The Online Photographer

What It Comes Down to For Me

The discussion in the previous post was certainly interesting, but sometimes I wonder if we're not getting lost in the minutiae. I thought I should just say what I think as plainly as possible to cut through all the specifics and get to a clear "global" overview of the issue:

Mathew B. Brady, Abraham Lincoln, 1864

For me—just for me, I'm not telling you what to think or do—the power of photographs comes from their connection to the real world. That's where their magic resides, and what gives them their power. A photograph of Lincoln required Lincoln to be sitting in front of the camera.

(As an aside, Monday was the 155th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.)

The greater that connection, the more direct the connection, the more interested I tend to be, and the stronger my responses. The weaker or more suspicious that connection, the less interested I am. If I'm looking at something obviously created or invented—fabricated—then I'd prefer to look at paintings or other kinds of art.

The question is, can I retrieve from the picture something true about the appearances of real things, real people, real places, or actual events? That's what cuts to my heart. YMMV, as Internet says.

Of course, we can all argue from now to Kingdom Come about the details, from whether you should crop or not to whether B&W is realistic all the way up to relativistic ramblings about the nature of truth and the im/possibility of honesty.

If you look at the extremes it makes the distinction clearest. Rod Sainty's comment (the last Featured Comment in the previous post) tries manfully to summarize the mechanics of how pictures might hold some truth. On the other extreme, we've all seen "photos" that amount to manipulated, highly unrealistic "fantasy" digital photo-illustrations. Not that there's anything wrong with that if it's what you want to do. But it's not the middle of that range we should be looking for, because that way lies hair-splitting and disputation: there isn't a dividing line waiting to be discovered. Understand the extremes, though, and you can sense what the whole issue is about—and make some inroads as to where on the spectrum you yourself might want to land.

And it's up to you where you land, of course. Your photography belongs to you. Although I think it's better if you do it consciously...but maybe that's just my teacherish nature speakin'.

Not everyone sees it as I do, and that's fine, but that's how I see it.

Mike
(Thanks to all the commenters from yesterday. Very interesting!)

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Joe's Version

Commenting on the two "Still Pond" images (above) in the "Editing Headaches" post, Joe Holmes wrote:

"That's a tough edit. I like each image for a different, simple reason. I like the round clump of trees in the upper left in the first image, and it's a shame to cut it off. But I like the foreground framing grass in the second image.

Composite image by Joe Holmes from files by Mike J.

"So here's what I would do, and, in fact, did with your two examples: In Photoshop, I brought both images together as layers in one file, manually lining them up and then using a mask to combine the two (which is easy in this case because the pond water disguises the line where they join). It took me less than three minutes. This results in an image that's not going to fit any stock frame or mat because the aspect ratio is now odd, but who cares? It combines the best of both originals.

"Now let me say that I'm not addressing your concern about editing, taking multiple shots, etc. That's a different issue, and my Photoshop solution would not work for most issues, like your wrestlers. But still."

Joe's version is better (in that it's likely to be more pleasing to more people) than either of my two alternatives. I confess I chose these shots because I thought they'd make good fodder for discussion, which they did, but I also confess I didn't anticipate this refinement—which also means I didn't see the possibility Joe saw. This neatly illustrates one of the ways in which the process of editing has changed conceptually. These days we can effortlessly construct digital images according to our desires (limited, as Joe mentions, by the opportunities afforded by the specifics of the images—and, I would add, by the skills of the post-processor person—this, for instance, is beyond my Photoshop skills), without leaving any telltales behind. It complicates the process, because editing is no longer a binary choice, a choice between "all yes" (warts and all) or "all no," between "print it!" and "rejected." Now we can say, in effect, "yes, if this is added or changed."

Where photography started for me conceptually was with the primacy of the lens image—what you saw on the groundglass of the view camera, for example. The integrity of the image cast by the lens was paramount. The print was just trying to "fix the shadow," i.e., provide a record or report of the lens image. Attempts to combine or blend different exposures were illegitimate on their face, although it was done throughout history here and there—the Baltimore pictorialist A. Aubrey Bodine used the same sky negative in different prints, for example. But in Joe's example above it's just a fix, a post-hoc creation of a more thoughtful composition than I managed to see at the scene in real time.  

Mike
(Thanks to Joe)

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Curt Gerston: "This topic creates some interesting conflicts in my brain. I think if I made an image from a composite like yours above, I'd have a hard time framing it on my wall...I would always look at it as inauthentic somehow. It would bother me. It wouldn't last long on that wall. I don't think I could give it as a gift, put it in a book etc. And yet, I think if it was a single image, but there was a can of Coke floating in the middle of that pond, I'd have no problem cloning it out. I can't explain why I draw that line, it's just a feeling I have about what's okay and what isn't for my own work.

"I have nothing against what Joe did, by the way...looks great, and if he or you are happy with it on your wall, all the better. It's really interesting to see where people land on image manipulation. As I point out to my students, photography isn't truth, but I think we all try to express some kind of truth in our art. What feels true to us is personal."

Doug Thacker: "Re 'Where photography started for me conceptually was with the primacy of the lens image—what you saw on the groundglass of the view camera, for example. The integrity of the image cast by the lens was paramount.'

"The key words here are 'lens image' and 'integrity.' Photography, up until recently, at least, is about the capture of something from life, that something being the lens image. Having captured it, we may dodge here and burn there, but it remains an image cast at a given moment onto your recording substrate by the world at large. It was you, the photographer, who isolated this moment from the endless flow of time by fixing it as an image, you who chose the framing, deciding what to leave out and what to include, and you, lastly, who selected this particular image to show versus all those you don't show. Implicit in this image was its integrity: the viewer relied on the fact that you saw this moment and isolated it as a picture. This is what it meant to be a photographer, and what it meant to be the viewer of a photograph. The integrity of the image was, as you say, paramount, and pity the poor charlatan who was found to have violated it. (Case in point: Steve McCurry.)

"But now comes digital imaging, which is something altogether different. Here, the captured image is merely raw material, elements of which are combined with other raw material to create an image that the 'photographer' sees only in his mind's eye; the image capture is merely a preparatory step, with all the action taking place in so-called post production.

"This can only mean that photography as most of us understand it is dead, to put it bluntly, and those who still practice it in the former way are merely indulging an anachronism—one for which we must take them at their word, for what that's worth.

"'Photo-based illustration' might best describe where the technology has led us. That's not better or worse, necessarily, than what we call photography, but it's definitely not the same thing, and more akin to painting. Painting with light, in this case."

Mike replies: Okay, but then how do you and Curt feel about this?

It's a stitched pano made from five vertical shots of the view from my family's former lake house. Is what Joe did really any different, or do stitched panoramas also make you uneasy? By the way I'm just asking, not challenging.

Rob de Loe: "I too started with the 'primacy of the lens image.' I'm becoming less conservative about this as time goes by, but cautiously. For a recent project I finally broke down and used focus stacking because tilt and depth of field alone were not giving me the results I needed. I like the results, a lot, but it bothers me deep down that the final picture is not traceable back to a single exposure. It's not rational. But I feel like I've passed through a portal and can't go back. Is this what it feels like to become a 'made man' in the Mafia?  ;-)  That which I have done cannot be undone.

"Anyway, I predict that in a few years—once we've moved fully into the realm of computational photography—this whole conversation we like to have about 'how much manipulation is OK?' will seem ridiculously quaint!"

Joe Holmes: "Re '...a more thoughtful composition than I managed to see at the scene in real time.' Or than was possible with your lens and where you could stand. It may have been physically impossible to frame the image as in the composite. So there's another wrinkle in this discussion: creating a new image that was impossible to shoot in a single frame. That kind of compositing was being done long before digital photography, but now it can done so easily and quickly that we can perform these tricks routinely."

Mike replies: No, I can't claim I couldn't have gotten what you've created. I just liked the second of my two shots better when I was at the scene. It wasn't a matter of not being able to get something close to your composite in one shot, it was that that wasn't what I arrived at when I worked the scene. I checked, and I shot 11 pictures at the scene, all quite different, and I figured I'd gotten what I wanted with the second shot I presented here.

Here are two more of the rejects from the 11:

As you know there are an infinite number of pictures even within a very limited subject or scene. It's not like there's ever just one picture there and our job is just to find it.

Henning Wulff: "I'm definitely in two minds about this stuff.

"For many years I worked as an architectural/construction/commercial photographer. The final image and what it represented were all that mattered and had to suit the requirements of the client. I did all sorts of manipulations, editing and rephotographing as required (and as was possible with film and masking). When Photoshop came out, I did whole projects with version 0.72 or so, as I recall from numerous crashes. For nearly 10 years I was the best in my area and specialty, and made lots of money. Photoshop was just the digital perfection of what I had been doing for decades.

"For my personal photography, it's been more the opposite, with 'honesty' and 'integrity' throughout. It's in quotations because there really is very little true integrity and honesty in all of this, as so many artistic decisions override the integrity and honesty. However, I try to be true to the found image. Maybe that's why I shot most of my commercial stuff with SLR's and view cameras and most of my personal stuff with rangefinders. The 'seeing' is essentially different between the two camps.

