# 6744-48 / common places-things • picture windows • adirondack survey ~ magnum opus

September 3, 2025

“Our artist in the Adirondacks has contrived to tell us his own story, in his graphic way, with the pencil camera, and explanation by the pen is therefore hardly necessary.” ~ excerpt from from the Saturday, September 21, 1872, edition of Appleton’s Journal featuring a wood engraving entailed “Our Artist in the Adirondacks”.

MY An Adirondack Survey / in plain sight BODY OF WORK IS APPROACHING the 650 pictures mark. Inasmuch as that number will continue to increase (where it will end, nobody knows) raises several questions. The most obvious one; whether (or not) it is time for some serious editing? Ya know, get the number down to a more “manageable” body of work. Next question; what about providence, aka: making a provision for the future? Ya know, I want the work to pass on after I pass on. After all, it is my magnum opus.

RE: editing? - simple answer: not gonna happen. While the body of work, as it currently exists, could be edited down to a more manageable number of so-called “greatest hits”, that procedure would, for all intents and purposes, dilute–if not completely destroy–the essence of what, iMo, the body of work is about; quotidian life in the Adirondack Park*. Here’s the thing ….

…. if the Adirondack Park were to be a state, it would rank as the 37th largest in the US. Within the blue line–the line drawn in blue to define its borders when the Park was created in 1892–there are 105 towns and villages with approximately 130,000 year-round residents. Yes, the Park is considered to be–and marketed as–an outdoor, natural world playground (with some nice civilized amenities throw in), but the fact is that it is also a place where the residents go about the business of paying the rent of daily living. In other words, it’s a big place with a big story, so to speak.

That written, realistically, I realize that I will most likely have to edit the collection down–for exhibition / book purposes–to approximately 300-400 photographs. FYI, that number will be determined by the number of folio edition photo books I am creating (see below).

RE: providence? - I believe that this body of work is an important collection; nothing like it has ever been undertaken. Fact is, most picture makers, tourist and accomplished locals, make, almost exclusively, pictures of the “grand” outdoors / natural landscape. If you want a picture of the Adirondack natural landscape, they are–or should be–a dime a dozen. ASIDE truth be told, I have sold–with a very hefty price tag–quite of number of that type of picture END ASIDE.

With this body of work, the major challenge for me is to find an art institution that will acquire the body of work. To that end, I will be creating 8-10 photo books (several copies of each), serial folio-edition style, each book containing 30 photographs that I will be circulating to a number of institutions.

Needless to write, I have my work cut out for me.

* An anecdote … early on I showed my first An Adirondack Survey / in plain sight photo book (70 photographs) to a couple I was just introduced to. From the art they had on the walls of their home (we were there for dinner), I judged them to be rather art conscious so I pulled out the book and they, separately, took the time to look through it, front to back. The initial comment from the wife, seconded by her husband, was, for me, quite telling …. she said that they had just returned home from a trip out side the Park and what immediately struck her about the work / book was that it expressed an overwhelming feeling of their recent drive through the Park.

Needless to write, I was delighted to know that they “got it”. And, that was confirmed when they each picked out 1 photo apiece for purchase to hang in their home.

# 6725-31 / travel • common things ~ picturing the obvious

August 20, 2025

***Twisted Dunes*** ~ my favorite golf course

I MADE IT BACK ALIVE FROM THE JERSEY SHORE only to start packing again for our 5 weeks at Rist Camp. Yesterday I sat staring at my desktop screen for the better part of 2 hours trying to come up with a topic, photography wise, to write about that I haven’t written about seemingly multiple times prior. Nothing came to mind.

That written, I’ll have lots of alone time on my hands at Rist and maybe I might just come up with a new slant on how / what I write about–rest assured, always on the topic of things photography wise–on this blog.

One thing I resolved to do while at Rist is get out and make pictures of the natural world, a referent I have been, if not actively ignoring, not pursuing with any vigor. Considering the fact I live in the largest protected area in the contiguous United States–the Adirondack “Park”, larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Glacier National and the Great Smokey Mountains National Parks–it seems like an obvious subject for picture making.

# 6700-03 / common places-things • picture windows • single women ~ OT New Jersey and some whiskey

December 31, 2024

SPENT THE WEEKEND IN NJ FOR THE WIFE’S family holiday get together. Snuck (aka: sneaked) out with a few family members to see-2nd time for me-A COMPLETE UNKOWN. Both the drive down and back were a Dylan music fest in a car, our car. At times it felt like we were on Highway 61.

Speaking of which, Highway 61 wise, for the Holidays Dylan gifted me a copy of his hand annotated lyrics to Subterranean Homesick Blues. It was wrapped around a bottle of his Heaven Door Homesick Blues Minnesota Wheated Bourbon Whiskey. How nice of him.

