The Online Photographer: Followups

Followups

Sunday, 25 February 2018

Sunday Support Group: Panasonic Photographer

Hey, today's my birthday!

According to custom I should be four years from retirement, but, as I like to joke, "My retirement plan is to keep working." (That might not be so funny one day, but you know what they say: oh well.)

So how did your project go this past week?

I had a rocky week. I found myself procrastinating too often. But I didn't get discouraged. I kept after it. I'm finding that if I don't make progress on my 275 x 2 words every day, I make that much progress on average. I'll have an unproductive day or two, then bash out 2k words.

The resolution is still to "touch it every day."

Psychological resistance is a bear. If you resolve to spend just a few minutes on your project every say (set a goal of ridiculously few minutes—three, or five, or seven), it gets you over the obstacle of that initial resistance to getting started. How hard is it to do something for three minutes? So just do it.

TOP reader Ken White wanted me to see his presentation of a short documentary project he created. It's a video-based still-photo essay of Paul Cauthen and his band, and Ken's comments about a performance in Luckenbach, Texas. It's called "Sometimes Magic Happens" and I thought it was great. Only takes two minutes to watch.

My upstairs "workstation," where I work on my books.
It's a luxury to work on projects that are a stretch for me.

As long as I sit down at the upstairs computer every day and open a book file and putter for a few minutes, I forgive myself if I have an unproductive day. My resolution is to keep after it and not get discouraged.

I made a wise move in setting up a second workstation upstairs. I spent the money and took the time to set it up properly and I like it up there...it's a pleasant place to work. (I still don't have offsite backup, despite all the good suggestions, for which thanks. I'll work on that.)

Update from 'Weigh In'
By the way, I made a decision about the camera indecision—I decided to become a Panasonic photographer again for a while. Without deciding which Panasonic. I'm going to get either a G9 or GX9 or GX8, or maybe two of the three, or maybe all three. Maybe I'll put the 12–35mm zoom on a G9 and the 20mm ƒ/1.7 on a GX9. Of course, I can't afford to do all that at once...but then, you've got to have goals.

Forget your shortcomings—they don't matter
I enjoyed being sixty last year. The way I look at it, I was "extremely young for an old guy." Still true! Good thing I'm so young; I have goals this year.

Hope you made progress on your own goals last week. Take a few minutes to review. If you didn't make progress, forgive yourself and forget about it. A new week starts now. So get going!

Mike

P.S. Top illustration: Fuji X-T2 with 14mm ƒ/2.8.

iPhone 7+ version of the same shot, processed similarly:

Original contents copyright 2018 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.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Trevor Johnson: "Retirement? Artists never retire."

Mike replies: That's a compliment!

JohnMFlores adds: "The only writer that I know of that retired is Philip Roth. He was prolific though, so it's understandable.

And I'm writing more and more precisely because I don't plan on retiring in the traditional middle-class sense; I don't like sans-a-belt slacks and find golf boring. Keep at that novel and Happy Birthday!"

kirk tuck: "Hi Mike, Happy Birthday!!! I have the same retirement plan. As I always tell my financial planner: 'If I take late retirement and early death I'll just about make the spread.' I'm jealous though. I'm 62 and I'm still hauling around lights, cameras, lenses, multi-carts, light stands, and more two or three times a week on day long shooting assignments. Video has added to the burden. I dream of a time when I can sit in a beautiful room in the rural wilderness and do my job with just my brain and my fingers.... At that point I'd probably stop using ellipses....

"Birthdays are great days for walking with cameras."

Rick Denney: "My 60th is this year, but procrastination knows no age. As I get older, though, I'm more likely to forget what I was procrastinating about, but that's another problem. In the music world, the most difficult thing is to simply take the instrument out of the case. A close friend teaches his students that way: Take the instrument out of the case. Sit down with it in your hands. Then decide if you are going to practice. That removes the pressure of accomplishment from the simple act of removing the instrument from the case. Of course, once I'm sitting with the tuba in my lap, I'm there for usually at least two hours. It becomes a greater burden to put it back in its case than to continue playing it. My problem with writing projects is that the thing is already out of the case, and when I sit down to it, I find more tempting modes of procrastination, this website not least among them. But, as with music, once I start, I find it difficult to stop."

RubyT: "Happy Birthday! I was going to congratulate you on being a prime, but then I have a weird preference for primes. :)"

Kent Phelan: "Happy Birthday Mike! I had a good week. Yesterday I finished Week 51 of my OC/OL/52 project. That would be: one camera, one lens, 52 weeks. I decided when I embarked on this gig to use my Fuji X-T2 with the 23mm ƒ/2 lens. I see in the 35mm FOV. Always have. I cannot remember all of the 35mm lenses I have owned. The little Fujicron was a natural for this. I have cheated a bit, however, in that during the project I bought an X100F with, as you know, the same 23mm lens. I have interchanged them since. One 'keeper' photograph per week has been daunting at times. Along about week 20 I thought 'Oh gawd man, what have you gotten yourself into!' Then came the changing seasons and winter here in the Pacific Northwest, which brings a steady stream of Zone V: rain-rain-gray-rain. Day after day; good thing the X-T2 is WR. Today begins Week 52. Feeling good."

Posted on Sunday, 25 February 2018 at 12:31 PM in Followups, Sunday Support Group | Permalink | Comments (98)

Thursday, 18 January 2018

Updates

Book: I'm making good progress on my book. I've missed a couple of days, but I typically write much more than 237 words (or whatever it was) when I do "touch it." I've been carving out the middle of every day to put in a few hours on it. I'm now up to chapter four and 9,500 words of draft (and another 15,000 words of notes, "skeletons" of later chapters I guess you could call them). It's just first draft so I'm not too worried yet about the excessive word count. There's a lot to the story and I already see I might have trouble fitting it all into one book of normal length (an ordinary hardback is in the range of 80–120,000 words).

I'm starting to feel that it's not all that hard to write a book. You just have to know where you're going and keep after it. Brave words, maybe, considering it's still early going.

'It Must Be Color': I'm getting a lot of great submissions. Such a pleasure. I wonder if I've adequately conveyed how very nice it is for me to see your work. I probably haven't gotten more than 40 submissions or so thus far, but it's just a joy to open the email every morning and be able to see more pictures. Big thanks. I like cameras, but I've always liked pictures more.

Print sale: I've been talking to Matt Weber, street photographer extraordinaire, about a Winter print sale, and it looks like it might happen. We're still trying to work out a way to offer signed, artist-printed gelatin-silver prints. This might be a week or three away as yet, but watch this space. This sale will be different and distinctive, I think. Here's Matt's website, and here's his book (or buy it directly from him at his website).

Mike

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
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Mike Peters: "Matt Weber! YES!!! I'm so happy to see that you're working with him to make a print sale. Matt is truly the embodiment of what a NYC street photographer is. His body of work is surely the deepest I've ever seen, and he's very prolific. He's been making amazing images for a very long time. TOP readers are in for a treat!"

[Mike Peters is no slouch as a photographer, either.

P.S. It probably seems like this post has gotten few comments, but the number of submissions for "It Must Be Color" just about doubled overnight. —Ed.]

Posted on Thursday, 18 January 2018 at 04:29 PM in Followups | Permalink | Comments (6)

Friday, 29 December 2017

Black-and-White Update

Submissions for the "Baker's Dozen Black-and-White" are now closed, as of last night at midnight. Counting them was not a trivial task, but I believe I got 223 submissions and well over 350 individual photographs—let's call it "between 350 and 400" and that will probably be correct, although it's possible that if I actually counted the individual photographs the total might be more than 400 or even more than 450. Most people sent three.

From which I now need to select 13.

And virtually none of the 350–400 are incompetent. A few might be somewhat nondescript, but that's the worst I can say. (And even some of those might come alive in context.)

Plus, many people sent along nice letters to me or long explanations of the circumstances of their shot (like Richard Kelley's that I published on Wednesday). I've read all of those, and I beg your forgiveness for not replying to everyone. It would be a week's work or so to write individual replies.

I've completed the first two rounds of editing, and have flagged the entries that I feel merit further evaluation. There are maybe 50 of those. The next step will be to go through all of those again, spend more time with each of them this time, and select the "shoo-ins" you might say—the ones I wouldn't want the feature to be without. That might do it right there, I don't know; we'll see.

With so many to choose from, I'm just going to pick pictures I myself like looking at. I don't know what else to do—the idea that the ones I pick might be "better" and the ones I don't "worse" is silly. We all have our own taste, and I'm sure if any of my friends were doing the editing here we'd all come up with different groups of 13. (Thirteen is a baker's dozen, as you probably know by now.)

And before you suggest it, no, it would be way too much administrative work to actually send everything to someone else and let them edit their own groupings. There's nothing at stake here; no prizes for you, no income for me. We're just having fun.

Mild critiques
Before I get back to work on this (I don't know when I'll finish; sometime between later today and Monday, I imagine), a few observations. First, please allow me to gently suggest that heightening the contrast and "clarity" (it's called "Structure" in Nik Silver Efex Pro 2) in a cloudy sky doth not by itself a B&W photograph make. Second, the same is true for a picture containing areas of white set off from areas of black or areas of black set off by areas of white—the picture still has to work on the level of content—emotion, meaning, connotation, information, feeling-tone—just like any other photograph.

In making "criticisms" I usually like to illustrate what I'm talking about using positive counterexamples, because it's never nice to hold anyone's specific work up as an example of what not to do (what did they do to deserve that?), and there are always exceptions to every rule. So here's a "black on white" photo that I think works very nicely:

Photo by Chris Fuller

It's called "Mueseo Soumaya (Mexico City)" and it was sent in by Chris Fuller of Helena, Montana. "Museo Soumaya was built by Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world, in honor of his wife. It contains the largest collection of Rodin sculptures outside of Paris, including the very famous one in this picture. I liked how the pensive posture of the security guard balanced the statue." Me, too. Taken with a Fuji X100.

I'd also like to introduce the notion that submitting three photographs to a "contest" is a bit of a trap. (Not one I set intentionally, I assure you.) It probably felt to people like they would increase their chances if they included three, but actually I think the opposite is the case. Three pictures in a submission is almost like a mini-portfolio; one strong picture is weakened by being in the company of two weak ones, and three pictures that have nothing in common with each other suggest that the photographer has no coherent vision or style, no concerns that distinguish him or her from the crowd. Even if that isn't really the case.

I'd like to show you two examples of the opposite—sets of three in which each picture makes the others stronger.

The first set is by Dan Rubin of New York City, who uses a Canon S95 point-and-shoot and describes himself as "non-professional":

Photographs by Dan Rubin

It goes without saying that you can't represent your range as a photographer and the range of your accomplishments in three pictures. Many photographers can't do that even in a single book, even with forty to sixty pictures or more. But I think by confining himself to a coherent theme, Dan makes a better case for each picture; each picture reinforces the others and each makes the other two stronger.

Another positive example:

Photographs by David Adam Edelstein

Here, in another effective set, David Adam Edelstein of Seattle, Washington, doesn't make use of a common theme, but rather a common aesthetic approach or "mood" you might call it. (Although all three have in common that they were shot with his Leica M Monochrom in Florence, Italy.) All three are dark, enigmatic, and work through a sense of mystery and indirection—in different ways, but together they speak of an underlying visual intelligence in common.

(David did say of the middle picture, "No, I can't explain the panda," which made us both smile.)

In general, though, I was surprised by how many submissions of three seemed diluted...the strongest picture undermined by the other two, or the effect and impression of the mini-grouping weakened by a lack of coherence between the three.

Another type of exception to that might be this pairing of a high-key shot and a low-key shot together, sent in by Peter Dewar, a retiree who lives near Cape Town, South Africa, and photographs for his local camera club:

Photographs by Peter Dewar

These two photographs (extensively manipulated, as he explains!) work nicely together by means of contrasts...they're opposites, in several ways. I suppose it was just accidental that they appear together in this order in his email, but I liked looking at them together, going back and forth.

