The Online Photographer

I know I have asked this question before, but it's been a few years and I can't find it. Anything you want to see? Now's the time to say something, for sure. 

I'm very energized by this morning's work. I ran my plans past my friend Gordon, and he had some valuable input. My next task is twofold: 1.) to set a schedule for completion of the various stages toward completion, and 2.) to come up with a list of features I want on the new blog, divided into "must have" and "nice to have" categories. (One of Gordon's ideas.) 

I chose a theme based on the way it handles pictures. I think you'll really like this. By clicking on a picture in a post you will first see it enlarged but uncropped on a non-distracting background, and then if the file is larger you'll be able to zoom in to the limits of the file size. That means I can finally meaningfully present artwork as well as illustrations. Moderated commenting is of course a must-have. Another of Gordon's ideas is that we won't port over all of the old blog; we will have an archive section for old posts from the last 17 years on TypePad*, but these will be a curated and limited selection. And they'll be indexed, by category, title, and date. I also know people want a reliable and robust RSS feed. Naturally the new site will be responsive, as Mike catches up to 2012 with a whooosh. 

I'm on the verge of hiring a developer, a decision which should be reached by tonight (four days ahead of the timetable).

Let me hear from you! 

Mike

*And maybe even a few of my old posts from the first two years on Blogger, columns from Black & White Photography and Darkroom User magazines in the UK, editorials from Photo Techniques, and ancient articles from Camera & Darkroom née Darkroom Photography where I got my start...before it was owned by Larry Flynt! Maybe even a few articles from my student days in Washington D.C., like my notorious article about Richard Avedon. Hey, I was young.

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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I reckon I've moderated something within shouting distance of 330,000 comments in my nearly 20 years as a blogger online. I'm sure I haven't seen everything, but I've seen most things. Commenters self-select, but they also respond to the culture of a site—if you're consistent about what you want and reward, what you encourage and what you don't, you'll get the commenters you deserve. As you know, the commenters here are one of the best things about the site.

The Commentariat, though, is a subset of the readership, not the whole readership. And people in my position shouldn't confuse the two. People who comment anywhere (discounting the 2% who just love their own poop, as my friend Phil used to say) tend to be those who feel secure discussing the subject at a useful level.

There are two ways I think that claim can be objectively verified. One is that when I bring up a separate and different topic, we will hear from some commenters we never hear from otherwise, who know a lot about that subject. So if I bring up, say, nursing, or mountain biking, people with expertise or experience with those things will join the conversation—they know more about it than I know about it, and they know they do. The other proof is, how do you yourself feel when you drop in on a forum about something you know very little about? I don't know ab0ut you, but if I go to a forum for car mechanics, or one about finance, or one about learning Italian, I tend to shut the heck up. The reason is that I'm pretty certain I have nothing meaningful to contribute.   

Telltale
A sign that people are insecure about their own standing, in my opinion, is what I call "the kicker." A kicker is when someone has made their point and corrected another person they think is wrong, but then they have to ram their point home with a gratuitous insult at the end. Here's an example from a random year-old reddit thread (kicker in red): 

OP: With inexpensive Chinese EV's banned in the US, I wonder if people will buy them in Mexico and bring them into the US?

1st responder: Not gonna happen. You can’t import non-US market cars that are less than 25 years old. The process to make them US market compliant is not someone an individual or even a small company can do successfully.

2nd responder: I live 2 hours from Mexican border and see Mexican license plates everyday.

1st responder: Mexican citizens can temporarily drive their Mexican registered cars in the US for 90 days. That has absolutely nothing to the with the OP’s suggestion of a US resident buying a car in Mexico and bringing it back permanently. How you failed to understand the difference between these two things is completely beyond me.

Really? Completely beyond him? Funny, because I can easily understand how the 2nd responder thought his observation might be relevant. And actually, 1st responder is wrong: Mexicans can drive a Mexican-registered and -plated car here for up to one year, as long as they have a valid Mexican driver's license and insurance that comes up to U.S. standards. But note that kicker. In effect, "How can you be so ignorant as to argue with me?"

