The Online Photographer

Tom Petty on Songwriting

"'It's kind of lonely work,' he said, 'because you just have to keep your pole in the water. I always had a little routine of going into whatever room I was using at the time to write in, and just staying in there till I felt like I got a bite.

"I compare it to fishing: There's either a fish in the boat or there's not,' he said with a laugh. 'Sometimes you come home and you didn't catch anything and sometimes you caught a huge fish.'"

—Tom Petty, who died on Monday, quoted in "Tom Petty's final interview: There was supposed to have been so much more," by Randy Lewis, from the Los Angeles Times website

Compare to what I said about photography in the article "Key Thoughts and the Zen of Fishing," July 7, 2002. "The other thing I find really helpful is to constantly remember to discard my expectations. Photography is a bit like fishing. You can think and prepare all you want, but sometimes the fish bites and sometimes it doesn't. (Also like fishing, those who know what they're doing stand a much better chance of success than those who don't. But there's still that element of serendipity involved.) Those of us lucky enough to be shooting as amateurs, for ourselves, ought to remain aware of this. Many photographers force their work to conform to the ideas they had when they shot. But the reality is, some shots work and some shots don't, and which is which does not always have much to do with what you wanted to have happen."

I still love the fishing metaphor where photography is concerned. I'm not a "control everything" kind of photographer. And the key is, "you just have to keep your pole in the water," meaning, get out and about with a camera in your hand and turn your seeing on. Ralph Gibson said something like that to me in the '90s, during an interview. This is a paraphrase, not a quote, but he said something like every time I go out I know I'm going to get something. I'm just good enough at this point. I always come back with something.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

Jimmy Reina: "Re '"...Some shots work and some shots don't, and which is which does not always have much to do with what you wanted to have happen,' I have heard that, when asked how to make a good photograph, Robert Doisneau said, 'If I knew the answer to that, I would do it every time.'"

Quote o' the Day: Carly Simon

"There's this eternal argument between the part of us that wants to be an artist and the part of us that wants to be a success. The success part often wins."

—Carly Simon

-

Quoted in "Production of a Lifetime: Whitney Houston and Clive Davis" by Jacob Bernstein, The New York Times, Sept. 30, 2017.

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

Mathias Vejerslev: "'An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.' —Charles Horton Cooley"

Steve Jacob: "Very true. I work in the IT business. I toyed with the idea of being a pro photographer, but realised that I wanted to pursue a consuming interest on my own terms, with none of the stresses or demands of other people's needs or approval. So I work a normal day job, but that doesn't mean I am not passionate about photography. I am probably far more passionate about it than I would be if I did it for a living. I was very excited about computers in the 1980s, but now my interest in IT is purely professional. I don't want to think about it at the weekends."

Omer: "Art and success are not mutually exclusive. It's a matter of balance and there are many musicians, writers, and photographers who've managed it."

Mike replies: True, but the article the quote came from is a case of an artist emphatically not managing it. Sad albeit thought-provoking IMO.

It was the second article I read this week designed to answer the question "What happened?" Both concern celebrities I've never cared for, and each article made its subject more human and more sympathetic. The other one was "What happened to Tiger Woods? It's the most vexing question in sports," by Alan Shipnuck, from golf.com, originally published in Sports Illustrated. (Beware that the video ads on golf.com are potentially irritating.)

Jeff1000: "I’m hauling lumber, locally here in Las Vegas, to pay the bills, and I pursue singer-songwriter/ acoustic guitar on my own time and terms. Success on both fronts: one monetary, the other soul-enriching."

Mike Plews: "'It ain't art but it's in...' —Every news photographer ever."

John Camp: "The word 'artist' is used a little too generically, IMHO. Carly Simon uses it in the show-biz sense, where everybody who ever cut a record or had a line in a movie is an artist. I don't think there was any particular reason to consider Whitney Houston to be an artist in the non-show-biz sense of the word. She was a performer with a great voice, but a performer. I have a reasonably acute sense of this, because I write novels that are bestsellers, but they're thrillers, not art works. In writing them, I'm a performer, and a successful one, but I'm not an artist.

