The Online Photographer

Mystery Couple

Who was this handsome couple, anyone know?

No cheating, now!

A more or less period photo of the studio where the picture was made can be seen here. (Thanks to Calvin Amari for that).

Mike

UPDATE Monday morning: First three comments that came in:

WJW: "Teddy Roosevelt?"

Craig Yuill: "Winston Churchill’s parents? (Mother was American if I recall correctly.)"

Bruce Hedge: "Your grandparents? Make that great-grandparents...but neither would have come up if I'd 'cheated' (I suspect they're well known), so neither is correct, I reckon."

Mike adds: Correct. But kudos to all three of you for not cheating. Speed noted, "The truly amazing thing (for us old people) is that it takes less than a second for Google (and others I suppose) to find the answer when I paste just the image into their search engine."

Stephen Jenner and some others knew the answer. The man is Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, better known as the Sundance Kid, one of the most famous outlaws of the Old West and one of the two titular subjects of arguably the best "bromance" movie ever made (or that I've ever seen, anyway), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), written by William Goldman and directed by George Roy Hill. Paul Newman starred as Robert LeRoy Parker, alias "Butch Cassidy," and Robert Redford played the Sundance Kid. Goldman won an Oscar for the movie, as did the cinematographer, Conrad L. Hall. It was the top-grossing film released in the U.S. in 1969 (and No. 8 in France); it eventually earned ~$100m, a lot of money in those days. Neither Longabaugh nor Parker were gunfighters or psychopathic killers, but they seemed addicted to robbing banks. In real life, they fled to Argentina (in the movie it was Bolivia), where they lived for eight years, becoming even more notorious there than they had been in the United States. But they eventually robbed one bank too many, and were hunted down and cornered, either killing themselves or being killed by the authorities in the standoff. Goldman had a hard time selling the screenplay because studios didn't like the South American ending. One studio head refused to buy it unless Goldman changed it, and when Goldman protested that it had really happened that way, the mogul reportedly replied, "I don't give a shit. All I know is John Wayne don't run away." The South American episode was what had attracted Goldman to the story in the first place, because it contradicted F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous dictum that there are no second acts in American lives.

The woman is Etta—more likely Ethel*—Place, and the "Place" is in doubt as well, as it was Longabaugh's mother's maiden name and thus probably an alias**. A lot of things are known about her, including that she was the first woman granted land in Argentina under an 1884 law that had previously excluded women. But a lot is not known about her, too. She is vaguely believed to have been a schoolteacher or a prostitute, or even both. But William Goldman, who also wrote The Princess Bride—the book as well as the screenplay—and All the President's Men, which also starred Redford, didn't buy the prostitute story. He argued that exceptionally beautiful women seldom were prostitutes in the old West, and that the life, which was grueling, tended to age women prematurely and show in their appearances. Place, if that was her name, was played in the movie by Katherine Ross, who had been one of the stars of The Graduate in 1967 and later starred in The Stepford Wives. Cinematographer Conrad L. Hall became the third of Ross's five husbands after they met during the filming of Butch. She also worked with Redford in Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, in the same year they made Butch together.

Mostly, what isn't known about Etta or Ethel Place is where she had come from...and where she went. The Pinkerton Detective Agency, a private law enforcement agency that was a sort of precursor of the Secret Service among other things, became uninterested in chasing her after Longabaugh's and Parker's deaths, and she fades from view and disappears. Interest in her fate among aficionados of the Wild West has been intense, and a welter of theories and claims have been put forward, all on the shoulders of slender evidence and ardent speculation. The truth is that no one really knows. After appearing in history rather distinctly during her years with the two outlaws—as distinctly as she appears in this photograph, one might say—she managed to disappear back into the mists of anonymity from whence she had come. No one knows how long she lived, or where, or how, or under what name.

So even though some of you knew who this photograph depicts, it still remains a mystery anyway—and doubtless always will.

*"Etta" is approximately what the Spanish speakers of Argentina might have said when trying to pronounce "Ethel."

**Although it's also plausible they were cousins. Worldwide, more than 10% of marriages are between first or second cousins to this day, despite the fact that the practice is outlawed in some countries. A Mennonite woman I talked to once, explaining the fact that her husband was five years younger than herself, said, "he was the most distant cousin to me we could find."

Original contents copyright 2023 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 or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

robert e: "William Goldman once used the variant spelling 'Harry Longbaugh' as a pseudonym. In his 20s, he'd already started his eight years of research on Butch and Sundance when he got a fat advance for a long literary novel, his fourth. But 300 pages in, he was blocked, so he took two weeks off to write a thriller based on the Boston Strangler murders (No Way to Treat a Lady). His editor feared for his reputation so they borrowed Longabaugh's name. It turned out to be Goldman's most successful book to that point and led to his screenwriting career. (That longer book, Boys and Girls Together, became a best seller.) He was sharing a New York apartment with his screenwriter brother James (The Lion In Winter) and the broadway composer John Kanter (Cabaret, Chicago). All three went on to win Academy Awards. 'I [don't] like my writing. I wrote a movie called Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and I wrote a novel called The Princess Bride and those are the only two things I've ever written, not that I'm proud of, but that I can look at without humiliation.' A fascinating person, life, and career."

'Halloween 2023'

Halloween 2023

Here's the picture I wrote about a few days ago in "Half the Battle is Being There." I titled it "Halloween" just to keep it a little friendly, even though it was taken on Monday, a couple of weeks past Halloween.

You can see the larger version here.

Mike

[UPDATE Friday evening: I think perhaps I should mention that this has no "fudging" of the lens image at all. All I did was crop the image somewhat and adjust the tones slightly—no Photoshop. The stones appear just as they do on the hillside from that standpoint. This image needed almost nothing in the way of processing.]

Original contents copyright 2023 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 or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Mark: "This is my favorite of your Sigma pics. Very nice."

Mike replies: Thanks Mark.

Will Duquette: "I love this, and especially that the tree right in the middle, amidst the trees with bare branches, is an evergreen. There is death, but life goes on."

Cecelia: "That is a beautiful, evocative, truly lovely image."

robert e: "That's another beaut, Mike. Congrats! Expanding on Stephen Jenner's comment [in the Comments section —Ed.], I've noticed a cinematic character in your recent work overall (some of the more obvious examples are the boys on bikes, which would not be out of place in a Spielberg movie, and the road/cornfield/house shot, as I commented then). Gets me wondering whether this character was always there but recently more evident, perhaps by your new practice; or if this is a new thing, inspired by the environment and/or the rig (which I note was aimed at cinema shooters); or maybe you've just been watching a lot of movies? Thinking back, I think it's something that's always been there in your work, but now is more obvious to me because you're shooting consistently in B&W, and maybe because your growing fluency with your new process is enabling both better expression and better recognition of opportunities to say what you want to say. What do you think?"

Mike replies: I'm flattered by the analysis, for which thanks. I do think I'm more comfortable when I start seeing and thinking in B&W. And I've recognized that I sense some emotional response with these pictures that hasn't always been part of my work. Something complicated having to do with aging and getting closer to death; the dreadful calamity of climate change and the fate of Earth; and the Mennonite idea that they—well, we—are only travelers through this world, and not here to stay. I titled this "Halloween" to trivialize it deliberately, in deference to the feelings of those who have lost, or are in fear of losing, loved ones.

The Man Who Wanted to Go to the Moon

Photographer unknown: Police Aviation Force
Captain Charles N. Fitzgerald performing
a stunt, New York, 1920

Took me a while before I could even look at this one. Photographs of people endangering themselves at great heights are among the photographs that can give me such a strong visceral reaction that I can't look at them. Can't watch parkour videos, sorry. Free climbing, nope.

