The Online Photographer

ADDENDUM (Blog Note)

(Just wanted to mention: it occurred to me this morning as I lay in bed before getting up that the real reason I write OT diet posts is probably that they inspire me. Every time I write one it makes me enthusiastic about redoubling my efforts to cook and eat healthily, and I get strength to resist my bad habits. Because the reason I'm so preoccupied with this stuff is that I naturally have bad food instincts, so I have to make up for that with knowledge and conscious effort.

So thank you for putting up with me. Because I need the kick in the butt.)

Mike

Book o' the Week

Home Fires Volume II: The Present. There is of course a Volume I: The Past.  TOP reader Bruce Haley has produced documentary work relating to conflict, humanitarian crises and environmental/industrial/land use issues for 30 years. He received the Robert Capa Gold Medal for his coverage of the ethnic civil war in Burma.

These book links are a portal to Amazon.

Today at 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.

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More on Those $6,000 and $7,000 Cameras

ChrisC wrote, yesterday: "I’m not sure if this is something you have already posted about, but to add to your comments on economics: Boots Theory.

Cool.

Here's The Boots Theory, in case you don't want to follow that link: "The boots theory comes from a passage of the 1993 novel Men at Arms [by the late Sir Terry Pratchett], the second novel to focus on the City Watch, in which he muses about his experiences of poverty as compared to his fiancée Lady Sybil Ramkin's conception of poverty:

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

I've never heard of "Boots Theory" per se (thanks for that) but I've written about that very thing, for instance in the first paragraphs of this post from 2015. Three points by way of commentary: I heard once that the MacArthur of the MacArthur "genius" grants made his fortune in insurance, but that he self-insured his own cars. It might be apocryphal that he said "insurance is a ripoff" by way of explaining why. Next point, consider that my father, when we moved to Washington, D.C. in the 1970s so he could work for NASA, paid $200k for our house in Maryland just across the D.C. border (Zillow "Zestimates" its current value at 11 times[!] that), and he paid cash. (He was Dave Ramsey before Dave Ramsey was Dave Ramsey.) Then consider that for most middle-class people, the no. 1 or no. 2 expense of their entire lives is the interest on their house. As I said in that 2015 post, "the reality of having no money is that it costs more. Not 'more' in any diffuse general sense, taking into account intangibles like limitations on life choices and personal satisfaction: it just costs more in plain ol' money." The third point: my grandfather, an investment banker whose lifestyle I like to semi-humorously describe as "Downton Abbey at one-quarter scale," used to say you should "buy the best." When I was a young teenager, I asked him why, and he said "if you buy the best you only have to buy it once." There's Boots Theory right there...

...And a bit of advice I probably should have followed when it came to cameras!

And believe me, I've often thought about what might have been. I actually wrote a manifesto-style little essay in the 1980s declaring that I wanted to be like Eugene Atget, and continue doggedly with one technique for my whole life, except in my case it would have been what I called my "Photo 101 technique": a 35mm camera, fast B&W film, and smallish prints reproducing the whole negative out to the blackline:

Photo-101-technique prints. Paper size is 11x14 inches.

At the time I couldn't even image how such an ordinary technique would be come obsolescent, although of course now it has. So what might my life have been like if I had stretched for that out-of-reach M6 at Industrial Photo off the beltway in Maryland back in 1984, and then kept using it and actually fulfilled my little manifesto? I might still have it today, and be using a newer one or an M7 or something. Would I still be at it?

If I had bought an M6 and three lenses back then and kept using it, I would have been way ahead of where I actually am. I can't estimate how much I've wasted spent on cameras since then, but $20,000 is way too low an estimate.

Of course, it's a moot point, because I turned out to be a writer—a magazine/Web writer—rather than (primarily) a photographer. I didn't know that's what was going to happen, at the time. (Funny, though, I still consider "Photo-101 style" B&W my "real" work. I've never been able to completely "own" digital inkjet prints in color as being wholly "me.")

My point here is smaller than you think
And an answer to Thom and everyone else who suggests used gear: it's been my observation that a certain subset of hobbyists prefers used gear, probably because it's a financial win: it's cheaper, still useful, and satisfies an urge for thrift that's important to them. But by "hobbyist" I certainly didn't mean "rank beginner." They're not hobbyists. Yet. A hobbyist would more likely be someone who already has a number of older cameras (the older they are, the older their old cameras). I would counter the "buy used" approach with another subset you're very familiar with: those who are so eager to own the latest thing that they'll discard superseded models that are still in great condition and still have a lot of life left in them. (Y'all know who you are. Haven't we all done it at least once or twice?) The ones who own an X-Pro2 and just have to have an X-Pro3 as soon as it appears. That's a big group too.

I won't ask Thom how many times in his career he himself has been satisfied to buy a 5-year-old camera for his professional and personal work. It's not a fair question, as I well know, because we have to write about the newest gear and we need to be familiar with it, he much more than I.

Several readers took me to task for creating a litany of "apex" cameras and not considering the reasonably-priced alternatives that are good enough. D B wrote: "Re: the question 'are hobbyists being priced out of the hobby,' I agree with Ken T.: you (we) are not. What the heck do you (we) need a Z9, A1, or GFX 100S for?"

But that's an interesting aspect of this: how can an enthusiast site survive if it doesn't consider the best gear in the field at least occasionally? But it's been getting sort of pointless. If I write about a $6,000 camera body, the portion of readers with a real interest in the product is just so small, for the simple reason that most of them would not spend that much on a camera even if they can. I know I wouldn't. Some of you would read it anyway and might even enjoy it, but, well, there's that "what has this got to do with me" reaction that I worry about, too. The equation has gotten more...fraught, let's say.

All I was really saying with the post is that the trend to five- and six-thousand dollar camera bodies might be putting a damper on enthusiast participation in the hobby, merely because those prices close off what is conventionally considered to be the most interesting and most desirable end of the market to a greater proportion of us—that is, the total set of "all hobbyists" or all enthusiasts. I do think that's true to some extent, notwithstanding a.) those who don't desire the apex cameras, b.) those who are satisfied to buy five-year old cameras, and c.) the existence of capable intermediate-priced models. (I'm also saying that those models wouldn't exist at all if we lived in a more egalitarian society, but that's just theoretical musing.)

As John Camp wrote, "Your complaints are reflected in virtually every hobby that equipment freaks have come to dominate—hi-fi, photography, music, horse competitions, computer gaming, sporty cars. But at the extremes, except perhaps for a very, very tiny professional minority, it's all Veblen."

Anyway, I don't mind if you disagree with me. It was actually a smaller point than many people took it to be. It's just a bit of a practical problem for me these days, that's all—since I ought to be making smart decisions about what to write about.

Mike

Book o' the Week

 All About Saul Leiter. The Amazon writeup for this book says "Photography lovers the world over are now embracing Saul Leiter"—and oh boy, is that ever true of me—"who has enjoyed a remarkable revival since fading into relative obscurity in the 1980s." One of my favorite photographers. Beautiful photopoems. Saul's Early Color (which you can still get for around $300) was one of our all-time bestselling book links. (I bought two, one to thumb and one to not touch!)

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

Link to B&H

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

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Featured Comments from:

Nick: "When I started reading about cameras and photography in earnest, ca. 2009, I coveted the near-top models: Not the huge, pro-grade cameras, but the higher-end enthusiast cameras, like the Nikon D70. I talked myself down a bit ('for the time being,' I said) and bought into Micro 4/3 for a fraction of the price. I figured I'd sell it and get a 'real' enthusiast camera in a couple of years.

"Now, 13 years later, my income is higher, but I've stopped reading gear sites almost entirely. I just made my first gear purchase since the pandemic started: A $320 used OM-D E-M10 Mark II to use as a second body. My last purchase before that? A $320 used OM-D E-M10 Mark II to replace a Mark I that died a week before a scheduled trip to Japan. I make a good bit more now (even inflation-adjusted) than I did then, but between the rapidly increasing prices of enthusiast gear and my contentment with what I had on hand, my covetousness dwindled to almost nothing and my priorities shifted. My (still limited) disposable income goes to getting to new places to take cool photos (see above about the trip to Japan), not on the gear with which to take them. From my point of view, the lack of focus around here on gear, especially stratospherically-priced gear, is definitely a feature, not a bug."

Mike replies: I'll tell you what else pertains: consistency. Once you've done 13 years of Micro 4/3, you might want your new pictures to continue to look like your old ones. I understand this isn't always the case; sometimes people are eager to make a break and create work that has a new look. But sometimes we don't want that.

Stephen S.: "I have owned thirty Micro 4/3 camera bodies, from the bottom of the range to the top, all purchased used. Regardless of how much they were used (going by shutter count and cosmetics,) the factor that most determined which ones would fail was how much they originally cost. The lower-end cameras were far more likely to have shutter failure, command dials that didn't respond, broken battery doors, and LCD screens that blanked out, sometimes at varying degrees of tilt. It seems to me some corners were cut in their design, in order to cut costs. When they were new, it may have had made sense to save several hundred dollars by buying a lower-end camera that could produce the same images, even if it was lacking a few features. However, if buying older gear used, it now only costs a little bit more for the higher-end models, and in my experience they are far more reliable. With warranties expired, and in some cases even paid repairs completely unavailable, this is an even more important factor."

MIKE: "Boots Theory? So true, but instead upgrade to Furniture Theory. Do we imagine that the rich have to go out every two or three years to replace their IKEA furniture? Or do we conjecture that the family probably hasn't bought a new table in centuries, not since great great great great (you get the idea) grandfather bought the Chippendale table that's still in the dining room. My Dad always said the Rich live cheap."

David Lobato: "Several years ago there was an article about tripods. Photographers often bought cheap ones to start. Then when its limitations arose they bought an incrementally better tripod, and so on. Turned out that it was much more cost effective to initially buy an expensive tripod."

Mike replies: It's about the only thing I've done right. I bought a very expensive Gitzo Studex in maybe 1982, used it for 30 years, then replaced it with a very expensive carbon fiber Gitzo Mountaineer which I'm sure is my last tripod.

Coming Up! (Update)

Thanks to everyone for all your submissions. I initially thought this one might be one of those things where people are "over it" and not interested, but not at all—I got a large number of submissions. Many will not make the final 13, but I enjoyed so many of them just the same. A lot of camera "portraits" came along with a personal story about the camera or what it means to the sender, and so many of those were good to read. I can relate, of course.

I've been working all weekend, but...not on TOP. But I am going to get to the Baker's Dozen later today and I hope to have it up as early as tomorrow. I think this one will be easy; almost no matter what I pick it will be fun.

[UPDATE Monday 3:30: I've gotten it down to 28 finalists, so it's going well. Lots of cool stuff left out, but that's the game. —Ed.]

[UPDATE no. 2, 10:30 p.m.: All selections made, pictures loaded and labeled. I'll add the captions tomorrow, and post.]

[UPDATE no. 3, 11:30 a.m. Tuesday: It's up! That took a solid day of work. I'm not as fast as I used to be.]

Mike

 

Books of Lincoln Photographs (Followup)

"When a rival called him 'two-faced' during a political debate, Lincoln replied: 'I leave it to my audience. If I had another face, do you think I'd wear this one?'"

—from Lincoln: A Photobiography

I spent yesterday happily immersed in learning more about Lincoln, which evidently you did not—I don't think any recent post here has gotten less response than yesterday's! Sorry about that. (Note to self: TOP readers are not interested in Lincoln.) I also got pretty far into the Benjamin Thomas biography.

Among the things I learned: Lincoln had a lazy left eye, which accounts for the fact that there is only one portrait of him (O'Sullivan's) looking straight at the camera; he was the first President with a beard, which he grew at the suggestion of a young girl who wrote him a letter saying he would look better with one; the killer of John Wilkes Booth, a soldier named Boston (originally Thomas) Corbett, was completely crazy—at the time he shot Booth he had already castrated himself with a pair of scissors to help himself resist the lure of prostitutes, and he later lived in a hole in the ground, which, believe it or not, you can still visit (in fact, there are a large number of Lincoln-associated places you can visit, including the site of a town Lincoln lived in that is no longer there). Corbett eventually escaped from an asylum and more or less vanished.

Abraham Lincoln's last confirmed descendant, a fellow named "Bud" Beckwith, died in 1985. However, George Clooney is a distant cousin.

