The Online Photographer

Sunday Support Group for that Rare Darkroom Rat: Enlarger Dealz

You're not looking to buy a brand new B&W enlarger.

Know how I know? Because no one is looking to buy a brand new B&W enlarger.

But consider this. For people who want to practice old-fashioned, obsolescent film / analog / traditional / opto-chemical B&W photography (whatever you want to call it) from soup to nuts, start to finish, it's not the film or the chemicals or the cameras but the enlarger that might well be the bottleneck going forward.

The reason is that an enlarger is one of those devices that need to be serviced and supported by the company that made it. You might need different accessories as your needs change (different lamphouses, negative carriers, lensboards, etc.); parts might break and need replacing; bits that wear out or age (bulbs, electronic components) might wear out or age and require service. It might seem simple to buy a disused enlarger on the secondary market, but you'll probably have to choose among dinged-up, dusty devices more or less in pieces in a box, which could turn out to be missing who knows what part or accessory that you will end up needing to get the danged thing up and working. 

So why not just buy new then? Several companies are still selling new enlargers. One—one of the best (I've always been a fan)—is LPL of Tokyo, which here in the United States always sold its products rebranded by importers. Saunders or Omega, principally. You can buy one new.

...But there's a hitch. They've become shockingly expensive. In 1983, the condenser version and the dichroic (color head) version of LPL's mid-line 670 model, a.k.a. the 7700, sold for $289 and $459 respectively. (Source? A page that includes a review by none other than Ctein!) B&H's current prices (and these aren't much higher than the factory-direct prices from Tokyo) are $2,473.95 for the condenser model and a rather eye-widening $5,595.99 for the colorhead model, without lenses (the significance of that last comment will become apparent below). That's not for LPL's best enlarger, mind you. That's for its mid-line good-enuff everyday meat-and-potatoes medium-format / 35mm model. I don't know about you, but in my area pretty decent used cars fetch those prices. Unless you're rich—not wealthy, not well-off, but rich—it would be silly to pay that, considering those enlargers will very soon have a residual value of a few hundred dollars or pounds if you're lucky.

So if you're not rich, you're pretty much forced into buying used. New is out.

Easter egg
Or is it? Maybe not absolutely, at the present moment at least. Should you happen to fall in that fraction of a fraction of a fraction of Photo Dawgs who might actually consider buying a new B&W enlarger, here are two opportunities for you.

One is that Freestyle is closing out the Kaiser VP 9005 condenser enlarger. That one's for printing B&W with manually-inserted gelatin VC filters, but it's made in Germany, it's beautiful, and if you're a home hobbyist you won't be the least bit inconvenienced by having to use gelatin filters. And you can get it right now for only $759.99. That's without a lens. How great a deal is that? Great enough that I'd write this post on TOP about it even though none of you are in the market for it! Just on the off chance of making one fellow Dektol-breather out there blissfully happy. Fingers crossed.

And if you want one of those highly inflated LPLs? There's something for you too. An overstock outfit in Brooklyn has nine LPL 670 enlargers—again, the plain-jane condenser version—brand new in sealed boxes, for $849 or best offer.

That sounds maybe a tad dear compared to a used one (remember, new they cost $2,474), but there's an Easter egg in the box. These are kits—each of the nine enlargers comes bundled—packaged—with a lens. What might be easy for anyone but darkroom rats to miss is that the lens is no ordinary lens. It's Rodenstock's very best lens for 35mm, the Apo-Rodagon-N 50mm ƒ/2.8, a lens that alone sells for $671.99 new (and can be used on your digital camera too, by the way). Even on eBay they go for $300–400. You might have heard of legendary enlarging lenses for 35mm such as the Apo-El-Nikkor 105mm and the Leitz Focotar 40mm, but I know people who have compared them directly who say that the Apo-Rodagon-N 50mm can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those legendary paragons of yore. It's the 35mm enlarging lens that graced my last darkroom. I chose it by buying three top enlarging 35mm enlarging lenses and pitting them directly against each other in careful tests. With those nine enlargers now on eBay, it's in the box.

Enough of this now, this fine Sunday. You might think this post is off-topic (!) since so few people do their own darkroom work now, and even fewer don't already have their own schtuff. But while it might not be of practical value, it's fun, for me anyway, even if in a nostalgic sort of way.

Mike

"Sunday Support Group" is an eclectic series of discursive digressions on topics random and sundry, offered in the hope they might help various subsets of our readership in their work and their ambitions, or that they might contribute to our mental, spiritual, psychic or physical contentment. It appears, as the title suggests, on Sundays.

Original contents copyright 2019 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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Patrick Medd: "Eccentric as it may seem I'm currently in the process of building my own darkroom. This will be the fourth time that I have had access to a darkroom but the first time that it will be a dedicated room in my house. I have more than one enlarger lying around in bits but this time I need to be able to print 4x5 and so I'm looking for an enlarger that can do that.

"Here in the UK the original manufacturers of De Vere enlargers are still active in some form (www.deveresecondhanddarkroom.com) and will supply you with a refurbished enlarger which they can still service (for the moment—I don't know how many young people starting out in life these days are thinking 'I know, I'll train to be an enlarger engineer—a job for life if ever I saw one'). So that's the route I'm heading down. Obviously it all costs money, but it's a sound investment and there's no doubt in my mind I'll always be able to get my cash back out of the project  ;-)  ."

adamct: "The interesting thing for me is that unlike others who may have wanted an enlarger in the past but don't want one now, I don't want one now, but am likely to want one in the future (when, of course, a new one in good condition will be impossible to find)! I got started in film photography, but I got in just as digital was taking off. I was a young lawyer, working long hours at a law firm. I never did my own printing—after using labs for a while, I eventually bought a film scanner and did the hybrid thing for a while. But I've always wanted to try analog printing myself, and it is exactly the kind of thing I can see myself getting into...when I retire. At that point I will have the time and space to do whatever I want. But now? Even I can't justify buying one now (and I can justify just about any foolhardy purchase related to my hobbies!). As a certain photo-blogger is prone to say: 'Oh well...'"

A certain photo blogger replies: At the various darkroom magazines I worked for, I always identified a healthy subset of the audience as what I dubbed "re-entry photographers," borrowing the term from what used to be called the women's liberation movement—a re-entry woman was a woman who re-entered the workforce after her children were grown and had left home. Re-entry photographers were just what you're talking about: people (mostly guys of course, but a significant number of women) who had maybe taken a photo course in high school or college and had always appreciated it and wanted to do more of it, but had to wait until retirement to do so. The magazines always fretted about the average age of their subscribers—it was very high, in the 50s age range—but that was because advertisers have a knee-jerk preference for younger audiences. I never worried about it because I understood that darkroom work as a home hobby was much more viable for people who had both money and time (not to mention homes!), and that meant retirees to a large extent.

It's fair to say most people didn't like darkroom work. From my own audience here, my rough estimate is that one out of ten photographers who had to do darkroom work in the past enjoyed the experience and the craft of it, and the other nine thought it was a chore and are glad not to have to do it any more. But I was one of the 10%. For people like me, it was enjoyable, relaxing, and rewarding. But we were always a minority, and now very much more so. Still, I continue to think it's a viable hobby for the few people it suits. The fact that it's difficult and involved isn't a drawback if you enjoy it and are satisfied by it; my brother facets gemstones, for heaven's sake—he taught himself to do it when he was 14—and I know a guy who makes fine knives. Neither of those things are easy or convenient, and neither are necessary in order to end up with jewelry or a knife!

Bill Bresler: "Buying a new enlarger? It's tough to give them away. Nothing sadder than the sight of a 23C with color head sitting at the curb on garbage day. The college where I taught a photo class or two for 16 years shut down their darkroom. Fifteen Beselers and a couple of 4x5 Omegas went into the dumpster."

Curtis: "Dear Mike, If I remember correctly, you first recommended the Kaiser enlarger a couple of years ago. And, you are right, it is indeed a wonderful piece of kit. I bought one earlier this year and set up a tiny darkroom in the back of my wife's studio space. It's just for fun—really, I just play around trying to channel my inner James Fee and enjoy having the chance to make art in the same space as my wife. So, thank you for these niche recommendations!"

Mike adds: Interview with the late James Fee by Dean Brierly. (Note that in the picture of James he's standing in front of a Beseler 23C as mentioned by Bill above.)

Steve: "Mike, I’ve been reading your blog for years. I loved the Leica challenge and ended up with an M3 with a 5cm Summicron Dual Range lens. My situation has changed after several years of digital and I’m ready to get back in the game. I bought the LPL enlarger. I’m looking forward to a long Wisconsin winter in the darkroom. Do you have any suggestions for a darkroom instruction book? I’m that 50 something year old guy who took a few college photography classes. Thanks for all your posts."

Mike replies: Big question! I learned from David Vestal's The Craft of Photography, and was pleased to get to know David personally in later years and to enlist him as a columnist for Photo Techniques magazine. The standard (and simplest) instruction book back in the day was Henry Horenstein's Black and White Photography: A Basic Manual (third edition); Henry was at Harvard back then and is now at RISD (pronounced "RIZZ-dee," the Rhode Island School of Design). A personal favorite was Jack Coote's book for Ilford, Ilford Monochrome Darkroom Practice: A Manual of Black & White Processing & Printing (third edition). I used Ilford's fixing technique (and Ilford papers) and found Jack's discussions of variable-contrast paper and practices helpful. There are books that take you much deeper into the arcana, but save those for later. Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter There.

By the way, you didn't ask, but I'd recommend starting out with Ilford RC papers. They're very good, they have excellent permanence, and they're much easier to use than fiber base papers that you have to run a washing routine on and that really need to be flattened in an expensive drymount press after drying. After washing you can immerse RC prints briefly in a bath of distilled water and a few drops of Edwal LFN (four ounces will last you till about 2050) and hang them from their corners with wooden clothespins to dry. I'd also recommend liquid film and paper developers...saves you the chore having to mix powdered chemicals. Aside from that, the best advice with B&W film is something John Szarkowski himself once said in my hearing: "expose enough and don't develop too much."

Sunday Support Group: Enjoy the Music

Rogers LS3/5a speakers. They're 305mm (12 inches) high.

Bear. [sic—his handle includes the period] wrote: "I have a friend who is a professional (certified, etc. etc.) food taster and critic. He has amazing palate sensitivity and gives consistently correct answers on all sorts of tasting subjects in double-blind conditions from tasting the same wines vs. different wines served at different temperatures to identifying different flour brands in otherwise identical cakes. Even more amazing to me is his palette memory. Not only can he give the correct result double-blind, he can repeatedly identify the same tastes many weeks and months later solely from his memory of prior tastings.

