The Online Photographer

Open Mike: Kirk Tuck Takes a Break

I would usually make jokes about "Open Mike" ("the often off-topic Editorial page of TOP") being a day late, but this is no time for cracking wise. Yesterday I didn't feel like writing this. I was feeling a curious species of grief. I got an email yesterday from my Texan colleague-in-arms and e-friend-I've-never-met, Kirk Tuck, who told me that he is hanging up his spurs for a while and stabling his blog, The Visual Science Lab. 

Kirk

No problem
He assured me that nothing's wrong. He hasn’t been injured, he's not sick, not broke, and he's not miffed or having a spat with anyone. (Kirk is an uncommonly good-natured guy, as you might guess). Still, the news is bittersweet.

He's leaving the site up and not officially calling it quits—he's leaving the door open for a return one day. That's the sweet part. The bitter part was Kirk's characteristic straight, unadorned honesty about what it's like to toil in a declining field. (That the field—writing about photography online—also happens to be my own doesn't help soothe the sting.) In the public announcement he made yesterday, he said things like: "Photography has changed profoundly since the inception of this blog in 2009," and "I sometimes feel as though I'm showcasing a style of lighting (and portrait engagement) that's become more of a temporal sign post of past practices than any good learning curriculum about current styles and trends," and "[I] can hardly shake the feeling that photography as we knew it and practiced it has changed so profoundly that the Visual Science Lab is now, more or less, irrelevant."

Sad to hear him say that.

Doesn't matter if any of us agree with that assessment (I don't, and maybe you don't either). It's the way Kirk feels. I get that, because I feel mournful over a lot of things these days. Not just things in my personal life, but the "drifting away" of things like prints as the end-product of photography, books on paper as the way to read long-form writing, principled, orderly government in my native country, and even...email. Commercialism has more or less ruined email as a means of convenient private communication among citizens, and our methods of staying in touch have begun to fragment into different walled-off corners of a Babel called "social media." I think that's a shame culturally and socially. An opportunity missed.

Imagine, mourning for email.

There's a (German) word for that
Maybe it's just the Weltschmerz* of a good guy getting on in years. And if so we might find that fact hard to stomach because, frankly, we just like Kirk, that's all. He can write about swimming or whatever else he cares about, like I can write about things like pool and stereos and George Kittredge and the meaning of words, in his usual voluble, articulate, friend-over-the-fence way, and we're pleased to spend time in his company. That doesn't seem to require "relevance" to continue. But on the other hand, all good things must come to an end; things rise, things fall. Where the truth of that is concerned, there's nothing new under the sun.

Kirk has other ways to make a living and lots of other things to do, at least. He is an accomplished and energetic professional with a mutifaceted business. He has five times the energy and business ability I do. If I were faced with the task of supporting myself with my photography, hoo law, in no time at all I'd be a shivering little girl in a ragged shawl selling pencils out of a tin cup in Dickensian London! They'd cart me off to the grim 'n' grimy workhouse instanter. Kirk also decided early on not to monetize his blog, and he notes that "last month was the first month that the blog logged a negative fifty six cents for affiliate earnings." I'm loathe to make this post about me (in my 12-step program we chide each other for egocentrism with the phrase "it's all about me/you," which can be topped with a question mark or an exclamation point, can fire in any direction, and can be a reminder, a note of caution, or a zinger), but TOP is being preserved—saved!—by the 682 "core readers" who are sending along a few bucks every month via Patreon. It's a neat solution, if you ask me...it's like switching to a subscription-only model but without closing the doors to the public. I still need about 200 more supporters, or 300 if Providence is kind. But currently one or two more trickle in every day, so by Summer maybe we'll have made that mark.

But I digress. (Can we be generous and say that digression is part of my charm?) Anyway, I've offered Kirk carte-blanche** to pen guest posts here on TOP any time he wants to, about any subject he's moved to unspool his thoughts over. We have a fair amount of overlap in our readerships, so I figured it could be a nice way for him to occasionally connect with part of his old audience. Don't know if he will take me up on that, but I shall renew the invitation from time to time. It's the most I can do, but it's also the least I can do.

