# 5910-12 / eats ~ fruitte di mare

August 4, 2021

ALL ALONG THE MAINE COAST AND NEARBY ENVIRONS THERE ARE QUITE THE number of Lobster “shacks”. The question becomes, how much lobster can you eat? I’m working on finding the answer.

August 2, 2021

PICTURES ARE OF MAIN STREET DAMARISCOTTA, on the coast of Maine where I will be residing for this week. I’ll be eating lots of Lobster. Going whale watching today.

# 5905 / quotidian ubiquity ~ and the blind shall lead team

July 29, 2021

GOOD GRIEF CHARLIE BROWN! THERE THEY GO AGAIN.....in his last 2 entries, Mike Johnston goes off, once again, with his ridiculous bias, re: the iPhone and/or smartphones in general. And, my intial response was very similar to that of Kenneth Tanaka, "To say the least, I’m disappointed by your reaction. I’ve no energy to debate the matter." However.....

....let's first get snarky out of the way - I was neither disappointed nor surprised by the sentiments expressed in the 2 aforementioned entries. That is cuz, in some ways, it is exactly what one might expect from someone who states that he is a writer, not a photographer. And, if I were to throw in a pinch of cynicism, it is also what might be expected from someone who wets his beak from conventional camera gear / supplies sales but hasn't figured out how to do so, re: iPhone / smartphone sales.END OF SNARKINESS So, moving on...

Re; "a writer, not a photographer" - I would be one of the first to admit that Mike Johntson has fairly broad, albeit generalized, knowledge of things photographic. That written, I don't believe that he has claimed to be a definitive expert in any one facet of things photographic. And therein, iMo, a specific lack of digital processing expertise, lies the problem with his thoughts and opinions, re: iPhone / smartphone picture making.

Re: the lake picture in the "wrong camera" entry - as presented, there is a measureable (INFO window in Photoshop) green cast along with a significant amount of cyan and yellow (which exacerbates the green cast) in the clouds. Whether this is due to the iPhone getting the White Balance wrong-which begs the question, is the picture made with the latest iPhone?-or is it due to the fact that it was introduced by questionable processing technique? No matter the answer to either variable, the fact of the matter is that the picture just flat out looks terrible. Green clouds? Really?

In any event, I'll make no assumptions, re: Johnston's iPhone version / processing expertise. What I will write is that, in my iPhone picture making experience-dating back to Version7-I have never experienced a severe WB problem nor been unable to process an image file to obtain a very high quality / desired result (see caveat below).

Having the knowledge and skills to make the most of the iPhone's capabilities makes it difficult for me to ignore the ignorance, re: the iPhone picture making potential, of those who know not of what they speak / write. When I confront that ignorance, aka: lack of experience and/or expertise, it is not done so out of a desire to embarass or demean but rather to enlighten and support those who might be tempted to explore the possibilities of a device which has re-introduced me to the joy of picture making.

CAVEAT I am a so-called Photoshop power user and have been considered as such by printing industry professionals for 3 decades. During that time, I have craved out a pathway through the byzantine labyrinth of Photoshop tools and techniques that gives me the ability to be very proficient at achieving very high standard results when working with image files made with whatever device. FYI, this pathway mirrors nicely in the smartphone processing app Snapseed. This proficiency has served me well in my transition to iPhone picture making.

# 5900-04 / quotidian ubiquity ~ a milk cow is not a helicopter and that's a fact

July 28, 2021

(Not so) RANDOM THOUGHTS

The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words. ~ Elliott Erwitt

Every artist I suppose has a sense of what they think has been the importance of their work. But to ask them to define it is not really a fair question. My real answer would be, the answer is on the wall. ~ Paul Strand

The funny and sad thing is that photography is an art, but these guys have such an inferiority complex about it that all they do is tag on gold-plate words where they aren’t needed. If they’d only let it talk for itself ~ Gordon Parks

I have been involved with the medium of photography and its apparatus for ever so slightly more than half a century. During the first 30 years (approximately) I made pictures-primarily but not exclusively-for the purpose of commerce, aka: advertising, marketing, editorial, and corporate communications. During the last 20 years (approximately) I have been making pictures for the purpose of making Art. As an adjunct to that more recent picture making, I have written over 5 gazillion (approximately) words, re: the medium and its apparatus.

Most of those written words were (or should been) considered as my thinking out loud wherein I was trying to find answers to several questions that were ricocheting around the confines of my skull....questions such as, what is a photograph?, why do I make photographs?, what is the "right" way to look at photographs (mine or those made by others?, can a photograph have meaning beyond the visual?, amongst many other questions.

