# 6296-6304 / discurcive promiscuity ~ setting Henri Cartier-Bresson a-spinning like a high-speed drill press in his grave

October 27, 2022

A FEW DAYS AGO I WAS THINKING ABOUT HOW MY ADOPTION of the iPhone as my primary picture making device has changed my picture making habits. To be certain it has not changed or altered my vision in any manner but it has changed the promiscuity quotient in my discursive promiscuity manner of making pictures inasmuch as I am now more promiscuous* than ever. Add to that, an extra dollop-or is it a cherry on top?-to my joy of photography.

Fast forward to this morning when I came across a New Yorker article, Candid Camera ~ The cult of Leica, written in 2007. The article is a good read. It even added a few new words to my vocabulary-a. “Leicaweenies”. A word used by Leica user Ralph Gibson to describe Leica addicts who are prone to writing scholarly papers on certain discrepancies in the serial numbers of Leica lens caps, and, b. “Visualus interruptus,” the brief viewfinder black-out caused by the flap of the mirror in a (D)SLR, a “malady” with which the Leica is not afflicted.

In any event, the article chord-struck me with a number of topics:

[Leica is] “a machine constructed with such skill that it renders every user—from the pro to the banana-fingered fumbler—more skillful as a result. We need it to refine and lubricate, rather than block or coarsen, our means of engagement with the world: we want to look not just at it, however admiringly, but through it. In that case, we need a Leica”…

…”the simplicity of the design made the Leica an infinitely more friendly proposition, for the novice, than one of the digital monsters from Nikon and Canon. Those need an instruction manual only slightly smaller than the Old Testament, whereas the Leica II sat in my palms like a puppy, begging to be taken out on the streets.”

“You could tuck it into a jacket pocket, wander around the Thuringer woods all weekend, and never gasp for breath.”

If you were to substitute iPhone for Leica, Fuji / Sony for Nikon / Canon, and Adirondack for Thuringer in these excerpts, it would, iMo, pretty well describe the iPhone as a picture making device. Which leads me directly to the question (ludicrous for some):

“Is the iPhone the new Leica?”

Answer:

let the caterwauling commence.

I would try to answer the question but my puppy [is] begging to be taken out on the streets.

*the pictures in this entry are but a mere handful culled from those that I have made over the past couple weeks.

# 6293-95 / landscape ~ the role of God's art director

October 24, 2022

“….Color photography’s poor reputation derives…from a school of slick, sensationalized, “creative” photography that has saturated the public (and artist’s) consciousness of the medium for the past quarter century…many photographers consider visual and/or sentimental excesses as key to expressivity…their lust for effect is everywhere apparent. Technical wizardry amplifies rather than re-creates on-site observations. Playing to the multitude of viewers who salivate at the sight of nature (in the belief that good and God are immanent)…such photographers burden it with ever coarser effects. Rather than humbly seek out the “spirit of facts”, they assume the role of God’s art director making His immanence unequivocal and protrusive” ~ Sally Eauclaire / The New Color Photography

THE EXCERPT ABOVE WAS WRITTEN 42 YEARS PAST but it still rings true today. I worked as a consultant on the book-my name is in the Acknowledgments. It is especially true at this time of the year, re: fall color, when photographers are busy taking saturation to the max in manner way beyond what was possible in the analog, aka: film, days.

In my neck of the woods, the Adirondack Forest Preserve (larger than the state of Vermont), the landscape is awash in Autumn color. It is a big tourist season wherein the leaf peepers descend upon us in droves. One can hardly drive down a road without passing a zillion stopped cars on the side of the road where the peepers, cameras, or phones in hand, are out snapping pictures. And soon enough, Facebook is loaded with “spectacular” pictures which bear no resemblance to the real thing.

Each leaf peeping season I feel good when I manage to avoid making landscape pictures of the cliched Autumn color genre. Which is not to write that I do not appreciate the Autumn Spectacular. The wife and I will regularly take a drive in Abarth with the top folded back and enjoy the experience. However, that written, I prefer to make pictures that whisper rather than scream. To each is own.

FYI, there is a new body of work on my WORK page, early landsccape (ku), which bear witness to my Autumn color picturing style.

# 6279-81 / flora • landscape • roadside attractions ~ I'd hike a mile (or not)

October 9, 2022

“Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn't photogenic.” ~ Brett Weston

I HAVE A LARGE BODY OF WORK LABELED AS roadside attractions. All of the pictures were found and made within 0-30 feet from the road. That’s well within Weston’s 500 yards. I assume that Weston’s idea was based upon his use of cumbersome, large-format gear whereas my gear is quite the opposite. Suffice it to write that gear is not the reason for my attraction to roadside tableaux.

