The Online Photographer

Playin' Hooky (Blog Note)

TOP is on hiatus this week.

If you're looking for something to keep you occupied till our slacker Editor gets back, check out the completely and almost unprecedentedly awesome New York Times "2020 in Photos: A Year Like No Other."

This is no rote "as-usual" end-of-year feature, no casual feel-good eye-candy. It contains a much larger number of photographs than usual, arranged by month, with excellent captions, often calling out and describing the work of specific photographers for their accomplishment and risk-taking. This is a photojournalistic and editorial accomplishment in and of itself, on its own.

I've been there three times already and I'm only up to May.

This one will reward your attention. Highly recommended.

The view from the red chair, just now

See you soon!

—Slacker Editor, enjoying his break

P.S. See the update in the pool table post...

Book of interest this week:

The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St Clair
(clicking on the links above takes you to Amazon)

From The Book Depository (free shipping worldwide)

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

Viggo Johansen, Joyful Christmas, 1891

Many of us will be more isolated than usual this year, and some who aren't might be taking greater risks than they would like. For me it will be a quiet Christmas spent alone, wishing I could be with family and friends. I hope to have a peaceful and contemplative day that includes prayer and meditation. I have a nice meal planned.

I sympathize with others who are alone but hey, it's not the worst thing in the world. This too shall pass. We can get through it.

This year has been a trying and tragic one. Still, we just passed the Winter Solstice, and from now on the light lasts longer. My prayer is that 2021 will be a brighter year, for my country and its people and for all people around the world. We all hope we will make headway against this capricious and erratic virus and that it will begin to die out. In the meantime, we each do our part.

I thought Viggo Johansen's picture might remind us that Christmas can be a celebration of light in the darkness of Winter. Fight back! Stand in the light, whether actual or metaphorical.

A Christmas Carol, which I'm re-reading now, is at root the story of a spiritual awakening. Groundhog Day, which I'll re-watch on my break, suggests that accommodating to the knottiness of existence is a repetitive task. Both are light entertainments, but their positivity is a little more than empty treacle and cheer. I think I'll also try to find a bluegrass Christmas album, on account of you can't be in a bad mood while listening to bluegrass.

I'll be taking a week off. I'm not planning to do anything. I'm just going to rest and take it easy for a few days, and get lots of sleep.

Meanwhile, I wish you a Merry Christmas and good health. May you walk through these days with a light heart and an easy step.

Back real soon,

—Mike, Head Writer and kitchen help of T.O.P.

Blog Note: Books of Interest

About the book link at the bottom of the post: I thought in 2021 I would resurrect my onetime practice of putting a link to a relevant, recommended, or intriguing book at the end of every post—perhaps one mentioned in a recent post, perhaps not; perhaps one I've seen, perhaps one I've only heard of. If the feature provides a convenient jump to Amazon for TOP readers, so much the better.

Because not everyone can see the image links on my site, I'll include both an image and a text link, plus a link the to book at The Book Depository, which offers free international shipping worldwide. I'll keep each link up for about a week.

Give this a few weeks then I'll ask you what you think of it.

I'll venture a guess Elements, due soon on January 5th, might sell out quickly. Voyeuristic voyaging to the corners of the earth for those stuck isolating.

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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Book of interest this week:

Elements: In Pursuit of the Wild, Rucksack magazine
(clicking on the links above takes you to Amazon)

Elements from The Book Depository (free shipping worldwide)

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Blog Notes: Blog Birthday

Item: Dang, I missed our birthday! The Online Photographer turned 15 a few weeks ago, on November 22nd. When I started this in 2005, my ambition was to try to keep it going for ONE WHOLE YEAR. That goal seemed unlikely. And here we are, 15 years (and a few days) later, still spluttering along. Pretty amazing. It's like starting an OC/OL/OY with dubious prospects, entirely unsure if you can make it, and then finding yourself still shooting with that same camera and lens fifteen years later.

Item: We had a lovely snowfall last night. Nine inches where I am, a medium powder.

