The Online Photographer

All the Things We Use Cellphone Cameras for that Aren't Photography

Charlie Dunton wrote, yesterday: "Now that I am in the middle of my 7th decade, I've found another good use for my iPhone. When I find myself standing in front of a food vendor and his menu is too far away, or otherwise too difficult to read, I pull out my iPhone and snap a picture of the menu. I can then quickly zoom in and read it with ease."

Mike replies: I wonder what a list of "all the things we use cellphone cameras for that aren't photography" would look like. I recall years ago seeing a young woman behaving strangely. She was waving her phone high in the air and posing like a model, her free hand flicking at her hair. It turned out she had the camera on her phone reversed and was using the phone like a mirror, fixing her hair. 

I use the phone to read very small text, especially when the text is molded into same-color plastic, which I have difficulty seeing. The "magnifier" mode is accessed by clicking the on/off button three times quickly. In the past I've used it to see things I can't get my head in position to see, for instance the back panel of my computer. Lately, when I suspect that a cashier might dispute the price of a sale item, I snap a quick picture of the shelf label so the clerk doesn't have to "go check" when I tell them what the item was supposed to cost. 

Sometimes things sitting right above a pricetag of $39.98 have
morphed to $48.98 by the time they get to the cashier.

And of course I use it for copies—I sent in a water testing sample this afternoon and snapped pictures of the documents before I enclosed them in the package. I use it for notes, like ads, phone numbers, cards on community bulletin boards, etc. But I'd guess we all do that. Around here, I actually find tradesmen by noting the names on the doors and side panels of trucks, which I'll then snap a picture of. 

What else do you use your phone camera for that isn't pictorial photography? Anything else you can think of?

Mike

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales thro ugh affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Mike Plews: "My bank app lets me deposit checks with my phone camera. Handy."

Dave Hsberman: "Frequent use for iPhone: Taking photos of books so I remember to see if our library has them."

Marc (partial comment): "I live on 300 acres of mostly bushland, and use my phone's camera for GPS coordinates of maintenance jobs. For example, I'll note holes for repair along the western fenceline, where the electric deer fence runs, where deer, wallaby, kangaroo and wombats have found a way to push through to avoid the zap. Also, for summer weed spraying, I'll note small outbreaks of St. John's Wort for attention (or horehound, or mullein, or thistle, or...but mostly wort)—it's as easy as just taking a photo.

"(Nothing stops wombats—they are the D9 tractor of the marsupial world. But I persist.)"

Ken Royce: "When at the market and am unsure exactly which brand or size or a product my wife requested, sending a quick text with a photo of the choices quickly resolves the matter...."

Rick Popham (partial comment): "I work in hospital maintenance. When we go into an office for painting, new carpet, etc., I take a picture of the walls so all the pictures and diplomas are put back in the right spot and any books are put back on the shelves in the right order."

Ilkka (partial comment): "The later model iPhones can see in the dark. It can be helpful if for example planning to make repairs in a dark place. I remember taking some pictures of a false ceiling to see how the wires and pipes went."

Henry White (partial comment): "Many younger travelers use their phones, in conjunction with Google Translate, to read signs in other languages with a quick conversion to English. Very helpful when visiting places like Japan and South Korea."

hugh crawford (partial comment): "Back in 1996 I bought my first digital camera, an Olympus D300L with a whopping 780,000-pixel sensor. Among other things, I used it to take pictures of expense receipts for a project at IBM that I was a freelance contractor on. It took about a week for them to figure out how to deal with them. I may have been the first person to submit digital photos of receipts at IBM. It hadn’t really occurred to me until now."

Albert Smith: "Parking space recall: in large lots or multi story garages, you can avoid an entire episode of Seinfeld by snapping a photo of Orange 43. Unless you like carrying a heavy air conditioner for 23 minutes. 😉 "

Bob Keefer does the same thing with trail photos, to help him find the way home again. —Ed.

Kodachromeguy (partial comment): "I use the phone camera to document parts of the house before going to the lumber yard or building store. It helps me explain a repair or project."

Sean (partial comment): "I travel internationally. Instead of carrying my passport, which I can safely leave in a hotel safe, I take shots of the current visa and other pertinent pages."

Open Mike: Culture is Ever-Changing (Self Portraits)

["Open Mike" is the often off-topic Editorial Page of TOP, in which Yr. Hmbl. Ed. is sometimes forced to come up to 2025, despite the fact that, for him, not only was 2001 in the future, but 1984 was too. He actually loves being a geezer, but for that whole "death getting closer" deal. Otherwise, being an old guy is da bomb (<—very dated expression that Ed. imagines is still hip.) "Open Mike" appears on Sundays, when Ed. remembers.]

Luke (who was the self-described "lab drudge" at the original Imaging-Resource website for a dozen years, when it was the main competition for the original DPReview) wrote a fascinating comment here a day or two ago. He mentioned a number of new terms that have become current since I personally kinda stopped paying so much attention*. This is fun stuff, so let me just go down the list briefly:

Reverse selfie: If most of the pictures you take are selfies, featuring yourself mugging for the camera in a variety of settings and with a variety of people, pets, food, swag, etc., then the opposite might become a whole new category; a reverse selfie is, as Luke wrote, when you "aim the camera AWAY from yourself." What a concept—a picture in which my I doth not appear? 

I remember when most photographs—the overwhelming majority—were actually all reverse selfies! So much that we didn't even have the term "selfie." Imagine. (I'm being arch**.) We used the more formal term "self-portrait" then, and it was a perfectly honorable genre, albeit probably not something that most people would make a whole project out of, let alone a whole career. At least, until Cindy Sherman came along and owned it. (She still owns it, smartphone selfies aside.) The peripatetic Lee Friedlander, who I've called the most important American photographer (or shall we say the quintessential, to avoid the value judgement) of the second half of the 20th century, did a whole book called Self Portrait. Lee's self-portraits, however, don't convey classical little-n narcissism and self-love (Ye, formerly known as Kanye, and who now wants to be known as Ye Ye, has a line in one of his raps about how "people be snapping my angles"), but rather the strangeness of inhabiting a body and the extent to which our observing consciousness is alienated from it.  

(The 1970 original of Self Portrait is unobtanium, and the 1998 Second Edition is getting expensive. I'd recommend the updated version, from Yale, which has a great many more photographs. Strangely, no other self-portrait projects are coming to mind for me here.)

I had to do a self-portrait as a school assignment at the Corcoran, and I wish I could put my hands on it to show you. It was not very good. Not very creative, either. And not my thing—definitely. Like a lot of photographers of my era, I don't like having my picture taken. I'm all into the reverse selfies and what they can tell me about the look of the world when the camera is pointed outward.

Actually, reverse selfies contain a lot about the photographer even thought he or she is not in the picture. You'd never look at a Michael Kenna and think it was a Helmut Newton, or a Helmut Newton and think it was an Ernst Haas. But no hate to those whose thing is exploring the look of themselves; it's a perfectly legitimate thing and I'd look at it as soon as I'd look at any other thing. I'd love to see some curated, deliberate, consciously-made bodies of work of smartphone selfies by persons of artistic temperament and skill. 

I once tried to recreate this Lee Friedlander self-portrait using myself. I thought it would be easy. It was not easy. I did not get close. I also mailed him a letter and offered to trade prints, one of mine for one of this. I have not heard back yet, but he has only had about 32 years to consider my offer. I think I ought to give him a few more years.

Handheld tripod: A.k.a. a selfie stick. (I heard once of a little kid calling it a "selfish stick," which maybe isn't too far off base.) While not unknown in days of old, when it would more likely be called a handgrip tripod or just a grip, the term divorces "tripod" from its meaning as a three-legged stand that sits on the ground, and hangs on to its meaning as something attached to a camera that puts the camera at a location in space where you want it to be. My only question would be, why the newer term when "selfie stick" already serves the need? But that kind of rational consideration is not always how culture works.

Lens filter: A filter made of glass, usually colored, that actually physically screws or clips on to the lens. Because as everyone knows, a filter is a digital preset that you apply to a file to give it a predetermined look or to create a particular effect. If you used the word "filter" to describe a glass screw-on filter, people might misunderstand. Hence lens filter.

2D printing: This one really floored me! Am I behind the times. But it is instantly obvious what it means and why it exists. Since AI is not copyrighted (having no conscious human creator), I believe I can reproduce this here. Just the first sentence would be enough, but it's all pretty amazing:

AI Overview
2D printing is the process of creating two-dimensional images or text on a flat surface, typically paper. It involves using a printer to deposit ink or other materials onto a substrate, resulting in a flat, visual representation. Common examples include printing documents, photos, or artwork on paper using inkjet or laser printers.

Here's a more detailed explanation:

Two-Dimensional: 2D printing creates images or text that exist only on a plane, lacking depth or volume.

Flat Surface: The process typically involves printing on a flat surface like paper, but can also include other materials like fabric or film.

Ink or Material Deposition: Printers use various methods to deposit ink or other materials, such as inkjet sprays, laser toner, or other specialized processes.

Examples: 2D printing is used for a vast array of applications, including:

• Documents: Printing reports, letters, and other textual information.
• Artwork: Creating prints of paintings, drawings, and photographs.
• Labels and Packaging: Printing product information, barcodes, and designs.
• Signage: Producing posters, banners, and other signage materials.
• Publications: Printing books, magazines, and newspapers.

Relationship to 3D Printing: 2D printing is fundamentally different from 3D printing, which creates three-dimensional objects by layering materials.

I love that it doesn't even bother mentioning under "other specialized processes" that you can create a 2D print on light-sensitive paper by projection. Perhaps because that's so 1870s. And I especially love that last bit—having to specify that 2D printing is different from 3D printing. I've written many times about the amorphous interrelationships and ambiguities involved in all the "print" words, noun "verse" verb, print, printer, printmaker, printing, printmaking. This new thing adds to the happy melée in a way that, perhaps opposite from what you might expect, delights me.

So there, that's your dispatch*** from the former future on a halcyon Sunday in June. How come nobody's written a book called 2084 or 2054?

Mike

*In the 1970s, in the suburb of Bayside, Wisconsin, there was a guy in his 50s who tried way too hard to act like he was in his 20s. He dressed like a Bee Gee, down to the gold chains and white bell bottoms, and drove a white Corvette Stingray T-top. I actually heard him say "hey hey hey" to one of the girls from my high school, which was as much a cliché as a dog peeing on a fire hydrant. I decided then and there that I would not grow up to pretend too hard that I was younger than I was. It's a mark of respect to young people for older people to go ahead and act their age. In my very humble opinion.
**Adjective, meaning 2: "Marked by a deliberate and often forced playfulness, irony, or impudence." (Merriam-Webster.)
***Younger readers are going, "What." And older readers are going, "Wow."

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

David Dyer-Bennet: "Well, a self-portrait at least used to be a formal portrait that you took of yourself, whereas a selfie these days is usually a snapshot you took of yourself. So not identical ideas. I've taken my own passport photo at least once, and I took my own college yearbook photo, I guess those have to be counted as self-portraits. But I seem to do it only when a photo is necessary, not just for fun."

Ideas Have Energy ('Bones' Part IV)

A couple more thoughts on the "Bones" posts.

Before I start, re the side discussion on Lee Friedlander...first of all, he's Lee Friedlander. One of the few photographers whose work always looks like his work no matter what the subject is or what camera he's using. Arguably (which I can say because I've made the argument) he is perhaps the most important American photographer of the second half of the 20th century. Certainly one of the top twenty however you cut it. He's got more talent in his little finger than most people have in their entire careers. Not to mention a protean appetite for working.

So it was said that Lee reputedly would not know an idea if it bit him in the ass. But (there's always a but), my little devil's advocate comment to that would be, if he works by identifying from his pictures what he's interested in, throwing the prints of the pictures he's made so far in a box and then adding to the box as the years go forward, how is that not working to an idea? Say you've started a box of pictures of you-pick-what. Chain link, cacti, TVs, pickup trucks, mannequins, self-portraits in foliage, pictures that are crowded with chaotic elements, pictures that include plate glass and reflections, whatever it may be. (These are all real Friedlander things.) How then do you go out into the world, encounter one of those subjects in what you think are promising circumstances for shooting, and not think of the fact that, back at home, you've got a box going on that very subject? What, do you just wipe it from your mind? How would you do that? That's like not thinking of an elephant. I'd argue that it's impossible not to shoot without any idea once you're actively collecting pictures based on an idea.

But I digress. And, what would I know about Lee Friedlander.

Anyway, my main comment today and the reason for this post is that ideas have energy levels. Again, I'll just reduce it to two simple opposites to make it plainer what I mean. Sometimes you can get really into planning and analysis and justifying and what have you, but, remember, an idea is something that facilitates and motivates work. So you can build a fancy edifice of words like a big three-tiered frosted cake, but then you get out with a camera in your hand and within a few days you're feeling wilted and bored. Well, there you've got an idea that didn't have much energy. Or, you can get a new idea and the dam breaks—it unlocks your creativity, supercharges your enthusiasm, makes it easy to get out and work, and it leads to results. The more you do it, the more you like it. And the more you do it, the more you want to do it. You refine it, you explore tributaries of the major streams, you become known for whatever it is you're doing, and you begin to get rewarded for it, with recognition, respect, money, fame, positions, prints sales, books, shows—whatever it is that defines success for you on your terms. Ten years later you're still doing the same sort of work, as successfully as ever. That's an idea that has lots of energy.

It seems trite and obvious to point this out, but an idea that "has energy" actually gives you energy. Personal energy. The ability to work, to exert yourself, to keep going. You know when an idea is not working because it saps your energy, slows your pace, or gives you feelings of ennui, disaffection, resignation, hopelessness, etc. You cast around for encouragement, you complain because something external is not right, you feel tired when you think about having to do more. When you're on the trail of an idea that really works for you on the other hand, you've got a sense of personal focus, of purpose. You don't need other people's approval for support but are happy to keep going under your own steam. You feel an almost visceral satisfaction or pride when you're looking at the work you've done. You can't wait to do more of it.

"Ideas" in this sense don't have to be complicated. When I started working with my B&W camera, my idea was to get out every day and drive around the Finger Lakes until I had found one picture. That was all. I just had to get a picture. That's good enough, by the way: PAD and PAW projects count as ideas. I think when I first presented the OC/OL/OY idea years ago, I think I specified that you should aim to shoot for 3–5 minutes a day. The way that idea works is that it gets the camera in your hand and gets you started pressing the shutter button. It overcomes inertia and gets you over the impediment of being in your "not-working" state. It can be enough because sometimes you're going to want to keep going.

But you'd have to wait and see. It will either be enough or it won't be. All ideas have some inherent amount of energy. You can't really force it. You just respond to it. Ideas that have energy are a gift. Ideas that don't will fail eventually no matter how hard you try.

I know of one photographer who decided to do a different project every year. Each one was going to be completely different from the last; different camera, different subjects, different methods, different aims, etc. Well, he did that for several years, until he hit on the idea that had energy for him. He loved it. Couldn't give it up. He worked that same way for the following thirty years. (You might have heard of him but I won't name him.)

Here are just a few basic ideas, based on seeing, reading about, and talking to actual real photographers.

A photographer...

...Who shot aerial pictures from his tiny personal airplane. He seemed to like shooting and flying just about equally, and used each to help inspire him to do the other.

...Who was preoccupied with adolescents. He liked them, sought them out, and was an accomplished physician with a specialty in adolescent development who gave lectures and (I believe) had written books about the subject. He might also have been attracted to them, possibly, which I only mention because he told me about the great lengths he went to to keep his behavior ethical, considerate, and above suspicion. (He passed away long ago, so I'm not at risk of embarrassing him with this.)

...Who collected unwanted old cameras and shot pictures with all of the cameras in his collection just to try them out.

...Who made exacting, very skillful replicas, using digital cameras and inkjet printers, of the Polaroid SX-70 prints he shot as a kid on family vacations, of subjects that evoked similar feelings in him that the old pictures did. He had learned to mimic visually the look of the old pictures.

...Who loved photographing beautiful women in elaborate quasi-Victorian, old-fashioned-looking costumes, jewelry, and hairstyles, and seldom if ever deviated from this style.

...Who loved harsh, high-contrast pictures that implied dark and violent or foreboding feelings, I think along the lines of a horror movie (which I almost never watch, so I'm not completely sure).

...Who photographed with a badly broken lens, often using extreme underexposure or overexposure, or hand-holding very long exposures to achieve random blurring. The pictures were "extreme" snapshots that used the vocabulary of actual random photographic mistakes.

...Who was shy about photographing people (she said "that's not available to me"), so she made exquisite tableaux of found objects exquisitely arranged on a small set, which sometimes would take weeks to collect and build.

...Who photographed small single objects that could seldom be precisely identified in the middle of large backgrounds of solid color, which he printed very large.

...Who was a dedicated trainspotter, and photographed scheduled trains as they passed specific locations. He was devoted to doing this even though he didn't have any specific purpose for the tens of thousands of slides he produced.

...Who did selfies while daringly climbing or clinging to public skyscrapers.

...Who loved manual unsharp masking of 4x5 negatives, which could take two or three days of work to make before Photoshop came along. He confessed that his actual pictures were not important to him; he just loved the darkroom work and the look of unsharp-masked prints.