That written, the biggest problem I encounter with making pictures of roadside tableaux, since all of those pictures are made while driving along various rural roads throughout the Adirondack Forest Preserve (aka: Park), is finding a place to park my car. There are times when, after I find a place to pull over, I have to walk nearly 500 yards to the place that pricked my eye and sensibilities. Life, and picture making, can be so hard at times.

In any event, FYI, the picture at the top of this entry is-currently-at the top of my best-picture-I-ever-made list. And, a best of roadside attractions body of work will be posted on my front (WORK) page in short order.

# 6267-74 / autumn color • flora • decay ~ 15 minutes in the back yard

October 5, 2022

all pictures ~ (embiggenable)

“If a medium is representational by nature of the realistic image formed by a lens, I see no reason why we should stand on our heads to distort that function. On the contrary, we should take hold of that very quality, make use of it, and explore it to the fullest.” ~ Berenice Abbott

THE LEAF-PEEPER RUSH IS ON. THIS YEAR AUTUMN COLOR is late, rather subdued, and of short duration. Blame a dry Spring and early Summer. Consequently, the happy leaf snappers will have to resort to saturation-to-the-max in order to illustrate what they wish Autumn color is suppose to be. Cuz, you know, reality just isn’t good enough.

# 5810-12 / kitchen life • landscape (civilized ku) - the pleasureable act of seeing

October 27, 2021

(embiggenable) • iPhone / PORTRAIT setting

IN THE LAST ENTRY REFERENCE WAS MADE TO SUSAN SONTAG'S declaration, re: art criticism. That critics should "show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means."

Consider one such effort-from Sally Eauclaire in her book, the new color photography-to follow that directive:

"Jenshel's works demonstrate photography's potential in the romantic, picturesque mode. The formal play is relaxed. The forms unfold gradually but ineluctably, while colors shift into delicately nuanced and often improbable variations. Such melifluous features prolong the pleasureable act of seeing, caressing imagination while reviving subconscious yearnings for paradisiacal worlds of milk and honey." Len Jenshel

CAVEAT It should be noted that Sally consulted with me-on matters re: photo techniques / mechanics-during the writing of her book. She had little, bordering on none, knowledge about how photographs were made, camera technique / printing materials and technique, et al. Needless to write, that upon receiving an advance copy of the book, I was delighted to find my name in the Acknowledgements on the very first page in the book. END OF CAVEAT

The above excerpt-which I really like-from the book is representative of most of Eauclaire's critiques in her book, all of which are mercifully free of photo-world jargonisms. On the other hand, it could be suggested that her writing is chock full of artspeak jargonisms and 2-dollar words. However, whatever anyone might feel about the actual words, the fact of the matter is that she consistently writes about photographs from the perspective of "the pleasureable act of seeing" and a picture's capability of "caressing [the] imagination" - an erotics of art, indeed.

Even when Eauclaire addresses things photographic such as camera formats, she does so with a literary touch:

"Len Jenshel and Mitch Epstein seem to function like 'Aoelian harps' responding when strummed by the exceptional confluences of the worlld's appearance. Using hand-held, 6x9cm cameras, they are able to cruise fluidly in search of their subjects, reacting with greater rapidity than a large format camera would allow...Jenshel and Epstein shoot intuitively and omnivorously, navigating through reams of subject matter with the mobility of fighter planes in search of an appropriate target."

All of the above written, I find it refreshing to read about the medium of photography and its apparatus / photographs written by non-photographers. That is, writers / critics who come from the greater Art World rather than from a specific segment-Photography Division-thereof. It is also why, for the most part, I like showing / exhibiting my pictures to non-photographers cuz in both cases non-photographers are much more apt to see a picture for what it is rather than searching for meaning and/or viewing it through the fog of photo gear / technique.

# 5790-93 / still life • civilized ku • landscape • flora ~ fairy-tale pictures

October 17, 2021

YET ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF REALLY BAD ADVICE / IDEA, re: making pictures:

"One of the biggest mistakes a photographer can make is to look at the real world and cling to the vain hope that next time his film will somehow bear a closer resemblance to it...If we limit our vision to the real world, we will forever be fighting on the minus side of things, working only too make our photographs equal to what we see out there, but no better."

