The Online Photographer

Sometimes It All Comes Together and...

Since writing the "Bonnie and Clyde" post last week, I've been on a gangster kick. I've read Public Enemies by Bryan Burrough (all 652 pages of it) suggested by Bruce Appelbaum in the Comments (thanks Bruce) and about five dozen Wikipedia pages about various aspects of the 1933–34 War on Crime, and watched several gangster-related flicks.

As I watched "Murder, Inc." last night (1960, directed by Burt Balaban [father of Bob] and Stuart Rosenberg, whose best movie was "Cool Hand Luke" seven years later), an old thought popped into my brain: sometimes things work, sometimes not so much.

Seems obvious, but honestly, I sometimes think it's the core mystery of creativity. For instance, one photograph can be magic while another similar photograph that has all the same elements is a dud.

Why does that happen? I'm certain that every young musician who ever had a big hit thought to themselves "That was easy; I'll just do that again." But 90% of them never can—try as they might, the moment inexplicably passes, and the magic chemistry turns out to be not so easily replicable. It's that way in all the arts to some degree.

[Spoiler Alert: I'm going to thoroughly filet the plot of "Murder, Inc.," so if you've been meaning to watch it but haven't quite gotten around to it for the past 56 years, don't click through the break.]

190 Bowery Update

You might remember the first time we talked about Jay Maisel's house, one of the more famous buildings in Manhattan.

First, Jay: he was one of the top advertising photographers in America in the '70s and '80s and into the '90s. Since then he's been revealed as an actual lover of photography as well, having continued to do personal work and teaching, and publishing books such as Light, Gesture, and Color and It's Not About the F-Stop (both of which are good and worth reading).

That first comment wasn't intended to be demeaning; it's just that lots of photographers who made as much money as Jay did are mainly interested in making money, not necessarily in photography. A normal person can only do so much. Jay had enough energy, not to mention the skill and talent, for both.

The Germania Bank building at the corner of Bowery and Spring, a cornerstone of Manhattan's former Kleindeutschland ("Little Germany"), in about 1975. Jay Maisel already owned it at that time. Photo by Edmund V. Gillon, courtesy Museum of the City of New York.

Jay's famous "house": he bought 190 Bowery, the former Germania Bank building, for $102,000 in 1966, when the area was a dreadful slum. He rented parts of it for a while but eventually just lived in it, filling it with interesting things and hanging out on the rooftop garden. Although definitely bohemian and not all fancy-rich, it was for a period the largest private residence in New York, with 72 rooms. The outside got covered with graffiti (including some by artist Keith Haring, late friend of our friend Hugh Crawford who comments here) and for years, New Yorkers assumed the building was abandoned.

Jay, meanwhile, had an indoor basketball court.

Jay is now 85, and although I once opined that he should be allowed to live forever, he apparently isn't planning for that to happen, because he recently sold 190 Bowery...to Manhattan "he's-everywhere" developer Aby Rosen. For 55 million dollars, which, you've got to admit, is a nice rate of real estate appreciation.

And he got to live there for 50 years, too.

I'm a little concerned about Jay now. He no longer has a place to live! We might have to pass the hat to help him get a place. Anyone have a 72-room bohemian hangout to rent? Maybe at his age he'd be satisfied with 40 or 50 rooms. You know, downsizing. But I digress.

[UPDATE: He's landed okay, and now has the nicest house in Brooklyn. Those photographers sure do well, don't they? Thanks to Techfan for this. —Ed.]

The News [buried lede dept.]: The point of this post is that Untapped Cities found its way inside 190 Bowery and has posted a series of picture-posts. Start here but if you're interested, be sure to follow the links for further dimensions of the story. A great story and great fun.

Finally: Here's Jay on "How to Be a Better Photographer." Note that although it's nothing pretentious at all, pretty much every word he says in this is profound. Listen to and consider every sentence and you'll take away something good.

Mike
(Thanks to Grant Williams)

Original contents copyright 2016 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.

Hmbl. Ed. just pines for a place to put his pool table.
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Mark Hobson: "I was able to visit the basketball court and, more impressively, view the large display of large dye transfer prints (30x40–40x60) of his work ringing the basketball court. I gained entrance simply by knocking on that corner door.

"My next encounter with Jay was in the early '80s when I was asked to be the backup choice for doing the Corning Annual Report (10 countries around the globe picturing Corning products in real world use). They wanted Jay but weren't sure they could afford his fee. When told of the project budget, Jay wouldn't even send his portfolio because the project budget number (US$60,000 in early '80s dollars!) was not even in the same neighborhood as his fee would be.

"Next month I have been invited to accompany a good friend and fellow photographer and close friend of Jay for a visit to his new digs. Looking forward to it."

Mike replies: I heard a story from a guy who lost a job to Jay. It was for a series of brochures for a cruise line. My friend was sure he would get the job because his fee, although high, was much lower than Jay's. But they hired Jay. When asked for an explanation, the agency person said, "I had to be able to tell the client that we hired the very best."

Tom Foster: "In 2007, Luminous-Landscape published a video in 'Luminous Landscape Video Journal—Issue 17' that contains a one-hour interview of Jay Maisel by Michael Reichmann. This includes a half-hour tour of his building at 190 Bowery. A fascinating interview and video tour."

Jarob Ortiz's Dream Job

Jarob Ortiz, who got the dream job everybody was talking
about last Winter. Photo by Casey Paynter.

Do you remember about seven or eight months back, when the Tubes of the Etherwebs were ablaze (alas, I can no longer say "atwitter," dang it) with the news that "Ansel Adams's old job" was being offered by the Park Service? And would pay $100,000 a year? Some lucky so-and-so would spend all year making Adamsian landscapes—which many of us pay to do for a week or two every year. The story went modestly viral and was reported far and wide (here's an example).

Turns out the hype was maybe a little too hyped—but just a little. The job is only remotely related to a job Ansel once had, and it will consist mostly of photographing architecture and man-made landmarks. And the salary range topped out at $99k and change, but the starting pay will probably be closer to the other end of the range, which was a little less than $64,000.

Still.

The job does sound pretty dreamy for anyone who likes to shoot a lot. And travel. It was landed when the dust cleared by Madison, Wisconsin resident Jarob J. Ortiz, 33, who grew up in Milwaukee and studied photography at Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC). Here's his website. Jarob will be shooting for the National Park Service in large format black-and-white.

"This is, realistically, the exact job that I would like to do for the rest of my life," he told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

The article, by Journal-Sentinel art and architecture critic Mary Louise Schumacher, was very pleasant to read. It's really nice to hear about a photographer getting a great job, for good pay, doing something valuable that so many people would enjoy.

Personally, I've long believed that every State and every decent-sized city should have an Official Photographer, whose job would be nothing more than documenting and archiving what things look like. Given that things change all the time. Heck, the whole program would cost less than one fighter jet, much less one aircraft carrier.

Ortiz will be based in Washington, D.C. and starts his new job this month.

Mike
(Thanks to Mike Plews)

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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kodachromeguy: "The City of Seattle did have official photographers in the 1930s and 1940s. If you are restoring a house, you could buy a black and white print of your house because thousands of structures had been photographed. Then you could compare your modern home with the older and, presumably, more original architecture. Users can go to the Washington State archives."

Tom Passin: "Around 1973, I was hiking in the Adirondacks, in New York State. As I worked up the trail in a light rain, I met a man coming the other way. He was well equipped and nicely rain-proof with his pack under cover, and he carried a tripod. He told me he had landed a year-long job photographing scenes in the Adirondacks and had been out for a few months so far. I don't know his name or the source of his funding, but I thought he had really landed a prize!"

Graham Byrnes: "Why large format B&W? I shoot 90% B&W, I recognise the artistic advantages; but for documenting the landscape? Dare I suggest that this is driven by nostalgia and the same results could be achieved using any 40-MP+ digital camera?"

Kent Thompson replies to Graham: "In archives, black-and-white film is still the trusted media for longterm storage. the standard is actually with polyester based black-and-white microfilm for records reformatting. Every State and Federal archive has some kind of microfilm program going on. With photography in archives and museums, most have gone digital but still consider film to be the archival choice.

"We've been shooting digital for about five years now, with a photo department that goes back around 50 years that was film based. We always shot 4x5 black and white and used color for 'illustration.' Color has never been used for archival work because of the dye fading issues and all that. In most archives you will find a disproportionate amount of black and white film over color. Most roll film, besides technical films and microfilm, is on an acetate base which isn't as stable as polyester. Acetate shrinks over time and causes the emulsion to buckle on the negative. Only cold storage and low relative humidity can stave this off. Polyester is much more stable even at room temperatures, so it's the preferred medium. In most archives, it's the film that is the master file, with prints used for access or dupe negatives as well.

"Now, with digital, there are all sorts of different approaches, But when it comes to HABS/HAER [Historic American Buildings Survey and the Historic American Engineering Record —Ed.]—they are still positively old school. The reason for LF is pretty simple though—perspective control. That is really the biggest thing I miss when I shoot digital now. The loss of control in the studio and working in the field. There is seldom a day that passes that I don't wish I was still using a view camera."

[In an earlier post, Kent described himself as "a museum photographer working in the design section of a history museum." —Ed.]

Cameron's Folly and Other News of the Morning After

• Destabilexit: David Cameron finally pushed his famous luck too far. Pride goeth before a fall, and we all know how he'll be remembered now. Just as an aside, do they not teach European history in the UK? Just wondering how 52% of the population could so easily dismiss the value of 70 straight years of stability and peace in most of Europe. Someone should tell them that Europeans haven't always gotten along with each other. That last is the understatement of the century—or rather the understatement of the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Didn't the UK already have all sorts of special dispensations from the EU to feed its exceptionalism?

But look on the good side—could be very good for Scotland, if it now leaves the UK and rejoins the EU. I'm part Scottish by ethnicity—related to the Johnston and Hamilton clans. The other part is English, though, and I'm sick about this. I hope it won't be, but June 23rd 2016 could be remembered as a very bad day indeed, in the UK and elsewhere.

