civilized ku # 5359 / the new snapshot (civilized ku # 5360-67) ~ moving on

Friday morning light ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

seen and pictured ~ Quebec City, Canada (embiggenable) • iPhone

seen and pictured ~ Quebec City, Canada (embiggenable) • iPhone

So, here I sit in a slightly perplexed state of mind, picture making wise. That mental state comes from realizing, after prepping 45 pictures-from my Quebec City trip-for a POD book, that if all of my "real" camera gear were to be instantly vaporized, I would be happy as a clam for the rest of my picture making life making pictures with my iPhone. Without a doubt, the iPhone camera module is an excellent picture making device for approximately 95.8% of my picture making endeavors.

That sentiment is made possible for a number of reasons:

1. for my personal "serious" picture making, I am essentially a 1 lens man. And, the "normal" lens-a moderate wide angle-on the iPhone suits my vision just fine. And, the ever so moderate tele lens is there when I want it.
2. the HDR function of the iphone camera "brain" does a great no-fuss/no muss job of creating full light range pictures (with an extra measure of highlight/shadow information that can be pulled out in processing)
3. And, add to # 1 and 2 the ease of use and convenience of the device making it one of the best don't-have-to-think-about-it (set and forget it) and just concentrate-on-"getting'-the-picture camera/device I have ever used.

Does 1-3 mean I am abandoning my "real" cameras? The answer is "No". However, in a weird twist of events, it does mean that, on my train travel around part of America trip (starting tomorrow), I will bring along my "real" cameras and 2 lenses-which mimic the iPhone's 2 focal lengths-as my backup cameras in case of any iPhone problems. They may also be put to use in very extremely low-light-the iPhone camera module does quite well in typical low-light situations-picture making situations.

To be certain, the "real" cameras are not being assigned to my already quite large dust bin of cameras past. They will be used for a handful of future projects for which they are ideally suited.

Civilized ku # 5355-58 ~ north of the border

Quebec Aquarium ~  (embiggenable) • iPhone

Morning Hugo  ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

Fashion statement ~ (embiggenable) 8 iPhone

Leaving the Old City ~ Quebec, CA (embiggenable) 8 iPhone

 Didn’t bring my laptop so I have to post using the Squarespace app which is really crappy. I’m hoping that some pictures are better for you than no pictures. In any event when I return home on Wednesday, I’ll restructure this mess.

civilized ku # 5354 ~ history be damned

Hyde Collection Museum ~ Glens Falls, NY (embiggenable) • iPhone

Recently the idea of reading books, re: the history of photography, come up on TOP. I was tempted to post a comment but I didn't.

That written, I have given thought to, given my truly vast and comprehensive knowledge of the medium and its apparatus, writing a history of photography. However, I have rejected that idea inasmuch as finding a publisher interested in publishing a 1 page book would be probably be a difficult task. Although I could break it up into chapters but there would still be only 5 sentences....

THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

CHAPTER ONE
Photography was invented.
CHAPTER TWO
People started making pictures.
CHAPTER THREE
People continued making pictures.
CHAPTER FOUR
They are still making pictures.
CHAPTER FIVE
Look at the pictures.

.... it's brilliant, concise and gets right to the meat of the matter.

That written, I have several books, re: the history of photography, such as, PHOTOGRAPHY ~ from 1839 to today, published by the George Eastman House, aka: Eastman Museum. It's 800 pages and, coincidentally, I have read less than 5 sentences although I have looked at a lot of the pictures.

That book, like all of the others like it, present the history of photography almost exclusively from the standpoint of the great and lesser known "masters" of the medium. You might think that an 800 page book with 1 or more pictures on every page would have a fair number of surprises, picture wise, but that is not the case. There's a lot of same-o, same-o seen that before.

AND, here's my main gripe about such books ... they, at best gloss over, at worst ignore completely, the greatest movement of the medium, the history of snapshot making. Which, iMvio, is ridiculous inasmuch as there have been more-by an unfathomable multiplication factor-snapshots made over the course of the medium's existence than all of the picture making genres (fine art, journalism, advertising, et al) put together. This fact is understandable since most, if not all, photography histories are undertaken by academics.

