The Online Photographer

Happy Thanksgiving!

A happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow Americans and anyone else who celebrates on this day. A day of rest, reflection, and gratitude. And possibly some American football*. We'll be back tomorrow. Peace and good wishes.

—Mike

*Maybe even some World football, from Qatar, a word which cannot be pronounced correctly. (How to pronounce "Qatar.") As you of course know, the most momentous sporting contest, pitting the European Union against the United States**, doesn't begin until November 30th.

**The Mosconi Cup. "The Mosconi Cup is an annual nine-ball pool*** tournament contested since 1994 between teams representing Europe and the United States. Named after American pool player Willie Mosconi, the event is comparable to the Ryder Cup in golf and the Weber Cup in bowling." (Wikipedia) There are two controversies in the Mosconi Cupt this year: despite his dominance in events he was allowed to play in—as a Russian he was banned from some International tournaments—Fedor Gorst, 22, of Russia, was left off the European team; and the controversial Earl Strickland, 61, who won five U.S. and three World 9-ball titles from the '80s to the early 2000s, was named to the U.S. team despite—or perhaps because of?—his volatile and erratic behavior while playing, sure to tee up the Mosconi Cup crowds. Anyway, enjoy your Thanksgiving and whichever form of football you prefer!

***I never write about pool on TOP. Which is a shame, because then you have no way to find out about extraordinary and delightful demonstrations like Fedor Gorst's seven racks in less than 27 minutes, Shane Van Boening's impressive runout (starts at 33:02), or Justin Bergman's 18-rack package (i.e., streak). On a bar box, but still. Your loss I guess...you'd think, as clever as I am, I'd find a way to sneak those links in somehow. Happy Turkey Day!

Foxy Vixen Booty Call (OT)

I was out in the pool table shed yesterday around nightfall, knocking balls into the pockets, when I heard the most ungodly sound—a wild, haunting cry like something out of a horror movie; something between a shriek and a yowl. It seemed to come from close by. Butters, my nine-year-old dog, who was out in the pool shed with me, became agitated. I heard other dogs barking at the noise from much farther away. Butters dropped his ball and began whining and whimpering excitedly, racing between the door and the window. Again and again it sounded. I listened intently, trying to discern what it was. It seemed to be coming from somewhere down the road south of the house.

The first thing that occurs to me in such a situation is, do I need to help? But I quickly realized the sound was not human. Could it be a dying animal? Something run over by a car? Possibly. It was a mournful sound that seemed to trail off in a sort of moan; it seemed to imply that some sort of violence was occurring. I decided to get Butters inside—I have a slight fear of wild coyotes in the woods at night, as they are known to occasionally prey on domestic dogs. As we went through the back door I found myself shuddering at yet another of these cries and thinking, whatever the heck that is, I am not going to investigate. It's out there, and we'll just stay safely in here.

Then it struck me what it could be. And I thought: I am going out to investigate! Maybe I'll get a chance to see it? So I got my coat and boots on and grabbed a powerful flashlight. Leaving the dog behind, I headed off between my outbuildings out to the road. The scream sounded again, very close.

The temperature was just barely above freezing. It had been raining most of the day, and everything outdoors was wet. It was all but totally dark—there was just enough light left to discern that the sky was still overcast. The Summer people have all departed, so there were no cheerful porch lights or window lights anywhere—the houses were just hulking masses of blacker black against the fast-falling darkness. And the trees are all leafless now.

I stood listening in the cold, wet darkness. Nothing. Did it know I was there? Stepping gently and softly, I walked slowly down the road, barely able to see, keeping the light off so my night vision would improve. I reached the bridge over the creek, looking back into the gloom of the creekbed as it receded up the hillside, and paused again to listen.

On the bridge I was above the creek, but the creek comes down a gully or ravine, and, especially on the south side, opposite my land, the bank juts sharply upward and looms over the road. The big trees that cover it tower far above that.

The howl sounded again, loud, and seemingly right across from where I stood! 

I made my best guess, pointed the flashlight, and switched it on. It illuminated, dimly, the craggy line of the top of the steep bank, and cast a circle of light on the bank and the lower parts of the trees nearest me—right in the middle of which, unmistakably, were two animal eyes staring back at me, shining brilliantly with reflected light!

I looked for a moment and turned the light off, so as not to ruin my night vision, and the animal howled again, softer than before. Switching the light back on, I saw the two bright eyes watch me for a few seconds then turn away. As the animal got up and began to walk, she came out from behind the stump that had been obscuring most of her body and I could see her entire profile. Although she and everything else looked faint and greyish in the weak light, I saw her entire body from nose to the extravagant tail, called a brush. A red fox.

That's what I had realized it might be, back at the house. Conditions here this year have been kind to foxes—I've seen more of them than any other year I've lived here. And foxes scream—that's a usual term for the noise I had been hearing. The male, called the tod, or reynard, or dog fox, will scream to warn other males off his territory, but the ones who mostly scream are the females, to signify to nearby males that they are there and ready to mate. It's actually a little early for that yet, so maybe the one I saw was a male staking his claim to his turf; who knows?

So it's no wonder Butters got worked up at the sound of the screams—foxes are distantly related to dogs, fellow members of the canidae family. 

She—or he, as the case may be—disappeared into the woods and didn't scream again. The next time we hear that scary scream from the woods in the night, I will know exactly what it is, and I'll know not to worry—it doesn't mean some sort of horrible violence is has occurred in the night. It's the foxes, sending messages only other foxes can properly decode.

Mike

Featured Comments:

Mark Sampson: "When I lived in Alexandria, Virginia, red foxes were common in the neighborhood, and sometimes in the evening, or at night, they would scream like that. My wife said 'like someone was murdering a baby.' It was a quiet, if crowded, neighborhood of town houses...one evening I heard a fox's scream just before taking the dog out. As we went by the next row of buildings, I saw two policemen walking from their car. I asked 'what's up?' and one said 'we had a call for someone screaming.' I said 'I've just heard a fox.' And one cop said 'Yeah, that's what we thought, but we have to check it out, have a good evening,' and we went on our respective ways. There are stories about our dog getting loose and chasing the fox, but those are for another time...."

Mike Ferron: "Way back when there was a blood-curdling, non-human scream from the woods behind the house one night. It sounded otherworldly and yes it was disturbing. Just might have been a 🦊...."

Dave Millier: "I live in London. There are foxes everywhere. If you drive around the neighbourhood, you will see 20 in 10 minutes. A family lives next door to me. The cubs are hilarious; I can often watch them from my bedroom window, rolling around and play fighting. Not so amusing when one of them broke into our Eglu and ate the chickens. And they do make an unearthly horror-movie wailing and screaming that sounds like murder being done. They are not closely related to dogs (which come from wolf stock); more closely related to raccoons. There is a fox selective breeding experiment where foxes developed dog-like appearance and behaviour within a few generations. It is fascinating in itself but when I checked the details for this comment, it appears things may not be as they seem. Some light reading."

Mike replies: Or not so light; but thanks for that. The Russian Farm-Fox Experiment was featured in the NOVA documentary "Dogs Decoded," which I loved and recommend to anyone who will listen. (It's getting hard to find.) It was nice to catch up with that a little.

Peak Color

We've had a picture-perfect Fall season here in the Finger Lakes, with lots of cool weather to cue the leaves to change. This past weekend was probably peak color. Both days were beautiful, sunny and clear. I had to reluctantly set Jason's fp(m) aside and get my color camera out (of my pocket).

"Peak color" is a strange notion. Human beings are generally subject to the MBB complex—"mostest biggest bestest." If somebody builds a ginormous house, the next person wants a bigger one. If somebody drives a humongous pickup truck, the next guy wants a better one. The changing of the leaves is an odd thing to want to max out, but we're humans—we want there to be a peak!

And what's "peak" supposed to be, anyway? Is it a single day? An hour? A minute, maybe?

I don't think there is a "peak." The changing and falling of the leaves in Autumn is a shifting, changing show that doesn't have any absolute climax. From beginning to end it's lovely. Phase shifts into phase and stage slides into stage and then changes again. My observation is that the most beautiful time in a beautiful place lasts a while, each day being a little different. The top of the bell curve is a flat stretch of days that are wonderful if the light cooperates.

I guess that's the peak, then. Anyway, if there is a peak, we're in it. And is it ever pretty to look at.

By the way, these pictures are just illustrations, meant to show you what the area looked like over the weekend. Taken with the note-taking camera. I don't take real pictures of fall foliage.  :-)

May I have my B&W back now, pretty please?

Mike

Book o' the Week

Leica M: Advanced Photo School by Günter Osterloh, second edition. My favorite of all the Leica gear books. And they are legion. You will actually learn practical stuff from this one. Used, but this is the latest edition from 2011.

The book link above is a portal to any purchase at Amazon. You're very kind use our links, as they help support the site.

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

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

Sympathy for Florida

Hurricane Ian making landfall (NOAA photo)

Sending sympathy and solidarity today to our neighbors, countrymen, and friends on the West coast of Florida and across the central section of the State. Yesterday at 3:05 p.m., Hurricane Ian made landfall (defined as the point of lowest pressure crossing land) at Cayo Costa, 20 miles north of Fort Myers, as a Category 4 storm, with sustained winds of 150 mph. Spreading destruction in a wide swath across the State, it dumped over two feet of rainfall near New Smyrna Beach and more than a foot in Orlando. It is currently downgraded to a tropical storm but is strengthening over the Atlantic and is expected to make landfall again in South Carolina later today, possibly as a hurricane, meaning a storm with winds of force 12 on the Beaufort scale, equal to or exceeding 64 knots / 74 mph.

My friend Jim Sherwood did an extensive photographic project of the aftermath of hurricanes and tornadoes 20 to 35 years ago now. I'd have to check with him on the time frame, but I know the project included Hurricane Hugo in 1989. His pictures were amazing. One that I remember showed a car neatly perched on top of a concrete lawn table as if on a pedestal, and another showed a more or less perfectly preserved bathroom hanging in the air, the house around and underneath it having been torn away by the wind. The toiletries were still arranged in orderly fashion on shelves and the window with its "X" of masking tape was unbroken. Jim paid his own way to areas devastated by several hurricanes and tornadoes. He used a Pentax 6x7 and Kodak VPS color film, and made 16x20 prints of the work using a Hope commercial processor. The set was extensive and dramatic, but has never been published. Jim is an accomplished photographer, with pictures in the permanent collection of MoMA and other top institutions.

Some friends who were flooded out of a low-lying area of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 opted not to rebuild. They moved instead...to Denver, Colorado, known as "the mile-high city," 5,280 feet above sea level.

Mike

'Golden Oldie' Books o' the Week

I was going to link to The Life of a Photograph by National Geographic ace Sam Abell, the book version of Sam's video talk we've been discussing, but guess what? Sold out since we mentioned it the other day. You can still score one of the few remaining copies of the 4-volume Sam Abell Library from 2013, but buy it directly from the publisher—they still have it at the $75 publication price (I called them in Santa Fe to check), and Amazon is already charging four times more. We need a reprint of Sam's classic Stay This Moment!

This book link is a portal to Amazon. You're very kind use our links, as they help support the site.

B&H Photo

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

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

Bruce Bordner: "I was very tempted to go out and shoot after Hurricane Sandy in NJ, but I was dissuaded by many stories of homeowners becoming very upset by photographer/videographers 'feeding on their pain.' I can't really see their point unless they thought everyone was making money from pictures of their disaster...I still don't get it, but I didn't want to chance it. Be careful if you're in one of these situations and be very respectful—they're hurting."