In addition to thinking out loud about such questions, I have also read a gazillion (or more) words-I have book shelves chock full of books-written by others who have expressed their ideas / answers to such questions. The one thing the books all seem to have in common is that they raise as many questions as they do answers. That's cuz it seems obvious to me (at this point) that virtually all of the answers to such questions are a matter of personal opinion. That is, kinda like trying to find the answer to the question, what is art?

All of the above written, my thinking out loud about such questions has resulted in a few answers (for me) that, iMo, can be summed up by the (not so) random thoughts presented at the top of this entry. Or, in my words....when employed by an open-minded practioner for the making of Art, the medium and its apparatus is capable of creating a thing (a print) which is, iMo, a piece of visual Art which is at its best; 1) when, iMo, it is perceived as a delight to the sense of sight, not, iMo, as an intellectual construct, and, 2) when, iMo, it exploits the medium and its apparatus' intrinsic charateristic as a cohort of the real.

And, to be perfectly blunt, I am sick unto tears with picture makers who try to convince, or is it "con, me into thinking-by means of gold-plated words or a sticky slathering of art suace-that a picture of a milk cow is a delightful picture of a helicopter when, in fact, I can plainly see that it is an un-delightful picture of a milk cow.

# 5897-99 / around the house• civilized ku ~ playing within the boundary lines

July 26, 2021

iced tea ~ Phoenicia, NY - in the Catskill Mountains (embiggenable) • iPhone — ***iced tea*** ~ Phoenicia, NY - in the Catskill Mountains (embiggenable) • iPhone

I HAVE BEEN CONCENTRATING ON MAKING FULL-FRAME pictures with the iPhone. Many of the pictures have been made with the PORTRAIT setting in order to generate-subject must be within 8 feet-a narrow DOF look.

AN ASIDE It seems kinda odd to say/write the phrase, "a narrow DOF "look" inasmuch as it could be understood to mean that I am applying a filter / app to create an "effect". Of course, to be accurate, that understanding is essentially very close to what is going on with my iPhone's AI (or whatever it might be). Nevertheless, I rationalize my use of the PORTRAIT setting-cuz I don't do art-sauce effects, aka: cheap tricks-by considering it to be a "setting" in the manner of an f-stop selection being a setting. Samo-samo, right? END OF ASIDE

In any event, for me, an interesting side effect (no filter/app used) to making pictures in the full-frame format is that the square format is seemingly starting to feel constrained. I use the word "seemingly" cuz the fact is that, now that I am open to using the full-frame format, when my eye and sensibilities are pricked with the sight of something which has the potential for being turned into a picture, I can sense-picture in my head / visualize-how the interdependencies of the visual elements in a scene might better work together when framed within either a square or a rectangle.

That written, square or rectangle, iMo, it's all good.

a few of the items in the Space Garden ~ Boiceville, NY in the Catskill Mountains (embiggenable) • iPhone — ***a few of the items in the Space Garden*** ~ Boiceville, NY - in the Catskill Mountains (embiggenable) • iPhone

#5891-96 / civilized ku ~ one extreme to another

July 21, 2021

TOOK A FERRY ACROSS THE LAKE YESTERDAY to tend to some auto maintenance in Burlington, Vermont-cuz that is the closest auto dealer / service facility that can work on the Abarth.

I expected the service would take the whole day so my good friend and I spent the day killing time in an assortment of ways. The AM was taken up with automobile things, dropping off the Abarth, getting a rental car, going to another auto dealer to start the auto buying process for our daughter, visiting another dealership, out of idle curiousity (re: an electric vehicle), lunch, and then spent the afternoon walking the downtown Burlington pedestrian shopping district - a closed (permanently) 5 block street, Church Street, converted into an outdoor mall.

The street is chock-a-block with bars, restaurants, retail stores and, as yesterday afternoon was sunny and warm, lots of people. I purchased some new cookware for the wife. My friend and I gave "into beer pressure" and had a pint of Guinness in a Irish Pub-themed establishment. However, we did not sample the whiskey with ice croutons soup.

The highlight of the day-no pictures thereof-was the return trip home. As we traversed the lake-Lake Champlain-on the ferry, we watched the western sky transition from medium-light gray to an ominous dark gray. Disembarking from the ferry, we drove 18 miles on the interstate to the exit for my town whereupon it started to rain. The tempo of the rain slowly increased until we were about 7-8 miles from my house where the landscape turned near-nightime dark and the rain turned into a driving deluge of gust-driven sheets of rain-huge raindrops-which limited visibility to 20-30 feet and leaving pools of standing water on the road. Add to that, dramatic bolts of lighting and booming thunder, it was an 8-10 minute of a pure adrenaline rush.

