# 6109 / kitchen life ~ here I am

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“Sometimes it feels like I write about gear too much. But it's much easier to write about than how and why we actually make photographs.” ~ written on the interweb

SINCE I BEGAN BLOGGING-c.2005-IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN MY INTENTION to avoid writing about gear and, to a lesser extent, technique. That’s cuz of my bedrock belief that writing about and encouraging comments / discussion about gear is best left to the domain of the hopelessly un-imaginative / un-creative picture makers.

That written, I also believe that it is nearly impossible to write about the how of picture making inasmuch as-despite the prevalence of the How-To-Master (pick a genre) advice sites / books-the making of pictures that are worth more than a passing glance simply can not be reduced to rules / formulas. Rather, as Walker Evans wrote:

The meaning of quality in photography’s best pictures lies written in the language of vision. That language is learned by chance, not system…Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.

iMo, these Evans quotes are amongst the best I have ever heard / read, re: the how-to of picture making and why it is so difficult to write about. That’s cuz there are not many picture makers who are able to separate their feelings from their thoughts when making pictures, much less be able to write about it. In large part that difficulty originates from the long-held idea that a photograph is suppose to “say” something / have “meanings”. That a photograph can not be enjoyed and appreciated as a sensuous object, in and of itself*.

And then, of course, there is the dander of expressing feelings. That is, the “danger” of being perceived as getting all soft and mushy / touchy feely cuz, when you come right down to it, feelings are deeply personal and often times expressing those feelings opens one up to all kinds of ignorant responses. And, when you think about it, what good would there be in letting anyone know how / what you were feeling when making a picture?

After all, that’s a very personal experience that comes from within, from knowing one self and how you see the world, aka: one’s own understanding of the language of vision.

Think about it.

*Given that true intellectual and emotional compatibility
Are at the very least difficult
If not impossible to come by
We could always opt for the more temporal gratification
Of sheer physical attraction
That wouldn't make you a shallow person
Would it? ~ Lyle Lovett

# 6108 / kitchen sink ~ perception

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OVER THE YEARS I HAVE HUNG MY PICTURES, BOTH at home and in galleries, indifferent presentation styles. Early on, I framed and matted my pictures under glass. Then I moved on to prints mounted on board with no frames (prints with a narrow white border). Lately, I have been making prints with wide white borders which are then framed (classic gunmetal gallery frames) without glass.

The reason for giving up the use of glass is two-fold: 1) to my eye and sensibilities, the look and “feel” of the surface of my prints is important to me and glass, at best, obfuscates the print surface and, at worst, completely obliviates it, 2) other than museum glass-which is way too expensive-regular glass has too much reflectivity which also has a tendency to increase apparent print contrast.

Re: frames - after a period of not using frames, I have returned to using them, albeit with very wide white bordered prints, for one primary reason. A framed print, with the image surrounded by a wide white border tends to signal to a viewer that the picture is not to be considered lightly. That is, a signal that a good picture demands an expansive neutral white field in order to separate it from any visual distractions that might interfere with a viewer’s contemplation and consequent appreciation of the picture.

And, you know, ya gotta let a viewer know that it is important stuff -not just some crummy snapshot that a clueless relative took-that they are looking at.

# 6105-07 / around the house • roadside attractions (common places) • watch update ~ no $6000 cameras were used in the making of these pictures

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“The fact is that relatively few photographers ever master their medium. Instead they allow the medium to master them and go on an endless squirrel cage chase from new lens to new paper to new developer to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don't know what to do with it.” ~ Weston

I THOUGHT IT WAS TIME FOR MY FIRST EVER WATCH UPDATE. You will be happy to know Mickey is still tapping his foot, one tap /second. And, he never tires of calling me “pal” when I inquire about the time. At the moment of this picture’s making, it was 11:35AM, 73F outside, and my heart was beating along at 66 BPM (6 minutes prior). It also should go without writing that I can live, any time I wish, my Dick Tracy fantasies when I talk to family, friends, or junk call recordings on my watch. Not to mention, how much joy I experience when reviewing, on my watch, my pictures from my iPhone picture library. And sometimes when I’m bored, I make an ECG using my watch and sent it to my cardiologist just cuz I can.

I pity the poor suckers who have a watch that only tells time.

That written, I also want to assure you that no pictures on this blog were made with a $6000 camera, or, for that matter, with a classic medium-format film camera.

# 6102-04 / roadside attractions ~ helter-skelter juxtapositions of time and space

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“If photography is about anything it is the deep surprise of living in the ordinary world. By virtue of walking through the fields and streets of this planet, focusing on the small and the unexpected, conferring attention on the helter-skelter juxtapositions of time and space, the photographer reminds us that the actual world is full of surprise, which is precisely what most people, imprisoned in habit and devoted to the familiar, tend to forget.” ~ John Rosenthal

# 6099-6101 / Adirondack roadside attractions (common places) • the new snapshot ~ a different kind of seeing

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“I used to think that photographs were "composed." This made photography sound very unexuberant, as if it was primarily a deliberate act. Such a notion suggests that a photographer stands in front of an inviting landscape, arranges a composition, and then takes the picture. And it's true that many photographers work that way. Of course, if photographs can be composed, then there must be rules of composition, such as: the subject should never be dead center. But why not? I used to think you could learn how to be a photographer by learning the rules of composition and how to use a camera. Now I think just the opposite: if you have to learn rules, then it's already too late. The elements of a design can make a photograph bearable and inoffensive, but they will not make a photograph compelling. We are compelled by photographs which, within the limits of an objectively appropriate form, manage to offer us something that touches on authentic concerns - our happiness or unhappiness, our fidelities, our modern war with perplexity. The balance between design and content must be there because design by itself is not interesting and pure content is merely assertive.” ~ John Rosenthal

RE: “The balance between design and content must be there because design by itself is not interesting and pure content is merely assertive.”

