# 5891-94 / the light (civilized ku) ~ a perspective on light

December 31, 2021

AS I WAS RUMMAGING IN MY PICTURE LIBRARY I DISCOVERED that; 1. I have quite a number of pictures which were made due to “the light” and, 2. even though I have made a the light photo book, I have never made a the light gallery for my WORK page.

As I was organizing quite few (40 and more to come) of my the light pictures, it came to my awareness that many of those pictures where made with the 1.5mm (13mm equiv.) on my iPhone or, from the way-back machine, the 12mm lens (24mm equiv.) on my µ4/3 cameras. In the case of the 4 pictures in this entry, they all include doors and the exaggerated perspective of an ultra-wide angle lens. All of which leads me to the question …

….should I pursue the making of a complete body of work titled, a perspective (pun) on light and doors (or some such title)? And, if I were to do so, would it also be pictures that are about photography? That is, pictures which illustrate a specific visual characteristic intrinsic to the tools of the medium (as an example). A characteristic like narrow DOF or, as in this case, exaggerated perspective.

FYI, a thought about my use of “the light”….obviously, for me, “the light” is not the light that so many pictures makers salivate over, late day warm Hudson River School light. Rather, my “the light” is just ordinary, everyday sunlight which, when streaming through an opening-a door, a window, et al-creates a visual element which I use as an piece in the visual jigsaw-puzzle field created by / imposed by my framing. Or, in other words, the pictures I make that are instigated by “the light” are not about or defined by that light.

# 5890 / decay ~ or, if you prefer, entropy

December 30, 2021

IT HAS BEEN QUITE A WHILE SINCE I made a decay and disgust picture. That may due simply to the fact that a resident of the house has been remarkably scrupulous about keeping the frig clear of such picture making items. Perhaps it is time for me to start cultivating and harvesting such picturesque items.

That written, I have no idea what my decay and disgust pictures mean.

# 5888--89 / around the house ~ to drink or not to drink?

December 26, 2021

***you only live once*** ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

MERRY HOLIDAYS, EVEN THOUGH I AM A DAY LATE and a dollar short (as the saying goes).

Actually, due to a mis-communication between the wife and myself, I am more than a dollar short on account of the fact that I spent $540.00USD on a very limited, recently released bottle of Bob Dylan’s Bootleg (Vol II) bourbon. FYI, the bottle is adorned with Dylan’s Sunset, Monument Valley painting. The leather case is individually numbered.

However, one question remains, drink it or save it as an investment? Last year’s Bootleg (Vol I ) limited release is sold out. Currently it sells for $1,000.00USD on the secondary market. And, the price will only go up.

# 5884-86 / around the house • kitchen life • people ~ feeling it

December 23, 2021

***I’ve been taking my temperature more often lately*** ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

***the light switches are in the off position*** ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

***carpet protects the porch floor from heel marks*** ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

ON MY LAST ENTRY, A COMMENT WAS LEFT BY STEPHEN McATEER:

Some people I used to read on the internet seemed to think that a photograph had to have 'Meaning' to be any good….My own view is that it is a good photograph if it pleases the eye. Meaning does not interest me in the least.

To clarify my thoughts on meaning to be seen / found in a photograph, I believe every photograph ever made has some meaning or another, even if only to the individual who made it. However, that written, once the photograph is offered for viewing to those other than the maker, what the photograph means (if anything) is anyone’s guess.

Truth be written, I spent a lot of time, used a lot of internet space, and typed a zillion words over the years (on this blog and my previous blog) speculating / festering, one might even say “obsessing” about meaning in photographs. ASIDE: Stephen might even have been taking a shot at me, re: “used to read on the internet” wise. END OF ASIDE That endeavor was due primarily to my concern, re: did my pictures have any meaning? That concern was based up my very loose acceptance of the idea that “a photograph had to have 'Meaning' to be any good”.