Mike replies: I believe most of the scenes Jim photographed were when people were absent. I could be wrong. But I don't recall seeing people in his pictures.

Albert Smith: "I live halfway between Orlando and Daytona and as usual we spend the week before the actual landfall watching every news update for changes in the projected path of the storm. It is nothing less than slow torture. You go to bed thinking it's going in a divergent direction then wake up with the cone right over your town. Five days out, three days out, one day out, they are still not sure. The most distressing sight is the so-called spaghetti paths, a dozen 'expert weather centers' project the expected line of movement and they are always in disagreement. The Euro center seems to be closer than most over the years, but they insist on adding in the never-even-close tracks and averaging them into a cone. I wonder what it was like 100 years ago before satellites and computers when the first clue that a storm was coming was the storm landing. The new technology is great but I know that I shaved some time off my life watching the stress inducing coverage leading up to the storm, 90% of which was wrong.

"We can't complain or feel bad about our situation: tons of flooding, power lines down (no electricity, well water, air conditioning TV, etc.), no supply to stores or gas stations, and mentally contemplating that there will be weeks of this. Giant trees are down, collapsing power lines and assuring no quick fixes. But other than some roofs and underwater living rooms, the houses are still here and just looking at photos from the southwest coast of the peninsula will make us feel like we won the lottery.

"The issues with supply from the pandemic was bad. How can anyone expect to rebuild after this? Thousands of from-the-ground-up new houses will be needed and last year you couldn't find basic housing supplies like drywall or roof shingles for general maintenance. This will take years.

"To my fellow Floridians: be strong. To the folks in the path in the Carolinas, pay attention and don't dismiss what's coming. Good luck to you."

Photographic Links regarding the Late Queen

I've learned a lot about the royal family this week. I'm not a royal-watcher, nor do I identify with them in any significant way. Although of course you pick up a certain amount about them by osmosis, as it were, and I did learn the story of Diana at the time of her death (it involved photographers, after all).

But I've read a lot about the late Queen this week, including a biography I'm partway through. Of everything I've come across here are the three not-to-be-missed tidbits for photographers:

First, this lovely story from the former Queen's Police Officer, Richard Griffin. Various outlets have been rewriting and rehashing the story in written form, and people have been sending me links to one or another, but the original is this video. A lovely little anecdote.

Next comes the article from Popular Photography called "A closer look at some of Queen Elizabeth II’s favorite cameras."

Lastly, the most important one, IMO, from The Guardian, "The story behind the portrait of the Queen the palace used to announce her death," by Luke Dodd. I think this is the original; similar articles have appeared elsewhere. At any rate this is the best telling of it. Although it's a short little article, it's a rewarding read—it's like a little photography lesson from Jane Bown (note no "r." It's not "Brown"). Jane (1925–2014) is one of my very favorite photographers, a touchstone. I love her work, her methods, her thoughts about what she did. And I'm pleased she existed.

Mike

Book o' the Week

Migrant Mother, by Sarah Meister. "Each volume in the One on One series is a sustained meditation on a single work from the collection of MoMA." Forty-two pages with many illustrations. An engaging guided tour of the history and lore of "American photography's Mona Lisa."

This book link is a portal to Amazon. You're very kind use our links as they help support the site.

B&H Photo

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

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
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Basic Camera Functions

I'm back from my trip. The purpose of it was for my son and his mother to meet for the very first time, 29 and a half years since his birth. He has a sprawling family on her side, and we met only a fraction of them, but there were a lot of new faces, and some I remembered from the old days. And I got to meet my son's new girlfriend, Kate, for the first time. Nobody knew in advance how it was all going to go, but it seemed to go as well as it could have. There was a nice spirit all around; one of reconciliation, and compassion, and forgiveness, and generosity. Kate is pregnant, and has experienced intermittent feelings of illness, and she is taking very good care of herself and their as-yet-unnamed son-to-be, but we managed some touristy activities as well. The high point was the National Aquarium in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, which is absolutely an A+ attraction—Kate and Xander both especially like aquariums, and I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would. Despite having lived in the area all those years ago I had never been there before. It's really well done. If you're ever near it and find yourself considering a visit, don't hesitate.

Visitors at the National Aquarium in Baltimore,
which was remarkably crowded on a weekday.

I took the Sony A6600 and tried to use it, although I forgot to bring it in from the car on the Aquarium visit. Although I took only a couple of hundred exposures, it was really the first time I had used the A6600 since I first tried it as a loaner from LensRentals. I'll show you a few pictures from it tomorrow.

Wait for it
One of the surprises, not a good one, is how slow it seemed. Of course one of the many "vexations" (I like that obsolescent word) of the iPhone is that it's so slow and awkward to use—if I see something like an airliner against a while cloud or a speedboat passing a perfect position in a lake composition, I've learned to not even try to get the iPhone ready, but just to observe the sight. Well, unfortunately, I have some of the same feelings about the A6600. It just seems to take a while to go from off to on and ready, and even if it's in the "On" position it takes too long to wake from sleep. Shutter lag also feels long, although it might not be.

One of the great advantages of the classic film Leicas—M4 through M6—is how responsive they could be. Shutter lag (the interval between pressing the button and the film being exposed) was famously short—if memory serves, 19 milliseconds vs. ~80 ms. for a pro SLR and 150 and up for an amateur SLR (many were around 200 ms.). But of course you don't have to turn on a film camera—it's always on. With the Leica, I got into the habit of zone-focusing it by feel depending on the situation I was in—at the Aquarium, for instance, I might have set it to six or eight feet and just carried it that way. Then when you raise it to your eye you have just a little adjustment to make. At any rate, good film cameras were "shutter-button priority"—there were a number of things you had to do to get ready to take the shot, but if you pressed the button the shutter went off and that was that. It didn't refuse to fire until the settings were all set.

It struck me that it's kind of curious that for all our "measurbating" and comparing of features on digital cameras, we don't really make a big deal of the basic responsiveness numbers, although AF speed might be an exception. I guess because these are so hard to measure, and differ based on circumstances. Does anyone know of a site that has compiled a comparative list of functions like turn-on time, wake from sleep, AF speed, latency, buffer clearing, and other responsiveness traits? I do see these mentioned hither and yon, but as I say I'm not sure we pay these things sufficient attention.

Anyway I did notice that with the A6600 slumbering on my shoulder, hanging from one of Al Stegmeyer's UpStraps, too many beats pass before it agrees to take a picture. Repeatedly, things changed before I could get a shot. Part of that is down to my rusty chops, but part of it was the camera's fault.

If you'll excuse a digression (of course you will, because those who don't are long gone by now!), the UpStrap is by far the best camera strap I have ever used—and many famous photographers starting with Jay Maisel agree with that. My new one is the "Friendship," and it's the best small-camera UpStrap yet. I have several similar older UpStraps, but I have other cameras now and needed a new one for the Sony. The only one I've ever found that stays on my shoulder without fuss.

Everything has an arc
And incidentally, while I am on the subject of responsiveness, the new iPhone is definitely worse than older ones. The auto-turn-on feature is a pain—I'm going to turn auto-turn-on off if it turns off—and the swipe commands are too many and too touchy to be convenient, although I suppose a few adroit young people will have them mastered. My brain doesn't work that way. Plus, the camera is now so configurable that it's actually possible on the phone to get into that dreaded state where I've done something and don't know right away how to undo it, which is the tell-tale curse of all overly electronic-i-fied devices. And face recognition is worse than the old fingerprint recognition, because it assumes you will be shining the moon of your mug directly at the screen at all times, which I often am not. So the iPhone-as-camera is leaving its signature strength—simplicity—behind. That trend will continue, because it always does.

More about "what I did on vacation" tomorrow or Monday. At any rate, I am back.

Mike

(New Book of Interest coming on Sunday[?])

Grit and Grace: Women at Work in the Emerging World. Unfortunately, this will be the posthumous swan song of the indefatigable documentarian Alison Wright, whose untimely death at 60 in the Azores this year meant she never got to see it published. Wright's photography was inextricably entwined with her life's dedication to social justice, a sense of acceptance of humanity, and a roving search for beauty and color.

Our link to B&H Photo

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

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

robert e: "What a momentous occasion. Glad it turned out well. Best of luck going forward.

"My Canon M is as slow as it gets. Like other commenters, I've trained myself to touch the shutter to wake it up before I even lift it. It helps, too, that I often have a manual-focus and -aperture lens on it. My biggest 'vexation' with it is the lack of a viewfinder."

Jim Arthur: "It’s good to have you back and I’m glad the trip went well.

"I agree with you on the importance of responsiveness. I still shoot with an old EOS 6D and the combination of an optical viewfinder and back button focus allow me to grab a shot in the blink of an eye. I guess I take it for granted.

"Back in the day, DPReview included a Timing and Performance section in their reviews. I imagine this became less relevant once people got used to the idea of digital and digital performance improved across the board. I just took a look at their 2004 review of my Olympus C-8080 and there is an entire page dedicated to timed camera operations."

Omer: "The wake-up lag and the settings info lag in the viewfinder has been a Sony issue for a long time. DPReview has reported it many times and only recently has Sony deigned to change it but only in the more expensive full frames. The reputation that Sony does not understand what photographers need in cameras is justified by exactly these issues. As for the shutter lag, the E-first curtain shutter mechanism actually has one of the shortest lag times in the industry. The thing is, only the closing mechanical shutter is heard and so the perception of lag stems from not hearing the two curtain shutter mechanism. If you use the A6600 enough, you'll learn to either press the shutter before lifting it up, or in the settings keep it from going into sleep mode."

Tim Swan: "Nothing has been faster between intention and photo than my Leica M6. But here's a tip for faster iPhone camera start-up. On your iPhone, go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch. Scroll down, then select Back Tap. Select either Double Tap or Triple Tap and set it to open the camera. Now, as long as the power is on (even if you're not logged in) you can double-tap the back to open the camera app."

Mike replies: Wow. Excellent. Thank you for that.

The Best Camera in the Universe

Webb's First Deep Field

-

"[Photography] is fast becoming the
right hand of the astronomer."

—Peter Henry Emerson, Naturalistic
Photography for Students of the Art, 1889

-

"NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has delivered the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe so far. Affectionately known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this is galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 and it is teeming with thousands of galaxies—including the smallest, faintest objects ever observed.

"Webb’s image is approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length, a tiny sliver of the vast universe.

"The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s largest, most powerful, and most complex space science telescope ever built. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency."

(Photos and text courtesy NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI [Space Telescope Science Institute]. Read more of the description of Webb's First Deep Field here.)

The JWST

(Courtesy XKCD. See it at the site to read
the alt-text. Here's what L2 means.)

Mike
(Thanks to Dennis Joy and others)

Book o' the Week

The Mindful Photographer by Sophie Howarth. I only know of Sophie Howarth from her time as a curator at the Tate Modern in London, but my impression then was positive. Her brand new book (it only came out a few days ago) is about slowing down as a means of enjoying photographing more. It's said to contain a curated collection of photographs along with anecdotes and explanation.

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

Our link to B&H Photo

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

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

Speed: "NASA tells us, 'The image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago.' Remember when we used to count the seconds between a lightning flash and the subsequent thunder to calculate how far away the lightning was? It'll be quite some time before we hear a rumble from SMACS 0723. The universe sure is big."