I don't think I'm ever going to need to know that.

Books of Lincoln photos
Regarding books of Lincoln photographs, I came across this list, on the frankly named "Abraham Lincoln Research Site":

"Among the Abraham Lincoln books that include his photographs are: Lincoln's Photographs: A Complete Album by Lloyd Ostendorf, The Photographs of Abraham Lincoln by Frederick Hill Meserve and Carl Sandburg, Lincoln: A Picture Story of His Life by Stefan Lorant, and The Face of Lincoln compiled and edited by James Mellon. Additionally, there is The Lincoln Family Album by Mark E. Neely, Jr. and Harold Holzer. Also recommended are Lincoln: An Illustrated Biography by Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr., Philip B. Kunhardt III, and Peter W. Kunhardt, and Lincoln: A Pictorial History by Dr. Edward Steers, Jr."

The Kunhardts' book is the one I remember. It's been a long time since I've seen it; I'm pretty sure it was in the library of the Corcoran School. My impression was favorable, although I can't say that with assurance. But I guess we've already determined that you don't care anyway.

Mumlered
And check out this weird thing:

Mary Todd Lincoln was said to be "erratic" later in life, which may be her right after having lost three of her children and her husband. Her only surviving son, Robert Todd Lincoln, who evidently inherited none of the traits of his father in any respect, tried to have her committed to an asylum. She managed to extract herself, but the two of them were estranged afterwards.

Wikipedia says of the above, "In 1872, she went to spiritualist photographer William H. Mumler, who produced a photograph of her that appears to faintly show Lincoln's ghost behind her (photo in Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, Indiana). The College of Psychic Studies, referencing notes belonging to William Stainton Moses, claims that the photo was taken in the early 1870s, that Lincoln had assumed the name of 'Mrs. Lindall,' and that Lincoln had to be encouraged by Mumler's wife to identify her husband on the photo. [This would have been only a year after she lost her son Tad at 18—maybe he was the one she was trying to summon from the spirit world —Ed.] P.T. Barnum, testifying against Mumler in his eventual fraud trial, presented a photo featuring himself with the 'ghost' of Abraham Lincoln, demonstrating for the court how easy it was to make one of Mumler's images. The image is recognized now as a hoax created via double exposure (by inserting a previously prepared positive glass plate featuring the image of the 'deceased' into the camera in front of an unused sensitive glass plate)."

Maybe we could say that a Photoshopped digital file has been "Mumlered."

And now let us move on.

Mike

Book o' the Week

Lincoln: A Photobiography by Russell Freedman. A very brief, illustrated overview of the life of America's 16th President suitable for young people.

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

Link to B&H

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

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Three Followups to 'Camera Roll'

Just wanted to briefly follow up on a few things relevant to the subject of "Your Camera Roll Contains a Masterpiece":

First, among many other types of people, I've been hearing from photo organizers around the world! As you might know, it's a career now: people who hire themselves out to help you curate your heaps of family pictures, old and new. One I've corresponded with, Isabelle Dervaux, headquartered in Brooklyn, was herself profiled in The New Yorker a year or so ago. I read it at the time. The ones contacting me are of course interested in the topic, and, sure, may also be interested in advertising their services (so here's her website)—but I'll bet they have perspective on photo editing and peoples' habits and responses that is different and fascinating. I'd love to talk to her. Actually, I'd love for us all to talk to her. I think I'll ask her if we can do an interview. The New Yorker piece introduced her profession to outsiders, but, here, we could talk nuts and bolts.

Second, someone on a thread about the article at Hacker News (thanks for the link, Jernej) commented (the first line is the subhead of the article):

> Our smartphones are stuffed with photos. The challenge is finding the good ones

Google already did this for you.

Yeah, well, maybe someday we'll really achieve that Brave New World. A camera you wear on your cranium will take pictures whenever its algorithms sense something important is happening in your life (based on what it overhears people saying to you, your pulse, brainwaves), but only when it recognizes a good composition based on popular agreement about taste. This mass of raw material, which you will never even see and will not require your attention at all, will be stored somewhere "safe" but not very accessible, and then every few years an auto-edited mini slide-show will crop up unbidden on your favorite device. Your Aunt Mandy's funeral, for instance, on the seventh anniversary of the event, or whenever sociological research suggests is the time you will have recovered from any possible grief. Your brain will think at you, "Mandy? Was she a character on Game of Stones or Dunces and Draggings? Oh, Mandy! My mother's sister." You'll realize belatedly that you knew her in old-fashioned reality, which by that time will be a poor and boring relation of all the much more appealing virtual realities. When the Aunt Mandy slideshow comes up, you'll swipe passively through the first eight of the 17 machine-learning-curated pictures, glancing at each of them for 1.1 seconds, or maybe a little less, noticing neither that the bots have converted everything to B&W (because it's a somber subject) nor that somehow there is a perfectly clear full-color billboard for an insurance company in the background at the gravesite and that the bouquet of flowers clutched to your weeping Mother's bosom has been helpfully transmogrified into a slightly too large red and white container of Coke. You'll reach the limit of your attention span before the end of the slide show, and shut it down. Coke and the insurance company will be auto-billed; your responses will be analyzed and a decision will be reached (the passive voice seems apropos, because it won't be a human that makes the decision) as to whether that slideshow will ever be provided to you again. As for you, you'll muse very idly about Aunt Mandy for twenty seconds before the next distraction.

Later, your brain will think at you: you know, I kinda feel like a Coke.

Even that will not be the ultimate, which would be, of course, never having to look at either the thing photographed or the photographs of it at all, ever. Just think how great it would be if we could remove ourselves from the process entirely. Then we wouldn't have to waste any time on pictures at all. We can live to hope.

(No disrespect at all intended to the OP. I'm just riffing. It's never wise to make hackers mad at you.)

Third (antidote to the above), there's a streaming film coming up called GRAIN (thanks to Lorna Clymer via KK for the link). No, it's not about wheat. Film grain. Directed by Tommaso Sacconi and Alex Contell. And it's listed as a "teen-friendly" film, which sounds like a good thing even though I'm not exactly sure what it means. Here's part of the blurb:

Digital photography, with its sharper edges, higher definition, and instant gratification, dramatically changed the way we capture and consume the imagery in front of us. But these 'perfect' shots we see on our phones—in a world more distorted than ever—may be doing us all a great disservice. Millennials worldwide, whose childhoods were slowly overrun by all-things-digital and looming screen time addictions, are driving the return to film photography and the need for a slowdown. ... Now, with more people craving real over flawless, the documentary GRAIN captures how shooting analog brings passionate photographers joy as artists and how the uniqueness of film may be here to stay.

Looks like that was written by Amy Brown. Gets to me, I can tell you that. I need a slowdown. I crave real over flawless. What was that Jada Pinkett-Smith posted? "I'm here for it."

It makes me kinda happy and not happy. Happy if young people are really discovering "slow photography" in any significant numbers (statistics needed), but not happy because it wouldn't have the same meaning if I did. Because, of course, it's only hip and happening (he said, aware that hip and happening is not a hip and happening phrase) if you're young. If you're old, then you're just stuck in your ways, afraid of new things, rigid in your thinking, etc. etc.

Sigh. Still, I want to see the film. Is it also ODD (Old Darkroom-Dawg)-friendly?

Bet it is.

Mike

Book o' the Week

Larry Clark, Tulsa. A classic of 20th century photography. Teenage Lust (NSFW) was always the hard title to get—$500+ for the paperback right now—but it wears its voyeurism too much on its sleeve. I have them both, and Tulsa, IMHO, is the better book. Available at a good price right now, but not always. Get it while it's cheap.

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

Today at 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:

Mike Chisholm: "Ach, these film-fantasists and their nostalgie de la poo... Just wait until they try a few darkroom sessions, and realise you have to get wet, squinty, and dog-tired just to produce one good print. And then do it all over again, exactly the same, to make a second.... And don't even think about colour! Not so hip and happening now, eh, youngster? Listen to Uncle Mike (no, not him) and get yourself a beautiful pigment printer and use it!"

Tam: "Re: Millennials and film photography. This is definitely true. I’m surprised that when you order Ilford from Amazon, the algorithm doesn’t suggest that 'people who shopped for this also shopped for skinny jeans and beard oil.' I spend a fair amount of time and, alas, money in the used department at Roberts Camera here in Indy and some of the staff behind the counter, most of whom are young enough to be my kids, don’t even own any digital cameras."

Open Mike: Fact Check

["Open Mike" is the Editorial page of TOP, in which Yr. Hmbl. Ed. might ramble down one of many memory lanes.]

So here's one sequence of events in my life from the past couple of days/weeks:

1. I had my work fact-checked for the first time in eons, by the New Yorker. The process uncovered only minor problems, but the "catches" improved the piece. It made me think of the rigor I apply to the pieces I post here, and wonder if I do a good enough job.
2. In the "We Are Who We Are" post the other day, I used Woody Allen as an example of an artist I felt ambivalent about on moral grounds, and mentioned that a movie that had been a great favorite when I was young (Annie Hall) was one that I hadn't rewatched because of it.
3. I made a factual error in that post, saying that Allen "took up with his adopted daughter."
4. Several readers more informed than I am on the topic soon corrected me, in the Comments and privately. Soon-Yi Previn is André Previn's adopted daughter, not Woody Allen's. (Fact-check fail.)
5. One reader led me to an essay by Moses Farrow, one of Allen's actual adopted children.
6. While I can't necessarily take all of Moses Farrow's claims at face value, his testimony makes it apparent that the accusations against Allen were a product of serious feuding within a deeply divided and dysfunctional broken family, in which context "truth" might not even be a particularly useful concept—it's more like a churning maelstrom of competing claims, needs, feelings, resentments, anger, interpretations, allegiances, efforts at control, and psychological states. Truth becomes mixed with falsehoods like two kinds of colored water and can't be separated out again. Each party has his or her own "truth," all of which interact in shifting ways. For example, evidently Moses "switched sides" at some point.
7. So I decided to provisionally accept that I don't know the truth, and...
8. I watched Annie Hall again last night, first time in this millennium.
9. And it was like renewing an acquaintance with an old friend. A poignant experience. A TOP reader, in the comments to a long-ago post called "Ten Best B&W Films (and then some)," pointed out that most of anyone's favorite movies will be movies from his or her adolescence and early young adulthood, a time when we're still learning about the world, our minds are more impressionable, and our emotions are more out front and come into play more easily. I accept that. Annie Hall is one of my favorites, probably because I saw it when I was young. It holds up, though. I still think it's brilliant. And I was just in contact (because of the New Yorker article) with an ex-girlfriend (the woman in the staring-out-to-sea photograph) for the first time in years, so the subject of the movie—the arc of a love affair (more about that phrase below)—resonated all the more.

So this is just one example, out of hundreds and hundreds, of the reward of writing a site that is blessed with so many humane and intelligent readers. I just never know when or by what little byway I'm going to learn something that leads to something else that leads to something else. Like an inexhaustible rag-and-bone shop in which unexpected and always surprising trinkets or treasures never fail to come to light.

And about that phrase: note that I wrote in Thursday's post, "Annie Hall is a singularly brilliant movie about what Paul Simon called, in the song 'Hearts and Bones,' 'the arc of a love affair.'" Not only do the song (1983) and the movie (1977) tell the same kind of story, but I had completely forgotten that Paul Simon appears in Annie Hall, playing a fictionalized variant of himself. Was there some sort of artistic connection made there, somewhere? Could be.

By the way, all facts herein are provisional. You do a fine job of keeping me honest, by and large, and I always remain willing to stand corrected.

Mike

Book o' the Week

Larry Clark, Tulsa. A classic of 20th century photography. Teenage Lust (NSFW) was always the hard title to get—$500+ for the paperback right now—but it wears its voyeurism too much on its sleeve. I have them both, and Tulsa, IMHO, is the better book. Available at a good price right now, but not always.