...Who loved the old architecture that was vanishing from his city and tried his best to preserve or save it, even to the point of physically salvaging architectural details. He was so dedicated that he met an untimely early death when beams from a partly demolished and unstable structure collapsed on him while he was photographing.

...Who said she gradually realized that most of her work included light sources of some sort (she made large color prints), from Christmas lights, to patches of interior sunlight,to streetlights or headlight, to flames, and that the technical challenges she loved were describing these light sources as well as possible. Once she realized this, she started adding to those pictures deliberately.

Those are just a very few examples, to briefly imply the range of what an "idea" might be. Of course I've only presented the view from outside, you might say, as I can't really speak to the interior motives or conceptions that any of these people might have had—although a few of them might have left writings, or are still alive and could speak for themselves if they wanted to.

Lastly, I'll tell a story about a student who was pursuing a very involved and elaborate, but also very conventional and unoriginal idea, which she would interrupt constantly so she could take descriptive notes of the experience with her phone. She finally realized she loved shooting with the phone more than with her "real" camera doing the "real" work, so she just dispensed with the latter and concentrated on doing more with the phone.

Be sure pay attention to what has energy for you, no matter how weird or offbeat you might think it is. If it isn't an idea itself, it might provide clues as to where you might want to go in the future.

Mike

Part I
Part II
Part III

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

The Artist's Statement (Bones Part III)

One more post about this (to those of you waiting for me to move on*). I confess it's probably more useful for younger, newer photographers...who aren't reading this. But oh well.

The A.S. and the wall placard
I said the other day that "an idea is any intellectual notion that facilitates and motivates working," and Gary Nylander very sensibly brought up the topic of the artist's statement. I'll abbreviate it "AS" for this post, although that's not a standard abbreviation, so don't use it in the outside world and expect it to be understood. To the AS I would conjoin the "wall placard," those often exquisite orchids of text that are put on cards and sprinkled amongst the pictures at an exhibition. The AS is more closely related to the wall placard than it is to a working-process idea.

I take a somewhat jaundiced view of artist's statements, that woeful sub-category of compulsive literature cheerfully lampooned by the phenomenon of the "artspeak generator" and IAD, international artist dialect, but I love wall placards, usually the responsibility of the curator of the show you're looking at. Szarkowski used to write some of the wall placards for MoMA shows, can you imagine? That's a bit like Édouard Manet drawing New Yorker cartoons. I wonder if those were properly cherished and preserved. (Why do we still not have a collected writings of John Szarkowski? That's a scandal.) Many times, the wall placards are plucked from the exhibition catalog, and are preserved in that manner. Wall placards give added information about the work, from a more objective and more professional perspective, and their presence ranges from neutral to positive, in my opinion, as a component of museum shows; they never detract, as you can ignore them if you wish. Most museumgoers ignore them, I feel like. But my heart sinks a little if I look around a gallery room and see no wall placards. (Some of which are painted right on the wall itself. How do they do that?)

So, are the working idea and the artist's statement the same thing? No. The AS is usually a back-formation, created to justify the work after the work exists. They're meant to imply that the work is deeper than it looks and also that the work lives up to the artist's intent. They also are probably meant to signal [verb] that, if the viewer might not like the work, then the viewer might not understand the work.

My signal [adjective, meaning "striking in extent, seriousness, or importance"] example came from a group show I saw many years ago. One participant had photographed...bramble. Tangled branches of bushes with no foliage. The tangled, twisted, interlaced stems filled the frame and showed no surrounding context. Some from a little closer up, some from farther away, some in hard sunlight, some in soft overcast; and so forth. So they're just pictures of bushes. It wasn't enough of an idea for one picture, much less twenty-two or whatever. But the fellow had constructed the most elaborate and convincing apologia for what he had contrived to do that I couldn't help but admire the chutzpah. It was so clever, so compelling, so convincing, so insistent, that it made me see the bramble photos in a more sympathetic light...for a while. Then I went back to the more clearheaded reaction that the fellow had had no clue what to make pictures of.

Which gets us back to the idea of the idea. (Sorry. I've known that was coming.) An idea is any intellectual notion that facilitates and motivates working, but here's the thing about the idea as the framework, the "bones," of a project, theme or mission: the quality (subtlety, erudition, nicety) of the idea often doesn't have a direct correspondence to how well it will work. A dumb idea can lead to great pictures and ongoing growth, and brilliant-sounding ideas can lead to dull pictures or dead ends. Many times over the years I've questioned photographers about what they were up to, and often they give simple, unsatisfactory answers. One's crest falls. Ideas are not always good. Or smart, articulate, or well-conceived. Academic people have the most trouble with this, because they're trained to work with ideas and they're well aware of the beauty ideas can have; and they're afraid of stupid ideas—having long since learned the trick, crucial in academia, of not looking stupid. They will often construct beautiful, intricate, dazzling ideas...and then, from it, create bad, weak work that trails along behind like an unwilling child.

Because here's the thing: you can't evaluate a working idea for art by the usual standards. An idea is good if it facilitates and motivates working, so that's how you have to evaluate it. I mentioned William Wegman the other day. What was his idea? Presumably it was something like, "I'm going to make a portrait of my Weimaraner dog." On its face, that sounds like the dumbest damned idea for a photographic project anyone's ever heard. But it has literally inspired a lifetime of work, and that work has earned acclaim, renown, remuneration, and Guggenheim Fellowships. He's been endlessly creative in thinking up new ways to make pictures with the dogs in them. It was therefore not a dumb idea. It was a fantastic idea. It hasn't even been copied: Weimaraners belong to Wegman. It has proven infinitely flexible, consistently enabling, and unaccountably rich. But will "I got bored and started taking pictures of my Weimaraner with a hat or a tie on" do, at all, as an AS? Of course not. For that we need something a good deal more highflown.

August Sander, Pastry Chef (l.), Bricklayer (r.)

Or take August Sander. His idea was to make an extended typology of the German people during the interwar period, the period of the German Republic—as if people were defined by their work and "types" gravitated to specific work. According to a page at Tate Modern, "He believed that, through photography, he could reveal the characteristic traits of people. He used these images to tell each person's story; their profession, politics, social situation and background." Again, kind of a blunt, even misguided idea. Photographs do not actually tell all those things. But it launched him into working at portraiture, to looking for his "types" and examples of his categories, and set him to roving far outside his normal circles for subjects; with the result that he created one of the great bodies of work in the history of photography. Although the bricklayer might have been interchanged with the pastry chef and none would have been the wiser**.

'Caught my eye'
One final example: I've observed that a lot of part-time digital photography enthusiasts don't want an idea, because they think it will hamper their freedom and constrain their activities. They want to haphazardly grab any "photo opportunity" that happens to pass their way. Which, if that's what you want to do, that's fine with me; you own your own photography. But it's pareidolia one day, a sunset the next, an architectural detail here, a bride in the park there. (Not to forget the quintessential: flowers and cats.) And they'll say something like, "I just take the camera when I go for a walk and photograph anything that catches my eye." That seems like a dreadfully weak-dishwater idea for working, a framework for little more than desultory camera-pointing. (I confess to never having liked the phrase "caught my eye.") But then, consider Henry Wessel—wasn't his whole life's work really just "what I saw on my walk"? He worked incredibly hard at it: putting high mileage on the ol' shoe-leather, photographing persistently, editing thoroughly and all the way to the conclusion of the finished fine-art print and book after book. And, sure enough: "The world is filled with incredible things," Wessel said. "So I’m happy to just let my eye be caught by something. If something catches my eye that’s enough reason to take the picture." He said that. (Of course it was further honed.)

tl;dr: evaluate your own working idea not by its beauty or how profound it sounds but by how well it works for you. A good idea enables and inspires. It has flexibility and adaptability. And consistency; it keeps on working. It lasts through time and keeps you motivated to pursue it further. It promotes creativity rather than stifling it. It gives your photographing direction and a framework (its "bones" as I started out calling it), a purpose, and richness.

What, me worry?
Yeah, I know, we all think we can photograph anything. August Sander's work included landscape, architecture, and nature. But it might as well not have. As a quick litmus test, I'd say you probably don't have a working idea yet until you recognize pictures you might take but that don't fit. A list of "I do this too" categories. To do something in addition to the main stream of your work, you need your work to have a main stream.

And don't worry about the AS. That can be constructed after the fact. If it's ever needed at all—being honest, the world seldom cares. How many photographers are shown in museums? 0.01%? As many as that? The working idea doesn't have to justify or explain you. It can be deep and/or smart, why not, but it doesn't have to be. It just has to rev your engine and get the camera in your hand, and result in the kind of picture that hits the spot for you. And do it again tomorrow. And the next day. Those who find an idea that becomes a style that becomes a signature that becomes a lifetime's work are the lucky lotto winners.

As before, these thoughts are not prescriptive, merely a quick attempt*** to be descriptive. If they lead to any thoughts that help you, then good; if they don't, don't worry about it. I'm just frinkin'.

Oh, and I actually have one more thing to say about bones. I'll try to intersperse something else in between, in the meantime, in case you are bored.

Mike

*I sometimes have a hard time getting off a topic, and I know it. I get enthusiastic. I want to take a deeper dive.

**I had the idea of taking Sander's idea and turning it on its head. Ed Meese, one of Ronald Reagan's top advisors, once came to the Corcoran School to "volunteer," because his wife was on the Board. They set him to work painting a wall. I thought of taking a picture meaning to title it "House Painter" in a Sanderesque typology of Washingtonians, but the Secret Service wouldn't let me get near him.

***This essay: begun at 9:15 a.m., finished at 11:35 a.m. How good could it be?

"Bones" Part I and Part II

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Not THAT Ross Cameron: "Thanks for this Mike. That’s what I was getting at with my Q in my Bones Part II comment. Ideas can also be poorly conceived and well executed, and vice versa. OK, so it’s not just me that finds AS and placards sometimes a dense babble. I appreciate I’m not in the art scene, and so might not understand where the concepts and language have been and are going. Your story of the bramble photos reminds me of going to see the Sydney Biennale several years ago. Someone had taken a few black-and-white photos of a large area of grass, either early a.m. or late p.m. There were some mounds, which stood out via their shadows. But there was nothing of interest to catch the eye in these photos—no composition. The placards indicated that an infamous building / institution used to stand on the site. Translation—all idea and no execution. And probably the initial germination of an idea—may not have been well thought through."

Mike replies: One of my critical principles, not very popular or respectable in my lifetime generally, is that a photograph should be good to look at.

In some way. Whatever else it is or does.

To me, one of the glaring weaknesses of some of the work given attention in museums I've seen (not that I see all that much of it), as you point out, is that it's all idea—and the ideas sometimes aren't even good ones. For instance, I saw a show in Chicago of "pictures" that were putatively of the night sky, each one titled with the coordinates of the sky where the camera was supposedly pointed. The "pictures" were all rectangles of pure black. That struck me as wrongheaded in several ways—for one, you get the joke right away, and seeing multiple examples of it across a whole exhibit didn't amplify or clarify anything; next, it deprives a real photographer of attention from the institution (in diets this is called displacement—one of the reasons for eating lots of non-starchy plants is that they displace less healthy foods in the diet); and it's not accurate, because there is often lots to see in a night sky. I'm sure real astrophotographers would have been greatly surprised to learn that there is nothing to see in the night sky but unrelieved, featureless blackness.

Look at Dave Lumb's Blurb book linked below—that's a modest idea, but it works, in my opinion, at the length of the book he's made, and I've never seen it before. It's a better idea in my opinion than those rectangles of black.

Dave_lumb: "As a UK Fine Art graduate in 1982 I didn't have to write an artist statement. They were never mentioned. So when did they become 'A Thing'? Meanwhile: 'I just take the camera when I go for a walk and photograph anything that catches my eye.' Sometimes that works for me. Something caught my eye and when I saw another example it became an idea."

Mike replies: We haven't talked yet about how we get ideas.

MikeR: "I needed an AS recently in order to submit work to a state sponsored art exhibition. Cripes! Most such statements make me want to puke. But, forced into it, I crafted something that didn't offend me with flowery language, but more or less retrospectively 'explained' how I go about things. My wife, then my daughter, edited and made suggestions. I let ChatGPT have a go at it. The result was partly barfable, but brought in some good points, so I incorporated those, reworked the thing again, and again passed it to wife and daughter for further scrutiny.

"I learned something about what I actually do from this exercise, so it wasn't totally pointless. I've taken to crafting my own wall placards, a 5x6" thing affixed to the rear of the framed work, that borrows a bit from the IPTC standard, with 'Caption' and 'Description' blocks, the latter containing technical details about the piece. Finally, at 83, I feel focused and organized about my photography. Most of it still sucks, but there ya go."

Nick Cutler: "Ideas have you. Long ago, a colleague I very much respected said 'You don't have ideas, ideas have you.' And once an idea has got you it's impossible to ignore; you have to run with it wherever it goes...."

James Meeks: "In museums where I’ve worked, we usually call the wall placards 'didactic panels,' sometimes 'text panels,' meaning they are informative panels, placards, labels, etc. Other institutions may call them something else.

"As for the text painted right on the wall, nowadays it’s typically vinyl cut on a plotter and applied by staff. I did do some by screen print but that was a disaster. There are other methods I’ve heard of or seen but have not tried. The pieces of paper by a work are merely referred to as labels and come in all sorts of forms. Some are short and sweet while others can be fairly long and are typically written by the curator. When you put the works in a gallery, we say we’re doing an install, and when it comes down it’s a de-install. Not a real word except in the museum field as far as I know."

James Bullard: "I hate writing artist statements. They are only done when exhibitors demand them; to me, they are meaningless. The last one I 'wrote' was done using AI. It didn't read much differently than the pap I would have written myself but it caused me much less anguish to produce."

SteveW: "Re 'Caught my Eye': Thank you for this. This is how I am with a camera anymore, and why I switched to using my iPhone as my primary camera. It's always with me, easy and quick to use, and I'm capturing images that I would have had a difficult time capturing with my 'real camera.' It's been liberating and fun. The iPhone images are well into the 'good enough' zone for me. I suppose my genre of work would be snapshots. It's weird, but if I go out with my real camera (Fuji X-T5) it's harder for me to find shots than simply carrying my iPhone (15 Pro Max) and letting the shots find me. I'm not saying I'm capturing anything tremendous, or building any kind of body of work, but it's more fun for me this way. The Happy Snapper."

Dave Millier: "The Royal Photographic Society have the concept of the 'Statement of Intent' in their distinctions programmes:

A Statement of Intent that defines the purpose of the work, identifying its aims and objectives. A cohesive body of work that depicts and communicates the aims and objectives set out in the Statement of Intent. A body of work that communicates an individual's vision and understanding.

"For their ARPS and FRPS distinctions, a candidate submits a portfolio of images along with the SOI. The SOI is used by the assessors to help them judge the portfolio. I think it is useful for the photographer, too, as it focuses their attention on exactly what they are trying to achieve and portray and helps in the decision-making about what images to include and what to leave out. For me, thinking about the RPS approach has led me to shift gears away from shooting individual images that I later attempt to group into genres, to thinking with a project/portfolio mindset right from the start. The SOI is essential to that shift."

Jim Simmons: "Lee Friedlander liked that one of his friends said Lee wouldn't know an idea if it bit him on the ass. He claimed to have no 'ideas' that he worked from, not even any interests. But after years of photos piling up that had commonalities, the photos revealed to him what he'd been interested in. He, like Wessel, just went out into the world and took the photos that presented themselves to them. Of course, they had the talent to see them."

Mike replies: I think Lee is being disingenuous about that. (Which is his right.) He's got his own way of working, but the titles of many of his books describe ideas. And the ideas are easy to see in the work.

Jim Simmons replies: "I don't know, Mike, I'm inclined to accept Mr. Friedlander's statement at face value. A day before your post, I was rereading an interview with Lee by John Paul Caponigro in a 2002 issue of Camera Arts magazine. He was a little testy/evasive with some of Caponigro's questions, but he especially refused to be pinned down on working from ideas. I quote: 'Anything that looks like an idea is probably just something that has accumulated, like dust. It looks like I have ideas because I do books that are all on the same subject. That is just because the pictures have piled up on that subject. Finally I realize that I am really interested in it. The pictures make me realize that I am interested in something.' He continues, 'I hardly ever think about doing work. I think about going somewhere that might interest me.'

"I am currently in the process of creating a monograph of my 1970s black-and-white work, and I'm trying to apply Friedlander's concept of looking at the photos to discover what my ideas actually were, because aside from a few documentary projects, my work tends to be, like Friedlander's and Wessel's, visuals I stumbled across while living my life with a camera slung over my shoulder. The photos are more a framed arrangement of 2D and 3D shapes reflecting light in interesting ways than they are photographs of the actual objects within the frame. I'm only realizing this in retrospect."

Tom Burke: "I've seen some of Sander's images before, and liked them. Like you, I'm not sure his AS stands up. Looking at those two images today, however, what struck me was how both men were being injured by their occupation. The bricklayer is compressing his spine with the repeated weight of those platforms of bricks, and sooner or later his back wouldn't have been able to take the load anymore. As for the pastry chef, I can't help but wonder how long it was before he had his heart attack.... Time and knowledge helps us to see things in a different light."