• We love our British readers (should I say "like and admire"? Is "love" too strong a word for reticent British sensibilities?) But I have to say there has never been much love lost between me and Hasselblad. The company pursued a nasty vendetta against me for a number of years, in response to a snarky comment (one single sentence!) that I once wrote in a Bronica review. (Snarky? Moi?) Granted, that one sentence was...well, pretty bad. But the great lengths they went to for revenge was over the top and out of proportion. Still...

...How about that new Hasselblad?!? I really like the looks of that. I wrote to a friend recently that high prices help insulate me from GAS in a number of cases—I would really like a Sony A7rII and a Zeiss FE 35mm ƒ/1.4, for instance, but don't have to think about either one—and the X1D-50c (the "50c" bit refers to the sensor, indicating the same camera might get different sensors in the future) is well into that territory. But it gives rise to hope that some other company will compete with something similar. Hasselblad has left room for the X1D-50c to be undercut in price.

The X1D-50c would be the perfect counterpart and complement to an iPhone, if it turns out that it works well and has no problems. Wonder who's making the lenses?

• Panaleica cornucopia: Speaking of lenses, there are now six beautiful Panasonic/Leica Micro 4/3 lenses. That cup runneth over. The picture is courtesy Panasonic via Imaging-Resource. (One drawback of cameras made by multinational electronics giants is that the camera divisions get utterly lost in the vastness. I could not for the life of me find that image anywhere on Panasonic's far-flung web presence, nor could I figure out whom to call to ask where it is. Maybe Kevin Purcell can find it. He's a web-research ninja whose powers exceed even my own.)

Left to right, the 15mm ƒ/1.7 ASPH. (I saw lots of this lens when Ben Rosengart came for a portfolio review—beautiful prints), the famous DG Summilux 25mm ƒ/1.4 ASPH., the new lens, the amazing Vario-Elmar 100–400mm ƒ/4–6.3 Power O.I.S. (which underscores an advantage of 4/3 over cameras with bigger sensors—telephoto reach, without the sensor being too small), the beautiful 42.5mm ƒ/1.2 Power O.I.S. portrait lens, and the older 45mm ƒ/2.8 Macro (which gets relatively little love, except from me—I like its exceptionally nice bokeh).

The new one is the 12mm ƒ/1.4, a superfast ultrawide. (With all 4/3 and Micro 4/3 lenses, simply double them to get the 35mm focal-length equivalents.) Although large for a Micro 4/3 lens, it weighs less than 12 ounces and is less than three inches long, underscoring another great advantage of Micro 4/3.

Early tests of the new lens are highly positive, nay, glowing.

• Naked Miata: A nice video review of the 2016 Miata that shows the chassis and drivetrain with the body removed. I now refrain from gassing on further about that car. Don't think I couldn't.

• Bloomin' 'ell! Last item—come back later to see! [Added now—see below.] I have three or four snaps to post of what happened to the flower buds I showed you the other day. It's extravagant. You won't believe what happened. Astonishing! And you can see what happens when a non-flower-photographer attempts to photograph a Monarch butterfly with a 14mm (21mm-e) Fujinon. But I have to go run and then exercise Butters first—he's always raring to begin his daily project chasing down his beloved tennis ball wherever it goes.

More very soon.

Mike

ADDENDUM #1: Re Brexit...please know that I don't bear the slightest ill-will toward any British TOP reader—or any Briton period—regardless of their views or vote. I'm concerned about events, but I'm no expert, of course. I got a solid briefing from a thoughtful and informed British friend (thanks again, TB) and since then have been reading avidly about the issue. That's all. There's no nationalistic competitiveness here either—I'm just as concerned about the bizarre election season in the U.S.—and I certainly have zero stake in being "right" about anything. I do fear Britain has made a very serious mistake but will hope to be proven wrong about that. I very much wish for the best outcome from all this, for one and all.

Let's hope for the best and that the best thing has been and will be done. The passage of a few weeks will do much to soothe frayed nerves and worries.

ADDENDUM #2: Now as promised earlier...in the "Specialists" post on Tuesday I put up a picture of some plants that looked like they were plotting something. That picture was a few days old at the time. Well, you won't believe what those perfectly innocent-looking plants had planned! Check it out:

The crazy things have staged a riot! 

I think the scientific name for these is Sumkinda lillyus. They did this all on their own, too—I had nothing to do with it. All I did was water them when I noticed them drooping (we've had a bit of a mini-drought recently). And boom! Well, not "boom." It took a day or two. Still, the whole flowerbed bursting forth all at once was quite the thing. The previous owner of the house set all this in motion. I don't have much natural feeling for flowers, but I'm sentient and alive, and I think you'd need eyes carved of wood not to enjoy the show.

As I was waiting for the shot above—I wanted the sun to illuminate the flowers but not the barn wall—I happened to see a butterfly, so I had to while away ten minutes attempting to make his portrait. To say that a 14mm lens on APS-C (21mm-e) is not the proper tool for shooting butterflies is probably an understatement. Although I have no idea what would be better. Some things are your thing and some things aren't, and insects are not mine, and I'm resigned to my fate, and over the years have learned to live with it.

Here he is:

Handsome little fellow, eh? Not half bad under the circumstances I don't think. He wouldn't pose and hold still. With a lens as wide as this I really had to stick the camera in the little fellow's face, although he didn't seem to mind. Yeah, I'm an amateur...I'm not sure I've ever photographed a single butterfly in my life, at least as something I meant to do. And if this is indeed the first, it could be the last as well. But it was nice to have the challenge. I have always accepted that photographing insects is a challenge, often a formidable one, for those who are good at it.

As I believe you can tell from this picture, there might even be more blooms on the way. Things have been happening all over this yard. I don't have any idea what to expect next. Only one thing is for sure...

"Life is good."

—Mike the Ed.

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

D. Hufford: "I recall back in September of 2008 watching the financial crisis suddenly pick up speed and knowing my career and life were going to change completely. Though it seems less likely, I am getting a bit of déjà vu. I just bought a Panasonic 12–35mm earlier this year. Turns out I don't really like Panasonic lenses. Except for the Leica branded ones. I love the 25mm ƒ/1.4 and it is probably my favorite lens of the digital era. (Well, the Nikon 14–24mm would be, but I sold mine years ago.) Had I not bought the Panasonic 12–35mm, the 12mm would certainly have interested me...after the price came down a bit."

David Cope: "No, 'love' is fine. We need a lot of that right now."

Jim Allen: "Ya know Mike, you're really starting to draw me into that gravity well the Miata represents. I can feel the slow and inexorable pull as my wallet slowly accelerates towards another impulse purchase.... Seriously though, having an actual engineer discussing details like that in a review is awesome. I don't want that car, I need that car. I wish there were curvy roads in Florida."

Ed. Note: The following two comments came in one right after the other:

David: "I'd just like you to know that I find this at once insulting, condescending and ignorant, so please think a little more before dismissing a brave vote by 17 million people, that must mean a lot to them given the authorities that were telling them to do otherwise and the likely short term pain to be experienced in extricating the country from this institution. This is not like expressing an opinion on sensor size! It is condescending to think that those voting to leave don't know about European history and wars, especially given Britain`s involvement in WWII. It is a simplistic conclusion that recent peace is a result of UK membership of the EU, and that some special clauses you don't know about mean that the other rules of membership you don't know about must be acceptable. P.S. I am an occasional reader and used to pay a volunteer subscription, that is how I came across your post."

Richard Parkin: "No, the specific name is lower case: Sumkinda lillyus. [Fixed again —Ed.] When moving to a house with an established garden it is good practice to wait a year to see what you have so you are doing the right thing.

"Likewise on Brexit wait and see may be good advice because it is now even more obvious that Brexit politicos want something different from what the Brexit voters thought they were voting for. I voted to Remain in 1975 when I was 40ish and have voted to Remain again now I am 80ish so I think I can claim consistency and that I don't fit the demographic of the Remainers. As you will see from some of the comments, some of the most vocal Brexiters are still fighting WWII. I defend your right to have a view on Brexit—when the French asked the US to remove their soldiers from France I recall they were asked if they want the dead ones to leave too."

Mark Cotter (partial comment): "To understand the EU, one has, as an example to think of a pan-Americas organisation that had it's capital in, say, Caracas, and whose trade rules and economic rules and currency applied to everyone from southern Chile to the tip of Alaska: while it would be good for some, it would not be good for others and countries like the US and Canada would tire of the inept bureaucracy and politics of South American countries and the free movement of, say, Mexicans into the US. We live in interesting times over here in the UK and in US politics as well."

robert e: "Would we Americans tolerate an EU-style agreement? The irony! The US was established with an EU-style agreement—the Articles of Confederation. Further irony: the Articles were deemed too weak by our founding fathers, who found inspiration for our second, current, constitution in the far more sovereignty-obliterating Anglo-Scottish union of 1707. I don't suppose I need to rub in the further, sadder irony of the now imminent dissolution of that older union. In other words, we are the result of not only tolerating such an agreement, but doubling down on it, thanks to the example of Great Britain.

"Yes, it was a different time, a different place. But the stakes were even higher. It wasn't put to popular vote, but then neither had been the UK. And we doubled down again, waging bloody civil war to maintain it 100 years later. As Mike said, the arguments persist, and you'll even find active secession movements in several states (most notoriously Texas, Alaska and California)."

Brian Ripley: "In scientific taxonomic nomenclature (not just botany) the genus name is capitalized but not the species name. In butterfly terms, that is not a 'little fellow,' maybe 3x the size of a typical non-tropical butterfly. It is Papilio machaon, the Swallowtail. In the UK (since you keep talking about us) it is the largest resident butterfly and rather rare, but common in most of the rest of the world. Indeed, common enough to have been named by Linnaeus."

Mike replies: I could write a book chapter about this comment, but I shall spare you all, and you're welcome!  :-)  But thank you Brian for providing those facts.

David Dyer-Bennet: "Some people are trying to set up an analogy betweeen the EU and merging North, Central, and South America. But another way to look at it is that the EU is slowly making its way towards a European version of the United States. Do I accept my fate being governed by legislators who mostly come from states other than my own? As it happens, yes I do! And so do the residents of each and every other state. Even those from states that were formerly at war with us."

