# 6758-63 / ~ landscape • common things ~ my involvement with the medium of photography over the past couple days

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“Great light makes great pictures.” ~ Michael Johnston

“There is no such thing as “good” or “bad” photographic light. There is just light.” ~ Brooks Jensen

"Light makes photography. Embrace it. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography". ~ George Eastman

SO, OVER THE PAST FEW DAYS I HAVE made some pictures, an endeavor which should not come as news to many. However, in addition to that satisfying activity, I was also very agitated, annoyed, and perhaps even apoplectic in fact.

What set me off, you might ask? All it took was reading the title of a Mike Johnston entry entitled; Great light makes great pictures. I can not explain fully–perhaps psychoanalytic counseling is called for–why I find this so overwhelmingly annoying but let me try to explain; simply stated, that idea is exceedingly stupid, amateur-ish rubbish in so many ways….

…. first and foremost, in order to even begin to understand that postulation one must define what-in-the-hell is “great” light and/or, for that matter, what-in-the-hell is a “great” picture? Seeking the answer to those 2 questions might not ever lead to a consensus so good luck with that quest.

Ignoring that potential pitfall, we can all most likely agree that in order to make a photograph of any kind–great or not so great–requires the availability of light cuz, as we all know, making a photograph is writing with light. So once again, belief wise, I think we can all agree that light is an essential ingredient employed in the making of a photograph.

However, that written, does or can light “make” a photograph?

The dictionary states that the primary meaning of the word make is to form (something) by putting parts together or combining substances. iMo, based on that definition, an actual person is the only maker who can put together all of the many “parts”–ya know, things like vision, technique, gear, subject selection and visual organization, et al–needed to make a photograph. Indeed, light is one of those parts and, in some applications, it can be a very important part but, nevertheless, a “great” picture requires more than just the light, no matter how “great”, in order to be considered to be “great”. In other words, quite literally, light can not make a picture.

That written, the dictionary also iterates other possible meanings of the word make, one of which is to assure the success or fortune of; as in, seeing her makes my day. That meaning of the word could be employed by some viewers of a picture (with “great” light) to state, “The light in that picture is what makes it for me”…..OK, I get that but, if it is only the light that stirs that reaction, then I would suspect that the picture is most likely little more than a sappy, romanticized rendition of something.

All of that written, I categorically reject the idea that great light makes great picture. Sure, sure, some great pictures exhibit the skillful use of great light but, truly great pictures are always about more than the light.

And, please, please, please, don’t get me started regarding serious amateur-made pictures that are “about the light”–with a subset of those that are “about color”–cuz it feels like I have now mellowed out enough to resume regular living.

# 6749-57 / landscape ~ looks like seeing

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“The central act of photography, the act of choosing and eliminating, forces a concentration on the picture edge – the line that separates in from out – and on the shapes that are created by it.” ~ John Szarkowski

“I’m looking at three-dimensional space and understanding how to articulate that space and collapsing it into two dimensions.” ~ Stephen Shore

“Most color photography, in short, has been either formless or pretty. In the first case the meanings of color have been ignored; in the second they have been at the expensive of allusive meanings. While editing directly from life, photographers found it difficult to see simultaneously both the blue and the sky.” ~ John Szarkowski

I HAVE BEEN GETTING OUT AND MAKING PICTURES of the natural world, Adirondack wise, and I must confess that making natural-world landscape pictures gives me pause–aka: to cause one to stop and think carefully, hesitate, or have doubts about something. It suggests a moment of reflection where one reconsiders their plans or intentions because something has made them unsure or prompted concern. 

That pause is instigated by the fact that, in the making of natural-world photographs, that act differs from–or I perceive it to be so–my “normal” picture making visual sensibilities. That is, in a man-made environment, I almost always see Form, i.e. relationships of line, shape, space, texture, value, and color in the real world that, when isolated within my imposed framing, creates interesting–to my eye and sensibilities–pictures. In the natural-world environment, not so much. Consequently, I do something that I rarely do in a man-made environment, make a framing variation; an act that is most often referred to in the photo making world as “working the scene.” And, to be honest, I find this situation mildly disconcerting.

My discomfort is caused by the fact that I actually have to make a choice of which photo to print. When faced by such a choice, I tend to fall back on a Stephen Shore quote ….

“I wanted to make pictures that looked like seeing and not pictures that look like photographs”

Shore’s picture making desire, which is very much like my own, invariably makes the choice crystal clear and very easy to make.

FYI, the photograph of the small river cascade is of the Hudson River, a mere 600-700 feet. from where it first bears the name of “Hudson”.