Item: I'm going to be taking Christmas week off this year (I normally take three days). I'll be gone starting Mon. Dec. 22 and return on Sunday Dec. 27th. Hopefully before I go I'll post some links to some gems from the archives for those who want to go exploring.

Item: Two days from now, on Saturday, it will be the one-year anniversary of my latest diet experiment, and I'll post an update. During the past year I've been practicing time-restricted eating, plus I've been following a mainly plant-based diet. I'm trying to keep the size of the post down to something less than book-length! It's been an interesting experiment.

Item: I believe the recent "What Do You Shoot With These Days?" post received the second-highest number of comments in TOP's now 15-year history: 293 as of this morning. The all-time record is 701 comments, and it was to a question very similar to this one back in 2014—I asked about "Your Favorite Digital Camera." The Nikon D700 won the contest at that time.

Item: We didn't have any Print Sales this year, turns out. An idea for the next one is a-stirring in my brain. I have something a little different in mind. Because the last few sales have sold between 50 and 100 prints, I thought I'd collect a limited number of prints from each of several photographers, get them all boxed up and ready to go in advance, then offer them to you, first come first served. There are reasons for such a plan, one of which is that it sounds like fun to me.

As ever, I shall keep you posted.

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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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

Jay Salisbury: "I’ve been here for all those years though I never comment. Have enjoyed your blog even though I’m not even real serious about photography anymore. Anyway, just wanted to say thanks!"

Mike replies: Well, I'm glad you finally spoke up! And you are welcome.

Roger Bradbury: "Happy birthday, TOP man! I think I started here about fourteen years ago, and have been chipping in with comments ever since. Since I enjoyed the blog so much, early on I went back right to the beginning and went through all your old posts; first on the old site, then here. It's a nice place to be, which is why I keep coming back."

Caleb Courteau: "I forget how I found you Mike. I think it may have been through the Sunday Morning Photographer at the Luminous Landscape. I was in my early twenties then and am now thirty-five years old. At this point reading your writing has been a part of my weekly routine for a large fraction of my life. Jobs, girlfriends, and cameras have come and gone while reading your blog. I bought my first house, got married, and started a new career, but The Online Photographer has been a steady companion throughout."

Mike replies: That's humbling, Caleb, thank you. I'm honored!

Dachshund! (OT)

I'm driving to Buffalo today to pick up that pool table light. I'm starting to think I'm just deliberately making this project more difficult than it has to be. It's starting to feel like there will never be a pool table in this shed. It's not like it has to be difficult; but the pool table I want costs $5,000 and another $2,000 for delivery and installation once all is said and done. It's as decisively and emphatically out of reach as that medium-format Fuji. I'm trying to do everything on a budget which greatly complicates the project.

My mother had a dachshund once whose name was Wolfgang. Wolfgang was not an ordinary dog—he was a miniature long-hair silver-dapple dachshund (meaning his coat was black and brown and silvery gray) who had one brown eye and one blue eye. He thought he was Napoleon—he would get in the faces of Great Danes and German Shepherds and bark furiously until the big dogs backed down. To paraphrase Thea Berg, other dogs had bigger sticks but Wolfie swung his harder. Anyway Wolfgang would drive us crazy by barking whenever his ball got stuck under the radiator. He'd whine and whimper and "dig" furiously trying to get the ball out. Finally it occurred to me to wonder why his ball always seemed to get stuck under the same spot, so I followed him around one day. He went here and there, nosed the ball away from him and chased it, settled down to gnaw on it for a while—and then he trotted over to the radiator, set the ball down, and deliberately rolled it with his nose to where he couldn't get it. Then he promptly began worrying it, barking, scratching, and whining. Funny!

Maybe that's me. Who drives four hours in the car to get a pool table light? I'm not even going to save any money on it when all is said and done. Anyway, here's the Wolfgang aspect of today's mission: we're setting out for a two-hour-plus drive West without knowing whether the light is going to fit inside the car. Why do I do stuff like this to myself?

