# 6334-36 / common things • around the house ~ do ya wanna dance and hold my hand?

November 19, 2022

But something is happening and you don't know what it is…Do you, Mr. Jones? ~ Bob Dylan

RE: WHAT I BELIEVE MAKES A PHOTOGRAPH INTERESTING.

It illustrates the real world, as much as the medium allows, in an accurate and truthful manner. AKA: straight photography.
It shows me something that I do not already know. Hint: Amongst many things, I already know that kittens and puppies are cute and that the natural world, when bathed in ‘glorious’ light, is pretty.
It shows me that “something” in manner that disregards the “rules for good photography”. But, no gimmicks. Just honest personal vision.
And, it also shows me an intangible “something” that is more than / beyond the literally depicted referent.
It is a delight for the visual senses.

Re: #5 : what delights my eye and sensibilities is a visual quality / characteristic that I call visual energy. A quality that defies the traditional picture making wisdom to simplify (see #3). To the contrary, I want my photographs to function like a pool table / pinball machine inasmuch as I have no desire to give a viewer’s eye a place to land and relax on the 2D surface of my prints. Rather, I want to direct a viewer’s eye to careen around the surface of my prints, ricocheting off the hard-defined edges of the image, all the while chasing / tracing lines, colors, and shapes. Think of it as dancing, if you will. albeit more like Hip Hop than a Waltz.

iMo and viewing experience, not only is the “dance” visually interesting, a photograph with visual energy encourages repeated viewing inasmuch as the “dance” will most likely be different with each successive viewing. And, in keeping with the dance metaphor, one could write that a photograph with visual energy has “legs”.

FYI, visual energy is a visual characteristic / quality that I look for, in one more-or-less degree, in the photographs made by others.

# 6324-25 / flora • common places • landscape • kitchen sink ~ why I like using the iPhone as a picture making device

November 7, 2022

RIGHT OUTA THE GATE, LET ME CRYSTAL CLEAR, re: the iPhone as a “perfect” picture making device. It is not. What it is is an amazingly good all-around picture making device. However, if the pursuit of technical so-called “perfection“ is your picture making goal, this device ain’t the one for you.

That written, the reason why I start this topic, re: why I like using the iPhone as a picture making device, with the fact that the iPhone camera module does not produce files with what is currently considered to be bleeding edge technical perfection is cuz that fact is at, or very near the top, on the list of reasons-what the hell, let’s call it Reason #1-why I like using this picture device.

To wit, ever since the dawn of my picture making life, it is quite accurate to write that, in my personal photographs-as-Art making life, I have never been in pursuit of pictures which exhibited “perfect” technical characteristics. That’s cuz, as a matter of course, I was-and still am-in pursuit of making pictures, on the technical level, that look like, as much as the medium and its apparatus allows, what the world looks like to the human eye.

Back in the day of analog, aka: film, picture making, I thought that, with the judicious selection of a color negative film type, photographs did a pretty damn good job of looking like what the world looked like. That’s cuz the human eye does not see the world in ultra high-def, saturated colors (unless the referent itself exhibited saturated color), or extreme dynamic range. Consequently, with my very first use of my very first digital camera, I set out, image file processing wise, to “soften” what I considered to be the “harsh” visual effects of digital picture making. And that pursuit continues to this day inasmuch as what, to my eye and sensibilities, appears to be ever increasingly “harsh” visual artifacts seems to be what the CCSoP crowd desires the most and what the camera makers are delivering to them in spades.

Reason #2 - While the iPhone does not deliver current state-of-the-art image files, its superior to that which any traditional camera maker offers AI-like it or hate it-does a remarkable job of delivering really good files in a variety of “difficult” picture making situations. Which not to write that most files do not need some degree of corrective surgery.

Reason #3 - the iPhone is the all-time leader in the convenient to have with you at times camera category. Not to mention, its ease of use and the fact that it’s virtually always at the ready. And, for the purist in me, it’s a 3 prime lens kit that I can hold in my hand or slip into a pocket.

Reason #4 - with the iPhone Pro Max, the viewing screen allow me to see not only an accurate view of my crop of a section of the real world but also how the arrangement of the visual elemts within the crop will look like on the flat, 2D field of a print.

Reason #5 - herein lies a guilty pleasure. I like the feeling I get-just like as if I were to be giving the finger to the CCSoP and gear loving crowd-every time I click the shutter. Or, to be more accurate, every time I touch the virtual shutter release “button” on the iPhone viewing screen.