"It is possible to be both, of course. Eminem is an excellent performer and also an artist, IMHO. So are Jeff Tweedy, Derek Trucks, Bonnie Raitt, etc. They not only perform, but also create things of substance and excellence."

Derek: "Did John Camp just name-check Eminem? That pleases me quite a bit, for some reason. And a trenchant comment, as always."

Mike Hess: "The best thing for my photography career was to get a job with a pension and benefits. I never disliked taking photos more than when I was doing it to support myself. Now that I don't need to chase each new job, I can pick what I want to do. I am much happier making the photos I want, when I want, and for whom I want. My love for my art has never been greater."

Quote o' the Day: Gregory Rabassa

-

"Every act of communication is an act of translation."

—Gregory Rabassa, the translator of 100 Years of Solitude,
from the book If This Be Treason,
via Chris Bliss

-

Thought of this in the context of "translating" the experience of seeing and being in a landscape into a landscape photograph.

Mike

Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

Quote o' the Day: Me

"Photography is about life, not about photography."

—Mike

-

Original contents copyright 2017 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

You may quote me
Give Mike a “Like” or Buy yourself something nice

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

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

Quote o' the Day: Kenneth Tanaka

"Tanaka's First Law of Photography: Whatever you use there you are. That is, you will make (or try to make) the same photograph regardless of the camera in your hands. Cameras are merely writing instruments for the mind's eye."

—Ken Tanaka

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

Like what you read?
Give Mike a “Like” or Buy yourself something nice

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

Richard S: "Absolutely true if you interpret it to mean that every photo you take is an expression of your inner self and the way you see reality. I think we can all agree that if you gave three people identical cameras and set them to photograph in the same location, you would get three radically different sets of pictures. By the same token if you give a single photographer three different cameras and set her to photograph a location, the pictures will all have the same underlying feel to them, and tell a consistent story both about the location and the photographer who took them."

[Ed. Note: In the Comments, Ken has responded to multiple commenters with a more nuanced explanation of his ideas. Because he's responding to many different people (and their comments are interesting too), the action is in the full Comments section for this post.

To reach our Comments section, either click on "Comments" in the post footer below, or click on the post title and then scroll down.]

Looking Glass

I went down a little rabbit hole on the Internet this morning, as has been known to happen on occasion. (A-hem. Cough! Cough!)

Wikipedia featured this image on its home page today:

View from the Artist's Window by Martinus Rørbye (Source)

I had to look into it because paintings like this have a tendency to annoy me—painted in 1825, it's clearly a fastidious copy of the image in a camera obscura. It even reproduces, somewhat, the tonal qualities and slightly faded colors of a lens image on a groundglass. Although that must have been a sensational and cutting edge technique at the time, presaging the shock of reality that representational photography was soon to make on the consciousness of the world, it's just another example of photorealism now. Albeit a pleasant and historically significant one, particularly if you are Danish. Isn't it beautiful?

But it's not how people see; it's how a lens sees.

Compare it to this work by Eugene Delacroix painted in the same year, 1825, "A Mortally Wounded Brigand Quenches His Thirst":

That's not lens vision, although we can possibly imagine a model striking that pose in the studio as the painter paints by eye.

Schjeldal and Rørbye
However, from there, one thing led to another, and soon enough I came across "Lonely Men of the Nineteenth Century" by the critic Peter Schjeldahl, from the May 2, 2011 issue of The New Yorker. He mentions Rørbye, but basically the article is about Caspar David Friedrich, the greatest painter of the movement to which Rørbye belonged. First, Schjeldahl calls Romanticism "the first distinctly modern movement and, it seems to me, the default setting of Western sensibilities ever since," which is a great line. Then, in passing, we are treated to this:

Friedrich proves that an experience of the capital-“S” Sublime—the idea of malign beauty, then in vogue—doesn’t require a storm in the Alps. It needs only a sense of external reality that is not other to the self but, rather, otherizing. Variants of the effect abound in the arts of the past two centuries. It is cranked up to a steady state of panic in Kafka. It is becalmed but ubiquitous in Edward Hopper. Most of all, it has engaged innumerable photographers and filmmakers. Take Robert Frank’s classic, devastating shot of gauzy curtains blowing in a window that overlooks a grimy mining town: the good news of beauty laced with the bad news of being stuck in Butte, Montana. Come to think of it, any camera might function as an inanimate avatar of Friedrich—analogous to a brain being invaded wholly, exclusive of thought, by the uncanniness of the not-oneself.

Isn't that great? Cranked up to a steady state of panic in Kafka, becalmed but ubiquitous in Edward Hopper. Nailed that. Makes me want to go immerse myself in Caspar David Friedrich's work, for one thing. Might be appropriate as I soldier on with Melville!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

You can support:
This author or this website

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

Chris Y: "All that, and gotta love the lucidity of Peter Schjeldahl—this from a review of Richard Prince’s Instagrams in 2014—'Possible cogent responses to the show include naughty delight and sincere abhorrence. My own was something like a wish to be dead—which, say what you want about it, is the surest defense against assaults of postmodernist attitude.' You can’t really forget a line like that…."

David Dyer-Bennet: "I kind of love the idea of a color photo from 1825! We don't get to see the objective photographic view of what happened that long ago very often. Of course, we don't know that the painter didn't in fact alter things. It was pre-Photoshop, but not pre-Artist, and artists are always suspect  :-)  ."

Heinz:

"Just a few weeks back I stumbled into a Caspar David Friedrich moment on an outing and couldn't resist this selfie called 'Was nun, Caspar?' [What now, Caspar?]"

Andrew Molitor: "When I see a reference to Frank's picture of Butte, I always check to see if the writer has really looked at the picture. Nobody ever seems to mention that the mine headframe in the distance appears to be engulfed in flame.

"Well, it's probably steam, but it's still dramatic as hell. That photo has always struck me as a guy seeing something dramatic out his window, and shooting it with the far-to-wide lens he has mounted. The white-engulfed headframe in the distance is the beating heart of the picture, even so small. It's graphically important, as well as, to my eye, the obvious 'subject.' But people always drone on about the dreary town and the curtains."

Quote o' the Day: Francis Hodgson

Francis Hodgson by Anton Corbijn, from 1000 Words magazine

"I still believe that photography is by far the most important medium of the latter part of the twentieth century—more important than prose and more important than cinema. No exaggeration. Photography is transnational, it’s transcultural. It is available to five-year-olds, it is available to professors of photography. It’s amazing how it is not a limited medium. No other medium equals it in its efficient transmission of powerful messages—certainly not prose. People are less literate than they were but they are more literate in photographs than they used to be, and that is pretty powerful. One could argue that photography is dropping off a bit from those great heights, and its other cousins are jostling up against it, but they’ve all developed from photography."

—From an interview with Francis Hodgson, described as a "critic, professor, photography consultant, co-founder of the Prix Pictet, former head of the photographs department at Sotheby’s, and an advisor specialising in fine photographs for private and public collections." The interview with Gemma Padley is at 1000 Words magazine.

Mike
(Thanks to Dave Sculthorpe)

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

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

John Camp: "What utter nonsense. It's like suggesting that architecture is more important than music, or that golf is more important than fishing."

David: "In my humble opinion, Francis is the best writer about photography at the moment by a mile—check out his old reviews in the Financial Times."

Quote o' the Day: Edward Steichen

-

"No photographer is as good
as the simplest camera."