This quote comes from a well known natural world / landscape picture maker (now departed) who made pictures with heaping doses of art suace. That should come as no surprise given the impoverished sentiment expressed in his quote which might be summed up as "reality bites". A sentiment which drove him to make pictures, not in pursuit of illustrating and illuminating the true character of the natural world, but rather, that were caricatures-a comically or grotesquely exaggerated representation of (someone or something)-of that world.

That written, if one were to search in the right places, one could find many examples of good advice / ideas which stand in direct contradiction to the preceeding quote:

"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

"Photography makes one conscious of beauty everywhere, even in the simplest things, even in what is often considered commonplace or ugly. Yet nothing is really 'ordinary’, for every fragment of the world is crowned with wonder and mystery, and a great and surprising beauty." - Alvin Langdon Coburn

It should be obvious-to those who have followed this blog for any length of time-on which side of this dichotomy I come down on. However, for those who land on the same side as I do, there is another cautionary quote to consider:

"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people." ~ H.L. Mencken

I have uttered this quote-changing the word "intelligence" to the word "taste"-many times to explain the salivating admiration of the majority of the public for art-sauced pictures of the natural world. Mencken's quote is well worth heeding if one wishes to engage in the sale of pictures of the natural world cuz it's a fact that cheesey, over-wrought, art sauce laden pictures of the natural world are what sells.

# 5783-87 / landscape (ku)•civilized ku ~ imitation is the sincerest form of missing imagination

October 12, 2021

Sunday afternoon on a porch ~ (embiggenable) iPhone — ***Sunday afternoon on a porch*** ~ (embiggenable) iPhone

along a country road ~ (embiggenable) iPhone — ***along a country road*** ~ (embiggenable) iPhone

THERE HAS LATELY BEEN SOME CHATTER AND NATTER, re: cliche, bouncing around on the interweb. Things like, what is a cliche?, how to avoid making cliche pictures, and the like. And, as is the usual case, the answer to such conversation provides a wealth of fodder for the idea of my Top insert number here Pieces of Photography Bad Advice and Sayings project. A prime example:

Photography is fundamentally a craft...[which] still requires learnin’.'Making pictures that look like' pictures that you admire is a landmark in that process for many, perhaps most, people. So I’d encourage newbies to make many such pictures and study them....Once you’re able to intentionally make that trite image of the Grand Canyon, the Eiffel Tower, or the Brooklyn Bridge you’ve achieved competence with the gadget. Now for the fun part.

To that nonsense I say, "Balderdash". The last thing one should do, for the purpose of making fine-art, learning to use a "gadget", or, finding one's vision, is to make "pictures that look like pictures that you admire". Rather, one might consider, as Brook Jensen suggested, to stop making pictures that "look like what you have been told is a good picture and start making pictures of what you see".

That written, re: "craft" - everyone who aspires to making good pictures, fine-art wise, needs to learn how to use a "gadget". iMo, the best manner in which to do so is to stand on the street in front of where you live-same spot again and again-and make pictures in the sun, in the rain, in the snow, in the fog, in the dark to include people walking, cars driving by, dogs chasing cats, garbage cans, discarded soda straws, or whatever else you might find / see in front of you.

And, most importantly, keep it simple...one camera, one lens, and adjust only fstop, shutter speed, focus, and ISO (as might be needed). DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE, engage in any menu diving cuz the aforementioned gadget functions are all you need to "master" in order to start looking for one's own vision. iMo, menu diving is for "serious" amateurs who don't have, and quite probably will never have, their own unique vision.

In any event, the "learin'" process should only require a few weeks of one's time, 2-3 weeks at most. If it takes more than that amount of time, maybe consider selling your gadget and taking up The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

FYI, in my next entry I will address how, within 6 months of picking up a camera, I was making my living as a photo journalist. HINT It did not happen cuz I was making pictures that looked like what I was told was a good picture.

# 5869-71 / around the house ~ this way and that way

July 7, 2021

BEING A CREATURE OF HABIT, I ALMOST ALWAYS HOLD my iPhone in a vertical orientation when making pictures. That's cuz, since I primarily make square pictures, it doesn't matter which orientation I use. So, I use the orientation that I normally use when holding / viewing my iPhone.

Now that I am frequently playing with the Portrait setting for it narrow-er DOF quality, + the fact that there is no square setting-although I can crop to square in processing-in the Portrait Mode, + the fact of my use of (habitual) vertical iPhone orientation, all of the recent full frame pictures I have made are in the vertical format. This relationship of habitual practices and their result just dawned on me. Duh and more duh.

Time to break old habits and hold my iPhone in a horizontal orientation.