New chapter
Bottom line: New chapter for our friend. Let's try not to be sad.

Wishing Kirk the best.

Mike
(Thanks to John Camp and several other readers)

*A German word with a fascinating history. Literally "world pain," it's defined as "a feeling of melancholy and world-weariness."

**Literally "blank document" in French, it means "to give full discretionary power."

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Here’s the situation

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Horror of Highlights

This is typical of the way I sometimes chase trails down into holes in the earth and the warrens of history...after seeing the Karsh exhibit the other day I got interested in his association with John H. Garo, the socialite Boston portraitist who lived from 1870 to 1939. Karsh evidently learned a lot of things from Garo, from his public persona and flair for stylish dressing to his way of working with clients. Here's Karsh with his employer and mentor Garo:

Nice portrait, although you'll notice Karsh is out of the zone of best focus, despite leaning into it. (Too much bokeh!) There's also a portrait of Garo by Karsh, although I don't particularly like it. (It has overtones of Mortensen for me, somehow.)

Turns out a book about the two was published in 2016, called Yousuf Karsh & John Garo: The Search for a Master's Legacy. This picture's on the cover. I haven't seen the book, although the first paragraph of the Amazon description paints a picture of influence, gratitude and loyalty: 

When President Calvin Coolidge was asked to choose between the artist John Singer Sargent or the photographer John Garo to make his official presidential portrait, Coolidge chose Garo. Although unknown today, in the early years of the twentieth century, Garo was a nationally acclaimed photographer, a leader in the thriving Boston photographic community. Cultured and charming, Garo also painted watercolors, wrote poetry and counted among his friends luminaries in the worlds of music and theater. It was to this humanistic atmosphere of Garo's sky-lit studio that the fledgling photographer, Yousuf Karsh, a survivor of the 1915 Armenian Massacres, was sent by his uncle George Nakash to be Garo's apprentice. Garo was a nurturing and encouraging mentor. His three years with Garo transformed young Karsh's life and influenced his original desire to portray those personalities who made a positive impact on our world. Garo died in 1939, a victim of the Great Depression, ill health, and changing photographic taste. Karsh, then still a struggling photographer in Canada, was devastated to discover Garo's studio ransacked and many of his portraits missing. Thus began a forty-year odyssey by Karsh to discover his mentor's portraits and preserve them for posterity. Drawing on meticulous research and on Karsh's personal correspondence, Mehmed Ali brings to life this intensely human journey, and the little-known story of Garo's stellar role in the history of photography in New England.

I can't vouch for that first line; the official Coolidge portrait is a painting by Charles Sydney Hopkinson as far as I can discover. (Ronald Reagan, who for some reason admired Silent Cal, had it moved to a more prominent position in the White House.) This might be the picture Amazon mentions, but I don't know.

Here's another portrait of Garo, this time by his fellow portraitist and friend William Manahan, about whom there is even less information online than there is about Garo:

Next I got curious about what Garo's own work might have looked like, and took a poke around to see if I could find any examples. There's a nice page of them at the Harvard Art Museums website. John Garo seemed to share that horror of highlights that was considered stylish back in pictorialist days. The fashion was, the murkier the better. There's a story of Steichen in his youth developing by inspection under a dim green light in his darkroom with his hand on a pitcher of restrainer, ready to stop development instantly at the first sign of a little density. Makes me chuckle.

The style hasn't aged well. Here's an example of Garo's portraiture:

John H. Garo, Prof. George L. Kittridge [sic]

The subject is the formidable Harvard didact George Lyman Kittredge, who is credited with one of the most famous academic quotations never uttered. Prof. Kittredge was notoriously strict with undergraduates, once permanently banning a student from class for excessive coughing. Legendary for scholarly rigor, Kittredge spoke a number of languages including Greek and insisted that Harvard doctoral candidates do likewise. However, the great man had never bothered to earn a Ph.D. himself. Upon being asked why, he is supposed to have said, "But who would examine me?"

