# 5793-95 / around the house•kitchen life ~ on the road again

May 25, 2021

LATER TODAY THE WIFE AND I BEGIN our 13 day moving about the country trip. First stop, flying to California for our son's wedding then driving (1,000 miles) to Santa Fe, New Mexico and environs for some leisure time hanging around.

So, for the immediate future there will be no entries, re: kitchen life, kitchen sink or around the house. Although, we will be staying in 2 different houses so....

In any event, my picture making intention is to use only the iPhone. Nevertheless, I am taking a full compliment of µ4/3 gear for some reason that is not clear to me other than the fact that old habits die hard.

5787-5792 / flora•people•civilized ku ~ what did you do this past weekend?

May 24, 2021

OVER 46 HOURS THIS WEEKEND PAST THE WIFE and I drove 700 miles (round trip) to Rochester, NY to go the Lilac Festival in Highland Park* and to catch up with a few friends and family.

At the Lilac Festival I made a picture of the wife at spot where there was sign which stated that it was a perfect spot take a picture. I also enjoyed a refreshing $8.00 lemonade drink while the wife had a $6.00 Creamsicle smoothie.

FYI, I grew up immediately adjacent-about a 3 minute walk-to Highland Park, a beautiful setting, covering 150 acres (61 ha), of hills and valleys created from glacial deposits. Spent a lot of time in the park, skateboarding down the paved walkways, ice skating in winter, disappearing into the woods (overlooking the city) with my girl friend to watch the submarine races and variety of other activities.

On Sunday, during our return-to-home trip, we had a delightful late morning breakfast at the "famous" Keyes' Pancake House-a long time favorite of mine-in Old Forge in the south central region of the Adirondacks. We both had pancakes. Arriving home at 3PM, we spent a relaxing afternoon on the porch with the cat while imbibing a few drams liquid refreshment.

Kinda felt like old times, aka: pre-Covid, thanks to the vacines and a (majority) pandemic mandate abiding population in our state.

*Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted to seem like a natural occurrence of trees, shrubs and flowers, Highland Park, a city park, is actually a completely planned—and planted—arboretum or “tree garden.” In addition to over 1200 lilac shrubs, the park boasts a Japanese Maple collection, 35 varieties of sweet-smelling magnolias, a barberry collection, a rock garden with dwarf evergreens, 700 varieties of rhododendron, azaleas, mountain laurel and andromeda, horse chestnuts, spring bulbs and wildflowers and a large number of trees. The park’s pansy bed features 10,000 plants, designed into an oval floral “carpet” with a new pattern each year.

#5768-70 / (ku) landscape•kitchen life ~ on discursive promiscuity

May 15, 2021

I TRULY BELIEVE THAT VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF LIFE, picture making wise:

"Photography is a contest between a photographer and the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing. The contest can be held anywhere...One might compare the art of photography to the act of pointing. It must be true that some of us point to more interesting facts, events, circumstances, and configurations than others." ~ John Szarkowski

Which is why I am a practitioner of what I call discursive promiscuity. Consequently, my picture making contest, as Szarkowski suggests, can be held anywhere. And, it can be the focus of any given referent. That is cuz my eye and sensibilities can be pricked by, seemingly, the most unconventionable referents. That is, referents outside of the box of what is considered to be referents appropriate for the making of a picture. However, no matter the referent, my pictures are most always about form. In a way, kinda like Robert Adams:

"By Interstate 70: a dog skeleton, a vacuum cleaner, TV dinners, a doll, a pie, rolls of carpet....Later, next to the South Platte River: algae, broken concrete, jet contrails, the smell of crude oil.... What I hope to document, though not at the expense of surface detail, is the form that underlies this apparent chaos."~ Robert Adams

All of the above written, coming back to Scarkowski's idea of "more interesting facts, events, circumstances, and configurations", it took a comment from a gallery director who said, upon the viewing of my porfolio-which at the time was not divided into separate bodies of work-that no matter the diverse subject matter seen in my work, he would have no trouble identifying any of the pictures (when viewed as a stand-alone picture) as a product of my vision, which caused me to understand that the manner in which I pictured the world-that is, the identifiable configuration seen in all of my pictures-was the link which held all of the diverse referents together as a unified body of work. (My thanks to Hemingway for introducing the idea of run-on sentences as a writing divice)

That realization caused me to understand that promiscuous picture making was the way to go. After all, it would always be possible, long after the picture making fact, to harvest like-minded referent pictures from my total body of work and organize them, by specific referents, into separate bodies of work.

I recognize that this manner of picture making flies in the face of the conventional wisdom about picking a single subject / referent and concentrate on it, and it alone, for a protracted period of time in order to create a unified body of work. However, for me, when attempted, that mode of picturing leads me to a kind of picture making boredom which leads to a premature end of what I might have wanted to accomplish. What I have found from pursuing discursive promiscuity picture making is that I can add pictures, ad infinitum, to any number of separate bodies of work over a very long period of time.

