The Online Photographer

TOP just passed 260,000 comments since 2007. Almost all of them above average, and that's no joke. Seriously, the number of bad comments we get here are within the rounding error. A great big...

THANK YOU

...to all you commenters, regular and occasional. You are the best. Keep 'em coming!

—Mike the Mod.

The comments are currently completely up to date.

Yesterday I alighted on what might be a better method for Yr. Hmbl. Moderator to keep up with comments: instead of writing a post first and then updating all the comments of a new morning, over my white tea, as has been my quotidian habit lo these very nearly 19 years (TOP turns 19 on the 28th of this month), I'm going to try switching the order around, and doing the comments first and then doing my writing.

That might help. I'll try it and see.

I will note, however, that the problem is not entirely mine. It is 97% me; I grant that. I am not dodging blame. (I am Hmbl., remember.) However, another aspect of it is that people are not commenting in as timely a fashion as they used to. More and more, readers are tending to visit not every day but every few days (if not every week or more) scrolling down to see if they find anything interesting. Formerly, when I had multiple tens of thousands of visitors every day (pause to sigh for Good Old Days), I would get a plethora of comments on a new post right away, from which I could extract the Featured Comments; and then I would just let go the good ones that came in late, because that saved me from having to add Featured Comments to days-old posts and getting all mixed up. Now, however, almost nothing comes in immediately, and I am left with the task of adding new Featured Comments to days-old posts, dealing with scattered comments on scattered posts. Which is greatly more confusing to Now-Brain (formerly Young-Brain) and flummoxes if not flusters the workflow. It was much easier to marshal comments when they were all together, and to work on only one published post at a time.

For example, I got a nice comment just yesterday morning from a reader named John about traveling with a Leica in China, left under the "Deathless Leica M Film Cameras Rebound" post—a post which today is a week old. It's an excellent comment, so I added it to the Featured Comments of that old post, even though relatively few regular readers will see it there, because you have already left that post in your rear-view mirror.

I'm not saying you shouldn't comment on old posts. You should do whatever is normal, convenient, and natural for you, and we shall continue to prize your droppings as you manifestly prize our'n. I shall, anyway. But that's part of the whole picture, and I just thought I'd mention it. Even though it looks like I am looking for an excuse.

—Mike the Mod.

One of the things that was wrong this past week was that I really messed up the Comments workflow again, and, as has happened once or twice before, I failed to edit or "Feature" some good ones. As of right now, Sunday, November 5th, 10:00 a.m., everything is up to date. But when too much time goes by, people don't go back and see new comments added to old posts. I've added new "Featured Comments" to post going back to "AI Imaging is a Pox, a Fraud and a Thief." Here are some even earlier good ones I might have made you miss:

Michael wrote, on the "Hobbies" post: "To be honest, I've found myself drifting away from photography over the last couple of years. I think it's a combination of being stuck at home during COVID, the skyrocketing price of new gear, and the ever growing feeling that everything I photograph just seems derivative anymore. It just doesn't feel like a hobby anymore, I don't get that excitement to go out early on Sunday mornings with my gear like I used to. I used to blame it on the cold dark winters, having other things to get done, or not wanting to catch COVID, but the reality is was just hiding my lack of motivation behind excuses. Instead I've found my interest moving toward audio gear, where enjoyment, new discoveries, and cool gear can be found for surprisingly cheap prices. But the really funny thing is, I've actually grown more interested in looking at photos over taking them. I've joined numerous photography groups on social media the last few years, and I really enjoy seeing other people's work and giving feedback and answering questions. So now my Sunday mornings are spent spinning records while looking at people's portfolios."

Mike replies: First of all, I think that is a perfectly defensible way to participate in the photography hobby. I've always respected it. I think of it as "being a member of the audience," which I think is something every enthusiast should aspire to be.

But, as to your initial comment, I've been feeling that too, and I wonder what to ascribe it to—is it just encroaching age, or this stage of life? Does it perhaps have to do with the state of the camera market, which flew very high for a while and has lately been coming back to earth like Icarus? Are we feeling, and finding ourselves influenced by, the changing status of photography in the culture? Or is there something else going on? I don't even know if this ennui is general, i.e., culture-wide, or something that's just affecting you and me and...how many others?

And this is despite the fact that my own photography is actually going better than it has in years. I'm still in love with photographing with my "digital view camera" and I've been shooting a fair amount, and I think about it a lot. So there's nothing wrong with my motivation or my participation. Or my love of creating.

I really haven't put my finger on this yet, but (to mix metaphors), I've got my antennae out. I've felt what you're talking about. But I don't know why. I need to understand better what this is...what I've been feeling and why.

Rob Griffin wrote, also on "Hobbies": "Mike, Watch yourself. After exploring DE razors, you may find yourself teetering on the edge of the fine-writing-instrument abyss that is much like high-end hi-fi in its ability to attract a person’s hard-earned cash."

Mike replies: Yeah, why do certain things just grab us for a while, and a few of them not let go? I seem to get immersed in these little bouts of obsession that last a few days or weeks or even months. My theory is that it's the internet! There are all these little communities for every little geeky thing, all the happy people getting lost in the connoisseurship of thingys.

