referents and subject matter

March 3, 2023

“…all photographers of stature whom I admire seem to share this fundamental characteristic: a deep and long-lasting respect and love for the subject matter…” ~ David Hurn

iMo, ONE MIS-UNDERSTOOD AND, QUITE POSSIBLY, destructive piece of oft recommended picture making advice is that a picture maker who is looking for his picture making passion should seek out a subject matter that he/she really cares about.

On its face this seems to be a smart thing to do. However, the problem I see with it is that it almost always leads to thinking about “subject matter” as an actual, literal / physical thing-a people, a place, or an object. A picture making alley that leads to an endless stream of pictures of ever popular subject matter; pictures in the making of which techniques and effects, aka: art sauce, are employed in an effort to “see” the same old stuff in a “different” manner from the rest of the literal subject matter focused picture making crowd.

The advice often goes on to state that…

“if images are not rooted in “the thing itself” then…the photographer has not learned anything about the real world.” ~ David Hurn

…to which I would respond that there ain’t all that much to be “learned” about the real world from the viewing of pictures which show us the same old stuff over and over again-stating and re-stating the obvious-no matter how much technique / effects have been applied.

All of that written, if one looks at the advice, re: finding subject matter, with the idea in mind that subject matter does not have to be a tangible, physical thing, then, iMo, you’re heading down the right track. I write that cuz one is then entering the picture making zone wherein one makes pictures in which concept-not the actual, literal referent-is the subject matter.

Consider, for the moment, my pictures.

The concept-my “subject matter” as opposed to my referents-that drives my picture making is my intent to illustrate and illuminate the fact-the undeniable truth to be found in my work-that the quotidian world is awash-when one has a picture making device in hand and the eye to see it-with seemingly random and serendipitous arrangements of virtually any real world objects that, when isolated and captured within a picture maker's framing, are fertile ground for making images with, to my eye and sensibilities (and to that of others), interesting visual energy and form which creates it own sense of beauty.

And, let me add to that-considering the pictures in this entry-that I do not have “a deep and long-lasting respect and love for” egg yokes, greasy water in a pan, or the things in my kitchen dish rack.

Nevertheless, despite my lack of love and respect for the diverse things-the referents-in my pictures, they are an integral element in my pictures inasmuch as…

“…resourceful photographic formalists regard the complexion of the given environment as potentially articulate aesthetic material….they [ed. I] consider the subject and its visual essence as indivisible….[they] perceive real objects and intervening spaces as interanimating segments of a total visual presentation….The resultant image exists simultaneously as a continuous visual plane on which every space and object are interlocking pieces of a carefully constructed jig-saw puzzle and a window through which the viewer can discern navigable space and recognizable subject matter…” ~ Sally Eauclair

The actual real world referents-the unconventional things, beauty wise-in my pictures also contribute to the perplexity / discomfort many have when viewing my pictures (the oft-heard, “I don’t know why I like these pictures, but I do.”)…

“.…many great photographs displaying beauty reveal a sensation of strangeness, not predictability, a kind of shock non-recognition inside the familiar. They are the opposite of cliche.” ~ David Hurn

All of the above written, I believe that “the thing itself” to be seen in a photograph is, quite simply, the photograph itself and, collectively, that which the photograph illustrates and illuminates.

ADDENDUM It should be understood that this entry is not suggesting / implying or otherwise insinuating that it is impossible to make photographs of things considered to be of conventional beauty that also conveys a concept that is beyond the obvious. However, I can write, without a moment’s hesitancy, that it is very easy to be seduced into thinking that a referent’s conventional beauty is all it takes to make a photograph interesting.

6493-95 / single woman ~ behind the scene (instructional)

March 1, 2023

***uncle momo cafe*** ~ Jersey City, NJ (embiggenble)

***wedding reception*** ~ Jersey City, NJ (embiggenble)

I DO NOT OFTEN POST INSTRUCTIONAL aka: how-to, entries but, when I was working on the top picture in this entry, I performed a modification on the image file that I thought might interest my readers.

