# 6380-82 / around the house • common things ~ what field are you playing on?

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A CONSIDERABLE PART OF PART OF the philosophy of modern pictures project is attempting to get an overview handle on what’s going on in the picture making world.

FYI, I have, for my purposes, divided that world into 2 categories; the snapshots and art worlds. However, to be more precise, the art world is split into 2 categories; decorative art and fine art. And, just to further define things, I have divided the fine art world into 2 sub-categories; the minor leagues and the major leagues.

In keeping with my previous post, wherein I wrote about my target audience, aka: me, of all of the above described picture making categories, the one I am most interesting in addressing in the PoMP project is the fine art / minor leagues category. That’s cuz that’s the category in which I toil, picture making wise. And, I believe that it is that category which holds a significant number of picture makers who are striving to make fine art but who will not make it to the major leagues.

So, in order to for my project to have value for that constituency, I believe that, having toiled in the minor leagues-with considerable success-for a significant part of my picture making life, passing on my experiences therein should be of interest to those working in the same picture making world.

All of that written, and returning to my opening remark, re: attempting to get an overview handle on what’s going on in the picture making world, I came across an item that might be of interest, what’s going on wise, to my blog followers. A collection of approximately 750 pictures which, by the slant of the site on which they are presented, are a fair representation of what’s going on in the minor leagues. And, FYI, if a picture catches your eye, there is usually a link to the picture maker’s site where more of their work can be viewed.

#6369-71 / common places • common things ~ confined to quarters pt.2

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ABOUT A WEEK AGO WHEN I WAS CONFINED to quarters, it was related to a extreme weather event. This time it’s cuz I am under the weather (to use a commonly expressed idiom). The “weather” in question this time around is Covid.

My symptoms are quite mild with extreme fatigue being the featured ailment. While this could not have happened at a more inopportune time, I should be out of isolation-my bedroom which, fortunately, is a suite with comfortable reading chairs, a tv, a full bathroom, an insulated porch, and some nice pictures on the walls-on Xmas Eve day.

That written, I do get out of the bedroom every now and then. I can do that cuz there is no else in the house other than the wife who came down with Covid a few days before I did (and then passed it on to me).

FYI, the wife and I both got Covid even though we are both up-to-date on vaccines. Obviously, the Covid keeps evolving but medical knowledge believes that our mild symptoms are due to the fact that we are up-to-date vaccine wise. Who knows? But, iMo, it’s better to try to be safe than to end up being sorry.

# 6342-44 / common places • common things ~ this and that

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BEEN MAKING NOTES, MENTAL AND HARD COPY, re: my The Philosophy of Modern Pictures book/project. No rhyme or reason to them yet, just random thoughts on the overall approach and miscellaneous thoughts / words on various topics to include in the book.

One item on which I have been rather fixated is how to describe my picture making M.O. However, as I skitter about the nomenclature landscape, I have realized that my M.O. does not fit neatly into any single genre inasmuch as my work evidences the quality and characteristics of several universally recognized genre - vernacular photography, the snapshot aesthetic, the new topography, to name a few.

That written, I also realize that I may have found the answer years ago when I coined the phrase / descriptor, discursive promiscuity, to explain my propensity to picture any/every thing I see that pricks my eye and sensibilities, aka: what I see. That nomenclature was never intended to describe anything more than my non-discriminatory approach to referent selection. However, I am sorta coming around to thinking that it also works as a descriptor for how I see, aka: a little bit of vernacular, a little bit of snapshot, a little bit of new topography aesthetics all mixed together in my own peculiar, hybred-ish manner of picture making.

FYI, I should point out that I have never been overly concerned with defining the how of my picture making, specific genre wise. That’s cuz the answer to that question, as Paul Strand once opined, “is on the wall”. So, viewers will see what they wanna see. Nevertheless, in the context of my book / project, much of what I will write will spin off of the how (and why) I photograph.

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

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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.

  1. It illustrates the real world, as much as the medium allows, in an accurate and truthful manner. AKA: straight photography.

  2. 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.

  3. It shows me that “something” in manner that disregards the “rules for good photography”. But, no gimmicks. Just honest personal vision.

  4. And, it also shows me an intangible “something” that is more than / beyond the literally depicted referent.

  5. 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

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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

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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.