The Online Photographer

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.  :-)

Photographers Pick Their Favorites (and Jay Townsend)

Jay Townsend at work

This seems appropriate for today in the formerly US (for those of you who aren't from here, or who don't follow sports, it's Super Bowl Sunday): "How'd they get that shot? Our photographers' favorite NFL photos of the season—and the stories behind them," a "Backstory" feature in USA Today by Nicole Carroll. (With a title that long, I guess I don't have to explain what the article is about.)

[UPDATE Monday: "A reformed football fan" (who normally posts as "Speed") wrote yesterday: "Sometime tomorrow, let us know who won. And for me, let us know who played." For Speed and others in the very narrow demographic of those who a.) care who won but b.) not enough to look it up themselves, the Los Angeles Rams defeated the Cincinnati Bengals 23–20. It was an entertaining game but not an especially well-played one.

L.A. wide receiver Cooper Kupp was MVP, on the heels of what Sporting News called "one of the greatest single seasons by a receiver in NFL history...Kupp was magnificent in 2021, averaging 114.5 receiving yards per game while tallying 145 receptions for 1,947 yards and 16 touchdowns—all NFL highs, making him the first player to achieve the receiving triple crown since 2005."

Apropos of nothing, softspoken L.A. quarterback Matthew Stafford is married to...wait for it...a blonde cheerleader. My brother Scott once saw a dog peeing on a fire hydrant and commented, "that's such a cliché." Despite the cliché aspect, they appear to be a genuine and loving couple, which was nice to see in interviews. They have four daughters; I hope Matthew is retired by the time they all become teenagers, because that sounds like it's going to be a full-time handful.

There were several injuries on the field but no players barrelled into photographers that I know of.]

Through TOP, I got to know the late Michael McCaskey, who succeeded his grandfather George Halas as President of the Chicago Bears. An enthusiastic amateur photographer, Michael obviously had very good access to the Bears, and his favorite football photographs of his own were a sequence of action shots of a touchdown catch taken from the end zone. They were similar to some of these. Michael and I attended a number of local photo shows together in the Midwest, and he treated me to a Bears game every year when I lived in Wisconsin.

I also got to know Jack MacDonough, who was on the Board of the Packers for many years (might still be, I'll have to ask him). Jack's spectacular Packers photos, in huge enlargements, are featured prominently at Lambeau Field in Green Bay. Seeing a Packers game at Lambeau is the secular American football version of a holy rite, which I got to experience, on a perfect day, thanks to Jack.

Sports photography?
The story also made me think of my friend Jay Townsend, who attends a lot of sporting events as a professional photographer. But Jay frequently mystifies his fellow photographers—he'll shoot madly in certain situations, some of which don't seem to have anything in common, then stay quiet at what everyone else thinks is the peak of the action.

This is an example of what Jay considers a successful sporting event shot:

The reason? Jay works for Leidos, created when Science Applications International Corporation was split into two separate companies in 2013. Leidos sponsors many prestigious sporting events, and Jay's job is to document the company's sponsorship displays. "Rule of thumb: If players are near our logo, fire away. If the players are anywhere else, I don’t bother putting the camera up to my face." Take a look at his self-portrait at the top of this post. When I commented about the background, Jay replied, "on brand 24/7."

It's a good job, though, and Jay and his wife Mary have a plethora of engaging photographic and artistic interests. For "ordinary" people with ordinary budgets, they're serious art collectors, for one thing.

The problem with TV
I don't get to watch the Super Bowl today. Haven't had a television since 2014. I just don't like it enough to pay for it, and the avalanche of ads gets to be like torture to me. Today is probably the day I miss it the most.

But I learned my lesson. The first time I experimented with not having a TV was a period of about a year in the 1980s. On the day before a Super Bowl in which the Washington Commanders (under their former name) were competing—I lived in D.C. at the time—I gave in and bought myself a television just before the game. I saw a memorable Super Bowl—Doug Williams threw for 340 yards as the first Black quarterback both to start and also to win a Super Bowl, and the Redskins won a 42–10 blowout, which means that we Washington fans were the only people in the country who enjoyed the game.

No problem with that. But then, three weeks later, I found myself watching reruns of "Bewitched" at two o'clock in the morning.

That's the problem with television right there. One day you're watching something you really want to see, and then some indeterminate amount of time later you're slouched like a zombie in front of something absolutely meaningless just because Elizabeth Montgomery was such a babe. (I almost wrote, "...was so bewitching," but even I have my limits.)

If you're watching today, enjoy the game. I'm rooting for the Bengals because the city of Cincinnati has never won a Super Bowl, and also for Matthew Stafford because he seems to be a nice guy and a family man and he's never won a Super Bowl. I wish Barry Sanders had had the same opportunity Matthew has today. Either way it goes, can't lose. 

Mike

Book o' the Week:

Ernst Haas: New York in Color 1952–1962. "When Haas moved from Vienna to New York City in 1951, he left behind a war-torn continent and a career producing black-and-white images. For Haas, the new medium of color photography was the only way to capture a city pulsing with energy and humanity. These images demonstrate Haas's tremendous virtuosity and confidence with Kodachrome film and the technical challenges of color printing."

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Today at B&H Photo

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

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Must See TV

Competing in the Sony slalom at the Olympics....

(Hope you can see this where you are. UPDATE: It's on YouTube, several readers have mentioned.)

Mike
(Thanks to Jay Townshend)

ADDENDUM: Jay adds, "The camera and lens survived. Minor damage to the LCD screen on the back of the camera body and the lens hood was toast, but apparently it was back in service the next day. Sony repair staff on site at the Olympics revealed to a reporter that the camera was a Sony Alpha 1 and a 24–70mm GM lens, if you’re a gear head. I’ve had a few cameras tumble in my time."

Book o' the Week:

Ernst Haas: New York in Color 1952–1962. "When Haas moved from Vienna to New York City in 1951, he left behind a war-torn continent and a career producing black-and-white images. For Haas, the new medium of color photography was the only way to capture a city pulsing with energy and humanity. These images demonstrate Haas's tremendous virtuosity and confidence with Kodachrome film and the technical challenges of color printing."

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:

V.I. Voltz: "Wouldn’t it be cool if it was recording video when it was dropped!? I’m getting giddy just thinking about watching that!"

Mike replies: When I was young, my father briefly got into Super-8 movies. On a ski vacation one winter he decided to make a film while skiing downhill. He practiced by making dry runs with his hands held to his face as if he were thumbing his nose with both hands, which of course looked absolutely ridiculous, and was embarrassing to my then-12-year-old (or whatever it was) self. When he made the film, of course he fell, and the resulting movie was absolutely great—it showed him first zooming down the mountain—then the camera nosedives to the snow and there's a crazy chaotic jumble of blurry, jarring snow and sky and skier for a number of seconds, and finally the camera comes to rest with a serene view of snow, sky and clouds at a sharp angle. Of course he didn't like the "fall" part and the peaceful aftermath, but to me it made the clip. I didn't think he could have done better if he had scripted it that way.