It's a great line, but Kittredge probably never said it. According to the all-purpose mid-century man of letters Clifton Fadiman, Kittredge said the question had never been put to him and that he wouldn't have answered like that if it had. But there was no doubting his faith in his own erudition. When Kittredge retired in 1936, the New Yorker published a cartoon that featured Shakespeare himself sitting in on one of the great professor's English 2 classes at Harvard, busily taking notes about the meaning of his own plays.

Wending back to Karsh and Garo, I think you could fairly say that Karsh, with his theatrical lighting, more than made up for his mentor's horror of highlights! I also think the younger man is unquestionably the better portraitist. Whatever you think of them, Karsh's portraits still seem vibrant and alive (and, notably, more individual in approach), while Garo's have become musty period pieces.

I personally like portraits, and, understandably, I have a special affection for portraits of photographers. I first encountered the portrait at the top of this post in one of the books Ken Tanaka recommended, Karsh: Beyond the Camera by David Travis. That seems the book to start with, if you want to be entertained by some reading about these past masters of the art.

Mike

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Here’s the situation

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Karl Lagerfeld 1933–2019

Karl Lagerfeld, Modelka, 1996–97

Karl Lagerfeld, a German obsessed by all things French who was the creative director of Chanel among other accomplishments, has died in Paris at the age of 85.

Despite running several of the world's most successful fashion houses, he never gave up his many personal artistic pursuits, one of which was photography. "Lagerfeld took up photography in 1987," reports Artnet News, "starting off by photographing his own designs and later exhibiting his monochrome landscapes and moody portraits in black and white, the same palette he seized on for his signature look." You can see JPEGs of a few of his photographs here.

He was also a collector of photography. And he was the adoptive parent of one of the world's most famous cats, Choupette Lagerfeld, whose jet-set lifestyle at her "father's" side earned her a 120,000-strong Instagram following.

Anna Wintour, Editor-in-Chief of Vogue, said, "To be his friend was an exceptional gift. Karl was brilliant, he was wicked, he was funny, he was generous beyond measure, and he was deeply kind. I will miss him so very much."

Mike

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Here’s the situation

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New News From the World of Stuff

Of course, the "stuff" doesn't have very much to do with photography—as they say in courtrooms, that's stipulated (in law the word means "to accept a proposition without requiring that it be established by proof"). That aside, a number of delightful new baubles of interest have passed by in the parade recently, as you might be aware.

The new Canon EOS RP

Full-frame Rebel: Most notable is the EOS RP, Canon's new "lower-end" R (full-frame mirrorless) camera. It's a small, light, relatively inexpensive* entry-level camera in the full-frame mirrorless interchangeable-lens category. It evidently uses a sensor very much like the one in the original flippin'-mirror 6D, which isn't really a bad thing as 6D pictures continue to look very nice; and it has a decent if basic feature set that includes things like a single card slot. I approve—I like simple. The notable things about it are a.) it's a Canon and b.) it costs only $1,300, which will look tempting to people who've been pining for full-frame but holding off because of the cost of entry. It will probably be popular for those reasons.

The new Fujicron 16mm ƒ/2.8

New Fujicron: Over in Fuji-land, an update called the X-T30 features a generous amount of trickle-down from the popular X-T3. To go with it there's another new "Fujicron." I refer, of course, to those small, light, still-fast-but-not-superfast X lenses nicknamed with a mashup of the words "Fujinon" and "Summicron." This time it's a pretty little 16mm ƒ/2.8 that's weatherproof and weighs only five and a half ounces(!).

Commentary

There's a reason why I stuck these two bits of stuff in one post. I can't help being struck by the juxtaposition of yet another Fujicron arriving at the same time we first see Canon's entry-level R offering.

...Which there's nothing wrong with, and I don't mean to imply otherwise. But most of Canon's R lenses so far are or will be premium, expensive offerings; the new lenses just announced don't look like they're going to change that. And the camera with even the basic lens is right back up to $2,200. Which ain't cheap**.

When the original Digital Rebel was introduced 16 years ago (can it really have been that long?), Canon had a whole slew of good but small and cheap SLR lenses you could stick on it. I'm left wondering what the point of a small, light, inexpensive body is when you're more or less obligated to buy large, heavy, expensive lenses to put on it.