One and done
Finally, although chosen by a minority of senders, the best approach when you're allowed to send three photos might be just to make a stand: one and done. Pick a strong picture and live or die by it. It's the no-nonsense approach, the don't-hedge-your-bets, take-it-or-leave-it approach.

Photo by Michael Knowles

This submission by Mike Knowles of Edinburgh, Scotland, taken with an Olympus E-520 and 11–22mm lens at the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam, is a good example of that. It's the only picture Mike sent.

...Although, as we'll see in the final portfolio in the case of readers Lois Elling and Hans Muus, sending more than one picture sometimes does pay off!

A big thanks to everyone who participated. I can't show everyone's photographs because 400 doesn't fit into 13, but I enjoyed seeing everyone's pictures, and I read everyone's comments.

More anon. In the meantime, hope you have a very nice weekend! As for me, I'll be working. :-)

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Oskar Ojala: "I enjoy these posts since the topic brings out interesting stories like the one that was featured a few days ago to thoughts and discussion around photography. B&W is particularly interesting since it's your preferred medium and I anticipated the readership of this blog would be quite comfortable with it (me I mostly do B&W for portraits).

"It's interesting to note what the trend is with contrast and clarity (boosting the local contrast). My advice is to look at photographs from various photographers taken at various times and see what makes then work; a lot of classic BW is not all that high in contrast; looking at such images helps to reset my compass after too much time on the Internet."

Tippler: "Can we do a selection of another baker’s dozen, only this time the selection made on the basis of voting by all TOP subscribers. This would yield a selection based on the group perspective and would be interesting to compare to your selection. Setting up automated voting might prove to be too cumbersome an exercise, though. Happy new year to all you snowbound upstaters. We are merely freezing in NYC."

Mike replies: Actually, crowd-sourcing is not the best method of editing. The reason is that editing is in part a creative process; for example, I pay a lot of attention to the mix of work and to the pacing of a group of photos when I edit a set. As a hypothetical example, let's say that the crowd likes landscapes better than street shots, and, for that reason, four very similar landscape photos all score higher in the voting than the best of the street shots, leaving no room for any street shots at all. That would be a worse set of pictures than one which chose the best landscape but also included a street shot, for those who like that genre. Do you see what I mean?

For example, I'm having to choose right now between two flower closeups. I don't think there's enough room in a set of thirteen pictures for two flower closeups; so I really have to choose one or the other. They're both excellent. Which one I choose will not have to do with which one I merely like the best. It will have more to do with the one that suits the overall mix better and provides the right degree of dissonance or distinction with the picture placed before it and the picture placed after it.

Posted on Friday, 29 December 2017 at 10:18 AM in Baker's Dozen, Followups | Permalink | Comments (21)

Friday, 22 December 2017

UPDATE: How to Get the Book of the Year

UPDATE to the Update: I just learned that you can buy the book directly from the publisher, with reasonable shipping costs. I don't know what the shipping costs might be to other countries, but when I went through the checkout procedure they were going to charge me $8.50 to Upstate New York. So try this method first. More news as I get it. —Mike the Ed.

This one's going to be hard to get, I'm afraid. The publisher is small and Only Human is its first and only photography book.

Hennessey + Ingalls Art and Architecture Bookstore in L.A. have gotten hold of a few copies (Judy did a signing there) and have posted it on Amazon. Only a few, though. [Note: gone as of 1 p.m. Friday. —Ed.] They might be able to get more.

There are only 1,000 copies total in the press run, and most of those will be reserved to sell at the de Young Museum during the exhibition the book is based on. In fact the publisher wasn't even going to release it until then. It's the exhibition catalog.

I got a very nice note from Judy after she read the review. She seemed genuinely touched by what I wrote. If you read the post before the review, you know I had some reservations about my ability to convey the emotional nature of my response to the book and to the work. I think I did okay, though. Judy was a photographer I admired when I was in art school in the '80s, and it's been a rich and relevant experience for me to come full circle with her life's work.

I'm sorry the book is not more readily available, but then, some books are, some books aren't—photography books are inherently difficult to produce and distribute, and there's little consonance between what's good and what's easy to get. Some dreadful books are all over the place and some great ones are difficult to obtain...as any longtime book buyer or collector knows all too well. I didn't know much about the book's distribution before I wrote about it. If you're balking at the shipping costs from the Museum store, I don't blame you at all (and Judy says she'll do what she can to look into that), but it's worth mentioning that after the book is out of print, which is likely to happen fairly soon, the price plus the shipping might well seem like a bargain. Consider our Book of the Year from last year, Multitude, Solitude: The Photographs of Dave Heath—it's out of print now and the prices of used copies on Amazon as I write this run from $130 (double the price when it was new) to $296.

The "Only Human" show is at the de Young Museum in San Francisco from April 7th to September 16th, 2018. When it begins I'll try to remind you.

Mike
(Thanks to Greg Edwards and several other readers)

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Featured Comments from:

Winwalloe: "It's interesting that Jörg Colberg's book Understanding Photobooks that you wrote about a few days ago specifically discusses shipping costs as an important part of a publishing project."

Dave Kerr: "Judy Dater was one of my instructors at the San Francisco Art Institute in the spring '74 semester, around the time she made the photo of Imogen and Twinka. As a long time admirer of Ms. Dater's work, I look forward to adding her new book, Only Human, to my library."

Joe: "It's a Christmas miracle! I ordered the book from the de Young as soon as you described it here, and it arrived this morning! Just in time to be wrapped and slipped under the tree for my wife (a portrait photographer)."

Posted on Friday, 22 December 2017 at 11:09 AM in Followups | Permalink | Comments (12)

Friday, 26 May 2017

New Bird

I wanted to give you an update, in passing, on my robins and my GX8 experiment.

Now that they're a little older, it has become obvious that there are three fledglings, in the nest under the eaves of the covered patio. I've seen charming, yes "iconic" scenes of Mama Robin dangling food into the youngsters' upturned beaks. But I haven't wanted to bother the family by trying to take a picture. Apparently the new birds know to hunker down in the nest when there are sounds or presences that seem threatening, and—naturally—Mama doesn't like it when I'm skulking about.

Bird after bird
I've been working on my bird photography even so...

...What do you think? All right, a little plain and cartoonish.

The whole frame is another matter:

Bird

The wider, horizontal version is even better, although that one needs more real estate for its pixels than I can give it here on Ye Blog. The bird would get too small. A 16-inch-wide print, maybe. It will be interesting to see if iPhone files hold up in prints of that size, or near it. I'm not a virtuoso eke-the-last-drop-of-IQ-out-of-the-file kind of printer like Stephen Scharf or John Lehet or Ctein, but I'll see what I can do.

Not bad for a phone, at any rate, although I feel obliged to mention in passing that a new champion has emerged in the ongoing smartphone-camera wars: DxO has lately given top marks (they're fickle) to the alluringly named HTC U11, which it says bests the Google Pixel and my iPhone 7, previous champs. I don't know—do we care?

Sorry. What I meant to say is, "I'm pleased they're making progress."

This magic land
This area—and, I confess, the iPhone—is changing my photography. I can feel it happening. One thing I've learned for sure is that the iPhone is quite adequate as a note-taker—illustrations for the blog, cute pics of the doggie to email to dog-loving friends, or a quick snap of what's playing on XM Radio so I don't have to annoy myself yet again by failing to remember the name of a song. But despite recent successes with it like "Keuka in the Rain," which I love, I don't want to be stuck trying to take pictures like that and "Bird" with it. I'm sorting out the used GX8, but I think it's a bad sample and I'm not trusting it yet. I'm not sure it's the right camera for this area, which seems to call for more horsepower (which would also counterbalance the iPhone 7 better). I'm not trying to justify, just trying to think things out. My needs are different here, and are shifting. I still need IBIS. I think I'll test the A7II next and see what's up with that.

Gordon's Part II soon, but I haven't eaten yet! And here it is 1 p.m. already.

Back soon.

[UPDATE: I'm sorry—I got distracted today, and now I'm too tired to do anything. I will post Gordon's Part II in the morning, at which time this Update will disappear. —Mike the Ed.]

Mike

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Posted on Friday, 26 May 2017 at 01:22 PM in Followups | Permalink | Comments (16)

Saturday, 07 January 2017

This Vs. That and That Vs. This

I've had a bit of a difficult time moderating the comments to the Ektachrome post. Seems some feathers are getting ruffled, going both ways. On that score, just a reminder: I ask that comments respond to the post, not to other commenters, unless you're being helpful. Our Comments Section is like the "Letters to the Editor" section in a newspaper. It's not a forum.

My own [personal, individual, you don't have to agree with it] opinion, echoing a comment Carl Weese made long ago:

Black-and-white was already perfect in the film era. Digital was the coming of age of color.

...And, at least for home and enthusiast use, digital color surpasses anything the film era had to offer, with the possible exception of projected Kodachrome.

But look, we're all different, eh? There's no point in getting upset one way or the other about it. Everybody has their own preferences and opinions. Some people love film, some people love digital, some people love both. Some people have strong opinions about many different aspects of technique within analog or digital. One person's opinions about materials and ways of working don't have to affect another's.

Can strong opinions be consistent with tolerance? I think so, as long as the strong opinions don't cross the line into "true believer" territory—which is more of a psychological affliction, if you ask me—and as long as we're not talking about core beliefs like politics or religion.

Or PCs vs. Macs—if I may quote Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, "Windows! The horror! The horror!"

That might not be quite the exact quote.

Personally, for example, I never gave a fig about Ektachrome, but that doesn't mean I don't respect someone who worked with it for years, loved it, has warm memories of it, and is delighted it's coming back. I'm happy for them. Why wouldn't I be? All good if you ask me. I would never look at great work and say, "it's no good because it was shot on Ektachrome." That would never happen.

Other people might not give a fig about Plus-X and Tri-X, which I shot thousands of rolls of prior to A.D. 2000 and loved dearly. That's all right with me—they don't have to like what I liked. Well, as long as they're willing to remain open-minded about the work itself, I guess. There's that need for tolerance again.

We all tend to like what we need (or needed) for our work, I think, and whatever "nourishes our enthusiasm" in Ansel's words*. What that is can be different for different individuals. All that's needed is to remember—oh yeah—to be tolerant.

Mike

* I love that phrase—a mild, careful verbal formulation that nevertheless acknowledges the depths of photo-geekery, to which Ansel was not immune.

Settle this dispute
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Al DaValle: "Thank God we all like different things!!! Think how boring the world would be if our desires, preferences and choices were the same!!!"

Tyler Monson: "'To have to despise something in order to respect something else is a sign of impotence' (Paul Strand, 1917)."

Speed: "I wonder...did anyone ever complain to Paul Simon that he hadn't written a song called 'Ektachrome'?"

Mike replies: It's little known, but that was the original title of the song. "Ektachroh-oh-ome / You give me those aaaac-curate colors." However, he couldn't find anything to rhyme with the line "All the world's a sunny day...as long as you use a Wratten 81A warming filter...."

hugh crawford: "I hadn't even heard that Ektachrome had gone away, but looking through all my 30-year-old Ektachromes and Kodachromes I really am not too interested in using Ektachrome ever again. In fact I wish I hadn't used it then. It was the abundance of labs that would clip test, push- and pull-process and do one-hour processing and have a guy on a bicycle hand-deliver it to you that made E-6 worthwhile. Kodachrome I would be interested in. Verichrome Pan would tempt me back into the darkroom."

Mike replies: You and me both, but only if they re-introduced Medalist along with it!