Today, it would get views and likes on YouTube, no doubt.

Mani Sitaraman: "The video clip of the Sony camera tumbling down the snowy slope is on YouTube, too."

Harry B Houchins: "Never did that! I kept close watch on all my gear. Honestly! Seriously! Never, really never. Well, nobody saw me...."

Håkan Andersson: "Apropos the camera filming while it took a tumble. I had a skydiving team mate who lost his video helmet on climb-out from the plane at 13,000 feet. It did record all the way down. We managed to pry the DV tape (yes, this was a few years back) out of the totally demolished camera and play it back. Showed it to some friends without telling them that there was no skydiver attached to the helmet/camera as that sequence was shot. Dark sense of humor, I know.  :-)  "

Patrick D Perez (partial comment): "This past Saturday, I had an opportunity to make an 'extreme' video w/ my phone. My wife's car suffered a blowout on the Narrows Bridge on her way to work, so I rescued her, and we swapped cars. I waited for the tow truck and, due to COVID, I was not allowed in the cab of the truck, but I could ride in her car, strapped onto the flatbed. So I made a few videos of me seemingly driving COVERING MY EYES! with no explanation. I got some great reactions."

Weather Notes

[Comments have been added.]

There's a giant snowstorm threatening the East Coast of the US, and several readers have contacted me with good wishes. I appreciate the concern, but I'm a long way from the coast—it's about 270 miles from here to New York City. For our friends in the United Kingdom, that's approximately the drive from Plymouth, in Devon, to Canterbury in Kent via the A303. For Australians, picture the distance from Sydney to Coffs Harbour by air. We might catch the fringe of this storm, but events on the coast are distant.

I do want to offer my own thoughts and concern for readers up and down the Atlantic seaboard. Take it easy with the shovel and we hope you don't lose power. And we don't want to hear reports of you being found frozen solid far from home with a camera in your hand, either. As one governor put it, this is a "Netflix and chill" event. I guess the chill part is mandatory!

While you're socked in, two things you could do—one, think about submitting to the "Objects" Baker's Dozen. The deadline is a week from tomorrow. I've gotten some wonderful pictures so far. (Also a number that I wouldn't really consider pictures of objects, but I've still enjoyed seeing those.) And if you can, and if you would, you could kindly help spread the word to other sites, forums, and friends about our upcoming Infrared Picture Print Sale (previous post). There are a lot of infrared fans out there, but they're scattered far and wide.

Right now it's very pleasant at TOP Rural World HQ in the hamlet of Penn Yan. Clear, brilliantly sunny, just a slight breeze, and a very pleasant 10°F (–12°C)*.

Mike

*Another of my unpedigreed theories: That the reason people don't like cold is because of temperatures hovering around freezing. That's the nasty, chilly, penetrating, unpleasant sort of cold that gives cold a bad name. Plus, it's not cold enough that you really have to dress for it. If you ask me, plus 10 to minus five degrees Fahrenheit (–12° to –20°C) is the sweet spot. It's crispy and dry, cold enough that you have to dress for it (which makes you comfortable), and, except if it's windy, not really all that cold. Very nice. YMMV!

Once it was –30°F in Wisconsin (with no wind) and I went outside in my T-shirt just to experience it. After a few minutes I could start to feel my body heat retreating to my core from my extremities. It was curious to reflect that all I had to do was stay out there and the air would kill me! Made me very grateful for a cozy little house.

Book o' the Week

In Search of Elsewhere: Unseen Images by Steve McCurry. The two Steve McCurry books I own—Looking East and The Unguarded Moment—are oversized (but not too oversized) and have some of the very best color photographic reproduction I've seen. I hope this will be the same, although it has a different publisher. Steve McCurry, although his career is not without blemishes, is a superb and accomplished photographer whose work is a joy to own and revisit. Note that he's a "visual storyteller," not a photojournalist.

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Featured Comments from:

Tom Burke: "I remain in awe of the American climate—so cold in winter and so hot in summer. Here on the edge of Sheffield, at an elevation of about 600 feet, 2021 produced (if I recall correctly) an absolute low of maybe –4°C once or twice, and an absolute high of 30°C once or twice. Anything over 25°C counts as a heat wave here ('Phew What a Scorcher!' —Daily Mail headline), and we only saw that a handful of times last year. And 2021 was fairly typical. Also as I've got older I've found my tolerance of cold has diminished while my tolerance of hot has improved—I used to hate hot weather. My biggest gripe over the last two years has been that I've been deprived of my ration of real heat in the Mediterranean or Southeast Asia. (I hasten to add that I've had a good pandemic, and I recognise that many other people have suffered much more than I have.)"

Mike replies: I've always thought I'm actually British like a lot of my ancestors. A climate that doesn't get too hot would suit me. I had an art teacher for many years (six, from seventh grade to senior year) who was very influential on my life, Gerald Landt. Mr. Landt disliked hot weather. He'd tell us he had a headline from a British newspaper framed on his wall at home: it said, "70 Degrees Again Today, No Relief In Sight." (From the era when Britain used Fahrenheit.) Whether or not it was originally intended as a joke, it fit his temperament!

Our perception of temperature does change as we age—up to 15°F is what I've read. So what 70° felt like when you were 15 might feel the same as 85° when you're 75. Doesn't have to change by that much, but it can.

Henning (partial comment): "I agree with you. Temperatures around 0°F are quite reasonable and accommodating winter temperatures, as long as the wind is quiet and the humidity low. At that temperature you could go outside and do stuff: go shopping, take pictures, go for a walk just for the fun of it. Also, when it got that cold, snow slowly stopped being slippery, so driving was fun. I grew up in colder parts of Canada and that's what we had, a lot of the time."

John Hall: "Mike, I've been reading since the column on Luminous Landscape and I've known for a while that our worldviews overlap. Your opinion on cold cements it though. Barely freezing is well, cold. Truly cold isn't, and is gorgeous. Hope this storm blows you some deep cold and sparkling snow. Happy shooting."

James Bullard: "Your body heat wasn't retreating to your core, it was being sucked off by the cold air. Cold is an absence of heat energy, a heat vacuum so to speak, and heat moves into that absence. Stay long enough and all your body heat will get sucked off to warm the air. Hint: you don't have enough body heat to warm all that air significantly. My cold comfort zone is 45–60°F but only if I'm active, hiking, working, etc. Otherwise, it is 60°+. But then, I'm old. I don't tolerate cold well."