There's really only one answer...it's so people can buy a "temporary" body as they begin to acquire lenses, putting off the purchase of a better, more expensive body to the future, at which point the RP can very logically become a second body / backup / carry-around / vacation camera.

Unless you just want that nifty 35mm with IS, of course, which solves all problems and quiets all objections. Mmmm.

Otherwise, I personally fail to see the appeal of a compact full-frame body that doesn't have reasonably light, easy-to-handle lenses that go with it. It's not like this kind of thing really matters...we all get what we want to get and then we get on with it. I'm sure the RP will be very nice, and eminently usable. But neither of the Canon R cameras have in-body image stabilization (IBIS), and neither does the X-T3; and if I'm going to get a mid-twenties-ish megapixel camera that's light and right-sized and doesn't have IBIS, I sure know what kind of lenses I want to go with it. One 16mm Fujicron to go, please. Also that one and that one too. Thenk-yew. That will be all.

Your mileage might vary, and I won't argue if it does. This "stuff" is supposed to be fun.

Mike

*Inexpensive as long as it's your money. If we're talking about mine, we need to discuss this further.

**Even with your money.

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Here’s the situation

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John W: "The 'big expensive lens' problem has always been my head-scratcher with FF Mirrorless. You still have FF, which means big lenses...period! The whole idea of mirrorless was to reduce size and weight. Sony seems to have cracked the problem somewhat, but only 'somewhat.' Their lenses are still big and very expensive but 'somewhat' lighter than the older FF DSLR lenses. APS-C as implemented in the Fuji system seems to be the true home of mirrorless. The size and weight are in the 'Goldilocks' zone and the sensors are 'good enough.' But though affordable the price is still a tad high. Still, with continuous free updates you can get a lot of mileage out of their cameras."

Larry Gebhardt: "The Sony A7II is still in the current lineup and Sony has dropped the price to $999. Given it's got IBIS and a range of smaller lenses it seems like an obvious choice over the RP if you're buying into mirrorless for the size benefits of the system. I think Canon should have introduced the RP at the same price, or at least added some smaller lenses with IS."

Question

...Formed any opinions about the new Canon EOS RP yet? Any reaction to the news? I'll be posting a bit about it (and some other new "stuff") later in the day.

Mike

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Here’s the situation

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Julian: "I dunno. I find it very hard to get excited about any new camera. They all seem pretty much the same after a while. I'm still using the Sony A900 I bought back in 2012 and, so long as it keeps on going, I don't see the need for another camera. So it's not mirrorless and doesn't shoot video and it doesn't have live view. Funnily enough, I find it pretty easy to live without all that. But then, I shoot 5x4, so using any digital camera is pure luxury....  ;^)  "

Josh Hawkins: "I’ll probably be getting one. Looks like a good vacation/family camera while stepping into mirrorless." [Old friend Josh is an in-the-trenches photojournalist who shoots Canon and who used to manage an old-line camera store. —Ed.]

Geoff Wittig: "Probably just me, but the EOS RP seems to reflect Canon's conviction that the interchangeable lens camera market is contracting, so they're making a play for the bottom end. This may partly explain why the EOS R is so underwhelming compared to Nikon's Z7. On the other hand, the Canon R- mount lenses so far are mostly really big and really expensive, which makes no sense if that's their plan. They should be releasing a slew of super compact and inexpensive lenses for the RP. Given their notable lack of IBIS when the market is clearly embracing it, Canon's R mount cameras don't offer any compelling reason to adopt them, even for a long-time EOS owner like myself."

Jeremy Stein: "As a longtime Canon user and owner of many Canon lenses already, I am thinking that the new RP may be my best way into mirrorless cameras. It seems to have many useful features, and the price is right!"

John Camp: "The Jedi teacher Yoda was a curious character, the font of all wisdom, yet he seemed unable to master English word order. I can sympathize: I can no longer grasp the subtle differences of camera performance. Befuddled I am."

