The Online Photographer

Best Comment Ever

All in, I believe we're approaching 270,000 comments on two different sites since I became a blogger in 2005. This might be the #1 best one ever. It's a bit dense, but be patient with yourself. Relax and read it over a few times.

"The problem is that photography has always been a technical pursuit and the mediating technology required to make a photograph has always threatened to overwhelm it. To quote Donald Kuspit, 'Technology is the last valiant attempt to discredit and devalue the unconscious.... The unconscious is the bête noire in a scientifically and technologically managed world, which is why it must be killed or at least ostracized.' The endless upgrade cycle, the more and more laborious and tedious mastery of imaging software, the solid belief in technical improvement and control as a means to achieve success, all of this leads one further and further away from any possibility of making original or authentic work. This is the bind of the technology treadmill. What it gives, it also takes away. So in digital photography we have an inherent pitfall in the photographic process married to the culturally dominant fixation with technology and control which are themselves obstacles to the unconscious, the very source of creativity itself."

Written by David Comdico (with, of course, a little help from Donald Kuspit).

I couldn't have said this. But I've certainly sensed it. As we get further into the age of digital imaging, there seems something a little more serious going on than mere fanboyism and gearheadism. It used to be that tech and gear geekery was a sort of lighthearted sideline to the main project of photography—something to be indulged in, or "the work behind the work"—but everyone understood that you got it settled and then got past it, and, when faced with photographs of emotion and power, you backed down on questions of mere technical fussiness. No more. Culturally, we do seem to be involved in a project—the project of asserting that there's actually some sort of pot of gold at the end of the "technical image quality" rainbow.

What's the point of more detail in photographs when we already have too much detail? A photograph today highlights detail, forefronts it, spotlights it—detail at an almost microscopic level dominates so many pictures. I call the look "CAF"—clinical analytical forensic. It's when you see the crusty mascara on a model's eyelashes instead of a girl with thick eyelashes. I'm sure it's why people have become so passionate about big sensors, fast lenses and maximal bokeh—that's the only relief permissible from the relentless CAF.

In 2008 I had a minor epiphany and came to what I called my "theory of überkameras"—we had reached the point where the Sony A900 saw more detail in the distance than my eyes can see, and the Nikon D3 saw in the dark better than my eyes can.

I wondered at the time if I really need a camera that sees better than I do. That's my definition of an überkamera—one that sees better than your ratty inferior biological self.

The disappearance of the unconscious is a thornier thicket, but I know what Donald Kuspit means. Page through Charles Harbutt's Travelog from 1974—one of the subversive underground masterpieces in the history of American photography—and then trawl around on any Internet picture site for as long as you like. It's not just that the pictures are different. It's that the project is: glimmer of the subconscious vs. the detritus of "the scientifically and technologically managed world." Culturally, are we lost in what should have been a mere digression? We sense something is missing, but to supply the shortcoming, we just double down, determinedly, on the project. Fixate, as David put it. The bind of the technology treadmill indeed.

Mike
(Thanks to David)

P.S. As I was thinking about David's comment, I happened to hear a comedian on the radio. Health club owner: "Hey, you'll love this. It's called a Stairmaster. You know how you hate having to walk up too many stairs? Well, I've got one that's different. Mine never ends. It just keeps going and going. I've got a bike that goes nowhere too! You can ride and ride and never move. It's great. Instead of just doing real things for free, you can come pay me to pretend to do them."

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Mark Sampson: "I studied with Charles Harbutt for a week when I was 20 years old. Some of the lessons from that time have stuck with me for the 42 years of photography since.... I bought, enjoyed, and still have his book. I never knew that it was a 'subversive underground masterpiece' until now, though you may very well be right about that."

Yiorgos: "Yes, an excellent and much needed comment. I'd like to add a couple of other observations. Consumerism, not just technology, seems to be part of the force that has taken us down this cultural wrong turn. The artists I know disdain gear, which always makes me feel judged for finding it alluring (and not having the balls to call myself an artist). A new (to me) camera seems to reinvigorate my photography every couple of years."

Jeff: "I’ll repeat my comment to another recent post: the most important tools remain between the ears. That part hasn’t changed."

Andrew Molitor: "Regarding your postscript. When I lived in San Francisco, on Ninth Avenue there was a gym something like 100 yards from the entrance to Golden Gate Park. You could see people in the storefront on stationary bikes sweating away indoors, less than a stone's throw away from one of the most agreeable outdoor locations on the entire planet to take some exercise."

Rob de Loe: "Excellent comment and nice follow-up thoughts in the post. This all resonates very strongly. Some areas of human endeavour seem to attract people who are all about the technology and have no space for, or capacity for, emotion and the unconscious. Photography is definitely one of those areas. I think it goes beyond just different tastes. Extreme sharpness and detail are the end goal in many peoples’ photography, so upgrading to the newest lenses and sensors is essential for them. The result is often your 'clinical analytical forensic' pictures: incredibly sharp, but incredibly dull.

"For some people, the answer is to reverse course technologically: old lenses, old processes, Lomography, etc. Personally I don’t think that’s the answer. A crappy plastic lens can’t turn your dull photo into a thoughtful, engaging photo.

"I personally think the only way out is to focus completely on expressing ideas, emotions, and story in your pictures. We don’t all have to make photo essays, but if we’re deliberately and mindfully trying to say something in our pictures, for me that’s the only track that goes anywhere. Ironically, with those goals in the forefront, maybe you do need extreme detail to carry your ideas, or maybe you need 19th century photographic technologies. The key is that the technology is now serving the idea rather than being the end goal."

alan: "Tech takes us further away from original and authentic work? I couldn't disagree more. All extra technology does is give us more choices to take pictures and different pictures in more situations some of which would have been impossible before. How can that possibly lead to less originality or authenticity? It doesn't; it gives us more scope to be original if we have the vision and the imagination to use the tech to our advantage. Blaming photo tech is as daft as saying that after the invention of word processors no one would be able to write a good novel or that after we started making paper and paint in factories no one could possibly paint a picture worth looking at again. I can't agree. I think tech gives us the chance to do more and to do things we couldn't do before, at all. That's all. I disagree with the idea that tech removes creativity or originality. I think it enables more of it."

Dennis: "The bind is a terrible thing. I've attended PhotoPlus Expo many times over the last 10+ years. It's common to see prints on display in the 40x60" range from 24-MP FF cameras, a handful of much bigger prints from the higher-res models, big prints from Olympus and Fuji, even prints around 20x30" (if I remember correctly) from Fuji's little 2/3" point-and-shoots. Lately, I've been shooting less and less with my Sony E system and more and more with my RX10 III. I dislike the E-system for a variety of reasons and will probably sell it. I'm sorely tempted to make the RX10 my primary camera for the foreseeable future, at least until I have a real need for something else. And at the same time, I find myself inexplicably thinking maybe it's time to finally move to full frame...."

Charles Rozier: "I think you are very much on target. One little note—perhaps one element of 'CAF' is color itself, not just super resolution. For example, street photography now seems to be a different animal when in color, containing more 'data' but less psychological power, even when displayed at the same resolution."

hugh crawford: "Reminds me of how pop music became obsessed with perfection and clarity just before punk rock. Also umpteen art movements where as soon as a generation of artists figure one thing out everybody abandoned that goes onto the next thing to figure out. The real question is where to go now that photography looks more real than ever at the same time that the technology exists to make more convincing fakes than ever before."

Guiie: "Amazing Friday blogpost. Though I agree with the comment and your opinion I disagree with the general technology approach. Through the ages there has always been people mastering techniques and crafts, technology. But our time has been transformed by one 'simple' technology and its effect: Internet. The amount of information one can reach today is insurmountable and that exposure is what allows the 'technology treadmill' to exist.

"I'm from a little town in Patagonia and if it wasn't for the Internet I wouldn't have learned anything about digital photography. I like to think that my first year doing photography included the digital technology treadmill and later the argument 'the best camera is the one you have with you' and my lack of budget pushed me to not bother with the treadmill and try to exercise my vision...."

John Krumm: "To me half or more than half of the fun in art is when we experience it communally. That includes both art I create and art I enjoy. Those opportunities are indeed disappearing. Facebook and the rest of the internet is not a strong communal experience, despite us all being so 'connected.' Our 'unconscious' needs the room of real life to breath, and the experience of real community to grow. I never quite bought the 'I make my art for myself' line. Sounds like BS. I make art to share. On whether or not technology moves us farther away from making art because of the 'unconscious'-stifling nature of technology, I don't know. There are many other factors at play, like our economy's way of turning everything into a commodity, for instance."

Christopher May: "I think there's a very large part of photography involves cameras that see better than we do. Much of it has some scientific or otherwise prosaic purpose (infrared photography, for instance) but so many of these tools and techniques have later gone on to have artistic careers, too (Richard Mosse's work in Africa with the aforementioned infrared, for example).

"At it's very heart, all still photography is about seeing better than we can. When we perceive the world in our biologically limited way, we're forced to interpret significant moments at the speed in which they happen. No matter how perceptual we are, there are going to be some bits of missing information thanks to our human condition. On the other hand, as photographers, we can take a single moment and preserve it for as long as we wish to contemplate and free ourselves from the constraints of life in real time.

"The still photograph has been with us for around two centuries now. In that time, we've been able to utilize it to see the world around us in new ways. Muybridge proved that a horse could hover, if only for a moment that our limited faculties couldn't perceive. Macro photography has shown over and over again that the very small can still be very exciting. Fast apertures can make most of the world go away so that we're forced to contemplate the subject of a photo. And on and on.

"Ctein's TOP article on 'Stochastic Photography' is a great example of utilizing the camera's ability to see better than we can for artistic purposes. Photographers always seem to go ga-ga over cotton candy water (another form of the camera seeing in ways we can't) but that article made me realize how incredibly beautiful moving water can be when photographed at the other extreme of superhuman camera abilities.

"So I'll take whatever additional abilities the camera makers want to make available to me. The better the cameras can see, the more I'll be allowed to see. That fascinates me."

Take Heart!

First a definition: The Digital Tsunami, noun phrase: The fact that there are now as many pictures taken in a day as used to be taken in a year*.  

Weren't we really talking about the Digital Tsunami last week? You know, all the pictures have been taken already—people take the same pictures of the same things—it's harder and harder to make your work stand out or be your own—and so forth. Mass taste, instant consumption, and snap judgement are leveling critical distinctions and the possibility of subtle, thoughtful work getting noticed; etc., etc.

All that is basically just saying that there's this huge wave of new pictures inundating everything, and in which everything gets lost. The culture's been swamped.

So I was going to write an encouraging post taking the opposite stance. There are a number of things I could point out as to why new photographs still matter: for instance, recency. All photographs recede backwards in time, and the world constantly changes (Mitch Hedberg's photo-epistemological joke encapsulates this, and is good to keep in mind). So just taking a photo that shows something now technically makes any picture different. 

Things like that. There are a bunch of 'em.

But rather than trudge through all those arguments, let's make one single point. You know how, when you love to look at pictures, and you grow older looking at pictures, you gradually develop an understanding about what you personally are looking for in a picture? You might even develop an overarching concept that "umbrellas" what you think is the most important element in all photos that are good for you, as when the critic Owen Edwards declared that glamor was the linchpin of his critical outlook.

And photographing is essentially a scavenger hunt, isn't it? Very few of us can reliably make equally great pictures at any time, anywhere, on demand. Almost everybody takes lots of bad and so-so pictures, along with a smaller number that are really pretty darn skillful and good. This is what I meant when I wrote, back in 2005:

To be honest, most of my pictures suck. The saving grace of that admission is that most of your pictures suck, too. How could I possibly know such a thing? Because most of everybody's pictures suck, that's how. I've seen Cartier-Bresson's contact sheets, and most of his pictures sucked. One of my teachers, Frank DiPerna, said that it was an epiphany for him when he took a class from Garry Winogrand and learned that most of Winogrand's exposures sucked. It's the way it is.

But then there's this: the corollary to "most of everybody's pictures suck": every now and then you get one you really love. One that, for you, stands out even from the good ones.

Every now and then you get one you really love.

So isn't that like eating a really good meal, or enjoying particularly good sex, or having a really good day, or happening across weather you think is spectacular—or winning at gambling, or helping someone, or going for a great ride on your motorcycle, or whatever floats your boat? It's this: sometimes things go well. Sometimes things work. Sometimes you're happy.

No matter what we're "after" when you take photographs, sometimes one comes along that just hits on all cylinders, and you just love it. It will most likely be something different for all of us, because we all have different taste and we're all looking for different things when we photograph. One person might like clean geometrical patterns, another might like odd gestures from people on the streets, another might like subtle colors in nature, another might like tender moments between people, another might like a sense of menace and surreality...whatever it is you look for in pictures, whatever satisfies you, sometimes you get it. Maybe it's not fame, or fortune, or renown. But sometimes serendipity blesses you and something good comes along.

Is that alone a good enough reason to keep photographing? For me it is.

So take heart, my friends. Go forth and find that next hit. The next good picture is out there. Get out with a camera in your hand and something good will happen. Don't know where, don't know what it is, don't know when we'll find it. But when we do, then all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well**. Right?

Mike

*This formulation isn't formal: no one knows how many pictures are taken in a day right now, and even the estimates back in the '80s were pretty loose—the figure I saw came from Kodak, which estimated that approximately six billion pictures were taken every year on film back then, worldwide. Given the various metrics I see, I don't think six billion a day is an unreasonable estimate for 2018, given that most people who own cellphones now have a camera in their pocket, and use pictures for everyday communication. So maybe the formulation "there are now as many pictures taken in a day as used to be taken in a year" is simplified, indicative, even allegorical rather than strictly statistical, it still seems like a good way to say it.

**Julian of Norwich via T.S. Eliot.

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Devilish Question

I've been watching some of those little blips from the Jimmy Kimmel show where they go out on Hollywood Boulevard and ask awkward questions of passers-by. Most of the questions are essentially fluffy ("Did you have sex last night?"), but one of them has had me puzzled for two days:

"What's the most interesting thing about you?"

I've been thinking about this, and am forced to conclude there's nothing interesting about me!

How would you answer this? It's a bit devilish I think.

Mike

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Kurt Shoens: "Finding interesting things to say about ourselves is as hard as finding interesting photographs of our everyday lives. It's so familiar we forget what's unique and interesting. Then something abruptly changes about your life. Maybe you move from a medium sized town in Wisconsin to a small out of the way place in New York. And then, if you're like me, you regret the pictures you didn't take of the old place now that the opportunity is gone. So you might think you're uninteresting, but you've held my attention and that of many others, for years about a range of topics, many photographic. But what's interesting about me? I haven't a clue."