# 6744-48 / common places-things • picture windows • adirondack survey ~ magnum opus

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“Our artist in the Adirondacks has contrived to tell us his own story, in his graphic way, with the pencil camera, and explanation by the pen is therefore hardly necessary.” ~ excerpt from from the Saturday, September 21, 1872, edition of Appleton’s Journal featuring a wood engraving entailed “Our Artist in the Adirondacks”.

MY An Adirondack Survey / in plain sight BODY OF WORK IS APPROACHING the 650 pictures mark. Inasmuch as that number will continue to increase (where it will end, nobody knows) raises several questions. The most obvious one; whether (or not) it is time for some serious editing? Ya know, get the number down to a more “manageable” body of work. Next question; what about providence, aka: making a provision for the future? Ya know, I want the work to pass on after I pass on. After all, it is my magnum opus.

RE: editing? - simple answer: not gonna happen. While the body of work, as it currently exists, could be edited down to a more manageable number of so-called “greatest hits”, that procedure would, for all intents and purposes, dilute–if not completely destroy–the essence of what, iMo, the body of work is about; quotidian life in the Adirondack Park*. Here’s the thing ….

…. if the Adirondack Park were to be a state, it would rank as the 37th largest in the US. Within the blue line–the line drawn in blue to define its borders when the Park was created in 1892–there are 105 towns and villages with approximately 130,000 year-round residents. Yes, the Park is considered to be–and marketed as–an outdoor, natural world playground (with some nice civilized amenities throw in), but the fact is that it is also a place where the residents go about the business of paying the rent of daily living. In other words, it’s a big place with a big story, so to speak.

That written, realistically, I realize that I will most likely have to edit the collection down–for exhibition / book purposes–to approximately 300-400 photographs. FYI, that number will be determined by the number of folio edition photo books I am creating (see below).

RE: providence? - I believe that this body of work is an important collection; nothing like it has ever been undertaken. Fact is, most picture makers, tourist and accomplished locals, make, almost exclusively, pictures of the “grand” outdoors / natural landscape. If you want a picture of the Adirondack natural landscape, they are–or should be–a dime a dozen. ASIDE truth be told, I have sold–with a very hefty price tag–quite of number of that type of picture END ASIDE.

With this body of work, the major challenge for me is to find an art institution that will acquire the body of work. To that end, I will be creating 8-10 photo books (several copies of each), serial folio-edition style, each book containing 30 photographs that I will be circulating to a number of institutions.

Needless to write, I have my work cut out for me.

* An anecdote … early on I showed my first An Adirondack Survey / in plain sight photo book (70 photographs) to a couple I was just introduced to. From the art they had on the walls of their home (we were there for dinner), I judged them to be rather art conscious so I pulled out the book and they, separately, took the time to look through it, front to back. The initial comment from the wife, seconded by her husband, was, for me, quite telling …. she said that they had just returned home from a trip out side the Park and what immediately struck her about the work / book was that it expressed an overwhelming feeling of their recent drive through the Park.

Needless to write, I was delighted to know that they “got it”. And, that was confirmed when they each picked out 1 photo apiece for purchase to hang in their home.

# 6736-43 / common places - (un)common things • landscape • adk vernacular ~ out and about

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UPDATE # 1 It required 2 days of effort but I have finally set up PS as a reasonable facsimile of my older and familiar version of PS. While it is loaded with–some might say “bloated” with–lots of new tools / capabilities, I have yet to find one that I need. And, FYI, the guy at B&H was wrong; this basic version Mac Book works quite fine with PS.

UPDATE # 2 Attended the iPhone Workshop. The best part was when the instructor began–about a third of the way into it–to say, ”let’s let Mark answer that question.”

THE WIFE AND I ATTENDED A DINNER AND A LECTURE–Adirondack folk music and stories–at Great Camp Sagamore..….

Great Camp Sagamore was constructed by William West Durant on Sagamore Lake–owned by Durant–between 1895 and 1897. The camp, which was sold in 1901 to the Vanderbilts, is arranged in two complexes a half-mile apart, the Upper, or worker's complex–homes, church, store, school, work spaces: most employees were year round residents–and the Lower, or guest complex, 27 buildings in all. The guests would not have frequented the worker's complex, as the buildings at the Upper complex are much more utilitarian than those in the Guest complex, and without the embellishment of the buildings designed for entertaining. Sagamore served as a sylvan setting in which the richest families in America could relax, party, and get a feeling of returning to nature. All of this, however, was accomplished without leaving the comforts of civilization behind.