The Queer Hutterite and Other Cool Followups

Several interesting things emerged from the Comments yesterday, and kept me immersed for much of the afternoon.

Apple ad featuring photo by "Chris F." (Chris Floyd) in the New York subway

Frecklehead
First of all, the "Frecklehead" story—I mentioned the latest Apple ads in the recent "iPhone Apocalypse" post and HowardH mentioned that British professional photographer Chris Floyd had his picture chosen for the ad series.

I get a lot of people contacting me about needing or wanting to get more attention for their work—many people feel under-appreciated (not to mention under-rewarded). It's a common part of being a photographer these days. (I heard from a mutual friend that even Mary Ellen Mark, in her last years, sometimes complained about work being hard to get.) So I thought it was especially nice to read an account of the opposite thing happening. Chris's casual Instagram shot has been seen in magazine ads and on billboards and bus stops around the world. And he wrote a nice account of the excitement so we can all vicariously take part in his gratifying experience!

Photo by Kelly Hofer

Next, in response to yesterday's post about the Amish woman wearing wraparound mirror sunglasses, Wes Cosand recommended the work of Kelly Hofer, a young man who struggled to be a photographer within the strict confines of a Hutterite Anabaptist colony in Manitoba. In the course of filming a BBC documentary on the colony, "How to Get to Heaven with the Hutterites" (scroll down at the link to get to the films), filmmaker Lynn Alleway turned reporter when she included Kelly "running away" from the colony. (It disrupts the documentary but also enlivens it.) A subsequent, shorter film on Kelly's page, "Queer Hutterite," fills in the blanks of the story. Quite long, but quite interesting—an acute instance of the difficulty creative people sometimes feel "fitting in." Kelly Hofer is now "out" (in several senses, I guess that would be) and a successful photographer in Calgary. A book of his pictures of the Hutterites is scheduled to be released in the Fall.

Y'all come back now hear?
Hard to believe it's Friday already, but yup. As you probably know by now, TOP is off on the weekends to allow me to work on writing a book. Don't forget our current book sale is still in progress...here's the page; enter the code 175212 for the discount. Have a nice weekend and please come back Monday!

Mike
(Thanks to HowardH and Wes)

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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A Different Afghan Girl

Well, it was fun to make that little academic excursion into terminology yesterday, although today I have a bit of a hangover from it. I like words and write reasonably well, but I have no gift for names and naming.

I concede I didn't think of the problem with "correction" implying that a mistake had been made in the first place—one that needed "correcting"—which might make you look bad to clients. Acknowledging that none of these terms are going to catch on in any event, I think as a result I would prefer the word "finishing" instead of "correction." FER?

  Sir John Herschel drawn by Margaret Louisa Herschel, his daughter,
possibly with the aid of a camera obscura

And here's a fascinating twist. The king of the name-givers in our field was Sir John Herschel, who probably wouldn't be pleased to know that he is now mostly remembered in Julia Margaret Cameron's photograph of him in old age, in costume (left). He made protean contributions to the invention of photography, including the discovery of fixer and the words "positive," "negative," and "snapshot" (a term imported from hunting, as when a bird is flushed and the hunter makes a quick reactive shot). His greatest contribution to the lexicography, of course, was the word "photography," which, quoting Wikipedia, was "created from the Greek roots φωτός (phōtos), genitive of φῶς (phōs), 'light,' and γραφή (graphé) 'representation by means of lines' or 'drawing,' together meaning 'drawing with light.'"

So instead of "reworking" (a word which Ctein supplied to CER, incidentally), shouldn't that be redrawing? (Or rewriting, if you prefer the translation "writing with light" for photos and graphe.

Because no matter how you feel about reworking or modifying or retouching or "photoshopping" a digital image file, all I know is that if you replace 40% of the honest pixels with different ones, the result was no longer "drawn with light." Not entirely. It was drawn by light and the retoucher. And, since there's no way to tell which was which, the viewer coming to it cold can no longer take anything in the picture as honest.

...But we're back in my personal value system, which (of course!) you are under no compulsion to adopt for yourself unless you want to. In any event, my advice to younger and beginning photographers regarding reworking or "photoshopping" is the same as photographer Frank DiPerna's advice on cropping. Frank once said, "I absolutely never, ever crop...except when I want to." Which is part good joke and part deep truth. I think it's generally good advice for reworking as well. My guiding principle is: I absolutely never, ever rework a photo...except when I want to. In other words, when it's really necessary and there's a very good reason to do it, then go ahead, but apply sparingly and use it a crutch. Of course your photography belongs to you, and you should do any tomfool thing you want to.

As the great photojournalist Bruce Haley said to me in a private e-mail (I received his permission to quote him here, but bear in mind he wasn't speaking for public consumption):

If I spell out my personal "rules" of photography then I risk sounding like a sanctimonious pr*ck. However, it's more just a matter of simplicity, of avoiding "tangled web" territory...I have always just used the KISS principle for my photography: I either got it or I didn't...if I got it, I might use/release it; if I didn't get it, it gets tossed in the rubbish bin, never to be seen by anyone else. I don't crop—I either got it right at the moment of the shutter's release or I didn't. If there is a pole or a tree growing out of someone's head, the image gets tossed. If my shadow is in the frame, it gets tossed. If someone is looking at me and smiling (like the now-vanished fellow on McCurry's rickshaw image), that photo gets tossed. Really simple: I "fix" things like that during my edit, by throwing the image out....

This is just how I want to work—I have absolutely no desire to set expectations or guidelines for others.

This is the same sentiment, phrased differently, as my long-held idea that a photograph is either a "yes" or a "no." If it doesn't work 100% for you, then it didn't work; and if it didn't work then it didn't work. It doesn't matter if it came close, or how much you wished it had worked, or how hard you worked to get it, or if you were just positive there was a great photograph somewhere in the vicinity when you shot it. (We all get our heads turned by those things occasionally, I think.) It just either works, and it's a yes, or it's a no. An addiction to reworking/retouching/"photoshopping," to me (we're still in my personal value system, remember), is like an addiction to plastic surgery: the more you try to correct, the more of an unnatural mess you make, until you've created a grotesque. Or perhaps I should choose words that are a little less loaded (!) and simply say that you're no longer drawing with light, so what you've got no longer quite fits John Herschel's fine old 19th-century word.

Bruce Haley's unretouched, unphotoshopped photograph of a wounded Afghan girl in a Médecins Sans Frontières clinic in Pakistan in 1986. Bruce took three photographs and then sat with her for a while until the doctors could see her. A photograph like this one either works or it doesn't, and its
connection to the real is where its power lies.

Of course, the meaning and uses of photography and its culture will change. New ways of understanding it and using it will emerge in the wake of new technologies and peoples' changed experiences, assumptions, and expectations. Our children won't have the same conceptual framework in place that we had. We're all taught to deal with a world that has already changed by the time we're living in it.

At least it's always interesting to watch those changes happen.

Mike
(Thanks to Bruce)

P.S. I still have more than 60 comments to add to yesterday's post, so please come back soon to check some of those out.

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Len Kowitz: "Mike, I understand where you're going with this thought and I think you're on the right track but why bother? You reminded me of an exhibition I saw at the Ransom Center in Austin. If my feeble memory serves it was an exhibition in conjunction with the Magnum symposium in 2013. One of the prints in the show was a 'work print' with the photographer's notes indicating the 'adjustments' he wanted in the final print. My first reaction to the picture was this is a piece that MoMA would fall all over itself to hang in a show of 'New Masters.' Dodge this 5%, burn this area 10%, all over the image. Photoshop just gives us a new tool (one that's easier to use) to do what photographers have always done with their prints. Thank you for making me think a little deeper about what I'm doing with my camera."

Mike replies: You answered your own question. Why bother? To make people think a little deeper about they're doing with a camera. Works for me. That is really the whole point of a post like "C-E-R": the goal isn't to change global terminology, it's to encourage thinking about what our own values and principles are and should be. Engaging with such questions helps clarify thinking, and clear thinking makes decisions easier and our practices more forthright.

It doesn't really matter where you fall on the actual issues—whether you conclude that you love photo-illustration and are going to stop looking at straight photography (i.e., disagree with me), or whether you want to stop at enhancement and keep wholesale reworking mostly off limits (agree with me). It's all good. The point is to become more clear about what we're doing and what our own values are.

Michael Perini: "Re Photographs are either a 'yes' or a 'no'...very appropriate for digital...either a 1 or a 0....

"I've always felt that getting it right in the camera (for me) was a very good discipline, and a worthy goal that helped me get more 'keepers.' But I do straighten horizons, and occasionally crop a picture within the 'picture' as I Correct-Enhance-Finish the work. I also tend to take far fewer frames than most others I know. It works for me. When I shot film, I developed and contact printed the roll and never excised bad frames, I just ignored them. I've been going through old negatives and scanning them and have found more than a few overlooked gems—so I'm glad I saved them. I do the same with digital, and occasionally find the same thing. All this is also effected by the kinds of work we do, and who we do it for.

"As you often say, it's a big house with many rooms. However there is value for each of us in deciding where we stand on these issues and then being true to that. Because the trouble always arises when our Implied Disciplines differ from our Actual Disciplines."

Mysteries of The King of Bokeh

Words and pictures by Eamon Hickey

This post is going to sound like it’s about photography, lenses, and real estate. It is not; it’s about something entirely different. The story begins yesterday when I read Mike’s post about the King of Bokeh (the Panasonic 42.5mm ƒ/1.7 lens), in which he footnoted a link to a real estate listing for “The Estate at King’s Point.” (This post won’t make much sense if you haven’t read that earlier post.) Mike’s story started some sleepy synapses firing in my increasingly creaky brain.

You see, my girlfriend, Donna, happens to own a seaside estate of her own in the form of an apartment in The Bronx, on the shore of Eastchester Bay. (Born and raised in New York City, she has never learned to drive, so when she decided to get a “beach house” for summer getaways it had to be located on a subway line!) Anyway, from Donna’s beach house in The Bronx, otherwise known as Apartment 2C, the easily visible shore about three miles across Eastchester Bay/Long Island Sound is…King’s Point. Two shores, visible to each other but widely separated. Wealth gaps. I won’t belabor the symbolism.