Trygve Strömberg wrote, on the "Gift Book?" post: "Some of these books are rare. Ragnar Axelsson: Last Days of the Arctic (magnificent); Sebastiao Salgado: Sahel, The End of the Road (famine, drought); Sally Mann: Deep South (wet plates, evocative); Susan Burnstine: Within Shadows (home-made cameras, dreamy); Alex Webb: The Suffering of Light (masterful photography); Rinko Kawauchi: Illuminance or Utatane (both are surreal); Masahisa Fukase: Ravens (dark and bleak); and Michael Kenna: Le Notre’s Gardens (different from MK’s usual). Perhaps too many, but...

"Pentti Sammallahti has been mentioned a few times already. His book Here, Far Away is superb."

Sreeram Chandran wrote, on the "Serendipity" post: "Worth mentioning the words serendipitiosity and serendipititious, coined by John Cusak in the 20-year-old rom-com Christmas Eve movie Serendipity. Incidentally, I hail from Kerala, a state on the southern tip of the Indian peninsula and very near to the island nation Sreelanka, Ceylon or Serendip! Kerala (known as God's Own Country) is very similar to Ceylon in climate, weather, landscape and culture; however we speak the language Malayalam (an anagram), while the people of Ceylon are two ethnic groups, Tamil and Sinhalese. I am also glad to let you know that I have been following your blog for a very long time, for more than ten years! In fact, I read your blog every day!"

Mike replies: Thank you very much for that Sreeram!

Bill Tyler on the "Video Lens for Fuji?" post: "I can't respond specifically to the X-H1, but I do have a recommendation. The book Making Movies by Sidney Lumet has several excellent descriptions of lens choices he made for various shots and the specific goals he had in mind when making them. The one that sticks in my mind most is the process during the filming of 12 Angry Men where the lenses and camera angles changed subtly throughout the film to heighten tension. Xander has probably already read the book, but others may find it interesting.

Mike replies: That book has been recommended here before. Thanks Bill. Xander ended up buying the Fuji XF 16–55mm ƒ/2.8, by the way:

Mark Sampson said, on the "Stuff Breaks" post: "As long as you're dealing with your house, may I recommend a book? It won't help you fix things but it's a wonderful read. How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built, by the great thinker Stewart Brand. Full of illustrations too."

Mike replies: That's right down my alley. I'll read that. Thanks. And by the way, right after I wrote the "Stuff Breaks" post, the toilet seat broke. Of all things. Guess how? The steel screws holding it together disintegrated with rust. Max possible age: 11 years. Who builds a toilet seat with screws that corrode in <11 years? I bought a new seat, then replaced all eight screws with stainless steel ones.

Joseph L. Kashi: "Most of the cost of building/renovation is in the labor. Using top quality materials instead of cheap 'good enough, I hope' materials only adds a few percent to the overall cost but definitely results in a much superior, more reliable product. Cheaper materials are very much false economy. I'm not referring to gold-plating but rather just getting genuinely better quality materials, sort of like the old Sears 'Best.'

"I've done a lot of defective construction litigation over the years and an ungodly high percentage is simply due to trying to go cheap, which is always more expensive in the long term."

Mike replies: I wish every builder ever would read what you just wrote!

Benjamin Marks on "Stuff Breaks": "I often rail at the impermanence of things, particularly those things that comprise our home. The structure apparently started out as a 1760s creamery for a nearby dairy farm, and it has had several generational iterations. Each renovation has raised alternating questions of competence and compromise, resulting in the current agglomeration. The place has what my wife calls 'character.' But really its purpose, other than keeping the rain off our heads, is to remind us of the second law of thermodynamics: that the universe tends towards entropy, and its painful local corollary, which adds to the law the phrase, 'this means you, bub.' My wife gently reminds me not to get upset when another piece of the structure fails—one might as well complain about the weather. Then again, it is somehow my job to fix those broken things, not hers, and so I am unable to reach the sense of philosophical detachment that she has so easily obtained.

"Bon Courage, Mike. You've only pitted yourself against time's arrow, after all."

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 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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Stanley Banos: "In response to Michael's post: back in my film days, I really didn't shoot very much, and not from a lack of trying. I'd miss the more nuanced, less perceptible things in life that can make for an interesting, insightful photograph; was always looking for some kind of...grand statement. Throughout that era, however, I kept looking at and studying photographs intensely in books and galleries, both B&W and color—even though I only shot the former. After switching to digital color seven years ago, I find myself not only shooting more, but getting more keepers. I honestly feel that the previous years of studying more than shooting has finally kicked in and paid off. Just wish it hadn't taken so long!"

robert e: "About the 'ennui settling in over the photography hobby' thing, I have felt something similar over the last several years. In my case, this coincided with moving from the city to an over-manicured suburb. But I suspect another cause is the evolution of photography itself. In this era of ubiquitous smart cameras, instant review and quick, near-limitless post-processing, camera operation is a much diminished aspect of image-making.

"Once, heroes created works of art with boxes and shutters, or in the alchemical abyss of the darkroom. These days, the process of photographing (as we knew it) is far more accessible, and often just the first step of many to create even a casual image and put it to use (of which there are many these days). Over time, a once arcane process became mundane and accessible to the masses. Where does that leave photo nerds?

