# 6736-43 / common places - (un)common things • landscape • adk vernacular ~ out and about

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UPDATE # 1 It required 2 days of effort but I have finally set up PS as a reasonable facsimile of my older and familiar version of PS. While it is loaded with–some might say “bloated” with–lots of new tools / capabilities, I have yet to find one that I need. And, FYI, the guy at B&H was wrong; this basic version Mac Book works quite fine with PS.

UPDATE # 2 Attended the iPhone Workshop. The best part was when the instructor began–about a third of the way into it–to say, ”let’s let Mark answer that question.”

THE WIFE AND I ATTENDED A DINNER AND A LECTURE–Adirondack folk music and stories–at Great Camp Sagamore..….

Great Camp Sagamore was constructed by William West Durant on Sagamore Lake–owned by Durant–between 1895 and 1897. The camp, which was sold in 1901 to the Vanderbilts, is arranged in two complexes a half-mile apart, the Upper, or worker's complex–homes, church, store, school, work spaces: most employees were year round residents–and the Lower, or guest complex, 27 buildings in all. The guests would not have frequented the worker's complex, as the buildings at the Upper complex are much more utilitarian than those in the Guest complex, and without the embellishment of the buildings designed for entertaining. Sagamore served as a sylvan setting in which the richest families in America could relax, party, and get a feeling of returning to nature. All of this, however, was accomplished without leaving the comforts of civilization behind.

After it was purchased by Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, he expanded and improved the property to include flush toilets, a sewer system and hot and cold running water. He later added a hydroelectric plant and an outdoor bowling alley with an ingenious system for retrieving the balls. Other amenities included a tennis court, a croquet lawn, a 100,000 gallon reservoir, and a working farm. ~ from Wikipedia

Prior to the event, we stopped at a funky little bar in the nearby village of Raquette Lake, pop. 115, for a drink. I had a Utica Club beer. A beer which is forever embedded in my childhood memories as a result of the Utica Club tv commercials featuring Schultz and Dooley, the talking beer steins.

# 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.

# 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.

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.

6962-78 / common places • common things ~ 5 days of ordinary life

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“Some people are still unaware that reality contains unparalleled beauties. The fantastic and unexpected, the ever-changing and renewing is nowhere so exemplified as in real life itself.” ~ Berenice Abbott

OVER 5 DAYS, LAST WEDS.>SUNDAY, IT RAINED A lot. I took the ferry to Vermont for service for one of our cars and killed time in a Panera Bread. Next day I played golf along Lake Champlain on a Canadian wildfire smokey day. Saturday there was a motorcycle rally in my home town and then it was off to Saratoga Springs for the running of the Belmont Stakes-2nd leg of the race for the Triple Crowd, a fitting appointment to have my irons re-shafted, and to hear our son-in-law’s band. Sunday was a quiet, sunny day at home.

FYI, I have made a few photo books that fall under x-number-of-days titles, i.e. like the title of this entry. Making such a photo book happens when I have had a number of consecutive days of intensive picture making for one reason or another–or, at times, for no reason at all. When I show the books around, viewers are usually rather intrigued by them inasmuch as they are rather fascinated by their interest and attraction to seemingly mundane picture matter.

That written, viewers almost always find a picture or two that really hold their attention and I am often surprised by their selections. I have even has requests a copy of some of the books. The most common comment I hear about their selection(s) is “I never would have thought to take a picture of that” and I must confess that that reaction gives me a great deal of pleasure.

RE: Abbott’s quote …. I would amend it to read that real life provides opportunities to make fantastic, unexpected and beautiful photographs. That cuz, real life does not always present us with unparalleled beauty. And, to my eye and sensibilities, the magic of photography is its ability to transmute the commonplace into something else, i.e. a beautiful–or at least interesting–print.

# 6941-46 / landscape • common places-things ~ home sweet home

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“The photographer’s act is to see the outside world precisely, with intelligence as well as sensuous insight. This act of seeing sharpens the eye to an unprecedented acuteness. He often sees swiftly an entire scene that most people would pass by unnoticed.” ~ Berenice Abbott

ON MONDAY PAST I DROVE TO THE GROCERY STORE. THE photographs in this entry are some of things I saw along the way.

It should come as no surprise that, living as I do in the Adirondack Forest Preserve*–aka: the Adirondack PARK–I have made thousands of photographs of the landscape. Inasmuch as the Adirondack Forest Preserve–larger than the State of Vermont–is a mix of private and public land–public land is enshrined / protected in the NY State Constitution as forever world–my photographs of the place are a mixture of the “pure” nature world and scenes with evidence of humankind.

This M.O. stands in direct contrast with the predominance of Adirondack picture making which emphasizes the landscape–featuring high peaks and large lakes–bathed in golden / dramatic light with absolutely no evidence of the hand of man. A school of landscape picture making that I call pretty calendar art. Which is not to write that the Adirondack landscape does not, on occasion, offer up some amazing Hudson River School-like apparitions. However, that written, the preponderance of daily life here in the Adirondacks is not a continuous stream of golden picture making moments.

That being the case, I prefer to photograph the landscape that most people would pass by unnoticed. Actually, the word “prefer” should, more accurately, be replaced by drawn or compelled. That cuz, photographing the landscape that most would pass by unnoticed is, quite honestly, what interests me the most. It is, in fact, the backdrop to my daily life and it has always been my belief that, if you can not embrace the everyday, what is the point of life / living?