Adrian Malloch: "The problem with that question is that it is asked of the wrong person. Interestingness is in the eye of the audience, not the actor. The question is as mis-directed as the breathless reporter asking of a bystander who disabled a gunman, 'Are you a hero?' Of course he/she does not perceive of him-/herself as a hero. They did what they did because that was the best thing they were able to do in the situation—not because of some vainglorious motive. It is for others to appreciate and value the selflessness of their actions."

Peter: "That I got my wife to marry me. Not enough? Consider that she also supports my camera purchasing habits. Interested now?"

Mike replies: Hold on to her.

Bill Tyler: "If there is truly nothing interesting at all about you, that fact would be very interesting indeed. 'A paradox? A paradox, a most ingenious paradox!'"

Stan B.: "Me and the wife always ponder what we would say to Alex Trebek when he asks every contestant to reveal a little something about themselves during that particular segment on every show. We mercilessly ridicule each and every contestant for being more sensationally boring than the previous—while admitting we're hard pressed to come up with anything even remotely better...."

Mike Plews: "I can curse in Morse code?"

Eric Rose: "I'm not allowed to tell you  ;-)  ."

Michel: "Dude, it’s staring you right in the face. You’re your own boss. You created your own business. You had a few print sales and bought a house! As for me, well, one time I juggled on the radio."

Richard Parkin: "To bring this back to pool, the real subject of this blog, I must reference Steve 'Interesting' Davis, six times world champion snooker player. He was nicknamed 'Interesting' due to his unflashy/unexciting style of play, perhaps particularly in contrast with that of his contemporary Alex 'Hurricane' Higgins, though Wikipedia seems to think it was only his monotonous interview style. His Wikipedia entry has 23 uses of the word 'interesting,' which is interesting and may be a record."

Preserve Your Photos!

We heard from David Sparks about the Black Skimmer post. You might want to check out his response if you enjoyed that post.

David, who is 80, said, in part, "The Black Skimmer project and the other projects I am working on now is an effort to preserve some of the successful images in a format that will be more accessible to family and friends when I am no longer around. Unless I do something to give prominence to selected photos they will just remain part of the bloated Lightroom catalogs where they now reside."

I'd like to try to give heart to those who don't see any usefulness in their archives past their own physical lifetimes. I used to make two recommendations—one was to notate, on the back of prints, the people, places or things that appear in them, for the benefit of heirs and posterity. The other was to simply create a separate box and segregate all your best or favorite work into it, labeling it "---- ----'s Best Photographs" or something like that. The idea there is that your heirs might find it overwhelming to confront a roomful of photographic detritus and many boxes and filing cabinets full of unorganized prints and negatives, but few descendants are likely to throw out a single box labeled Grandad's best.

Of course, those recommendations seem very quaint now, unless you're one of the minority for whom printmaking is a part of the hobby. Few people have prints now and fewer prints start out as negatives, and you can't label a TIFF file with a pencil.

Still, there are a few logical ways to respect and honor some of the work you've done. A lucky few are able to find a repository for it, such an historical society or a curated archive, club, or local museum. (We're at an odd point in history, when exponentially more photographs are being made but exponentially fewer will likely survive the next hundred or hundred-and-a-half years.)

David's strategy is a good one—make small finished presentations that have a point and a purpose. I've always thought that another good way to insure the survival of work is craft—people tend to value beautifully made things, especially if they telegraph good craftsmanship even to people who don't entirely understand its value. Your own fame and the value of your work is another good preservative, as we've discussed several times, although that's neither really in our control, nor, for most of us, in the cards.

But generally, I'd say: try not to be fatalistic about it. Have some compassion for your own work! Have some sympathy for the effort you've put into your work and the fun you had making it, and don't shut the door on doing something that might help a little of it survive beyond your own span. Maybe you don't care, and that's fine—it's your work and you can do with it what you wish—but it's also not that hard these days to share it with others in a form that will let it last. Why not?

That part can be fun too, by the way!

Mike
(Thanks again to David Sparks)

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Rob de Loe: "Curate and print. I think those are the only two viable options. If you don't care enough to curate and print your own work, who else is going to care?

"Books are a great idea. I've been thinking about making simple photo books for projects. There are some very basic binding techniques that will get the job done, e.g., Japanese Stab Binding. Even something as basic as a nice archival box with interleave tissue sends a signal that something worth saving is inside.

"But the key is to curate. Choose your best work, and organize in ways that make sense (projects, themes, etc.). Or become famous so a museum will do it for you. That works too."

Nigel: "I am slowly making digital copies of my best negatives with a contraption I had made for the job.

"It is amazing and shocking to see London and Italy as they were forty to thirty years ago. These pictures taken when I was in my 'street photography' phase are now becoming historical documents, and certain pictures that were not interesting at the time have taken on a new life. The most interesting ones are the pictures I took for the short period when I first came to live in Italy and I was lucky to find a job with a local news magazine. Photography was much easier back then. There were not the neurotic privacy problems we have today if you shoot certain subjects.

"Regarding what I will pass on to the future: well, my theatrical photography will go to the musty archive of the local theatre. But I suppose most of my photography will disappear with me. It does not bother me at all. Most of my photography, particularly my hiking photography, is done to preserve memories for myself. I have/will make a few Blurb books of London and Italy 'as they were.' These are probably the only photographs that will be interesting to others and as they do not take up too much space may not end up in the house clearing skip. I am at an age where I have had to take part in quite a bit of what we call 'house clearing' of deceased relatives. It is a sad, brutal business. Inevitably one reflects on oneself whilst doing this awful job. We could only keep very little of what our relatives left us. It made me get rid of an awful lot of photographic gear that was lying unused for example. If my son keeps the few Blurb books I have made of holidays together and my documentary projects, I will be happy.

"Here is my ebook of Italy."

Joseph Brunjes: "My father died in October and I have the tough duty of going through his negatives and prints. He taught high school photography so he not only had thousands of his own negatives but hundreds of negatives from students. He photographed sports teams, clubs, and every day high school life for 30 years and has quite a visual history of his high school. Only a small portion of the entire collection was sleeved and organized. I found twelve 100 foot bulk canisters full of shot negatives with family and school related images intermixed. It will take me years to go through it all. Luckily for my dad, I still shoot film and can scan and archive his best photos in my spare time. His photos for the most parts are not artistic, but I have already found some real gems (and enough blackmail photos of my brother in his youth to last the rest of my life). It has also been fun going through the negatives of all the unknown students who left their negatives in the HS darkroom and were preserved by my father. It has helped me put my own collection of prints and negatives into perspective and I am currently working to make it easier for my family to know what is worth keeping."

 

Smartphone Pictures

Kenny showing us at dinner how he looked like Frankenstein
after dental surgery

As regular readers know I recently tried to embrace using a smartphone in order to engage with what's happening currently, a curative to my former anti-phone snobbery (which was admittedly pretty strong). I notice two strains in my smartphone photography today. One is the desire to make beautiful "public" images that might have been made with a more serious rig. The other is play—I just mess around with it—like, well, everyone does.

The first is a sort of fakery—trying to mimic with a phone what a good camera will give you. This sets up failure, because only when used well within its narrow "sweet spot" will a tiny sensor give you what a larger one can provide with ease. An example might be that "bird on a wire" picture from last May—I certainly would have benefited from having a better camera when I took that, although I still like the picture.

Sometimes I will simply take a picture of whatever I happen to be looking at, just because I happen to be looking at it. A scene, a momentary accident of light, a person I notice or someone I'm with, a detail.

Documenting your life is one thing everyone uses phone photography for. I tend to not so much "document" as "play"—I'm just curious about how things look and when I see something I like seeing, I like to see how it will look as a photograph. (That's almost cribbed from Garry Winogrand, but just because he said it doesn't mean I can't mean it.) Sometimes—most times—this play doesn't result in "good" pictures, but it does result in particular or peculiar pictures...pictures that are not generic or "general" but specific and particular.

Jim taking a picture of the moon with his phone
at Yatesville, a.k.a. The Spiritual Center of the Universe

There's absolutely no purpose to this. But it's fun.

I don't want to categorize all the reasons why I might take a picture of something—I'd only leave things out. Usually I guess it's just the joy of seeing, or some related cliché. It's just that. "That" is a pointer word—it says look! or pay attention over there or this is what I saw or for a moment this existed. (It's possible that the number one shortcoming of photographs is that the "that" in them isn't anything. It's not that there's no there there, it's that there's no that there.) Still, I really enjoy it—the smartphone ranks among my favorite cameras, and although it's not among the best it's no slouch for what it is. I would never talk it down now like I used to. 

I suppose smartphone pictures are ephemera. Nothing exists for long. The picture survives the moment, but only for a longer moment. And then it, too, is gone.

Mike
(Thanks to Kenny and Jim)

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The Quality of Your Attention

A rule that suits sports or art: and maybe love: what you get out of it is proportional to the quality of your attentiveness.

Pay close attention—really focus—immerse yourself, learn the background and know the stories, the people and the history—think, observe—feel—make your experiences direct and immediate and full; and you will be rewarded. Be casual, skate the surface, give in to boredom, expect to be entertained, let your mind wander or get distracted or frazzled or fragmented, and you will get very little back.

As true of a football game* as of a great painting or book.

Mike

*Either kind

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Hans Muus: "It is reported that when Gotama, the historical Buddha, was asked to sum up his entire teachings in one word, he said, Attention."

Benjamin Marks: "My father was an art dealer, but in his heart of hearts he was a painter. His specialty was near and far eastern antiquities, but his first love was the Western tradition. From his gallery in Manhattan, he was just a few blocks from the Metropolitan Museum and he would often go there at lunch. On many occasions, I saw him spend a half hour just looking at a single painting. Matisse was a favorite of his, but he loved the modernists too.

"When you visit a museum next, stop and look at how long the average viewer encounters any particular piece of art. In my observation, an average viewer looks at a piece of art for under a minute. In fact, a minute of really looking would be a really long time for most viewers. I'd be willing to bet a seltzer that the average is more like eleven seconds or so.  ;-)  Really engaging with any work takes time. And everything in our current multi-tasking, web-enabled, jump-cut current reality is pulling us as fast as we can go in the other direction. Taking the time to really see, rather than simply having a quick look is not merely a question of getting back a reward for what you put in; rather it creates a change in one's consciousness (and a worthwhile one, in my view). I realize that this is a grandiose claim, but I would bet that the average TOP reader has a favorite visual work in mind to which he or she could pay extended attention of this type. But then again, I think a lot of us and our mental abilities.  ;-) "

Brian Taylor: "This is most obviously true when playing music. The moment when your mind wanders, a blooper happens—often because you've been foolish enough to think 'this is going well.' The challenge with photography, perhaps, is that the evidence that things have gone awry, and thus the link between cause and effect, tends to be less obvious."

Sights Not Photographed

We had beautiful weather here for the supermoon last Sunday, perfect for the occasion—cold, cloudless, and extremely clear. Moonrise above the ridges and the supermoon in the night sky was vivid and dramatic.

My friend Eric was driving to church in Hammondsport (at the south end of the lake) last Sunday morning and saw a remarkable thing. As he drove along the winding lakeside road, he was joined by a huge bald eagle flying above and ahead of him. The eagle was carrying an animal in its talons, probably a small rabbit. He slowed a little to match its speed (speed limit on that road is 55 MPH), and he said the eagle flew for quite a ways as if he were following the lane lines, in synchrony with his car. He said the bird was huge, estimating its wingspan at five or six feet, and that it was an amazing sight, the best eagle encounter of his life so far.

On Saturday evening I was playing fetch with Butters in the backyard (we do this three times a day, four times when the days are longer) and I saw a less dramatic but still wonderful sight. It was past sunset—both Bluff sunset and real sunset—and it was fast growing dark, when I saw a jet plane high in the troposphere laying down a contrail. It must have been catching the very last rays of the sun setting out to the West of us, because the contrail was a brilliant sunset pink. It was beautiful, so I stood and watched it as Butters ran for the ball.

It was in the middle of a very clear Southern sky, far from any obstruction. I averted my eye from it for just a couple of seconds—just long enough to scoop up the ball and send it flying again—about four seconds—but when I looked up to the sky again, at the place the plane should have been by then, it had disappeared! The effect was startling, like a magic trick, like the heavens had swallowed the plane.

My conjecture is that I just happened to look away at the moment the sun disappeared from the point of view of the plane. No longer illuminated by the rays of the sun, plunged into in shadow, the jet and its contrail blended into the darkening sky and became impossible to pick out from the ground.

These things remind me that before photography comes the joy and the wonder of simply seeing. It's one of the reasons for photography in the first place.

Mike
(Thanks to Eric)

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.

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Hans Muus (partial comment): "Beautiful! I couldn't agree more. Practising photography and enjoying the other visual arts from an early age onwards, have helped me to see—and thank god also to see more intensely without a camera present. Every one here on TOP will recognize the initial feeling of 'O, sh*t, I should have had my camera with me,' but in situations like these it is also a relief to be freed from the urge to try to possess the view."

Dogman: "It was in the late 1980s. My wife, then girlfriend, and I were camping in Arches National Park in Utah. I arose early one morning, before sunrise, and started the camp stove to make coffee. When it brewed, I took a cup and walked into the rocks behind the campground, preparing to watch the sunrise over this incredibly beautiful landscape. I found nice boulder that made a comfortable seat and began to sip my coffee, alone with my thoughts. There were a few people up and about besides myself, down in the little valley below. Among them was a man and two young blonde-haired children. They didn't notice me up in the rocks. As the sun came up over the horizon, it backlit the threesome to such a degree the blonde hair of the two children seemed to glow against the background of dark red rocks and sand. At that moment, a deer quietly wandered up between the three and myself. They did not notice the deer. The deer stepped up on a rocky area just above them and froze, looking down on them.

"The elements were all there, the most incredibly beautiful scene in my memory—the unearthly landscape of Southern Utah at sunrise with three human figures, blonde hair glowing in the rising sun, with that stealthy deer just above them peering down, rimmed by the same glowing sun. For a few seconds, I saw a perfect moment in time.

"I'm sure 30 years has allowed embellishment of this memory. But it remains with me today, vivid in my mind. I did not have a camera with me at that moment. If I had, I doubt I would have taken the picture. It was too perfect. No photograph could have done that moment justice."