In any event, I guess what I am suggesting in this entry is for giving it a try for a couple of months. Just picture anything and every thing and see what happens.

# 5765-67 / flora•civilized ku ~ a picture is not a helicopter

May 14, 2021

Photoshop composite ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone — ***Photoshop composite*** ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

EXACTLY MY THOUGHTS ON THE Academic Lunatic Fringe crowd (wherein content is more important than the visual)

"The funny and sad thing is that photography is an art, but these guys have such an inferiority complex about it that all they do is tag on gold-plate words where they aren’t needed. If they’d only let it talk for itself." ~ Gordon Parks

# 5762-64 / kitchen life•civilized ku ~ on tinkering and fiddling

May 13, 2021

(embiggenable) • iPhone / PORTRAIT mode*

* Listening to music on the ferry ride across Lake Champlain to Vermont.

I MUST ADMIT THAT I HAVE A FAIR AMOUNT of pity-but no sympathy-for those picture makers who whine about "real" camera menu complexity.

That state of mind springs from the fact that, iMo, if one is fiddling with a camera's menus during the picture making process, he/she is an idiot. And, I most always have pity on idiots cuz they just can't help themselves.

To wit, the age-old adage which advises again thinking when making a picture is a very valuable one, especially so involving gear. Inasmuch as, iMo (any many others), a significant component in the making of good pictures is for the picture maker to respond, with as little interference as possible, to the visual and emotional aspect(s) of what he/she sees, letting a camera's operational procedures "get in the way of" that response is counter-productive to good picture making.

In fact (and in practice), what a picture maker should do is to learn, gear / technique wise, what his/her picture making requires. Master it and then, "forget it" so, that at the moment of having one's eye and sensibilities pricked, it is, at most, a simple matter of adjusting the picture making triangle-aperture, shutter speed, focus-and clicking the shutter release. In other words, to act instinctually / intuitively, AKA: the ability to apply knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning.

AN ASIDE...In the digital picture making world, much of the adjusting can be eliminated by the use of "auto" settings-something I use to avoid like the plague-as in auto exposure, auto focus, auto White Balance, and the like. Today's in-camera AI is incredibly capable of getting it right. END OF ASIDE

Of course, I understand that many who come to the sport of picture making find the act of tinkering and fiddling with gear and technique its most endearing and involving characteristic. Which only goes to prove Julian's grandmother's statement that, "For every pot, there's a lid." Or, in other words...to each his own. Or, whatever floats your boat.

All of that written, here's a fact; the overwhelming number of successful and admired picture makers-those whose pictures are judged to be Art-keep their picture making simple...1 camera, 1 lens, l film / digital senor, and even in some cases, 1 aperture (f64 group). And, of course, one singular vision. They don't think about it, they just "set it and forget it."

More is the pity, in the digital domain, that more picture makers do not follow that proscription.

# 5759-61 / civlized ku•people•kitchen life ~ actually, it's how the eye sees

May 11, 2021

RE: NARROW DOF - THE PORTRAIT MODE ON THE iPHONE.

While the PORTRAIT mode is not "perfect" inasmuch as it has, amongst a few other minor quibles, a limited plain of focus range within which it works. As an example, I most often get the Place subject within 8 feet warning when using the PORTRAIT mode. That's cuz I do not often use the PORTAIT mode for making actual portraits.

Consequently, as in the case of the motorcyle picture, the PORTRAIT "effect" was not applied - the motorcycle-the focus point-was well outside of 8 feet. Which required that I create a narrow DOF look in Photoshop (it ain't rocket science).

Conversely, when making a portrait, as in the case of the beer drinker (my son) picture, the PORTRAIT mode works quite nicely, and, it gives me the ability to select the amount of DOF-via a simulated aperture setting-during post-shoot processing. FYI, that simulated aperture setting is not permanent. It can be adjusted at any time.

Another nifty thing that can be done with the PORTRAIT mode is "correcting" mis-focus. Consider the case of the paper towels picture...

...my point of focus was on the frontmost roll. In processing (on the iPhone), when I got the DOF look I liked, the rearmost roll was out of focus. So, I saved the image file with my desired DOF-albeit with the back roll out of focus-then (on the iPhone) I re-processed the image file to get the rearmost roll in focus and saved-with a new name-that file.

The next processing step (in Photoshop) was to cut/select the 2 in-focus paper towel rolls from the image file in which they were both sharp and paste that selection into the image file with my desired DOF. Viola, an image file with my desired DOF with both paper towel rolls in focus...a composit picture made from the same image file with different aperture/DOF settings.