Happy about a heater
Here's the latest on the shed: The drywall is all done and looks fantastic. The walls are going to be the spiffiest feature of the room, as befits their status as the basis for the photography exhibit. The electrical got finished up yesterday too—all the outlets got dug out of the plaster, spacers installed for depth, and the new covers on (I don't know what the damned things are called and maybe there isn't even a name for them—the plates that surround switches and outlets on the wall). The eight-foot baseboard heating unit was installed—with two coats of paint behind and underneath it—and the thermostat went in. You've never seen a guy happier about a heater. I love it.

So—progress. Hopefully, the next thing you'll see is a photograph of the undamaged pool table light, hung on a fan box and emanating photons. Baby steps. Wish me luck.

Mike

UPDATE later that same day.... The mission went splendidly and without a hitch. My friend Eric consented to use his truck (thanks Eric), a humongous vehicle with a 5-liter V8 that can accommodate a large riding mower, and anyway the pool table light would have fit in my car. It took us only four hours, plus a few minutes for stops, and it was great to have company along the way. The pool table light exceeds my expectations—it's really very nice and the quality is excellent. The seller said it cost $540 new, and I paid her asking price of $150. Next step will be to get it installed. Then I'll suck it up and motivate myself to begin the painting.

But right now ah'm tarred, as they say in the South. 

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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Featured Comments from:

Robert Roaldi: "I've driven farther for good cheese and cappuccino. What you're doing make total sense. Are we going to get a post about the different kinds of billiard balls they make? I assume that as with everything else, there are all kinds of choices."

Mike replies: Your wish is my command. I'll put it on the list.

Patrick Dodds: "Re 'Anyway, here's the Wolfgang aspect of today's mission: we're setting out for a two-hour-plus drive West without knowing whether the light is going to fit inside the car. Why do I do stuff like this to myself?' This made me laugh harder than anything I've ever read here before. Thank you. Worthy of James Thurber himself."

Kefyn Moss: "The cover around a light switch is called an escutcheon plate."
Tom Burke: "In the UK the front of an electrical socket is known as the face plate."
Ben Rosengart: "They're called switch plates."
Malcolm Leader (partial comment): "They're simply called coverplates."

Mike replies: You see the problem!

Steve Rosenblum: "Jeez, I go for long drives just to get out of the house during the pandemic and I have no other goal in mind!"

Mike replies: ...In your new Tesla! I might go on long drives too...

My favorite story about aimless drives comes from a book in a series called "Witness" by Lee Friedlander about his and Maria's friend the sculptor Raoul Hague, who made giant abstract wooden sculptures out of sections of large trees. Seems Raoul would head off on a journey but get distracted by curiosity and aesthetic promise at every turn and crossroad, and he would simply follow whatever path looked more promising in terms of things to see. In so doing he would get hopelessly lost and couldn't find his way back home. In his later years this problem was solved by his friends who made a rule that whenever Raoul went driving someone else had to go along. It was this second person's responsibility to navigate and keep track of where in the heck they were, so they stood a chance of finding their way back. All in the era long before GPS, of course.

Update, Friday 7:30 a.m.

The insulators are here. This is going to be interesting—I don't know much about polyurethane spray foam insulation and have never used it before. All the trades in this area seem to have a high opinion of it, and I keep hearing good things about the outfit doing the application. Everyone tells me it will make the shed "very tight" (I must have heard those words eight times from various people) and a number of people have told me it will improve the structural integrity of the shed. One guy even said I won't have any trouble with insects if I use spray foam. I asked the guy who's doing the application, Tyler, what he thought about the baseboard heating idea, and he said "you'll be able to heat this space with a match" and "you'll be playing pool in your bare feet."

Okay, bring it on. 

Other fun facts? It takes half an hour to 45 minutes to heat the foam material and prep the line for spraying, but once he gets going Tyler estimates it will take him only an hour to an hour and half to spray the whole interior of the shed. And the foam sets so fast you can touch it within ten seconds and paint it after only 15 minutes.

