# 6732-35 / landscape • rist • (a) kitchen sink ~ new tool

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outside

inside

SETTLING IN AT RIST CAMP. HAVEN’T GOT OUT YET FOR natural world picture making, however, as is always the case, the landscape view from the front porch offers up a very satisfactory visage. And, no matter were you go, it seems that there is always a kitchen sink. Then again, there is the question of whether or not a picture of a tree growing out of the roof of a building is a natural world landscape picture.

A fair part of my first couple days at camp was spent setting up my new Mac Book Air laptop. I purchased the absolute bottom of the line, 13 inch version despite the warning I got from the guy at BandH who said it would be “borderline” for Photoshop usage. He just couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that I use PS for simplest of processing tasks, especially so when I am on the road.

In fact, the main reason for my purchase was that I do like to post entries on this blog while traveling but the mobile app for doing so on SquareSpace is a piece of crap. Now, with the MacBook, I can use the desktop software. It is kinda a bonus that I can now use PS while traveling cuz it gives me a bit more processing capabilities than most mobile processing apps. However, those apps, Snapseed and Darkroom, have been more than adequate for 95% of my on-the-go processing needs and I could always perform more demanding processing operations when I returned home from my travels.

So, now with most of the set-up heavy lifting done, the only thing I still have to wrestle with is coming to grips with the latest version of PS. In my wildest dreams I wish for a simple, no frills version of PS with all of basic photo processing capabilities and none of the “wonderful” upgrades. Of course, that ain’t never gonna happen.

PS this Wednesday I am gonna “crash” an iPhone Photography Workshop at a nearby art center / gallery. Have yet to decide if I will strive to be a asset or an irritant. Keep ya posted.

# 6725-31 / travel • common things ~ picturing the obvious

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Twisted Dunes ~ my favorite golf course

I MADE IT BACK ALIVE FROM THE JERSEY SHORE only to start packing again for our 5 weeks at Rist Camp. Yesterday I sat staring at my desktop screen for the better part of 2 hours trying to come up with a topic, photography wise, to write about that I haven’t written about seemingly multiple times prior. Nothing came to mind.

That written, I’ll have lots of alone time on my hands at Rist and maybe I might just come up with a new slant on how / what I write about–rest assured, always on the topic of things photography wise–on this blog.

One thing I resolved to do while at Rist is get out and make pictures of the natural world, a referent I have been, if not actively ignoring, not pursuing with any vigor. Considering the fact I live in the largest protected area in the contiguous United States–the Adirondack “Park”, larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Glacier National and the Great Smokey Mountains National Parks–it seems like an obvious subject for picture making.

#6723-24 / travel•common things ~ petty bourgeoisie

WHILE SITTING AROUND–in air conditioned comfort-AND KILLING TIME at the Jersey Shore this week, I came across an entry on a photo site that discussed “how much is too much?” – the much in question was post picture making “editing”. I put editing in quotes cuz the author of the piece, according to my way of thinking, was actually writing about post picture making retouching, i.e., removing unwanted visual elements from an image file.

That procedure, undertaken in the pursuit of making a “perfect” picture, is, iMo, a petty, bourgeoisie pursuit that is the ultimate bane–i.e., cause of harm, ruin, and a source of persistent annoyance or exasperation–undertaken by “serious” amateur picture makers which pretty much eliminates the possibility of making a really good photograph.

My rational for such a belief derives from the fact that I am a devoted practitioner of “straight” photography–a picture making practice which exploits and mines the medium’s intrinsic / inimitable relationship with the real–which allows a picture maker to show us what it is as opposed to engaging in the process of putting lipstick on a pig. To put it bluntly, I ain’t no fan of photographs that, metaphorically speaking, “makes you think all the world’s a sunny day”.

Hey, visually, the world is a pretty messy place. Trying to impose some kinda order on it–modifying / adapting it so as to make it suitable or acceptable to conventional / traditional concepts of “beauty”–is, not only fakery, but also sterile. Consider this, re: imperfection:

  1. Yet equally compelling is everything that is wrong and mad in art, as in life. It is the imperfections in works of art–and arguably in human beings–that often make them more beautiful, challenging the viewer in ways that polished work doesn’t. As John Ruskin said: “To banish imperfection is to destroy expression” and what is art if not a means of communication feeling?

