The Online Photographer

Situational awareness, it's called. Yes, photographers have to be aggressive to get the shot—the stories are legion, from elbows in the press scrum to obnoxious street photographers getting in peoples' faces. But you always have to have situational awareness.

Frenchman Benjamin Bonzi, up two sets to love, was ahead in the third set and serving for the match in the first round of the United States Open Tennis Championships against Russian Daniil Medvedev. It's a tense moment; spectators need to be respectful. He nervously netted his first serve. Perhaps erroneously thinking the match was over, an as-yet unidentified photographer then ran along the edge of the playing area, where he's definitely not allowed to be, to get to a better vantage point. The Chair Umpire then said, over the P.A. system, "Wait, please. Not now! Get off the court, please." He awarded a do-over to Bonzi, allowing him to take his first serve again.

Hopefully it was the biggest "oops" of this guy's career* 

The opportunity was immediately (and predictably) seized by Medvedev, who, despite actually being a pretty thoughtful and analytical guy, has long had a reputation as a "bad boy" with a sometimes sour and dyspeptic attitude. He can get a chip on his shoulder and is occasionally not entirely in control of his emotions. (A television announcer in Sydney, Australia, humorously commented that Medvedev "has yet to be accused of being a class act.") Inciting the crowd, Medvedev immediately went over to the referee and began berating him. Egged on by Medvedev, the crowd responded with an unruly protest, repeatedly preventing Bonzi from serving. It was six minutes before play could resume. 

Medvedev then escaped the match point against him and went on to win the third set in a tiebreaker. Buoyed by surviving his close call, and with Bonzi perhaps understandably rattled by the hostility of the crowd (remember, Bonzi had done nothing wrong at all), Medvedev then dominated the fourth set 6–0 to even the match. 

It's worth noting that the referee's ruling was entirely correct and in accordance with the rules. His mistake, if anything, was that when things got out of hand he probably ought to have called in the Tournament Referee to clarify his ruling for the spectators. It would have created a delay which might have allowed him to regain control of the crowd. 

It's also worth mentioning that disrupting an opponent's momentum when the chips are down and the odds are against you is standard practice with a lot of tennis players at the highest level. Djokovic does it routinely, often discovering that he has some transient "medical issue" when oh-by-the-way things aren't going his way and he needs to disrupt his opponent's rhythm and the flow of the match. That's all that was really going on: Medvedev had an opportunity to create a distraction to get out of trouble, and he took it. Many of the top guys are detail-oriented to an apparently fanatical degree, even in matters like this, because matches and even tournaments can hang on things that outwardly appear to give them only a small edge. It's no accident that Medvedev is known for being an especially adroit strategist. His stamina and physical gifts are somewhat lacking, but  he's managed to get the most out of his talent, having been as high as No. 1 in the world. In winning his sole major, at this very tournament in 2021, he prevented Novak Djokovic from becoming only the third male player in history to win a true Grand Slam. I personally think he's going to make a great coach for some lucky player someday, if he chooses to go that route. However, he's been struggling for some time now, dropping out of the top ten and winning only one match in the majors in 2025, after winning 24 matches across all four majors in 2024.

And he lost this time, too. Benjamin Bonzi recovered and won the fifth set 6–4, claiming the match—remarkably, the third time overall and the second time this year that the otherwise little-known world No. 51 Bonzi has beaten the renowned world No. 13 Medvedev in the first round of majors. Sometimes, one player just has another's number, like when a higher-ranked football team has a losing record against one particular lower-ranked nemesis. The two players shook hands amiably after the match, too—no hard feelings; it's just gamesmanship. They both understand that. 

Of course, after the match, Medvedev childishly smashed a few of his sponsor's racquets sitting in his courtside chair. Hey, you're a grownup, now, man. (Medvedev is 29.) So grow up. 

The photographer who started the whole thing has not been identified, but the U.S. Open confirmed that he was ejected from the Bonzi-Medvedev match after the incident and had his credentials revoked for the remainder of the tournament. Always got to maintain situational awareness. 

Mike

*Ever had an "oops"? I've had a couple, but I ain't talking.

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

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Mike Plews: "About the first month into my TV news career I got designated local airport pool for President Ford's visit to Sioux City. I got caught up in the moment and wandered between Ford and his Secret Service detail. Did not go well, but was not ejected. Live and learn."