—Edward Steichen

-

Steichen, an American born in Luxembourg who lived until 1973, enjoyed one of the highest-flying careers in the medium's history. He was the most-published photographer in the entire run of Alfred Stieglitz's influential 1903–1917 journal Camera Work; in 15 years spanning much of the 1920s and '30s he was the most widely known and highest-paid professional in the world, often credited with essentially inventing modern fashion photography (not to mention setting the tone for how photography was practiced as a profession at the highest levels for many decades); and he served as Commander of the Naval Aviation Photographic Unit in WWII. As the Director of the Photography Department at the Museum of Modern Art for many years, he staged the exhibit "The Family of Man," which set records for attendance that still stand. In 2006, his "The Pond—Moonlight" became briefly the most expensive photograph ever sold.

Mike
(Thanks to Bruce H.)

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

TOP's links!

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

Tom Duffy: "Well of course Steichen was right. In his day the simplest camera had manual focusing and adjustable f-stops and shutter speeds."

DiegoMolinaPhoto: "It may be true in some cases...."

Lynn (partial comment): "In recent years I've been testing this theory by using mostly simple cameras—Barnacks and folders, TLRs, even a Brownie No.2. My photography has improved! Go figure."

Stevan Latkovic: "It is one more of those bon-mots that looks profound when you first read it, but are totally  meaningless in fact. Did Steichen mean that he was not as good as the simplest Kodak of his day? Or, that Irving Penn was not as good as a Holga? You are pulling my leg, Steichen. I can see you grinning."

Mike replies: Maybe you'll like my version better. "99.99% of the greatest photographs in the medium's history were taken with cameras that are not good enough for today's most inexperienced amateur."

Quote o' the Day: Roland Michaud

"To do something interesting, you need time. Nobody ever has time. Everyone is always in a hurry. Time is the secret."

—Roland Michaud (see some of his and his wife's fine photographs here)

-

(Thanks to Eliott James)

ADDENDUM: I really just wanted to post this to introduce you to the delightful Roland and Sabrina Michaud, who seem very much worth getting to know. But the discussion of time in the comments, which leads back to the "Eight Hours" post last month, is interesting too.

Since then, I've been reading the very interesting book Overwhelmed: How to Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time by Brigid Schulte, recommended during that March discussion by my brother Scott, who, over the years, has been a steady and excellent source of reading recommendations.

It turns out that "busy-ness" has become a status symbol. In the U.S. it's an unintended consequence of a number of societal forces, most notably the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938. That's the law that first separated hourly wage-earners from salaried workers, and mandated overtime for hourly workers who worked more than 40 hours per week. But back then, only one out of seven workers was salaried; the rest were wage earners. And the salaried workers were higher-level managers, who were expected to take care of their own leisure. Now, a third of workers are salaried. And there's no law in place that limits the hours a salaried worker can be made to work. Combine that with the laws regarding benefits, and the result is that wage earners are highly likely to have time on their hands: in the lower echelons they're probably employed only part-time, and many companies even refuse to give workers a steady schedule, in order to prevent them from taking a second part-time job. So wage earners are now more likely to be lower class and to have time on their hands. Meanwhile, workers who are salaried are pressured to work many more hours than a mere 40 a week. But those jobs, of course, include all the best ones, the ones filled by all the better-educated and more highly qualified people—and that pay well.

Et voilà—it's a sign of status to be busy. It means you're better educated, have a better job, and are earning more money, and it implies that you're essential to the people you work for, because why else would they make so many demands of you and depend on you so much?

An interesting study that author Schulte recounts is one that analyzed hundreds of those Christmas letters that people mass-mail to their friends and family during the holidays. An overwhelming majority of those, it turns out, are mainly concerned with emphasizing busy-ness. Doing so much! Working hard, playing harder! Activities every which way! No time for anything! ...All just basic markers of high status.

Of course what it made me want to do is to write a Christmas letter emphasizing how un-busy I am and all the many ways I take time to stop and smell the roses. But that's not because I'm above it all; it's just because I'm a contrarian, and going against the grain means status to me.  :-)

Anyway, a very interesting book. I second Scott's recommendation, if you're interested in the subject.

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

TOP's links!

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

Bob Blakely: "tl;dr  :-)  "

HaJe: "Time is not something you just have. You have to take time. Only then will you have it."