So watch for kickers—your own or other peoples'. It could be a sign that an overly positive writer is actually unsure of him- or herself. Why add the kicker if your argument is strong enough alone?

Bogus links
Anyone can fall for a bogus link*. I'm not playing holier-than-thou here, nor am I suggesting that any specific individual is to blame for "falling" for wrong information—actually, back in '22, when I wrote a couple of articles for a national magazine, the fact checker did so. She challenged something I wrote on a subject I'm so thoroughly versed in that I knew right away where she had gotten her information—she had fallen for a tendentious website that was spreading a false narrative, and she got there by just Googling the question. I knew all about the person who wrote the site she found, a known fraud. (And she wasn't wrong to ask me to defend myself.)

But most things aren't so easy. When people include links in comments here, it's generally a big headache. If I'm being conscientious, I have to check out the link before publishing it. Sometimes, I don't know enough to evaluate the veracity of the link without doing more research. And I have limited time for such things. For that reason, sometimes I'll just remove links from comments.

And sometimes, I learn later that I should have removed a link. The other day, I published a commenter's link to a site that claimed that the "electromagnetic fields" associated with electric vehicles can have deleterious health effects on people, especially people with heart disease or pacemakers. Turns out that's not true, and the author of the site that was linked is a known fraud. But I had to hear from someone with deep knowledge of the issue before taking down the link. 

I'm sure I've made mistakes like this...well, let's just be kind to me and say "not infrequently." But with 330,000 comments to vet, even over 20 years, we can't get everything right. Not everything I say is correct, either. My biggest advantage there is that I'm always willing to be corrected. If I make a mistake, I don't have such a big ego that I won't admit it. Of course, I'm also secure enough to argue the point if I still think I'm right.

One of the huge benefits of writing a site like this one is that almost no matter what I write about, I'm surely just about to learn a lot more about it...from you. 

Mike

*Although I'm always surprised when I do. I fell for this when it was broadcast—I went around for three days afterwards telling people about the astonishing thing Demi Moore did despite being pregnant. Why that one? I honestly don't know. I try to remember those instances where I fell for things that are obviously tricks, though—it keeps me humble. 

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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That last post was unpleasant, and I apologize.

When I retire from blogging, as must happen someday, I'm going to spill the beans on a lot of things I haven't been able to talk about over the years. Even preceding the Internet. I got stories. Stats, earnings, gossip, insider scoops, troubles, triumphs, enmities, freaks-scoundrels-'n'-fools. You might think this plan churlish, but consider that David Vestal always refused to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) on principle, saying, "I'm in the disclosure business." Me too, David.

A couple of things I can mention: one is that among my stalkerish-bullying harassers years ago was the significant other of a famous photographer. I had written briefly about the photographer, slathering praise all over them (I use the neutral pronoun), even calling them one of the greatest photographers ever; but to this self-appointed sentinel and defender of the SO's almighty reputation, I had damned with praise that was yet too faint. The first email I got was not excessive in length and still retained an air of reasonableness, and I responded politely with an apology. I might even have modified the post to mollify my interlocutor. I can't recall now. However, the original injustice seemed to prick the person more deeply as time went on, and, without there being any further offense, they renewed their objections numerous times over a period of months, each time at greater length and in ways that seemed to me to be more and more unhinged. I stopped answering after three or four of these communications, but ended up pretty thoroughly alarmed. Curiously, the defender always referred to the Great Eminence in the third person, or by their full name.

The neatest and funniest of all the "problem children" readers over the years was a gentleman who appeared suddenly, and, right away, took, shall we say, a vigorous approach to participation. Trouble was, he often attacked other commenters, with relish and gusto. (This is a story I've told before, so you might remember it.) I would withhold the comment and write him polite emails reminding him that I don't allow fights to get going in the Comments Section, under the terms spelled out in The Comment Guidelines:  

2. TOP is not a forum! Please don't respond to other commenters unless you're being helpful. Your comment should be your response to the main post.

This exasperated him, and eventually he wrote, "But I WANT to fight!!! That's what I get on the Internet for!!! If you're not going to allow me to fight with other people, then I'M LEAVING!!!" Or words and exclamation points to that effect.

