The Online Photographer

This Time of Life

You know, apart from the fact that I'm growing old and the finish line is on the horizon (I'm coming up on my 65 1/2 half-birthday), this is actually a pretty great time of life. I'm still a very imperfect human, but I understand myself pretty well now. I'm more stable. I don't have significant health problems yet. I'm not rich, but I have only a couple of debts (what's left on my mortgage, plus $8,936.26 left to grind out on the pool table shed). I don't have day-to-day worries—none that are too pressing, at least. Work is still engaging, especially because of this wonderful new opportunity I've been given. And the best thing about that? I'm learning—learning a new way of writing, which is good for me, and interesting. I'm thankful for it. I've been observing the decline of my brain, but it's still hanging in there; with luck, older people actually do make up in wisdom and knowledge what we begin to lack in mental flexibility, agility, and stamina. I put things in context much better than I ever did before. I don't "live by hate" as some of my countrymen seem to do now.

Most notably, I'm happier now than I ever was before. Not for the reasons I once hoped, but still. I've come to terms with a lot, as they say. My appreciation for the little things in life has definitely increased. I appreciate the world more; I value my friends more. I'm more spiritual. I'm still self-centered, but I'm able to focus more on others. And I know a lot of little tricks to turn my setbacks, large and small, into learning experiences. My coping skills are better than ever.

I once read (appropriately, in a magazine in a psychologist's waiting room) a description of the mid-life crisis. It said that sometime in your forties you start to think, "is this all there is?" And it sets off a troubling decade or so. And then, sometime in your fifties, you begin to realize, "yeah, this is all there is, but it's pretty great!" I think that was true for me, although I came late to both stages. (I've always thought I'm developmentally about ten years retarded because of the decade I lost to the worst of my drinking.)

Like I say, apart from the whole getting old and gonna-die-one-day thing—which was never not the case, when you think of it—I like this time of life. It's good. It's a cliché, but I do kind of feel like I've finally learned how to live.

Mike

Book o' the Week:

The Beatles: Get Back. The story of the band's last year, coinciding with the release of Peter Jackson's documentary Get Back.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.

Here's the link to B&H Photo

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:

Inappropriate Humor (OT)

A Sunday truffle:

(All of this should be considered NSSFW, not-so-safe for work. Although it's just naughty, not nasty.)

I noted to a group of former Corcoran Photo classmates that the 37th anniversary of our graduation just passed, an email I began by saying, "Prepare to feel ancient...." One of my classmates replied that his wife was 12 then, so he replied, "I feel dirty, not ancient."

That reminded me of one of the wickedest SNL skits. (No offense to my classmate, who's been happily married for years.)

When I look at video or film what I mostly think about is how well it's written. That one has Tina and Amy all over it—I'd bet a hundred dollars they wrote it, or most of it. Candy Kirby at The Jest called it the "most savage SNL skit ever made," adding, "also making an Emmy-worthy appearance: Leslie Jones’ death glare." The death glare is one of the few things on video that actually makes me "lol" every time I see it.

Hooker story
And speaking of wicked but hilarious, I ran across this a few days ago. I saw it when it originally aired, in the hazy, distant days of 1978—and probably haven't seen it since then. It's an appearance by the reformed con man Frank Abagnale, who passed millions of dollars in fake checks in his youth, on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson*.

Pick it up at about the 7:45 mark for the story about the hooker.

What Johnny says at the end was "so you both got screwed!" although it's bleeped.

Who knows if it's true—Abagnale appears to be something of a compulsive liar, and/or a natural storyteller, however you prefer to look at it. His life story, or some version of it anyway, was the basis for the Steven Spielberg movie Catch Me If You Can, with Leonardo DiCaprio, which further fictionalizes Abagnale's claims to have successfully impersonated a pilot and a medical doctor among other things, and to have passed all those millions in bad checks. It's possible that the only thing he really impersonated was a famous con man! That is, that his whole con man story is a schtick, and never happened. Which adds further convolutions to the story. The final hoax may be Abagnale's more recent depictions of himself as completely reformed criminal who has become a highly ethical man with a long FBI career. Fooled Google, if so.

Interesting. Personal honor gets almost zero mindshare today, but it's surprising how complicated things get when it's completely absent. In any event, I think we'd better accept the "hooking the hooker" story as nothing more than a well-told joke.