Mike Ferron: "My original home town of Bridgewater, Massachusetts, received 24 inches, or about .66m for our metric friends. That’s a lot of snow for one day. I don’t think I could handle moving back north again."

Snow, Beautiful Snow

On Sunday night and into Monday we had what used to be known as a nice little snow, which is now known as Oh my God it's Armageddon huge storm affecting 80 million people roads closed ice snow hail disaster ice ice ice cars are slipping and the sky is falling airports closed travel discouraged carnage ruin apocalypse gaaaaaaaaah MELTDOWN. That seems to be the take of the news organizations concerning Winter storms these says. Something more to freak out about.

(I'm not saying it isn't a problem where it's really serious.)

Thirteen inches here, and the roads and driveways all clear by the next day. If you failed to prepare in advance and lay in at least 18 hours of emergency food supply, you could have, you know, gone hungry for a few hours. Such that your tummy might have rumbled. It was that bad. Of course, what kind of grasshopper doesn't have 18 hours of food in the house as a normal thing?

When I was young I remember a storm that dumped 18 inches of just this kind of snow over the morning and afternoon of a weekday, and my school, pretty reluctantly, let the kids go home at 2:00 instead of 3:15. That's how bad that was. Teachers of last-period classes were miffed. A gang of boys with snow shovels cleared the parking lot by hand. A bunch of us gathered at the foot of the mild slope of the parking lot entrance to help cars get up the rise to the road. More fun than last-period class.

In those days there were American cars with one-wheel drive (compliments of an open differential), and it was one of the rear wheels. Add shiny summer bias tires and it was no wonder they couldn't get up a gentle little slope. Back then, Swedish Saabs with front-wheel drive were considered super-competent for Winter driving. Now, FWD is normal and ordinary.

Have I mentioned recently how awesome snow tires are? This is lost knowledge today. "All-Season" tires should be called Three-Season tires. Two-wheel drive and snow tires beats four-wheel drive and all-season tires on snow and ice.

Of course, four-wheel drive with snow tires is best.

Anyway, life has returned to normal here at TOP Rural World Headquarters, thanks to my neighbor Jim Schnitzler and his enormous pickup truck with the industrial-sized plow on the front and a salt-spreader on the back. It's quite a rig. Great big knobby tires. I failed to get a picture. Took him about seven minutes to clear my driveway and he did a beautiful job.

His other car is a Prius. With all-wheel drive! Who says there's no such thing as progress?

Mike

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

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

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

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Featured Comments from:

Benjamin Marks: "I call this "Weather Alarmism." It is what happens when the news philosophy of "If it Bleeds, it Leads," is crossed with cable news specialization, as in "The Weather Channel." Hey, when else are you going to get the eyeballs?"

Rick Popham: "Absolutely agree with you about snow tires. I drive a Subaru AWD these days, and people ask me why I would bother with snow tires. I tell them 'It's because I like to stop when I have to.'"

A Dozen Dinners

[Comments have been added.]

Happy New Year to you!

It's New Year's Eve, so what better time to talk about resolutions? And resolve?

To begin with, a question—do you have any memory of ever sticking with a New Year's resolution for the whole year? I can't say as I do. In fact, I can't say I've ever remembered what my resolution(s) for the year were by the time the end of that year rolls around. Because of course when the odometer ticks over, as it will tonight, it's not just the beginning of the next year, it's also the ending of the last one. Without looking for the similar post I no doubt wrote last year, I haven't a clue what I resolved to do in 2021. I don't recall.

2022 C.E.

 

I have just one insight here: we all actually know what we have to do. It's really more a matter of facing fear, counteracting entropy, forging ahead, sucking it up, overcoming inertia, working the plan, or persevering after the enthusiasm wanes or the resolve dissolves—isn't it?

Be it hereby resolved...
So here are my two for 2022, for what they're worth, which might not be very much.

1.) I had the bright idea that what I should do for TOP is review lenses. I've been aware for a while that I'm no longer very happy reviewing cameras, for the simple reason that cameras are too complicated now, and I don't like the complexity and get no joy from it. I like beautiful simplicity, and that's just not the way the devices are now. And, as a reviewer, I stand little chance of understanding a new camera better in a week or two than the young mavens in the full flush of their shopping years understand them from poring over the voluminous info and the plethora of videos that exist. I can do it, of course; if I force myself. It's just that I don't have enough patience and interest any more to keep up with the guy who is obsessing over every little specification and wading into every obscure online argument...and who thinks that all that matters. To paraphrase Mrs. Pendrake in the whorehouse in Little Big Man (ancient movie reference—sorry, twentysomethings): I like cameras, just not all the time.

But I could review lenses. I enjoy trying new lenses, I can get them just by asking for them, and reviewing one involves looking and seeing and judgement, both of which I think are essential ingredients of reviews that are tasty and fun to read. I write pretty good lens reviews, I think.

2.) I need to learn to cook. Can't escape it. Can't get around it, can't go over it, can't avoid it. To sustain any way of eating you've chosen, you need something like one breakfast, three lunches, and a dozen dinners. That's to have a minimum of variety such that you can keep going without over-saturating yourself with one dish and making yourself sick of it.

The good news is that most people who aren't cooks don't have an infinite number of recipes they prepare in a never-ending succession. Just as we don't have an infinite amount of clothing in our closets, but rather a selection which we rotate intelligently, normal families and normal people don't have to have an infinite number of go-to dinners—and some have just enough so that repetition doesn't get onerous.

I really have no aptitude for cooking. I'm not good at it, don't enjoy it, and find it a chore. I know a certain number of cooks will chime in that "anyone can cook," but it's just not my thing. However, I need to learn how to cook a dozen dinners. It's simple self defense. No one is going to do it for me.

Compliance
I've talked about this topic before, but it's important and bears revisiting. In sobriety (I'm sober 31 years and part of today so far), there's a concept called "rebellion." I had a period in which I knew I needed to stop drinking, but I wouldn't. That's rebellion. The opposite of rebellion is compliance. My particular addiction*, alcoholism, is a slow-motion torture—it can take many years or even decades to play out. But at least it eventually leads some of us to compliance, for the simple reason that, unless you accept total abstinence (which is the only way to arrest it), it always gets worse. At every stage of the way, we think if it doesn't get any worse than this I'll be all right and I can keep on drinking...but it always gets worse. It never stays the same. It's a progressive disease. Eventually the point comes where rebellion needs to cease.