That single women picture was made without any opportunity for any iPhone settings. There was just enough time to point the iPhone and hit the make-a-picture button. The iPhone was pre-set to the PORTRAIT setting and chose the paper bag as the focus point. The “single woman”, aka: my subject, was not in focus. Not to worry cuz…

…one of the great features of the PORTRAIT setting is the fact that one can change the so-labled f-stop when processing the file. So, when I opened the file on my phone, I set the f-stop to f16 which essentially created an everything-in-focus image file. I copied and saved that image file and went back to the original image file and returned the f-stop to its original setting.

I now had 2 image files, one sharp, one soft focus. It was then a simple procedure-on my desktop machine using Photoshop-to select the “single woman” in the sharp image file and place it on a separate layer in the soft image file. And, voila, I now had the picture that I wanted; sharp referent with soft background. And, as you can see in the finished photograph, I made some modifications-color balance, tonal adjustments (on the single woman), high recovery (the light globes), and the removal of the upper left cyan cast (mixed light, daylight + tungsten)-on some selected areas of the image file and then merged the 2 layers together.

ASIDE I made a couple additional single women photographs while in Jersey City this weekend past. Those 2 photographs were made with my “standard” single women M.O.; making a picture without the woman in question knowing that I was making a picture of her. Which leads to a question, re: the Uncle Momo single women…

She seems to be aware of the fact that I was making a photograph of her. Although, it is possible that she might have thought that I was looking at / reading something on my iPhone. Whatever, the case, it does call into question whether I can, thematically writing, include it in my single women body of work. Gotta thing about that. END ASIDE

#6490-92 / single women • common places • common things ~ ennui

February 27, 2023

***this weekend past in Jersey City, NJ*** ~ (embiggenable)

IT COMES AS NO SURPRISE TO ME TO READ a blog entry-from a dedicated gear head-that expresses a sense of (non-commercial) photo making ennui. It would seem that an equipment fetish is not particularly conducive to the making of good photographs.

While it would me very easy for me to heap a bunch of no-shit-Sherlock on the author, I thought that I would instead-for instructive purposes only-intersperse a few Brooks Jensen quotes-from his Things I’ve Learned About Photography-together with a few excerpts from the blog entry in question:

excerpt: All I can manage to say for the photographic process now is that it gets one out of the house…But without a spark behind the process all the trappings of the craft are mostly rendered meaningless and banal….old duffers like me wandering around with wonderful gear in a vain attempt to re-capture the magic we felt when taking photographs in our youth….

The more gear you carry the less likely you are to make a good photograph. ~ BJ

excerpt:…Almost as though we've all concluded that with the endless torrent of images being constantly shared everywhere that no individual shot or selection of shots matters anymore….I felt a certain sense of futility…Another futile attempt to carve out some sort of alternate viewpoint.

…every photographer who sticks with it long enough arrives at a technical plateau where production of a technically good photograph is relatively easy. It is here that real photography starts and most photographers quit. ~ BJ

Now I am not suggesting that the author is about to give up making non-commercial pictures but, if he were to do so, it would not be much of loss to fine art photo world cuz one should…

Never ask a person who collects cameras if you can see his photographs. ~ BJ

You would never know it by looking at the photographic press [ed. gear focused blogs], but there are an amazing number of creative people engaged in photography who couldn’t care less about equipment but who love photographs. ~ BJ

# 6482-88 / roadside attractions • flora • common places ~ drive by shooting

February 22, 2023

“Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn’t photogenic.” ~ Edward Weston

DURING THE PAST COUPLE DECADES I HAVE amassed in the neighborhood of 150+ pictures that were made within 20 yards of my car; my car which was pulled over to the side of the road. And, in almost all cases the pictures were made with my feet firmly planted on the edge of the road. Hence, from that picture making M.O. comes the title, roadside attractions.

This practice is the not result of my being lazy or lame. Point of fact, I have ventured far from the road-10-20 miles into the forest / wilderness on foot or in a canoe-spending up to 4-5 nights in the backcountry. Needless to write, I make lots of pictures on those treks.