The What ('Bones' Part II)

Old print in a box

Photography is unique among the arts and crafts in that it can't (or mostly doesn't) come from nowhere. There had to be what you might call a "what"—the pretext, the thing the camera was pointed at when the picture was taken. That was the case with photography, defined as any method of dumbly capturing the image cast by a lens. The situation changes with digital imaging, which is ten times or a hundred times more easily and undetectably altered, and now by synthographs, made by "AI," in which a photographical-style illustrative image with no pretext in the real world is generated by a computer. Digital imaging is a different thing than photography, although the two have been willfully jammed up together into one thing ("digital photography," which always struck me as an oxymoron, or at least an oxymoron waiting to happen) because of the fact that it is possible to not alter and manipulate a digital image beyond simple correction, thus making it into a photograph (even though the viewer cannot be reasonably certain it is). But synthography is a different thing altogether, and belongs to a completely different class of imagemaking altogether. It is as unlike photography as linocuts or stone lithography. But put all that aside and pretend that we are talking about an art/craft that involved making pictures by pointing a lens and recording its image—the sort of thing that required a "what."

For the creator, the photographer, the classic big question then was, what is the what?

Pants legs
In photography school I got interested in the question "how many possible photographs are there?", and, as an experiment (ever the empiricist), I shut myself up in the lowest, half-underground level of my mother's townhouse on O Street in Georgetown one dull Sunday afternoon—Mom was away—and resolved to shoot as many pictures as I could find. The entire house was only 11 feet wide, but deep, and five stories high. The lower level consisted of a small dining room with a fireplace and a round table on a pedestal, a tiny kitchen that mother claimed she could cook in without ever moving her feet, which was only a slight exaggeration—it had a fold-down table that blocked the entryway when it was up, such that when she had something going on on that table she had to get down on all fours and crawl under it to get in and out of the kitchen—and of course the descending end of the staircase, under which was a powder room, which is what Mom called a half-bath. French doors opened onto the stone patio and the walled-in garden, but I set the condition that I had to shoot inside. I was armed for the experiment with two six-packs of beer; my robust Gitzo tripod, which I quickly became too lazy to deploy; the small television which was located on that level of her house; of course my camera, a Contax 139Q; and a 100-foot "bulk roll" of Kodak Plus-X that I had just rolled into reusable cassettes using a Watson bulk loader. So I had something like 21 rolls of 35-exposure film—I used 35, not 36, because that way they all fit in a 7-row x 5-frame PrintFile sheet, which in turn all fit on an 8x10 proof sheet. Enough film for 735 shots. For you film-virgin digital shooters out there, that was considered a lot. I had the cost of each shot tracked out to the very farthing, although it's been so long I don't recall what it was: the cost of the film, per frame, the developing chemicals, pro-rated (I developed my film myself, of course), the PrintFile sheet that held the negatives and the sheet of 8x10 paper for the contacts each divided by 35. The per-shot total wasn't much, but it seemed like it was, because I didn't work a job at the time—I was in art school for a living.

Anyway, I took every picture I could think of, and then many more. I wish I could remember how many rolls of film I used up; it wasn't all of them, and, simultaneously, it was way too many. I took pictures of the fringe of the rug, everything on the mantel, every object in the kitchen. I disallowed the television screen, because it imported "pictures" that were not native to that floor of the house. I took self portraits, pictures of cracks in the plaster, ten pictures of a doorknob, etc. I actually got into it for a few hours. The interest faded as subjects became steadily harder to come by. I was down there for more than six hours, and quit due to drunkenness.

I learned the obvious lesson, which is that the number of possible pictures even in the smallest space is infinity. I admit I thought contemptuous thoughts when, later, I read about the artist Robert Rauschenberg's discovery of photography, about which he said something like, "I wanted to photograph everything!" Every square inch of the world. Good luck*. 

Rather remarkably, I ended up getting something out of it, though. I edited all those pictures down, made prints of six of the pictures, and got a critique out of it. It wasn't poorly received, either, by the teachers or the class. They weren't bad, but only one was what I'd call "good," a picture of two silver candlesticks with overlapping shadows from several different lights. One was a picture of the ornate Kleenex-box cover on the back of the toilet (above), another was a picture of my corduroy-clad pants legs looking down at the base of the table, with almost nothing in focus. That one was probably taken when there were only a few beers left.

Here's the point
Anyway, to come down to it: for a photographer, an idea is any intellectual notion that facilitates and motivates working. What else could possibly have set me to taking endless numbers of pictures in a place with no pictures—what else, other than an idea? The idea can last six hours, like my little one just described, or it can last a lifetime, like William Wegman's idea, which I would argue is equally small, though obviously much more flexible and enabling. It can be purely visual, it can be technical, it can be subject-oriented, it can be illustrative of some concept, it can be documentary, it can be some notion of a methodology, it can be the pursuit of a feeling or some kind of stance—I could think of ten more things to say, but that would imply I had made an exhaustive list, whereas that can't be true—the number of possible ideas is as actually large as the number of possible pictures in the lowest floor of my mother's townhouse. It's what enables you. Whatever gets you past not-doing and into doing. Whatever you can think up that answers the question what is the what going to be. A good idea sets you free.

Mike

*By the way, did you know that photography was Rauschenberg's first interest, and he was torn between becoming a photographer or an artist? He ended up being both, in a way, because he used photographs so persistently in his work. David White, co-editor of the posthumous book Robert Rauschenberg: Photographs: 1949–1962 and Rauschenberg's curator from 1980 until he died in 2008, said, "it is surprising how little attention Rauschenberg’s photographs have gotten, considering it was his primary interest."

(Bones Part I)

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Stan B.: "You could probably drop off John Gossage anywhere on god's green earth and he could make interesting, memorable photos of the most banal and mundane. That's not to say I'm gobsmacked by all of his images, it's just that I can't believe how many featuring the most everyday, overlooked objects, tableaus, or scenarios actually succeed in grabbing my attention and holding it—making me linger, question, marvel...see! Scenes I would have blissfully ignored in real life, walking right on through complaining all the while, 'Sh*t, there ain't a g-d thing to photograph around here!'"

Mike replies: Here's my portrait of John, inside an art installation on the roof of Dia Chelsea in Manhattan. I haven't been in touch with him in years unfortunately. The tones don't look great—I didn't want to take the print out of the book it's in.

Scott Abbey: "Re: digital photography, which always struck me as an oxymoron': If one would accept that photography is always grounded on a physical subject that exists in the real world, then I would argue that there is usefulness in appending a modifier such as the process used to the noun photography, as in wet plate photography, dry plate photography, film photography, and (yes) digital photograph . I might also talk about still life photography or wildlife photography. They are all just helpful qualifiers to further describe the photography you are doing. And all of these are distinct from digital art forms that don’t start with a real-world subject."

Nick Cutler: "What is 'The What'? I have a picture of a British policeman in full uniform, standing in a river, water up to his knees, holding a large fish. The picture could have been created by an ai image generator. The picture could have been created by hiring an actor, hiring a police uniform, borrowing a large fish, travelling to a location.... Both approaches create an artificial scene that is not a picture of a real 'what.' Neither would be 'true.'

"The 'What' and reality. Some friends of ours used to live in a slightly crumbling but lovely old house in a small English midlands town. For some incomprehensible reason they allowed a glossy magazine, Country Homes or some such, to visit and create a set of photographs of the interior. The published article had almost zero resemblance to the house: everything had been re-arranged, flower vases added, rugs draped, camera carefully positioned and pictures edited to avoid any semblance of any space that a family actually lived in. The magazine's advertising sales team needed to make everything resemble the aspirational interiors in the ads selling furniture and high class paintwork."

Bones

"Alas, poor Yorick!" Engraving from a painting by Horace Fisher.

I'm big on "bones."

• Our bodies need bones; skeletons are the framework that hold all our other bits up and together and in their proper places. Our skeletons survive us, too—mainly to scare us on Halloween, or to remind Hamlet of mortality.
• Old houses can be said to have "good bones"—stout, sound framing that can be used again. I live in a house that was built in 1888, but the flesh and guts—the arteries (plumbing), nerves (electrical), fat (insulation), skin (cladding or siding), and eyes (windows)—were mostly replaced in the 2010s.
• A screenplay is the bones of a movie. All the people who make movies are wonderful at their work, performing an infinite number of jobs in symphonic coordination to realize a creative vision, but, no matter how well all that is done, without a good solid script it all falls apart. I like to call beautifully made movies with defective screenplays "jellyfish"—bad bones; weak story. No matter how well realized—acted, directed, set to music—a movie that's a jellyfish can never be anything but a jellyfish.

Somebody here confessed the other day to loving YouTube. It's a new medium—very vigorous, much maligned. The bones of a short-form video—the idea or concept—is not so easy to come up with; already we see rote formulae, and every conceivable form of mistake and error. My favorite is when AI is choosing random illustrations for voiceover and hopefully chooses a generic photograph, but it's of the wrong person, place, or thing. I watched a video about Brian Gottfried the other day—an old-tyme tennis player—and some of the photos were of Vitas Gerulaitis, another tennis star of the same era who superficially resembled Gottfried. Still a few "flaws in the ointment."

I like an old-fashioned and somewhat unpedigreed word for idea generation—ideaphoria. "Ideaphoria is the ability to quickly generate ideas, or to have a creative imagination. It can be measured using a test that assesses the speed and volume of ideas, but not their quality." David Foster Wallace and Robin Williams both had very high ideaphoria.

Pip and...Pip, from David Lean's Great Expectations, 1946

Media are all different and require different ideas
In all new media, it takes some time for people to understand which kinds of ideas work and which fall flat. For example, do you remember in the early days of movies when movies would be adapted from novels, and the novel tracked a character at different ages? Jane Eyre and Great Expectations both track their main characters in childhood and then on into adulthood. In written novels, this works fine—Willa Cather's My Ántonia tracks Jim and Ántonia from childhood to death, for instance—Ántonia dances for just a short interlude in the quick of youth. In movies, though, it's clunky, this scheme. You can't use the same actor for both (there's one early film version of Jane Eyre in which Jane the child and Jane the adult seem to have completely different personalities, mannerisms, and affect; it's hard to imagine how the one became the other), and the audience has to be clued into the fact that, oh yeah, this is supposed to be the same person, only later. That awkward break used to be familiar to moviegoing audiences, who were supposed to have learned to "suspend disbelief" about it, but, soon enough, screenwriters realized it just doesn't work all that well in movies, and they stopped doing it. (Richard Linklater eventually solved the problem in Boyhood [2014], a movie shot over a period of 11 years as the child actors actually grew up! The problem there was that the whole movie couldn't be scripted in advance—the director had to let it evolve as the actors grew into being themselves. Worth seeing, if you haven't.)

But I digress. Anyway, short-form informational videos being a newly dominant media, we're in the period where creators are learning how to generate good ideas, learning what works and what doesn't. Here's a stellar positive example, from a channel called Doctor Mike. The idea is simple, original (at least, I've never seen it before), instantly gettable, yet quite brilliant. He states it in words right from the very outset: "I asked a bunch of different medical specialists, what's the one thing that they would never do given the things that they've seen in their specialty?"

Brilliant idea: succinct, creative, and more or less infinitely flexible. The rest of the video is various specialists naming those things. An orthopedic surgeon, for instance (since we were talking about bones! You see what I did there), says he would never a.) ride a motorcycle or b.) play with fireworks. "My hands," he says, "They're critical. They're precious, I need them, and I don't want to blow 'em up."

The point is that every creative effort in every artistic medium needs bones: a structure to guide the work and give it a framework. A concept. Some kind of guiding set of aims, principles, or ways of proceeding. Even the absence of a framework is a framework! Stream of consciousness* writing, for example, that abnegation of structure, is itself a structure, isn't it? Isn't The Americans in effect stream-of-consciousness photography?

This is the topic I was struggling with two days ago and couldn't organize. I wanted to talk about how we get ideas for still photography and why ideas at their worst can be stunting and restricting and, at their best, enabling and freeing. It's a big, sprawling topic, one in which every specific claim is potentially wrong and yet still could be helpful. Very important and, still, seldom talked about, because it's big and blowsy and not everything will pertain to everyone. Difficult to reduce it to neat little categories and tidy theories stacked like blocks.

And yet. A photographer with a truly great idea can work that goldmine for a decade.

Mike

*William James, one of the most important writers now never read (he's very whitemale, for one thing), is thought to have coined the phrase, in The Principles of Psychology, 1890: "...Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself as chopped up in bits...it is nothing joined; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let's call it the stream of thought, consciousness, or subjective life."

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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John Camp: "This might be the most critical question faced by all artists—the question of 'what to do?' and then, secondarily, 'how to do it?' I've given this a lot of thought over the years, and the conclusion I've reached is that people want art (of all kinds) that deals with...people. The Americans has probably a dozen photos that don't have people in them in one way or another, and even those photos refer to people and their artifacts. No pure landscapes. No abstractions. I'm an art freak who has educated himself in a certain way, and so I do like (some) landscapes and abstractions, but in a sort of distant, intellectual art-freak way, not particularly viscerally. The very best photos and paintings, IMHO, have to have a visceral element. Have to evoke an emotional response based on memory and experience and human relationships."

Greg Boiarsky: "A lot of the bones for your ideas can be traced to Marshall McLuhan: 'The medium is the message.' (And, of course, many other clever variants.) Not only do we need to develop a structural language for each new medium (sorry—not media, which is plural), but we also need to find the match between our content and the affordances of the new medium. That is, we need to discover what is inherent or natural to the new medium. Going from print to the moving picture, for example, allows the creator to more easily and fluidly depict the flow of time or causal chain of a process. Going from print or TV to the internet allows the creator to add interactivity to the content. Of course, there are other fits/matches.

"What I find more interesting than what the new medium can do is what it can't do. When I want to do something with my photography that isn't natural to image making, I am forced to be creative within the bounds of the photographic language and limitations of a two-dimensional construct. The very restrictions that limit me also force me to think in new ways. The mother of invention and all that (pardon the sexist trope)."

Synthography

I just heard this for the first time. I'm using it. From now on.

A synthograph is an AI simulacrum that mimics the appearance of a photograph. Because face it, "AI photograph" is a contradiction in terms, an irredeemable misnomer. A photograph is written by light. A synthograph is created by a computer.

In his article "AI 'Street Photography' Isn’t Photography: What We Lose by Simulating Experience," which is where I heard this, Kōdō Shimon says, in a footnote, "The term 'synthography' appears to have been independently coined in 2022–2023 by both [Elke] Reinhuber and [Steph] Ango, demonstrating convergent thinking about AI-generated imagery. There are more people who could claim it around that time. It's a simultaneous invention."

In the next footnote he adds, "Baudrillard would likely recognize this as the 'precession of simulacra' at work: AI photography is not just a copy of reality, but a representation without original. Simulacra."

Not just a copy of reality, but a representation without original. There ya go. Thus, it's an illustration without being an artistic creation "by" anyone (despite being selected/directed, arguably), and certainly not a photograph because it doesn't have any direct or specific antecedent in the world of visual appearances. In photographs, there is no such thing as a totally accurate record, but usually you can provisionally retrieve something true from the picture about what was in front of the camera when the picture was made. That is, when Weston photographed Pepper No. 30, I believe there was truly a pepper there. I am not so depraved that I have to doubt it. He didn't invent it, he recognized it. 

So this continues the dilution and corruption of photography as a direct record of the pretext in front of the lens when the picture is made, which has been traceably present more or less since the beginning but has gotten worse and worse as people figure out how to subvert it. The corruption of the photograph-as-record took a huge jump upward with digital and Photoshop et alia, and now with AI imagery has reached what must be its nadir. Please.

So as synthographs get better and better as AI does, leaving fewer and fewer signifiers of its use by which viewers can detect it, how are we to know we're looking at something wholly and cravenly unreal? Well, it's really no different than it ever was: the human maker is ultimately the one who either lies or tells the truth. Not the medium itself.

"Lying" is a judgemental term when it comes to expression. Albert Bierstadt's landscapes are fantasies; so are Oscar Reijlander's composites. El Greco's human figures are distortions; so are the funhouse-mirror pictures of Andre Kertesz. Monet's Rouen Cathedral series are impressions of light and color; so are the many experiments with motion blur by Ernst Haas. Edvard Munch was preoccupied with symbolism; so was Ralph Eugene Meatyard. Expression isn't lying.

But only because it isn't hiding. Yes, we'll be lied to by synthographs—probably a lot—and the "slap of truth" that honest photographs once possessed in more abundance will become yet more fugitive. Already we're at a point where the first reaction to any remarkable photograph is not wonder but skepticism. In an ideal world, we'd get to the point that a synthograph would be labeled as such, and the word "photograph" will be reserved for images that retain a connection to the real. Here's hoping.

I'll be using the term synthograph from now on, where and when it's warranted.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Color Lover

I meant to post these on Sunday, and I'm sorry I didn't. They're perfect little videos for a lazy Sunday afternoon.

But better late than never. Are you a color lover? Some people rank "5" on the 1-to-5 How Much Do You Like Color scale. Colors move them. They seek out color, love it in photographs and paintings, and have sophisticated taste and discrimination when it comes to color in all its subtle and strong varieties. True lovers of color will appreciate these.

The first, from the always interesting Vox channel, explains how the idea of white marble statues made its way into the modern world, whereas the Greeks and Romans had painted them in colors as bright and strong as they could manage. They didn't get to us from ancient statues directly, but from ancient statues, paint faded, that inspired Renaissance artists—who really did produce unpainted statues, thinking that that was what the ancients did. The video is called "The white lie we've been told about Roman statues." Fascinating. And not even six minutes long.