"As for the panos; again, if I was shooting for work, stitched photos with massaging would have been ideal if available. As it was I shot Horizon 150's, possibly stitched and Roundshot 120's, because that was what was available, and then worked hard to 'fix' things after the negative was produced. Now for any intense personal purpose I still shoot those, even though the iPhone or even any digital stitched can get you panos with a lot less hassle, and you can always 'fix' things. The Horizon and Roundshot images I don't fix, and don't think about fixing while producing them.

"In the end, if you're doing it for money you have to produce the images your client likes. If you're doing it for yourself, that's the person you have to satisfy. There are no other rules.

"By the by, the 'aspect' intolerance thing is one area I'm gobsmacked about. The square format was invented so that cameras you couldn't turn on their side were usable. I've shot 17x6 vertical to square to 6 cm high and about 40cm horizontal on my Roundshot, and they're all reasonable formats. Different images need different formats. Shoot what makes sense. They're all good."

Rod S.: "Historically, a photograph has always meant a single exposure.

"That definition embodies a critical aspect of photography: That the photographer was right there at that spot and succeeded in overcoming the technical hurdles of making the exposure successfully, and did both in that moment.

"It's these momentary aspects of photography that makes photography special. And challenging. The photographer has had to capture the image in that moment. The photograph is painted with light, not painted with software. Consequently, it's 'accurate'—and widely acknowledged as such—in terms of the appearance of objects within the frame.

"It's these momentary aspects of photography that separates photography from, say, painting, or digital illustration, because those other art forms involve a lengthy process of creation or manipulation, and we intuitively understand that the appearances of objects in the image has changed.

"So Joe's composite pond image and Mike's stitched pano are not 'photographs.' Each image is a 'composite image.'

"Why is this unambiguous terminology resisted so much by some digital practitioners?

"Digital practitioners who continue using the word 'photograph' to describe their composite or manipulated images are trading on the public's regard for photographs (sadly, now damaged) as single images made in the moment, which reliably show how things looked at that moment."

One Week Till Our Latest Print Sale Starts!

Peter at work

The beginning of this season's print sale is only a week away—it starts next Monday before work (6 a.m. Eastern U.S. time).

On the theme of "Paris, Venice, Havana," we'll be offering traditional silver gelatin prints of three new, recent photographs by my good friend Peter Turnley, plus a very nice free bonus. The sale is crucial to the health of The Online Photographer, so if you like the site, I really hope you'll make a point to stop in during the week and look at the pictures being offered.

These are original, individually signed fine art prints.

If you're a newcomer to TOP, I should explain that we do things a little differently. To expedite the process and in turn keep the prices very low—in this case less than one-third what Peter sells full-sized prints for in bricks-and-mortar galleries—we take orders during a short window and then close the orders. At that point, the photographers whose work we feature know how many prints they need to provide and are able to produce them as efficiently as possible.

Next week the ordering period will be from the morning of Monday the 26th until Friday evening (the time has yet to be determined, but we'll be sure to let you know). The deadline is a hard one—we don't take late orders. Once the ordering closes, that's it.

The new pictures are beautiful, and I think you'll like them. Please come back next Monday, a week from today, to see what we have for you this year!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 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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Michael Stevens: "Until I saw the picture I hadn't appreciated how Mr. Turnley's height must be a distinct advantage in his profession."

Mike replies: Peter stands above the crowd.  :-)

Brandon J Scott: "In February, when I attended one of Peter's workshops in Havana, he was photographing with an M10 and a 35mm Summilux. I believe his only requirement for equipment is that it does not impede his ability to record what he's feeling and experiencing. Peter's photographs come from his heart and its connection with his subjects. If you ever have the opportunity to spend time with Peter, don't hesitate. I am definitely a better person (and photographer) for my time with him."

Fanman*

Workhorse

So the other day I got accused of having personal biases about certain camera brands. Maybe, but what else? Doesn't everyone?

But it got me to thinking.

Here are some (most, I hope!) of the brands of camera I've used over the years. Seems like a lot, but in my defense, it's been a long time—roughly half a century, since I was nine or 10.

• Kodak (an Instamatic—did my first project with it in 7th grade at the Gettysburg battlefield. Did another project with it in art school called "The Great Pigeon Safari"—I shot color negative film in it and made large B&W prints on Panalure paper. The only rule was that every selection had to have a pigeon in it.)
• Zeiss (a Contaflex B SLR with a fixed 50mm Tessar that wasn't mine—it belonged to my father)
• Minox (a "spy" camera—again, dad's)
• Konica (my dad got me a T3 for my 16th birthday. Much later I used a Konica Hexar for a while.)
• Minolta (CLE)
• Konica-Minolta (my first DSLR)
• Diana (the toy plastic camera that was a fad among art photographers in the 1970s—similar to Holga)
• Leica (both RF and SLR, but I've never owned a digital Leica)
• Contax (went most of the way through photography school with one on my shoulder; owned several others)
• Nikon (I've owned at least seven Nikons over the years, starting with two N8008's that I used to make a living with, and including an F4, a D700 that was a gift from a reader, and most recently a D800 I didn't warm up to)
• Olympus (both film and digital)
• Exakta by Schneider (my first medium format camera)
• Plaubel (a Makina 6x7)
• Mamiya (RZ67 and Mamiya 6)
• Wista (first 4x5 and the only LF I've done concerted work with—I had a Rodenstock lens)
• Rollei (TLR and SLR)
• Canon (but just one, the pellicle-mirror RT of 1989—I have less experience with Canon than with most other brands)
• Bronica (645, 6x6, and 645RF)
• Hasselblad (only one, very briefly)
• Agfa (a beautiful antique Super Isolette I bought from Jurgen at Certo6)
• Fuji (the GS645s film camera—loved it, but with a fixed ƒ/4 lens it ended up being too slow—and several digital ones Including my X-T1 that I still have)
• Sigma (bought a DP2 just to try the Foveon sensor)
• Pentax (several, both film and digital)
• Chamonix (search "single use device" on the site)
• Sony (including an A900, the best of the best in 2008; an F-707; and a NEX-6)
• Panasonic (currently)

I left off the list a few things I owned but never shot with, like a Graflex Crown Graphic I bought in order to modify according to a how-to article I had accepted for the magazine. Had fun taking it apart and putting it back together, but I never shot a single sheet of film with it. I also left off many cameras I reviewed, and cameras I borrowed for extended periods of time, although some of those are covered anyway. I did a virtual OC/OL/OY with my friend Nick's Leica M4 and a recoated collapsible 50mm Summicron, for instance. "OC/OL/OY" wasn't a thing then, but I only used that one camera and lens for a little over a year, so it qualifies.

So tell me again how I'm a brand zealot or bigot, or a fanboy? I don't know, but it feels more like I'm a brand nomad. Fickle and faithless!

If anything, you should accuse me of being biased against, say, Linhof, or Phase One, or Polaroid, or Samsung. Never owned even one example of any of those brands. And given that I only ever owned one Canon, a long time ago, but have owned many Nikons in both film and digital over many years, wouldn't you think people would accuse me of being anti-Canon more than anti-Nikon? But no.

A few personal opinions or observations:

Best built / best quality: Contax, Chamonix

Brand I've owned the most of: probably Nikon; Pentax comes close

Camera I was proudest to own: Nikon F4

Camera I had the most fun with: Sony F-707—early-days digital was like getting set free

Weirdest: Ricoh GXR

Cameras that took the best pictures: Exakta 66; Minolta CLE with 40mm ƒ/2 M-Rokkor lens. The latter is purely empirical: it was the camera I owned that drew the most compliments from non-photographer viewers about how nice the prints looked

Curious fact: I've done a lot of my best work with cameras that had no meters

Cameras I liked best: that's another post!

 Mike

*Never liked the term "fanboy." It's usually derogatory. I seldom allow it in the comments and seldom use it myself. Some people use it like it's a fun word, but to me there's too much shaming intention in it.

Original contents copyright 2018 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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Patrick Dodds: "How many of those have you still got Mike?"

Mike replies: One reason I've owned so many is that I've lived hand-to-mouth most of my life (still do, when it comes down to it, although the piper is here to be paid), and when times got tough I'd have to sell off my cameras to get the money back out of them. Like a junkie jazzman pawning his saxophone and then having to get it back out of hock again to play a gig. Unfortunately you can't do that as effectively with digital cameras because they lose their value too quickly. In film days I could use a camera for a year or three and get most (sometimes even more) of my money back out of it. Those days are history now. Anyway, I retain very few of the cameras on this list. Keeping old cameras was a luxury I couldn't afford. Most got sold to raise cash for the next camera, or to raise cash for something else.

Lowest Prices Ever

...Should there be eight exclamation points at the end of that title?

But my contacts at B&H Photo tell me these actually are the lowest prices on these items they've ever offered. (It's possible you might be able to find them advertised for even less, but then you wouldn't be dealing with B&H Photo. They clearly label anything that's gray market ("Imported"), they never bait-and-switch, they never sell open-box as new, their delivery is quick and efficient, and they offer generous, no-hassle returns. Dealing with B&H is as safe as mail-order gets.)

