# 6132-35 / in situ (street photography) ~ an instant of life captured for eternity

June 23, 2022

“‘A photograph can be an instant of life captured for eternity that will never cease looking back at you.” ~ Brigitte Bardot

AS MENTIONED IN MY ENTRY, STREET PHOTOGRAPHY ~ a first world problem, my intention was to make a photo book-the same pictures in color and monochrome in separate groupings-to investigate the differing viewing and appreciation experience (if any) between color and monochrome versions of the same pictures.

Initially, my thought was to limit the number of pictures to 10. That was, in part, cuz, not being a street photographer, I thought that coming up with 10 good street pictures might be a stretch. As it turns out, much to my surprise, I came up 30 very good-(iMo) picture possibilities, So, my now second first-world problem is editing down the choices to 10 just pictures.

After several go-arounds I narrowed it down to 15 strong pictures. So I thought, 15 it is until…I started designing the book-each spread with a picture on one page, location caption on the facing page-at which point I realized I was creating a 66(ish) page book. While the number of pages, per se, is not an issue, the cost of such a photo book with the design and production values I want-premium paper, lay-flat pages, 6C printing-would be in the $100USD + range. Once again, the cost is not an issue for me….except….

…what I hoped to create was a book in the $30USD range in order that some of you, the blog followers, might be interested in acquiring the book. Not because I am a brilliant picture maker but, rather, to partake in the investigation, re: color v monochrome of the same pictures, of whether there is a difference in the viewing and appreciation experience.

If there is an interest, I will edit the pictures down 8 or so and make a soft-cover book with 4C instead of 6C printing. The book would be available direct from the POD printer, Blurb. If anyone is interested just hit the LIKE button. FYI, I am not looking for big numbers. 5-6 would be enough for me to make the effort. And, BTW, I would be selling the book at cost.

# 6123-31 / common places (civilized ku) ~ thinkin' 'bout the good ol' days

June 21, 2022

WOKE THIS MORNING TO A GREY DAY. IN AN EFFORT TO brighten up the day, I decided to get out and about, use the sky as a blank slate and make some pictures. Throw in some neutral grey road surfaces and, iMo, you have got the stage set for pictures in which colors come to the fore.

In a perfect picture making world, I would have grabbed my dad’s Kodak Brownie Hawkeye camera out of the closet, went down to the drugstore, bought a roll of color negative film, then taken a stroll around the neighborhood looking for something to prick my eye and sensibilities. Instead, I picked up my iPhone and headed out with FRANK BREUER on my mind.

6118-22 / civilized ku (urban landsape) ~ drinking in Brooklyn

June 20, 2022

***drive-by picture*** / ***Manhattan*** ~ (embiggenable)

***Gowanus Canal*** / ***Brooklyn, NY*** ~ (embiggenable)

***Brooklyn Street*** / ***Brooklyn, NY*** ~ (embiggenable)

SPENT SATURDAY IN BROOKLYN ATTENDING A KINDERSCHULE graduation event followed by a private party. There was quite a sunset. The party was at a bar / restaurant called Pig Beach-BBQ pork their speciality.. Kinda thought that was a strange place to have a Jewish / Socialist party.

Pig Beach-no beach, just a name-is in Brooklyn along the Gowanus canal. The canal is one the most contaminated sites in the US of A. It is currently undergoing a clean up that will take 10 years. So, even if there had been a beach, there would be no swimming.

# 6112-13 / kitchen life • common places ~ malarkey on a shingle

June 16, 2022

*finished (L.)* / ***original (R.)*** ~ (embiggenable)

(embiggenable) ~ full frame / Portrait mode

RE: THE DEATH OF THE SMALL SENSOR CAMERA. I am not one to profess that I know what the future will bring. However, I will not let that stop me from offering a few thoughts on the speculative idea that small sensor cameras are on the way out.

First, let’s define “small”….best I can tell, it the current camera market, it seems that “small” is any sensor smaller than a full-frame-24mmx36mm-sensor. And, for some reason, camera makers seem to have decided that, surprise, surprise, bigger is better. If I put on my cynical hat, I would write that they think that the more money they can charge for a camera+lenses the better.

That written, the idea that small-sensor cameras are in a death spiral is based on the notion that, a huge majority of avid amateur picture makers will all want a full-frame sensor camera. A notion that I believe to be nonsense. cuz…

a) most full-frame cameras+lens are very expensive but, even if the prices drop over time…

b) …most picture makers, even avid amateurs, do not want to lug around large, heavy gear.

c) most avid amateurs who use “small”-format sensor cameras have an investment in lenses for their systems. Moving to full-frame sensor cameras means the significant added expense of acquiring new lens.

d) in addition to the expense of full-frame sensor cameras+lenses, there is, for many, the added expense of upgrading the computer in order to handle and store the larger file sizes, and, perhaps most significantly……

e) not all picture makers, including most avid amateurs, have the desire or the need to engage in the “my dick is bigger than your dick” competition.

