# 6447-48 / kitchen sink • diptych ~ allusive, formal, and breathtakingly efficient

Frienze

“These collections of the photographer’s are pictorial notebooks—efforts to capture an evanescent emotional reaction to a visual stimulus. He is not really trying to say this or that has existed, but that this or that has existed for him in a particular way.” ~ K.B.Dixon

iMo and to my eye and sensibilities, the very best of photographs are those made by a photographer who see the world in their own innate / particular way; an M.O. that is most often labeled as their vision. And, the success of those photographs is most often conditioned upon, not what they photograph, but the resultant photographs which exhibit an exquisite sense of form.

Some might opine that creating form is just another picture making cliché; a tried and true formula for making pictures. To which I would write that, if it is true that everything that can be photographed has been photographed, I believe that it is true that no matter what one photographs there are endless possibilities for the creation of new form.

And, photographs that exhibit an allusive, formal, and breathtakingly efficient sense of form are those that separate the really good photographer from the merely talented picture makers.

# 6438-43 / common places-things • porches ~ can I walk and chew gum at the same time?

all photos ~ (embiggenable)

PORCHES IN MY HOME TOWN, a nascent body of work which I hope to complete over the next week or so. I need another 10 photographs to flesh it out.

I should be un-distracted next week inasmuch as the wife is headed off to Washington State to meet up with her 2 besties and marry-she is the presiding “minister” as opposed to becoming a polygamist-one of her high school classmates. I’ll have a lot time on my iPhone picture making button hands, so it should be, barring some sort of severe weather, pretty productive, unless…

frgrnd - a “warm up” assembly / bkgrnd ~ earlier LEGO Succulants assembly

…one of my Bday presents was the LEGO Typewriter kit; 2079 pieces of very intricate assembly. Looking at the instruction book, it might just require a a week or two of my time to complete.

I guess it all comes down to a matter of priorities.

# 6431-32 / landscape ~ weathering the weather

all photos ~ (embiggenable)

DID I MENTION THAT WE HAVE HAD a lot of rain-massive displays of thunder and lightning-over the last few days with flash flood warnings galore. Throw in uncommonly high temperatures for this time of year with uncomfortable levels of humidity and it’s accurate to write that it has been a unusual couple of days.

# 6424-27 / common places-things • copy cat ~ the dog days of summer have arrived

ON A RECENT WALK ABOUT IN OLD MONTREAL I made a few pictures that have been added to my art reflects gallery on the WORK page. During that walk about I was quite surprised when I came upon an art gallery window display of a painting that replicates my art reflects work.

Now I know that my art reflects photo book is floating around somewhere in Montreal. However, I don’t know where it is cuz I lost rack of it when it was stolen-I think of that as an act of appreciation-from a hotel lobby in Old Montreal. Consequently, I do not know if the maker of the window reflection art work painting has seen my book-probably not, unless of course, the artist is the one who stole it.

But, in any event, I feel flattered. Cuz, ya know, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

# 6418-23 / common places • common things ~ life as it happened

all photos ~ (embiggenable)

IN THIS ENTRY I’M TAKING A CUE FROM MIKE JOHNSTON AND THE Texas gear nutjob, both of whom laden their sites with lots of personal, non photography data. That written, this entry could be labeled as 24 hrs in the life of me, complete with pictures.

On Monday morning I awoke to a glorious Adirondack summer morning. The cat drew me out to the back porch where sunlight dappled the scene and the air was cool and fresh. I made a picture.

Going back into the house for my morning coffee, I noticed that there was an arrangement in the kitchen sink demanding my attention. I made a picture.

After completing my morning routine, I got in one of our cars-we have 3-and headed off to a doctor’s appointment-a followup to my recent prostrate procedure. Did I mention that I live at least 30 mile from everywhere? Although in this case, I live a 1 1/2 hour car drive from my urologist’s office. It’s a nice ride that includes a midpoint ferry ride across the 6th largest lake in North America. I made a picture.

After being cleared for normal peeing duty, I met the wife for lunch along with a couple from Denver who were in town-Burlington, Vt.-to visit their son who is a clerk for a Vermont Supreme Court-aka: appellate court-judge. I did not make a picture.