Mike replies: It boggles my mind that Voyager 2, traveling 35,000 miles per hour, took 41 years to cross the heliopause, leaving the solar system into interstellar space. After that, the nearest star to ours is 4.246 light years away. And that's just two stars in one galaxy that has 100 thousand million stars. And then you look at the tiny patch of sky in Webb's First Deep Field, a patch of sky that could be covered by a grain of sand at arm's length, and there are many galaxies visible...it's way beyond incomprehensible.

John Krumm: "As a sci-fi fan, to me that telescope/camera seems straight out of a movie, with clean and curvy lines. It's a looker, as you would say."

Nikon SLR 1959-2022

The Nikon Single-Lens Reflex may be dead at 63.

Nikkei Asia is reporting this morning (links below) that Nikon will withdraw from the DSLR market. However, it says "production and distribution" of existing DSLRs will continue. This would parallel the end of film SLRs, when the last F, the F6, was kept in production for many years as NOS (new old stock, i.e., a last production run stockpiled and continuing to be sold as new product), the last of its noble breed, while at the same time no new F models were forthcoming and no more production of the F6 was being contemplated. If this report is based on what will become an official statement, it will mean we have already seen the last Nikon DSLR, and that there will be no more new ones to come, ever.

This may well be non-news, however. Our friend Thom Hogan, who probably knows more about Nikon than anyone at Nikon does (I'll say I speak tongue halfway in cheek, to avoid offending either party) takes a dim view of the Nikkei article, noting (links below) its lack of attribution and the mishmash of recent and older information as well as of specific and general pronouncements. (It highlights how good it is to have Thom as a Nikon analyst, gadfly, and expert; would that Rob Galbraith were still doing the same with Canon. Ah, nostalgia.)

Nikon's true all-rounder, the affordable D7500

The current Nikon DSLRs, ranked in order of desirability, are:

The D850 (pro FX/full-frame, $2,800);

The D7500 (prosumer DX/APS-C, a bargain at $999);

The D500 (pro DX/APS-C, $1,600);

The D780 (prosumer FX/full-frame, $2,200);

The D5600 (amateur/consumer DX/APS-C, $800 with kit lens);

The D6 (specialist professional FX/full-frame, $6,500—don't buy unless it's a business expense and you can depreciate it); and

The D3500 (entry/cheapie DX/APS-C; with kit lens, $650 that probably won't be money well spent).

Get 'em while you can. An era may be slouching to an end.

Here's the article on Nikkei Asia; here's Thom's commentary. Read them in sequence, but read both. Despite being at odds, it's quite possible they're both broadly right.

Mike
(Thanks to Dean Johnston)

UPDATE: Nikon has posted an apparent denial of the Nikkei report without naming Nikkei. (thanks to Wolfgang Lonien for this). The denial reads, "There was a media article regarding Nikon's withdrawal of SLR development. This media article is only speculation and Nikon has made no announcement in this regards [sic]. Nikon is continuing the production, sales and service of digital SLR. Nikon appreciate your continuous support."

Consider, however, this Ward's Auto headline from 2008: "GM Denies Reports Saturn Faces Elimination in New Restructuring Round." The article begins, "A report that suggests General Motors Corp. may kill its Saturn brand is 'wild speculation,' the auto maker says." (GM killed its Saturn brand in October of 2009.)

Or this:

September 2015: "Withdrawing from the camera business is not true and there is no official plan to stop production of cameras and lenses." —Samsung official statement.

April 2017: Samsung withdraws from the camera business.

Or this:

Olympus Corporate Strategy statement, November 2019: "For Imaging, however, we currently have no plans to sell the business. The task is therefore to stabilize and strengthen its market position. To achieve that, we...have already established a clear and exciting product roadmap for the coming months and years ... Imaging is and will continue to be an important technology and innovation driver for our other businesses." (Olympus sold its imaging business in June 2020.) 

I'm just sayin', is all I'm sayin'. I'll stick by that last sentence in the post.  —MJ.

Book o' the Week

The Mindful Photographer by Sophie Howarth. I only know of Sophie Howarth from her time as a curator at the Tate Modern in London, but my impression then was positive. Her brand new book (it only came out a few days ago) is about slowing down as a means of enjoying photographing more. It's said to contain a curated collection of photographs along with anecdotes and explanation.

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

Our link to B&H Photo

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

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

Ken: "Being a current owner of D850 and D500 cameras and having previously owned a D7500 (and having used all of them extensively), my personal experience is that the D500 should be number two on that list after D850, and at the very least, it should in no way be rated below a D7500, price notwithstanding. In my opinion, the D500 is a better value than a D7500, even if it was at twice the price."

Alex Mercado: "'…Nikkei has learned.' I won’t claim to know Nikkei's guidelines for business trends articles, but this story is stating a de facto standard; they learned there is no further development of SLRs and posted an article about it. A cry for critical journalism feels like pedantry here. I doubt the global economy is contingent on this market sector, let alone this business trend article. I don’t think we really need a source at Nikon for this. Or a press release. The lack of DSLR representation on Nikon’s home page backs the story. This may be a hard pill to swallow for Nikonians holding out for the Dƒ Mark II, but alas, the SLR preformed exceptionally to a respectable age of retirement. Farewell dear single lens reflex."

darlene: "Today [Tuesday  —Ed.] is George Eastman's birthday. To announce it may be the end of the Nikon SLR era is interesting to read on this particular day. 

Bill Tyler: "'Nikon is continuing the production, sales and service...,' but notably, not R&D."

[Note that in the following Featured Comment, Thom responds to some comments found in the full Comments Section. As an aside, it's true that I don't usually allow commenters to respond to other commenters, but there's an exception—when they're being helpful. Thom is definitely being helpful here.  —Ed.]

Thom Hogan: "A lot to comment about.

"1. 'Nikkei has learned.'

"This isn't a gold standard. It's not even a defensible standard, as it can't be assessed. A reputable news organization's standard would require something along the lines of '[publication] has learned, based upon interviews with a top executive who provided the information only if they could remain anonymous.'

"The reason for this is simple: you're identifying where you got this information from in at least a general fashion. Nikon is a top-down managed company. The only place such a decision would have been made is at the top. Indeed, I've heard from several lower level Nikon managers, but I don't trust their statements because they weren't backed with anything that indicated that a decision came from higher up.

"2. The FTZ adapter was a half-hearted attempt.

"I'm a little surprised that Nikon didn't include AIS indexing, though I suspect that was because of the fear that someone would attempt to put a pre-AI lens on the adapter and break something. But I'm not surprised that we didn't get a screw-drive motor, as it has power implications and complicates the focus performance. Until we got the Z9, battery life has been a bit too shy to consider adding a constant power draw.

"3. DSLRs are [not desirable]

"Sure they are. To some people for some things. The D500, for instance, is still in the top three APS-C cameras you can buy today, and only recently eclipsed in any way (by the X-H2S for sure, and in some ways, arguably by the R7). And most people denigrating the D6 haven't actually used one. It's strange that Nikon didn't manage to tell anyone what the key difference in that camera was, but all of us using it can tell you: state-of-the-art focus, with superb user control. Those dedicated AF sensors are huge and fast (and yes, quite different than the D5 ones).

"4. Nikon denies the article

"As Mike implies, they didn't. Note the disconnection in Nikon's 'denial' between development and production. Nikon is still producing, selling, and supporting DSLRs, for sure, and I don't see that changing any time soon. But nothing was said about continued development.

"Bottom line is that DSLRs will be abandoned by Canon and Nikon at some point. The pertinent question to ask is whether there is any continued development going on. In Canon's case, I'm pretty sure that there is no new DSLR development going on (based upon off-the-record discussions with a couple of people who might actually know). In Nikon's case, I'm not so sure. I've heard rumblings about one project, though not in the last two months. That 'last two months' is critical, by the way. Nikon top management makes decisions just prior to their fiscal year end (March 31) and then begins pushing those down the chain during and after the financial and shareholder meetings that follow. So it's possible that Nikon has made a decision to stop DSLR development. However, I wouldn't think this would be conveyed to a 'Nikkei staff writer.' The old Nikkei would have reserved passing on such information under one of their top reporters' bylines, and alluded to where the information came from."

Rob L.: "If you have to end a line, having the D6, D850, D780, and D500 stand as the last examples of the breed is a fine tribute. I love my Zs, truly love the Z glass, but I’d still like to have a D500 to glue to my 200–500mm. It would have been nice if Nikon has been able to produce one final DLSR and recognize the breed formally; but the pandemic plus a shifting market won. Thankfully they weren’t too late to adapt—or at least, I hope they weren’t!"

The iPhone at 15: 'You Have to Adapt. What Else AreYou Going to Do?'

iPhone doodle

The first iPhones came on the market at about this time 15 years ago.

It's an era now. One that has hugely impacted our hobby. As Enric Martí puts it, "You go through life having to change. The world is moving quickly. You have to adapt. What else are you going to do?" That's from a nice article and portfolio called "The iPhone at 15" from the AP that has some interesting reflections on the iPhone and a diverse selection of photographers' personal pictures. Enric Martí, a native of Spain, is deputy director of photography for the AP.

Enric Martí

By the way, about the picture at the top: I'm sitting here drinking that mug of tea, which helped me discover that the iPhone has parallax! I was very self-indulgently taking a picture of the pretty light, as I often do, when I noticed a particular streak of light that was on the screen but that I wasn't seeing with my eyes. Turned out it was because the lens is offset up in the corner and the view is slightly different from what I typically see when from behind the screen. When I moved my head around, the little reflection showed up. I moved in on it to show it better. It's mild, and you'll only notice it doing closeups, but yeah, a sort of parallax.

I stopped off at the Verizon Store to look at the 13 Pro again. My old phone is starting to worry me, acting buggy. I do need a dependable phone...I think I bought my current phone right around this time six years ago, back when the iPhone itself was only nine.

Mike
(Thanks to Kenneth Tanaka)

Book o' the Week:

The Mindful Photographer by Sophie Howarth. I only know of Sophie Howarth from her time as a curator at the Tate Modern in London, but my impression then was positive. Her brand new book (it only came out a few days ago) is about slowing down as a means of enjoying photographing more. It's said to contain a curated collection of photographs along with anecdotes and explanation.

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

Here's our link to B&H Photo

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

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

Peter Komar: "I am not trying to spend your money but get that darn phone. I have the 12 Pro and for me it has brought back the joy of photography. I have mentioned this before but it is very easy to shoot IR with just a filter and shoot in night mode. The ease of use and editing on the phone adds huge bonus points."

Albert Erickson: "Mike, I haven't commented in awhile since I have been away, but I saw that you were looking at the iPhone 13 pro and will tell you it is truly an amazing piece of photo equipment. I used to say I would never use my phone for serious photography, but I have changed. I now use my phone much more than a real camera. Further, I can print nicely small 5x7 or 8.5 x11 prints from the 12 MP built into the phone. Just an observation. I think you would find the phone very useful from a photographic standpoint. All the best, Eric."

Joseph: "I'm overdue for a new iPhone too, but I can't bring myself to do it this late in the cycle. The new ones will likely be here in September. Especially when you skip several generations, iPhone camera improvement is really quite remarkable. I still use an OM-D E-M5 from 2012, but an iPhone 5 from that same era? No thanks."