"After I watched him demonstrate under test conditions and offered congratulations, I said something like, 'Wow! I wish I had your palette—it must be wonderful to have that level of discernment and recollection.' His answer: 'Yes, it is wonderful. I can identify and remember all the wonderful taste differences in fabulous foods. But it's also a curse. I identify and remember all the crappy tastes too—I don't get to pick and choose—and there are many, many more of those.' I'm pretty sure there are people out there to whom the Leica look or CaNiOlyJi look, or whatever, is bleedingly obvious, and, given a decent frame or print, can tell you with which lens or at what f-stop it was taken and so forth."

'Mongst audiophiliacs this is known as having "golden ears." I'll give you an example: I was getting a nice audition from the owner of a prestigious high-end audio salon in Chicago once. We were alone in an audition room and he had just hooked up some new speakers for us to listen to. "Nice," I said, "but you've got them out of phase." He checked, and insisted they weren't—he had connected them properly. We listened some more. "Still out of phase," I said. Something wrong somewhere. Seeking to please (or maybe just to appease), he began checking methodically through the whole chain—and, to his surprise, discovered the mis-wiring at the preamp. Mumbling an apology and promising to pillory the underling responsible, he asked, "how did you hear that?"

But the problem is worse than that, like Bear's friend said: how can I not hear it?

Because, seriously, I want to not hear it.

I can hear standing waves, too. Took me an afternoon to figure out what that was, but now that I know how to recognize them, if they're there, I'm going to hear them and it's going to bug me.

Sigh.

It also bugs me that audioskeptics love to bring up "blind listening tests" as if that proves that "golden ears" audiophile are full of it. Wrong, wrong, and wrong. The skeptics get the time-frame all wrong. They want to play a snippet of music with one piece of equipment and the same tiny snippet with another piece and challenge the audiophile to immediately identify which is which. When he or she can't, what that proves is that even golden-ears listeners can't parse differences from thirty-second or three-minute samples—not that they can't parse the differences. It takes maybe three days of listening with many different pieces of music to get a proper handle on what a component is doing. Set up "blind listening tests" with three-day sampling periods, and I have no doubt that seasoned audiophiles could pass blind tests consistently. Ask any of Stereophile's or The Absolute Sound's reviewing staff whether they agree with me here. I'll bet they will.

I've experienced this many times—great enthusiasm for the lifelike richness of a new component at first, followed by the gradual denouement of figuring out just what it's doing and how it's doing it a few days or a week later. Repeat the process a few times with different associated equipment, and I have a handle on how the thing sounds. Drop it into an unfamiliar system in an unfamiliar room and of course I'm not going to be able to identify which amp or preamp or whatever is in the chain, and I'm certainly not going to be able to do it quickly. That doesn't mean I don't know how a particular piece of equipment sounds.

It's been the same way with lenses for me over the years. I was at a point once when I could identify certain lens designs from the properties of their bokeh. Crazy. Field curvature was the worst—once I learned how to see it, I couldn't unsee it. Think you can't see the difference between a coated and uncoated lens even when there's no flare in the picture? I could, if I knew the film. The specifics of a lens doing its thing unmask themselves pretty quickly for me—or did at one point. I've been trying hard to reform, by not paying too much attention to it.

Bear. continues: "But really, who wants to be able to see things that well? If a lens produces images that you—i.e. the photographer—either intended to make or are so close that you either can't tell the difference or don't care, or even if you just enjoy using the darned thing (in my case, a tiny 40mm Voigtländer stuck on the front of a Nikon D3), isn't that enough?"

Exactly. That's my ideal. The more relaxed I can be about my "golden eyes" syndrome affliction, the better I like it. My late friend Dick Schaus, who owned Audio International in Georgetown D.C. and imported many different brands of British hi-fi into the USA at one point, including Spendor and Musical Fidelity, had been all the way to the deep end of extreme audio. But near the end of his life he simplified to a little class-A integrated amp and some small Rogers LS3/5a two-way speakers and just enjoyed the music.

That's the ticket.

Mike
(Thanks to Bear.)

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

Please help support The Online Photographer through Patreon

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
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James: "I trained baristas some time in the past, and one day we had a guest roaster bring some coffees. We set up a blind triangulation tasting where each set of three had one different coffee in it, and the baristas had to pick which one was different.

"I did the tasting blind too. Since most of the coffees were different origins, it wasn't that hard. I got them right. Then as a bonus, I said what I thought the country of origin each coffee was. I was pretty sure I was right, which I was.

"There are levels of refinement up from that. The Specialty Coffee Association of America does a certification called Q-grader, where you only get certified if you can distinguish between different lots of coffee on the same farm."

Robert Harshman: "Ah yes, the special senses beyond normal range that probably most of us have in some area or areas. Mine is sensitivity to light. I first became aware of it when I took a astronomy class in college. One of the lessons was a trip out of town to a very dark area to view the night sky. One of the questions asked to all was to gauge the relative value of brightness of various stars. My professor was completely shocked as I got within .1 on the scale of all stars. It was clear he had never had a student do that before. I guess that's one reason why I became a photographer."

Andrew Molitor: "Perceptual testing is heinously fraught. One might, for example, formulate the notion that lens X has superior microcontrast to lens Y. One might, in fact, be able to identify this improved microcontrast in suitably blinded tests. However it might well prove in further, more careful testing, that you are not in fact seeing any effect reasonably described as 'microcontrast,' you are in fact identifying the lens by some other, unrelated, quirk. And here is the habanero: you then perceive improved microcontrast. You really do. Despite the fact (perhaps) that there is literally no measurable effect present that in any meaningful way could be called microcontrast. Both hearing and seeing are the result of massive amounts of post-processing by our brains, massaging the output of astonishingly poor physical apparatuses. The result is as much a hallucination as anything else, differing only from a true hallucination in that, where it can be spot checked against reality, it matches more often than not."

Peggy C.: "I call them super powers. I too have one. I spent 25 years as a professional pet groomer. Early on I found that I could not only feel a mat or snarl in a pet's coat while brushing, but I could hear it! I also could hear it from across the room when anyone else was brushing. In all those years I never found another groomer that could hear it. As I learned my trade I began teaching new want-to-be groomers. In all that time I was unable to teach that skill. It's a skill I still enjoy even now in my retirement. When I groom friends and family's pets. I teach them how to brush their pets between grooming sessions. Still haven't found anyone that can hear the snarls and mats."

Timothy Auger: "A spot of tinnitus, as well as normal age-related loss of hearing at very high frequencies, will save you a great deal of money when it comes to audio equipment. One of the benefits is that you focus on the music. Eyesight slightly compromised years ago by a detached retina imperfectly re-located paradoxically makes it easier to distinguish between an interesting photo and a boring photo at an exhibition. I don’t recommend any of these afflictions, but they do force you to concentrate on content, rather than technical details of presentation."

David Elesh: "I make no claim to have golden ears. My audio point of reference is simply how closely the gear gets me to what I have experienced live in decades of listening to music in concert halls with excellent acoustics. For about 30 years, the speakers that, for me, came closest in my home and with my associated equipment were Quad 63's (my musical tastes do not require deep bass). Friends who heard this setup often asked for advice in purchasing equipment, but few were willing to pay the costs I paid. In the 1980s I often recommended the Rogers LS3/5a as a deeply musical speaker. Almost all who bought them were delighted with their sound and have never seen a need to replace them. It was and is a marvelous design."

I Just Sent...

...Today's "Sunday Support Group" post to the Patreon subscribers by group email (I'd been meaning to experiment with that functionality), to thank everyone for putting me over the initial goal of 750 supporters. As I explained, I only picked the 750 number in the first place because I thought it was out of reach. How nice that it wasn't.

Ironically, the newest supporters, the very ones who put the number over the top, might not have gotten the message. (You'll have to tell me—I'm not absolutely sure who did and didn't get the group email). In the Patreon system I think I'm only allowed to message people I have "financial relationships" with—that is, who have actually sent money. Don't blame me, I don't make the rules! So new signer-uppers who haven't yet made their first payment might have gotten left out. Not your fault.

So, to them—you, if you're one of them—a big thanks, the same thanks I sent to everyone else just now. You're very kind.

Warm thanks too to those existing subscribers who increased the amount of their existing contributions! And don't think I've forgotten about you, Eric P. Still mulling that over.

And wow, I should email my supporters more often—the messages I'm getting back are so warm and generous and friendly it's making me verklempt. Thanks, truly.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

Please help support The Online Photographer through Patreon

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Kjell: "I just got the message through Patreon telling me how you just now reached your goal of 750 patrons. I myself have made a small donation of $3 each month for a while now. I think it is about half of what your content is worth, but being cheap, I always love it when I get a discount. I would highly encourage everyone to donate a small sum. Think of it this way. If don't, you're kind of stealing it, but if you donate $1 a month you get a huge discount on the best photo content on the web. Also keep in mind that this blog is the only photo-related site on the Internet that never, ever writes anything about pool (or other related sports). And that is really worth something."

Mike replies: Yes, you're absolutely right, and people really need to keep the value of that in mind. For example, I never post anything like this amazing break by Jeffrey DeLuna of the Philippines at the 2019 WPA Players Championships in Las Vegas. Because, duh, it has nothing to do with photography. Most people will probably never see a break like that because I don't link to it, but that's...wait for it...the breaks.  :-)

Kjell replies: "I'm so glad I never had to see, or even know anything about that break. I can only imagine it would have blown my socks off, and I really enjoy wearing socks in the winter."

Keith replies to Kjell: "Not to nitpick, but I would like to point out that there are actually two photo-related sites that routinely write about pool. You might check out Kirk Tuck's blog, where he frequently posts...oh wait, that's a different kind of pool."

Sunday Support Group: New Lens, New Eye

"Sight is the soul's perfect delight."

—A medieval Pope, although I can't find the citation

Well last week was weird—it was like TOP in slow motion. Wednesday's post took till Friday to complete, and then it took another day to get the comments done. Pace that old joke about baseball*, I crammed into four days the work I usually complete in one. Still, it was pleasant. I love books. I was all set to begin a career in rare books when I was diverted into photography, a course change which turned out to be permanent.

Fear fear itself
Time now to say a few words about being a big baby.

I'm a big baby when it comes to strangers carving, grinding, cutting and piercing bits and parts of me. I've had a bonafide phobia about dental work for years; knowing the phobia is irrational should, but doesn't, make it easier to deal with.

But everything else pales before the terror I felt contemplating an eye operation. The idea of someone attacking my eye with blades, needles and lasers undid me. I couldn't face it. I put off the operation approximately two years longer than I probably should have.