About 1/3 of a mile from my home we emerged from the maelstrom into sunny skies and a very gentle rainfall. As we pulled into my driveway, the wife was sitting on the front porch-where she had ridden out the storm-grinning like a Cheshire cat.

# 5888-90 / civilized ku ~ epiphanic visual interdependencies

July 19, 2021

IN MULTIPLE ENTRIES OVER THE YEARS, I HAVE MENTIONED my involvement in the landmark book, the new color photography*, by Sally Eauclaire (Abbeville Press,1981). Sally Eauclaire was an art critic and "neighbor" who lived down the hall from me in the warehouse I had converted into artist's living / studio lofts.

In the late 70s Eauclaire turned her writing attention to the then emergent genre of Fine Art color photography. She undertook the project of writing an overview of the movement having had no previous experience in critiquing / writing about things photographic. That was not a problem inasmuch as she intended to write about the art of photography, not about the techniques of making photos. Nevertheless, she wanted to learn about how specific pictures-selected from those featured in the book-were made. So, that's where I stepped in as her how-the-pictures-were-made consultant (I am credited in the book).

For me, the experience-over the course of 2 years-was an epiphany. During that time, as I perused portfolios from photographers-many of whom are now considered to be the star-studded founding fathers (and mothers) of "modern", Fine Art color photogaphy-it was an eye-opening experience. In addition to the fact that color photography was now being taken "seriously", it also gave witness to the idea that anything, any referent, was now fair game for the making of pictures thereof. As Eauclaire wrote, picture makers were now free to make color pictures of things other than "prodigious crags, rippling sands, or flaming sunsets."

All of that written, here is a excerpt form the book wherein she is writing about Stephen Shore's work and in which she also pretty accurately describes my approach to / intended goals, re: making pictures....

Shore's goal, like that of Evans, appears to be a "reticent, understated, impersonal art." Viewer's immune to his subtle, sensuous visual intelligence often descibe his work as "dry" and "detached" because they only see lucidly described facts....Shore does not use cliched pictorial packages to carry readymade meanings. In one sense, his subject matter is what it appears to be-a scrupulous inventory of visual facts. But Shore maneuvers his facts to reveal epiphanic visual interdependencies. Pictorial priorities supersede a devotion to what might constitute the subject's truth. He is engaged not with any place's knowable identity but with its visual mystique, its potential for being turned into a picture.

Is there a better description of the medium and its apparatus' ability to, when paired with a picture maker's "visual intelligence", transcend its descriptive facility by providing the playground and tools to see beyond the obvious?

*288 pages, 47 photographers (to include, William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, Jan Groover, Joel Meyerowitz, Eve Sonneman, David Hockney, William Christenberry, Mitch Epstein, Roger Merton, Michael Bishop), and well over 150 photographs.

# 5884-87 / around the house•kitchen sink ~ symmetry

July 16, 2021

summer time and living is easy ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone — ***summer time and living is easy*** ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

THERE ARE TIMES WHEN I CAN SIT IN FRONT OF my desktop monitor and stare for quite a significant length of time. That tends to happen when the monitor screen looks as it does today-as seen in the picture below.

Part of the reason of why I stare at the screen is cuz, after a short period-a few days-during which I have made a significant number of pictures-I am contemplating which picture (or pictures) to use in a blog entry. That written, I have come to realize that I am also using the monitor screen as a contact sheet of sorts. That is, as I stare at the screen a picture-or a part of a picture-will catch my attention. I click on it, enlarge it and then stare at it. If it hits me in the eye like a big pizza pie, I make a mental note of it and send it back into the pack.

While this exercise helps me pick pictures for blog use, it also has an interesting (to me) side effect. When purusing my "big" contact sheet-my library (currently 12,861 pictures) of finished pictures-it is remarkable how many of the pictures I have made mental notes of emerge from the pack once again.

There is, quite obviously, no science involved in this exercise. However, what it does indicate to me is that, inasmuch as my picture making is driven by a visceral reaction to what I see, when I am looking at my "contact" sheet-either a jumbled collection on my monitor or in my library-I respond to pictures which cause me to have a visceral reaction to what I see in the finished picture. In both cases-the making of pictures and the viewing thereof-since there is little or no thinking involved,it seems to be a fine example of the adage, "Stupid is as stupid does."