Associated rascality
By the way: apparently the word "hooker" came from Joseph ("Fighting Joe") Hooker, Lincoln's short-lived General in command of The Army of the Potomac who got thrashed by Lee at Chancellorsville. Apparently fighting was not all Joe was known for—he was an overenthusiastic patron of the army's camp followers, who came to be called "Hooker's brigade," a nickname that outlasted the General's tenure.

Joseph Hooker. I admit that I fixed up this JPEG
a bit, including separating the horse's neck from
the background, which you will no doubt notice
now that I've mentioned it.

That tale, like Abagnale's, might or might not survive the fact-checker.

Mike

*Carson was the host from 1962 to 1992. Those shows were much bigger then—Carson's peak viewership was 58 million in 1969, more than a quarter of the U.S. population then, for the wedding of an entertainer called Tiny Tim and his fiancée Miss Vicki. The current Tonight Show's best performance recently was 1.9 million, when President Joe Biden appeared. And that's against a population more than half again larger than it was in 1969.

Book o' the Week:

The Beatles: Get Back. The story of the band's last year, coinciding with the release of Peter Jackson's documentary Get Back.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.

Here's the link to B&H Photo

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:

QKA*

Our beautiful lake, from the head of the bluff. If you look on a map of Western New York, and find the Finger Lakes, mine is the one shaped like a "Y."  The lake is split by a high bluff that rises 700 feet above water level. (This is much lower than that.) This is only a small section of it. A century ago, there were lake views all over the place, because most of the land was cleared. Now it's shrouded in trees everywhere, and the places where you can get a view of the lake are limited. Even the "scenic overlooks" along my road are completely blocked by trees! Seems like a mistake from a Chamber of Commerce viewpoint, but unfortunately they have not put me in charge of anything yet. (I keep waiting.)

Mike

*The lake is called Keuka, and the bumper stickers say

Book o' the Week:

The Beatles: Get Back. The story of the band's last year, coinciding with the release of Peter Jackson's documentary Get Back.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.

Here's the link to B&H Photo

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:

Doug C: "A cousin of mine who lives in New Hampshire says that in 1860, 80% of that state was cleared land; now it's 80% forest. He says the Civil War opened the young men's eyes to what sort of farmland was available elsewhere in the country."

Mike replies: Yes, there used to be a lot of farming there. They isn't there any more. As a boy, riding horseback through the hills of Vermont, it was very common to come across stone fences running through the woods; made from the stones they cleared from the fields. I fell through a wooden bridge once that was so overgrown I didn't even know it was a bridge until the horse fell through it. (The horse didn't let himself be recaptured, and I walked all the way home.)

This is a minor issue in landscape photography. I saw an article once that gave examples of all the features that photographers think are "natural" that are actually the remains of manmade features in the land. It often takes an expert to recognize what they're actually looking at. Supposedly there's one tiny section of primeval forest left in America, and its location is a closely guarded secret because the people who study it don't want it to be ruined.

Should I...

...Review the Pixii rangefinder? They've offered.

Seems to me it might make sense while I have the M10 Reporter here and some M-mount lenses floating about. But it depends on whether you're interested or not.

Mike

Book o' the Week:

The Beatles: Get Back. The story of the band's last year, coinciding with the release of Peter Jackson's documentary Get Back.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.

Here's the link to B&H Photo

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:

A Couple of Days Off (Blog Note)

I'm in the home stretch for my big piece for newyorker.com which will probably appear in July. Lots going on. We've been working on it for a couple of months now. I haven't time to attend to my regular duties today, so this week I'll write for TOP on the weekend. Sorry for the inconvenience!

—Mike, Chief writer, editor, housekeeper, and dogwalker

 

Implementation Would Be Everything

Yesterday, reader Bear wrote:

"I'd like Leica to get together with Apple and build an iPhone into a Q2 or 3 or whatever...that would give me both a reason and an excuse to cart a camera everywhere. I might look a bit silly holding a camera to my ear instead of my eye though...but I probably would still buy it!"

I've actually always wondered why Apple doesn't do this. I used to wish for an "Apple Camera," but that was before the smartphone era.  

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "I trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods." That's the original quote from his Journal, in 1855. Folk wisdom streamlined it to: "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door."