Next up, after lunch-no, we did not eat a EL CORJITO, the wife, her from Denver bestie, and I took a walk down Church St.-a pedestrian shopping, dining, entertainment district on the way to where I had parked my car. Along the way, I noticed a bookstore-I really like bookstores-and we went inside where the wife purchased a birthday-it’s 10 days away-present for me; the BOB DYLAN ~ MIXING UP THE MEDICINE book. FYI, she won’t let me read it until my birthday, even though it sits tantalizingly close on the kitchen counter. I made a picture.

Upon leaving the bookstore I notice the EL CORJITO restaurant. I made a picture.

Then it was time for me to head home. The wife stayed behind-she had one of our other cars-to spent the afternoon followed by dinner catching up with her bestie. No pictures that I know of.

Upon arriving home, I made a picture of a tomato I had been wanting to picture. Made my supper. Re-watched Asteroid City. Went to bed. No more pictures.

# 6901-03 / common things-places • around the house ~ one of these things is kinda like the other thing

all photos ~ (embiggenable)

NOW THAT I AM A DAY AWAY FROM ALL of the aftermath-anesthetic hangover, carrying around a bag of urine on my calf for 5 days, et al-of my hand enlargement / prostrate reduction event, I feel capable of addressing the idea of…

an art of expressing much and suggesting more….evoking a definite, though unstated, emotional response….work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm

…as expressed in my pre-op entry wherein I wondered if any one might come up with the word linked to that definition.

Reader Thomas Rink nailed it - the word is poetry. That written, he seems to be curious as to why I might suggest that the medium and its apparatus has a relationship to poetry. Good question which I will try to answer…

CAVEAT I have never been a fan of comparing one form of art with another / different form of art. Especially so when I hear / read the idea that a photograph resembles a painting by xxxxxx. So, fyi, I approach this poetry / photography relationship with a great amount of hesitancy and confliction. END CAVEAT

As best as I can determine, my reason for pursuing this idea derives from my ongoing desire to unravel what I feel when I view a photograph that I consider to be a good photograph (mine or made by others). That’s cuz, when I view a photograph that I consider to be a good photograph I am almost immediately struck by 2 nearly simultaneous sensations; 1) an engaging visual stimulation, and 2) a feeling, aka: an emotional response; akin to Sontag’s “an erotics of art”.

Thoughts rarely enter my mind at that point and I most definitely do not start searching for meaning or the picture maker’s intent. That’s cuz, re: intent, I am looking at the picture maker’s intent-it’s called a picture-which I assume was made with the intention to show the viewer something from the the real world as he /see sees it. Ya know, the vision thing.

How, you might ask, does my very personal way of viewing and experiencing a good photograph relate to poetry?

To be honest I don’t have much interest in poetry with one notable exception, haiku. A form of poetry which, for me, that is an art of expressing much and suggesting more….evoking a definite, though unstated, emotional response…work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm.

Haiku also hits me with 2 nearly simultaneous sensations: 1) a cognitive recognition of the words which creates an emotional state of mind, and 2) visual stimulation; the pictures that emerge in my head.

I would suggest, emphatically so, that that definition / description of poetry is, to my sensibilities, a very fitting description of a good photograph. For photography purposes, one might wish to replace “distinctive style and rhythm” with “personal vision and form” but, either way, it still points in the same direction.

All of that written (and I could go on and on), I believe that good photographs and good haiku are both emotionally rich and, surprisingly, visually rich mediums. Does that mean that I believe that my photographs are a form of poetry / haiku. No, I do not. But, that written, I do believe that good photographs are capable, with the skillful use of the medium’s lyrical and descriptive power, of expressing a picture maker's emotions in an imaginative and beautiful way, making them, in a manner of writing, kinda /sorta poetic.