Or has to cease. The alternative is death. Somewhere between seven and nine out of every ten alcoholics either die drinking or die of drinking. I had two cousins who went that way. Joe, who was my age, drove into a pine tree one night, dead drunk, same death as his Dad before him (in my mind it's the same tree, but that's probably wrong), and his sister Amy, age 40, fell off the wagon with a bang and her liver shut down. When they loaded her into the ambulance, before she lost consciousness for the last time, she said, "I went too far this time, didn't I?"

Yep.

It's a totally weird disease. I heard about a guy whose boss came to him and said, "either you quit drinking or you're fired," and, despite the fact that he absolutely needed his job to pay his rent and buy his food, he instantly thought, well, there goes my job. That's crazy. But I understand.

When we're suffering from rebellion, what we're rebelling against are our own desires. That is, we make a resolution—because, like I said, we already know what we should do—and then we rebel against our own plan, our own ambition, our own common sense, our own best interest. Our own desire! We rebel against what we want for ourselves. Which is crazy, really.

I need to learn how to cook a dozen go-to dinners in 2022. It's my very own desire. Will I rebel, or comply? Maybe I should just settle for remembering what this resolution was, come the end of this year that for now is new.

All best wishes to you, in 2022.

Mike

P.S. The counter tells me this post is 1042 words, which reminds me of Bach's BWV 1042, perfect music for today. Check it out!

*By the way, here's the only accurate test of whether you are an alcoholic: stop drinking entirely for six weeks. Then, at the end of the six weeks, if you forget to start again, you are not an alcoholic.

Book o' the Week

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

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

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

[Ed. note: As often happens, the following two opposing viewpoints arrived one right after the other.]

Tom Burke: "Lens reviews? Are you sure??

"It’s just that there are so many out there, both blogs and YouTube videos. You’ll be expected to produce charts; optical measurements; you’ll be expected to make throwaway comments to the effect that you understand how unrealistic lens test charts are, but hey! they’re the best thing we’ve got; and above all you’ll have to spend time doing all the stuff that I suspect you don’t really want to do. Roger Cicala already does an excellent job reviewing lenses, and why wouldn’t he? Who else has 100+ examples of the same lens? Or has multiple examples of equivalent lenses from all the manufacturers, and can compare them? And all that optical test kit he’s got….

"I think I’m trying to say that this seems to be an odd direction to take. Lens reviews—indeed, reviews of anything—are all over the internet, not generally of high quality, and usually repeat each other. Have you seen how many reviews there have been of the new Apple MacBook Pro laptops? They all feature the same benchmarks from the same software tools, so the results are pretty much the same and of course the conclusions are also quite similar. Similarly with lens reviews, in my experience.

"I might be wrong, and I apologise if this seems harsh, but I don’t think that’s where your strength are, or indeed why I read TOP. I’d always rather read about why you took that beautiful image of Butters at the bottom of the stairs; what was going through your mind at the time; and what you were hoping to achieve with the image, rather than the technical details of how it was taken, or what with. Please carry on with that!

"(Once again, apologies for the directness. And—Happy New Year! 2022 has got to be better than 2021.)"

Nick: "Lens reviews would be a great idea! For one, in most cases almost every modern camera is 'pretty good' and you can simply read spec sheets to see if it has particular new features you may want/need. But lens reviews are not often done with any subtlety or experience around how they see/draw which I think would be a specialty of yours. I may be able to look up MTF curves, but understanding how things actually look different is hard. For example I have a 24–70mm ƒ/2.8 to cover most of what I need, but how does that at 50mm look different to my Sigma Art 50mm at ƒ/2.8? If it's not an angle of view or aperture choice, what are the artistic choices and different looks given by different designs?"

MikeR (partial comment): "I think I threw it away some time this year, but I had a half-page paper where I had written about five things to do. I titled it, 'Resolutions for 20##.' Each year, I would cross out the old year, write in the new one, scan the list, and find that no change was needed. As in, I didn't do any of them."

[Ed. note: The full text of "partial comments" can be seen in the full Comments section, accessible in the footer of the post. The Featured Comments on TOP are meant to be a sampling, for the convenience of those who don't want to read all the comments.]

John Dahlstet: "I had decided to retire at the end of 1997 and, with that, end my filthy smoking habit. I was tired of being held hostage by tobacco. My last official day of work was 31 December '97, and on 3 January '98 I smoked my last cigarette about midnight. I have been tobacco free ever since. Today the smell of tobacco smoke or that idiotic vaping residue makes me ill. Quitting tobacco and later on giving up booze frees up substantial cash for other things: cameras and lenses come to mind."

Mike replies: That's great. Good work. Your comment reminded me of this, which you might enjoy....  :-)

David Francis: "For me, lens reviews are not much of a draw, so I would not be hugely disappointed if that particular resolution fizzled. What I would like to see more of is what you proposed in your original mission statement—content about the culture of photography, as it was in the past and as it is evolving now. What can you (and your insightful readers) tell us about the work of some of the greats of the past? Who is doing interesting work now? How does photography relate to other visual arts, and how is that changing? Why do we take photographs? What is their social value? What are the qualities that make a portrait, landscape, street photograph, or any other photograph memorable? Some of this may sound a tad academic, but it doesn't have to be. There's an infinite amount of material to be mined around these and similar topics. That's not to say that there is no place for discussions of lenses and other gear.

"Everybody likes gear, but there's more to photography than that. All the best for 2022."

Lothar Adler: "I am so happy to read that you want to devote more time to looking at lenses again! Lenses are so important in the representation, the optical transformation of the visible. Many people are not aware of this point of view in today's photographic life, because most lenses nowadays have been optimized by means of modern technology to objectifiable parameters and are therefore very similar. It is comparable to the modern design of cars. Compared to earlier times, the types are very similar, because they have been measured, among other things, in the wind tunnel and physically optimized according to advantageous flow conditions.

"The fact that there are a lot of lens tests and opinions on the Internet has no meaning for me, because the decisive factor is who and with what wealth of experience makes the evaluation of this optical transformation by the lens.

"What I think of all the time now is the great insight of J.W. v. Goethe, the German writer and scholar, who wrote: 'The most difficult thing is what seems the easiest to you, to see with your eyes what lies in front of your eyes.'"

The Obvious Question

[Comments have been added.]

Obvious question for Boxing Day—so what did ya get? Any photo-related treats, surprises, presents, gifts or goodies?

...For those who celebrated Christmas. Hanukkah was nearly a month ago, but please mention gifts from your seasonal celebration.

Presents you bought for yourself count too (because we all understand). Any photo-related presents you got for others?

(I'll be asking about photo-related New Years resolutions soon too, so think ahead!)