Chris A Beloin: "Turns out that 92% of Apple products are made in China, and our trade relationship with them is very much in question with recent events. Better get that iPhone now in case it takes a couple of years for Apple to resource manufacturing to another location, should that supply chain get sanctions, etc."

Gavin Paterson: "I bought an iPhone 13 six months ago; it’s a revelation! I have Nikon, Fuji, Canon, Sony digital systems, as well as Nikon, Olympus, Leica, Ricoh and Voigtlander film equipment, but most of the time have just the iPhone in my pocket, so now (at last! says my wife), will cull what I have to be subject-specific, such as telephoto for wildlife, and enjoy a simpler life courtesy of Apple!"

V.I. Voltz: "You should see the parallax when the 13 Pro Max can't decide if something is macro or not and starts jumping between the 28mm-e lens and the 13mm-e lens. Hope you don't have a latent Brian malfunction. [I love that typo so I left it in. —Ed.] But, I must say, it's about the only flaw I can find with the camera, within its basic limitations."

Rich: "I went from an iPhone 6 to a 13 Pro and I can confirm that the cameras are amazing, considering their size. I use it a lot as a feed for Instagram and visual note-taking. Also only have to charge it every couple of days, although I don’t make a lot of calls, so YMMV."

Hugh: "Hmmm...you feel you need to change cameras frequently because of your job as a photography commentator? The most important photographic instrument of today is the phone—iPhone or Samsung—yet you are on a six year old iPhone? That's a bit like still shooting with a Canon 50D in DSLR terms.  :-)  There was a big jump in picture quality with the Samsung S10 (2019), and probably with the iPhone around that date. In this country one can get an immaculate refurbished S10 for £200 and a sim only contract."

Central Camera Reopens on Chicago's Loop

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

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

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

Block Club Chicago has the story here.

Mike
(Thanks to Ken Tanaka)

Book o' the Week:

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

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

Heeeeere's...B&H Photo

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Father's Day! And, Juneteenth

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

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

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

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

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

Mike

Book o' the Week:

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

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

Heeeeere's...B&H Photo

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

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

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

Great Expectations

Matt O'Brien wrote in response to yesterday's post:

"All of these reasons are why I am waiting for the [Leica] CL2."

The late Leica CL. It was Leica's me-too X100[x],
but failed to slay the dragon.

Alas, Fuji excepted, these are woeful times for people who like smaller-than-24x36mm sensors, and the Leica CL is one more reason. On May 17th, Leica Rumors published an internal document from Leica advising its dealers how to handle any questions they might get about the CL and TL from "distributors, customers, and the media." Essentially, the document says that sales of cameras with smaller sensors are in die Toilette (again, Fuji excepted, I would guess) but that the FF segment is still a bright spot, and that this state of affairs "has prompted Leica Camera AG to discontinue its CL-/TL2-system cameras." The company adds that it'll be concentrating on FF cameras going forward.

On the good side, the rumor filters through that Leica is surprised at the success of the Q series. (See Peter Wright's comment.)

Leica did affirm that it'll service any CL or TL2 for six years from date of purchase. B&H lists the CL as discontinued, but, in what is no doubt a glitch, lists the TL2 as being both available and discontinued. I have a feeling if you were to try ordering a TL2 with lens (same price as the TL2 without lens), your order would be cancelled.

Six years might be a good prediction for the extent of survival for "legacy" smaller-sensor ILCs. (The legacy is from the days when "chips," as they were called then, were exponentially more expensive the larger they were.) If I were to wax acerbic as is my wont betimes, I would fire off a snarky comment about how we'll soon all have to drive giant pickups like the GMC Deniali [sic] and take pictures with proper bricks and bags of giant lenses if we can't be satisfied, like good sheeple, with the phones Apple gives us. But I won't go there, and thou art welcome. You might think Fuji is also excepted from this six-year dire prediction, but they're only one decision away from it. Remember that Nikon was "committed" to APS-C in the early days of DSLRs, until it wasn't any more.

But, as Matt knows by now from other commenters, he's unlikely to get a CL2. But hey, Matt, join my club—I'm waiting for the Panasonic GX8 Mark II. Comma, dammit. Miss Havisham is still waiting for her bridegroom, too—we all have our great expectations!

Mike

P.S. Note the categories for this post. :-)

Book o' the Week:

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

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

Link to B&H Photo

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

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

xf mj: "I just upgraded to a used 'big dragoon' Olympus to pair with a new-to-me 80–300mm-e lens, but these last posts had me really thinking I should replace my ol' 2011 E-M5 + 20mm combo with a Fuji X100v. I still very much enjoy the digital equivalent of a walk-around, almost pocketable RF with a wide-normal, and those posts were a good reminder of that love. For a few years every other comment I made on TOP expressed my allegiance to that E-M5 combo.

"So I do a deep looking back at the image quality etc of all these guys. It's all good. Quite good. What the industry achieved with that Fuji, probably with this CL, with the E-M5 Mark III, etc., is more than good enough. They are all great. They are all capable cameras, some with IS, some with good weather sealing. All I ask of everyone who owns these cameras now is to treat them nice and sell 'em cheap to me someday on eBay!

"The market has briefly forgotten this segment for the time being. Hopefully it will twist back around. Some possible evidence in the vehicle realm: I live in a rural coast area, and all the big truck bros are now into buying used Minis to drive around these days. They want stick shifts, good gas mileage, and some fun handling. Gives me a weird kind of hope. Heck, maybe a fun-to-drive, compact, reliable, light-duty truck will be back in vogue soon too!"

Mike: Strange, I just noticed the other day that I'm seeing more Minis on the road around here. There's a Mini parked in a driveway that used to serve as parking for one of those 700-HP Dodge Challengers.

A mini point-counterpoint:

Kirk (partial comment): "As to the Leica CL, which I own. The images out of that small and agile system are extremely good. It's a product that required a better educated market, and the interchangeable lens capability makes it head and shoulders better than the Fuji X100V. I owned that camera as well—until I shot with the CL. Then it was 'Adios X100V.'"

Kenneth Tanaka (partial comment): "Re: the Leica CL, alas, 'tis fading to history. No surprise to me. I owned one for a couple of years. Yes it was kinda kute. Yes, it loved M lenses via an adapter. Yes its native lenses were nice. But the package, as a whole, was, typically for Leica, overpriced, outdated, quirky, and under-featured. I felt no sentimental pangs when UPS took mine away."

stmpjmpr: "Re 'Leica is surprised at the success of the Q series': I'm surprised that they're surprised: The Q gives a lot of the Leica feel and quality, but for those of us whose eyes aren't up to the manual focusing of the M. Its simplicity, quality, and M-inspired styling are alluring. To Yuan's point in the comments, it is EVF-based, but it's quite nice in manual focus mode."

darlene: "In 2010 I purchased my last DSLR, the D700 for an Iceland trip. My favorite Iceland photos were actually made with the smaller Canon G7 because it stayed in my pocket and was easily accessible, although the D700 images are 'prettier.' Not long after, I acquired my first mirrorless camera, an APS-C Sony NEX-7. The D700 was sold off after it slept for a year in my gear closet. I shoot tech cameras with digital backs in the studio, and Fuji APS-C cameras for all my other needs. No longer do I have a need for the 24x36 sensor. If I did not shoot medium format, that might be a different story, but medium format and tech cameras make me happy. The 4/3 system never interested me because I found APS-C good enough for my smaller format needs."

The Nikon Z7II, UFOs, and Icebreakers

Dave Levingston showed up to visit a few days ago. He's a reader from Ohio who has an uncommon ability to pursue dedicated photographic projects. One is environmental nudes; he was on his way back from Maine (to his wife—he's happily married) where he reunited with the model of one of his famous pictures 20 years after the original photo was made.

He tells me, "my models seldom get paid. Most are volunteers. I try to make sure they don’t have any costs involved with shooting with me. I give them gas money and buy lunch, etc. But I’m serious about sharing the credit for the work. The models get all the photos and full rights to use them. I share copyright. I consider them co-creators of the photos we make together. It’s just a manifestation of the old hippie in me."

Dave Levingston

You might remember that in his work life, Dave was a civilian Public Affairs official for the Air Force. An interesting part of his purview was that if you called Wright-Patterson AFB looking for information about UFOs, Dave was a guy you might end up talking to.

Dave has a new project he's gearing up to start. He's going to be documenting his hometown, Perryton, Ohio, where he grew up seven decades ago. As a photo-historical note, "Perryton is only a few miles from another tiny town, West Carlisle, where Clarence H. White, Sr. grew up. His family moved to Newark, the 'big town' about 15 miles away, when he was a teenager."

Perryton town has only 92 residents and he hopes to photograph as many of them as he can. He'd like to photograph all of them, but he has enough experience to expect that, inevitably, some people will balk and refuse to cooperate. So it goes.

Mighty nice Nikon
He'll be doing the new project with a Nikon Z7 Mark II, a 45.7-MP full-frame body. Dave started with Nikon in 1968 with a Nikon F and stayed with them till he got frustrated waiting for mirrorless, when he switched to Micro 4/3. So now he's back with Nikon, although he says he's not giving up his Micro 4/3 gear, which he loves.

He reported only two downsides to his Z7 II, apart from the time he spent waiting for the backordered 24–120mm lens: first, it's too complicated, such that he doesn't quite feel comfortable with it, or trusting of it, quite yet; and second, that with camera and lens he's noticed pronounced diffraction for the first time in his experience. He avoids ƒ/16 and ƒ/22 with the combination. You can see some samples of this at the blog at his website.

Believe it or not—I know they've been out since 2018—but I have never seen or held any Nikon Z-series camera before.

I was pleasantly impressed. Ergonomically it fit my hand like a glove and the materials felt "warm" and hand-friendly (in contrast to the Sony A7 III, which I felt had unpleasant surfaces and was awkward to hold), and the body seemed to be decently light (615 g, 21.7 oz.). The viewfinder gets out of the way, and the controls are well placed as far as I could tell.

But the thing that really impressed me—I do know this is "old hat" to those of you who have been following the lineup more closely—is the marvelous "third ring." Well, it's the third ring on Dave's zoom, but you can assign different functions to the focus-by-wire ring even on the primes. Dave had his camera set up so that the third ring, which on his lens is the one closest to the camera body, controls exposure compensation (EC).

Now, I know not everybody chooses to shoot this way, but for many years my preference has been to use EC to fine-tune exposure. On many mirrorless cameras you can choose to see the effects in the electronic viewfinder (EVF). (On film cameras, you just had to guess, based on experience.) Well, Dave had his Nikon set up to use the third ring for EC. It was, in a word, marvelous.

Setting EC is the thing I like least, by far, on the Fuji X-H1. I liked my original X-T1 because of the nice dedicated EC dial, but the X-H1 turned that plus into a distinct minus. The fiddly, balky, inconvenient EC setting on the X-H1 makes EC an afterthought and, for me, a continuing annoyance.

But Dave's Nikon? Best EC control ever, in my experience of cameras. It would be worth switching for. (Time for Odysseus to tie himself to the mast again, I guess.)

