#5694-95 / around the house ~ all the world's a sunny day

March 29, 2021

comparo ~ (embiggenable) - iPhone 12 Pro Max Night Mode — ***comparo*** ~ (embiggenable) - iPhone 12 Pro Max Night Mode

WITHOUT A DOUBT AND WITH ONLY A FEW pictures made with the iPhone 12 Pro Max, I can write that the new sensor(s?)-47% larger sensor and larger pixels (same 12mp) and the new OIS stabilizes the sensor, not the lens-on the 12 is a significant upgrade over the iPhone 11 Pro Max. The upgrade is most apparent with the Night Mode function. An improvement that is well worth the upgrade. However ....

....Apple seems to believe that, when making a picture in low-light, everyone wants night to look like day. See the above comparo diptych where the left-side image is how the Nighy Mode saw it and the right-side image is much closer, after my processing adjustments, to how the scene actually looked. While most users might be impressed-"Wow. That's amazing"-by the night-into-day look, I want my low-light pictures to look like they were made in low light.

That written, it is no big deal to adjust-for me, using Snapseed-an image to more accurately portray the low light look. After all, I adjust, to some degree, just about every image I make with just about every picture making device I use.

Another case in point with the iPhone, low contrast scenes require processing adjustment inasmuch as the HDR function with the iPhone wants every picture to be a "perfect" Ansel Adams like, 10-Zone white>black picture. Even so when there is no almost pure white highlight or deep black/dark shadow tones in the actual scene. Once again, it is no big deal to process the image to get it to be more true to the actual scene.

It is possible that Apple devlopers, re: the camera module, are required to listen to and sing, over and over again, the refrain from Paul Simon's Kodachrome song...

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

Whatever the case, I like the fact that the iPhone camera module gives me a full-tonal range, AKA: "rich", image file-including a RAW file if I want one-which I can adjust / process to achieve a finished picture which closely resembles what my eye saw.

# 5665-69 / around the house•kitchen sink ~ looking forward to getting out of the house

March 9, 2021

AIN'T BEEN DOING MUCH THE PAST WEEK or so other than getting my 2nd Covid vaccine and following the sunlight around the house. Although with temperatures warming and having the 2nd shot, I hope to start getting out more and making some pictures away from the house.

That written, it ain't pretty out there inasmuch as we are close to entering the so-called mud season. Nevertheless, I'll give it a shot, or, maybe 20 shots (or more).

# 5655-60 / miscellania ~ through the looking glass

February 28, 2021

NOT MUCH OF ANY SIGNIFICANCE OCCURRED over the past 10 days (or so). Had an average snow fall, there was some stuff in the kitchen sink and I saw the hint of a rainbow through the windshield of our new car.

Some might think buying a new car is rather significant, but it was more of a deja vu event for us inasmuch as it was the 2nd new car for us over the last 2.5 months. In fact, the new car seemed less significant cuz, from a visual POV, it is the exact same car-make, model, color, etc.-as the car we purchased 2.5 months ago ( and traded in for the "new" car).

However, to be honest, the "new" car is not identical to the "old" car. The "new" car has a turbo engine / drive-train that the "old" car did not have, cuz it was not available at the time of our first "new" car purchase. In any event, the wife has made the sales manager at the car dealship agree to not sell me another new car for at least 6 months. I should be able to survive that embargo.

There was one other development recently wherein I was introduced to the concept that a picture maker could actually have a "favorite" viewfinder. Say what? Really?

When I tried to contemplate the possibility, my brain locked up and posted a warning about a possible meltdown. So, I put the idea out of my head and into my really-stupid-things-people-dream-up bin and went out for a drive in our "new" car - a much better way to spend some of my time.

# 5652-54 / kitchen life•around the house ~ attention class

February 24, 2021

A RECENT ENTRY ON TOP HAD A LINK to An experiment in looking at photographs.

Essentially, the "experiment" is simple enough. There are 5 pictures and the viewer is asked to stare, for 2 minutes, at each picture. The hoped for effect of the effort is for the viewer to overcome his/her dreaded (and, iMo, over-hyped) the internet-is-killing-everybody's-attention-span disorder. And, once freed from that disorder, his/her brain can draw "not just on analysis and reason, but on imagination, emotion and memory. That is, from right brain function rather than left brain function. The result? A deeper understanding and appreciation of what a picture is about.

I engaged in the experiment. I can write without a single doubt-and more importantly, without any hesitation-that the author's hoped for result did not work for me. As a matter of fact, at first and very short glance, I knew which pictures-3 of the 5-would not hold my attention and which two-Catching Flies / It Felt Like Home-would. I did not need 2 minutes to figure that out and, FYI, it is not because the internet has killed my attention span.