The second is from Kodak—yes, Kodak. It's a test of a very early motion picture film called Kodachrome, from more than 100 years ago—1922. However, it's very likely not the famous Kodachrome invented by "God and Man"—Leopold Godowsky Jr. and Leopold Mannes—that was in production for 74 years. God and Man were probably still in school in 1922. It's no doubt an earlier, all but forgotten film, an entirely different process but also called Kodachrome, invented by John Capstaff around 1913. The video says there's an article on Kodak's "1000 Words" website, but that appears to have gone the way of all things. Maybe somebody can find it archived somewhere.

An early color movie test and a recent YouTube video...together they kind of bookend the making of moving pictures in color, don't they?

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

hugh crawford: "That Kodachrome isn't color film. though. That Kodochrome used black-and-white film and two lenses, or, later, a beam splitter, exposed through red and green filters, creating two frames per exposure, one above another. To make a projection print they would use film with photographic emulsion on both sides and print the even frames on one side of the film and the odd frames on the other. Then the front and back of the film print would be dyed red and green respectively. Obviously three colors would work better—note that there is no blue or yellow in the sample—but film only has two sides. The invention of three-strip Technicolor fixed this by using three rolls of film and printing them using a dye transfer process. See more here."

Mike replies: Thanks for the explanation. The process was also sometimes called "two-color Kodachrome." It's literally almost forgotten today...I almost never see any reference to it.

[Ed. note: Sroyon found the accompanying article: http://web.archive.org/web/20100902035707/http://1000words.kodak.com/post/?ID=2982503 .]

Not THAT Ross Cameron: "Thanks for sharing those Mike. My day needed some brightening up. Always glad to have preconceptions corrected.

"Incidentally, I watched the Kodak one a second time without the music. I much preferred it like that. The music tries to add a dimension that is unnecessary, to my mind."

Kaemu: "A lot of medieval places in my native France have mostly bare white stone walls today, but they once were covered in painted frescoes (and tapestries). The dungeon of the Chateau de Vincennes near Paris had an exhibit (maybe still going on) where you could don augmented reality glasses to see what the bare white walls once looked like. At first, I had a hard time believing/accepting that perspective because I was so used to the unadorned limestone walls. It makes the story about Roman statues much easier to accept...."

Dan: "Similarly, China's terracotta soldiers were painted. There are photos taken of them when first unearthed that show the colors, which rapidly deteriorated after exposure to oxygen. Apparently there are still known tombs in the area that haven't been opened while Chinese archaeologists continue to research how to best preserve the soldiers once the decision is made to excavate them."

Is It True That Photographs Have Always Been Manipulated?

William Mortensen, Human Relations, bromoil transfer print through textured screen. Allegedly inspired because he was angry about a long distance phone bill.

I don't mean to stir up a bitter old argument, but I thought I'd address one little question*.

Whenever I or anyone says "digital images are easy to manipulate," people will inevitably chime in and claim that photos could always be manipulated and that it's not just digital images.

No disrespect to anyone who did so, but...well...

Sigh.

It's true, strictly speaking (they're not wrong). But it's also deeply misleading. I spent many years printing for a living, and a print from a negative, much less a slide, is very difficult to substantively modify. And doing so—even successfully—almost always leaves telltale signs that the manipulation was done. Maybe these telltales are not obvious to a layperson, but often they can be detected by an expert. So...

...Yes, the Soviets used to "disappear" luckless officials and expunge them from old pictures, as documented in David King's The Commissar Vanishes (a good book by the way). But the CIA and MI6 could pore over the pictures and sometimes (no one could claim "always"!) detect when changes had been made.

...Yes, objects could be "airbrushed out" of a print, such as the unfortunate "fencepost growing out of the subject's head" in the famous Kent State image. But airbrushing was difficult to accomplish and almost always had to be done by a skilled expert. It wasn't available to everyone by any stretch, and it cost money.

...Yes, Ansel Adams retouched an image of a high school graduation year spelled out in white painted stones on a shadowed hillside in one of his landscapes. Negative-to-positive prints were routinely "spotted." If a negative had dust on it when it was printed, the mote of dust or dirt, printed as a negative image, would create a tiny white spot on the print; sometimes there were dozens or hundreds of these (it only seemed like thousands). Photographers routinely "knocked down" this white spot to make it invisible by dabbing it with a dye called SpoTone** using a tiny pointed brush. Spotting, like darkroom work, was a chore enjoyed only by a small minority of those who had to do it. One of my advanced expert Contributing Editors at Darkroom Techniques magazine was initially excited by digital imaging because it meant that spotting would become so much easier! He said if he never had to spot a print again he would thank his lucky stars. Anyway, from there, it was a short leap to realizing that unwanted small light objects in prints could be similarly disguised. But this was pretty limited. It didn't work with anything that was too large, at least if you didn't have mad skills like the Master.

...Yes, similarly, many photographic techniques had various controls by which to correct images to make them look like they were "supposed" to look (burning and dodging and contrast adjustments being the usual examples trotted out), and these controls could be extended or overdone to change the visual effect of an picture.

...Yes, you could retouch wrinkles and blemishes by "drawing" in pencil on the back of a large-format portrait image—Edward Weston complained bitterly about having to spend long, boring hours at this thankless task for his commercial portrait clients (he was an artist. Except he really was). Some sheet films were specifically made with a "retouching surface," meaning a matte surface with some "tooth" that was easier to draw on than a glossy surface. But if you went too far with this, it could make for an odd-looking image which even an untrained eye could "sense" if not actually "see."

George Hurrell asked movie stars to arrive at his studio wearing no makeup, and Joan Crawford said she came for this portrait with only a "scrubbed face." Hurrell's master retouchers then spent many hours making the finished portrait on the left from the straight shot on the right. But this was high-level work in 1931, available to very few photographers and very expensive even for the pros who had access to it. Moreover, would any professional photographer (now or then!) look at the result on the left and not know it has been retouched?

...Yes, many Pictorialist photographers reworked photographic images so extensively that they were essentially half photograph, half traditional visual artwork (cf. "Struggle" by Robert Demachy). The Pictorialists had many camera-club heirs in later decades, the reductio ad absurdum of whom is that notorious paragon of kitsch William Mortensen, whose work is so bad it's almost, well, good. There was eventually a reaction against the practice of striving to make photographs mimic traditional paintings and drawings, a goal which has never been seriously or widely revived.

...Yes, Henry Peach Robinson and O.E. Reijlander were featured in Newhall's once-standard history (first printed 1937 and revised several times—I prefer the fifth edition) as examples of combination printing, meaning making one image from two more more negatives. A. Aubrey Bodine had favorite dramatic skies that he would drop into different pictures, and Jerry Uelsmann, a master of the technique, used it to create surrealistic dream images—which, however, were not intended to deceive. Another type of combination printing were those spoof postcards of people with giant vegetables and so forth so beloved of the 19th century—you can still find these occasionally at antique-slash-junk shops if you look for them. But those were jokes and also not intended to deceive.

But no, I don't think Matt Mahurin's 1994 alteration of O.J. Simpson's mugshot on the cover of TIME magazine is an example of pre-digital manipulation. Photoshop was introduced in 1987 and even I had access to it by 1994, at least though my company's Graphic Design department. I can't find a source, at least not off the cuff, but I'm guessing it's likely that Matt created his unfortunate and ill-fated "illustration" (you can read his own thoughts about it here) using digital means.

O.J.'s mugshot and Matt Mahurin's TIME magazine cover. Of course the values (lightness and darkness) you're seeing now, here, aren't absolute.

So yes, it's certainly true that photographs were manipulated before digital came along. But most such methods a.) required skill and practice and/or specialized equipment to put into effect (i.e., to airbrush, you needed an airbrush and the practiced skill to use it); b.) cost money; c.) were severely limited in their availability to average and casual snapshooters, if only because few would take the pains or go to all the effort; and d.) very often left telltales of the manipulation in the resulting image such that an expert could at least guess that something might be fishy. It required great skill to make substantive alterations invisibly, and even then, you'd be limited as to the extent of the alterations you could pull off. Digital images, early on, became, by orders of magnitude, a.) easier to alter and to a much greater extent if desired; b.) and more cheaply; and c.) far more invisibly, very often leaving absolutely no visible trace in the image that any changes had been made. Even to the eyes of experts. And of course the means of making such changes were far more widely available, to many, many more people. So to claim that there is equivalence or parity in the ways digital and pre-digital photographs can be faked is, as I said, deeply misleading. Of course, it's something Internet believes, and what Internet believes is indelible. That can never be altered! 

Part of a broader fight
Finally, I need to point out that the assertion that "photographs have always been manipulated" was, originally, during the earlier years of the digital transition, essentially an argumentative claim in defense of digital. There was a period when film users were defending film as being superior, and, at first, they had the weight of long history and prestige on their side. Initially they were pretty smug about it, even insufferable at times, and adopters of the upstart medium were correspondingly touchy about defending it from attack. This was only true for a short period of time, maybe a decade or a decade and a half depending on how you look at it. (It would be interesting to run down the specifics of the various stages by which advances in digital imaging overwhelmed all of the supposed advantages of film.) But, during that time, it was largely a status argument, not a technical one—so neither side were particularly inclined to take an objective look at the relative ease and extent of how various kinds of photographs could be manipulated.

Mike
Image sources, from top down: Minneapolis Institute of Art; Mark A. Vieira via The Hollywood Reporter; Comitialbulb561; WorthPoint.

*Again.

**As far as I could find out, the owner of SpoTone had a heart attack around the year 2000 and the company was shuttered. (One wag wickedly opined, "If I owned Spotone I probably would have had a heart attack too when I saw what could be done with the rubber stamp and healing tools in Photoshop.") Alternatives remain available.

P.S. I will say that one reason I like demotic film snapshots—I have many books—is that they were almost never manipulated. They just "came out," as people used to say. ("Did it come out?" "I took a picture of her, but it didn't come out.") That was for a time true of smartphone snaps too. It wasn't that phone snaps couldn't be manipulated, it was merely that they seldom were, because so few people could or would go to the trouble. That period is over now too, if the manipulations are going to be built into the phones and applied automatically.

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Kirk Decker: "Dust spotting with SpoTone wasn’t too bad if it was just a few spots, but if you dropped a wet roll of film on a dusty floor or got a scratch running the length of the neg, you were screwed. It seemed universal for small town Mom and Pop studios that Pop was the photographer and Mom was the print artist. Retouching on color photos required a base lacquer coat with tooth for Mom’s colored pencils and then another coat of lacquer to seal the work she’d done. Pop would spray one set of prints while Mom worked on another set. Most of them didn’t have spray booths and if you were looking to buy a studio you wouldn’t have to look very long to find one for sale because Pop had died from lung cancer. You don’t see that very often with Photoshop. It’s my understanding that our current concept of ghosts as floaty diaphanous beings is a direct result of early spiritual photography manipulations."

Geoff Wittig: "Thoughtful post, Mike. Years back when I was just getting started with Photoshop and digital printing, my nephew's family asked me to remove his ex-girlfriend from a family group photo, as she was now persona non grata. I happily accepted the technical challenge and was quite pleased with the result. I didn't think at all about any potential ethical issues. More recently a niece asked me to remove her toxic and abusive ex-husband from a photo. Having met the gentleman in question, it was very satisfying to erase him from the photograph, if not from memory."

Jayanand Govindaraj: "The problem really seems to be that the ability to manipulate images has become democratic—what was a finely-honed skill has become a blunt instrument. That is absolutely fine in my book—if one person could do it, then everyone is entitled to do it, and that is the way humanity progresses in all spheres, as closely guarded technology becomes widely used. Besides, there were different ways to alter reality with subtlety, in the darkroom—ever see the examples on Magnum's Darkroom Prints series? The levels of adjustments is mind boggling—the amount of post-processing done by most photographers today would never approach anywhere near the amount shown there."

Jeff Hartge: "I would agree that today, every photograph is suspect regardless of source. However, I strongly believe there is a higher percentage of past photographs that are fake than is currently realized. My stance is that past photographs involving 'high stakes' of some form should be assumed to be manipulated. Corporate and government entities were completely capable of quickly and efficiently producing fake images that could deceive experts. Especially 35mm Tri-X images! The poor quality of certain Soviet images should not be taken as representative of the state of the art in photo fakery. The Soviet Union had much more pressing problems than being concerned that every fake image they produced could fool Western analysts. Most of their faked images were simply for internal consumption. I would argue that there are some images that were produced by the Soviets that fooled, and continue to fool, experts. I would also argue that the higher value BW 'art' images would also be suspect. Jerry Uelsmann's techniques were, on some levels, harder than just creating the same images using photorealistic drawing techniques! Of course having been bombarded with 'reality TV' (among other things), I now start with the assumption that every photograph ever taken was 'staged.' When and image does pass muster on 'staging' it is suspected of being taken out of context. The caption under every photo is always a lie in my mind."

John Shriver: "My great aunt Rose Meirowitz married Harry Grogin. He was assistant art director at the New York Evening Graphic, and made many fake composite photographs under the moniker 'composograph.' They would fake photos that they couldn't really take, like Rudolph Valentino's ascent into heaven. A famous composograph had to do with Kip Rhinelander's divorce trial, where the cause was this his wife hid that she was part black. She was forced to remove her top in the courtroom, and the photographers were excluded. So Grogin staged a fake courtroom, and hired a showgirl to pose as the wife."

Stan B.: "Before, one could question a photograph's veracity should the suspicion arise; now, it should always be questioned—as a matter of course."

John Sparks: "In 1980, I worked for an architectural photographer; mostly as a darkroom printer. During the time I worked there, one of his most reprinted photographs was of a brick school building where students had cleaned chalkboard erasers on the bricks in one area that was about an inch square on an 8x10 print. There were probably a hundred eraser marks. We would regularly get orders for 20 or 40 8x10 prints and occasional orders for large prints like 24x30. We would regularly spend a week or more at a time spotting those prints. I got quite good at spotting. In a stack of 20 prints, there would be some that you couldn't tell that anything had been done unless you used a magnifying glass, but with enough magnification, you could always tell. The large prints were both easier and harder. Easier because the spots you were trying to hit were larger, but harder because everything was bigger and easier to see, but if you built the tone up slowly with dilute dyes the eraser marks really did disappear. I think we could have made a large print with very careful retouching, then made a copy negative to print from that would have made it almost impossible to detect the retouching on the prints. I think we talked about doing this, but it was about the time the orders from this negative dried up. In any event, retouching prints took a lot of skill and a lot of time."

Disillusion

Just a brief note about...disillusion.

These days, I have high-on-photography days and I have down-on-photography days. On my bad photography days, I can get so I'm just not sure how I feel about "photography" any more. I hate to say that.

It started long ago with what I then called digital imaging. The image from a sensor isn't an optical-chemical impression of the lens image—it's a map of the lens image. A map made out of tiny little squares. And the map can be manipulated, in such a way that you can't tell it's been manipulated. The problem there was that if you can't tell if it has been, then you don't know it wasn't—so you have to approach all images as if they might have been manipulated. It changes the relationship of the medium to the truth.

I would say I used to approach photographs confident that there was always some kind of truth there that could be coaxed out of them. The reward of photographs—that "slap of truth"—was in there and could be drawn out. Now, I approach all photographs with distrust, eyes narrowed in suspicion so to speak. My default assumption is that somebody is trying to fool me, or doesn't care about lying, or that the idea of "truth" simply wasn't valued enough to be considered. I come to trust a photograph, if I come to trust it at all, slowly and with a feeling of caution. It's been a big change.

I'm in the minority, I guess.

Regarding our tools...as a photo-writer, my position, historically, was that I wanted photographers to have whatever they needed to do their work. (I do have what I need.) Years ago when digital came around I worried that we'd become too dependent on the cameras the makers offered us, that cameras would be driven toward a lowest common denominator. That the manufacturers would drive down the quality of digital cameras to what the vast general public would accept. Of course it wasn't the manufacturers that did this; they're still fighting the good fight. It turned out to be phones that did it, in the process pulling off a rather breathtaking robbery of a huge market from the industry that used to own it. The process is far from complete; the sky isn't falling. We still have good cameras. But it's headed in that direction. The eventual end point would be a world in which every camera manufacturer goes bankrupt and we're left with nothing but a vast sea of billions of phones. With the illusion that they're connected, when actually we'd all be marooned on millions of tiny islands.

Then there's the tsunami. This relates to culture. Over many decades, and with painful slowness and in fits and starts, people who loved photography built up a culture of shared values and goals, a conversation that took place through photobooks and museum shows and dedicated practitioners building portfolios. An idea of a flow of movement and progress that was at least sensible if not always strictly defensible. There were movements and major figures and trends and innovation and competing ideas. And accomplishments you could point to. The work of Ralph Gibson. The Dusseldorf School. The view camera revival of the '70s. Now, there are a trillion photographs a year. Online, there are billions of new images a day. So why do I get the distinct and persistent feeling that I'm seeing less photography now than I did when I was 25? I think it's because everything gets lost in the tremendous destructive wave of more work than anyone can possibly pay attention to. Voices that keep trying to point out cultural markers are plaintive and lost, if not trite and quaint. Tell me, what is the new generation of serious photographers, the ones who have come along in the last ten years? What are their shared concerns? How do they influence each other? Get serious. You can't call out any of that. It doesn't exist. Do curators matter? Do critics matter? Are museums showing new work by new photographers? Sporadically, maybe. They take a stab at it here and there. But mainly there are ten thousand little subcultures online, but no conversation between them. Hell, not even any awareness by any one of them that more than a few of the others even exist.