All of that written, let me add my ultimate reason for why I do not give a damn about any sensor size. Simply out, I do not care one iota how or what gear was used to make a picture. I only care about the picture itself. And, great pictures can be made with just about any camera / picture making device you would care to mention.

FYI, the diptych in this entry offers a peek at the man behind the curtain. That is, the work I often put into the processing of my pictures. In the case of this picture, I probably-I did not keep track-employed more than 20 separate processing steps-most local as opposed to global-to achieve the final result.

# 6109-11 / people • common places • the new snapshot ~ I don't understand

June 13, 2022

*the daughter* (r.) *and her cousin, both scheduled to be married next Spring* ~ (embiggenable)

WENT TO AN EXHIBITION OPENING (at an university gallery)-PAINTINGS, solo artist-THIS FRIDAY PAST. I was quite disappointed by what I saw even though, after seeing the work online, I was expecting a different reaction.

The work is described as “realist”-not photo-realism-in style. The subject matter was a large local family on their farm. Portraits of family members working on the farm as well as landscape scenes of the farm and its buildings. A review of the work focused on the artist’s ability to capture quality of “the light” as encountered in situ. View the work here.

As I understand it-as told to me by a member of the farm family who is marrying our daughter (as seen above making a selfie)-the artist works from photos. I found that interesting-but not unusual-inasmuch as my ultimate feeling, re; the work, is that the exact same images would have made a much better impression, to my eye and sensibilities, if they were presented as photographs instead of paintings - a take that stands in contrast to the oft-stated notion of, “That photograph looks like a painting.”

FYI, one of the primary issues I had with the exhibition was that, surprisingly, the galley lighting was not daylight balanced (5400K). Rather, it appeared to be closer to tungsten (3200K) which caused the colors of the paintings to have a warm, yellow-ish tint / cast that was quite unlike the more more neutral / “clean” look of the work as seen online.

I asked the artist about this fact and he said that he thought that the lightning enhanced the look of his work. A response which befuddled me no small amount inasmuch as it seems inconceivable to me that an artist who takes care in the selection the color to apply to his/her paintings wouldn’t seem to care about how they look on a gallery wall. That notion stands in direct opposition to how I process my work for printing in that, a hallmark of my prints, is very clean color which is intended to convey to a viewer, as accurately as the medium allows, how the world looked at the moment when I made any given picture.

Given the fact that the artist was lauded by his ability to capture the quality “the light”, I thought that the gallery lighting worked in significant opposition to that characteristic of the work. So much so, that it spoiled the entire viewing experience for me.

# 6105-07 / around the house • roadside attractions (common places) • watch update ~ no $6000 cameras were used in the making of these pictures

June 4, 2022

“The fact is that relatively few photographers ever master their medium. Instead they allow the medium to master them and go on an endless squirrel cage chase from new lens to new paper to new developer to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don't know what to do with it.” ~ Weston

I THOUGHT IT WAS TIME FOR MY FIRST EVER WATCH UPDATE. You will be happy to know Mickey is still tapping his foot, one tap /second. And, he never tires of calling me “pal” when I inquire about the time. At the moment of this picture’s making, it was 11:35AM, 73F outside, and my heart was beating along at 66 BPM (6 minutes prior). It also should go without writing that I can live, any time I wish, my Dick Tracy fantasies when I talk to family, friends, or junk call recordings on my watch. Not to mention, how much joy I experience when reviewing, on my watch, my pictures from my iPhone picture library. And sometimes when I’m bored, I make an ECG using my watch and sent it to my cardiologist just cuz I can.

I pity the poor suckers who have a watch that only tells time.

That written, I also want to assure you that no pictures on this blog were made with a $6000 camera, or, for that matter, with a classic medium-format film camera.