Huh, my sleepy synapses seemed to say. Wonder if “The Estate” can be seen from my girlfriend’s apartment? Given The Estate’s generous dimensions and lively architecture and landscaping, I was not surprised that I could find the place on Google Earth in about 30 seconds. Yep, pretty much straight across the bay from Donna’s apartment.

Wait. Didn’t I have The King of Bokeh for a month or two last year, when I was reviewing a Panasonic GF7 for the estimable fellows at Imaging Resource? And didn’t I use The King of Bokeh to take a picture I sorta’ liked of a Blue Moon rising over the bay one night that summer, when Donna and I were at the beach house? Search through Lightroom. There it is, big Blue Moon. Is The Estate somewhere in the picture? English major with evermore creaky brain now attempts very risky move: deploying trigonometry, however rudimentary, on a satellite image of Eastchester Bay. Known location of camera. Known horizontal field of view. Known object in photograph (Stepping Stone Lighthouse). Draw an angle in Photoshop. Holy smokes. I have taken a picture of The Estate at King’s Point using the King of Bokeh! Alas, the estate itself is obscured by trees, but the neighbor’s shack, a mere 15 bedrooms by the look of it, is clearly visible in both my picture and in the pictures from the real estate listing. Confirmed! (The houses are too small to see in this downsized JPEG, so you'll have to trust me.) 

Now, let’s get to what this post is really about. How does a fellow born and raised in California end up in a Bronx (Bronx!) apartment one lovely but random summer eve, taking a picture of a Long Island mansion without even knowing it, with a lens he possesses temporarily and accidentally, but which will be the subject of a single posting that also mentions the Long Island mansion in a stunningly unlikely aside, and which was written by the editor/publisher of a blog to which the California boy is also a Contributing Editor? Coincidence? The work of the supernatural? Some kind of as-yet-unexplained spooky action at a distance? Or just another example of the wonderful, ineffable mystery of this weird ride we’re all on? I dunno, but it tickles me fancy.

As a bonus, I also have a picture of Donna (on the right) that I took with the King of Bokeh (at ƒ/2.5) when she and a lifelong friend showed up at a party in dresses that suggested some kind of telepathic connection. It’s ineffable, that’s what it is.

Eamon

Eamon Hickey is...well, he already told you, a Contributing Editor of TOP.

©2016 by Eamon Hickey, all rights reserved

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The Click Affair

Remember Melissa Click? She was the University of Missouri professor seen bullying a student photographer at a protest in a video taken by another student. (It's possible the photographer and videographer were "baiting" the protesters hoping for just such an incriminating confrontation, but the fact remains that they had the right to make photographs in that situation.)

Here's what I said about her in that post:

...a more serious issue is the woman seen at the end of the video...she is Melissa Click, an Assistant Professor of Mass Media in the Communication Department at the University of Missouri. She's clearly seen assaulting the videographer (her blow jolts the camera) and then inciting violence against his person, asking for "muscle" to help her "get this reporter out of here." (Keep in mind the "reporter" is a student.)

Is this appropriate behavior for a University faculty member? Even when acting out some fantasy of being a neo-1960s lawn-chair revolutionary, or whatever she thinks she's doing? Doesn't seem that way to a lot of people. The video of her unfortunate behavior went viral, and has created considerable backlash against her.

This morning she was fired from the University of Missouri for her actions on that occasion, and for her actions at an earlier protest. In a "Statement from University of Missouri leadership," Pam Henrickson, chair of the University of Missouri Board of Curators, said, in part:

After reviewing the report and Dr. Click’s response, and, after extensive discussion, the board voted last night in executive session to terminate the employment of Dr. Click. She has the right to appeal her termination. The board went to significant lengths to ensure fairness and due process for Dr. Click.

The board believes that Dr. Click’s conduct was not compatible with university policies and did not meet expectations for a university faculty member. The circumstances surrounding Dr. Click’s behavior, both at a protest in October when she tried to interfere with police officers who were carrying out their duties, and at a rally in November, when she interfered with members of the media and students who were exercising their rights in a public space and called for intimidation against one of our students, we believe demands serious action.

The board respects Dr. Click’s right to express her views and does not base this decision on her support for students engaged in protest or their views.  However, Dr. Click was not entitled to interfere with the rights of others, to confront members of law enforcement or to encourage potential physical intimidation against a student.

Mike
(Thanks to Mike Plews)

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Doug Thacker: "It's kind of delicious that this case centers around student photojournalism rights, and the perpetration of abuse against a student photojournalist, and that the perpetrating, professing doctor's name is Click. That's the sort of detail a writer like Vladimir Nabokov would add, and that a reader like me might both enjoy and think slightly contrived. But I digress before I've begun. (Always better to digress afterwards.)

"After reading several articles about the event, I watched the student photojournalist's video of it, both the short version and the unedited one. Each time I did I could feel the hair rising on the back of my neck and my blood pressure moving likewise.

"I can't quite convey what my immediate impulse was, probably because the language to do so would not be appropriate to your blog. And having not been there it's difficult to say for sure that I have a complete grasp of the situation. (I hate to be herded into an internet pile-on, only to find out later I was missing vital information.)

"But, honestly, it's hard to see how this so-called professor has a leg to stand on. Doing exactly the opposite of what any thinking person, never mind a university professor, should be doing. Where is the commitment to liberty, to free speech, to freedom of the press and the fourth estate? What was she teaching, Totalitarianism 101? Talk about setting a bad example. When next she appears it will be as media liaison for the NSA.

"The great thing about this, though, and perhaps the most surprising, is that the university fired her. From what I can tell she certainly had it coming. Sayonara, Dr. Click."

Mike replies: Yes, many people might not realize how difficult it is for a teacher or professor to be fired. The nail in Dr. Click's coffin might have been that in defending herself, she claimed she had never been involved in "altercations" before in her 12 years at the University—and then another video surfaced of her, at a different protest, getting in a cop's face and shrieking "get your f---ing hands off me." So that both indicated a pattern, and also undercut her credibility in her own defense of herself.

As for the "Internet pile on," the awkwardness for me is that I'm not reporting on, or analyzing, the entire larger situation. I'm just concerned with a small "kernal" inside the larger situation, which is that the student photojournalist was claiming he had a right to take pictures on the public Quad of a public protest, which he did, and he was being bullied, and was standing up for his rights. It's never hard to stand up for your rights when everyone accepts them. But it recent years (since Diana's death and especially since 9/11) photographers have been increasingly persecuted, and I think we need to continue to assert our rights, or we will lose them.

Layoffs (and Other Updates)

Thirty of the 60 most valuable guitars

Calamity Lyt
Two days ago we featured Amazon's "Deal of the Day," which was Lytro's Illum 40 Megaray [sic] Light Field camera for $399, when previously the asking price had been either $1,600 or $1,300 or $600, depending on when you mean and who's saying. I just thought that for $400 it's a cool toy that some people would be interested in playing around with.

In a classic case of "nice work if you can get it," Michael Perini points out that Lytro has recently raised another $50 million based on the failure of the Lytro camera to win acceptance or gain any sort of traction. (That's like Kevin Costner ever working again after Waterworld or pretty much the arc of the fake billionaire's entire career.) Resource magazine online says that Lytro is moving out of "the digital imaging space" and taking its technologies elsewhere, for instance, possibly, virtual reality. (Or, if I may be allowed to so term it, the virtual reality space. Words are so satisfying.) And that in the business world this is called a "pivot."

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Lytro founder, executive chairman, and former CEO Ren Ng accepted a job as assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the College of Engineering at UC Berkeley—and Lytro announced that it will cut 20 to 50 people from its 130-person workforce. Some of them the same people, resourcemagonline implies, who worked 80 to 100 hours a week and slept under their desks. Hey, so the Silicon Valley startup myth doth not a mortal lock on riches make.

Lord of the flies
You'll recall also that TOP scooped the whole world not long ago by securing an exclusive interview with the Devil after said Prince of Darkness purchased the soul of The National Geographic. So you probably won't be too surprised that massive layoffs are occurring at the National Geographic Society too. The 180 employees who are being let go are part of the largest layoffs in the Society's 127-year-history, according to The Washington Post, which noted that "the reduction also will affect people who work for the National Geographic Channel, the most profitable part of the organization," adding, with a very innocent look in its eye, that "several people in the channel’s fact-checking department, for example, were terminated on Tuesday." Italics mine. Ooh!—Ooh!—You just got burned, Lucifer. I love that "for example," like the Post wasn't intentionally poking Satan with a stick.

But let's face it, it only stings because it's true. We all know that The Devil considers facts to be pesky, annoying things, like flies.

'If your mother says she loves you, verify'*
I came across this policy in my surfing yesterday, in an article on gizmag about the sixty most valuable guitars ever sold:

The following list of the most valuable guitars sold at auction has been compiled in the same way we have compiled our other "most valuable" lists (such as the most valuable cars, most valuable motorcycles and most valuable movie cars), in that we only count those sold at auction which can hence be verified as sold at a certain price by a reputable source (the auction house). Private sales don't count because there is no publicly available record of the transaction (and word-of-mouth tends to exaggerate a price).

Of course what sprung to my mind was photographer Peter Lik, who claimed not long ago to have sold a scenic picture of a slot canyon for a preposterous price, only he wouldn't identify the buyer or provide any hard evidence that the sale was real. I didn't buy it, myself. (Ya see what I did there. Love words!)

gizmag's policy is the best one, I think. Where records for the most valuable photograph are concerned, private sales shouldn't count.

Mike
(Thanks to Michael Perini and David Lobato)

*Old saying in journalism

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Chuck Albertson: "John Kay, an economist who writes in the Financial Times, once wrote that he was going to scream every time someone at a conference he was attending referred to so-and-so company doing business in a 'space' (when what they meant was a 'market'). Then he realized that if he did that, the conference venue would sound like the interrogation cells at Gitmo. So he stifled himself."