The operation I had was a DMEK, a partial cornea replacement, and I got a new lens for cataracts at the same time. The cornea replacement was a transplant, a part of another human's body; the new lens is an implant, manmade. Big thanks are due here to Jim Schley, my "friend of long duration" (we were best buds in second grade) who came here to help my with my recovery.

If you take only one message from this post, let it be this: If you ever need similar surgery, don't fear it. It's certainly easy to fear it, and completely understandable if you ask me. But it's just not bad at all, turns out. You have no nerves in your eye, so you don't feel much pain. You feel some pressure and see bright lights and odd distortions, but at worst it rises to the level of mid-level discomfort, with nothing that can be described as pain; most dental work is worse, frankly, because there's always the possibility of a zinger or zap of pain with a tooth. Like any operation it's tough on your body (operations are roughly similar to being wounded in battle when it comes to recovery, at similar levels of corporeal insult). But at this point I actually have a rather hard time recreating my prior fears in my memory. I know I was fearful but I no longer know why. I no longer feel it. Sometime in the next few years I'll have to have the other eye done. And I shall not fear.

Better and worse
In fact, I'm looking forward to that! Having the other eye done, I mean. My new/right eye has been healing fine; my only treatment now is Prednisolone eyedrops three times a day to prevent rejection. It can continue to heal for up to a year, so it hasn't stabilized yet. At my next appointment I'll get another interim prescription for glasses. I already had one interim prescription made into glasses corrected for 18 inches, for working on the computer. When I get the newer prescription I'll replace those.

 In the month after the operation I felt dependent on my driving glasses, which mainly improved my "old" left eye, being not corrected for the "new" right eye; but gradually, as I got better and better, the penalty of being deprived of my new/right eye was no longer offset by the improvement the glasses made to my old/left eye, so I found myself no longer putting on my glasses when I drove. And sure enough, according to the ophfthalphlaphmologist (that word that cannot be spelled**), my eyesight is now adequate for me to legally drive without eyeglasses in the State of New York.

The new/right eye is certainly a huge improvement already. My old right eye wasn't useless, but, if it was all I had, I would not have been able to either read or drive. It was like looking through a strong soft-focus filter, and it flared badly. Looking at a person's head across a restaurant table with a window in behind them, the flare was such that I only saw a silhouette and could see nothing of their expression. My old/left eye was my "good" eye. Now, my new/right eye is better than my left.

My sight in my new eye is still far from perfect, and it still fluctuates. However, a very interesting thing has happened. The sight in my new/right eye is much more contrasty and has much better color purity and saturation, but not particularly good resolution, especially up close. The sight in my old/left eye has much better resolution, but lower contrast and an overall yellowish or tan cast caused by the aging of my natural lens and a slight degree of veiling or softness. When I look at the world with both eyes, however, my brain has learned to combine the best information from each eye, so I see things with the contrast and color purity of the new/right eye and the resolution of the old/left eye. It's quite amazing actually. I'm really impressed with the degree to which we see with our brains. The analogy to what smartphone manufacturers are doing with the data from minuscule sensors in software to mimic larger-sensor cameras isn't far off. (Humans anthropomorphize technology.)

Purer, stronger, whiter
Best of all? The world is amazing and enjoyable to look at again. Repeatedly, I'm struck by the beauty of the what I see through my new eye, especially in vivid, clear air with strong sun. Colors are purer, stronger, more saturated; whites are white; and the contrast is similar to that of a mint Commercial Ektar (a lens type that was optimized for contrast at some expense in resolution, following empirical tests conducted by Kenneth Mees and Loyd [sic] Jones at Kodak). There are times when the effect is just beautiful, almost mind-blowing. To say I really appreciate it is an understatement. 

All in all...the current state of eye care is one of the great things about being alive at the present moment of history. My grandmother, who became all but blind at the end of her life, was afflicted, at each stage of her decline, about ten years too early for the cures that would have helped her remain sighted.

Thanks are due to my surgeon, Holly B. Hindman M.D., M.P.H. and her team at the Eye Center in Canandaigua. This has been a great experience. (And, I must confess, a big load off my mind.) I can't wait to have the other eye done. Even if the new/right eye never improves to the level of resolution of the left, it's possible the future new left eye will "turn out" even better than the right.

As it is, I'm still getting better, but, even now, I'm fine. I see well. And, as you can surely appreciate, that's a big, big blessing.

Mike

*A baseball game is fifteen minutes of action crammed into three hours.

**Ophthalmologist. I have to look that dang word up every time, and I'm an excellent speller.

Original contents copyright 2019 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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Sunday Support Group: Older You, Younger You

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["Sunday Support Group" is about personal projects, mine or yours, photography-related or otherwise. It appears, at the risk of being obvious, on Sundays. —Ed.]

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Looking for a little help here. Doing a little research for the book.

There are a hundred ways to succeed at photography and a thousand ways to enjoy it. Assuming you've been along for the ride for a while, what would you say are the things about the pursuit that have been the most rewarding for you?

It can be anything, not just the obvious things. For example, my current top three are:

• Discovering the work of other photographers through books and museum and gallery shows
• "Obsessing" over lenses
• Mastering traditional darkroom craftsmanship

Ask me next week; they might change.

But anyway those are just my own "fer instances."

What are the things you've most enjoyed about your pursuit of photography and wish you'd done more of, and what are the things you wish you hadn't wasted your time on? For example, I actually wish I hadn't spent so much time and energy obsessing over lenses, even though I enjoyed it. If you could speak now to your younger self, what would you emphasize? What would you caution yourself against?

Mike

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[Ed. Note: Unusually, I will not be posting Featured Comments to this post, to avoid even the suggestion that certain enjoyments and regrets are more important than others. It's your photography—you own it, and you can do anything you please with it so long as you're not hurting yourself or others, and that's okay by me. Please see the Comments Section to hear what readers have to say.]

Sunday Support Group: Make It a Game (OT)

["Sunday Support Group" is hopefully meant to provide support and inspiration for peoples' personal projects, photography-related or otherwise. It appears, at the risk of being obvious, on Sundays. —Ed.]

-

Humans love games. Toyota used this when it devised its suite of dashboard monitors for its Prius line—Prius owners use the feedback to optimize their mileage in a game they've dubbed "hypermiling."

Lately I've been using a similar strategy with eating: make a game of it.

Backtracking a bit—my eye operation in June derailed my diet. I survived my confinement by eating quick meals of peanut butter sandwiches, which got me back into sugar and bread again, and I have addiction issues with sugar and bread. From there, my healthy eating broke down.

But as I mentioned recently, in my life I've quit cigarettes (1985, age 28) and I've quit alcohol (1990, age 33), and I know how to deal with addictions: you keep struggling until you get it. The struggle with addiction seems endless when you're in the middle of it, but in fact it's not endless—or doesn't have to be—eventually, if you keep trying, try different things, and are willing to go to any lengths to change, you can change. You get it. The new habits "stick." The struggle recedes into history. The trick is to keep trying until you succeed*.

Playing games with the brain
Diet isn't just about food ideology—it's also a lot about behaviorism. The best three beginner's starting points for overhauling disastrously bad eating, for instance, are all behavior related:

1. Don't eat between meals
2. Don't drink calories
3. Stop eating two hours before bedtime

So anyway, my latest trick with myself is also behavior related—I've made a game of my goals. I printed up a sheet with my daily goals on it and then at the end of every day I just tick off the ones I achieve. The total is ten, so I can easily count up my score on a ten scale.

The top third of my daily score sheet

Now, obviously, your sheet would have your goals on it, and would look a lot different from mine. I drink two mugs of tea in the morning, have a main meal in the afternoon built around rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes / yams or whole-wheat pasta and one or two vegetables (I eat as much as I want), and then have a dinner of bean, chickpea, split pea, or lentil soups (I eat as much as I want of that, too). The rest of the things are specific to my own bad habits and the details of my own particular daily life. For instance, there's free popcorn at the Moose Lodge where I play pool, and that's a failure point**. I want to try to limit myself to one serving. (I failed yesterday, but I beat my friend 8–6, so you lose some, you win some.) You'll notice that on my sheet I get two checkmarks if I avoid sugar for the day, that being my major weakness—if you have no "sweet tooth," sugar might not even be on your own list at all. "Didn't eat out" is because I'm making much less money now and sort of in a battle to try to make it to Social Security, so I've been trying to comprehensively reduce my expenses, and eating out is a bigger expense than most people think. Not to mention that there are restaurants that have not a single healthy meal on their entire menus. The last one, "soup made," is just because I need to keep up with the chore of making my homemade soups for the evenings—when I don't have any on hand, I have nothing convenient to eat in the evenings, and for me that's a big failure point.

Make your starting point an automatic success
Speaking of behaviorism, the first check on my list is a free point—I love my tea and never miss it. It's a "list trick" I learned long ago. Let's say you're making out a list of things to do the next day. Well, what you do is begin the list with three things you've already done! That way you wake up in the morning and you can tick off three items right away. It makes you feel like you're already on the right track, and makes it easier to dive into the rest of the list. Try it; it might sound dumb, but it works.

Everything for the week fits on one page. I eat three salads a week and three berry smoothies a week, and I allow myself one serving of meat a week, mainly so I can either partake when meat is on offer at friends' houses or have an occasional meal of sushi.

That's it. Just wanted to share this trick in case you might like to try it with your own goals. Make a game of it! It's surprising that it works, but it appears to be how we're wired.

Sugar is hiding everywhere
Oh, and by the way—you might wonder how peanut butter sandwiches got me back into sugar. Well, the peanut butter I was using has three grams of sugar per two-tablespoon serving (amusingly, the label says "3g sugars including 3g added sugars"), and the bread I bought has six grams of sugar per slice, of which five grams are added sugar. So each peanut butter sandwich I fixed myself during my recovery contained 15 grams of sugar—that's three and a half teaspoons of sugar per sandwich!

There's added sugar in everything these days, including our vegetables, which are being hybridized to be sweeter. I bought a package of celery the other day and look what it says on the bag:

And that "occasional sushi meal" I mentioned? I can't give myself the two points for "no sugar" on days I eat sushi. Sushi rice (and "sushi" is the rice, not the fish) is made with vinegar...and sugar. You have to be careful with this stuff—it's a minefield out there.

Now I gotta go walk. It's not that it's good for me and I need the exercise, it's just that I need the point.

Mike

*This is not advice that I'm a big fan of when it's generalized—I take a dim view of those mindless "persistence" exhortations that are perennially so popular. There are many things you shouldn't persist at—most notably those things at which you consistently fail, or for which you obviously have no aptitude. But addiction recovery is one area where persistence really is the right idea.