Posted on Saturday, 07 January 2017 at 10:38 AM in Blog Notes, Followups | Permalink | Comments (18)

Tuesday, 03 January 2017

Solving Problems

A few brief followups:

Re "Things Go Wrong," the washing machine repair cost $397.48, more than half the price of a new one; the water heater, replaced under warranty, cost $468.83. My butt hurts like somebody gave me a swift kick in the wallet. Hence....
B&H sends me a holiday gift card every year to thank me for being an affiliate (thanks B&H!), so I solved my problem of needing IBIS because of my "yips" by putting this year's gift card toward a used Fuji XF 18–55mm OIS lens. Not IBIS, but rather in-lens IS, but I can't afford a new camera right now. (My X-T1 is not even three years old yet and works fine.)
Re "The 2017 Novel," I finished Heart of Darkness in 2016 with a little over two hours to spare! However I did not enjoy it. Have decided I do not actually like Conrad, much as I would like to. Went to the attic of the barn and, until my hands got stiff with cold, rummaged through boxes. Found one of my two editions of Moby-Dick; ordered two more...despite the fact that I'm reading an online version (cf. Mrs. Wittig, "all you book collectors are insane").
To solve the computer problem, I'm using my 13" 2014 MacBook Air as my main computer. I may have already mentioned this. Seems to be working okay, except that not infrequently it makes a giant industrious whooshing noise like it's hot and its fan is blowing, despite the fact that there is no detectable inlets or outlets for air to pass and, if it actually has a fan, I have no idea where they put it. This bears more discussion, but I'm not going to post my thoughts about Apple right now because the new Print Offer starts in the morning and I don't want the Comments to be inundated with talk about computers.

Did I mention the Print Offer starts in the morning? It does. This one is going to be special; I adore this print. I've already found a frame shop in Canandaigua and I've been Scotch-taping John's proof up to the wall here and there in the house to help me decide where to hang it.

More in the morning. Noon actually, to be precise.

Mike

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Jim in Denver: "Earlier this year my mother had to replace her GE clothes dryer, which she bought new in 1967. To say that 'they don't make 'em like they used to' seems accurate in this case."

Rob L.: "The 18–55mm ƒ/2.8–4 is a great lens, that I don't use often simply because the 16mm is so amazing. It's not as great as the Nikon 17–55mm ƒ/2.8, but close, and in fairness about 45 lbs. lighter. :-) "

Manuel: "Curiously, I felt a strange lack of attachment when I tried to read Heart of Darkness. It just didn't grip me. When a book doesn't rivet me by page 28, I usually give it up, but I made an extra effort with this one. It didn't work. It's weird that, while being quite straightforward and short, the narrative is boring. I read behemoths like Magic Mountain, with its thorough character and environment depictions—I could actually see Hans Castorp in my head!—and I never felt tired as I did with Heart of Darkness. At least now I know it it's not a translation issue, nor a lack of comprehension."

Mike replies: It might be one of those programmatic novels that's supposed to be one big extended metaphor, so maybe it's gripping to those who know all about the subtext. A novel like that is Andre Dubus III's House of Sand and Fog—supposedly the story of the Middle East conflicts recast as an epic real-estate squabble. I mean the characters are contending over a house. That novel, which I read all the way to the end, infuriated me—the whole programmatic premise seems utterly disreputable to me. I felt betrayed that the author wasn't true to the humanity of his characters, but had made them into straw dogs in his programmatic agenda. This I suppose is a matter of taste. Or ethics, or something.

Kev Ford: "The MacBook Air vents out of the gap between the main body and the screen. There is a fan that pushes air out that is a little like a water-wheel. It's normal for the fan to come on occasionally; the fan will lower the temperature quite far below where it needs to be before turning off and allowing the heat to build up again."

Posted on Tuesday, 03 January 2017 at 09:06 PM in Followups, Print Offers | Permalink | Comments (28)

Thursday, 22 December 2016

Do Reviews Really Review? And Other Matters of Contention

It's been a busy few days here at TOP Rural HQ. (I no longer refer to it as "World" headquarters; we have given up our former ambitions of world conquest. Too much competition.) Note to other one-man-band one-person-band bloggers: never write even glancingly about religion unless you welcome extra work.

More reading about grammar, oh joy
...And that applies to "religious" topics outside of religion, too. I'm always pleased to have a real expert in my corner, taking my side in an argument I have put forth that I have neither the wit nor the knowledge to support on my own. In the case of my incendiary comments about the beloved and avuncular Strunk & White the other day, the cavalry comes to the (well, to my) rescue in the person of one Geoffrey K. Pullum, an actual real-life grammarian and a Professor of General Linguistics in the School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland (although I believe he is American—apparently he lived here for many years, at least). (MarkR first pointed me to him.)

He has written several times about "Strunk & White" (The Elements of Style). The article slanted more toward a popular audience is rather provokingly called "50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice" and appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education in 2009 (thanks to KeithB for this). The professor is not critical of Prof. Strunk and Mr. White themselves: "I'm not nitpicking the authors' writing style. White, in particular, often wrote beautifully, and his old professor would have been proud of him." Regarding their grammar advice, however, the good professor's gloves come off: "The book's toxic mix of purism, atavism, and personal eccentricity is not underpinned by a proper grounding in English grammar." For one thing, he (entertainingly) points out that Strunk and White frequently violate their own directives, sometimes even in the same paragraph in which they propose the rule:

"Keep related words together" is further explained in these terms: "The subject of a sentence and the principal verb should not, as a rule, be separated by a phrase or clause that can be transferred to the beginning." That is a negative passive, containing an adjective, with the subject separated from the principal verb by a phrase ("as a rule") that could easily have been transferred to the beginning.

In one sentence, in other words, Strunk and White violate fully four of their own principles, including the very one they are setting forth. He gives more such examples.

The Grammarian: Geoff Pullum. Photo by Timo Klein.

The more scholarly article appears in the journal English Today and is titled "The Land of the Free and The Elements of Style." It appeared in 2010, which makes me think it might have been written because of all the flak Prof. Pullum must have gotten following the publication of the first article; although that's just a guess. He reiterates the points of the 2009 article, some in greater detail, and adds more.

He also compares Strunk & White to its Ur-text—Strunk alone, that is, pre-1959—so as to discover which prejudices and errors are White's. He discovers that because one of White's rules prohibits a construction that Strunk himself used, White went back and purged all the instances of it from his former professor's writing! And, it turns out, it is none other than Andy White who is solely responsible for the longstanding and pervasive prejudice against the poor maligned split infinitive. Say it ain't so!

The second article's conclusion, of course, is similar: "My judgment [is] that The Elements of Style is a hopeless guide to English usage and has been deleterious to grammar education in America. I do not think the issue is trivial. The Elements of Style does real and permanent harm...sensible adults are wrongly persuaded that their grasp of their native tongue is imperfect and their writing is incorrect. No good purpose is served by damaging people’s self-confidence in this way."

The allure of being learned is only for those who will learn
I have my own private guess to explain the popularity of Strunk & White. When I was in eighth grade, we had a "gentleman amateur" English teacher, a parent who taught only one or two classes (arriving from his estate in the woods north of the city in a variety of antique sports cars). He actually let our class vote on whether we wanted to learn grammar. Our vote was yes, so he started in on the subject. Five days later, we overruled ourselves and demanded a new vote, by which we overwhelmingly changed our decision to no—exclamation point elided but implied.

The lesson I took from that experience is that grammar is a wonderful thing to know but a horrible thing to learn. (I myself know almost nothing about it...but then, my entire formal education in the subject lasted five days, so what can you expect?)

Strunk & White is popular because it provides the illusion of knowledge while giving the reader permission to set the subject aside. Learn these few simple, sensible-sounding rules, it seems to say, and you will have done enough. It's a formidable promise for a book to make, and Americans have been gratefully accepting its offer for 57 years now. Because who wants to have to learn grammar?

Vids, vids, vids, vids
It hasn't escaped my notice that there are an awful lot of camera review sites now. Most recently, they all seem to be in the form of videos, some of which are very nicely made.

Video bores me generally (except YouTube videos of snooker matches, of course, which are so exciting that they keep my eyes riveted on my monitor. There's always that one vivid exception to any rule!). Generally I would much rather read a review at my own pace than be forced to sit still while a presenter plods along at his pace. How else but in written form can I consume an online review in the proper fashion, cherrypicking only the "Introduction" and the "Conclusion" and skipping over all the dreary technical bits in the middle?

It's not nice (or too smart, actually) for a reviewer to review his competition. But one thing struck me as I was watching some of these video reviews last week (I'm not saying this is true of all of them): some of them could very easily be corporate PR. It's not that they share some features of corporate PR; it's not that they present some of the information the same way; it's that they're indistinguishable from it. It's like they're interviewing for it and what we're watching is the screen test.

That's the better ones. The worse they are, the more incompetent and superficial and bumbling, the less they do resemble PR, it's true...but of course then they have those other faults.

A point of view
Back when I was an editor I had a simple rule for reviewers: don't repeat things the reader can get from the manufacturer's sales literature or from the instruction manual. It seems now that many reviews don't offer anything but. (Or maybe they're following one of the admonitions from The Elements of Style: "Do not inject opinion.")

Wouldn't it be better, now that there are so many review sites and channels, for reviewers to go the opposite way? Instead of being so careful and technical, wouldn't it be better for some of 'em to have a stronger flavor, and more opinionation as opposed to less? It would be more interesting. What they seem to lack is not just judgements of any kind but a point of view. There's nothing wrong with having a point of view. No one is under the misapprehension that we are omnipotent. The key is to be clear and forthright about your taste, your prejudices, and your own needs, and then to go ahead and write or perform the review as if you were yourself.

If there were only a small or limited number of reviewers out there and only a few places for people to get any information at all, well then, fine—caution, evenhandedness, a conservative focus on features, and a sober piety might even be fitting. But these videos are all over the place. When I get to the third or fourth one turgidly going over the same feature yet again, one I already knew about from the B&H product page, my head starts to flop to the side and I begin to drool.

But they're all lovely and all the people who make them are above average, so please don't kill me, please. I will now stop talking about the competition again, which is my usual stance, or state.

Mike
(Thanks to KeithB and several others)

Original contents copyright 2016 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.

Splitting infinitives since 2005
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
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Colin Work: "I'm sure there are some great review videos out there, but I seldom see them. I don't sit down of an evening to watch reviews. I have better things to do. But I do like to read reviews when I have a spare moment during a work break, on a train etc. I'll probably be using a phone or tablet, and don't like using headphones. So, sorry to all you vloggers, you may have the time to produce this stuff, but in my case, it's wasted time 'cause I don't have the time to watch it. Want my attention? Put it in writing—and make sure the first couple of paragraphs convince me that reading the rest will be worthwhile. By all means include a link to a video in your text to illustrate something or other—if your article is good, I may watch it at some point. I suspect part of the attraction of video is the lure of some revenue via YouTube advertising."

David Raboin: "Thank you for this post Mike! My 7th grade English teacher convinced me that I was a hopeless writer because I couldn't diagram a sentence. Then, after 7th grade, my school district loosened it's English curriculum and I never received another grammar lesson. While I felt lucky to avoid that dreaded subject, I also never overcame my self-consciousness about grammar. Last summer, I downloaded the $.01 Kindle version of Elements of Style to see if I could figure out grammar as an adult. Part way in I started to question myself because it seemed like Strunk and White were contradicting themselves. Certainly I must not know how to correctly identify the passive voice because I was finding it everywhere in Elements of Style. I was sure I was wrong. Now, thanks to this post, I feel vindicated. Maybe this is the confidence boost I need to get back to work on that book I'm procrastinating?"

Mike replies: You made an error in the third sentence, David—"possessive 'its' never gets an apostrophe." We just have to memorize that.

