# 5738 / still life•little things ~ I like little things

June 17, 2021

IN ADDITION TO 123 PICTURES* MADE ON MY RECENT TRAVELS I also acquired a number of other mementos to add to my collection of little things.

While on the subject of little things, during my visit to Sante Fe I came across some pictures-on exhibit at the New Mexico Museum of Art-which really pricked my eye and sensibilities. So much so that they might cause me to order a new camera.

2 of 12 on exhibit ~ New Mexico Museum of Art (Santa Fe) - (embiggenable) • iPhone — ***2 of 12 on exhibit*** ~ New Mexico Museum of Art (Santa Fe) - (embiggenable) • iPhone

The pictures in question were made with one of the Fujifilm Instax cameras. One that uses the Fuji Mini Instant print film-in this case a Monochrome film-to make a 2x3" print with a 1.75x2.5" image size.

The prints I viewed were quite beautiful. And, given my previously mentioned affection for instant-Polaroid pictures-picture making, I was immediately afflicted with a must-have monkey on my back. So, I might just order a Fujifilm INSTAX Mini Neo Classic camera and bunch of INSTAX print film (color and monochrome).

Although, Fuji also makes a portable smartphone instant print printer which spits out square 2.8x3.4" prints with 2.4x2.4" image size.

All of which leaves me trying to wrap my head around the idea of a "film budget".

* processed and ready to print

# 5655-60 / miscellania ~ through the looking glass

February 28, 2021

NOT MUCH OF ANY SIGNIFICANCE OCCURRED over the past 10 days (or so). Had an average snow fall, there was some stuff in the kitchen sink and I saw the hint of a rainbow through the windshield of our new car.

Some might think buying a new car is rather significant, but it was more of a deja vu event for us inasmuch as it was the 2nd new car for us over the last 2.5 months. In fact, the new car seemed less significant cuz, from a visual POV, it is the exact same car-make, model, color, etc.-as the car we purchased 2.5 months ago ( and traded in for the "new" car).

However, to be honest, the "new" car is not identical to the "old" car. The "new" car has a turbo engine / drive-train that the "old" car did not have, cuz it was not available at the time of our first "new" car purchase. In any event, the wife has made the sales manager at the car dealship agree to not sell me another new car for at least 6 months. I should be able to survive that embargo.

There was one other development recently wherein I was introduced to the concept that a picture maker could actually have a "favorite" viewfinder. Say what? Really?

When I tried to contemplate the possibility, my brain locked up and posted a warning about a possible meltdown. So, I put the idea out of my head and into my really-stupid-things-people-dream-up bin and went out for a drive in our "new" car - a much better way to spend some of my time.

# 5564-66 / still life•around the house ~ a ray of sunshine

November 8, 2020

Out of Context ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone — ***Out of Context*** ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

PLEASE EXCUSE MY ABSENCE FROM BLOGGING CUZ, OVER THE PAST WEEK, I HAVE BEEN preoccupied with hoping for a ray of sunshine to appear. My desire for a ray of sunshine was for a more figuative than literal ray of sunshine but I am more than pleased that my hoped for outcome appeared in both ways.

That written, I have, nevertheless, been making pictures, literal ray-of-sunshine wise, during the past week (as well as other referents). And, for one reason or another, a quote from John Szarkowski crepted into my mind:

"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." - John Szarkowski

FYI, many might know of John Szarkowski as the legendary MOMA curator and photo critic but not be aware of the fact that he was a damn good picture maker. I have the book, John Szarkowski ~ Photographs, which is, iMo, an amazing retrospective of his work. In addition to the photographs, the book is interspersed with a significant amount of his personal correspondence which elucidates many of his ideas about the medium and its apparatus.

The book is so amazing that, in fact, if I were banished to a tiny desert island and allowed to take only one photo book, Szarkowski's book is the book I would take.

Very highly recommended.

#5520-22 / out of context ~ lots of stuff / things

October 1, 2020

THE WIFE SEEMS TO BELIEVE THAT "WE" have too much stuff sitting about in our house. And, I must admit, she has some evidence, but...our respective definitions of "stuff" are not quite precisely aligned.

To be precise, the wife's definition veers rather firmly in the direction of canidates-for-disposal "clutter". Whereas my defintion clings to the notion of semi-precious collectible-worthy objects. However, despite our somewhat conflicting ideas about the "stuff", we have both contributed our share of things to the accumulation of stuff.

FYI, almost all of the stuff, transitory (flora / fruit arrangements, et al) and perdurable, is small and placed about the place on flat surfaces of one kind or another. The lone exception is my life-size taxidermied, snarling coyote which greets-just inside of the front door-all the visitors to our house.

In any event, all of that written, I have begun a project, Out of Context, to create still life pictures of some of the stuff. My goal is to make a minimum of 12 > maximum of 20 pictures.

The pictures will be made with my iPhone using the Portrait mode with the 2x lens setting in order to create a very narrow DOF. For visual consistency, the set up will be in the exact same spot on my kitchen island counter in order to utilize the soft, directional light which comes in through the very large (approx. 5x4foot) kitchen window.

As a change of pace, I am looking forward to creating made pictures as opposed to found pictures.