Mike

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 (partial comment): "My wife gave me two photobooks. Ernst Haas, New York In Color: 1952–1962. Gordon Parks, The Atmosphere Of Crime, 1957. Both are great. No big photography presents for myself as I already did that earlier in the year."

Mike replies: The Atmosphere of Crime is a recent favorite of mine too. Outstanding photobook.

Kenneth Tanaka (partial comment): "Chizu ('The Map') Reprint Edition by Kikuji Kawada, 1965, reprinted 2014 by Nagasawa Publishing. Three years ago I decided to stop buying books of B&W photography. My principle photographic interests all lie in the realms of color capture and reproductions. And, with a library of over 700 books, I just don’t have space for many more books!

"But undeniable exceptions do appear, and Chizu is a perfect example. Photo books and zines have a very rich history as primary media for photography in Japan. Some years ago my participation in researching the Provoke show in Chicago really opened my eyes to post-war Japanese photo books, among which Chizu became one of the most rare and prized. The first edition of Chizu was a very small run and is virtually impossible to find. But fortunately Nagasawa recreated much of the original edition’s gestalt, including the rich gravure printing. It’s a very unique experience to view. So I couldn’t resist getting a numbered copy while I still could."

Mike replies: I found two reprints on Amazon, an expensive one from Mack and a very expensive one from Nazraeli, in addition to the one you link to.

Speed: "No new gear—I've got too much already. But I did spend a few hours off-and-on, trading images with a couple of friends—taking turns editing each other's work. Sometimes for laughs and sometimes to try something new. We do this now-and-then and I almost always learn something. Another view or a new technique. Not an activity possible before this internet-thing came along."

Lesley T: "Through the pandemic I have been working on the photography certificate program at a local community college. Although I am not learning a lot, it keeps me in touch with a like-minded community of people and has given my photography some direction and purpose while we have kept close to home (my husband is over 80 and immuno-compromised, so we have been very careful). Next term I'm taking a portrait class and, for a self Christmas present, bought the 85mm lens for my Nikon Z6 II.

"My adult nephew, a graphic designer, has become interested in photography and I gave him my Nikon D300, a couple of decent lenses, and enough gadgets and doodads so that he was well set up to start shooting on Christmas morning. He is thrilled, and I am very happy to see the equipment getting used again. At my age, giving really is more fun than receiving."

Dillan: "Santa brought me a Sigma 35mm ƒ/1.4 Art for my Canon EOS R. I am quite pleased!"

John Howell: "A copy of Looking at Photographs (already read once), a BH-40 ballhead (still on order), but best of all, the relaxation of state border restrictions so I can go and take some photos over in Canunda National Park in South Australia!"

Aaron: "We make photo books every year of family vacations, events etc. and give them as gifts. They’re always gifts that everyone appreciates. And they never get thrown out—we always see them on family members’ shelves. Previous books often get another look-through at this time of year, too."

Merry Christmas!

Holiday shopping, 1918 (artist unknown)

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to one and all! And your families, friends, and pets.

As I usually do at this time of year, I'll be taking a few days off. See you on Monday! Good health to you, and peace on Earth. 

Kind regards,
Mike

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

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Mike Ferron: "There is a gift I received from TOP (AKA Mike) that has little to do with photography. I am now eating a diet that is mostly plant based. I gave up the beer, all sugar, and nothing processed enters this mouth of mine. I am down 27 pounds since April. Karin is also on the same eating regime and also losing weight. So Mike have a great holiday and thanks for the motivation."

The Journey of the Swatzells

It's one of the stories you often hear in the aftermath of tornadoes, which are more terrifying the closer they come to you. "Paper debris rides winds, sometimes reaching heights of 30,000 to 40,000 feet above the ground," before the air currents calm and the debris settles back to earth.

After the recent tragic carnage in Kentucky, a nearly 80-year-old photograph of Gertie Swatzell and a baby J.D. Swatzell, taken in 1942, traveled more than 120 miles on the swirling winds of the atmosphere. Katie Posten, of Albany, Indiana, found it on her windshield. Posten took to social media, seems to have located the family of those who lost the picture, and plans to see that it is returned. Here's the story, from NBC News.

There's nothing heartwarming about a maelstrom that can tear your cossetted possessions right out of your home, but when strangers trouble themselves to see that lost items are returned, it can function as a gesture of solidarity and sympathy.

Mike
(Thanks to Kenneth Tanaka)

Book o' the Week

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

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

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

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Featured Comments from:

Albert Smith: "I've been watching the coverage of the tornadoes and saw that story about the photo that traveled that distance. There are going to be thousands of personal artifacts over multiple states. I guess they'll have websites established to try to reunite these irreplaceable effects with the owners. As I look at the rubble of completely flat houses on the TV, I then look around my multiple rooms with boxes of documents, photos, and well, just 'stuff' and I can't imagine if everything goes airborne and dispersed to the horizons. Those poor people."

Days of Darkness (OT)

[An unscheduled post in honor of the occasion,
the day with the earliest sunset of the year.]

-

Do you have a least favorite thing about this season, the season of long nights?

We're still 17 days away from the shortest day of the year, but, as near as I can tell, today begins the days with the earliest sunsets, here where I live in the tiny hamlet of Penn Yan, New York (population 4,893 and falling). Our sunset is at 4:34 today, and will stay that way until the 13th.

The days with the earliest sunset are a little earlier than the shortest day of the year. I don't know why that is, but I don't need to.

The thing that annoys me about Winter days is that something in my brain tells me that once it gets dark, it's time to knock off work! That might be sensible in the Summer, when there can still be light left in the sky after 9:30. But it's ridiculous at this time of the year—Civil Twilight, so-called, ends at 5:07, and I still have six hours before I go to bed. I could get a lot of work done in six hours.

But do I? Sometimes. It gets dark and my brain still tells me it's time to relax, watch a few videos, and go to bed.

Perfect movie for a Winter evening
Speaking of both these things, if you've never watched the film Alone in the Wilderness by Dick Proenneke (pronounced PRENN-uh-kee), you should. It's fascinating watching him build his little cabin. Dick did all the cinematography as well—that was how he earned money, by making films of wilderness wildlife with a wind-up 16mm Bolex. The film was narrated by Dick's friend and the producer of the film, Bob Swerer, adapted from Dick's detailed journal. The two of them decided that Dick's own voice was too high and unpleasant for him to do his own narration.

The thing that brought this to mind is that I recall from the film that he slept extremely long hours in the Winter and extremely little in the Summers, his life synchronized with the daylight. There's a sample of the video on YouTube. But it's best to watch the whole thing. Kind of a basic must-watch, in my opinion—a true classic. Most of us would not have the skills and the work ethic to survive so easily in the wild, but Dick Proenneke embodies the idealized back-to-nature life that many city dwellers fantasize about at one time or another.