To which I sent a one-word response: "Bye."

Never heard from the guy again. Hey, at least he was as good as his word.

Above average
By the way, you needn't be tempted to see yourself in this or the previous post, even if you think you are sometimes contentious. If you ever did have a comment that didn't appear, it might be your fault—one time a reader couldn't find his comment because it was among the Featured Comments added to the main post(!)—or—more likely—it might be my fault—sometimes I get disorganized and miss a comment or three, at least for a while, and sometimes, I imagine, forever. That doesn't mean there was anything wrong with that comment—moderation can get quite complex, and I don't have the organizing gene. I don't mind people disagreeing with me or with each other. In fact I like to Feature comments that offer opposite reactions. The fact of the matter is that I very rarely get a comment I need to disallow, and very rarely get a comment that requires private negotiation with the sender. Ninety-nine percent of the time, if I do contact someone privately, suggesting they might soften their words, I get a friendly, coöperative reply back.

TOP readers are (almost) all above average.  :-)

Mike

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Jack Luke: "Your blog is a much admired and loved relic of the Internet of old. I don’t mean that in disparaging way—with the rise of Substack and the like, modern-day writers have turned back to a format not entirely dissimilar to this blog’s. More to the point, the uniquely close relationship you have with your readers, largely fostered through your absolutely Herculean moderation efforts, is the sort of ‘engagement’—to use the parlance of the day—that bigger publishers would kill for. But to maintain this on a larger site is nigh on impossible—it takes a great deal of effort, and that is the reason why other websites have less vibrant comment sections. I have little doubt the comments are why this website trucks along mostly merrily despite a vastly changed publishing landscape. And that this rolling stone of old school Internet wisdom should pick up a few unwelcome passengers along the way is no great surprise!"

Roger: "Some of my comments haven't made it. That's OK. I'd start my own blog if I felt it was necessary that everything I wrote be posted (read)."

Mike replies: You've left 245 comments going back to Dec. 12th, 2007, making you an O.G. among commenters (your first comment came in about a month after I moved from Blogger to TypePad). I did find at least two that were not published—that aspect of comments is not easy to check, as I do not publish Featured Comments in the full Comments section, so I would need to go back and check each one individually, and diminishing returns for effort begins to kick in rather powerfully. But, to you and everyone whose comments occasionally failed to appear as expected, sorry! At the very least, I read them all.

Is anyone out there a lawyer in Toronto, or anywhere in Ontario, who might be willing to help me with a problem? 

Unfortunately, I've had several stalkers or cyber-bullies over the years. It's a hazard of being online and sharing personal details. The most recent one is less virulent by comparison to some of the others, who thankfully have gone away now, but he's persistent. (It was because of him that I had to cancel one of the Baker's Dozens a few years back.) I don't know him. He presents himself as a professional photographer but as far as I can tell doesn't have much in the way of an actual business. I can't really say what his original trigger was because I don't know; he doesn't seem to want anything except to be a bully. He agreed at one time to go away, and did so for a while (saying there's nothing here worth reading anyway), but lately he's back. He crops up when I share any signs of what might be considered weakness: for example, he taunted me about my dog when my dog was dying. He seems to fantasize that I welcome his advice on personal matters, which, as should go without saying, I do not.

Surely Canada must have cyber-stalking laws and agencies to enforce them? I'd like to explore what options I might have under Canadian criminal or civil law. I wonder what it might take get a restraining order or file a lawsuit. Failing that, I wonder if I can get expert advice as to whether I can name him to warn others. I don't have as much pull as I used to, but if I put his name and profession in a post title ("WARNING: Beware blank-blank photographer"), it would come up every time anyone searched for him.

Thanks for any thoughts, opinions, offers, or help.

Mike

I'm going to be taking a brief vacation for the next few days. (I've done this before, although maybe not every year.) 

The middle-of-the-night writing has been going great—it's a lovely time of day to write, and I'm stormin' right along. I've gotten 6,500 good new words added to the draft about my son's birth just in the last nine days. My plan is to draft the whole story in about 65k words, and then let successive rewrites take it up to 90k words. So that means I've written more than a tenth of the whole first draft just this week.