After intense and protracted looking for meaning in my pictures, I discovered that, shockingly, there was none to be seen / found. However, what I did find was that all of my “good” pictures shared a common characteristic - that is, they all incited feelings and sensations instigated by their visual-senses activation. There was nothing to" “interpret”, nothing to “understand”. Their “goodness” was predicated upon how a picture looked and how that “look” pricked my eye and sensibilities.

If how a picture looks is the basis for a viewer to look for meaning in a picture-literary, cultural, art theory, historic connections, et al-so be it. I am not suggesting that there is nothing of the sort to be seen /found in my pictures. However, in the making of my pictures I am not trying to instill / insert any meaning. My intent is to make visible the experiences I see / feel as I traverse the planet-with my eyes wide open-in a manner that pricks my eye and sensibilities and of those who view my pictures.

That written, and despite the fact that the visual referent(s) depicted in most of my pictures is not what the pictures are about, some of those pictures can, and do, hold special meaning for me.

So, when all is written / said and done, I do not see meaning v. pleasing to the eye as mutually exclusive ideas. My only problem with meaning in photography is with those who elevate meaning, aka: content, over form. Or, when doing so, eviscerate a picture by dissecting / breaking it down into pieces.

FYI, you may noticed the non sequitur-like captions with the pictures in this entry. I am playing with the idea of mis-direction, re: providing a caption to a picture which causes a viewer to try to figure out what a picture is really about cuz it can not possibly be about what the caption seems to imply that it is about.

# 5873-75 / around the house • kitchen life ~ picturing experience

December 14, 2021

JOHN SZARKOWSKI WROTE (c.1976):

…it is true, as I believe it is, that today’s most radical and suggestive color photography derives most of its vigor from commonplace models…[I]n the past decade a number of photographers have begun to work in color in a more confident, more natural, and yet more ambitious spirit, working not as though color were a separate issue, a problem to be solved in isolation (not thinking of color as photographers seventy years ago thought of composition), but rather as though the world itself existed in color, as though the blue and the sky were one thing….[they] accept color as existential and descriptive; the pictures are not photographs of color, any more than they are photographs of shapes, texture, objects, symbols, or events, but rather photographs of experience, as it has been ordered and clarified within the structures imposed by the camera.

And, speaking of experience, here’s what Joel Meyerowitz had to say:

“I don’t want to talk about one aspect of these pictures over the rest. The fact is, I’m trying to photograph the wholeness of my experience. I’m trying to pass that experience back into the world…[T]hat’s what it’s about-the location of the subject, it’s about the passage of the experience itself, the wholeness, though you back into the world, selected by your native instincts. That’s what artists do. They separate their experience from the totality, from raw experience, and it’s the quality of their selections that makes them visible to the world.”

Add to the idea, re: Szarkowski’s and Meyerowitz’s photographing experience, Meyerowitz’s sensation of “feeling”…:

“I see things-this is my life-I look; I make visual images…[I]t’s what I’ve done since I was a kid. I feel things…[I] love sensations. But ,within the limited range of sensations that I am responsive to, certain optical things excite me...[I]f I am in a good place, where there’s lots of visual activity, I become supersensitive. I receive many signals and I pick and choose among them.”

…and I have started to think that I need to reassess the idea of so-called “vision “ as it is most commonly bantered about / understood in the “serious” amateur picture making world.

# 5863-67 / landscape (civilized ku • ku) • around the house ~ working different

December 8, 2021

I SORTA GOT SIDETRACKED BY THE IS-SQUARE-GOOD-FOR-LANDSCAPES thing along with a dose of BW infatuation. Using the work of Robert Adams as markers / aim points for both ideas, as well as rummaging around in my picture library for pictures which were suitable for RA-like (signs of man in the landscape) conversion to BW, I am well satisfied that, for my picturing, square and BW digital BW conversion processing is good. I might even state that it is very good.

Re: digital conversion / processing for color > BW. From time to time I come across, most recently on T.O.P., the idea that digital is not BW picturing friendly. That the only way to achieve the best BW pictures is via the analog, aka: film, picture making process. I disagree….