Jim Allen: "Dogman's comment above was for me, every bit as vivid as the photo might have been. The way he described that moment, I felt like I was seeing it myself. Thanks for sharing that."

Dillan: "This is just the sort of thing that I wanted to read first thing this morning. Thanks for the (to me) encouraging thoughts. Reading this was so much better than the news."

The Fixed Object (A Spiky Thorny Question)

How very curious that even only a few hours after posting, we had gotten several diametrically opposed answers to the question in the the previous post.

One comment, however, spurred a different but related question in my mind. Paul Giguere said, "I recently bought a Sony RX100 Mark III for $750 and have pretty much used this as my only camera since then. To date, I have shot about 1,500 photos with it. So far, that comes out to 50 cents per photo."

Maybe it's just that I've had a private discussion going recently with a distinguished figure in the field (who does not wish to be quoted or named) who said that, for him, a photograph has to be an object—but the question that came to my mind was: has Paul shot 1,500 photos with his RX100 Mark III, or just 1,500 files?

The spiky thorny question is, are files really photographs yet?

I suppose they are in some sense, because they can communicate to another person. A file doesn't have a fixed form, however. It can't reliably carry the intentions of its maker to an audience once it's released into the world*.

I wonder if, when people talk about how many exposures they take, they're really making a fair comparison. For 1,500 exposures of B&W film I would have loaded 42 rolls of film onto cassettes, made 42 contact sheets, between 50 and 250 work prints, and maybe 12–15 finished prints. That's a huge amount of work and a considerable expense—so much so that I haven't worked this way in the past 17 years or so—but all the same, it's not entirely fair to assume that it's replaced completely by just making digital files that don't have a fixed, finished form.

To get to the same point with digital I would:

• Spend a fair amount of time at the computer and in Photoshop—not as much time as loading cassettes and developing film and making workprints, but enough time that it offsets somewhat;

• "Try" maybe 30 or 35 prints to see how they looked as prints, even if I were just "playing" or indulging my enthusiasm; and then...

• Make those 12–15 final prints, which would each require several sheets of paper to "get right" and, of course, the ink to print them.

Inkjet printing paper is (this is still astonishing to me) actually more expensive than sensitized silver gelatin photo paper, and there is no parallel to ink costs in silver gelatin printing except the paltry costs of the chemicals. Just as digital exposure are "free" whereas film exposures weren't, digital ink is costly in a way that has no analogy in traditional B&W film work.

The latest picture in my little iPhone portfolio of 12 or so prints that I hope to exhibit locally. It's called "Three Fish Jumped." It's destined to be a print but hasn't been printed yet. Illustrating this post with it constitutes publication, however. © 2017 by Michael C. Johnston.

Knocked out
These are just musings on the previous topic, that is, the relative expense of my photo hobby then and now.

I confess, too, that Dan Khong's comment made me shudder (except when I release my inner Buddhist and embrace my acceptance of the impermanence of material things):

Know when digital becomes expensive and you wished you had continued with film?

It's when your stored images get lost in a hard drive crash, or slowly but surely gets incompatible with the passing of time during which you got tardy and ignored the hassle of reorganizing your files.

That's when the nightmare begins, and decades of work gets knocked out.

Dan's words made me reflect that, out in my barn, I actually have these two things: a box containing old external hard drives from the 2000s, none of which will spin up any more and that require connectors that are no longer current—and the drives have pictures on them I don't have any other backups of. My bad, I know, but that's the situation. And a box containing notebooks full of negatives from the 1980s that I haven't touched in years, but that are still in perfectly good shape and could still be printed or scanned with no penalty.

My friend Ken Tanaka likes to chide us whenever the topic of film vs. digital comes up, as if everything new is simply better and saying anything in favor of old ways is hopeless reactionary regression and neo-Luddism, but my position is that when things change, it's interesting to be aware of what we have lost as well as what we have gained, even if the gains are greater. I'm newly sensitive to this as I get to know some of my Old Order Mennonite neighbors here in the region. There are definitely ways in which I would not be happy with the losses if I had to follow their way of life, but I—we—mainstreamers—have definitely lost some important things as well. In fact sometimes when I contemplate how my Mennonite neighbors live, I'm tempted to believe we "Standard Americans" have lost our way more than a little.

But I digress from the digression. What do you think of the idea that a photograph is not really a photograph until it becomes an object with a fixed form? Before you scoff and dismiss the question, consider that your descendants will probably never see it otherwise, and, certainly, posterity will never offer it at auction. But as long as we're taking that tack, do think this question is even, well, valid at all?

I might especially ask the people who bought Gordon's print "Precipitation" in the last sale, as you compare your print with the online JPEG representations you saw previously. Are they just different forms of an image? Do the two forms of the picture equate?

I have to admit, I think photographs are whatever they are...they can exist only on the cellphones of two friends, and only for two hours or two days before they're deleted, or they can be preserved as treasured artifacts in the vaults of great city museums, or anything in between. As a critic and commentator of the art and the practice of imaging, it would be foolish of me to believe anything else. On the other hand, I have to use myself and my feelings as a sort of compass or barometer as well, and I admit that at one time, I had difficulty accepting prints on resin-coated paper as "real"! I felt, somehow, that a photograph of mine wasn't really real, or done, until I printed it on fiber base paper. That's ridiculous and indefensible objectively, naturally, yet still, I did have that feeling. And I have to confess that there's a part of me, just a little part, that retains the sense that all my image files on my computer aren't really anything yet, that they don't yet quite exist. I can dismiss this feeling, and certainly reason my way around it, yet I can't quite banish it completely either....

Mike

*As an example of this, consider that in this post about two photographs by Nick Ut, both are crops, and I first presented the picture of Paris Hilton "being whisked off to jail" in the post as if it were the whole picture. Then we discovered a less cropped version, and then, later, one that was even less cropped. Which is the real photograph? Who got to decide—Nick, or the editor who assigned him, or someone else? Who cropped the most cropped version, and is the least cropped version actually the whole frame? No way of knowing. At least not without more research than I care to get into. Putting a picture into a "final, fixed form" is important if you work as an artist, because it's an important aspect of your intentions, which matter.

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.

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Manuel: "A very interesting question. Do photographs exist before they're printed, enlarged, scanned or published?

"Recently I've made an in-depth research on the subject of copyright in photography. In continental Europe it isn't required that a work is fixed in order for it to be copyright-protected. All it takes is that the work is discernible in any way. Therefore, the moment a photograph is created—the one that determines protection—is when the photographer presses the shutter release button. Thus the photograph exists even in the form of a digital file (or a negative).

"This isn't idle. You might need to prove the originality of a photograph, and the metadata can be used as evidence. Likewise when needing to prove you are the author of the photographic work.

"Not so, apparently, under Common Law rule, where it's the copy that gets copyright-protected. In this case the photograph doesn't seem to get protection until it's reproduced by means of fixing it, be it on paper or any other means that bring it to the world of objects. According to the U.S. Copyright Act, a work is 'created' when it is fixed in a copy for the first time.

"Of course, the U.S. having signed the Berne Convention, courts might rule that the moment of the creation is when you press the shutter release button. The jury's out (no pun intended).

"So much for the legal side. Being 54, and having a drawer full of memories in the form of printed photographs, I've fought the idea that a digital file is a real photograph for some time, but now I've come to terms with the idea that what we see in the computer screen is a photograph. It is. I no longer care to print my photos, even the ones I find most significant. I'm not famous and probably my photos will never be exhibited, so why bother?

"I have no issue with virtual photographs. Of course it's always more interesting to see Bruce Gilden's portraits at an exhibition than on the computer (let alone on a smartphone); the experience is inimitable. But what if one never has the chance to see them at an exhibition? Better see them on a computer than never see them at all.

"Finally: 'when things change, it's interesting to be aware of what we have lost as well as what we have gained, even if the gains are greater.' That's what I call wisdom, Mike."

Keith: "A file is where you evaluate the technical qualities of an image, a print is where you evaluate the emotional qualities."

David Brown (partial comment): "Whatever was current when you were in your teens is the real stuff (for you)."

Mike replies: There's something to that, there really is. I used to put it this way: "The world you expect is the world you were born into." Everything else feels like change, or "the future," or things not as they used to be (or should be). But of course the world I learned about and discovered as a child was not the same one my grandfather, born 1902, found when he got here. I really am quite sentimental about the vivid experiences of my boyhood, it's true.

On the other hand I wouldn't trade the experience of living through the digital transition. I firmly believe that I've lived at the perfect time to have been a photography enthusiast—it was a great privilege to live before digital, in a time that was still so connected to photography's beginnings, a great opportunity to live through the change, and a great experience to live and work on the far side of it now, as well...to have made my entrance portfolio to art school in a little darkroom beneath the basement stairs, with my fixer-stained copy of David Vestal's The Craft of Photography opened on the sink, and to be making a portfolio with my smartphone now!  :-)

Ken Tanaka: "Two comments regarding your thoughts here, Mike. First, my recent comment regarding the film vs. digital topic wasn’t meant to be sarcastic or a reactionary criticism of 'old' media. It was an observation that you had presented a bit of a non sequitur for comparative measurement. That digital imaging is superior in every measurable technical parameter to chemical photography is no longer an arguable matter. But comparing the two beyond imaging capabilities is like comparing very different technologies, not simply old and new. The communications overlay, for example, makes the whole cost-per-frame measurement silly. What would it cost to make a film frame immediately viewable by hundreds of millions of people? And, let’s face it, how many die-hard film photographers are still wet-printing much, if any, of their work? For color the answer must certainly approach zero. Yet you can easily print nearly -any- digital image for the cost of a cup of coffee today. And so on.

"As I've said a great many times, here and elsewhere, photography for the vast majority of camera owners is a hobby. It's a diversionary undertaking for pleasure. I salute anyone who gets their enjoyment from the craftiness and tactility of chemical photography. But truly comparing its costs to digital requires that you first establish the field of view for those costs.

"As to your other point, a photograph becomes a photograph when an image is recorded…on any medium. But anyone expecting a digital image file to be an everlasting keepsake is a fool. There's simply no excuse for not making a physical embodiment—a 'print'—of your most prized digital images today. The permanence, quality, and affordability of today’s photo printing processes is superb. You don't have to have a piece of grand art to make a print. Nor do you have to make tableau-sized prints. But the only way to ensure the longevity of a photograph, especially a digital image, is to print it."

David Boyce: "Oh boy. Cat, pigeons. I am going to say film, but for a different reason than most I suspect. Digital makes it way too easy to spray and pray. I still use film for a lot of things, and the reason being that it makes me consider each frame. Each push of the shutter is thought about, composed and completed with conscious consideration. The plus side of this is that when I use digital I use the same approach which saves me time (which is money as we all know) in front of the computer editing and adjusting. When I find my frame rate in digital climbing and the actual good shots declining I head out with a film camera and reset my way of thinking."

JohnMFlores (partial comment): "I've grown much faster as a photographer with digital than I did with film."

Mike replies: True for me as well.

Richard Man (partial comment): "What I am most interested about is how many 'keepers' I get, not how many frames (digital or film) I have shot. The keepers are the 'photographs,' the rest are potential (some are much less than others)."

The (Many) Ones That Get Away

I saw a marvelous photograph just now. It's a dark, heavily overcast morning in Penn Yan. While not actually foggy, the air is laden with moisture and visibility at not-very-great distances is limited—the far shore of our narrow lake is muted in the gray air, pastel, pearlescent, its details indistinct.

Where Route 58 turns on to Liberty Street, coming North and West, there is a sweeping left-hand turn that doesn't quite make a right angle (the proper adjective is "obtuse," but "obtuse angle" is an obtuse phrase for people who don't remember high school geometry). As I drove East and South toward home this morning after an errand, I saw coming around that corner, first, a Mennonite horse and buggy—the horse a dark, sleek young bay, stepping at a brisk trot, the cab of the black buggy shrouded in shadow; and, following it around the corner, slowly, a hulking semi trailer-truck, all white, almost spectral in the half-daylight. It would have made a gorgeous photograph...

...For about half a second. Visually it coalesced, hung there poised for a fleeting moment in my sight, and then fell apart again.

I mused to myself that to have gotten that shot, I would have had to be on foot, walking, camera in hand. And I would have to have been on the lookout; because I am often lost in thought, I'm not always alert. It struck me that even if I had been situated ideally to encounter that wonderful momentary scene, I still would have needed some luck, not to mention good chops, to get the shot. Maybe better chops than I have any more, at my age.

I'll think about that picture-I-missed for a few days, holding it in my mind. Gradually it will fade, as most of the pictures-I-couldn't-take do. (Although a few I can remember for decades.) I don't know about you, but as I go about almost every day, I see far more photographs than it's possible to even try to take.

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.

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Ken James (partial comment): "Walking around seeing pictures seems to be one of the side effects of being a photographer methinks."

richardplondon: "I recall someone (Henri Lartigue?) writing that as a child—before he had his first camera—he already longed to 'fix' or 'freeze' momentary sights and impressions as if captured by a camera in that moment. He would do this by blinking twice, quickly. Whatever flashed on his vision, isolated in time and in circumstance between those two black blinks, became an inarguable visual 'quantum.' Of course, this pretend-photo could not then be reliably remembered, let alone later re-manifested. Hence the camera.

"Yet, for example, the Impressionist painter Marquet was known for having precisely such a facility. He'd go for a walk, and when he got home, paint some scene he'd encountered—in lively and highly characteristic detail that was impressive to his fellow artists who'd accompanied him on that same walk."

Stan B.: "The ones that got away, the ones you almost got, the ones if only if...yeah, they add up after a while. The truth is, these magical visual moments of happenstance and grandeur occur in every city, town and path in between, all around the world, every hour of the day. They coalesce, shine and dissipate at a second's notice with your presence or not, with your recognition or despite it. And it's a wonder we ever get to pay any one of them any justice at all...."

Keith (partial comment): "I'm not sure which is worse, to see a shot you can't get for whatever reason, or being in just the right time and place for the shot but screwing up somehow."

Lindsay Bach: "I call shots like the one you saw 'retinagraphs.' My retinagraphs, etched in memory, are some of the most indelible images I know. Though they can be shared with no one, they are treasures nonetheless."