But my point is, so what if you made an error? As an online writer I have to be my own copyeditor and proofreader, and it fits my skill set because I used to be a magazine editor. (Though, I should note in passing, a magazine editor who had a copyeditor, Nancy, and a proofreader, Burt. Nancy taught me lots of tricks and things to look for, but I overruled about half of her red-penciled corrections. Many of her corrections made me laugh—she once struck out a whole paragraph written by a famous photographer and scribbled in the margin, "A complete mess—toss the whole thing.") But real writers don't even need to know how to spell. Neither Ernest Hemingway nor Jane Austen could spell. Nor could William Butler Yeats or Agatha Christie. I'm capable of writing grammatically but I never studied grammar—I picked it all up by ear, and by working out problems I encountered as I wrote. Editing poor writing can be hard work (the error in your last sentence would be a little harder to correct while preserving your word choice and voice, for example)—but good writing doesn't have to be error-free. That's what copyeditors and proofreaders are for. Write that book!

Steve Jacob (partial comment): "A film or book review would be very boring if it was factual. You can wrap all the facts into performance tables and give me a straight, down to earth, subjective opinion, as long as you can back it up with something more than 'I'm a genius so my opinion is the best.' Things like 'camera handling' and 'lens character' are totally subjective, but useful to know, as long as you also know the reviewers general preferences, and how yours compare. There is a film reviewer in the UK who I disagree with about 50% of the time, but I know exactly where we differ. Because he is 100% consistent and open about his preferences, I find his reviews exceptionally useful."

emptyspaces: "I make videos about various electronics for an online retailer, and I feel everyone's pain. We don't do reviews, they're just stand-ins for those who don't want to read the web copy on a given product. And our data shows us two things: first, products we sell that have videos attached sell at a significantly higher rate, and second, most people don't read any of the web copy.

"I started out as a copywriter. Most of the 'problems' people would write to us about were addressed in the first paragraph of web copy, or at worst in the second or third. A higher and higher percentage of people just can't be bothered to read anything at all while they're shopping. Despite that being my job, I, too prefer written articles. I only turn to video in a 'how-to' situation, generally. When I shop, I rarely if ever use video in my research."

Posted on Thursday, 22 December 2016 at 02:11 PM in Followups | Permalink | Comments (39)

Wednesday, 28 September 2016

The Delicate State of the GX8

I don't know anything, okay? So please don't bust my chops if I have this wrong.

But it seems to me that the Panasonic GX8 (announced on June 16th, 2015, reviewed here on TOP by me on June 10th, 2016) might very well have a severe public relations problem, and we might be seeing some of the consequences of that.

A number of testers found and documented the so-called "shutter shock" issue, which showed that the camera's mechanical shutter was causing unwanted vibration at 1/125th and adjacent shutter speeds. (Other testers, notably Tyson Robichaud, did not find any problem.) The problem was avoided by switching to the electronic shutter, but then that has issues too in certain shooting situations, causing "rolling shutter" with fast-moving subjects. So it's not feasible to simply switch to electronic shutter and forget about it.

It's a pretty easy issue to work around, especially since so much is known about it. Panasonic made it even easier by specifically designing a firmware-update fix for it.

So has the shutter-shock scare caused demand for the GX8 to tank? See what you think: not only has the camera (only a little more than 15 months old now) had "Instant Savings" of $200 applied to it more or less continuously, but now B&H is giving away a free $500 lens with the "body only." That smacks of a stock-dump to me.

The freebie lens is the Panasonic Lumix G Vario 12–60mm ƒ/3.5–5.6 ASPH. POWER O.I.S.

Amazon has this lens for $400, not $500, although Amazon isn't giving it away with the body.

Even so, that's effectively $600–700 off on a premium $1,200 camera that's not yet old enough to be replaced.

So here's my educated guess: the GX8 might be "surreptitiously" on closeout, possibly because Panasonic is going to pull the same move Nikon did when it updated the troubled D600/D800 with the fixed D610/D810, and release an updated variant of the GX8 with a modified name and an engineered fix to get rid of the pesky shutter-shock problem for good.

As I said, I don't know that. I'm just speculating.

If it's true, though, then this does create an opportunity. If you don't want the offered lens, you can probably sell it on eBay—there are 18 being offered there now, for prices of $300 and up, most around the $330–$350 range.

That means you can effectively get a brand new GX8 for ~$650. Or even less. Which is pretty cheap for a brand new GX8.

Now, granted, if I'm right, you could wait for the fixed model for $350–$550 more. Or you can wait for the Olympus E-M1 Mark II which will have the same sensor as the GX8, and pay probably somewhere in the $1,200–$1,300 range. Or you can just get the existing GX8 and just deal with the shutter-shock work-around. Which I really don't think is very hard to do.

That is, if you detect the problem with yours at all.

Why do I care?
I care because I took to the GX8. I liked it a whole lot. Ergonomically it's one of the nicest digital cameras I've ever used. Loved the viewfinder, which is slightly but noticeably better than the Fuji X-T1's even without the nifty tilting feature (also a big fan of that). And now that I've got the Epson P600 fired up, I can say I am impressed with the GX8's sensor. DxO says it's the best Micro 4/3 sensor yet and I believe it. You know that trick where you can make a small print that's essentially a section of a much larger print of the file you're looking at? I did that with several of my GX8 test shots—I made 8x10 "sections" of a 13.5x18" print and a 54x72" print—and I'm impressed.

I've probably gassed on way too long here. The point is just that you can get a possibly slightly wounded version of a very nice up-to-date Micro 4/3 camera for an excellent price right now.

I'm going to be watching to see what happens and how this all unfolds in the near future. Interesting, to say the least.

Mike

...Like a GX8 maybe!
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Featured Comments from:

Michael Perini: "I suspect that you are correct. But you can't fault potential buyer for saying, with all the nice cameras out there, why buy one that many folks have had a problem with—even at a discount. The Internet is a place where molehills get made into mountains, but why risk pictures even if it is just a mole hill? I liked the GX8 too, but crossed it off the list when I read about the issue. Because it also struck me as an issue that should have been caught."

Kenneth Tanaka: "I don't know, or worry, about this either Mike. Offhand, though, I would wonder if the GX85 might not have stolen the GX8's show. I've been using one all summer (after selling out of Micro 4/3 gear last year) and it's absolutely superb for general photography, especially as a travel camera. I have zero interest in the GX8 and did not take a shine to its predecessor, the GX7, when I owned one."

Ron Zack: "Shutter shock is not a design defect unique to the GX8; it can be found in almost all mirrorless cameras. Even the original Olympus E-P1/2 had it. But its severity seems to be related to the lens you mount on it for some odd reason. No doubt, normal or telephoto lenses might magnify the effect over wide angle lenses, for all the obvious reasons. My current Olympus E-P5 had really bad shutter shock, until Olympus came out with their own firmware fix, and it was never an issue again.

"So I would heartily recommend getting a GX8 for all those who are interested in one, and apply the firmware fix if it has not already been done at the factory. These small bodied Micro 4/3 cameras are a lot of fun, and Panasonic's iterations, though not as popular as those from Olympus, are really better thought out in a lot of ways, especially in regards to menus and ergonomics."

Adam Maas: " You may have liked the ergonomics but most GX7 users did not and were quite vocal about it. The GX8 earned a rep as an ergonomically-challenged body with good guts overall, the two biggest challenges being the location of the AE-lock control (a serious reach compared to the ideal location on the GX7) and the overly chunky grip, which improved handling with large lenses at the cost of handling with the small lenses that worked so well on the GX7. The GX8 was trying to be too many things. It's too big to be a proper replacement for the GX7 as a RF-style street shooting camera, but never got the DSLR-style handling of the G series for large-lens use. And it didn't sell as well as it could because of that."

Urs Willi: "I bought a GX8 with the 12–60mm some months ago after having read the TOP review. I never noticed any shutter shock problem (installing the last firmware version first probably helped). I must acknowledge that Mike didn't say anything about this camera that I could not subscribe to after having been using it for a while now. (Is this English? Sorry, not my mother tongue....) I can recommend the GX8 to anyone who is looking for an excellent compromise between comfort and performance—and, what's more, it is a pleasure to work with."

Posted on Wednesday, 28 September 2016 at 10:45 PM in Cameras, new, Followups | Permalink | Comments (22)

Tuesday, 06 September 2016

Sometimes It All Comes Together and...

Since writing the "Bonnie and Clyde" post last week, I've been on a gangster kick. I've read Public Enemies by Bryan Burrough (all 652 pages of it) suggested by Bruce Appelbaum in the Comments (thanks Bruce) and about five dozen Wikipedia pages about various aspects of the 1933–34 War on Crime, and watched several gangster-related flicks.

As I watched "Murder, Inc." last night (1960, directed by Burt Balaban [father of Bob] and Stuart Rosenberg, whose best movie was "Cool Hand Luke" seven years later), an old thought popped into my brain: sometimes things work, sometimes not so much.

Seems obvious, but honestly, I sometimes think it's the core mystery of creativity. For instance, one photograph can be magic while another similar photograph that has all the same elements is a dud.

Why does that happen? I'm certain that every young musician who ever had a big hit thought to themselves "That was easy; I'll just do that again." But 90% of them never can—try as they might, the moment inexplicably passes, and the magic chemistry turns out to be not so easily replicable. It's that way in all the arts to some degree.

[Spoiler Alert: I'm going to thoroughly filet the plot of "Murder, Inc.," so if you've been meaning to watch it but haven't quite gotten around to it for the past 56 years, don't click through the break.]

Continue reading "Sometimes It All Comes Together and..." »

Posted on Tuesday, 06 September 2016 at 12:57 PM in Followups | Permalink | Comments (17)

Thursday, 04 August 2016

190 Bowery Update

You might remember the first time we talked about Jay Maisel's house, one of the more famous buildings in Manhattan.

First, Jay: he was one of the top advertising photographers in America in the '70s and '80s and into the '90s. Since then he's been revealed as an actual lover of photography as well, having continued to do personal work and teaching, and publishing books such as Light, Gesture, and Color and It's Not About the F-Stop (both of which are good and worth reading).

That first comment wasn't intended to be demeaning; it's just that lots of photographers who made as much money as Jay did are mainly interested in making money, not necessarily in photography. A normal person can only do so much. Jay had enough energy, not to mention the skill and talent, for both.

The Germania Bank building at the corner of Bowery and Spring, a cornerstone of Manhattan's former Kleindeutschland ("Little Germany"), in about 1975. Jay Maisel already owned it at that time. Photo by Edmund V. Gillon, courtesy Museum of the City of New York.

Jay's famous "house": he bought 190 Bowery, the former Germania Bank building, for $102,000 in 1966, when the area was a dreadful slum. He rented parts of it for a while but eventually just lived in it, filling it with interesting things and hanging out on the rooftop garden. Although definitely bohemian and not all fancy-rich, it was for a period the largest private residence in New York, with 72 rooms. The outside got covered with graffiti (including some by artist Keith Haring, late friend of our friend Hugh Crawford who comments here) and for years, New Yorkers assumed the building was abandoned.

Jay, meanwhile, had an indoor basketball court.

Jay is now 85, and although I once opined that he should be allowed to live forever, he apparently isn't planning for that to happen, because he recently sold 190 Bowery...to Manhattan "he's-everywhere" developer Aby Rosen. For 55 million dollars, which, you've got to admit, is a nice rate of real estate appreciation.

And he got to live there for 50 years, too.

I'm a little concerned about Jay now. He no longer has a place to live! We might have to pass the hat to help him get a place. Anyone have a 72-room bohemian hangout to rent? Maybe at his age he'd be satisfied with 40 or 50 rooms. You know, downsizing. But I digress.

[UPDATE: He's landed okay, and now has the nicest house in Brooklyn. Those photographers sure do well, don't they? Thanks to Techfan for this. —Ed.]