The retailer's friend
An administrative note: Black Friday on TOP is not starting until—this is quirky, I know—the day after Thanksgiving. Although I have put a link to B&H at the bottom of recent posts. On the actual Black Friday I'd like to post a few gift ideas based on cool things I've bought on the recommendation of readers over the years and really like.

I'd like to solicit ideas for that...is there anything you've bought on Amazon or B&H that you particularly like and would recommend highly to your fellow readers? Only if you've used it yourself and genuinely like it. It can be anything, doesn't have to be photo-related.

On Thanksgiving (my favorite holiday) I hope to post a few notes about the uses of gratitude. It's a biggie in the practical "spiritual toolkit" and very useful in increasing contentment with life.

I still haven't decided whether to have turkey on Thanksgiving!

Bck outside with the trusty X-H1 to see how they've masked off everything in the shed interior. I'm using the 14mm and ISO 1600 but will use the 35mm to take a few shots of Tyler doing the actual spraying.

It's fun but also a little harrowing to have stuff built. The pool shed, I imagine, is probably 10%—maybe only 5%—of the stress and worry of building a house, something I've never done, but I imagine it gives me at least a taste of what being the client in a home build must be like. Fun and exciting, and certainly interesting, but also a little stressful. As with most such things, I'll probably know exactly how I should have gone about this by the time it's all done!

Mike

UPDATE 11:30 a.m. All done! I'm going to save the pictures for when I do the wrap-up on the shed, but I'm pleased with the work. The insulation is very tough and very airtight. I think I made the right decision here, even though it's more expensive.

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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Four Distractions for You

Well, it looks like I'm taking a small unscheduled break, without, at first, intending it.

On Wednesday, purely as an indulgence and as a way of distracting myself from what has become The Great Wait (for the incompetent States, I want to add, but don't be snarky, Mike, don't be snarky), I started writing a post called "How to Buy a Pool Table." That would have been for "Open Mike," the "often-off-topic Editorial page of TOP," which I try to post on Wednesdays.

At the same time, the weather turned nice. We have had almost nothing but rain here for three weeks, although there was one sunny warm day and one snowfall, our first wintry day of this year. (The light was wonderful that day.) Tuesday was another warm sunny day, so I also distracted myself by working a lot. I have a balcony porch in the back of the house that was actively decaying and sorely needed attention, and I used the nice weather to finish all the repairs on that and to get two coats of stain on it. Then I mulched leaves till dark. Mulching leaves is a good enough way to clean them up—I have a riding mower and a push-mower, and the push-mower is the one that has the mulching blade on it—but I need dry weather to do it! Can't mow leaves in the rain.

And the good weather, like the Great Wait, has continued. Despite two days of working on it (in between bouts with the paintbrush and the lawnmower), I have not been able to finish the pool table post—in fact, I'm not even half done with it, such that I could post it as a "Part I." Today the weather report is for 68°F (20°C) and sun all day, so I'm going to get ambitious—I'm going to try to get a coat of stain or two on my back deck. Which is pretty extensive, as it includes the wooden walkway to the barn and pool shed (I need a name for the pool shed. Maybe I can mull over that as I work).

In case you're looking to me for your distraction, I'll pass along these links sent to me by various readers:

Chris Killip 1946–2020. Photo by Kent Rodzwicz.

—Chris Killip, the British documentary photographer best known for his work among the lower classes in the north and later a Harvard professor, died of lung cancer on October 13th. Here's an obituary from Harvard that includes examples of his work.

—Darin Boville, a TOP reader, has written an extensive two-part review of Rebecca Senf's Making a Photographer: The Early Work of Ansel Adams (here's the book on Amazon—I only provide a purchase link to it because Darin doesn't. By the way after an abrupt break I am apparently an affiliate again, to my great relief). Darin is a new blogger and could use some eyes. Becky Senf is Chief Curator at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson, one of the premier institutions in the U.S. in the field of photography. CCP holds Ansel's extensive archives.