**Popcorn is only healthy if it's not cooked in oil and is unsalted. Otherwise it's pretty fattening.

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Lior: "Here's the merciless version. (SMBC is very funny and very, very intelligent.)"

John Daw: "Hey Mike, Prius owners did not coin the term Hypermiling. It came from a guy name Wayne Gerdes. He was getting upwards of 60 MPG with his stock Honda Accord by driving a certain way to maximize mileage. He dubbed it hypermiling. You can use this strategy with any vehicle. Hope all is well."

David M: "I suggest you also keep a second sheet of paper (or an app) that tracks each day you 'succeed.' The pressure to have a successful day goes up substantially when you've done it, say, 11 straight days. I use a Apple (Watch) app called 'Streaks' to keep track of whether I have done my daily push ups. I'm currently on my longest streak of 294 straight days!"

Sunday Support Group: You Don't Lose Until You Stop Trying (OT)

Well, Summer's over. Boo-hoo. Maybe just boo.

It's been a beautiful Summer, but difficult. I haven't been doing a very good job with my various resolutions lately, and it's getting me down. That's awkward to admit, but I need to be honest. I haven't touched my book project since my operation, and I stopped being strict about my WFPB aspirations after the last post I wrote on the subject. It's depressing.

Sunday Support Group: The Meatitarian Diet (OT)

People need to eat plants (hear me out. I'm going somewhere with this). We were evolved to eat plants. Our teeth and intestines are formed so we can eat plants. Our nearest animal relatives eat almost nothing but plants. Our bodies function best on plants. Study after study after study closely correlates the health of populations to the percentages of plant food in their diets. All manner of medical outcomes—from the incidence of diabetes, to the health of our veins and arteries, to sleep, to headaches, to joint aches, to longevity—all improve when we eat plants. Plants contain hundreds and hundreds of chemicals that are important or critical to health beyond youth (they're important when we're young too, but, when we're young, the vitality of youth itself often "masks" the health risks and dangers of dietary foolishness). The scientific evidence is growing fast that cancer cells pop up in your body all the time, and that phytochemicals give it the vital ammunition it needs to crush them. If you aren't eating mostly plants, you are not as healthy as you could be. Most humans can survive and thrive indefinitely ingesting nothing but plants and water—a statement that can be made for no other category of food or "foodlike substance."

But it turns out that on a diet adequate in essential plant foods, you can also eat...well, meat.

Make no mistake, meat is poor food. It has low nutritional value. It is high in fat of the worst kind. Of the dietary essential in shortest supply in the appropriately abbreviated SAD—the standard American diet—namely, fiber—meat has none. (Fiber comes from plants.) People like meat because it's savory and it's got all that fat and, as recently as the post-war era, it was still a high-status food enjoyed frequently only by the well-off, and that status lingers in the culture. But it's not healthy. About the only things meat supplies that are good for you are things that the animal itself got from plants and concentrated in its own tissues—such as protein, a nutrient Americans already get way too much of to the detriment of our liver and kidney health. (One cup of broccoli has only 31 calories but 2.6 grams of protein; spinach contains every essential amino acid; etc. You cannot eat a sensible variety of plants and not get enough protein. You'll just get more, faster, from a steak.)

Pam Popper's latest book

But here's the thing. If you are eating a wide range of plants and vegetables and starches and are getting all of the phytonutrients your body needs, a few servings of meat a week won't kill you. Dr. Pam Popper (she is a Ph.D., not an M.D.) is the founder and President of Wellness Forum Health, "a company that offers educational programs to both consumers and providers that facilitate informed medical decision-making, diet and lifestyle intervention, and improved long-term health outcomes." Dr. Popper, who happens to eat no meat herself, defines "a few servings" as up to four ounces of high-quality, organic, non-processed (i.e., not bologna or sausage or Slim Jims!) meat up to three times a week. People who eat meat in low doses like that, as a group, have about the same health outcomes as vegans and people who eat WFPB (whole-food plant-based) diets.

...Which is a notion that is not very popular among vegans and people who eat WFPB diets.

That's rather an understatement, actually. The idea offends many of them. Well, "horrifies" is a word that also works, shall we just admit. Partly that's because "the V-words," vegetarian and vegan, often define not just a diet but an ethical stance toward animals and/or an environmental position...the production of meat, collectively speaking, being among our poor planet's worst environmental nightmares. There is certainly strong merit in those ideas. Partly, also, it might be because people love being true believer types. Most people who believe in plant diets don't see any sense or sanity in not going cold turkey, excuse the term.

In truth, though, the least worst thing about low-dose meat as part of a plant-based diet is merely that it displaces better foods. That is, the more prime rib you eat, the less spinach you'll have room for. The more pork tenderloin you pig out on, the more likely you are to skip seconds of green beans. The more shrimps you scarf down, the more blackberries you'll be deprived of forever.

But it won't hurt you.

Food by itself is not ideology. If you eat for health rather than ethics or ecology, then you can have good-quality meat in sensible amounts now and then if you enjoy it. It's not ideal food, no, and you could do better for your health just upping your portion of watermelon or watercress or yellow split pea soup. But you'll be fine. Your militant vegetarian friends won't like this at all ("never eat anything with a face!"), but, as long as you get all your plants down, you can be a low-dose meatitarian if you want to, and, at the statistical level at least, your health outcomes will still remain as good as theirs.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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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John Krumm: "Been doing full vegan Greger ( more or less) for a couple months now. Greger takes pains to emphasize that he’s not really advocating veganism, but of course if you make it through the daily dozen you likely won’t have room for much meat. Sometimes in a world where meat and other bad options surround you almost everywhere, it’s easier stick to full vegan rather than always 'moderating' something I’d like to stuff myself with. Same with cheese especially, my true weakness."

Mike replies: Cheese is the #1 unhealthy food. And it's mildly addictive. Check out Neal Barnard's The Cheese Trap. Or watch How to Magnetize a Baby.  :-)

Jim Pilcher: "Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! This may be the most sensible post you've made in eons, or at least this week. I'm a 95% vegan by choice since 2012 (no agenda other than health) who enjoys a bit of king salmon once or twice a week. I feel great, much better than when I ate a lot of meats. I don't begrudge others having their meat; I just don't do it any longer. Thank you again, Mike. I did not expect such a sane dietary post mixed in among the gear, billiards, photographic philosophies and sensibilities, and print talk."

Sunday Support Group: The Class of '69

If you're a regular reader who happens to pay attention to the comment bylines, you probably know the name Dave Levingston. Dave is a retired photojournalist who lives in Springfield, Ohio. He took the last photograph in this post.

Dave and some members of his family visited last Friday, just in time for an epic rain squall that flattened the area and cut power to hundreds. ("Hundreds" meaning "lots"—we're the third least-populous county in New York State. There are hardly any people here.) He showed me several boxes of his work.

My favorite was a group of "environmental portraits" (portraits of people showing their surroundings). He was attending his 50th high school reunion and started making pictures of his classmates. Then he got a good idea, and decided to try to get as many of them as he could, and at that point he titled the project "The Class of '69." Then he got a really good idea, and thought, hey, why limit this to our class?

Since then, he's been finding people who graduated in 1969 wherever he goes.

Isn't that a great idea? It's a very specific project, yet the potential subject matter is functionally limitless. It's a great entrée by which to make contact with people, even strangers, and oh by the way, make photographs of them. It's comprehensible to everyone instantly and most everyone would be happy to participate (you can tell this because all most all of the people in his portraits look genuinely happy and good-natured) and it's a great way to make new friends.

Perfect. I thought it was a little bit of genius.

Great ideas are actually tough to come up with. They have to be flexible but specific, easy for people to grasp but a rich vein to mine, varied enough to keep everyone (subjects, photographer, viewers) interested....and having that entrée never hurts.

The portraits, by the way, were very nicely printed, I'm going to guess about 9x13" maybe? He did the conversions in DxO and took the pictures with a Micro 4/3 camera. I thought they looked like small enlargements from about a 645 film camera.

The beardy guy in the example portrait above is, as you have probably guessed by now, one Dave Levingston of Springfield, Ohio. Self-portrait using the camera's timer. Class of '69, of course.

Mike
(Thanks to Dave)

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post said Dave was from Canton, Ohio, but that was merely his destination when he passed through here. He lives in Springfield, Ohio. Sorry for the error.

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William Schneider: "Being from the class of '68, I felt a strange tinge of disappointment that I did not qualify. Upon reflection why, I realized that exclusive projects like this have something working for them. Leveraging human nature, they motivate people to become willing subjects. Clever!"

Gary: "I will be attending my 1969 high school reunion in San Diego in September. It was a momentous year: Moonwalk, Woodstock, and great music. The previous year was momentous also, but tragic. Please provide a link to Dave Levingston's project!"

Dave Levingston adds: I can't thank you enough for your very kind words about my Class of '69 project. I really appreciate it. I've been posting this project on Facebook. If anyone would like to see all the photos they can look at them there. But please remember that Facebook does awful things to photos when they are uploaded to their site. The prints I showed Mike were 8.5x11 work prints. I hope to find a venue to do a little show with some of these before this 50th anniversary year is out. I will likely print them to around 11x14 for framing and display.

For those who care about technical stuff, I'm shooting with a pair of Panasonic GX8s and using a 12–60mm Panasonic lens, mostly around 12mm, for these portraits. I use DxO Photo Lab 2 for RAW conversions and black-and-white conversions. I use ACDSee Photo Studio 2 for most other editing tasks. The prints were made with an Epson 4900 on Epson Ultra Premium Luster paper.

And, if anyone reading this graduated from high school in 1969 and would like to be a part of this project, please get in touch.

Martin D: "Class of '69 is a brilliant project idea. It is simple and effective and amenable to all sorts of artistic variations. And as you rightly say, with such simple ideas it is always easy to see their value once you have them put before you, but coming up with them in the first place is where most of us struggle. I will not copy this idea directly, as such transfers never work, but your friendly visitor Dave Levingston has encouraged me to go back to the little black book in which I take notes for potential photo projects...and then to actually pick one and get it started! Really good photograph by Dave in your 2013 competition by the way, of the turkey farmer. I remember being impressed by it at the time, and now there is additional context."

Mike Potter: "That is a wonderful self-portrait. I like it, a lot."

Sunday Support Group: Two Radical Obesity Interventions (OT)

"Change of mind is not inconsistency."

—Cicero

If you see an obviously obese person walking down the sidewalk clutching a jumbo container of soda, you are almost certainly looking at a food addict. It's possible to get addicted to food, especially sugar. The helpless person you're seeing can't even venture out and be ambulatory for a little while without infusions of sugar-water at the ready.