ASIDE I have to wonder, does that make me a shallow person? END OF ASIDE

# 6318-20 / common places • common things ~ assuaging my guilt

November 2, 2022

SINCE MY ACQUISITION OF THE FIRST iPHONE WITH THE 0.5 lens setting-14mm equivalent-I have been, making pictures with that setting with no conscious directive of creating body of work focused upon the optical characteristics of that lens. As a matter of fact, when using that lens, I continually experience a guilt-driven suspicion that I am employing the lens to create a photographic cheap trick / effect.

Nevertheless, I plunged ahead cuz, as stated in the a wider view of things gallery on my WORK page, I use this lens, not for its extended field of view, but rather for the emphasis it creates on the visual elements of line, shape, and space as seen across the 2D plane of a photographic print. And, cuz I boldly went where no one has gone before (ha), I find myself with yet another uninitentionally made “found” body of work comprised of 55 pictures made with the 0.5 / 1.5 (14mm-e) lens.

And, much to my relief, cheap trick guilt wise, I have validation that I was making these pictures for all the “right”reasons / intentions (ok, ok, albeit unconsciously):

“Clement Greenberg’s dictate that each art ought to “determine through the operations peculiar to itself, the effects peculiar and exclusive to itself.”…Numerous photographers have made photographs about photography-enlisting, even embracing, the visual peculiarities of the medium that capable professionals once avoided or indirectly acknowledged….[they] purposely court and coax the perceptual ambiguities and accident visual excesses typically found in unselfconscious amateur snapshots. When imaginatively enlisted to achieve fastidiously formal and/or provocatively narrative images, such effects become crucial elements in a vivid and vital vernacular.” ~ Sally Eauclaire / the new color photography

FYI, one of the photographers Eauclaire calls out in chapter 3: THE VIVID VERNACULAR is Harry Callahan, about whose work she writes:

“While color photographs produced with relatively conventional lenses feature flattened spaces, Callahan/s extreme wide-angle lens imposes the reverse, so exaggerating near/far disparities that buildings lean away diagonally, gesturing anthropomorphically…Because the disorienting diagonals obviate stability and tranquility, Callahan has devised a spatial choreography in which rollicking voids and solids are equal, counteractive compositional partners. The result: photographs that burst into view, the color-dense sections discharging energy as they collide, giving the images a peculiarly photographic verve and pizazz.”

So, given all of the above, here’s the deal - Does it matter, re: making (Fine) Art wise, that all of the aforementioned pictures were made in a manner sans the conscious intent of what might be labeled as the above artsy-fartsy speak? No. Cuz it is not the intent that matters, it is the pictures that matter.* However, it is worth noting that as I continue to make pictures in this 0.5/1.5(14mm-e) manner, with confidence buoyed by artsy-fartsy speak, I will shed my “cheap trick” guilt and strive to, in fact, maximize this specific peculiar visual effect of the medium thus turning the traditional and derisive visual effect proscriptive, re: wide angle “distortion, on its head.

PS another the medium’s visual “peculiarity” that I am mining is lens+aperture based effect of limited DOF - see my AROUND THE HOUSE work / gallery on my WORK page.

* rationalization is more important than sex. Just try getting through a day without a juicy rationalization.

# 6296-6304 / discurcive promiscuity ~ setting Henri Cartier-Bresson a-spinning like a high-speed drill press in his grave

October 27, 2022

A FEW DAYS AGO I WAS THINKING ABOUT HOW MY ADOPTION of the iPhone as my primary picture making device has changed my picture making habits. To be certain it has not changed or altered my vision in any manner but it has changed the promiscuity quotient in my discursive promiscuity manner of making pictures inasmuch as I am now more promiscuous* than ever. Add to that, an extra dollop-or is it a cherry on top?-to my joy of photography.

Fast forward to this morning when I came across a New Yorker article, Candid Camera ~ The cult of Leica, written in 2007. The article is a good read. It even added a few new words to my vocabulary-a. “Leicaweenies”. A word used by Leica user Ralph Gibson to describe Leica addicts who are prone to writing scholarly papers on certain discrepancies in the serial numbers of Leica lens caps, and, b. “Visualus interruptus,” the brief viewfinder black-out caused by the flap of the mirror in a (D)SLR, a “malady” with which the Leica is not afflicted.