It might have been true in 1855. Not any more. For one thing, big companies don't take ideas from random citizens—there's way too much liability in it. Whatever they do, they get pestered by people claiming the idea was theirs, like a hiker in Maine in the summertime gets pestered by black flies. They'll not only not use your idea, they don't even want to hear about it—my father, who was a management consultant for 30 years, told me about one company that wouldn't even open letters if they had any idea that there was a product idea inside.

Of course, companies also do steal ideas all the time, but good luck getting them to admit it.

So, mental exercise only: picture some compact but good quality APS-C or Micro 4/3 ILC such as a Ricoh GRIII, a Sony A6[x]00, or (okay, Bear) a Leica Q2. If it had a phone touchscreen on the back of it, with all the functionality of an iPhone, would that be something that would appeal to you?

Implementation is everything
I doubt I'd like it, and here's the reason: it would entirely depend on implementation, and the chances they'd screw it up are exactly 92%.* My family had a little Boston Whaler once that was supposed to do everything: it had oarlocks and oars if you wanted to use it as a tender, a transom stern so you could mount a little outboard motor, and a mast well for a little sunfish-style sail (don't know what that rig is called) [UPDATE: It's called a lug rig, technically "balanced-lug rig,"and such boats are called luggers. So now we know.] Well, it was horrible at all three tasks.

Skerry with balanced-lug rig. Illustration thanks to
John C. Harris's The Life of Boats blog.

Of course, a phone itself replaces approximately a dumptruck's worth of traditional tools, objects, documents and implements, from maps to calculators to books, and does a lot of new stuff besides, so it's already a Swiss Army knife. So maybe it would accommodate being stuck to the back of a camera without issues.

Still, my opinion is that they seldom get cameras quite right, so I'm guessing that adding a phone would be more cooks than the broth could bear.

Would you buy such a thing?

Personally, my seven-year-old iPhone had a seizure over the weekend, which scared me, even though it seems to have recovered. I guess it's of the age that I should be thinking about a new one when Apple comes out with the iPhone 14 in September. I'll have to have a print sale before then, if I intend to be able to pay for the blasted thing.

Mike

*That's a "monkeybutt number." Pulled it out of a monkey's butt.

Book o' the Week:

The Beatles: Get Back. The story of the band's last year, coinciding with the release of Peter Jackson's documentary Get Back.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.

Here's the link to B&H Photo

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:

Speed: "Statista tells us, 'In their 2018 fiscal year, Apple sold more than 217 million iPhones. After the release of the first-generation iPhone in 2007, the unit sales of the Apple mobile device saw rapid growth year after year, peaking at 231 million in 2015. iPhone sales have stayed relatively stable since then.' After completely re-engineering the iPhone into a Leica (a large and complex task), the incremental sales to apple would be vanishingly small—how many Leicas are sold today? Even a million could be mistaken by Apple as a rounding error. That isn't to say that owning such a thing would be interesting, useful and probably fun."

James: "Although I own both a Ricoh GR III and IIIx and absolutely love them (I also have a Leica Q2 Monochrom), I much prefer using a viewfinder. My favorite camera is the Fuji X100V. On the Q2 and X100 I never use the screen to compose. Focusing with a screen is a compromise I am willing to make with the GR series. I find phones difficult to take photos with. I am always accidentally touching the screen so that it suddenly doesn't allow me take the photo. I haven't mastered holding it by the edges.... :-)

"Additionally, the GR series has a handgrip and buttons which are very easy to use. It's even more remarkable given its size and the fact that it has a APS-C sensor. If I had to choose between the Leica and the GR, I would pick the GR every time. Is this hypothetical phone/camera going to have buttons/dials to change the aperture, exposure compensation, etc.? If it does then does it actually work as a phone with all these extra controls?"

Mike replies: Re holding a phone, you don't have to hold it by the edges. Just look on the back where the lens is, and wrap your hand around the back so that it doesn't cover the lens. Perfectly easy and natural. (But I still think the go buttons are in entirely the wrong places. And I hate the way its exposure adjustment works.)

KeithB: "Here is the somewhat cheeky user tip I wrote for the Apple Community Discussion board about submitting ideas to Apple."

Mike replies: That's very good. Tells it the way it is.

Mani Sitaraman: "What I really want is 1.) the digital interface on my Nikon DSLR to be as simple to use as the camera app on my iPhone and 2.) for my in-camera image files to be seamlessly transmitted without excessive fuss to my iphone/iphotos database so that I can forward them."

Omer: "Yeah, but no. I get enough stares when my camera is at my eye, what would those stares turn into if the camera were at my ear?"