"Actually in not such a bad place. Yes, there is still value in working on our chops and obsessing over gear, but we are also freer to think about projects, questions, statements, to ask: What am I trying to accomplish? Or to simply enjoy photographs.

"I bet many of us have a forgotten list somewhere of projects we'd do if only [insert limitations here], and I bet some of those limitations have evaporated or become surmountable. If I focus on capabilities and opportunities, events seem to have relieved us of more and more technical obstacles. One no longer needs to be a technician or an optics expert to realize a vision. OK, those conditions were never absolute, but the dynamic has undeniably and dramatically changed.

"I'm telling myself now that I can mope about this and feel increasingly irrelevant, or I can leave old habits in the past and see where the new capabilities lead. I can keep studying classic processes, too, for their own sake. Or take up new obsessions. It's all good."

Okay, I'm almost done with enough of the stuff I have to do. Thank you for your patience!

Next up, Jack Mac has sent me a nice review of the camera in his new iPhone 15, along with permission to publish it. (Another reader sent me a nice article recently, but I can't find it now. If that was you, could you give me a shout?)

I should have that up tomorrow or Sunday, and then we'll be underway again.

—Mike the once again energized Ed.

...Not really. But I'm afraid I have to take a few days off. I've fallen behind on nearly everything—too many things, anyway—and I've got that feeling like I'm drowning. I just have to take some time and at least kickstart a few tasks & jobs I've let slide for too long. Gotta catch my breath. And do a little prioritizing and organizing. 

Coming up, some Sony reviews, a red (small c) camera, News Notes from around the web, and the Baker's Dozen "House" portfolio. Among other things. I'll be back on either Wednesday or Thursday, hopefully the former. I hope to load up some of my own new pictures on my Flickr page, too—I'm way behind on that as well.

See you soon. And thanks, as ever, for reading TOP.

—Mike the beleaguered Ed.

The other day, Edward Taylor wrote:

"Mike—this will sound ridiculous to you, but I think you should switch to off-topic posts and sprinkle in a bit of photography. Now that phones exist, interest in dedicated camera photography is dying. You are a writer. People will read your writing. I like your off-topic posts. I already know just about everything about photography.

"Look at how successful blogs have been. They don't even have a 'topic.' They are all off-topic!"

What's your reaction Edward's idea?

I've been amusing myself these past few days with the thought of doing a new, true "all-topic" blog, and I've got more ideas than I know what to do with. I would have a lot of fun with it. Commenting on the news, ranging far afield with gear talk, unleashing my inner opinion columnist, finding quirky things to call attention to, unearthing local goings-on. Plus, I have reams of non-photo-related stories mouldering away in my graying gray matter that are aching to get out.

But I wear two hats. I'm the main content provider here, and that's a creative-side job. But I've also made a living at this for going on twenty years, so I'm the "company strategist" too. Mustn't forget that this is at root a business problem.

Would you who are reading this also come read a general-interest site if I wrote it?

More to the point, if you are a current Patreon supporter, would you be more likely to keep or cancel your pledge if I segued over to an all-new site with general content? I've got a reasonable approximation of Ctein's old "1,000 True Fans" idea—I currently have 688 people who contribute a little (some a lot) each month to help me keep TOP going. That's a lot of people, albeit not quite 1k. But the high was 804. to give you some real numbers, in May I had a net loss of 56¢ in pledges, and of three patrons; in June, a net loss of $31 in pledges and two patrons; in July, a net loss of $8.07 in pledges and three patrons; and in August, a net loss of $61.48 in pledges  and six patrons. You see where that is going. From a high of 804 patrons, there are currently 688 of you. That's enough to keep me in the saddle, but for how long is the question. The trendline has been going only one way.

And second, what's to bring new readers in? The world is beset by a hailstorm of demands for our attention (I find Apple News exhausting, yet at the same time generally unsatisfying), and I'm not sure how a general-interest blog goes about attracting attention. To follow the metaphor unconscionably far, it would be like tapping you on the shoulder in the middle of that hailstorm. How would anybody even tell?

Seems like a risk. But it might also be a risk to try to ride TOP into an inevitable sunset. Looking forward to hearing your take.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 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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Phew! TypePad has been down all day for me. Sorry for the silence.

Back in the morning.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 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've been off my game lately. Here, remedially, are some comments to recent posts that I meant to publish but didn't.

About the Vocal Range video, from Doug Anderson: "There is an important vocal range missing from the video. Just as baritones (like me) are those men who can not reach either the lowest notes of the bass range or the highest notes of the tenor range, mezzo sopranos are those women who can not reach either the lowest notes of the alto range or the highest notes of the soprano range. Baritones and mezzo sopranos are the most common vocal ranges of men and women, respectively."

Comment: Thanks for this clarification. I assume the guy making the video is a member of an a cappella group and was either concentrating on the normal makeup of a cappella groups generally or maybe just his own. But I don't know.