Next Print Sale Starts March 6th

Mark your calendar, tell your friends, post it on social media.  :-)

Mike

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Here’s the situation

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Now It's a Verb?!

My fifteen seconds [sic] of fame seems to be having a nearly infinite number of millisecond extensions....

It's actually a pretty good ad...communicates the function of the camera feature pretty well.

Mike
(Thanks to Bahi Para and several other readers)

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Here’s the situation

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Mark Roberts: "'Verbing weirds language' —Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes."

Lucian Pintilie: "Apple is wrong in its pronunciation. Not only in this ad, but also during their various launch events where they touch upon photography. For a company very proud of its attention to detail (obsessing over even minute details is something that Apple considers a virtue), getting this wrong is...well, wrong. What message do they send to the discerning public? Do they even realize that?"

Steve Renwick: "It's a confident company indeed that can run an ad making fun of its customers' self-absorption."

Yousuf Karsh (It Helps to Have a Mission)

Yousuf Karsh, Self Portrait [with 8x10 negative in holder], 1954

Yesterday I journeyed to Corning to the Rockwell Museum with my friend Geoff Wittig. He's a primary care physician from nearby* Dansville and, despite being busy at his job, he's very interested in, and engaged with, art—a longtime landscape photographer, he took up plein air landscape painting four years ago. We went to see a small show of photographs by the late "Karsh of Ottawa," midcentury portraitist extraordinaire. 

The Museum is really nice and the little gallery where rotating exhibits are shown is really nice, except for one little glitch, namely, the automated sliding entrance doors. Whenever you stand looking at one of the pictures hung next to either of the doors, the door unhelpfully slides open and shut, open and shut, again and again, like a demented servant demanding to be of assistance, until you move on. Like those "motion activated" paper towel dispensers in public restrooms that never quite work right, this strikes me as one of those problems that were formerly solved but that we have un-solved. Really, it is not necessary to motorize every single thing. A manual door with a handle on it would have been sufficient, and familiar.

One big advantage of never having engaged with a particular artist: it means there are still new works of his or hers for you to discover. I saw several new Karshes in this show that I had never seen before—one of Helen Keller, and a particularly nice print of his picture of Russel Wright. Some of the new-to-me ones I liked better than the big hits, although Karsh's celebrated portrait of Georgia O'Keeffe is a masterpiece, enjoyable online or in reproduction but considerably better in the original. The gallery lighting was sufficient, if barely—the darks in the prints were somewhat too dark and could have used a few more lumens of light. Some prints don't come fully alive until you have enough light shining on them, and Karsh would have been printing for more generous lighting conditions.

All the placards were about the subjects. I learned that "Jacqueline Bouvier was working as an 'inquiring camera girl' for the Washington Times-Herald when she began dating Congressman John F. Kennedy in 1952." There was very little on offer (well, that I managed to find) about the show itself, which originated at the National Portrait Gallery and features prints that were given to the NPG by Karsh's wife Estrellita after his death at age 93 in 2002. The show was curated by Ann Shumard, who has been the National Portrait Gallery’s senior curator of photographs since 2001. I reached out to Ann to find out a little more about how she curated the show, but her answering machine says she's out of the office until Monday. Seeing as I myself have been out of the office recently, I can't complain. If I do hear from her, I'll post an update.

In the main informational wall bloc about Karsh, it relates that he apprenticed in Boston to photographer John H. Garo, and that by the time he returned to Canada, he had "set his heart on photographing those men and women who leave their mark on the world." Well. That's a mission statement, right there. It helps to have a mission.

A rewarding day. I enjoy Geoff's company a lot, and it was good to get out of my usual routine, and it is always a pleasure to look at prints.

Mike
(Thanks to Geoff)

*Nothing is nearby anything here in Upstate. What I mean is that Dansville isn't really far away, only far away.

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Here’s the situation

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John W: "Many years ago while I was still living in Ottawa I worked for a company named Ginn Photographic, the largest camera store in Ottawa. I had the pleasure and honour of meeting and serving Mr. Karsh on a couple of occasions; he was a close friend of the Ginn family. He was a small (5'4"), dapper man who looked more like a very successful banker than a photographer and was unfailingly gracious and polite. What a pleasure....