Then there's the ugly Stegosaurus in the living room swinging his tail this way and that: AI. In art school (1982–85), I wrote a little spoof about cameras of the future. You'd point the camera and it would say, nah, that's not a good composition—shutter release denied. Here, we'll put in a better sky. We'll take out this and add that. All meant to be a lampoon of fakery and the oppressiveness of mass taste. Well, it was also a primitive, crude description of what AI now promises. (I wish I still had it, so I could actually compare.) I'll be honest: the threat of AI makes me want to walk away from photography forever, just wash my hands of it. Start writing about electric cars or some other coming thing. It's the opposite of everything I value. I haven't got a clear idea of what "Apple Intelligence" means or what it threatens to be, but it seems that some image-editing programs are already offering built-in AI. The thought of AI being built into cameras would be the fulfillment of my worst nightmares about everything I loved about photography.

I know a photography curator at a major museum who once said to me, in private, "I miss photography." Weird, but I can relate.

But as I say, maybe I'm just having a bad day. Good days will return. Got to get the camera out and go for a nice walk....

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Paul Bass: "I recall commenting to a post some years ago, scoffing at some new camera model, saying 'It still doesn't tell you where to point it.' To which you responded, 'Don't tempt them!' It looks like we're there."

XK50: "Yer, I miss photography, at an enthusiast’s level, that is. Although using adapted, old, manual-focus lenses (Nikkors, Topcor REs, Takumars, and especially Zuikos that 'fit' well), on today’s mirrorless cameras can get close to the feel of doing it, for me. Manual focus forces you to look at the scene, in front of you, and select. (Clearly, not so useful for the sports photographer etc.). I miss the old craft of photography, too—but don’t miss the drudgery of assembling, then putting away, darkroom kit, in an average (then) British kitchen or bathroom, with their attendant temperature control difficulties. It was a sad day, when Diafine disappeared.

"But most of all, I think I miss prints! We don’t print enough, these days. It is easier to stare, think about and critique work, with a print in front of you—viewed close, viewed further away. Writing this, I’ve realised, though, that with auto this and auto that (and worse to come!), what is maybe redundant (not dead) is the thinking about photography. So, maybe photography isn’t dead, after all. Maybe it’s just slipped our consciousness, for a while?"

David Littlejohn: "My bottom line with cameras, photo software, and printers is 'Can you make art with it?' At the moment, the answer is 'Yes.' We’ll see how the future unfolds; but right now the tools work just fine. At least for me."

Andy Munro: "What's a timely post, one that I can relate to. I have just bought myself a new Pentax 17 half frame 35mm camera. It is not a perfect camera though. I've only just started with it. Everything I remember about photography is there from the anticipation of getting the film developed to the unknown exposure. Frustration with a mode dial that can move when you wind the film. I must check and double check. It is bringing something back that I missed about photography. I'm now trying out various films to see which I will use. The magic is back. I must stress that the photos are for my enjoyment."

Sean Keane: "I lived the first half of my life in a low-trust neighbourhood. I won’t pretend I was a maths genius growing up, but I instinctively knew that zero-sum games were playing out in minor and major ways. Naturally, this has a wearing effect on your ability to trust. But you adapt to the demands and stop complaining about it; it's the operating system of your micro-culture. My biggest trouble came in leaving my neighbourhood, and the life I was living, for one with higher trust. I made many prediction errors in the early days. I was operating under the old system in a new environment—a costly mismatch.

"Things improved when I started trusting more and questioning less. It freed me from being stuck in a loop of hyper-vigilance and cynicism. The real surprise was that I didn’t code-switch when I visited my old neighbourhood. I decided to try trusting, hoping it would pay off in the long run. I’ve taken the odd hit, accepting that I might, but in the long run, it’s a better state of mind. Not only that, but people respond to you in new and better ways, creating a virtuous circle.

"Mike, it looks like photography has become a low-trust environment for you. You could leave your old neighbourhood and write about electric cars. But there will be some writers equal to you on that subject, and many better. When it comes to photography, though, you are almost peerless; your reputation is well-deserved; you have repaid your readers’ trust tenfold. I doubt someone could replicate what you’ve done with TOP, and when you can post no longer, I hope what you've created lives on as a whisper to arms.

"Until then, turn from disillusion to resolution: trust in trust."

In It For Love

Darlene wrote, a few days ago: Regarding your sports stories on a predominantly photography blog, let me level with you—some of the photo stuff bores me to tears. I mean, how many times can you read about gear or techniques that were probably chiseled into cave walls by our ancestors? Reading about gear and beginner techniques feels like watching paint dry if you've been in photography for ages or if it was your profession. I don’t mind the other topics, but can we get more imagery? And not just your photos—though they’re lovely—how about showcasing more of your readers' work? Those posts are always enjoyable to read and view, and they stay very well in the context of a photography blog.

I know most of your audience is male, and they may enjoy gear reviews, male hygiene talks (razors anyone? How about Kotex?), sports, etc., but trust me, more women are reading than you think. We’re just generally in the back, quiet and unnoticed—except for me because my background turned me into this delightful commentator.

Made me laugh. Darlene is a friend. "Some of the photo stuff bores me to tears" was not what I expected to be criticized for in a comment that begins "regarding your sports stories...," but there ya go, you never know.

And hey, Darr, some people in the double-edge (DE) razor community are women. They prefer them for shaving their legs. The buyer of one of my DE razors recently was a woman.

And then, a couple of days later, Sergio Bartelsman wrote:

Nowadays I find camera gear the least interesting topic about photography. I use Fujis because it is what I have. I can't care less about brands. If it feels good in hand, and takes the picture in the precise instant you press the shutter, that is all I ask for. There is no longer any big practical difference other than price and Veblen vanity. The days when you could spot any perceivable difference between Leicas and whatever other brand are over.

I can write all I want to about how camera companies like Canon are adjusting to changed circumstances, but what about how I'm adjusting to changed circumstances? I still assume people like reading about gear. Is it time to adjust to changing times? The above are only two data points, but whaddaya think? Is the siren song of camera gear gone? Or going?

Eight lions
I will admit that for me, the combination of high prices, technical sufficiency, and, especially, the fact that increases in capability don't reward me with obvious visual improvements in the result, are making my former happy camera obsessiveness...soften. To give you an example, I've had a loaner Leica Monochrome here for two years (no, the owner is in no hurry to have it back) and haven't been motivated to try it. Granted, part of the reason is superstition. I bought my Sigma FP and had it converted to a B&W sensor, and if the Leica is "better" I don't want to know. I'm afraid it might nag at my mind. I don't need the discouragement. But actually the inescapable conclusion is that I'm just not that interested. He also loaned me an incredibly expensive Leica lens that I once gushed about, in writing, as being the best lens money could buy. In days of old, wild horses, a squadron of Centurions, and eight lions could not have prevented me from enthusiastically running that lens through its paces. I would have had a lot of energy for that at one time. But now, when you can oversharpen any picture with the touch of a button or by dragging a slider, sharpness in a lens...isn't as exciting as it once was, let's put it that way. The lens is not the determinant of the look of the picture nearly as much as it used to be thirty and forty years ago.

As I asked many years ago, when was the last time you looked at any newish picture and thought, "too bad they didn't use a better lens"?

Also, even if the Leica M9 Monochrome is "better," I don't really care. The Sigma FP-m is good enough for me and then some. What I really need is to get out looking for pictures more often. (And stop driving past opportunities.)

Even if times really are changing, and people just aren't interested in new cameras and better specs as much as they used to be, it doesn't really matter that much. Here's the thing: dedicated photographers are outsiders. I've always looked at us that way. We're not attached to the industry; we're not affected by fashions. We're not driven by mass taste. We go our own way. We do our own thing.

Mayflies and cicadas
If you have the patience for one more, here's a great recent comment, this one from Geoff Wittig (whom I would dearly love to visit—I should talk to him about that). I've edited this very lightly.

It's clear to me that we're in the sad twilight of the era of photography as a serious hobby. It's rapidly heading for the same category as ham radio or model railroading: a quirky, shrinking tiny niche, regarded (if at all) with a flicker of tolerant amusement by the masses. I derived immense satisfaction and not a little joy from several decades spent honing my technical skills, learning how to use finicky gear, and teasing the best possible result from large format inkjets, all in service to a goal. That goal was creating the best possible photographic print. I still love a beautiful print, but it has become a niche skill. To the broader culture, photography now means billions of technically competent snapshots captured by increasingly sophisticated smart-phone cameras flooding the Internet every single day, each with the impact and lifespan of a just-hatched Mayfly or cicada. Briefly seen then promptly forgotten. I recall reading Brooks Jensen's prescient comment about this perhaps 20 years ago, when he predicted precisely this situation: a minute-by-minute firehose of images where each was rendered invisible by the colossal volume. And yet, I can't help myself. I still derive some genuine joy from a perfect print of a quietly beautiful morning on the river, made with my own hands.

There it is in a nutshell. We do what we do. Sometimes the public looks on admiringly, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes the practitioners up near the ceiling have status and prestige, sometimes not so much; sometimes hordes of people get excited by the equipment and want to participate by buying and posing, sometimes they collectively shrug their shoulders and say meh. Meanwhile, the people who are in it for "genuine joy" and the rewards of the results keep soldiering on. They can't help themselves. They love it.

Another thing that's interesting is that photography is unlikely to prove to be a generational phenomenon. Younger people aren't showing any diminished interest in photography—quite the opposite in fact—they just won't be practicing it in the way us older enthusiasts accepted as normal when we were young. But then, we practiced it differently than our grandfathers and grandmothers did, and they practiced it differently than their grandfathers and grandmothers did. You can argue that the cultural centrality of music from halfway through the '50s to the end of the '70s was a generational phenomenon; and Harley-Davidsons are generational (Harley is going downhill, with its biggest competition being used Harleys); and just the other day I got "insulted" in a thread on YouTube by a guy who accused me of having a "guitar collection," which I took to be a lightly coded way of saying "boomer," which in turn is a euphemism for those who are old and in the way—that is, entitled but no longer entitled to be entitled. Model railroading is definitely generational, and I know a little about that because I used to work for Model Railroader magazine. The peak demographic is males who were 11 years old in 1950, when an "electric train" was the No. 1 Christmas gift for boys. That cohort is aging out (sadly! Model railroaders are fine folks, with a few exceptions). Photography never ages out, any more than eating, communicating, or traveling will.

The last 30 years have been a roller-coaster ride. But a roller coaster isn't actually a journey. "Real" photographers* aren't in it for cheap thrills. Photographers who go their own way and do their own thing just need what they need to do their work, and if they don't have it, they'll find it, or make it, or see the creative possibilities in whatever is available. And, really, it's always been that way, for the great majority of good and even great photographers. It's like that alternate or etymological definition of "amateur": in it for love.

Mike

*I mean "enthusiast photographer," "dedicated" or "devoted" hobbyist photographer, or "advanced amateur" photographers (which can also include pros, if they also do personal work and use it as an avocation). I used to define that as being someone for whom photography was in their top three avocational interests consistently over time. I don't think most people have time or energy for more than three big, deep interests outside of work, family, and vocation. God knows I've been on many, many "excursions" over the years of my life; currently I am engrossed with the subject of curved manual treadmills, thanks to an email from a reader that I can't even find now. But that will pass. The three I always come back to again and again are photography (and art), writing and books, and home music listening. Not perhaps the greatest list, but that's the list.

P.S. The other issue Darlene raised was more pictures on the website. That deserves a post of its own, though.

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Peter (partial comment): "As a lifelong photographer—I’ve worked for studios, publications, and freelance, earning quite a few bucks along the way—at each fork in the road, I have chosen not to go pro and have stayed a committed amateur. Still, the gear itself is important. It is hard to love my contoured partially polycarbonate Canon R6, but I am gaga over the images I get from it. Appreciation of the technology is part of my passion."

Alex Buisse: "I must say that, as a professional photographer, I take what I can only describe as perverse pleasure in taking barely competent product pictures. It feels wonderful to be allowed to not try to be getting great images, just this one time...."

David Haynes: "I find that my interest in 'gear' articles has greatly declined, although I have no objection when you publish one. I just skip over those that don't interest me. I generally find your off topic articles much more interesting and rarely skip those. I think that showcasing photos by your readers is a brilliant idea (go for it, please). I'm sure that you will receive a wide range of views on what content you should publish, and I'm also sure that you have been receiving those opinions for many years. I expect that you will continue to publish articles on a wide range of topics because you have a wide range of interests, as do most of your readers. Well done, Mike."

Wayne: "My two cents…I’ve always enjoyed your off topic posts as much if not more than your photography posts. Would also like to see more images posted, yours or others. Just saying…."

robert e (partial comment): "Maybe the question is not so much 'Should we talk about gear?' as 'How should we talk about gear?' Sure, it's always been 'to each their own' to some extent, but that doesn't explain why it used to be fun to talk about gear and now it isn't. Every incremental advance in picture quality and usability used to be relevant to many of us. But gear has evolved to the point most of us don't need more such gains, so where's the interest?"

Ed. note: These next two comments came in within an hour of each other:

"[name redacted]: "I used to avidly read this blog/site every day but now I almost have to force myself to look every few days and there have been times when I've thought I might as well delete the link and forget about it. 'The Online Photographer' seems to have lost its way. Such a shame."

Bruce Hedge: "TOP is becoming interestinger and interestinger. Thanks for a great last week or so."

John (partial comment): "[Regarding technical developments] It’s actually a relief that things are cooling down."

Sharon: "I have loved to read all my life. I come here for the excellent writing. I have little interest in gear until I have a specific need but it seems a lot of your readers do. Write about what you love. I love photography but mostly I come to follow your journey."

PaulW: "Although gear reviews are not the main reason I visit TOP, I still enjoy your take on new gear, so I hope you'll continue writing about things I'll never have the chance to try."

David Dyer-Bennet: "While they probably aren't the posts that have most frequently moved me to comment, I think actual discussion of photos (with or without specific examples) are the posts I've benefited the most from and probably also taken the most pleasure from."

Stephen S.: "I don't know if it translates to blogs, but on YouTube, where view counts are public, it's very easy to look up any YouTuber who does a mix of camera gear reviews and artistically-oriented videos, or one that started with gear reviews and then tried to switch to covering art and technique, and see that the view count of their gear reviews absolutely clobbers anything with artistic aspirations. At least on YouTube, reviews of specific gear are the only path to success and viewership in the camera/photography space."

Mike replies: Oh yes, I know all about that, believe me. I've been doing this for going on 20 years.

Robert Elswit's B&W Cinematography for 'Ripley'

Andrew Scott as Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley in Ripley

SPOILER ALERT: There are no spoilers in this post. I've policed myself. You're welcome.

I might have mentioned once or twice over the years that I like black-and-white. Also that movies can be a great resource for calibrating your feel for tonal qualities, and learning what to look for. So from time to time people alert me to new movies in B&W—Alexander Payne's Nebraska, from 2013; Joel Coen's The Tragedy of MacBeth from 2021; George Clooney's Good Night and Good Luck from 2005, and many more. This week I watched Ripley, an eight-episode made-for-streaming show from Netflix released just this Spring.

It is, to begin with, a terrific work of art. I found it far superior to the 1999 movie The Talented Mr. Ripley, made from the Patricia Highsmith novel of the same name. I found that one because I watched most of Philip Seymour Hoffman's movies after he died of an overdose in 2014. But despite Hoffman's superlative turn in the role of Freddie Miles in the 1999 film, Eliot Sumner (the child of musician Sting and actress Trudie Styler) brings even more to the role in Ripley. Very high praise.

Not that I had an entirely positive first impression. The limited series centers around that beloved darling of pop culture, the murdering sociopath; and there's no relief. We see everything from his perspective, meaning there is almost no one to identify with or root for. I clung to the film's few slim reeds—the businessman father, the French detective—hoping for a hero.

My knee-jerk first reaction to the B&W was that it looks digital, too crisp, with depressed midtones, empty shadows, and, sometimes, those glarey leached-out highlights that we all love in digital. (Sorry about the sarcasm.) I thought the tones wrong for 1961, when the movie was set. But after rewatching clips from Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal from 1957, John Huston's The Misfits from 1961, and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho from 1960, I decided I was wrong.

I needn't have worried anyway. I wasn't even all the way through the first episode when I realized that the tonal qualities had to be an artistic choice. And sure enough. The cinematographer turned out to be Robert Elswit, a Hollywood heavy hitter with big-time movies to his credit, such as There Will Be Blood as well as many of Paul Thomas Anderson's other films, The Bourne Legacy, TV movies like Steel Magnolias, and the aforementioned Good Night and Good Luck. Elswit worked with the director of Ripley, Steven Zaillian, once before, in 2016, on an episode of the underrated drama The Night Of.

Once I got over my prejudices, I found nothing but enjoyment in the visuals. They're a rich feast. The cinematography is masterly, and it's an integral component of the film's mood, feel, and storytelling. It's virtually as good as another character in the drama. I can't say I wasn't piqued from time to time by some of the choices, but it's worth watching just for the camerawork. If you like film noir, you'll love this, and not just for the macabre, hardboiled, cynical story.

