# 6651-53 / kitchen life • common place ~ instax gratification

July 19, 2023

**a part of the 01/21 exhibition** - not (embiggenable)

I HAVE BEEN PREOCCUPIED RECENTLY IN THE MAKING of 32 INSTAX prints of pictures of my home town. The effort has been made in anticipation of a gallery exhibition titled. The Forks ~ it really is a small town. The exhibition would be a redux / revival of my 2011 exhibition The Forks ~ there’s no place like home - about which this review was written:

Last Friday, I went to the new Tahawus Cultural Center – currently under renovation as part of an ongoing rehab project. On display was "The Forks - there's no place like home" by photographer Mark Hobson, which features intimate and intriguing portraits of the local community ... you can see Hobson's great photos right through the great shop front windows ... you might have seen Hobson's work recently in the Lake Placid Center for the Arts Annual Juried Exhibition .…. Of course, a picture is worth a thousand words, so the best way to experience Hobson's evocative work is to head over to Ausable Forks and check it out ... It is a great photography show in an exciting new gem of a space and I recommend stopping by for a visit.

2 years after the exhibition, Adirondack Life Magazine published an 8 page feature-presented monograph style-of pictures from the exhibition. Added bonus - the magazine (and I) won an Award of Merit in the annual International Regional Magazine Awards event, the judges noting that the pictures were a “refreshing look at home”, “everyday scenes that many people overlook”, and how they were struck by how beautifully the series captured everyday life in a small town.

It should go without writing but, no surprise, since the exhibition, I have continued to make pictures of my small town. No particular reason for doing so other than the fact that here it is and so am I. But, as fate would have it, enter the INSTAX Mini Printer.

To wit, my acquisition of the INSTAX Mini Printer got me to thinking that the small prints-a tiny bit over 2x3 inches-would be a perfect format for pictures of a small town (we’re talking 600 people here). And, what better place to exhibit them than in a really small gallery.

Wow. What a creative cosmic convergence - really small photographs of a really small town in a really small gallery. The only thing that could make it even better would be if I were 4 foot tall.

PS meanwhile life goes on in my kitchen

# 6645-50 / places • people • things ~ my change over day in pictures

July 14, 2023

YESTERDAY MORNING I CLOSED OUT MY 76th year on the planet and began the first day of my 77th year on the planet first day with a walk around the neighborhood to check out the rain results on our local river and brook. Both were raging and roaring up to, but not over, flood stage level. Returning home I got into my normal morning wake up routine which goes as follows…

Coffee, coffee, coffee

coffee, coffee

coffee

Everybody shut up

coffee

Next up, around noon, I picked up a good friend (since grammar school) and went to lunch where I made an instax picture / print of our friendly bartender /waitress. After a very leisurely repast + a tipple of Lagavulan 16 (all praise the peat), we headed out to return my friend to his home. During the drive we drove straight into yet another rain storm. And, after arriving at my house, I and the cat lounged through an hour-and-a-half thunder storm. Me on the bed reading and he under the bed hiding.

Next up, the wife arrived home from work and I made a call to our local liquor store to inquire about the anticipated arrival of a unique whiskey, Fuji Japanese Whisky, I had requested that they find and order. Lo and behold, it had arrived on the very day of the beginning of my 77th year.

So, after the wife retrieved said whisky, we spent a relaxing 2 hours on our back porch inbibing and watching the rain clouded sky transition into a soft, drifting clouds sunset.

It was a nice day.

BTW, the pictures in this entry appear in top-bottom, chronological order.

# 6636-44 / around the house • foliage • (un)common things ~ all backed up

July 10, 2023

OVER THE PAST WEEK OR SO I HAVE BEEN afflicted with a kinda constipation, i.e. the making of many discursive promiscuity pictures, placing them in a number of individual blog entry setups, and then not posting any of them them cuz I couldn’t come up with any words to accompany them. Add to that that I have been spending some time sitting out on our front porch and our back porch while contemplating the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address and there you have it - the recipe for letting time and other stuff slip by and backup.

The Haudenosaunee interest-the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy (People of the Longhouse)-Address-a Greetings to the Natural World-was instigated by a recent visit-I have been there a number of times-to the nearby Six Nations Iroquois Cultural Center. The Address is kinda like a meditation which expresses and encourages gratitude for the earth, people, earth, waters, plants, animals, birds, bushes, trees, winds, sun, moon, stars, as well as the unseen spiritual forces. It recognizes that are a multitude of connections between human beings and all living things in the world and that we have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things.

What I find very mysteriously attractive about the Address is the fact that, as one person expressed it, it…

…conjures up no image of a vassal bowing in thanks before his lord who grants blessing or apologies-as in the medieval world view that still frames much of our contemporary western world. Instead, this gratitude situates us in the great web of all life, with all being, and helps us remember the true miracle that it is to be alive and our deep relationship with all things.