John Camp: "I have, unfortunately, a guitar habit, and the prices of true vintage guitars in good shape can be obscene, which is why I don't have one. A vintage '59 Gibson Les Paul in good shape will set you back in the high five-figures, or more. (There are rumors of a perfect '59 Les Paul for which the dealer is asking almost a half million dollars.)

"But the curious thing, to my mind, is why anyone would pay a million bucks for a vintage electric guitar or any mass-maket vintage guitar solely because it was played by a star. You could get (or even make on your kitchen table from pre-cut parts) a guitar that would be sonically indistinguishable from Clapton's guitars, for ~$300 (make it yourself) to $2,000 (high end Fender Strat.) The only additional value is the Clapton connection, and the Baby Boom is dying out. In thirty years, your $1 million guitar is going to be worth a few thousand dollars, much to the distress of your heirs, because nobody will remember who Clapton was. In the meantime, the million you're gong to piss away on a guitar could save several thousand lives in Africa, India or the Middle East...."

Mike replies: I was surprised that Roy Rogers' guitar made the list. Probably more people remember him than remember Tom Mix, but I don't think he's a household name any more. Except in a few cases, as you note, fame is fleeting. Although I'm guessing they'll still remember the Beatles in 100 years.

Keamu: "Not defending Rupert 'The Devil' Murdoch here, but having worked on the integration of a few acquired companies, one thing comes to mind: many functions that were necessary when the acquired company was independent (accounting, order management, possibly even post-production in this case) become redundant because the buying entity has its own, often larger-scale teams serving these functions. Indeed, these 'syngergies' are often part of the justification for acquiring a company. Left unsaid is whether The Devil already has a fact checking team.... The acquired company often ends up being the one which has to make the buying company's grand plan work...."

Recent UPDATES

A few updates from recent posts:

Scottsdale Run: John Sandford (John Camp) on the left and Ctein in the middle, at their personal appearance three nights ago at the Poisoned Pen Mystery Bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona USA for the launch of their science fiction thriller Saturn Run, which I notice is #8 on the Science Fiction > Exporation bestseller list at Amazon as of this writing. (My brother and sister-in-law both wrote me to tell me the book was featured by the Literary Guild.)

The photo is by Jeffrey Goggin, who added a nice signed copy of the book to his shelves. Ctein said there were four or five TOP readers in attendance, "...a remarkably high percentage. The disproportionate influence of TOP continues to startle me." For deep fans, the occasion has been put online here.

The Cubans: Speaking of books, Peter Turnley's gentle collective portrait of the Cuban people, Cuba: A Grace of Spirit enjoyed an extremely successful launch, with the press run, designed to last at least a year, more than 1/5th sold out already.

Here's Peter in the TOP Lightbox (that's what he dubbed my family room, unusual in that it has windows on all four sides).

DAC rec: One reader got incensed that I would recommend a DAC (digital-to-analog converter) for desktop audio that costs $465, which he considers silly money for a DAC. That's wrong; the Halide HD I use is keenly priced and a good value, and most audiophile DACs cost more than that—a lot of them, much more.

However, I was remiss in not suggesting an alternative for those who are interested but don't want to spend $465. If you're using the Audioengine A2+ (black, white, or red) or A5+ (black, white, or bamboo) desktop computer audio speakers that I recommend (I have black A5+'s), do try the Audioengine D1 DAC in preference to the soundcard in your computer. Amazon has a 30-day return policy, and I think once you try an outboard DAC you'll find it more than worth the very modest $169 pricetag.

An Audioengine D1 DAC connected to an Apple iMac and Audioengine's A5+ powered desktop speaker in bamboo.

Setup is very simple: on a Mac, just go to System Preferences > Sound > Output and select the DAC. Audioengine includes easy-to-follow setup guides for all their gear. For simplicity in the illustration above, a few additional needed wires are not shown; the picture illustrates just the connection of the DAC.

And by the bye, my Audioengine S8 subwoofer (black or white) arrived last night and is now pumpin' the bass from under the desk. Hugo's hilarious country(!) cover (with banjo!!) of Jay Z's hiphop classic "99 Problems" now sounds much more powerful. I'll write more about the S8 later.

And for those of you with somewhat more money than $465 burning a hole in your pocket, I'd recommend the PS Audio DirectStream DSD DAC. (Of course, that's for a full system, not for desktop.) PS Audio's Paul McGowan is a fellow photo enthusiast, and used to be a reader of TOP, although I don't think he visits very often now. He's told me that running his business takes up a little more than all of his time.

Poets and actors? Still speaking of books, also I received my copy of TOP reader John Sarsgard's fine book Like Musical Instruments: 83 Contemporary Poets. (Broadstone Books. There's still a courtesy discount for you (that is, TOP readers) in place; thanks to the folks at Broadstone for that). I'm enjoying both pictures and poems, and, as always, the presence of writing on the facing pages has the effect of slowing me down and making me look at the portraits more, which enriches them. The balance is nice—hearing the poet's voice and seeing his or her visage at the same time. I do wonder how the poets were chosen.

[UPDATE: See John's response below. —Ed.]

John's son Peter is an accomplished actor with a number of movie roles on his resumé. Perhaps John's next project could be actors of the younger generation, of all sorts; maybe he could ask them what their favorite movie or play is and why they love it, and use that for text. In any event Like Musical Instruments is good enough that it seems like John has found his métier, and I hope he continues in the same vein.

Alternate view: Film director Bob Burnett augmented his earlier iPhone snap of "Marshall's House," the Edward Hopper subject where he stayed recently, with this frame grab from a tracking/slider shot taken late in the day:

Here is the Edward Hopper painting again, for comparison purposes:

Bob writes, " In terms of spot-on accuracy, I was told by locals that Hopper frequently took liberties with what he painted to make them stronger as paintings, both in perspective and in elements within the scene. The biggest change besides the growth of trees that I mentioned previously is that the screen porch in the painting is now a formal room with windows.  The painting includes a corner of the still standing shed shown here as well as a slight shift in location of the red house that’s visible in the distance."

Mike
(Thanks to Jeffrey, Dennis, and Bob)

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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james wilson: "Any comments on the DAC included in the A2+ and A5+. The speakers can be plugged in to USB without the external DAC."

Mike replies: There's no DAC in the A5+ speakers. If hooked directly to the computer (or, say, iPod) they're using the computer's (or other device's) built-in sound processing, which is usually considerably inferior for music listening. The D-to-A conversion in the computer is a) typically very rudimentary, b) operating in a hostile environment electrically speaking, and c) designed to be "just good enough" for either earbuds or the very cheap, very small speakers built in to the computer.

Audioengine says the D1 offers "a benefit to audio quality" over the DAC in the A2+.

[Note: Thanks to Tom Noto for his corrections to this reply. —MJ]

You can also do a lot of good for the quality of your music by replacing the driver in iTunes with dedicated software such as PureMusic, Audirvana or Amarra.

Here's a nice intro by Steven Stone about how to start optimizing your Mac as a music server.

John Sarsgard: "The poets for Like Musical Instruments were mostly chosen by my collaborator, New York poet Larry Fagin. We wanted an assortment of young and old, unknown and famous, and representing all kinds of very different work. There are many more that could have been included, but we had to stop somewhere.

"Thanks for the followup, and the comments about my actor son, who spells the name Sarsgaard, originating with an incorrect spelling in an otherwise stellar review of a play he did years ago. Poets were easy to photograph; most were so happy someone was paying attention they welcomed me. Young actors could be different!"

Roberto M.: "Geez, that Hopper really needs to take a basic composition class and learn to process properly. He cut off the building on the left and he hasn't followed the rule of thirds. He needs to fix the white balance and get rid of that awful color cast. And he has way overdone the noise resolution—all the details have been turned to watercolor smears. There is no texture left on the roof or the screens, and there is color splotching everywhere. He hasn't fixed the blown out highlights in the sky or the weeds. And he definitely needs to lay off that saturation slider. He really shouldn't be posting pictures until he learns how to handle the basics first. *SA."

Keith B.: "Mike, I purchased the Audioengine D1 DAC on your recommendation a few years ago. Despite the cheap-feeling volume knob, it is still happily providing nice sounding music reproduction from my desktop computer stereo."

Kirkwood Sale Wrap-Up

Ctein reports  that the last of the Kate Kirkwood print orders shipped out this past week. If you have not gotten your prints or a tracking number from the U.S. Post Office, please contact him at ctein@pobox.com. He says the post office software is being a little flaky about sending out the tracking numbers.

If you have not gotten your prints within 30 days of receiving a tracking number, please email Ctein.

Kate was very happy with the results of the sale. If you've gotten your print already, what thinkest thou? I've gotten the print I bought ("Road in the Rain") and it will be framed for the eventual TOP gallery.

Mike
(Thanks to Ctein)

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The New BMW 2002 (I'm Not Supposed to Be Doing This) (OT)

I'm supposed to be packing and not writing. But just a not-so-brief followup on Sunday's Open Mike post, "It Costs More to Be Poor":

First point: Wrong question! Turns out, the insurance is going to be more expensive than any of the proposed car payments. The question should have been, how do you get decent insurance for a price that won't break the bank? My agency quoted her $2,600 a year, and said they had shopped rates for an hour. Her monthly insurance payment will be higher than her monthly car payment....

...Except she won't have a monthly car payment, because she's decided to buy a car outright for less than $5k.

I think that's a mistake. Granted, some people do this successfully, and I hope she does too, but in my view it's too risky for a young person without financial reserves who will own only one car and will have to rely on it. The risk is that she'll get a car that continually presents her with unexpected bills...which she won't have any money in the bank to pay. My girlfriend's son went this route, and he is continually borrowing from his parents to pay for car repairs. Just recently it was another $800 for new brakes. Buying a cheap car for cash is something that makes sense for adults with cash reserves who will not have to absolutely depend on the car in question for transportation to work...or who have mechanic friends to vet the purchase and bail them out of troubles.

One of her choices was a demo Nissan Versa with 1,000 miles on it and more than two years left on the factory warranty, for about $3k off list. In my opinion it would have made far better sense to put a down payment of $2k on that car, keep $3k as liquid cash reserves, and pay a small monthly payment. (She's not working yet, but she will be.)