In any event, the article chord-struck me with a number of topics:

[Leica is] “a machine constructed with such skill that it renders every user—from the pro to the banana-fingered fumbler—more skillful as a result. We need it to refine and lubricate, rather than block or coarsen, our means of engagement with the world: we want to look not just at it, however admiringly, but through it. In that case, we need a Leica”…

…”the simplicity of the design made the Leica an infinitely more friendly proposition, for the novice, than one of the digital monsters from Nikon and Canon. Those need an instruction manual only slightly smaller than the Old Testament, whereas the Leica II sat in my palms like a puppy, begging to be taken out on the streets.”

“You could tuck it into a jacket pocket, wander around the Thuringer woods all weekend, and never gasp for breath.”

If you were to substitute iPhone for Leica, Fuji / Sony for Nikon / Canon, and Adirondack for Thuringer in these excerpts, it would, iMo, pretty well describe the iPhone as a picture making device. Which leads me directly to the question (ludicrous for some):

“Is the iPhone the new Leica?”

Answer:

let the caterwauling commence.

I would try to answer the question but my puppy [is] begging to be taken out on the streets.

*the pictures in this entry are but a mere handful culled from those that I have made over the past couple weeks.

# 6276-78 / common places • common things • autumn color ~ whispering, not shouting

October 6, 2022

“If photography is about anything it is the deep surprise of living in the ordinary world. By virtue of walking through the fields and streets of this planet, focusing on the small and the unexpected, conferring attention on the helter-skelter juxtapositions of time and space, the photographer reminds us that the actual world is full of surprise, which is precisely that most people, imprisoned in habit and devoted to the familiar, tend to forget.” ~ John Rosenthal

# 6262-66 / ordinary life • common places • common things ~ a funy thing happened on the way to the forum

October 3, 2022

RE; THE TITLE OF THIS ENTRY: I WAS NOT ACTUALLY on my way to a forum. But the name of that movie popped in my head when I was thinking about how a funny thing happened while I was working my way through my photo library folder looking for a few pictures for submission to a juried exhibition titled, The Poetry of the Ordinary.

It is also worth noting that what happened was not really “funny” but it was arguably laughable that, once again, I discovered a body of work lurking / hiding in my photo library. A body of work that I am titling, Ordinary Life.

Background: As I have previously noted, I have been “experimenting"“ with the concept of making full-frame pictures with the iPhone PORTRAIT setting. About a month ago, I put together 12 such pictures and made a POD photo book titled, A Random Sense of Form, in which is this Statement:

Every day after arising, I move about my house engaging in daily activities which some might consider to be the humdrum of an ordinary life. In doing so, my eye and sensibilities are often pricked by intimate tableaux which evince the potential, when isolated within the frame I impose upon it with my picture making device, for the making of a photograph with interesting visual form.

Even though these pictures are anchored by a truthfully rendered referent, they are rarely about the thing so depicted. Rather, it is the perceived form-the coming together of color, line, shape, space, texture, and value-that I see and photograph which, for me, emerges in my photographs as interesting visual energy and form. Energy and form as found in the, seemingly, most unlikely of places in the everyday world.

When the book arrived from POD source, I showed it to a few interested parties who liked it very much. However, it was not until a few days ago that I picked the book up on my way to bed, settled into bed, and spent some time looking through it. As self-important / egotistical as it might sound, I was both impressed and surprised by the impression it made upon my eye and sensibilities when the pictures were viewed as images on paper, aka: prints, as opposed to viewing them, as I had been doing, on-screen. That experience caused me to think that I was onto something, picture making wise, and that I should concentrate on making a conscious effort-as opposed to my “normal” picture making MO of discursive promiscuity-to create a body of work of such pictures.

That written, it was the next day that a funny thing happened on my way to the forum (sorry, yet another metaphor) during which I “discovered” 40 full-frame pictures in my library made utilizing the iPhone PORTRAIT setting. A happening which made realize how utterly clueless I can be, every now and again, of the fact that I have been creating a body of work without the knowledge that I have been doing so.

In any event, it should be noted there were 2 things saved my picture making ass, unified seeing wise, in the “making” of this body of work. First and foremost, I remained true to my vision. That is, I pictured what I see (form) how I see it. And, second (completely as a result of using the iPhone PORTRAIT setting), the fact that the iPhone PORTRAIT setting requires, a requirement that I sometimes find annoying, that the focused upon referent be within 8 feet of the iPhone. This demand results in the fact that the plane of focus in my pictures all fall within a fairly uniform distance from my picture making position. And, of course, the use of the PORTRAIT setting results in an (apparent) visually similar limited DOF (the visual point of this exercise).

In conclusion, I can write with a firm conviction-and my tongue firmly embedded in my cheek-that I am sure glad that I had the right camera with me when I made these pictures.

