Comments are all up to date at Midnight between Monday and Tuesday.
Sorry about the recent radio silence. I've been immersed in the political events here in the no longer United States, from the assassination attempt, to the Republican National Convention in my old hometown, to "JD Vance" popping to the surface again like a cork (I have a whole lot to say about that), to President Biden stepping aside, to the rising candidacy of Vice President Harris...all of it has happened in less than ten days, which blows my mind. Normally when I get "obsessed" (as we are wont to say, inaccurately) with something, I write about it here, but I can't (or shouldn't) when it's politics.
As if that weren't enough, Bryan got me going with Frank Deford, so I've been doing a deep dive on Frank and had to start reading several of his books.
And my current pair of robins are being highly entertaining—they built a nest under the pavilion outside my back door, and I've been feeding them dried mealworms (protein-rich, good for eggs and babies), so they're half in a state of gratitude and half in a state of high alarm that I'm coming too close to their babies when I go out the back door and round the corner toward the barn. They both will dive-bomb around and chirp at me, and they'll sit right next to each other on a pine bough and scold me. This is my fourth nesting pair this year, and I've had many in other years, and I've never had a couple this proactive. I can tell the male and the female apart even when they're not together.
And here on Keuka Lake we've been living in a postcard for the past five or six days. Heat up to 80°F (26.7°C) during the day, cool in the shade and hot in direct sun; nights down into the 50s or 60s; boats crisscrossing out on the lake; families in swimwear adorning the docks; vivid blue skies past heaps of high white clouds. So I've spent a fair amount of time out photographing—and I've had two interesting and instructive failures, one of which is going to eat at me for a while. I'll tell you about those later, not now.
For now, a few comments on recent comments (which are up to date again, fortunately for me—else I daren't show my face):
About soccer, Bryan Geyer wrote: "It was Frank Deford, the notable PBS sports commentator (now deceased) who once said, 'Soccer is America’s fastest growing sport—and always will be.'"
Mike replies: That's funny, and somehow accurate. Maybe it's like the way I was named "Most Improved Player" in ice hockey in both seventh and eighth grades, which still makes me laugh. How far behind was I when I started and how far did I still have to go before I caught up? Could I have won the award in ninth grade too?
Frank Deford was also an outstanding writer, who wrote for Sports Illustrated among other outlets. He authored a wide array of books, more than a dozen, many on sports, a few being compilations of his sports writings, but which included a novel about Pearl Harbor (Love and Infamy), a thriller based on the painting "Venus and Adonis" by Peter Paul Rubens, a memoir that might have been titled "A History of Sportswriting in America," and a touching, tragic, yet somehow still joyful account of the life of his daughter Alex, who was born with cystic fibrosis and died in 1980 at the age of eight.
With all that is available, we probably don't have the book we really need, which would be a collection exclusively of his best articles for SI.
Also concerning soccer, Daniel wrote: "For the inevitable 'it’s called football' people: No, in the U.S., where Mike lives, it’s called soccer. In different countries, things have different names. I’ve never understood the condescending anger on this subject from Brits. In Italy it’s called calcio (the kick), in China, zúqiú. It’s called football in some places, and others have a different name for it. Imagine that!
Mike replies: You know, you're right, and I'm going to make a style-sheet change. A style sheet is the list of the ways a publication deals with various issues of formatting, spelling, punctuation, typesetting, etc.—basically it sets the policy for the way presentation issues are handled. To name two notorious ones, The New Yorker puts book and magazine titles in quotation marks (they should be italicized), and The New York Times refers to subjects by honorifics, which, just recently, led to a snarl of confusion in an article in which they were referencing the father of Thomas Crooks but along the way were also referring to the late Thomas as "Mr. Crooks." All by the style sheet, and believe me, Managing Editors can be very schoolmarmish about style sheets. The general habit of referring to already-introduced subjects by only their last names when there are other people in the article with the same last name tends to drive me batty. If you're discussing Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, it's confusing to refer to both of them as "Clinton." But the style sheet says thou shalt introduce a subject by their first and last names and thereafter by their last name only, and the style sheet must be obeyed. Personally, I go for clarity first, effect second, and let rigid rules go limping along behind.
Anyway, I'm going to dispense with the term "world football" and just call it soccer. I'm a U.S. American and that's what it's PROPERLY called here*. I doubt any English speaker won't be clear about what I mean.