# 6879-81 / commonplaces-things • kitchen life ~ uncommon beauty

all photos ~ (embiggenable)

I WAS SEARCHING FOR A SPECIFIC STEPHEN SHORE QUOTE. Didn’t find it. However, in my search I came across this (an excerpt), written by Christy Lange, from a section-Nothing Overlooked-in the book STEPHEN SHORE:

“This was a new conception of the landscape picture….Each image is so sharp and detailed that it seems to have infinite centers of attention, or none at all. ‘If I saw something interesting, I didn’t have to make a picture about it. I could let it be somewhere in the picture, and have something else happening as well. So this changes the function of the picture-it’s not like pointing at something and saying, “Take a look at this”. It’s saying, “Take a look at this object I am making”. It’s asking you to not savor something in the world, but savor the image itself .”….Shore saw how the photograph ‘imposes order on the scene’ or ‘simplifies the jumble by giving it structure’.”

At the risk of sounding self-aggrandizing, this description of one of Shore’s pictures, Beverly Boulevard and La Brea Avenue, could easily have been written about most of my photographs inasmuch as, as mentioned in my last entry, I rarely make pictures that ask a viewer to “take a look at this”-aka: the literally depicted referent(s). Rather, I ask viewers to “take a look at this object I am making”-aka: the print in and of itself and the form depicted there upon.

Ya know, like in this entry’s pictures; for instance, I am not asking any one to “savor” the, as the wife calls it, clutter in a corner of my work room. Rather, my hope is that a viewer might “savor”, or at least appreciate / recognize, the form (Shore’s “structure”) I have attempted to illustrate as depicted on the surface of a print.

That is to write that I do not see so-called traditional beauty in the quotidian world around me but that I do believe that I make “beautiful”, visually interesting photographs thereof.

@ 6868-77 / travel ~ excelsior, you fathead

birthday cannoli ~ (embiggenable)

Brooklyn ~ (embiggenable)

Cooperstown~ (embiggenable)

my kitchen + Brooklyn sink with window ~ (embiggenable)

EVERY YEAR-FOR THE PAST 5 YEARS-THE WIFE and I go to Cooperstown, NY where the wife has an annual conference. While she attends the conference, I play golf and hang out around the very upscale hotel on the lake. The trip also coincides with her birthday so we always go out for a nice meal. This year we also went to NYC / Brooklyn for a couple days before heading to Cooperstown (the home of the Baseball Hall of Fame). All of which brings me to the point of this entry…

….I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE THIS ANY MORE…

To be precise, the “this” in question that makes me mad as hell is any utterance such as:

“It's fantastic for the things it's meant for and designed to do, but it's mainly a communication device. It can be exasperating as a camera.…they”-iPhone files-“fall far enough short of the best "real" cameras that ultimately they're just not terribly satisfying…”

iMo, those who make such utterances are; a) those who have not made the effort to understand the in and outs of how to use the iPhone photo making capabilities, b) those who are not using the RAW capture capabilities or c) don’t know how to process RAW files for maximum results, d) those who, like the commentator quoted above, are using older generation iPhones, and, e) those who are gearheads who make photos that are tack-sharp with saturated color and high dynamic range but are, nevertheless, rarely worth a second glance.

Now, to be certain, I am not proposing that an iPhone “camera” is ideal or well suited to every picture making task or that it can “satisfy” every picture maker’s aesthetic. However, that written, I am emphatically emphasising that it is perfectly capable of producing photographs that are as good-that is, expressing the intent of the photographer-any other picture making device.

Any one (me, being a prime example) who has used a wide variety of cameras-8x10 / 4x5 view cameras, medium format cameras, 35mm cameras, Polaroid cameras, and the like-knows that every camera has its own distinct peculiarities, both in their use and their rendering results. However, the only thing that matters to the picture making artist is that any given camera helps in producing his/her picture making intent.

All of the above written, just let me declare that, in a “perfect” picture making universe, I wish that picture makers would just pick whatever camera device is best for them and their intent and vision-if they even have one-and then keep their fucking yap shut and concentrate on making pictures that “satisfy” their eye and sensibilities. I might not like their pictures but that sure as hell it won’t be because of the camera they used.

FYI, during the 6 day trip I covered a lot of ground, picture making wise. l returned with 25 “keepers” which spanned multiple photography genres: landscape, street, people, night, and still life. All of the pictures were made with my iPhone 24 PRO Max camera device set to produce RAW files. And, to my eye and sensibilities, the results were very satisfying and, BTW, the “cmaera” served all of my picture making intents very well, thank you very much.