1" Sensors as Good as Medium-Format Film

Shopping is fun but....
Right. I shouldn't be saying this. Things used to be easier; now, competition has gotten fierce—even The Huffington Post (fer Pete's sake!) is publishing camera reviews and posting affiliate links to Amazon and B&H Photo. It's getting a lot tougher out there for cool old dudes who actually like to write words down such as, um, moi. And who at least sometimes provide content that goes more than just a little way past exactly what the marketing departments of the corporations we serve that serve us want us to say to shift product.

This is my competition now too. (The link is to the pretty young woman above vlogging* about the Sony RX100V as a vlogging camera. She doesn't write; but then, I don't shoot video.)

I shouldn't be discouraging anyone from shopping, is what I'm trying to say.

But I just want you to look at something amazing, and take a second, placidly amid the noise and the haste**, to fully appreciate where we are and what is happening.

Just look at this. It's a photograph. The photograph is of an unidentified woman, and it was taken by a photographer I've never heard of before named Andreas Jordan (to whom thanks, at a couple of removes). Enlarge it by clicking on it, then contemplate it, and then evaluate it visually from a holistic standpoint, i.e., without drilling down into picayune specifics.

Given that most photographers now look at most photographs on screens now***, ain't that good enough? I'm just sayin'.

Granted, it's not the ultimate in detail, by today's standard, but doesn't it give you pretty much all the detail—all the information—your actual human eyes could, at a distance where you'd be seeing that woman, the subject, in about the same way? Doesn't it get the idea across about as well as anybody needs?

And that's a picture from a one-inch sensor. It was taken with a Sony RX100V, the fifth iteration of a tiny digicam that has a 1" (8.8x13.2mm) sensor. The sensor in the V iteration has a BSI (back side illuminated) sensor that gives it 315 focus points and the ability to capture AF in .05 seconds. Phil Hall at TechRadar (no link because the page imposes sound on you unwillingly, a new trend I happen to detest): "Using the same stacked Exmor R back-illuminated CMOS sensor technology that we first saw in the RX100IV, Sony says it has tweaked the chip, while the clever stacked sensor design means it has memory chips built right onto the back of the sensor. This means data doesn't have to flood out to the edge of the sensor, and, coupled with a new LSI chip, it means the sensor can deliver incredibly fast readout speeds."

My readout, from my brain I mean, is that while there are differences, 1" sensors are now virtually as good as medium-format film was in 1991.

Back then, my friend Jim Sherwood, an art photographer who did a lot of shooting of major storm damage in 6x7, switched from a ISO 100 speed film (Kodak Vericolor 100, I think it was, a low-contrast negative film beloved of 1980s art photographers who shot in color) to an ISO 400 speed film, which had just gotten good enough. While RX100V captures might not be quite as enlargeable in prints as Jim's 6x7 cm negatives were, it certainly beats the pants off it for color correctability and low light sensitivity, and for detail and image quality as long as you're looking at it on a screen. Of course, it does cost $998—but then, that was about $560 in 1991.

It's da bomb, as people who were that vlogger's age ten years ago used to say.

Where I'm going with all this...
...Is a question. At what point are we going to learn to stop worrying and love da bomb?**** At what point are we just going to start making pictures again?

When digital cameras came along for most of us in the late '90s and early 2000s, digital just wasn't good enough. But we all wanted to use it anyway because it was so liberating and so much fun. The first one I used, an Agfa—there's a name not everyone knows now—was not even close to one megapixel, and I remember thinking: too bad you can't get decent images from this thing, because using it is like being a kid let loose in a candy shop. Wheee.

So we started this endless roundel of trying, comparing, shooting "test shots," making the most fanatically minute comparisons, and of course upgrading, always interested in the latest and the next. "Neomania," I called it back then. We became maniacs for the newest thing.

But at some point, I just assumed, things would settle down and we'd go back to just...well, making, and looking at, pictures. You know, without caring how the pictures were made. Are we there yet?

That still hasn't quite happened, I don't think. And now I'm wondering if maybe it never will.

Oh, and speaking of 1" sensors...
...If image quality is all you're after, and not that wicked new processor and the last soupçon of AF speed, you can get the same image quality from the RX100IV for $100 less. Or, for that matter, from your iPhone, as long as you attach a DxO One to it.

The iPhone as a 1" camera

(Oh, right, right: DxO One: B&H, Amazon.)

One-inch digicam / 8.8x13.2mm sensor = MF of only 26 years ago = who'd a' thunk?

Mike

*Vlog, n., video log, a weblog in which most of the postings are in video form.

**The reference of course is to the "Desiderata" (desired things), a 1927 prose poem by American writer Max Ehrmann. Largely unknown in its author's lifetime, it became popular through several spoken-word recordings in the 1970s. It was not written in 1692, a fatuous but oft-repeated claim based on the fact that the rector of St. Paul's Church in Batimore, Maryland, included it in a compilation of devotional readings for his congregation, which is apparently where the creators of the spoken-word recordings found it—and the church was founded in 1692. "Editors needed everywhere," as Yr. Hmbl. Ed. always says.

Here's a book jacket photo of Max Ehrmann, who was born of Bavarian immigrant parents in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1872, and died in 1945 before his poem became famous. He was educated at DePauw University in Greencastle and later received an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University.

And here's the poem, just to cover the faint possibility that you've never encountered it before—

DESIDERATA

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

It's contained in a largely unread compilation of his poems, and there are various letterpress and calligraphic presentations of the poem available intended for framing.

Some of the poem's ideas might have been "in the air" in the 1920s. I hear strains in it of the ideas espoused by the Oxford Group (founded 1921 as "A First Century Christian Fellowship"); of Schweitzer, whose The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle was published in 1931; and of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous (1935) as represented in "The Big Book."

Although it may be sappy, and beloved of sappy sorts, and thus easy to dismiss, the poem's advice, one must admit, is uncommonly sound, not to mention beautiful.

There...now, you're not gonna get all that in a vlog, are ya? (Quiet, you in the back.)

***Even though more people are printing more photographs now than ever before, it's still a small fraction of the photographs viewed on screens. I can't substantiate any of that, but I believe it's true.

****The reference is to the subtitle of Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, a black comedic farce about how deranged leaders could needlessly trigger nuclear war—which obviously can't happen because our leaders are so sagacious, cautious, probitious, contemplative, policy-savvy, humane, empathic, steeped in culture, and wise.

...On second thought, better re-watch Dr. Strangelove.

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.

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Dave Wilson: "Among far too many others, I have both (all three? iPhone as well) modern devices you mention above. Frankly, for 90% of use cases, they're all you need: but this approach does mean that, when I pick up my FF camera, the reasons I still own it come flooding back. But I'm not going to chuck it in my work bag and take it to London daily, something I don't need to think about with either the DxO or RX100V."

Mike replies: You'll note that our vlogger astutely says at one point that the smaller the camera, the more she'll use it. Struck me as both true and also honest.

Andrew Molitor: "I dunno, hasn't there been a 'nerd' community for a long time? I distinctly recall in the 1980s spending a lot of time dorking around with lenses and films and testing this and that. Photographers, culturally, seem to have a terrible problem with looking for technical solutions to creative problems. I don't know how far back in time this goes, but I assume there were fistfights about how what percentage of silver nitrate to use in this solution or that. Or maybe it really arose with the internet forum? I don't know. But it's been around as long as I have been aware of these things, which is a few decades now."

Mike replies: I've read enough in the old literature to suspect that distracting disputations about image quality have been going on at least since the Daguerreotype went away. Maybe it's essentially social—part of how we keep each other's company—given that the creative side of photography is so solitary? As I've lived only half of my photographic life in the age of the Internet, I can say with some confidence that the Internet did supercharge the tendency, no question.

Bill Tyler: Along with the other footnotes, you might want to include the definition of 'probitious.' The most recent uses I've found are both 18th century, one in Congreve's Judgement of Paris, and one in 'An ESSAY On The Scheme and Conduct, Procedure and Extent of MAN's [typography sic(!) —Ed.] REDEMPTION. Wherein is shewn from the Holy Scriptures, that This great Work is to be accomplished....' Title pages in the 1700s did tend to run a little long. Anyhow, a definition, please!"

Mike replies: Found that....

Love the scrawled owner's commentary. And the library stamp, which to a book collector would amount to vandalism.

I think I did read around in the 18th century too heavily when I was but a lad, although I never encountered the worthy William Worthington. Re "probitous," which is what I originally wrote, I think I made it up, on account of I have always wanted there to be an adjectival form of the noun "probity."

When I started writing for magazines I fetched up against the uncomfortable fact that I had made up a lot of words and was in the habit of using them. I had to stop that.

I guess I should go change it...probably to "upright," which to my ear doesn't have the same brawn or antique burnish or Latinate depth, alas. Or maybe I shall leave it as it is, and count on our exchange here to redress the error.

cdembrey: "With the rapid decline of the middle class's discretionary funds, expect more competition for those few remaining dollars. Small bloggers will be squeezed just like small brick-and-mortar stores were in the past. Unique products will become more important. In many cases podcasts are both easier to consume (politics, literary criticism) and videos are more understandable (technical subjects—don't tell me, show me). For me, I'm listening to more podcasts, and have cut back to only TOP and Eric Kim's blog. Speaking of Eric Kim, he said in his Review of the Pentax 645Z and Digital Medium Format Photography: 'My idea of the future of photography: either buy a digital medium format camera, or just use your phone.' I'm not impressed with gear-geekish-gobbledygook, so g-g-g goes in-one-ear...."

Mike replies: Funnily enough (is "funnily" a real adverb? If it is, then "probity" should have an adjectival form, dang it. I'm going to stick my head in the sand on funnily), about half a year ago I decided to use my iPhone as one of my two main cameras, and since then have been trying to decide what the other one should be. And the logical answer keeps coming up, "go medium format." But I can't, because I can't afford it. So, one for Eric Kim.

Life is full of frustrations! ...But I'm learning to look on the bright side, which is that I'm being geeky and I don't actually "need" any particular camera or kind of camera. I'll keep working on actually believing that.

Michael Kay: "I agree with your comments about 1" sensors. I have the original Mark I version of the RX100 and it is remarkably good. But they are not cheap. Here is a cheap camera which produces a surprisingly high level of detail with its 86x56mm sensor. It only cost £15.49 (about $20). Read the text and click the link for the enlargement. You will be surprised."

David Dyer-Bennet (partial comment): "'Deteriorata' may almost justify the existence of 'Desiderata.' Maybe." [Link added, and thanks to Steve for it. —Ed.]

Jim: "I have an RX100, and plenty of medium format cameras. The RX100 does not even come close to 35mm film, to say nothing of medium format. If your standards are that low that you cannot tell the difference, it might be time to reevaluate your sensibilities. Digital is still not good enough."

Mike replies: This post twisted the tails of several medium-format film photographers—among which, Jim's comment was the mildest. One old friend came close to removing TOP from his RSS feed. All I can say is, wait till tomorrow.

PhotoDes: "'Twas ever so. Many of the famous Baroque era artists experimented extensively with different pigments for their paintings—Prussian Blue, zinc white, etc. were valued for their intensity and were regarded as a characteristic of high-quality work."

Are Classic Photographs Still Relevant?

A nice "idle question" for a sunny Tuesday in the Finger Lakes...are classic photos and photobooks still relevant as references, inspiration, and instruction for today's photographers?

I'm not sure.

Granted, I love the history of photography; I love learning about the great practitioners as well as the excellent-but-little-known ones; and I certainly love looking at old photographs, from Shorpy to snapshots, and everything from the greatest of classic photobooks to ancient, musty photo annuals and antique instruction manuals.

But I'm wondering how relevant it is in today's world, or whether the great pre-digital-era work of the second half of the 20th century has become...well, history.

A few of the changes: today most photographers work in color. That's a big change from when I got into photography in 1980, when most serious photography was still B&W*. Cameras see very differently now—many of the problems that were with us for well over a century have melted away in the era of super-duper sensors and computer-controlled electronics, such that the better cameras nowadays see conspicuously better than most humans do**. While photographs were historically quite difficult to modify or fake, and it was possible to spot it in many cases when they were, today they can be heavily edited and modified with great ease, and the changes are often completely invisible, if the creator wants them to be. Furthermore, the formal culture of photography is changing***, in ways that aren't quite understood yet; even the cultural uses of photography seem to be morphing from one state to another, in at least as major an upheaval as the Kodak and the hand camera craze in the 1890s changed the way photography was used and conceived of.

I recall that when I mentioned one of the formative books of my photographic education—John Szarkowski's Looking at Photographs—one commenter said he thought all the examples were old-fashioned and didn't help him much with what he himself was doing. Another shock was seeing an exhibit of contemporary photography at the Art Institute of Chicago and noticing how out of place, how plain and old-fashioned, two 35mm B&W 11x14s looked amid all the altered and concocted and variably colored wall art.

I don't know. Maybe photographs recognized from life and taken at once with a single release of the shutter-button aren't entirely "relateable" any more. Maybe, some time in the recent past when I wasn't watching, they left the realm of the relevant and entered the musty catalogs of the merely historical.

Mike

*It's a revisionist commonplace for pontificators to claim that color has always been important, trotting out autochromes and Kodachrome and Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky and hand-coloring and yadda yadda yadda in support of the argument. That's largely fatuous: until at least the 1960s and '70s, "the colors of photography [were] black and white," to quote Robert Frank's famous dictum. Color was for amateur snapshots, advertising, magazines, illustrations, and pornography, and only slowly and weakly made inroads into fine art and documentary and newspaper photography starting, slowly, in the '60s and '70s. An interesting process, to be sure, and one that's fun to chart; but that's no reason to overlook the fact that most serious, artistic, ambitious photography was B&W and more serious photographers by far worked in B&W than color until at least the 1980s. Of course important color photographers existed, but color was a "poor stepchild," quietly looked down upon, and the occasional color photographer was usually either a token or an exception. B&W was the baseline standard of that era in serious photography—the basic assumption, the fallback.

**In human vision terms, the best cameras now have about 20/2 vision in terms of resolution, and far better dark vision than the human eye. They don't quite have better color discrimination, thanks to the handicap of the Bayer array, but they're getting there.

***If you don't think it is, quick, name the three leading photographers of the 21st century in your country. Then name a famous show or book that everyone has heard of.

Mike

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Michael Poster: "At least with respect to art: all art of the past can be useful (and informative) to the current generation of artists. Photography, for sure. But I’d argue that painting, drawing, literature, and music are useful too. At the museum, I spend as much time with Caravaggio, Sargent, and Hopper as I do with Cartier-Bresson, Arbus, and Friedlander."