Pictures as icebreakers
After dinner we walked down to the waterfront in Hammondsport, where I idly made a pano as we were standing there:

That's only about a fifth of the length of our long, skinny lake (I live about a long Aaron Rodgers pass from the shore, 14 miles or so north of where this picture was taken). A while later, when it had gotten darker, a couple came walking along and passed us. While the woman went on down the wharf to explore, the man helpfully improved my composition by walking into my earlier picture:

I kind of liked it on the phone screen, so I just asked the man if he'd like to have it. I sent it to his phone. Turns out his name is Joshua and he's from New York City, where he's a political science professor at a small college. His wife, Erin, who soon joined us, is a physician's assistant. She regaled us with horror stories of the pandemic, which was dire in New York in the early days. They met in California. We ended up talking for quite a long time before the encroaching darkness brought an end to the conversation. Interesting, intelligent, likable folks.

So pictures can be icebreakers! I like to engage strangers in conversation, but I've found it works better when I'm with someone. When I'm alone, people seem to be too wary, or maybe "leery" is the word. There's something about being with a friend that reassures people that you're okay, and loosens them up a bit. If I were photographing my old hometown, I'd hire a high school girl to be my assistant. She wouldn't actually have to do much of anything. People are just more relaxed if they can see that someone else finds you trustworthy.

Maybe I just look creepy? That's a possibility too I guess. I've learned on Zoom that when my face is at rest, I look stern. Here I am with Dave's Z7II:

Another example of that honorable old genre we all have examples of, "the photo friend across the dining table." (I am no longer adding to a different but similar genre, "test shots of camera store counterpeople.")

Dave made it back to Ohio, and Emily, without incident.

Mike

Book o' the Week

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

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

Link to B&H

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

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

John Krumm: "A month or so ago I bought a Z6 just to try it, lightly used and a good deal. Handling wise, I think it's my favorite mirrorless, more like a compact DSLR, with good build quality and a clear viewfinder. Fits me just right. Plus, the IBIS seems a little better than my Fuji IBIS, which is surprising. It's a keeper. And the Z 50mm ƒ/1.8 S I bought for it is one of the sharpest lenses I've used. I'm also on the waiting list for the 24–120mm."

Tom Burke: "I'm sure that Nikon is a fine camera—all these mirrorless cameras are—but it's not small, is it? Especially with that lens. I checked some weights earlier today: 700+ grams for the body, and 630+ grams for the lens, making about 1.35 kg. That's approaching three pounds.

"And talking of pounds, they're not cheap either, are they? In the UK the Z7II retails for a shade under £3,000, and that lens adds another £1,000+. Far too much for my budget these days. And of course if you want the ƒ/2.8 zooms, you need to take a deep breath...the standard trio (14–24mm, 24–70mm, and 70–200mm) are each over £2,000—call it £7k for the set. I was thinking of putting my Canon 90D up on eBay recently, but I suspect the announcement of Canon's EOS R10 and EOS R7 APS-C mirrorless cameras a week or so ago will have eviscerated secondhand values for the DSLRs, so I might as well hang on to it.

"But more and more I'm using the iPhone. I took the 90D to Dubai in February and didn't take it out of the hotel room, whereas the iPhone got a lot of photographic use."

New All-Time Record Set for a Photograph

There's a new "most expensive photograph ever sold," for the first time in 11 years. Like eight of the top ten most expensive photographs, it was sold by Christie's, the auction house founded in 1766.

The original of Man Ray's much-reproduced Le Violon d'Ingres sold for $12.4 million last Saturday in New York in its first-ever appearance at auction. The pre-auction estimate of five to seven million was more than the previous high record for a photograph, the $4.3 million set by Andreas Gursky's Photoshopped riverscape Rhein II in 2011.

The Man Ray was the top offering from the collection of Melvin and Rosalind Gersten Jacobs, art collectors who had connections to the surrealists. They bought the work directly from Man Ray himself in 1962. Melvin was a former CEO of Saks Fifth Avenue. After his death in 1967, Rosalind, who had been an executive at Macy's, continued the collection.

Man Ray has a strong auction record and an obvious appeal to major collectors, having sold several other works for multi-million dollar prices. (Elton John, who paid the then-world-record price for a Man Ray in 1993, says "If I'm going to die, I'll be killed by a falling Man Ray," because the picture hangs above the headboard in his bedroom.) Wikipedia tells us that "le violon d'Ingres" is a French expression for a hobby or pastime; apparently the French neoclassical painter Ingres (roughly pronounced, according to Jeff in the Comments, "ANG-ruh") played the violin when he wasn't working on his art. And as James Sinks pointed out in the Comments, "The title and the image itself also reference 'The Valpinçon Bather,' one of Ingres' most famous paintings," Valpinçon having been the name of one of the painting's owners.

The auction battle was between two anonymous bidders on the phone, one represented by Christie’s New-York-based photographs specialist Darius Himes, and the other by its Paris-based photographs specialist Elodie Morel-Bazin. Her bidder won, but it hasn't been announced who either of them are.

The artwork was first published in the French surrealist magazine Littérature in June, 1924. The model was Alice Prin, a.k.a. Kiki de Montparnasse, an artist's model and libertine who became a celebrity of the Années folles (crazy years) of Jazz Age Paris. She and Man Ray had a tempestuous eight-year affair, and he took hundreds of pictures of her. "It bothered me a little to take off my clothes," she wrote in her memoirs, "but it was the custom." Le Violon d'Ingres, whether or not it was intended as a sort of sneering dirty joke (play her like a fiddle, or, perhaps, she's my hobby), or merely a comment on the similarity in form between a stringed instrument and a woman's body, is one of the best-known works of surrealist photography, and a symbol of the movement.

Mike
(Thanks to James Sinks)

Book o' the Week

It's Not About the F-Stop by Jay Maisel. Jay was suggested by Moose and this book was suggested by Albert Smith—it's actually my favorite too (I got mixed up before). I got to meet Jay Maisel once. Everybody should meet him in his books, if they haven't already. Might help; cannot hurt. Jay's is some of the most positive, hopeful, and generous picture-taking advice you'll find.

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

B&H has this!

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

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

Neils: "There are a couple of interesting TATE-produced videos of Elton John's photography collection on YouTube. One scene that stuck to my mind was the one where he proudly points to a Man Ray photo for which he paid a world record price in 1993. His response to the question of why he paid a record price was (besides 'I love it') that it was with this purchase he realised he was a serious collector (at 2:15).

"I first thought it strange to see his pride in having paid a record price—after all, how hard is it to place the highest bid if you have a lot of money? Upon reflection, my most expensive book purchase two years ago, was a special edition of Elliott Erwitt's 'Pittsburgh 1950' signed with a signed silver gelatine print for GBP 750. A significant amount of money for me and probably, in retrospect, also a time when I had to accept I was not just a collector of random photo books any more.

"Elton John's comment above makes it clear that nothing in collecting is logical and value is only relative to what you have available. Another good video of EJ's collection."

Mike replies: The top item on my admittedly very short bucket list—I'll never see Patagonia—would be to visit Elton's photograph collection. I'll never get to, but I sure would like to.

Mark Sampson: "When I worked as a museum assistant at the Phillips Collection a few years ago, they held a major Man Ray retrospective. As my job required me to stand all day in the galleries, I became very familiar with a great deal of his work (including 'Le Violon d'Ingres'). I'll admit that I didn't spend any time wondering about the sale value of any of his works, but I did (and still do) wonder if the print on the walls at the Phillips was the only example ever made. Given the astronomical price it sold for, it might very well be. If not...."

Dogman: "Whoa! Big money for the Man. I downloaded a low-res JPEG of this photo back in February—actually on my birthday. Maybe I'll print it and proclaim myself as the winner of the bidding as a birthday gift to myself. I think Man Ray would appreciate the gesture."

Trump Makes Headlines

...But not in a good way. Click past the break at your discretion. (Don't want to make anyone upset.)

Favorite M-Mount Lens

Just out of (idle) curiosity, do you have a favorite M-mount lens?

From Leitz, Leica, or any other maker.

If you want to, show us a picture of it, or a picture taken with it. (To add a picture to the Comments section of this TypePad blog, see here.) But no picture required.

For me it's down to two. But I'll tell you about them later.

=   +   =   +   =

Today is the culmination of the year's biggest event in sports, by my lights. It's the third and fourth sessions of the 2022 World Snooker Championships at the fabled Crucible in Sheffield, UK. We don't play the sport here—in fact, most Americans have never heard of it—so it's not on TV. I keep up on YouTube.

One of the greatest players the game has ever seen is currently crushing his highly accomplished younger opponent. But no guarantees—anything can and does happen. If he does go on to win, he will become the oldest World Champion ever, and he will match the formerly unassailable record of seven titles set by the great Stephen Hendry of Scotland, who was by far the dominant player of the 1990s.

If you are curious and want to catch up a little bit about this superb game (it really is subtle and beautiful) and its acknowledged genius, check out Sam Knight's New Yorker article about Ronnie O'Sullivan here.

By the way, there seems to have been some talk about moving the World Championship away from the Crucible, and making the games shorter?!? What madness! That's the trouble with the British—no respect for tradition!*

Looking forward to hearing your M-lens choice, if you have one, and care to share.

Mike

*I'm kidding, don't bridle, bristle, or take umbrage.

Book o' the Week

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

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

B&H is the stonker, the smasher, the stunner, the wonder, the winner

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

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

Richard Alton: "O'Sullivan is ambidextrous. I remember him getting bored in a competitive tournament some years ago and playing a complete frame left handed, instead of his usual right handed. He won the frame, infuriating his opponent, who felt completely humiliated."

Mike replies: I believe Larry Bird did the same thing once in a basketball game....

Goran: "Just to quote an anonymous commenter from The Guardian: 'We don't want to see another Trump victory, do we?' Jokes aside, I just have to tell you I was delighted to read this post of yours. You have just reminded me how lucky I am for being able to watch snooker on TV, in my otherwise insignificant country in the South-East of Europe. But we can watch Eurosport TV!  :-)  Oh, and in this moment Ronnie is just one frame away from being crowned as the World Champion, for the seventh time!"

Mike replies: It was a marvelous thing, just marvelous. Judd will one day surpass Ronnie's record for centuries. He's on pace for it. But there will never be another Ronnie.

Tom Bell: "Snooker…well, what a match…what a result…the greatest player the world has ever seen beating Trump…what is not to like…."

Mike Hits the Big Time

Very wonderful red-letter day for me: my first-ever article for The New Yorker just went live at newyorker.com. It's called "Your Camera Roll Contains a Masterpiece." Comments/thoughts/ reactions welcomed. 

Please tell your friends! Post on Facebook! Butters' friend Wex is here to play, so I'll have more to say later. (Guess that's always true.)

Mike

UPDATE: Check it out...it also made Apple News+ (you did know you can search Apple News+ for "photography," right? Okay, I didn't):

And Ken Tanaka noted that it made the evening's list of featured stories for subscribers:

Whew, what a day. One thing I also wanted to point out is that my editor there spent a very generous amount of his time with me, and the articles are carefully crafted with the help of various professionals in addition to his expert editing and direction. My piece ended up far stronger than it started out.

Book of Interest this Week

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

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

Today at B&H Photo

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

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

Stelios: "I was thinking just that yesterday. What am I going to do with the thousands of pictures on my phone? What happens when the phone goes? Sure I download them on my computer but still, they are so many! Most of them notes. Thousands of my dog, most failures, or identical to each other (you can only have so many pictures of a dog lying upside down, all the same and yet all different because they happen now!). Congratulations on the New Yorker article. I hope there’s more coming."

Niels: "Great article, congratulations!

"I don't understand why they couldn't link to this blog in the credits, but they appear only to do internal links.