The News [buried lede dept.]: The point of this post is that Untapped Cities found its way inside 190 Bowery and has posted a series of picture-posts. Start here but if you're interested, be sure to follow the links for further dimensions of the story. A great story and great fun.

Finally: Here's Jay on "How to Be a Better Photographer." Note that although it's nothing pretentious at all, pretty much every word he says in this is profound. Listen to and consider every sentence and you'll take away something good.

Mike
(Thanks to Grant Williams)

Hmbl. Ed. just pines for a place to put his pool table.
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Mark Hobson: "I was able to visit the basketball court and, more impressively, view the large display of large dye transfer prints (30x40–40x60) of his work ringing the basketball court. I gained entrance simply by knocking on that corner door.

"My next encounter with Jay was in the early '80s when I was asked to be the backup choice for doing the Corning Annual Report (10 countries around the globe picturing Corning products in real world use). They wanted Jay but weren't sure they could afford his fee. When told of the project budget, Jay wouldn't even send his portfolio because the project budget number (US$60,000 in early '80s dollars!) was not even in the same neighborhood as his fee would be.

"Next month I have been invited to accompany a good friend and fellow photographer and close friend of Jay for a visit to his new digs. Looking forward to it."

Mike replies: I heard a story from a guy who lost a job to Jay. It was for a series of brochures for a cruise line. My friend was sure he would get the job because his fee, although high, was much lower than Jay's. But they hired Jay. When asked for an explanation, the agency person said, "I had to be able to tell the client that we hired the very best."

Tom Foster: "In 2007, Luminous-Landscape published a video in 'Luminous Landscape Video Journal—Issue 17' that contains a one-hour interview of Jay Maisel by Michael Reichmann. This includes a half-hour tour of his building at 190 Bowery. A fascinating interview and video tour."

Posted on Thursday, 04 August 2016 at 09:07 AM in Followups, Photographers, current | Permalink | Comments (18)

Tuesday, 02 August 2016

Jarob Ortiz's Dream Job

Jarob Ortiz, who got the dream job everybody was talking
about last Winter. Photo by Casey Paynter.

Do you remember about seven or eight months back, when the Tubes of the Etherwebs were ablaze (alas, I can no longer say "atwitter," dang it) with the news that "Ansel Adams's old job" was being offered by the Park Service? And would pay $100,000 a year? Some lucky so-and-so would spend all year making Adamsian landscapes—which many of us pay to do for a week or two every year. The story went modestly viral and was reported far and wide (here's an example).

Turns out the hype was maybe a little too hyped—but just a little. The job is only remotely related to a job Ansel once had, and it will consist mostly of photographing architecture and man-made landmarks. And the salary range topped out at $99k and change, but the starting pay will probably be closer to the other end of the range, which was a little less than $64,000.

Still.

The job does sound pretty dreamy for anyone who likes to shoot a lot. And travel. It was landed when the dust cleared by Madison, Wisconsin resident Jarob J. Ortiz, 33, who grew up in Milwaukee and studied photography at Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC). Here's his website. Jarob will be shooting for the National Park Service in large format black-and-white.

"This is, realistically, the exact job that I would like to do for the rest of my life," he told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

The article, by Journal-Sentinel art and architecture critic Mary Louise Schumacher, was very pleasant to read. It's really nice to hear about a photographer getting a great job, for good pay, doing something valuable that so many people would enjoy.

Personally, I've long believed that every State and every decent-sized city should have an Official Photographer, whose job would be nothing more than documenting and archiving what things look like. Given that things change all the time. Heck, the whole program would cost less than one fighter jet, much less one aircraft carrier.

Ortiz will be based in Washington, D.C. and starts his new job this month.

Mike
(Thanks to Mike Plews)

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

kodachromeguy: "The City of Seattle did have official photographers in the 1930s and 1940s. If you are restoring a house, you could buy a black and white print of your house because thousands of structures had been photographed. Then you could compare your modern home with the older and, presumably, more original architecture. Users can go to the Washington State archives."

Tom Passin: "Around 1973, I was hiking in the Adirondacks, in New York State. As I worked up the trail in a light rain, I met a man coming the other way. He was well equipped and nicely rain-proof with his pack under cover, and he carried a tripod. He told me he had landed a year-long job photographing scenes in the Adirondacks and had been out for a few months so far. I don't know his name or the source of his funding, but I thought he had really landed a prize!"

Graham Byrnes: "Why large format B&W? I shoot 90% B&W, I recognise the artistic advantages; but for documenting the landscape? Dare I suggest that this is driven by nostalgia and the same results could be achieved using any 40-MP+ digital camera?"

Kent Thompson replies to Graham: "In archives, black-and-white film is still the trusted media for longterm storage. the standard is actually with polyester based black-and-white microfilm for records reformatting. Every State and Federal archive has some kind of microfilm program going on. With photography in archives and museums, most have gone digital but still consider film to be the archival choice.

"We've been shooting digital for about five years now, with a photo department that goes back around 50 years that was film based. We always shot 4x5 black and white and used color for 'illustration.' Color has never been used for archival work because of the dye fading issues and all that. In most archives you will find a disproportionate amount of black and white film over color. Most roll film, besides technical films and microfilm, is on an acetate base which isn't as stable as polyester. Acetate shrinks over time and causes the emulsion to buckle on the negative. Only cold storage and low relative humidity can stave this off. Polyester is much more stable even at room temperatures, so it's the preferred medium. In most archives, it's the film that is the master file, with prints used for access or dupe negatives as well.

"Now, with digital, there are all sorts of different approaches, But when it comes to HABS/HAER [Historic American Buildings Survey and the Historic American Engineering Record —Ed.]—they are still positively old school. The reason for LF is pretty simple though—perspective control. That is really the biggest thing I miss when I shoot digital now. The loss of control in the studio and working in the field. There is seldom a day that passes that I don't wish I was still using a view camera."

[In an earlier post, Kent described himself as "a museum photographer working in the design section of a history museum." —Ed.]

Posted on Tuesday, 02 August 2016 at 11:32 AM in Followups, News and Occasions | Permalink | Comments (24)

Friday, 24 June 2016

Cameron's Folly and Other News of the Morning After

• Destabilexit: David Cameron finally pushed his famous luck too far. Pride goeth before a fall, and we all know how he'll be remembered now. Just as an aside, do they not teach European history in the UK? Just wondering how 52% of the population could so easily dismiss the value of 70 straight years of stability and peace in most of Europe. Someone should tell them that Europeans haven't always gotten along with each other. That last is the understatement of the century—or rather the understatement of the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Didn't the UK already have all sorts of special dispensations from the EU to feed its exceptionalism?

But look on the good side—could be very good for Scotland, if it now leaves the UK and rejoins the EU. I'm part Scottish by ethnicity—related to the Johnston and Hamilton clans. The other part is English, though, and I'm sick about this. I hope it won't be, but June 23rd 2016 could be remembered as a very bad day indeed, in the UK and elsewhere.

• We love our British readers (should I say "like and admire"? Is "love" too strong a word for reticent British sensibilities?) But I have to say there has never been much love lost between me and Hasselblad. The company pursued a nasty vendetta against me for a number of years, in response to a snarky comment (one single sentence!) that I once wrote in a Bronica review. (Snarky? Moi?) Granted, that one sentence was...well, pretty bad. But the great lengths they went to for revenge was over the top and out of proportion. Still...

...How about that new Hasselblad?!? I really like the looks of that. I wrote to a friend recently that high prices help insulate me from GAS in a number of cases—I would really like a Sony A7rII and a Zeiss FE 35mm ƒ/1.4, for instance, but don't have to think about either one—and the X1D-50c (the "50c" bit refers to the sensor, indicating the same camera might get different sensors in the future) is well into that territory. But it gives rise to hope that some other company will compete with something similar. Hasselblad has left room for the X1D-50c to be undercut in price.

The X1D-50c would be the perfect counterpart and complement to an iPhone, if it turns out that it works well and has no problems. Wonder who's making the lenses?

• Panaleica cornucopia: Speaking of lenses, there are now six beautiful Panasonic/Leica Micro 4/3 lenses. That cup runneth over. The picture is courtesy Panasonic via Imaging-Resource. (One drawback of cameras made by multinational electronics giants is that the camera divisions get utterly lost in the vastness. I could not for the life of me find that image anywhere on Panasonic's far-flung web presence, nor could I figure out whom to call to ask where it is. Maybe Kevin Purcell can find it. He's a web-research ninja whose powers exceed even my own.)

Left to right, the 15mm ƒ/1.7 ASPH. (I saw lots of this lens when Ben Rosengart came for a portfolio review—beautiful prints), the famous DG Summilux 25mm ƒ/1.4 ASPH., the new lens, the amazing Vario-Elmar 100–400mm ƒ/4–6.3 Power O.I.S. (which underscores an advantage of 4/3 over cameras with bigger sensors—telephoto reach, without the sensor being too small), the beautiful 42.5mm ƒ/1.2 Power O.I.S. portrait lens, and the older 45mm ƒ/2.8 Macro (which gets relatively little love, except from me—I like its exceptionally nice bokeh).

The new one is the 12mm ƒ/1.4, a superfast ultrawide. (With all 4/3 and Micro 4/3 lenses, simply double them to get the 35mm focal-length equivalents.) Although large for a Micro 4/3 lens, it weighs less than 12 ounces and is less than three inches long, underscoring another great advantage of Micro 4/3.

Early tests of the new lens are highly positive, nay, glowing.

• Naked Miata: A nice video review of the 2016 Miata that shows the chassis and drivetrain with the body removed. I now refrain from gassing on further about that car. Don't think I couldn't.

• Bloomin' 'ell! Last item—come back later to see! [Added now—see below.] I have three or four snaps to post of what happened to the flower buds I showed you the other day. It's extravagant. You won't believe what happened. Astonishing! And you can see what happens when a non-flower-photographer attempts to photograph a Monarch butterfly with a 14mm (21mm-e) Fujinon. But I have to go run and then exercise Butters first—he's always raring to begin his daily project chasing down his beloved tennis ball wherever it goes.

More very soon.

Mike

ADDENDUM #1: Re Brexit...please know that I don't bear the slightest ill-will toward any British TOP reader—or any Briton period—regardless of their views or vote. I'm concerned about events, but I'm no expert, of course. I got a solid briefing from a thoughtful and informed British friend (thanks again, TB) and since then have been reading avidly about the issue. That's all. There's no nationalistic competitiveness here either—I'm just as concerned about the bizarre election season in the U.S.—and I certainly have zero stake in being "right" about anything. I do fear Britain has made a very serious mistake but will hope to be proven wrong about that. I very much wish for the best outcome from all this, for one and all.

Let's hope for the best and that the best thing has been and will be done. The passage of a few weeks will do much to soothe frayed nerves and worries.

ADDENDUM #2: Now as promised earlier...in the "Specialists" post on Tuesday I put up a picture of some plants that looked like they were plotting something. That picture was a few days old at the time. Well, you won't believe what those perfectly innocent-looking plants had planned! Check it out:

The crazy things have staged a riot!

I think the scientific name for these is Sumkinda lillyus. They did this all on their own, too—I had nothing to do with it. All I did was water them when I noticed them drooping (we've had a bit of a mini-drought recently). And boom! Well, not "boom." It took a day or two. Still, the whole flowerbed bursting forth all at once was quite the thing. The previous owner of the house set all this in motion. I don't have much natural feeling for flowers, but I'm sentient and alive, and I think you'd need eyes carved of wood not to enjoy the show.

