# 5447-49 / Rist Camp • landscape ~ Camp Daze

(Embiggenable) • iPhone

(Embiggenable) • iPhone

(Embiggenable) • iPhone

JUST A QUICK ENTRY DONE ON MY IPAD as a test.

At camp but not fully settled in yet cuz I gotta go to Vermont tomorrow for my Watchman procedure follow up visit. Back to camp on Wednesday for the long haul (September 30th).

civilized ku # 3516-20 ~ up a lazy river

all pictures (embiggenable) • iPhone

The # 1 "activity" while at Rist Camp, during our annual 5 week stay, is sitting on the front porch. In my case, that means sitting on my Adirondack chair which is placed in the right-front corner of the porch.

Our stay at camp is timed to start the last week in August through the last week in September. That time span allows us to experience the change of season from late summer to early fall. Part of that change, of course, involves witnessing the emerging autumnal color as well as the sometimes dramatic change in the weather.

It could go without writing but I'll write it anyway, I make lots of pictures of the seasonal and weather transitions, at times while sitting on my butt in my Adirondack chair and at other times standing somewhere on the porch. ASIDE: as a backward look throung my Rist Camp entries will atest, I do, in fact, leave the porch and move about the area making pictures. END

This year I undertook the making of a mini body of work of the view from my Adirondack chair to include the corner support of the porch. A few pictures from that series are presented in this entry.

While I like the results, it has ocurred to me that I could do better ... in one of my first entries made while at Rist Camp, I wrote that I would be attempting to make ku (natural world) pictures that "avoid the "standard" ain't-nature-grand-and-glorious picture cliches. My porch corner were a half80%-hearted attempt at that goal.

Why 80%-hearted? That's because, on hindsight, I realize that fell into my "standard" iPhone picture making M.O. of holding the device in the vertical apsect and making a square picture. I believe that, if I had been picturing with a 100%-hearted objective-focused attitude, I would have held the iPhone in a horizontal aspect and made 16:9 aspect ratio pictures. Pictures that would have had a more "traditional"-like natural world / landscape style look and feel and, obviously, included more of the natural world / landscape.

I blame my lazy-ass, rote picture making on the fact that, while my butt was in my Adirondack chair, my picture making head was in the full-on Rist Camp not-a-care-in-the-world, very relaxed, go-with-the-flow state of mind. A state of mind which could aptly described by some lyric's from Hoagy Carmichael's song Lazy Bones:

Lazy bones, loafin' through the day
How you 'spect to make a dime picture that way?
You'll never make a dime picture that way. Never heard a word I say

Oh well, there's always next year, god willing and the creek don't rise (as a friend used to say).

ku # 1434 / civilized ku # 3697-98 ~ happenstance and the learning curve

early evening ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

just after sunset ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

cat puke and lip liner pencil shavings ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

Back home from our 5 week hiatus (from "regular" life) at Rist Camp. In the last 2 days of our stay, I was gifted, by nature and a puking cat (our cat), 2 picture making opportunities.

First was a rather dramatic early-evening-until-sunset light show as seen and pictured in the 2 pictures in this entry. The visual event was instigated by the fact that a stormy weather front was moving out of the area and giving way to rather clear sky conditions to the west, which means that the actual sunset is out of sight, hidden by trees, which also means that the view is side-lit as opposed to seeing a view of the sunset.

FYI, it is worth noting that I reduced the color saturation, as rendered by the iPhone, of these 2 pictures. Believe me or not, the result is very close to the actual scene.

I came upon the second picture making opportunity when I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth just before retiring for the night. Turning around for a towel, I was presented, in the toilet, with a rather visually appealing arrangement of, as I later learned, blades of grass our cat had puked up and a few lip liner pencil shavings. I could not resist the opportunity.

Credit where credit is due .... kudos to the wife who threw the blades of grass into the toilet, where the shavings already were, and suspended her normal impulse to flush the toilet because, if I my suspicion is correct, she knew-learning from my years of making pictures of the contents of the kitchen garbage can and the kitchen sink-that I would be drawn to the making of a picture of the resultant arrangement.

civilized ku # 3686 ~ too much information

(embiggenable) • iPhone

Not to long ago I wrote about the idea of sharpness. To be accurate, I wrote about what I cinsder to be excessive or overwrought sharpness as persued by picture makers who seem to be obsessed with it. Not to mention camera makers who seem to share the same obsession, re: making ever bigger sensors with mind boggling resolution.

iMo, unless one is in the regular practice of making really big prints-4x6ft or bigger-what's the point?

Very recently, Mike Johnston wrote:

"The fact is, strange as it may seem lately, visual impressions can still be made perfectly effectively in the absence of microdetail."

Since I am in the practice of making "visual impressions" rather than pictures which are about detail(s), Johnston's point is, to my eye and sensibilities, well taken. Case in point, the picture in this entry.

That picture was made with my iPhone and that scene is one that the iPhone and its attendant AI can have a spot of trouble with. That is, subjects which are dominated by very low light or an abundance of dark colors/tones. Often the result is dark color and tones are not rendered smoothly. FYI, it does not seem to be a matter of noise.

In any event, in such a case I use a tool in Snapseed, Structure, which is intented to emphasize detail in a picture. However, if I move slider into the "negative" zone, it tends to reduce detail and in the process smooth out the colors and tones-it also darkens the selected areas which I then correct with a touch of the Brightness tool.

The result in this entry's picture works really well for my eye and sensibilities because the picture is not about detail but rather a visual impression of what I saw.

Civilized ku # 3682-85 ~ let there be light

all pictures ~ Rist Camp / Newcomb, NY - in the Adirondack PARK (embiggenable) • iPhone

One of things about Rist Camp is the ever changing, hour-to-hour / day-to-day, light coming through the windows. Or, for that matter, the light show over the mountains and lake. And, the place itself is so seductively comfortable that it's tempting to never leave the hilltop.

But leave it I will. There's golf, hiking, our canoes (1 tandem, 2 solos), a nice beach, a couple good restaurants and a world class museum to intice me to get off the porch. And, of course, I want to get out specifically to make some ku pictures.

By "specifically" I mean to get out with only the intention to make pictures. Something I don't do very often. My normal MO is to make pictures of whatever pricks my eye and sensibilities when I am out and about for other purposes. And, in fact, I find that going out for the purpose of making pictures to be a bit intimidating.

I believe that to be the case inasmuch as I feel that I am trying too hard-forcing myself, if you will-to find pictures rather than, as is most often the case, letting pictures come to me unbidden.

In any event, why let a little mental hang up stop me? Tomorrow, I'll be out and about looking for pictures. Wish me luck.

ku # 1420 / rist camp diaries # 22 / picture windows # 72 ~ a little bit extra

fall color ~ Au Sable Forks / Adirondack PARK - (embiggenable) • iPhone

door window ~ Rist Camp / Adirondack PARK - (embiggenable) • iPhone

picture window ~ Rist Camp / Adirondack PARK - (embiggenable) • µ4/3

My stay at Rist Camp has been extended for a few days due to the fact that our house interior renovations have not been completed as expected by the end of our Rist Camp stay. Hopefully we will have our kitchen back within 5 days.

extended caption: fall color - I have been driving by this seemingly dead tree for 20 years. It just won't give up the ghost. And this year, when fall color is both subdued and spotty (note trees in bkgrnd), it seems to be defiantly screaming, color-wise, "I'm still here!"