It's not entirely her fault. An industry with formidable resources has entrapped her. As with the tobacco, alcohol, and now (in some states) the marijuana cartels, 80% of their profit comes from 20% of their customers. They're highly motivated to get you hooked.

I seldom drink soda, and never have it in the house, but I'm a food addict myself...

Sunday Support Group: Strange As Fiction

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An Echo

I never thought I'd be in the demographic for one of these. (Once you get older you start ignoring most trends and fashions, because time has taught you how fleeting and without body and substance most of them are.) But I've ordered an Amazon Echo.

The Echo is the device, the hardware; Alexa is the synthetic humanoid that* listens for your instructions and responds orally. By the way, Echo was originally a mountain nymph in ancient Greek mythology who pines so badly for Narcissus that she withers away until nothing is left of her but her voice.

Really, what could be more perfect during my recovery than, um, a devoted mountain nymph? Hopefully I'll get it set up successfully so that it works entirely by voice command, so I can tell it to start and stop reading audiobooks. Not only that, but I don't even have to buy books—it turns out I joined Audible years ago (I think because my son was an affiliate for a while) and bought a dozen titles that I never listened to. They're still waiting. I'm good.

Mayil in the clutch
When the Harry Potter books came out 22 years ago, I (along with approximately one zillion other people) got the bright idea of writing a series of fantasy/sci-fi adventure books for young adults. I plotted a quadrilogy, four books, and outlined two of them. My stories followed a protagonist named Mayil Daka, who lives c. 2280 in an era that followed 80 years of disasters called The Contractions. During the Contractions, world population had plunged to a mere 20 million souls. Survivors had resumed living and behaving in tribal fashion, retreating into small fortified compounds called "enclaves." As world government began to get reorganized, resourceful individuals, called "travelers," were enlisted to locate and approach these armed and isolated settlements to inform them of the re-establishment of civilization and to try to reassure their leaders that it was safe to venture out and reconnect with the broader society. It was dangerous work, requiring bravery, social skill, and good judgement, and the travelers often became heroes to subsequent generations, as well as founders of larger civilized areas, which are also formally called Enclaves. Mayil (pronounced "mile"), lives in the Praetorian Enclave, formerly part of South Africa.

When the story commences, world population is rumored to be approaching 100 million, and renewed fears of overpopulation are reaching almost hysterical levels among the superstitious; terror of the memory of the Contractions is so strong that parents are allowed to exempt their children from studying it in school. World government, based in the Australs (Australia/New Zealand/New Guinea), has an urgent need to carry out an accurate world census. There is only one octant of the globe that is not served by surviving satellites and is hence "dark"—out of contact with the rest of the world. It's a region that was riven by sectarian violence, dark cults, and strange superstitions in the run-up to the Contractions, and it is known as the lands of the Northams—the former North America. Little is known about conditions there.

World government is mounting a small and most likely doomed expedition to the lands of the Northams to see if a government exists there, and, if it does, whether it has census data that can be added to the projections for the remainder of the planet. The expedition will travel by sailboat across the inhospitably hot equatorial region. Mayil, who is the only great-grandson of the great Traveler Emil Ali Daka, the most legendary of the nine founders of the Praetorian Enclave, has been chosen for the honor of being ceremonially asked to participate in the expedition. At age 14, he is not required or expected to accept; it's merely an honor to be asked, a symbolic gesture intended as a compliment to the people of the distant Praetorian Enclave.

He has every reason not to want to go. He has just entered "clutch," a rite of passage for teenagers wherein 12 young women and 12 young men who have been scientifically selected as genetically healthy enough to have children sort themselves into couples. Clutch is not only prestigious—not everyone is allowed to have children, because of the high incidence of birth defects—it is also very social and great fun.

But Mayil has just lost two of his closest friends. One, Davi Ald, a neighbor boy whom Mayil grew up with, had been chronically sickly and always expected to die. But the other was the apparently healthy girl to whom Mayil had been secretly betrothed since age 10, Mali Ohen, who died unexpectedly of a fast-acting cancer after learning, to her devastation, that she would not be allowed to participate in clutch. Her genetic markers for disease had been just above the cutoff.

Mali's exclusion from clutch had subtly driven a wedge between the two former childhood friends despite their better intentions, and since Mali's death Mayil has suffered from guilt as well as grief. To the great shock of his parents, when Mayil stands in the great Council Hall of the Australs to hear his invitation read aloud, he throws caution to the winds and surprises everyone present—and even himself, a little—by accepting a place in the dangerous expedition to the lands of the Northams.

And off we went. 

Hominids and humanoids
I had fun with it, anyway. The publisher of Harry Potter sent a very nice letter in response to an outline and seventy pages of manuscript: "This almost made it for us! Please keep us apprised of your other projects." Other projects? I didn't have any other projects. I was hard at work on that project. Unfortunately, my next project was to get fired from a job, which threw me into a slow-grinding crisis for several years. Writing was mostly forgotten.

So what's the point of this? I'm sure experts in speculative fiction are well aware of this problem and can limn its dimensions at length, but when the first book opens, in the first scene, Mayil is waking up in his bedroom in his parents' house on the Transvaal plain, and the first thing he does is ask for news from something I called a "conbox," which is voice-activated and can respond to him interactively. The idea seemed at least mildly futuristic to my innocent self in 1999, but my fictional "conbox" was almost identical—in function, but even in size and shape!—to an Amazon Echo. Sheesh.

So anyhow, I got myself a conbox, straight out of the former future.

Mike

*A bit o' grammar: "who" is the proper pointer-word for humans; "that" is the pointer-word for things. Common errors like "the girl that was brushing her hair" or "My friends that have a nice house" are howlers to an ear sensitive to words; should be who both times. But here I think "Alexa" is properly a that, because "she" is not human, but rather humanoid.

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Locked Out!

Dennis Ng wrote a comment in the "Oberon" post about how he is finally buying a used medium-format digital back, something he's always wanted. (And congratulations, Dennis. Hope it works out.)

Mani Sitaraman wrote under the same post that he can't afford high-end home audio speakers. [Note: this post is not about speakers. It's about grapes.] Well, who can? The first three entries under "Class A" under the "Loudspeakers" category in Stereophile's once-useful "Recommended Components" list cost $85,000 a pair, $22,000 a pair, and $40,000 a pair, and it goes on from there. But he said he hopes to find a nice pair of Spendor SP100II's in decent used condition one day, and might even be able to afford them.

Have you ever been locked out of something by rising prices? Something you really wanted that seemed again and again to remain just out of reach, like the grapes to the fox in the famous fable*?

Keep-away
Sometimes even if your situation improves, the target moves. I have a friend who used to own a house in a certain neighborhood of Denver. She sold it, and now she can't go back—property prices have risen so much that she can no longer afford to buy a house in the neighborhood she once lived in. Locked out! You know what they say: Oh well.

The same thing happened to me with cars when I was young. I started saving for a car when I was 14. At that time, Volkswagen was running an ad for what it called the cheapest car in America—a Beetle for $1,919. (That's going to make me seem very old to young people.) I had to buy a new car because my father said he would put me on his insurance policy, but only if I bought a new car. But by the time I was 16 and had nearly saved $1,919, the cheapest new car in America—I think it was a Datsun (now called Nissan, and yep, yep, sonny, I'm ancient)—was $2,800 or so. Two years later I had saved something like $2,400, and the cheapest car in America was midway through the $3,000 to $4,000 range.

And so on. I gave up, and didn't buy my first car until I was 30. Before that I took the bus a lot. There was one advantage to that at least—you could read on the bus. I carried a tiny "Oxford World Classics" volume of Walden in my pocket so I was never without it. Everyone—especially every young person, and by that I mean you 30-year-olds and 40-year-olds—should read Walden**.

Mark II = price hike
Mani reminded me of this by talking about Spendor speakers. For me it's a name that conjures magic. When I was in art school I really, really wanted a pair of Spendor SP1 speakers, and very nearly bought a pair for $850. But they were just a little out of my reach.

Damn grapes.

And just as with that first car, they remained out of reach. Now, you can buy a used pair for $1,200 or even less if you're lucky, but speaker drivers wear out—it's not the smartest move to buy 30-year-old speakers. Fortunately, and rather amazingly, a modern remake is available directly from Spendor, the original maker—the SP1/2 (Mark II, in camera-speak). As you can see from this page, the price had ratcheted up dramatically, to $2,750...in 2002. That is, still beyond my reach at that time.

They're still available, but I don't want to know how much they cost now. I already know they're beyond my reach. They've occupied the same relative position now for more than 30 years, so why would anything ever change?

Aesop's lesson
It doesn't matter anyway (see the fox and grapes fable in the footnote again!), because I don't have a place in my house to set up a traditional stereo, with the equipment on a rack in the middle and two speakers on proper stands situated at the proper place out in the room. Besides, I'm happy with my current desktop system, which sounds marvelous and which allows me to enjoy music just fine. (You can see my system in this picture). So I'm able to be grateful for that, and not have any complaints. "Unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and my attitudes."

It's just a feature of "life on life's terms," being locked out. And it'll always be something. No matter how good you have it, you can always identify, and focus on, and aspire to the next level, just out of reach. There's always a next level. All we need to do to cure the situation is change our own attitudes, that's all.

Mike

* The Fox and the Grapes

ONE hot summer’s day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which had been trained over a lofty branch. "Just the things to quench my thirst," quoth he. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning round again with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success. Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: "I am sure they are sour."

"IT IS EASY TO DESPISE WHAT YOU CANNOT GET."

—Aesop, Sixth Century B.C.
(text from the Harvard Classics via Bartleby)

**It's very much on topic for this post.

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Malcolm Myers: "There is also the inverse of this. Things that were unimaginably expensive to me as a teenager became easily affordable as: a.) I grew older and started to earn more money, and b.) things I desired new became available second-hand. I have found this to be especially true when picking up old film and digital cameras from car-boot sales, charity shops. and camera stores."

Joe: "My parents bought a Volkswagen Beetle about the same time you first started wanting one. My father noted that the car cost a dollar a pound."

Benjamin Marks: "I think, responding as a camera guy, 'Leica' comes to mind. Their 35mm cameras were 'unobtainium' for me in college in the '80s. Oh the pain!

"At some point in the mid '90s I bought my first M—a used M3 double-stroke from a camera shop in Oakland, CA, with a really nice 50mm ƒ/1.5 Summarit. I did finally buy a new M8 in the 2000s and then traded it in on a new M9 three years later. But after that, the prices jumped again, and now it's like watching the tail lights of a faster car receding into the distance. I really like the platform (go on, haters...do your worst), but I am just never shelling out $7K for a camera, period.