It's not my decision, of course.

Second point: Big discovery of the car shopping safaris with both Lillian and Xander: the Nissan Versa (although neither 22-year-old will be buying one).

The base sedan is the cheapest car you can buy new in America.

Driving it reminded me a lot of a car from long ago: the BMW 2002.

You might scoff, because the status/prestige coefficients (call this "s/p") of the two are so radically different. Nissan's s/p has been drifting downwards for years and was never super high to begin with, and BMW's s/p rose to the stratosphere beginning with the 2002 and only in the last four or five years has started to fall again. Japan vs. Germany, hip vs. unhip, etc.

But they drive similarly. The biggest differences are that the 2002 was rear-wheel drive whereas the Versa is front wheel drive, and the interior of the Versa, while pleasant and well designed, has poor tactility on the bits you touch and doesn't have any coolness factor, whereas the interior of the 2002, though minimalist, was considerably slicker. Other than those two differences, the two cars are very similar, and have a similar feel.

The 2002 had a 2-liter inline 4 cylinder engine with a carburetor, making 98 horsepower and 106 pounds-feet of torque. The Versa has a 1.6-liter DOHC 16-valve inline 4 cylinder with fuel injection, making 109 horsepower and 107 pounds-feet of torque. Making up for this negligible difference is the slightly heavier curb weight of the Versa, 2,363 vs. 2,072 for the 2002. On both, you had to stir the gears, keep the little engine on a boil, and pay attention to your revs.

As far as the suspensions go, both cars are sprightly and light on their feet with good road feel and not a lot of grip. Betters wheels and tires wouldn't go amiss on the Versa, but don't make economic sense.

The BMW had a 4-speed floor-mounted stick shift. The base Versa has a 5-speed floor-mounted stick shift.

Both cars have manual crank-up windows, which was dead common in 1971, and considered exotic now; one dealer told me that some of his young customers have never encountered such a thing in any car before.

The Versa is larger all around but only significantly in trunk space: it's nine inches longer, four inches wider, and four inches taller, with four inches more wheelbase. The trunk is 14.9 cubic feet vs. the BMW's 9.5.

Both cars have a high driving position with a good greenhouse.

The Versa is actually a better car in an absolute sense—of course, having benefited from 44 years of advancements in automotive technology. It gets 30 combined MPG vs. 22 for the BMW, and has better safety features and crash resistance, and will certainly be more dependable and more durable, statistically.

But of course the meaning of the two cars could not be more different, and is inverted from the above: the BMW was a hot car in its day, caused a sensation in the automotive world, looked great, and made its maker's reputation in the United States; the Nissan looks frumpy, is its maker's loss-leading econobox, and gets decidedly lost amongst its competition.

It's just that I think they feel a lot alike, if experiential memory is anything to go by. I really wish I could drive these two cars against each other directly and do a true comparo. I bet it would be interesting. Ignoring s/p factors—which I'm better able than most to do—the base Versa is the closest thing I've driven in recent years to the non-tii 2002.

Mike

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susan: "I wish I still had my dad's '71 2002 (round tail lights), in which I learned to drive, No AC, Blaupunkt AM/FM radio (no tape player), crank windows and all. A real gem. the first of many BMWs for us, but the best-loved of 'em all."

Manuel (partial comment): "Fortunately we don't have the Versa in Europe. Good thing Mr. Ghosn decided to spare us the eyesore. The car is simply grotesque. Its design is flawed and incoherent, and the interiors are dull. It may be the less expensive new car in the USA, but so was the Yugo back in the day and price didn't make it an interesting proposition."

Roger: "The more things change the more they stay the same. Back when the 2002 was for sale the Datsun/Nissan 510 was considered the 2002 for the budget minded. I owned both and preferred the 510—much less finicky and more fun to drive."

A. Dias: "The Versa is not the 'new' 2002. Not even close. Far better entry levels compacts are the manual VW Golf or any Mazda model."

Rodger Kingston: "In 2011 I bought a year-old Nissan Versa four-door sedan with the help of a close friend who's an automotive pro. It had under 20,000 miles on it and cost me about $9,000. It's a comfortable, roomy, smooth running small car (and like the Tardis in Dr. Who, it's lots bigger on the inside). In the nearly four years we've had the car, we've driven all over New England and across Eastern Canada. The only repairs I've made have been to replace a ball joint and one set of tires. Also, I use synthetic oil and change it on time. I would buy another Versa in a second."

HBernstein: "BMW 2002: no power steering. It was a car that you really had to drive, and stiff to parallel park. It was a ton of fun, especially with the handcranked sunroof."

Mike replies: I forgot about that. The BMW's steering wheel is probably bigger, too, for leverage! It's been a long time since I've driven a car without power steering but I'll bet muscle memory would kick in and it would feel all too familiar if I ever experienced it again.

Mao: "My advice, which should not be taken, is to get a real 2002. In addition to being a blast to drive, when I lend it to friends who come to town and then come across it on the street unexpectedly, I get to see it and think—'whoah, cool 2002...wait, that's mine!' That never happens with newer cars. But she needs to get to work, right?"

The Psychology of Camera Anxiety, Part II

[Part I is here —Ed.]

-

We all recognize the signs. Snarkiness, anger, hurt feelings, reactive lashings-out.

All over someone else's opinion about a camera, a format, a style, or—?

As you might imagine, I have some concrete advice. I'll go ahead and use a prescriptive voice and address "you," even though you might not need to hear it. Apologies in advance for that.

But before I hit you with it, let me say I sympathize with insecurity. If you believe in yourself strongly most of the time, then you have, um, an unusually healthy ego. (And if you believe in yourself all the time, then you might have Narcissistic Personality Disorder.) Most of us are more, er, balanced. Some of us suffer unduly from lack of self-belief and from insecurity. I understand that, and I don't mean to throw petrol on the fire by criticizing anyone for it.

Personal choices
However, I believe if you're going to succeed (in any sense of the word) as a photographer, you just have to go ahead and do your own thing and be comfortable with it. And not be threatened or even concerned with whatever anyone else thinks, or their snarkiness or belittlement or apparent or implied disapproval.

What do they know? Nancy Rexroth made herself famous with a book of blurry pictures taken with a toy camera. Howard Bond's camera is an 8x10 and he's an expert in (optical!) unsharp masking (no piece of cake, take my word.) If you like one, does that mean you can't like the other? I hope not, because I appreciate both of them.

Ken Tanaka, in a comment to the previous post, said, among other things, "someone with talent, energy, and vision will ultimately succeed with any camera."

To which I would add "...that they like." I.e., that gives them the results they want and allows them to do what they really want to do. If you hate your camera, you're unlikely to do much work with it at all, much less good work.

Different things "turn us on," for lack of a better phrase. The smooth tonality of large format; grays vs. colors or vice-versa; the grittiness of grain; high contrast, low contrast, just-right contrast (Peter tells me that Voja's first instinct when he looks at a print is to zero in on just what he doesn't like about the print); saturation, or muted colors; the list goes on and on. (And for every property you can name, the opposite can be made to work well too.)

Ian Land put this beautifully (talking about film): "...each format really is its own thing, and has its own distinctive look, capabilities, oddities, d-o-f characteristics, grain structure, and so on. This is why—contra 'Net chatter which says the camera or format doesn't matter—most working photographers have very strong preferences for particular equipment and formats, because they know their choice of equipment does indeed directly affect the results they achieve."

He's right. Most working photographers do have very strong preferences for particular equipment and formats. Ansel Adams had the perfect phrase for it. He said that equipment we like and trust (he was talking specifically about lenses at the time) "nourishes our enthusiasm." The tone of that is just right: accurate, but just a touch stilted and geeky. So "someone with talent, energy, and vision will ultimately succeed with any camera," yes...but it doesn't hurt if it "nourishes their enthusiasm." So go ahead and indulge any "very strong preferences" you might have. It's part of your work.

Status claims
What we like isn't a contest with others, however. What we own and shoot with isn't a contest with others. Your choices aren't right and those of other people aren't wrong.

One commenter said he feels the need to "pipe up" when someone writes off a camera as something that "can never be a useful tool." (Why? Policing the Internet singlehandedly is a tad quixotic, actually—cf. the famous XKCD cartoon.)

Another commenter wrote, "we need to guard on being elitist about our equipment."

Maybe, but I go further than either. I think we really need—I use the word "need" advisedly—to not consider or even acknowledge comparisons that have their main basis in questions of status. I'm as guilty as anyone of lapsing into that, and I know it's hard not to—I'm not casting aspersions on people who do that, necessarily, because we're all weak and ignorant sometimes and that includes me.

But really, what we need is to be open-minded and accepting of the potential of others. If you aren't, you are really just closing yourself off to potential joys; you'll be "not seeing" what's there to see in other peoples' work, and not enjoying what's there to enjoy, because of limitations that are self-imposed.

The key is to go ahead and enthusiastically and confidently pursue and embrace what works for you and at the same time completely accept that completely different things work for others. Strong opinionation for your own work and open acceptance of other peoples' work are not mutually exclusive. It's not at all inconsistent for a passionate and devoted 8x10 film landscape shooter to be a huge fan of a color Instagram shooter, or vice-versa, or for a Leica fanatic who loves the very latest gear to love work made with a seven-year-old Pentax, or vice-versa. The old shouldn't be dismissive of the young (and vice-versa); the pro shouldn't disregard the amateur (most pros don't, actually—they're secure enough to enjoy lots of things). Great technical experts can accept and appreciate work by people who don't know what an aperture is. And so on.

The criteria should merely be if you think the work's good and whether it works for you, is all. Not any status-bound or status-based litmus test.

And when people conflate the two—as Nicholas Condon put it, "Any claim on the internet of, 'This thing didn't really work for me,' will be read by some small subset of people as, 'This thing doesn't work. And anyone who thinks it does is wrong and stupid'"—they really just need to be ignored.

No 35mm fan should mind even if Ctein hated 35mm work with a passion, which he doesn't, and no one should ever think I'm not open-minded about color work just because I love black-and-white. It's not a status issue. Status is not in operation. Status considerations just get in the way.