A few armchair experts have declared this to be Photoshop, but that probably just indicates the degree to which people's default now is to assume fakery. The trouble with that assumption is, there are old newspaper articles that include the picture and other views from the same outing:

And one writer even found a one-page bio in an old comic book!

The guy was apparently Knievel before Evel. (Evel Knievel, if you've never heard the name, was a motorcycle daredevil who did things like jump over canyons and multiple Greyhound buses 50 years ago.) Fitzgerald also did things like stand on the upper wing of a biplane as it did a loop-de-loop. He had 18 occupations in 26 years, most of which were dangerous. These included high diver, Texas Ranger, motorcycle racer, and vaudeville strongman. His status as Police Aviation Commander apparently came about because he talked the city of New York into giving him a biplane. He was that short-lived corps' one and only member. He subsequently fell out of the plane and spent a year in the hospital; further details, regrettably, appear lost to history.

According to the stories—which, I'll admit, do all sound a mite suspicious—his last adventure, like Evel's jump over the Grand Canyon, never came to pass. Evidently the rocket pioneer Robert H. Goddard, for whom Goddard Space Flight Center is named, once made an offhand comment about how hard it would be to hit the moon with a cannonball. Directly after which, dozens of people volunteered to get shot to the moon. The press wouldn't leave the story alone. The unwanted publicity and pesky questioning so exasperated Dr. Goddard that he became reticent with the press from there on out. However, our hero, Charles N. Fitzgerald, not only promptly volunteered to ride inside the cannonball (apparently assuming it was going to have to be a giant cannon), but went so far as to call it his "last adventure" and to formally say goodbye to his Mom!

I like the picture, anyway...now that I have steeled myself against my acrophobia and can look at it. I look at a lot of old pictures, one way and another.

Mike
(Thanks to Caramel and 1-900-Hotdog, among others)

Original contents copyright 2023 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 or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Herman Krieger: "Another girder, or rather a bridge crawler. This fellow was drunk, and crawled over the bridge on a dare from a drunken companion."

Bill Tyler: "Perhaps Fitzgerald and/or Goddard had been reading Verne's From the Earth to the Moon, in which the Baltimore Gun Club constructs and uses a giant cannon to carry three intrepid travelers on just that journey."

Tony McLean: "As a former rock climber, and having climbed a few routes on this limestone crag overlooking the town of Matlock, in Derbyshire, U.K., Paul Hill took this photograph of his daughter dangling her legs over the precipice. Here is an account of this famous image."

Mike replies: Probably Photoshopped. Just kidding!

It is a famous picture and it's a charming article. I very much like that series.

Gary Merken: "Wow, has it really been 50 years since Evel Knievel's heyday? Where'd the time go? I remember watching his motorcycle stunts on television when I was a kid. Jumping over the fountain at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. A line of buses at Wembley Stadium. A rocket-fueled attempt over the Snake River Canyon (I forget if he was successful in that one). Broke every bone in his body, twice.

"There was a hill with a narrow dirt path behind my elementary school. One day after school a group of us boys built a small ramp from a piece of wood and some logs and took turns riding our bicycles down the hill and over the ramp. My attempt didn't end so well; I crashed off the ramp and the handlebar dug into my stomach. No lasting damage, at least to my body. My pride, well, that was another story!"

Political Picture

Wheat field, corner of Welker and Old
Bath Road, Barrington, New York

Signs of summer
I am of course way behind in getting new pictures up on Flickr (because I'm late with everything always), but I thought I'd mention a few things about this one.

It's the middle of summer now (but not Midsummer, which is a specific day). To me, the middle of summer is reached when the first bloom appears on my big Rose of Sharon bush outside the kitchen window. That was yesterday. Today there are ten blooms, and soon it will be covered. Also yesterday, by coincidence, the last batch of robin fledglings from the nest outside my back door made the leap of their lives and left the nest. I didn't see it happen, but everyone's gone now. The fledglings are at the greatest risk over the next two weeks. I sure hope they make it!

The two robin babies who left the nest yesterday,
and the Mama robin who has done her bit
for Robinkind this year. iPhone 13
at maximum digital zoom.

I did what I could to help. I didn't mow under the nest after the eggs hatched, and all summer I've left a tray of premium dried mealworms out on the top of the propane tanks, so the birds can get to them but the dogs can't. American robins don't eat birdseed, and dried mealworms are rich in nutrients for the parents, the eggs, and the babies. There hasn't been any shortage of earthworms this year, either, because of all the rain. That and berries are their other favorite foods.

Three batches of eggs were raised in my back porch nest this year, two fledglings in each batch. I haven't been able to figure out if it's the same nesting pair. I got to see the second set leave the nest. It was quite dramatic. I think it was the same Mama all summer because of her behavior—she was easily alarmed and readily spooked at the beginning of the first nesting, but eventually she learned that I was not a danger and she'd just sit there letting me talk at her, and only fly off when I circled around the nest to replenish the mealworms. Then, with each successive nesting, the Mama acted exactly the same way. So I think it was the same mother for all three nestings.

Wheat
Two things about the wheat field picture. First, I was surprised at how difficult it is to get a halfway decent picture of a wheat field. The best one I know of is by a guy named Lawrence McFarland. This one is merely decent, not rising anywhere near the quality of his, but I took a lot of pictures of wheat fields before I got one even this good. The other subject I'm on the trail of is a field with cows in it. Sounds simple, but I haven't made a good one yet, unless you count my shot of the cows gathered under the little stand of trees to escape the early September heat.

The second thing is that this picture has some political content. Well, a little. My area is a wheat-producing region, so wheat fields aren't unusual, and I've only been here for eight years, which is not enough to make me an expert. However, simply by looking and paying attention, I'm pretty certain I can say that there's a lot more wheat being grown locally this year than in the other years I've been around.

The reason isn't far to seek. Russia and Ukraine combined are responsible for a whopping 28% of global wheat exports in normal times. Wheat prices are up an average of 50% nationally because of the sorry situation in Ukraine. A local farmer told me that "fifty percent is huge."  So this field, where I've never seen wheat before, is a wheat field because of Vladimir Putin's crazy imperialistic obsessions and Russia's unilateral aggressions.

I took this only 18 days ago, but the wheat in the picture has now been threshed, the wheat straw baled and carried away, and the secondary crop is coming up in the understory. Wheat fields all over the area have been harvested already. Good thing I took this picture when I did, because I'm not going to get a chance again until next year—and I hope not even then.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 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 or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Bill Tyler: "Cows in the field. Try doing a Google search for 'Cole Weston Palo Corona Ranch.' I used to drive by that spot frequently, but never saw the light and cattle arranged as he found them. It's taken from California Highway 1, just south of Rio Road in Carmel on the way to Big Sur."

GKFroehlich: "That photo shows so much grain! But I do like the crop."

Pretty Little Pinhole Photo

A couple of pictures from the Comments that I would like to...well, comment on.

Photo by Darlene Almeda

First up is this lovely thing from regular reader Darlene. Darlene Almeda is one of those rare photographers who manages to be an accomplished professional and also an art photographer doing personal work. (Carl Weese is another like that*.) This is Darlene's picture from Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. I think it's remarkably successful, speaking as one who has never really cared for pinhole photographs all that much**. This uses the natural softness of the image to good advantage, implying a vintage look with appropriate subject matter, tonality, and color, and I think flare really does complement the pinhole "look" well. An exceptionally nice pinhole photograph any way you cut it, and to do it "on demand" to celebrate a specific day shows impressive skill.