"English isn't my first language, but the article seems a bit more polished than I am used to from you—which is understandable given the medium, but I kind of prefer the style on this blog—it is more lively—in lack of better word.

"I hope you will also notify your readers when the next article is up."

Mike replies: Well, on them not linking here...it might be a little like when I hired one of the caregivers at my son's daycare center to come stay with him while I traveled to the yearly photo trade show at the Javits Center. The neighbors said she held parties at my condo every night and that they heard my three-year-old crying at midnight. She left some shot-glasses in the dishwasher, and one of my bedsheets was in the dumpster down in the garage with cigarette burns on it. When I asked the director of the daycare center about it, she said, "we can only guarantee their behavior while they're here." (The next year, I got my Mom to come stay with Xander.) I would guess that about sums up why The New Yorker doesn't link directly to things like triflin' lowdown no-editor-having blogs and the like—they can only guarantee my behavior when I'm there. (Where's that laughing emoji with the crying eyes when you need him?)

Animesh Ray: "Beautiful article. Thoughtful. Ruefully romantic. Sparkling with insights. Congratulations."

Antonis R: "Well, first: Congratulations Mike! To New Yorker's credit, they know to pick among the very best. I have been reading your wordsmithing since the days of the 37th Frame (I always opened the magazine from the back!) and this one, referencing 'Your Camera Roll' suggested a continuity in tone. Encouraging, evocative, informative, at once very personal and truly universal. It's in a different voice than, say, blog posts with their own casual charm. Making us create a mental image for a picture that only appears in words is brilliant, but how the subject switches from 'a woman in dark clothing' to 'we had gone to...' takes us across the chasm from generic to intimate and to the emotional essence of the story in a quick flash. Some sharp writing there.

"I know things live in the Cloud these days, but I wish a selection of your writing would come together, ink-on-paper, in a bound volume. A photography how-to manual with no technical instructions."

Mike replies: I tried once, but I'm too disorganized. Couldn't bring it together. I did hire a friend's daughter to clip all my magazine articles, rather than throw them away. Filled six (or was it eight? Where's the fact-checker?) three-ring binders! But they're here, at least.

Patrick Murphy: "OMG! Just saw your New Yorker article (via Apple News+, not from your blog). As you began to describe the 'woman by the sea' photo, a chill went up my spine. I purchased that photo during your print offer last year. It was the only print I’ve bought from you in the two decades of my reading your exceptional blog—the only print that really moved me. And now here it is shared with the world at large. The photo alone is an evocative masterpiece. Your description of its taking and meaning to you is what put it over the top for me. Congratulations to you on your as-always insightful writing getting the audience it deserves!"

Aaron: "After thinking more about your piece: given that we are awash in images and that our phones give us such easy access to making photographs I think you should write something on when not to take a picture. I hasten to say that this isn’t motivated by digital grouchiness or nostalgia for the good 'ol days. Rather, I’m interested in how not taking a photograph can be a way of practicing taking better photographs. I remember reading once that in a piece of music the negative spaces—the pauses, decrescendos, rests—were as or more important than the positive spaces—the notes, chords, accents, and so forth. Music is only music when the notes are framed by emptiness. A set of notes played continuously is noise not music. In our image saturated world—and our image saturated personal lives—perhaps there’s an analogy to be made. The images we do have are enhanced by the images we intentionally refrain from making. I also remember (though I can’t recall who) a professional nature photographer saying that he could only photograph a small percentage of the beautiful things he saw simply because the other things would not work as a photograph. Knowing when not to take a picture was part of his craft.

"Just this morning, clouds are clearing after several gray days and they have a the clarity and brilliance that seems only to come after rain—but these particular clouds in this particular setting won’t photograph well. Learning to appreciate the photos I do have may be part and parcel with remembering to appreciate the moments that can’t be photographs, and crucially appreciating them as moments, not as potential photographs. Again, I don’t mean this as general life advice (don’t let photography rob you of appreciation for what can’t be photographed). But, rather, I wonder if there’s something to learn about taking better photographs by paying attention to what can’t be photographed successfully."

Curt Gerston: "I’ve been a New Yorker subscriber since my dad got me my first subscription as a going-to-college gift in 1986. Great magazine…you absolutely belong. Congrats!"

Alvan: "Congratulations, Mike! A lovely, fluent, illuminating piece. You're an inspiration in many ways. Long may these—pictures, pieces, muses—continue! Long-time reader (and lurker) here, harking from Singapore."

Andre Y: "Congratulations Mike! To the story of NatGeo editors wanting a surfeit of photos to distill down to 15–20 perfect ones for the story, it's thought that in documentary filmmaking, an 80X ratio (that's eighty times) is about the right amount of footage for B-roll. That is, you need to shoot 80 times as much footage as you might use for the ancillary, illustrative stuff in your film."

Open Mike: Imbroglio

["Open Mike" is the Editorial page of TOP, wherein Yr. Hmbl. Ed. recklessly wades into frays.]

The snow squalls up here are really something. One minute it's clear and sunny, and the next minute the wind is gusting and swirling and the snow is dancing in the air moving up, down, and sideways like schools of tiny fish. Visibility plummets to a few hundred feet and the headlights of oncoming cars are all you see of them at first. Then all of a sudden the road on a distant hillside is glowing with sunlight amid the gray melee, small patches of blue sky begin to open and close up again, the wind and snow abate, and ten minutes later the squall is gone and it's bright and clear again.

Never mind trying to take a picture of it—the amazing thing about it is how it changes all around you and how you can drive from one kind of weather to the next in an eighth of a mile, and then to another. When the skies in different directions look like different days. It can go from peaceful to stormy breathtakingly quickly.

In his obituary
...Speaking of which, I'm feeling sorrowful about the Will Smith imbroglio.

I have two questions: first, did Chris Rock know Jada Pinkett-Smith suffers from alopecia? Because if he didn't, and he thought Jada's hair was just a fashion statement (she looked good, right? Sure looked like fashion), then it was a very different joke. Second question, did Will Smith realize that G.I. Jane was a movie in which the female lead shaved her head? Because if he didn't, that could explain his initial laughter. Just laughing along at Chris Rock giving his family a call-out from the stage. I mean, Chris had just said, "Jada, I love ya."

If Chris knew it was a medical condition, then he went too far. It's a cheap shot, even if the affliction is hardly the worst thing in the world. The Academy Awards isn't a roast. And shouldn't he know not to insult another guy's wife? Yet Smith's response was an order of magnitude worse. Misdemeanor battery in front of ten 16.6 million people? I feel sorry for him. He has damaged his own reputation. Probably not irreparably, but at the same time, it'll be mentioned in his obituary, probably. And, painfully, he cut the legs out from under his own moment of glory, which should have been the triumphant culmination of a worthy career—his first Oscar for Best Actor—which, now, no one will be talking about. Didn't he have a solid image as a person of cheerful intensity, warm good humor, and positive energy? Has anyone ever seriously suggested that's not his real nature? To see him act the way he did on such a huge stage was so bizarre it was no wonder people thought it was a performance, a skit, planned out ahead of time.

One thing that really annoys me is that racist America is going to have a snark- and smirk-up. Ya hate that. And finally, the Academy saying, "We do not condone violence in any form." What?! Do they not go to the movies? Hollywood not condoning violence...now that's rich. Hollywood practically exists to condone violence. It could be mistaken for its very mission.

Will apologized in writing. But what should happen (well, in Mike-world, and we all know I have my head in the clouds, at least when it isn't in a snow-squall) is: Chris and Will should meet, talk it out, then hold a joint press conference in which Chris apologizes to Jada and Will apologizes to Chris. In that way the two of them would show their fans, young people everywhere, and the whole world how real men handle themselves in the wake of unfortunate and all-too-human lapses of temper and judgment—how real men act, in other words, after it gets too real.

But then, I don't follow Hollywood. I have no idea about the histories between the players, the state of the Smiths' marriage, other pressures, anything. To be honest, while I'm a fan of Chris Rock's standup (and of Everybody Hates Chris, and I'm surprised there have been no jokes), I've never seen a movie with Will Smith in it. I just know he's a top star. And that it's easier to do what he did to Chris Rock than to The Rock.

Don't like Gauguin
'Kay, now I have a very serious question, something that's been bothering me, and that I've been thinking about, for quite some time. Is it okay to separate the art from the artist? When we know an artist is a pig or worse, does that make it not okay to like the art? Bill Cosby's comedy records, Woody Allen's Annie Hall? Did Kevin Spacey taint American Beauty after the fact?

Composer Percy Grainger was an anti-semite. Paul Gauguin reportedly took three child-brides in Tahiti...and gave them all syphilis. And the less you know about the British sculptor Eric Gill's incest, the better. Pablo Picasso was probably really dreadful to women. Is it easier if it's farther back in history? Carravaggio was a murderer, and his rap sheet and court record reportedly filled many pages.

I'd be interested in your opinion. I'll give mine later.

Let me just make one (again: sorrowful) prediction...that there will be a spike in assaults on comedians.

Hope I'm wrong, hope I'm wrong.

Mike

Book of Interest this Week

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

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

Today at B&H Photo

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

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

Michael: "Once you learn that some artist had some deep flaw and had acted badly, even abominably, you may never be able quite to set that thought or judgement aside. But if we recognize that the line between good and evil runs through the heart of everyone—I think that's Solzhenitsyn—then we might retrieve the excellence in their work, even if that excellence is darkened by the artist's works beyond art. 'Let he who is without sin....' Or put this another way: what would we lose if we let our acceptance of 'Guernica' be wholly eclipsed by our censure of Picasso's behaviour with women?"

Mike replies: For me it's even neater and more excruciating, because it's 'Mother and Child' at Chicago, a painting that bowled me over. So then I'm dealing with a beloved expression of motherhood painted by a man who used and mistreated women...gak.

Michel Hardy-Vallée: "Well, since you asked...

"The ethics/aesthetics problem is often approached from a 'clean slate' perspective, suggesting that the general case is people consuming art in the blissful ignorance of their creators' assholery. And so it becomes a big turning point when taa-daaa! that so-called genius turns out to be despicable.

"But that is not true at all. We always know that such-and-such is shady, we already know that to get there, they made actions that are wrong on a spectrum. So we're constantly negotiating some kind of willful denial in exchange for entertainment or enlightenment.

"Gifting innocence and genius to artists has always been the most dangerous inheritance of aesthetics. No, I'm not asking for Plato's exclusion of artists from his Republic on moral grounds, but I'm calling on people to be reminded that we never give a free pass to ordinary people the way we tend to do with artists. You hate your bigoted uncle, and will grudgingly share a holiday meal with him, but you won't praise his genius, and ask others to 'separate the art from the man,' whatever his art may be.

"Denying agency is exactly at the heart of the Oscar kerfuffle. If understand the twisted macho logic of the event, it means that a wife is a property to be defended? The person targeted by the joke was unable to stand up for herself and had to be 'protected' like an object? She could not respond in a way that reflect her point of view, and someone had to think for her? You mean, like a child? F*ck this paternalist sexist shit.

"If I were to try to 'protect' my partner from a stupid joke, she would be the one kicking my butt for denying her the agency of responding in the way she saw fit! And she'd be right. There's a big difference between helping and patronizing."