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

Today at 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:

We Are Who We Are

We're in the middle of an issues discussion, which is unusual around here. First, I have to address the departing supporters, who have withdrawn their Patreon contributions: I'm sorry you were offended—the aim here is indeed for that not to happen, and I strive for that. I don't want anyone to feel the way you'd have to feel to yank back your helping hand. But I don't think it would be wise for me to submit to the blunt command, "No more politics," either. Sometimes, politics enters in, and I write about what I'm moved to write about. That's the way it has to be in a daily blog that's been chugging along for going on 17 years. Everything's fodder. The deal is, you pick: like a newspaper or a magazine. It's not homework. Read what you want to read, leave what you want to leave. I can't do it for everyone. Consider: with everything I ever write, there are at least a few people who love something most people hate, or at least a few people who hate something most people love. If I had to tailor everything to everyone—well, couldn't be done. The post previous to this one wasn't labeled "OT," because it wasn't off-topic: I related the "current event" to the question of untangling art from the morality of artists. Which led, I might add, to some reader comments that might be among the best this site has ever gotten. I'll re-read them at some later time I'm sure. (I still haven't gotten them all up, but I have little else to do this afternoon.) [UPDATE Fri. evening: One of the three readers who left has already come back. I'm glad. —MJ.]

As for the Smith-Rock affair, Mike Plews pointed to the best analysis he's seen, by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Kareem touches on all the repercussions we can know about, with crystal clarity. Short and worth reading. I truly admire that guy, by the way, and have for a long time. Not just because he's a deep jazz fan. And not just because he happens to be about the first celebrity I ever saw up close and personal—he used to come in to the Bay Point Pharmacy where I worked when I was 14 and 15, back when his name was still Lew. He's a role model, IMHO.

And finally, I did promise I'd share my own take on "untangling art and the morality of artists" before we move on to the important topic of the Leica watch  :-)  . So here it is. It's not a political position with me, and it's not even an intellectualized stance: I just have trouble enjoying art when I know the artist is a shitheel in some obtruding or offensive way. It's an emotional response, and I wrestle with it. It causes me anguish, too, because sometimes I want to engage with and enjoy art or entertainment made by people I no longer trust or like. Even before the MeToo charges later leveled at him, I already had left Louis C.K. behind, for instance, because of the vile (to me) things he would say about his children. (With me, as with Dickens, mistreatment of children is the cardinal sin.)

I have a particular problem with Woody Allen, because of Annie Hall, the transitional movie between the broad, Marx-Brothers-inspired schtick of his early career and his later, Ingmar-Bergman-wannabee serious films that in my opinion encompasses the best of both. Annie Hall is a singularly brilliant movie about what Paul Simon called, in the song "Hearts and Bones," "the arc of a love affair." As moviemaking, the ideas tumble out in a dazzling torrent almost offhandedly, like Jimi Hendrix moves from musical idea to musical idea in "Born Under a Bad Sign." The pathos/but the humor/but the pathos of that little boy saying "I used to be a heroin addict, and now I'm a methadone addict"...what a way to say that fate awaits all innocence. The movie is well written, full of Allenesque quips like, after Annie parks, "That's okay, we can walk to the curb from here," and there are a remarkable number of cameos and first or early appearances—the young Christopher Walken as the psycho brother, can't do better than that. But the things I like best are the gags and vignettes that can only work as film/video: the brief panning shot across the three people in the front seat driving to the airport, ending on Alvy's puddle-of-fear face. Can't do that in a theater or a book or in anything but a movie. Annie actually is what has become a movie-blurb cliché, a tour-de-force. It earns its bittersweet, elegiac feeling-tone. Maybe I just have too many failed relationships in my life. But then, I didn't when I first saw it.

At any rate I have resisted circling back to Annie since Allen took up with his adopted daughter [UPDATE: This is an error. See correction below]. It's been a long time now. Before I can do so I'll no doubt have to delve into the details of he and Soon-Yi Previn, and I'm not sure I want to. With eyes averted it's still possible to believe it's a wholesome coupling of consenting adults who happen to have an unconventional meet-story. They're still together, and he was never convicted of a crime.... On the other hand, it's possible I'll die before ever seeing Annie again. But I'll always want to.

Orwell
I'm not actually proud of my molten moral core when it comes to art. It's just a psychological fact of me that I deal with. It was never a decision. Didn't I write a piece once called "Never Meet Your Heroes"? I think I did. And that's why. Scott Abbey writes, in the Comments,

As to the question of separating the artist from the art, it depends. It depends on how close in time, space and culture the transgressor and their transgression is. I haven’t watched a Woody Allen movie in years, although I used to really enjoy them. Bill Cosby’s comedy albums were a source of joy to me and my friends as teenagers; I can’t listen to them. Certain current musical artists—giants in my mind—have robbed me of some of the enjoyment I get from listening to their artistry due to them going out of their way to encourage people to skip getting vaxxed. Picasso was a long time ago (to me), and he was never a favorite of mine. So I like his work about as much as I ever did. So, it depends. I don’t have a good decision-making framework here.

I sympathize.

As for Yoram Nevo's recommendation of Orwell's "Benefit of Clergy": know it well. And it does treat this subject better than almost anything. One of my touchstone books is Orwell's Essays (Everyman's), a thick brick of a tome that I habitually root around in to find a truffle. I read it like the pious read the Bible, in snips and pieces, and, like they, I'll never stop. Well, until I have to. I believe I could feel the truth of Orwell's judgment of Dali, unarticulated, directly from the art itself, by the age of 12 or so (I spent my youth engaging with painters, mainly)—the sense that the obscene immorality and surreal morbidness is the only thing that enlivens the otherwise conventional Edwardian draughtsmanship ("a dexterity that goes no higher than the elbow," writes Orwell piercingly, ever the master of le mot juste). Just as I read the essays of E.B. White aloud alone (and have always done) to steal a little reflected light from his cadences, I return time after time to the watering hole of Orwell to linger a little in the company of a mind like mine only better.

And an exquisite little touch about "Benefit" I only just learned: see the little note at the bottom about it being included in a collection of essays but then being physically cut out of all the copies because the publishing house changed its mind and decided the essay wasn't fit to print. To which one can only observe, wow, how...Orwellian.

Dead heads
Once when I was young, I attended a lecture by Joel-Peter Witkin, a photographer who once posed two severed human heads as if they were kissing. (He had worked out an arrangement with a Mexican hospital that allowed him to sort through unclaimed corpses and discarded body parts to use in his photographs.) He had a photograph he told us was of his own then-six-year-old son, naked or nearly so, with a collar on, and the collar was attached by a chain to the nipple of an naked obese woman. Witkin told us, with a delighted smile, that the "little guy" was "confused" and was crying. That's all I heard; I walked out, and have never looked at Witkin's work again on purpose, and never will.

It's just the way I am, can't help it. My first role model, age six, was Popeye, who said "I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam." Gotta be yourself, like you have any choice.

Your homework for tonight (I'm kidding, kidding, don't go all Will Smith on me): read "Benefit of Clergy." It's goooood.

Kindest regards,

Mike

CORRECTION: I did look into the matter of the Allen/Farrow household, a little, thanks to a helpful reader, J Lee. Moses Farrow, the adopted son of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen, who states he is a licensed therapist, has a web page which states that:

She [Soon-Yi] is not Woody’s daughter (adopted, step, or otherwise), nor is she developmentally challenged. (She got a master’s degree in special education from Columbia University!) And the claim that they started dating while she was underage is totally false.

In truth, Woody and Soon-Yi rarely even spoke during her childhood. It was my mother who first suggested, when Soon-Yi was 20, that Woody reach out and spend time with her. He agreed and started taking her to Knicks games. That’s how their romance started. Yes, it was unorthodox, uncomfortable, disruptive to our family and it hurt my mother terribly. But the relationship itself was not nearly as devastating to our family as my mother’s insistence on making this betrayal the center of all our lives from then on.  

I will admit that I'm in over my head here. Moses' page made me uncomfortable to read, and it appears various family members have a history of feuding. I'll leave this post up, but I think I'll watch Annie Hall again.

Book of Interest this Week

Home Fires Volume II: The Present. There is of course a Volume I: The Past.  TOP reader Bruce Haley has produced documentary work relating to conflict, humanitarian crises and environmental/industrial/land use issues for 30 years. He received the Robert Capa Gold Medal for his coverage of the ethnic civil war in Burma. This is his exploration of his home territories, and it's great.

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

Today at 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 Krumm: "The end of your post made me laugh, because my wife was recounting a bad meeting where someone made her angry, and she said ugh, I just wanted to Will Smith that guy. He (Smith) managed to verb his own name."

Nikhil Ramkarran: "I can speak only for myself, but it is one of the hardest things in the world for me to give credibility, or even just acknowledgement, to differing opinions on controversial issues where I sympathise with one side. And yet, I believe it is one of the most valuable skills I could possibly learn. I have recognised the value of dissenting opinions a long time ago, decades, but I still have to fight most times, first to even recognise my own intolerance, and secondly, to moderate it. Just as an aside, there's no opinion you express Mike, that will cause me to pull support. Your approach to controversial issues over the years have been a model (or, in other words, I wanna be you when I grow up, but rich 😆)."

Lothar Adler: "I would like to say something about your experience and reaction to Joel Peter Witkin. For many years I have been very impressed, moved and disturbed by Witkin's photographic work. I have seen much of his work, read things written by him, seen many large original enlargements, spoken with him personally at an exhibition.

"The story you have reported with his six-year-old son also strikes me as repulsive and unjustifiable. But: Mr. Witkin is Mr. Witkin is Mr. Witkin, whether he uses a camera or not. And he shares his personality and his view of life through photography.

"In my understanding, it cannot and must not be that only people who are morally, ethically, legally, politically ('political correctness') correct are allowed to express and communicate themselves artistically. With that we would be directly on the way to a superordinate censorship, even if this first takes place only in our heads, in the context of a self-censorship. Of course, everyone is free to decide what he wants to ingest or not. But is it in the concrete case really the very own decision or does one believe only to have to fulfill the current social norms?

"I admit, however, that also for me a border would be crossed, if a reprehensible action against a living, feeling being, against its will! takes place only because of it, in order to produce a product of the art. In this case I will rather renounce this art product, but would hesitate to reject the other life work of this artist altogether.

"In a video interview Witkin said about the content of his photography that his pictures would show 'conditions of being.' That seems very important to me. For me, art is a way to explore and communicate the human dimension of 'conditions of being.'

"The older I have become, the more I have experienced that human life, human existence considered in its entirety, is often far beyond what young people are usually taught in so-called education. This is one reason why it is difficult for many people to come to terms with the fact that many things are in fact quite different in the course of their lives.

"I would find it tragic if then also in the art only the well-behaved, adapted to social rules and venerable people were allowed to make their messages."

Mike replies: I appreciate that you've expressed your opinion of this photographer, with one little cavil: I didn't say that he shouldn't be allowed to express himself and communicate artistically. I just said I would no longer be part of his audience. It's not up to me to convict him of anything, but I do think it's wrong to mistreat a child the way he described.

Keith: "A number of years ago I was reading Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. I found the book to be an intriguing, thought-provoking, and well-researched work on the challenges of the many unfortunate people who are trapped in a low income existence, and the rigged socio-economic platform that keeps them there. About halfway through the book I read the passage where the author casually mentions that she is an atheist. Having been raised in a very conservative Christian (Southern Baptist and Republican) family and community, I was stunned by the author's admission, and dismayed that I had supported an atheist by purchasing her book with my discretionary income. I immediately closed the book and laid it aside for a couple weeks.

"As the initial shock subsided and I pondered over my initial reaction, it occurred to me that the fact that the author was an atheist did not change the value of the content in the book. I picked up the book and continued where I had left off. Reflecting on my thoughts after completing the book revealed two things. First, it reinforced my concern of the pitfalls of properly regulated capitalism (whatever that may be), which can become a runaway freight train that can create an imbalance in wealth distribution. But more importantly, it became a turning point for me in that I realized that we do not have to agree with or condone an individual's personal morals or actions in order to recognize and learn from the value of their contributions. The content and delivery of 'Bill Cosby—Himself' is no less funny or brilliant now than when he first created it. Our perception and appreciation of the creator may influence our interpretation of the work, but it does not change the objective strength of the content."

What to Do, That Is the Question

[Comments have been added.]

Here's our day yesterday. My address is 740 East Lake Road, and the addresses here are the mileages from the town line—so I'm 7.4 miles south of the southern border of the hamlet of Penn Yan, up at the top of the Lake.