The other one I didn't want anyone to miss, a very different kind of photograph, is this visual by reader Niels of the Friedlander books he owns:

Photo by Niels

Awesome. You could actually be a meaningful photobook collector by only collecting Friedlander books...not only his own (although that would be a formidable task***), but books in which he is represented or discussed. It would be enough to absorb a collector.

Here's what he says about it:

"I wish you didn't do this [he means that I mentioned the new book selected by Joel Coen —Ed.]. This one hadn't reached my radar. I already have more Friedlander books than I feel I should, but I enjoy his work too much. This is what my Friedlander stack looked like at World Photobook Day (Oct. 14) last year. Two additional books were added since then. America By Car is the most expensive photobook I own. The 2010 Whitney show reached Copenhagen in 2012. The show blew my mind, but the book was long out of print. I was hoping for a reprint, but the price of the out-of-print version just kept climbing—to the point were it was approaching the price of the oversized signed special edition. So I finally caved in and forked over $395 for the special edition. It took me eight years to make that purchase decision and I am happy to say that I don't regret it."

Most of Niels' books I don't have, a few I haven't seen, and a couple I didn't even know about! (I will say that Cherry Blossom Time in Japan is my most expensive of his books and one of my least favorite. Anybody want to buy it? They're hard to find. My favorite of his books is Like a One-Eyed Cat, which amounts to a sort of representative sampler of his 35mm work up to the time it was published. Delightful, and I've memorized it. Amazingly, it is still affordable. Go figure.

Mike

*Generally, my take on this has been that most professionals who claim they also do personal expressive work are saying so for marketing purposes, mainly, and are actually pretty lame at it...and, from the other direction, that many art photographers who claim they can do professional work are usually just chasing the paycheck without the professional/business chops to really do justice to the client's needs. Almost all photographers like to think they can do any kind of photography—we're typically very bad at knowing our strengths and weaknesses and, er, focusing (sorry) on what we do best. Most pros are pros, and most art photographers are art photographers. It's rare that one person is good at both...although there have been some famous photographers who do both very capably, such as Irving Penn or Martin Parr. A lot of the pure artists you know from history also did commissioned work for clients, including even Ansel Adams, Elliott Erwitt, and Diane Arbus. Lee Friedlander started out shooting record covers. Well, I could go on (as you know, I do go on), but let's stop there.

**Mostly, successful pinhole photos strike me as blurry pictures that would have been better sharper. Darlene's is one exception. But don't let me discourage you; you do you.

***Unless you were to pay him for it. I'm pretty sure I heard that Lee's son Erik, who is a fantastic jazz cellist by the way—he's involved in the experimental downtown music scene in NYC and often plays with John Zorn—is helping Lee sell full sets of all his books put together from all the remainders Lee has stuffed in his house. That's going to set you back about as much as a nice new car, but it's the easy way to get all the books at once.

Original contents copyright 2023 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 or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Dogman: "The only one of those Lee Friedlander books pictured that I don't have is Lee Friedlander & Pierre Bonnard. Why? Well, it was probably too expensive at the time and I'm living on retirement income, so.... Despite the dearth of dollars, I recall buying The First Fifty [a catalogue of Friedlander's first 50 books —Ed.] and counting how many of them I did not have. The answer: very few. One is even autographed. (I'm such a groupie.) I've told my wife that when I kick the bucket she should get my photo book collection appraised and sell it to fund something she wants. God knows I've spent a fortune on books that only I enjoy. By that way the new L.F. book is gorgeous! Just buy the damn thing, OK?"

Mike replies: I already did.

Gary Nylander: "Re: your comment on most professionals who claim they also do personal expressive work. I'm guilty of doing that. For over forty years I worked as a newspaper photographer and on my time off for 30 of those years I pursued my own personal photography shooting black-and-white landscapes, Ansel Adams style. To be honest my personal work was crap and I would never have made it as an artist as I didn't have the talent. It's a good thing I stuck with my day job as a newspaper photographer because it's what ended up paying the rent and putting food on the table plus other associated financial bills for day-to-day living."

Mike replies: At least you managed to make a career as a shooting photographer, which is more than most of us ever manage!

FIVE: The Twelve Links of Christmas 2022*: Earth at Night

Earth at Night poster from Amazon

I've linked to a poster of this, which I can't actually recommend because I haven't seen it. But it's inexpensive, so it's not too much of a risk. There have been two versions of this composite. One dates from 2012 (the source of the Amazon poster) and an updated version from 2016, updated 2017 (shown above).

It's one of the most remarkable "photographs" ever made, even if it's not actually what I normally think of as a photograph. It's not just that it's a composite—some remarkable technology has to go into isolating the human-created lighting in an unconfused way, and not just to avoid cloud cover. NASA.gov has a short description of it on its Black Marble page, and, strictly for science geeks, there's there's a fuller technical paper at Elsevier. 

The technical aspects of the capture are just the tip of the iceberg. Earth's nighttime lights only approximately track with population—wealth also plays a big part in who's bright and who's dark—but you can see evidence of a lot of things, for instance that 80% of the US population lives in the Eastern half of the country, that Perth is the most remote city on Earth, that Africa has the lowest percentage of households with electricity, and that South Korea is effectively an island; and the outline of the Nile River is clear from space. RealLifeLore has a fun video about many of the things the Earth at Night composite shows about human civilization, clickbaitishly entitled "How 1 Photo From Space Explains ALL of History." Not quite, but they do explain lots of interesting things you might not notice on your own, for instance one lonely dot exactly in the center of Australia (it's Alice Springs, near a joint military base operated in cooperation between Australia and the United States that controls spy satellites) and why there are lights even in the world's seas and oceans (oil and gas fields).

Add to this the remarkable fact all of this happened just in the last 144 years give or take—Thomas Edison's big Eureka moment with the light bulb happened in 1879. We take it for granted, but human knowledge and technology is developing at warp speed.

Mike

*A list of a dozen beautiful gifty things in the spirit of the season.

Original contents copyright 2022 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 or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Jim Simmons: "Sigh. Another world map that thinks New Zealand doesn't exist."

Mike replies: A number of you noticed this. Here's the image I grabbed—I didn't crop it. Updated August 2017. Here's a JPEG of the 2012 image with New Zealand included. My sympathies to any cropped-off Kiwis! Did you make NASA mad at you or something?

Steven Palmer: "After seeing the 2012 map you linked to in the comments, I'm not sure how much faith I would put in those maps. Take a look at the amount of light coming from central western Australia in the 2012 version. As an Australian, I can assure you that part of the country is basically empty of human habitation. So where did all the lights come from?"

Mike replies: I wondered about the same thing. And in the newer map, those lights aren't there.

Peter Rees: "We New Zealanders are hard-wired to do two things: 1.) instantly detect capital Ns and Zs on any given page of text ('ooh, they're talking about us!'), and 2.) bristle at the injustice of the Mercator projection, which puts us right in the trim zone of any given world map."

JH: "I discovered that composite graphic years ago and adapted it to show something else—how those lighted high population areas are connected by submarine fiber optic cables—the cables that carry 99.99%+ of all the worlds communications. My version has been reproduced many times too! Nice that NASA images are in the public domain."

Mike replies: I've seen your map before too!

Helen: "NZ not on the map—it's a thing. And there are theories."

Two More Test Pictures (Maintenance Going On Here at TOP World HQ)

Still testing! Pardon me. This is the picture I was going to post on Halloween, now a few days tardy. I thought this was pretty clever. And there's a nice touch—look inside the back window of the car! Got the expression right.