About watching the Wimbledon Final, from James Weekes: "1. I am really sorry that you missed it. A match for the ages. Well worth finding online and watching [assuming I can find the time —MJ]. 2. Have you explored ways to stream events like this? I'm pretty sure that it would have been possible, even up there in Possum Holler by the Lake. 3. The indoor version of tennis, better known as court tennis, is still being played in the U.S. and in England and, possibly, France. A good friend of mine, Haven Pell, is heavily involved and still plays at age 77. It is not played because of the cost of building a court. I grew up on Long Island and my father played in one of the remaining courts, Greentree. It is now idle. I also recommend you look up Haven's book on court tennis, Around the World in 50 Courts [link added by MJ]. Good fun. The game was invented by monks who strung a net across the interior court of their monastery. So there are windows and pitched roofs. I tried to play, having been a decent lawn tennis player, but I am left-handed and couldn't hit a decent serve."

Comment: Seems a bit like three-cushion billiards, which was one of the most popular sports in America in the 1920s and is now vestigial. It's fascinating to watch, though. At least to me.

About not watching television, by ritchie thomson: "Yes, some years ago I largely stopped watching film and TV. I maybe see two or three films/movies a year and then usually old ones. This was for two reasons. The primary being the formulaic and clichéd story lines and scripts (I wouldn't be surprised if we discover that AI has been churning out Hollywood scripts for several decades already). The secondary one was the routine depiction of explicit and sickening violence. I understand that video games take this even further. I know that many psychologist will say that this exposure doesn't lead to acts of violence (at least for most people), and that may be true, but surely at best it desensitises (people are no longer shocked by images which they should be shocked by), and at worst in infects their psyche. Images cant be unseen and come out in dreams and nightmares, thoughts, and feelings. We need international regulation of the internet, games,films and TV."

Comment: This reminds me of my decision when my son was very young to not allow him to watch TV. We watched an episode of Wheel of Fortune, a game show, and, during the half hour, saw seven guns, and saw or heard about four murders and one rape: the murders were in advertisements for TV shows that would be on later, and the rape, which was the worst of all, was an advertisement for the local news program! It actually featured a 911 call by the victim screaming and begging for help. Of the five portrayals of violence during that innocuous game show, it was the worst, disturbing even to me. Awful. So that was it. Until he was five or six, Xander watched only videos of movies for kids on the VCR. And I'm not saying children as young as five or six should watch violence, but there comes a time when you can't protect them from it.

Very curious thing about the Mennonites and Amish around here: they've never been subjected to fictional depictions of violence.

About cameras we missed, by nextSibling: "I prevaricated over getting a [Ricoh] GRIII for quite a while. Wasn't sure if I could justify the cost for a viewfinderless APS-C camera. Having had one about a year I wouldn't be without it and it's by far my most used camera because it's so easy to set up just how I like and to carry and use, and produces images of such lovely quality that such a small camera has no business making but somehow does. So now I'm just another fanboi. Recommend you try it if you get a chance sometime."

Comment: I've heard comments like this for years! Certain cameras are more beloved by users than you would guess, and certain others are less well liked than one would guess. The GR series is in the former category.

About me taking time out to work on my book, by Keith Cartmell: "Writing can be a very circular or recursive process. In order to write it, you have to know the story, and in order to know the story you have to write it. Many writers like doing the first draft. They flail away, putting in everything that comes to mind. They don't care about spelling or grammar or plot holes or anything. They barf it all out onto the page. Then they revise, (and revise and revise and revise) which typically means fixing things and boiling the words away, till you have the exact number of words to tell the story, and not one more or less. It is entirely possible to write it out so you know how it ends and who does what to who, and how, and this version is essentially an unreadable mess. Which is fine. Then you take the same material, and write the actual story."

Comment: I seem to do exactly that with every chapter! Write it once, then throw all that out and write it again like I know what I'm doing.

About the 'Mennonite Boys' photo by David Drake: "Mike, I really like his image! Such a great mood you have captured. The image reminds me of ET or Close Encounters. The two kids on bikes (of course from ET) looking up at those glowing orbs of light. I love mysterious images like this!" 

Comment: That's very nice, and thanks to you and to others such as Lisa O. for the kind compliments.

About the "enshittification" of the Web, by Geoff Wittig: "It's very much worth digging further into your quote above from The Verge. That link in turn links to a brilliant analytic article by Cory Doctorow detailing the 'Enshittification' of TikTok. Doctorow uses 'enshittification' as a technical term. In my humble opinion, he nails what's wrong with web platforms from Google to Amazon to Twitter, and the problem is most definitely not the rise of AI.

"Rather, it's the depressing inability of the owners of these platforms to resist the gravitational pull of terminal greed. He plots their identical trajectory from creating a useful function, attracting a critical mass of users to that function, and linking their users to eager marketers and advertisers. This is followed by a pivot away from providing a function toward feeding their users to their marketers, intentionally corrupting their searches to prioritize the desires of their advertisers, and strip-mining users by selling their data. Doctorow notes that the owners carefully judge how aggressively they can abuse their own users without quite inflicting enough pain to drive them to flee the platform. All so depressingly accurate."

Comment: Very astute like most all of your comments, Geoff, and spot on...unfortunately.

Thanks to all these commenters!

How such great comments get lost is that when I moderate comments late at night when I'm tired, I reserve certain ones to "Feature," but I don't edit them and load them into the post right then because I'm too tired—and then I don't get back to it the next morning as I mean to do. In other words, SNAFU.