I think these deals are just for today? Not sure. On to the news:

Sony A9 body, ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS OFF (lowest price ever)

Canon 6D Mark II, $500 off and a grip for free (lowest price ever)

Canon EF 16–35mm ƒ/2.8 III wide angle zoom, $300 off. This deal ends at the end of the day (11:59 p.m. EST) on Wednesday.

Canon EOS 5D Mark IV, $500 off (lowest price ever)

Sony A7RIII, $400 off (lowest price ever)

Older Sony A7RII, only $1,598, (lowest price ever) (42 MP and IBIS...no, Mike. Down boy.)

Canon 24–70mm ƒ/2.8 II normal zoom (if you haven't seen Roger's teardown of this lens, check it out. He concluded, "Would I get one? Of course—I’m a resolution freak, a gear-head, and I don’t have a 24–70. I’ve just examined the highest resolving zoom lens I’ve ever tested and found it’s also built and designed superbly. I can’t walk away from that combination.")

Canon 100–400mm ƒ/4.5–5.6 IS II, $400 off

Canon EOS 5D Mark IV with 24–70mm ƒ/4, $650 off (lowest price ever. Also comes with an extra battery, the BG-E20 battery grip, a SanDisk 64 GB Extreme Pro memory card, and a shoulder bag, all thrown in to sweeten the deal.)

A few other things are on sale, but those are the big deals. Go nuts! (But careful, don't spend the rent money.)

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 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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Geoff Wittig: "If you've ever lusted after Canon's 16–35mm ƒ/2.8L III, just buy it. I can't praise it highly enough. I wasn't much of a wide angle user previously, tending to favor ~70–120 mm equivalent or so, but this lens has changed the way I see. Build quality is fabulous, handling is impeccable, and it's sharp edge to edge even wide open. Distortion is trivial, especially for this focal length range. It's much, much better than versions I and II."

Michael Perini: "I would second Geoff's comment about Canon's 16–35mm ƒ/2.8 III. I bought it and the new 24–70 ƒ/2.8—they are about as good as lenses get. Not only are they dead sharp, they both focus nearly instantly. But more than that, they create images that have a 'rightness' and depth about them. They are both better than most primes. I also own the 17mm T/S which I thought was in a league of its own—it now has company."

Oskar Ojala: "I paid nearly a grand more for my Sony A7RII when I bought it. Tells a lot about the camera market today. I still use it as my main camera, several times a week, and it was the mirrorless that made me completely give up on DSLRs. Yes, it has some quirks, but so do all cameras, and I get results consistently, so I'm not looking for a new camera right now (although the raw speed of the A9 is tempting...). And 42 megapixels might be too much, but it still looks stunning even if I need to crop."

Everything Went WHAT For a Minute?!

All right, all right, settle down, Doonesbury.

Slaggin' my beloved B&W!

Mike
(Thanks to Scott Kirkpatrick)

P.S. My iPhone now tells me how many minutes I used it the day before. Twenty-seven minutes yesterday, probably because I used the GPS to find my way from Geneva to Dundee....

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SteveW: "No comment."

Editing Headaches

Which is better:

or

?

I learned a lesson long ago. I was on the Mall in D.C. for one of the regular "festival"-type gatherings of the throngs—I forget what it was, maybe the Fourth of July—it was hot—and I came across an open hydrant which had created a sea of mud in front of it. In the sea of mud, a large, muscular black guy was taking on all comers in mud-wrestling contests. He won a number of challenges, until a shorter, dumpy-looking white kid with a strangely confident smile stepped up. The white kid beat the big black guy. It quickly became obvious to me why: the big guy was not a trained wrestler, and the shorter guy was; I'd bet dollars to doughnuts the white kid had been on a college wrestling team and had put in thousands of hours of focused practice. But the bigger guy, without animosity, seemed genuinely curious as to why he was getting beaten. So each time he lost, he insisted on another contest—and he would lose again. There was no hostility in it. There was quite a large crowd watching, the whole time. After about four goes, the new champion begged off, washed all the mud off himself in the spray from the hydrant, and wandered away in the company of his girlfriend, and the black guy asked for new challengers. The crowd began to disperse.

As I watched all this, I took a roll and a half of pictures—maybe 50 frames or so. That was a lot, at that time. I probably took those 50 frames over 15 or 20 minutes. I didn't photograph quickly—I was taking care, picking my spots, doing the best I could. I figured I had it covered.

But when I got to the darkroom—what a headache! I made at least 15 workprints (my method at that time was to make quick 8x10 workprints on RC paper to edit from—my rule was that I had to make at least one workprint from every roll of film—that was to overcome laziness—and I couldn't make any more than six—that was to enforce selectivity at the stage of viewing the contacts with the illuminated loupe, which was the first pass in the editing process.

But rules are made to be broken, and I wasn't sold on any of the first six workprints I made of the wrestlers, so I made more. There just wasn't one standout shot that rose head and shoulders above all the others; a number of them were competent.

Now, I suspect that the best way to tell the story might have been to pick three or four that worked synergistically and mat them together, in a row. I didn't consider that at the time. (I'd been trained to be an exhibiting art photographer, but I wasn't one. I never did become one—the difference is that, then, I thought I would someday.)

I finally did manage to choose one, and I made a fine (i.e., final) print of the selection. (On Ilford Galerie, if any of you remember that!)

The lesson I took from the experience was maybe a little contrary: I decided I shouldn't shoot so much. I loved it when Jane Bown, the great English portraitist (I think she actually is English—born in Herefordshire and brought up in Dorset?), said that she noticed the first few and last few pictures she took during a sitting were the best, so she stopped taking all the ones in the middle! Heh. I'm always trying to take fewer shots, because the fewer shots I take, the more I try to get it right before I push the shutter button.

And the easier the editing is.

There are always editing headaches, though. Especially with landscapes—for me, landscapes are particularly difficult to edit. The differences are subtle and the effects you think you notice aren't always perceptible to others.

In this case, I think the second picture is stronger. It puts the main subject—the still surface of the pond reflecting the sky—a little more centrally, it prevents the black clump of trees in the upper left from drawing too much attention from the eye while still letting it balance the bit of fence at the opposite corner. And it shows more of the fence.

Took me a while to get there, though. They're so close to the same. Should have only taken one!

I should really go see if I can find that old shot of the wrestlers to show you. Surely it's around here someplace....

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 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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Bandbox: "Re 'Should have only taken one!' Usually true, and the thing about digital is that you can shoot all around your subject and take as many as you want. I do it all the time with landscapes and interiors, and it's made me careless and less decisive because it allows me to put off the decision until I view all the images on a computer screen. The good shooting habits and visualization acquired over fifty plus years of using film have flown out the window."

Peggy C.: "When I first saw the images, I preferred the first one. I found my eyes being drawn to the sunlight on the field. However, once I started to compare them by bouncing back and forth between them, I found myself being drawn very strongly to the second image. I like the effect of the dark shore line, blue lake and the dark grasses and fence. If it were me, I’d even go so far as to crop out the field just where it meets the shadow of the shore.

"Drives one of my sisters-in-law crazy (for various reasons I truly enjoy, shhh) because she loves trees. And I mean, really loves trees...to the point that she believes it should be a jail-able offense to ever cut them down. Even if they are on another person’s property! However, my favorite time of year to photograph trees is after they’ve lost all their leaves. I am more strongly drawn to the pattern of bare branches than at any other time of year. Even in my astrophotography I am more likely to show the stars through bare branches. Probably why I am drawn to the pattern of the fence and grasses in your second photo. For me, the pattern is in the grasses."

Steve Jacob: "I used to take lots of shots of things that looked interesting, but didn't make interesting images. No amount of tinkering would change that. If I couldn't pick one it was often because none of them really grabbed me. When a series of images all have potential, it's usually obvious which one hit's the mark. If you have to analyse, if you have to look too hard, the chances are that none of them work. I learned to know what would possibly make a good picture, and what wouldn't. If I am not sure, I check in the VF, but I'm usually right the first time.

"I take far fewer images now, but I would have deleted the rest anyway."

Philip Storry: "I prefer the first. Mostly because it has more symmetry between the sky and the water. And more importantly, in the second picture you've lost much of the gradient in the sky. That's what suggests the symmetry—we can't see the deep rich blue of the sky above, but we can see the reflection in the water. And without that additional gradient from horizon to sky in the first picture, the suggestion of that deep rich blue sky is lost. The reflection on the water becomes almost incongruous.

"No matter which way this discussion goes, what's probably more fascinating is that this is an example of how a photo isn't reality. What you're trying to convey is, you feel, better served by the second picture. And if I never saw the first, I might have been quite satisfied. But having seen the first, I now imagine cloudless skies of deep rich blues—which may not have actually been the case. As ever, the camera captures a mere slice of both time and space, and you could have been hiding all kinds of things in your framing. There could easily be a building site to either side, or behind you, ruining the idyll that's presented! And yet the discussion is about the choice of a few degrees of FOV.... Isn't photography marvelous?"