# 5508-19 / still life•kitchen life•flora ~ re: the shallow end of the gene pool

September 30, 2020

AS I WADE THROUGH THE AUTUMN COLOR SEASON OF WRETCHED EXCESS, picture making wise, I am reminded of a few of Brooks Jensen's 100 Things I've Learned About Photography...

• If you want to sell a lot of photographs, use color and lots of it. If you want to sell even more, photograph mountains, oceans, fall leaves, and animals.

• We are fast approaching critical mass on photographs of nudes on a sand dune, sand dunes with no nudes, Yosemite, weathered barns, the church at Taos, New Mexico, lacy waterfalls, fields of cut hay in the afternoon sun, abandoned houses, crashing waves, sunsets in color, and reflected peaks in a mountain lake.

• Finding great subject matter is an art in itself.

I mean, seriously, there is much more to Autumn than standing by your car on the roadside, pointing a picture making device at a hillside covered with autumn color, then printing or posting online the resultant picture with color saturation pushed to 11 (on a scale of 1-10).

Or, on the other hand, maybe not. After all, 50% of people (including picture makers) are below average.

# 5505-07 / rist camp•still life•around the house ~ I confess

September 29, 2020

(embiggenable) • iPhone - 2x Portrait setting

(embiggenable) • µ4/3 - needed a longer tele lens

(embiggenable) • iPhone - ultra wideangle setting

NOW THAT I AM BACK HOME, FIRST THINGS FIRST....on my BW OLDIES ~ LONG AGO / FAR AWAY entry, Thomas Rink asked:

"Did you make the picture with a square aspect ratio camera, or has it been cropped to a square later?"

Interestingly, or strangely enough, dispite my near exclusive adherence to the square format, I have never owned a square format camera. With the exception of a 3-4 year period of personal picture making-as opposed to professional-during which I used an 8x10 view camera (and made prints to that format), I have always cropped to square from various camera's "full-frame" files / negatives. The lone exception to that practice is my iPhone image files which are made using the square format setting.

When using my µ4/3 cameras, the viewing screen (LCD) is set to square. Consequently, when processing RAW files-I always make RAW files with my µ4/3 cameras-my conversion software only displays the cropped image (which I had viewed on my camera's viewing screen). Inasmuch as I NEVER crop the square image file which came out of the camera / iPhone, I consider my pictures to be "full frame" / un-cropped square images.

And, on a directly connected noted, I have always printed-analog and digital-my pictures with a thin black border. In the analog days that meant including part of the film edge. In the digital "darkroom" that means introducing a "manufactured" edge. In either case, the use of a black edge was/is traditionally most often intended to indicate that the picture was un-cropped.

In my case, the use of a black border is two-fold: a.) it does indeed indicate that the picture is uncropped. i.e., exactly as the I saw it on/in my camera / iPhone viewfinder/screen. b.) to reinforce that the picture is, in fact, "cropped" / consciously selected from the surrounding world.

# 5470-72 / Rist Camp • week of... ~ one thing leads to another

September 5, 2020

IN MY LAST ENTRY, I MENTIONED THE PASSING of a couple photo blogs and that I thought it typical of a trend of similar end-of-the-line happenings. While I am quite certain there are many reasons, personal and global, for this trend, I also believe that there is one reason that is seldom mentioned...

...many a photo blogger has forgotten or, in reality, never understood that the best photo blogs, iMo and that of many others, are about offering forth photographs-exempli gratia, actual pictures. You know what I mean, as opposed to nattering and blathering on about this vs. that, camera / lens / software / technique / et al wise. From a creativity point of view, I can not imagine anything more mind numbing than a head full of that stuff.

And, in my experience, why is it-like, say, where there is a steam locomotive, there a coal/water tender attached-that photo blogs featuring the aforementioned stuff and "standard" run-of-the-mill pictures go hand-in-hand?

Wait...don't try to answer that question cuz I already answered it in the paragraph preceding it.

civilized ku #3543-45 ~ I can run but I can't hide

April 16, 2020

IT'S TIME FOR ME TO FACE UP TO THE FACTS. While I am not overly tense and nervous and I can relax, I do need to realize and give in to / accept the fact that I make a lot of kitchen life / kitchen sink pictures, most of which also fall into the still life category, simply because I spend a lot of time in the kitchen. That fact has implanted a nagging idea in my head that I have gone lazy in picture making.

However, here's the thing about my kitchen. After building a very nice kitchen island topped with a with a cherry wood counter-top, our kitchen has become a place where the wife and I hang out quite a bit. With a large south facing window over the kitchen sink, the kitchen is a very light-filled and airy place. I spend at least the first hour of every day at the island nursing coffee(s) and a donut(s), reading the newspaper and cruising the web visiting my daily rota of regular sites. It's how I ease myself into the day.

During the day, I make regular visits to the kitchen for a wide variety of purposes. And, it is either during my morning time or my daytime visits that I make pictures. As it turns out, a lot of pictures. That's cuz....

....unlike other rooms in my house in which I spend time, the thing about the kitchen is that the topography of things is ever changing. The serendipitous placement of things-I never arrange or re-arrange them-is never ever the same and neither is the light that falls upon them. All of which makes the kitchen, to my eye and sensibilities, a target rich environment. An environment in which things just sit and stare at me and say, "There's a picture to be made here." And, as should be obvious, I am absolutely incapable of ignoring that voice.