(I tend to add words in revisions. Old story about D. H. Lawrence—his publisher once sent a manuscript back to him demanding that he cut 30k words. Months later, Lawrence returned the manuscript, and it was 60k words longer.)

I'll aim to return this coming Sunday Monday with the completed "Dogs" Baker's Dozen, and we'll resume from there. Have a great week, and I'll be back before you know it!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Ctein
Note that Ctein's off-to-Ireland archive print sale will start this coming Friday, and we'll be posting some of the particulars mid-day today. Please stay tuned today for that. Also, unlike all of our other sales, you will be able to look at all the pictures today. There's a broad selection, over many categories, from Christmas lights to the northern lights to Scotland landscapes to the space program.

There are two prints left of this deservedly famous eclipse print, for example. Ctein's commentary: "This is an exceptionally fine image of a solar eclipse. Set in a dusky and dark blue sky, the full extent of the corona is visible out to four or more solar radii. The delicate nature of the corona is preserved in the fine inner detail, all the way in to the pale pink prominences just barely visible near the silhouette of the moon. This screen image cannot convey the fine tracery in the corona and subtle detail present in the real print. Dye transfer print: 19" wide by 15" high (image area)."

You should see this glorious thing in person. Deserves to be accompanied by the 2001: A Space Odyssey theme music. 

Comments milestone
Tough to tell exactly, because I don't publish full Featured Comments in the Comments section so they don't get counted exactly, but I think the site just passed 300,000 comments. That sounds like a lot, and it certainly is for a small site manned by one guy, but consider that The New York Times gets that many comments about every 25 days!

We're a big small site. :-)

The Online Photographer turns 20 next November 28th. To date there have been 10,080 posts (this is number 10,081) over 7,118 days. The average number of pageviews is about 14,000 per day, but it's going down, in step with the camera industry. For about 10 years the number was over 20,000 per day. These days it's about 4,500. That's the lowest it's ever been, but a lot of you still reading are True Fans, not idle passers-by, camera shoppers, or one-time visitors alighting via search engines to then flutter off again never to return. I'll take that. I've always been lucky to have you in my audience, and I'm still lucky. When I finally cease publication, assuming that hopefully far-off event is not due to sudden catastrophic cessation of consciousness, I'll post some earnings numbers.

Whole thing's been a wild ride. Blogging for a living isn't romantic, but you are hanging out there all alone.

Fujifilm
Working on a post about a few new Fujifilm cameras. Meanwhile, been using the not so new any more X-T4. I would guess I'd prefer the X-T5 by a considerable margin, for several reasons, but I'm finding the X-T4 surprisingly amenable. It's the first new Fujifilm that has made me pick it up in preference to my venerable X-T1. And guess what? I'm using it in JPEG-only mode with a film simulation preset (PRO Neg. Hi). A first since the veritable Dawn of Digital, when we had to pre-select White Balance  and cook meat over open fires in caves.

Woof!
Thirteen Dogs will appear at some point during the Ctein sale. Assuming I can manage; things are admittedly a bit torn up at TOP Rural World HQ, on account of my faithful companion mutt Butters (he came to me with his name) is lately an Aged D requiring elder care. He is getting lots of loves. Despite the fact that, in the last four days, his brain has abruptly lost track of the fact that poops are for outside. Hey, no one said that doggie care was always a tiptoe through the tulips. I'm not rubbing his nose in it; he's well past the training stage, alas. Into hospice mode now. He was very reliably house trained through most of his life. There is air freshener. Sorry if this is TMI.

Programmable
I'm using a programmable keyboard. I have it set up so that I can make an a hyphen - with a short press of the hyphen key, and a long press makes an em-dash —. Very nice, since I write with a lot of em-dashes. Similarly, the top row types numbers with the short press and the shift character with the longer press—so for example the open parens key is "9" with a short press, "(" with a longer press. The "Home" and "End" keys are the same key, short and long press respectively (I use these keys a lot because they take me to the bottom of the comments page where the "Post" command is. You can program a third character with a double-tap. In fact there's little limit to all you can do, although I've been conservative. It's all very nice.