I'm not trying to make excuses, but it's not entirely my fault. People complain that comments don't appear quickly enough, but that's partly (only partly) because comments don't come in as quickly as they used to. It used to be that every post on TOP would get a lot of comments right away, so I developed a workflow of putting up a new post in the morning and then, directly afterwards, doing the Featured Comments for the previous day's post. If a great comment came in later, I might add it to the Featured Comments if it was really good—or I might not. Many readers aren't looking for updated comments for older posts, so, when posting Featured Comments late, there's less benefit for readers in general.

Now, however, more and more readers are checking in with TOP at longer intervals, meaning that comments come in more slowly, and great comments can arrive three, four, or even more days after the post is published. Some of these are so good that I reserve them for use as "Featured Comments," but if I don't publish them right away (because it's late and I'm tired) they're outside of my usual workflow and it's easy for them to get overlooked.

I just haven't quite worked out how to handle this yet, is all. I will point out that a daily blog with moderated and Featured comments like this one is a lot to handle, and also that I'm still using a workflow that I developed when a.) I had more energy, and b.) I worked more hours. I'll keep working on this, and thinking about solutions.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 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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Richard Parkin: "Maybe comments are dwindling because they don’t get posted quickly or not at all. It’s a negative feedback loop I think. That will never improve, as you acknowledge in this post I think, unless you change the method of posting or editing comments."

Happy Independence Day for all you 'Murricans.

Little announcement: I'll be taking a something-cation for a few days. Traffic here is way down anyway during these few days around the midsummer holiday. People in the USA are off doing their own thing.

You've heard of a staycation? A vacation where you don't go anywhere? Then there's a workation, which means you travel somewhere but keep working. Well, I'm taking a few days off for a "stay-home-but-work-on-something-else"...er, -cation. 

I'm so underwater it's not even funny. I've spent the last four days working on my book and my photography. Which have both been going great. But I haven't done anything else. Every other aspect of my life I'm way behind on. I need to saddle up the lawnmower in a very bad way, for instance.

I've decided to give in and continue working on the book for three more days. So I'll be taking the next three days off to write. (Well, and mow.) Back on—let's see—Friday morning? We'll see if I can stay away that long.

I love writing
I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel on the book. Tough to say how much is actually done...I've got about 60 pages or 20k words, another 10k words of first draft, and the rest of the book is all blocked out. I've made many, many false starts, but now I've finally got a good beginning. Each time I venture into further first draft, I find I have to first explain to myself in detail everything that happens, then throw out everything I've just written and remake it into scenes with forward-moving action. It's funny, because I've studied fiction and read lots of fiction in my life, but I don't consider myself a fiction reader and I don't read contemporary genre fiction. So along the way I'm doing a lot of research into authors, approaches, and simply familiarizing myself with the proper "tone."

At the same time, I have to be myself. Have you ever heard that old adage that you have to be your authentic self or else you won't know who your real friends are? If you present a false front, you'll just attract the wrong friends. It's the same with writing, I think. You have to be yourself in order to attract your real audience. So I can't just mimic other writers in the genre. I would attract the wrong readers.

I'm slowly learning the way I have to work, working out my own idiosyncrasies and deficiencies. For example, I hate writing first draft. I'm mentally disorganized, for one thing, and get lost easily. Also, first draft is generally bad writing, and I'm insecure enough that "writing bad" makes me feel defeated and pessimistic. I'm odd in that I much prefer to rewrite and polish; it's what I'm best at. (A lot of writers are the opposite.) I'm slowly coming around to the idea that my best bet in book-writing would be to start by writing a 5k-word summary, then make a complete draft, front to back, soup to nuts, in the range of 35–40k words. Then the fun part could begin. In successive rewritings the 40k-word draft would naturally swell to 60k, then 80k, then 100k words without much effort. I'd have fun at that stage. It's just how I am, how I work.

The best thing for me (this just occurred to me) would be to have somebody else write that first 35k-word draft—somebody who's good at plotting and organizing the action into chapters and who likes blocking out first draft. Then I could take over from there in my wordsmith shop, with the fire and the anvil and the hammers and tongs. We'd make a good team, me and that other imaginary writer who's good at everything I'm bad at. But dream on, old boy.

Back soon! If you're on vacation, hope you're having a good one.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 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 didn't mean to take the whole weekend off, but on Saturday my big trip to the Midwest caught up to me. Although I got a lot of work done in the morning, including getting back on the yard and cutting a section of it, later I was so weary I took not one but two catnaps and then slept the whole night through. Then, yesterday morning, over my white tea with lemon juice, I spent the morning happily writing away at a meandering post that went everywhere and nowhere. I had great fun writing it, hopping from one half-formed thought to another. Before I posted it, fortunately, I realized that it had some problems and needed to be edited. So I decided what the main theme should be and cut out everything else. After which there were only a couple of little stubby paragraphs left! That didn't work. So I put the banished parts back in and resolved to shape it up. I worked on it for a while, then went away, then came back and worked on it some more. Late in the day the truth began to glimmer at the edges of my brain, and I realized that I had created possibly the worst post I have ever written. By the time darkness fell I had decided not to inflict it on you. I put the poor thing out of our misery.

