pile of leavings ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone
things in sink ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone
streaks of light ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone
I am constantly amazed at how many picturing opportunities - resulting from serendipitous occurences over time - there are in my house. Makes me realize that I should create yet another "hidden"-in-my-picture-archive body of work comprised of pictures made within the confines of my house. A body of work which I suspect would most likely be my largest body of work and could aptly be titled Ode to André Kertész.
Moving on to another topic .... with the exception of my life without the APA work, I have almost always been an advocate for and the making of straight photography. I believe that the medium's unique-to-the-visual-arts intrinsic identity as a cohort of the real is photography's defining characteristic. I also believe that making pictures - which are visually interesting - of the everyday commonplace world is the most difficult to achieve use of a camera.
In addition to the preceding paragraph, it should be quite obvious to write that the camera is fully capable of capturing pictures which are very accurate representations of the real. That written, I believe that, in the digital picture making realm, the pursuit of "perfect" pictures - specifically, ultra high resolution and defiition - has had a deleterious effect on the notion of photography as an art. To wit ....
... in effect, this visual "perfection" has bent the medium and its apparatus more toward super documentation / analytical rather than to the poetic. Consider this writing by Lorenzo Papadia (regarding his Fade Point work):
I believe in the strong evanescence quality of things, beyond the appearance, where everything ceases to be «true.» In the digital age we are all obsessed by the high fidelity of the image, the so-called «quality». I believe photography should be lacking in the perfection of its materiality. I think instant photography today may turn away from this «surplus visibility», providing us a more poetic view as it envelopes the concept in a veil of mystery and secrecy...
While I have made thousands of Polaroid pictures (literally) and while I really like Papadia's Polaroids, iMo, Polaroid photography steps a little bit too far outside the line of straight photography. It is, again iMo, a bit too "poetic" and too enveloped "in a veil of mystery and secrecy". Those notions aside, the Polaroid is a fully capable means for the making of great pictures.
Re: my "straight" digital picture making - I have, from day one, deliberately avoided the pursuit of "perfect" pictures. My choice of cameras has always been dictated by the deliberate avoidance of ultra-perfection state-of-the-art sensors. In the making of my first prints made from digital files, I deliberately added soft vignetted corners to the pictures (and still do to this day) in order to introduce "traditional" photographic imperfections. And, I love the look of my 24"x24" prints made from my "mere" 16mp files.
My preference for the aforementioned "imperfect" manner in which I make pictures is dictated by a single consideration .... even though current state-of-the-art camera sensors "see" in ultra high definiton, the human eye does not. Consequently, I want my pictures to look and feel more like what the human eye sees rather than what a sensor sees.