FLASHING RED ALERT - before you start thinking that I’m going down a hippy-dippy, loopy-metaphysical, mystical rabbit hole, stop. That written, I call your attention to my recent entry, a river of time stopped in its tracks, wherein I wrote (and discounted) that “I wonder if my constant-near daily-making of photographs of seemingly inconsequential things in or around my house is a subconscious attempt to slow things / time down. To hold on to and appreciate every moment that is left to me.” END OF ALERT

The writer of the above comment suggested a writing exercise that express gratitude for something you have gratitude for. One such example given was to…

….write a piece expressing gratitude for this moment, just as it is, with all its ordinariness, imperfections, and/or wonderfulness.

In thinking about that idea I came to realize that that suggested subject matter comes pretty damn close to describing how I have been drawing with light* - making pictures of daily life, snatched from a moment in time, just as it is (straight photography), with all of its ordinariness, imperfections, and, as I see it, (potentially) wonderful form.

So, does that suggest that I have been expressing in my pictures a gratitude for the everyday? I have never thought of it that way but, on the other hand, I have thought of it as an expression of appreciation for the oft-overlooked “gifts” as found and seen in the commonplace. An appreciation that I hope might be a sorta contagious influence for others to become aware of that state of awareness.

On the other hand, as written in the aforementioned entry, I am just making pictures of what I see and how I see it. That is, making pictures that I hope are made in a fashion which others may find interesting, for reason or another, to look at.

*Ya know, photography-from the Greek words photos (light) and graphos (drawing).

FEATURED COMMENT from Garet Munger

I wonder if this from Poet Mary Oliver might be a statement of gratitude fitting the sentiment of the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address you refer to….

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird — equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? Am I no longer young and still not half-perfect? Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture. Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart and these body-clothes, a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is that we live forever. ~ Mary Oliver

# 6630-33 / people • places • things ~ patterns created by the pointer

July 4, 2023

***dusk+ overcast+Canadian wildfire smoke ~*** Willsboro Bay on Lake Champlain in the Adirondack Park ~ (embiggenable)

***a people, a place, a thing*** ~ (embiggenable)

IN AN ARTICLE IN TODAY’S NY TIMES THE AUTHOR writes that an exhibit, “Love Songs: Photography and Intimacy” at ICP, “…reveals the camera’s limitations as well as strengths when it comes to depicting romance..…[it] is as much about what photography can’t do as about what it can.” He also wrote:

“Love Songs” left me wondering if the theatricality of posing and the ambiguity of still images undercut the capacity of photography to document intimacy. Various art forms afford different advantages and limitations. Novels are best at describing the complex charms and vicissitudes of love, which is why so many of these artists resort to texts along with images.”

Re: the medium’s ability to “document”-or is it “depict”?-or convey feelings, emotions, concepts, or thoughts and the like is, iMo, at best, very limited. The medium’s strength-in fact it’s very raison d’être-is to depict / illustrate, by means of its intrinsic relationship to the real, the physical properties of that toward which a picture maker points* his/her picture making device. A strength that results in the creation of ipictures that are interesting to look at.

Does that mean that a photograph cannot incite thoughts or feelings? Absolutely not. However, any thoughts and or feelings that a photograph might incite has as much to do, if not more so than the picture maker’s intent, with what the viewer brings to the viewing - knowledge about the referent (aka: a people, place, or thing), a shared experience with that which is depicted, a viewer’s emotional state and art sensibilities to name just a few possibilities.

So, if a photograph, in and of itself, is a poor medium for conveying any meaning / message / concept beyond the most elementary, it begs the question, “How does a photographer capture and hold the attention of a viewer of his / her photographs?”

For some, the answer is simple…picture grand vistas (natural and urban), dramatic light, saturated colors, dramatic POV angles, and like. And, by all means, keep it simple. The referent is everything. For others, the answer is found in the pursuit of creating interesting form no matter the referent. A quality that flows from a personal vision. A vision that revolves around the pursuit of capturing the visually correct moment / opportunity to make an exposure, aka: the decisive moment**. As John Szarkowski wrote…

*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. [...] The talented practitioner of the new discipline would perform with a special grace, sense of timing, narrative sweep, and wit, thus endowing the act not merely with intelligence, but with that quality of formal rigor that identifies a work of art, so that we would be uncertain, when remembering the adventure of the tour, how much our pleasure and sense of enlargement had come from the things pointed to and how much from a pattern created by the pointer.

Re: “a pattern created by the pointer” - the “pattern” flows from the pointer’s personal vision. The point being that it does not matter what one points his/her picture making device toward. Rather, it is about how the pointed at referent is seen by the pointer and made visible in the resulting photograph.

