertise it blows me away.

I think I'm going to unofficially mark tomorrow as the starting line of my old age. Which will require: flexibility of mind, willingness to adopt new habits and adapt to changing situations and circumstances, and a deliberate attempt to be more positive, optimistic, and grateful! We only live once, but we don't realize it until we're old.

Alternatives
While I'm gone, Based on a True Story, a nice blog itself, has a nice list of other blogs and photo sites that you could explore. Check the right-hand sidebar at the link. Chris Gampat at The Phoblographer has recently announced a change of direction away from gear and more toward what people do with cameras, and it will be interesting to see how that pans out. Roger Cicala is always worth keeping up with—here's the clearinghouse page for all things Roger. And Kirk Tuck is posting. He recently announced VSL's lifetime stats: "5,700+ blog posts; 63,000+ comments, casually moderated; four resignations in a huff; zero ads; zero affiliate links; no requests for cash; no fees."

With all that to distract you, please don't forget about good ol' TOP!

If you're looking for something off-topic while I'm recuperating, consider the latest entrant in my Extemporaneous Idiosyncratic YouTube Hall of Fame, a motley collection of uniquely interesting videos on a great variety of topics that take advantage of the medium of handmade short videos: "Mob Boss's Daughter Interview—Rita Gigante," from Soft White Underbelly. Rita is the daughter of Vincent "Chin" Gigante. The Chin, referred to by underlings merely by signs—making a "C" with the hand or simply by touching one's own chin—was the eccentric boss of the Genovese Crime family in New York City from 1981 to 2005. Among other things, he put a lot of effort into pretending to be mentally impaired as a way of escaping conviction in court. The interview is fascinating, somewhat uplifting if you can believe that, and more than a little horrifying from a psychological child-rearing perspective. The story of little Rita trapped under the dining room table will be one you'll be unlikely to forget.

And for something lighter, and more musical, try this nice acoustic version of "Lazy Eye," the 2007 alternative hit by the band Silversun Pickups.

As for a question for today's comments: what would you like to see more or less of on TOP in 2024? I, too, am in the mode of thinking about overhauls. Although I'll probably just keep on keepin' on.

This shouldn't take too long. Back soon, I hope.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

robert e: "Best of luck on the upgrade, Mike! In response to your question of the day, I'll simply paraphrase a well-known slogan: Keep TOP Weird!"

Open Mike: 'House' Baker's Dozen Cancelled

["Open Mike" is the Editorial page of the venerable Online
Photographer, a survivor weblog founded in 2005.]

I'm sorry for all of those who submitted work, but the "House" Baker's Dozen is cancelled. An agitated individual has been harassing me over it, and after consulting with several advisors I don't see a neutral way out. This is permanent and not undoable.

For the most part I've been fortunate. I've attracted outstanding readers and commenters. But in any public-facing job you're always liable to attract the random bad egg. In this case, a bully. Or "cyberbully" as the term is now. The bully has been banned, but that hasn't made them go away (I'm avoiding pronouns here). Some of the particulars are, shall we say, concerning: for instance, despite their obsession with it, the person did not actually submit a picture to the Baker's Dozen contest. That's not the only anomaly. Another recent-ish term not of my generation: "WTF?"

Corporate cyberbully
I've been writing about photography since 1988, and this has happened four or five times over the years. The worst was a person who proposed themselves for a feature I used to do called "Random Excellence." I had a policy that I didn't allow people to propose themselves for that feature. I explained that to them, as I had done a number of times before with no issues arising from it. The person went off the deep end, and harassed me with impressive persistence for quite a number of years. I don't know how people can sustain such vindictiveness on the basis of so little offense. But that's their problem. People have their own issues. I know other photo-writers who have had similar experiences.

Another of the very worst for me was a company, believe it or not. And talk about bullying. I wrote one negative sentence about Hasselblad in a review of a competing medium-format camera (admittedly, very snarky—I was trying to be funny, and I get carried away with words sometimes), and Hasselblad launched a vendetta against me that lasted for many years. This was way back in the film era, when Hasselblad was far and away the leading medium-format brand among professionals in North America. So it was a big dog way back then; whereas I was an impoverished art-school graduate living in a two-room walk-up. Not exactly a fair fight. They made concerted attempts to get me fired from the magazine I worked for, enlisted a number of allies to discredit me, and so forth. It went on and on. I didn't keep it, but one result was a multi-page letter from the semi-official Hasselblad booster Ernst Wildi, written to the publisher of the magazine I worked for (that is, he was trying to go over my boss's head). It was remarkable for its vituperation, but also for its mixture of fact with obvious error, because he didn't actually know me or know much about me. So a lot of it consisted of shots fired (er, I almost said "wildly") in the dark. Some landed; some went rather absurdly wide. My editor was very supportive, and got into the habit of screening the reader mail for the kind of diatribes Hasselblad tended to instigate. Most of the mail I got was highly positive, so when she got a letter raking me over the coals and asserting that every word I wrote was as worthless as sand and that personally I was blood kin to the very Devil, she was usually able to uncover a Hasselblad connection. In one case, though, she received a negative letter from a woman who was the President of a company, and she (my editor I mean) called me and told me she couldn't see a Hasselblad connection and that she couldn't simply censor every negative letter about me just because it was negative. So she published it. It turned out that the woman was the President of an advertising agency, and maybe you can guess who one of her clients was.

Anyway, I usually respond to these things by walking away. I responded in that case by simply disqualifying myself from writing about Hasselblads from then on. I figured my objectivity was compromised. In my next life, I might write under a pseudonym.

That is the news. We will have another Baker's Dozen soon.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Terry Burnes: "I appreciate this update. I must admit I was wondering what had happened to BD House as it seemed to me that if you ask us to do something for TOP you need to do your part in return and seemed in the past to have done so. Now it's clear that it wasn't neglect on your part or some overall deficiency in our submittals. Just the unpleasant side of the Internet that we usually see little or none of here.

"House was still a useful exercise for me, as are all the BDs. You pull a theme out of your hat and it causes me to review thousands of my photos thinking 'There must be something worthwhile in here' as I struggle to find it. But then something surfaces that clears the bar, if only barely, and confidence returns. Sort of an exercise in self-appraisal that we can all benefit from periodically that I think helps us going forward. So thanks for that."

Peter Williams: "It's bullshit to cancel it. You've taken so long to even mention it since asking for entries."

Mike replies: That's fair. I've been sick, though. I keep mentioning that I've been off my game.

A Strange Fact About Blogs

It appears that longer blog posts get more readers, and shorter comments get more readers.

This is rather odd, and I'm still not quite sure I believe it. These "factoids" seem to exhibit characteristics of the echo chamber—that is, of people simply repeating information that is common and widespread on the web, thereby reinforcing what doesn't deserve to be reinforced.

Posts
Various studies (a number of them quite old now—I looked into this years ago) have prescribed lengths of 1,500 all the way up to 3,000 words as optimal for a blog post; a generally recommended target is in the 2,000–2,500-word range.

That seems long to me, but I've made an effort to "write longer" for years now. (Because if that's what the customers want....) However, yesterday's post was only 390 words; "A Most Honorable Photographer" was ~640 (a bit of formatting messed up the exact count); and "Football Today" was ~1,800 words. I sometimes say, "I do go on," and you might think me rather long-winded yourself, but I have my work cut out to reach 2,500 words. Which I believe I do only rarely.

Comments
I had trouble yesterday picking Featured Comments, because so many of the comments were so good. I don't think I would like to deprive myself of some of the longer comments, such as Zyni's (382 words) or Jordi P.'s (617 words), both of which I liked. I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from saying everything they want to say. Knowing that long comments sometimes cause a tl;dr ("too long, didn't read") response, though, I'm reluctant to feature too many long comments. But sometimes I do anyway. To mix things up if nothing else. However, it appears that the most-read comments are in the 100–300-word range. As a general rule, if you "think succinct" (as a onetime writing teacher of mine used to say), your views might get more of a hearing.

