# 6717-19 / flora • kitchen life-sink • common things ~ creativity

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What one photographs says as much about an internal and personal process as it does about an external bit of subject matter….The most amazing thing about Weston’s Pepper #30 is not that he made a great photograph of a pepper, but that he saw it as photographic subject material.

THE WORD “CREATIVE” IS ONE THAT IS EMPLOYED MOST REGULARLY in describing both a personal trait and the fruits of one’s labor. As in, he/she is very creative, or, that idea is very creative, or, in the photography world, that’s a very creative photograph. And, it is not out of line to suggest, again in the photography world, that the majority of “serious” amateurs strive to be “creative”.

Consequently, many turn to workshop gurus, how-to advice books and other sources for inspiration in order to get themselves on the path to becoming creative. iMo, that path is littered with a multitude of tips, techniques, and, dare I write, bogus gimmickry, all of which is time and money ill spent. I believe that to be true inasmuch as I have never come across a workshop guru or how-to book that touches even remotely upon what I believe to be the single most important “creative” idea for the making of good / interesting photographs ….

….. deciding in which direction (literally and figuratively) your picture making device should be aimed.

iMo, Brooks Jensen stated it best when he wrote:

“Real photography begins when we let go of what we have been told is a good photograph and start photographing what we see.”

At the beginning of my picture making life, I was never told what constituted a “good photograph” so I just started making pictures of what I saw. That written, it took a couple years for me to realize that my pictures were not made in the mode of “traditionally” approved subject matter. It was at that point that I started down the path that has served me well throughout my picture making life; I began “investing” time and money in acquiring–still ongoing to this day–a significant collect of monographs of a wide range of various photographer’s–some well-known, others not so much–work.

The single most important lesson I learned from this activity was that anything and everything is fair picture making fodder. And, that there was no one, “approved” manner in which to picture that fodder.

Never having had an hour, much less a single day, of formal photography education, I can honestly write that I do not believe that I could have had a better “education” than the one from which I learned on the path I followed.

# 6714-16 / common places-things • people ~ OT interim entry

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THE WIFE AND I ATTENDED THE MICHIGAN-FEST YESTERDAY. The festival has nothing tho do with the state of Michigan but rather, it is all about a local food commodity, aka: the Michigan hot dog. No one knows how the word “Michigan” was applied to the thing–a steamed all-beef hot dog in a steamed bun, topped with a seasoned meat sauce–but it has been suggested that perhaps the man (a traveling salesman?) who “invented” it while he was in Plattsburgh might have been from Detroit, Michigan.

In should be noted that I am not a Michigan fan. First, and foremost, a good hot dog–some are not so good–should never be boiled cuz, after all, we are not British. In addition, the meat sauce, despite the ingredients, is most often rather bland and does not have much singe. Put the combination in a plain white hot dog bun and the result is, iMo, rather bland.

So, you might be wondering, why the hell did we go to the Michigan-fest? With nothing else on our Saturday schedule and it being a fine Summer day, I thought that maybe that, with a gathering of multiple Michigan venders–food trucks and restaurants–there just might be some interesting variations on the Michigan recipe. But alas, that was not the case. Apparently, diverging from the tried and true is just not in the cards. It is, when all is said done, a very popular item hereabouts so why mess with success? Nevertheless, it was a relaxing afternoon having a couple good beers in the beer garden, meeting and conversing with a few interesting people.

FYI, I made the SUNY Plattsburgh DEI table photo cuz no one was visiting it. The wife and I had just watched the South Park episode, Sermon on the 'Mount .…

…. wherein Cartman is grappling with the loss of his ability to offend the world, raging that, in Trump’s second term “woke shit is off limits” and that his unique brand of bigoted misanthropy has become the norm…”now everyone rips on the Jews .… it’s OK to say retarded”, plus the devastating news that President Trump canceled NPR, thus ending Cartman’s limitless free access to hearing liberals whine about current events cuz, as Cartmen laments, “That was like the funniest shit ever.” ….

So, I took the fact that no one was stopping at the DEI booth as a sure indication that, as Carmtan fears, “WOKE IS DEAD” and made the photo. A sad, sad sign of the times.

#6709-13 / people • flora • common places-things ~ at times a few words never hurt

view from 1st hole tee on the Mountain Course - all photos (embigenable)

the 3 of us

“My photographs are visual analogues for the quality of my life, a private view of subject matter found in the commonplace reality of the Adirondacks.”