Curiously, we get different weather than they do. Snow squalls spill over the massif of the bluff and descend on us—once I got to watch a little one come at me, and I saw it all the way, which was thrilling—but they sometimes hit us and leave Penn Yan alone. Yesterday I was coming from town, and the weather up there and for about the first four miles was fine. No snow and clear roads. Down here it was a different story. We got two or three inches in an hour or two.

It's not the first time I've observed this. Weather is very local in these parts. 

Question: When should you not zap up a digital picture with Dehaze and Clarity and so forth? Answer, when you're trying to show a heavy atmosphere. If I kick up the contrast and clarity of the truck in this, I can make it almost look like it was a nice day.

OoP (Out-of-camera. Or should it be OoP?)

Improved? Not sure about that. You be the judge.

As you can see, I opted for something in the middle. When editing digital images, as in darkroom printing, the how is always the easy part. You can master that relatively easily. What to do—judgement, as I call it—is always the tougher question.

Futbol
Just as a followup, it was quite a weekend in the NFL. To quote Ben Shpigel of the New York Times, "I’m not prone to hyperbole, but THAT WAS THE BEST WEEKEND OF FOOTBALL IN THE HISTORY OF EVER. In case you weren’t watching—and if you weren’t, why not?—all four divisional-round games ended on the final play: three field goals and an overtime touchdown."

The Divisional Round is the quarterfinals, in case you don't know. The remaining four teams will meet in the championship games, to determine the AFC (American Football Conference) and NFC (National Football Conference) champions. The two champions square off in the Superbowl—which is typically a pretty snoozy game.

One little tiny flaw in the picture is that our local team, the poor Bills, from the City of Eternal Football Heartache, fell just short again. They were ahead with 13 seconds left. Unless you've hardened your heart against enjoying any sport ever as a matter of principle or of crankiness, you really should watch the ending to that game. Even if you're not a fan of American football—or of sports at all—you'll get it. Remarkable.

I was rooting for Green Bay, Buffalo, and Tampa Bay, in that order, so all of my teams are out of it, knocked down like bowling pins. I guess I'll root for Cincinnati now. (That means they'll lose. I'm a Jonah, I guess.)

Pool this morning! So I need to get breakfast. At least I often win at that. As my friends put it, I cheat: I practice.  :-)

Mike

Book o' the Week
Eye and Brain by Richard Gregory, Fifth Edition. "As far as I know nothing in the past 50 years is a better explanation of how humans see." —Hugh Crawford

The link is a portal to Amazon. Thank you kindly for helping support The Online Photographer!

The following logo is also a link if you click on it:

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:

Mark Sampson: "I've spent thousands of hours driving through the murk your photo so accurately describes. That picture makes me recall the mingling of accomplishment and relief I would feel upon reaching my destination, after a long journey in those conditions. Your 'improved?' version merely looks like it was taken an hour later, towards dusk. And Mike, nothing you can do to that image will make it look like a nice day."

Bill Bresler: "When it comes to image adjustments in Photoshop or whatever, I'm reminded of the Cajun Chef who, regarding spicing food, declared, 'A little too much is just enough.' I agree with the chef when I'm cooking. But when I'm editing photos, I tend to stop just short of what looks good on the screen. Sometimes I'll change my mind later, but as long as I still have the raw file, it doesn't matter."

On Resolutions: A Coda

After writing dyspeptically-slash-humorously about the futility of resolutions yesterday, I felt chastened when I looked up and revisited my actual resolutions from last January. Here's what I wrote then:

"Real resolutions are behavioral and spiritual.

"One of the reasons I started TOP more than 15 years ago is that I wanted there to be a little oasis where at least gratuitous negative energy was kept mostly at bay. Where casual and needless snark and scorn and casual provocation wither from lack of nourishment. By and large we do pretty darn well, you and I. But there is certainly no shortage of negative energy out there in the world.

"So my resolution for this year is to work on improving tolerance. Although this is at root basically a spiritual goal, there are many concrete ways I can work on it. One, for me, will be to be as mindful as I can be of negative energy—not only to recognize when others are dumping it on me—and work on tolerating them when they do—but to be more aware of the situations in which I am tempted or led to dump it on the heads of others."

That seems like a pretty good New Year's resolution, actually, as resolutions go, and shame on me for forgetting I wrote it.

However, on the good side, I've actually done a pretty good job of following through on that idea this past year. I'm learning to look out for and recognize those occasions when my attitude or behavior is distorted by fear, anger, self-pity, resentment, manipulation of others, casting blame, or other negative emotions or habits, and to take steps to correct my thinking. Just as those negative emotions can become habits, looking out for them and recognizing them when they appear can also become habitual, so working on changing those negative impulses and mental habits quickly becomes satisfying and rewarding.

So if any part of my post yesterday seemed cynical or morose, please forgive me!

Kind regards,
Mike

Following Up...

[TOP now publishes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Comments will be posted later.]

What I got for Christmas: a gift certificate from B&H thanking me for being an affiliate, which I used to buy an extra battery, a charger, and a tripod plate for the A6600. Thanks to B&H Photo.

Another gift: my "Mike's Miniatures" sale was a success. I sold 39 prints. I'm happy about it. Grateful thanks to everyone who purchased one. They'll be delivered by the end of January. I hope you like. Thank you!

And from an Australian reader: a copy of a most amazing book, A Few of the Legends by Peter Adams. It's an astonishing piece of work, like QT Luong's National Monuments book except for those of us who love portraits. More about this one later. You can see a few samples here. I'm greatly enjoying every dimension of it.

Friday: time for resolutions.

Mike

Book o' the Week

Eyes Wide Open! 100 Years of Leica Photography Edited by Hans-Michael Koetzle

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

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Featured Comments from:

(Fotomat Addendum) John Dersham

Photo by John Dersham

Kenneth Wajda sent me to John Alexander Dersham's Classic Fine Art Photography pages on Facebook. There, I found the photo I originally wanted to use for the Fotomat post. I had come across an obviously secondhand, cropped copy of it on the Web, and was pretty sure I shouldn't snitch it and use it without permission. However, Kenneth found the picture at its source, and I've gotten permission now from John, so here you go. It's a record shot, but documentary pictures gain in stature (that's my feeling, anyway) as the things they record become unrecoverable otherwise. As long as they're well done.

Note that two of the businesses seen in the background were also once common and are now less so—a travel agency and a bakery.

The Fotomat post comments are also late, but now (finally) they've now all been posted on the original post.

It's been one of those weeks. On the other hand, traffic was unusually strong for the posts this past week, so maybe I need to turn my attention to OG O/C* photography and yarns about ye olden days more frequently.

Mike

*Optical/Chemical, e.g. film creating a record of the lens image.

Book o' the Week

This is the book that sold 1,100 copies through our links, back when it first came out in 2007. It's essentially a catalogue raisonné of the work of the iconic American landscapist. I suppose it won't sell any more, since everyone already has a copy, but the link can be a portal to Amazon for your holiday shopping. Thank you kindly for helping to support The Online Photographer!

The following logo is also a link if you click on it:

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:

Sharon: "I don’t use Facebook, so I was glad Mr. Dersham made those photos available for anyone to see. That series was great. I found it interesting that I didn’t see any women working in those shops. Thanks for posting his work."

Hélcio J. Tagliolatto: "Re: 'so maybe I need to turn my attention to OG O/C* photography and yarns about ye olden days more frequently': Yeah! Absolutely yes!"

Stephen Scharf (partial comment): "Re 'so maybe I need to turn my attention to OG O/C* photography and yarns about ye olden days more frequently': If, as a long-time reader and occasional contributor to TOP, I may provide some 'VOC' (Voice of the Customer) to Ye Humble Editor...please don't. Personally, I'm not interesting in looking backwards."

Mike replies: Hard to please all the people all the time....

The Ideal Format, Continued

Oh, ouch. Ain't that just the way it goes? There I was, gassing on about how I moderate comments, and...then I realized that the Featured Comments for the "Ideal Format" post never got posted.

Or rather, they did get posted, but then I probably saved the wrong version of the page and "disappeared" them again. [Inarticulate frustrated strangling gurgling noise.] I hate it when that happens. Yr. Hmbl. Ed. is plagued with a disorganized mind.

Since they would just be buried if I published them underneath the older post, here are the Featured Comments for the "Ideal Format" post, with my apologies to their authors for the delay. Here is a link to the original post.

+    =    +    =    +    =    +    =    +

darlene: "The square is ideal. You get three formats in one: square, portrait and landscape. I started my career as a comp artist working in advertising then later became a commercial photographer, so my creativity is accustomed to the perspective of the page or print. When I shot events with a Speedlight next to a Hasselblad on a bracket for handheld shooting, no need to turn the camera sideways and screw up the flash direction. In-camera cropping is easy as pre-visualizing (designing) as I shoot, so for me there is nothing not to like about the square format. Just wish we had a square sensor."

Mark Roberts: "I'm more than happy with my full-frame camera but it's not my ideal. I really dislike the 2:3 aspect ratio and I don't like 3:4 any better. My favorite ratio by far is 5:7, but no one makes a camera that shoots that way natively. It's odd because 2:3 prints out to 5 x 7.5 inches and you wouldn't think trimming a quarter of an inch off each end would make much of a difference. But, for me at least, it really does. So for now I'll just keep shooting with what I have and trimming most of my shots just a wee bit."

Mike replies: During my time with the view camera—my first 4x5, a Wista—I actually attached a bar to the inside of the back standard that cropped each image as I took it to 5x7 proportions. So as far as aspect ratio was concerned it was a mini-5x7. (I had really wanted a Deardorff 5x7 but couldn't afford one.)

Tom Burke: "For me, it's APS-C, and Canon APS-C at that. I've had a couple of full-frame DSLRs, and ultimately found the outfit that collected around them just too big and too heavy. I've briefly tried Micro 4/3—I bought a secondhand Olympus E-M10 from a local photo dealer—but perversely found it too small and light—the controls were too small and too close together. So for me the ideal size is a well-spec'd Canon APS-C DSLR. It might also be significant that my current such camera, a 90D, has a very similar size and weight to the first Canon film SLR that I ever owned, an EOS 650. I used that camera (and an almost identical successor, the EOS 600) for years, and perhaps that size and heft are burned into my brain as 'what a proper camera should feel like in my hand.' If I was just looking at lens choices, however, I'd be very tempted by a Fujifilm X camera."

Dan Khong: "Ideal format? It's a no-brainer: 35mm of course. I'm partly biased because I shoot film plus digital, soup and print the film in my darkroom, smelling fixer in the process. My B&W negatives are as archival as one can get nowadays. So when I bought an affordable FF Canon RP, I could not ask for anything more."

Gordon: "5x7. Back in the 1980s I met a guy taking photos with a 5x7 Deardorff. Before then I’d never heard of the format and thought it peculiar. It produced a negative too large for an affordable commercially available enlarger and a tad small for contact prints, though doable. But today I find it suits my 3:2 images, which otherwise seem too elongated. It comes pretty close to 4x3, but not quite as fat."

Stephen S.: "The E-1 was my first DSLR, and one of the main reasons was the 14–54mm (28–104mm-e) kit lens. Other camera companies were still just offering lenses from their film cameras, which meant a pair of 17–35mm (27–56mm-e) and 28–70mm (45–112mm-e) which did not appeal to me, especially considering the problems with dust getting on the sensor when changing lenses. That the E-1 was the first camera (that I know of) to offer a built-in sensor cleaner just helped seal the deal. The 'designed for digital from the ground up' strategy really was unique at the time, and had very real benefits."

Joseph: "There was a time when Micro 4/3 made sense to me. I used both a E-M5 and a E-M5 II extensively for a number of years and liked both cameras very much. But I look back at the files and wish I had lugged my D800 along with me instead. Now that something like the Nikon Z7 with the 24–70 ƒ/4 lens exists, I just don't see the advantage of Micro 4/3 for my needs. The Z7 isn't quite as small as the E-M5 but has much better image quality. A good compromise."

SteveW: "APS-C seems the optimal sensor size for me. I've used Nikon FF and APS-C cameras, and a year or so ago changed to a Fuji X-T4 primarily to use the small ƒ/2 primes. For the way I shoot, and I'm a hobbyist, APS-C is sufficient. That said, I prefer the 4:3 aspect ratio, and I frequently crop to 4:3. If the Fuji X-T4 had a 4:3 aspect ratio APS-C sensor, that might be the ideal for me. But cropping is no big deal."