Peter Williams: "The bottom photo seems more succinct to me. It also feels better balanced across the frame. It's the one I'd choose to show from the two if they were mine."

Paul: "Your wrestling story reminded of a workshop I took with a Magnum photographer. It was made very clear I was to be shooting for at least eight hours and at least 500 photos per day, preferably more. It was also explained we had to 'work the scene' whenever we came across something like your wrestlers and visually search whilst shooting, getting closer, moving back, forward, lowering oneself until we found the perfect spot. I would end up with perhaps 150 photos by just doing this. All slightly different and usually one or two outstanding images which I would not of captured if it had not been for this approach.

"Now Mike you probably would not have worked this way due film costs and it begs to think how many still approach shooting digital with the same way they shot film. Which just isn't necessary. These requirements proved to be the most important aspect of the workshop. It's very hard to explain, but let me say my photography changed for the better. I began to see images I had never noticed before. My mental, visual and physical approach with the camera also evolved—I loosened up, I was freer. I became at one with the camera and, Mike, the whole concept kept reminding me of your advice on reading Zen in the Art of Archery. It was impressed on me I wasn't to edit whilst shooting. Just to let go and not to think too much. Shooting like this and with a daily deadline looming over made me push myself like never before."

Dogman: "I recall William Eggleston saying he only takes one shot of his subjects because it's too hard to pick the best shot when there are several. I tend to agree but I usually make a few insurance shots anyway. Shot number two would be my pick between the two shown here."

Jack Stivers: "I liked the first, but it took a bit of time to reach that conclusion. I'm a little too familiar with this process and sometimes change my mind after as much as a year (or more!) of looking at the image I originally chose."

Sharon: "I quit posting photos for critiques on forums because the advice was always to crop out the sky. That ain’t my style.  :-)  . But it does seem to be your style so I might ask why have the sky at all in this shot. I like the fence post with chicken wire in the bottom left. That could be an interesting component."

John Krill (partial comment): "You should do more of these. I'm waiting to see what everyone says about the images. It's a good way to learn composition and what folks think is the best composition."

[For the full text of partial comments, see the full Comments Section. —Ed.]

School Me on the iPad?

I don't think yesterday was my finest hour. I seem to have irritated some people, and am uncertain why. But if anything I said made you mad, I apologize. (Also not sure why it devolved into a discussion of my opinions about Leica. Usually not a good omen when that happens.)

Anyway, on a new subject...

...If you're a photographer/creative who shows portfolios to clients on an iPad, could I ask you to help school me as to how you set up those portfolios? Can you recommend any apps, or point to any tutorials you like?

(The new iPad. I have an old one.)

I need to lock out the viewer from accessing the rest of the iPad or the back-end of the program when they're looking at the portfolio. I should also mention I'm not adept with software. With programs or apps that are complicated I usually just bog down, stall out, and wander off in a haze. So I'd be looking for methods that are simple, or simple-ish.

To me, fewer features is a feature.

Thanks for any help!

Mike

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John Camp: "I don't know why you would have irritated anyone yesterday, but today I'm a little pissed that you used 'school' as a verb."

Mike replies: Why you gotta be hackin' on me too brah? Be easy when you in the heazy.

Murray Davidson: "Concerning school as a verb...it may be a Britishism. Quote: 

1 (formal) to train somebody/yourself/an animal to do something

• school somebody/something/yourself (in something) to school a horse

• She had schooled herself in patience.

• school somebody/something/yourself to do something I have schooled myself to remain calm under pressure.

From Oxford Learner's Dictionaries."

Jack: "I once made a $20,000 sale using an iPad. But it was for Apple not me. iPads had just come out, and I was presenting my photos to a loyal client in a restaurant. They were amazed. They were amazed at the iPad, not my photos. They decided then and there to buy 50 iPads for their sales presentations. So be careful with new gadgets that you don’t sell the gadgets but rather what you have to sell."

The Fuji X-H1: An Aside

[Just to be clear—this is not a review. This is the bit that I couldn't justify putting in the review. I'm still working on the review. Sorry it's not here yet. I'll get back to work now.  

P.S. I didn't mean to offend anyone who loves Nikon, by the way. Just using them as an example. Don't worry, I like Nikon—and I love people who shoot Nikon.  :-)  —Mike]

I've been wrestling with what to do with these thoughts. What follows just doesn't seem to belong in a camera review. And yet it's a significant part of my reaction to the Fuji X-H1. These ideas don't really "attach" to the object—the camera—in any meaningful way, and they're not really relevant to someone who's considering buying and using the camera. (Why should that person care?)

Fuji X-H1 with battery grip, rear view

Here's the thing, though: the Fuji X-H1 doesn't seem to quite belong in the Fuji lineup. You've heard the expression "odd man out"? It's an odd camera out.

Consider, for comparison, just as a "fer instance," Nikon. Nikon has legacy products stretching back all the way to the horizon behind us, but that's not its fault—that's just the result of having been in business for many decades. I'm not going to blame them for that. But other than that, Nikon's product offerings are largely...a mess. Not a hopeless mess, just a mess. Nikon goes one way and then another, buffeted by competitive reactivity, by constantly shifting marketing strategy, and by inconsistent vision. Their flagship products (professional FF DSLRs) are essentially replicants of 35mm film SLRs, so that the large system of 35mm SLR lenses could be transitioned without modification and the installed user base wasn't left hanging. They devise whole product lineups (Nikon 1) strategized mainly to protect their more profitable products. They fail to support whole segments of their lineup (absence of APS-C primes), abandon certain customers for agonizingly long periods of time (the gap between the D300 and D500), shift strategies (dedication to APS-C jettisoned when Canon had success with FF). They make me-too products and charge to much for them just to pirate other companies' success (Coolpix A). They don't even follow up with refreshed iterations of their own most successful products (no real update for the landmark D700). They announce a lineup of cameras and then later decide, ah, no, we're not even going to make those at all. (I can't even remember what those three cameras were called.) Most recently, they rolled out a whole new lensmount just to compete in a segment that another company was having success with (full-frame mirrorless, Sony A7/9). They just wander this way and that, scarfing up little blobs of market demand where they can, reacting to competitors where they think they need to. It's not evil or even bad, necessarily. It's just that there's no detectable overriding vision anywhere. Maybe there is but it's just buried under this and that and the other thing. Maybe under heaps of old discarded rebranded point-and-shoots.

I'm not saying the Nikon product lineup is completely inchoate, or that the offerings overall are a total hodgepodge. But I will say that when a company gets in the habit of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, pretty soon you've got a big mess on your hands. (Always the visual in my memory—I'm reminded of my childhood friend Karen's twin sons Galen and Isaac when they were two years old. She had to spread a big plastic painter's tarp on the floor when she fed them spaghetti, and then carry them off to the shower afterwards because they'd be coated from their hair to their toes in tomato sauce. Despite the tarp, there could still be the odd strand of spaghetti on the floor or the wall. Those little boys sure had a blast with Italian food.) The result for Nikon is a company that's had no real consistent vision for so long that its product offerings resemble a junk drawer. Even if it's not a total hodgepodge, it's still sort of a hodgepodge. Hard to argue otherwise.

Dazzlingly clean
Fuji has pretty much been the inverse, the exact opposite, of that. Starting with a clean sheet after the surprise success of the X100 in 2012 or '13, they've followed a coherent strategy and come out with a product portfolio that looks purposeful, balanced, and sensible. They have several distinct tiers of cameras for different levels of the market; options of camera styles at each tier; they update the products with thoroughly researched and really thoughtful iterations at regular intervals; and their lens lineup—although there are, of course, earlier and later products that differ somewhat—is for the most part carefully judged, balanced, complete, and sensible. Heck, even the big GFX is perfectly situated to complement rather than conflict with the established X mount line—you can easily envision the same customer owning and using both.

And that's a big part of why I like Fuji. It's the vision company. It has a clean, clear, consistent idea of what it wants to offer you. There's not a lot of  me-too-ism, no chasing of little puffs of tasty market share here and there willy-nilly, no spinning of wheels or yawning gaps in the lineups or redundancy or stunted little vestiges of marketing blunders or missteps left hanging and spinning slowly in the breeze like the corpses of fired Nikon product lineup managers*.

Into that admirable orderliness, that unusual coherence, the X-H1 seems oddly out of place. Sort of an interloper. It doesn't really quite belong anywhere. It's not part of the X-T[x] series; but it's still pretty close. It feels like a one-off. More significantly, it feels like the first product where Fuji said, "Hmm, we don't have what we need to compete here, in this little market segment, so let's react to the competitors' product offerings and counter what they do." Like they were getting criticism for what their cameras didn't have and they said oh yeah? We can do that. Take this.

...Which might not be dumb; I mean, if they see that they don't have a videocentric offering with IBIS, why not start a new line? But then they turn right around and put almost all the video goodness of the still-new X-H1 into the X-T3, minus just the IBIS. That kind of steals the thunder of the X-H1. Quick, which is better for video, the X-T3 or the X-H1? It kinda depends on what you mean by "better."