This is the prettiest tree in the neighborhood in the fall. The leaves are brilliant scarlet in the sun. Here the sun is illuminating the leaves still on the tree, but not the leaves already on the ground. Alas, the iPhone did not quite have the guts, the vim, the chops to record this delicate scene as it deserved! It clearly requires 40 megapixels and a camera with a vertically tilting viewing screen! Er, no, wait, why did my brain force me to type that?

Sorry if you can't see these properly. I'm just trying to see what works as an upload and what doesn't, so I can tell Typepad.

Mike

Featured Comments:

Daniele: "Those note taking cameras sure are convenient and do a lot of neat tricks; yet even in these smaller pictures I can't really like the overprocessed and undernuanced results. I know, that's what the masses dig and what sells and so on.... Still, I'm not even 50 yet and feel like a grumpy old man!"

The Fourth Best Chili in Penn Yan

To test whether pictures are working again, two shots from the "note-taking" camera—

This one made me laugh. [UPDATE post-publication: You'll have to click on this to see the whole image. We're working on it.] "PY" stands for Penn Yan, the little "hamlet" where I live. You gotta understand, Penn Yan had 5,056 people at the last census—and that was down 103 souls from 2010. There probably aren't four places in Penn Yan that serve chili!

The diner's chili can't be that bad. It must be at least second or third best.

This one I took out walking the dog last night. No, night before last. Maybe holding a camera with a dog randomly tugging at your hand ought to be considered a photographic skill. I'm surprised I've never dropped the phone, knock on wood.

Let's see if these work and I'll show you two more.

[UPDATE: Well, it kinda worked. The images are too large and only showing you the left half of each. You'll see the whole image if you click on it. I can't get it to resize, although I'm talking to Typepad about this and they're troubleshooting. We'll keep plugging and see if we can't get this resolved.]

Mike

Rainy Day

I didn't do much writing today, but I did a lot of photographing. It was forecast to rain all day, and I was unhappy about not being able to get out with the camera...so I figured that, just to get something, I'd go look for reflections on a wet road. The rain was coming down when I shot this. I had to shoot from inside the car, so I just looked for a place where I could park at the proper angle.

It ended up being a rather spectacular day—great swaths of mist clinging to the steep hillsides, and even a little sun when it got down under the clouds. As usual in the Finger Lakes, though, what we're missing is places to get an unobstructed view.

I found a guy fishing in the rain—man, did he ever know a lot about fish and fishing in the lake! And I ended up taking a lakescape I really like ("Sun After Rain"). See if you like it too. I'm very glad I went out. You can see a larger version of this picture on Flickr too. As well as the fisherman.

I am having a whole lot of fun.

Mike

Book o' the Week

Fred Lyon, San Francisco Noir. "The version [of San Francisco] that Fred Lyon celebrates in his new book is a classic San Francisco full of smoky jazz clubs, neon lights in the fog and sharply dressed men and women stepping on and off of trolley cars. Made mostly during the 1950s and '60s, Lyon's images are big on atmosphere and style, and hit many parts of the city that visitors love." (PDN)

These book links are your portal to Amazon. Please use our links; they help support the site.

B&H Photo

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

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

Stephen: "Hello Mike, The very first thing that came into my head the instant I saw the photo of the car on the road was, 'it's not straight!'

"Ruins it."

Mike replies: So then, you don't believe I got the photo the way I wanted it? Even though I've been deconstructing for days the lengths to which I'll go to do so?

You're you, and you're in charge of you, and you can do whatever you want to, but my standard advice to anyone who feels that way about pictures is: it would be best for you to get over that. I understand the straight-horizon compulsion, and I know it's common—I've seen it since my teaching years—but it's counterproductive. It will shut you off from an appreciation of an awful lot of photographs. Any such fastidious preoccupation will—and there are dozens if not hundreds of common ones, some of them opposites. ("Every B&W picture must have detail in the lightest highlights and the darkest shadows!" "Every B&W picture must have some pure black and some pure white!") In general, one either takes a given photographer at his or her word, or doesn't. If Garry Winogrand wants to shoot with the camera held at an angle, we just decide whether we think Garry has anything to say to us; if we think he does, we accept his pictures the way he wants them to be, even if it's not our own way for our own work. The bottom line is, I want this picture to be this way, and you should accept it. It's not your picture. That sounds like hubris, perhaps, but it's not, it's just the way the exchange between creator and viewer works.

(In the case in point, the problem is that if you get it exactly straight, the band of light in the sky is at too much of an angle, and then the picture looks more, not less, crooked. Plus, I like the way the slight angle in the reflections add to the "stance" of the car.)

If readers will indulge me and allow me to pursue the point further, take for example the photographer Guy Perkins pointed us to the other day, Ando Fuchs. Ando photographs in a style unlike my own; his techniques and strategies are not ones I would follow; he resorts to methods I would never use. But I can also tell immediately that he is doing what he wants to do; getting his art to look the way he wants it to; and it's clear after looking at merely 20 or 30 of his pictures that he has a lot to say. So I meet him where he is, accept his language, and surrender to his "world." Because I can see he's genuine, authentic, being true to himself. I take him at his word.

This is necessary. It really is. But not for our own work necessarily—for the work of others. How else can one appreciate Anders Petersen, and Uta Barth, and Andreas Gursky, and Philip Jones Griffiths, and Saul Leiter—and so on?

People can get over the "straight-horizon neurosis" and anything similar in other people's work if they work at it. I recommend it. But of course if you choose to dismiss me as a naïf who doesn't know what he's doing, I accept that too.

[By the way, I apologized to Stephen privately for appearing to lecture him. Of course my comments are actually aimed at whoever wants my advice. Those who don't are aware they don't.]

Kye Wood: "Damn Mike. These are some beautiful shots. I don't think it's the camera either. But if it inspires you to go out, when you could just stay in, then yes, it is the camera.  :-)  Isn't black and white such a graceful way to remember a moment? I know this won't make Featured Comments because it's too complimentary—and that's okay sir."

Maris Rusis: "That a horizon can be pictured out of level is a legitimate and valuable expressive device. Cinematographers have been doing it for nearly a hundred years. It's called a 'Dutch Tilt.'"

David Lee: "There is a beautiful Kertesz photograph with a very tilted sea horizon and I love it."

scott kirkpatrick: "The horizon is just one of the straight lines that can be part of a picture. Winogrand's famously tilted pictures often have some other straight line that magically turns out to parallel an edge of the frame. It just meant more than the horizon did, or maybe the tilted horizon trapped something important between it and the straight line at the border."

Bully Hill

Bully Hill Vineyards is the buildings high up in the middle of the frame. This is the southern end of Keuka Lake, near Hammondsport, 16 or 18 miles down from where I live.

Just a random iPhone snap, in passing. (There are very few places where you get good views of the lake that I know about.)

Mike

Book o' the Week

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

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Our link to B&H Photo

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Mani Sitaraman: "Mike, you'll be pleased to hear that I've been conveying, over the years and from over here in Asia, your positive impressions of Keuka Lake and environs to a couple of old friends on the East Coast. This latest, very pretty photograph is perfectly timed, as they've just set off to explore the area this weekend!"

QKA*

Our beautiful lake, from the head of the bluff. If you look on a map of Western New York, and find the Finger Lakes, mine is the one shaped like a "Y."  The lake is split by a high bluff that rises 700 feet above water level. (This is much lower than that.) This is only a small section of it. A century ago, there were lake views all over the place, because most of the land was cleared. Now it's shrouded in trees everywhere, and the places where you can get a view of the lake are limited. Even the "scenic overlooks" along my road are completely blocked by trees! Seems like a mistake from a Chamber of Commerce viewpoint, but unfortunately they have not put me in charge of anything yet. (I keep waiting.)