For the past few months I have been wandering about the picture making landscape in search of a picture making trope which is focused on a recurring single referent theme. That is to write, a departure from my design, aka: form, focused picture making M.O. in which any and all referents are fodder for my picture making endeavors. An endeavor in which pursuit of design / form is at the fore. Content, not so much.

ASIDE I am using the word content in the sense of the depicted referent, not in the sense, as currently fashionable in the Academic Lunatic Fringe, of “meaning” or what the picture “says”. END OF ASIDE

The difficulty I am facing in this search for a referent-focused picture making M.O. is that I find it very difficult, if not impossible, to find / see form, as it appeals to my eye and sensibilities, when I am in the referent seeking mode of picture making. That’s cuz, for all intents and purposes, referent-focused pictures are pretty much all about the referent. Form (in the classic art world sense of the word), not so much.

Which does not mean that I am incapable of making referent-focused pictures that have interesting visual characteristics which are independent of the depicted referent. What it does seem to mean to me is that I feel like I am cheating by depending upon the chosen referent for snagging and holding a viewers interest. And, perhaps the biggest challenge I face in pursuing this endeavor is getting over that feeling.

FYI, the pictures in this entry, which fall under the heading of Adirondack roadside attractions, is most likely to be the referent-focused picture making path I will follow. That’s cuz: a) the Park is bigger than the state of Vermont and there are roadside things aplenty, new and old, which can attract a wanderer’s attention, b) they have never been “cataloged”, and, c) I am pining for a gallery exhibition-in one regional gallery in particular-and this referent-focused body of work just might be like shooting fish in a barrel, re: getting the attention of regional gallery directors.

# 6095-97 / common things ~ TMI

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“We got tired of the sameness of the exquisiteness of the photograph . . . [referring to the exact rendition of detail which is all-revealing.] Why? Because the photograph told us everything about the facts of nature and left out the mystery. Now, however hard-headed a man may be, he cannot stand too many facts; it is easy to get a surfeit of realities, and he wants a little mystification as a relief...” ~ Henry Peach Robinson

SINCE MY FIRST MAKING OF A PHOTOGRAPH WITH THE use of a digital camera, I have been applying-during processing-vignetting to my pictures. Recently I have also been making pictures using the iPhone PORTRAIT setting in order to achieve a limited DOF. From time to time, a slight hint of overall Gaussian Blur makes an appearance in my pictures. And, overall color saturation reduction is a regular part of my image file processing.

My rationale for these post-click-of-the-shutter processing steps is predicated on my dislike of the ever-increasing-let’s call it what it is-fetish for ultra realism. That is, iMo, the quest for maximun sharpness / resolution / detail together with extreme dynamic range, micro contrast, and color saturation that give us those nice bright colors, give us the greens of summers and makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah.

Some might opine that I am wallowing in a nostalgia for the good ol' days of color film cuz, I must confess, to a certain extent I want the look and feel of my pictures to resemble the look and feel of a color C print made from color negative film. However, I want that look and feel, not cuz it mimics the analog look and feel but cuz, to my eye and sensibilities, I just flat out do not like the look and feel of the hyper-realism so evident in the current picture making environment.

In today’s digital picture making domain, iMo (and to my eye and sensibilities), so many pictures contain “too many facts”, aka: too much information (TMI). Or, if you will, a “surfeit of realities”. I would go so far as to suggest that the surfeit of realities found in hyper-real photographs far exceeds what the human eye-with a fixed glance-can see when viewing the same scene in situ. These pictures are, to a certain extent (to my eye and sensibilities), rather “clinical”. That is, while they present a surfeit of facts, they have a rather distinct lack of mystification.

ASIDE To be certain, in my application of processing techniques I always attempt to respect how the depicted referent(s) appeared to my eye in situ. END ASIDE

FYI, Robinson put forth the above quote most likely between 1869>1890. One can only imagine what he might have to say re: today’s digital surfeit of realities.

# 6084-94 / common places ~ 4 days in May

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“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

WHEN I AM OUT AND ABOUT / TRAVELING I MAKE A FAIR number of pictures. Most end up in hard-cover POD photo books which are made in response to specific travel ventures.

It is in those books that appear my pictures of tourist “hot spots”-people, places, and things which are “must sees”. While I attempt to make those pictures in a manner that differ from the typical touristy pictures-what Szarkowski labels as with a quality of formal rigor that identifies a work of art. However, ultimately those pictures are primarily about the pictured referent. Re: more interesting…configurations / a pattern created by the pointer, not so much.

That written, the travel photo books are, in fact, dominated by pictures in which the pictured referents are co-opted for their potential, to my eye and sensibilities, for making photographs which illustrate more interesting visual configurations. And, it is those pictures which are the reason I make photographs.

Fortunately for me, the wife gets my more-interesting-configuration picture making M.O. That’s fortunate cuz she really appreciates the total visual representation of our travels as illustrated in the books. That’s true even though she has no memory of having seen most of things that I see and picture.