There's a lot online to read about this eight-part limited series. Reviews, explanations of the ending, articles about the cinematography and its look, and about Patricia Highsmith and other movies made from her "Ripliad" books (this is at least the third direct treatment of The Talented Mr. Ripley).

The story is dark, and ends...well, I promised not to say. But worth seeing for the B&W alone, no question.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Jon Hallberg: "I couldn't agree more! I absolutely loved the cinematography. Every frame was beautifully, thoughtfully composed. (I was tempted to hit pause on multiple occasions, just to admire the compositions.) One of my all-time favorite B&W films is Ida, from 2014. David Denby in The New Yorker rightly called it 'a masterpiece.' It, too, is an absolute visual feast."

Bob Keefer: "One of my favorite reactions to the new Ripley comes from Jerry Saltz, senior art critic at New York magazine. He said on Instagram: 'I know it is great and gorgeous but the story makes me so unnerved I cannot watch it. Watched the first episode jumping out of my skin—yelling at the TV.' Me, I loved it—the photography is incredibly beautiful and the story is wonderfully creepy, living up to Highsmith's original—and I plan to watch it again soon."

aaron c greenman: "I enjoyed the series, but found the camera angles and style a little too self-conscious, to the point where they were sometimes distracting to the storyline. And I agree something filmed in high definition video is too detailed and contrasty to not be distracting.

"My all-time favorite black-and-white movie is still Ida. I used to play a game with myself watching it by making a shutter clicking noise with my mouth every time I thought the moment was a beautiful black-and-white photograph, and it was so often I stopped counting. And for some reason in Ida it really serves the setting and storyline."

Mike replies: I really need to see Ida. I've been meaning to for years.

Open Mike: Colors of the Essence and Other Comments

I thought I'd continue the discussion about color photography by answering a few comments this morning. Or commenting on them.

Tullio Emanuele asked: "What about subjects that are shot in color because COLORS are the essence of the subject? I am thinking about birds, flowers, exotic wildlife...the list could go on forever."

That's very true. In a lot of cases, color is an essential part of the information being conveyed. I'd say this is most true with subject matter in the natural world. Eliot Porter was a pioneer color photographer, and argued that he had to photograph in color because it was an essential aspect of so much in nature. Consider that various birds are essentially identical except for their coloring, or that coloring can be crucial to the identification of birds, insects, or other animals; it wouldn't make much sense to photograph a chameleon in two states of color without photographing in color. Interiors can look fine in B&W but not if you're trying to record the color palette the designer used. Other subjects that need to be shown in color include colored gemstones; flags; and designer clothing most of the time (although Albert Watson and Peter Lindbergh, among others, were fashion photographers who photographed mainly in black and white). There are lots of times you need color just to accurately describe what you're depicting.

Of course, looked at the other way around, this might be just an aspect of photography's humdrum role as a tool in commerce and so many other quotidian purposes. The vast majority of photography isn't expressive, personal, or transformative, it's simply workmanlike: an insurance record, an advertisement, a decoration, a communique, etc. The fact that color is desirable for many of these purposes isn't necessarily relevant to artistic choices.

But what Tullio says is, yes, always a consideration.

No eye for color
I wanted to mention that I recall from long-ago reading that Ansel Adams was apparently notorious among his friends for having a truly awful color sense. He apparently loved showing up at parties in colorful clothing, but he would wear stripes with plaids or extravagantly clashing colors while apparently being blissfully unaware of any problem. It's true that he shot all that Kodachrome (even 8x10, imagine!—as someone mentioned the other day) but he depended on God to take care of the colors. Because, of course, he was out photographing wilderness, as usual. Although I seem to dimly recall that he complained about the never-ending palette of blue and green, blue and green, and more blue and green! That might have been someone else, though, who I'm confusing with Adams. Wish I could remember the sources of these things...but I don't. I "engaged" with Adams in my 20s, and not much since then, although I did read Mary Alinder's 1996 book when it came out.

Original in B&W
My former dj friend Kim (here's a fine mix he made on Wednesday) used to have a pet peeve about coming across B&W reproductions of color pictures in books accompanied by the words "original in color." His bitter argument was that the color was half the point and you can't claim to have reproduced the original at all if it's not in color. He had the last laugh, though, when the "colorization" craze came along—spawning a whole raft of movies and pictures where the rubric could have been "original in black and white"! (Which, by the way, I hated. Vandalism, desecration, and disrespect!)

A big reddish rectangle

Mark wrote: "Here’s a story for you. I was involved in a court case involving The Red Rothko. This was probably 10–15 years ago. I’d never heard of him. It was owned by a high-society couple in Texas who had loaned it to an art museum there. The husband died unexpectedly and the widow soon discovered they were house rich but cash poor. Not wanting her wealthy friends to know, she requested and received the painting back in order to sell it. She contacted the art dealer from whom they purchased it as he specialized in Rothko. He put out feelers and came up with an oligarch willing to pay nine or 10 million, I don’t recall exactly which. She insisted he sign a secrecy agreement and agree not to resell it. I don’t recall if there was a time limit when that agreement would expire. Obviously, she should have put it up for auction, but didn’t want anyone to know she was forced to do this. The sale went through, she was paid, and the dealer got his cut. Within a short time she learned the buyer put it up for auction and so the cat was out of the bag. It sold for $27 million. She sued both the dealer and purchaser/seller along with the auction house.

Mark Rothko, Untitled (1961)

"To this day it boggles my mind that a big reddish rectangle could be worth anywhere near that. Rothko mixed food in his paint, along with other things. Weird but effective."

I remember that case. So it cost her ~$17 million for a failed attempt to hush-up her "poverty" relative to her friends. No wonder she was having money troubles! The funny thing is, half of the "Joneses" she was trying to keep up with were probably having private money worries of their own.

You might enjoy a book that came out 15 years ago: The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art by Don Thompson. I have a feeling we're getting a little off the topic, so here's a delectation conundrum for you: if you could have one or the other to keep and enjoy (i.e., trying to remove the possibility of profit from your answer), would you prefer to own Rothko's Untitled (1961) a.k.a. The Red Rothko, or William Eggleston's Greenwood, Mississippi (Red Ceiling)?

Lucky timing

Dave Levingston wrote: "Black-and-white photography is an accidental product of the limitations of early photographic processes and, later, of the limitations of printing processes, particularly in newspapers, where I started as a photographer. If the inventors of photography had been able to perfect a color process that wasn't very difficult, we would not have black and white photography. The inventors wanted to make color photos, but were unable to because it was just too hard with the processes available to them."

So true, and something I'm so deeply thankful for and always will be. Black-and-white (monochrome, in British) was a great gift, and it was indeed adventitious, as you say. It might never have been. Recall that I've consistently opined, right from the beginning of digital imaging, that digital imaging should not have been called photography but something else; that photography as we knew it was something distinct, something that is becoming vestigial now. It was an incredible accident of history and the evolution of technology that we had photography in a central role in culture for virtually 150 years with relatively few changes in its basic principles, as they were devised by Talbot in the 1830s. I'm also very grateful that my life in photography bestrode the two main currents—I got to see the digital transition and the coming of age of color, the smartphone and the advent of near-instantaneous electronic transmission, Photoshop, the virtual end of the print, AI, and whatever is yet to come, but I also got a solid grounding in the practice, the culture, the history, the accomplishments, and the lore of silver-halide photography as it used to be, while it was still current. It's amazing that the primacy of B&W lasted very strongly even up to my time. When I first worked till dawn making 8x10 prints from Verichrome Pan film on Medalist paper in a primitive darkroom set up in a bathroom under the basement stairs, I was working in a way that was not so different from the way photographers had worked a hundred years earlier. I arrived at the end of a long tradition that had strong ligatures to the past—and got to immerse myself in it before culture and technology changed forever. Lucky timing for sure!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Dennis Mook: "Back in the 1970s, I was a forensic detective, and we photographed all crime scenes with Pentax Spotmatics, only a 50mm ƒ/1.4 SMC Takumar lens (for normal perspective) and Tri-X film. The courts forbade color film as it was considered too inflammatory for a jury. Curiously, our testimony always had to include the phrase, 'A true and accurate representation of the scene as I found it.' But it wasn’t, as the scenes were captured in black and white! I think if color film had been invented first, black and white never would have been allowed in court.

"Several years ago, I started a project of photographing subject matter 'Just for the Color.' I found looking for compositions 'just for the color' was fun and interesting and caused me to see in a different way. Here is a link to that gallery on my website if anyone is interested."

Albert Smith: "Besides traditional photography, let's not forget another medium that put B&W into the gestalt: television. Those of us of a certain age remember when B&W television, both the hardware and programming, was the norm, and we just accepted that as perfectly natural. I can remember that even when color TVs became available (at a very high cost), networks still initially produced new shows in B&W, only going to color after they were proving their popularity. Then the classic brag, 'In Color' was displayed with the title, I suppose so that people that only still had B&W sets would know."

Mike replies: And then there are those of us who deliberately bought B&W sets until we couldn't find them any more. (Big sh*t-eatin' grin.) I remember once when I was watching the movie Wall Street with about five professional photographer friends when that movie was first out on VHS, probably in the early '90s or thereabouts. The host had provided popcorn. During one of the opening cityscapes, one friend said, "that's a nice shot." I waited a few beats, then said, "yeah, 'cept it's moving." Paused for a beat, then added, "...and it's in color." There were groans all around and they all started throwing popcorn at me. 

No doubt you (or at least some readers) recall our epic Readers' Choice list of The Best B&W films. Three that I like that aren't on the list are The Asphalt Jungle, In a Lonely Place, and The Best Years of Our Lives.

Rob de Loe: "When I became serious about photography several decades ago, I shot colour reversal film for a short while, but switched to black and white very quickly. I shot exclusively black and white when I used film, and when I switched to digital in 2014, I shot exclusively for black and white. I never understood people who made a photograph and then decided on the computer whether it should be black and white or colour. I shot for black and white. I simply didn’t press the shutter button when the image in the viewfinder looked to be a colour photo.

"And then I switched to colour. I don’t mean I started making some colour photographs in addition to black and white. I switched completely over to colour in April, 2022.

"I feel like a person who loved classical music until he had a head injury, and now can’t listen to classical anymore. I’ve tried a couple times to shoot for black and white, but it’s gone. It’s like a switch flipped in my brain. I still enjoy some of my black-and-white work from film and digital, but almost as if it’s someone else’s work.

"Trust me, I find this very strange too!"

Mark Sampson: "When I worked as a guard at the Phillips Collection (2014–17) I often was assigned to the Rothko Room there. Never has it been more true that 'THE REPRODUCTION IS NOT THE ART.' Sorry for shouting, but the 'I don't get it' people (in almost every case) need to experience the art before speaking up. Rothko vs. Eggleston? I've never seen an original Eggleston dye transfer so I won't choose, but remember that 'There's no accounting for taste.'"

Art and Artists Question

Which artists would you think might be useful for photographers to know and study?

That was a question I came up with a few days ago, thinking of topics to write about. Trouble is, my list kind of stalled at...four. I was a little shocked that a cascade of names didn't drown my brain. The first three that I thought of immediately were Edward Hopper, Raphael, and Vermeer.

Then I thought of Caravaggio—Mr. Chiaroscuro—and that seems obvious, although I never liked him all that much. His paintings seem violent to me. When I was young I had this persistent sense that I could glean the artist's personality from their art, and when I didn't like what I sensed of the personality, I tended not to like or trust the work.

If ever a cover should not have a red banner across the
corner, it's this one.

After those three I started to run into one peculiar problem. My high school classmate Caroline's daughter, whose name I don't know, was a prolific drawer as a child. When her mother suggested she copy something, when the daughter was nine, she refused, saying, "never go from flat." I love that.

That is, when you're drawing, look at the three-dimensional real world and don't copy something that's already been reduced down into two dimensions by someone else or by some other means. This is a sensitive point with me, because I have a sense when I look at art of all kinds whether "there's a photograph behind it," meaning, the artists is painting or drawing from a photograph. With some art it's obvious, and with some it's almost like a faint shadow and I'm not sure of it. But I tend to like art better when it doesn't have that shadow of a photograph behind it.

It's a bit odd that Hopper is photographic in his vision, yet there isn't that shadow there. And sure enough, Hopper didn't "go from flat." He looked at the real thing and made sketches (many of them) and took written notes. So he might have been a painter who was influenced by photography, but he wasn't one who used photographs to paint from.

Even Vermeer, who died 164 years before the invention of the Daguerreotype was announced, might have been using the lens image as an aid for his painting, according to the (must-see) movie Tim's Vermeer.

Edgar Degas, Race Horses, 1883–85

The problem I ran into was that many latter-day and recent representational artists do have that shadow behind their work. Winslow Homer does; Eakins does, to my eye, although I don't hold it against him—I used to say that Eakins was actually a multimedia artist whose final works happened to be rendered as paintings. (Kind of half a joke, like a lot of my opinions about art.) It's easier to forgive artists who worked closer to the inception of photography; when Degas used photographic cropping in paintings, it was radical and new. A friend tells me that Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera is actually a very interesting book for us photographers, regardless of whether you like Rockwell. I love Jordan Casteel, but would someone look at her work purely to inform their photography? It seems odd to suggest that photographers should study artists to improve their photography when the artist might have used photographs to paint from in the first place.

Maybe what I really should do, rather than to compile such a list as I'm proposing, would be to read Secret Knowledge by David Hockney, which I'm rather shocked to find out is from 2006. (I still think of it as "recent.") It's about that very subject: artists who mediate their vision through or with the lens image vs. those who paint from direct observations of three dimensions, from imagination, or abstractly.

The book has always been a little too expensive for me, and I'm flat out of room for more books, sadly. (Half my reference books that I need for this job are already inaccessible in boxes in the attic of the barn. I'm shocked to discover just now (from Amazon's records) that I actually own Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera. It's in a box somewhere and I can't get to it, and out of sight, out of mind. You know what they say: oh well.)

I do tend to forgive artists who were also photographers, which includes Eakins. I have The Photographs of Thomas Eakins somewhere. And it includes the marvelous artist/photographer Saul Leiter whose photography work I cannot get enough of. And David Hockney himself.

Maybe one of my resolutions for 2024 should be to get Secret Knowledge from the library!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

robert e: "I'm going to sort of sidestep the question and suggest studying the artists that move you (whether positively or negatively); just do it deliberately, i.e., with the goal of learning something applicable to photographs.

"Why? First, I think photographers can learn something from most any flat art, including abstracts. Second, there's a lot of art and your time is limited, so you might as well focus on the stuff that resonates personally, that you want to spend more time with anyway. And third, you might learn something about yourself, too."

David Dyer-Bennet: "My mental model is that the thing I could particularly learn about from non-photographic visual artists is composition. (I can of course also learn about that from photographers.) Not to say there aren't other things to learn; there clearly are, particularly if you start including retouching and restoration in 'photography' (because then lots of painting techniques or at least the understanding behind them become relevant).

"('Cropping' is another area where there should be plenty to learn; it's tightly related to composition, too.)

"And, for composition, whether I approve of their techniques or even of their results doesn't really matter, does it? If an image is widely thought to be first-rate, the composition must be at least 'okay,' and is very probably considerably better than that, right? So my looking to figure out how that works has reasonable chances of being enlightening? There's a certain feeling of superiority to be had from thinking you've learned from art you don't like, anyway  :-)  .

"I've been collecting examples and trying to make time to study them, off and on, for over a decade now I guess. Possibly I might even have learned some things."

Roger Bradbury: "Perhaps you should get rid of that funny looking table in the middle of the 'pool' shed, and fill the space with book shelves....  ;-)  "

Mike replies: Part of the original plan: low bookshelves around the edges that cues would clear the top of. Alas, it's not big enough. The room on the floor is needed for footing. The pool shed is big enough, but barely.

A library is actually a perfect room for a pool table. Shelves on all the walls, pool table in the middle. But the room has to be big enough. Take a look at the basement this house in the town I'm thinking of moving to. Very few small houses have any space that is truly big enough for a full size pool table. You need about 19x15 feet clear of any impediments. It's rare to find. I would deal with the less than ideal kitchen, which is probably what's keeping that house from selling.

Oops, am I talking about pool again? I'm not supposed to do that!

Bob Keefer: "I'm going to sidestep the question slightly and suggest a different way for photographers to learn from the classical art world. When people ask me what's the best class to take on photography, I recommend they sign up for a good drawing class. Learning to draw what's in front of you from a decent instructor develops your ability to see the world carefully and accurately, to see what is actually there as opposed to what you expect to see. You also learn about composition and tonal structure of images. Drawing doesn't require talent—only regular practice—and it can deeply change your view of the world and of art."

Len Salem: "Mischievous me suggests that any book by or about any artist you like is worth studying if your intention as a photographer is to express yourself and how you feel about things. Because what, as photographers, many of us need to think about is our intention in making images. Getting to grips with the thought processes of an artist might be valuable help for understanding this. Learning the technique(s) necessary to express that intention is a separate study, and possibly one about which it is easier to become informed or recommend resources."

Hank: "I ran into a Bonnard exhibition during one of my travels a few years back—I think it was at the Tate—and I was struck at how 'photographic' his paintings were. A little research later showed he was a keen amateur photographer."