After it was purchased by Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, he expanded and improved the property to include flush toilets, a sewer system and hot and cold running water. He later added a hydroelectric plant and an outdoor bowling alley with an ingenious system for retrieving the balls. Other amenities included a tennis court, a croquet lawn, a 100,000 gallon reservoir, and a working farm. ~ from Wikipedia

Prior to the event, we stopped at a funky little bar in the nearby village of Raquette Lake, pop. 115, for a drink. I had a Utica Club beer. A beer which is forever embedded in my childhood memories as a result of the Utica Club tv commercials featuring Schultz and Dooley, the talking beer steins.

# 6732-35 / landscape • rist • (a) kitchen sink ~ new tool

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outside

inside

SETTLING IN AT RIST CAMP. HAVEN’T GOT OUT YET FOR natural world picture making, however, as is always the case, the landscape view from the front porch offers up a very satisfactory visage. And, no matter were you go, it seems that there is always a kitchen sink. Then again, there is the question of whether or not a picture of a tree growing out of the roof of a building is a natural world landscape picture.

A fair part of my first couple days at camp was spent setting up my new Mac Book Air laptop. I purchased the absolute bottom of the line, 13 inch version despite the warning I got from the guy at BandH who said it would be “borderline” for Photoshop usage. He just couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that I use PS for simplest of processing tasks, especially so when I am on the road.

In fact, the main reason for my purchase was that I do like to post entries on this blog while traveling but the mobile app for doing so on SquareSpace is a piece of crap. Now, with the MacBook, I can use the desktop software. It is kinda a bonus that I can now use PS while traveling cuz it gives me a bit more processing capabilities than most mobile processing apps. However, those apps, Snapseed and Darkroom, have been more than adequate for 95% of my on-the-go processing needs and I could always perform more demanding processing operations when I returned home from my travels.

So, now with most of the set-up heavy lifting done, the only thing I still have to wrestle with is coming to grips with the latest version of PS. In my wildest dreams I wish for a simple, no frills version of PS with all of basic photo processing capabilities and none of the “wonderful” upgrades. Of course, that ain’t never gonna happen.

PS this Wednesday I am gonna “crash” an iPhone Photography Workshop at a nearby art center / gallery. Have yet to decide if I will strive to be a asset or an irritant. Keep ya posted.

# 6725-31 / travel • common things ~ picturing the obvious

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Twisted Dunes ~ my favorite golf course

I MADE IT BACK ALIVE FROM THE JERSEY SHORE only to start packing again for our 5 weeks at Rist Camp. Yesterday I sat staring at my desktop screen for the better part of 2 hours trying to come up with a topic, photography wise, to write about that I haven’t written about seemingly multiple times prior. Nothing came to mind.

That written, I’ll have lots of alone time on my hands at Rist and maybe I might just come up with a new slant on how / what I write about–rest assured, always on the topic of things photography wise–on this blog.

One thing I resolved to do while at Rist is get out and make pictures of the natural world, a referent I have been, if not actively ignoring, not pursuing with any vigor. Considering the fact I live in the largest protected area in the contiguous United States–the Adirondack “Park”, larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Glacier National and the Great Smokey Mountains National Parks–it seems like an obvious subject for picture making.

#6723-24 / travel•common things ~ petty bourgeoisie

WHILE SITTING AROUND–in air conditioned comfort-AND KILLING TIME at the Jersey Shore this week, I came across an entry on a photo site that discussed “how much is too much?” – the much in question was post picture making “editing”. I put editing in quotes cuz the author of the piece, according to my way of thinking, was actually writing about post picture making retouching, i.e., removing unwanted visual elements from an image file.

That procedure, undertaken in the pursuit of making a “perfect” picture, is, iMo, a petty, bourgeoisie pursuit that is the ultimate bane–i.e., cause of harm, ruin, and a source of persistent annoyance or exasperation–undertaken by “serious” amateur picture makers which pretty much eliminates the possibility of making a really good photograph.

My rational for such a belief derives from the fact that I am a devoted practitioner of “straight” photography–a picture making practice which exploits and mines the medium’s intrinsic / inimitable relationship with the real–which allows a picture maker to show us what it is as opposed to engaging in the process of putting lipstick on a pig. To put it bluntly, I ain’t no fan of photographs that, metaphorically speaking, “makes you think all the world’s a sunny day”.