So what's going to happen in the future? Is X-H[x] going to become a new category—the videocentric Fuji—reiterated in successive iterations like the other cameras? Or are the features of the X-H1 going t0 migrate into the X-T4? Or is the X-H1 going to be orphaned, like what Panasonic did with the GX8 or Olympus with the E-1?

The X-H1 just doesn't seem to fit any plan. It may not be the first product that Fuji's made that's merely a Nikon-like reaction to the competition, a we-can-do-that-too camera, but it feels like it is.

Not that there's anything wrong with that**
Note that all this isn't necessarily a criticism of the camera. It doesn't really have anything to do with the camera. It's more a reflection on the marketing plan of Fuji and the gestalt of Fuji's systematic thinking overall.

I don't know, maybe Nikon's spaghetti-mess quality is just what happens when companies stick around for a long time and continually try to adapt to changes in markets. But Jay Leno says he likes cars that were the product of one strong vision, one person's clear ideas, and I like that too. That was why Apple became such a success, because it expressed one strong-willed person's clear vision. (Whether you liked that vision or not is beside that point.) I have no idea if there's a single individual behind Fuji's beautiful clear strategy, or who that might be, but there sure seems to be. I've loved the fact that Fuji goes its own way and does its own thing with such calm boldness and assurance. It's...refreshing. Maybe that will become muddled as they evolve from a young company (the post-X100 camera division, I mean) into an older one. 

And see what I mean? None of this really has to do with the X-H1 as a camera. It doesn't affect how any one owner will be able to use the product. It's really just a holistic marketing concern, an aspect of corporate identity. An issue of...consistency. It's a "meta" concern. It doesn't belong in a camera review.

Mike

*Sorry. I get carried away.

**Seinfeld reference.

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Dennis: "I get what you're saying here and I think this is part of what some people find so appealing about Fuji. However, I find myself a little disappointed in the actual details of the concept when I look at Fuji. You have bodies with ISO dials, bodies without, bodies with Bayer sensors, bodies with X-Trans sensors, lenses with labeled aperture rings, lenses with unlabeled aperture rings, and lenses without any aperture rings at all (including the 18mm pancake, not just cheap consumer zooms). Zooms with IS, zooms without IS (16-55mm), and now, bodies without IS, but a body with it. And you have compact camera models that have people wondering about replacements for (only the X100 has been consistently upgraded).

"Meanwhile, in Nikon land, if you restrict your view to F mount, things look much less messy. Sure, there are all of the DSLR inconsistencies you've mentioned (and probably a few you haven't) and I don't deny that it's messier than Fuji. But looking just at F mount, it's cleaner than looking at the entire Nikon product line, and Fuji, I think is messier than its image portrays.

"As for going from F mount to mirrorless, that was inevitable. It's a shame they waited to copy Sony, instead of showing leadership. But as you say, it's not their fault they had a legacy mount that pretty much necessitated some mess.
Ultimately, though, even if I find Fuji a bit messier than you do, I agree with your assessment: Fuji seems fairly 'focused' and Nikon seems to lack vision.

"As for the X-H1, I can't say much about it, but I think you can only be so focused for so long if you want to grow. I don't know if they could have done a better job designing a camera for the video crowd while fitting it in better with the rest of the X series, but on the other hand, I don't know that it sticks out any more than, say, the X-A5 with its PASM dial."

Dillan: "Your exasperation with Nikon makes me feel slightly better about Canon's mess. It puts things into perspective."

Eamon Hickey: "This is tangential to your topic but Mike, after reading you for many years, it's clear to me that there's just something about Nikon that rubs you the wrong way. Which is fine. I feel that way about Verizon.

"All the behaviors you selected (out of a larger pool of behaviors) and are putting in the harshest possible spotlight for Nikon are to be found in all the other camera companies. All of them are, after all, for-profit technology corporations from the same nation and culture. Their DNA is 99% the same.

"And in the case of the Fuji X-H1, that's great, as far as I'm concerned. As your picture clearly shows, they finally—finally!—were smart enough to copy Nikon's AF-ON button size and placement, making this the first X-series camera with a good implementation of this crucial feature that Canon (!) invented 28 years ago.

"Come to think of it, the last time Fuji had a good AF-ON button was on the S5 Pro. Wait, what happened to that lineup of DSLRs? Surely, they didn't abandon it because it didn't turn out to sell as well as they hoped? I kid, I kid."

Mike replies: No, I don't think I accept that as fair. What's more true is that I tend to exaggerate for effect when I make points, which makes me seem harsh to people who feel tenderly toward what I'm writing about (cf. my occasional disparaging comments about singers, which I'm trying hard not to do any more—I've learned that there is always someone out there who loves that singer who will be offended. It's never my intention to be offensive to anyone. Even people who like Ji...nope, not going to say it! Heh.)

I don't think it makes much sense to either love or hate companies. They're soulless, really. Your tastes and desires might align with their product portfolios and marketing philosophies for a stretch, but sooner or later they'll go their own way and let you down. It's seldom safe to get sentimental about them. I'm much more passionate about and engaged with photographers I like, not so much with camera nameplates.

But of course I like Nikon. I have an antique Nikon on display in my front hall next to my 1903 Rochester Optical whole-plate camera. I shot with Nikons for years; literally wore out two N8008's. As for the behaviors I spoke of being found in other companies, of course! I said as much. Just used Nikon as an example because they've been a little worse lately (and I know the details a little better, thanks to Thom), not because they're the only ones getting caught up in such tangles. Far from it.

Jeff: "Contrary to your response to Eamon, you’ve written before: 'I admit to a certain bigotry about Leica.' And you frequently admit to your own snarkiness toward the company, despite your use (film M's) and praise of some its products (the S). Methinks price weighs heavily in your seemingly emotional assessment.

Mike replies: You can believe what you want, but I'm not terribly sentimental about brands. I'm just not a brand fan or foe. I have disliked some individuals; the former President of Hasselblad USA had a vendetta against me for some years, and I established a personal policy of not writing about Hasselblads as a result. But that wasn't really about the brand, it was about the individuals and the situation.

As I interrogate my feelings now, I can't discover any hostility toward Leica. They're simply not for me, is all. It's a brand targeted at a market I am not part of. The same is true for expensive medium-format backs, but no one accuses me of being anti Phase One. It's true that I regret Leica's transition from tough working tool to overpriced status symbol, but that's the way they went and that's life—BMW's transition has been worse to witness.

What's consistent about me is that throughout my career people have accused me of being for or against certain brands, just as you're doing now—often the same brand. Usually, when people accuse me of being a hater of some brand or other, it's merely because I'm not a loyal fanboy like they are. Which is usually the case. At one point I had a pair of letters from readers of Camera & Darkroom, one of which accused me of being a foe of a certain brand and one of which accused me of being a fan of the same brand. The only thing that's true is that I tend not to worship brands and I tend not to demonize brands. Neither one makes any real sense to me. They're just cameras. The magic is not in the cameras. The magic is in photographs.

I hardly think that article you linked pegs me as any sort of Leica hater, by the way.

John Merlin: "I like the fact the way Fuji keeps adding capability and new form factors to their lineup while retaining what I find are the two biggest investments I make in a camera-line: the lenses, and the time I spend learning the controls/menus.

"My photo interests keep evolving and Fuji keeps offering more solutions in a rational system that I can understand and anticipate. I left a Nikon system for the compact easy-carry XEs, then as I started a new personal project, the faster AF and more sophisticated flash capabilities of the X-T1 were just the thing for it. Lately I have missed the larger form factor, the deep grip and the top display of the Nikon—and Fuji produces the X-H1.

"I can't help but think that the continuing rational line extensions, including the GF series, new form factors, and the regular firmware updates within each series, must make the Fuji systems more and more attractive both to current users and those new to the system."

Joe Holmes: "I'm deep in the Nikon environment. I've owned 12 Nikon SLRs and DSLRs, and I've got so many Nikon and Nikon-mount lenses I can't even count them. But I think a lot of what you complain about, Mike, is true. Nikon often frustrates the hell out of me. I've owned other cameras (my wife and I both own Fuji mirrorless for example), and I've used others including Leica, Mamiya, Olympus....

"But I'm stuck here in Nikonland because this D850 is plainly superb in my hands. It's the best picture-taker I've ever lifted to my eye. The thing is close to transparent in use. It's 95% perfect for my needs (and at half the weight it would be 98% perfect). So while Nikon the company frustrates the hell out of me, Nikon the camera gives me enormous pleasure every single day. What's a guy gonna do?"

Mike replies: Exactly what you're doing, I'd say.

Hishimaru: "The logic on Fuji's part was pretty simple I think. That massive 200mm ƒ/2 needed a body to match."

