# 6200-02 / common places • common things ~ stupid is as stupid does

August 13, 2022

***it’s raining outside*** ~ (embiggenable)

ELSEWHERE ON THE INTERWEB, IT HAS BE POSTULATED, AS AN answer to the question of “…why we don't talk more about the "art" of photography here on the blog instead of going over lots of gear and technical work…”, that:

“…a viewer using a phone or small iPad to view will see none of the technical "features" that might make the image worth looking at.”

“…when we do try to talk about the work we end up with so many different avenues for viewing, each of which is a diminished and poor replica of the original, that it's impossible to make many meaningful assessments.”

At first blush, I would tend to suggest, first and foremost, that the author of the blog in question does not talk about the art of photography cuz that author has a very dim understanding of what it is that constitutes photography as Art. Consequently, the author would be best served by sticking to what he knows, aka: gear. My opinion is offered in light of the fact-one of many-of the author’s suggestion that “technical features” might make an image worth looking at (don’t know whether to laugh or cry at that cringe-worthy idiocy) - a statement in full-blown support of why Bruce Davidson is “not interested in showing my work to photographers anymore…”

Re: with so many different avenues for viewing… it's impossible to make many meaningful assessments.” when trying to writing about on a blog. BS. While the author’s point, re: the diminished image quality-for any number of reasons-of images on the interweb, is true enough, unless a device’s viewing parameters are highly compromised, I believe that there is more than enough visual information in most cases to make a reasonable assessment of a picture’s aesthetic / ”artistic” worth. Enough, so that, you know, you can determine whether or not a picture is “worth looking at”.

I would even go far as to suggest that, under ideal screen viewing conditions-there is a long list of items under the concept of “ideal”-one could even undertake a critical, informed review of a picture.

Is viewing an image on the interweb-under ideal conditions-the same as viewing that image as a print? Short answer, “No.” Slightly longer answer, a qualified “Yes.” inasmuch as most of the visual qualities which distinguish a photograph as Art, especially the idea of form, are easily perceivable on even a less than ideal viewing screen. And, an on-screen viewing of a good photograph can stir virtually all of the feeling, emotion, and thought that a print of the same image can incite.

iMo and experience, I can write that, in the Fine Art World, Photography Division, there are very few who are interested in the technical features of a photograph. That’s cuz they know and have viewed countless number of photographs which display very little in the way of technical features but which, nevertheless, are some of the greatest photographs ever made.

# 6199 / kitchen life • common things ~ arriving at a fork in the road

August 9, 2022

IT IS A RARE DAY WHEN, ON THE INTERWEB, ONE COMES across an ultra-addicted gearhead having a come-to-jesus picture making moment wherein he/she realizes that he/she has “… really tried hard to substitute hardware for talent. Over and over again.” Add to that a fair amount of other self-flagellation, and it qualifies as something akin to a red-letter day.

That written, I can write that it took a decent amount of fortitude for her/him to confront the fact that, after all of that gear infatuation / acquisition, his/her “images [were] maybe a bit sharper but by no means any better in terms of insight, impact or overall splendor.” And the time, effort (and cash) spent on all that gear preoccupation could have been better spent “finding a great model, a great location.”

All of that written, even if the aforementioned penitent manages to follow the straight (pun) and narrow path of the joy of photography, aka: making pictures, not acquiring gear, he/she still is going to have a long slog getting to the point, if ever, of making pictures that exhibit “insight, impact or overall splendor”. That’s cuz spending time finding a “great”model, a “great” location or overall “splendor” does not a great picture make ( nor, I might add, does getting “bored sticking with one focal length”). A referent-centric pursuit may lead to the making of pictures with splendid decorative value-which may be the sine non qua of that which he/she wants to achieve-but it will not lead to making pictures of insight, impact or overall splendor.

If I were one to leave a comment on the blog of the remorseful, maybe born again picture maker, it would be something like this - Get over it. A camera is, in a very real sense, little more than a recording device for what the human eye sees. (with an emphasis on how the human eye sees). If the human in question does not take the time to learn, understand, and embrace how he/she sees the world, the idea of acquiring a personal picture making vision is a lost cause and all the gear in the world ain’t gonna save your picture making ass.

# 6198 / kitchen life • common things ~ for every pot there is a lid

August 7, 2022

"Nothing exceeds like excess”~as someone said

“No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public” ~ H. L. Mencken

ON MY LAST ENTRY, MARKUS SPRING-a long time follower-WROTE; “…accepting the overcooked look as what memory and feelings conjure up to "it looked exactly like this…" He also expressed an idea on why this is so in response to which I present the above quotes.

