# 5526-28 / around the house•OoC Context•week of ... ~ imagine it

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IT HAS BEEN WRITTEN (Ecclesiastes 1:9) AND REPEATEDLY SAID that there is no new thing under the sun. There are many who would beg to differ but, using the broadest definitions possible, re: "new" and "thing", the idea is, iMo, a reasonably sound generalized concept.

However, what about the notion of there is no new thing under the sun, re: the medium of photography and its apparatus? If I were asked that question, my answer would be, "when it comes to making pictures, there is no new thing under the sun."

In the most generalized sense, no matter the device you may using today to make pictures, since the dawn of photography, pictures were always made using a picture making device of one kind or another. And, no matter the software you may use to process those picures, the capabilities thereof mimic traditional processes dating back, again, to the dawn of photography.

Do the current picture making devices and picture processing software make it (potenially) easier and quicker to make and process pictures? Do they make it (potenially) easier and quicker to create manipulated pictures? Do they make it easier and quicker to make techically good pictures? Yes, yes and yes. But, in fact, there is little-if any thing-that a skilled craftsperson of 150 years ago could not have accomplished, albeit requiring much more time and effort.

All that written, my question is, why all the nattering and caterwauling, re: the end of photography as we know it?

My answer: Fear. Those who have distinguished their work from that of others based on their technical mastery of the medium and its apparatus, realize that that ain't gonna cut it anymore. Whether they like it or not, the democratization of the medium and its apparatus has drawn attention to the most important tool in the tool box and it's not a device or a bit of software. It is not a tool that can be purchased, online or in a big box camera store. Arguably, it most likely can not be taught or learned in a workshop.

It is, in fact, the tool that Einstein said was more important than knowledge...imagination.

iMo, imagination, which is linked to creativity, is the timeless-no new thing-tool which separates the very good from the merely average.

Imagine that.

# 5470-72 / Rist Camp • week of... ~ one thing leads to another

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IN MY LAST ENTRY, I MENTIONED THE PASSING of a couple photo blogs and that I thought it typical of a trend of similar end-of-the-line happenings. While I am quite certain there are many reasons, personal and global, for this trend, I also believe that there is one reason that is seldom mentioned...

...many a photo blogger has forgotten or, in reality, never understood that the best photo blogs, iMo and that of many others, are about offering forth photographs-exempli gratia, actual pictures. You know what I mean, as opposed to nattering and blathering on about this vs. that, camera / lens / software / technique / et al wise. From a creativity point of view, I can not imagine anything more mind numbing than a head full of that stuff.

And, in my experience, why is it-like, say, where there is a steam locomotive, there a coal/water tender attached-that photo blogs featuring the aforementioned stuff and "standard" run-of-the-mill pictures go hand-in-hand?

Wait...don't try to answer that question cuz I already answered it in the paragraph preceding it.

natural world / week of... / # 3695-96 ~ adaptability

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FYI, JUST THOUGHT I WOULD MENTION THAT most pictures posted on this blog were made on theday of the entry or within 24-48 hours thereof. However, not every picture made within that time frame gets posted. So, that being the case, I thought I would start making and posting a week of picture collage comprised of all the pictures made that week.

And, yes, I have posted a picture-as shot-made within the frame of a rectangle. That's cuz I picture what I see and that's how I saw it. Never let it be stated that I am so anal-retentive, re: the square format, that I can not adapt to a given picture making situation. After all, as I say every time I repeat the Possum Lodge Man's Pledge...

"I'm a man. I can change. If I have to. I guess."

One last thought ... here is another quote/excerpt from Sally Eauclaire. She was writing about Stephen Shore's pictures ....

"He is engaged not with any thing’s knowable identity, but with its visual mystique, its potential for being turned into a picture."

Change "He is" to "I am" and it describes my picture making MO to a T.