Chris Y.: "Ah, Greg Brown—

Love calls like the wild birds
It's another day
The spring wind blew my list
Of things to do away...."

Andreas: "Re '...because why else would they make so many demands of you and depend on you so much?' Because they exploit you? ;-) "

Burple: "Actually, six out of seven workers aren't salaried today. According to the BLS, just under 60% of all workers are paid by the hour. Also, Dan Clawson and Naomi Gerstel's book Unequal Time: Gender, Class and Family in Employment Schedules, winner of the 2015 Max Weber Award given by the Society for the Organizations, Occupations, and Work section of the American Sociological Association, is an excellent read on this subject."

Mike replies: Fixed. Thanks.

Quote o' the Day: David Duval

"...It goes back to being a stand-up guy, an honest person who has gone through great struggles and is still working and practicing, not quitting. I've had some awful days where it takes a lot of mental will to go play golf. I shot a 62 at Pebble Beach once. Six, seven years later, I shot an 85. What did I do after that? I teed it up the next day."

—David Duval

Golfer Duval was ranked #1 in the world in the late '90s and once shot a 59 in competition. After a sudden and steep fall from the heights, he won his last tournament in 2001 and lost his Tour card in 2011. Quoted in an article by Chip Brown in Men's Journal in 2010.

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

TOP's links!

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

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

Quote o' the Day: Susan Sontag

"Surrealism lies at the heart of the photographic enterprise: in the very creation of a duplicate world, of a reality in the second degree, narrower but more dramatic than the one perceived by natural vision. The less doctored, the less patently crafted, the more naive—the more authoritative the photograph was likely to be."

—Susan Sontag

(Submitted by Roy Feldman)

Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

Don Norris: "I think that, taken out of the context of the paragraph in which Sontag makes these statements, the quotation could be misleading. They are the paragraph’s last two sentences and give us its conclusion. The paragraph’s first sentence gives us its subject and context: 'That photography is the only art that is natively surreal does not mean, however, that it shares the destinies of the Surreal movement.' Her point is that, because photography is naturally surreal (i.e., super-real), attempts to make it 'super-real' by using Surrrealistic methods such as solarized photographs, photograms, and photomontages failed. 'The mainstream of photographic activity has shown that a Surrealistic manipulation…of the real is unnecessary, if not actually redundant,' she states. So the 'Surreal' that begins the quotation is a really small-s surreal, which makes the quotation make perfect sense."

Quote o' the Day: Marjorie Salvaterra

"A photographer’s job is to shoot something
no one else would see."

—Marjorie Salvaterra, quoted in the caption of "Marilyn," a portrait in LensCulture's "Making Portraits of People," curated by Andy Adams of FlakPhoto

-

Mike

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

TOP's links!

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

Mark Jennings: "Yup! I agree with that and add that the photographer should be so besotted as to be convinced that other peoples' love of life is incomplete without that rare find. At least that's my ideal standard for work that goes out (I'm not a pro obviously). But if it excites me so much that I just can't keep it a hidden, then it has a chance at being of general interest. All of the exceptional-for-me images that I have managed have been of subjects that I'm strongly attached to and have spent truly excessive amounts of time with. Feelings, thoughts, eye, inspiration and technique come slowly to me. But getting there is one of the most fun things there is.

"An anecdote I read a long time ago fits in here. A beloved author was asked by a young guy, 'What does it take to be a good writer?' The pro asked in return, 'Do you like sentences?' And after a lecture on the intricacies of meter, Robert Frost was asked if that really was what he thought about while writing his (unique) verse. He came back with, 'I revel in it.' Is it any different for us with line, planes, colors, tones, movement and stuff? That's what I like!"

Manuel: "Yes indeed. An interesting—and quite complementary—piece of popular culture about originality in photography is one featured in Richard Linklater's 'Boyhood.' During a scene that (fittingly) takes place in a darkroom, Mason's Photography teacher asks his pupil: 'What can you bring to photography that others can't?' Every photography enthusiast should ask themselves the same question."