THE OPENING LINE IN MY ARTIST STATEMENT FOR MY Adirondack Survey body of work could, with a slight modification, be used for just about all of my various bodies of work – substitute “in my life long walk about the planet” in place of “in the commonplace reality of the Adirondacks” and there you have it, a one size fits all statement that is applicable to just about every photograph I have ever made (commercial work excepted).

I mention this pursuant to my last entry wherein I reiterated my promise to not turn this blog into some kind of written personal diary. But, truth be told, my photography is in fact a visual personal diary of sorts. That’s cuz I do not make pictures of things, I make pictures of life in all its forms and locations. Hence my propensity for discursive promiscuity.

Despite that propensity, I have numerous individual bodies of work which fall under the headings of “traditional” photo genres–people, places, things, street, landscape, still life, et al– but, that written, I rarely make a photo with a genre-driven idea in mind. Virtually all of my individual assemblies of genre-related photos were organized together well after the fact of their making.

In any event, on occasion I do post photos that do seem to call for a caption / description of sorts. Say, like .… those in this entry ….

a.) I do not write about my golf game but I do post photos of my golf experiences, most often in the form of a landscape photo. However, yesterday, I played golf with my son and grandson on our home course–the Lake Placid Resort Course (45 holes, 2 18s and 1 9 hole par 3 course)–where we are privileged to play for free. That written, the real “story” here is that I am so lucky, fortunate, and graced with the opportunity to play with my multi-generation progeny on a regular basis–although grandson is only home from college for the summer. And, FYI, independent of that story is the fact–which may be understood by just looking at the pictures–is that, no matter how well–or not–one is playing, the old saying of “Golf is a good walk spoiled” does not apply on this course. It is always a grand and glorious good walk.

b.) Bet ya didn’t know that the Adirondack chair most often seen in photos are a later day version of the original Adirondack chair, aka: the Westport Adirondack chair. That chair design was the very first Adirondack chair which dates back 1903 and the Adirondack village of Westport. iMo, and to my eye and sensibilities, that chair is the most simple and elegant chair, of any kind, ever designed. That’s why we have 3 of them on our front porch. And, BTW, our cat also likes them.

# 6705-08 / flora • around the house ~ it's a modern life

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THERE ARE DAYS WHEN I STRUGGLE TO COME up with photography related topics to write about. In large part. that’s cuz during the course of my blogging–decades–I have covered a lot of ground and I try not to repeat topics too frequently and I strive to stay on topic, i.e. the medium of photography and its apparatus.

That written, I do have an interesting life and I could easily write about my sleep habits or all of the fascinating details of the recent decisions I made when purchasing a new car or all about the 3 turbo-powered performance cars I have or there is my golf game and how I have recently re-shafted my forged irons with senior shafts or explaining why I have 4 canoes–2 solo and 2 tandem–and the subtleties of the J-stroke or how about my whiskey collection of rare and very expensive bottled spirits and addressing the question of whether or not my bottle of Pappy Van Winkle 20 Year Old is worth the price or my other hobby of building very complex LEGO sets or … et al …. but, I won’t do it. So instead, it’s on with the show….

Re: “creamy” bokeh: bokeh is the quality and feel of the background/foreground blur and reflected points of light in the out-of-focus, aka: blurry, parts of an image. Bokeh is judged to be “good” when the background blur is soft and “creamy”–smooth, round circles of light and no hard edges–making the blur pleasing to the eye. Bokeh is judged to be “bad” when the circles of light have sharp, aka: well-defined, edges and, dependent upon lens diaphragm blades–rounded blades, good / straight blades, bad–a hexagonal shape.

So, back in the olden days when photographers used those antiquated things called cameras, if one were to be desiring smooth, round out-of-focus circles of light / “creamy” blur, both the number and the shape of a lenses’ diaphragm blades was an all important element in creating that desired result. Making pictures with a fast prime lens, with rounded / blade apertures, set to the lowest value, aka: wide ”open” was the way to go for creating “good” bokeh.

On the other hand, today, in the modern world, one need not be concerned with all that “real” camera crap. Enlightened shooters can just fire up their cell phone’s picture making module / capabilities, set it to the PORTRAIT mode and choose the amount of blur you desire and fire away. And, get this, if you don’t like the result you can increase or decrease the blur–from none at all to max out-of-focus–after the fact during the image processing stage. And, in my experience, there is nary a hard-edge circle to be found and the blur is “creamy” enough to please my eye and sensibilities..