"Then again, when I was in my 20s, I had a list of camera 'wants' in my head. You know: a Zone IV 4x5 with a matching dual-tube cold light head enlarger, a Hasselblad 500 C/M, a Leica M6, and so on. I could buy all that and be 'done.' I think the magic number was $10,000 in 1988 dollars. Well over the years, I have owned everything on that list, and then some (or: and then, sum). But I still have a mental list, and the magic number hasn't changed much. On the other hand, I can't think of a single picture I haven't taken due to some gear-related shortcoming that existed at the moment of snapping the shutter.

"It brings to mind Spock's (That's 'Mr.' not Dr. Benjamin) quotation about wanting and having."

David Dyer-Bennet: "I've owned a Yashicamat 124G, and a Graflex Norita 6x6 SLR, and the Fujica GS-645, but I think of myself as having been 'locked out' of medium format from the mid '70s until the 2000s (when I went digital) by prices, which kept rising. What that really meant was my perception of benefit didn't ever catch up with my feeling about the price for long enough for me to act; I could have bought used medium-format gear most years in that period with money I instead used for other things. Another part of the problem was that I had 35mm ideas about the range of lenses needed to have a useful system, which ran up the price of medium format as I perceived it. And I did always know that my primary area of photography was recording and documenting things, often rapidly-changing things in dark situations, which is not what medium format is best at."

SteveW: "Buddhist Economics: Happiness = Wealth/Desires

"The greater the desires the more wealth necessary for happiness. And vice versa."

Dogman: "When I was a kid in high school in the early 1960s, I lusted for the Jaguar XK-E. Of course, to a poor country boy it was an unobtainable dream for its new price of just over $5,000.

"In 1977 I paid just over $5,000 for a new Chevrolet Nova.

"Speaking of that XK-E, just after I graduated from college I made friends with a guy who owned a body shop. Visiting him one day I noticed in the back of his shop something under a heavy, dusty tarpaulin. I asked him about it and he pulled the tarp back to show me a 1960s XK-E. According to him the car and its owner were stranded on the highway when he happened upon them. Being helpful, he offered the man a ride and they later returned to tow the Jag back to his shop. At that point the Jag's owner expressed the frustration he had endured for his entire ownership of the car due to its unreliability and frequent breakdowns. He then made a gift of the car to my friend because of his kindness. Unfortunately, my friend found there were so many things about the car that needed expensive repairs he couldn't justify ever fixing it. But it was a beautiful car and he couldn't force himself to get rid of it."

Dave Levingston: "When I was in high school in the middle of the last century I lusted after two cars, the Shelby AC Cobra (the 289, not the ridiculous 427) and the Porsche 911. Both were completely out of reach at astronomical prices around $7,500. Back when I had a portrait studio I used Mamiya C330s and lusted after a Hasselblad 500 C/M, but could never quite manage to afford one. Today I still feel that lust, and I could afford one, but have to admit to myself that I have absolutely no use for one now. A lovely camera, though, it still is."

Mike Ferron: "Locked out? Sure, on high end photographic gear. I love the good stuff but you won't find me in possession it. I shoot 6x6 with a Yashicamat instead of a Rollei. Thirty-five millimeter rangefinder? Olympus RC instead of a Leica. Digital? A secondhand Oly E-M1 with the Oly 25mm ƒ/1.8 as my premier lens. (not a bad lens at all, by the way)."

Mike replies: I wish I were as smart as you are. I'm being serious.

Moose: "Re 'I really, really wanted a pair of Spendor SP1 speakers.' Change one letter—spender speakers.  \;~)>  "

Timo: "Locked out? Sure. There's plenty of examples: e.g., Leica's M offerings, which I've not yet tried in any iteration, or maybe that photo safari to the Amazon or Patagonia or Antarctica; of course such were probably always pricey. But the 'locked out' that really stings is Apple's Aperture being discontinued. The amount of time I've spent trying to figure out how to move on (while still taking at least some of my edits with me) is probably a larger 'splurge' than any version of a (have to look up the spelling) Summilux."

Mike replies: Fortunately for me, I had already learned about Apple's nefarious and wicked habit of orphaning its software before Aperture came out, and I lashed myself to the mast to help me resist the siren song of Aperture. I never fell for it. I sympathize with you, though.

Thomas Walsh: "Like so many others, I wanted that special car or camera or stereo system. And then the concept of opportunity cost set in. Marriage and family seems to intensify opportunity cost and then one is often left rationalizing that those grapes were probably sour."

Mike replies: Below is the placemat I use where I sit and eat three times a day, day in, day out. Amazingly, I had never consciously noticed the grapes, nor the theme! Talk about blind.

I was just sitting there this morning eating my oatmeal, when I thought, whoa, those are grapes—that's Aesop's fox.

alex-virt: "This post reminded me a toast from an old Soviet movie: 'I want to buy a house but have no means. I can buy a goat but have no desire. May our desires always match our means!'"

Sunday Support Group: OC/OL/OY (and Mike's Camera Decision)

From time to time I suggest little exercises—well, okay, sometimes some big ones too—for people to consider. I love learning, and learners naturally teach.

One of those exercises was called OC/OL/OY—one camera, one lens, one year. Here's a description of it on PetaPixel*.

So...it's January...time for resolutions...which I am notoriously bad at keeping...and I'm thinking...well, that maybe I should take my own advice and do a OC/OL/OY.

I've actually done a OC/OL/OY before, several times. Mainly because there have been a number of more-than-one-year periods when I only owned one camera and one lens. In my first year in photography school I only had a Contax 139Q and a fast Zeiss 50mm lens. In Year Two I made the most momentous equipment change of my life and career and sold the 50mm and replaced it with a 35mm and an 85mm. Whew, big change. Brave new world.  :-)

I actually even did a OC/OL/OY with a zoom lens once, too...I purchased my first DSLR, used, in 2006 I think it was, and it came with the Minolta 28–75mm lens made by Tamron that's still available as a Sony lens. (Buy Tamron's own version instead, available for Nikon, Canon, Pentax and Sony DSLR mounts; it's almost half the cost.) I liked the lens so much on the "crop-sensor" camera (in FOV equivalency it was about a 42–110mm) that I never got another lens for that camera. Note that I can only recommend this lens on APS-C—I didn't care for it on FF at the short end.

Mike's camera decision
I decided to unwrap the G9. And keep it, that means. So I've got a new camera. It's not perfect for me (mainly because, ironically, it's just more camera than I need and prefer) but it does have what I need right now—fast AF and excellent IBIS. I bought David Thorpe's book. I ordered an extra battery and hunted down one of my UpStraps.

I sold two cameras and a lens and covered the cost of the G9 that way. It's expensive, but Amazon still has it at the lowest-ever price of $1,212.49. B&H is only slightly higher if, like I did, you prefer to buy from them. That's what makes it better than the Olympus E-M1 Mark II for me—it costs less. For people who are less price-sensitive the Oly might have a little edge. It has a bigger tribe of users.

So what lens would I use for a OC/OL/OY? I have four Micro 4/3 lenses...the 20mm (an old favorite, but one that triggered this little blat), the Panasonic/Leica 45mm Macro, an old Olympus 12–50mm that came with an early Micro 4/3 camera I quickly sold, and my bread-and-butter 12–35mm ƒ/2.8 II. Again, the Oly version might have a bit of an edge, but I like my Panasonic lens.

I don't really doubt that I could use just the G9 and the 12–35mm for a whole year, but...a true OC/OL/OY would mean no iPhone photographs other than just record-keeping, note-taking, and social-media-communication-type snaps for that year. And that would mean having the G9 with me much more than I keep a "good" camera with me now. Can I do that? Hmm.

Well, I probably should. I'm pretty addicted to iPhoney snappery, not always to good effect.

Mike's new camera. Uh-oh, this picture is an iPhone snap.

But hey, challenges are supposed to be challenging, right?

Unless I really commit, my OC/OL/OY won't last more than a month. And I'm not really committed yet. Just thinking about it.

But I'll keep thinking about it.

Mike

*...Which I had never seen before I Googled "OCOLOY" just now. Thanks, Michael Z. and PetaPixel!

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Franklin Berryman: "Given your photographic experience, what do you hope to achieve by such a commitment? I mean there should be a goal other than just saying you did it."

Mike replies: Excellent question. I will ponder that, but I think the goal is re-commitment, renewal, re-engagement—a restoration of your involvement; putting gear, GAS, and technical fussing on the back burner, getting out with the camera more, and concentrating on seeing. Sound about right?

Benjamin Marks: "Why not start with OC/OL/OM (one camera, one lens, one month) and see where it goes?"

Paul McEvoy: "On Instagram for musicians (I believe there are other equivalents for other arts) there is a tag #100daysofpractice (and now #1000daysofpractice). I believe the violinist Hillary Hahn started it. Basically practice your instrument every day for 100 days. Generally post a video of yourself doing such every day (the last requirement is sort of loose).

"I’m on day 312 or thereabouts. About 740 hours of practice which very well might be more practicing than I’ve ever done in my life. I’ve gone from an inconsistent 1-2 hours a few times a week to 16-20 hours weekly. It’s been mostly very enjoyable.

"For me the most important thing has been getting offline. I lock my phone in a thing called a kitchen safe for large periods of the day and don’t have other internet access at home. I have another phone I use to make calls. It’s just the damn internet that screws up my brain.

"The other thing is a large wall calendar (now datebook planner for the new year) where I marked down my practicing hour by hour. This made a huge difference in feeling like I was keeping my streak up.

"It’s been life-changing. I have come to just love practicing in a way that as a lifelong musician I never have before. Just consistently sitting with my instrument and exploring, mostly the same stuff day after day and really digging in. Also totally owning being able to record something that’s pretty awful and put it up there knowing it will be better in six months.

"Lately I’m pondering returning to photography a bit with a similar mindset although it’s hard to serve multiple masters."

Sunday Support Group: Try, Try Again

Well, I've failed my resolution. I decided early this year that I was either going to write a book in this calendar year—2018—or die trying.

And I didn't. Write a book, I mean.

But you know what? I'm not going to give up. 

I don't have any excuse for not giving up. I probably should. I'm just not going to. I like to write, and I've been practicing it all my life, and I'm passably good at it. My problem is mental organization—I'm not very organized in my thinking, not very good at following a thread over the long haul. (You might sometimes detect this even in my blog posts, if you're looking look for it.) I have trouble staying on track over tens of thousands of words. 