Mike replies: One of my favorite books is a book of Bonnard's photography. They are not "good," nor do they look at all like my own photographs, but for some reason they just grab me right at base level. Kind of like Howe Gelb's music. Thanks for mentioning him!

Jim R: "When working in color I tend to think of Maxfield Parrish when taking landscape photos after sunset, and William Turner and Hudson School of Art painters when there's water in a scene."

John: "Picasso was supposedly challenged about his distorted representation of an individual—likely his latest mistress. Picasso then asked his interlocutor whether he was married, and if so, did he perhaps have a photograph of her? Out came a wallet and a small snap handed over. 'She’s very beautiful. Such a shame she’s so small, flat, and grey.'

"To Adam Isler’s list of painters, I would add Durer, especially his Great Piece of Turf (Das große Rasenstück); and, George de La Tour, 'The Cheat with the Ace of Diamonds,' in the Louvre collections."

Tom Burke: "It would have to be 'realistic' painters, I think. So, for example, still life and genre paintings from the Dutch Golden Age, would inform photographers of similar subjects. And portrait paintings, surely—again, Dutch masters, as well as artists such as Lawrence and Gainsborough. And then there's Joseph Wright 'of Derby.' If you want chiaroscuro without the violence, e.g. 'A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery'. It would be challenging to tackle a subject with that much dynamic range with a digital camera and try control it...."

AI Imaging is a Pox, a Fraud and a Thief

I woke up this morning thinking I might become a radical—photographically speaking. I am so demoralized by the sudden-seeming advent of this pestiferous "AI" imaging that I'm afraid I've allowed it to begin suffocating my interest in photography altogether. But why should I lay down without a fight? Why should I submit without resistance to becoming literally a fool, by being fooled? Why should I not stand up for what value and believe in? When what you love is attacked, should you not fight back?

In one brutal fait accompli, AI is the apotheosis and the realization of the worst fears I had when digital imaging first appeared. Photography in its most exalted form and practice is a means of investigating and appreciating the visual world, of commemorating what we are privileged to see; and as such it should have some sort of connection to the real, like a bear print in the woods is connected to the bear, or like a fossil had to be formed by an actual ancient trilobite. It has to have a trace of the real, left by the actual. The ligatures that bind it to truth (whether closely or loosely) are an essential and indivisible part of its nature, in the complete absence of which it is not itself. To be "photography," an imaging system, whether analog or digital, either by its nature or by virtue of the way it is deployed by a sentient human being, must respect the lens image, and, through the lens image, report to the viewer of the photograph, in some manner and to some degree, what actually might have existed in the world of appearances.

AI has nothing to do with photography, except as a means of flooding the culture with counterfeits—a flood that is dispiritingly likely to drown once and for all the benefits and the benevolences of the art and the craft we have learned over the years to love. It is a pox, an assault, a body-blow, a curse. It has nothing to do with me and I wish I could choose to have nothing to do with it.

Mike

P.S. Wish I could make TOP an AI-free zone. I guess you can't fight the Borg, though.

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Peter Lohnes: "This may be the best, most concise critique of visual AI I’ve come across. I especially like the analogy of the bear track in the woods. Even as I chafe at the inescapable ubiquity of smart phone cameras with their ever increasing computing power, I find myself ignoring my beloved Fuji X-100F and relying on the ease and convenience of my iPhone. Today a friend told me in wonder of his new phone which will allow him to use AI to paste himself into photos of places he’s never been. I felt a bit of my soul die."

Mike replies: I could swear the bear track analogy comes from Walter Benjamin, the great art, culture, and media critic, but I've never been able to find it again. I've mentioned it many times over the years and nobody has come forward with a citation. Sorry I can't be of more help. But I can't take credit for it myself.

Arg: "Brilliant thinking, brilliantly written. This is why I have been following TOP for 15+ years. Thank you Michael."

David Comdico: "Interestingly I posted a comment here several months ago that said something very similar. Don McCullin noted that digital photography’s inherent form gave it a propensity toward dishonesty. He was considered an old fuddy duddy shaking his fist at rain clouds, but he was totally correct. AI is the sound of the other shoe dropping."

Mike replies: Perhaps I subconsciously "absorbed" it from you. I have a different quote from you taped to my computer, after all!

Derek Kemp: "To say 'I couldn’t have said it better myself' is an extreme understatement. You, Mike, are wonderful with words sometimes, especially when needed to be. This was/is one of those occasions for sure. And not one swear word in the whole thing. Just perfect. And...so true!"

Christopher J May: "Re: 'P.S. Wish I could make TOP an AI-free zone. I guess you can't fight the Borg, though.' If there's one thing that the various incarnations of Star Trek have taught us, it's that you can fight the Borg. There's usually a heavy toll and success requires creativity, daring and élan. Resistance, however, is not as futile as they'd like you to believe."

Kye Wood (partial comment): "AI is garbage. In a decade it will still be garbage. Here's the why—at its core, it's not AI. It's SI. Simulated Intelligence. Give it something it hasn't encountered before, and it will fail. Given that this world is defined by endless change, it will fail. There are edge cases where it can accelerate the understanding of epic datasets. But that's it. It will never 'know' the difference between a human hand and a spoon. Every thing is just a 'thing.' Sentience is the purview of the sentient."

calvin amari: "Even without generative AI we are increasingly (and alarmingly) becoming a post-truth, alternative-facts world. AI likely will be the final nail in that coffin. The complete evisceration of photography's generally presumed veracity is a loss to be sure, but that may be the least of it. There are already shelf programs—my firm has access to one—that can target anyone who has as little as a few minutes of voice recordings on the internet and make them say literally anything that you want them to say, however outlandish. This is not merely splicing technology but voice simulation that is instantly recognizable as the target. Not only is it the case that 'facts' can be generated, but actual facts now are quite reasonably subject to plausible deniability. To be sure, AI can be used for good or ill. The problem is that being an asshole, though optional, remains a very popular elective."

egor: "Like anyone who never leaves the house without a camera glued to their hand, I’ve given generative AI a lot of thought. My conclusion is somewhat different. Because generative AI is an entirely different medium, its presence does not affect how I see and experience my surroundings. It does not change my desire to photograph those surroundings (95% of the time on B&W film), nor to print them in all their grainy, murky, low-fidelity greyness. It does not limit my 'audience,' because an A.I. audience would not be interested in my photos anyway.

"I once would frequent a small, traditional, family-owned Italian coffee shop. Perfect roast. Perfect pulls. One day a Starbucks went in across the street, and I asked the proprietor if he was worried. 'Nah,' he said, 'no one who goes there would come here, so it’s not a problem.' Ten years later, that small, traditional, family-owned Italian spot still remains and still thrives.

"As you pointed out (and as I’ve also argued), generative AI is not photography. It is its own thing. I have no doubt I’ll discover exquisite AI works that I love, just as I do with exquisite paintings, or exquisite sculptures. I can have deep appreciation for a Giacometti sculpture, a Rothko painting and a Shomei Tomatsu photo—they do not compete. My issues with A.I. are related entirely to it being an existential threat. But a threat to photography? Nah…'cause it ain’t photography. I wrote more 'elequantly' about this earlier in the year."

Mike replies: That's an excellent essay and beautifully written. And I love the idea of making photographs to deliberately screw up AI's trawling tendrils.

Keith Cartmell: "My writer buddies call AI 'the plagiarism machine.' I have as little to do with it as possible, but it's creeping into Lightroom. Soon it will get to the point where the only way I'll trust an image is is a photograph is if I can also see the actual piece of celluloid with a negative image on it."

How to Enjoy Photography

I wouldn't say there are as many ways to enjoy photography as there are photographers, but there are a lot. I wish I was a list-making kind of guy, who could keep a list going until it reached some sense of completeness. In the last post I mentioned a few. Here are those and a few more off the top of my head:

Camera collecting. A way of exhibiting status in parts of Asia, and the main interest of any number of enthusiasts. You could say you're a collector as soon as you arrange the contents of your "camera closet" (or drawer, or cabinet, or wherever you keep your gear) as a display. Jason Schneider, one of the major editors of the photo magazine era, has always had a strong interest in collecting, and even concocted a list of The 100 Greatest Cameras of All Time.

Photograph collecting. There are a large number of subsets, from Elton John all the way down to people who clip photos they like from magazines. You can collect postcards, or antique-shop portraits, or de-accessioned newspaper file photos, or prints from art fairs. One guy I knew collected photographs by students, most of whom are very grateful to make a sale. Another friend of mine, Jim, decided he couldn't be a photo collector because he didn't have enough money, so he decided simply to buy himself one nice photograph every year, the best he could afford, on his birthday. Forty-odd years later, his home is full of rare photographs, and they've appreciated so much that the sale of just one picture paid for a daughter's college education.

As a way to organize vacations. Michael Reichmann used to lead tours to Antarctica and Iceland, and Peter Turnley gives workshops in Paris and Cuba. You can find workshops in the American West and expeditions by ship up the Alaskan coast, all manner of things, all in the service of photographing.

As tech. Some people love to concentrate on various aspects of the tech; my friend Max knew everything there was to know about print developers at one point (I think he's given that up and moved on now), and one of our readers was an expert on sensors and sensor fabrication.

The industry. With the advent of the internet, some forumers got very interested in the fortunes, workings, and strategies of the camera companies. There used to be other kinds of companies as well, like film and paper companies, accessory manufacturers (some of which are still around), darkroom specialty companies, and so forth, and now there are software companies to get interested in, too, such as Adobe and computer companies that make smartphones such as Apple.

For that matter, as a forumer. People who photograph love to talk to each other, and a few would rather talk about it than do it. There's nothing wrong with any of this, by the way. Suit yourself.

As a family chronicler. A friend of mine, Jerry, was very assiduous in documenting his family and their activities, and now in his retirement he's working to put in all in order so it makes sense to his children and grandchildren.

As personal expression. People who practice art photography might either incorporate photography into art of different kinds, or create unique work that expresses their own vision or concerns distinctively. You don't have to succeed at this from a monetary standpoint to practice it.

As documentary. The opposite of personal expressivity might be subordinating photography to its subject; that is, you're more interested in what the photograph shows than in the photograph in and of itself.

As shopping. Some people get happily immersed in a neverending loop of research, desire, and acquisition, and they really enjoy that.

As a way to get out into nature, from hikes in a local park to mountaineering or hiking the Appalachian Trail with a camera.

As a focus for walks or driving trips. Lee Friedlander's son Erik, a jazz and avant-garde cellist, talked in an interview about the family's epic car trips when he was a boy, during which his father would photograph. Henry Wessel's working method was to go places and walk for many hours each day with his Leica and its old Canon lens.

Printmaking. If you didn't read Clay's Featured Comment on the previous post, you should go back and do that. Photographic fine printmaking is an old and honorable craft that continues to thrive here and there, both in terms of old alterantive processes, traditional analog printmaking, and as fine-art inkjet printing.

-

[To be continued...but if more of these come to your mind, by all means drop a comment.]

The Antidote (Follow-Up to 'Is Photography...Ending?')

Okay, now for the antidote. This follows up on my glum article from last week, "Is Photography...Ending?"

First of all, you can be a photographer with nothing but a smartphone. To me, what I need for satisfaction is a.) a camera that's fun and satisfying to use while taking pictures, and b.) that gives me results that I love and that nourish my enthusiasm. For me—just for me—a smartphone doesn't cut it because it provides only "a." I do love the freedom and fun of the iPhone camera and I use mine a lot. It's...socially acceptable. The last print I had made for me (by an expert custom printmaker, which I used to be) has an image area of ~12x17", and phone cameras can't do that. But smartphone pictures look great on the phone itself and good on the computer or tablet screen, so, if that's your target, you're good to go with the camera that came with the device you already use every day. A large survey by Piper Sandler recently showed that 87% of American teenagers prefer Apple phones, but some of the Android devices have cameras that are just as good and in some cases better. The advent of the smartphone camera is a bad thing for the camera industry, but it just isn't a bad thing for photography, or for people who love pictures.

You only need what you need
Secondly, the camera market might be declining, but so what? Don't you currently own possibly the best camera you've ever had in your entire life? Or something very close to it? I do. Who doesn't? I suppose someone within the sound of my voice is at the end of their camera's life and is ready to go shopping again, or is tired of hauling a big DSLR around, or finds their interest changing to things a different camera would be better suited for. But, for the most part, digital cameras have fulfilled their early promise, and even an older one is plenty good enough to have fun with and yield great results. Perhaps some people don't have a great camera, or the camera they want. I suspect my readers, in general, have the opposite problem—they have more great cameras than they need.

And if you prefer "slow photography" and still shoot film, there's a modest resurgence of interest in film photography happening, lots of encouragement and sharing of knowledge on the internet, and an endless parade of old products still hanging around (well, maybe not enlargers). And contrary to the many dire predictions that were common in the 1990s and early 2000s, film itself is still available.

Competent? Why you, I'll...
On to the notion of photography galleries withering away and museums sort of being lost about digital, leaning on things like historical surveys and the big names from the end of film. (Not that I don't love those. And, art needs objects.) Here's a memory from my faraway youth. Not long out of art school, I prepared a portfolio of smallish (11x14") B&W prints for a then-new gallery in an arty enclave of D.C., which represented a hot "emerging" talent I admired. Two weeks after dropping it off, having not heard anything from them, I wandered back in to see if any progress had been made regarding my portfolio review. Behind the desk .occupied by a distracted young gallerista talking on the phone, I immediately spied my lovingly prepared portfolio on a cluttered side-table, looking neglected under the beginnings of a paper-drift on top of it. I cooled my heels for quite a while as she continued her phone conversation. When I was finally favored with her attention, I asked if Mr. X, owner of the eponymous gallery, had looked at it yet. She said, "no. And I don't think he will." Then she added, "but I have."

I immediately apprehended that she was probably the person who decided which of the walk-in portfolios to pass along to Mr. X—and mine had not made her cut. With my mind rapidly composing the likely conversation between the two of them, in which Mr. X undoubtedly waxed acerbic and stern about her duty to protect him from all the wannabe junk he didn't want to bother with, I said, "what did you think?"

She looked confused and uncomfortable, and finally she said, "well...[long pause]...it's...competent."

Ouch!

My thinking was something along these lines: damn, who are you? You're the same age as me if not younger; you probably live in a cheap, miserable little walkup just like I do, unless you still live at home; you accept help from your parents or you'd be perpetually broke; you try to put on a brave face about your job when actually you're just a glorified receptionist. And the primary asset that got you hired is that you're slinky and gorgeous, not that your taste in photographs is anything special. And so on. I didn't say any of that, of course. In the few remaining words that were actually spoken, we agreed there was no point in my leaving my work there any longer, and I walked out with my portfolio under my arm, my feelings good and hurt.

I got the last laugh, after a fashion. I got asked to curate a show at a Park Service gallery that got ten times the foot traffic of that little downtown art gallery—if not twenty times—and I showed six photographers, one of whom was me, and I showed the work from that portfolio. It got a lot of nice compliments. We were reviewed in The Washington Post (which later asked me to be its photography critic; I declined). Inside the front door of the gallery I put one of my large color view-camera landscapes, mainly because it was already framed. I sold two prints from that show (for $350 each, score! Two months' rent) but both were of the large color landscape that I had included as decoration for the entryway. So maybe the gallerista was right.

I can't say I wouldn't have appreciated a little more encouragement in my early days. And it was certainly a pleasure to make the rounds of galleries and museums when I lived in D.C.—I took a long day once and month and hit everything, and for a while I did the same in New York City. But is it really so bad that no photographers (the number approaches zero, anyway, compared to the number of photographers there are now) get gallery shows any more? I slapped a bunch of test pictures from that converted Sigma on Flickr, and then kept going, and look at the number of views some of the older ones have gotten—4,000, 5,000, 12,500, 67,000. Does a show of photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art get a total of 67,000 walk-through visitors? I don't know. Even my newest one, "Combine Near Dark" (which you should look at on your monitor at night, under subdued room light, by the way—I'll go add that to the description) has gotten 1,200 views. I doubt that the gallery that sent me packing, which is long gone now, ever got 1,200 visitors for a one-month show. Or if they did, it was probably only a few times. Granted, I have an advantage, because I have an existing audience through this site, and I've gotten significant boosts from being picked several times for Flickr's "Explore" page, Flickr's brightly-lit shop window for selections from its contents. But that one that got 67,000 views wasn't featured on Explore. Neither was the one that got 77,000 views.

I think you see the point I'm making. Most of us get much more exposure now, or at least have a fair chance to go after it.

There are a lot of advantages to having gatekeepers. One is that curators curate, which is highly useful to the rest of us. I loved photography galleries. Another is that a show of carefully prepared original art is the best way to look at photographs. Or was, until the museums started turning the lighting down. But for most people—we have it better now.

Don't complain
While it's true that photography's culture is changing and we're losing a lot that we once took for granted, this is also true: it's always been that way. Also during my time in D.C. after graduating from the Corcoran, I worked for six months as an assistant to a studio advertising photographer. When I knew him, he liked to complain about how "amateurs" were stealing work from him—I could reconstruct his arguments today, I heard them so often. His idea was that there were all these people out there who thought they were photographers who did professional jobs for nothing, or for very little, just because they wanted to call themselves pros. (I didn't point out that, technically, this included me.) I won't go on about this; suffice to say that I read a lot about photography in my early days, and, if you read around enough in photography's history, you'll soon detect a steady undercurrent of photographers bitching and moaning about how great things used to be and how much worse they are now. Often, right alongside other photographers who are embracing whatever is new and gushing about how great the new thing is! Whether it's that newfangled albumen printing, or the new "fast" ISO 64 Kodachrome, or cameras that have an exposure meter built in. Right up to all the recent hand-wringing about social media changing (Google "social media is dead" and look at some of the articles. Snapchat is changing! Instagram is changing! Social media isn't what it used to be, apparently.)