Of course, when employing this technique, you risk incurring the ire of the “real” camera purists who will tell you in no uncertain terms that your blur is “fake”–nothing more than an amateurish, cheap trick / effect cuz, ya know, “real” men use use “real” cameras.

My advice, just smile and move on knowing that “real” people, who enjoy looking at pictures, rarely give a crap about how a picture is made. They just know a good picture when they see it.

# 6701-04 / kitchen life • landscape • common places-things ~ At the risk of hyperbole, couldn't this be regarded as a coup of some sort?

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“I'm not sure why and when artists decided their role was primarily to be enactors of head-hurting philosophical conundrums, but it's never been a good look …. You hardly ever read an artist's descriptive statement of their "practice", now, without being told quite explicitly how this or that gesture, mark, or aesthetic choice "references" this or that important issue, from complex philosophical debates and cutting-edge scientific theories to controversial matters of race, gender, and politics. Why? Because I say so! How? In the way I say! Read the bloody manual statement!” ~ from: idiotic-hat.blogspot.com

THERE IS NO DENYING THAT THE MEDIUM OF photography and its apparatus encompasses a multifaceted means of artistic expression, genre wise. One could postulate that it is all good as long as nothing or no one is harmed in the making of its output. That written, I reserve the right to hold, in relatively deep dislike, both pretty-picture dreck and Academic Lunatic Fringe flapdoodle and green paint pixtures.

Re: the Academic Lunatic Fringe - setting aside setting aside the facts that practitioners thereof profess to be “lens-based artists”–ya know, as opposed to being just “pedestrian” photographers– and that their work product is rarely visually pleasing / interesting to view, what really gets my goat is that they, have for all intents and purposes, virtually hijacked the exhibition worlds of galleries and fine-art museums.

As these practitioners are spewed out of advanced BFA / MFA / Doctorate programs, many rise to positions of gallery directors and heads of photography departments in universities and museums where they rarely exhibit non-conceptual photography. iMo, that practice is most likely dictated by their smug and ingrained prejudice that any “non-educated” idiot can press a shutter release and make a picture. That, plus they all know that a simple-minded photographer can not possibly write a zillion word artist statement loaded with obtuse / nearly incomprehensible artspeak and theory–a “skill” that is deemed absolutely essential to advancing one’s work in the ALF art world.

All of that written, in addition to my outright dislike of ALF work, I am finding it more and more difficult to find fine-art galleries / museums that are exhibiting “traditional” photography. It is my belief that there are some damn good contemporary photographers out there who are making some very good pictures that, consequently, are not seeing the light of day–gallery light, that is. Mores the pity, as they say.

# 6998-6700 / people • around the house ~ they say it's your bithday... well it's my birthday too, yeah

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TOOK A FERRY RIDE YESTERDAY ACROSS THE 13TH LARGEST lake in the USofA–Lake Champlain-107 miles long, 14 miles at its widest–and purchased a new car. Didn’t mean to buy a new car, it was just kinda a spontaneous happenstance. In any event, all 3 of our cars are now sport-oriented–aka: so-called “drivers” vehicles–turbos.

Today is my birthday so this entry is on the brief side. I’ll be back in the more wordy mode in a few days.

6993-97 / adirondack vernacular ~ for posterity

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had dinner and breakfast at Chef Darrel’s Diner

stopped at a local farm to get some protein for a cookout

WE TOOK A SHORT DRIVE TO BLUE MOUNTAIN LAKE on Saturday for the opening of the Adirondack Lakes Art Center’s new facility–I have had 2 solo exhibitions at the old facility, Stayed overnight in one of their visiting artists cabins–that’s the wife posing on the steps of the cabin. The Center was running the No Octane Regatta-classic Adirondack boats-on the lake on Saturday.

A lot of my photography that is on the walls of our house are 4-picture composites of our various trips and travels like the one pictured in this entry. All of the pictures are presented as “snapshots”. That’s cuz that’s what you do–take snapshots– when you travel.

I also order 4x4 prints of most of the pictures–again, converted to “snapshots”–that I make when traveling and throw them in a box for safe keeping. These are the pictures that are most likely to survive after my passing from the planet. FYI, the template I use for the snapshot border is from a family snapshot of my grandparents.