Adam Lanigan: "I was shooting photos for a long-running, but now dearly departed, annual local music festival. For a few years they were also bringing in a number of notable comedians as a fairly natural extension the rest of the festival, which was focused on independent artists from all over. Having really only shot live music shows, I was used to moving around the room freely to get better angles, but now I was shooting the headlining comedy show in a still small and intimate venue (~200 capacity). At one point, I moved to the rear corner and stepped up almost to stage height on some steps to get some clearer shots over the crowd—thinking that in the darkened corner and away from the bright stage lights this would not be an issue. This, unfortunately, drew the comedian's attention and I was the target for some immediate sour looks and a few barbs about being on their stage, etc. I can still feel the immediate heat and the 'Oh, what have I done?' of that moment—shifting from a being a moving ghost in the background to a full-on target in an instant. Luckily this was only locally embarrassing rather than internationally, but definitely that same situational awareness issue and lack of understanding of the rules of engagement."

Edward Taylor: "As a young newspaper photojournalist, I was photographing a US Senate hearing with my trusty Canon F1, and apparently the shutter was making too much noise. The chairman of the hearing stopped the proceedings and asked me to take fewer shots. Prior to that day, I had prided myself on my stealthy approach to news gathering. The feeling of being singled out in that chamber has always stuck with me, and it changed my future behavior as well."

Alex Buisse: "I shot tennis at the Rio Olympics, and there were very specific and strict rules about where you could shoot from, and when you could move. The photographer has been identified and said that he was assured by security that it was OK to move at this particular time. Shooting a first round of a major tournament has insanely complicated logistics, requiring to rush from match to match hoping to capture the important moments, especially the upsets, so it would be very understandable that the photographer wouldn’t have known what was going on and relied on security to see if it was OK to move. All in all, I am far from convinced that he did anything wrong!"

Mike replies: Others have opined elsewhere that Medvedev should have been penalized the point for raising such a ruckus over it. At the very least, the photographer must have found it excruciating that his mild faux pas was blown up into such an intense and extended diversion from the game. 

A sporting post, in honor of Summer—but first, Happy 4th of July to my fellow Americans. Formally called Independence Day, it commemorates the ratification of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, establishing the United States of America. Three Founding Father Presidents died on this day—John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both signers of the Declaration, died on the same day, the country's 50th birthday in 1826, and James Monroe, the fifth President, died five years to the day later. Curious coincidence. 

Is it just here, or are celebrations muted elsewhere? I haven't heard a single firecracker yet. Formerly the cacophony started in June, though it's been more subdued in recent years. But on to tennis.

Jack Draper. Photo by si.robi.

Upsets and surprises
Malcolm Gladwell wrote a whole book on outliers. Outliers are by definition atypical, and rare.

The UK's top-ranked male tennis player, Jack Draper, the No. 4 seed at Wimbledon in the men's draw, lost yesterday, to Marin Čilić, an unseeded player from Croatia. Čilić is a former major winner, but he won his single major more than ten years ago, in 2014; and he peaked at No. 3 in the rankings, but that was seven and a half years ago. His win over Draper was the first time he had beaten a top-10 player at a major in three years, and, at 36, he became the third-oldest player ever to beat a top-10 player at Wimbledon. It was, in other words, quite an upset.

Draper, however, joined 18 other seeded players in the men's draw (among 32 seeded players total) who are now out of the tournament. The same thing has happened on the women's side—17 seeded players are out, for a total of 36 in both draws. More than half of all seeds, men and women.

In the first two rounds, more seeded men lost in 2002: 20, compared to this year's 19; and the same number of seeded women, 17, fell in 2013 and 2016. But the total of 36 seeds losing across both draws makes this year the absolute outlier. More seeded players lost in the first two rounds of Wimbledon this year than ever before at Wimbledon, and indeed ever before at any major* tennis tournament.

The wily Djokovic, ranked and seeded sixth, now sees this as his best opportunity to add a 25th major to his record 24—even though no player, male or female, has ever won a major at his age, which is 38.** But the top two seeds in the men's draw are still alive. No. 2 seed Carlos Alcaraz of Spain (pronounced as though the "z" is a "th," despite what you hear constantly on English-speaking media), who almost fell during a five-set scare in the first round against Fabio Fognini, and Jannik Sinner, of Italy, the No. 1 seed, are both still in it. Sinner is 23 years old, Alcaraz 22. Both are in their prime: between them they've won all six of the last six majors.

Despite a recent three-month suspension, Sinner is by far the World's No. 1-ranked player, with 10,430 ranking points vs. 9,300 for the second-ranked Alcaraz. The amazingly consistent Sinner has put some awe-inspiring beat-downs on lesser players, for example his lopsided 6-1, 6-1, 6-3 thumping of Aleksander Vukic yesterday (Sinner seemed to apologize for his weak showing in the third set at his press conference), but he seems unable to beat Alcaraz, who has already won Wimbledon twice. Alcaraz is ahead 8-4 against Sinner in their lifetime head-to-head score, and has won all five of their last five meetings.  