Mike

*The lake is called Keuka, and the bumper stickers say

Book o' the Week:

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

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Doug C: "A cousin of mine who lives in New Hampshire says that in 1860, 80% of that state was cleared land; now it's 80% forest. He says the Civil War opened the young men's eyes to what sort of farmland was available elsewhere in the country."

Mike replies: Yes, there used to be a lot of farming there. They isn't there any more. As a boy, riding horseback through the hills of Vermont, it was very common to come across stone fences running through the woods; made from the stones they cleared from the fields. I fell through a wooden bridge once that was so overgrown I didn't even know it was a bridge until the horse fell through it. (The horse didn't let himself be recaptured, and I walked all the way home.)

This is a minor issue in landscape photography. I saw an article once that gave examples of all the features that photographers think are "natural" that are actually the remains of manmade features in the land. It often takes an expert to recognize what they're actually looking at. Supposedly there's one tiny section of primeval forest left in America, and its location is a closely guarded secret because the people who study it don't want it to be ruined.

Sun and Clouds

A few recent iPhone snaps. I take pictures every day; just not that often with...well, a camera. (Frowny face emoji.)

The sun and clouds. There are several clues
here as to what kind of day it was.

The Penn Yan Diner, founded 1925. I've
never seen it empty before.

Patriotic field

I'll tell you what kind of smartphone I need: one with no camera in it. Because then I'd have to carry my camera again. Smartphone cameras are bad for lazy photographers....

Mike

Book o' the Week:

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

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

Heeeeere's...B&H Photo

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Featured Comments from:

Dave Levingston: "Smartphone cameras produce much, much better quality files than early 'professional' digital cameras. So what's the issue with using them to make photos? Plus, they always seem to nail the correct exposure, unlike my 'professional' cameras which frequently require exposure compensation."

Moose: "Message from the Other Side: I had a good bird photo op yesterday afternoon. Only iPhone 13 Pro at hand. I thought about it, then thought how I would spend time processing the Raw file—and end up with something short of my imagined photo. So, I just sat and enjoyed it."

Bear.: "I'd like Leica to get together with Apple and build an iPhone into a Q2 or 3 or whatever...that would give me both a reason and an excuse to cart a camera everywhere. I might look a bit silly holding a camera to my ear instead of my eye though...but I probably would still buy it!"

John Camp (partial comment): "It may seem a little odd, but one of the major playgrounds of the Miata is Beverly Hills, home of the Rolls, the Ferrari, the Bugatti, and all those other plutonium automobiles. You see them all the time in LA, often fire-engine red [actually it's called Soul Red Crystal, and there's quite a story behind it... —Ed.], with the top down; they have so little in the way of logos on them, that I think a lot of people don't know what they are. Might possibly say...'saw a nice little Ferrari roadster today on Santa Monica....'"

Ernest Zarate: "Happy Father’s Day, Michael. I’d suggest remembering that old adage: The best camera is the one you have with you. I find my iPhone a useful, handy tool. Not unlike a painter might carry a small sketch pad or a writer might carry a small notebook, it gives me a quick and easy way to make visual notes. Most of the photos I make with it will end up in the dustbin, a select few might be useful references or worthy additions to the family photo album, and that very rare one might even stand on its own. But the process of making them remains the same: choose both where I’m standing and when I push the button. Those are essential skills to keep sharp no matter what camera I’m using. Drop the baggage of 'should' from the phone. Just let it be what it is and use it to your own advantage."

Edward Fritzen: "Due to an ongoing 'relocation' I've had to pack my DSLR away in storage. I agree that today's smart phones take great images, and it's very convenient. I really need to force myself to use my iPhone. To me using an iPhone is not as much fun as a traditional camera."

John Abee: "It dawned on me as I read that I'm simply not very good at using my phone (Pixel 6) to take pics, and that's because I have never invested the time in learning how. I suspect I am not alone. I know the ins and outs of my G9 and GX8 but I'm clueless on the finer points of phone photography. There are all sorts of apps and tutorials for this phone but I need to set aside some time to optimize my phone workflow. And I will. Thanks for the prod. P.S. Drove my '90 Miata again yesterday. Even after 32 years it still plasters a smile on my face that requires a lemon to remove."

Mike replies: Lucky dog...! I'm jealous.

Out Playin'

I've been under a fair amount of stress for one reason and another recently, beleaguered by my nightmares as usual, so I've been going out photographing to kind of get away from it all. Trying to make friends with the Fuji 55–200mm, which I keep in the car.

On the one hand, I don't photograph very often and don't work very hard at it when I do. On the other hand, I "photograph" all the time...because as I go around the world I'm always looking and noticing, always sort of evaluating possible pictures even when I don't have a camera with me. I see a lot of pictures go by. I just don't take them is all.

I pulled into a parking space meaning to spy on a few of the ice fishermen with the long lens, and this guy is standing right in front of the windshield. I expect the car to startle him, but does he fly away? He does not. He gives me the gimlet eye, tucks one foot away out of sight, and continues to survey his domain. Every now and then he casts his eye back on me as if to say I'm watching you too, buster. And every time he does I take another picture of him (or her, I don't know). I was amused. Species stinkeyeus, genus peglegidae.

I should have had enough d-o-f; ƒ/8 at 128mm on APS-C (this is cropped). I guess the blurring is due to the angle of the windshield I was shooting through. Any self-respecting bird photographer would scoff. If he was going to stay put (and he sure did—he was still there when I passed on the way back out of town), I should have eased back out, moved 20 feet away, angled the car the other direction and shot out the open window. I'm just not that dedicated. It's only a seagull.

Lazy, in other words. But birds are hard. And insects—I've never liked photographs of insects, but I'm in complete awe of people who can photograph them well. That takes some serious skill and dedication. And landscapes are hard, too. I feel like I'm only middling good at them. I've always liked landscapes, but not always when I take them.

This isn't a picture, but it was cool to see. For a short time just after dawn, the treetops were covered with a thin coating of ice, brightly illuminated by the sun, which is just behind the snow-covered rooftop in the foreground. Every time a puff of wind hit the trees, a cloud of ice crystals would bloom off the treetops into the air, accompanied by a very faint tinkling or crinkling sound like thousands of tiny distant bells. I watched it for a while, and took a picture as an afterthought. Half an hour later, all gone.

What would it take to actually get a good picture of that? I have no idea. I might as well be assigned to take a picture of a jumping spider in mid-air.

As I always say, I should either go out shooting more, or less.

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

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Featured Comments from:

Craig Yuill: "You were doing what blogger Robin Wong would call 'photo therapy.' Good call! You mentioned that your 'ice crystals' photo isn’t a picture, but it may be the photo of yours that I like the best so far."

xf mj: "I treated myself to a lens rental of the 40–150mm Olympus a couple weeks back. Like you, I'm not used to its kind of shooting. But it was fun trying bird pics for once. They are tough! I have a much much greater admiration for good bird shots, and almost just as much admiration for decent ones. Even so, despite all my misses and no real hits, it was fun to try. It was also fun seeing what landscapes I could now get. Much different than a 40mm-equivalent or 90mm-e gets of course. It was like a different world opened up to be photographed.

"This was all prompted by a stitched landscape I had taken of an open river area near me where birds tend to hang out, and where I regularly photo walk. While I was panning and shooting, one of the residents of the neighborhood said 'ahh...you must see that bald eagle that's always out there, huh?' I nodded politely, agreeing with them, having no idea whether what they said was true and not wanting to waste their time explaining that my camera lens wasn't really for that.

"Sure enough, I walk home, zoom in on the shots with my computer and there on the screen is this little white dot head off in the distance. A bald eagle dead center of the pano! When I got the long lens and went back daily, the eagle was there nearly daily too. Some days with an eagle friend. Still far away, but it/they sure had my attention.

