The Online Photographer

TOP is unfortunately overdue for a new computer. My AppleCare ran out last February, and that's what sets the pace for my computer replacements.

I don't know when I'll actually be able to buy a new computer, but I do know that I haven't really liked trying to write and post from the road using the iPad. It's one of those things that I could get used to if I had to, but being away from my usual computer has been a big annoyance. Small posts take three times as long to write, and I haven't sat down to learn how to add pictures or links to the posts. I'm sure it's simple, and I'm sure I'll figure out exactly how to do it just as soon as I get home and no longer need to know.

I think the next configuration of the TOP computer will be a good laptop connected to a 27-inch screen and my Microsoft ergonomic keyboard. Then, when I want to travel, I'll just disconnect the laptop and take it with me. If I'm driving, like I have been this trip, I'll take the big keyboard along, and if there's room to set up the keyboard wherever I'm staying, I'll use it; if there isn't, I'll just use the keyboard on the laptop.

It's easy to back up the laptop at home as usual, and I wouldn't bring a drive on the road with me to back up to, but then, most of what I'm doing on the road is email and blog posts, neither of which are really critical to back up. At least on a short-term basis.

The old 27-inch iMac can be used as a working computer for a part-time temp and as a printing station for the new printer.

The question then is which laptop to buy. Ctein has pointed out that Apple has lately been confusing it's line more than it did in the past. That seems true to me when I try to figure out which laptop is best for me. Air? Pro? Don't really have any idea.

I did purchase the long-planned sit-stand desk, a Jesper – they just came out with an economy model. That's going to be an interesting experiment – to see just how much of the day that I can spend standing, and whether I can discipline myself to do it at all.

I also owe you a Sunday Open Mike car review of my current car, which now is not so new anymore. It's an Acura ILX 2.4 with a manual transmission, the Acura based on the Honda Civic. By the time I get home, I will have logged about 2700 miles on this trip. That's a good chance to get to know a car.

As far as the computer is concerned, an interesting feature of computers is that I don't like buying them. With cameras, I'm a kid in a candy shop. Of course that does mean that I waste a lot of money on cameras. I'm much more sensible when it comes to buying computers.

And there's one more huge cost advantage of buying computers. They don't need interchangeable lenses! Lenses, even more than cameras, is my addiction. :-)

Mike, from central New York State

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Nicholas Nixon has revealed this year's addition to his long-running multi-year portrait of his wife and her three sisters, and Susan Minot, whose writing I have loved for many.years, has used the occasion to write an ideal short essay of photographic criticism, unpretentious but incisive, thoughtful and deeply poetic. The slideshow from the World's Best Photography Magazine (my not-ironic epithet for The New York Times) is a great way to experience this evolving photographic masterpiece firsthand, to catch up with it if you haven't done so for a while. But I warmly recommend a slow and contemplative reading of Susan Minot's little gem of an essay. I wish we had more people writing like this about photographs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/01/magazine/40-portraits-in-40-years.html

I've been reading about Nick Nixon's The Brown Sisters for many years, and I can't remember a more satisfying, straightforward and honest commentary.

Mike, on vacation, from the Finger Lakes District in New York State

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On Tuesday afternoon at the height of rush hour I left Boston. With apologies to Bostonians, I ended up feeling that where traffic is concerned, they should just tear down Boston and start again, giving precedence and power to traffic planners the second time around. The path the iPhone led me on out of Boston was astonishing, taking me through what looked like parking lots and back alleys and double-loops and strangely configured intersections. It was as if at every opportunity, the road planners had said to themselves, now how can we make this little area different and difficult to navigate and understand? Boston traffic did not really dissipate until the New Hampshire border.

(On the way into the city I was amused by a sign at the entrance to a long tunnel. "Reduce Speed," it said. I was only going eight miles an hour. Exactly how much slower did they think I should go?)

My friends Jim and Becky live very deep in the country, on a land co-op founded in 1986. On a rainy night I followed my headlights up a steep and twisty road lined with towering trees, down into a valley and then up another ridge and back onto co-op land. Blue Moon, the name of the place, is much more invisible than the last time I was here, much more hidden by trees and brush. The five families who live here have a pond and a picnic area and a high granite-laced hillside overlook where they go to pick wild berries in the summertime or sing Christmas songs under the moonlight in the December snow. All their houses are hand-built, heated with woodstoves and electrified with solar panels and house batteries. Jim and Becky can see seventy miles from their deck—and at night, they see only a light or two (other than millions of stars).

And yet they are only half an hour from Hanover. There might be 10,000 people in Hanover when all the college students are there, making it one of the largest towns in the area, but it has the resources and cultural opportunites of a cosmopolitan city of maybe 250,000. We saw a show of Civil Rights era art and photography at the Hood Museum yesterday, that included two absolutely wonderful photographs by our old friend Ernest C. Withers, the first original prints of his I've seen. Search the site for him if you don't recall the post. I loved his shots.

Hanover routinely makes its way on to lists of the best places to live in America. But bring your money. My friends—with their long-ago paid-for house on their long ago paid-for land—get the best of both worlds.

Yesterday I did meet with two TOP readers, because they are also friends of my friends. Rob Strong is a dedicated jack-of-all-trades professional who does freelance photojournalism and all kinds of assignment work, and Eli Burakian is the Dartmouth College photographer. We had a tasty and interesting meal at a brand new Nepalese restaurant in Hanover. Both are avid readers of TOP. I was impressed by their energy, accomplishment, obvious knowledge, and dedication. Eli has contributed to many books and has self-published a book about nearby Mount Moosilauke, and Rob is just converting a studio in a repurposed building called the School Street School. (He jokes that if he taught a workshop that covered yearbook portraiture, he could call it "The School Street School School of School Photography.")

Just this moment I llooked out the window and saw the first patch of blue sky I've seen since crossing the Massachusetts border.

As we passed a patch of grass near a Richardson Romanesque College building yesterday, Jim told me a story of a huge tree that stood on the spot for many decades. It came down in a storm, and the College's minions, mindful of appearances, efficiently eliminated all traces of it within a day or two. A few days after that, Jim was passing the spot and noticed a small boy arguing with his exasperated parents. As Jim passed, the little boy stamped his foot and Jim heard him say, "I know it's gone. But where did it go?"

I know how the little boy felt. Many of the landmarks of the Hanover I knew as a student here have disappeared—familiar restaurants like Peter Christian's Tavern gone, parking lots turned into courtyards, the Kiewit Computing Center outdated and torn down, new buildings changing the massing of the townscape to the eye. I feel like saying, too, "but where did it go?" Hopefully one thing Eli is doing at his job is documenting the way Hanover looks now, for the students walking these streets today.

Some pictures when I get home.

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