# 6099-6101 / Adirondack roadside attractions (common places) • the new snapshot ~ a different kind of seeing

May 30, 2022

“I used to think that photographs were "composed." This made photography sound very unexuberant, as if it was primarily a deliberate act. Such a notion suggests that a photographer stands in front of an inviting landscape, arranges a composition, and then takes the picture. And it's true that many photographers work that way. Of course, if photographs can be composed, then there must be rules of composition, such as: the subject should never be dead center. But why not? I used to think you could learn how to be a photographer by learning the rules of composition and how to use a camera. Now I think just the opposite: if you have to learn rules, then it's already too late. The elements of a design can make a photograph bearable and inoffensive, but they will not make a photograph compelling. We are compelled by photographs which, within the limits of an objectively appropriate form, manage to offer us something that touches on authentic concerns - our happiness or unhappiness, our fidelities, our modern war with perplexity. The balance between design and content must be there because design by itself is not interesting and pure content is merely assertive.” ~ John Rosenthal

RE: “The balance between design and content must be there because design by itself is not interesting and pure content is merely assertive.”

For the past few months I have been wandering about the picture making landscape in search of a picture making trope which is focused on a recurring single referent theme. That is to write, a departure from my design, aka: form, focused picture making M.O. in which any and all referents are fodder for my picture making endeavors. An endeavor in which pursuit of design / form is at the fore. Content, not so much.

ASIDE I am using the word content in the sense of the depicted referent, not in the sense, as currently fashionable in the Academic Lunatic Fringe, of “meaning” or what the picture “says”. END OF ASIDE

The difficulty I am facing in this search for a referent-focused picture making M.O. is that I find it very difficult, if not impossible, to find / see form, as it appeals to my eye and sensibilities, when I am in the referent seeking mode of picture making. That’s cuz, for all intents and purposes, referent-focused pictures are pretty much all about the referent. Form (in the classic art world sense of the word), not so much.

Which does not mean that I am incapable of making referent-focused pictures that have interesting visual characteristics which are independent of the depicted referent. What it does seem to mean to me is that I feel like I am cheating by depending upon the chosen referent for snagging and holding a viewers interest. And, perhaps the biggest challenge I face in pursuing this endeavor is getting over that feeling.

FYI, the pictures in this entry, which fall under the heading of Adirondack roadside attractions, is most likely to be the referent-focused picture making path I will follow. That’s cuz: a) the Park is bigger than the state of Vermont and there are roadside things aplenty, new and old, which can attract a wanderer’s attention, b) they have never been “cataloged”, and, c) I am pining for a gallery exhibition-in one regional gallery in particular-and this referent-focused body of work just might be like shooting fish in a barrel, re: getting the attention of regional gallery directors.

# 6095-97 / common things ~ TMI

May 27, 2022

“We got tired of the sameness of the exquisiteness of the photograph . . . [referring to the exact rendition of detail which is all-revealing.] Why? Because the photograph told us everything about the facts of nature and left out the mystery. Now, however hard-headed a man may be, he cannot stand too many facts; it is easy to get a surfeit of realities, and he wants a little mystification as a relief...” ~ Henry Peach Robinson

SINCE MY FIRST MAKING OF A PHOTOGRAPH WITH THE use of a digital camera, I have been applying-during processing-vignetting to my pictures. Recently I have also been making pictures using the iPhone PORTRAIT setting in order to achieve a limited DOF. From time to time, a slight hint of overall Gaussian Blur makes an appearance in my pictures. And, overall color saturation reduction is a regular part of my image file processing.

My rationale for these post-click-of-the-shutter processing steps is predicated on my dislike of the ever-increasing-let’s call it what it is-fetish for ultra realism. That is, iMo, the quest for maximun sharpness / resolution / detail together with extreme dynamic range, micro contrast, and color saturation that give us those nice bright colors, give us the greens of summers and makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah.

Some might opine that I am wallowing in a nostalgia for the good ol' days of color film cuz, I must confess, to a certain extent I want the look and feel of my pictures to resemble the look and feel of a color C print made from color negative film. However, I want that look and feel, not cuz it mimics the analog look and feel but cuz, to my eye and sensibilities, I just flat out do not like the look and feel of the hyper-realism so evident in the current picture making environment.

In today’s digital picture making domain, iMo (and to my eye and sensibilities), so many pictures contain “too many facts”, aka: too much information (TMI). Or, if you will, a “surfeit of realities”. I would go so far as to suggest that the surfeit of realities found in hyper-real photographs far exceeds what the human eye-with a fixed glance-can see when viewing the same scene in situ. These pictures are, to a certain extent (to my eye and sensibilities), rather “clinical”. That is, while they present a surfeit of facts, they have a rather distinct lack of mystification.

ASIDE To be certain, in my application of processing techniques I always attempt to respect how the depicted referent(s) appeared to my eye in situ. END ASIDE

FYI, Robinson put forth the above quote most likely between 1869>1890. One can only imagine what he might have to say re: today’s digital surfeit of realities.