Mike replies: Made me laugh. And that's the last word!

Central Camera Reopens on Chicago's Loop

Central Camera. Photo by Jen Sabella, courtesy Block Club Chicago.

You might remember that Central Camera, the old-fashioned, third-generation, more than century-old camera store on the Loop in downtown Chicago, was burned and looted in the rioting that took place after the death of George Floyd in 2020. The owner, Don Flesch, had no bitterness, and stood by the African-American community in solidarity at the time. However, the old store, which was founded in 1899 and moved to its current location in 1929, was a near-total loss.

I'm happy to pass along the news that, thanks to almost $230,000 in donations, Central Camera has reopened! We passed along the call for donations in 2020. If you helped back then, "you done good."

Block Club Chicago has the story here.

Mike
(Thanks to Ken Tanaka)

Book o' the Week:

The Beatles: Get Back. The story of the band's last year, coinciding with the release of Peter Jackson's documentary Get Back.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.

Heeeeere's...B&H Photo

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:

Richard Man: "Great news! When I was in Chicago photographing at the Nebula Awards weekend in 2017, I was running out of 4x5 color film (I thought 70 sheets would be enough, ha!) and lo and behold, Central had boxes of Portra 160, and saved my having to ration the remaining stock. Central was also the place my father-in-law used to frequent, back in the '70s and '80s. So I will for sure pay them a visit again when I will be in Chicago this Summer."

Roger Bradbury: "Great to hear. I haven't done too badly for actual shops locally, here in Milton Keynes, England. There's a Wex Photographic shop just a couple of miles from me; it's only been there a couple of years. We've had a Jessops or two though I think they are just online now. Calumet had a small shop at their warehouse again just a couple of miles away, but that went a few years ago when they became part of Wex. Not so close but worth going to despite having to deal with the town's one way system, is SRS at Watford. They are Pentax specialists and I've bought most of my Pentax gear there over the years."

Kirk (partial comment): "My local camera store, Precision Camera and Video in Austin, Texas, has two bricks-and-mortar stores here in the city and just opened a store in Houston. They do a brisk business catering to people buying in person. However they also have a very efficient and highly profitable online sales team as well. Especially in used cameras and lenses, both sides of the operation work in close collaboration. I would conjecture that this combined model is the most prudent way forward for all camera retailers. And is more normal than novel."

Happy Father's Day! And, Juneteenth

Happy Father's Day to all you fathers and grandfathers out there.

And it's the real Juneteenth, too. (Tomorrow is the Federal holiday.) It celebrates the emancipation of the slaves. It's been an official holiday in Texas since 1980 but only became a Federal holiday last year.

A group photograph of thirty-one people at an 1880 Juneteenth
Celebration at Emancipation Park in Houston's Fourth Ward.

The best article I found on Juneteenth is "What is Juneteenth, and how is it celebrated?" at BBC History Magazine (requires signup for free trial). Did you know that there are Emancipation Parks in cities all over the U.S., on land originally purchased for Juneteenth celebrations? Seems some white people in certain cities tried to block Juneteenth gatherings. The original Emancipation Park, in Houston, now the oldest park in the city, was purchased with $1,000 raised by formerly enslaved people specifically for Juneteenth celebrations. Another thing I just learned: red food is a Juneteenth tradition.

I choose to not celebrate Juneteenth—but to celebrate Black people celebrating it. It's their holiday, not mine—but I hope everyone has a fine, and fun, and peaceful and satisfying day. And for Black fathers, it's a twofer.

Mike

Book o' the Week:

The Beatles: Get Back. The story of the band's last year, coinciding with the release of Peter Jackson's documentary Get Back.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.

Heeeeere's...B&H Photo

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:

John Krill: "Every time I picked up a camera I have the ghost of my father standing behind me. Every time I work on a computer I have the ghost of my father standing behind me. My dad was an early photographer, the 1920s, he was also an early computer designer, the 1950s. I worked at fixing and repairing computers for 30 years. And I have been a serious amateur photographer since 1959. So, you see, everyday is Father's Day for me."

Sun and Clouds

A few recent iPhone snaps. I take pictures every day; just not that often with...well, a camera. (Frowny face emoji.)

The sun and clouds. There are several clues
here as to what kind of day it was.

The Penn Yan Diner, founded 1925. I've
never seen it empty before.