All in all, easy-peasy. And, I might add, try getting that from a "real" camera with just 1 click of the shutter.

PS Kinda makes me wonder what Gordon Parks might have thought, re: this technology and how he might have used it. Although, this quote from Parks might contain a hint (inasmuch as, to my eye and sensibilities, I have always thought / felt that narrow DOF conveys a sense of dreamy-ness):

"...I have felt like a wayfarer on an alien planet at times — walking, running, wondering about what brought me to this particular place, and why. But once I was here the dreams started moving in, and I went about devouring them as they devoured me.

picture by Gordon Parks ~ (embiggenable) — ***picture by Gordon Parks*** ~ (embiggenable)

# 5756-58 / around the house•kitchen life ~ nice and easy does it

May 6, 2021

ONE OF THE VERY FIRST PHOTO-BOOK MONOLOGUES I ever purchased was a photo book of pictures made by Gordon Parks. I do not remember which of his pictures that, at the time, pricked my eye and sensenbilities and caused me to purchase that book.

However, what I do know is that many of his pictures, especially his color work, exhibit a quality that I would label as delicate and lyrical. A quality, no doubt, enhanced by a narrow depth of field which was most likely the result of, in his square pictures, his use of a 120 film camera (a twin lens reflex?) and that era's slow color film speed.

In any event, I mention Gordon Park's work as an intro of sorts to an explanation of my attraction to pictures with narrow dof...

...suffice it to write that I never have been a fan of "sharpness". To be more accurate, the excessive sharpness which is now approaching the status of a photo fetish. In fact, since my day 1 of digital picture making, I have been adding a tiny dash of global Gaussian Blur to all of my pictures as well as corner vignetting. I am also prone to reducing the color saturation in many of my pictures as well. All done in an effort to reduce the digital "look". And, iMo, making pictures with a narrow dof contributes to the same idea of reducing the digitial look.

Quite obviously, making pictures with a skosh of blur, corner vignette and narrow dof softens the image. And, I'm willing to admit that I do such things in order to create a, some might say, nostalgic look, albeit subtle, to my prints. A look that mimics how pictures use to look back in the pre-digital era of picture making.

However, it is not just a trip down memory lane which drives my picture making and print making proceedure / technique. My eye and sensibilities are drawn to pictures which exhibit a sense of "softness"...not soft in the blurry sense, but soft, as in, with the digital edge ground down.

To my eye and sensibilities, pictures which exhibit such "soft" qualities tend to be more lyrical, poetic and I might even opinion as more visually seductive than those straight out of the digital box. One might even write, picture that softly hum rather than emitting a screeching-finger nails on a chalkboard-shout.

# 5751-55 / around the house (full frame) ~ beyond the square

May 2, 2021

A SOMEWHAT STRANGE THING HAPPENED yesterday, after making a picture of wilted flowers in a vase using the iPhone PORTRAIT setting, I opened the file for processing and, seemingly for the first time-actually most probably the second time-I noticed that the picture look very good as shot. That is, as an iPhone "full-frame" picture.

To clarify, when using the PORTRAIT picture making setting on the iPhone, there is no setting for the square picture format-as there is when using the PHOTO setting-so you end up with an uncropped-to-square, full-frame image file. Consequently, my standard processing procedure is to open such a file and, without even considering it as full-frame picture, I immediately crop to the square format. An almost Pavlovian, don't even-think-about-it response, aka: square, it's what I do.

In any event, yesterday, the seed was planted in my head as I was making the picture that, due to the way it looked in the iPhone screen, it looked damn good as a full-frame picture. So, upon openning it for processing, I did pay attention to its full-frame possibility. And, I liked it. Which lead to...

... my wondering how many PORTRAiT setting image files I might have let slip through the processing procedure without considering or even noticing their full-frame possibilities.

After combing through my un-processed image file library, for my original un-cropped, un-processed PORTRAIT image files-only 2 of which were actual portraits-I now know the answer to that question...25 image files.

That came as quite a surprise cuz, when making a picture with the PORTRAIT setting, I first compose the picture with the PHOTO setting set to square. Then I switch to PORTRAIT and, without considering the on-screen, full-frame image, I make the picture. The surprise was the result of the fact that most of the un-cropped image files worked really well as full-frame pictures without my paying any attention at all to that possibility at the moment those pictures were made.

To be certain, I do not think that the full-frame picture variants are any better (or worse) than their square variant counterparts. iMo, and to my eye and sensibilities, they are just different.

All of the above written, stay tuned for my next entry when I with attempt to explain why I have been a fan of narrow DOF since nearly the beginning of my picture making life. And, why I will be more frequently using the iPhone PORTRAIT setting-did I mention how much I really like the ability to adjust, for all time, the amount of DOF in a picture after its making?-in my future picture making.