So it's going to be a very interesting Wimbledon. But whatever happens, it's already an outlier. Outliers are by definition atypical, and rare—but then, they have to happen sometime.

Mike

*Now despicably called "grand slams," which they are not. A Grand Slam means winning all four majors in one calendar year. Only two male tennis players have ever won a real Grand Slam: Don Budge, during the amateur era in 1938, and Rod Laver. Laver did it twice, once in 1962 as an amateur and again in 1969 as a professional. Laver wasn't allowed to compete in major tournaments in the intervening years, because he turned professional and the majors were amateur-only until the Open Era began in 1968. The major tournaments are the Australian Open; the French Open, now called "Roland-Garros" [sic] after its venue; Wimbledon; and the U.S. Open. Tennis has taken to calling all the majors "grand slams" for marketing reasons. It's a sleazy swindle, which steals valor from those who have actually accomplished that ultimate feat. Among women players, Maureen Connolly (in the amateur era), Margaret Court, and Steffi Graf have won the real Grand Slam—Graf's is called "the Golden Slam" because she won an Olympic Gold Medal in the same year. Jack Crawford, Serena Williams, and Novak Djokovic all came within one match of winning the real Grand Slam, but failed.

Credit: San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive

Curiously, Roland Garros the man was not a tennis player but an aviator. He was the first man to fly across the Mediterranean, and became a French flying ace in WWI. He was shot down and killed over the Ardennes in 1918, only one month before the end of the war, one day shy of his 30th birthday. Garros was also a close friend of the legendary automobile maker Ettore Bugatti, and an early Bugatti was also named for him. Why the odd hyphen in the tournament name? Beats me. [UPDATE: See Yves Papillon's Featured Comment below.]

**Ken Rosewall won the 1972 Australian Open at 37 years, 2 months, and 1 day, which has been the record ever since. He reached the finals of Wimbledon and the U.S. Open two and a half years later, in 1974, at the age of 39, but was shellacked in both tournament finals by Jimmy Connors. Connors, for his part, was dominant enough that he might have won a real Grand Slam—but he was banned from the French Open during his best years because of his affiliation with a now-forgotten league called World Team Tennis. 

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

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Lisa s. Gorrell: "As much as I enjoy watching some of the seeded players, I also like it when an underdog upsets them. These underdogs could become tomorrow's winners."

Yves Papillon: "About hyphens in French. If it is a name, no hyphen. If it is a place, building or else named to honor a person, it takes an hyphen. Sorry for my frenchglish."

Mike replies: That's all right, it's better than my Englench. And merci for explaining that.

If you're in New York or within a tolerable commute, B&H Photo's BILD Expo is coming up on June 17th and 18th (a Tuesday and a Wednesday) at the Javits Center, the huge convention center on 11th Avenue between 34th and 38th in New York City. You can register for free here.

The two-day show features more than 100 speakers, mainly in the areas of photography, filmmaking, and content creation. While there are many side features adding value to the proceedings (portfolio reviews are one good opportunity), the main show under the big top is gear: more than 250 exhibitors will display oceans of gear on the show floor.

Thandiwe Muriu, courtesy of the artist and 193 Gallery

Among the scheduled photography speakers are Peter Hurley, a headshot specialist and Canon Explorer of Light; Christina "Mitty" Mittermeier, a global conservation photographer and photo-essay storyteller; Scott Kelby, photographic educator, instructional book author, and founder of the digital publication Photoshop User; YouTuber and Instagrammer extraordinaire Peter McKinnon; and Thandiwe Muriu, a Kenyan artist and fashion photographer who creates surreal illusions using vibrant kitenge fabric (African print cotton, also known as ankara or Dutch wax print), reflecting themes of womanhood and identity. That gives an indication of the great variety. Something for everybody. Advice from Mike (apart from "never give advice," which is excellent advice): be adventurous with the speakers. Don't just go hear people you know will be safe for you. Explore new things.

I've attended many photo expos at Javits over the years, and it's a trip. Two days is perfect—any more than that and you begin to get overwhelmed. At least if you're an introvert. (Gear is great, but in appropriate doses.) It's also a great place to talk directly to factory reps, marketers, and small entrepreneurs about all kinds of photo-related products. It's likely you might also stumble across something useful that you didn't know existed, which is always fun.

Mike

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

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John Camp: "Thanks for this. I didn't know. I will by in NYC from June 17–20 for another event, but will be sure to stop in to this one. Thanks again."