Jamie Pillers: "Mike, I suspect you've opened a can of worms here...or maybe opened an old wound. Excellent! I for one believe that photography today is welcoming to everything...from the classically crafted-in-a-darkroom B&W image to all the craziness offered up by all the digital bells and whistles we have today. I've been at it for many years, starting from hours and hours breathing fixer fumes back in the '80s and '90s. I miss those creative and calming times in the dark. But that amount of time pursuing a beautiful print is seriously unavailable to me anymore, given the piling on of life's other responsibilities.

"Thankfully the digital era arrived and I could still pursue that beautiful image here in my office. But I know there a lot of people are still enjoying the joys of film photography. A friend has just started a film-based community photo group and it's growing like mad. And I must say, I'm truly glad that I can't name the three leading photographers of today. The digital era has, to a huge extent, democratized the world of photographic art. There's so much to look at these days, so much impressive photography available to inspire us!"

Marvin Van Drunen: "Books of photographs from well respected, not to mention famous photographers are important to me...but I'm a 67-year-old man with adequate funds to purchase any and all of the photo books that interest me. I've taken pictures for at least 55 years and that history in my life has created an interest in what has gone before. But, I'm quite sure my children are not interested, at this stage of their lives. They are a the stage of life when their major focus is the care, feeding, and future college education of my grandchildren. They may, in the future, be interested in looking at the work of historically important photographers. But not now. My kids don't have the funds or the time or the inclination to study the history of photography.They are, at this time, interested in snapping hundreds of pictures with their iPhones. My job is to encourage them to a least get the pix off their phones and in some way backed up! And, some day they will inherit my collection of photo books. I hope they will at least look at them!"

Robert Gordon: "Two weeks ago I saw the Irving Penn retrospective in Paris. Breathtaking in terms of variety of content and print quality. Immediately ordered the catalog, which is exceptionally well printed."

Stan B.: "Hard to gauge the extent and relevancy of this transition while actually immersed within it, since the changes are still ongoing and the outcome in flux. No doubt the B&W print era is over. More relevant—is the print era over altogether? Photography has sacrificed its primary raison d'etre (preserving the moment for history) for the immediacy that modern technology has now bequeathed it. More compartmentalized than ever, photography is definitely expanding as far as what it is, how it's used and what it means to all concerned...individuals are free to pick those facets that most interest them, and make of it what they will. If you're going to be seriously involved, it helps to be familiar with the history of your medium, and for those more attuned with its past, to at least try to appreciate what is current.

"P.S. That said, unless it's a topical, just published, news photo, nothing surpasses the power and eloquence of a printed photograph on a gallery wall. Many a time, I've thought I've seen a photograph online—only to really discover the photograph for the first time upon viewing it in print form."

Benjamin Marks: "The most important skill that a good photographer has is the ability to see rather than simply look. So yes: this will never go out of fashion. Or, to mangle Hillel: The importance of photography is seeing; all else is commentary."

Paul: "William Eggleston's work seems to be as popular and relevant as ever. Just go on Instagram, you will see his hashtag is happily alive and kicking with daily updates by people of all ages. I wonder if Eggleston would choose an iPhone camera instead of a Leica in 2017 if he was to begin shooting images for his Guide."

Edward Taylor: "Every few months, more photos are uploaded to the Internet than were taken in the entire 150 or so year history of black and white film. Searching for an hour, even on Instagram, I can find many unknown photos that are arguably as good as anything that has come before.

"Even more surprising to me is that I actually dislike many classic photos that I used to really admire, if not love. Now they look technically weak and perhaps even a bit trite. I look at them and think, 'what's the big deal.' An awful lot of art is emperor's clothing and I am beginning to see that in classic photos as well.

"Of course, there are still many that I love, but all together, they represent a tiny fraction of the photographs I admire today. It's hard to say where photography is going, but it will become harder and harder for any photograph or any artist to truly stand out. In every small corner of the world, in almost every amateur or pro's hard drive, website, or portfolio there is amazing work. In several lifetimes, we could only take a brief glance at a microscopic percentage of it all."

Steve Jacob: "Despite probably being median age for this blog-site, I am and have always been a fan of the colour image, and I have thumbed my bargain copy of Herzog's Modern Colour a hundred times since I received it (thanks Mike!).

"I have books by Walker Evans, Elliot Erwitt and others, but that's not because their images are black and white, but because they transcend the technology. If they had been taken with an iPhone they would be just as good.

"Photography is an art based on science, and idealised representational photography will age faster than humour or humanity. All I see when I look at an Ansel Adams image in the flesh is how dated it looks. I can admire the craft in the context of its time, but I have seen so much breathtaking landscape photography in the last 20 years than I am numb to the whole genre.

"Far too much old photography was admired for the craft, not the content. This is largely because it was difficult. Digital has removed the constraints. They key to the craft now it to make it convincingly invisible, which in its own way is no less difficult.

"Even so, digital is as liberating as the 35mm camera was in the 1930s. It demands more of us because it allows us to do more, yet so many demean that very aspect of it.

"It is ironic, because now, content is everything. Copying what is in front of us is no longer worthy of applause. It requires a new perspective in which, I believe, the iPhone has as much of a role to play as the dedicated camera, if not more so. Life is just getting interesting, I think."

Darkroom DAYdream

By the way, speaking of darkroom dreams, my darkroom daydream was echoed partially by Alan Carmody: "My darkroom dream (recurrent) is that I find a used 8x10 enlarger for pennies, set it up and use it to make 2X-enlarged 16x20 proof sheets. An actual dream, which I've had a few times, well into the digital age and 20 years after I last used a darkroom. It's a dream from which I wake quite happy."

In my darkroom daydream, which is predicated (naturally, as daydreams often are) on sudden vast wealth, I'd go back to shooting Tri-X with a couple of Leicas and hire several darkroom assistants to develop all the film and make Carmody-style enlarged proof sheets, work prints, and final prints for me. I'd just shoot, like Cartier-Bresson did (the independently wealthy scion of a famously prosperous French family, he never did his own darkroom work).

The only snag in the daydream is that my work wouldn't be worth such resources. I don't have the appetite for shooting to keep me at it with the persistence that would be required; I know I lack the "people skills" to approach people and ingratiate myself sufficiently to gain access to the kinds of photographs I'd want to take; and I'm too old—I no longer have the energy and vitality needed to engage in the kind of travel and hard work needed to keep such a support system busy.

So all is well just as things are. George Bernard Shaw put the following words into the mouth of Mendoza, the Spanish brigand in Man and Superman: "Sir: there are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it."

Mike

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Tim Bradshaw: "I find your daydream odd: if you don't enjoy making prints, why would you want to shoot film? I know a lot of people do, but I'd assumed this was a combination of hipsterism ('my photographs are artisanal') and practicality. I certainly would not use film if I did not love the process of making prints (I could live without the film processing, which is boring). If I had a private income I would practically live in the darkroom. I suspect pretty strongly that if HCB was working today he would not use film, for just this reason."

Gordon Lewis: "Re 'I know I lack the "people skills" to approach people and ingratiate myself sufficiently to gain access to the kinds of photographs I'd want to take.' Really? During the short time I visited you at TOP World Headquarters, you seemed to know the names and backgrounds of half the people we met and some we didn't. I even watched you make friends with a part-time apple farmer / full-time Corning engineer you had never met. You're one of the most neighborly people I know. So unless the kind of photographs you'd want to take are nudes, I seriously doubt you'd have a problem with that aspect of photography."

Mike replies: That's kind of you, Gordon, but I do have lots of trouble when it comes to taking the camera out.

Tim Bradshaw: "Here's a tangential comment to a couple of the other comments (mine included). Are Henri Cartier-Bresson's prints (by which I mean prints of his work, since he did not print) actually good? Note I said prints, not the pictures. I am actually not sure: I have seen original prints of his work (which I think were 'vintage' or whatever the right term is) but not for a long time, and my memory is not reliable about them. I have a copy of the recent edition of The Decisive Moment, but it has reproductions of prints, not prints, and I have not seen the original so I don't even know how it compares. And finally I am not sure what I think of the reproduction quality in the book: well, I think it is too heavy to hold comfortably and the images are too large for 35mm prints to look at at the natural distance for a book, and I hate the gutter-crossing. So, in fact, I don't like them: but that might be just me. So the question is still there, in my mind: was his work well-printed? I realise it is heresy to suggest it might not have been."

Mike replies: It really depends on what you're looking at. Henri's prints were made for the last 30 years of his life by Voja Mitrovic, and those prints are excellent, or perhaps running a range from very good to superlative. But some "scholarly" shows of Cartier-Bresson's work have displayed—as if they were finished work, which they were not—reproduction prints, which were deliberately printed small, soft and dark to suit newspaper reproduction methods at the time, often on cheap paper because they weren't intended to last. Peter Galassi's large retrospective show "The Modern Century" in 2010 was to my mind a spectacular failure in presenting a case to the public for Cartier-Bresson as a photographic artist: it showed huge, diffuse groups of prints including large numbers of workprints (used for editing) and repro prints, many of which were very poor. Of course they were indeed "vintage," a concept which is exalted by the art dealing crowd, if sometimes brainlessly. Add to that the fact that Cartier-Bresson preferred his workprints printed excessively "soft" (low contrast) so he could see how much information the negative held, and it meant that many of the prints were not good to look at. To the public generally, that show was virtually reputation-ruining; no one seeing Henri's work for the first time could have come out of it very impressed at his ability. It was a show pitched at specialist scholars but billed as an extravaganza for the general public, which not infrequently happens in the museum world but seldom so glaringly. I thought it was dreadful.

The best case for Cartier-Bresson is made by his books. If you have only one, it should be Henri Cartier-Bresson, Photographer, published by Bulfinch (at least in the States), which was in print for some 20 years. It's now out of print but still widely available for not much money.

Darkroom Dream

I have a surprising number of photography-related dreams, which are amusing as well as sometimes alarming. The lost-camera dream is popular with my dopey subconscious, for example. Last night I had a new one. I got a good night's sleep for the first time in several nights, which was welcome, but I dreamed I was shopping for a Durst enlarger...outdoors, in South Carolina, in the snow. All the enlargers were flimsy metal contraptions on stands and looked very similar to Durst's main product which were children's swingsets and porch swings, also all flimsy metal contraptions. Neither the swingsets nor the enlargers looked like either swingsets or enlargers. All of these products were set out in a field, with aisles between them, and I kept having to ask which ones were the enlargers—most of the many people wandering the aisles with their rugrats were shopping for the playground equipment or the porch swings. Later, I was trying to do aerial photography of the field with the enlargers in it from a small plane, but with my iPhone, and it was hard to see the screen.

When I was younger I had a friend who disliked it when his girlfriend recounted her dreams to him in excruciating detail, which she did often. He asked her not to but she wouldn't stop. So, to discourage her, every time she told him a long boring story about one of her dreams, he would comment blithely that the dream represented something terrible deep in her mind. "That clearly means you're actually a disturbed psychopath." "Obviously, you suffer from a subconscious urge to stab puppies." "Hmm, are you sure you're not into S&M?" "I'm afraid that means God doesn't love you and you're not going get into heaven." And so forth. That friend may or may not have been me. It didn't work; she kept on telling him turgid lugubrious dream stories until he wanted to jump off a bridge or beat his head against a fencepost. They eventually had to break up.

Anyway, right when I woke up, I felt an urge to go online and shop for enlargers. Which is stupid, because I no longer have a darkroom or do darkroom work. So of course, as I immediately realized, it would be a total waste of time to do that.

I chose this one.

Mike
(Thanks to my dopey subconscious)

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Earl Dunbar: "I saw a Kodak 4x5 enlarger advertised on Craigslist for $20. The seller said it had belonged to his son, was now sitting in his house and if no one bought it he would take it to the dump. A Kodak 4x5 enlarger. In Rochester. How could I let it go to the dump? I called, drove over and bought it. As described, the bellows are shot, but they can be replaced. A company here makes custom bellows. In Rochester. Of course. It's still in my garage."

Yin Fang: "I just purchased a Salthill 4x5 enlarger on eBay, after going through a Durst 606, Leitz Focomat Ic, Valoy, V35, Saunders 4500II, 670XL, and a Durst Laborator 1200. Looks like I was inspired by something I read years ago on Luminous-Landscape with the title 'Confessions of a Cameraholic.'"

Tom: "My recurring photography dream is I arrive for an assignment to find I have an inadequate quantity of black and white film and cannot get the camera to load. I haven't shot film on an assignment since 2004 and black and white film for ten years before that."

John Holland: "Yes, yes, fine, an enchanting dream I'm sure, but what about the enlarging lens?!? (P.S. I used a Durst 606 in my high school camera club for 4 years. Gawd, what a bugger to get and keep in focus. We eventually replaced it with a $79 Russian Zenith enlarger, which was a step up.)"

Mike replies: Best enlarging lens I ever had was a Rodenstock Apo-Rodagon-N 80mm ƒ/4.

Ed Hawco: "I understand your friend's problem with impatience with the recounting of dreams because so many people around me seem to suffer the same thing. As a result, I generally keep my dreams to myself, which is difficult because I tend to have the most insane dreams imaginable, which cry out for analysis, or at least recounting. A notable (and short) one: I had a dream in which I was being threatened by a group of komodo dragons, each of which were wearing a cheap plastic alligator mask. Whaaaaaa???"

George Feucht: "Stop it. Stop it right now. (I will NOT build a darkroom I will NOT build a darkroom I will NOT....)"

Mike replies: You know you want to. Oops, I didn't stop....

Ken Tanaka: "Re 'I dreamed I was shopping for a Durst enlarger...outdoors, in South Carolina, in the snow.' That’s about where I’d expect to find one."

Dave in NM: "I'd have chosen this one."

Are Images Getting More or Less Real?

You know how a thought can sometimes hit you between the eyes? Like a small blob of something softish moving at a velocity sufficient to keep it airborne. It arrives with a wettish splat and jerks your head back. Ouch!

The thought that hit me yesterday was this: as camera technology, lenses, and processing have gotten so much better, are images becoming more realistic, or less?