—I still haven't gotten around to watching "Bokeh is overrated," a video on YouTube, though several readers thought I should. You're on your own with this one. I suspect I might agree with some of what the makers have to say. I will try to get around to watching this someday.

—New Lumix S 85mm—I suspect I'm like a Pavlov's dog with regard to 35mm and 85mm lenses. They just trigger the endorphins. A recent article I read about going to chef school said that some real chefs have only one large and one small kitchen knife (plus perhaps a bread knife), and if that's true then the 35mm and 85mm focal lengths (or equivalents) are my large and small knives. I've been shooting with those two forever. (All of the post about Andrew S. the spice-rack maker was shot with those two lenses, to name just one very typical fer-instance.) Anyway Panasonic has announced a new 85mm prime which, at only 12.5 ounces / 355 grams, seems to go against the recent trend toward larger, heavier lenses.

Now off to work! Miles to go before the sun sets. Hope you find some comfort in distraction yourself, too.

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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Thanks to all our Patreon contributors!

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Featured Comments from:

scott kirkpatrick: "On Killip. I have always liked his photos but knew little of his course in life. Reading up, it turns out that after a few years in the 'big show' in London, he discovered that photography could be pursued for its own sake, and spent the next 10–20 years working out of his caravan with a field camera in dicey places around England. When he concluded that his approach had become dated (in the light of Martin Parr's and Lee Friedlander's hand cameras with attached flash), he accepted a lectureship at Harvard. He stayed for the next 10–20 years, becoming Harvard's Carpenter Center's equivalent to Richard Benson, a craftsman/artist administering a visual arts program. How's that for a high degree of self-awareness and a soft landing?"

Nigel Voak: "I was sad to see the passing of Chris Killip. Killip was on of that great crop of UK 'documentary' photographers that came out of the UK in the eighties and who now seem to have been forgotten as photographic fashion has shifted to 'conceptual' photography."

Dan Jansenson: "Regarding Chris Killip, a very nice article, with several links, was published in the Guardian."

Older Readers (Blog Note)

People in the USA are...tense right now. Let's just put it that way.

I don't see much of it, but I've noticed that the frequency of various accusations flung across my bows has ratcheted up. I don't think I'm doing anything differently than I ever have, but tense people are maybe a little...short, as in short-tempered? Is that a mild enough thing to say to indicate what I mean?

Anyway, one of the occasional accusations leveled at TOP is that it's a site for older readers.

Usually stated like that's a bad thing.

I don't look at it that way. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to write for young people in virtual hordes—I'd write for teenagers if I could!—and photographers of any age or description are more than welcome. But, if anything, I target older readers. Who wouldn't? They're experienced, they're wise, they're interesting. They have stories to tell. Their culture includes a broader swath of recent history. They get my references. (When T.S. Eliot died, Ezra Pound said, "now who will get my jokes?") They tend to not get all hot and bothered about angels dancing on the heads of pins. They put things in perspective. There's a reason they're called "mature."

Herman (hover your mouse over image)

I like the company of people who know more than I do. About something, possibly including photography, even.

Speaking of which, unless I am mistaken, our Official Oldest Reader (as well as Punster-in-Chief, but don't provoke him), Herman Krieger, turned 94 yesterday. Ninety-four...that's a good start. (I think I know more about his life than I know about my own.)

Happy Birthday Herman! Are you still riding your bike Friday?

So to the next person who says TOP is for gray heads, not gearheads, my response is: I hope. None better.

Mike

Reply from Herman: "Yes, I'm still riding my Bike Friday recumbent. I'm now waiting for a Swytch electric pedal assist kit to install on the bike. Now if only they made a shutter assist kit to make it easier to take photos."

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

 Patreon

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

Mike Hurd: "I was just going to say—well I'm young and I've been enjoying your blog for years but then I realised that I'm 43 and I need to start remembering that I'm not actually young any more...."

Mike J. replies: I remember sitting in Phil Davis's workshop studio—he developed Beyond the Zone System and was the de facto technical editor of Photo Techniques—complaining about how old I was. He immediately admonished me (he did a lot of that), telling me that I was still very young and I should realize it. I believe I was 42 then.