I should stop. More later today.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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I.

Here's the warp and woof of photo blogging:

Write about gear, traffic will go up and the number of comments will go up, and yet, inevitably, someone will complain that photography is about photographs, and shouldn't we talk about photographs?

Write about photographs, and traffic will go down and comments will go down. Stick with writing only about work for two weeks, and the place will resemble an all-but-empty saloon in a western town with the dry wind blowing the saloon doors in and out and tumbleweeds blowing by in clouds of dust on the street. Still, I loved the (relatively few) comments about Bob's birds and Paloma's exurban landscapes.

II.

Back in the 'aughts when this blog was young, my boyhood friend Jim's family, whom I have known my whole life, had a Christmas party. They invited a family of new neighbors, who had just come to the United States from New Zealand for the father's job. The family were charming and well-spoken—and, it was later agreed, great company. As they were putting their coats on to go back across the street, the father of the family and I got into a brief conversation for the first time, in the course of which he asked me a very American question: "And what do you do?"

When I answered, "I have a blog," the man reacted with a startled change of expression and physically drew back  from me, as if I had said, "I live at a special hospital, but they let me come to Christmas parties!", or perhaps, "I have an important job, I pick up paper in the park with a stick with a sharp point on it! I am very, very careful!" It was all I could do to keep from bursting out laughing. Jim, who witnessed the exchange, suggested that I try to avoid the word "blog" when I tell people what I do for a living.

III.

Even when you have the job that is the perfect job for you and you love it, "work is work."

IV.

You're not always behind, but you can only be caught up for, say, eighteen hours. It's a little like you have an infant who needs to be fed every two hours or a dog that needs to pee every three. (I know whereof I speak, on both counts. All three counts.) It limits your range and your mobility. The same old friend, Jim S., was a national-level prospect in competitive swimming until his early teens, when his improvement began to not keep pace with his peer group (he's happy and fulfilled with his life's work as a book editor). I was frustrated when we were boys because he was eternally "at swimming practice." He describes interminable laps that were timed so that he could almost but not quite keep up with the big clock high on the wall—designed to keep the swimmers striving. He's conscientious and organized, and nearly fifty years later says he still dreams of the frustration of not being able to keep up with that clock. I think of that as a metaphor sometimes. It's not that I work all that hard, but I work hard in the context of my natural energy level, which is low and, like Dr. Johnson's, tends to be intermittent. (Samuel Johnson was bipolar a hundred years before Jean-Pierre Falret first described what he called "la folie circulaire," which translates to circular insanity. Later it was called manic-depression and then later still, bipolar disorder. I'm not bipolar but I do go in waves, up for a while, down for a while.)

We lived next to a large ravine that ran for miles through the countryside and got wider and deeper as it approached the cliffs by the shores of Lake Michigan. Another friend, Jim H., complained that when he wanted to hang out, I was always in the ravine. One thing I liked about it was that when you were down in it, you couldn't see any of the houses, so you could imagine you were in a wild place. The illusion was shattered by other hikers appearing or the calls and shouts of distant kids playing, so I especially liked foggy or wet days when I'd be the only one down there, alone in the vast wilderness of my imagination, like the junior mountain man I would have liked to be when I was twelve.

V.

I like the research, which I do swiftly when I'm focused. When I'm not focused, it can be more like being up to my waist in quicksand without a soul around to save me; I get hopelessly lost up impossible tributaries of the main stream. But the best thing, for me, are your comments. I always have things I want to ask the Commentariat. Often I can't, because the question, no matter how juicy, is so off-topic.

For instance, yesterday I really wanted to ask, who would you nominate as the single greatest male and female actors in the history of the movies? If you had to pick just one of each. But it's not really an appropriate question for TOP, is it? Not really meaningful in any way at all. But possibly fun. 

VI.