Mike replies: I owed you one. You suggested during my keyboard search that writers don't really need to type fast—we spend most of our time thinking, editing, revising, re-arranging and so forth. That insight turned out to be key (no pun intended) to finding my way to a less painful way of typing.

Thunderstorm

That was a bad one! Twenty-six hours without power or water. (My well pump is electric.) Power came back at 6:21 last night.

When I bought it, my house came with a "whole house generator" for blackouts, but it died during a long power problem at Christmastime 2022—many hours of successive brownouts. I wrote about it at the time. Fortunately, right around that time, they were replacing the power lines and the wiring poles (formerly known as "telephone poles") from town to my house and on down the shore road, and we've had relatively few blackouts since then.

I know little about electricity—I'm better with things I can see—but a battery backup for my CPAP has got to be in my future. A reader recommended this one, but the one-star reviews scared me. I need a few extra flashlights too. I have a friend who is a big fan of the type that straps to your forehead.

I got a lot done yesterday during the outage. Picked up my prescriptions and did some other errands, went to two meetings, read my book, did yardwork till the mower ran out of gas and then went and got more gas. Picked up my new shirt from Esther on Tuesday before the thunderstorm, which was very nice. I like Esther, and she did a good job on the shirt. I should have gone out photographing yesterday; I could have done that too.

In the dark was when it got lonely. You don't know how long the blackout's going to last so you can't be profligate with the charge in your devices, including the flashlight.

All's well that ends well
Human beings have many superpowers, and sometimes we're not even aware of them. One of them is "compartmentalizing," which I read about when I read a great long tome about trauma that was very enlightening. Assuming it isn't a real trauma and doesn't leave too deep a scar, when you have a bad experience or are in a bad stretch of time for some reason—recovering from an operation, in jail for 30 days, going through a nasty divorce (I wonder if there's any other kind?) or childbirth, being in an accident that doesn't hurt anyone but totals your car, moving, losing your house but not your life to a fire, enduring a serious dental procedure, whatever—it can completely dominate your life for a while—your thoughts, worries, your whole experience of existence. Maybe you're caught somewhere with little food for a week. While it's front and center in your life it might cause real pain or just be a pain in the butt. But then, when it's over, it's over. We put the bad experience in a box, stick it on the shelf, and move on with our lives. And before we know it, apart from some general impressions which can seem quite superficial in retrospect, we hardly remember what's in the box.

Superpower.

A power outage is a perfect example. It's not the worst sort of suffering, but you do suffer for a while. Usually, though, you're not in it alone, you have a high degree of faith that it will end, and you still have the power, no pun intended, to make the best of some otherwise wasted hours and to take further protective action if need be, like when I spent the night in a motel during the brownouts in 2022. Then it's over, and, after it recedes, it's like it never happened. 

So anyway, all is well. A big frustration that seems little already.

Mike

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

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I'm late in relating the story I promised about Bob.

It starts because I am short of shirts. I've become obese since I had all my heart trouble, and most of my shirts no longer fit. So I've made repeated attempts to buy shirts online and even in person, with limited success. I won't rehearse my problems and complaints, but mostly they have to do with cheap materials: the shirts I buy, even the supposedly good ones, seem to almost disintegrate. (See: "Enshittification," Cory Doctorow's American Dialect Society Word of the Year for 2023.) Then I got the idea to find a Mennonite seamstress to have a shirt custom-made. There was a trail. First I stopped at the sewing-machine shop, where the proprietress had a photocopied sheet that showed a map and listed the names of local women who took in sewing. I called a shop listed in Dundee, and got no answer, but I was headed to Dundee anyway, so I found the small street-side shop in what passes for Dundee's downtown. It was closed not only Monday but Tuesday too. But the principal of that shop returned my call that afternoon. She recommended another fabric shop, which turned out to be rather large, which I've probably passed a hundred times on one of my routes to town, without noticing. (Oops. Photographers, David Vestal once said, are professional noticers.) It turns out it is where one buys the things one needs to be a Mennonite: there were piles of brand-new black men's hats (Mennonite) and straw hats (Amish) for one thing. She too had a sheet with a map and names, but when I told her I wanted shirts she gave me the name of a woman who had a variety shop. "She likes to do shirts. She might help you."

Most Mennonite farms will have some small roadside enterprise advertised to passers-by. Most are farm stands, in season, or sell flowers or fresh baked goods. A few are variety shops, which are stuffed with, well, as the name implies, a variety of things. Useful trinkets, I would say, if I had to describe them. I have mainly a visual impression of profusion. I drove out to the heart of the country and found a neat little farm of many mostly 19th century buildings, surrounded by mature deciduous trees. There was a small sign by the roadside that pointed to a low, nondescript building with no street facing apertures. I walked all the way around it the wrong way before coming to the door, which was unlocked. Inside was...no one. So I went to the farmhouse door and knocked. Then knocked again. I had started back to the car when I realized I had a phone number, so I called it.