"Funny what you can suddenly recognize that's always been there to be seen."

Keith: "I like going out with a camera because then it gives me an excuse to walk at my pace, and pause to think about potential shots whenever I feel the desire. I don't measure the success of the walk or drive by the number of shots I took, it's how much I enjoyed the process."

Random Snap: The Moon and Venus

[Comments to Friday's two posts have been added.]

-

I was going to put this in the last post but I gave up trying to make it relate somehow, so here it is all by itself. More lunatic stuff. The Moon and Venus, taken with the new Sony. Handheld! I cropped this down quite a bit so the celestial bodies would show up more clearly. The full frame has lots more tree at the top and on the right side. A lovely evening. I wish I could put the smell of the air in the picture for you.

Mike

Book o' the Week

Photography, The Definitive Visual History by Tom Ang. This is a book that can't exist—it's too much work to put it together, like several others I know of (I'm looking at you, Q.T. Luong). Amazingly, it exists anyway. A brightly-lit shop window for the attractions of photography—a whirlwind tour of people, cameras, and pictures. The author still has time to be an accomplished travel photographer, although I don't know how.

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:

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Featured Comments from:

Mike Ferron: "I took a similar shot from my front yard. Venus was so bright I had to call Karin outside to get a look at it as well."

Mike replies: It was amazingly bright, wasn't it? Something my picture doesn't show well. The air was so clear.

Matt G: "Thanks for sharing the photo! I took a picture of the conjunction a few hours later near my home in Southeast Alaska). It was not long after sunset and the moon would soon drop behind a cloud bank. I'm mostly not much of a planner, but I do like to document what I see when I'm out and about. In my case I had been out to see if a Short-eared Owl might show up around dusk at our airport (one of very few places with open fields where I live). I didn't see an owl, but it was great to see the Moon and Venus together.

"(In my case, handheld 500mm at 1/60—I'm certainly grateful for modern image stabilization!—assuming the link worked, click the photo to see a slightly larger version.)"

The Rising Moon

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

As you might recall, I'm a lunatic. The moon is one of those things, like new-fallen snow, that for some unknown reason I think I have to photograph. I was heading to a meeting the other night when I crested a rise and saw this, so I had to hop out of the car and try a picture. A beautiful full moon rising over Seneca Lake. Of course all I had with me was the phone [unhappy face emoticon].

I hope you can see the picture okay. It's tough to get the density right on the blog because some people see pictures brighter on their monitors and some people see them darker. So when you're trying to hit the edge—almost dark but not quite, like here—it can get dicey. There is only a particular register where it sings, or hits the right key. Click on it to enlarge it and it might be a little better.

Pictures with predominantly mid-tones have more tolerance for being too light or dark. It's one of the big advantages of a print—you can get the values exactly right, and then they're set, or fixed. Of course then you have to worry about the viewing light—brighter light will open the shadows; dim, weak light (as is now favored by many museums, very unfortunately), will block the shadows and dull the highlights. (Many photos in museums now, although honored by being exhibited, remain mute and shrouded.) So there's no free lunch.

The detail is extremely murky in most of this picture, as you can see in the 100% detail below from the middle of the frame. But the interesting thing about that, and the reason I thought I'd bring it up for discussion, is that although it's far from sharp—the leaves of the oak look almost impressionistic, like brushstrokes—is that this level of detail works fine for an after-sunset picture. That's because our eyes (well, my eyes, anyway) see that way. I don't see distinctly in the near-dark. I don't know, maybe you do?

The detail is very vague, as in certain kinds of figurative paintings.

I did have to graft in a fake moon. It's the same size and position as the full moon that was there in reality, the but the phone couldn't handle the highlights, so I performed a little Photoshop surgery. Don't tell anyone.

Here's a strange habit I have...every time I stop to take a picture, or most times, I turn around and take a picture in the opposite direction after I'm done. Here's that one:

It's not a compulsion, but I've been doing this for years. It started many years ago when I was doing a project with a view camera in the northern tip of the lower part of Michigan. I was getting frustrated by the tyranny of the frame—my own tendency to pluck out little picturesque arrangements from out of the unruly landscape. (It's a form of lying, this selection.) One day, aware that I was just playing little games and deploying the same tricks over and over, and feeling disgusted about it, I just swung the camera around and took a picture in the opposite direction—and it turned out to be pretty good! Generally they're not, but I guess I just like to make a record of where I was, so I can get a sense of what was outside of the frame of the first picture. It lets the first picture breathe, in a way.

I used to love illustrators when I was a kid, and was a fan of people like Arthur Rackham, N.C. Wyeth, Nancy Ekholm Burkert (who was a friend of the family) and Gustave Doré. A book about Wyeth talked about "easel pictures," by which they meant single, standalone paintings, as opposed to book illustrations which were obviously sets of pictures. I guess "easel pictures" were also painted from life. It introduced to me the idea of single images versus pictures in sets or series. Most photographs tend to work best in sets or series; one photograph is seldom enough to express an idea or describe a story.

As an aside, I never lost my taste for illustrated books, and consider it a shame that only children's books are seen as being fit to illustrate. I'd like it if every book were illustrated. Why shouldn't books like The Accidental Tourist or The Omnivore's Dilemma or The Road or The Known World be published with twelve or twenty commissioned illustrations approved by the author, like Dickens' Phiz or Dodgson's Tenniel? Do we not have artists? But that's not the convention. A shame. I have some first edition Mark Twains (inherited), and they're illustrated on almost every page. (That's a spread from the original edition of Life on the Mississippi in the inset.)

The eyes we've got
And speaking of seeing indistinctly in the dark, I had my eye appointment the other day. Happy to say I passed with flying colors—everything is good, said Dr. Holly, and I don't need new glasses this time, which is a relief. Throughout the process of getting my cornea replaced I've had to get new glasses several times. It's an expense.

This is probably the last of the phone pictures for a while. These were taken right before the new Sony got here.

Parting words for this Wednesday—here's a trick. Take the cardboard inner tube of a roll of paper toweling, or make something similar, say from a rolled-up magazine. Then open the top picture on your monitor, close one eye, and, with the other eye, look at the dark foliage through the cardboard tube. Interesting, huh? It has the same effect as turning up the ambient lighting on a physical print.

Mike

P.S. And a brief blog note: I had thought the three-posts-a-week format was not working out very well, but then the "Soiling of Old Glory" post on Monday got the most views of anything in nearly a month. I didn't see that coming! I do need to learn to be more scheduled to give the new format a fighting chance.

Book o' the Week

Photo No-Nos: Meditations on What Not to Photograph by Jason Fulford. Although I would never actually let anyone tell me not to photograph anything, this is a fun book for getting "the lay of the land" as what subjects and treatments are common. There are some nice insights, and it's a pleasant read, although I think it will be more fun if you already know a lot about photography and can relate to the subjects he discusses.

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Featured Comments from:

Geoff Wittig: "Nice photograph, Mike!

"The single greatest challenge (or dilemma) of photographic printing is deciding how to distribute the value range of the image across the very limited tonal scale of a photographic print, from paper white to D-Max. That's what the 'Zone System' is all about. Digital image processing and inkjet printing makes it a lot simpler mechanically than in the darkroom, but you still have to make some decisions based on what you want the print to 'say.'

"Landscape painting presents exactly the same challenge. Starting from a blank canvas, you deliberately structure the painting's value range to say something. Dark and moody or bright and sunny, it's all in your hands. The standard teaching from skilled landscape painters is that photographs are inadequate as a source of painting information because of blocked up shadows, distorted colors, and perspective errors. That has not been my experience. My 30 years of landscape photography mean I'm capturing (in my humble opinion) much better image files than most painters work from. I make conscious decisions about shadow value range and color balance when I'm taking photographs knowing I'll be using them as the starting point for paintings.