Will: "I like that a lot. (But) In the spirit of the conversations I enjoy here, I offer the exact opposite assertion: 'At least one of a photographer’s jobs is to shoot what everyone can see.' I'm regularly asked to document gatherings / events / etc. because 'you're a photographer.' Without too much exaggeration, I can say that there are usually hundreds of people at these events, and many of them are using a phone-cam or a non-phone-cam to shoot as well. So why ask me? Because I capture the event in a way that allows people to people see what they saw. Without the usual problems that seem to plague so many others' photos. As far as I can tell, that job description covers many types of people who call themselves—and are called—photographers. Salvaterra shoots things I would never see, literally and figuratively, and I love her work for that reason. I also love photographers who can show me exactly what I saw. Not 'in a new way,' or 'truer than true,' but exactly as I saw it."

Quote o' the Day: Don McCullin

"The trouble with photography is that it’s been hijacked by the art world. I’m a photographer. I’m very happy with the title. I’m not an artist."

—Don McCullin

-

Posted by: Mike
(Thanks to John Denniston)

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

TOP's links!

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

Manuel: "I disagree. He's an artist. His photography has solid composition principles and, like W. Eugene Smith, he is able to find beauty in the horrors of this world. Although a photojournalist, Don McCullin embeds an artistic language in his pictures. That, in my admittedly unqualified opinion, is enough to make him an artist.

"The first part of his quotation can be a bit more controversial. Was photography kidnapped by art, or was it adopted by art? I understand what Mr. McCullin means—some photographers, and lots of photojournalists among them, trade content for style much too often—but it's not such a bad thing for photography to be regarded as an art. If there wasn't an artistic element in it (a personal, original view on a given subject), photography would be rather prosaic and deeply uninteresting.

"But then again, Don McCullin was just being hyperbolic when he stated that. He is an artist. And he knows that."

David Elden: "Mr. McCullin appeared at a meet the 'artist' event at the National Gallery of Art here in Ottawa on the occasion of a large retrospective show of his life's work a couple of years back. He walked around the exhibit with a large crowd in attendance, was a mesmerising speaker, and made this same point about not being an artist quite forcefully."

Patrick Dodds: "'The majority of photographers still seek "artistic" effects, imitating other mediums of graphic expression. The result is a hybrid product that does not succeed in giving their work the most valuable characteristic it should have—photographic quality.' —Tina Modotti (via photoquotations.com, an excellent site that inspires and provokes in equal measure). I've certainly been guilty of the above, and still am from time to time."

toto (partial comment): "...There's enough photography to go around for everybody."

Gordon Lewis (partial comment): "In the end, they're all just labels. I am not my label and my label is not me."

Quote o' the Day: Anne Rice

"Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."

—Author Anne Rice, talking about
what she learned from Franz Kafka

-

Posted by: Mike

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

TOP's links!

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

Henry Rogers: "That works fine for an artist, writer photographer or whatever working on their own. A lot of worthwhile human activity depends on teamwork. The attitude expressed in the quote makes teamwork more difficult. I'm sure we all know people who have, by pursuing that idea to extremes, blighted their own lives, and obstructed the worthwhile efforts of others, by refusing to compromise. It isn't a matter of surrendering integrity to compromise when by doing so the team is enabled to work towards worthwhile results. On its own that quote provides an excuse, not an ideal to work towards."

Quote o' the Day: Gordon Cahill

"I'm a full-time photographer. That means I spend nearly 10% of my time taking photographs."

—Gordon Cahill

-

[Gordon commented on the "Diversions" post. Truer words.... This is a big shock for a lot of people when they first innocently "turn pro." —Ed.]

Posted by: Mike
(Thanks to Gordon)

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

TOP's links!

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

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

Quote o' the Day: Mike

"Making a picture that's technically what you want is where
photography begins, not where it ends."

—Mike J.

(People seem to like this quote from the other day, but I think I prefer this wording.)