Presently a young matron (Oxford Languages says the word means "a married woman, especially a dignified and sober middle-aged one") appeared. Her name was Esther. She said she did have one pattern for an overly large person like me. I told her she could use the shirt I was wearing for measurements, as it was one of the few I have that fit; it was expensive, and I'd had it tailored, and I've had it only a short time, but it was already showing unexpected wear. (What happened to all the shirts I used to buy that would last ten years if not twenty? Where have they gone?) She rather briskly expressed her preference to work from freshly-laundered garments, so I said I would return the next day.

The next morning, Bob arrived.

Now, Bob has been here before, and has seen some of the obvious sights. We had lunch, and then I asked him if he'd be interested in a visit to a small Mennonite farm way out in the country. Since I had the errand to run anyway. He was agreeable. Esther was in the shop this time, and I gave her the clean shirt and she brought out a stack of patterns and began to compare my shirt to her pattern to see where the differences were. Bob wandered around. But we got to visiting, and presently it got out that Bob was a bird photographer.

Well, had we ever come to the right place. It turned out that Esther is a devoted, energetic, and apparently passionate birdwatcher. Have you ever had that experience when two people in a group will discover a common subject of interest or expertise, and the conversation will suddenly collapse into an active core around the two of them? As I stood by gently amused, Bob and Esther were off. Bob wanted to know all about the local birds, and Esther was full of information, naming species and where they could be found, local happenings in bird-dom, unusual events, etc. Bob told her all about the birds where he lived. He showed her pictures on his phone. As the two of them chatted animatedly about sightings, behaviors, unusual species, and all manner of related things that went largely over my head, I looked around and it suddenly snapped into focus: a decent amount of the items in the variety shop related to birds. Guidebooks about them, food for them, a rack of binoculars, items decorated with birds including some printed pads of lined paper with Esther's own bird drawings printed on them (I bought several, for another birdwatching friend), and so forth. 

Just one of those serendipitous confluences. But I think they both enjoyed it.

It reminded me of Bill Jay and David Hurn's lovely little book On Being a Photographer (paperback for $13.52  here, for Kindle and other e-readers for $5.95 here). If you had to summarize that book in a sentence, it might be: photography is not about photography; it's about whatever there is out in the world that you are inspired to take pictures of.

My new shirt is due three weeks from when it was ordered, and we'll see if the trail ends there.

Mike

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

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Long ago I worked at a place called Johnson’s Flower Center in Washington D.C., located in a sprawling old one-story department store on Wisconsin Avenue near Van Ness Street, south of the National Cathedral and quite close to downtown. It's long since gone, torn down and replaced with a sleek multi-story modern building. Johnson's, named for its founder Ray Johnson Sr., was a complete flower shop, with five full-time flower arrangers and an army of kids selling bedding plants in the springtime, and a complete garden center as well, with a nursery with piles of bark mulch and fertilizer bags and heaps of pea gravel and so on. It had a whole department for pots and vases and containers, one for houseplants, yet another for lawn tools and books about plants and gardening, a greenhouse, even a small gift shop, the space for which I remodeled myself. They really had it made in that location, but some developer must have made them an offer they couldn't refuse. I can't even remember how long I worked there, but I started selling bedding plants in April—I believe that was 1980—so I was there at least until mid-February of the next year. When bedding season ended I finagled my way into staying by becoming the carpenter and handyman. I needed the paycheck. Probably stayed a year or two.

This is the only photo I could find online of the old Johnson's Flower Center in downtown D.C. I built all those A-frame bedding plant racks you can see under the awning.

On Valentine’s Days we would stay open an extra two hours. But the boss and the managers went home early, leaving three of us young goof-offs in charge. Business stayed brisk for a while, tailing off as it got later. For the stragglers, we had a special treat. We would lock the front door and stand inside it, pretending we were already closed. Young guys with sober expressions on their faces would come up, try the door, and their expressions would change to alarm and panic. I'd tap my watch and shake my head. We’d let them beg a little, then relent and let them in to buy a bouquet or an arrangement. The later they were, the more money they spent.

This was juvenile, but then, so were we; I was 23, and a drinker, and a joker. We thought it was pretty funny at the time. 