…That written, I am not here to debate one process against the other. Rather, the position I take is that digital BW images can be created which compare-that is, if comparing is your thing-very favorably with film created BW images. Me, I’m not into “comparing”. Nor am I a life-long devotee of BW picture making.

Sure, sure. Back in the analog days, I had my very own soup-to-nuts “formula” for making BW pictures - preferred film, developer, developing times / agitation, (my own “personal” zone system) + my preferred printing system - condenser enlarger, specific developer, specific graded paper. My formula produced BW prints that I liked very much. Not to mention, I truly enjoyed my private time in the darkrooms (1 for film processing, 1 for printing).

At the same time there were those who took the I idea of creating a personal BW picturing, processing, printing formula to an extreme. Example: I have overheard many a photo club conversation hotly debating the type of bulb to be used in an enlarger head. They loved to tinker with the process to the point where, in some cases, it was the reason they were involved with photography.

In any event, I’ll leave you with a hint-I have mentioned this previously-for making really good BW digital image files. The process is simplicity itself - open an RGB color image file. Convert to LAB Color Space, Discard the a and b channels, leaving only the Lightness channel. Convert to Grayscale. At this point you now have an image file that contains only the lightness values-independent of any color values-extracted from your original color file-THIS NOT THE SAME THING AS DE-SATURATING THE COLORS IN A COLOR FILE-not even close.

Once I have the Grayscale file, I will usually make small tonal adjustments in Photoshop to bring the tonal values in line with the feel of the original color file, therefore in line with the actual scene.

**RGB original** / **LAB conversion Grayscale** ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

# 5851-52 / landscape (new topographics) ~ one of these things is not like the other thing

November 27, 2021

OVER PAST MONTH OR SO I HAVE BEEN MAKING A FAIR NUMBER of full-frame pictures. In most cases, doing so after making a square-frame picture of the small referent / scene.

What I have learned from this procedure is that , while I still see square, picture making vision wise, I only see full-frame wise when I switch from square crop to full-frame crop on the viewing screen of the iPhone. That is to write, I do not see the world full-frame, picture making wise, “naturally” / intuitively. Nevertheless, I do feel that once I impose the full-frame rectangle on my viewing screen, I have no trouble “arranging” the visual elements on the 2D visual plane within my imposed frame into a satisfactory visual form.

The interesting result of this crop-of-the-real-world switcheroo is that the full-frame picture-even though it is based upon / around the square instigating prick to my eye and sensibilities-presents (in print), a remarkably different look and feel from the square version thereof. That is not to write that one is better or worse than the other. They are just different.

So, considering the preceeding, were I to set out to make a full-frame body of work, I would set my on-screen crop to full-frame and, after being incited to make a picture by a prick to my eye and sensibilities, I would then only view the instigating referent through the full-frame crop on the iPhone screen.

However, I am intrigued by the idea of making a photographs about photography body of work which is comprised of full-frame + square frame pictures of the same referent. The intent being to have an exhibition with one wall displaying square prints opposing another wall displaying the full-frame prints.

# 5848-50 / landscape (ku) • kitchen life ~ forever and ever, amen

November 24, 2021

I HEARD AN INTERESTING PHRASE LAST EVENING ON A PBS SHOW-”staring into the distance of the present”-which had nothing to do with photography or art but I thought it kinda said something about my pictures. Especially if it is paired with a quote from George Tice:

It takes the passage of time before an image of a commonplace subject can be assessed. The great difficulty of what I attempt is seeing beyond the moment; the everydayness of life gets in the way of the eternal.

Over the past few years in particular I have willfully avoided, while making pictures, thinking about anything but responding to the moment. I do not think about “the eternal” or any other notion, re: why I am making the picture. My intent at the moment of making a picture is simply to be successful in capturing that which pricked my eye and sensibilities.

My idea of success is measured upon the viewing of the finished print and whether or not it instigates the same prick I experienced upon the viewing of the actual scene / referent. With those pictures that achieve that result, I know that they will repeatedly do so every time I view them, a quality which makes them and the depicted referent somewhat “eternal”.