Patriotic field

I'll tell you what kind of smartphone I need: one with no camera in it. Because then I'd have to carry my camera again. Smartphone cameras are bad for lazy photographers....

Mike

Book o' the Week:

The Beatles: Get Back. The story of the band's last year, coinciding with the release of Peter Jackson's documentary Get Back.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.

Heeeeere's...B&H Photo

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:

Dave Levingston: "Smartphone cameras produce much, much better quality files than early 'professional' digital cameras. So what's the issue with using them to make photos? Plus, they always seem to nail the correct exposure, unlike my 'professional' cameras which frequently require exposure compensation."

Moose: "Message from the Other Side: I had a good bird photo op yesterday afternoon. Only iPhone 13 Pro at hand. I thought about it, then thought how I would spend time processing the Raw file—and end up with something short of my imagined photo. So, I just sat and enjoyed it."

Bear.: "I'd like Leica to get together with Apple and build an iPhone into a Q2 or 3 or whatever...that would give me both a reason and an excuse to cart a camera everywhere. I might look a bit silly holding a camera to my ear instead of my eye though...but I probably would still buy it!"

John Camp (partial comment): "It may seem a little odd, but one of the major playgrounds of the Miata is Beverly Hills, home of the Rolls, the Ferrari, the Bugatti, and all those other plutonium automobiles. You see them all the time in LA, often fire-engine red [actually it's called Soul Red Crystal, and there's quite a story behind it... —Ed.], with the top down; they have so little in the way of logos on them, that I think a lot of people don't know what they are. Might possibly say...'saw a nice little Ferrari roadster today on Santa Monica....'"

Ernest Zarate: "Happy Father’s Day, Michael. I’d suggest remembering that old adage: The best camera is the one you have with you. I find my iPhone a useful, handy tool. Not unlike a painter might carry a small sketch pad or a writer might carry a small notebook, it gives me a quick and easy way to make visual notes. Most of the photos I make with it will end up in the dustbin, a select few might be useful references or worthy additions to the family photo album, and that very rare one might even stand on its own. But the process of making them remains the same: choose both where I’m standing and when I push the button. Those are essential skills to keep sharp no matter what camera I’m using. Drop the baggage of 'should' from the phone. Just let it be what it is and use it to your own advantage."

Edward Fritzen: "Due to an ongoing 'relocation' I've had to pack my DSLR away in storage. I agree that today's smart phones take great images, and it's very convenient. I really need to force myself to use my iPhone. To me using an iPhone is not as much fun as a traditional camera."

John Abee: "It dawned on me as I read that I'm simply not very good at using my phone (Pixel 6) to take pics, and that's because I have never invested the time in learning how. I suspect I am not alone. I know the ins and outs of my G9 and GX8 but I'm clueless on the finer points of phone photography. There are all sorts of apps and tutorials for this phone but I need to set aside some time to optimize my phone workflow. And I will. Thanks for the prod. P.S. Drove my '90 Miata again yesterday. Even after 32 years it still plasters a smile on my face that requires a lemon to remove."

Mike replies: Lucky dog...! I'm jealous.

Creative Energy

marcin wuu wrote, in the comments to yesterday's post:

Hey Mike, did you notice how your articles come in phases, or waves, connected by subject? There's a Leica phase, Apple phase, Film phase, I Bought a New Camera phase, Pool phase etc? We're past the Leica, are we entering Camera Bags?  ;-)

It's true. That happens.

I believe it's mostly organic, though; for instance, after yesterday's post we were talking not so much about camera bags as stolen equipment, and a number of people have stories relating to that; those stories lead to other thoughts on the subject, which lead to more stories, and so on. The same post could have led in some other direction, perhaps assisting on jobs and not getting credit, or working for fathers or family members, or something like that. But that's not the direction it took.

I'm sure I direct it sometimes, emphasis intended, because it might be something I'm preoccupied with. The reason I claim it's organic, though, is that it happens the way it happens. That's what I've observed over many years of doing this. For instance, we could be talking about Kurt Markus right now and, let's say, what it means to photograph cowboys in the modern West, whether it's valid documentary or more like romantic nostalgia. But we're not. But there have been no comments on the Kurt Markus post, but a number of comments about my father's stolen bag.

Over the years, I've come to think of it as "energy." Some subjects have energy, others don't.