We were supposed to close at 7:00, but the three of us decided to stay an extra 20 minutes or so because of the fun we were having with it. Right at the end of that time, a taxicab screeched to the curb on Wisconsin Avenue, and a young guy in a nice suit leapt out of the cab, hopped over the chain you see in the picture, and came running to the door. As I said, I think this was not quite a month after Reagan's inauguration, so he might have been new in town to boot. All three of us were on the other side of the glass. He was so desperate and distraught we let him beg and plead for quite a while because it was so entertaining. He acted like he was begging for his life, and maybe he was! He even offered us $20 each if we’d let him in and sell him some flowers. Twenty dollars was a lot to us back then—I started that job at a wage of $1.90 an hour plus tips. We finally opened the door, of course. We didn’t take his $20 bills—the boss, Ray Johnson Jr., would not have approved of that. 

Well, if you never saw anyone so desperate, you also never saw anyone so grateful. Turned out he knew when we closed, but had gotten distracted calling all around town for restaurant reservations and lost track of time, and then the cab got slowed by rush-hour traffic. He thanked us profusely and over and over again. He’d somehow forgotten all about Valentine’s Day, and we got the distinct impression that that wasn’t going to go over too well that evening.

We never let on that he'd been the victim of a prank, and I doubt he ever knew. At least the poor guy's relationship probably survived the evening, though, because he got the dinner reservations and he got the two dozen red roses in the end. Or maybe it was three dozen, I don't recall. He was motivated, I'll say that!

Mike

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

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This is a helpless and meaningless thing to do, but it feels callous to blithely carry on with no mention of it. Obviously we can't acknowledge many things that happen in the world at large. But today we acknowledge and express concern for all of our friends and their relatives affected by the terrible fires in Los Angeles.

I spoke to my cousin John yesterday, checking on him and his wife—they live near the Pacific west of Torrance. Thankfully there is no danger yet where he lives, but he said the stories there are truly horrible. Thousands of building have been lost and tens of thousands of people displaced. The fires have destroyed homes along the Pacific Highway, and the eastern part of Malibu is ablaze. In Palisades, with limited roads in and out, he told a story of people fleeing who got caught in slow traffic, and, seeing fire on both sides of the road, panicked and fled on foot. Authorities then had to send bulldozers down the road pushing abandoned cars aside to reopen the road. Today fires virtually ring the San Fernando valley. Pierce has not been heard from yet—Pierce (his first name is Bill, but he never uses it) is a good old photo-dawg and photojournalist who used to be a custom B&W printer for the professionals and famous artists in New York City. Given the location of his house he probably had to evacuate. I saw a report that actor James Woods was in tears when he related that his eight-year-old niece offered him her piggy bank to help rebuild his destroyed home.

A friend who works in public policy, in a different specialty, offered wise counsel—"Rule No. 1 for these occasions to ignore all immediate spin from politicians and pundits. Only after all the ashes have literally settled will it be possible to reliably sort out whether and where there have been preventable policy or implementation failures, and what might reasonably be done about them." Amen to that.

A well done BBC page offers perspective on what is happening, as well as many visual illustrations. It's called "In maps: Thousands of acres on fire in LA."

Our thoughts go out to those affected today.

Mike

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

Featured Comments from:

Gordon Lewis: "I was born in Los Angeles and moved almost 20 years ago. The so-called Eaton fire in Altadena, California, just north of Pasadena, has just consumed the neighborhood I once lived in. Old friends who once owned multi-million dollar homes in Pacific Palisades and Malibu are now homeless. This is the paradox of Southern California: the very things that make it so attractive can be destroyed in an instant by fires, mudslides, earthquakes, riots, hubris, you name it. Those of us who live elsewhere shouldn't feel too smug though: climate change is spreading the same seeds of pending disaster worldwide. We just don't yet know what form it will take."

William Lloyd: "As a native Angeleno, I am particularly well-acquainted with the areas lost to these fires in general, and especially in the Pacific Palisades. I have spent much time working in these neighborhoods; I recognise many of the locations we see in the pictures of devastation. I still have family in Ventura and South Pasadena, who remain safe.

"But, in addition to my deep sympathy for those who have lost everything is a startling personal realization: perhaps as much as half my output in my career as a professional cabinetmaker has been lost in this and other recent fires. A trivial loss in comparison to be sure, and yet...I have outlived my legacy!"

Mike replies: I'm sorry to hear that. There are many kinds and forms of loss. The emotional impact of loss (and grief) doesn't follow a rational hierarchy. Many people think it should; they disapprove when someone, say, mourns a pet more than a sibling. Jacques Lowe's photographic archive was stored in a bank vault in the basement of the Twin Towers. That loss was not primary when compared to the lives lost that day and the first responders exposed to toxins that later debilitated them, not to mention the trauma to a nation and the political turmoil that followed. For years it seemed almost disrespectful to even bring it up. Yet I still think of it as a pity.