As for me and my end, maybe I just need to pick bigger subjects. But that's all for this one—even though this is only 350 words.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Blog Note

January might be a rough month around here...I got put on the fast track for a pacemaker today. Can't wait, as I've been pretty sick for much of the past two months. Turns out, you need adequate blood circulation. (Who would've guessed?)

I'd love to hear from anyone who has one. If you don't want your comment published, just mention that, and it won't be. I'm curious as to what your experience has been.

I've been highly fortunate for most of my life. No real health issues and not a lot of problems with being sick, even. I've had COVID-19 three times, but it didn't give me any trouble to speak of. I had to have an operation on my eye...but it worked. No other problems. I didn't even take any medications until recently.

I won't be writing much about this, but I'll keep you posted as to schedules, days off, etc. Today was supposed to be a day of work on the "House" Baker's Dozen, and it wasn't. But I'll get back in that saddle tomorrow a.m.

Mike

UPDATE: Just wanted to say thanks for all the good wishes and comments, many of them private, especially the ones from people who have had the procedure or are involved with the process professionally. I'm slowly getting a handle on what to expect.

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Brandon Scott: "I've had my pacemaker for two years. No problems. I feel much better and stronger. As two of my physician friends remarked: No brainer. Low risk, high benefits. Don't worry; you will be fine."

Marco Alpert: "I've had one for a couple of years. Although the installation was done on an emergency basis (that's another story), the process went very smoothly, recovery was a breeze, and all has worked well since then. I have a gizmo by my bedside that talks to the pacemaker via Bluetooth and phones home if it detects any malfunction, but so far it hasn't had any need. It looks like the battery will last for 12 years or so. Given that it solves the problem that it was installed for, I couldn't be more pleased."

Roger: "Take care of yourself, Mike. We’ll be here when you’re back. I’ve had a pacemaker/ICD for a bit over three years. I had to give up my welding hobby but otherwise not a big deal. Donated my welding gear to a local makerspace and called it good. I have non-recurring tachycardia. When I asked the cardiologist what my other options were she said, 'dying.' Kind of made the decision process much easier. As others have said the recovery isn’t too bad—I was back to traveling shortly after the bandage was removed.

"I’m still trying to convince the nurses who do the annual device check to turn on the option that’ll let me shoot lightening from my fingertips…."

Mark Hobson: "Within a few hours of having an ablation, my electrophysiologist informs me that my heart rate is 40 bpm and I should get a pacemaker. next thing I know I’m being wheeled into the procedure room and the nurse says, 'You will be awake during the procedure.' Say what? Assuming they know what they are doing, I am nevertheless taken slightly aback when the surgeon tells me that normally I would have a choice of what music to listen to during the procedure but unfortunately for me that was the day that the team listens to The Greatful Dead. After receiving something to relax me, the next thing I remember is smelling something burning to which I ask the surgeon, 'Are you cutting me with that laser scalpel thing?' To which he responds, 'Yes I am. I’ll be done in a minute.' In any event, it was a truly odd experience."

We Are Lucky

Screen shot of Ray Davies of the Kinks being knighted by then-Prince Charles. The man on the left in the gray suit waiting his turn is photographer Don McCullin.

I've been a mite under the weather. Mysteriously so. Finally might have figured out what's going on. I hope.

I had a spell of dizzyness, vertigo, lightheadedness, wooziness, and visual disturbances this past week that lasted about four days, the latest in a string of weird symptoms.

Of course I couldn't get in to see my doctor just for that. The way things are now, there's only a narrow band between "not serious enough to get an appointment" and "so serious you need the ER or the ambulance." Poking around on my own, I figured it might be low blood pressure. A friend told me Wal-Mart sells home blood pressure (BP) monitors, so I ventured into the wilds of Wal-Mart in Watkins Glen. Once located, I balked at the price of the home units, but there was a little kiosk right there where you could sit down and take your own BP. It was rather alarming to have my arm gripped in a giant steel contraption in a Wal-Mart. "Your blood pressure is very high," it admonished me, "Stage 2 hypertension." That sent my BP even higher, I'd guess. It's unusual for me—I've had low blood pressure all my life. I called my doctor brother and my doctor friend Steve. For counseling. Or, er, consoling.

Well, my blood pressure doesn't seem to be a problem, turns out—it was 122/70 this morning on the new home BP monitor I got from Amazon (way cheaper than Wal-Mart)—but my heart rate (HR) at Wal-Mart was 42, and my HR since then has been measuring in the 30–40 range. Which is low unless you're a marathoner, and I am not. Many calls later, with the surprise help of a friendly nurse I don't know who was looking out for me, I actually wrangled an appointment with the cardiologist on Monday morning. The main guy, no less. Mike for the win! So I hope to get to the bottom of this on Monday. Or at least get launched on that quest.

I was just about to write a post about how I was going to abandon my diet—it's just too hard to come back from a relapse. I had it, but I lost it. (That ought to be carved on my headstone someday [grimacing smiley face].) I'm not sure I'm up to the task of managing an old body. But maybe I have to keep trying. The stakes are pretty high...although just for me. The funny thing is, I like this age. I like it a lot. It's actually a nice time of life, except for the little fact that you're getting old.

The march of medical advancements
A fair number of my same-age and older friends are complaining about various medical issues, but I have to remind myself that at 66 I'm at the age where most men died in the middle of the nineteenth century. Which wasn't that long ago. When the retirement age was set at 65 in the 1930s, 65-year-old men could expect to live to 76 1/2. A lot of the procedures and treatments that my friends bitch about only came into being fifty, twenty, five, or even two years ago. My paternal grandmother died at more or less my age of a stomach cancer which is now 100% curable—it kills exactly zero people. (Well, unless they're completely untreated. It makes me mad that, historically, so many black people died of simple lack of adequate treatment. The world lost Eric Dolphy for that reason, among many other losses to humanity.) My other grandmother was blind at the end of her life, and never would have been had she entered her 80s at the turn of the millennium or later.

So it's true that medical entanglements are a PITA, but on balance we're actually quite lucky to be living when we are in terms of medical science and treatment. You can console yourself with that the next time you're dying of boredom in a waiting room.

Listen to your heart beat
There's a line in Sir(!) Ray Davies' "Morphine Song"—written about a hospital visit—that goes "Hey buddy, you know, you got a slow heartbeat." Well, me too, now. But at least it's still beating, and I'm still looking at the grass from the good side.

And now I think I'll go treat myself to a listen of Ted Curson's "Tears for Dolphy." He's long gone, but I love Sir Eric Dolphy, I gotta say. (You see what I did there.)

Mike
(Thanks to Chuck Albertson)

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Al Gardner: "Hmmm. A low heart rate put me on the floor in May of 2022. I wore a heart monitor for two weeks and the results revealed that my heart's electrical system was the culprit. Long story short I signed up for an FDA trial of then-new wireless pacemakers that are inserted into the heart via a catheter. Immediate relief and no surgical procedure to place the old style pacemaker. Only a small, one inch or less, incision to insert the catheters. Two and a half hour procedure and an overnight stay to be certain the incision was sound and not leaking. The FDA issued it's approval during the summer and that solution should be widely available now. If you need that then please look into it. Be safe."