Roger Bradbury: "I bought my first DSLR in 2009. It was an APS-C camera, because that's what was within my budget, both for the price of the camera and because its well established mount meant there were plenty of used lenses around. This format turned out to have the depth of field I need; enough when I want a lot, but not so much that I can't control it enough to throw a background enough out of focus. The 35mm format I was used to before I bought the DSLR sometimes didn't quite have enough depth of field for me."

(Posted belatedly by)
Mike

Products of the Week

Which one is best? Panasonic S1R (47.3 MP), Sony A7R IV (61 MP), Canon R5 (45 MP), Nikon Z7 II (45.7 MP), or Leica SL2 (47 MP)? You know the answer.

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

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On Glass Orbs and Pictorialism

Words and photo by Dave Levingston

As a fan of Clarence White, Sr., and someone who has used orbs in his own photos, I thought I'd give you a little info on orbs that goes beyond what I put in my comment on TOP. White was a native of my home town, Newark, Ohio, and I have often photographed in some of the same locations, such as Blackhand Gorge, where he did some of his most well-known photographs.

White was fond of orbs. Stieglitz, not so much. There are quotes of him complaining about White using them. I've not dug those quotes up, but here is a note from page 227 of the book Clarence White and His World by Anne McCauley:

"The glass orb, which became one of White's trademark props, had been used since the Renaissance as a symbol of the Holy Spirit (because it echoes the orb of the world), of the transparency of the soul (as in Johannes Vermeer's Allegory of the Catholic Faith [ca. 1670–72], in which it hangs from the ceiling), or of the vanity of earthly things, akin to a soap bubble (in seventeenth-century vanitas still lifes). It was also traditionally associated with virginal purity, as in Cesar van Everdingen's Amor Holding a Glass Orb (ca. 1660). Later it reflects the mystical practice of scrying, in which the future appears in a crystal orb. A typical Aesthetic movement example of the use of glass orbs is Edward Burne-Jones's cycle The Days of Creation (1870–76), in which each stage of creation is envisioned in a crystal orb held by a female allegorical figure. Underlying all its symbolic uses, the glass orb presented painters and photographers like White with an interesting play of transparency and reflections that challenged normal optical perception and complicated the process of representation."

So as I've been working on a project in homage to White, I've used orbs quite a bit. Above is one of my favorite and most popular examples.

On a related note, in photo school I was taught that Pictorialism was a mistake, a dead end that didn't actually advance photography. I think that is wrong. The modernist ƒ/64 group photographers reacted against Pictorialism and put it in disrepute. But I think it was crucial in the process of photography being accepted as a legitimate medium for art and not just a representative craft. And, looking back from today, I think we can see that Pictorialism is one way to do photography, just as valid as any other technique or genre.

Dave

Mike adds: The most famous glass orb in art recently was of course the one in Christ's hand in Leonardo's Salvator Mundi, which (the painting, not the orb) sold at Christie's in New York City for approximately $450 million in 2017. That one caused quite a bit of controversy, which appears to be resolved now. P.S. here's me and Dave last time he was in town.

Book o' the Week

The Atlas of Beauty: Women of the World in 500 Portraits. "Since 2013 photographer Mihaela Noroc has traveled the world with her backpack and camera taking photos of everyday women to showcase the diversity of beauty all around us. The Atlas of Beauty is a collection of her photographs celebrating women from all corners of the world, revealing that beauty is everywhere, and that it comes in many different sizes and colors."

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

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Featured Comments from:

Bill Tyler: "The controversy Mike alludes to is in part whether Salvator Mundi is actually by Leonardo, and in part about the fact that Jesus' robe, seen through the orb, is not shown inverted. I'm astonished at the misunderstanding about the inversion. Writing on the topic seems to reflect a mistaken belief that objects viewed through a glass sphere always appear inverted. This is not always so. A glass sphere is in effect a lens with a focal length that is quite short relative to its size. Looking through such a lens at an object more than one focal length away will indeed show the object inverted. However, if the object is closer than one focal length, it will appear erect, not inverted. That orb in the painting is very close to Jesus' robe, and thus the lack of inversion is completely optically accurate.

"Here's a photo of a solid glass sphere resting on my keyboard, illustrating the point. The letter G seen through the sphere is right-side-up, not inverted. It's how an ordinary magnifying glass works—the focal length there is a bit longer relative to the magnifier's size, and you see the subject erect. The article Mike references has a bunch of computer scientists doing simulations with hollow and solid spheres. If they'd bothered to open a first-year physics textbook, or any introduction to optics, this point would have been explained in detail. Failing that, glass spheres are easy to obtain and inexpensive. An actual experiment seems to me to be far more convincing than a numeric simulation."

Jnny: "That is a mesmerizing photo. Kudos."

Thanks! (Plus an Update)

Things are going well. I appreciate all the advice, pro and con, the good wishes, the admonitions, the compliments and complaints. I'm extremely grateful to everyone who signed up at Patreon and all the people who increased their donation. Thank you! Thank you.

I had a great writing day today. Was in the saddle by 7:00 and didn't run out of steam till 1:00. Wrote 1,700 words. For those who've asked and are curious, I'm not imagining myself as a bestseller author, novelist, or instant millionaire. I'm going to write a series of modest books either on practical topics or for reading enjoyment. From each one I aspire to earn around $20k. I intend to put the profits into paying off my mortgage. Assuming I can hit that target, I'll need eight books to pay it down to zero. More if they earn less, fewer if they earn more. I'm really looking forward to it because I love coming up with ideas for projects and I anticipate that I'll get better at the process after I get a couple under my belt.

I'm going to try to find an agent to offer them to mainstream publishers, but I don't have a lot of illusions about that; most probably they'll end up self-published on Amazon and marketed as well as I can by myself. If I can't make 50k words worth $7.99 or so to most anybody then I'm not worth my salt. I'm confident I'll have few if any dissatisfied customers. I just know I can offer more than $8 worth of entertainment for $8, that's all.

I'd like to get at least three of these under my belt before I tackle the book about Xander. That one will be the only full-length book. It's really a fantastic story, the best story I have by far; all I really have to do is not mess it up. But I don't want it to be my first book because I want some practice before I tackle it. However, I've finished a very good first chapter for it and a solid draft of a proposal. It's an uphill climb to sell a book proposal to a real publisher for an advance, but I'll be prepared just in case.

The small books will be about 40–50k words each, although I'm the type who tends to add more words as I revise, and I love to revise. (I live for it.) So maybe a draft that starts out at 40k words will grow to 70k naturally as I work it over.

Y'all are going to love the first book. It's just pure fun, and pure pleasure to write. It's a series of entertaining tales based on my life (but fictionalized some, too). In the past two days I added 4,000 words. And it's some of the best writing I've done lately. I'm really, really enjoying it. I feel energized and happy.

I can't wait to wake up tomorrow morning and get back to work!

Mike

Leylah and Emma (OT)

[UPDATE: Emma Raducanu of Great Britain won the United States Open Tennis Championship Women's Singles, 6-4, 6-3. If you are ten years old and live to be 110, you will never see this again—a qualifier ranked 150th in the world winning a major championship without dropping a set. It's the very first time and highly likely to be the last time it will ever happen.

Wonder what it's like in Old Blighty tonight?]

Malcolm Myers answers: "We have all gone Emma crazy in Blighty. It's been decades since we've had a female tennis player who was even in contention, so for Emma to storm through the way she has—breaking every record on the way—is quite astounding. We all got to watch it free-to-air and it was a really competitive match. I think Leylah Fernandez played extremely well. As one commenter here said, shame that only one of them could win. However, Fernandez will no doubt have her day, probably may times, over the next decade. Brilliant stuff."

I've been following the U.S. Open closely, or as closely as I can given that I don't own a TV. It's been a fascinating and wonderful tournament so far, really fun to follow.

The big news, apart from the fact that Novak Djokovic of Serbia is still in contention for the first true Grand Slam in men's tennis since 1969, is that two previously little-known, unseeded teenagers (one a qualifier, no less) are in the final of the Women's draw for the first time in more than two decades—since a young Serena Williams of the USA, age 17, defeated Martina Hingis of Switzerland, who was 18 at the time, in the 1999 final.

The two are Leylah Fernandez of Canada and Emma Raducanu of the UK. Emma is 18 and Leylah just turned 19 a few days ago, in the midst of the tournament. Leylah is ranked 73rd in the world, and Emma, ranked 150th, is the one who had to come through the qualifying tournament. Since rankings were initiated in 1975, only five women outside the top 50 have ever reached the U.S. Open final. Both young women will make meteoric rises in the world rankings following the tournament, Raducanu especially. Both will probably emerge as the No. 1 ranked female players in their respective countries.

Photo courtesy of Sirobi Tennis Photos

Leylah Fernandez of Canada at this year's French Open

Leylah has been a true giant-killer, beating a succession of formidable opponents to make it to the final. These include defending champion Naomi Osaka of Japan, the first Asian woman ever to hold the World No. 1 ranking; three-time major champion and former World No. 1 Angelique Kerber of Germany; No. 5 seed Elina Svitolina of Ukraine; and World No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus, a seasoned and particularly powerful player. Fernandez is the youngest woman since Serena Williams in 1999 to beat three Top 5 players on her way to the final, and only the fourth Canadian, male or female, ever to appear in the final of a major.

Photo courtesy of Sirobi Tennis Photos

Emma Raducanu of the United Kingdom in 2018

Emma, meanwhile, playing dazzling tennis, has steamrolled her way through the draw without dropping a single set—and that includes her three qualifying matches. She is the first qualifier ever to reach the U.S. Open finals, and the first British woman to reach the finals of any major since Virginia Wade—who is in attendance at this year's tournament—in 1977.

Leylah's mother, Irene, was born in Canada of Filipino parents, and although her father Jorge's family moved to Canada from Ecuador when Jorge was four, he later played professional football (soccer) for Ecuador. He is his daughter Leylah's coach, and, more's the pity, he's not at this tournament (think about it. They never know how far she'll advance. How was he to know this would happen? Nobody else in the world did). Emma's mother Renee is Chinese and her father Ian is Romanian—both are financial executives. Although she lives in London and plays as a UK citizen, Emma too was born in Canada.

It probably doesn't hurt their exploding global popularity that both of the teenage finalists are beautiful, charming, and well spoken, with dazzling smiles. In interviews they come off as typical giggling teenage girls, bright and happy. These off-court outward attitudes contrast sharply with the unyielding killer instinct and no-nonsense confidence each of them shows during matches, when they have seemed as composed and mature as players in the primes of their careers.

Spectacular and rare
It's such a pity to me that my brother Scott isn't here to see this. He would have been loving it. He was a fan of women's tennis no less than the men's—he thought the women's game was a subtly more relatable form of the art of tennis because brute force and strength don't play quite so much a part. This year's finals could possibly be the sensational first flowering of a new rivalry in women's tennis, but, even if it isn't, it's a rare and spectacular occurrence all on its own. Too bad I can't watch it! I hope I'll get to see the whole match someday. My prediction: Raducanu in three, and I'll say one set will go to a tiebreaker. As they say in tennis, sometimes it's a pity there has to be a loser.

If my prediction comes true, it would be the first major tennis tournament ever won by a qualifier. If you're able to, you might want to try to catch it even if you're not normally a fan. It's only the eighth time two teenagers have contended in the finals of a major. As Emma Raducanu herself said, "we’re both playing good tennis so it will be a good match." The women's finals commence at 4:20 p.m. Eastern U.S. Time tomorrow, Saturday, September 11th.

If you do get to watch, enjoy it for me!

Mike

[CORRECTION: I deal with dozens of names every day, and try hard not to make mistakes, but the original version of this post spelled Leylah Fernandez's name wrong. All eight times it appears. That is a bad one. Sorry for the error. —Ed.]

Book o' the Week:

The second edition of old friend Bruce Barnbaum's The Essence of Photography is just out. Bruce wrote for Photo Techniques when I was Editor. I always enjoy his insights into the art and craft, even if his technique isn't the same as mine. I still learn. Mastery is fun to read about.