To sum up, this is my advice:

—Go ahead and be passionate and committed to your own choices...with zest, verve and élan! You're right because it's you who decides what's best for your own aims.

—Respect that other people can be just as passionate and committed to very different choices without threatening you at all—and that you can still fully immerse yourself in, and enjoy, their work.

—You can't build yourself up by tearing other people down. On the other hand, if you're prickly, defensive and insecure about your own choices, that's on you, not on others. Weather their blasts! Stand proud!

—Stay open—at least open-minded—to all kinds of work, based on nothing but your reactions and responses to it, your feelings about it, and your liking or disliking of it—studiously ignoring and refusing to acknowledge, on principle, status-claims, partisanship, clubbishness, snobbery or anti-snobbery or any other kind of prejudice or fanboyishness or bigotry et cetera. 

I keep striving to do this—not always perfectly successfully as I've admitted—and it's mostly kept me happy and feelin' free. I recommend it.

Mike
(Thanks to Ken, Ian, Nicholas, and others)

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Pat: "Years ago while shooting an event I found myself shaking my head at another photographer who was using a lens that I thought was very ill-suited to the situation. Over the next few years my tastes changed, and I now shoot events using the exact lens I'd been laughing at. Never laugh at some one else's gear choices, because you never know what you yourself will be shooting with tomorrow.  :-) "

Update: Film Director Sentenced to Prison Time

Do you remember our discussion a year ago about the disaster on the Altamaha River in Georgia? Director Randall Miller, who allegedly flaunted his image as a renegade and rulebreaker, has now pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the death of 27-year-old camera assistant Sarah Elizabeth Jones during filming on train tracks on a trestle bridge over the river. The sentence includes two years in prison, eight years on parole, and a $20,000 fine.

Miller becomes the first film director to serve time for a death on set.

The incident resulted in a lot of discussion here on TOP, and some of it got heated when we advised against the convention of posing portraits on railroad tracks. Some people refuse to believe that being on railroad tracks could be dangerous...a perception which leads to people dying there (it also leads to accidental deaths being assumed to be suicides).

To repeat our advice then: "Venture there yourself if you want to risk your own life—photographers do take foolish risks to get photographs—but keep your clients, friends and models off train tracks. Using train tracks as a setting for photographs is an illegal, unethical, and unsafe practice."

Out-of-service stretches of track set aside for public use are an exception.

Miller's wife and collaborator Jody Savin goes free under the terms of the deal, despite originally facing charges similar to those her husband pleaded guilty to.

Mike

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Chuck Albertson: "Back in February, a guy got killed south of here while taking a selfie standing between the northbound and southbound tracks of the BNSF main line. He only saw the southbound train coming. And yesterday, a woman was so engrossed in texting someone on her smartphone that she ducked under the safety barrier at a crossing and was clipped by a freight train (and lived)."

You Can't Take The Same Picture Twice

You might remember Carl Weese's beautiful platinum-palladium print of the white church, from last September's sale. Just a gorgeous example of fine printmaking. (I guess you'll remember all right if you bought one—this print will be going up on the wall at TOP World HQ, although I haven't had mine framed yet.)

The full title is "United African American Baptist Church, Iron Gate, Virginia, 2002."

Here's the same Church much more recently. I remembered it had been moved once before, but Carl says it hasn't moved since he took the top picture with his 8x10. It's just that time has moved on and things have changed. The earlier picture isn't quite there any more.

Mike
(Thanks to Carl)

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Chris Norris: "I'm editing a personal series that touches on this. My family moved around four or five times when I was growing up. Some places I hadn't been to in 15–20 years. I went back to the towns I lived in and photographed the houses (very formal, 4x5 shots) we lived in and places I remembered (Kodachrome and a Leica). It's interesting because these places are imprinted into my brain, and they are very real and concrete. They're still the backdrops for my dreams sometime...but the reality is that the places in my mind only exist there. The physical places are just reminiscent. You can't go home again."

Don't Miss

...I just added a longish section with lots of links about male nudes as a reply to a Featured Comment on the Celebrity Portraits —> Soft Porn —> Love post, in response to a challenge (I think it was a challenge) from an anonymous reader.

...Also, The Guardian is debating with itself: in response to Jonathan Jones's petulant rants against photography, Guardian photography critic Sean O'Hagan wrote a good-natured and reasonable response called "Photography is art and always will be." (Numerous readers sent me links to this.) Even if you don't read the article, check out the lead illustration, a great Jane Bown portrait and a great portrait of Samuel Beckett. (Jane being one of my favorite photographers.)

Mike
(Thanks to Anonymous)

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Let the lights continue to shine (in my basement)

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Jim Bullard: "Since I have a degree in Fine Art I feel qualified to weigh in on the Guardian issue. Photography is a medium just like paint is a medium and marble is a medium, etc. Any medium can be used to create art although not every photograph, painting or object cut from a block of marble is art. They could be art or they could simply be a passport photo, a living room wall, or a kitchen countertop respectively. The question 'is photography art?' confuses medium with product, in my educated opinion."

What Else?

I was a little surprised by the blowback from the Commentariat over Aaron Greenman's self-publicizing efforts. My question is simple: what else?

That is, what's the alternative, if you want to make a name for yourself as a non-commercial photographer, other than doing your best at taking an energetic stab at self-promotion? What's supposed to happen? Spontaneous acclaim? The world beating a path to your door because you invented a better mousetrap?

It reminds me of a story I heard about a fine-art magazine I shall not name, conceived and published at a prestigious Southern U.S. University using an alumni grant of $10 million. The overseers of the magazine had quickly burned through half the bequest when the powers-that-be at the Universty stepped in to put the reins on the runaway expenditures, saying that the idea was not just to waste the entire bequest. The way I hear it, the person in charge of the magazine peevishly retorted something like, "It was never our intent to make a profit."

That made me laugh out loud when I heard it. (I was in the publishing industry at the time.) What else? was the reaction I had—there are only two other alternatives—breaking even, and losing money. Had their "intention" been to bleed a handful of millions of dollars in just a few short yours, and go speeding on towards bankrupcy? Is making a profit so distasteful, so disreputable, that it's something to be avoided? Seems to me that if you have such a generous amount of seed money and you get to structure a publication any way you want to, the goal should be at least to break even after becoming established. Apparently even that was too grubby for the idealists in charge of that magazine.

I might be remembering those facts wrongly, or not quite rightly. But I wondered the same thing when readers were complaining about Aaron. He's a young guy with a family and he wants to be a photographer. Why should he be faulted for wanting to promote himself? What else is he supposed to do, to differentiate himself, and make a name, and rise even temporarily above the waves so he can actually practice photography actively for a few years?

Even if you think his particular methods ham-handed or not quite ideal, seems to me like we should cut the guy—and all the men and women like him—some slack. Because really, what other way is there? What else are they supposed to do?

Mike

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Andy Kochanowski: "The blowback you heard was, I'd venture to guess, caused by the dissonance between Aaron's portfolio and the amount of noise he makes about it. (Not that all the marketing was successful—I follow this genre pretty closely and never heard of him before this blog entry). Another example of similar dissonance: Eric Kim. Let me hasten to add, Nothing wrong with marketing, we all do it to some extent. But if you wave your arms around hollering 'look at me' not everyone will like what they see."

Chuck Albertson: "Brings to mind an interview I saw a few months ago with Dame Judy Dench. She was asked what she looks for when reviewing a new script, and replied, 'Well, I'm usually looking for work.'"

Chris Y. (partial comment): "The whole thing did seem aimed at an audience unfamiliar with photography as art, so that's probably why it rankled with us."

Dan: "All success is based on some level of self promotion. When it's done skillfully you just don't notice it."

Close Call and Other News

Downtime: I'm just back online after some gnarly downtime...no Internet or email on the computer for almost a day. Ya hate that. But after several pleasant hours on the phone with my new friends Tanvi in New Delhi and Edward in Arizona and multiple reboots of the modem as mysterious tasks and functions were allegedly performed remotely, all is copacetic again.

But I could get email and Internet on the phone, which is cool. I'm finally coming around to the smartphone era—what, five or ten years late? BlackBerry introduced its original RIM 850 in 2003, and the first iPhone was introduced to great fanfare in 2007. I bought my iPhone 4s in 2011 to use essentially as a walkie-talkie with my son Zander, who connects to his friends via texting. (Cellphones, I must say, are a huge boon to parents of teenagers—you can reliably hear from them if you need to, which reduces those traumatic incidents when they're out of touch when they should not be, for instance when your 14-year-old has an 11 p.m. curfew and still hasn't shown up at 2:35 in the morning. The kind of thing that gives parents white hairs.) Recently, with my new phones not hooked up yet, it's been my only means of phone communication.

More about the iPhone issue soon—I have more to report.

Metzker books: John Hamann at the Nelson-Atkins bookstore reports that all the extra copies of Keith Davis's The Photographs of Ray K. Metzker have been sold. They got lots of requests. If you didn't get a reply, it means they can't supply you with a book.

Close call: We had a brush with death the other day. I was going to Ten Chimneys with my new girlfriend—that's the estate and house museum of the '20s-through-1960 Broadway actor stars Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne, a real gem of a tour for visitors to this area (I've actually done the tour three times now and enjoyed it each time)—when a car came careening across the centerline at full speed heading straight toward us, dragging a large construction cone halfway under its front bumper. I was able to detect quickly that its course was constant—the thought flashed into my mind that the driver must have fallen asleep at the wheel—so I could plan and execute evasive action in a second or two, and we missed the oncoming car and also managed not to hit anything else as we went off the road.

That'll wake you up. I looked it up, and the average reaction time you get before an automobile accident occurs is well under three seconds. It turned out the driver was having an epilectic seizure, meaning he was most probably driving illegally. He careened off the road and managed to come to a stop in some bushes, semi-conscious and drooling blood. A number of people stopped to help. Another car pulled up that turned out to be the man's sister, who had just happened by and saw the accident. She wasn't surprised that it was him and who didn't seem terribly alarmed by the event, which indicated to me that this was nothing new to her. Nice of the guy to take risks with my life and my friend's life as he blithely takes risks with his own—I hope they throw him in jail. (And I might try to follow up on the story.) We left after the second Sheriff arrived, none the worse for wear but considerably shaken.