I mean more like the reporting or recording of subjects that might be seen by our own eyes, "in the flesh" as the expression is. I was looking at A6300 examples on Flickr and my eye fell on a complicated B&W picture of a woman looking up at the camera amid a scene. The light looked like nothing I have ever witnessed in the world, impossibly dark with areas here and there that glowed like light sources; the detail was so extreme that every micro-feature on the topography of her skin could be charted by a dermatologist; the local contrast made every slight change of value pop into high relief. Her skin looked as hard as obsidian, glowing from within. It looked like a scene from some distant planet, under some different sun. Then a little while later I was at a review site and idly clicked on a picture the site offered up, and was met with a fantastical cityscape that looked like a poster for a science-fiction movie. Cars made long blurs, their headlights streaked bars of white, on tangled curlicues of expressways against a candy-coated sky, while the skyscrapers of the city-center rose in the distance like a fantastical Oz. High DR had banished every shadow and lighted every shaded crack and crevice. The colors were lightened and brightened to a remorseless unceasing cheerfulness. I kept staring at it and realized I could not make it transport my mind to an actual scene, something that I myself might see, somewhere, anywhere, here on Earth.

Both pictures were appealing; neither could have been captured, or not very easily, on film; both exhibited the pictorial conventions of our present window in history—that is, they looked like we collectively seem to think pictures are supposed to look. And both dutifully exhibited in different ways the technical virtuosity of today's equipment. Both pictures were good by most conventional measures. It's just that—splat!—neither one looked, well, very real.

I'm not drawing any conclusions about this because...how could you? Two pictures out of billions don't tell us anything. And I'd show you the pictures, but I try desperately not to use negative examples on TOP. It's just not friendly, to dangle one artwork by a specific individual before a crowd for the purpose of picking on it. Anyone could expose to unfriendly fire nearly any photograph that any one of us ever made. It's not what people want when they share their work. Work shown to others is both a gift as well as an unspoken appeal for affirmation.

But I do wish I could unthink that thought.

Mike

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Neil Partridge: "Oh my word you've just crystalised a thought of mine that's been lurking for years. I've never been that keen on anything posed, artificially lit or obviously photoshopped. I much prefer something that looks like a momentary grab of something real and untouched. So yes I agree...We need more reality (for those who prefer it)."

Rob de Loe: "There's definitely an emerging aesthetic that I think of as hyper-realism (or in the second example you used, hyper-unrealism!) As sensors and lenses allow us to record more detail, I'm seeing more and more images that I can only describe as 'clinically sharp and detailed.' This development will be a boon to people doing forensic photography, where the ability to see the smallest detail in a crime scene photograph is a huge advantage. But I don't think it's necessarily improving photography. I see portraits now where I can count every pore on the person's nose, and that's not very appealing. Similarly, there are countless super-detailed, super-sharp landscape images that, to me, are also super lifeless and clinical.

"I realize I'm just defining my own tastes here. However, I think it's worth raising the topic because we've already reached the stage in the development of the technology where for many people current possible digital image quality is 'too good.' I think this fact explains why there's a small resurgence in film, alternative printing techniques, and interest in 'alt' lenses. On the plus side, we are in a golden age of photography where we all can have almost exactly what we want."

bongo: "To 'make you look' was/is the goal, not to accurately represent the scene."

Bill Wheeler: "I know exactly what you mean, and you describe a 'not-very-real' picture well—at least, as I would describe it. A few weeks ago, I photographed a mountain view with my DSLR, and while the photograph had its own appeal, it didn't look real to me. I emailed the image to a long-time friend with whom I share photographs, and he liked it a lot. It wasn't as 'all-out' as the photograph described in your piece, but still it did not look real to me. This past summer, I attended, twice, an exhibit of Ansel Adam's photography. It also didn't look 'real' to me, but it was gorgeous to behold!"

Mark Hobson: "Welcome to the world of Pictorialism Redux, Digital Edition.

cdembrey: "Same as it ever was. Way back in the 19th century they were doing double exposures to put the same person in a photo multiple times. Get it right in camera is not a modern concept. At the turn of the 19th/20th centuries the pictorialists were distorting reality. A little later Man Ray, Ansel Adams and others were changing reality to suit their tastes. In the past image manipulation required a dollop of creativity. Nowadays just a couple of clicks will do you. 8-D  "

John McMillin: "The other night I spent a few hours on Zillow researching the local market. The groaning sounds I made had nothing to do with the crazy prices or ugly houses I found. My reaction was to the repulsive, overcooked HDR photography that showed up in three-quarters of the listings. I saw lurid colors never seen in nature, while other photos were so brightened that colors washed out almost completely. Window views showed strong halos, adding unreality, and white walls were marred by exaggerated shadows that made them look dirty and greasy. This look has more to do with fashion photography and hobbit-fantasy movies. It's unattractive and unappealing to me. If I saw such scenes with my own eyes, I'd head for the closest eye doc!

"I also work in this field. I work to give my clients realistic images with true colors. When I use HDR—usually outdoors—I use it so mildly that it's not obvious. Indoors, by mixing natural light and direct and fill flash, I aim for honest, naturalistic images. This took time and practice to achieve. My competition seems to do no lighting, but simply to shoot a wide bracket, and then fiddle with the results until it meets their standard 'imagery.'

"IMHO, overuse of HDR is a common mistake that is spreading way beyond its wise use."

Roel Kramer: "My thoughts: Too realistic...maybe often a loss of atmosphere. Human eye (at least mine) do no see all the details that are shown in many current cameras/lenses, certainly not in dim light. Something unexpected, seen in a short flash, will give you an impression of what is going on, without details. You will not reproduce this image/feeling with a supersharp picture.

"I only shoot B&W film and even I have this problem with the current lenses. My test for your question would be: take classic B&W pictures (a Koudelka shot from Gypsies; HCB, for example 'Boy carrying a wine bottle'; 'Migrant Mother'...) and ask yourself: how would this shot have looked when it would have been shot with current technique. Would this have been an improvement or would it have lost its appeal? More of these questions!"

Photography Is Open To All Just as It Belongs to Everyone

As a sort of rejoinder to the mini-imbroglio over the all-male "Nikon 32," I've been featuring a few female photographers this past week. And not just Nikon shooters.

It's not affirmative action; I've always included women. Many years ago I wrote the following paragraph in a long essay called "The Photographers Menagerie":

The list of the most remembered photographers is also an honor roll. It is a list that is refreshingly non-sexist, non-ageist, and certainly not limited to the rich or the famous. From the very earliest times—not among the small handful of the inventors themselves, but beginning directly thereafter, from the pioneers to the present day—there have been women among the most important photographers of every era, from Mrs. Cameron in Victorian England, to Dorothea Lange in the era of the FSA and Margaret Bourke-White in the heyday of commercial photojournalism, to Fay Godwin and Joyce Tenneson and Mary Ellen Mark today. The list would include the very young and the very old, ranging perhaps from the prodigy Jacques-Henri Lartigue, who took his first photograph when he was seven and his best ones by the time he was twelve, to Imogen Cunningham, who took her last ones well into her nineties. It includes the great and the near-great, the ordinary, millionaires and paupers, photographers as famous as Ansel Adams or Richard Avedon as well as those who labored in near-total obscurity like old Atget, including even unknowns whose work has so far actually been lost or forgotten, or who remain unappreciated or undiscovered.

Note that of the photographers I used as contemporary examples back in 1998, two are gone now—Fay Godwin died in 2005 and Mary Ellen Mark in 2015. Joyce Tenneson is still going strong at 72.

And note that the last part of the last sentence in the quoted paragraph could have been about another now-famous woman photographer, Vivian Maier.

Joyce Tenneson's A Life in Photography 1968–2008

I suppose this might be Pollyanna-ish (or Pangloss-y*), but it's always been my belief that although camera hobbyists and gear and tech geeks (and TOP readers) mostly skew male—and there's nothing wrong with that—photography itself is open to almost anyone, at least in "first-world" countries: male and female, rich and poor, old and young, and people of any color or ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. It's one of the reasons I like photography. (In high school, I had friends from different cliques.) Any way you want to slice and dice humanity into piles and labels—not just by demographics, but also qualities and properties like dedicated or casual, primitive or sophisticated, seasoned or green, ambitious or humble, supported or isolated, persistent or dilettantish—photography is at least potentially open to all. Just as it belongs to everyone.

Pretty much.

What Nikon did doesn't actually bug me. It's sort of a shrug and a so what. But then, it's not for me to judge—I'm not part of the group that might have been affected by the insult**. At the same time, I wouldn't excuse what Nikon did, either. Photography is not, has never been, and never should be a club of any particular sort of folk. Implications that it might be or should be deserve whatever opprobrium they attract.

Mike

*Merriam-Webster defines a "Pollyanna" as "a person characterized by irrepressible optimism and a tendency to find good in everything," after the main character of the 1913 novel of the same name by Eleanor Porter. "Pangloss" has the same sort of etymology but is much older—it means "a person who is optimistic regardless of the circumstances" and comes from the character Professor Pangloss in Voltaire's satirical 1759 novella Candide. Pangloss, Voltaire's jab at the philosophical optimism of the great German mathematician Leibniz, is beset by disasters and catastrophes yet continues to idiotically insist that "all's for the best in this best of all possible worlds!" (In the novella he gets hanged by the Portuguese Inquisition.) The name means, essentially, "all talk" or perhaps "glib about everything."

**The Nikon thing became a thing not because representative groups have to reflect demographics...that way lies madness, as Franz pointed out in his comment to our post. Steve Caddy (in the comment directly below Franz's) hit on the real reason: "...Representation in ambassadorship isn't important because it reflects the market as-it-stands, but because it's important that young women photographers see a path for themselves." That's right.

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.

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Stan B.: "Being more inclusive is often summarily dismissed as including those who are less qualified simply to adhere to some vague fairness doctrine. Being more inclusive is about making the actual effort to find those who are, in fact, qualified but are under-served and without voice. The mere effort, and actual inclusion, has been repeatedly shown to increase not only the size of a participatory audience, but its quality and originality through the freer exchange of ideas, influence and innovation."

David Dyer-Bennet: "The thought that this could, even possibly, be the best of all possible worlds is the most depressing philosophical concept I have ever seen put forward!"

Arg: "Nikon USA's ambassadorial team comprises 17 males and seven females, which is the highest female representation among the main brands, by quite a margin. IMO that is a mitigating consideration. They made a bad mistake, but maybe it was stupidity, and not ingrained."

William Scheider: "Last fall term, I had 14 women and only two men in my beginning photo class. This year's ratio is about the same for students entering our photojournalism and commercial photography majors. We should all get used to an increasing female presence in the pro photography fields."

brad: "I think this might be a problem with Nikon Inc. Japan, it doesn't apply, as per my experience, with Nikon USA. Of the two local past NPS reps, one was a woman.

"As for women in the photo biz, and my client base...more than half of my assistants have been women. One is a highly successful food photographer today. They weren't picked by gender, but by previous experience and on the recommendation of other photographers. More than half of my clients are women. These are graphic designers, art directors and businesspeople—institutional PR or communications directors. This has been the case in my world since the '80s. My first big client was a female graphic design / communications director for a large West coast engineering firm.

"So, while this may be a problem for the Nikon people in Japan, I don't see the 'all male' thing in my photo world."

Mini-Collections Can Be a Clue

...Anyway.

To continue the interrupted conversation (I don't know what was wrong with me on Thursday; dyspepsia, or angst, or anomie; some sort of hazy undefined malaise), I hope you got a chance to check out the comments on the "Book Update" post. And sorry again for posting them so late.

I asked if people who collect photography books have noticed if their acquisitions have been concentrated in any particular areas—what I called "collections within the collection" or "mini-collections." The answers were what I expected: a wide range. Here are some that people mentioned:

• Leica-associated people and things
• Railroad photography (several mentions)
• National Geographic photographers
• Martin Parr
• Czech photographers
• Books from TOP sales and recommendations
• Photojournalists who spoke or presented at a particular academic photojournalism program
• The painter Edward Hopper, as a photographic influence
• Daido Moriyama
• Contemporary Korean photo books
• Biographies and autobiographies of photographers
• Michael Kenna books, because of their beautiful production values
• Post-WWII Japanese photography
• Stephen Shore
• A complete collection of the books of the late railroad photographer Don Ball, Jr.
• Books by Strand and Kertesz
• Conceptual books questioning the nature and meaning of photography
• Individual monographs mainly of landscape photography
• Photobooks with a textual component
• Books in the social documentary, street, and photojournalistic (Magnum) traditions about the human condition
  
• Josef Sudek
• Books of quiet landscape photographs that do not "pop"
• Books featuring proof sheets
• Books about formerly communist countries

It's curious that sometimes people zero in on gathering certain kinds of books without completely conscious intention. Sometimes we find ourselves being channeled into a particular area of interest almost despite ourselves.

I believe these little "mini-collections" as I called them can be significant clues to the nature of our real photographic interests. Insights into the nature of the subject matter we are drawn to ought to be precious to us. I know one photographer who identified the fact that he loved complexity and visual chaos, or even carnage, filling up the photographic frame; once he realized this, he was able to find pictures in many kinds of subject matter, everything from a harbor jammed with sailboats to photographs of hurricane wreckage to crowds at beaches. What a great—and enabling—insight!

Some photographers just have a tendency to investigate what other people consider appropriate subjects for photographs and then photograph "that sort of thing." That's what leads to what I once called "photo magazine disease"—the motley of "the usual subjects" known to make "good" pictures. This leads to people having portfolios that don't really indicate any subject-matter passion or coherence at all—rather, they're just a collection of conventional or clichéd picturesque "stuff." (And by the way there's nothing wrong with that if you're aware of it and you've decided it's what you want to do.) Thus a picture of fall foliage follows one of a zoo animal which follows one of a cute puppy which follows one of a ballerina which follows one of a city scene which follows one of a cool car. (I used to genially poke fun at flower and cat pictures, and this was the reason for that. Of course, you can have a passion for flower pictures or cat pictures and do great work in those areas, as Tony Mendoza's delightful little Ernie always reminds me.)

Personally, I've never quite found my subject as a photographer. I can say that, finally, at my age now. I've tried lots of things—family; portraits; event reportage; documenting a particular region or area. I'm particularly drawn to Summer life around water and beaches (not sure if you could get away with the latter any more—it's been quite a while since I've tried). But all of these have just been "tendencies" that tend to sort of drift away rather than catch afire and become something that I could commit to. When people ask me what kind of photographer I am, I find I can't really say. I regret that.

Of course it's not too late. I guess it's time to go re-read On Being a Photographer by Bill Jay and David Hurn.  :-)  What I'm talking about—finding yourself by finding your subject—is one of that book's big concerns.

Photographers who know themselves know their subject. They're the lucky ones. There are lots of clues to help each of us find what our direction is; the books we semi-involuntarily gather around interests that seem inevitable to us might serve as one such clue.