Mike replies: ...Except if she's the one implicitly demanding that he do it. She apparently had a well-publicized affair a few years ago, and he acceded to a period of "non-monogamy." Now imagine if that "period" was her idea and he had to swallow it to keep up appearances, and that one of her criticisms of him was that he wasn't "man enough" and would never stand up for her when it counted? That would put her agency into the mix. This is conjecture, and I'm not disagreeing with your astute take on the matter—just pointing out that the true dynamics of a couple can really only be known to the couple themselves. He did appear to do an about-face once he saw her reaction to the joke. He was laughing at first, and next thing you know he was striding up to the stage.

Speed: "Mike asks, 'Is it okay to separate the art from the artist?'

"Is it okay to separate the speech from the speaker? Is it okay to separate the donation from the donor? Is it okay to separate the politician from the philanderer? Is it okay to separate the touchdown from the runner?—home run from the batter?—basket from the shooter? No. And it not okay to separate this act from the actor.

"Actions have consequences and people are more likely to behave themselves if those consequences are certain, meaningful and in proportion to the act. The Oscars are an institution by and for the motion picture industry to recognize its art. But they have been turned into a money-making marketing device to boost sales of their product. The correct public response would be to not patronize the movie industry products and thereby discourage it from happening again. But...it's not gonna happen."

Mike replies: It could...Gallup said last January, "Movie attendance was...down among moviegoers. In 2021, those who attended a movie saw 3.6 films on average, compared with 6.9 in December 2007 and no fewer than 5.7 in any other Gallup survey," and The New York Times said last November 29th, "Nearly half of the prepandemic audience hasn't returned, research shows, and 8 percent may be gone forever." On the other hand, 16.6 million people watched the Oscars this year, said to be an increase of 58% from 2021, and viewership spiked in real time after "the slap." Tough to separate those numbers from the influence of the pandemic, though. I'm part of the "quadrant" that doesn't go to movies much (older males, the least movie-attending of the four quadrants the movie-marketers target), but the last movie I went to see in the theaters was Richard Linklater's 2014 movie "Boyhood." I'm not purposely boycotting (I just don't like fantasy or comic-book or sci-fi or action films), but I kind of am. I used to try to see all the nominees for Best Picture every year, but since 2009 there are too many for that so I no longer try.

Margaret R: "Re 'One thing that really annoys me that racist America is going to have a snark- and smirk-up.' On the other hand, imagine how much worse the furore would have been had one of them, in that exchange, been white.... So small mercies, perhaps."

Timothy Auger: "In response to your question as to whether you can/should like art by unlikeable people: I rather like the style of architecture promoted by Mussolini in Italy during the Fascist era. It is far more successful aesthetically than most 'modern' architecture, and it's widely respected. Does that allow me to like the style of classicism promoted by Hitler in 1930s Germany? I marvel at the architecture of the Greeks and Romans of ancient times—but their rulers were no saints. The pyramids in Egypt were built by slave labour. Should they be struck from the tourist brochures? There is no consistent solution to this dilemma. The only thing you can say is the more distant the work is culturally or historically, the easier it is to ignore nasty aspects of the people who produced it.

"P.S.: And I still enjoy Woody Allen films."

Zyni Moë: "You have to. 'Baby Driver' is wonderful and Spacey is wonderful in it. It does not become less wonderful when you know what Spacey did. Gill's sculpture is wonderful as is his typography. When you can't is when the art is about the awfulness. Apart from being 935 hours too long and just not very good (yes, I have listened to it, in several recordings) The Ring (operas, not the great Japanese movie) is all about awful Germanic-supremacist myth-making, made by an awful Germanic-supremacist, antisemitic man. People who like it are making excuses all the time for something which is just not excusable. If you want overlong late-romantic pseudo-mystical gubberish, Mahler is just over there, and he really was a genius (and he would still have been a genius if he had not been Jewish). (Whenever posh people deride pop music for being shallow, mention opera.) Same: Miles Davis beat his wife but his music was not about assaulting women and is very great."

Mike replies: John Lennon: "I used to be cruel to my woman I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved." And apparently that was true with his first wife....

James Allen: "Re 'One thing that really annoys me that racist America is going to have a snark- and smirk-up.' Really? I have lived and traveled across America for all of my 59 years, and I haven't found this mythical place called racist America. I have met individuals who are not bastions of racial harmony, but they are rare and unpopular. I find America to be a welcoming country to all people far more than we get credit for. This ongoing self-flagellation about race is puzzling to me. I'd wager that no other country has tried as hard as the USA to live up to its ideals regarding racial harmony. Are we perfect? Nope, and I'll bet we never are. Is any country? Also nope. I love this country and the people who live here, and I think calling it 'racist America' is an unearned slur."

Mike replies: Okay, that's your opinion, and I hear it—even have some sympathy for it—but we disagree.

Are you Black?

I'm not using the phrase to say all of America is racist. I mean there is a portion of America that is racist.

We have a persistent problem with police flat-out murdering Black people. Watch the Walter Scott video online (a case I followed closely). That cop is now serving 20 years. It's not an isolated incident: look at the selected sourced list Renée Ater compiled. I asked a former police chief friend about it, expecting that he would be affronted, but he immediately agreed. He said (I'm paraphrasing), "It's a constant problem. It's a violent job and it attracts violent people. You always have to be on the lookout for the bad apples. Officers in the field don't have much oversight. You have to keep alert and keep trying."

A racist President was elected in 2016. Northerners fly Confederate flags on their pickup trucks and hang them in the windows of their homes where I live—where local town squares and parks still feature statues with lists of locals who died in the Civil War, a war fought over whether new territories should be slave or free. How is it possible to see that as anything but fealty to white supremacy? You might say that that black-and-white U.S. flag with the one blue stripe in it is merely "pro law enforcement," but others will disagree and call it anti-BLM. Racists are a minority, I do believe that, and I used to think as you do. Not any more.

Anyway, assuming you're white, it's kinda not for us to decide. In college we had a public hearing on the school's (now former) American Indian mascot, and I spoke up saying it wasn't that big a deal. A young Native American woman came up to me after the program and asked to talk to me. We wandered the streets for two hours and talked intensely. She convinced me that the oppressor's viewpoint isn't the important one. It's for the oppressed to say what their experience is. As soon as you can get Black people to agree with what you say, then I'll give it credence. I doubt that would be easy for you right now. The rallying cry "I can't breathe" speaks their opinion. How many times during your 59 years of travel in America did you ask Black people whether "racist America" exists? You and I should probably listen to them. If you don't agree, okay, but that's my take.

By the way, one of the authors of Without Sanctuary, a book of lynching photographs that's too expensive for me to own, is named James Allen.

JOHN BOUR: "Re 'Whenever there are two patches of blue that appear in the middle of a stormy sky, leaving the impression that the storm is about to break, that’s also referred to as the Dutchman’s Breeches. The expression is part of traditional sea-going weather lore where it’s believed that in bad weather, two patches of blue sky is a hopeful sign as long as the patches are big enough to 'mend a pair of Dutchman’s breeches.' Back in the day, sailors wore wide trousers, and Dutch sailors were known to wear even wider trousers which just happened to be blue like the the sky on a clear day. As a private pilot we still use the expression; 'it's overcast, with some Dutch pants.' (I'm Dutch.) Keep up the good work.  ;-) "

Mike replies: That's charming, thanks for that. I have a number of photographs of Dutchman's breeches. It's a minor theme for me—seems to symbolize a little patch of hope in grim darkness.

Christopher Perez: "Yes, Picasso was pretty bad to the women in his life. Add to the list Dali, who supported Franco. And how about Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the Italian Futurists and their support of Mussolini? Why is Tissot considered a minor artist when his works are filled with light, beauty, and are wonderfully composed? Many people see white marble statues and don't realize the great Greek and Roman works were painted. It only been in the last five years that Vigée Le Brun, Marie Antoinette's portraitist, has been exhibited in a large show dedicated to her in France. Demonstrably great women artists need to be 're-discovered' (Artemisia Gentileschi, Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, or Suzanne Valadon). Closer to photographic home, why did Saint Ansel carry a Portland lens for many years after denouncing the pictorialist movement? Further, the more I learn about Ed Weston and his women, or Saint Ansel's long love affair with Nancy Newhall. the more I question their culturally recognized deification. Either out of complete ignorance or as memories of certain things artists have done or the ways they behaved fades, perhaps we can simply look at what they've accomplished? Art appreciation sure seems to have many and long cultural, social, historical, memory feeder lines."

A Touch of Spring

Look—I got another bird card from Jim Arthur, whose cards I've shared before. (The last one was an owl—five life points if you remember.) The little JPEG squeezes all the subtle colors out of it—the print is much prettier. Jim's cards always remind me that while I don't love online digital pictures particularly, even though they comprise 99% of the pictures I see, I love inkjet prints made from digital files. Well, when they're well made. Which reminds me, I have some more reader prints here sent in for critique—we're going to get back to that this year.

I have some catching up to do this coming week! I made myself too scarce last week. I spent a lot of time working on my other writing projects. I hope everybody realizes I'm not really retired. That was just a joke.

May I just say that I've definitely hit upon the hardest part about trying to write a memoir: you have to relive it all again. It dredges up a lot of old muck that might be better left settled on the bottom of your clean-running river. It's one thing if you're Keith Richard and have enjoyed your life. It's something else when things didn't go so well. (Keef gives the lie to the old joke that if you remember the '60s you weren't there. He was there and he remembers everything.)

We had a number of dustings of snow here in the Finger Lakes in February, and one reason I like them is that I have a deck and a wooden walk that leads to the barn, and in new snow there's a report of the animals that used the walk during the night. I've seen the tracks of housecats and coyotes (not simultaneously!), raccoons, rabbits (under my deck is a rabbit hotel), gophers (ditto, under the small shed at the edge of the property), possums, skunks, fox, and a strange track that I associate with a mysterious black catlike animal the size of small dog that I've seen from a distance, running, a few times. [UPDATE: A fisher! See Geoff's comment, below.]

So the other morning, deer tracks! For the first time ever. Small ones. That amazed me. I've never seen a deer down here so close to the lake; there are plenty of them around and you see them all the time (my friend Mike, who "drives big truck" as he puts it, is expert at spotting them from surprisingly far away—it's great to have him spotting on an after-dark drive back from a meeting) but I'm told they tend not to like to get themselves hemmed in between the two-lane highway and the lake.

Today is our first springlike day, 69°F, sunny, and windy. People are strolling by dressed in summer clothes and the ground is still partly covered with snow and ice. The three days we're in the middle of will get rid of much of it. We're in the days when winter eases its grip.

                                                       ...Winter is winter,
Gnawing the Tyrrhene cliffs with the sea’s tooth.

—Horace, translated by E. Pound

The freeze/thaw cycles have raised a little havoc; I expect to lose some grass. Our long, narrow lake freezes most readily at the northern end, where it's shallow, and in recent days a vast panel of ice the size of many World Football (soccer) fields (do you call them fields?) detached from the frozen end and came drifting down the lake. Floating chunks of ice anywhere from the size of a suitcase to the size of a tennis court have jammed up along the shoreline, causing damage here and there. Some people have "bubblers" that roil the surface of the water and keep the areas around their docks from freezing, but I would never do that. In the wintertime the ducks and geese congregate by the hundreds in the open water around a bubbler. All that concentrated bird poop can't be sanitary, if you ask me. 