None of the above should suggest that I think there is no such a thing as a “perfect” picture. Nothing could be further from the truth inasmuch as I have viewed thousands of “perfect” pictures. However, it should be made clear that not a single one of those pictures was “perfect”–in the sense that a “serious” amateur would approve of–in that none were exemplars of outstanding dynamic range, razor-edged sharpness / resolution, brilliant (to a fault) saturation and color, conventional composition, et al. Nor were they free of visual elements that would be judged by perfectionists to be “distractions” from what was, ostensibly, the object of the photographer’s center of interest.

What is my criteria for a good picture? Simply written, it is “to try to see everything that’s in the viewfinder / on the screen and make it all work together as a satisfying picture, not just as a document of the Nice Thing you saw, that ignores everything that was behind and around it.*”

Qu’est-ce que c’est “all work together as a satisfying picture”? To my eye and sensibilities, that means recognizing the basic elements of art-to include line, shape, form, space, color and value–when they align, in the real world, in an interesting visual configuration when viewed and pictured from a specific POV. Capturing that happenstance creates what I label as visual energy; an energy that keeps the eye and, eventually, the mind engaged.

*thanks to Mike C. At idiot-hat.blogspot..com

# 6720-22 / common places-things ~ the Haudenosaunee

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Haudenosaunee symbols on the floor of the museum

TONIGHT I EMBARK UPON MY ANNUAL MIDNIGHT RUN, that is, a 426 mile thru-the-night drive from home to Stone Harbor, NJ. By making this drive at night, I avoid frequent, interminable traffic jams on the highway thru the metro NY area and on the NJ turnpike during daylight hours. However, in the deep of the night I rarely encounter more than 40-50 cars over the entire distance that are headed in the same direction as me.

That written, yesterday I made a very short drive–28 miles–to Onchiota for a visit to the Six Nations Iroquois Cultural Center, a museum dedicated to educating the general public about the Haudenosaunee (The People of the Longhouse), aka: the Iroquois Confederacy, heritage and culture. FYI, the 6 nations are the Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, Tuscarora, and Mohawk tribes. The museum is a place that I am drawn to time and time again.

Consider this:

A little known fact….Today many historians believe that Iroquoian ideas of unity, federalism, and balance of power directly influenced the United States’ system of government. Among the founding fathers, Franklin may best illustrate the influence the Iroquois had on Americans.

Franklin carried the Iroquois concept of unity to Albany in 1754, where he presented his plan of union loosely patterned after the Iroquois Confederation’s Constitution, aka: The Great Law of Peace. Several Iroquois leaders attended the Congress. An aging Mohawk sachem called Hendrick received a special invitation from the acting governor of New York, James de Lancey to attend the Congress and to provide information on the structure of the Iroquois government. After Hendrick spoke, de Lancey responded, “I hope that by this present Union, we shall grow up to a great height and be as powerful and famous as you were of old.”

During the debates over the plan for union, Franklin pointed to the strength of the Iroquois Confederacy and stressed the fact that the individual nations of the Confederacy maintained internal sovereignty, managing their own internal affairs, without interference from the Grand Council. His Albany Plan proposed that each colony could govern its internal affairs and that a Grand Council consisting of a different number of representatives from each colony would provide for mutual defense. This proposed council closely resembled the Grand Council of the Iroquois nations.

In 1775, treaty commissioners from the Continental Congress met with the chiefs of the Six Nations “to inform you of the value of the advice that was given about thirty years ago, by your wise forefathers.” And, in 1988, the 100th U.S. Congress passed a concurrent resolution acknowledging the contribution of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy to the development of the U.S. government.

FOOTNOTE: Franklin wrote:

“It would be a very strange Thing, if six Nations of Ignorant Savages* should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an Union, and be able to execute it in such a Manner, as that it has subsisted Ages, and appears indissoluble…”

  • Despite his use of the phrase Ignorant Savages, evidence shows that Franklin had a healthy respect for the Iroquois, and his language seems intended not as an insult to the Six Nations but as a backhanded slap at the colonists—who, in Franklin’s opinion, could learn a lot from the Iroquois about political unity. In an essay four decades later expressing unabashed admiration for the Iroquois, Franklin wrote: “Savages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the Perfection of Civility; they think the same of theirs.”

# 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.