Hey, visually, the world is a pretty messy place. Trying to impose some kinda order on it–modifying / adapting it so as to make it suitable or acceptable to conventional / traditional concepts of “beauty”–is, not only fakery, but also sterile. Consider this, re: imperfection:

  1. Yet equally compelling is everything that is wrong and mad in art, as in life. It is the imperfections in works of art–and arguably in human beings–that often make them more beautiful, challenging the viewer in ways that polished work doesn’t. As John Ruskin said: “To banish imperfection is to destroy expression” and what is art if not a means of communication feeling?

None of the above should suggest that I think there is no such a thing as a “perfect” picture. Nothing could be further from the truth inasmuch as I have viewed thousands of “perfect” pictures. However, it should be made clear that not a single one of those pictures was “perfect”–in the sense that a “serious” amateur would approve of–in that none were exemplars of outstanding dynamic range, razor-edged sharpness / resolution, brilliant (to a fault) saturation and color, conventional composition, et al. Nor were they free of visual elements that would be judged by perfectionists to be “distractions” from what was, ostensibly, the object of the photographer’s center of interest.

What is my criteria for a good picture? Simply written, it is “to try to see everything that’s in the viewfinder / on the screen and make it all work together as a satisfying picture, not just as a document of the Nice Thing you saw, that ignores everything that was behind and around it.*”

Qu’est-ce que c’est “all work together as a satisfying picture”? To my eye and sensibilities, that means recognizing the basic elements of art-to include line, shape, form, space, color and value–when they align, in the real world, in an interesting visual configuration when viewed and pictured from a specific POV. Capturing that happenstance creates what I label as visual energy; an energy that keeps the eye and, eventually, the mind engaged.

*thanks to Mike C. At idiot-hat.blogspot..com

# 6720-22 / common places-things ~ the Haudenosaunee

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Haudenosaunee symbols on the floor of the museum

TONIGHT I EMBARK UPON MY ANNUAL MIDNIGHT RUN, that is, a 426 mile thru-the-night drive from home to Stone Harbor, NJ. By making this drive at night, I avoid frequent, interminable traffic jams on the highway thru the metro NY area and on the NJ turnpike during daylight hours. However, in the deep of the night I rarely encounter more than 40-50 cars over the entire distance that are headed in the same direction as me.

That written, yesterday I made a very short drive–28 miles–to Onchiota for a visit to the Six Nations Iroquois Cultural Center, a museum dedicated to educating the general public about the Haudenosaunee (The People of the Longhouse), aka: the Iroquois Confederacy, heritage and culture. FYI, the 6 nations are the Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, Tuscarora, and Mohawk tribes. The museum is a place that I am drawn to time and time again.

Consider this:

A little known fact….Today many historians believe that Iroquoian ideas of unity, federalism, and balance of power directly influenced the United States’ system of government. Among the founding fathers, Franklin may best illustrate the influence the Iroquois had on Americans.

Franklin carried the Iroquois concept of unity to Albany in 1754, where he presented his plan of union loosely patterned after the Iroquois Confederation’s Constitution, aka: The Great Law of Peace. Several Iroquois leaders attended the Congress. An aging Mohawk sachem called Hendrick received a special invitation from the acting governor of New York, James de Lancey to attend the Congress and to provide information on the structure of the Iroquois government. After Hendrick spoke, de Lancey responded, “I hope that by this present Union, we shall grow up to a great height and be as powerful and famous as you were of old.”

During the debates over the plan for union, Franklin pointed to the strength of the Iroquois Confederacy and stressed the fact that the individual nations of the Confederacy maintained internal sovereignty, managing their own internal affairs, without interference from the Grand Council. His Albany Plan proposed that each colony could govern its internal affairs and that a Grand Council consisting of a different number of representatives from each colony would provide for mutual defense. This proposed council closely resembled the Grand Council of the Iroquois nations.

In 1775, treaty commissioners from the Continental Congress met with the chiefs of the Six Nations “to inform you of the value of the advice that was given about thirty years ago, by your wise forefathers.” And, in 1988, the 100th U.S. Congress passed a concurrent resolution acknowledging the contribution of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy to the development of the U.S. government.

FOOTNOTE: Franklin wrote:

“It would be a very strange Thing, if six Nations of Ignorant Savages* should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an Union, and be able to execute it in such a Manner, as that it has subsisted Ages, and appears indissoluble…”

  • Despite his use of the phrase Ignorant Savages, evidence shows that Franklin had a healthy respect for the Iroquois, and his language seems intended not as an insult to the Six Nations but as a backhanded slap at the colonists—who, in Franklin’s opinion, could learn a lot from the Iroquois about political unity. In an essay four decades later expressing unabashed admiration for the Iroquois, Franklin wrote: “Savages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the Perfection of Civility; they think the same of theirs.”