FYI, here’s a review typical of his whiskeys:

Okay, so there's something just a teensy bit creepy about naming a booze brand after a Bob Dylan song with a title that's a euphemism for dying (via YouTube). Dylan does own the distillery, though, and presumably drinks the whiskey as well, and he's still knock-knock-knockin' right along in his 80th year. By all accounts, the man is quite the whiskey aficionado, so he's not going to attach his name to any old plonk. While not all celebrity-branded booze lives up to the hype, Heaven's Door Master Blender's Edition seems to be well worth the price. You can still pick up a bottle for around $100, which is not bad at all considering its striking Dylan-designed artwork.

BTW, not all of his whiskeys are $100 but, that written, I do have one (2020 edition) that was $650 off the shelf, now selling for $1,000-2,000+ a bottle. That’s why I have 2 bottles-one to drink, one (it was a gift) to hang on to for later sale as the supply dries up. The 2019 edition is currently selling in the $3,000+ range - iMo, this is a rather bizarre / ridiculous absurdity not unlike, say, buying a “bargain” priced, used Leica M4 for $7,557.29.

For the record, I do not buy whiskey as an investment. I buy it to drink it cuz, ya know, I enjoy it.

FYI, the design on the bottle is of one of his much sought after iron gates; gates he makes in his iron working studio that are put together with scrap metal he gathers while on tour.

# 6459-62 / people • foilage • sink • picture window ~ philistinish pleasures

August 8, 2024

645 medium format camera / transparency film ~ ***all photos*** ~ (embiggenable)

IN A RECENT T.O.P. ENTRY MIKE JOHNSTON prattles on (and on and on and on), re: that whatever a picture maker’s intent, meaning-wise, a viewer will make of it whatever they want, influenced by what mental / emotional makeup he/she brings to the viewing. A postulation which is totally dependent upon the idea that a photograph is capable of possessing / communicating a meaning. An idea that I-and many others-reject.

Unfortunately, iMo, the art world has, over time, reached a point wherein content-what a piece of art “says”-is valued over form-what a piece of art looks like. Me?… I subscribe to K. B. Dixon’s idea that:

“The contemporary fine-art establishment is a coalition of vested interests. They are not doing the medium any favors by relegating the idea of “visual interest” to the scrap-heap of philistinish pleasures. In a photograph, as in a painting, the photographer wants to see something he wants to look at. He does not want some ancillary item—some half-baked idea of intellectual profundity.”

Call me a philistine but I much prefer visual interest in a photograph-or any art form-over “intellectual profundity”. Or, to put in another way, I believe a photograph is meant to be seen, not “read”. I want a photograph to hit me in the eye like big pizza pie cuz that’s amore. If you wanna read, get a book.

I believe Susan Sontag got it right when she wrote:

“Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy… the very muteness of what is, hypothetically, comprehensible in photographs is what constitutes their attraction and provocativeness.” ~ Susan Sontag

I also think she got right again when she wrote:

“Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art. ”

That’s cuz I believe that, if you want to suck the life out of a photograph-or any piece of art-try turning it into words instead of letting it seduce and captivate your visual senses.

FYI the pictures in this entry are meant to represent the fact that there is no “magic” format for creating interesting form. No cropping was employed in processing / editing these photos - full frame only.

# 6835-45 / all things considered ~ life squared-a year in the making

January 3, 2024

(all photos embiggenable) ~ ***adirondack scenic***

***quite possibly my favorite picture from 2023***

AT THE END OF THE OLD / START OF THE NEW year, it customary in some quarters to do a year-in-review thing. In many cases it is a a “best-of” kinda thing. In any event, here is my take on it…

Inasmuch as, in an overall scheme of picture making things, I toil in the discursive promiscuity garden of picture making, I nevertheless feel compelled, by the medium’s custom of organizing itself into recognizable, theme-based bodies of work, to relegate my pictures to separate / definable bodies of work - 10 bodies of work as presented above.

That written, re: the pictures in this entry, while they are presented as the “best-of” each category, they are not necessarily my favorite pictures of 2023. If I were to discard the limits imposed by adhering to separate theme classification, it is possible that some of these pictures would not make the cut. Case in point, the adirondack scenic picture would be nowhere to been seen.

That’s cuz, to be honest, that genre-“beautiful” scenery pictures-is not something that I pursue with any passion. The simple fact of the matter, picture making passion wise, is that the only dictate that drives my shutter activation finger is the making of pictures of selected segments of quotidian life which prick my eye and sensibilities.