As I was waiting for the shot above—I wanted the sun to illuminate the flowers but not the barn wall—I happened to see a butterfly, so I had to while away ten minutes attempting to make his portrait. To say that a 14mm lens on APS-C (21mm-e) is not the proper tool for shooting butterflies is probably an understatement. Although I have no idea what would be better. Some things are your thing and some things aren't, and insects are not mine, and I'm resigned to my fate, and over the years have learned to live with it.

Here he is:

Handsome little fellow, eh? Not half bad under the circumstances I don't think. He wouldn't pose and hold still. With a lens as wide as this I really had to stick the camera in the little fellow's face, although he didn't seem to mind. Yeah, I'm an amateur...I'm not sure I've ever photographed a single butterfly in my life, at least as something I meant to do. And if this is indeed the first, it could be the last as well. But it was nice to have the challenge. I have always accepted that photographing insects is a challenge, often a formidable one, for those who are good at it.

As I believe you can tell from this picture, there might even be more blooms on the way. Things have been happening all over this yard. I don't have any idea what to expect next. Only one thing is for sure...

"Life is good."

—Mike the Ed.

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D. Hufford: "I recall back in September of 2008 watching the financial crisis suddenly pick up speed and knowing my career and life were going to change completely. Though it seems less likely, I am getting a bit of déjà vu. I just bought a Panasonic 12–35mm earlier this year. Turns out I don't really like Panasonic lenses. Except for the Leica branded ones. I love the 25mm ƒ/1.4 and it is probably my favorite lens of the digital era. (Well, the Nikon 14–24mm would be, but I sold mine years ago.) Had I not bought the Panasonic 12–35mm, the 12mm would certainly have interested me...after the price came down a bit."

David Cope: "No, 'love' is fine. We need a lot of that right now."

Jim Allen: "Ya know Mike, you're really starting to draw me into that gravity well the Miata represents. I can feel the slow and inexorable pull as my wallet slowly accelerates towards another impulse purchase.... Seriously though, having an actual engineer discussing details like that in a review is awesome. I don't want that car, I need that car. I wish there were curvy roads in Florida."

Ed. Note: The following two comments came in one right after the other:

David: "I'd just like you to know that I find this at once insulting, condescending and ignorant, so please think a little more before dismissing a brave vote by 17 million people, that must mean a lot to them given the authorities that were telling them to do otherwise and the likely short term pain to be experienced in extricating the country from this institution. This is not like expressing an opinion on sensor size! It is condescending to think that those voting to leave don't know about European history and wars, especially given Britain`s involvement in WWII. It is a simplistic conclusion that recent peace is a result of UK membership of the EU, and that some special clauses you don't know about mean that the other rules of membership you don't know about must be acceptable. P.S. I am an occasional reader and used to pay a volunteer subscription, that is how I came across your post."

Richard Parkin: "No, the specific name is lower case: Sumkinda lillyus. [Fixed again —Ed.] When moving to a house with an established garden it is good practice to wait a year to see what you have so you are doing the right thing.

"Likewise on Brexit wait and see may be good advice because it is now even more obvious that Brexit politicos want something different from what the Brexit voters thought they were voting for. I voted to Remain in 1975 when I was 40ish and have voted to Remain again now I am 80ish so I think I can claim consistency and that I don't fit the demographic of the Remainers. As you will see from some of the comments, some of the most vocal Brexiters are still fighting WWII. I defend your right to have a view on Brexit—when the French asked the US to remove their soldiers from France I recall they were asked if they want the dead ones to leave too."

Mark Cotter (partial comment): "To understand the EU, one has, as an example to think of a pan-Americas organisation that had it's capital in, say, Caracas, and whose trade rules and economic rules and currency applied to everyone from southern Chile to the tip of Alaska: while it would be good for some, it would not be good for others and countries like the US and Canada would tire of the inept bureaucracy and politics of South American countries and the free movement of, say, Mexicans into the US. We live in interesting times over here in the UK and in US politics as well."

robert e: "Would we Americans tolerate an EU-style agreement? The irony! The US was established with an EU-style agreement—the Articles of Confederation. Further irony: the Articles were deemed too weak by our founding fathers, who found inspiration for our second, current, constitution in the far more sovereignty-obliterating Anglo-Scottish union of 1707. I don't suppose I need to rub in the further, sadder irony of the now imminent dissolution of that older union. In other words, we are the result of not only tolerating such an agreement, but doubling down on it, thanks to the example of Great Britain.

"Yes, it was a different time, a different place. But the stakes were even higher. It wasn't put to popular vote, but then neither had been the UK. And we doubled down again, waging bloody civil war to maintain it 100 years later. As Mike said, the arguments persist, and you'll even find active secession movements in several states (most notoriously Texas, Alaska and California)."

Brian Ripley: "In scientific taxonomic nomenclature (not just botany) the genus name is capitalized but not the species name. In butterfly terms, that is not a 'little fellow,' maybe 3x the size of a typical non-tropical butterfly. It is Papilio machaon, the Swallowtail. In the UK (since you keep talking about us) it is the largest resident butterfly and rather rare, but common in most of the rest of the world. Indeed, common enough to have been named by Linnaeus."

Mike replies: I could write a book chapter about this comment, but I shall spare you all, and you're welcome! :-) But thank you Brian for providing those facts.

David Dyer-Bennet: "Some people are trying to set up an analogy betweeen the EU and merging North, Central, and South America. But another way to look at it is that the EU is slowly making its way towards a European version of the United States. Do I accept my fate being governed by legislators who mostly come from states other than my own? As it happens, yes I do! And so do the residents of each and every other state. Even those from states that were formerly at war with us."

Posted on Friday, 24 June 2016 at 10:26 AM in Cameras, new, Followups, Lenses | Permalink | Comments (94)

Friday, 17 June 2016

The Queer Hutterite and Other Cool Followups

Several interesting things emerged from the Comments yesterday, and kept me immersed for much of the afternoon.

Apple ad featuring photo by "Chris F." (Chris Floyd) in the New York subway

Frecklehead
First of all, the "Frecklehead" story—I mentioned the latest Apple ads in the recent "iPhone Apocalypse" post and HowardH mentioned that British professional photographer Chris Floyd had his picture chosen for the ad series.

I get a lot of people contacting me about needing or wanting to get more attention for their work—many people feel under-appreciated (not to mention under-rewarded). It's a common part of being a photographer these days. (I heard from a mutual friend that even Mary Ellen Mark, in her last years, sometimes complained about work being hard to get.) So I thought it was especially nice to read an account of the opposite thing happening. Chris's casual Instagram shot has been seen in magazine ads and on billboards and bus stops around the world. And he wrote a nice account of the excitement so we can all vicariously take part in his gratifying experience!

Photo by Kelly Hofer

Next, in response to yesterday's post about the Amish woman wearing wraparound mirror sunglasses, Wes Cosand recommended the work of Kelly Hofer, a young man who struggled to be a photographer within the strict confines of a Hutterite Anabaptist colony in Manitoba. In the course of filming a BBC documentary on the colony, "How to Get to Heaven with the Hutterites" (scroll down at the link to get to the films), filmmaker Lynn Alleway turned reporter when she included Kelly "running away" from the colony. (It disrupts the documentary but also enlivens it.) A subsequent, shorter film on Kelly's page, "Queer Hutterite," fills in the blanks of the story. Quite long, but quite interesting—an acute instance of the difficulty creative people sometimes feel "fitting in." Kelly Hofer is now "out" (in several senses, I guess that would be) and a successful photographer in Calgary. A book of his pictures of the Hutterites is scheduled to be released in the Fall.

Y'all come back now hear?
Hard to believe it's Friday already, but yup. As you probably know by now, TOP is off on the weekends to allow me to work on writing a book. Don't forget our current book sale is still in progress...here's the page; enter the code 175212 for the discount. Have a nice weekend and please come back Monday!

Mike
(Thanks to HowardH and Wes)

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Posted on Friday, 17 June 2016 at 01:49 PM in Around the Web, Followups | Permalink | Comments (7)

Wednesday, 18 May 2016

A Different Afghan Girl

Well, it was fun to make that little academic excursion into terminology yesterday, although today I have a bit of a hangover from it. I like words and write reasonably well, but I have no gift for names and naming.

I concede I didn't think of the problem with "correction" implying that a mistake had been made in the first place—one that needed "correcting"—which might make you look bad to clients. Acknowledging that none of these terms are going to catch on in any event, I think as a result I would prefer the word "finishing" instead of "correction." FER?

Sir John Herschel drawn by Margaret Louisa Herschel, his daughter,
possibly with the aid of a camera obscura

And here's a fascinating twist. The king of the name-givers in our field was Sir John Herschel, who probably wouldn't be pleased to know that he is now mostly remembered in Julia Margaret Cameron's photograph of him in old age, in costume (left). He made protean contributions to the invention of photography, including the discovery of fixer and the words "positive," "negative," and "snapshot" (a term imported from hunting, as when a bird is flushed and the hunter makes a quick reactive shot). His greatest contribution to the lexicography, of course, was the word "photography," which, quoting Wikipedia, was "created from the Greek roots φωτός (phōtos), genitive of φῶς (phōs), 'light,' and γραφή (graphé) 'representation by means of lines' or 'drawing,' together meaning 'drawing with light.'"

So instead of "reworking" (a word which Ctein supplied to CER, incidentally), shouldn't that be redrawing? (Or rewriting, if you prefer the translation "writing with light" for photos and graphe.

Because no matter how you feel about reworking or modifying or retouching or "photoshopping" a digital image file, all I know is that if you replace 40% of the honest pixels with different ones, the result was no longer "drawn with light." Not entirely. It was drawn by light and the retoucher. And, since there's no way to tell which was which, the viewer coming to it cold can no longer take anything in the picture as honest.

...But we're back in my personal value system, which (of course!) you are under no compulsion to adopt for yourself unless you want to. In any event, my advice to younger and beginning photographers regarding reworking or "photoshopping" is the same as photographer Frank DiPerna's advice on cropping. Frank once said, "I absolutely never, ever crop...except when I want to." Which is part good joke and part deep truth. I think it's generally good advice for reworking as well. My guiding principle is: I absolutely never, ever rework a photo...except when I want to. In other words, when it's really necessary and there's a very good reason to do it, then go ahead, but apply sparingly and use it a crutch. Of course your photography belongs to you, and you should do any tomfool thing you want to.

As the great photojournalist Bruce Haley said to me in a private e-mail (I received his permission to quote him here, but bear in mind he wasn't speaking for public consumption):

If I spell out my personal "rules" of photography then I risk sounding like a sanctimonious pr*ck. However, it's more just a matter of simplicity, of avoiding "tangled web" territory...I have always just used the KISS principle for my photography: I either got it or I didn't...if I got it, I might use/release it; if I didn't get it, it gets tossed in the rubbish bin, never to be seen by anyone else. I don't crop—I either got it right at the moment of the shutter's release or I didn't. If there is a pole or a tree growing out of someone's head, the image gets tossed. If my shadow is in the frame, it gets tossed. If someone is looking at me and smiling (like the now-vanished fellow on McCurry's rickshaw image), that photo gets tossed. Really simple: I "fix" things like that during my edit, by throwing the image out....

This is just how I want to work—I have absolutely no desire to set expectations or guidelines for others.

This is the same sentiment, phrased differently, as my long-held idea that a photograph is either a "yes" or a "no." If it doesn't work 100% for you, then it didn't work; and if it didn't work then it didn't work. It doesn't matter if it came close, or how much you wished it had worked, or how hard you worked to get it, or if you were just positive there was a great photograph somewhere in the vicinity when you shot it. (We all get our heads turned by those things occasionally, I think.) It just either works, and it's a yes, or it's a no. An addiction to reworking/retouching/"photoshopping," to me (we're still in my personal value system, remember), is like an addiction to plastic surgery: the more you try to correct, the more of an unnatural mess you make, until you've created a grotesque. Or perhaps I should choose words that are a little less loaded (!) and simply say that you're no longer drawing with light, so what you've got no longer quite fits John Herschel's fine old 19th-century word.