Migrating: The soybean field in back of my house must be right on the migratory route; the Canada geese are using it as a stopping-station. This morning I was out in the back with the dogs when a cacaphony of calls and honking arose from the field, and waves of birds took to the air. My best estimate was that there must have been eight hundred to a thousand in that flock, but the flocks come and go all day and night. I went out just now with a camera, but the field was deserted. I should take a camera out with me each time I let the dogs out—even though I'm just going to my own backyard.

Admitting failure: Reader Andy Sheppard took personal offense at my "Small is Relative" post yesterday and went on to excoriate the entire enterprise (TOP, that is), and so I apologize to Andy.

...And that's the end of "Morning Comment" and the short and rocky experiment with a regular autoposted morning comment. Some things I'm good at, lots more things I'm not, and I'm not too proud to admit that something's not working when it isn't. Having finally made a positive virtue of the mercurial aspect of my interests and my chronic lack of an ability to plan, I hardly see why I should regularly set myself up for failure on purpose. The very core of TOP is to make readers feel welcome, not the opposite.

Moving: If I had known how much work it was going to be to move, I wouldn't have attempted it. It just never ends, and it's wearing me down.

Current experiments: The Jesper sit-stand desk has arrived, and I'm standing as I write these words. As a preliminary review, you do not want the "Value Desk"—you want the regular "Prestige Desk" in whichever flavor you think will work best for you (the 47" model would be just high enough for me—I'm 6'1"—and the 63" model provides plenty of leeway). If you can't afford the Prestige, take a pass. The Value Desk I got is more cheaply constructed and a false economy, although I guess I'm stuck with it now.

In more major self-experimental news, the Soylent has arrived! It's been a long wait, thanks to a New Yorker article that jump-started interest in the product and left the company scrambling to catch up.

Soylent is a food replacement that many readers consider crack-brained, but I think it's interesting and worth a try. For those who haven't heard of it, it's an attempt to create "human food" that contains all the nutrients necessary for a healthy and balanced diet, like futuristic science-fictional "food pills" that eliminate the need to eat. Lunch becomes a glass and a half of a vaguely malty-tasting, sandy-textured liquid. I guess I don't see this as being as insane as some others think it is, because it's intended to replace unhealthy meals in your eating schedule—that is, instead of having Doritos and a pint of ice cream for dinner, you have Soylent instead. If you're cooking from good ingredients, that's when you take a pass on the Soylent. It doesn't need to replace any of the good meals you normally eat. So its healthiness is relative. And really, who among us eats good, healthy meals three times a day, seven days a week? Those people must be the exceptions now, rather than the rule. I plan to go ahead and eat food whenever I can prepare good food from ingredients, and replace the extemporized, unplanned, blatantly unhealthy meals with Soylent.

(I've been experimenting on myself with multiple diets in the past two and a half years, so this is just one more. I've managed to drop 35 lbs. over that time, and at a recent doctor visit all of my health indicators had improved.)

The biggest downside to the name? Not the deliberately controversial connection to "Soylent Green," but the implication that it contains a lot of soy. It does have a little, but most of the protein is rice protein.

I'll keep you posted as to how it goes.

Parting advice: Stay vigilant in your cars, friends; things seldom go wrong, but when they do, they go wrong quickly.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Bill Tyler: "Your close call brought back an experience I had about a year ago. I was driving home after an exhilarating morning out with a group of elephant seal researchers on the beach. It was a bright, clear crisp autumn day, traffic was light. I was approaching a group of bicyclists, and planning to swing a bit wide to give them plenty of room. Just then, a car coming the other direction swerved across the road, across my lane, up a dirt embankment to my right, and started down again, headed towards me. My attention was completely focused on avoiding a head-on collision. After our cars had passed without contact, I saw the bicyclist. He was lying motionless on the road, on a beautiful fall day, dead.

"The aftermath has not fully played out. Apparently the driver fell asleep at the wheel. I'm not sure what consequences he has suffered beyond a badly damaged car. For me, the experience was deeply disturbing. After calling 911, I had a hard time processing what I'd just seen. It's hard to describe how it's affected me. In one way, it's worse than the deaths of my parents because it was so sudden, so meaningless, so avoidable. Your driver was lucky. If he goes to jail, he'll still be lucky. It doesn't always happen that way."

Stephen Scharf: "When I read the description, I was skeptical about the concept behind 'Morning Comment.' What the point of it was wasn't clearly defined, and what value it would have brought to the TOP Community-At-Large wasn't clear either. I have to admit that thinking to myself, 'Not sure how this is going to go over...'

"On a positive note, however, I really enjoyed very much your Morning Coffee series of columns, and hope that you continue with those, in addition to the 'classic' TOP content. Just my 2¢."

Darr: "I am waiting on my sampling of Soylent, so please let us know how it goes for you. I am like you in that I purchased it for those times when I run out of prepared food. I am a vegetarian and do not always find the time or energy to use my juicer ahead of time for those busy days and tend to grab too many carbs."

IanM: "Moving. Things will improve, though it takes time. How much time? Think one and a half cycles through the seasons of the year. Then things will be normal (not the old normal, the new normal). The new place looks great and your writing about it tells good stories. It seems that the move to a new home has put you in a generous place in life. Relax into it and keep up with the thoughtful writing which makes TOP a premium blog."

Joe Holmes: "I'll be keeping an eye out for your updates on how it feels to work at a standup desk. I've had my Ergo Desktop Kangaroo Elite for about a year and a half (it's worked out really great), and I give two pieces of advice for those about to take the plunge: First, get a desk that does up and down easily. Days when I've been out walking for miles and miles, I come home and drop my desk to its sitting height. I might even keep it that way for a day or two. Then, up it goes. A good desk should go up or down in 30 seconds or a minute. If it takes too long, you'll never bother to change it. Second, a good foot mat is absolutely essential. I swear by my WellnessMats brand mat (I got the SmartStep Supreme). My back feels so much better since I switch to a standup desk."

More About the 'Torture' Post

Following the post 'Torture, the Whole Thing' last Thursday, I was pleased to hear from William Todd Schultz, the author of the Dinae Arbus book An Emergency in Slow Motion, who I quoted extensively in the post. Responding to some of your comments, he wrote:

For the fun of it I'd like to address a few things said. It's interesting how so many people seem to dislike any attempt to interpret art, no matter how informed or perceptive. It's as if art ought to always stand utterly alone, with no context, no meaning-making, just pure perception. My feeling is that what keeps art alive is exactly interpretation—talking about it, speculating about it. And I don't present my thoughts on Arbus as if they are undoubtedly correct or certainly right etc. So I'm not assuming special authority—although I did research her life in great detail, obviously. They are just my angle, my take, on the images. You can accept them as partially correct if you find them convincing, or you can dismiss them if you don't. Fine by me. But the images do come from a mind.  Arbus was definitely after something specific in her shots. So to speculate as to motive is not off base. To me it never is. But that's another point.

And I know arms akimbo means hands on hips! Horrified I made that error. Thanks for pointing it out!

And thanks for the thoughts.

Next, our friend Kevin Purcell contributes this researched explanation regarding the book's lack of illustrations (and neatly ties it into our recent discussion of copyright, in the Slater's Macaque posts):

I remember reading the Acknowledgments in Geoff Dyer's The Ongoing Moment. He said this after acknowledging:

I finished writing this book in June 2004; little did I know that this meant the drudgery, tedium and frustration of trying to find and obtain permission to reproduce photographs would now begin in earnest.

Dywer then thanks many people for providing photography for a large number of photographers then he finishes with

For its failure to come closer to that ideal the frustrated reader can thanks those responsible for the pictures—by Robert Frank, Roy DeCarava and Diane Arbus—most conspicuous by their absence.

The acknowledgement of Diane Arbus: A Biography by Patricia Bosworth also comments that she couldn't get permission from the Arbus Estate to reproduce images.

This 2003 article in the New York Times explains why:

Doon Arbus was 26 when Diane died. As the older daughter of a divorced mother, she took on the responsibility of managing the estate. Her response to the critics was to clamp the spigot shut. Arbus's letters, journals and diaries could not be examined. Anyone wishing to reproduce Arbus photographs would have to submit the book or article for Doon's vetting; any museum contemplating a retrospective had to enlist her active collaboration. In almost all cases, permission was denied. Unsurprisingly, critics and scholars fumed. As Anthony W. Lee, the co-author of a new academic treatise, "Diane Arbus: Family Albums," puts it in an acid footnote, ''Those familiar with the writings on Arbus's photographs will recognize a common thread that joins them all, which this essay also shares: nearly all are published without the benefit of reproductions of some of her most famous work.''

This is the downside to an estate inheriting the copyright of their ancestors' photographs.

My thanks to William and Kevin for these illuminations.

Mike

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Rod S.: "Thanks for the exposure to William's book and for including his response here. It's given me some insight into Arbus's photography. I appreciate informed and intelligent insights—even speculation—into a photographer's life and work. Often, photographers are not good at explaining themselves, and their intention can be lost if only a small representation of the work is seen. Of course, the insight and speculation must be grounded with evidence for it to be credible, and a good writer will bring the evidence to life. Now I feel I have some understanding to bring to Arbus's photographs, and some reason to seek it out."

Statement from Monkey

You know how fond I am of the monkey selfie story. If you've been keeping up, here or elsewhere, you need to read Bill Barol's A Statement from the Monkey at newyorker.com.

"Monkey not talking about law of the jungle here, either. Monkey talking about your human law. Because Monkey may have been born in an Indonesian lowland, but he not born in Indonesian lowland yesterday."

Hilarious.

Mike
(Thanks to Steve Rosenblum and Chris Y.)

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TOP's links!

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Featured Comments from:

Richard Newman: "Go Monkey! And remember, macaques are not known for being mild-mannered. Ask anyone who has handled them in zoos or labs. So, humans, try not to get him mad."