Pick a well known / respected picture maker-Shore, Meyerowitz, Eggleston, Evans, Frank, Mann, Cartier-Bresson and so on. Take your pick. The beauty of their work is not so much about what they pictured but, rather, how they pictured it as an expression driven by their individual vision. And, iMo, it is worth noting that the pictures created with their unique vision are straightforward and honest depictions of the real, devoid of any art sauce, cheap tricks / gimmicks, or convoluted technical gymnastics.

All of the above written, I think it kinda sheds a new light on the idea of point and shoot.

**decisive moment as Cartier-Bresson intended it to mean: decisive not because of the exterior event but because in that moment the flux of changing forms and patterns is sensed to have achieved balance and clarity and order-because the image became, for a instant, a picture.

# 6625-28 / around the house ~ a river of time stopped in its tracks

July 1, 2023

Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground - Talking Heads

Life flows by like a river. I think of it as a river of time - a metaphor of our lives as we experience it. When we make photographs, we have ability to snatch a moment-most often a mere fraction of a second-from the flow of time and render it indelibly for anyone to see at any time. And, perhaps, to experience it-the moment-vicariously again and again until the end of (their) allotted time.

That written, at my ripe-old age of 76 my life seems to be flowing by like speeding train. And, at times, I wonder if my constant-near daily-making of photographs of seemingly inconsequential things in or around my house is a subconscious attempt to slow things / time down. To hold on to and appreciate every moment that is left to me.

On the other hand, to avoid going down a self-analytical rabbit hole-ya know, like the Academic Lunatic Fringe who try to force-cram self-referential meaning into their pictures-I can write that I am just making pictures of what I see and how I see it, aka:my vision. It’s what I do and have done for a long, long time. That’s simply cuz I have not ever been able to locate the off button for my eye and sensibilities mechanism. It-my picture making propensity-is most likely nothing more than just that.

In any event, the actual point I am driving at in this entry is that I simply do not understand those picture makers who are constantly whining about a lack of “inspiration”. A shortage of which is keeping them from getting out making pictures. To which I write…

…get over it. iMo, “inspiration” has nothing to do with it. Rather, the “desire” to make pictures has everything to do with it. That and fostering one’s intrinsic / native vision. If you don’t have a recognized and understood (by you) vision, just get out there, start making pictures and find it.

When it comes right down to it, as in my case, one does not have to even “get out there”. I see enough picture making possibilities in and around my house to keep me busy for a lifetime.

FYI, the pictures in this entry are but a few of the around the house pictures I have made over the past week or so.

# 6621-23 / common places • common things • people ~ a public pageantry of people on parade

June 24, 2023

***street lights*** ~ Saranac Lake, NY (embiggenable)

***mode de rue*** ~ Paris, France (embiggenable)

IF COMMENTS FROM THOMAS AND DENNIS ON my last entry are any indication, I apparently created confusion, re: my idea of street photography. While I thought that the pictures in the entry might make my what is street photography? idea fairly clear, I believe the confusion culprit is the phrase “…can be done anywhere and people do not have to be present in the photo”. So, let me give it another go using my own words, as opposed to quoting those from some else. Smiply put…

iMo, to my eye and sensibilities, street photography is the surreptitious act of making candid pictures which depict people, in public places (primarily man-made environments), displaying gestures, expressions, body language, including quirky / spontaneous / curious situations and relationships to others and/or their immediate environment, and the like.

No. I do not believe any of Sir Ansel’s pictures of the natural world are street photographs. They are landscape photographs. While I appreciate-and make-street scenes devoid of people, I do not consider them to be street photography. No. They are urban landscapes.

All of that written, it should go without writing (as he writes it while writing it nevertheless) that street photography can be many different things to many different people. Ultimately, that’s OK with me cuz, I don’t give a damn what a picture might be labeled as. I care only about whether, or not, any picture (any genre) is, iMo and to my eye and sensibilities, a good picture.

# 6616-20 / common places • common people ~ on the street, or not

June 22, 2023

**from my *single women* body of work** ~ (embiggenable)

BEFORE ADDRESSING TIPS FOR PHOTOGRAPHING IN PUBLIC, I thought I would address the idea of what is street photography. It seems that the answer is open to question for some-the purists would say that it is pictures of people made while standing on an actual street using BW film in a camera with a wide-angle lens attached. Anything else is, well, quite simply, not street photography.

That definition is a little too tight-ass for me. Consider this from a more modern source:

“Street photography at its essence means candid photography of humanity. A street photograph is a real moment….Street photography can be done anywhere and people do not have to be present in the photo….It is a way of connecting with the world and bringing back the moments that stand out. ...It can be likened to a visual form of poetry – while beauty and form are important aspects of street photography, great street photographs often have something going on beneath the surface….There are hints, feelings, ideas, stories, or questions…”

That definition more closely aligns with my idea, re: street photography. However, I would suggest 2 other points; 1) color of BW, your choice-whatever works for your intent, 2) if people are not present in the picture, it should illustrate evidence of places / things that suggest a past or future human presence.