That written, what pricks my eye and sensibilities along the roadside is the abundance of intimate landscapes brimming with the potential for the making of photographs with a high content of visual energy /complexity. Tangles, thickets, and clusters of bio-diverse, indigenous flora / detritus present a riotously complex visual symphony of color, line, shape, and texture that, when isolated and “organized” within my imposed frame, conspires to give the eye no place to rest.

FYI, years ago, when I began this M.O., my son, the cinemascapist, had labeled this picture making practice my Jackson Pollock picture making state of mind (and eye).

In any event, I am assembling a couple roadside attractions print portfolios, together with a photo book, for submission to galleries. See more roadside attractions pictures in the new gallery on my WORK page.

# 6465-68 / windshields • hockey ~ and now for something completely different

February 13, 2023

***he’s a Vermont Lumberjack and he’s OK*** ~ (embiggenable)

***waiting in line for the ferry*** ~ (embiggenable)

***sunset as viewed from on the ferry*** ~ (embiggenable)

I BEGAN MY µ4/3 LIFE WITH THE PURCHASE OF an Olympus E-3 DSLR - pre-mirrorless era. After moving on to Olympus mirrorless cameras, I used the E-3 as a prop inasmuch as, when making pictures for commercial assignments, I had it around on shoots to validate to the client the idea-image wise (in the personal image sense)-that I was a professional photographer. In other words, pay no attention to those little amateur looking cameras which, of course, were making much better image files than the big impressive looking camera.

That written, this weekend past, I was tasked with making pictures of my hockey-playing (Juniors in the Eastern Hockey League) grandson (FYi, he’s playing his way up the ladder to college hockey). So, out comes the E-3, emerging from its current state as a paperweight, cuz it is, together with my 50-200 f2.8 lens (e10-400mm), my best tool for hockey action picture making. It has been so long since I have used the camera, that I had to almost relearn how to use it. Not to mention the time spent finding all the pieces - batteries, charger, cards, camera strap, et al.

In any event, one of the challenges of making reasonably sharp hockey action pictures is the problem, at ice level, of shooting through glass. That is, “glass” which is actually well scratched and marred plexiglass. Fortunately, a tele lens focused on a referent well away from the glass helps diminish, but not eliminate, the scratches and mars but, nevertheless, you are still shooting through what might be labeled as a pretty thick diffusion filter.

My grandson’s team, the Vermont Lumberjacks’-hence the spiffy red checked, flannel pajama -looking uniform-home rink is in Vermont and it requires a ferry ride across Lake Champlain to see a game. Last evening, on our ferry ride home, the wife and I were treated to very nice sunset which was very different from our midnight-a pitch black, cloudless sky before moonrise-ferry ride home after Saturday night’s game.

# 6443-50 / bodies of work ~ stumbling down a dead end street #2

February 3, 2023

***Life without the APA*** ~ (embiggenable)

***Adirondack Snapshot Project*** ~ (embiggenable)

ACCORDING TO THE IDIOT QUOTED IN MY LAST entry, I have apparently been “repeating the same basic work, for decades and decades, unaware that I have been stumbling down a dead end street”. That would be because I have been making pictures driven by my very own picture making vision. A vision that does not allow me to go careening around the technique / visual effects / gear-obsessed picture making landscape like a drunken sailor. To wit, I see what I see and that’s how that I see (all credit to Popeye who said, “ I am what I am and that’s all that I am.)

That written, re: careening around like a drunken sailor, I will readily admit to careening around the referent landscape like a drunken picture maker. A picture making condition condition (affliction?) that I call discursive promiscuity. To my eye and sensibilities, any thing and every thing is fair game for a picture making possibility. The result of that discursive promiscuity is that I have accumulated, over the past 25 years, at least 15,000 pictures.