About the newest Canons, BG wrote: "$6,300 and $4,300? Wow. Are there customers for these new cameras?"
Yes, I'm sure there will be.
The way I look at it, there are three types of people who would be customers for those new cameras:
First are people who are rich enough that those amounts of money aren't very significant. They can buy a new camera as easily as a kid buys a candy bar. And how great is that? Power to 'em.
The second type of customer is someone who really, really wants one. After deep focus and study, it has become the object of their affection/fixation, and they will save and sell stuff and rationalize until they can get what they want oh so badly. (Been there, done that a time or two. ::shamefaced emoji:: )
The third type of customer for such cameras is someone who makes money with cameras and feel that ownership of one of these models will aid their enterprise.
Beyond that, I have pondered and struggled, but I can't think of any other general type of customers for those cameras. If you can come up with a fourth type, don't be shy.
Mike
*The TOP style sheet does not allow words in all caps.
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Featured Comments from:
Yonatan Katznelson: "Re: Soccer vs. Football: the English have only themselves to blame."
Larry Wilkins: "I started reading Sports Illustrated around 1967 and had a subscription for more than 50 years. Yes, Frank Deford was a gifted writer, but when I think of him, I think of The National, the short-lived national sports daily for which he was editor-in-chief. I used to get to my office early so that I could read The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal before starting work. After The National launched, I had to get to work at least 20 minutes earlier than that so that I could read that too. I loved The National—to my mind, the perfect mix of scores, stats and shorter and longer reporting.
"Fifteen or 20 years later, I saw Frank in a parking garage in Manhattan, where we were both waiting for our cars. To this day, I regret not going up to him to tell him how much I enjoyed The National."
jh: "Speaking of pricey cameras, I have seen two people carrying new Leicas recently. One was an older well-dressed guy hiking, casually carrying the camera on a strap over his shoulder. The other was a young guy at the Farmers' Market, tightly hugging the camera to his chest with both hands. That's two out of three of your types."
Benjamin Marks: "'*The TOP style sheet does not allow words in all caps.' This alone was worth the price of admission."
Sean: "The Football/Soccer debate is a consequence of TOP's international reach, which we’re all happy about. And let's not forget that the US and UK are two nations separated by the same vegetable, so let's not start throwing aubergines and eggplants at each other."
Ronny A. Nilsen: "I guess I'm sort of a forth type: people that need or can use the new capabilities of the cameras to get more or better images? For me the other three types is a bit ... odd? Why would I buy something that would not give me more or better images? But it has to be seen in context of what kind of photography one do. For my landscape photography I only need a reasonably high resolution camera, and I dop everything in manual mode. But for wildlife and my daughters horse show jumping I need low light and autofocus to get more keeper images. My current Canon R5 kan do all the kinds of photography I do, so I only need one camera."
Mike replies: I need to reply to this but I'm out of time this morning. Hopefully I'll get to it sometime today (Wednesday.)
Geoffrey Wittig: "A few observations come to mind. Yes, $4,300 is a lot of money for a camera. But in constant dollars the Canon 5Dsr cost more when it was released in 2015. This is in line for what high end prosumer DSLR and mirrorless bodies have gone for in recent years. And it's absurdly capable.
"But it's also clear to me that we're in the sad twilight of the era of photography as a serious hobby. It's rapidly heading for the same category as ham radio or model railroading: a quirky, shrinking tiny niche, regarded (if at all) with a flicker of tolerant amusement by the masses. I derived immense satisfaction and not a little joy from several decades spent honing my technical skills, learning how to use finicky gear, and teasing the best possible result from large format inkjets, all in service to a goal. That goal was creating the best possible photographic print. I still love a beautiful print, but it has become a niche skill. To the broader culture photography now means billions of technically competent snapshots captured by increasingly sophisticated smart-phone cameras flooding the Internet every single day, each with the impact and lifespan of a just-hatched Mayfly or cicada. Briefly seen then promptly forgotten.
"I recall reading Brooks Jensen's prescient comment about this perhaps 20 years ago, when he predicted precisely this situation: a minute-by-minute firehose of images where each was rendered invisible by the colossal volume. And yet, I can't help myself. I still derive some genuine joy from a perfect print of a quietly beautiful morning on the river, made with my own hands."