Fortunately, there is one book (that I know of) that addresses that omission, THE ART OF THE AMERICAN SNAPSHOT-1888-1978. The book has 294 pages, 250 pictures (drawn from the collection of a single individual) and is divided into 4 sections-determined by era-each with an essay written by a different author. It is chock full of surprises and delights, picture wise, and the essays address the interdependence of snaphot making with each era's culture. The essays are a kinda chicken or the egg exercise inasmuch as they posit the question, did the cultural paradgm of each era dictate what people made pictures? of or did the pictures people made help influence and change the cultural paradgm of that era? The book is facsinating no matter how you look (or read) at it.

In my picture making life, there have been only 2 books which greatly influenced my picture making thoughts and activities. The first was the new color photography (by Sally Eauclaire published in 1981), which surveys the work of then-emerging modern photographers and compares and analyzes their use of color. Long out of print but considered a classic. Used copies are generally available and one bonus of owning the book is that you can read my name in the acknowlegements. The second book is the ART OF THE AMERICAN SNAPSHOT.

If I were to be banished to a desert island (with internet and wifi / cell connections), those are the 2 books I'm bringing with me along with, of course, my iPhone, my iPad, a BOSE wireless speaker and a lifetime supply of Cheez•its. Both books are highly recommended.

civilized ku # 5350-53 / ku # 1414-17 ~ a body in motion tends to stay in motion

All pictures embiggenable

rainy Adirondack Spring day ~ µ4/3

back when all was right with the world ~ iPhone

this morning / reflected light ~ iPhone

This Tuesday past was the start of the better part of a month of travel. It seems that, while I am traveling, I make a lot of pictures and that propensity has held true over the past few days.

Tuesday and Wednesday were local-ish travel days. Tuesday was a 180 mile round trip to Blue Mountain Lake where I meet with Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts gallery director to discuss the details of my upcoming exhibition. Picture wise, the result of that venture was the landscape pictures above. All of those pictures were made in the rain.

Yesterday, it was another 180 mile round trip to Glens Falls (just outside of the southeast corner of the Adirondack PARK) to transport my grandson Hugo to an endodontist appointment. After that we drove by the Hyde Collection Museum to check out what was on exhibit and, as chance would have it, the featured exhibit was of Kodak Colorama pictures. I had seen a similar exhibit at the Geoge Eastman House, aka: Eastman Museum, but at the Hyde there were quite number of Colorama pictures I had not seen prior.

I must admit that, at this aged perspective point in my life, I found the pictures to be somewhat humorist-as in,if you don't laugh, you might cry-and full on depictions of innocence-lost naivete. They brought to mind the lines from the song Kodachrome:

They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day

In fact, there were quite a few pictures of sunny days but, figuratively writing, all of the pictures implied that every day, indoor or out, was a "sunny" day. Ahhhh, the grand and glorious American '50s when all was right with the world.

Travel wise, next up-this Sunday-Wednesday-is a 4 day visit to Quebec City with Hugo for our annual Grandpa / Grandson Spring Break Trip. The following Sunday, the wife and I depart from NYC on our train-around-part-of-America trip - the Southern Crescent train to New Orleans (30 hours w sleeping compartment and dining car) for 4 days to include the Jazz Festival. Then The City of New Orleans train to Chicago (20 hours w sleeping compartment and dining car) for 4 days to include lots of blues music, "legendary" Chicago steaks and a 2 day car trip to Racine, Wis. to tour the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Johnson Wax complex. After which, it's back on a train, The Lake Shore Limited (20 hours w sleeping compartment and dining car), for the return to NYC.

There will be pictures.

civilized ku # 5349 / triptych redux ~ meaningful grouping

coma girl mini ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

coma girl real~ (embiggenable) • µ4/3

In my last entry I wrote, re: my groupings, that some objects have special meaning and others do not. One grouping which has special meaning is the so-called coma girl grouping.

During her first week at college, our daughter Maggie was found unconscious on her dorm room floor. She was transported to a hospital where she became very agitated and somewhat combative. Consequently, she was placed in a medically-induced coma where she remained for 4 days while a team of medical specialists tested her for the cause of her condition (alchohol and drugs were immediately ruled out).