Blogging should be fun.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Benjamin Marks (partial comment): "Interesting question about the actors. The 'all time' piece is what got me. The standards for what constitutes a riveting performance are themselves a moving target. For instance: The most popular actor in 1865? John Wilkes Booth, according to some. And hey, he may have been the word's greatest Julius Ceasar at the time, but his infamy overshadows any professional reputation for moving an audience in their seats. A more modern example: I have seen some of Sir Lawrence Oliver's famous performances (Hamlet, for instance) and they leave me cold. He seems mannered and stiff. But at the time, he was the bee's knees. And I have seen actors like Gary Oldman or Daniel Day-Lewis disappear into parts in ways that made them almost unrecognizable from performance to performance. I recently watched Helen Mirren in 1923 and thought, 'I'd watch her read a phone book.' But the current hot kids like Timothy Chalamet or Ryan Gosling? Not interesting to me at all. I would rather watch paint dry. So my response is that the greatest actors of 'all time' is an empty set, because all performers are creatures of their specific moment (as are we few, we happy few). It's moving targets all the way around."

Mike replies: That's no doubt true on an absolute level, but recently I've been "catching up" on actors who were famous before my time, and enjoying getting to know them finally. The earliest movies I remember as first-run films were late '60s to early '70s onwards. By the way if you like Helen Mirren, see if you can find Prime Suspect, a short (five episodes?) series of TV shows. They are excellent. Feature-film quality. Cop shows often age poorly, but those hold up. 

I'll be back on Friday with a "Film Friday" and a nice little portfolio for those of you interested in the art of wildlife photography.

I've taken a few days days off and I need a couple more. Unfortunately my beloved dog Butters seems to be getting worse. He had me up all last night and the night before. The only bad thing about dogs (for dog lovers, but Yo! Present) is that they don't live long enough.

We should do a Baker's Dozen of dog photographs*. Have we ever done that before? I don't think so.

I'll be back on Friday.

Mike

*Photographs with the dog's nose out of focus would be automatically disqualified, except for just the one that had the dog's nose the most out of focus.

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Momentary pause for a big thank you shout to all who shoot me a few bucks via Patreon.

TOP is in its 20th year and will turn 20 in late November. We've seen a lot of photography websites come and go in that time. I'm absolutely not saying I don't appreciate those of you who shop through my links, because I certainly do, but here's a sobering little factoid that came up as I was doing my taxes: I made less from my two biggest affiliate partners in all of 2024 than I used to earn from them in a good month. Not every month by any stretch, but there were a bunch of good ones.

The situation isn't dire. I'm solid, stubborn, & still sticking around. However, the number of Patreon "true fans" who throw a few bucks in the basket every month is down to 634 from a high of 804. That trend line scares me me, so I try not to think about it. But it makes each one of you more valuable. Your contributions are what's keeping this site going. Thank you. Did I say that already?

Speaking of taxes, Patreon doesn't give you a 1099 for the net amount of money gifted to you through them. Only for the gross amount. In other words, people are innocently and unknowingly paying taxes on the money Patreon takes in fees. I did, for several years, until I wised up. How do they get away with that? Isn't somebody keeping track of such things? I so liked the old America better.

I still wish I could reach that magical plateau of "1,000 True Fans"—Kevin Kelly's famous idea that it's better to find 1,000 people who believe in you enough to support you, rather than strive to appeal to a giant mass audience. But 634 ain't bad.

Patreon contributions are now TOP's biggest source of support. Without you, TOP would not still be here. If anyone wants to, please sign up, or increase your contribution amount. And many thanks to those of you who already have.

Gratefully,

—Majordomo Mike

P.S. I got my tax stuff done and in to the preparer. O happy day!

Interesting question—what should I do if I'm just all wrong about something?

Usually when I make a mistake, I can add a CORRECTION or an UPDATE, or re-edit the post on the fly, or Feature a comment that explains an opposing view. I don't actually mind being wrong—I'd rather get to the bottom of something than post incorrect information.