# 6728-34 / common places / things • landscape • picture windows ~ fall without the screaming

October 6, 2023

**(embiggenable)** - as are all the pictures in this entry

WITH SOME VERY UNCHARACTERISTIC OCTOBER WEATHER-85F yesterday-I have been out and about making pictures as I go about enjoying the outdoors…54 holes of golf over the last week included.

Nothing much of note going on out there in the web-o-sphere. Although, Mr. Johnston just doesn’t seem to be able to get off the schneid, re: his idea that the status of photography is starting to decline:

“…hobbies tend to have more status the more rare or difficult or risky they are, and the fewer the number of people who have achieved some sort of mastery in that area…Maybe what's been happening to photography in the last two decades or so is that it's become something that far more people can do satisfactorily without specialized knowledge or experience, so its status is starting to decline.”

I just do not understand this status decline thing he keeps harping about. That’s cuz, in my experience, I am encountering a fair amount of evidence that, because of the vast amount of pictures that are being made, more and more people-those who have at least a modicum of aesthetic sensibility-seem to be recognizing that some pictures have more to offer than just straight off-the-cuff description. And this is especially true of those people regardless of whether or not they are “serious” or not picture makers.

In my personal experience..say…like when I am sharing my made-on-the-spot INSTAX prints-which look for all intents and purposes like mere snapshots of relatively unimportant moments-I repeatably hear comments such as, “You’ve got an eye.” Or, then there is the highest praise I hear when handing out an INSTAX prints, “This picture is going right on my refrigerator.” High praise, indeed.

I believe that this recognition of some pictures are “better” than others comes from the viewing of a zillion not so good pictures. Whether, in my experience, this recognition stems from the moment I capture or how I capture them-most likely a combination of both-is open to debate. However, I can write that when people see a picture they consider to be “special”, they do have respect for and appreciation of the medium and for the maker thereof.

So, iMo, I believe that despite that fact that far more people can satisfactorily make a lot of pictures, there are far more people making pictures that are far more than “satisfactory” than ever before. And, for those who can recognize the difference between shit and shinola ( the cream rising to the top), there is a growing / increasing appreciation for the medium and those who can make pictures with a bit of shinola.

# 6550 / common places • common thing • An Adirondack Survey ~ letting it all hang out

April 28, 2023

I AM APPROACHING THE An Adirondack Survey PROJECT finish line. 2 copies of the 110-page / 52-photos book are in production and 20 prints are ready for the folio. It has been a rather demanding physical-many hours in front of the computer-and mental-picture editing-undertaking.

RE: picture editing - the final edit of the book includes 54 photographs, selected from the nearly 300 photographs in the An Adirondack Survey folder. Selecting those 300 photographs from my 10,000 photo library was rather time consuming. Editing down to the final 54 photographs was quite challenging inasmuch as, although there were approximately 45 no-brainer inclusions, there were 8-9 photograph pages that were in constant flux-this photo in, that photo out, that photo in, this photo out, seemingly ad infinitum.

Then there was, for me, the seemingly inevitable happenstance of hitting the PRINT button for a POD photo book, any photo book, and, within 24 hours thereof, making a picture that just screams to be included in the book. Happened 2x after hitting the PRINT button for 2 “proof” books.

The other project component that required editing was selecting photographs for the print folio. The big question was whether to print selected “greatest hits” from the book-the purpose of the folio was to demonstrate the high quality of the prints-or to print photographs that were not in the book. I went back and forth on this question for quite a while. It wasn’t until I did a deeper dive into a few other body-of-work folders, during which I “discovered” quite a number of additional “greatest hits” that it became obvious that printing them would vastly improve the scope of the An Adirondack Survey collection.

All of that written, now comes the scary part of the project. Sending out the door a significant part of my picture making endeavors for consideration, a judgement of sorts, of a (possible) exhibition. Soar-and-fly or crash-and-burn time is soon upon me.

# 6479-81 / picture windows • common places • common things ~ a window of opportunity

February 21, 2023

THERE IS A WINDOW IN A TINY WINE STORE (350 sq ft?) in a tiny Adirondack hamlet (pop. 690) that the wife and I visit once a month-it’s a 90 minute drive from our house-to pickup our monthly wine club selections. I have recently begun making pictures featuring the window and its view.

The view out the window ain’t much special, except..….iMo, I think it is rather extraordinary inasmuch as, depending upon the time of day, season, quality of light, weather, et al, it presents an ever changing tableau for picture making opportunities. Opportunities that I would love to more fully explore if I can just figure out the logistics.

I would need to make at least 12 pictures in order to consider it as a body of work. Although, who knows? At that point it might not seem worth exploring any further.