They're both wrong, really. In some ways the new developments are better; in some ways, it's a shame that we've lost what we've lost. The point is, this isn't a new thing.

Outside in
One last thought and I'll shut up. We—dedicated photographers, enthusiasts of the pastime, those who love photographic images—have always been basically outsiders. We have always gone our own way and done our own thing. The technology has always been in flux; social acceptance has gone up and down; the culture has constantly changed. The meaning of what a photograph does and what it means has actually never been static or stable. None of it matters, really. The fact remains that it's a pleasure to look hard at the world and investigate what we see in our lives. Seeing—and, sometimes, photographing—always is, always was, and always will be a joy.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

John Sullivan: "I am retired from a museum photography job. For many years I created beautiful images of rare priceless objects. I got great satisfaction doing this. In the final years of my job I began doing more of the art photography that I have loved. I get more enjoyment from this than all the work that I did for the museum. Before I retired I got the distinct impression that no matter how excellent my images were, I could be replaced by another technical photographer and not be missed. When people see the images I am making for myself I know they can't be done by anyone else and they cause others to experience joy."

Patrick Murphy: "This is one of the saddest sentences I've ever read: 'We were reviewed in The Washington Post (which later asked me to be its photography critic; I declined).' I have great respect for you, and great respect for the Post. I'm the same age as you and grew up in D.C. during the Post's tremendous Pentagon Papers/Watergate era. My career goal at 20 was to be the Post's Comics Editor. But to be the photography critic?!? Heaven! You must tell us why you turned this down, and your thoughts on it now as you look back."

Mike replies: tl;dr version: The pay wasn't adequate.

I don't recall a lot of the details now, but here's the story as I remember it. I had written for several smaller papers and arts journals in the D.C. area, and became mildly notorious (even in New York, just a little) after I wrote an article that was harshly critical of Richard Avedon's "In the American West." My title was "The Fashion Photographer's Nightmare"; the paper that published it changed the title to "Sniping at Avedon," which I thought was less a title for the article than a critique of it. And I don't think I would have been "the" photography critic...I think there was someone with a name who was writing feature articles. They wanted someone to write short gallery and museum show reviews. At first I was very excited about it. The previous reviewer had just moved on. Because I knew several gallery owners, I knew that that person, and I honestly can't recall the name now, was known to write show reviews based on only a phone call to the gallery owner, without even seeing the work. Well, I would definitely not have done that. I would have visited the work twice, spoken to the artist, and interviewed the gallery owner or someone else who was in some meaningful way connected to the work. I can't recall if they wanted three pieces a week or five, but I figured that the way I would want to do it, it would be about a half-time job, maybe twenty hours a week. And the offer was $105 a week. When I complained, it was sweetened to $130. (Which was considerate of them, I now realize.) It just wasn't enough. I had recently graduated, and had debts, and was trying to make a go of it as a photographer, meaning, I had no job. There were many months when I didn't know how I was going to meet the rent for the very next month. I'm pleased to report that I never did anything illegal*. Well, not for money.

As far as my thoughts looking back, my official position is that I regret everything*. However, the missed Post opportunity is one thing I truly regret. After I had matured just a little, it occurred to me that it would have been a nice line to have on my resumé. But later still, after I had matured even a little bit more, I realized that everyone has to pay their dues...and that I should have done so too.

*That's meant to be a joke!

Alan Whiting: "Mike, I would also emphasize (under the 'now is better' heading) The sheer technical advance of imaging. Pictures are now routinely produced that would have been impossible, or very difficult, a few decades ago. I'm thinking in particular of nightscapes showing the Milky Way and a scenic foreground; and the pictures produced by amateur astronomers in general. There must be other examples. A picture that presented no technical challenges in the old days might not be much improved by present technology, but the range of possible images has been greatly extended."

Mike replies: Great point, Alan, thanks.

Is Photography...Ending?

Okay, clickbait title. At least I hope it is. I try.

But take it as a serious question. Of course "photography" has to mean photography as we once knew it, because virtually everyone in the First World is equipped with a camera as matter of routine nowadays. According to Pew Research and others, almost 90% of Americans now own a smartphone. Another 7–8% own cellphones. (I presume they're counting only adults.) Everyone takes and shares pictures now. Photography certainly isn't ending in that sense; it's taken off like a rocket.

That doesn't mean that photography "as we knew it" can't get functionally obliterated by the ubiquity of smartphones, although that's probably a conversation for a different day. The vast torrent of new pictures—above a billion daily just in the US, by most estimates—has many implications, including a.) that no one person can be familiar with more than a minuscule fraction of all the photographs being made, meaning that no one, not even a professional curator, has a reasonable understanding of the directions and accomplishments of photography as a whole any more; and b.) photographing is fast becoming nothing special or distinctive simply because everyone does it, about like everyone eats, breathes, and poops. It's a part of daily existence and fast becoming nothing at all special. Photographers used to be respected, because, through hard-won skill and knowledge and practice, they could do things ordinary people couldn't. But the status of having specialized knowledge and skill has been evaporating for years now. Paralleling that decline is a decline in the in the need to hire a photographer for a wide array of once-common needs. In the late '80s I was charging $670 for a portrait sitting plus $80 per print. Now, I literally can't give away portrait sittings for free half the time. People take their own portraits now.

Then there's the camera industry. For decades it was a truism that "the mass market" supported the makers of the high-end equipment that art photographers, professionals, and photojournalists wanted. And it did, once upon a time. No longer. Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Lenovo, Xiaomi, Oppo, ZTE, Vivo, LG and Alcatel own the mass market now, and none of them are doing anything to support lower-end consumer ILCs (interchangeable lens cameras), much less helping Nikon produce Z camera lenses or subsidizing Fuji's interchangeable-lens medium-format cameras. Camera companies have been disappearing for years now and there are for all practical purposes only five of them left: according to Statista, Canon, Sony, Nikon, Fuji and Panasonic account for 94% of ILCs sold today, all the other surviving brands sharing the meager remaining six percent. And shipments of digital still cameras declined from 121 million units in 2010 to just eight million in 2021, a decrease of 93%. And nearly all of those eight million are hybrid cameras, video having become a significant driver of both interest and sales to today's buyers, as well as a locus of technological development and innovation for the manufacturers.

Hard-won culture
As far as some of the other features of the old culture of photography, built up so painstakingly from the beginnings through the advent of affordable digital cameras, I don't have facts and figures at my fingertips. These include museum and gallery shows and sales, books, and printmaking, and the art market.

The practice of "art photographers" (usual disclaimer: I use the term as a description, not a claim) building up a CV based around shows, sales to museums and private collections, teaching and lectures, awards and honors, and published articles about the photographer or the work used to be common enough that the nuts-and-bolts of it was part of a class about the business of photography that I took as a senior in art school. So do photographers still strive to advance their work by dropping off portfolios of prints at galleries and museums for review? I'd have to talk to gallerists and museum curators to get a handle on whether this is more or less common than it was forty years ago, but I have my suspicions.

Peer-to-peer and peer-to-public sharing of deliberate bodies of work through books seems less necessary now than it was when photography was on the rise as an art form. I've seen no sign that interest in photobooks has diminished; it's quite possible more are being published now than ever before. But I do get the sense that books are more often considered artworks in themselves, with many of the creators maybe falling into the category of "artist" rather than "photographer" and the individual photographs in them perhaps becoming less primary, and I would guess that printing runs are getting smaller and smaller. I'd have to talk to photobook publishers to take the temperature of this aspect of the culture of photography.

Prints. The vast majority of photographers three-quarters of a century ago shot B&W negative film, meaning that pictures required the making of a physical print just to be viewable. Making a print was required in order to share the picture with others. Prints were what we shown and shared. Now, if a photograph existed only as a paper print, it would virtually be a way of hiding it from view. My most popular picture on Flickr (itself not considered a very prominent site, not like Instagram) has just over 77,000 views. Even if I were honored with a full show of custom exhibition prints at a prominent museum—say, the George Eastman Museum, which is local to me—do you think 7,000 people would see it? I doubt that very much. (Again, I'd have to ask the staff at the museum what they believe the average attendance to be.) And how many enthusiast photographers still make their own fine prints, or have fine prints made? As insufficient as it is to view a picture as an online JPEG rather than as a fine print made by a master printmaker, the percentage of photographers who have good prints made is likely in steep decline, I believe. Again, I haven't done the actual research.

A consideration of the art market—which for all practical purposes requires objects to function—wouldn't be out of place here either, but I don't have time.

That sinister elephant
And then there's the elephant in the room: the recent phenomenon of AI. Digital eroded the essence of photography, because it was so much more easily faked and doctored; but there was at least the potential for it to continue to be a record of the lens image, with its understandable connection to the world of appearances, if the operator was honest and worked in a culture which encouraged honesty, such as traditional, edited photojournalism. But AI is the danger inherent in digital suddenly exploding to a nightmare level, and it could be a disaster for any number of areas of photographic culture that were previously still struggling to survive. Just a week ago, in the post about audio speakers, I showed an example of a real-world advertising pastiche that was based on AI. That's something that a professional photographer would have had to shoot, and be paid for, in times gone by. No more. Before the pandemic I asked a professional I know how he was doing, and he told me he cleared $80k the year before. "That's not so bad," was my comment, to which he said, "Yes, it is, because I used to clear $240k a year." That's about to get worse. Thank goodness it's still easy to recognize AI when you look for it; I hope against hope its flaws are inherent in it and it never gets any better, although that seems very unlikely.

And if digital quietly eroded public support in the veracity of photography, its ability to serve as a witness, AI, if it gets a lot better, will obliterate it.

In sum: the art, craft, and business of photography as we once knew it is in considerable decline, in terms of status and stature, practice, reward, it's place in society, and in its conceptual underpinnings. Things look grim.

Don't despair
I have to break this off, because the insistent needs of the blog format mean I simply have to get something up before breakfast—there hasn't been a new post since Saturday, and there must be. And, um, it's almost 1:00 p.m. and I'm hungry. So I don't have time to finish this now. As I always say, this stuff doesn't write itself, and I watch myself getting slower as I get older. But don't despair just yet—and don't condemn this post for being one-sided until you read the other side. There's good news, too. I'll show you the sunny side of all this, and explain why it's not really a disaster, sometime within the next week.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Tex Andrews: "Re 'So do photographers still strive to advance their work by dropping off portfolios of prints at galleries and museums for review? I'd have to talk to gallerists and museum curators to get a handle on whether this is more or less common than it was forty years ago, but I have my suspicions.' Got news for you (I work at the Hirshhorn, and my wife at the Baltimore Museum of Art; I'm in the Exhibits Department, she was a registrar and now a curator—a rare bird!): Not only is this not true for art photographers, it's not true for any artists anymore. It's harder now to get your work in front of 'the people that matter' than it has ever been."

Paul Martini: "'The ease with which we can make a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.' —Ansel Adams."

Doug Anderson: "I look forward to reading the good news! My take on the situation is pretty much what you have described so far."

JOHN B GILLOOLY: "The beginning of this post echoes the sentiment I have had this month while photographing two PGA events (professional golf) in Chicago, Illinois, and Greensboro, North Carolina. The layers of redundant coverage of everything is a bit disheartening. Almost any significant moment that you photograph is also being photographed and recorded by multiple others with varying skill and equipment levels. The premium in terms of media distribution is certainly speed. I am almost never shooting for media purposes so I am not part of that, but it still has greatly eroded any sense of capturing something 'special.' That represents the erosion of the personal fulfillment side of this equation.

"On the other hand, my business as a commercial photographer is thriving. Demand is steady and even growing and rates are also steady and/or rising. So I felt the need to buffer my frustration and discontent with the reminder that I am a commercial photographer doing this work for a living. I can, and must, be an artist on my own time."

Paul: "The ever-changing world. Which side of the proverbial fence? It really does not matter as we all have to adapt. This argument could be made about most everything and likely has been made since the beginning of time and evolution. That said, I still prefer much of the "old days" and my view considers both nostalgia and romanticism."

Rob de Loe: "You offer a realistic assessment. I've come to the same conclusion. There are a lot of people who still enjoy cameras and lenses, who like making photographs, and who appreciate good photography. But the number is dwindling. Eventually those of us remaining will be like the folks who still practice large format film photography. There are some young whippersnappers in that community, but mostly I think we're down to people who have been doing it seriously for a long time and simply enjoy the process.

"A related trend, which I think you recognize in your post, is the huge gulf that has opened up between the above crowd (enjoys cameras and lenses, likes making photographs, appreciates good photography) and 'artists who use photographs.' Talk about Mars and Venus. The artists who use photographs will be fine because it doesn't look like they're too fussed about things that excite photographers. So how is this not depressing? I suppose if you're willing to just make photographs for yourself and your own enjoyment, you'll be fine. Mind you, with all the billions of photographs being made every day, that's all we're doing anyway, so it won't be a big adjustment."

Lee Rust: "The internet and digital devices have upset just about every traditional aspect of modern life. Photography is everywhere all the time these days, but 'famous photographers' seem to be a thing of the past. Now that anybody can instantly broadcast their images or videos worldwide with the flick of a finger, who needs a gallery? 'Going viral' seems to be the new 'getting famous.'"

John Krumm: "Your coming 'sunny side' follow-up immediately made me think of Monty Python's 'The Bright Side of Life.' We are indeed in weird camera and photography times. I think the decline of photography as a hobby is related to the decline of all hobbies, to the very idea of hobbies. You have to hope that in 30 years we won't be limited to phones, an ever declining used camera supply, and sad go-fund-me garage-made cameras cobbled together with security camera parts."

psu: "The answer is no."

Sean: "Not according to Betteridge's Law of headlines, which states: 'Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no.'"

Jim Arthur: "Amateur photography as we knew it is dead because of its cost and complication. A smartphone is easy to use, can be inexpensive, and is incredibly useful. Camera companies are now trying to automate their complex cameras with additional in-camera processors for AI based autofocus and other computational features, but they can’t compete with the convenience of the smartphone. Once we began to network computers, everything changed…everything sped up…and today in 2023 the modern mirrorless camera remains isolated.

"Today, a twenty-year-old with a smart phone in his pocket has no need to buy a still camera, video camera, stereo, calculator, etc., and if a compromise in the quality of these items is needed to gain the incredible convenience of the smartphone, that’s OK because the device will likely be improved next year. Technology and automation won’t be slowing down anytime soon but I expect quality cameras and lenses to remain available for folks like us for as long as they remain viable tools. For example, you can still spend hundreds of dollars on a Starrett dial caliper when cheap digital Bluetooth calipers are also available."

Guns As Lazy Drama

With the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), Hollywood's largest union, representing 160,000 film and television actors, joining the ongoing Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike, perhaps it's a good time to trot out another of my unpedigreed theories. These are thoughts I have that are neither bolstered by expert opinion nor checkable by fact-checkers nor taught in schools nor defended by polling. Here goes: it is my opinion that the greatest, the best, the most meaningful, the most insightful, and the most accurate piece of criticism of television and movies ever created or expressed is this short segment of the TV show "The Office":

I am waaaay, way past being sick to death of the eternal shoot-'em-up. Sure, when it's called for. Sure, now and then. Sure, when it's appropriate. But wall-to-wall, 24-7, never-ending mayhem and gore for all ages and in every situation? We're like gun-aholics. Maybe somebody involved in the strike could negotiate for the improv class teacher's dictum to Michael: "No more guns." Just for a while. Steve Carell's Michael Scott in this scene is Hollywood in a nutshell. Even if you love violence for some reason, you've got to admit it's true.

While we're at it, could we put the same moratorium on video games? I'm just sayin'.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Awesome and Brilliant Metrics

As we were alerted to via PetaPixel, there's an interesting and well-done post at a home products and review site called SimpleGhar (what's a ghar?) that breaks down, in all kinds of ways, the kinds of cameras in use on Flickr.

The graphics are awesome. British translation: brilliant. Whatever word you choose, they really are awesome and brilliant. As a former magazine editor, I can tell you I would have killed to be able to publish such detailed and well-presented graphics. Assuming it's good data, of course.

The only thing is, and I'm sure you're already aware of this, that Flickr probably isn't very representative of photographers today as a whole. I can't really summarize its reputation generally, because I'm not familiar with all the sharing sites or their content. But my sense is that it's relatively conservative, slanted toward users who care more than average about image quality in the presentation of the pictures, and, all things considered, small. The most interesting revelation concerns Apple: first, that it did so well on Flickr against dedicated ILCs (interchangeable-lens cameras), and secondly, that it so thoroughly dominated the smartphone category. I would expect it to, but maybe not by so much. The top 24 smartphones on Flickr are all Apple iPhones.

More globally, of course, in terms of numbers of pictures made, Apple would completely clobber all those cameramakers, even Canon, and not by anything like a small margin.

Still, data is always interesting, as the kind reader who sent me the link observed. Check it out.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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