But wait, I am not suggesting that I am, in the making of my photographs, advocating for the embrace of daily life. Some viewers of my work might glean a hint of that concept but, to be perfectly clear, the impulse that drives my picture making is that I like making and viewing photographs that exhibit a lot of visual energy, Consequently, I am drawn to referents that are chock full o’ visual information / detail and the Adirondack landscape delivers that in plentiful abundance.

Simply written, I have always thought that the standard picture making advice of simplify, simplify was a lot of malarkey. I mean, come on, are we to assume that those who view photographs are so simpleminded that our photographs must be dumbed down to the point that a kindergartener can “understand” them? Of course, on the other, the way I look at it (pun intended) is that there is very little to actually understand when looking at a photograph. It is a visual exercise not a intellectual one. Or, as Berenice Abbott wrote:

“People say they need to express their emotions. I’m sick of that. Photography doesn’t teach you to express your emotions, it teaches you to see.”

LINK > Sometimes it really pays off to photograph what interests you.

*FYI, there are approximately 100K permanent residents–spread out in 101 small towns and villages–in the Adirondacks. On the other hand, it hosts approximately 12 million visitors a year. The “park” is the largest publicly protected area in the contiguous United States, greater in size than Yellowstone, Everglades, Glacier, and Grand Canyon National Park combined.

# 6936-40 / common places-things ~ Viva la difference

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“I like ambiguity in a photograph. I like it when one is not certain of what one sees. When we do not know why the photographer has taken a picture, and when we do not know why [when] we are looking at it, all of a sudden, we discover something that we start seeing. I like this confusion.” ~ Saul Leiter

TAKE A MOMENT AND CONSIDER THE WORD ambiguity. Various dictionaries define in word in much the same way; a situation in which something has more than one possible meaning and may therefore cause confusion….the possibility of interpreting an expression in two or more distinct ways. All of the dictionary definitions of the word are, coincidentally, un-ambiguous.

re: “ambiguity in a photograph”: in a very real sense, all photographs are ambiguous inasmuch as it rather difficult, if not impossible, to impose / imbue a single, exact meaning in a photograph that will be interpreted by every viewer in exactly the same manner. In that regard I am in the same boat as Susan Sontag:

“Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy…. while photographs capture a specific moment, they don't provide the full context or explanation…”

There are those photographers who, in an attempt to eliminate any ambiguity–re: what their photograph(s) are about, try to make excruciatingly obvious what they are trying to convey. The worst offenders are usually nature / landscape photographers who generally imply a single meaning–ain’t nature grand. iMo, photographs that try to force / ram–down–one’s_throat a single meaning on their viewers are the worst photographs on the planet….most often, simple meaning for simple minds.

The best photographs?, you might ask. Consider this:

“I think about photographs as being full, or empty. You picture something in a frame and it's got lots of accounting going on in it--stones and buildings and trees and air--but that's not what fills up a frame. You fill up the frame with feelings, energy, discovery, and risk, and leave room enough for someone else to get in there.” ~ Joel Meyerowitz

iMo, if you want to “leave room enough for someone else to get in there” when making a photograph, be ambiguous. In a very real sense, create and cultivate curiosity.

In my picture making, I depict the form I see as found on the picture-making canvas of the quotidian world. That M.O. most often mystifies many viewers of my photographs as often attested to by the frequent comment, “Why did you–or, why would you–take a picture of that?” ASIDE the same question could be directed at Saul Leiter and his photographs in the book Colors END SIDE. The only answer I can give to that question is that “I have left enough room in the picture for you get in there and discover what the picture is about. And, hint, it is not about ‘that’.”

Some questioning viewers might eventually “get” what the photograph is about if I go on to explain that the photograph is about a visual sense of form I see when I impose a frame on a section of the real world. Others may not. What I hope some viewers might “learn” is that I see the world in a manner, most likely, different from how they see the world. And, projecting outward from that realization, that other photographers might also see the world in a different manner than they do–or, for that matter, different than I do. Perhaps they might even realize that that is what makes the world go ‘round, re: good photography wise.

So, all of the above written, like Leiter, I’m all in ambiguity / confusion wise. That is to write, in both my photographs and those made by others. And, I am especially pleased that there are photographers–to include many of the greats–with whom I share similar sensibilities but who, nevertheless, see the world in their own particular way.

# 6920-22/ landscape • around the house • common places-things ~ a bug-ike immersion in the quotidian world

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WHILE READING AN ESSAY IN THE BOOK, FRED HERZOG • MODERN COLOR, I came across an interesting concept:

In 1962m Manny Farber (film critic) distinguished between what he called “termite art” and “white elephant art.”. Termite artists get on with their art with little regard for posterity or critical affirmation. They are “ornery, wasteful, stubbornly self-involved, doing go for-broke-art and not caring what becomes of it.” They have a “bug-like immersion in a small area without point or aim, and, overall, concentrating on nailing down one moment without glamorizing it, but forgetting this accomplishment as soon as it has been passed: the feeling that all is expendable, that it can be chopped up and flung down in a different arrangement without ruin.” On the other hand, “white elephant art” is made in the self-conscious pursuit of transcendent greatness and in the channels where greatness is conventionally noticed. The white elephant artist is likely to “pin the viewer to the wall and slug him with wet towels of artiness and significance.” We need not choose between these two. Great work can be made by either, and history suggests that this is perhaps more true of photography than any other medium.

After reading this, I believe that I am a termite artist and, btw, the wife thinks that I am ornery.