Albert Smith: "I've been doing home BP testing for years. I get 'white coat' syndrome in the doctor's office and any single test can be scary, but a single test is not a trend. Just want to say, do the test correctly. Five minutes of quiet sitting, feet on floor, cuff at heart level. Google the protocol. In the doctor's office, they call you in and immediately throw the cuff on and say that it's high. I then present my physical calendar with daily annotations of my BP, taken at various times in the day and show that my trend is low-normal. So keep good records."

Dan Khong: "A friend of mine had giddy spells and low heart rate and ended up with a pacemaker. He's OK now."

Ben: "My father had a pacemaker put in a couple years ago for a low heart rate. Sorted him out no problem. I met Ted Curson in Paris in the late '90s. He seemed a very kind and generous man, and had all the patience in the world for some random kid."

Be of Good Cheer (OT)

Very sorry there was no post again. I was up to my a** in alligators all day. Didn't hear from the mechanic, but at least confirmed that the disabled car got where it was supposed to be going. And I learned that AAA will tow someone else's car if someone is willing to call for it! The policy follows the person, not the car. My friend Chris would have called her AAA and saved me the $286 or whatever it was. Finished delivering the pictures to my Mennonite friend Andrew's friend Lyn, which is what I was undertaking when the car conked out. Called Hertz to check on the availability of rental cars, just in case, and was barely able to stop some lad in Kolkata from bestowing upon me a reservation against my will! My goal was to find out what a rental car cost and did they have any. He was very avid to achieve his goal instead, and showed remarkable persistence. We sparred; he feinted, I parried. After narrowly avoided reserving a car I don't yet know if I need, he informed me that they have no cars at my location anyway. But they have some in Rochester. Rochester is 54 miles away. "Not that far away from you." I'm proud of my restraint for not remarking that it is a rather long way, when you don't have a car. I filed a claim with the insurance agency for the house generator which went kablooie almost a year ago, and that took multiple calls. (Yeah, I know. The agent was curious about my delay too. But don't mock me too much. When I called to see if a rental car would be covered under my policy [nope], it shook loose the memory of the generator. I also added roadside assistance and towing to my car insurance policy.) I spoke to the adjuster for the dead generator. That took a while. He scheduled a visit from a tech/inspector who was due in "two to four business hours" but never showed up. Lastly, I could sleep for only five hours last night and suffered an alarmingly high number of apneas, so I called the Otolaryngology Department that oversees my CPAP sleep therapy to see if I could speak with the sleep therapist. We played telephone tag a while too. I was not able to speak to that person, but I did get a stern lecture from another person who said I absolutely must be seen in person. She informed me that my CPAP machine is a prescription device, and they would absolutely not make any changes to any settings or attempt to diagnose any problems until I had been seen in person; I could not just call on the phone; I had to be seen in person and they can make no exceptions. I said all right, that's fine, I'll be seen. She then checked and...told me their next available appointment is in a month and a half. Made me laugh. 

But you know what? It was a great day. I got a lot done, made some headway, never lost my composure, and handled everything that came my way. My neighbor very kindly bought some breakfast staples for me while she was in town, for which I was grateful. And midway through the day came a big blessing...my son texted to tell me that he's gotten an impressive job offer back in Illinois where he lives. I'm so proud of him I could bust—I do not need any other Christmas present this year.

The icing on the cake was that it was a sunny, warm(ish) day, so look what I did:

It looks a little forlorn I will admit, but at least it signals that TOP Rural World HQ is participating in this year's festival of peace on earth, good will toward men. And on time for once (pats self on back).

I'll sleep well tonight. Alligators vanquished! Well, maybe not all the alligators quite yet. I'm still grateful to be living in this great land where we are free to choose our own system of weights and measures*. Even if we are a little discombobulated.

Mike

*That one really gave me a good laugh. Hope those in Europe or elsewhere can see it.

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

JTK: "Thanks for the link. It's 7 a.m. and I am laughing and my eyes are watering. I grew up in England and was thoroughly involved in the technical side of the metric conversion in the banking system. The money was good whether I got 240 pence to the pound or 100 pence to the pound. Lots of overtime."

Breakage

Little SNAFU. There won't be a new post today. I'm dealing with more breakage. (You remember "Stuff Breaks.") But you can enjoy all the new comments and pictures added under the previous post! I did.

Remember that watch I bought and talked about in this post a few years ago? Regular readers might. A Solar Seiko. Well, it was great, but it broke. I tracked it pretty carefully, and as far I as I can tell, it was accurate to about three seconds a year. Phenomenal. And amazing. Unfortunately, it no longer works. Won't hold a charge. I can put it out in the sun for fours days (one day is supposed to keep it ticking for six months) and it'll run for ten or twelve days and then stop. Nuthin'. I hope to pursue the promised warranty. We'll see what happens.

Remember my pool shed? Last week the baseboard heater broke. Wouldn't heat. Two years old. The electricians brought along a new unit just in case they might have to replace it, but the culprit turned out to be merely a loose wire in the thermostat. One of those wire nut thingys let go. While they were here they discovered the baseboard unit had never been grounded, so they did that too. The pool shed is possibly the best thing (well, material thing) I ever did for myself—I shoot at least a little almost every day. I had wanted a pool table so badly for so long.

And finally, remember Andrew Sensenig, who built a spice rack for me while I documented it? Well, a bunch of us stopped off at Andrew's Wood Design to see his latest creations on the way home from a meeting. I'm home now, but my car is still at Andrew's. Wouldn't start. Broken. Towing bill to Wheeler's Auto in Geneva is $268, and still no word on when I'll get the car back. Big thanks to Dan who drove me around while I tried to take care of that mess all day today. Do you have a backup camera? All pros do. A car is too expensive to keep a backup! 

Thanks for all those comments. I think I'll go read them again myself. I can't go anywhere, but at least I get to watch Thursday Night Football tonight...unless something breaks!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Dori: "Sorry to hear about the car troubles. Not knowing if it's a dead battery, I would still recommend everyone have a good jump start battery in their car. It comes in pretty handy as you don't have to wait for another car (or AAA) if a simple jump will do to get you going. I use this one, but there are plenty out there."

Tsosie: "A Triple-A or similar membership is a lot less expensive than the cost of your tow. You live in a winter climate so it only makes sense to get a road service membership of some sort."

Harry B Houchins: "Things always break in pairs or threes. Our RV broke down (battery and starter) five days ago. Towing bill $860. Mechanic's bill $551.37. I'm still waiting for the 'other' shoe to drop. CRUD! Anyway, have a great holiday to one and all!!!"

The Writing Life (OT)

Or the sort-of-writing sort-of life, but who's counting.

I worked hard on my book—one of my books—yesterday and this morning, and made good progress. I feel like I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. (No, not a train.) I have some difficult-for-me—nay, grueling for me—work upcoming. I have to sit down and block out the whole story, fashion it into chapters, and outline the chapters. It will take me hours (days?), and it will be very uncomfortable the whole way—organizing in all its shifty shapes and forms is not an aptitude I naturally have. However, I feel like once I have manageable chunks to work on, I'll be less lost, and first draft will go better. The goal is to finish the whole book in about half the target word count. That will be hard for me too because first draft tends to demoralize me. But then the fun can start. Jiggling the bits and pieces about, striking all the reallys and verys, finding the music, letting the flow flow, sharpening the drama—rewriting and revising over and over again, polishing—that's the phase I enjoy. I can do it endlessly. Rewriting will effortlessly expand the ms. ~1.5–2X and I'll be at the target length. Got to finish the hard part to get to the easy part.

Another good thing, when I get that far, is that I will be able to skip and jump around the chapters. When I get tired of working on one I can go work on another.

Whenever I get rolling on the book project, I have difficulty getting out of it again. Then when I get out of it, I have difficulty getting back into it again. When I'm into it, though, it's in my head 24/7—I think about it in the shower, on the way to the grocery store, doing laundry, exercising, feeding the dog. "Immersed" is the word. Trouble is, my life is not organized for that. I have dozens of things to do every day, posts and comments on TOP being the most important!