The above is a link to Amazon from TOP. Here's the new edition of The Essence of Photography at The Book Depository. The following logo is also a link:

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:

robert e: "I agree with Scott. I find that nuances seem to both matter more and are easier to discern in the women's game. There are dimensions of tennis that don't really come across on TV, while other aspects are easier to see, and this may have something to do with the difference as well. Relatedly, there's more stylistic variety in women's tennis at the moment, which makes for more intriguing matchups.

"It's been an Open full of surprises and an extraordinarily high level of tennis. Notably, the fans packing the main stadium seem more than ready to make their presence and preferences known, and they've found in these two teens willing and charismatic partners. That's yet another precocious quality these teens share—they seem very much at ease engaging with large and enthusiastic crowds, especially at critical moments. They're also surprising everyone with their tactical smarts.

"At least in my area, the free trial of YouTubeTV includes ESPN, which carries the U.S. Open. Possibly goes for other online TV services as well.

"But for some a service isn't even necessary, as increasingly in the US many without TV are able to watch at least some TV thanks to their internet or cell phone provider's relationship to one or another media giant. Might be worth checking USopen.org or ESPN.com and seeing what you can see. I understand that in the UK Amazon Prime is carrying matches."

Lisa S. Gorrell: "Maybe you could hang out at Best Buy or Sears to watch the game."

Mike replies: Actually I got a trial to YouTubeTV like robert e suggested and it works (this time). But your comment reminds me that when I was young I used to stand in the photo section of the bookstore in Georgetown and read whole books of photo criticism! The clerks knew I was a poor photo student and they let me do it. I read all of A.D. Coleman's Light Readings and most of Robert Adams's Beauty in Photography that way, among others.

AndrewH: "Happily Belgium is showing all of the US Open. I am backing Emma and Novak for wins in the finals (sic), one for the huge achievement (Novak) and the other for the sheer charm (Emma). It is so nice to see a happy professional sport player."

It's Always Something

Fog
My neighbors, who are wonderful people, had family over yesterday and they asked me to come over and man the camera for a group portrait. I was happy to be asked. Ginny just wanted me to take a few pictures with her phone, which I did, but I also brought my X-T1 along as...backup?!

It was hot and the air was extremely humid. Just from taking the magic 50 (meaning, the XF 35mm ƒ/1.4) out of the air conditioning into the humidity, the lens fogged over! I had to wipe it off twice. Which just goes to show, it's always something.

I've had lenses fog up when I bring them indoors from intense cold (tip: put camera and lens into a couple of plastic baggies before coming inside), but never the other way around before.

Both the phone and Fuji pictures "turned out" very nicely.

Lulu
I should mention that Lulu died last Friday. It went about as well as it possibly could have—she was relaxed and supported and not in any kind of distress. I could write a 5,000-word essay on the experience but I thought there might be a few of you who might want to know. It's been very different around our house this week. She had a good life and a good and timely death, for which I'm grateful. I miss her. After months of getting up in the middle of the night to take her out I'm having difficult relearning how to sleep through the night. I'll keep trying.

Melt-in-your-mouth melon
In food news, I scored a coup yesterday—Honeybee Dave from up the hill (you remember Dave) let it out that he knows who grows the best melons in the whole area. When Dave makes a pronouncement like that, my ears perk up. I got the directions to a Mennonite farm and got over there yesterday and bought two cantaloupe. The farmer (no picture, because Mennonite) explained to me in detail how to choose good ones. Well, they didn't look like much, but [eyes widen] I've now tasted the grail of cantaloupe—lordy, lordy. Melt-in-your-mouth and bursting with glorious complex flavor. A different level altogether from the supermarket version. I get to have the second one for breakfast as soon as I finish this*.

And I got to taste Dave's own "Standish Stilton" homemade cheese, too. Another incredibly complex flavor, another rare treat.

Life is good, and goes on.

Mike

*It was just as good. My word.

ADDENDUM: Darn, I forgot to mention this. Remember that Solar Seiko I bought in June? (Quartz watch, runs off a battery recharged by light so you never have to change the battery.) It's been running for two months and four days now, and it's not yet a full second slow. My other Seiko has been running for a little less than two months, and it isn't a whole second off either, but it's fast. Considering that Seiko claims an accuracy of 15 to 20 seconds a month, both these very ordinary watches are far exceeding their spec so far.

Book o' the Week

Bystander: A History of Street Photography by Colin Westerbeck and Joel Meyerowitz (Laurence King Publishing, 2017). First published in 1994. In this revised edition, the story of street photography is brought up to date with a re-evaluation of some historical material, the inclusion of more contemporary photographers, and a discussion of the ongoing rise of digital photography.

The above is a link to Amazon from TOP. Here's Bystander at The Book Depository. The following logo is also a link:

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:

Nicholas Hartmann: "So sorry to hear about Lulu. Maybe it went as well as it could have, but I’m sure it still wasn’t good. Treasure Butters, and all your two- and four-legged friends. Byu the way today is National Dog Day (our dog thinks that every day is National Dog Day, and that the particular dog being honored is him)."

Mike replies: Thanks to you and to everyone for the kind thoughts. I only wish my brother had been as lucky...to have lived to a ripe old age and then be spared suffering.

Robert Roaldi: "I'm 68 and I've probably never gone more than two or three days since childhood without eating cantaloupe, although I sometimes substitute other melons. It's probably only during vacations that I don't eat them because fruit is rarely on restaurant menus. I don't eat dessert; fresh fruit is my dessert. I know people who rarely eat fresh fruit—I find that bizarre. I'm saddened to hear about Lulu."

Photographer's Block

Monday morning I have my pool group, and today is my good friend Jerry's last attendance before his move to North Carolina. I've been joking that he's perfectly free to move, as long as he's at my house at ten o'clock every Monday morning for pool—how he's going to work that out is his problem. But in reality, this is the last week he'll be joining us, at least until next Summer, if he and Sue come visit next Summer. I'll be hoping. And by the way, he came in first last week—beat us all. We're sure going to miss him. He's a good friend. 

So just a brief update this morning.

Entries for the Baker's dozen are closed—thanks to everyone who sent pictures. I'm counting 111 submissions, not including one guy who didn't follow the instructions. I'm not going to name and shame him! But I know where his picture is. So 112 total. I've got a bit of a different idea for presenting the results this time, but we'll see how it goes once I get into it. I'll be starting later today.

Yesterday I asked you what I should do when I've got writer's block. But a much better question is, what do you do when you've got photographer's block? Longtime reader and commenter Stan B. has one solution, and his process was interesting to read about. I like the result, although Stan doesn't look like I had pictured him!

A walk with a camera doesn't necessarily do the trick for me, because I just take lonely pictures with no one in them and that just makes me feel more lonely. It's not the solution. I'll venture one axiom: when you go out to try to make pictures, it should be a situation where there's a chance of getting a good shot. I hate coming back from a walk not even wanting to look at the pictures I shot because I already know I didn't get anything. The last thing I want to do is go repeatedly shoot in situations where I already know I'm never going to get a shot I care about.

I've got to get started with breakfast and a shower before the guys come. This group taught me what I think is an essential trick for dealing with old age, which is now officially six months and nine days away for me. (Middle age ends and old age starts at 65, as defined in the DSM-5.) I'll write about that little insight later too.

Mike

Book of the Week

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk M.D. "Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence." A tough slog of a read, but full of revelations. And it reviews many strategies, both conventional and alternative, toward relief and healing.

This is a link to Amazon from TOP. The following logo is also a link:

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:

Bob Keefer (partial comment): "Creative block of any kind results, at least for me, from too-high expectations."

Sroyon (partial comment): "I don't think I've ever had photographer's block, but I think my secret is simply that I have low standards.  :-)  "

[I thought these were kinda funny, next to each other like this! For a lot of good ideas from a lot of different photographers, see the full Comment section. —Ed.]

Open Mike (Again): My New Watch (OT)

[This will be indulgent Writer Mike's LAST watch post for a while. Just in case you are not enjoying these. —Disciplined Editor Mike]

-

I bought a watch. As you might have expected I would. (It's the best way to settle down these little—er, let's be nice to me and call them "enthusiasms"*—to which I intermittently fall prey. "Remember the Wista.")

Monday night I went to look at an Apple Watch (I saw the 40mm SE) at the local Verizon store. It's nice, and much easier to figure out than I feared. But I decided that really the last thing I need is another monthly bill**. [UPDATE: Carl tells me the Apple watch doesn’t incur an additional monthly expense unless you want it to have its own data plan. Otherwise it does all its tricks coordinated with your iPhone. If you’re in the house with WiFi the phone doesn’t even need to be near the watch. Away from WiFi it just needs to be within Bluetooth range. Sorry for the error. —Ed.] Then, yesterday morning, I spent several hours watching videos for alternative smartwatches. Interesting to come up to speed on those a bit, but they don't seem like my thing.

So, surfeited with looking at watches online, I decided I needed a dose of reality. I had to go to Canandaigua yesterday for another reason, so, was there a Seiko Authorized Dealer in Canandaigua? The Seiko website said yes: Crown Jewelry on Main Street.

No substitute for the real thing

It was just the place. I got waylaid on the way in by the many watches in the window, and there were many more inside, including a selection of estate watches. The young lady who helped me quickly decided I was asking questions that were too specific ("what is 10 bar in meters?"), so she went to get "the watch guy."

The watch guy turned out to be a man named Nick (right), who knows all about the stock, is a watch repairman and restorer, and owns 33 watches himself. He was wearing a Seiko dive watch on which he had replaced the stock flat crystal with a convex sapphire one. (I asked him to hold his watch up for this quick phone-snap portrait—made with his permission.) Turns out Nick is a photography enthusiast too—he does mostly macro work, mainly of watches as you might expect. We had an interesting conversation. He does know a whole lot. Not your average store clerk by a long shot.

In person
Seeing actual watches was instructive, too. (As it often is with cameras.) It turns out that I was wrong about the sizes: a 40mm case is not too big; it looks fine. Actually it does look a little more masculine and proportionate than the smaller, more traditional (for Seiko) 37mm case size.

I ended up buying a Seiko SNE031, which does have the smaller 37mm case. Nick says Seiko has been making a version of this model for some 50 years. There was a very similar but larger watch (the one just to the left of the red dot in the first picture), but it didn't display the weekday, which I decided I wanted. There was also a much better-looking watch that I was drawn to at first (just above the red dot), but the face was silvery and a little too close to the same tonal value as the hands once we got it out of the bright light, and I thought I might have trouble reading it in poor light.

Curiously, Monday night, looking at watches on the computer until I was bleary-eyed, I had picked out the Seiko SNE039 as being a candidate that had pretty much what I wanted. (It's an "Amazon's Choice," too.) Turns out that the watch I actually bought is the exact same thing except with a white face instead of black. I didn't even realize until I got home. Hey, at least I'm consistent. Seiko SNE032, Seiko SNE036, Seiko SNE047, and Seiko SNE042 are also all essentially the same watch as mine, just with different cosmetics.

The watch I bought is Solar—that is, driven by a quartz movement with a permanent battery that is recharged by light, an innovation first developed by Citizen.

On the plus side, the SNE031 "disappeared" on my wrist practically as soon as I put it on. Very comfortable. On the negative side, it's tough for me to read the day and date in poor light without my computer glasses on (my eyesight is 20/20 with glasses but worse without them).

With tax, my new watch cost only $1.22 more at Crown Jewelers than Amazon charges. Pretty great for a bricks-'n'-mortar store with a real live expert answering your questions. (He can answer your questions, too—yesterday he was shipping one of the fancier Seikos off to Utah. Call or email him if you want to buy a watch and tell him I sent you.)

So, then, why a watch? As an experiment. Many of you had good reasons for preferring a wristwatch, but I like to try things for myself. So I plan to wear this for a few months to see if I think there really is any advantage, for me, over using the iPhone as a pocket watch.

It'll at least be nostalgic; I wore a Seiko not dissimilar to this for years when I was younger. I enjoy nostalgia.

Experiment Part 2: I set it exactly to the second against the phone. Of course I'll have to reset it at the end of June, but then I'll be able to let it go three straight months without resetting. That should give me a bit of a read on its accuracy. I'll report back then. If I think of it.

Here's an interesting video about the accuracy of quartz movements.