JH: "Until 3 p.m. this afternoon, the evacuation zone here in Santa Monica was 3.5 blocks from us and the evacuation warning zone across the street. Fortunately, the fires have burned as far S and E toward us as they will but are headed N into the hills where we hike. The fury of these wildfires and the speed with which they spread is unfathomable—until you see it personally. (This was our second one.) In this case there were winds pushing the fire toward densely packed neighborhoods at 40–60 mph (70–100 kph.)

"Here some photos.

"Noon Tuesday from the corner of our block. The fire had started less than an hour before.

"About 4 p.m. Tuesday, view from the oceanside park 10 blocks from us. The fire was gaining intensity fanned by the high winds, headed for the Pacific Coast Highway and the ocean..

"View from our balcony at 1 a.m. Wednesday. The fire was about 2–3 miles away but scary. Hard to get to sleep.

"Today 4 p.m. from the same oceanside park as above. The fire has leveled most of Pacific Palisades and moved North but still burning ferociously in mountain brush in the Santa Monica Mountains.

"Incredible losses—5–6,000 homes, probably average value $4–5 million. Homes and collections of many artists. Lost: a number of famous architect houses, Will Rogers Ranch (where we hiked several times a week...we think the Eames House survived, along with several other Case Study Houses.

"Scary from where we live...."

Well, here we are, another year come to an end.

Wir werden zu früh alt und zu spät klug
(We grow old too soon and wise too late.)

—German folk proverb

A brief look back over the year that was here on TOP:

Way back in January '24, I expounded on two skillsets to optimize in order to carry a camera with you all the time. And we had a multi-way conversation about the implications of color in photography. I wrote about several photographers caught up in the Me Too movement as well as the problem of psychopaths, rapists and murderers hiding behind the role of photographer, in an article (very) inelegantly titled "Photographer Traumatic Stress Disorder, Or, Separating the Artist from the Art...Or Not."

In February I was adjusting to my new pacemaker and not feeling very good, and I annoyed readers by getting briefly obsessed with keyboards and belaboring the subject. Readers were right to complain; I posted way too much on the subject. We also visited the late Elliott Erwitt's country house for sale on Long Island (he also had a place in Manhattan), which gave us a glimpse of the great man's studio—but the link is gone now. I proposed the best enlarger ever made (film Friday before Film Fridays, except it was published on a Monday). The then-new Fujifilm X100 mark VI got IBIS—in-body image stabilization—which was exciting. It's one of my favorite features. There have been persistent shortages of that camera, and they persist.

Then, in March, Ctein made a brief return. I tried to give some examples of "punctum," Roland Barthes' famous term—there were several posts on the subject. Nikon acquired RED. I started a list of the World's Best Cameras, but eventually abandoned it due to lack of interest all around; those days have passed, I guess. And I made an off-topic excursion into all the off-topic excursions that occur on TOP. The consensus was, "keep TOP weird."

In April, guest author Tom Burke wrote a review of Paul McCartney's book of photographs from 1964, the Ansel stamps came out, I moved my office to the back of the house, and various readers responded inventively to the eclipse of the sun. A technical/aesthetic topic was "Shooting Wide Open."

May came, and we discussed the cinematography of the dark miniseries Ripley. Demand for batteries for Teslas affected Panasonic's bottom line. We reviewed Stuff White People Like, which, incredibly, called me out personally :-) . We talked about which old cameras we'd like to see reincarnated, wherein I cried again about the untimely death of the not-quite-perfect-but-tantalizingly-close Panasonic GX8 (I always had a soft spot for Panasonic's cameras).

In June, I wrote about the importance of word-of-mouth and creating goodwill when you're trying to run a photography business. The triggering topic of Leica was revisited yet again—we're hard on Leicaphiles around here, but they are a stalwart and sturdy lot and well girded to defend themselves. The Pentax 17 half-frame film camera arrived (again, the post fell on a Monday). In the arena of honing visual skills and techniques, I shared an idiosyncratic exercise about cropping. (It's really just a habit I have.) We tried to pinpoint the sweet spot in the Nikon Z range.

July saw an exploration of why it isn't actually the camera that matters. I described "Two Failures." One, the kind of failure that you learn from, that instructs you—the second, a missed opportunity, merely a loss. I still think about that missed picture when I drive past that spot! Curiously, though, the first of those "failures" turned out to be a shot of mine that a lot of people liked and that got a lot of compliments. A valued colleague from my magazine days, Howard Bond, passed away. A "Mystery Pic" was none other than the canine model for Buck in Jack London's Call of the Wild. History and literature both fascinate me.