When my son was a very little baby—I raised him myself, without experience or knowledge—his daycare provider, Pam Goebbels, a mother of many kids herself, realized I didn't have a lot of baby clothes, and took up a collection at her church. She presented me with a great big plastic leaf-bag full of old baby clothes donated by all the kindly Seventh-Day Adventists. Dressing the baby every day, I would fish around in the bag to find whatever we needed—pants, a shirt, socks, what have you. And mostly I did pretty well making one thing match with another; not as well as an experienced mother might do, but something passable. And of course he was too little to care about style or appearance. But occasionally, just occasionally, I would look down at my adorable baby looking back up at me in a ridiculous ill-fitting outfit that made him look like a miniature demented clown and think, naw, I can't do that to the kid. Back to the bag. Try again, Dad.

It's pool day here at TOP World Headquarters, but I'll get back to the bag later today. Happy Memorial Day, to those of you who celebrate it. The lakeshore is crawling with people, and fortunately for all of them the weather is idyllic, cool and sunny. All's well here, except perhaps for my pride, which might be a touch sore.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 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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Grant: "You would make a great politician. You manage to cover up your mistake, make a weak apology and then distract us with a cute baby story. Foolishly we fall for it. Are you running for Congress, or the Senate?"

Mike replies: We will constantly strive to research worldwide eTraining portals for today’s Fortune 500 eBusinesses. Unlike my opponent, I have faith in our delicious apple pies, our love for the Bible and our hard-working neighborhoods. (This response courtesy of the Corporate Slogan Generator and the Political Rhetoric Generator.)

I'm back! 1,725 miles in the car, five States, 34 MPG, three hotels and one guest room. Old pet peeve: one semi trying to pass another while going the exact same speed. New pet peeve: I'll tell you tomorrow.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 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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Sebastian Broll: "Question from a non-native speaker. What is a 'semi'? 'Hemi' I would have understood, but those I'd not expect to perform endless overtaking moves.  ;-)  Cheers, Sebastian (waiting for an X-Pro3 to be delivered)."

Mike replies: Sorry. What I meant is a tractor-trailer. A semi-trailer is a trailer that bears its own weight only on the back end; the front end is supported by the rear wheels of the tractor, which is the part with the engine and the cabin where the driver sits. A tractor can drive without a trailer, but a trailer can't roll without a tractor. You can see a diagram with the parts labeled here. And congratulations on the b*tchin' new Fuji!

Sean: "Re 'New pet peeve: I'll tell you tomorrow.' Is it cliffhangers?"

At least a few people are having trouble seeing some of the Blur images, for which I’m very sorry. I had trouble with the images in the post, but I loaded them again and again and tested the post three times over a two-hour period before leaving. Unfortunately there’s nothing I can do about it now except apologize. I’ll definitely look into it as soon as I get home. Very sorry to the readers whose pictures are affected, too. I hope not everybody is seeing problems. [UPDATE: It looks like the problem is with TypePad. The image caching on one of their servers is faulty. It affects about one in four viewers. They’re working on a permanent fix, but this has been going on for a while now. Thanks to Roger Bradbury for bringing me up to speed with this.]

I had a lovely drive through the Indiana countryside this evening, passing Amish buggies and watching the red ball of the sun descend out of the haze and touch the treelines. I was in the car for 10 hours and 10 minutes, drove 505.5 miles, and got 35.4 miles to the gallon—not bad for a nearly 10-year-old car. I can tell you the worst speeders I’ve seen are Ohioans! New Yorkers are law-abiding by comparison (well, at least Western New Yorkers, that’s all I can say.) In Ohio I decided to drive exactly at the speed limit of 70 miles per hour, and many, many cars passed me very quickly and disappeared into the distance. A lot of semis passed me too, but more slowly. Doesn’t Ohio have a State Patrol? I finally got curious and paced one of the speeding SUVs, accelerating behind him to see how fast he was really going. Right about 100 MPH! That’s impressive on an American public highway. Takes some chutzpah, I think would be the proper Yiddish. It must have been an off-duty cop. Only a cop would have the nerve to speed like that. Although other cars that passed me seemed to be going just as fast.

Every day I get a gift whether I take it or not. Today it was an old country church, after dusk, with a graveyard next to it, and a sign out from that said “He Is Risen.” The composition was right there for the taking, but it was late—dusk—and I didn’t stop. Forgot the tripod, anyway! I always forget something. Long day, and my reward is a pretty marginal motel room that smells like somebody got sick in it a few nights ago. Oh well, I will never pass this way again. Tomorrow I will reach my destination.

Mike

I've got a confession to make: I'm getting really sloooooow. I used to be fast. Fastest gun in the West. I could whack a post together in two hours, and then do it one more time the same day. But it took me two days to write that last post—knead it into shape, rewrites, percolation time, find a place for it to end up (old white folks' early-'90s hip-hop starter kit!), add a little spice to make it personable ("Pirate" as a baby girl name?!), find quotes, more rewrites, choose and add links, go hunt down a rights-free illo...slow as the proverbial molasses in January. Last night, late, I was like, finally! I'm going to get this up, took me the whole day!...and then it soaked up two more hours this morning. Two hours that just walk on by.