Vivian Maier, The Color Work

Vivian Maier: The Color Work
By Colin Westerbeck
Foreword by Joel Meyerowitz
Published by Harper Design division of HarperCollins Publishers
Published November 6th, 2018
240 pages
List price $80; Amazon $60.65, Kindle $27.99, U.K. £39

...Another book from the most famous photographer of 2010. As far as I can tell there are at least 1o books about her now; my favorite among the ones I've seen is Vivian Maier: Self-Portraits, because of my sense that she seemed to find the fact of her own existence so curious. It's by John Maloof, the person who bought most of her archive at a storage locker auction in 2008. I talked to John on the phone in 2009, to urge him to stop selling off the negatives in small lots on eBay, which was his original plan. I never met him or spoke to him again, but in my opinion he's done a responsible job with the helter-skelter task of managing his holdings and coping with his charge's meteoric rise to world fame. John's story is interesting in itself, quite apart from Vivian's story.

From Vivian Maier: Self-Portraits

Possibly the first stop for anyone who's curious about Vivian as well should be the film, which is called Finding Vivian Maier. Haven't watched it yet myself, but I will.

Mike

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Mark Kinsman: "I though you might enjoy this homage 'graffiti' to Vivian in one of the Chicago neighborhoods. The artist did a fantastic job in the details—the color seems appropriate for today's post."

Mike Plews: "Finding Vivian Maier is one of the saddest things I have ever watched. Her photography amazes me but that film broke my heart.

"One positive thing did come out of it. The film made me feel OK about just being OK as a photographer as long as I can hit the couch and be buried under swarm of giggling grandchildren. Still, one thing seems certain to me is that Vivian Maier's reputation as a distinct American voice is just going to grow and grow. This book is going to look right at home next to my copy of Harry Callahan's color work."

Curt Gerston: "I've watched Finding Vivian Maier a dozen times or more, as I show it each semester to my middle-school photography classes. It's a really engaging story, which is important for my audience. For adolescents, who still often view the world in simple black and white, Vivian's story is more complex: she comes across as both caring and cruel, soulfully artistic and mentally ill, a competent adult and helpless child. Among other themes it explores the age-old relationship between artistic genius and mental illness, but for my students that's usually new territory. Mostly they come away inspired by her photographs and I've seen my more mature students begin to experiment with self-expression in new ways. Anyway...good movie."

Kenneth Tanaka: "Indeed, this is a very notable current release. A few additional notes. First, I believe that Howard Greenberg Gallery is a primary driver of this publication, as he’s also one of the primary dealers and exhibitors of this work. If you’re in the New York area be sure to visit the gallery to see the just-opened show of some of this work (along with Ed Burtynsky’s new work 'Anthropocene').

"Second, take special note that this book is also available on Kindle. (See Mike’s link, above.)

"I have been traveling for the past several weeks and my copy of the book awaits me in Chicago as I write this. But I have seen many of the images and am, frankly, surprised by their skill. Generally speaking, nearly without exception, mid-century B&W’ers suck at color. (And vice-versa, for that matter.). They just don’t see that way. Maier, by contrast, seems almost equally adept with color altthough she seems slightly less comfortable with it. Still, her eye puts the color where it’s most effective for the scene, a key skill that she may not even have known she had, since these images had never been printed.

"If you’ve been a Vivian Maier follower you owe it to yourself to see this work. John Maloof and Howard Greenberg have assembled what appears to be an excellent collection of the minority segment of Maier’s work for this publication and its associated traveling exhibition.

"P.S. Thanks very much for posting that mural tribute, Mark. I’ve not seen it in-person yet."

Andrew Molitor: "The Maier monographs always strike me as a collection of vaguely familiar pictures. '"This one looks like...' and 'that one looks like...', which leads me to suspect that the curators are selecting pictures not to represent a coherent representative of the photographer's work (if such a thing even exists—how would we know?) but to make a comforting collection that resembles the 'great photographs' we already know closely enough to support a profitable myth."

Quote o' the Day: Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe, Blue and White Abstraction, 1958

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"Nothing is less real than realism. Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things."

—Georgia O'Keeffe

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Quoted in Jonathan Stulman and Barbara Buhler Lynes, Georgia O’Keeffe: Circling Around Abstraction, West Palm Beach, Florida, 2007, p. 22. The painting sold at Sotheby's yesterday for $615,000.

(Posted by) Mike
(Thanks to pmartini)

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Open Mike: Teavivre (Tea Update) (OT)

["Open Mike" is the often off-topic Editorial page of TOP. It appears with iron discipline on Wednesdays. So is today Wednesday?! It is!

That's the story and I'm stickin' to it. —Yr. Hmbl. Ed.]

-

Bao Jia Cun Organic tea garden in Zhe Jiang Province of China
where some of Teavivre's teas are sourced.

...And the adventure continues. So far I've tried about 25 different kinds of green tea.

I don't like green tea very well yet, but it's healthier than coffee. The caffeine dose in the coffee I like messes with my heart (I've had a-fib). I had to prove that to myself: stayed off coffee for a week or three, then had my usual mug. Sure enough, I could feel the effect. Not good.

So that's it for coffee for me. (I don't like the idea of decaf.) I was a daily coffee drinker for most of 45 years—even roasted my own beans for a few years, which was delightful, a real pleasure.

But life is change, and ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

First step with green tea was to get away from teabags. Processing and handling dried tea leaves results in a certain amount of dust, flakes and bits, and those are used in teabags where what you can't see doesn't hurt you. Tea dust over-extracts easily, resulting in bitterness and astringency (that sourish taste with a "dry" mouthfeel—the goal with tea brewing is to extract for as long as you can before tasting any astringency. This requires some experimentation; good suppliers give you a starting point, but don't let it end there. Experiment for yourself). I did find a few teabag teas I like. One was in a sampler from Stash Teas that, alas, I've never been able to find again, and another was Tazo Organic Pan-Fired Green.

But loose leaf tea is the way I'm going to go.

Second step was to work out a brewing method. I got that lovely Willow & Everett electric kettle with temperature presets which is a fantastic luxury—it works perfectly and is surprisingly accurate. It was a good purchase; I love it. So nice to be able to heat water to just the temperature I want. (The 205°F setting is perfect for pour-over coffee, too.) And it turned out that the little glass teakettle I bought has a large oversized strainer that happens to fit perfectly in the top of my old Shaker Village mug I've had since I was nine years old. The glass top of the teapot covers it nicely. So the pot itself was prematurely retired and I brew tea right in the mug—it makes about 15 ounces, which is two of the traditional American "large" cups of tea. (Our cups of tea are about 8 ounces; Asians tend to drink cups of 3.5–4 ounces.)

Brewing tea. (Here's that timer. It's weighted so it doesn't slip around.)

I've tried a number of sources such as Harney and Sons, Tea Source which Ctein likes, Teavivre, Têtê Tea (from the Himalayas in Nepal, which I think is cool), Clearview Tea Co. which is owned and run by the wife and daughter of a Canadian TOP reader, and several others.

I've settled on Teavivre as my chosen source, for four main reasons:

1. They offer free samples of your choice with your first order. Very nice. You can buy samples too, with enough tea for two American cups or four Asian cups. Good for exploring.
2. You can choose for your tea to be delivered in a tin. If you buy the smallest (3.5 oz.) amount of tea, the tin only costs a few extra bucks and will hold 6–12 ounces of tea. They're high-quality tins with double-seal tops. You only need a few for the favorite teas you'll keep in stock, but it's nice to be able to get these cheaply.
3. They offer a wide variety of teas, good if you want to experiment to find the ones you like best. (Têtê Tea by contrast offers only three, white, green, and black.)
4. They're based in Fujian province in China, which is where the people who own my favorite local sushi restaurant come from. Through that connection I know several people from Fujian province, and I've gotten interested in it and have learned some things about it. So I like that connection. Of course that's just me.

Many of the teas come direct from China when you order them (all the samples and tea in tins come from China, for example), so it takes 8–10 days. Teavivre does have a new American warehouse now, in Arizona, so certain teas in zip bags bags come from there and take less time to arrive.

I've found a few I like, but I won't mention which one I've settled on as my daily drink. It's got a flavor I love and is low in caffeine. My choice isn't a big secret or anything, but everyone should choose according to their own taste and everyone's taste will be different. I'm certainly no tea expert. (I don't even have a very acute sense of taste.)

Finally, I should mention in passing that I like the language on Teavivre's website. It reads like expressive English written (or translated?) by a Chinese person, which seems honest to me. I hope they don't change that. It's perfect just the way it is.  :-)

Mike

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TC: "The community college where I teach photography recently had a field trip for teachers, taking us out to a tea plantation in the mountains of Pinglin, Taiwan. There we not only listened to presentations on the tea-making process, we were able to pick and process some tea ourselves.

"It was very interesting, and gave me a renewed appreciation for tea even though I drink it every day."

Antonis R.: "Easy to see the underlying connection to TOP. Teavivre founder Angel Chen writes: 'My husband, Chris, also my partner, sometimes would laugh at me, Since all earnings are spent on more trips to further discover great tea. In return I would say: 'Why don't you talk about upgrading your camera?'"

David Evans: "That is a beautiful kettle, but I would be lost without a water level indicator. Also I'm amused at the claim that with a 1000-watt element 'your water boils in a fraction of the time compared to a normal kettle.' In the UK a normal kettle is 2000 to 3000 watts."

Mike replies: Yes, but I would assume that you in the UK know best when it comes to tea kettles!