Mike

Products of the Week

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

The above are links to Amazon from TOP. Once you're at Amazon, anything you search and buy will be credited to TOP. The following logo is also a link if you click on it:

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

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Featured Comments from:

Josh Hawkins: "On the upside I can get my sunset shots done and still be home in time for dinner."

Thanksgiving and All That

I hope those of you who celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday had a nice time. I had a mid-afternoon dinner at the lakeside home of some friends and neighbors, the Wexlers. Despite the fact that such things are seldom called for in country living, I broke out the good jeans and an actual sport jacket for the occasion. With a pocket handkerchief, even! Well, sort of...

Like my natty pocket handkerchief? The maker is a hip and
happening high-style fashion brand called KN95.

I had a lovely time. The people (only two of whom I had met before this week) were accomplished and engaging and great to talk to, and I joked that the dinner was the best meal I've had in the decade of the 2020s—except I wasn't joking, it really was. A very nice occasion, and big thanks to Ilene and Philip for including me. It's not a good day to be away from family! (I did have a nice call with Xander, though.)

Along with many other people, I'm not very happy with the way a lot of things are going in my country and the world these days. But I was heartened to read online that a number of States have banned retail sales on Thanksgiving so their employees can celebrate the holiday just like they were actual citizens of our nation. Because of course, as you know, there's been a War on Thanksgiving in recent years, as the remorseless juggernaut of Christmas seeks to invade and annex ever greater swaths of temporal territory, not to mention mindshare and money. Another thing regarding Thanksgiving I ran across—well, actually it was shoved under my nose, by Apple News—was a feature on Buzzfeed (rule of life: never click on Buzzfeed! You only have one life and you can never get wasted time back!) featuring peoples' worst Thanksgiving horror stories. The one that made me laugh was this one from someone identified as LOTR4eva1 on Reddit:

"I was probably six or seven at the time. My mom's candles caught the kitchen curtains and some decorative greenery on fire. My sister and my cousins and I were at the 'kid’s table' in the kitchen while the adults were in the dining room, so no one of significance noticed anything except me. My mom threatened us with pain of death if we annoyed the adults during dinner, so I quietly walked to the dining room and stood silently for a minute or two, until someone noticed me, and only then did I politely say, 'Sorry, but the kitchen’s on fire.' My mom still gives me grief about my prioritizing politeness over sense...."

Fortunately we had no such excitement yesterday. All was very civilized, convivial, and pleasant, just as Thanksgiving is supposed to be. I hope yours was all that too.

Mike

Book o' the Week

Our National Monuments: America's Hidden Gems by Q.T. Luong. Just out! Brand new. Publishing isn't easy. Our friend QT (Tuan) Luong tells me that his new book will have to sell 6,200 copies out of a print run of 7,500 just to break even! And that's not including the labor and time it took to make the photographs. Fortunately, the predecessor book, Treasured Lands, has done exceedingly well. It has won 12 international awards and is now in its 6th printing.

The above is a link to Amazon from TOP. Once you're at Amazon, anything you search and buy will be credited to TOP. The following logo is also a link:

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

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Featured Comments from:

KeithB: "Recently seen meme: 'I will stop my war on Christmas once it stops its illegal occupation of November!'"

Art is Personal

[The first day's comments have been added.]

-

I MIGHT BE OLD
...but I got to see all the best bands

—One of my friend Dan's T-shirts

I had the best weekend. Yesterday, on fairly short notice, we staged a Zoom reunion of my photography school graduating class—the Photography Department Class of '85 at the old Corcoran School of Art (as it was then called) in Washington, D.C.

It wasn't as big an event as you might be picturing—when I entered as a second-year student (first year was a foundation program in art before students specialized into departments), there were 15 of us in the Photo Department. When we graduated, only eight remained. Seven of the eight of us were in touch for this reuniting, but one had prior commitments and couldn't attend (hopefully Adrian will make it next time). Our classmate Sheri Lyn Marshall couldn't be located—the only person I knew who had been in touch with her recently was our teacher Mark L. Power, who largely built the photography program at the Corcoran in the 1970s—but I couldn't ask him; Mark died last August.

Being part of such a small class has definite advantages. Art is personal, and being mashed together for so much of our schooling for three years made us close in ways that have never been replicated in my life. Our graduating group of four men and four women had little in common in 1982 apart from a love of photography, but, even after 35 years, we slipped easily into the old dynamic. Seeing everyone again brought vividly to the forefront just how important these people were to me, then and in my subsequent life. We knew each other really well.

Engagé
We were known then to be a volatile, opinionated, vigorous, forceful, and lively group. The then-chairman of the Department, Steve Szabo, once commented to me privately that our group had "ten times the energy" of certain other classes the faculty had known over the years. Critiques, the core of the didactic method at the school, could be, ahh, let's say, very engaged. Jay Townsend wrote, after the meeting, "My wife and I still hang out with a lot of the fine arts folks from the Corcoran, and their interpersonal communications are generally very touchy-feely, quiet and sensitive, whereas our group is much more blunt, free-wheeling and challenging, but still very supportive of each other." In the group each one of us has a lot of integrity, I think, and long ago we learned to be honest with each other.  

We visited for two and a half hours on Sunday, on Zoom. Sarah Huntington called the meetup life-affirming, energizing, and inspiring, and got that right. But then that's the way we were. The reunion was one of the true bright spots of the Time of the Contagion for me. As competitive as we could be back then, it's so easy to see now that I really love these amazing people. I learned so much from all of them, and from our experience together. My time with them at the Corcoran shaped me.

Life is strange
It's true that it's best to be young, and, given the choice, we'd be young, for some definition of the word, if we could be. But later years have consolations as well. As I approach traditional retirement age, I really am deeply grateful that I lived across the span of years I did. It's been the perfect stretch of history to be involved in photography. When I was born, Edward Weston, Paul Strand, Edward Steichen, and Dorothea Lange were still alive. The Decisive Moment was five years old and The Americans would be published a year later. To see everything and watch everything that has happened up to now...well, I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

The Corcoran sits in the midst of that experience. When I arrived there I had been forced to drop out of Dartmouth after doing very well there, and then (alcoholism raging, by that time) I crashed and burned out of Reed College in Portland all on my own. I didn't expect to fit in at the Corcoran, didn't expect to make friends, never thought I'd be anything but an outsider. If I'm honest, I didn't expect to learn much—I had already been busy teaching myself photography for two years at that point. I was pretty cynical. Originally, I planned to stay for only one year—my reasoning was that one year was better than none, and I thought one year was as long as I'd have patience for.