Human engineering
I took a three-day battery of aptitude tests way back when I was a teenager, administered by an organization that is now called the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation* (JOCRF). It was very interesting, and I learned some things of lasting value about myself.

To give you one example, I scored very high in all the musical aptitudes, but in none of them did I score as high as people who turn out to make their livings as working musicians. JOCRF told me that people who do score high enough in those aptitudes pretty much have to work in music in some way, shape or form, or they tend not to be happy; but that people like me, people with high but not-high-enough musical aptitudes, who attempt to be musicians usually fail.

I took their word for it, and determined to resist the siren song of trying to be any sort of musician. I decided instead to be a music listener—a devoted part of the audience. And that decision has stood me in very good stead over the years. I'm completely happy with that course I chose based on their advice. 

They also told me that I was particularly bad at foresight—I have no memory of how they tested for this**, but I do remember sitting across from the clinician's desk while he told me that, to me, "the past will be like a lush, intricate mountainous terrain, constantly worthy of exploration, while the future will look like a flat, featureless, uninteresting desert"—or words to that effect. Raise your hand if you've planned for your retirement...and guess who hasn't. 

Salt flats again
And guess what my attempts at book manuscripts look like to me? Lots of richness in what I've already finished, and pretty much no freaking clue as to where to go from there forward. Fascinating terrain behind me, bleak nothingness ahead. I have a hard time writing fiction for that reason. I have no more idea than a reader would what the characters are going to do next!

One thing I did do this year, though, was write what I think are very good first chapters of two different books. I had to work very hard at it, but in both cases when I go back and reread them I think they're not just good, but excellent. So maybe planning writing by chapters is the pathway out of my mental organization problem. I think what I'm going to have to do is write chapters as if each one was a little miniature book all by itself—getting one chapter to a pretty high state of finish, then mulling over in my mind as to where the next one needs to go before starting it. In that way I could build a book chapter by chapter, and thereby overcome my problem.

I don't want to quit, though, despite my ultimatum to myself last January. I want to keep after it. I just haven't got the key yet, is all. It's out there. I'm going to find it. I just have to keep working. I'm going to know when it happens for me, because things will start to flow. Until they do, I'll know I'm not there yet.

I feel like I just need to find what I'm meant to do. Do you know the old 18th century definition of "genius"? It meant the particular, peculiar things that make you you—that make you distinctive, individual, and different. What I need to do is find my genius, in that antiquated sense of the word.

Two-thirds right
By the way, do you want to know what Johnson O'Conner's three top recommendations for me were, back when I was 16? They suggested that, given my aptitudes, I might want to think about becoming a writer, a photographer, or a forester.

Ha! Forester. Two out of three ain't bad.

If you have a child of any age older than puberty who is floundering about in their life course or career path like a fish flopping on dry land, I recommend you treat them to the JOCRF aptitude tests if you can afford it. It's not very expensive—they're a nonprofit—and there are 11 locations around the U.S.

Helped me, I'll say that. And it's interesting, too.

Onward! Maybe I'll actually die while still trying. But really, there are worse fates.

Mike

*It was originally founded in 1938 as the "Johnson O'Conner Human Engineering Laboratory," which sounds maybe a little Frankensteinish to modern ears.

**It's Chapter 13, page 59, of the Foundation's free ebook about its tests, which you can see here.

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Paul: "It really hurts me to hear this about your writing. Your blog has become part of my life. Can't you just sit down every day for one hour and just get on with it? Most days your writing will be average, a few will be awful and a couple will be amazing. Those incredible days will refuel you for many days. Stop focusing on finishing it and focus on that bloody hour everyday and things will change for the better."

Mike replies: That doesn't do it though. Works for blogging, not for a book. It's like walking fifty miles in the wrong direction—doesn't matter how brisk your pace is if you're not getting any closer to where you want to go.

Ilkka: "You cannot write a book in a year. Not a good one anyway. That is a too ambitious target. If you didn’t start writing it at all in 2018, then shame on you. You will never write it until you start. But be realistic and give yourself 3-5 years. You need a plan and outline. That can change during the process. Then you need to write. And then you need to edit. But first you need to get started."

Mike replies: Oh, I've started. Have I ever started. It's finishing I have the trouble with. :-)

Rose of Sharon Before and After

The Rose of Sharon bush outside my kitchen window on July
18th. Hard to see at this size, but note single flower.

I don't think I hallucinated this—is there a large photo-centric or photo-heavy social media site that has banned "before and after" pictures? I think it's Instagram. Maybe Facebook? I think to prevent before-and-after weight-loss come-ons. But that might be wrong. Sorry...I can't remember. (Told you my brain is shrinking.)

Same bush 12 days later, July 30th

Anyway, I like before-and-after pictures. One of my favorites was taken in the '90s with a then-antique Spotmatic—two B&W pictures of a pan of cookies before and after baking. Simple pictures. But...tasty.  :-)

As with many photographic ideas, once you start thinking about it and looking for them, more and more possibilities pop up.

As far as weight-loss before-and-afters are concerned, all I can say is that I am all prepared with the "befores"!

And while we are on the subject of things that grow, may I just say how sorry I am that blueberry season is over* and that green bean season soon will be. We've had a wet Summer and it's been a banner year for green beans. I think I've eaten fresh-picked green beans close to every day for the past month and a half. But broccoli season just got going and will be going strong until the first hard frost, so that's consolation! I'm trying to get the Mennonite farmer up the road to let me go out into his broccoli field (two acres) and cut my own. I suspect he thinks I've got a bit of a screw loose, but broccoli oxidizes fast. It's better for you if it's eaten right after it's picked**.

Enjoy your Sunday. I'm off to work on my book about photography, which is going splendidly if I do say so myself. I'm writing it all off the top of my head and just telling stories. Which, it turns out, I have a lot of. And it even includes quite a bit of sensible practical advice, even. Lots of fun to write. I'll enjoy it even if no one else does. Because when you get right down to it, photography should be fun, right?

Mike

*But don't cry for me. A farmer near me fresh-freezes them and sells them out of his freezer all Winter.

**Source: Eating on the Wild Side by Jo Robinson, a must-have for anyone who eats fruits and veggies. Recommended to me by a TOP reader, and thanks again for that. It's in the form of an encyclopedia, with entries for every major edible fruit and vegetable, telling you about their history, the various cultivars, how to shop for them and how to cook them for maximal health benefit. Big surprise—there's no rule that covers everything, like "always eat raw" or "always eat fresh" or "always eat organic" or any of the other popular ideologies. Everything's different and you have to take each one individually and case by case.

P.S. Someday soon I will do a post about the organic heirloom apple orchard near me. Tomorrow I plan to get some fresh-squeezed 100% pure Concord grape juice from the vineyard across the main road. Life is good in the Finger Lakes.

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Gordon Lewis: "Please do write a post about the organic heirloom apple orchard. I remember when you and I visited that orchard for the first time and hearing all about the owner's background (not what one might expect) while trying to decide among all of the exotic varieties he had. I can't remember which one we decided on, but I know for sure it was amazingly crisp, delicious, and bargain priced."

Sunday Support Group: Selling Nikons

Sometimes I think I missed my calling. I've got a dirty little secret: I sometimes believe I know the right ways to sell stuff.

I think I might be a closet marketer.

I had a first-cousin-once-removed and a great uncle who were in advertising. Remember "The Heartbeat of America, It's Today's Chevrolet"? That was my cousin's. Me, I'm not in marketing or advertising, of course. In fact, as I explained the other day, the opposite: I'm on the side of the consumer—the customer—not the manufacturer or seller. And, of course, thinking you might be good at something is a far cry from actually being able to do it, or from putting yourself in a position to try it, much less succeed at it. It's usually a lot more complicated in real life.

Good ideas are good ideas no matter where they come from, though.

My ideas for a few products have led to those products being brought to market over the years, the result of suggestions to, and conversations with, manufacturers. I say ideas because just suggesting ideas isn't the same as being responsible for the decisions to go forward and spend actual money. Of course, with some of the ideas I suggested, the manufacturers were concerned with not giving me any credit. Like I'd dog them for money or something. In one or two cases it was really egregious—I had long, detailed, documented back-and-forth communications with companies, the companies would do exactly what I was pitching, and then they'd disavow ever knowing me or hearing of me. For the record, I've never asked for money. But in a couple of cases, when what I pitched obviously worked, a thank-you would have been nice.

I see this kind of thing so clearly sometimes. So many times I'll see ad or marketing campaigns and roll my eyes—they're so often wrong, or dumb, or—this is the worst—they'll represent a botched opportunity. "No, no, not that, if only you had done this...." Sometimes, just for fun, I find myself inventing marketing campaigns in my head. I don't know if other people do that. I've been doing it for years. It amuses me, I guess.

Anyway, I came up with a perfect marketing plan for the Nikon Z6 and Z7 in my head yesterday, just wandering around the house vacuuming and doing dishes. I could sell  those cameras like gangbusters. Six 15-second ads, cheap to produce, quick to make, easily realizable in either print or video format. And they'd not only do good for the full-frame mirrorless cameras, they'd do good for Nikon as a brand. They'd work equally well for deep mavens and casual consumers. I'll bet could write all six in one day. (Or, if I actually had to do it, one week.)

...But sorry, I ain't sharing. I've had enough of big fat companies stealing my ideas then pretending I don't exist. I stopped doing that...well, the last time it happened.

I think this one's the very best imaginary marketing campaign I've ever come up with, though. Of course, amateur imaginings are a far cry from professional reality, and I know that. But I still think my idea would sell Nikons like nobody's business. I know how they should do it. Good ideas are good ideas no matter where they come from.

...Of course, I also still think my idea for the last episode of M*A*S*H was greatly superior to the one the writers actually came up with. Heh. Like I said, daydreaming is not the same as doing. Don't think I've got a big head.

It's not big, it's just in the clouds.

Okay now. Back to the work-week and to real life,

Mike

P.S. The point for the Sunday Support Group: for your longterm project, stick with what you know. Don't spin your wheels.

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Sunday Support Group: Letter from my Head

-

All the chickens come on home to roost
Plump bodies blotting out the sky
You know it breaks my heart in half, in half
When I see them trying to see them fly
'Cuz you just can't do
Things your body wasn't meant to.

—The Mountain Goats, "Dilaudid"

If you read it, you remember that last Sunday's post about long-term projects, "When to Not Persist," was kind of a downer. I had to 'fess up to having drifted away from my book project ambitions (in my fellowship we call it "going back out," i.e., falling off the wagon. Returning to our former state—in this case, my natural state of sloth, inertia and ennui). I had been feeling guilty about this, and it was liberating to man up and come out with it.