Spring reminds me that when I taught photography, way back in olden times, the gang darkroom on the fourth floor of the building that housed the art department would clear out on days like this. Enlargers that were in high demand all winter were suddenly deserted. Down below, the grass of the Quad would be sprinkled with kids, lying around, talking, reading, throwing frisbees, chasing each other, hanging out. Among them were the students who would parade their excuses past me at their next class, explaining why they didn't have their prints made. Like I couldn't see why.

The only other thing I have to report was two very cold nights recently when the air was uncannily clear and the stars in the otherwise black sky seemed to glitter. I could wish I could see them a little better; I have some astigmatism, which gives me a bit of a false report. But that's without glasses, so who would complain? I hope you can see stars in the night sky, where you are.

Mike

Book of Interest this Week

Gregory Crewdson: Alone Street. "Filmic" seems the best single adjective to describe Gregory Crewdson's work; his directed and carefully managed tableau are the still photography version of scenes in movies. As such they are hyper-real; more beautiful than life and more poetic, and more concerted. They're also very easy to enjoy and a pleasure to look at.

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

Today at B&H Photo

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

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

Geoff Wittig: "That black cat-like animal is likely a fisher. They're a large weasel that has made a comeback here in the Finger Lakes after being largely extirpated by trappers 100 years ago. We've seen one on our trail camera several times. They have a (mostly) undeserved reputation for killing pets, though they are pretty ferocious, apparently the only predator that will regularly kill a porcupine. They're extremely wary of human beings and eat mostly rodents, rabbits and the like."

Mike replies: Geoff, thank you! That solves a mystery. It fits what I saw perfectly—I saw one running against the snow of my hillside last winter. I've asked several locals about it and hadn't come up with a satisfactory identification because I just didn't get that good a look. All I knew for sure was that it wasn't any animal I was familiar with.  And the tracks I've found that I couldn't identify definitely match the track of the fisher. Thanks!

robert mckeen: "Lovely postcard, is it a hummingbird? Now to football or footie, soccer, fields are called pitches and can vary in size within certain boundaries. The largest in the Premier League is Brighton 105 x 69 metres, smallest is Wolverhampton at 100 x 64 metres. Liverpool's is 101 x 68 metres."

The Inevitable Putins (OT)

Sure is a tough time in the world. I feel for the many innocent citizens of Ukraine, those who would prefer just to be left alone to live their lives. I feel for the many innocent citizens of Russia, who have no control over the actions of their government or their leader—they have no more more ability to stop their country's "neighbor abuse" than you or I have to stop any of the cockamamie things our own governments do. Imagine yourself, if you will, as one of the 1,800 Russians newly imprisoned merely for protesting. Your life probably isn't so bad by comparison.

I feel for today's teenagers, growing up with COVID-19, isolation from their peers, and the jumbled babbling fracas of the internet. But also, this latest—the abrupt resurgence of an articulated nuclear threat by someone with the power to carry it out—is reawakening long-slumbering fears in the generation just ahead of mine, whose childhoods were clouded, long ago, by the brooding threat of nuclear Armageddon in the early days of the Cold War. They used to have to do drills at school which had them getting under their desks to take cover from a nuclear attack, a gesture even five-year-olds could recognize as pathetic and futile, even if they didn't know those words. Some people of that generation find those old fears being unearthed again by the prospect of a deranged leader waving his weapons around. As a small boy I used to listen for the "booms" of the supersonic fighter jets high overhead—staring at the sky, hoping to see one. They were invisible.

I've posted this before, but it seems like it might offer a modest balm this Monday: the reverently joyful 50th-anniversary performance of "The Weight" by Playing for Change, performed by Robbie Robertson, Ringo Starr, and more than 20 musicians across five continents. This took a year and a half to record and edit, everyone working together.

Dictator-types
This is just my opinion, but humanity, I feel, just has to get past its voluntary subjugation to the psychodramas of semi-demented single individuals. We regularly put our societies, often almost willingly it seems, into the hands of dictator-types with disordered personalities. It's always broadly the same, whether it's Alexander the so-called Great (I'd call him the Great Destroyer), Napoleon, Hitler, Idi Amin, Saddam, or Putin—we sure wish the list were that short. They're like a drug for us somehow. It might be the biggest recurrent problem of the human race throughout history. But we can understand it now, from a mental health perspective. Collectively we'll have to learn to act on what we know, to find some way to free ourselves someday from the inevitable Caesars, the inevitable Putins. Those assassins in the Curia of Pompey had something right, after all, on that ancient Ides of March. Although it's less well known that every one of them was eventually hunted or hounded to death, and they were on the losing side. The Republic they were trying to rescue by their shocking act was lost*.

May I just say I love Ringo's drumming, always have. Never a showoff, always in the pocket. He's not a great drummer, he's a great musician who happens to be a drummer. As someone once said, "most drummers play the drums. Ringo plays the song."

Enjoy the music, pray for peace.

Mike

*One of my unpedigreed theories, of which you know I have many, is that all modern Westerners should be schooled in the fall of the Roman Republic. Nothing in history offers greater relevance for our times and our own societies.

Book o' the Week

Ara Güler's Istanbul, one of the more amazing books in my collection. I'm also amazed it's still in print. Not only does it culminate a longtime habit and a vast body of work for the Turkish photographer of Armenian descent, one of the few world-famous photographers from Turkey—a labor of love—but it's a unique and wonderful example of bookmaking. If you don't buy this, at least see one sometime.

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

Today at B&H Photo

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

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

David Miller: "Thank you Mike. I can't explain why that video from Playing for Change released the flow of tears that has been building up in me since the invasion of Ukraine began, but I'm grateful."

John Camp: "I was part of the under-the-desk generation. As the saying went, 'Get under your desk, put your head between your legs, and kiss your ass goodbye.'"

Kye Wood: "My brother Mike. I hear you. I really do. But we're all hardwired to find the best mate we can. To compete. To show potential mates that we can provide for them, better than others can. Thus, finite resources get shifted disproportionately, to those who compete the most successfully. Wealth inequality and all that flows from it is a consequence of our core programming. Ya can't patch the symptoms with laws and dreams. Our core unconscious programming is the problem. All we can do is be kind and be generous. Inequality is an uncrackable nut."

Mike replies: We'll always have Athens.

David Cope: "I often wonder, but can’t work out how, as a society, we afford one individual so much power. The power is not really with them, it’s given to them by others who cannot say 'no.' Fear of punishment from one’s peers for saying no is carried out, usually, by subordinates who, themselves, are not willing to say no. It’s easy to see why a chain of command is, psychologically, the instrument of the hierarchy, be it military, criminal or civil society. Are we genetically disposed to live in hierarchy or can we evolve into true egalitarian, flat structures where no one individual can dominate."

Albert Smith: "Love that song and this compilation video is so well done. I was in the military for 22 years; it doesn't define me, it's just what I chose to do. Every day from the '70s until the early '90s, we trained to take on the Russian bear. I was in SAC when we brought our bombers off of alert and, in a gesture of goodwill, Russia flew two Bear Bombers to our base and we flew two B-52s to Moscow. Everyone exhaled and could relax a bit. We were done with the cold war without the worst-case scenario happening.

"Now because of one guy that can't accept history we are in jeopardy of one mistake leading to some horrible consequences.

"My hat is off to the Ukrainians. Nothing motivates like things happening in your own backyard, and they are putting up a valiant effort to repel this unwarranted assault. I wish them well and hope for a quick resolution."

Charlie Ewers: "Cicero wasn't even a conspirator, just a Senator who loved the Republic and was willing to speak up when he felt it was being threatened by the autocrats. They cut off not only his head, but also his hands, which he had apparently used extensively to gesture while speaking in the Senate. In my mind a true hero, someone whom we might well need to emulate in our own time, the way things have been going lately."

Mike replies: And Fulvia, the wife of Antony, who was presented with the severed head of Cicero (which would have been pronounced "KICK-eh-roe" in his time) stuck pins in the tongue, to repay him for his sharp words. Now that's vengefulness, lest you think your neighbor is being vengeful by ignoring your request to borrow his snowblower because you were slow to return it last time.

Patrick J Wahl (partial comment): "What book would you suggest about the Roman Republic?"

Mike replies: That's hard to answer. Maybe Rome: An Empire's Story, by Greg Woolf, to start? On the grounds that it's a complete overview from soup to nuts, a sort of basic primer of the outlines of everything. Roman history, I suspect, is one of those subjects in which scholars write books from the perspective of their own theories as a way to communicate and contend with one another. And it's such a vast and sprawling subject that a lay reader can dip in here and there and come away with a partial picture that feels more complete than maybe it is. And finally, I don't know how little old me would know. I read Roman history for maybe eight months—it didn't feel like a whole year, whatever it was—and took in only a smattering of books. Personally I would not recommend Mary Beard, who comes in for a lot of praise but doesn't give me what I'm looking for. Her book SPQR struck me as commentaries on history rather than a history. She seems to be writing for people who are already well versed.

One thing I will say is that reading about Rome is damned entertaining. Lurid, vivid, larger than life. 

Julius Caesar was the fulcrum point of Roman history, the hinge. Before even Greg Woolf's book, read the short Wikipedia article "Crossing the Rubicon." It's only a few hundred words, but you'll catch the whiff of all the drama implicit in it.

Rod S.: "I wondered whether I was alone in having my 'long-slumbering fears' resurface from childhood. I'm 65 and vividly remember the fear and chill that I, as a six-year-old, felt as my family listened during a car journey to a series of radio news broadcasts during the developing Cuban Missile Crisis. A nuclear World War Three was imminent. And here now, all these years later, we have cause to fear it all coming at us again."

Mani Sitaraman: "This was wonderful, Mike, though the theme song by The Band playing in our heads the last few days was probably 'The Shape I'm In'! Nice to see Lukas Nelson in that collaborative song—I like him.

"And a word offered in protest. It is 2022, and it is high time we retired the canard, originally likely proffered as a humorous aside, that Ringo Starr isn't a great drummer. He is—as any fresh listen to the Beatles albums and the perspective of time reveals to us. In my YouTube viewing of late, it is heartening to hear musicians of the younger generation wonder why we 'olds' would say that about Ringo. He just isn't a showy drummer, the type who hogs passages with long drum solos, but surely that's immaterial?"

Mike replies: I agree totally. The gag was, "Maybe Ringo wasn't the best drummer in the world. All right, maybe he wasn't the best drummer in the Beatles." Attributing it to John Lennon is what makes the joke a canard, "a false or unfounded report or story, especially, a fabricated report." The words were written by Geoffrey Perkins and broadcast on the Radio 4 sketch comedy "Radio Active" on October 6th, 1981, followed either by audience laughter or canned laughter. Lennon had no part in it it.

But, of course, you can't correct the internet.

Paul C: "On the Ringo front—there’s a short, fun TikTok video that was making the rounds last fall from a drummer illustrating what made Ringo so special. Twitter link to it."

Jeff Hughes: "What would you recommend to this modern Westerner who would like to learn more about the fall of the Roman Republic? Thank you for that musical inspiration."

Mike replies: See my reply to Patrick above, but my favorite of the ones I read is The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome by Michael Parenti. But this would not be an appropriate recommendation for everyone, because Parenti is a red-blooded leftist and unapologetically examines his subject in that light. I loved it—who wouldn't want to know that girl-children in ancient Rome were often given the same name and distinguished by descriptives? For example, the two daughters of Octavius were Octavia the Elder and Octavia the Younger. You'll know exactly where the author stands by the end of Chapter 1, which launches with an ice-cold, rock-hard appraisal of the class biases of Gibbon.  :-)