"Yet we probably saw more of his lesser-known younger brother Malak's work. Malak Karsh was an award winning landscape, commercial and illustrative photographer who also frequented Ginn Photographic. Both are national treasures of Canada and the photographic world."

Earl Dunbar: "In 1974 I spent a few nights in Ottawa between Christmas and New Year's day. My colleagues and I stayed at Chateau Laurier, next to Parliament. In the lobby were Karsh originals and wow, I was blown away. This was before I seriously took up photography, so those prints served as a seminal event and inspiration to plunge into the art and craft. Unrelated but seared into my brain was watching the CBC news television broadcast of the death of Jack Benny on Boxing Day. I also had my first ever bowl of French onion soup in the restaurant frequented by members of Parliament, Ottawa mandarins, and others in the political class who were, of course, not in town. It still feels surreal."

Wolfgang Lonien: "Am I the only one who finds the English term 'print' to be a bit lacking? It doesn't make any difference if you develop an original onto photographic paper in the darkroom, dodge and burn old style with your hands or other helpers, and then really develop it in chemicals—compared to what simply comes out of a printer, and what can be reproduced at the press of a button. I really think there should be different words for it, as the results are so hugely different—especially in black and white—that 'print' simply doesn't give it justice (and makes it hard for a potential buyer of art to distinguish between the two, except of course that you will see it). Sorry about my short 'rant.' In German we would say Photoabzug or Ausbelichtung instead of Druck (print). Only the latter would come out of a printer. But no dictionary I've found makes any difference in (British or American) English."

Mike replies: And "print" further conflates with what comes off a printing press, as in the phrase "in print." Photographic terminology has always bugged me—there are lots of small awkwardnesses and oddities and even a few outright misnomers.

Regarding what you're talking about, I would say we usually distinguish in English by adding words—the first type of print you speak of, and what I was looking at in the exhibit, would usually be called "silver gelatin prints," the latter kind "inkjet prints" which then might get a further descriptor such as "pigment" or "dye" perhaps. And that's just the tip of the iceberg—there are a great many kinds of prints.

But of course those additional descriptors usually get dropped in repeated mentions and casual speech.

William Furniss: "I had a similar experience (the work not the doors) at the Sally Mann exhibit at the Getty Centre in Los Angeles 10 days ago. I had no idea she had done so much work beyond photographing her family, to point it is a shame she is so well known for that work. Her pictures of battlefields are amazing and her tintypes in person are really special; anyone in the Los Angeles area should go."

Benjamin Marks: "Just out of interest, Mike, were there any of Karsh's photographs that showed evidence of retouching with pencil? I saw an exhibit of Karsh's work in Montreal (I think), and the pictures I saw were retouched in this way. I don't know whether it was because the photographs were intended for reproduction or whether they were work prints, but I was impressed with his desire to do what was necessary to get the shot 'right' for its intended purpose, whatever it was. Karsh's pictures, or many of them anyway, are the pictures that come to mind when I think of the subjects. His 'Winston Churchill' is like that."

Mike replies: The only picture I thought looked retouched was his picture of FDR, who was standing—knowing FDR could not stand unassisted, it's easy to see him hanging on to the fellow next to him, and other things about the print seemed a bit off to me, although I couldn't tell you exactly how. It's exotic to think, now, that FDR's disability was kept mostly hidden from the public.

Photo by Robert Demachy (imitation of sanguine [red chalk] drawing)

Retouching was quite common with large negatives (it's far easier to retouch a large negative than a small one), especially among portraitists. If you've ever read Edward Weston's Daybooks, he frequently grouses bitterly about the demands of his retouching tasks on his time. You can't help but feel this influenced his later artistic principles. Of course the pictorialists took it quite a bit further—photographers such as Robert Demachy created images that were meant to appear to be drawings, and partly were.

Kenneth Tanaka: "Good outing. Karsh’s portraits are polarizing among the photographic appreciation crowd. Many find them fascinating and engaging while many others find them phony and excessively theatrical, reflecting more of the photographer than his sitters. To the extent I think of them at all I am mostly of the former group, although the latter group makes a valid point.