But life is strange. To my great surprise, I found a whole community of like-minded souls and made many friends. My frozen heart thawed out. I didn't have a teacher I didn't learn from, and I had veritable Socratic experiences with several of them. I stopped drinking, fell in love, learned to see, learned to print, learned where I fit in. I might be looking at the past with rose-colored glasses, but I honestly think I looked forward to every day. I loved art school. Every day held new surprises, new riches. I looked through every book in the library, saw every show in the gallery, listened to every visiting speaker, roved through all the museums and galleries of D.C. as if it had all been put there for me. All of it was just what I wanted to be doing. I stayed as long as they let me and graduated with a BFA. It was a marvelous time.

I'll write more when I can, but it's past sunset on Monday and I promised a post on Mondays, so I've got to be good and get this up. Anyway, our little six-person Zoom meetup yesterday might not have been a typical one, but for me it was everything a college reunion should be. And then some. Such a nice time. Big thanks and solidarność to Pam, Jay, Sarah, Ian, and Karen. May we meet again.

Mike

P.S. And by the way, we challenged each other to get the old cameras out of mothballs and shoot a roll of film before our next meetup. I'm in.

Book o' the Week

  Friedlander First Fifty. A very fun little book that gives a tour of the first fifty of Lee Friedlander's books—extra copies of which are apparently stashed all over every floor of his house. By his grandson, who is trying to sell full, signed sets on eBay. This is very enjoyable, but also might be the most unique book about photobooks ever. Who else has published fifty photobooks?

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

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

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

Frank Gorga: "In my estimation, the value of caring, informed feedback/critique from a group of friends cannot be overestimated in the 'art life.' Too many photographers work in isolation. To me making photographs is a more-or-less solitary endeavor. However, on the other hand, we need feedback in order to do our best work.

"I belong to a group or a dozen accomplished photographers who get together once a month to share prints, gather feedback and 'talk photography' in general. I am always amazed at how little of the talk is about cameras, printers, etc. Most of the discussion is rather deeper than that. The group formed organically five years ago with three of us asking other acquaintances to join us over the subsequent months. I can not overstate the value of this group of friends to my growth as a photographer."

Zack S: "Speaking of seeing the best bands, I saw the Doors play the longest set they ever performed, at Cobo Arena in Detroit. Also saw Springsteen for the Born to Run tour and Pink Floyd do the Dark Side of the Moon tour there too. I saw Bob Seger play in a small bar long before he hit it big. Worked security for a show that John Lee Hooker was doing and just he and I sat around talking for about an hour."

Mike replies: Dan's T-shirt rests its case. My friend Kim K. (Corcoran '86) saw Led Zeppelin when they were an opening act. He saw Hendrix live, too. (Plus about 1,800 other bands—I picked that number out of a hat, but he's been a dedicated concertgoer for decades. He's responsible for about half of my own live-music experiences. The real number of concerts he's seen is probably more than that.)

John Robison: "What a great post. Agree with Dave Millier, post these type of remembrances more often. Your happiness just spills all over the page and is heartwarming."

Ron Hoffer: "So glad you could get together with such a nurturing group of Corcoran alumnae. As a former (and somewhat jaded) NYC native who moved to DC for work in the late 1970s, for decades I was delighted to experience, at lunch and in the early evening, the quality and approachability of the Corcoran exhibits and the so memorable pubic presentations by photographers from far and wide. A cherished photo book still in my collection is the slim catalogue from an incredible exhibit 'Washington Photography: Images of the Eighties' held in early 1982 featuring the work of not only Mark Power and Steve Szabo, but other great artists you may have run into Mike, including William Christenberry, Frank DiPerna, John Gossage, John Radcliffe, and Shirley True."

Mike replies: Knew them all to varying degrees except John Radcliffe. Went to NYC with John G., used to hang out with Steve, even. And that show was one of the reasons I went to the Corcoran! I didn't realize then what a great historical moment it was, but man were we lucky. 

A Scream**

[Comments have been posted]

SA*

Another great victory in the neverending battle to keep America safe from photographers occurred last Saturday at LaGuardia Airport in New York. A Republic Airways aircraft operating as American Flight 4817, full of patriotic Americans going about their everyday business, was proceeding from Indianapolis to LaGuardia when an alert woman correctly identified a man seated near her as a vintage camera enthusiast. Fearing that at any moment he might try to capture her image on a negative without obtaining a model release from her, thus violating her God-given copyright to images of herself, she properly alerted authorities—okay, flight attendants—that he had a device.

She was correct: he did. The device might have been something like a Certo 6 folder with a Synchro-Compur shutter built in East Germany (the former Communist part) in the 1950s. Experts from counter-photography watchdog agencies who monitor the activities of suspicious photographers say it is possible to use this shutter to MacGuyver a detonator for a 1950s Russian nuclear warhead, and that for this reason photographers are always attempting to smuggle these shutters from one terrorist cell to another.

"It's DA BOMB!!"

It was later determined that the passenger was merely engaged in an activity known as "camera fondling" and was not actually planning to take any pictures without permission. However this form of fondling is well known to quickly lead to pederasty and the permitting of male animals to legally marry each other in civil courts with their hoofs or paws on the Holy Bible and with an American flag not all that far away.

Fearful that this aberrant passenger might actually have more vintage cameras in his carry-on or even packed away in the baggage compartment, feet or even inches from the vulnerable essential systems of the jet, pilots immediately panicked, requesting that air traffic control divert the plane to...well, LaGuardia, where it was headed anyway. Air traffic controllers of course complied.

The pilots, however, made the landing as quick and rough as possible in order to heighten the drama, while responders massed on the ground to quickly close in on the deviant. Passengers were rewarded for the scary landing by being allowed to slide down those cool inflatable slides, which is something many passengers—well, okay, many male passengers—have always secretly wanted to do. The vintage camera collector was forced to lie down on the runway while people kept their distance just in case he had a Minox or a Minolta TC-1 secretly duct-taped to his midriff ready to go off.

Some background for context
The public is reminded yet again that photographers are always up to no good. In 1997 following the tragic death of Princess Diana, everyone became hyper-vigilant about the cult of extremist fanatics known as the paparazzi, who relentlessly hound celebrities to death by chasing them to the point of exhaustion and bad judgement, similar to the way English aristocrats on horseback in cool costumes used to molest foxes. (Photographers of any type may be damned by association to paparazzi, because close enough.) Then after 9/11 it became known that anyone photographing the outside of any building or any other feature of our national infrastructure, no matter how remote or insignificant, were secretly planning to blow it up. In response, bored security guards were given carte blanche to harass said terrorists until they went away. These miscreants are often cunningly disguised as tourists and are often seen with camera backpacks or camera bags that probably contain bombs. One telltale is that these "photographers" are constantly seen with different bags. Why? It is believed to be because the old ones were used in the commission of crimes—why else would anyone need so many different bags?*** Finally, anyone taking any picture with a child visible in any part of the image can automatically be deemed a predatory pedophile even in the absence of other evidence. And so forth. 