Speaking of which, I'd better get to work.  :-)

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

It's Black Friday Week

Wow, I am really sorry. No new post yesterday...and in the middle of Black Friday week! I am not the World's worst businessman, but I am at that end of the scale. If you are starting your shopping already, please think of TOP if you are buying a camera at B&H Photo or a book at Amazon, would you? (Both of those look interesting, and one of them is popular.) (And both of them are links, hint, hint.) Pretty please? It would help me out. I get a little spiff in return when I refer you to them, and you don't pay anything extra. Many thanks.

Speaking of cameras, after writing about my kit the other day (and hearing from Ned B., who is the very soul of a true enthusiast, and a friendly fellow), I did think of something to want. (I have lots of practice at that when it comes to cameras, so I fall back into it easily.) A Pentax Monochrome for portraits. Which made me wonder: has anyone (besides Ned, who definitely has) bought or used the Pentax Monochrome yet? And if so, what do you think? Useful? Pleasant? Pointless? Valuable to you, or too specialized?

Of course, reader Acetous Q. Driveby can opine about how B&W is sh*t and he's always hated it and anyone should just convert color files and etc. etc. etc.—because that happens every time the subject comes up. Or, Acetous, you could ease up and just not. Up to you. (Look up "acetous." It means "vinegary." I'm kind of proud of myself for knowing that word.) There sure are a lot of parentheses in this post. (As is my wont. Well, one of my wonts. I just looked up "wont"—"one's customary behavior in a particular situation." Looking up words is my wont too. I do it probably every single day, and probably have done since my grandmother gave me a dictionary before I started high school. I was proud of that dictionary. If you can believe this, I used to read the dictionary, as well as the encyclopedia. Really! But I digress. As is my....)

Obviously, I have a B&W-only camera, so I've put my money where my mouth is. ("Halloween 2023," when I checked just now, just passed 14,000 views! That will be next Fall's print, assuming old TOP survives that long.)

You can thank me for the existence of the Pentax Monochrome, by the way. I conjured it into existence by buying an expensive converted camera just before it came out. I think it worked out for me, though—my camera is far from ideal, but I love it.

Sorry for the lack of post-age yesterday. I did do the Comments, at least. And now, breakfast.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Matthew: "The Pentax Monochrome is the best camera I've ever used, but in a quiet way. Under ideal conditions detail and tones are a bit better, and noise is a bit better. But under adverse conditions it really shines; high-ISO photos—I happily use 50,000 through 200,000—are grainy but usable, without breaking up the way colour files can.

"As a thing, the camera itself is excellent. It has an essence and purpose that makes my Ricoh GRIII feel fussy and haphazard. There's a spiritual difference between looking at the world through the lens versus looking at the camera's recreated light, just as there's a difference between recording colour for monochrome post-processing and black-and-white photography. The Monochrome certainly isn't right for most people, but it's as close to perfect-for-me as I've ever found."

John Camp: "I bought a bunch of Pentax gear for my wife when she evinced an interest in photography, which turned out to be passing. So it sat around, doing nothing, until the Monochrome came out. Since I had six lenses, I figured what the heck. When I opened TOP this morning, the camera was sitting next to my elbow, because yesterday I was out shooting...crows. Nothing like some serious black, if you're shooting B&W. Especially against an overcast (white) sky.

"It's really a good camera, I think. Feels good in the hand. Maybe has too many buttons. Twenty-eight on the exterior of the camera, including two adjustment dials and a joystick (as opposed to setting dials.) Fixed B&W LCD, and very nice traditional DSLR viewfinder. I mostly ignore the buttons and dials; after setting it up, I left them alone, although I do have to make further adjustments when shooting in the evening.

I have all Pentax glass: a 60–250mm, a 50–135mm, a 16–50mm, and three of the very small 'Limited' lenses, the 70mm, 43mm and 21mm. The zooms are quite good if not excellent. The Limited are jacket-pocket size, and they are very good.

"The images also seem quite good, although I'm not a pixel-peeper and don't do 'tests.' Anyway, the images are satisfying, for B&W. I would never buy a Leica, as I don't like rangefinder cameras, but looking at the examples that Kirk Tuck has been showing lately, I'd say that the Leicas are better, probably both because of the sensor and the glass (and Kirk's talent) but if you like B&W prints, I doubt you could see much difference in anything less than a 22-inch print (except for the talent part).

In other words, the Monochrome seems to me to be a good solid camera. My biggest problem is that I'm no longer sure how much I like B&W, even after shooting it for the first 20 years of my photography life. I screw around with it more than I get serious. And I really do shoot it like a film camera—I don't chimp, mostly just shoot.

"Do like the crows shots, though. They make me laugh."

Andy Kochanowski: "I have said several times, even probably here, that the Pentax K3III is a marvelous camera. Unless you require preternatural focusing speed, or if you cover the NFL or similar, it will give you pliable, rich files all day long. I shot maybe 600 images one day of an event and didn't even get the battery meter to go down one bar. The viewfinder is almost like a fine SLR with the added focus confirmation or grid lines if you like. It is small and dense and feels like you could drive a nail with it if needed. All this to say I'm sure the Pentax Monochrome is a very fine B&W camera. I don't have need for one, since I shoot color and am happy to continue to do that. A kit of the K3III and a Ricoh GRIIIx is pretty perfect."

Robert Roaldi: "I'm told that the Monochrome is a big success and selling like hot cakes, so we might have more B&W cameras soon. Someone must be working on an app to colourize B&W photos."

Clayton: "You may notice that Robert Frank drove across America while Todd Webb walked. Both lived 95 years. Just thought you needed to add that to the lifestyle statistics."

Kye Wood: "This is the gold standard review and reason explaining why this camera is truly important. And explains how it came to be. I still think the FA 31mm Limited is the best lens I've ever held, by the way."

rr: "I think I get the idea of a monochrome sensor, and the impact of its characteristics. I also think the technical differences are overrated. What makes a camera like this produce better black-and-white photos is the commitment and the decisiveness of the person who bought the thing in the first place. Nobody who just wants to try B&W once in a while does. I'd guess these cameras are used by people who are really into B&W, who know which filter to use to bring out the tonalities, who were willing to learn the characteristics of the sensor a long time ago, and who are now just taking photos. Decisiveness on all levels, from the mundane technical, to subject matter choice, over to where the resulting images sit on an emotional and cultural spectrum, that's what's important."

Blog Milestone: Thank You

TOP just passed 260,000 comments since 2007. Almost all of them above average, and that's no joke. Seriously, the number of bad comments we get here are within the rounding error. A great big...

THANK YOU

...to all you commenters, regular and occasional. You are the best. Keep 'em coming!

—Mike the Mod.

Yr. Hmbl. Mod.'s Comment Problem

The comments are currently completely up to date.

Yesterday I alighted on what might be a better method for Yr. Hmbl. Moderator to keep up with comments: instead of writing a post first and then updating all the comments of a new morning, over my white tea, as has been my quotidian habit lo these very nearly 19 years (TOP turns 19 on the 28th of this month), I'm going to try switching the order around, and doing the comments first and then doing my writing.

That might help. I'll try it and see.