I am aware of a picture maker who creates nothing but over-HDRed, ultra-excessive color saturated pictures (his idea of fine art), apparently with great commercial success. His very large prints adorn hospital, corporate, public place, and wealthy residential walls (they ain’t cheap). iMo, the pictures are nothing more than wretched ornamental dreck. His website has 100s of followers whose eyes glaze over and mouths salivate-as judged by their adoring comments-with each of his offerings.

It would be easy to write that this quest-as represented by the aforementioned picture making excess-for wretched excess can be found in so many things American-houses, cars, movies, advertising, et al-and label it as an American obsession. However, I believe it can be found in abundance in most, if not all, first-world countries / cultures. It is also my belief that this quest for excess is nothing new. The grand cathedrals of Europe come to mind as an example. There is also the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to consider.

In any event, I gave up a long time ago thinking that those involved in the quest for excess, at least in the arts, are brain-dead cretins. That’s cuz I came to realize that, that which can be labeled as Decorative Art, does, indeed, serve a purpose. It might even be called a valuable purpose. That is to write, Decorative Art is a vehicle which can assist in gaining an escape, albeit temporary, from the humdrum boredom of everyday life.

And, by one means or another, who is there who does not need an “escape” every now and again?

# 6195-97 / kichen life • common places ~ what you see ain't always what you get

August 5, 2022

left, AFTER / right, BEFORE ~ (embiggenable)

AS MENTIONED BEFORE, THE iPHONE CAMERA MODULE IS not perfect. While it does, in fact, produce files that require only minor adjustments-primarily bright sunny day pictures. Where it “fails” to get it almost right are those picture making situations that have; a. low contrast, and, b. night / very low light scenes. In those situations the computational bits seem to be programed to deliver a full-range (nearly pure black > nearly pure white) file. That is, a file that does not match what the eye sees in situ.

In some cases, a simple adjustment with a BRIGHTNESS slider gets you very close to where you want to go. In other cases, a more nuanced use of the CURVES tool is called for. In either case, the fact that you are working with a fairly rich file-no, not RAW rich but way more than adequate-gives one lots of room with which to work. Neither fix requires an advance degree in Rocket Science or software engineering.

FYI, I am going to try a few experiments with making pictures with the Scene Detection and Smart HDR disabled to determine the difference, if any (I assume there will be), that those setting create.

PS all of my file processing is performed with the intent of accurately reproducing, as much the medium and my memory allow, what my eyes perceived, in situ, at the moment of making a picture.

# 6191-94 / narrow depth of field ~ is it now an effect?

August 3, 2022

*from my* ***single women*** *series* ~ µ4/3 camera / 20mm (40e) / @ f1.7 (embiggenable)

***iPhone*** ~ Portrait setting (embiggenable)

BACK IN THE OLDEN DAYS OF PICTURE MAKING, aka: pre-digital, picture makers came by narrow depth-of-field “honestly” - camera+”fast” lens+shoot wide open = narrow depth-of-field. This technique was applied to many uses such as portraiture or drawing attention to a featured referent in a picture. But, in any case, it was derived from an intrinsic characteristic of the medium’s equipment.

In today’s digital picture making realm, narrow DOF is harder to come by given the typical smaller than so-called full-frame sensors + the laws / science of optics and image magnification (which I won’t get into here). For many picture makers who desire max DOF in their picture making , this a bonus.

As an example, in my picture making, wherein I am seeking out aesthetic form, I want every line, shape, texture, space, color, value, et al to be rendered with clarity and definition. That’s cuz every visual element with my imposed frame is an integral part of the aesthetic form I picture and hope to make perceivable to the viewers of my pictures.

For those who like narrow DOF, the options for obtaining it are limited and usually very expensive. Like, have you priced a (so-called) full-frame digital camera with a “fast “ high quality lens? While I like narrow DOF in some of my picture making, the expense versus small need-actually, it’s more like desire-does not justify the expensive. So….

….when the desire for narrow DOF strikes-I turn to my iPhone 13 Pro Max and its Portrait setting / feature. And, in case you haven/t noticed, over the past few months I have been using that setting-and,surprise for me, within a full-frame-much more than I ever imagined that I would. That’s cuz, best as I can tell at this point, I have been seduced by what my eye and sensibilities perceive as the soft, emotional warmth of pictures made with some significant degree of limited DOF. Which, again to my eye and sensibilities, stands in contrast to the hard, analytical, detached coolness of those pictures made with sharp definition and clarity from edge to edge.

ASIDE No. the iPhone Portrait setting does not accurately replicate the effect of the the old-timey film camera+fast lens combination. Yes. It can get confused, re: what to soften versus what to keep sharp, by small details. But, with some processing “corrections”, it does what I want it to do for my apparent narrow DOF picture making purposes. END OF ASIDE

All of the above written, I am ever so slightly conflicted with use of the iPhone Portrait setting. For the first time in my picture making life, I am using a filter to achieve a look / effect. OK, it'‘s not a filter. It is actually computational photography, Nevertheless, I can not help but feel that I am “cheating”, re: my sacred straight photography vow. Although, when picturing scenes / referents which are static, I do pre-select the aperture setting which creates the DOF look I am after and, 9 times out of 10, I print the file from that selection.