More resources
In case you've been following along these past few days with interest, more tidbits for you: Here's a neat video about how quartz movements work. Explained by Steve Mould. (I wanted a quartz watch. Maybe it's because I was a kid when all the fuss over the Seiko Astron happened, but I find I gravitate to Seiko and I'm a fan of quartz movements. When I bought my first good watch, in Switzerland, at age 14, I bought a Seiko, and I was informed by the shop proprietor in no uncertain terms that it was not proper to buy a Japanese watch as a souvenir of Switzerland! But that was a year after the Astron and a Seiko was what I wanted.)

Another recommendation was supplied by Justin Ting and several other readers: "Confessions of a Watch Geek," a New Yorker article by Gary Shteyngart. Finally, the two best books I've personally read about timekeeping are Revolution in Time by David S. Landes and, especially, Longitude by Dava Sobel, which deservedly won many awards. It's been a long time since I read either, but I remember really liking Longitude, the all-too-human story of the the first marine chronometer and its star-crossed inventor. Along with Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea, one of the best books on tech I've read.

Oh, and the best watch in the world? Not one from the "holy trinity" of Audemars Piguet, Vacheron Constantin, and Patek Philippe. It's a Citizen. That's right, a Citizen. And quartz. Check out the Citizen Eco-Drive Caliber 0100. "The most accurate watch anyone has ever produced, anywhere, ever" (Hodinkee)—accurate to well under two minutes over a human lifetime without external influence. (The best mechanical watches manage the same accuracy over the course of a month.)

Oh...and, right after I bought this, while Nick was still in the back adjusting the band and retrieving the box, I started thinking about what my next watch was going to be. Settle down, Mike.

It's a good thing I'm not rich. I'd just waste more money.   :-)

Mike

*I used to follow common parlance and call it "OCD"—humans love intensifiers—but then I read a book about OCD, which is a very serious disorder on a different level altogether than getting all hot about a new watch (or camera). Calling it "OCD" or "an obsession" is akin to a well-fed individual who hasn't stuffed his face in three hours saying "I'm starving"—something I've also stopped doing. ("You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." —Inigo Montoya.)

**Although it's a significant safety device for seniors who live, or spend time, alone—it can detect a fall and send out a distress signal. So I'll probably have one eventually. Consider Kristine Hinrichs' comment from yesterday:

"I have the Apple Watch for a variety of reasons (excuses for tech). However, the primary reason is the fall detection feature. I’m out alone before dawn almost every day, often along the Lake Michigan shore. I’m paranoid about falling and being alone where no one knows exactly where I am. If I fall, a voice asks if I’m OK. If I don’t respond in 60 seconds, 911 is called. I can also activate it manually. It gives me peace of mind—and keeps my friends and family from worrying. Get the watch."

Product o' the Week:

The Apple Watch Series 6. This is a portal to Amazon from TOP.

The following image is also a link. You support TOP by buying through these portals.

Original contents copyright 2021 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

Mark Rouleau: "I too wear a Seiko solar. Supposedly runs for 10 months on two minutes of sunshine. Since I live in Rochester that seemed possible."

Mike replies:  :-)

Howard W. French: "The Seiko SNE039 (black face) is available for $99 on Amazon, which is a pretty dramatic discount if the only difference is cosmetic, i.e. the color scheme."

Mike replies: The prices fluctuate daily and it's a few dollars higher now, but you're basically right—and yes, it is the same watch as mine.

There's a bit more to the story. Quartz watches still account for 97% of the market, in volume, but a lot of the profit in the market now is in luxury mechanical watches, and the high-volume, low-cost makers are in a bit of a bind. As Nick put it to me, "mechanical watches used to be a niche market; now all watches are a niche market." (At least I think he used the word "niche"—maybe he said "specialty.") One of Seiko's huge strengths has long been in making very conservative, plain, but highly capable quartz wristwatches of almost incredibly high value—like that amazing solar watch for a mere ~$100, a triumph of modern technology and manufacturing.

But, and as Sir Mix-a-Lot said it's a very big but, Seiko doesn't really want to be in that segment of the market any more! It's trying to position itself as being more upmarket. So it has actually banished the Essentials line—where all the practical quartz watches reside—from its own main website. If you just go to Seiko's global website, you won't find it listed among its new "brands" categorizations. It still exists, but to get there, you might have to Google "Seiko Essentials." (It's still accessible on seikousa.com). Apparently Seiko would like you to think that its basic line is the 5 Sports automatic line of self-winding mechanical watches (also very high-value, but less accurate, less practical watches than their quartz counterparts). Although it does retain some quartz lineage in some of its flagship Grand Seiko brand watches, including in the groundbreaking new Spring Drive movement, it's passing strange that the progenitor of the quartz revolution is now quietly returning more and more to making mechanical watches.

So the SNE039 is a bit of a threatened species—probably not on the endangered list yet. But actually Seiko is not pushing its traditional strength any more.

Michel Hardy-Vallée: "Seiko and Citizen watches are great products when you want to have appreciable quality and still some leftover lunch money. I read a lot of blogs about watches for a while (yeah, these temporary passions can happen for all sorts of things!), and once I mustered the courage to go to a Rolex store to try one, gape in amazement, and tell the clerk who couldn't give a crap about me that I would think about it. So I eventually got myself one of the Orange Monster watches from Seiko, because I wanted a mechanical movement, and I loved the design of dive watch. I took it diving twice, but now it's mostly my daily timepiece. Since it's mechanical, it's not the most accurate, but I check it regularly and adjust it using the noon signal on the radio. That's what I also do with my grandfather clock, formerly owned by my actual grandfather!"

Herman Krieger: "And, if you need a watch repairer:

Peter Wright: "Patek Philippe sends out a lavishly produced 'free' quarterly magazine to its owner list, so I get a copy every so often. The photography in it is excellent. It always includes good articles on fine art, exotic geographic locations, and of course Patek watches. It comes in the mail in a plain brown heavy duty, opaque plastic envelope, without any company logos or indicators whatsoever: just my name and address. I am sure the postman thinks I subscribe the to the worst imaginable pornography. I fear he may be right!"

Benjamin Marks: "Three things.

"First, congratulations! That Seiko is a great piece and I think/hope it is going to make you very happy.

"Second: Regarding accuracy: I remember a comment made by a watch guy on one of the forums to the effect that he changed watches every day and wound and set the mechanical watches when he put them on after a period of inactivity. In practice this meant that his watches only needed to be accurate over the 18 hours he was wearing them on a given day—a standard (say 15 seconds a day) that almost any watch from the last 30 years could meet.

"Third: watch makers are a crafty breed. There is a Seiko (massive, expensive thing) that talks by radio to an atomic clock several times a day and resets itself according to that standard. So it doesn't need to be accurate to several seconds per human life, because it is adjusting on the fly to a very accurate standard frequently. Clever, although I despair when I think of any situation in my own life that might need that level of precision. The thing is also solar powered, but looks like it weighs enough to leave one arm longer than the other."

Mike replies: Regarding your last point, there are actually two types. One is the so-called radio-controlled watch, which, between the hours of midnight and some very early hour of the morning, will reset itself according to the radio signal broadcast from the atomic clock of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colorado. (There are other atomic clocks broadcasting elsewhere in the world.) One problem is that some devices won't receive the signal if you live too far away from Denver. As with  all radio reception devices, some are better at pulling in signal than others.

The other is simply a bluetooth watch, which checks in with your smartphone, which gets its time signal from GPS satellites and is generally accurate to 50 milliseconds or less. If you want to find out how accurate your computer or phone is—for those in the U.S.—go to time.gov and it will tell you both the Official U.S. Time and also how far off your device is. My Mac Mini is off by a whopping 152 milliseconds this morning—more than a tenth of a second!—but it's usually far less than that.

Naturally, watch aficionados feel that's cheating, somehow, and that a timepiece should keep track of time independently of other devices. I personally like it. Here's a really gorgeous radio or bluetooth watch that is made for the JDM (Japanese domestic market) but that you can actually buy from an exporter on Amazon, with all of Amazon's protections. It has its own app!

The Oceanus will be accurate right down to its limit of precision virtually all the time. So here's where we need Ctein—well, I do, anyway, maybe you don't. If you have a watch with a jump second hand—that is, a second hand that jumps from one index to the next rather than moving from one to the next smoothly (and we'll assume for the sake of argument that the jump is instantaneous, which obviously it can't be), how accurate can it be? My presumption is that it's exactly correct once a second, but that it can be off by as much as almost a second potentially added to the inaccuracy of the syncing device. That is, if your smartphone is off by 30 ms, then your watch could never be off by more than 1.2999 (9 repeating, however you write that) seconds. Then we would have to add in the watch's possible error in between synchronizations. But I'm definitely no physicist and mathematician. So I'd probably say a quartz watch with a jump second hand that syncs to a phone is probably "accurate to within a second." But that's its accuracy continually, since its rate of error isn't allowed to continue to accrue.

Curiously, re your comment "I despair when I think of any situation in my own life that might need that level of precision," actually our need for time precision in daily life is usually very loose indeed. One cultural norm that might be changing is that when you look at a clock with hands, you will customarily round to the nearest five-minute increment if you're telling someone else the time—sometimes even to the nearest half-hour. If it's 5:22 and someone asks "What time is it?", you might say "about twenty after" but you might also say "coming up on half-past." This could be changing as more and more young people never learn to use a clock with hands and are only familiar with digital readouts. If their phone says "10:13" and someone asks them the time, they'll say "ten-thirteen," not "about quarter after."

In fact, I seem to remember that a young person in our family once asked what "quarter to" meant when I used the expression....

Dori: "Solar Seikos are pretty neat. I went with a Seiko Prospex Padi Solar SNE435P1. I have automatic watches too, but it's nice not to worry about winding them, good in case of a swim (though mainly desk diver for me), and I don't have to worry so much about having something too expensive on my wrist potentially getting banged around. Something else that's a plus, really good luminescence so I don't have to bring out the brightness of the sun from the phone to just read the time at night."

hugh crawford: "You do know that Seiko was also a camera and shutter manufacturer right? Always wanted a Zenobiaflex just because, well, who wouldn’t want a Zenobiaflex?

"There, I fixed that pesky off-topic posting ratio for you."

Ernest Zarate: "I was an elementary school teacher for 30 years (now retired), having taught in a number of different schools and classrooms. All the rooms had a wall clock in them as a standard feature. Anytime I taught intermediate (5th/6th grade) I often covered up the clock with a sign that said: 'Time will pass. Will you?' No one on earth is more attuned to time than students (recess, lunch, dismissal). My goal was to engage the students in their learning enough to have them ask if they could simply keep working rather than leave.

"One room I was in for a few years had a delightfully frustrating wall clock that never told the correct time. It always displayed times that were hours ahead (or behind) the actual time. It would even change its wildly inaccurate time during the day, the hands spinning forward lazily or quickly until they would stop at some other random point. The solution ended up being a trip to IKEA to purchase a $10 wall clock, battery operated. One of many purchases out of my pocket during those three decades.

"Another school had all the classroom clocks tied to the main computer (a huge monolithic thing menacingly hanging on the staff room wall) I dubbed HAL 9000. The clocks would all gain time each week until it would be several minutes fast, making on-time students tardy—and making for unhappy parents. It was the VP’s job to reset the clocks (a mildly onerous, 24-hour process) when the complaints from everyone reached a level she determined as too much.

"I currently have a wristwatch after not having one for a couple decades. I went with the Apple Watch Series 6, as it synced smoothly with my phone and computer. It also has apps that tie to my Tesla and makes sending commands to the car easier than having to dig out my phone. It took a couple of weeks to get used to wearing a watch again, but now it feels pretty good. It does not incur any fees."

Mike Hess: "My grandfather owned a jewelry store in Northwest Minnesota for 39 years. He was trained as a watchmaker after WWII ended. He was a Seiko dealer. I have always had a soft spot for them. I especially love their 1960s designs. After he retired, he held onto all his watch parts and even had a large inventory of repairs that were never picked up. My uncle has his watchmaker's bench and tools. Plus, the pile of old watches belonging to others is there, too."

Followup: Why One Photographer Wanted a Watch

I had tremendous fun yesterday reading everyone's thoughts and comments about my little side-jaunt into watches. I thought as much. This website has the best, smartest, most experienced commenters. It's really flattering to me that you are reading this. Thank you!