I will note, however, that the problem is not entirely mine. It is 97% me; I grant that. I am not dodging blame. (I am Hmbl., remember.) However, another aspect of it is that people are not commenting in as timely a fashion as they used to. More and more, readers are tending to visit not every day but every few days (if not every week or more) scrolling down to see if they find anything interesting. Formerly, when I had multiple tens of thousands of visitors every day (pause to sigh for Good Old Days), I would get a plethora of comments on a new post right away, from which I could extract the Featured Comments; and then I would just let go the good ones that came in late, because that saved me from having to add Featured Comments to days-old posts and getting all mixed up. Now, however, almost nothing comes in immediately, and I am left with the task of adding new Featured Comments to days-old posts, dealing with scattered comments on scattered posts. Which is greatly more confusing to Now-Brain (formerly Young-Brain) and flummoxes if not flusters the workflow. It was much easier to marshal comments when they were all together, and to work on only one published post at a time.

For example, I got a nice comment just yesterday morning from a reader named John about traveling with a Leica in China, left under the "Deathless Leica M Film Cameras Rebound" post—a post which today is a week old. It's an excellent comment, so I added it to the Featured Comments of that old post, even though relatively few regular readers will see it there, because you have already left that post in your rear-view mirror.

I'm not saying you shouldn't comment on old posts. You should do whatever is normal, convenient, and natural for you, and we shall continue to prize your droppings as you manifestly prize our'n. I shall, anyway. But that's part of the whole picture, and I just thought I'd mention it. Even though it looks like I am looking for an excuse.

—Mike the Mod.

Comments I Missed

One of the things that was wrong this past week was that I really messed up the Comments workflow again, and, as has happened once or twice before, I failed to edit or "Feature" some good ones. As of right now, Sunday, November 5th, 10:00 a.m., everything is up to date. But when too much time goes by, people don't go back and see new comments added to old posts. I've added new "Featured Comments" to post going back to "AI Imaging is a Pox, a Fraud and a Thief." Here are some even earlier good ones I might have made you miss:

Michael wrote, on the "Hobbies" post: "To be honest, I've found myself drifting away from photography over the last couple of years. I think it's a combination of being stuck at home during COVID, the skyrocketing price of new gear, and the ever growing feeling that everything I photograph just seems derivative anymore. It just doesn't feel like a hobby anymore, I don't get that excitement to go out early on Sunday mornings with my gear like I used to. I used to blame it on the cold dark winters, having other things to get done, or not wanting to catch COVID, but the reality is was just hiding my lack of motivation behind excuses. Instead I've found my interest moving toward audio gear, where enjoyment, new discoveries, and cool gear can be found for surprisingly cheap prices. But the really funny thing is, I've actually grown more interested in looking at photos over taking them. I've joined numerous photography groups on social media the last few years, and I really enjoy seeing other people's work and giving feedback and answering questions. So now my Sunday mornings are spent spinning records while looking at people's portfolios."

Mike replies: First of all, I think that is a perfectly defensible way to participate in the photography hobby. I've always respected it. I think of it as "being a member of the audience," which I think is something every enthusiast should aspire to be.

But, as to your initial comment, I've been feeling that too, and I wonder what to ascribe it to—is it just encroaching age, or this stage of life? Does it perhaps have to do with the state of the camera market, which flew very high for a while and has lately been coming back to earth like Icarus? Are we feeling, and finding ourselves influenced by, the changing status of photography in the culture? Or is there something else going on? I don't even know if this ennui is general, i.e., culture-wide, or something that's just affecting you and me and...how many others?

And this is despite the fact that my own photography is actually going better than it has in years. I'm still in love with photographing with my "digital view camera" and I've been shooting a fair amount, and I think about it a lot. So there's nothing wrong with my motivation or my participation. Or my love of creating.

I really haven't put my finger on this yet, but (to mix metaphors), I've got my antennae out. I've felt what you're talking about. But I don't know why. I need to understand better what this is...what I've been feeling and why.

Rob Griffin wrote, also on "Hobbies": "Mike, Watch yourself. After exploring DE razors, you may find yourself teetering on the edge of the fine-writing-instrument abyss that is much like high-end hi-fi in its ability to attract a person’s hard-earned cash."

Mike replies: Yeah, why do certain things just grab us for a while, and a few of them not let go? I seem to get immersed in these little bouts of obsession that last a few days or weeks or even months. My theory is that it's the internet! There are all these little communities for every little geeky thing, all the happy people getting lost in the connoisseurship of thingys.

Trygve Strömberg wrote, on the "Gift Book?" post: "Some of these books are rare. Ragnar Axelsson: Last Days of the Arctic (magnificent); Sebastiao Salgado: Sahel, The End of the Road (famine, drought); Sally Mann: Deep South (wet plates, evocative); Susan Burnstine: Within Shadows (home-made cameras, dreamy); Alex Webb: The Suffering of Light (masterful photography); Rinko Kawauchi: Illuminance or Utatane (both are surreal); Masahisa Fukase: Ravens (dark and bleak); and Michael Kenna: Le Notre’s Gardens (different from MK’s usual). Perhaps too many, but...

"Pentti Sammallahti has been mentioned a few times already. His book Here, Far Away is superb."

Sreeram Chandran wrote, on the "Serendipity" post: "Worth mentioning the words serendipitiosity and serendipititious, coined by John Cusak in the 20-year-old rom-com Christmas Eve movie Serendipity. Incidentally, I hail from Kerala, a state on the southern tip of the Indian peninsula and very near to the island nation Sreelanka, Ceylon or Serendip! Kerala (known as God's Own Country) is very similar to Ceylon in climate, weather, landscape and culture; however we speak the language Malayalam (an anagram), while the people of Ceylon are two ethnic groups, Tamil and Sinhalese. I am also glad to let you know that I have been following your blog for a very long time, for more than ten years! In fact, I read your blog every day!"

Mike replies: Thank you very much for that Sreeram!

Bill Tyler on the "Video Lens for Fuji?" post: "I can't respond specifically to the X-H1, but I do have a recommendation. The book Making Movies by Sidney Lumet has several excellent descriptions of lens choices he made for various shots and the specific goals he had in mind when making them. The one that sticks in my mind most is the process during the filming of 12 Angry Men where the lenses and camera angles changed subtly throughout the film to heighten tension. Xander has probably already read the book, but others may find it interesting.

Mike replies: That book has been recommended here before. Thanks Bill. Xander ended up buying the Fuji XF 16–55mm ƒ/2.8, by the way:

Mark Sampson said, on the "Stuff Breaks" post: "As long as you're dealing with your house, may I recommend a book? It won't help you fix things but it's a wonderful read. How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built, by the great thinker Stewart Brand. Full of illustrations too."

Mike replies: That's right down my alley. I'll read that. Thanks. And by the way, right after I wrote the "Stuff Breaks" post, the toilet seat broke. Of all things. Guess how? The steel screws holding it together disintegrated with rust. Max possible age: 11 years. Who builds a toilet seat with screws that corrode in <11 years? I bought a new seat, then replaced all eight screws with stainless steel ones.

Joseph L. Kashi: "Most of the cost of building/renovation is in the labor. Using top quality materials instead of cheap 'good enough, I hope' materials only adds a few percent to the overall cost but definitely results in a much superior, more reliable product. Cheaper materials are very much false economy. I'm not referring to gold-plating but rather just getting genuinely better quality materials, sort of like the old Sears 'Best.'

"I've done a lot of defective construction litigation over the years and an ungodly high percentage is simply due to trying to go cheap, which is always more expensive in the long term."

Mike replies: I wish every builder ever would read what you just wrote!

Benjamin Marks on "Stuff Breaks": "I often rail at the impermanence of things, particularly those things that comprise our home. The structure apparently started out as a 1760s creamery for a nearby dairy farm, and it has had several generational iterations. Each renovation has raised alternating questions of competence and compromise, resulting in the current agglomeration. The place has what my wife calls 'character.' But really its purpose, other than keeping the rain off our heads, is to remind us of the second law of thermodynamics: that the universe tends towards entropy, and its painful local corollary, which adds to the law the phrase, 'this means you, bub.' My wife gently reminds me not to get upset when another piece of the structure fails—one might as well complain about the weather. Then again, it is somehow my job to fix those broken things, not hers, and so I am unable to reach the sense of philosophical detachment that she has so easily obtained.