Mani Sitaraman: "The Internet really is a fount of knowledge. Here's a detailed explanation that is a good follow-up read to David Evans' comment about electric kettles in Britain as compared to those in America, titled 'Why Kettles Boil Slowly in the US.'"

Mike replies: And here's an explanation of "fount of knowledge" vs. "font of knowledge."

Schoolteacherish Mike

Sometimes I feel like referring articles is a bit schoolteacherish, like I'm passing out assignments. That is, of course, not my role, as I'm talking to friends here—my equals and betters.

But really, sometimes articles come along that ya just have to read. One such is "In the Age of A.I., Is Seeing Still Believing?" by Joshua Rothman, in The New Yorker. Pretty much a must-read for photography polymaths like you. (It annoys me that The New Yorker has evidently adopted another QUIRK—awkward "shouting" capital letters intended—to go along with its longstanding brain-dead practice of putting book titles in quotation marks instead of italicizing them like everyone else in the literate world. (Editor Remnick should have left the quaint old original typeface alone and changed that instead.) But at least that one is excused by being a "tradition," going all the way back to Ross or wherever it goes back to. The publication's newest QUIRK, with no tradition whatsoever, is to assign different titles to the same article depending on whether it's online or in the paper magazine—which is confusing and irritating. Anyway, in the printed magazine the same article is titled "Afterimage," in the Nov. 12th, 2018 issue.*)

Years ago I tried to assert that digital imaging should not be called "photography," that the word photography described what we now clumsily know as analog or optical/chemical photography (I usually dislike back-formations), and that the new medium was sufficiently different that we should know it by a different name. I thought "digital imaging" or D.I. served just fine, since that had currency at the time.

I've never changed that opinion, but I learned to back off on it, because people didn't like it—in the early days of digital, any comparison of film vs. digital quickly devolved into a status dispute, and people on Team Digital were immediately and automatically prickly about imagined slights to their standing. They wanted the main word applied to their chosen tech. So "digital photography" it was. As Mad magazine used to say, Yecch.

This article—whatever you want to call it, "Afterimage" or "In the Age of A.I., Is Seeing Still Believing?", really gets at what I was talking about back then. We're on different territory now. It's just that it looked like the same territory at first. It isn't. The changes are far more profound than just the means by which we fix a lens image to make a still picture. Really, D.I. is closer to figurative painting than it is to photography. Sez me.

At the very least, there's a short list of people I think everyone interested in our subject ought to know, and Hany Farid is on the list. If you don't know the name yet, the article will be an overdue introduction.

...Reports due Tuesday. Just kidding!

Mike

*I know, I'm getting to be a grumpy old man. (My friend Dan's joke—he's 65: "Every morning I wake up grumpy. I should just let her sleep.")

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Rob de Loe: "Superb find Mike. Thank you for sharing. The implications for society are stark and clear in this piece (and they're not good—we have a lot of things to figure out).

"What the article doesn't get to is the implications for 'photography' as an art form. On that front, I'm actually not too worried. Would you expect a painting to be a faithful representation of the real world as seen by the painter? Of course not. That's where photography as an art form is going (if it's not there already). Once people are comfortable with the idea that you can't believe anything you see in a still photo, we can all focus on whether or not the picture gets us to think, engages our emotions, makes us feel something, etc. (which is kind of the point for me). Of course where the wheels will come off the bus is situations where the photographer as artist claims that the picture is a faithful representation of the world, but in reality it isn't. We're there already as everyone hopefully knows based on recent famous 'gotcha' incidents. This will only get worse. Hopefully software will help us sort this out (but as the article points out, that's not guaranteed either)."

robert e: "I agree that different titles for web and print is both annoying and complicating, but I think I understand the reasoning, or at least the motivations to do so. While 'Afterimage' is a perfectly appropriate title in the context of an issue of The New Yorker magazine, it's not very effective in the context-stripping environment of web reading, where attention-deficient people like me peruse long lists of article titles, often from different sources, and often not bothering to click up even the descriptive blurb. On the other hand, 'In the Age of A.I., Is Seeing Still Believing?', while both attention-getting and descriptive, would clash with both the style and layout of the print mag, and not contribute anything to the way most people read it. (Might work as a subtitle.)

"Sure, many people probably do read the web mag as they would the print mag, but the idea, of course, is to try to leverage the openness and reach of the web to expand the steady, paying readership."

rodfrank: "I read an article a couple of years ago about Dr. Farid and his software that that will detect an altered photograph. At that time he extended an offer to analyze a couple of photos. My class at the local university sent two photos. One was unaltered and the other had very little alteration that we thought was well hidden. About a week later we received an email telling us not only which photo was altered but exactly where the alteration was done.We were impressed to say the least."

Essays Odd Wondrous and Strange

Universal Newsreel from 1933 showing Cecil H. Dill, a farmer from Traverse City, Michigan, demonstrating his ability to render popular melodies by pressing his hands together. After the performance, which seems to be of Yankee Doodle, Dill, while staring rather intensely into the camera, modestly tells how he discovered his unusual talent.

This is by way of noting that today is the last day to order The Public Domain Review: Selected Essays, Vol. V for the introductory price and with delivery before Christmas. I have no affiliation! PDR is one of the sites I visit occasionally because they post essays about photography like this one about the blinds and camouflages used by early nature photographers the Kearton brothers.

—Yr. Hmbl. Ed.,
Like Cecil H. Dill A Man of Peculiar Talents
(First para from PDR, mod. auct.)

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FraserGJB: "Are you sure this isn't a short film David Lynch made in art school? Wonderfully weird."

Soul Red

My friend KK is a color photographer. He's also a color maven. Loves colors. He gardens, and for him gardening is basically color management—a continuous creation of ever-changing color combinations. I used to not get some of his photographs, until I realized they're often about some precise color somewhere in the shot. Sometimes even just a little bit of color in the shot.

If you're a color photographer too, and you love colors, you owe it to yourself to go see a new Mazda painted in the latest version of "Soul Red." Soul Red Crystal Metallic Tricoat, to be more exact. Just gorgeous. There was video (I couldn't find it—I think it's been replaced by the new video) showing the original craftsman who hand-paints Mazda's concept cars. When the company decided to try to provide the show-car finish on production cars, they actually used the motions of this master painter to program robots that replicated his arm movements! So cool.

I saw a CX-3 in this latest new iteration of the color the other day. Stopped me in my tracks. The color changes with the light, too. If I get that Miata I want before I go shuffling off to Buffalo (hopes are fading), it'll be Soul Red.

Really worth seeing. Because let's remember, the joy of seeing precedes the joy of photographing.

Mike

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SF Murph: "We got a CX-5 in the Soul Red. Cost $500 more, but so worth it. Such a great color to have in our lives every day."

Steve Rosenblum: "I have a Soul Red 2014 Mazda 6 and people still walk up to me after I park the car to tell me how amazing it looks."

Herman Krieger: "In the early 1950s I worked as a chemist for a industrial paint company in California that made auto paints for new cars as well as for repainting of autos and trucks. My speciality was auto finishes in lacquers and air-dry enamels. At that time the cars came in all sorts of colors, that make the present day cars look rather drab."

Mike replies: Why is that? These days you can go on the computer and "build" a customized car out of the options and colors available, which I sometimes do for fun. I've been struck recently at cars where the only colors available seem to be some form of drab. Some cars seem to have two kinds of black, three kinds of gray, a white and an off-white, and silver. It makes me wonder.

Marvin G. van Drunen: "Re 'Some cars seem to have two kinds of black, three kinds of gray, a white and an off-white, and silver. It really makes me wonder.' I own an automobile dealership. My lot is full of three kinds of gray, two shades of black and white and silver cars and trucks. We have other colors available, but when I stock them they just sit and sit without selling. I'm not sure why, but I've got to go with what the buyers want to buy. The favorite car I recall from my youth was my father's 1956 Ford Crown Victoria painted white and FLAMINGO! Flamingo was a wonderful, rich dark coral. I loved it."

Hugh Crawford: "So if you went to the Porsche dealer in 1973, this is what they offered.

Alaska Blue Poly
Amber/Signal Orange
Aubergine
Bahia Red
Beige Gray
Chartreuse
Dalmatian Blue
Delphy Green Poly
Earth Olive
Gemini Blue Poly
Glacier Blue
Gold Poly
Gold Poly
Green Poly
Gulf Blue
Gulf Orange
Indian Red
Irish Green
Kelly Green
Leaf Green
Light Green
Light Ivory
Light Yellow
Lilac
Marathon Blue Poly
Olympic Blue
Phoenix Red
Raspberry
Ravenna Green
Saturn Yellow
Sepia Brown
Signal Yellow
Silver Poly
Sunflower Yellow
Tangerine
Zambesi Green

"...and if that's unsatisfactory there is always this:

Hugh with the Huemobile

Mike Plews: "The Miata is a car I always admired more than lusted after. I have a couple of Triumphs, TR3 and 6, in my past so I appreciate the Miata as a roadster that does not drip parts as it goes down the road. That admiration turned to lust with the latest iteration of the Miata. It looks like a baby Ferrari and Soul Red is flat out gorgeous. Thank god they don't make this in BRG or I would be cashing in my 401K."