Bruce Haley's unretouched, unphotoshopped photograph of a wounded Afghan girl in a Médecins Sans Frontières clinic in Pakistan in 1986. Bruce took three photographs and then sat with her for a while until the doctors could see her. A photograph like this one either works or it doesn't, and its
connection to the real is where its power lies.

Of course, the meaning and uses of photography and its culture will change. New ways of understanding it and using it will emerge in the wake of new technologies and peoples' changed experiences, assumptions, and expectations. Our children won't have the same conceptual framework in place that we had. We're all taught to deal with a world that has already changed by the time we're living in it.

At least it's always interesting to watch those changes happen.

Mike
(Thanks to Bruce)

P.S. I still have more than 60 comments to add to yesterday's post, so please come back soon to check some of those out.

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Len Kowitz: "Mike, I understand where you're going with this thought and I think you're on the right track but why bother? You reminded me of an exhibition I saw at the Ransom Center in Austin. If my feeble memory serves it was an exhibition in conjunction with the Magnum symposium in 2013. One of the prints in the show was a 'work print' with the photographer's notes indicating the 'adjustments' he wanted in the final print. My first reaction to the picture was this is a piece that MoMA would fall all over itself to hang in a show of 'New Masters.' Dodge this 5%, burn this area 10%, all over the image. Photoshop just gives us a new tool (one that's easier to use) to do what photographers have always done with their prints. Thank you for making me think a little deeper about what I'm doing with my camera."

Mike replies: You answered your own question. Why bother? To make people think a little deeper about they're doing with a camera. Works for me. That is really the whole point of a post like "C-E-R": the goal isn't to change global terminology, it's to encourage thinking about what our own values and principles are and should be. Engaging with such questions helps clarify thinking, and clear thinking makes decisions easier and our practices more forthright.

It doesn't really matter where you fall on the actual issues—whether you conclude that you love photo-illustration and are going to stop looking at straight photography (i.e., disagree with me), or whether you want to stop at enhancement and keep wholesale reworking mostly off limits (agree with me). It's all good. The point is to become more clear about what we're doing and what our own values are.

Michael Perini: "Re Photographs are either a 'yes' or a 'no'...very appropriate for digital...either a 1 or a 0....

"I've always felt that getting it right in the camera (for me) was a very good discipline, and a worthy goal that helped me get more 'keepers.' But I do straighten horizons, and occasionally crop a picture within the 'picture' as I Correct-Enhance-Finish the work. I also tend to take far fewer frames than most others I know. It works for me. When I shot film, I developed and contact printed the roll and never excised bad frames, I just ignored them. I've been going through old negatives and scanning them and have found more than a few overlooked gems—so I'm glad I saved them. I do the same with digital, and occasionally find the same thing. All this is also effected by the kinds of work we do, and who we do it for.

"As you often say, it's a big house with many rooms. However there is value for each of us in deciding where we stand on these issues and then being true to that. Because the trouble always arises when our Implied Disciplines differ from our Actual Disciplines."

Posted on Wednesday, 18 May 2016 at 11:36 AM in Followups, Photographic aesthetics, Photojournalism | Permalink | Comments (28)

Tuesday, 03 May 2016

Mysteries of The King of Bokeh

Words and pictures by Eamon Hickey

This post is going to sound like it’s about photography, lenses, and real estate. It is not; it’s about something entirely different. The story begins yesterday when I read Mike’s post about the King of Bokeh (the Panasonic 42.5mm ƒ/1.7 lens), in which he footnoted a link to a real estate listing for “The Estate at King’s Point.” (This post won’t make much sense if you haven’t read that earlier post.) Mike’s story started some sleepy synapses firing in my increasingly creaky brain.

You see, my girlfriend, Donna, happens to own a seaside estate of her own in the form of an apartment in The Bronx, on the shore of Eastchester Bay. (Born and raised in New York City, she has never learned to drive, so when she decided to get a “beach house” for summer getaways it had to be located on a subway line!) Anyway, from Donna’s beach house in The Bronx, otherwise known as Apartment 2C, the easily visible shore about three miles across Eastchester Bay/Long Island Sound is…King’s Point. Two shores, visible to each other but widely separated. Wealth gaps. I won’t belabor the symbolism.

Huh, my sleepy synapses seemed to say. Wonder if “The Estate” can be seen from my girlfriend’s apartment? Given The Estate’s generous dimensions and lively architecture and landscaping, I was not surprised that I could find the place on Google Earth in about 30 seconds. Yep, pretty much straight across the bay from Donna’s apartment.

Wait. Didn’t I have The King of Bokeh for a month or two last year, when I was reviewing a Panasonic GF7 for the estimable fellows at Imaging Resource? And didn’t I use The King of Bokeh to take a picture I sorta’ liked of a Blue Moon rising over the bay one night that summer, when Donna and I were at the beach house? Search through Lightroom. There it is, big Blue Moon. Is The Estate somewhere in the picture? English major with evermore creaky brain now attempts very risky move: deploying trigonometry, however rudimentary, on a satellite image of Eastchester Bay. Known location of camera. Known horizontal field of view. Known object in photograph (Stepping Stone Lighthouse). Draw an angle in Photoshop. Holy smokes. I have taken a picture of The Estate at King’s Point using the King of Bokeh! Alas, the estate itself is obscured by trees, but the neighbor’s shack, a mere 15 bedrooms by the look of it, is clearly visible in both my picture and in the pictures from the real estate listing. Confirmed! (The houses are too small to see in this downsized JPEG, so you'll have to trust me.)

Now, let’s get to what this post is really about. How does a fellow born and raised in California end up in a Bronx (Bronx!) apartment one lovely but random summer eve, taking a picture of a Long Island mansion without even knowing it, with a lens he possesses temporarily and accidentally, but which will be the subject of a single posting that also mentions the Long Island mansion in a stunningly unlikely aside, and which was written by the editor/publisher of a blog to which the California boy is also a Contributing Editor? Coincidence? The work of the supernatural? Some kind of as-yet-unexplained spooky action at a distance? Or just another example of the wonderful, ineffable mystery of this weird ride we’re all on? I dunno, but it tickles me fancy.

As a bonus, I also have a picture of Donna (on the right) that I took with the King of Bokeh (at ƒ/2.5) when she and a lifelong friend showed up at a party in dresses that suggested some kind of telepathic connection. It’s ineffable, that’s what it is.

Eamon

Eamon Hickey is...well, he already told you, a Contributing Editor of TOP.

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Posted on Tuesday, 03 May 2016 at 12:47 PM in Followups | Permalink | Comments (6)

Thursday, 25 February 2016

The Click Affair

Remember Melissa Click? She was the University of Missouri professor seen bullying a student photographer at a protest in a video taken by another student. (It's possible the photographer and videographer were "baiting" the protesters hoping for just such an incriminating confrontation, but the fact remains that they had the right to make photographs in that situation.)

Here's what I said about her in that post:

...a more serious issue is the woman seen at the end of the video...she is Melissa Click, an Assistant Professor of Mass Media in the Communication Department at the University of Missouri. She's clearly seen assaulting the videographer (her blow jolts the camera) and then inciting violence against his person, asking for "muscle" to help her "get this reporter out of here." (Keep in mind the "reporter" is a student.)

Is this appropriate behavior for a University faculty member? Even when acting out some fantasy of being a neo-1960s lawn-chair revolutionary, or whatever she thinks she's doing? Doesn't seem that way to a lot of people. The video of her unfortunate behavior went viral, and has created considerable backlash against her.

This morning she was fired from the University of Missouri for her actions on that occasion, and for her actions at an earlier protest. In a "Statement from University of Missouri leadership," Pam Henrickson, chair of the University of Missouri Board of Curators, said, in part:

After reviewing the report and Dr. Click’s response, and, after extensive discussion, the board voted last night in executive session to terminate the employment of Dr. Click. She has the right to appeal her termination. The board went to significant lengths to ensure fairness and due process for Dr. Click.

The board believes that Dr. Click’s conduct was not compatible with university policies and did not meet expectations for a university faculty member. The circumstances surrounding Dr. Click’s behavior, both at a protest in October when she tried to interfere with police officers who were carrying out their duties, and at a rally in November, when she interfered with members of the media and students who were exercising their rights in a public space and called for intimidation against one of our students, we believe demands serious action.

The board respects Dr. Click’s right to express her views and does not base this decision on her support for students engaged in protest or their views. However, Dr. Click was not entitled to interfere with the rights of others, to confront members of law enforcement or to encourage potential physical intimidation against a student.

Mike
(Thanks to Mike Plews)

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Doug Thacker: "It's kind of delicious that this case centers around student photojournalism rights, and the perpetration of abuse against a student photojournalist, and that the perpetrating, professing doctor's name is Click. That's the sort of detail a writer like Vladimir Nabokov would add, and that a reader like me might both enjoy and think slightly contrived. But I digress before I've begun. (Always better to digress afterwards.)

"After reading several articles about the event, I watched the student photojournalist's video of it, both the short version and the unedited one. Each time I did I could feel the hair rising on the back of my neck and my blood pressure moving likewise.

"I can't quite convey what my immediate impulse was, probably because the language to do so would not be appropriate to your blog. And having not been there it's difficult to say for sure that I have a complete grasp of the situation. (I hate to be herded into an internet pile-on, only to find out later I was missing vital information.)

"But, honestly, it's hard to see how this so-called professor has a leg to stand on. Doing exactly the opposite of what any thinking person, never mind a university professor, should be doing. Where is the commitment to liberty, to free speech, to freedom of the press and the fourth estate? What was she teaching, Totalitarianism 101? Talk about setting a bad example. When next she appears it will be as media liaison for the NSA.

"The great thing about this, though, and perhaps the most surprising, is that the university fired her. From what I can tell she certainly had it coming. Sayonara, Dr. Click."

Mike replies: Yes, many people might not realize how difficult it is for a teacher or professor to be fired. The nail in Dr. Click's coffin might have been that in defending herself, she claimed she had never been involved in "altercations" before in her 12 years at the University—and then another video surfaced of her, at a different protest, getting in a cop's face and shrieking "get your f---ing hands off me." So that both indicated a pattern, and also undercut her credibility in her own defense of herself.

As for the "Internet pile on," the awkwardness for me is that I'm not reporting on, or analyzing, the entire larger situation. I'm just concerned with a small "kernal" inside the larger situation, which is that the student photojournalist was claiming he had a right to take pictures on the public Quad of a public protest, which he did, and he was being bullied, and was standing up for his rights. It's never hard to stand up for your rights when everyone accepts them. But it recent years (since Diana's death and especially since 9/11) photographers have been increasingly persecuted, and I think we need to continue to assert our rights, or we will lose them.

Posted on Thursday, 25 February 2016 at 04:14 PM in Followups, Legal and social issues | Permalink | Comments (15)

Thursday, 05 November 2015

Layoffs (and Other Updates)

Thirty of the 60 most valuable guitars

Calamity Lyt
Two days ago we featured Amazon's "Deal of the Day," which was Lytro's Illum 40 Megaray [sic] Light Field camera for $399, when previously the asking price had been either $1,600 or $1,300 or $600, depending on when you mean and who's saying. I just thought that for $400 it's a cool toy that some people would be interested in playing around with.

In a classic case of "nice work if you can get it," Michael Perini points out that Lytro has recently raised another $50 million based on the failure of the Lytro camera to win acceptance or gain any sort of traction. (That's like Kevin Costner ever working again after Waterworld or pretty much the arc of the fake billionaire's entire career.) Resource magazine online says that Lytro is moving out of "the digital imaging space" and taking its technologies elsewhere, for instance, possibly, virtual reality. (Or, if I may be allowed to so term it, the virtual reality space. Words are so satisfying.) And that in the business world this is called a "pivot."