I'm doing the best I can. I'm just plain slowing down. It takes me longer to think of words now (memorize analyze internalize). It takes me longer to think of names that used to just flash into my brain-pan if I bid them to (Method Man; what can be so elusive about the word "method"?). Takes me longer to proofread. I type slower now. Takes me longer to do anything. I'm slower at everything. It's not that I have more to do, it's that it feels that way. Because what I have to do fills up more of the time I have available to do it. Feels like time is speeding up, but it's not. I'm just slowing down.

Just keeping you apprised of conditions! And I appreciate your patience.

That is all,

—Head Writer Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 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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Al in Vancouver: "I feel your frustration. I turned 70 this year, and this is my single greatest challenge: progressive loss of both long-term, but more importantly, short-term memory. I began to notice this in my early 60s and found over the years since then that it made me increasingly less productive, i.e., it took longer and longer to accomplish less and less. When I was younger, I dreamed about all the things I would do in retirement. Now that I am “there,” I’m beginning to realize how little of that I will be able to do.

"Thankfully, like you, I am articulate and still have a lot to offer to the communities I am involved with. But oh, what a struggle to analyze, remember, compose, and make important decisions. Thankfully, one area this does not affect as much is photography: I still enjoy making and editing images, and is the one area in my life, where I still feel I am improving!"

Geoff Wittig: "Just a bit of cheerful contrarianism here...

"People do age, and our brains do change. Brute force short-term memory (for example, the phone numbers or lines of code you can keep in your head simultaneously) declines after age ~30, and it falls off a cliff after 60. But our capacity to recognize patterns, to integrate knowledge and draw accurate conclusions from observation, continues to improve. That's why scientists can still be highly productive into their 80s and beyond. And when it comes to artists, many create their finest work in old age. I'm currently reading Last Light: How Six Great Artists Made Old Age a Time of Triumph. This very engaging book demonstrates how artists from Titian to Hopper created their strongest work when they were...well, old.

"I take great comfort from that. I can't work all through the night and cheerfully continue working the next day like I could in my 30s and 40s. But I can figure out a difficult or obscure diagnosis better than I could back then. And my paintings keep getting better.

"I too have noted that my writing pace is slower than it used to be. But I like to think it's because my standards are higher; stuff I blithely sent out 30 years back I wouldn't dare loose on the world now.

"So don't sell yourself short, Mike. Your pungent observations and polished prose remain something we all keep coming back for."

[Geoff is a small-town doctor who has delivered the grandchildren of babies he delivered. —Ed.]

Kye Wood asked yesterday, in a comment to the spoof post: "I would like to turn this on its head. In all seriousness, I'm asking how much would it take for you to sell control and ownership of this blog, while remaining on staff? Seriously. Might you indulge me?"

The marker I used for many years to measure myself against was my last corporate salary, which was $55k in the year 2000. I figured out how much that was per day, and celebrated when TOP earned that much for just one day. Eventually I achieved it for a whole week, then across an entire month, then a whole year. Eventually I was making double that. I will say that it's awfully nice to earn enough money, and do it on your own bootstrappery. That's been a good life lesson of TOP, and I'm grateful I had that experience. I do wish I had planned better, though, and saved more when times were good. But you have to live sometime.

However, the blog is worth nothing. Because it's just me. My cousin Liz—who, last I knew, works for Intuit—owned a successful bakery in Lexington, Kentucky, for a number of years, and despite being a thriving business she could not sell it, for one simple reason. She wanted to sell so she didn't have to get up at two o'clock in the morning six days a week to bake the day's product any more—it was ruining her social life, and she was approaching 40 and wanted a family. But without her as the baker, the business wasn't one. Same here.

I started the blog in 2005; in 2009, I was able to leave my last outside job (columnist for the British Black & White Photography magazine) behind, and make my entire living from TOP. My two NewYorker.com articles last summer were the first outside jobs I've taken since 2009, and I'll have to be doing more outside work again in the future.

The unadorned reality is that TOP is in the process of failing, following the same larger trends that forced Olympus to sell its camera division and DPReview to shut down, etc., etc. My audience today is one-third of what it was at its peak. Jeff Keller owned a digicam website years ago called Digital Camera Resource. If my memory is correct, at some point he published a very honest post, which I wish I still had, charting the bell curve of his site's fortunes. He was forthright about the fact that it was on the downward slope, and that the handwriting was therefore on the wall, and that he had to start looking for his next job. I remember thinking at the time, whew, sure glad that isn't me. Well, now it is. The amount I earned from my various affiliations  in all of 2022 was less than what I used to earn (sometimes) in one month! The reality is that now, I need help to keep TOP going.

...But, amazingly, I'm getting it. Patreon donations and a small cadre of voluntary contributors have moved the "Point of Failure" much further down on the down-slope of the bell curve. So I've survived the Pandemic, when otherwise I would not have. Even so, I'm making less than my old baseline now. I start taking Social Security this August, which will help.

Times are getting harder for a lot of people, not just me. I'm very grateful, and feel very complimented, that many Patreon supporters who need to tighten their own belts haven't simply cut me off, but, rather, have only reduced their contributions instead. That's incredibly nice of them, and I take it as a big compliment. However, many people have reduced their contributions, and from a high of 835 Patreon patrons, right now I have 707. So the trend is playing out there as well.