How did I know? The answer is both simple and complex. The simple answer is that I know myself-arriving at that knowing was not so simple-and one of the most important things I know about myself is that the so-called right brain function is the dominate manner in which "see" (literally and figuratively) the world. Over time and with much picture making, I came to realize that, visually, my RB-function was accutely sensitive to perceiving form-line, shape, color, value, et al-and that sensitivity is the core value in my picture making vision.

Consequently, it should come as no surprise, that I know I am drawn to pictures made by others which mimic my picture making vision. That does not mean that I am close-minded about viewing and appreciating pictures that do not conform / mimic my vision. What it does mean is that I can recognize, nearly instantly, a picture that will hold my attention and interest. That is, hold my interest, not for 2 minutes, but for the long haul - as in, hanging on my wall and to which I can return again and again for that special tingle, aka: prick, a picture can incite, re: to my eye and sensibilities. And, as an added bonus, an evolving appreciation of that picture for newly discerned / discovered pricks it is capable of inciting.

All of that written, my point is this...I don' think that I am in any way "special" in this regard. I believe that any picture maker who has, at the very least, a freshman grip on his/her personal vision has the ability to very quickly discern which pictures prick his/her eye and sensibilities. It ain't rocket science. Rather, it is "simply" a matter of knowing one's self.

# 5631-33 / kitchen sink•around the house•landscape ~ oh, my aching back

January 30, 2021

PHOTOGRAPHERS, UNLIKE PAINTERS, ARE, SEEMINGLY (AS EVIDENCED BY THE SHEER VOLUME OF WRITTEN WORDS), obsessed with attempting to come up with answer to the question, what is a photograph? Or, perhaps, more accurately, an answer to the question, what is it that makes a good-better-best photograph?. Pianters, on the other hand, do not seem to concerned with the question, what is a painting?

iMo, while there are many interesting tidbits to be found here and there amongst the writings, re: photography, in the end it is all very subjective idle chatter. I believe that to be true cuz I believe that each and every photograph is, quite literally, a Rorschach test-like image from which a nearly endless number of deductions / conclusions / meanings / feelings can be had. Not to mention the fact that one person's adjudged great photograph may be headed for another person's junk pile.

That written, my experience, taken from the millions of written words-books and selected quotes written by photographers-I have read on the topic, leads me to conclude that are 2 main camps involved in this ongoing idle chatter; on the one side there is the simpledminded crowd, and on the other side, there is heavylifter crowd. FYI, I tend to come down on the side of the simplminded crowd.

Re: the simplemided crowd - is not stupid. iMo, they just try to keep it simple / pure (as "constrained" by the limits and capabililities of the medium and its apparatus). Think Gary Winogrand:

"I don't have anything to say in any picture. My only interest in photography is to see what something looks like as a photograph....For me the true business of photography is to capture a bit of reality (whatever that is) on film...if, later, the reality means something to someone else, so much the better.

In a sense, the simpledmided crowd acts upon the idea that a picture is "just" a picture. A thing to be looked at. A "simple" visual experience which, nevertheless, can lead / incite a viewer to go wherever he/she might want to go, limited only by an individual viewer's knowledge and life experience.

Re: the heavylifter crowd - has, seemingly, never viewed a photograph upon which they can heap too much of a burden which does not break a pictures back. Think Robert Adams:

"If the proper goal of art is, as I now believe, Beauty, the Beauty that concerns me is that of Form...Beauty is, in my view, a synonym for the coherence and structure underlying life...that is, the order in art that mirrors the order in Creation itself...Why is Form beautiful? Because, I think, it helps us meet our worst fear, the suspicion that life may be chaos and therefore our suffering is without meaning."

In his writings, re: "important" pictures Adams states that most "important" pictures "reveal Form"...."show us coherence in its deepest sense" and "contain the full Truth, the full and final truth." ASIDE All of the preceding is from Robert Adams is from his book, BEAUTY IN PHOTOGRPAHY. END OF ASIDE

Try as I might, and I have read and re-read Adams' essay, Beauty in Photography over and over and over again over the past few days, I just cannot get to where Adams wants me to go. The metaphysical burden is just too heavy for me to lift. I suppose it is possible a little weed might help me get somewhere in the Adams neighborhood when contemplating a specific picture. However...

....I have no real interest in turning my picture viewing (or, more emphatically, my picture making) into a quest for pictures which contain the full and final truth, the coherence and structure underlying life in its deepest sense and the Form / Beauty in art that mirrors the order in Creation itself. I just sounds too much like religion to me.