A few more resources:

Here's a printable size guide for face sizes. One problem I have is that I don't like large clunky watches—they just don't feel good on my wrist. The feeling I get from them is similar to when you have a spider on you—get it off! And the fashion these days is distinctly for large watches. Of course it depends not just on preference but also on the size of your wrist. You can clip these out and put the cutout on your wrist to get a pretty good idea how a certain size watch will look on you. 

Here's a short, sweet introduction to the difference between quartz and automatic watches. Won't take up much of your time.

A very kind reader, a watch collector, is actually sending me a watch! Can't wait to see what he has in store for me.

Billionaire bling
If I were going to become a watch aficionado, I think I might be most interested in cheap watches...less than $200 maybe, with an absolute top limit of around $400. As Albert Smith points out, I'd be in good company—there are many pictures floating around the web of Bill Gates wearing one of these:

It's a Casio 200M Duro Analog, and you can have one too for a $50 bill...and get change back.

I don't know, though—isn't it pretty snobby to ape the superrich? Every time you checked the time, people would see you unleash the dazzle and go whoa, who do you think you are, Bill Gates?

Regarding servicing, Stephen Gilbert tells me he bought a Rolex explorer for $195 plus sales tax of 2% in 1969. When he had it serviced last Fall, the servicing cost $1,600, and Rolex insisted on replacing the hands and crystal—which they keep, so I hear, to prevent the old parts from being used to add patina to fakes.

Chris R contributed this quick little 4-minute video of a trashed Tissot being restored. Wonderful.

SmartMike
The watch I'm most seriously considering buying is an Apple Watch with a blood oxygen sensor. I suffer from sleep apnea, and the health-monitoring benefits of a smartwatch seem like they might be worth the cost in added life-complexity. Unfortunately I wouldn't know until well after I bought it.

The wristwatch I would most want, typically, doesn't exist. It would be a smartwatch with no smart features...just an always-on OLED screen with a classic watch face design in an elegant case that keeps perfect time and doesn't do anything else. A dumb smartwatch. It would never sell. I love digital analog displays, though—someday I'll have a car with one.

As always, as Michel Hardy-Vallée points out, XKCD has the correct perspective on all philosophical problems:

You need to check your messages?
And although lots of people had good reasons why they wear a watch, Michael Ryan provided a good reason why a photographer might want a watch:

"I bought a watch to keep track of time while shooting. If I'm on a job in an office and I have six hours to shoot 12 locations I have to watch (no pun intended) that I don't spend too much time at each location. I used to check the time on my phone but I became conscious that it might look like I was constantly checking my messages during the shoot. So I bought a nice Tissot for under 300 dollars. It looks stylish and it's so much easier and more graceful than pulling your phone out of your pocket."

That's valid. I can see that. Appearances are everything.

Finally, I realized, belatedly, that I do own a watch! It's this one:

Cute. Available on Amazon. Nice case and everything. I'd never wear it....

Mike

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Bill Tyler: "My guess is that if you do buy an iWatch, you'll be surprised at how useful it is. It's hard to describe convincingly, but I'm on my second iWatch, and my only complaint is that I'd like a longer battery life between charges."

Kenneth Tanaka: "Re 'The watch I'm most seriously considering buying is an Apple Watch with a blood oxygen sensor. I suffer from sleep apnea, and the health-monitoring benefits of a smartwatch seem like they might be worth the cost in added life-complexity.'

I admit, shamefully, that I am something of a closet watch lover myself. On my desk I have a case with a dozen watches, all solar-powered (Seikos and Citizens mostly), basking near the window under their glass-topped case. I doubt I’ve worn any of them for over a year. Why? Because they’re utterly obsolete. Like film cameras they do one thing in one way and that’s it. But they are sure nice to look at. And I do rather lust for mechanics watches sometimes…but only had really a valuable one once, during my 'I'm a master of the universe' phase of life.

"For the past two years the Apple Watch has been my companion. Honestly, it’s been literally 'wonder'-ful, with each new generation introducing even more sophistication. Specifically to your interest in the Apple Watch’s pulse-oxygen facility, yup, it works…kinda. You should realize that it is a bit touchy and not nearly as consistently accurate as a plain ol’ fingertip pulse-ox meter. To quote one of my heroes, Elmer Fudd, 'You must be vewy, vewy, still!' for it to make a reading. And the readings will nearly always be lower than the true finger reading by a few points. But as long as you don’t take it too literally it’s good.

"The more valuable 'health' feature of the Apple Watch is the two-point ECG meter. Some years back I suffered from AFIB and lament that the watch’s ECG wasn’t yet available.

"There are many reasons to get a smart-watch, Mike, and hardly any reasons not to."

Jack Mac: "Your first watch post reminded me that I have several nice watches that I no longer wear and yes I am one of those people who check their pocket watch called the cell phone. So after reading at TOP that checking my cell phone for the time was intrusive, I strapped on one of those nice watches. It wasn’t until reading today’s post on watches that I remembered I had a watch on my wrist! I had automatically been checking the time on my iPhone."

Mike replies: Funny. Reminds me of my early days with the iPhone 4s (my first one) when I'd be out and see something and think, damn, wish I had a camera with me. It took me an embarrassingly long time to remember that, oh yeah, the iPhone is a camera too.

Tom Burke: "I went from automatic watches—a UK brand, Christopher Ward—to the Apple Watch. I’d wondered about an Apple Watch for a long, long time, but couldn’t convince myself. However the improvements in the Series 5 were enough, though I bought the cheapest version (aluminium) in my size.

"Twenty-one months or so on, I love it; wouldn’t be without it. My wife says I let it run my life; my view is that the watch curates it….

"Why did I switch? Well, I enjoyed wearing the two automatic watches I had, but it came time to get them serviced (!) and that was a bit of a hassle. Also, one of them had got pretty beat up and no longer looked as good. I looked at their current offerings and discovered that the latest version of the watch I owned now cost almost twice what I had paid for mine just six years earlier—they had found that their market would bear those increases (£350 to £700).

"Given that I am completely immersed in the Apple eco-system—Macs, iPads, iPhone, TV streaming box, AirPods—an Apple Watch was always going to fit in with my existing technology. I’m a happy user."

Speed: "This is reportedly the most watched (!) appraisal ever on Antiques Roadshow. Hold on...the appraisal that floored our guest, literally! See Peter Planes appraise a Rolex Oyster Cosmograph and documentation, ca. 1971, in Bonanzaville, Hour 1."

Mike replies: Wonderful, that. I think I've watched it about three times over the years. I think some of the crew actually thought he'd had a health event.

Christer Almqvist: "Sometime in the mid 1970s I sat at a table near the Volvo CEO (Gyllenhammar) in a Stockholm restaurant. He wore two watches, one on the left wrist and one on the right. That was his USP [unique selling proposition —Ed.] and well known by everybody in Sweden. My then girlfriend (now wife), a foreign national, asked me why he wore two watches. 'Local time and New York time,' I answered. Totally unimpressed, she commented: 'Can't he figure out New York time in his head with one watch showing local time?' Too many and too-expensive watches may backfire."

Ronnie A Nilsen: "Would have loved an Apple watch, but the battery life is not what I want. I have aa Garmin smart watch, that can do the same as the Apple watch (pulse, blood oxygen, GPS etc.) but can go a week between recharging. And the watch-face can be as simple or complicated as you want it. The Scanwatch from Withings might be what you want."

Woz Alexander: "I have the Withings Scanwatch, and as an ex-Apple Watch owner it's a breath of fresh air. It can do all the notifications if you want it to, but you can also just use it as a watch and let it do its health thing in the background. SPO2, ECG, Steps, Distance, Heartrate and sleep...and it lasts a month (-ish) on a charge. The Apple Watch only lasting a day is a massive downside, especially if you hope to do sleep monitoring as you don't have time to charge it. I also have a bunch of mechanical watches, but they don't get a look-in now I have the Scanwatch."

Al C.: "As a disciple from the school of he who dies with the most toys wins, I have throughout my life indulged and immersed my spare time in complex machines with ineffable qualities, from cars, to HiFis, to cameras, to—for a very short time—watches.

"For a year or so I studied the history of horology, the holy trinity of Vacheron, AP and Patek, and the lineage of the famous movements. In the process, I acquired a couple high-end watches with the most venerated movements (calibers), notably the 2003 and the 2120. I was on the verge of acquiring what seemed to me the grail watch—an equation of time with perpetual calendar—when it dawned on me that watches are a total waste of time. Unlike cars and HiFis and cameras which one can compare, tinker with and fuss over without end, a watch is an impenetrable, inert, passive device. All one can do is to gawk at it.

"Take the perpetual calendar complication. To appreciate its function, one has to wait for the singular moment which comes but once every four years. And even then, one has to stay awake through midnight of the 28th of February. Even so, all that is really needed to implement this complication is a bunch of cams.

"Or take that other cherished complication, the chronograph. To achieve that with the ultimate precision, one needs a column wheel to implement in effect a ridiculously crude state machine, and a vertical clutch. At least, it does need more than cams. I own one with the thinnest of such movements. But I have never used the chronograph function for any practical purpose, except once to time a parking meter. I got a ticket anyway, because I forgot to look at my watch until too late. It's useless, unlike the alarm app on my phone.

"The one watch I do not regret acquiring is a Tiffany-Patek minute-repeater pocket watch. The mechanism is indeed interesting and fascinating. The gong does sound wonderful. But what makes this special is that it belonged to Phillip Franklin, VP of the White Star Line, who famously—allegedly—pronounced the Titanic unsinkable."

John Hagen: "When I am with other people and look at my watch I am telling them I am simply paying attention to the time. If I look at a smartwatch or phone, I am signalling that I am not paying attention to the person in front of me."

Kristine Hinrichs: "I have the Apple Watch for a variety of reasons (excuses for tech). However, the primary reason is the fall detection feature. I’m out alone before dawn almost every day, often along the Lake Michigan shore. I’m paranoid about falling and being alone where no one knows exactly where I am. If I fall, a voice asks if I’m OK. If I don’t respond in 60 seconds, 911 is called. I can also activate it manually. It gives me peace of mind—and keeps my friends and family from worrying. Get the watch."

Kenneth Wajda: "I have a few Skagen (Danish) watches I picked up for $5 each at an estate sale. Like them a lot. Small and thin. You'd like them, Mike.

"Years ago, I was headed to Washington D.C. for a big annual photo shoot, and at the Denver airport realized I forgot my watch. I stopped in a newsstand store (candy, books, headrest pillows) and saw a display of $10 watches. I picked one, and it made the shoot much more enjoyable than if I had to rely on the phone. The remarkable thing is it had a face with a series of metallic circles and when I wore it, people everywhere commented on it. When I reached for the elevator button in the Senate building, 'Nice watch.' When I ordered at restaurants, 'Cool watch.' And it was. It was cheap but looked cool. It lasted about two years before it needed a battery and a band and I got a replacement watch instead. But it will always be the one I got the most comments on, hands down. All that for a tenner!"

Mike replies: Thus the category of "fashion watches," those made to be style statements. And nothing wrong with that.

Followup: The Burning Monk

I read once (in this rather scary little book) that as we age, we tend to get better at the things we were always good at and worse at the things we were always bad at. Accordingly, I'm getting even less organized as I age, if such a thing is possible. In any event, I somehow neglected to load the Featured Comments for the "Burning Monk" post...or rather I did, but then I managed to inadvertently default to an earlier version in the compositor (which happens from time to time, despite my efforts) and away they went again. They've been restored now (here's the post again).

Louis McCullagh sent a link:

"I visited the monk's monastery on the banks of the Perfume River. The car was there with details of The Burning Monk."

And Guy Tremblay sent a photo of the car, now on display as a relic.

Photo by Guy Tremblay

Thanks to Louis, Guy, and the other commenters.

Mike

Book of interest* this week:

A Better Life for their Children by Andrew Feiler, University of Georgia Press, published last month. Read the description at the link—fascinating. It's the story of one of the earliest philanthropic collaborations between Jews and African Americans, one that drove dramatic improvement in black education. The story's told visually. *"Book of Interest" means I haven't seen it, but would like to.

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