Have a nice weekend! TOP will be back on Monday.

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.

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Huw Morgan: "This is a fascinating line of thought. What draws us to collect certain works of art? What drives us to photograph certain subjects? I have to give an artist's talk at my gallery show in September and I've been doing a lot of thinking about how I get drawn to certain subjects and projects. To me, it starts with the gut. I find myself shooting things that interest me first, then try to make sense out a seemingly random set of images. Writing an artist' s statement often helps to find the deeper reasons for taking these images. When my motivation emerges, a grain of a project takes shape and starts to drive future photographs. The project evolves and grows and takes on its own life."

Dennis: "It used to vaguely bother me that I didn't really have a particular subject that I'm passionate about shooting (like you, I can identify a few trends that reappear over the years). Then I got turned onto Jay Maisel's photography. I can't say that I find his photos more enjoyable to look at than many others in my collection...but I found him inspiring because he just goes out and shoots what strikes his fancy. He looks for things that demand to be shot.

"I'd have to be careful looking for clues in my photo book collection because there's a big disconnect between what I like to look at and what I like to shoot. I can point to thousands of photographs that I'd love to be able to say 'I shot that' but I wouldn't, in fact, want to go through the motions of shooting it. I'm reading Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air right now and embrace the romantic notion of standing on top of an 8,000 meter peak and being able to say 'I did that,' but I'm ridiculously far removed from being the type of person who would do that. So I'll read books like that and enjoy photos that I appreciate even though they're not representative of what I want to spend my time doing or creating. (It's also interesting to me that more than half of my photo books consist of black and white photos and over 99% of my own photos are in color).

"If there's a mini-collection in my photo book collection, it's probably 'how to be a photographer' type books (including the Jay/Hurn book, Jay Maisel's books, Galen Rowell, David du Chemin and others)—though after reading Jay Maisel's books, I think I'm finally coming to terms with my photography and can hopefully be done with that genre."

Mike replies: Note that I'm not saying what you collect is what you shoot or should shoot. It's just that it can be a clue is all. I'm not criticizing what you're said here, merely adding a clarification to what I meant to say in the post.

Dennis Ng: "I mainly have Saint Ansel."

John Krill: "My collection is not with books but LIFE magazines. In particular issues that have the great photo essays that LIFE was famous for. I started by referencing the LIFE book 'Great Photographic Essays from Life.' Collecting essays by Gene Smith was the main passion. I ended with issues from the Vietnam war. The one issue I have yet to find has the famous D-Day photos by Robert Capa. And yes, I have several books on Vietnam."

'Smallening and Lightening'

The great 20th-century American landscape photographer Ansel Adams, when asked what camera he used, famously answered "The biggest one I can carry!"

It's difficult to quantify perceived trends in photography, because data about so many things is fugitive or difficult to isolate. But it seems like in the last four years I hear more and more stories about photographers making do with less. Collectively we seem to be turning away from the quest for the latest, biggest, and best, and more and more often making do with smaller and lighter—even if we also own the biggest and best. The answer to that question put to Ansel seems to be "whatever is affordable and easy to carry that offers image quality that's good enough."

Take my friend Susan Haig for example. Sue is a supervisory wildlife ecologist at the USGS Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center, a professor of wildlife ecology at Oregon State University, and a research associate of the Smithsonian Institution. A number of years back, she came to me for advice about a better birding camera on a budget. We settled on the best DSLR that fit her budget, a Canon.

Well, lately I heard from Sue, who writes:

I think you would laugh at this but I've been supporting the photo industry of late—much to my chagrin. As you know, I spend a lot of time tromping or paddling around looking for birds. I had that really great Canon set-up but after five years just couldn't deal with the weight. Not only couldn't I hold the camera up myself to take a photo (with 300mm prime and 2X converter), but carting two camera bodies, a tripod, binoculars and lenses up mountains was more than I could bear.

Before I did anything drastic, I bought a little Canon Powershot, as it got rave reviews for a point-and-shoot. I thought it would be good for traipsing around, and I thought I could save the bigger Canons for when I had good stable photo ops. But I despised that camera—couldn't figure out where it was focusing. So I gave it to my sister-in-law.

Next, I took the leap and traded in (or sold to friends) my Canon gear (tears) and bought a Fuji X-T2. I love it! However...it is still a lot of stuff to carry and last month when Kelly [her niece —Ed.] and I were in Death Valley and she had her Nikon P900 (which I recommended to her), I could not get over how fast that camera would get shots. Mine might have had better glass, but that Nikon produced! The bird-watching function on the Nikon is amazing for birds and flowers.

...As we drove past Best Buy in Reno, I found myself at the photo counter and...yep! I am now the proud owner of a Nikon P900. I love it although it is clearly not as versatile as my Fuji. So that is my tromp-around camera and the Fuji is my better camera. I'm off to Saudi Arabia several times this next few months and I will always have the Nikon out.

What an expensive lesson!!

She's not alone. At all levels, I'm hearing from people who either own "big rigs" and more often leave them at home, or people who used to own DSLRs who are trading them in for full-frame mirrorless cameras, or people who are switching to Micro 4/3, or people who used top models in a cameramaker's lineup who are now using easier-to-carry, simpler mid-line models.

Our last print sale artist, John Lehet, for example, has transitioned in recent years from his Nikon D800E to a more compact Sony A7RII. That's "smallening and lightening" for a dedicated landscapist. Even TOP reader JG, he of the big, over-the-top, tripod-only Frankencamera, takes his small, fixed-lens Sony RX1 with him when he leaves the house with his dog Miss Abby. It's definitely a big camera in a small package.

Dave Morse of Olde Country Picture Framers in Canandaigua, New York, at work on my print by John Lehet from our last print sale. John's picture was taken with a Sony A7RII, which represents downsizing for him; this was taken with my current walk-around note-taking camera, the dual-module Apple iPhone 7+...the, um, bigger version of the iPhone 7.

Out in the non-photography world, of course, I'm encountering friends, acquaintances, and relatives who are using their smartphones instead of their older digital point-and-shoots. That goes for many photographers, too, although I don't know any serious photographer who uses a smartphone exclusively. Yet, I guess I should add. Despite books such as Chase Jarvis's The Best Camera is the One That's With You, shot entirely with an iPhone. (There are a number of such books shot with phones, including serious works of photojournalism.)

"Smallening and lightening" seems like a trend to me, but it's possible my objectivity is influenced by the particular view from my perch here at TOP. What does it look like from where you are? Trend, or am I merely emphasizing data selectively? (And what about in your own personal ecosystem—have you smallened and lightened, or have you been considering it?)

...Note, however, that Ansel Adams, virtually a patron saint for classic large-format photographers, photographed mainly with a Hasselblad for the last several decades of his life. I guess it stands to reason that it became the biggest camera he could carry!

Mike

P.S. That's it for me this fine week. You are cordially invited to come back on Monday, when I will go out on a limb and predict the future. Don't forget our current book sale is still going on (see just below). Have a nice weekend!

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.

TOP/Yale Spring Photo Book Offer
(Ends June 30th or when supplies run out)

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

Bill Poole: "The sainted AA's much-quoted answer to the how-large-a-camera question made perfect sense for an age when the largest piece of film yielded the most detailed images for the large prints he was trying to make. So, the right tool for the job at hand. For people who never print, mostly display images online, and have learned to love the everything-in-focus look yielded by small-sensor camera phones—well, who would need more?

"That said, the image on the front page of today's print edition [photo by Doug Mills, and it's not on the front page of every edition —Ed.] of the New York Times showed James Comey being targeted by a firing squad of DSLRs with bazooka lenses."

Stephen Cowdery: "Over the last twenty years I've gone from a Pentax 6x7 (2400 grams with normal lens) to a Pentax Q7 (240 grams with normal lens)—quite the drastic reduction! Interestingly enough, the Q7 holds it own against the 6x7 on a print up to an 8x10; the Q7's IQ certainly is the equal of any 35mm film camera I had."

Mike replies: That is quite a contrast for sure!

JG [who is mentioned in the post —Ed.]: "FYI, even Clyde Butcher, who is legendary for his mammoth B&W landscape prints that he makes from film negatives captured using view cameras as large as 12x20, has climbed onto the mirrorless camera bandwagon because of their size and weight advantages compared to DSLRs and medium- and large-format film cameras. (As an aside, I can vouch for the Sony A7R / Cambo Actus combo he's using, because I have been using one myself since this past February—yes, I've retired all of my Frankencameras for the time being, because the Actus provides just as good results in a much smaller and lighter package—and the results I am achieving with the Sigma Art series lenses I've been using with it are absolutely stunning!)"

John Lehet [who is also mentioned in the post —Ed.]: "The lightening/weightening seems to be a wave function for me, rather than a steady slope. First I moved down from the view camera to a twin lens reflex medium format camera; after several years of only using the view camera, I had kids. By the late '80s I just wasn't schlepping and setting up the view camera like I used to. I loved those twin lens cameras. I think I had a Rollei and Yashica, and then a less-loved Pentax 6x7. The Pentax 6x7 I called my 'mini-cam.' The twin lens cameras were my 'grandma cameras.' I did not use 35mm film after college.

"In modern times it has been very sinusoidal rather than straightforward. From one DSLR to carrying two (adding the infrared), then to Micro 4/3, then back to the DSLR (it was a D800E, not the 810 [sorry John—fixed now —Ed.]) added to the Micro 4/3 cameras. I think I would happily have kept carrying the DSLR, but I found myself solidly in the EVF camp, and also IBIS dependent.

"But the unlightening has gotten pretty serious, as the A7RII has turned me into a lens nut. I 'need' to have quite a few primes with me most of the time, and that means I carry two medium size bags or a big backpack along with my main side bag. Maybe this will swing back to lightening again...."

Matt: "I see many pros and amateurs sticking to DSLRs. It's the class in between, enthusiasts and hobbyists, who are discovering that smaller mirrorless cameras yield similar quality and better handling."

Arg: "'The biggest one I can carry' was code for 'cameras weren't good enough back then.' 'The smallest one that does the job,' is code for 'cameras are good enough today above a certain size (which varies with the job).' Either cameras have improved, or standards have fallen. Standards haven't fallen."

Roy Feldman: "I have photographed with just about everything from view cameras on down. Lately I have been working on a project that interacts with young (20–30 year old) artists and musicians. To this group the cell phone is entirely invisible; everyone has one and it almost never leaves their hand. I am able to get pictures I never could just because a cell phone in the hand doesn't even register."

Richard Conolly: "Yep, definitely smallened and lightened. Had a Bronica 645 and a Canon EOS 50. Sold them and went digital with a Canon 5D. Just got fed up with it as long-haul air travel started to get difficult due to the size and weight. Also no fun carrying it any distance. I ended up with an Oly E-M5 outfit and I love it. Just bought a used Fuji X100T. Love that too."

Bob Johnston: "I think it's true to say that here in the UK the most famous and revered living landscape photographer is Joe Cornish. He used a Sony A7r and now has a A7rII I believe. I now have a Fuji X-T2 and an Infrared-converted X-E2 and couldn't be happier. I would never be tempted to go back to the SLR world."

Barry Reid (partial comment): "The biggest trend I'm seeing in London is smartphone + film camera. I'll see more kids with Canon AE-1's than with mirrorless cameras. Check the eBay prices for AE-1 bodies and Pentax MX's which have both doubled or more from where they were four or five years back."

Lynn: "I seem to have gone against the trend, I've smallened and fattened over recent years. Oh wait, you mean cameras.

"Well in that case I've gone from a big bag containing a large FF DSLR with bulky zooms to a small bag with simpler equipment, mostly a film camera and one or two primes. I think trying to carry everything when I was younger was often due to insecurity—the belief that you had to cover all bases to meet any situation. Now I know not to worry about gear, though lens lust is insidious!"

George Feucht: "It's so great to fit my Domke bag with my Leica and three lenses into a backpack that also holds my laptop and a ton of other stuff, and still call that my 'personal item' for flights. As a director of photography for TV, I frequently have to carry on the production camera. Having the ability to bring my personal camera as a part of my 'personal article' for flights is amazing. That is simply not possible with my Canon 5D Mark III."

Kirk Tuck: "The trend is not just with cameras; I notice it all over the market here when it comes to flashes. Gone are the power packs and heads; the number of people shooting with monolights is shrinking; and more and more people are figuring out how to make multiple, radio controlled, battery powered flashes take up the slack.

"I've been selling off Profoto stuff and Elinchrom bits and pieces for the last year while adding inexpensive and highly portable small flashes. Love the new trend toward shoe-mountable flashes that come with lithium ion battery packs. So convenient and, with fewer batteries, again, less weight."

dwig: "I sold camera gear and managed camera stores for nearly a quarter century. Over the years, I noticed a distinct trend: as photographers got past early middle age they began gravitating toward smaller sets of equipment. It was an almost universal trend.

"There are five things that indicate you are getting older:

1. You change to smaller camera kits.
2. You begin to forget things.
3. ??...ugh, I seem to have forgotten the rest....

"For me: at 20—one SLR with two lenses. At 30—two SLRs with four lenses and a 4x5 with two lenses. At 40—three SLRs with five lenses, a 4x5 with three lenses, and three 35mm rangefinder cameras with several lenses. At 60—one Micro 4/3 camera and two lenses."

Have Faith

The great American photographer Sally Mann once told me (paraphrasing madly here—it's been a long time) that she always worried about where the next great picture was going to come from. Or, sometimes, whether it would come along at all. And then she said something like, "and yet it always does." I think a lot of photographers have that worry. TOP reader Euan Forrester, who visited here yesterday, works very hard on self-assigned documentary projects, some of which have engaged him for years, and one of the reasons he wanted to talk to me was that he's between projects and is wondering what the next big project should be. I think it's fair to say that he's worrying about it. (He can chime in with a more accurate word if he'd like to.)

I think readers will recognize this too—it's the feeling you get when you finish a great book and don't know what to read next. I don't know about you, but sometimes I "miss" the just-finished book, as I might miss a departed friend, and sometimes have to make a false start or two while I try to find the next book that's going to engage me.

Of course, it always comes along. Books are many; it's time that's short.

The antidote, probably, is a kind of faith. I got to interview Ralph Gibson a number of years ago—a memorable event for me, although I know Ralph doesn't remember it. He told me that his many years of photographing have given him that faith. He knows he's good enough that when he heads out into the world with a camera around his neck (on a red lanyard, if I recall correctly) he's going to find something. He just doesn't know where, or what; but it's out there.