I do respond to the energy, too. Sometimes I'll wait to put up a new post because the last one is still getting a lot of response; the energy is there and I don't want to dampen it. Other times I'll work hard on a post but it doesn't get much of a response. In those cases I need to move on; no energy.

It's not 100% up to me. I try to create energy for pool, sometimes, hoping to do my little part to increase the fan base for my chosen sport, but my readers come here because of their interest in photography, and I don't have a godlike power to rewire their brains and redirect their interest. One way I got schooled about this was that, early on, when the audience was bigger, I had a great power to influence people buying books—did you know there were a number of books that we sold more than 500 copies of through our links? One surpassed 800 sales. That's influencing power! Especially considering that a full print run of a photography book might be 3,000 copies. But, when I've tried to recommend other books unrelated to photography, do you know how many we would sell? Six, maybe. Or 12, sometimes three, sometimes none. So it wasn't me...it was me + the predisposition of the self-selected audience, who were here because of their pre-existing and independent interest in photography. In short, Marcin's "phases and waves" are created by my energy plus your energy.

Heck, the site itself exists because it generated energy. I started this blog pretty convinced I would never have the discipline to write as much as one post a day, and my "stretch goal"—which seemed very unlikely to happen—was to keep it going for one full year (I had written a blog about politics prior to this one—it wasn't very good—that lasted about a year). Well, at its peak I was sustaining an average of something like 2.4 posts a day, and next November 28th we'll hit our 17th birthday, God willing. TOP has had energy.

Apply the concept to art
The idea of "energy" is significant because the same thing happens with creative work. You might have noticed it: sometimes you get what you think is a really good idea for a project, and and you strategize for it and gear up for it, but, when you get into it, it sputters...for some reason it doesn't "take." Like trying to start a fire and failing. How I experience it is that I don't have the energy for it. Literally, in that I feel logy and dispirited when I try to apply myself. Hence the term energy. Other times, you'll seize upon a subject and take off. Sometimes it might even surprise you, how much energy it has. Hard work doesn't seem like work, enthusiasm carries you along, and you might even take it further than you first intended. It can feel almost like it's not even up to you. If you read enough biographies of artists, you begin to notice how they find their energy as they work out what it is they're supposed to do in life, how they arrive at their mature styles and concerns. It might not be magical, but it sure is fascinating.

If you're creative, you have to be sensitive to the energy, I think*. And willing to have the courage to make changes based on it.

Maybe that's another topic; but let's see how much energy this post creates.  :-)

Mike

P.S. Does anyone remember a saying about how a plan is an ambition with a deadline or something like that? I can't remember it or find it.

*One of my personal foibles is that I'm too dogged. I keep trying to do things even after I've found out I'm no good at them. You wouldn't believe how long I thought I was going to make a living as a portrait photographer. I had some early successes doing that kind of work—I did a lot of it and made some good money—but I have very little knack for business, and as a main business I failed at it—not just failed, but failed blatantly, comically, decisively, over and over again. It was clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was not going to succeed as a portraitist full time. But somehow I continued to not get the picture. The Universe didn't just have to whack me with the "Get-a-Clue" stick; it had to beat me repeatedly with the Get-a-Clue 2x4. (I still think I'd like to be a portraitist sometimes. I carry around various pet schemes in my head. They've been there a long time and doubtless won't die until I do. Success at these schemes is certainly possible, with the caveat that I'd merely have to be a different person than the person I am. To be good at business you need to be not just realistic but boldly realistic, I suspect.)

Book o' the Week:

Inspiration Leica Akademie (English and German Edition). A "group show" of 76 Leica Akademie photographers from 16 countries worldwide, curated by Heidi and Robert Mertens. It looks to me like this is going out of print soon, so act soon if you want one.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you choose to support the site.

Link to B&H Photo

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:

Grant (partial comment): "There is too much energy on the TOP site. My life is consumed by the articles that you post. There are too many fascinating links that I have not yet had the time to follow. I have three recommended books only partially read and two more still in the wrappers. Please, I need a break. The dandelions on my lawn are mocking me. Perhaps a food and diet phase would give me time to catch up on my life."

Mike replies: Dandelion greens are very healthy for you in salads.

Kirk: "I believe in the discipline of work. The more you work the more it flows."

Kenneth Brayton: "I have no energy for indoor photography. Just not there no matter how much I try. During COVID I have tried. But whenever I get outdoors it is a whole different level of energy. And much better results. Remember the days of 'Good Vibrations'? There is something to that."