I can usually depend on commenters to set me straight, and it's looking like a difference in coatings isn't the main difference between the Classic 50mm ƒ/1.4 and the renewed small 50mm ƒ/1.4 (we're talking about the two smaller 50mm ƒ/1.4's in Pentax's lineup here). I was making an assumption, and my assumption was a wrong guess. In the Classic, Pentax just added a reflective element inside the lens or removed one of the design measures that prevents internal reflections. Which kind of negates my whole conclusion, and makes a lot of my comments beside the point. (And begs the question, why would they do that? The Classic lens then becomes just a gimmick, something to play with. Isn't that rather un-Pentax-like?)

I added an explanatory note as an update, but...well, even as I write this, the right thing to do is becoming clear: I have to take the whole article down. When you're wrong, you're wrong. Gotta take my lumps.

Yeah, I do. I'll leave it up till noon as I look into this some more, and then remove it. I'll post a revised version of the post as soon as I can get it done. It's going to take some time, though.

Mike

Any reader is welcome to comment on open posts. That's half the fun and half the reward of a community like this. TOP gets many good comments and a lot of great ones.

A gentle hint: Always give your comment another onceover before pressing send. That would catch 90+% of all errors.

All comments are moderated, meaning, I read them. The goal is simply to keep the conversation pleasant and helpful. I don't like "flame wars" and I don't permit them to get going on TOP. Despite this, there's hardly any censorship going on—I only disallow a handful of comments every year. (Although I do lose some, but that's a whole 'nuther post.)

The basic guidelines will be familiar:

1. No ad hominem. Insults usually don't get published. Please don't be nasty or insult people, or phrase things in a way that will hurt anyone's feelings. Friendly, polite conversation among equals is the norm here.

2. Our Comments Section is not a forum. Your comment should be your response to the main post. Responses to other commenters are allowed as long as you're being helpful and friendly.

3. Don't promote. A little honest plugging of things you like, including yourself, is fine, but don't go overboard. And be aware that I don't publish comments where the name or "handle" is a company or business name, even if the comment is not promotional itself.

4. Try to refrain from political rants and provocations. Since I do, you should. Only fair.

5. No profanity, dirty jokes, etc. It makes certain search engines block us, and might get the site banned in schools.

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Typical problems

Escalation: When a "back and forth" exchange between commenters gets going, it's sometimes hard to stop, because whomever's comment I disallow first will take it personally. I have to do it anyway, because multiple-episode exchanges, especially accompanied by escalating hostility, are something I want to discourage.

Hijacking: Another type of comment I might occasionally disallow is something that I know from experience will probably hijack the discussion. What used to be called, in forums, "thread drift." I've been participating in inter-computer discussions since 1976 (Xtalk at Dartmouth College), so I've developed a sixth sense about what sort of thing is going to lead us out of the happy meadow with the butterflies and sunshine to the dark forest where the witch lives.

Drive-bys: I don't like what I call "drive-by comments," meaning quick, usually snide reactions written by someone who's apparently not a regular reader of the site, who might have come to a certain post through a search engine and just feels like lobbing an empty bottle over the wall before he departs so he can feel superior.

Put-downs: I don't like "you suck" comments, either, regardless of how they're expressed. If I suck, or one of our authors does, or one of our commenters does, the critic is welcome to go somewhere else: the Internet is broad, and contains multitudes.

Imported arguments: I have an aversion to what I call "imported arguments," meaning long, complex, polarized, impassioned position-papers on certain issues that have been developed through long drawn-out disputation elsewhere. An example of this might be a post that mentions the Supreme Court drawing an 800-word comment about judicial activism (that example really happened).

Demon rum: Another slight problem is that sometimes, folks write comments late in the evenings after they've, ah, had a few too many. These are not always easy to spot, but sometimes they are—sometimes very easy (!)—and in those cases I might just contact the individual in the morning and gently ask them to re-submit the comment. 

Editor's pet peeves: I don't like certain words, such as "idiot" and "fanboy," and I don't allow certain casual slanders, such as saying that Leica owners are "rich dentists." I've written articles extolling Leica and dentists!

Bemusement: Oh, and very occasionally I don't post something just because, even when I concentrate, I can't figure out what the heck it means. ("Bemused" is one of those camouflaged words that doesn't mean what it appears to mean. It doesn't mean amused; it means puzzled.)