So, RATIONALIZATION ALERT, it’s kinda like straight photography, right?

# 6185-90 / the new snapshot • commonplaces ~ my precious stand-in

August 1, 2022

***this weekend past*** ~ (embiggenable)

“…it rarely occurs to such a photographer to take a picture of something, say a Venetian fountain, without a loved one standing directly in front of it and smiling into the lens.” ~ Jean Shepherd

OVER THE YEARS, THE WIFE HAS PLAYED, DURING OUR TRAVELS, HER ROLE in my pictures, ala Jean Shepherd’s “loved one standing directly in front of it and smiling into the lens.”, with the patience of a saint. And, this weekend past was no different.

Our travel this weekend past, a 260 mile (total) out-and-back run to the central Adirondacks in order to purchase a dozen of the planet’s best cinnamon sugar donuts, started with our first ever gas up at our hamlet’s rebuilt-from-scratch convenience store / gas station. After securing the donuts, we stopped for an early afternoon breakfast in the hamlet of Blue Mountain Lake where we dined in a recently restored 1946 era diner that was moved-after its restoration-from Maryland to the Adirondacks.

I have been making travel pictures with the wife as a stand-in for quite some time. I began making them as a somewhat casual, satirical take on the classic tourist picture as described by Jean Shepherd. I continue to do so with the same intent but, as my collection of these pictures grow, I am now approaching the making of such pictures as a “serious” endeavor with the idea of creating a “serious”, albeit somewhat tongue-in-cheeky, body of work.

My only regret about this undertaking is that it was not until quite recently that I started to this picture making seriously. Consequently, I am kicking myself in the butt-not easy to do at my age-for all of the stand-in picture making opportunities I have passed up over the years.

# 6178-84 / kitchen sink ~ let function and meaning float free

July 29, 2022

**from the *kitchen sink* series** ~ (embiggenable)

“Bernd and Hilla Becher were sometimes more interested in aesthetic form than in what industry actually does…its goal was art, which means it was always bound to let function and meaning float free.”~ from the NY Times article

THERE IS AN ARTICLE IN TODAY’S NY TIMES, re: an exhibit, Bernd & Hilla Becher, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. The article is a good read, especially so as it does not jam the reader up with a load of art-speak.

That written, what really grabbed my attention was the manner in which the photographs were presented (in the article). That is, primarily grouped by subject matter-blast furnaces, water towers, and frame houses. This pricked my eye and sensibilities inasmuch as, up until this point, I have been rather lukewarm in my assessment of the Becher’s work. A situation which I now attribute to the fact that I have never viewed their work presented as coherent bodies of work. Seeing the Becher’s work presented as bodies of work has changed my assessment of their work. So much so that I will be, in the near future, boarding a train to NYC to see the exhibit.

The fact that seeing a coherent body of the Becher’s work so opened my eyes to their work comes as no surprise in that I have always understood that a good body of work can be a collective staggering visual force which illustrates and elucidates an artist’s vision. Such is the case with the Becher’s work. I can now attest that I have much greater understanding about what the Becher’s were up to with their picture making.

Re: the quote from the article - “Bernd and Hilla Becher were sometimes more interested in aesthetic form than in what industry actually does…” In regarding my kitchen sink pictures, I hope it is obvious that I am more interested in the aesthetic form to be found in the “life” that goes on in the sink than I am in the actual depicted referents to be seen in the photographs.

# 6175-77 / common places • common things ~ Gutenberg would say, "Print it!"

July 28, 2022

IF IT IS TRUE, ANOTHER I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THING, re: picture making, is the notion that the making of photo prints is on the wain. I find it difficult to believe that “serious” amateur picture makers do not make prints. Why would anyone tote around a “serious” camera with which to make pictures and then not make prints?

In my case, I have 121 photo prints on the walls of my house. Add to that number 30+ photo books-let’s say an average of 20 pictures/book-sitting around the place and, it is safe to write, that I am not numbered amongst the do-not-make-prints crowd.

One way of looking at it (that’s sort of a pun), is that, in effect, I have approximately 800-900 printed pictures ready to go, posterity wise. And, since the work has been printed-in one form or another-over the past few decades, it was, and continues to be, a relatively painless endeavor.

Posterity wise, the most valuable printed pieces are the 12-picture, hard-bound, lay-flat pages, year-in-review calendar photo books that I make every year-for the past decade-as an Xmas present for the wife. The calendars are a collection of pictures of significant events, travels, and the like.

All of the above written, what is the point of picture making if you do not make prints?