One might think that that glut of pictures would make for a very unruly mess. However, that is not the case cuz, thanks to the guidance of my vision, the overwhelming majority of my pictures exhibit a consistent,-but not formulaic-very particular attention to form, aka: the “arrangement” of the visual elements-line, shape, tone, color and space-within the imposed frame of my pictures.

This “consistency” leads to a very interesting result; while I rarely work with the thought of creating a body of work in mind, nevertheless, I have, over an extended period of time, realized that my eye and sensibilities have been, and still are, drawn to specific referents again and again. The result is that eventually-many times over the course of years-I “discover” that I have, in fact-albeit inadvertently, created many bodies of work.

ASIDE the body of works illustrated above, with a few images each, are some of the bodies of work I have created, most of which were “discovered” in my library (as opposed to deliberately created). The are at least 6 more bodies of work I could display. END OF ASIDE

And, what I find interesting and very surprising is that, once a number of referent related pictures are organized into a body of work, the coherent consistency of vision is, quite frankly, amazing.

Makes me quite happy that I have not tried to “re-invent” my vision. And BTW, I really like the “street” I am on. It is not a “dead end” and, in fact, there is no end in sight as far as I can see.

# 6423-37 / comon places • common things • still life • people ~ meaninng schmeaning

January 30, 2023

***Quality butcher*** ~ Scotland (embiggenable)

“Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy.” ~ Susan Sontag

IN MY LAST ENTRY I PROCLAIMED THAT, re: the medium of photography and its apparatus, it’s the same as it ever was. I believe that to be true albeit with one notable exception; the Major League Division of the Fine Art Photography World. To wit…

Over the past decade or two, fine art photo galleries and art institutions have been taken over-I would venture to write”hijacked”-by the Academic Lunatic Fringe. That is, at the directorial level graduate degrees-MAs /MFAs-are the norm and, consequently, the work being exhibited or acquired adheres to the ALF dictum of meaning trumps visual content. Or, in other words, what a picture means is much more important than what a picture depicts. Concept is the thing, which quite frankly is to be expected of academia, aka: the home of ideas.

The unfortunate (iMo) results are two-fold; 1) most ALF pictures are, to my eye and sensibilities, visual flops, and, 2) the pictures are always accompanied by a bloviating art speak explanation, re: what the pictures mean. The explanations are, iMo, virtually indispensable inasmuch as the pictures, in and of themselves, are rarely self-explanatory. In fact, after being told by a picture maker exactly what his/her pictures are about, I rarely see in his/her pictures whatever it is the maker is trying to express.

“University presses [ed. +fine art photo book publishers] increasingly hold to the policy that requires books of pictures to incorporate “substantial” texts…. layering together pictures with the photographer’s words, [ed. or more likely an academic’s essay] but also sandwiching the concoction between slabs of social—scientific balloon bread. ~ Robert Adams

To be completely honest, I should make it clear that my dislike, re: this sad state of photographic affairs, is predicated upon a very selfish desire to be visually engaged when viewing photographs on a gallery / art institution (or even online) wall. That is, as opposed to pictures of the self-pyschoanalyzing, navel gazing “investigations” by some so-called lens-based artist’s obsession with the “intersection” of some aspect of a social-scientific balloon bread concept and his/her inner self/life.

# 6412-14 / windshields • landscape • (un)common places ~ throwing stones

January 20, 2023

TRUE TO MY PLEDGE IN MY LAST ENTRY, during my time out and about yesterday, I kept my eye open for the making of additional windshield series pictures. While I made a straight picture of the scene, I have to admit that I am becoming even more enamored of the windshield-type views.

Last evening during my 40 mile drive to Saranac Lake-through a driving snowfall-for the World University Games curling semi-finals, I did not make any windshield pictures. The event- GBR v. CAN / USA v. SUI, won by USA and GBR, who will play for the gold medal-was a great example of cowbell madness. What a riotous racket.

After the games, the drive home was even more adventurous than the drive in. So, no more windshield pictures were made. However, today’s drive in to Lake Placid for the Short Track Speed Skating event might be windshield productive.