# 5616-18 / around the house•kitchen sink•nartural world ~ a return to the scene of the crime, as it were

January 19, 2021

faux Polaroid ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone — ***faux Polaroid*** ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

THE FOLLOWING QUOTE FROM RICHARD KALVAR makes me a little crazy / perplexed...

"A photograph is what it appears to be. Already far from 'reality' because of its silence, lack of movement, two-dimensionality and isolation from everything outside the rectangle, it can create another reality, an emotion that did not exist in the 'true' situation. It's the tension between these two realities that lends it strength."

...and I could go down a long list of the crazy / perplexed whyfors however, instead, let me deal with what attracted me to the quote....

I have spent a fair amount of time ruminating about a picture's "silence, lack of movement, two-dimensionality and isolation from everything outside the rectangle." The result of that mental effort is that I believe those aforementioned characteristics of a picture are one of the medium of photography and its apparatus' most unique characteristics in all of the visual arts.

That is to write, nearly every photograph stops time inasmuch as it "freezes"-snatched from the stream of time as we perceive it-a very short-duration segment of time. The result, when viewed as a print, is what some, to incude me, might consider to be a static schematic of that particular and isolated moment / segment in time. And, assuming the picture was made by a picture maker with the intent to capture what he/she sees-to include the literal and figurative vision thing-the fact that the pictured moment in time is freed from the "distractions" of "reality"-sound, movement, surroundings, et al-the viewer of the picture can devote as much time as he/she wants to in order to "discover" what the picture is about.

That written, I am not so certain that the static schematic "create[s] another reality". Sure, the photographic print is a "real" thing and it, most definitely, is not the "real" thing depicted on the 2D substrate but I think one has to engage in a bit word parsing, re: reality, to get to the idea of another "reality".

Although, if one looks at the idea of differing realities from the picture maker's perspective (and this quote comes from a picture maker), it is possible that, inasmuch as he/she experienced both realities, there can be an emotion that results from the viewing of the static schematic which differs from the emotion experienced at the moment of the picture's making.

I can attest to the 2 separate experiences / realities idea cuz it has happened to me over and over again. While I picture "things" to which my eye and sensibiites are intuitively attracted, the fact remains that I rarely spent any time at the moment of picture making to appreciate / contemplate that which I have pictured.

That is due to the fact that, for the most part, I have little, if any, interest in the thing(s) I picture. My interest is to be found in what those things look like when pictured. That is, the static schematic. The thing I could and do contemplate for hours and do so again and again over time.

# 5614-15 / around the house•civilized ku ~ illustration/illumination

January 13, 2021

"The more you look around at things, the more you see. The more you photograph, the more you realize what can be photographed and what can't be photographed. You just have to keep doing it." ~ Eliot Porter

GOOD ADVICE. SOUNDS SIMPLE ENOUGH BUT.....the implied idea that some things "can't be photographed" is, iMo, a two-sided coin inasmuch as there are-at the very least-2 aspects of a picture to consider. That is, the tangible (aka: the depicted content/referent) and the intanglible (aka: the intended concept imparted by the picture's maker).

Consequently, I believe that just about any thing or every thing a camera can be pointed toward can photographed-specialized referents may require specialized gear-however, try as a picture maker might, it is not always possible to "capture" an intended concept. Or, in other words, it is almost always possible to illustrate a referent but not so easy to illuminate a concept (an expression of a picture maker's vision) associated with the photographing of it.

In any event, the suggestion to keep on trying is damn good advice.

# 5613 / civilized ku•around the house•kitchen life ~nothing exceeds like excess

January 9, 2021

"If a medium is representational by nature of the realistic image formed by a lens, I see no reason why we should stand on our heads to distort that function. On the contrary, we should take hold of that very quality, make use of it, and explore it to the fullest." ~ Berenice Abbott

ABBOTT'S COUNSEL FOR STRAIGHT PICTURE MAKNG IS right up my picture making alley. However, that written, I believe that making good straight pictures is the most difficult objective to obtain. That's cuz....

"Some people are still unaware that reality contains unparalleled beauties. The fantastic and unexpected, the ever-changing and renewing is nowhere so exemplified as in real life itself. " ~ Berenice Abbott

I would differ with Abbott's opinion, re: some people are still unaware, inasmuch as I would substitute for the phrase "some people" with the phrase "most people". That's cuz, it seems that, even in those instances when a picture maker's eye and/or sensibilities might be captured by an "ordinary", everyday referent, most often he/she reverts, Pavlovian response wise, to applying one form or another of art sauce to the picture. What is is never quite good enough.

I would guess that proclivity is due to the human attraction (addiction?) to spectacular / dramatic / romanticized representations of the real world. Or the idea on the part of the piture maker that nothing exceeds like excess.