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Lytro founder, executive chairman, and former CEO Ren Ng accepted a job as assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the College of Engineering at UC Berkeley—and Lytro announced that it will cut 20 to 50 people from its 130-person workforce. Some of them the same people, resourcemagonline implies, who worked 80 to 100 hours a week and slept under their desks. Hey, so the Silicon Valley startup myth doth not a mortal lock on riches make.

Lord of the flies
You'll recall also that TOP scooped the whole world not long ago by securing an exclusive interview with the Devil after said Prince of Darkness purchased the soul of The National Geographic. So you probably won't be too surprised that massive layoffs are occurring at the National Geographic Society too. The 180 employees who are being let go are part of the largest layoffs in the Society's 127-year-history, according to The Washington Post, which noted that "the reduction also will affect people who work for the National Geographic Channel, the most profitable part of the organization," adding, with a very innocent look in its eye, that "several people in the channel’s fact-checking department, for example, were terminated on Tuesday." Italics mine. Ooh!—Ooh!—You just got burned, Lucifer. I love that "for example," like the Post wasn't intentionally poking Satan with a stick.

But let's face it, it only stings because it's true. We all know that The Devil considers facts to be pesky, annoying things, like flies.

'If your mother says she loves you, verify'*
I came across this policy in my surfing yesterday, in an article on gizmag about the sixty most valuable guitars ever sold:

The following list of the most valuable guitars sold at auction has been compiled in the same way we have compiled our other "most valuable" lists (such as the most valuable cars, most valuable motorcycles and most valuable movie cars), in that we only count those sold at auction which can hence be verified as sold at a certain price by a reputable source (the auction house). Private sales don't count because there is no publicly available record of the transaction (and word-of-mouth tends to exaggerate a price).

Of course what sprung to my mind was photographer Peter Lik, who claimed not long ago to have sold a scenic picture of a slot canyon for a preposterous price, only he wouldn't identify the buyer or provide any hard evidence that the sale was real. I didn't buy it, myself. (Ya see what I did there. Love words!)

gizmag's policy is the best one, I think. Where records for the most valuable photograph are concerned, private sales shouldn't count.

Mike
(Thanks to Michael Perini and David Lobato)

*Old saying in journalism

Original contents copyright 2015 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.

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Chuck Albertson: "John Kay, an economist who writes in the Financial Times, once wrote that he was going to scream every time someone at a conference he was attending referred to so-and-so company doing business in a 'space' (when what they meant was a 'market'). Then he realized that if he did that, the conference venue would sound like the interrogation cells at Gitmo. So he stifled himself."

John Camp: "I have, unfortunately, a guitar habit, and the prices of true vintage guitars in good shape can be obscene, which is why I don't have one. A vintage '59 Gibson Les Paul in good shape will set you back in the high five-figures, or more. (There are rumors of a perfect '59 Les Paul for which the dealer is asking almost a half million dollars.)

"But the curious thing, to my mind, is why anyone would pay a million bucks for a vintage electric guitar or any mass-maket vintage guitar solely because it was played by a star. You could get (or even make on your kitchen table from pre-cut parts) a guitar that would be sonically indistinguishable from Clapton's guitars, for ~$300 (make it yourself) to $2,000 (high end Fender Strat.) The only additional value is the Clapton connection, and the Baby Boom is dying out. In thirty years, your $1 million guitar is going to be worth a few thousand dollars, much to the distress of your heirs, because nobody will remember who Clapton was. In the meantime, the million you're gong to piss away on a guitar could save several thousand lives in Africa, India or the Middle East...."

Mike replies: I was surprised that Roy Rogers' guitar made the list. Probably more people remember him than remember Tom Mix, but I don't think he's a household name any more. Except in a few cases, as you note, fame is fleeting. Although I'm guessing they'll still remember the Beatles in 100 years.

Keamu: "Not defending Rupert 'The Devil' Murdoch here, but having worked on the integration of a few acquired companies, one thing comes to mind: many functions that were necessary when the acquired company was independent (accounting, order management, possibly even post-production in this case) become redundant because the buying entity has its own, often larger-scale teams serving these functions. Indeed, these 'syngergies' are often part of the justification for acquiring a company. Left unsaid is whether The Devil already has a fact checking team.... The acquired company often ends up being the one which has to make the buying company's grand plan work...."

Posted on Thursday, 05 November 2015 at 02:19 PM in Followups | Permalink | Comments (19)

Friday, 09 October 2015

Recent UPDATES

A few updates from recent posts:

Scottsdale Run: John Sandford (John Camp) on the left and Ctein in the middle, at their personal appearance three nights ago at the Poisoned Pen Mystery Bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona USA for the launch of their science fiction thriller Saturn Run, which I notice is #8 on the Science Fiction > Exporation bestseller list at Amazon as of this writing. (My brother and sister-in-law both wrote me to tell me the book was featured by the Literary Guild.)

The photo is by Jeffrey Goggin, who added a nice signed copy of the book to his shelves. Ctein said there were four or five TOP readers in attendance, "...a remarkably high percentage. The disproportionate influence of TOP continues to startle me." For deep fans, the occasion has been put online here.

The Cubans: Speaking of books, Peter Turnley's gentle collective portrait of the Cuban people, Cuba: A Grace of Spirit enjoyed an extremely successful launch, with the press run, designed to last at least a year, more than 1/5th sold out already.

Here's Peter in the TOP Lightbox (that's what he dubbed my family room, unusual in that it has windows on all four sides).

DAC rec: One reader got incensed that I would recommend a DAC (digital-to-analog converter) for desktop audio that costs $465, which he considers silly money for a DAC. That's wrong; the Halide HD I use is keenly priced and a good value, and most audiophile DACs cost more than that—a lot of them, much more.

However, I was remiss in not suggesting an alternative for those who are interested but don't want to spend $465. If you're using the Audioengine A2+ (black, white, or red) or A5+ (black, white, or bamboo) desktop computer audio speakers that I recommend (I have black A5+'s), do try the Audioengine D1 DAC in preference to the soundcard in your computer. Amazon has a 30-day return policy, and I think once you try an outboard DAC you'll find it more than worth the very modest $169 pricetag.

An Audioengine D1 DAC connected to an Apple iMac and Audioengine's A5+ powered desktop speaker in bamboo.

Setup is very simple: on a Mac, just go to System Preferences > Sound > Output and select the DAC. Audioengine includes easy-to-follow setup guides for all their gear. For simplicity in the illustration above, a few additional needed wires are not shown; the picture illustrates just the connection of the DAC.

And by the bye, my Audioengine S8 subwoofer (black or white) arrived last night and is now pumpin' the bass from under the desk. Hugo's hilarious country(!) cover (with banjo!!) of Jay Z's hiphop classic "99 Problems" now sounds much more powerful. I'll write more about the S8 later.

And for those of you with somewhat more money than $465 burning a hole in your pocket, I'd recommend the PS Audio DirectStream DSD DAC. (Of course, that's for a full system, not for desktop.) PS Audio's Paul McGowan is a fellow photo enthusiast, and used to be a reader of TOP, although I don't think he visits very often now. He's told me that running his business takes up a little more than all of his time.

Poets and actors? Still speaking of books, also I received my copy of TOP reader John Sarsgard's fine book Like Musical Instruments: 83 Contemporary Poets. (Broadstone Books. There's still a courtesy discount for you (that is, TOP readers) in place; thanks to the folks at Broadstone for that). I'm enjoying both pictures and poems, and, as always, the presence of writing on the facing pages has the effect of slowing me down and making me look at the portraits more, which enriches them. The balance is nice—hearing the poet's voice and seeing his or her visage at the same time. I do wonder how the poets were chosen.

[UPDATE: See John's response below. —Ed.]

John's son Peter is an accomplished actor with a number of movie roles on his resumé. Perhaps John's next project could be actors of the younger generation, of all sorts; maybe he could ask them what their favorite movie or play is and why they love it, and use that for text. In any event Like Musical Instruments is good enough that it seems like John has found his métier, and I hope he continues in the same vein.

Alternate view: Film director Bob Burnett augmented his earlier iPhone snap of "Marshall's House," the Edward Hopper subject where he stayed recently, with this frame grab from a tracking/slider shot taken late in the day:

Here is the Edward Hopper painting again, for comparison purposes:

Bob writes, " In terms of spot-on accuracy, I was told by locals that Hopper frequently took liberties with what he painted to make them stronger as paintings, both in perspective and in elements within the scene. The biggest change besides the growth of trees that I mentioned previously is that the screen porch in the painting is now a formal room with windows. The painting includes a corner of the still standing shed shown here as well as a slight shift in location of the red house that’s visible in the distance."

Mike
(Thanks to Jeffrey, Dennis, and Bob)

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james wilson: "Any comments on the DAC included in the A2+ and A5+. The speakers can be plugged in to USB without the external DAC."

Mike replies: There's no DAC in the A5+ speakers. If hooked directly to the computer (or, say, iPod) they're using the computer's (or other device's) built-in sound processing, which is usually considerably inferior for music listening. The D-to-A conversion in the computer is a) typically very rudimentary, b) operating in a hostile environment electrically speaking, and c) designed to be "just good enough" for either earbuds or the very cheap, very small speakers built in to the computer.

Audioengine says the D1 offers "a benefit to audio quality" over the DAC in the A2+.

[Note: Thanks to Tom Noto for his corrections to this reply. —MJ]

You can also do a lot of good for the quality of your music by replacing the driver in iTunes with dedicated software such as PureMusic, Audirvana or Amarra.

Here's a nice intro by Steven Stone about how to start optimizing your Mac as a music server.

John Sarsgard: "The poets for Like Musical Instruments were mostly chosen by my collaborator, New York poet Larry Fagin. We wanted an assortment of young and old, unknown and famous, and representing all kinds of very different work. There are many more that could have been included, but we had to stop somewhere.

"Thanks for the followup, and the comments about my actor son, who spells the name Sarsgaard, originating with an incorrect spelling in an otherwise stellar review of a play he did years ago. Poets were easy to photograph; most were so happy someone was paying attention they welcomed me. Young actors could be different!"

Roberto M.: "Geez, that Hopper really needs to take a basic composition class and learn to process properly. He cut off the building on the left and he hasn't followed the rule of thirds. He needs to fix the white balance and get rid of that awful color cast. And he has way overdone the noise resolution—all the details have been turned to watercolor smears. There is no texture left on the roof or the screens, and there is color splotching everywhere. He hasn't fixed the blown out highlights in the sky or the weeds. And he definitely needs to lay off that saturation slider. He really shouldn't be posting pictures until he learns how to handle the basics first. *SA."

Keith B.: "Mike, I purchased the Audioengine D1 DAC on your recommendation a few years ago. Despite the cheap-feeling volume knob, it is still happily providing nice sounding music reproduction from my desktop computer stereo."

Posted on Friday, 09 October 2015 at 07:58 AM in Books, Followups | Permalink | Comments (25)

Friday, 24 July 2015

Kirkwood Sale Wrap-Up

Ctein reports that the last of the Kate Kirkwood print orders shipped out this past week. If you have not gotten your prints or a tracking number from the U.S. Post Office, please contact him at [email protected]. He says the post office software is being a little flaky about sending out the tracking numbers.

If you have not gotten your prints within 30 days of receiving a tracking number, please email Ctein.

Kate was very happy with the results of the sale. If you've gotten your print already, what thinkest thou? I've gotten the print I bought ("Road in the Rain") and it will be framed for the eventual TOP gallery.

Mike
(Thanks to Ctein)

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Posted on Friday, 24 July 2015 at 03:10 PM in Followups, Print Offers | Permalink | Comments (6)

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