"Bon Courage, Mike. You've only pitted yourself against time's arrow, after all."

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Stanley Banos: "In response to Michael's post: back in my film days, I really didn't shoot very much, and not from a lack of trying. I'd miss the more nuanced, less perceptible things in life that can make for an interesting, insightful photograph; was always looking for some kind of...grand statement. Throughout that era, however, I kept looking at and studying photographs intensely in books and galleries, both B&W and color—even though I only shot the former. After switching to digital color seven years ago, I find myself not only shooting more, but getting more keepers. I honestly feel that the previous years of studying more than shooting has finally kicked in and paid off. Just wish it hadn't taken so long!"

robert e: "About the 'ennui settling in over the photography hobby' thing, I have felt something similar over the last several years. In my case, this coincided with moving from the city to an over-manicured suburb. But I suspect another cause is the evolution of photography itself. In this era of ubiquitous smart cameras, instant review and quick, near-limitless post-processing, camera operation is a much diminished aspect of image-making.

"Once, heroes created works of art with boxes and shutters, or in the alchemical abyss of the darkroom. These days, the process of photographing (as we knew it) is far more accessible, and often just the first step of many to create even a casual image and put it to use (of which there are many these days). Over time, a once arcane process became mundane and accessible to the masses. Where does that leave photo nerds?

"Actually in not such a bad place. Yes, there is still value in working on our chops and obsessing over gear, but we are also freer to think about projects, questions, statements, to ask: What am I trying to accomplish? Or to simply enjoy photographs.

"I bet many of us have a forgotten list somewhere of projects we'd do if only [insert limitations here], and I bet some of those limitations have evaporated or become surmountable. If I focus on capabilities and opportunities, events seem to have relieved us of more and more technical obstacles. One no longer needs to be a technician or an optics expert to realize a vision. OK, those conditions were never absolute, but the dynamic has undeniably and dramatically changed.

"I'm telling myself now that I can mope about this and feel increasingly irrelevant, or I can leave old habits in the past and see where the new capabilities lead. I can keep studying classic processes, too, for their own sake. Or take up new obsessions. It's all good."

Blog Note

Okay, I'm almost done with enough of the stuff I have to do. Thank you for your patience!

Next up, Jack Mac has sent me a nice review of the camera in his new iPhone 15, along with permission to publish it. (Another reader sent me a nice article recently, but I can't find it now. If that was you, could you give me a shout?)

I should have that up tomorrow or Sunday, and then we'll be underway again.

—Mike the once again energized Ed.

Gone Fishin' (Blog Note)

...Not really. But I'm afraid I have to take a few days off. I've fallen behind on nearly everything—too many things, anyway—and I've got that feeling like I'm drowning. I just have to take some time and at least kickstart a few tasks & jobs I've let slide for too long. Gotta catch my breath. And do a little prioritizing and organizing. 

Coming up, some Sony reviews, a red (small c) camera, News Notes from around the web, and the Baker's Dozen "House" portfolio. Among other things. I'll be back on either Wednesday or Thursday, hopefully the former. I hope to load up some of my own new pictures on my Flickr page, too—I'm way behind on that as well.

See you soon. And thanks, as ever, for reading TOP.

—Mike the beleaguered Ed.

A New, All-Off-Topic Blog?

The other day, Edward Taylor wrote:

"Mike—this will sound ridiculous to you, but I think you should switch to off-topic posts and sprinkle in a bit of photography. Now that phones exist, interest in dedicated camera photography is dying. You are a writer. People will read your writing. I like your off-topic posts. I already know just about everything about photography.

"Look at how successful blogs have been. They don't even have a 'topic.' They are all off-topic!"

What's your reaction Edward's idea?

I've been amusing myself these past few days with the thought of doing a new, true "all-topic" blog, and I've got more ideas than I know what to do with. I would have a lot of fun with it. Commenting on the news, ranging far afield with gear talk, unleashing my inner opinion columnist, finding quirky things to call attention to, unearthing local goings-on. Plus, I have reams of non-photo-related stories mouldering away in my graying gray matter that are aching to get out.

But I wear two hats. I'm the main content provider here, and that's a creative-side job. But I've also made a living at this for going on twenty years, so I'm the "company strategist" too. Mustn't forget that this is at root a business problem.

Would you who are reading this also come read a general-interest site if I wrote it?

More to the point, if you are a current Patreon supporter, would you be more likely to keep or cancel your pledge if I segued over to an all-new site with general content? I've got a reasonable approximation of Ctein's old "1,000 True Fans" idea—I currently have 688 people who contribute a little (some a lot) each month to help me keep TOP going. That's a lot of people, albeit not quite 1k. But the high was 804. to give you some real numbers, in May I had a net loss of 56¢ in pledges, and of three patrons; in June, a net loss of $31 in pledges and two patrons; in July, a net loss of $8.07 in pledges and three patrons; and in August, a net loss of $61.48 in pledges  and six patrons. You see where that is going. From a high of 804 patrons, there are currently 688 of you. That's enough to keep me in the saddle, but for how long is the question. The trendline has been going only one way.

And second, what's to bring new readers in? The world is beset by a hailstorm of demands for our attention (I find Apple News exhausting, yet at the same time generally unsatisfying), and I'm not sure how a general-interest blog goes about attracting attention. To follow the metaphor unconscionably far, it would be like tapping you on the shoulder in the middle of that hailstorm. How would anybody even tell?

Seems like a risk. But it might also be a risk to try to ride TOP into an inevitable sunset. Looking forward to hearing your take.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Blog Note

Phew! TypePad has been down all day for me. Sorry for the silence.

Back in the morning.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Don't Shoot Film? It's Okay. You Can Relax.

So just a little gentle admonishment. I have lots of readers, and y'all do different things and have different histories. Some of you even photograph flowers and cats, or use Rodinal!

I kid.

All right, all right
Some of my readers shoot film. A few of them, like me, liked darkroom work—we found it a positive pleasure for its own sake. Even if we aren't graced with darkrooms in our current circumstances. This is okay.

Some shoot with view cameras. Because they like the process. I already told you the story of how I got suckered into writing an "anti-view-camera" article once, at, let me see, the original Camera & Darkroom magazine, for Ana Jones who was the editor then. It was proposed to me as one half of a "pro/con" pair of articles, and Ron Wisner of Wisner Classic Manufacturing Co., a builder of bespoke view cameras of high Edwardian style, was supposed to write the counterpart "pro" article. But Ron never came through on his promises, so Ana went ahead and published my "con" article by itself. As a stand-alone article, it made me out to be a hater! It alienated many view camera photographers, understandably, making them think that I was unsympathetic to their beloved niche. Actually, though, I kinda love large format. I certainly have an appreciation for view camera work (what, I'm going to hate Weston and Watkins and all the others?!), and I absolutely have no quarrel with people who choose to center their hobby or their art on large format! Then or now. So using view cameras is okay too.

But if you don't shoot film any more, look...it's okay...you don't have to respond to every film article by saying "I hated/loved film/darkroom but I shoot digital now and it gives me so much more control and it's cheaper and...." It's okay. We know. We all shoot digital now. I adore my handheld digital 4x5 view camera (by the way, "Paddleboarder on the Outlet" now has 9,884 views and 228 Favorites) and I actually adore my iPhone camera too. Digital won. So there's no need to treat every mention of film like it's a call to battle. Maybe it used to be. But not now. The war is over.