The axe—er, tax—lady
Wednesday was Taxageddon, the day I don all black and force myself to trudge down Dickensian alleyways, past the haunts of thieves, cutpurses, mountebanks and beggars, and wend my way to the lair of the tax preparer. She is cheerful and interesting but formidable and ruthless. She takes a double-bladed axe to my bank account and whacks away at it until a torrent of money that used to be mine comes gushing out and into the waiting maw of the Gub'mint. I paid 29.5% of my income in taxes last year. Here's a number that pertains: a whopping 57% of my income last year came from Patreon and direct support from kindly readers. Even so, it's less than that Y2K salary. Were it not for Patreon supporters and that small cadre of well-wishers who contribute cash from time to time, TOP would already not exist, and I would be off by a roadside somewhere, shivering in the whispering cold and selling pencils from a tin cup.

Perhaps I overdramatize.  :-)

So the answer to your question: $55k in 2000 is a cool $98k now, adjusted for inflation. How much capital would yield that much income? Knowing nothing about finance, I don't know what that number might be. But I doubt there's much point in doing the research.

I am mulling over other moves (several posts in recent weeks have concerned my ponderings about what kind of writer I hope to be when I grow up, as you might have noticed), and hope I can come to clarity before my hand is forced. My main goal is to continue to be a writer, somehow, merely because that's what I like to do. Other options are to teach or tutor, among other things, and I'm looking into it. I'm taking a (10-hour!) test this week to become a literacy volunteer, to get a little experience tutoring. Whatever my next move turns out to be, it comes down to a favorite old joke, which might be funnier if it weren't so true: "my retirement plan is to keep working."

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 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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darlene: "The check is in the mail. I hope everyone who can help Mike will. Let's keep the ink for his pen flowing and Butters' dish full. I appreciate Mike's writings greatly and always look forward to this site's classy, witty, and enlightening comments."

Simon: "I can't even dream of earning £55k. That is rather more than 2.5 times my current salary and nearly 4x what I was earning in IT back in 2000. I'm pretty sure that it's more than the CEO of our small company will be paid too, though he does get a car and other perks. Despite a very modest lifestyle, the UK cost of living hike is starting to bite.  :-/  "

Mike replies: Yes, of course money is always relative, and I've generally been very fortunate with TOP, in many ways. Do note however that a pound in 2000 was exchanged at $1.52 on yearly average, so my chosen baseline was ~£36,200 in 2000. Of course, that is £63,700 now, adjusted for inflation according to the Bank of England.

The relative nature of money has always fascinated me. The site has readers who range from multimillionaires to retirees (pensioners) who have to think carefully about buying a new lens. One interesting thing I experienced was moving from an area in a big city where my salary was 3/5ths of the average household income, to a small rural town where I earned 1.5X the average. I went from being slightly poor-ish to mildly but distinctly prosperous, on the exact same paycheck. Learned a lesson there.

A friend of mine was a member of the retinue of a Saudi Prince years ago, for a period that lasted about three months, and he related this story: the Prince's father, the King, paid all of the Prince's expenses, down to food for him and his retinue. In addition to that, the Price had an American Express card for incidental personal expenses. My friend said that everyone in his retinue knew that the Prince would be a foul mood during the last few days of every month. The reason was that his father had tried to put a limit on his spending, and had capped his American Express card at the equivalent of US$1 million per month. And near the end of every month the Prince would suffer the indignity of having his card refused.

It would put anyone in a bad mood, right?  ;-)

Ed Hawco: "Is this the Jeff Keller article you’re referring to Mike? One key difference between his blog and yours is that his was very specifically focused on camera reviews, whereas yours is more about photography in general (and life in general). The former can easily be usurped by an Amazon-like big gun (as was Keller’s) but the latter has more resilience and is harder to squash. Keeping it fed is still a challenge, of course."

Dan: "Video killed the radio star and it's doing the same for written content. YouTube, TikTok etc. are the mediums with growth potential. Are you ready for your closeup?"

Mike replies: I'm ready, Mr. DeMille.

I've been distracted of late—caught up in the medical churn. Today is my last (I hope) big appointment, an hour and a half away at the "big hospital" in Rochester. (No pool today.) We have LOTS of good comments awaiting publication from the "Photographs Are Beautiful" post still awaiting publication, some of them quite long. I had hoped to get those done this morning but, alas, more distraction, and now the time is gone and the window is closed again. They will be top on the TOP agenda once I put this appointment in the rearview mirror. I might even figure out a way to make new posts out of several of them. Keep yer fingers crossed for me this morning! Really hoping for a clean bill of health and the go-ahead to exercise.

[UPDATE seven hours later: Thumbs up. No pacemaker needed, no followup necessary, [further boring details redacted]. And the green light to exercise.  ::big smile::]

—Mike

We're preparing for severe winds tonight and tomorrow, which usually means power outages in our area, and I no longer have a backup generator. So I could be down for a little while.  The winds haven't started yet. If I go quiet, I'll be back when I can.

And for the good news: I just became a grandfather for the first time! I can only describe the feeling as joy. Kate sent out a video of Xander holding his son for the first time, and what a feeling. Wow.

—Mike