Long story short, no definitive cause was ever determined. She was eased out of the coma and placed under the immediate and long term care of a neurologist who eventually proscribed a med (she was on the med for 3 years) and she was released from the hospital. So, for her, it was back to college and life returned to normal.

Just before her release from the hospital, I dubbed Maggie as the coma girl. The name stuck for a while. The following Xmas, Maggie gifted me with a the above pictured minature hospital set.

civilized ku # 5335-48 ~ group nourishment

all pictures embiggenable and iPhone made

An article in yesterday's NYTimes caught my attention. The title, Art Is Where the Home Is subtitled, Two gallery shows make a case for the nourishing aspects of objects in artists’ lives. The article began with this:

Artists are picky people. The objects they live with — furniture, artifacts, ceramics, works by other artists — are usually carefully chosen, and they look it. They highlight an artist’s personal or aesthetic connections (or both), and clarify the nourishment objects can give us.

After reading the article I decided it was time to take stock of the objects in my home so I grabbed my iPhone and went to work. My survey, while not completely comprehensive, gives a good/accurate accounting of where my objects interest lie. Which, in a nutshell, could be described as small objects of a somewhat elclectic nature. Some of which have life-meaning for me, some of which are just weirdly cool.

Again, from the article:

The shows ... form a meditation on some of the ways artists sustain themselves and their art.

Re: the above excerpt. I'll be honest, I have never thought that my groupings (as I have now named them) have contributed to the way I sustain myself and my art. However, this article is making me think that I need to think about that idea. Or not.

civilized ku # 5333-34 (picture windows) ~ idle hands are the picture maker's workshop

morning light ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

gray Spring day ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

gray Spring day ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

There are times when my picture making gets caught in a loop. Over the past few days that loop has been cycling through the notion of looking out of windows. There is no particular reason for that that I can discern.

civilized ku # 5331-32 ~ like Mark Twain said

(embiggenable) • iPhone

on the phone ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

I've been thinking about a number of things, picture making wise, influenced by some the rambling on TOP - backup, storage, archives, et al. The one item that keeps coming back to my thinking space is the idea of prints.

On the walls of my house, there 68 (of my pictures) prints. On tables and in bookcases there are 25 POD photobooks + 3 "coffee table" hardbound books featuring my pictures. Not to mention, I am prepping 160 prints for my upcoming solo exhibition, my 6th solo exhition. So, suffice it to write, I am a firm believer in prints (of one kind or another).

That written, I have never been able to understand why someone would make pictures and not make prints. What would be the point?

Conventional wisdom has it that fewer picture makers are making prints. While that may be true of the legions of happy cell phone snappers, I don't believe that is true of the more "serious" picture makers. With the advent of good quality desktop printers, I believe that "serious" pictures are, most likely, making more prints than ever before. After all, good quality prints are much cheaper (after the cost of a printer) and, dare I write, easier to make than ever before.

FYI, the reason I write that it "may be true", re: making fewer prints, of the legion of cell phone snappers is that, with the advent of online POD print suppliers, it may be true that even they too are making more prints than ever before.

However, the wife (part of whose mission in life is to correct me when I'm wrong) has pointed out that, in the camera toting analog picture making past, "casual" picture makers all made prints, or more accurately, had prints made at the drugstore or similar place. And, I must admit, she has a point. However ....

.... today, more people than ever before have a "camera" in their possesion and on their person, albeit a cell phone. It is my belief that many of those people are also having prints made.

Case in point, every drugstore, chain mega-stores and other locations in or nearby my neck of the woods (I live in a forest preserve) has a walk up self-sevice kiosk for print making. And, few and far beteen are the nuber of times I have been in such a place (I never go to chain meg-stores) that there is not someone at the kiosk. And, of course, there is the (some might say) glut of online print making sources.

Does that prove that more prints made by casual picture makers are being made than ever before? I not making a bet with the wife (I'd hate to be proven wrong) on that proposition but ....

....suffice it to write, I do believe that the death of print making has been greatly exaggerated.