So...
If you come across an article on film or darkroom here, and you aren't interested, maybe you could just treat it like it's not for you. It's for somebody else. It's for the people who still like and/or work in film or in the darkroom. If you're not one of those, that's okay; everyone understands. You don't need to rise to the defense of digital.

I'm saying all this with a smile and a chuckle, not at all angrily or stridently, so don't get that wrong. I do like it when we can find something new that everyone wants to talk about for a day or two; but a lot of topics are minority topics. Aren't there a few other topics I cover occasionally that have zero interest for you personally? I know some readers won't read about sports, or hate the WFPB posts, or pool, jazz, Miatas, or vintage stereo speakers. So just treat the film/darkroom posts like one of those. With each of those things, there's some percentage of readers, some small subset of the set of everyone, who enjoy them. How about you, don't you also enjoy one or two of the off-topic subjects? Why lowriders bounce? Romance at the movies? Lee Sandlin? So you can understand that the film/darkrooms posts please somebody, somewhere.

A.V. Shirk in his darkroom, 1974. I had an enlarger like that
once. (I found this picture on Wikimedia Commons.)

So anyway, don't stress. I want to write about film photography sometimes. I don't want it to be off limits. I want to write about vintage eBay film cameras. I want to write about large format. Occasionally, not frequently. I even want to write about ye olde darkroom that apparently horrified so many people (in 1979, the peak of the darkroom hobby, the then-leading magazine estimated that there were 250,000 small private darkrooms in the USA. Soon after, there were not one but two US darkroom newsstand magazines). I don't want to have to field a bunch of comments about how glad you are that film is gone or how superior digital is every time the old ways crop up. If you don't want to read about that stuff, I get it. I understand you might not have any interest any more. But relax. If you don't care, somebody else might! Find a little sympathy in your heart for them.

A blog is like the weather in Scotland. If you don't like it, wait a while, and it will change.

Cheers!

Mike

P.S. Although I get on my high horse every now and then, and sometimes lecture about things, I seldom lecture at people. So if this made you feel lectured at, I apologize!

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Our Print Sales Need to Evolve Too

I spoke yesterday of how my writing and comment-moderation workflow here on TOP might need to change. Well, our print sales might need to evolve as well.

I've heard anecdotally from a variety of sources that print sales are slowing across the board, as the tradition of fine printmaking continues to evaporate from the culture of photography. Our print sales have certainly declined. I'm not sure I can ascribe that to anything in the broader culture, however. TOP's audience has constricted to about one-third the size of the audience at peak (2013), although the readers that remain seem much more engaged, devoted, and active—also, they're more dedicated or devoted to photography or however you want to phrase it, more experienced and knowledgeable. TOP doesn't attract hordes of casual visitors looking for shopping advice any more, that's for sure.

Anyway, it might be time for a transition here too. Our old model (taking orders in advance for a limited time and fulfilling them after they were already sold) worked quite wonderfully. But it's a high-volume model. Our best print sale sold ~735 prints, and our most lucrative made $128,000 in profit. Another artist first agreed to make 50 prints, but that 50 sold so rapidly that he agreed to make 100 more. Those vanished as well. Yet another print-sale artist told us that the check we sent her was the largest amount of money she'd earned at one time in her life.

But those days are long gone. Now we struggle to sell 100, and often don't reach 50. And the profits are more modest.

Great good fortune
It's still nothing to sneeze at; not at all. When's the last time you sold 35 prints of a single picture? It's very unusual. The number of photographers who sell 35 prints of one picture in a gallery show are a tiny minority. Most people who have gallery shows would be over the moon to sell 35 total. So I'm grateful we can do that. Looked at objectively, it's still very fortunate that we do so well. Quite wonderful.

It might be time to change the sales model, is all. For one thing, the printer still needs to be paid. The first print is where a lot of the labor is. If we sell 125 prints, the first print is a small proportion of the whole. If the printer is providing 15 prints, it's a larger part of the work. It becomes harder for us to cover that cost. One printer won't work with us unless we can guarantee 100 sales.

So what I'm thinking of is switching to some kind of small-volume model. As you can see from the last post but one, 148 readers put themselves into the category of people who would consider buying a print of "Mennonite Boys Watching Dirt-Track Racing." But how many people actually will buy one? Fifteen per cent? Ten? So call it 15 to 22 sales. And that sounds about right.

So maybe I should have the printer make 15 copies (or 15 and three artist's proofs), and I'll pay him out of my pocket, and then we'll offer the 15 until they sell out. The price would have to be higher doing it that way, but still nothing too onerous. (And sometimes people want to pay more, but that's another post.)

I'd like to try that with reader prints, too. Your prints, I mean. I have in mind three prints by readers. I could ask each person to provide, say, ten copies of his or her print, and then offer them without a deadline. They'd just sell until they sold out. Wouldn't it be nice to make a sale out of the Baker's Dozens, for instance?

I'll have to think about that. Anyway, that's all that this post is trying to say: that I'm thinking about this. The volume model is on the cusp of not making enough volume, so maybe it's just time to change.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Comments I Missed

I've been off my game lately. Here, remedially, are some comments to recent posts that I meant to publish but didn't.

About the Vocal Range video, from Doug Anderson: "There is an important vocal range missing from the video. Just as baritones (like me) are those men who can not reach either the lowest notes of the bass range or the highest notes of the tenor range, mezzo sopranos are those women who can not reach either the lowest notes of the alto range or the highest notes of the soprano range. Baritones and mezzo sopranos are the most common vocal ranges of men and women, respectively."

Comment: Thanks for this clarification. I assume the guy making the video is a member of an a cappella group and was either concentrating on the normal makeup of a cappella groups generally or maybe just his own. But I don't know.

About watching the Wimbledon Final, from James Weekes: "1. I am really sorry that you missed it. A match for the ages. Well worth finding online and watching [assuming I can find the time —MJ]. 2. Have you explored ways to stream events like this? I'm pretty sure that it would have been possible, even up there in Possum Holler by the Lake. 3. The indoor version of tennis, better known as court tennis, is still being played in the U.S. and in England and, possibly, France. A good friend of mine, Haven Pell, is heavily involved and still plays at age 77. It is not played because of the cost of building a court. I grew up on Long Island and my father played in one of the remaining courts, Greentree. It is now idle. I also recommend you look up Haven's book on court tennis, Around the World in 50 Courts [link added by MJ]. Good fun. The game was invented by monks who strung a net across the interior court of their monastery. So there are windows and pitched roofs. I tried to play, having been a decent lawn tennis player, but I am left-handed and couldn't hit a decent serve."

Comment: Seems a bit like three-cushion billiards, which was one of the most popular sports in America in the 1920s and is now vestigial. It's fascinating to watch, though. At least to me.

About not watching television, by ritchie thomson: "Yes, some years ago I largely stopped watching film and TV. I maybe see two or three films/movies a year and then usually old ones. This was for two reasons. The primary being the formulaic and clichéd story lines and scripts (I wouldn't be surprised if we discover that AI has been churning out Hollywood scripts for several decades already). The secondary one was the routine depiction of explicit and sickening violence. I understand that video games take this even further. I know that many psychologist will say that this exposure doesn't lead to acts of violence (at least for most people), and that may be true, but surely at best it desensitises (people are no longer shocked by images which they should be shocked by), and at worst in infects their psyche. Images cant be unseen and come out in dreams and nightmares, thoughts, and feelings. We need international regulation of the internet, games,films and TV."