Haters: Lastly, I take a rather dim view of people expressing hostility or dismissiveness to photography, photographers, or the activity of photographing. That's what most of us are here for, after all.

•  •  •

Things I especially like

Hearing from people who were involved in the subject of the discussion. Once, we were talking about Irving Penn's platinum/palladium prints, and we got a comment from Irving Penn's Pt./Pd. printer. To continue the motif of precious metals, that's gold. Another time, I published a video of the science fiction writer Harlan Ellison ranting about people wanting to publish his work for free. In keeping with the spirit of his complaint, I sent him $25. I got back a note typed on a scrap of paper, and you can bet I featured that. In the original post, I said, "wonder how much Dirck Halstead got paid for the famous picture of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky [on a TIME magazine cover]?"—and we heard from Dirck Halstead, who told us how much he made for TIME magazine covers. Things like that.

Hearing from people with personal experience. If the topic is industrial photography and we get a comment that begins "I was an industrial photographer for 15 years...."

Hearing from women. Photography and especially gear tends to be a guy thing, but I've always aspired to create a site where women are welcome and feel respected, safe, and included. Accordingly, locker room talk or crude jokes tend to not get very far.

Hearing from people from faraway lands. According to the metrics I have two readers in Ulan Bataar, Mongolia. If either of them ever write a comment mentioning that, it's a lock that I'd Feature it.

Hearing from people with great names. I just like cool names. I once had a student named Lely Constantinople. She was a good photographer, too. I was sure I once wrote a post about Happy Thanksgiving Reynolds, but it doesn't come up in a search.

It's probably most helpful to think of TOP's comments as a "Letters to the Editor" section. And "Featured Comments" are not necessarily the best comments—they're meant to be a representative sample. That's a holdover from the era when we got so many comments it was difficult to read them all. 

Comments, and the people who write them, are the lifeblood of a website like this one. I'm just like every other reader of the site in this sense: we all like getting your input.

Thanks, and please keep all those good comments coming!

Kind regards, 

Mike/TOP's Majordomo and M.C.

P.S. The backstory of this post: I was blocked off the site for 16 hours or so starting last night—gateway timeouts—and it was kinda scary. It got me to thinking that all my eggs are in the TypePad basket, and if TypePad goes kablooie I'd be up the creek without a paddle. So, yet again, I started thinking about migrating to another platform, or creating a parallel site somewhere else where the same content would be displayed.

Laughably, whenever I try to do that, I discover...that I've already done it. I have trial blogs started at Wix, Blogger, Wordpress.com, Ghost, etc. All in various states of crude incompletion, because I'm not actually good at this.

Anyway, on one of those, I ran across this revised version of my Comment Guidelines, and I figured it might be high time to repost 'em. Long ago, I meant to do this twice a year or so, just to remind people, but, honestly, TOP commenters are so smart, nice, good, thoughtful, polite, knowledgeable and experienced that there's just not a lot of reason to. So I haven't done it in years.

You can comment on these guidelines if there's something you see you don't like. I'll pay attention.

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Yr. Hmbl. Host has been taking some time to more fully recuperate. This was unplanned; sometimes a break just sort of forces itself on me. Without meaning to, I spend a few days doing very little.

Thanks to all those who expressed kind wishes. I'm much better, and improving every day, but need to rest. TOP will reset this Friday with a Film Friday. Yours truly,

Mike

"Film Friday" will have to occur on Saturday again. Management apologizes for the delay!

—Management

Sorry about yesterday. Sometimes I sit down to write, turn the processor on, hit the go button, and nothing comes out. The power's out. I struggled with a piece for a few hours, but the longer I struggled with it the worse it got.

The opposite happens sometimes too. I'll sit down with no idea what I'm going to write about and it it all magically comes together and I create something that people seem to enjoy. You never know what you're going to get. This is my twentieth year of doing this—I'm very accustomed to the patterns, the way it plays out, the warp and woof. This just happens from time to time. No big deal.

Back to work!

Mike, Director of Publications