"Some years back David Travis, the long-time former chair of the Department of Photography at the Art Institute of Chicago, curated a wonderful exhibition of Karsh’s work at the AIC. During the show Jerry Fielder, Karsh’s longtime assistant, visited to give a very memorable and revealing talk about Karsh’s practices and quirks. It was my introduction to Karsh, and a delightful one at that.

"The catalog from the show was excellent but is no longer in print, although it's available in the secondary market: Regarding Heroes. Interestingly, David Travis’ associated work, Karsh: Beyond the Camera is available in a Kindle edition (as well as paperback). It’s largely composed of Jerry Fielder’s tape transcripts of Karsh's recollections and is guaranteed to be worth the tiny cost for anyone who likes Karsh’s work or who’s interested in the history of celebrities."

Kirk Decker

Kansas City photographer Kirk Decker

Kansas City photographer (and TOP reader) Kirk Decker stopped by Penn Yan a few days back for lunch. A retired UPS driver (both delivery and big truck), Kirk is pursuing his photography seriously these days and is experiencing increasing success. He told me his interests always seem to circle back to portraiture and landscape.

A portrait by Kirk

He photographs using both film and digital, and both black-and-white and color. A visit to his website reveals an affection for B&W. He showed me a gorgeous print of this picture that had a lot of presence (the print and the JPEG are night and day). Of particular interest might be his Headshot Information page, which I think reveals in brief form a thoughtful take on that task from both conceptual and nuts-and-bolts perspectives.

So what was he doing in Penn Yan? On his way from Missouri to Boston to check out the big Ansel Adams show. Because of course that's not too far to go for a photography show if you used to be a professional driver.

I enjoyed our conversation, and Kirk's gentle, dry sense of humor. Always great to meet y'all!

Mike
(Thanks to Kirk)

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

Here’s the situation

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Gary Nylander: "Beautiful work by Kirk Decker. I had a look at his website. Very nice."

Blog Note (Dr. Johnson's Maxim)

I've apparently reached one of those times when I need to take a few days off. I don't have any excuse, and I'm fine; it's just that every now and then a person needs a few days off.

Dr. Johnson's maxim, taped to my monitor

I never know when these times are going to hit me—there's a confusion with "setting oneself doggedly to it" and knowing when to step away. Sometimes when you feel overwhelmed and exhausted you have to power through it. Other times you need to rest. Which is which? It's often hard to say.

One year back when I was trying to build this business, I took a grand total of seven days off. Another year, 14 days. I was in my 40s then. I'm in my 60s now. I was more dogged then. I used to work like a dog! Now I get dog-tired. (Have you ever noticed how we blame all sorts of things on dogs? A good life is a dog's life, but a bad lens is a dog. You can be as loyal as a dog, which is good, but when a man is being a dog, he's being bad. And so on.)

Now, the way I feel sometimes just makes it clear: time for a break. Those times are getting a bit more frequent now. Such is life.

I'll be back on Friday, off on Saturday, back on Sunday. Apologies for the down time! While I'm gone, why not root around in the archives a little? There's lots in there.

More anon.

—Yr. Hmbl. Ed.

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Jim Metzger: "Is your boss OK with this?  :-)  "

Mike replies: Not really. He always worries.

David Evans: "I notice that there is no such thing as cat-tired. That's because cats have the good sense to get all the sleep they need."

Jeff: "Please do not bother to feature this comment."

Mike replies: But it made me laugh, so I had to.

Steve W: "There's wisdom in knowing when to take a breather, and you are doing the right thing. Over the long course of my career this kind of judicious time off I would call a 'mental health day.' To take this kind of time off from the 'treadmill' of work felt essential to me. From time to time we need some quiet time for rejuvenation from the pace of life. As I said, there is wisdom in it. The corollary of all this is the guilt we feel when not working. Discard such feelings; guilt is an insidious emotion. In other words, it is okay to do good for yourself and practice forms of self-compassion, and there should be no guilt in it, nor anxiety."