Comment: This reminds me of my decision when my son was very young to not allow him to watch TV. We watched an episode of Wheel of Fortune, a game show, and, during the half hour, saw seven guns, and saw or heard about four murders and one rape: the murders were in advertisements for TV shows that would be on later, and the rape, which was the worst of all, was an advertisement for the local news program! It actually featured a 911 call by the victim screaming and begging for help. Of the five portrayals of violence during that innocuous game show, it was the worst, disturbing even to me. Awful. So that was it. Until he was five or six, Xander watched only videos of movies for kids on the VCR. And I'm not saying children as young as five or six should watch violence, but there comes a time when you can't protect them from it.

Very curious thing about the Mennonites and Amish around here: they've never been subjected to fictional depictions of violence.

About cameras we missed, by nextSibling: "I prevaricated over getting a [Ricoh] GRIII for quite a while. Wasn't sure if I could justify the cost for a viewfinderless APS-C camera. Having had one about a year I wouldn't be without it and it's by far my most used camera because it's so easy to set up just how I like and to carry and use, and produces images of such lovely quality that such a small camera has no business making but somehow does. So now I'm just another fanboi. Recommend you try it if you get a chance sometime."

Comment: I've heard comments like this for years! Certain cameras are more beloved by users than you would guess, and certain others are less well liked than one would guess. The GR series is in the former category.

About me taking time out to work on my book, by Keith Cartmell: "Writing can be a very circular or recursive process. In order to write it, you have to know the story, and in order to know the story you have to write it. Many writers like doing the first draft. They flail away, putting in everything that comes to mind. They don't care about spelling or grammar or plot holes or anything. They barf it all out onto the page. Then they revise, (and revise and revise and revise) which typically means fixing things and boiling the words away, till you have the exact number of words to tell the story, and not one more or less. It is entirely possible to write it out so you know how it ends and who does what to who, and how, and this version is essentially an unreadable mess. Which is fine. Then you take the same material, and write the actual story."

Comment: I seem to do exactly that with every chapter! Write it once, then throw all that out and write it again like I know what I'm doing.

About the 'Mennonite Boys' photo by David Drake: "Mike, I really like his image! Such a great mood you have captured. The image reminds me of ET or Close Encounters. The two kids on bikes (of course from ET) looking up at those glowing orbs of light. I love mysterious images like this!" 

Comment: That's very nice, and thanks to you and to others such as Lisa O. for the kind compliments.

About the "enshittification" of the Web, by Geoff Wittig: "It's very much worth digging further into your quote above from The Verge. That link in turn links to a brilliant analytic article by Cory Doctorow detailing the 'Enshittification' of TikTok. Doctorow uses 'enshittification' as a technical term. In my humble opinion, he nails what's wrong with web platforms from Google to Amazon to Twitter, and the problem is most definitely not the rise of AI.

"Rather, it's the depressing inability of the owners of these platforms to resist the gravitational pull of terminal greed. He plots their identical trajectory from creating a useful function, attracting a critical mass of users to that function, and linking their users to eager marketers and advertisers. This is followed by a pivot away from providing a function toward feeding their users to their marketers, intentionally corrupting their searches to prioritize the desires of their advertisers, and strip-mining users by selling their data. Doctorow notes that the owners carefully judge how aggressively they can abuse their own users without quite inflicting enough pain to drive them to flee the platform. All so depressingly accurate."

Comment: Very astute like most all of your comments, Geoff, and spot on...unfortunately.

Thanks to all these commenters!

How such great comments get lost is that when I moderate comments late at night when I'm tired, I reserve certain ones to "Feature," but I don't edit them and load them into the post right then because I'm too tired—and then I don't get back to it the next morning as I mean to do. In other words, SNAFU.

I'm not trying to make excuses, but it's not entirely my fault. People complain that comments don't appear quickly enough, but that's partly (only partly) because comments don't come in as quickly as they used to. It used to be that every post on TOP would get a lot of comments right away, so I developed a workflow of putting up a new post in the morning and then, directly afterwards, doing the Featured Comments for the previous day's post. If a great comment came in later, I might add it to the Featured Comments if it was really good—or I might not. Many readers aren't looking for updated comments for older posts, so, when posting Featured Comments late, there's less benefit for readers in general.

Now, however, more and more readers are checking in with TOP at longer intervals, meaning that comments come in more slowly, and great comments can arrive three, four, or even more days after the post is published. Some of these are so good that I reserve them for use as "Featured Comments," but if I don't publish them right away (because it's late and I'm tired) they're outside of my usual workflow and it's easy for them to get overlooked.

I just haven't quite worked out how to handle this yet, is all. I will point out that a daily blog with moderated and Featured comments like this one is a lot to handle, and also that I'm still using a workflow that I developed when a.) I had more energy, and b.) I worked more hours. I'll keep working on this, and thinking about solutions.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Richard Parkin: "Maybe comments are dwindling because they don’t get posted quickly or not at all. It’s a negative feedback loop I think. That will never improve, as you acknowledge in this post I think, unless you change the method of posting or editing comments."

Short Something-cation (Blog Note)

Happy Independence Day for all you 'Murricans.

Little announcement: I'll be taking a something-cation for a few days. Traffic here is way down anyway during these few days around the midsummer holiday. People in the USA are off doing their own thing.

You've heard of a staycation? A vacation where you don't go anywhere? Then there's a workation, which means you travel somewhere but keep working. Well, I'm taking a few days off for a "stay-home-but-work-on-something-else"...er, -cation. 

I'm so underwater it's not even funny. I've spent the last four days working on my book and my photography. Which have both been going great. But I haven't done anything else. Every other aspect of my life I'm way behind on. I need to saddle up the lawnmower in a very bad way, for instance.

I've decided to give in and continue working on the book for three more days. So I'll be taking the next three days off to write. (Well, and mow.) Back on—let's see—Friday morning? We'll see if I can stay away that long.

I love writing
I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel on the book. Tough to say how much is actually done...I've got about 60 pages or 20k words, another 10k words of first draft, and the rest of the book is all blocked out. I've made many, many false starts, but now I've finally got a good beginning. Each time I venture into further first draft, I find I have to first explain to myself in detail everything that happens, then throw out everything I've just written and remake it into scenes with forward-moving action. It's funny, because I've studied fiction and read lots of fiction in my life, but I don't consider myself a fiction reader and I don't read contemporary genre fiction. So along the way I'm doing a lot of research into authors, approaches, and simply familiarizing myself with the proper "tone."

At the same time, I have to be myself. Have you ever heard that old adage that you have to be your authentic self or else you won't know who your real friends are? If you present a false front, you'll just attract the wrong friends. It's the same with writing, I think. You have to be yourself in order to attract your real audience. So I can't just mimic other writers in the genre. I would attract the wrong readers.

I'm slowly learning the way I have to work, working out my own idiosyncrasies and deficiencies. For example, I hate writing first draft. I'm mentally disorganized, for one thing, and get lost easily. Also, first draft is generally bad writing, and I'm insecure enough that "writing bad" makes me feel defeated and pessimistic. I'm odd in that I much prefer to rewrite and polish; it's what I'm best at. (A lot of writers are the opposite.) I'm slowly coming around to the idea that my best bet in book-writing would be to start by writing a 5k-word summary, then make a complete draft, front to back, soup to nuts, in the range of 35–40k words. Then the fun part could begin. In successive rewritings the 40k-word draft would naturally swell to 60k, then 80k, then 100k words without much effort. I'd have fun at that stage. It's just how I am, how I work.

The best thing for me (this just occurred to me) would be to have somebody else write that first 35k-word draft—somebody who's good at plotting and organizing the action into chapters and who likes blocking out first draft. Then I could take over from there in my wordsmith shop, with the fire and the anvil and the hammers and tongs. We'd make a good team, me and that other imaginary writer who's good at everything I'm bad at. But dream on, old boy.

Back soon! If you're on vacation, hope you're having a good one.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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