Mike replies: My Miata of sainted memory was BRG...

...And it even had a wooden Nardi steering wheel.

The 'Great' War

Field gunners loading shrapnel shells

I suppose I should have posted this yesterday, but I was having too mellow a day off to dip my head into thoughts of war. Yesterday was Veteran's Day, which used to be called Armistice Day. Yesterday (at 11 a.m., to be exact—the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month) marked the 100th anniversary of the end of WWI.

World War One—called "The Great [i.e., large] War" until there was an even greater one—was perhaps the most pointless catastrophe in modern human history. There was no reason for it to happen. It solved nothing. And no good came of it—many historians make the case that it laid the foundation for the rise of Hitler and WWII.

The human waste was utterly appalling. The Wikipedia page begins, "The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I was about 40 million: estimates range from 15 to 19 million deaths and about 23 million wounded military personnel, ranking it among the deadliest conflicts in human history. The total number of deaths includes from 9 to 11 million military personnel. The civilian death toll was about 8 million, including about 6 million due to war-related famine and disease." It killed so many young men that males born from 1883 to 1900 were known as "The Lost Generation" in Great Britain.

The head of the German delegation that signed the Armistice
was murdered by right-wing German assassins in 1921

"Armistice" means truce, but the end of WWI was not a truce. It was a surrender. Yet, as one writer put it, if there was ever a war with no victor, WWI was it. Very little fighting occurred on German soil, and home-front propaganda was so relentless and pervasive that the surrender took the German population largely by surprise, planting the seeds of resentment and dark conspiracy theories about betrayals that surely contributed, at least indirectly, to the Holocaust. The head of the German delegation that surrendered to the vengeful French Field Marshall Foch, Matthias Erzberger, was murdered three years after the end of the war by members of an ultra-nationalist death squad—two former German naval officers—while he was out for a walk at a spa town in the Black Forest. The weapons of war were so brutal and the conditions so miserable that it marks the point at which all of humanity became aware of what's now called PTSD—in the 'great' war it was called shell-shock. The unending rain of explosives was as likely to unhinge soldiers' minds as blow them limb from limb. Roughly 60% of physical military casualties were caused by artillery.

 

As if relentless shelling wasn't bad enough, soldiers in the trenches had to deal with poison gas—the first widespread use of chemical warfare—which was so universally agreed to be inhuman that it later contributed to the establishment of the the Geneva Convention.

There are many great books about the First World War. Best of all might be Barbara W. Tuchman's The Guns of August—although her book The March of Folly might actually be more pertinent. ("Folly" is beginning to be an old-fashioned word, known mostly to people who read—it means foolishness. The book chronicles four of the greatest examples of foolishness by governments. She didn't include WWI, probably because it was the subject of her masterpiece, but she could have.) Great books came out of the war, including Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet On the Western Front, Robert Graves' bitter but darkly comic memoir Goodbye to All That, Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, and Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory. (Consider getting the illustrated edition.)

Veterans Day is a day to honor all veterans—the survivors of wars—but, as a separate occasion commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the Armistice, the fictional veteran I can't help thinking of is Joe Bonham, the protagonist of Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun. I like reading books in pairs, and I'd pair that one with a book that is subtitled "The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier": U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler's War is A Racket. He should know. He was a veteran.

Soldiers washing in a shell hole

Off to play pool! I put this together in two torrid hours of work—please forgive typos! I'll proofread, fact-check, and make corrections when I get back home. [UPDATE: Done now. I had a great time playing pool with my friends, some of whom are veterans. My friend Loyle's father Fred—Loyle is soon to turn 90—had the unusual distinction of serving every minute of both WWI and WWII, beginning way back when WWI broke out in 1914. —Ed.]

Mike

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Patrick: "Someone tweeted this link yesterday. It's quietly very striking, about a minute or two audio clip."

Mike replies: Wow. There are so many written accounts of those moments, many of them very moving.

V.i. Voltz: "It’s little known, but a great account of the First World War is Frederic Manning’s The Middle Parts of Fortune. Manning died at 53 in 1935, still wracked by the memory of the war."

Mike replies: The writeup says that Ernest Hemingway re-read that novel every year.

Thomas Rink: "The men who murdered Matthias Erzberger—Heinrich Tillessen and Heinrich Schulz—were members of the Organisation Consul (O.C.), a right-wing terrorist group. The O.C. was founded by Herrmann Ehrhardt, a former Captain of the Kriegsmarine (German Navy).

"In the winter 1918/19, the political and social situation in Germany was very unstable; in some of the major cities, workers and disbanded soldiers seized power and established soviet republics (most notably, in Munich). Among other cities, this happened in Bremen. In this situation, Captain Ehrhardt gathered 300 troops and overthrew the local soviet system. This was the origin of what should later become the infamous Brigade Ehrhardt, a Freikorps (militia).

"The problem for the Weimar Republic was that the Brigade Ehrhardt was not a singular case. Around 1919/20, there were dozens of militias which had tens of thousands of well-armed and battle-tested combatants. Initially, the social democrat German government under Friedrich Ebert and Gustav Noske relied on the Freikorps to quench leftist turmoils and soviet republics. But, what to do with these militias after the political situation had stabilized? It was not possible to integrate them into the Reichswehr (provisional army of the Weimar Republic), since the treaty of Versailles limited it to 100,000 troops. An attempt to disband them ended in the attempted coup d'etat by Wolfgang Kapp and General Walther von Lüttwitz in 1920 (in which the aforementioned Brigade Ehrhardt played an important role).

"After the coup failed, the Brigade Ehrhardt finally disbanded in April 1920. Some members, Ehrhardt among them, later founded the Organisation Consul.

"Given all this, the treaty of Versailles doomed the Weimar Republic from its very beginning. It provided the anti-republican extreme right-wing forces with a founding myth (Dolchstoßlegende, or stab-in-the-back legend—allegedly, the German army would have won the war wasn't it for politicians like Erzberger), and made it very difficult for the democratic government to properly disband all these armed militias."

John Krumm: "I have my grandfather's diary around here somewhere, where he described the excitement on the ship heading over, how good the food was. Like most diaries, the entries became shorter and shorter as the fight went on. One was just the date and 'Gas.'Here he is before shipping out:

"But he made it back and started a family in Medina, NY. Later, working as a state trooper, he was killed by a drunk driver."

AlexV.: "Tragically for the people of northeast France, WWI's legacy of killing continues. Due to the stagnant battlefields in muddy terrain, poorly implemented technology, and the sheer volume of the shelling, a large swath of the region is polluted with unexploded ordinance.

"On maps, is is the 'Red Zone.' Animals and plants now thrive amidst the scenery, but no one is supposed to walk in many of these places.

"In other areas the have been returned to agriculture, farmers regularly dig up so many shells that they now place them by the side of the road for disposal. This 'refuse' includes shells with still active gas agents. The casings are now rusted and brittle, hence one can crack them open like an egg to release the toxicity inside. In the papers, one apparently still reads of the unlucky farmer who ran into one with a tractor, or a member of a disposal unit who had an unlucky day.

"National Geographic put up this site, but it is one of many.

"Just as tragically, Laos is even worse, because that country is covered in cluster bombs ('bombies' in the local patois) dropped during the Vietnam war. (I am sure there are other regions with equally grim tales of land mines, etc.)"

Joe Holmes: "My grandfather was in the trenches in France for WWI. He was living in Pennsylvania at the outbreak and volunteered at age 16, lying about his age.

"But over there he was gassed and also lost one finger on his left hand to a shell that landed nearby. (I inherited his Purple Heart.)

"He never told any of his children about his time in the war. When they asked about his missing finger, he joked that he had accidentally bit it off when he was eating a slice of pie. As far as I can tell, I was the only one who ever heard him say what really happened.

"In the trenches, he was so frightened that he promised God that he'd become a minister if he survived, and when he returned from the war, he went to a seminary and became an Episcopal priest, the rector of our town church for more than 30 years until he retired in 1970. He died only two years later at age 72—his lung cancer may have resulted from that early exposure to poisonous gas in France."

James Symington: "I spent a four years in the British Territorial Army (National Guard equivalent) as an artillery command post officer. As part of the training we were put in a bunker, on Salisbury Plain, with tiny, very thick perspex windows looking out over an impact area just outside. We were then subjected to a battery firing different kinds of 155mm shells at us. Even in the absolute safety of this bunker the concussion of the shells going off 10 yards away was breathtaking. I cannot imagine what months or years of it felt like whilst sitting in a muddy, open bunker."

Chuck Holst: "I once met a soldier of the Great War. It was 1966, and it was in a laundromat at 9th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis. He might have been in his early 70s, but he seemed older to me at the time—I was 22. As I recall, he just started talking about the war out of the blue, about the gas attacks and how so many of his friends and comrades had died in the war. I didn't know what to say to him, but I think he really just wanted someone to listen to his story, someone to serve as an excuse to talk about it. The war was still very much present for him 48 years after the events. I wish I had taken the time to sit and talk with him and hear more of his story, but I probably had things to do."