Torches and pitchforks Dept.
Disappointingly, although the vintage camera collector was detained, he could not be executed or even imprisoned, for the very inconvenient reason that he had not actually broken any, well, you know, laws. But he was definitely stressed out and shamed, which should make him think twice the next time he settles down with a three-quarters-full bottle of cheap Chardonnay and opens up eBay on his browser instead of going to bed.

However, support among the passengers for the heroic actions of everyone involved, from the Governor of New York (who Tweeted soothingly to calm the populace [seriously, she did]), to the police, the fire crews, airport authorities, pilots, cabin crew, and the lady who sounded the alarums, was strong. Some passenger comments in the aftermath:

"You just never know when you're going to be trapped on a flight with one of these freaks. Why can't he just collect guns like everyone else?"

"This was a close one, and I agree with the decisions made. He should be taking pictures with his phone like a normal person."

"Honestly, taking out a camera and fondling it in public? What did he expect would happen? Certain things, like picking your nose or doing Elaine Benes dancing in your undies, you should do in the privacy of your own home."

"I guess this turned out to be just precautionary. But the slide was great. They should let us get off the plane like that every time."

"I was trapped in a window seat next to a Leica collector once, so I know what she was going through. At least she realized she could get an emergency landing and a super-quick deplaning out of it. I wish I had known that."

"You just dread the day when your slightly odd eight-year-old says something like, 'Daddy, what's a view camera?' Your heart just sinks."

In the end, everything was fine. Fox5 News New York got a really alarming news segment out of it to agitate the public with the unimportant half of a story, another photographer was harassed for God and country, and all the survivors had quite an exciting story to tell when they got home, without ever actually having been in any danger.

The advice for air travelers is clear: if you're on a plane and you see someone taking out an old camera, don't think. Scream.

Mike

Disclaimer: I have seen no report yet about what camera(s) the passenger actually had.

*Satire Alert. I was especially miffed by PetaPixel's headline, "Man’s Vintage Camera Mistaken for Bomb, Causes Emergency Landing," the syntax of which clearly implies that it was the man's vintage camera that caused the emergency landing. Whose side are they on?! The asinine woman jumping to completely incorrect conclusions and sounding a false alarm caused the emergency landing, not the poor fellow's vintage camera!

**Re the title: My grandmother, born 1901, used to call a funny story "a scream."

***I was going to link to that amazing video called "Bag World (with Dr. David Alan Harvey, Professor of Bagology)" showing the famous Magnum photographer rummaging through his absolutely vast collection of old camera bags. Sadly for photo-geek culture, that video is no longer available.

Book o' the Week

  Friedlander First Fifty. A very fun little book that gives a tour of the first fifty of Lee Friedlander's books—extra copies of which are apparently stashed all over every floor of his house. By his grandson, who is trying to sell full sets on eBay. This is very enjoyable, but also might be the most unique book about photobooks ever. Who else has published fifty photobooks?

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

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

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

Christopher Kleihege: "Yes, the alleged satire above follows my train of thought exactly. Like I said, the photographer should have taken Amtrak. Remember the old Dudley Do-Right cartoons with the damsel tied to the tracks?"

Don Parsons: "As a former regional pilot and a current teacher of many of Republic Airways pilots, I find this both funny and alarming. Don't people think any more?"

Daniel M: "At first, I was thinking that you have presented a funny story to entertain us. But, with the link you have posted, I have discovered that it was real, very sadly...."

Dillan: "You never know what you're going to read here! That was great! As an aside, I can just imagine your grandmother as a flapper girl in the 1920s, telling her bestie that she had a funny story to tell. 'Oh Gertie, you have to hear this! It's such a SCREAM!'"

John Krumm: "This morning, after dropping off a car at my auto mechanic, I was walking down a residential street with my still new Fuji X100V, taking the occasional photo of interesting houses. A woman came out of one house, loudly saying, 'excuse me' to get me to stop. She was super concerned because I had taken a photo of her neighbor's house and it had kids inside, apparently. She wanted my full name, which I refused, though I did explain I was a hobby photographer, and she can see some of my neighborhood photos on my website. Two blocks later I was talking to a cop, who had received a 'suspicious person' call from said woman. He asked for my ID and checked for warrants, which surprised me. I was in no mood to argue with a cop, but I know that was wrong. Frankly my whole morning was kind of a mess emotionally after that."

Mani Sitaraman: "From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's news story about the incident. 'The woman was traveling with her husband and children, sitting across the aisle from her spouse, when she spotted another man in her husband’s row scrolling through videos and photos of vintage cameras, sources said.' Life with Mom."

Lee Rust: "I thought you were kidding at first...like a spoof article in The Onion...but no...I looked it up and all the initial news stories were about the threat and the drama and the emergency slides and etc....and then, nothing. 'No further information is available at this time.' it seemed like the 'authorities' were pretty embarrassed and just wanted the story to go away, which it did. Except for here, of course."

Eric Rose: "That lady should be sued by the owner of the camera plus have to pay compensation to all the passengers who were affected by her hysterics. The crew should also be better trained in what is and what is not a bomb. This whole thing just shows how hysterical and unhinged America has become."

scott kirkpatrick: "Two-three days later, it's not news and in several pages of Googling I can't find any further information about who was the photographer or what camera he had. The picture of a TLR was the result of a reporter going to Willoughby-Peerless and asking 'what is a vintage camera?' So not much of a clue. I realize that deep in my Leica bag is an external self-timer. I can imagine the reception I might get if I wound it up in public and let it buzz down to its 'click!' And, at Oren G.'s suggestion, I will never again go out in public with my Pentax Spotmeter in its holster. But why did nothing happen to the lady who caused all the trouble? Neither embarrassment nor education resulting from the moment...."

David Lee: "I hope this woman is added to the no-fly list as soon as possible.

"Years ago in the Denver airport, a TSA guy asked me to take my camera out of my bag so he could inspect it. He started looking at it with that gesture in his face that can only mean 'I won’t get fooled.' He asked me to turn the camera on. I can’t, I said, it’s an old camera, no batteries inside. Then he removed the lens cap and looked through the viewfinder to make sure he could see through the lens (it was a Leica M3). After he convinced himself it was a real camera, he gave it back to me. The funniest thing is that I was one of the pilots in the flight…."