"Charles Cramer trained me to understand how to pitch the shadow values in an inkjet print properly, so they read as shadow but aren't lost in the murk. Painters have the same problem; if I paint with bright light on my easel, the painting will be far too dark for viewers to see into the shadows in dim room light.

"Right now I'm working up a painting based on photos and thumbnail sketches of that same full moon I made last week on the way to work, as it was setting just before sunrise. The goal is a painting that lets you smell the damp earth and feel the chilly pre-dawn air."

Martin Pallett: "First time I've commented, but just have to say how much I enjoy your site and the contents therein. The phone image is very pleasing and I would be happy had I taken it, would look good as a print. Keep up the good work Mr. Johnston!"

Mike replies: Thank you Martin, and good to hear from you.

Bruce Bordner: "You got really lucky—the low angle light looks almost artificial. And always shoot behind you at sunset! I love this type of image, but it is a pain to display no matter how you do it. Take a print outside in the sunlight if you want to see everything. It's just a reflective medium, and you don't get colors not in the light. The 'easel pictures' effect is another problem for me—I have 13,000(?) images at Flickr but less than 200 that make good standalone prints. (In the 'Prints in Waiting' album for convenience.) I do more slideshows in effect by creating albums. Still, I have no idea what people are seeing when they open a 36MP file on their phone.... My only popular image is 'Panopticon Pussy,' so I give up in trying to be popular. Everyone told me 'you should sell that!' on every print but not one gave me money so I just do it for fun. It's good enough to share getting lucky. Few actually observe the world anymore."

Kent Wiley: "Your non compulsion to turn around and photograph the opposite direction sounds familiar. For a while a large format landscape photographer, I'm now more 'democratic' in my selection of viewpoints. Or is it indecisive? I'm collecting environmental views—on video—that encompass 360 degrees, from all 50 states, so the decisions about what to look at are either non existent—or infinite. It should be displayed as four different streams on the four walls of one room. Here's a single stream taste so far."

Jim Freeman: "I have found that, in many cases, the scene behind makes a better picture than what initially caught your eye. Also, this is one of your best posts, new format or old."

Jonathan Morse: "A 19th- and 20th-century author who thought deeply about illustration was Henry James, who loved illustration himself but didn't want illustrators to distract readers' attention from his envisioned reality with theirs. So when the time came for James to publish a collected edition of his novels, each volume bore only one illustration: a frontispiece photograph by Alvin Langdon Coburn. James's language in those books was one actuality and Coburn's photography was another: a complement, not a competition. Want a philosophical short story about that? Try James's 'The Real Thing.'"

Giant Loyle

I got an app for my phone that actually changes the size of people and objects.

Here, my friend Loyle has been transformed into a near-seven-foot giant, and is seen making a shot on my tiny toy pool table.

He didn't like being 6'10" however ("how am I going to fit into my car?"), so I hit another button on the magic app, making him the size of an eight-year-old and restoring my table to its expansive nine-foot length.

(I was just playin' around. Fun with perspective!)

A serious aside: I can't prove this, but I've always believed that as the 182-year history of photography has made its merry way onward, the sophistication of the public in interpreting typical photographic distortions has increased greatly. I undertook a sort of survey of the literature of photography as a student, and it seemed to me that complaints about the various lens distortions were fairly common in the early years even when the distortions themselves were mild. As the decades piled up, people became much more sophisticated as viewers of photographs. We learned to tolerate greater and greater amounts of the kinds of distortions that tended to bother early viewers. The only one I really encounter much these days are complaints about unlevel horizons in seascapes. Tilt that horizon radically, however, and the complaints go quiet—in that case they assume it's intentional. 

As I say, there's no way to prove this. It's just something I believe to be true.

Mike

Book o' the Week

Bystander: A History of Street Photography by Colin Westerbeck and Joel Meyerowitz (Laurence King Publishing, 2017). First published in 1994. In this revised edition, the story of street photography is brought up to date with a re-evaluation of some historical material, the inclusion of more contemporary photographers, and a discussion of the ongoing rise of digital photography.

The above is a link to Amazon from TOP. Here's Bystander at The Book Depository. 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:

Pen Waggener: "Giant Loyle reminds me of a photo my late father published in a rural Kentucky newspaper in 1977. He wrote a sort-of-weekly column for a few years, and his photo of a farmer with a seemingly gigantic pumpkin grabbed the attention of a reporter from the Louisville Courier-Journal, who called asking if it was 'trick photography.' Dad assured him that it was not, although he did admit that 'the perspective is somewhat flattering to the pumpkin.' You can see the photo here."

Brian Stewart: "No framed prints on the walls???"

Mike replies: The room isn't actually finished yet...the molding and window framing haven't been done (the trades are in demand here and it's hard to find anybody who will do such a small job). Plus, no lighting yet. So that remains a future project and probably will for a while.

Sroyon (partial comment): "I think you may be on to something here. In a 1971 interview Cartier-Bresson said a 35mm lens(!) is often used by 'people who want to shout,' and that the distortion is an 'aggressive' effect. What's an 'aggressively wide' lens today, maybe 21mm?"

Sean: "My sister has a portrait hanging in her home of her son and daughter taken by yours truly. They all joke about how my nephew’s forearm looks like the size of leg of lamb in the picture ( he was about six in the photo). I tell ya, I don’t get no respect."

Anton Wilhelm Stolzing: "I like this post, and I appreciate it very much. I have read a bit on the theory of photography, inter alia Roland Barthes, but not even he has brought up the interaction between photography and the development of the 'sophistication of the public,' which is also a kind of awareness, I would say. This opens a new field. Kudos, Mike!"

Albert Smith: "Just a reader's plug for Mike's 'Book O' The Week,' Bystander...if you have any interest in street photography across the entire time that it was viable (when cameras were able to be handheld to current times), this is the book. The photos are mostly chronological and nicely annotated with the shooter and the date. Additionally, and very interesting to me, is a long form interview with Joel Meyerowitz, who worked with everyone in the New York street photography A-team, Frank, Winogrand, Arbus, Friedlander and others...cool stuff for those of us of a certain age. Bought mine at Christmas and Mike's recommendation had me taking it off the shelf."

Random Snap: The Fate of All Balls

Butters' brand new tennis ball.

Life at the Johnstons'....  :-)

Mike

Book of Interest this week:

Ralph Eugene Meatyard: American Mystic (Fraenkel Gallery, 2017). An excellent introduction to Meatyard's quirky, spooky worlds. "Photography is a dream of awaking to a world still dewed in sleep." And Fraenkel Gallery's productions are always a cut above. The link is a doorway to Amazon.

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Sean: "We’re going to need a bigger ball."

Dandelion Problem

Just in case you think you've got a dandelion problem. This shows only about a quarter of the field, too.

I have to say, though, it's really quite pretty around the region while the dandelions are in bloom. You see patches of yellow like this all over the place. It doesn't last long of course, but that's the problem with flowers.

Speaking of pretty, look what else I found. I usually take a "test shot" of my shed with any new camera, and I was poking around in the image at high resolutions enjoying the details and the lens rendering. (Michael Reichmann coined a term for this that stuck: "pixel-peeping.") Here's the full image:

And look what I found:

This is about 200% after you click on it. Is that some funky-looking interference pattern, or what? Evidently aliens have made my shed into a hidden communications relay station or something. A lovely little accident.