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

TOP's links!

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

Paul Emberger: "I tell a variation of that truism to my students. And interestingly, I met Ralph Gibson yesterday: he was giving a lecture at the college where I currently teach. He told the crowd nearly the exact same thing. He spoke about how he came out of the Navy as a photojournalist with really good technical skill (I believe his wording may have been perfect or great skills) but that he hadn't yet really learned how to see. He also remarked about his time assisting Margaret Bourke-White. He said she had a phenomenal eye, but her skills were lacking. I recommend going to hear him talk if you ever have the chance."

Random Excellence / Quote o' the Day

Photo by Dave Jenkins

Triggered by my snapshot of the TransAmerica building the other day, Dave Jenkins sent me this photo of the same motif that he took 25 years ago with an Olympus OM-2 and Zuiko 85mm ƒ/2 lens.

Dave writes, "I found what I think is the perfect summary to all the talk about clichés a week or so ago. On the back cover of the February, 2000 issue of Popular Photography is an ad for Minolta light meters. It shows a photo of Elliott Erwitt holding a large, framed print of one of his best-known photographs. In the caption, he is saying 'To me, photography is an art of observation...I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.'"

I managed to find the ad:

This is the quote I felt related to Ctein's two photos, the one of the plane wing and the one of the leaf.

Another relevant quote is probably mine, something Ctein says I told him 20 years ago: "We should never be so insecure as to avoid cliché at every turn."

Ezra Pound said "make it new"; I say "make it yours." Half the battle.

Mike

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

TOP's links!

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

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

Quote o' the Day: Jim Richardson

“Might I vote for a new camera category: the Interchangeable Software Camera. The ISC. From a fair bit of experience with an iPhone (and a few decades with SLRs) I've come to the conclusion that camera makers have seriously underrated the value of interchangeable software. Apps give you all sorts of creative possibilities. Apps are fun. Given the choice of spending $1,000 on a new lens that might improve your pictures or spending $15 on five new apps that you can go out and play with tomorrow, I think lots of photographers are figuring out where the fun is.

”

Jim Richardson

Our friend Jim Richardson, a Kansan, has photographed more than 30 stories for National Geographic magazine and is a Contributing Editor of NG's sister publication Traveler magazine.

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

TOP's links!

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

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

Quote o' the Day: Duane Michals

-

“Don’t try to be an artist. Find the thing within you that needs to be expressed. You might find it is art.”

—Duane Michals

-

Mike
(Thanks to Dave)

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

TOP's links!

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

Kenneth Tanaka: "Good quote! I met Duane Michals about 10 years ago. He impressed me as a very lovely, very animated, and very opinionated fellow. I can easily envision him saying this to someone. Of course there is one catch to this directive: what if you discover you've nothing to express?"

Mike replies: There must be worse fates than not being an artist.  :-)

Quote o' the Day: Jeremy Clarkson

-

"First rule of being a bloke: more buttons
equals better."

—J.C., from here

Made me laugh. Ya wish it weren't so. I still think there's a market out there for at least a few models of "alternative" simple cameras. There's currently only one simple camera on the market: this one. Wish I worked for a camera company—I could "design" (i.e., specify, or create the concept for) a great one. Not for nothing have I been working for amateur, hobbyist, family, enthusiast, and students photographers since 1984. (You know what they say: Oh well.)

Mike

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

TOP's links!

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

Bruce: "I think this is one reason why a lot of photographers don’t think much of iPhone cameras. They can’t be any good because they don’t have enough buttons! My Fuji X30 point and shoot has buttons that exist because of ancestor worship. The front of the camera has a fake lens release button on the right, a fake aperture control ring, and a fake little flappy button on the lower left which did something on film SLR cameras, but I don’t remember what. I do like the real zoom control ring though, that’s nice. However, sometimes I reach for the zoom ring and get the other ring by accident. I think having multiple rings is becoming like having multiple blades in razors. I predict we will see a point and shoot camera with four control rings around the lens before too long!"