So now, good news. I've switched gears and changed projects. I've decided to take John's advice and slam out a book about photography. Starting with a brief autobiography of my life in photography, then switching to an insider history of The Online Photographer. Then I'll recount some of my adventures and misadventures in the various industries and people I've intersected with. Next, a section about the aesthetics of art and practice. Finally, I'll write down my reflections about the changing state of the art over the time I've been involved with the medium. (I just made that all up on the spot. Sounds okay, though.) Along the way I'll sing like a canary and tell tales. I like telling stories, and I got a whole bunch of 'em, and if I leave them sit there on the hard drive, one day the hard drive will just fail and then where will all the stories be? Lost and gone forevs.

No timetable, and of course I'm notorious for not finishing anything, so there's no guarantee this will ever become something.

If it does become a book PDF, however, every loyal booster who contributes via Patreon will get it for free, so you don't have to worry about missing anything. Anything I manage to finish, you'll get, no charge. That's not to say I'll finish anything, but it means those folks won't miss it.

The best-laid schemes o' Mikes an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

—Robbie Burns, "To a Mouse," tr. mod. auct.

I would think this one's going to be a piece of cake, though, because I'm not going to worry about it too much. I'm just going to start writing. It's all in my head already, so I can just write off the top. Like writing a letter. And that goes fast.

Mike

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Sunday Support Group: When to Not Persist?

-

We'd sell out, if only we knew how.

—Jerry Garcia

As you may know, I've been trying to write a thriller, which is specific kind of genre novel with its own forms and rules. Thrillers are much more popular, and sell better, than so-called "literary" novels (or, as they used to be called back when they were novel, "novels"). I've got to be honest: things aren't going well.

I heard a story about Michael Crichton, the late book author who wrote a string of bestsellers including The Andromeda Strain, The Great Train Robbery and Jurassic Park. Supposedly he read a bestseller when he was a young doctor and thought, "that's not so hard. I could do that." So he bought a stack of bestsellers and read them all, absorbing the styles and plots and forms and tropes and modes. Then he started writing his own.

I'm apparently not able to do that. I've tried to study thrillers, and I've read a bunch of them, and I have a good mentor whose advice I've tried to take to heart, but when I try to write my own I'm like a Boy Scout far from home trying to start a campfire in the woods in the rain: it just won't catch*.

I always had this idle thought hanging around in the back of my head that I'd be good at novels. I like telling stories, of the James Herriot variety—part joke and part anecdote, cut to fit, like you'd share at a bar over a pint of ale. (I always suspected Herriot's tales started out as pub stories.) I don't mind "storifying" the truth. And I like yarns. A great example of the yarn form is the movie Little Big Man by director Arthur Penn, little brother of photographer Irving Penn, from the novel by Thomas Berger. To "get" that movie, as Roger Ebert did but many other critics didn't, you have to keep in mind the structure as you watch it: it's an old man spinning a yarn.

But here's the rub: I kinda can't stand false data. I really only like stories if they make some truth more clear or vivid. But with novels, you're supposed to make stuff up. It's not supposed to have to be true. 

My mentor is pretty clear on the idea that you have to be deeply familiar with thriller novels to write them. Not only do I not read thrillers, I hardly read novels. Just to keep in touch with fiction I try to read one classic novel every year. One. Last year I finished Heart of Darkness on December 31st...in the evening.

I read nonfiction.

You can't say you're a reader of anything if you read only one (or two, or three) a year. It's not that I'm bigoted in favor of literary novels and a snob concerning genre novel forms; it's that I'm not a novelist. Not knowing thrillers is not the problem. It's that's I don't know novels. I probably read 40 books of nonfiction for every novel I read. At least 20. That's the problem.

You've got to know when to press on, but you've also got to know when to quit. "Persistence" and "perseverance" are beloved myths. But the truth is that persistence is just as often counterproductive as it is positive. You can't make yourself be what you aren't, no matter how hard you try. You've got to figure out what it is you're meant to do. I'm pretty discouraged right now, but I'm not going to give up on that. There's got to be some kind of long-form writing I'd be good at, and somehow I need to figure out what it is.

On that score, I will try to persist.  :-)

Mike

*Cf. Jack London's "To Build a Fire"—but note that there are two versions with divergent plots and different lessons learned by the protagonist! I like the little-known 1902 version better.

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Joe: "I just finished Robert Gottlieb's Avid Reader, a memoir in which he talks about his time as Editor-in-Chief at Simon and Schuster (among many, many other interesting positions including Editor-in-Chief at The New Yorker).

"He has a lot to say about Michael Crichton. Apparently Crichton needed a lot of editing:

'...Michael had a strong background in science. And he had a keen eye, or nose, for cutting-edge areas of science—and, later, sociology—that could be used as material for thrillers while cleverly popularizing the hard stuff for the general public. You got a lesson while you were being scared.

'What Michael wasn’t was a very good writer. The Andromeda Strain was a terrific concept, but it was a mess—sloppily plotted, underwritten, and worst of all, with no characterization whatsoever. His scientists were beyond generic—they lacked all human specificity; the only thing that distinguished some of them from the others was that some died and some didn’t.'"

 Joseph Reid: "As a person who makes a living putting words on paper, I can can tell you that writing is easy. Hard is picking a fabric for a sofa. That is an irretrievable act. What you write you can change endlessly before publication, before you have to face the fear that someone else will see your words and retch. So write, dammit! STFU and punch those keys! Also, when did this undertaking change from personal story to thriller? Writing the former would fix that fact-block you have."

David A Edelstein: "My favorite bit of trivia about the 1908 version of 'To Build a Fire' is that apparently Mr. London wrote (revised?) it sitting on the lanai of his friend Princess Kaiulani's house, on O'ahu."

Bill Mitchell: "Thirty years ago a photographer friend and myself decided to write a best seller. It was going to be a 'dirty book' with each chapter fully devoted to a one single perversion. Couldn't lose! It had to have some sort of plot, so we decided to make a murder mystery out of it. Unfortunately, as we progressed, we found the story more interesting than the perversions. I have spent the last 30 years rewriting, revising, and updating the manuscript. Finally, 30 years later, Born to Die will be published this year by a reputable publisher. Occasionally, I run across one of those obscene chapters that we discarded. Even today, I find them incredibly erotic as hell! (Including the ones that I wrote 30 years ago!) Good luck with yours Mike!"

Charlie Ewers: "Points well taken, Mike, but you should still finish your novel. I'm a nonfiction writer, pure and simple, and nonfiction makes up 100% of my published work, but I wanted to write a novel, more or less to see if I could do it. I could, and I used that novel for the thesis in my Master's program. Tried unsuccessfully to get it published (I still think it was pretty good) but then realized its true purpose. I had to write that novel to move past it and back into my nonfiction. Yes, I did learn some stuff regarding narrative form, dialogue writing, and so forth, but the real benefit came from successfully finishing a long (in terms of number of words written) project. That experience served me very well when it came time to write my dissertation, and I would guess it would serve you well, too, if you turn later to writing a long piece of nonfiction."

Tex Andrews: "Oh, boy! Have I got a lot to say about this! Here's a story from grad school, severely cropped: For those who haven't been through it, studio art programs rely an 'the crit'—end of semester, faculty troop into your studio, rip you up, you defend. Lots more to that, but no room here. let's just say the better you are at defending/deflecting, the more success you'll have in the crit. Note I didn't say the better your work was....

"So, in my second semester, I was bound and determined to have a super-strong crit. Tons of work, because I thought other students did far too little, so much it was all over my studio, floor to ceiling. A sculpture I was working on I couldn't finish, so I laid the parts on the floor, and wrote notations in chalk with arrows, like a 3D mechanical drawing. Not enough room for people to come in my studio, fully.

"I was also working full time, two-hour commute one way, and, in the opposite direction of the University of Maryland, one-hour commute one way. By the day of the crit I was exhausted, running on fumes. My normal defenses and intellectual readiness at an all-time low. Could barely, numbly answer questions, coming at me fast and furious. Everyone looking at me really strangely, some peering into the room. They looked oddly alarmed.

"Crit ends, and everyone starts to leave. One prefessor, Jim Sanborn, a sculptor with a rising star in those days, last one to leave, stopped and looked back at me, cocked his head, and said: 'You know, Tex, you should really stop and look at your work sometime.'

"Huh?

"Then I kind of spun around and saw what they saw. I had entered as a painter, started getting other ideas, started furiously developing them, and then basically exploded my brain onto the walls of my studio—and created my first installation. So, then I was an installation artist (plus other things).

"So, Mike, I think you should take a look at your work, all of it. ;-} You know, novels take lots of forms...."

Sunday Support Group: More Than Funny

But it is funny too—Michael Jr.'s TED Talk. I enjoyed this and I liked his message, and my son did too.

And it's on topic. Hope your punchlines—er, projects—are going well!

Mike

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cecilia: "What a nice way to start the morning! Thanks!"

Sunday Support Group: Family Matters

Alyssa and Xander horsing around at Watkins Glen

I love the phrase "family matters," with its serendipitous ambiguity—it means both "family concerns" and "family is important."

My son and his new girlfriend have been visiting since Wednesday, so I've been on vacation. We went to Watkins Glen, the Curtiss Museum, the Finger Lakes Boating Museum, and the Corning Museum of Glass, and their visit gave me permission to go off my diet for five days—we've had several SAD* meals and went out to dinner four times. They're into board games, so we played several nights. One of the ones we played was an incredibly complex game called Scythe. Fun.

I used to take a sort of "not my thing" attitude to complicated board games, but now I think it's good mental exercise for me to learn them, so I was a more willing participant this visit. Of course I couldn't have managed without Xander as a guide. Scythe was funded on Kickstarter in 2016 with the help of 17,739 backers, who pledged $1,810,294 to help bring the project to life. Xander is deep into board games and very adept at them. He still wants to try his hand at game design, despite working 50+ hours a week.

And it was great to meet Alyssa, who is a centered young woman of integrity with a sharp wit but even temperament, a nice combination.

As for my own LTP**, my writing discipline went AWOL for a few days because—well, you know, family matters. But I'm okay with that. I haven't seen Xander since last October and, as a Dad, albeit semi-retired from active duty, pretty much nothing makes me happier.

Xander at CMoG

If you're a parent I'm pretty sure you can relate!

Mike

*Standard American Diet

**Long-term project

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Mark Cotter: "There are moments when one just requires a Like button."

kirk tuck: "I agree with what everyone else said. I love this blog!!! And I'm having fun with my kid too. He's perfect. Thanks for all the perspective Mike!"

Jay: "Lovely post! One of those instances where I wish Typepad had a Like button!"