Re: tips for photographing in public. The first thing you should know is that I do not consider myself to be a street photographer. Rather, I am just a guy wandering around various streets around the world with a picture making device of some kind and my eye and sensibilities perpetually attuned to picture making possibilities. That written, I have managed to make quite a number of pictures that many would label as street photography. Be that as it may be, the fact remains that I have never consciously developed a street photography strategy.

On the other hand, I have relied upon simple common sense procedures. Assuming that one wishes to imitate the proverbial, somewhat inconspicuous fly on the wall, the operative word is “simple”, as in, keep it simple. It ain’t rocket science. Ya know what I mean? Say, like:

Simple # 1: Gear. A single, small, unimposing camera with small, unimposing WA lens. Preferably with standard metal trim cuz most people know that pros use black cameras.

Simple # 2: Clothing. No fashion statements or bright colors. If you can not blend in to the crowd, try not to stand out too much.

Simple # 3: Body language: Do not stand in any one spot too long. Act natural. Be casual. Look around, especially at things you have no intention of picturing. Ya know, cuz you are just a naturally curious sorta person.

Simple # 4: The act of making the picture. Point and shoot. Your picture making device must be set and ready to go. If you have to hesitate to make an adjustment, you risk alerting the subject and the decisive moment will probably be missed.

On an added note, in my experience, I have only one time ever been waved off by a subject while making a street photo. A simple shake of the head and a wave of the hand and that was it. Which leads me to believe that there is nothing to be anxious about when making street pictures. Especially so when one has mastered the art of being a fly on the wall.

An example: I am not small person - a reasonably fit 6’ 3” / 220 lbs with long (8 inches below my shoulder) very wavy light grey hair, most often seen wearing a black baseball cap with a bright KODAK logo on the front which nicely compliments my weirdly stylish eye wear. When out and about, it is SOP for me to hear, “Nice glasses.” or “I love your hair” - almost always uttered by women. All of which makes the following somewhat interesting….

….if you check out my single women gallery on the WORK page, none of those subjects ever knew I was photographing them. That despite the fact that 90% of the photographs were made relatively in close with a street photography “standard”, moderate WA lens. A prime example of discrete fly on the wall, point and shoot, and then disappear into the wind picture making.

# 6612-15 / common things • street photography ~ touchy, touchy

June 20, 2023

PROCRASTINATION IS THE WORD OF THE WEEK. Since returning from Portugal, my mind, photography projects-wise, has been overloaded; processing, organizing and printing Portugal pictures, acquiring and messin’ around with the Instax printer and thinking about what I want to do with it, and what should be at the top o’ the heap - finalizing the work (and getting it out the door) on my Adirondack Survey Project.

The net result of all that mental muddle has been a bit of slacking off, blog entry-wise. However, over the past week there has been a bit of a preoccupation on a few sites, re: street photography. It seems like a bit of a contagion spreading from on site to another. So…

…the prime irritant which got me infected with the bug was a bit of a snit-ty entry from my annoyingly favorite Texas-based gearhead obsessive who is prone to getting a bit testy when his non-commercial, aka “personal”, photography bonafides are called into question. In this case, it seems that another blogger (unnamed) opined that the Texan’s pictures, those self-described as “street'“ photography, are not street photography at all. This poke at the hornet’s nest send the Texan into a snit that resulted in a throw spit-balls at the wall and see what sticks exercise. The spit-balls were a very large number of pictures, some of which had the “look” of street photography, others not so much.

That written, it is not my intention to get into the are-they-or-ain’t-they street photography fracas. My intent is to get off my chest, once and for all, my opinion that the work in question and, or for that matter, and / all of the non-commercial pictures posted by the Texan exhibit not single shred of a coherent picture making vision. And, when confronted with a similar assessment-which he has been-his defense is that his site is a gear review site, not an “art” site.

Well, iMo, he just blew that defense to smithereens. If his posting of his cluster-fuck / poorly edited street photography is not an attempt to bolster his non-commercial picture making creds, then-as his entry states-”we’re all delusional” and so is he.

All of the above written, what this street photography contagion has caused me to do is spend some time processing some of my Portugal street photography pictures to monochrome and present them in a new WORK page gallery. Have a look and let me know what you think of it.

PS more on street photography-specifically, Mike Johnston’s Tips For Photographing in Public-in my next entry. And, the bathroom picture in this entry is the bathroom in a our Porto, Portugal hotel room. I want to replicate it in our house.