We all should have that faith, even if it doesn't always pan out. However you manage to make yourself comfortable with a camera in your hand, do it, and you'll find something. The pictures are out there. It's just our willingness to put ourselves in front of them that's needed. For you, it might be more involved than just going for a walk. Maybe you need to plan a trip, or design a project, or collect permissions, or find some way to break the boundaries of your "usual tricks." Whatever it is, go forth. Have faith. Work it. You'll find it. Your next great shot simply can't elude your lens forever.

Mike
(Thanks to Euan, Kate, Laurel, and Llew)

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Bear.: "This is more of a philosophy for life than a tip for photographers."

Euan Forrester: "Yes, I definitely feel worried about what my next project should be. I would be sad if I wasn't working on a project at all—they've been what have motivated me to continue with photography—but I've been finding myself struggling with finding the motivation to start another one. I think that your advice to break out of the boundaries of my 'usual tricks' was right on. Most of my ideas were safe: they were things that I knew I could succceed at (to whatever level of abililty that I have done before) and I don't find that particularly exciting. Even just describing my ideas to you made me realize that. But you correctly pointed out that I (somewhat accidentally) took a big risk with my last project: showing it in a public way that I found quite scary, challenging, and motivating. I'm not an expert by any means, but I think that taking a big left turn with my next project and doing it in a way that I don't have much experience with and is way outside of my comfort zone is quite interesting, and I'm looking forward to trying. Not knowing whether I'll succeed is maybe the most motivating thing: it's time to move back out onto the ledge."

Richard Alan Fox: "I was an art student in San Francisco from 1971 to 1980. At some point in that decade Ralph Gibson gave a lecture about his work and methods at the former modern art museum on Van Ness Avenue. Paraphrasing my memories he said, 'Always take a position, and do not be afraid to reject it and take another position.' That is what I remember he said and it has been useful in my life since."

robert e: "This may not help with Euan's current dilemma, but may prevent recurrences. Sally Mann gave a reading at our main library when her autobiography came out. During the Q&A afterwards she was asked what advice she'd give to aspiring photographers. She was generous and honest, and one unexpected and immensely valuable nugget is my only note from that event. I paraphrase: 'I make sure I have at least one project ready in the wings—one I can't wait to dig into, and at a stage that needs my full attention and commitment, in order to avoid that inevitable, awful feeling of loss and purposelessness I get when I finish a project and don't know what to do next.'"

Yourself But Better

To the "Idle Question" post yesterday, a lot of people answered that the photographer they would like to be is themselves. Which is entirely comprehensible and completely laudatory. It's a good answer and I don't quarrel with you if it was yours. (Although I was asking more about hero-worship than anything else—that's what I meant to convey with the bits about the Walter Mitty daydreams of rocks stars and sports glory. Personally, I would rather be Roger Federer than face Novak Djokovich in the finals at Wimbledon as an overweight 60-year-old with one bad knee and two bad shoulders. Get where I was trying to go?)

And while I'm a bit stymied by my own question, I know one thing: I'd like to be better.

Let me count the ways
...Better than myself, I mean. There are a number of facets to this idea. I'd like more talent. I do have talent, but perhaps I've been uniquely situated in my career to understand more deeply than most the limitations of the talent I have. It comes, I reckon, from trying for so hard for so long to analyze and understand the talents of others through their accomplishments.

But there are other ways.

I wish I'd had a better work ethic. Although maybe I'm being too hard on myself. I actually might not mind being as good as my best pictures, just more of the time. Maybe I should say that I wish my work had been more focused, more goal-oriented. I get distracted easily.

But no, really, I wish I had worked harder.

I wish I'd had more belief in myself. Self-effacement (pace poor "Thomas Rowley"), lack of self-belief, or low self esteem can be a formidable impediment for an artist. Perhaps for any person in any ambitious career...but I won't speculate on that. Confidence is essential, even if it is faked. Fear of success is a more common psychological disorder than is generally accepted. I got discouraged easily.

I wish I had embraced failure more enthusiastically. To carry around the dead embryos of ideas, cosseting them lovingly and protectively, is Miss Havisham-ish; better to boldly attempt the idea when it comes to you and let it fail if failure be its fate. Growth involves failing early and often. Learning how to deal with failure is more valuable than money. 

And I wish I had been more myself. Truer to myself I mean, than as myself I was. Am I contradicting myself, here? Very well then I contradict myself. I wanted to be a writer when I was young, and one Winter when I lived on a remote farm deep in the hills of rural Vermont I set myself the task of writing 100 finished short stories. I made it past 50, almost to 60. But I was also drinking heavily and feeling very sorry for myself at the time (both for good reason, which doesn't make either one a good thing to do), and I got very drunk one night and, in some sort of demented Sorrows of Young Werther gesture, burned all my stories in the fireplace. (There were at least three of them that I wish I had back.)

Later I wrote two stories and one poem which unflinchingly drew on the darker and less savory recesses of my character, and you know what? That terrified me. They weren't even about me; the protagonist was clearly, cleanly fictional. Even so I hated what those stories implied about their author. So I did not have the courage to continue to mine that vein. I was aware even at the time that I had hit upon a key, and that I should have followed where those early discoveries might have led. Instead, I stopped writing stories. So, turns out my superego was possessed of a conventional finger-wagging middle-class morality, which makes me cringe to think it. Gad. A fragile ego is a wretched affliction.

And I wish I'd had stronger principles. Remind me to tell you my story about the evolution of my styles of portraiture someday. 

Some day when taxes aren't due soon.

...But talent, mainly. I just wish I'd been someone with a little more of it, is all. Just someone who handles the camera better and sees pictures more easily.

So I don't know who I'd want to be. But I know I'd want to be somebody better.

Stressing
I liked lots of other peoples' answers to my question better than this one. It was especially nice to be reminded of Sudek, via Nigli's "sick joke" (see the Featured Comment with the illustration in the "Idle Question" post). But this is what came up for me.

Even if you'd like to be yourself, wouldn't you like to be yourself but better? Just wondering. Maybe you're already as great as you can imagine yourself being. I don't know your work, note bene.

Okey-dokey, back to taxes. My fourth appointment with my tax guy is tomorrow, and I'm still not ready for him to tell me why I'm not ready for the fifth appointment. Miles to go before I sleep. My kingdom for a W-2....

Mike

P.S. Literary figures referenced in this post: Thurber, E.B. Browning, Chatterton, Dickens, Whitman, Goethe, Frost, and Shakespeare. Don't think you don't get your money's worth around here.

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.

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Peter C.: "I, personally, resolved a few days ago to stop comparing myself to others, and to only compare myself to, well, myself. When I compare myself to others, I'm always going to come up short, but by all measures, the work I'm doing right now is the sort of stuff I would have envied three years ago. This is far easier said than done. I am a naturally anxious person, and my first inclination when I'm unsure of myself is to look at what somebody else is doing, but I'm starting to realize how useless this is in any creative endeavor."

Kent: "Ouch...stop that! Just turned 62 myself, and would rather not even get into weight and bad knees and all the rest. They tell me these things are related.

"But as for getting better, I have a theory that you can and in fact should  improve at whatever you do after the age of 60, assuming reasonably good health and the ability to find time to work at it, and I'm danged-well not letting go. There are so many things that haven't been achieved yet, for many (if not all) of the reasons you mention. And now, on the post-60 downhill stretch, when much of the interference from 'life' has been taken care of, I figure it's time to stop making excuses, chuck caution out the window, and devote every waking minute to achieving some long-neglected goals. Not giving a shirt about what people think every step of the way (without imposing, of course). It sounds kinda selfish, but I figure if I'm satisfied with the results, someone else out there somewhere will be happy too. It's worth a shot.

"To hell with the 10,000 hour rule (how I hate that concept), although I'm pretty sure I've spent at least that much time on the things that matter over the years. To clarify, I'm not talking about becoming any kind of athletic champion at this age (although I certainly wouldn't discourage anyone so inclined from trying), I'm talking about the creative pursuits that still get me charged up, physically and emotionally. Photography is one, music is another, woodworking yet another...just generally creating beauty in any way possible. For pursuits like that, 60 sounds more like a starting line.

"There's a catch though: it'll require work. The trick for us old farts, I believe, is to work smarter, with all of that experience driving and guiding the process.

"I'd get started if I were you.  :-)  "

Peter Conway: "After reading your post, I was reminded of something I came across several months ago (no attribution): Somebody once told me the definition of hell: 'On your last day on earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become.' Sobering, but thought-provoking."

Getting Glorious

I looked at a lot of work over the weekend. It struck me that digital photography has really come of age in the past few years.

It's true that photography seems to have gotten much worse over the past decade or two. But I blame that on culture; the traditional supports for serious work have withered or been blasted away, and although "sharing" is of course much more ubiquitous, social media is by definition atomized, or at least decentralized. Nothing structural has emerged yet to give form to photographic accomplishment, or give support to serious and ambitious workers in the medium. The old culture has been partly or mostly cleared away and nothing has taken its place. It's several magnitudes tougher now to make a splash, become known, or create work that will get widely noticed. I would argue that it was never easy to tame and tether the essentially subversive and unruly nature of the medium, but now we're back to a sort of Babel. It's all iconoclasm and chatter, not to mention inundation.

But at the same time, photographs seem to have gotten better and better. There was a time when a large part of professional photography revolved around the problem of creating a clear, plainly seen, well crafted photograph of a desired subject or event, and putting it into a form that could be used for an intended purpose. In that sense, photography has improved by leaps and bounds. It's become hugely easier for less and less skilled camera operators to come away with clear, sharp, color-balanced photographs of subjects that once were difficult but now no longer are, whether it's photographing far-off critters or photographing in the near-dark or up close, or photographing things that move.

For quite a while, I just didn't like digital photographs very much. The reason was simple. They were ugly. Not ugly in a characterful way like ugly analog things are ugly; just inherently ugly. Digital photographs started out with deficits and were further distorted by people anxious to over-exaggerate popular properties such as "sharpness" or "bright colors." The results were often mildly sickening. Too much at once was like eating too much cotton candy at a fair. It's partly why we were always looking for something a little better during the Transition years.

And it's true that photographs now don't look like they did twenty, thirty, and forty years ago. Digital images don't look like film photographs. A new aesthetic has emerged. There's really nothing new about that; every era and every stage of technical development has had its characteristic "looks." If you know enough about photography, many photographs telegraph their age and their era. It's no different now. A sense of hyperreality, clarity above and beyond what the eye can see, and a certain gloss of fictionalization—or formalization—a polishing-away of the visual chaos of life—is characteristic of the look of the best photographs today. But while they have their own characteristics and style, digital photographs no longer look bad. Quite the opposite. They can look fantastic. The tech has evolved, and with evolution has come maturity. Three-dimensional, exact in description, rich in color and dynamic range. Culture may be keeping photography from meaning as much or mattering as much, but photographs themselves are getting glorious.

Of course there's no milestone for something like this—no demarcation point at which you can point in one direction and say "not quite there" and point in the other and say "we're there." But I really am starting to think that digital photography is of age, finally—realizing its promise and confidently looking like what it was always hoped it would one day be.

Just thinking out loud.

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.

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Featured Comments from:

Anthony Shaughnessy: "I've got quite a few hiking/walking/climbing books illustrated with photos shot on film. We're talking 1980s and 1990s. Compared to today, they don't look quite up to the mark. I think now I expect more."

Svein-Frode: "It just struck me that photography and music have shared parallel developments in the past couple of decades. When music recording and instrumentation became increasingly digitalized in the 1980s things started going downhill. You could hear a Yamaha DX7 synthesizer in almost every pop album. It was an inflation in cheap sound, and later cheap technology (mp3 files), which in turn made music worthless—in a monetary sense. Much like the saturation controls of Photoshop made digital photography boring and predictable.

"But as I sit here listening to the latest Radiohead album I feel, much like you feel about digital photography, that things have matured and that digital music has finally come of age. And just as I would never go back to photographing with film, I’m not going to throw away my CDs and trade them in for noisy vinyl albums.

"That being said, some music is better on vinyl, and when I listen to '50s or '60s jazz records the pops and crackles doesn’t bother me at all, it actually enhances the experience. I could say that about photography too. When looking at prints from the old masters, a bit of blurriness and film grain doesn’t bother me at all, but a digital print of a digital image with Photoshopped grain just looks awful…."

Ramón Acosta: "Is it better because the technology got better, or is it better because we learned how to extract better images from it? It reminds me of the sample picture threads on photography-on-the.net, when someone is trying to decide which version of the 50mm for Canon is better, and when you look at the examples of the Canon 50L versus the non-L, or even versus the Sigma, you find that the 50L thread does have (in my opinion) better images. But is it because the lens is better? Or is it because the 50L with all of its quirks, is often used by more experienced (and economically stable) photographers?"

Mike replies: Good point Ramón. I realized years ago that some people thought Leica rangefinders were better cameras simply because a higher percentage of skilled and dedicated photographers used Leica rangefinders. The pictures were better. It just wasn't necessarily because of the cameras or lenses. The same idea translates to picture websites that have sorting mechanisms, such that you see all the most-liked or highest-rated pictures first. This can lead to subtle misimpressions of whatever you might be looking for.

mark I: "I just checked my photo monograph collection, all 800 books, and not one is taken on digital, not because I actively choose film photographers, but those photographers take the pictures I like. Never yet found a digital photographer I could be bothered to buy a book from. Pentti Sammallahti is still my favourite. After you insisted we learn HTML to post pics on the Camera Porn posting (humour alert). I did actually sell all my Nikon digital and stick to film, wet darkroom and all, and I still love the results and I've printed more in a month than I had in two years with digital. I loath digital prints, regardless of how good they are on screen, and I had a pro lab of my own for twelve years so I know how to print. I've decided to retire early at 57 and devote my last years to perfecting the silver print which I've been practicing since I was 14. May even get into platinum/palladium printing. So I don't actively dislike digital, just don't like it either. It may have matured, but maybe I haven't...."

Manuel (partial comment): "So, when you state 'photographs seem to have gotten better and better,' you're referring to aesthetics only. I agree. On the other hand, though, the creative side has receded. One aspect which surface you've only scratched in your otherwise interesting and thoughtful text is that people imitate each other like there's no tomorrow. All photographs look pretty much the same nowadays. And what's the use of all that clarity if it serves poor, uninteresting images?"

Mike replies: That's the cultural problem I referred to. It takes time to develop a culture of appreciating what matters. We'll get there, though, I think.