# 6259-61 / common places • common things ~ on shooting up the place

September 28, 2022

THE TOPIC OF “WORKING THE SCENE” HAS COME UP ON TOP. My immediate inclination is to call BS. That’s cuz the idea of working a scene brings to (my) mind the notion of aimlessly firing a machine gun at a target in the hope that one of those bullets will hit the bullseye. Whereas I believe the best way to hit the bullseye is carefully considered aim, the bullseye firmly fixed in one’s sighting device, and a relaxed squeeze of the trigger.

OK. I apologize. Those last 2 sentences are a bit heavy on the metaphor scale but I think that, most likely, you get my point.

That written, I am not declaring BS on the idea of working the scene inasmuch as a little bit-a very little bit-of working the scene can be useful every now and then. FYI, by a very little bit of working the scene I mean a matter of inches as opposed to firing off shots while break-dancing around a scene. I can write, without reservation, that I have never utilized the making of pictures as part of my calisthenics routine.

All 3 of the pictures in this entry were made over the last 24 hours with but a single pull of the trigger (sorry, yet another metaphor). One shot wonders, all. That written, I did employ my idea of working the scene inasmuch as, before I pulled the trigger (sorry), I did move the camera (sorry, the iPhone) a little bit-inches-while viewing the scene on the iPhone screen in order to get the framing and placement of visual elements where I wanted in order to manage a direct hit on the bullseye with just 1 shot (sorry, sorry, sorry).

The reason that this picture making process works for me, most of time, is that I see with soft eyes which, when a referent pricks my eye and sensibilities, I am able to identify, in my peripheral vision (no eye movement), surrounding visual elements and subsequently (and quickly) recognize how I might use them to create an interesting visual form, the true “subject” that I am always trying to create. Consequently, I am able to get right to the “right” POV with very little wasted effort, cuz I am ”just” photographing what I see.

And, FYI, writing of picture making calisthenics, if I were to be using a tripod-which I no longer do-it would need only 2 head-height positions. 1 set to my standing eye level and the other to my sitting eye level. That’s cuz 99 of 100-or some very close number-pictures I make are made from my eye level. In the case of tripod use, the head might be tilted up or down to one degree or another but, cuz I photograph what I see and, literally, how I saw what I see, it’s all a eye level POV for me.

In any event, re: working the scene, my manner of working a scene works for me. It may not work for many others. Although, it is most likely how those who work with a view camera work. That written, I probably average 2 pulls of the trigger per picture. I do some exposure bracketing and, every once and a while, I move the iPhone an inch or so in order to get an ever so slightly different POV. That’s cuz I wanna be sure I hit the bullseye (sorry).

# 6256-58 / kitchen sink • common place • common things • civilized ku ~ what something will look like photographed

September 26, 2022

AS MIGHT SEEM OBVIOUS FROM THE PICTURES IN this entry, I am back home after our 1 month + at Rist Camp. Got some work to do sorting through the 141 finished pictures I made while at Rist. Shutterfly is having an unlimited free pages offer. Maybe it’s time for a really big book.

A recent entry contained a quote from Alfred Stieglitz…

“My aim is increasingly to make my photographs look so much like photographs…”

…which brings to (my) mind a quote from Garry Winogrand:

“I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.”

Both of these quotes, iMo together with the way that I read them, suggest to me that a photograph is something different from what has been photographed. That is a concept that is not news to me inasmuch as I have writing / saying for years that ”a printed photograph is a thing in and of itself, independent of what is depicted.” You can quote me on that.

Re: the Stieglitz quote: I do not think that Stieglitz was suggesting that there is a specific manner in which a photograph should look other than it should not look like a painting, aka: in the manner of the Pictorialism school of picture making. A school from which Stieglitz had previously graduated and subsequently disparaged. In other words, to utilize, in an unadulterated manner, the inherent / intrinsic characteristics of the medium.

Re: the Winogrand quote: I do not think that Winogrand was suggesting that a referent would, in and of itself, look any different in a photograph than it does to the naked eye. Rather, that a referent, when photographed with judicious framing and attention to the “arrangement” of color, form, line, shape, space, texture, and value, might be perceived in a manner different from that of the unaided viewing of it in situ.

iMo, to understand these 2 quotes is to understand the “genius” of photography. That the camera, in the hands of photographer who can truly see, does not need “tricks”, flashy techniques, bigger sensors, lots of gear in order to supplant the inclination to indulge in habitual seeing. Habitual seeing, a manner of seeing that may illustrate much but illuminate little.