CR: "Twenty-two-year-old here enjoying your blog nonetheless. I like the literary references, and the fact you know so much more about photography (and other things) than me is probably exactly why I keep reading."

Mike replies: Welcome CR, good to know you're here.

Aaron Hines: "From where I sit, I do not think you target any audience other than those interested in photography in its many forms. The 'old' part seems to come from the fact that younger generations do not have as much interest in dedicated cameras at the moment, while those of us that have been photographing for a while don't see smartphones (and social media) as having entirely usurped all other cameras or completely devalued photographic history. At 38, I am sure that many here do not consider me old...though, that's always a matter of perspective, isn't it? My 11-year-olds think I'm ancient."

JG: "One point you didn't make, but probably could (should?) have, is that older readers are much more likely to be...well, readers, not watchers. A couple of years ago, I stumbled into a mentor role wherein I've been casually teaching two high-school age kids (children and grandchildren of friends) about the basics of photography. (They are particularly interested in using film, which I find amusing, as I was equally happy to be rid of it.) While they claim to be interested in learning, if I forward to them a link to anything text-based, they won't read it. No way, no how! However, they will happily watch videos, even poorly made ones that are chock full of errors and inaccuracies and are intended to be consumed as entertainment, not education. Not surprisingly, the primary outlet for their photography is Instagram via an iPhone and they love using filters when post-processing their photos. While they would no doubt benefit a lot from regularly reading your blog, there's zero chance they will ever do so, because it's simply not the way they have been primed to acquire knowledge or entertainment. I've repeatedly tried to gently nudge them into being more open-minded about this, but no such luck so far! Anyway, based on this small sample set, at least, I suspect if you ever do try to cater your blog more toward younger readers, your business model will fail spectacularly!"

Mike Plews: "I suspect a convention of TOP readers would be a gloriously fascinating event but would also be over by 8 p.m.

"I am into my third month of retirement and hit 71 in November which should establish my geezer bona fides. Most of my friends are about the same age and some have shared nuggets of wisdom about this time of life, a few worth sharing:

• You know you are really old when you ask your date 'are those your teeth?' and you aren't asking if they are dentures, you are asking if they are paid for.
• You know you are really old when you are less concerned about running our of Viagra than stool softeners.
• And finally, you know you are really old when you can remember when 4x5 was considered medium format.

"Good lord I miss DuPont papers—that sort of says it all."

Mike replies: I was just thinking I wish Kodak still made Verichrome and Medalist. Or at least Plus-X.

Chris C: "I think in the modern world, 'readers' is enough to imply 'older.' The younger generations are more into watching video as their source of information. My teenage son is a prime example—'why read the book when I can watch the movie?'"

Mike replies: Anecdotal evidence, but my 27-year-old son is the same way. And he's a good reader; he just doesn't enjoy it. On the other hand, I was researching the book marketplace the other day and adolescent fiction is a hot category.

Bob Feugate: "As always, a thoughtful and interesting post. And I was delighted to learn that Herman Krieger is still alive and doing well. He has led an extraordinarily productive life and deserves to be better known. His pages of visual puns 'Essays in Black and White' are endlessly amusing."

Joe Iannazzone: "Mike, I've got a couple of years on you and have been reading your columns since the Luminous Landscape days. To pick up on Mike Plews' anecdotes...'You know you are old when the motivation for dating a younger woman is that she can see to drive at night.' Just to be clear, I am happily married and can see well enough to take photographs in the daytime."

Chan: "Started reading your blog from my late 20s. Its been more than a decade now. By the way, I'm waiting for your post about iPhone 12. LoL."

Mike replies: I requested one from Apple today because of your comment here. I don't even know if they provide review samples, but it never hurts to ask.

Ken W: "I'm in my 30s, and I drop by this site every day (and drop a bit in Mike's Patreon while I'm at it). Mostly lurking, and happy to read and learn from many who have made photographs for longer than I've lived so far."

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.

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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.

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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.

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(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.