I went out photographing in the wet this morning, so I have a bunch of new stuff to look at. Sony files seem to play very nicely with Photoshop and ACR.

Mike

Book of Interest this week:

How Photography Became Contemporary Art: Inside an Artistic Revolution from Pop to the Digital Age, by Andy Grundberg, Yale University Press, 296 pages. A longtime critic and observer attempts a synthesis. Good reading. Also available from The Book Depository with free shipping worldwide.

Original contents copyright 2021 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Romano Gianetti: "Welcome to the fashion of removing antialiasing filters on our cameras. As an electronic engineer, I fight with it every day...and I am appalled at the idea that people prefer apparent sharpness to a more correct sampling of the real, analog world. This is a clear example of aliasing: impossible to remove after the fact...and unfortunately no so easy to explain, because the math under it is not trivial. Fortunately, just a bit of focus miss or a less sharp lens will fix it...but only before the shot. Once you have it, the only solution in post is to paint over it."

Jeff: "When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's a moiré."

Matthew: "'When two patterns of lines cross to form new designs, that's a moiré.' Wisdom found elsewhere, but I think of it every day."

Rob de Loe: "The sensor in the Fuji GFX 50R is quite prone to this kind of aliasing. The 'Enhance' tool in Lightroom sometimes can tidy up some of it (note the qualifiers). I tend not to see it in my files because I usually stop down far enough for diffraction to eliminate the problem. This is where the GFX 100S really cleans up: the more advanced sensor is vastly less prone to aliasing."

Random Snap: Days of Spring

This is the wrong light for this, so please ignore the photographic aspect. I just wanted to point out what the picture shows. There are a few days every Spring when the later-leafing trees are still bare, and the earlier-leafing trees are starting to bud and have that delicate light yellow-green color. So the opposite shore of the lake is dotted with pale green cotton balls against the gray-brown of the bare trees we see all Winter. This transition doesn't last long. You might notice it a few times and then bang it's gone.

It looks best in late-afternoon overcast light when everything's wet, with a storm-dark sky behind it; but, when the light was right I was on an errand and couldn't go back to the place with the view. This sort of gives you the idea, but isn't "the" shot.

The older I get, the more I love the turn of the seasons. And I've always loved it, so the love is deepening. I would never want to miss April here where I live.

By the way, I just bought a new lens. Can't wait for it to get here! More on that later.

Mike

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The iPhone as Teacher

I've been having great fun shooting panos with the iPhone lately. Took this on my walk yesterday. I walk up Welker Hill most days for exercise. It was cold up there yesterday bro—32°F/0°C with a hard wind. The wind was coming straight out of the West when I walked back down the hill, and I was coming straight out of the East. As I pushed on, it pushed back. I had on two hats, a fake down vest and my Winter coat. I passed Dave coming in from his barn and all he was wearing was a pullover and a billed cap. But he's a lot tougher than I am.

Sometimes I think any camera can be a teacher and show you how to do something new. I've never shot panoramics with anything—no judgment, I was just never drawn to that way of seeing (although I've greatly admired several panoramic shooters over the years, most notably Aaron Hobson and Pentti Sammallahti. And my favorite photographer, Josef Koudelka, has published many panoramics—including, I think, a whole book of them). Of course, I did do my "one" pano, because I like to try everything once (um, photographically speaking), but that's not the same as working that way.

I've been (finally? Belatedly) trying to take the iPhone more seriously as a camera. Not for any ideological reason, just because I find I shoot a lot with it now.

I still do have problems considering it a serious image-maker...

Oops! Crop from the above

That would take some Photoshop skills to fix. The wind was stiff enough that the occasional gust was knocking me around, and it was difficult to hold the phone very still.  Here's a single shot:

It was late in the day. Such a pretty day. Those clouds were moving. Did I mention it was brisk?

I'm not very good at panos yet. I have a tendency to shoot things too close to me, such that I get that loopy swooping perspective anomaly that some people hate and some people play with. All things considered I'd rather shoot with a large single-shot panaoramic camera—only then I wouldn't be be doing panos at all.

The other thing the iPhone is teaching me is how to shoot square. Speaking of Aaron Hobson, his father Mark, who reads TOP, is a very experienced professional who's been shooting personal projects with his iPhone in recent years, and he shoots square. I think Mark processes his pictures with Snapseed or something like that. Square seems like the ready-made solution for anyone who complains about not being able to hold their iPhone while shooting. Shooting square means you can hold the phone vertically and get the same aspect ratio in the pictures.

Shooting square is fun. It's easy and somehow also challenging at the same time. I can't be more clear than that because I don't really understand it. But maybe you know what I mean.

Do any of those medium-format digitals shoot square? Such that you see square in the viewfinder I mean.

Curiously, the one time in my life that I shot extensively with a square-format camera—well, there were two times, the first being a Kodak Instamatic when I was a kid—was with the Exakta 66 in the '80s, and as a matter of course I always cropped to the vertical with that camera. I don't know why; it's just how I saw with it.

I'd rather there weren't a camera in the phone. But since there is, might as well have fun.

Incidentally, play is the solution for any photographer's block—the doldrums, boredom, lack of inspiration, a rut—just find some way to play. Fool around and have fun. Be goofy. Be free. It'll shake your tree and get you going where you're going again.

Mike

Book o' the Week:

ArtCurious: Stories of the Unexpected, Slightly Odd, and Strangely Wonderful in Art History by Jennifer Dasal (Penguin, 2020. Adapted from the popular podcast.)

This link is a portal to Amazon, through which most anything you purchase will be credited to TOP. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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Featured Comments from:

Jeff in Rhode Island: "SQUARE: This is one of the advantages that I really love about working with mirrorless digital or phone cameras. We have the ability to previsualize different aspect ratios. I often have my Fuji X-H1 or X-E2 set up to a 1:1 aspect ratio with B&W as my rendering intent. This is something I could have only dreamed of in terms of previsualization and flexibility in the analog days."

DavidB: "The mis-matched power lines might be a result of the strong winds causing the lines to move as the multiple frames were captured."

John Y: "I grew up using 35mm films. When transitioning to digital, any aspect ratio not 3:2 completely turned me off. Now I’ve unlearned that stupid bias and come to appreciate different compositions/subjects call for different aspect ratios, and vice versa."

Mark Hobson: "Hey Mike—thanks for the mention. FYI, I shot with rotating lens pano cameras as part of my pro shooting repertoire. One of those pictures—see them here—one of 50 all made with Widelux cameras for the Allegheny Hospital: Portrait of an Urban Hospital book, was Aaron's inspiration for all of his work."

Bruce: "For those jagged power lines, there’s a great app, Touch Retouch, which makes correcting those incredible easy on the iPhone. As well as having a decent clone stamp and healing brush. Definitely worth the $2 to try."

John Shriver: "Koudelka created The Black Triangle, a book of panoramic photographs of coal mining devastation. Josef Sudek created two panoramic books, Prague Panaorama and the posthumous Sad Landscapes, also of coal mining devastation. Sudek used a Kodak Panorama No. 4, hand loading it with 4x12 sheet film, since 103 size roll film was already unavailable."

Scott Reither: "I find the wider the pano format, the more challenging it is to compose well, and the closer to square I get, the easier it gets. For my eye, anyways! For years, I used Linhof 617 and 612 panoramic cameras, and found the formats very challenging. It did not come naturally at all. One thing I love about the Fuji GFX cameras is, they have seven image ratios that you can set, and it blacks out the area so you see that actual selected format. I had been wanting for that in a camera for years—it seems so obvious. With the raw, you can always change your mind later and undo the crop, if you want.

"You’re going to love the 50R when you get to use that!"