August found me struggling with heart issues again, which, strangely, affects mood and outlook. I guess it is, you know, the heart, after all: not for nothing does it have such metaphorical significance across human history. If you've ever been truly "heartbroken," and I hope you haven't, you know that it makes your heart physically hurt. Speaking of bodies, we touched on the all-important but under-discussed topic of bodies of work. I reviewed a car, which is not relevant to the site, and a William Wegman show, which is. I was shooting a lot, which led to several posts. I got briefly enamored of the D-Lux 7 and 8.

In September we discussed faked photographs, photographs as gifts from the universe, disillusion (which might just reflect my own struggles in coming to terms with present-day reality in the medium), and, to complete the get-off-my-lawn picture, the decline of bands and guitar-based rock in popular culture. The iPhone 16 and a deluxe anniversary commemormorial [sic] edition of The Americans came out. I summarized in writing a video by Martin Evening. And took a picture of sunflowers. My best effort during that month (and maybe the year?) was "The Erasing of Arthur Rimbaud."

October and the months after it are pretty recent, so you might remember these unless you're really really new here. In October I was distracted by the purchase of a new computer; then again, everyone can, and did, relate. We discussed Leica books; Marques Brownlee and a $40,000 collectible original iPhone; and my favorite Macs. Former TOP reader and bicycle impresario Grant Petersen got profiled in The New Yorker. Also, I did a couple of real estate jobs for my friend Michelle, which was fun. (I don't do photography for pay any more, generally. I was a working pro for five years, and that was enough of that. But the RE experience was invigorating and rejuvenating, somehow.)

November was only a month ago. You remember—I went to the Nathan Benn show and saw inkjet prints of his Kodachromes. I also reminded everyone that old digicams really weren't very good cameras. And we cogitated on the subject of abstract photos. I visited Geoff Wittig in Dansville, and finally got to see his mancave filled to the rafters with photo and art books. Lucky guy.

December only ended yesterday. What was the best post from this past month? We talked about Realistic Minimalism and Synthography, discovered the Louis Mendes Test to identify street photographers, discussed digital film simulation recipes, launched "Film Fridays," and paused for Christmas. I got in trouble talking about a $6.2 million banana taped to a wall. We dissected a photo of an old building by Eero Saarinen, and along the way I learned something about Brutalism, not the least of which is that some people appreciate it.

And here we are!

Happy New Year

-

May 2025 be good enough to us all. Thanks for hanging out around here from time to time, and, see you again soon. Kind regards,

Mike

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

Featured Comments from:

John Bennett: "June 2024: I forgot just how much vitriol was aimed at the Pentax 17 when it debuted. I bought one in August, and rarely leave the house without. It's just plain FUN...and when is that ever a bad idea? Happy New Year! "

Kodachromeguy: "Thanks for reminding me about Ctein's excellent exposé on the absurdity of aperture equivalence. Gawd, that wasted an immense amount of effort on photo forums. But as long as the equivalence warriors think they take better photos...."

Jez Cunningham: "Thanks for your hard work—the 2024 summary neatly summarises why I love this place and visit every day."

Mark P Morris: "I don't like year-end reviews. I like this one very much! Very interesting recap of your work for the year."

I'd like to wish you and all our friends a warm and contented holiday break this year. I hope you are with loved ones and can set aside worries and concerns for a few days to relax, count your blessings, celebrate, and restore your faith, values, and connections.

TOP will close down for a few days so I can do some of those things too. Wishing you the very best,

Mike Johnston
In the heart of the old Burned-Over District
December 2024

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Snow on driveway, 2018

It's the shortest day of the year, least sunlight, longest night. Sunset here has been getting later since the 16th. On January 8th, sunrise times will start to get earlier, and by that time, sunset will already be 17 minutes later than it was at its earliest on Dec. 3–15.

The daytimes get longer from now until the Summer Solstice on June 21st. More light for photographers; more light for our eyes and brains and bodies. If you get depressed in the wintertime, try a light bank. Try to get up at or before dawn and sit by your light bank for two hours or so to start the day. It helps with seasonal depression. I go outside first thing every day and, if the sky is blue, I look at it for a while. Blue light is a good way to start the day. My late dear brother Scott worked as an intern and assistant for Norman E. Rosenthal at the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) for a year. Dr. Rosenthal first described seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and developed light therapy as a means of alleviating the Winter Blues. Scott used to describe to me the extreme cases who were in inpatient care at NIMH and boy, can SAD ever get extreme. He described one guy who got manic in the summertime, sleeping only a few hours a day, but in the wintertime had to have his bed right next to the bathroom door, because otherwise a trip to the bathroom would seem so overwhelming that he'd helplessly pee the bed. We all suffer a little from the winter blues, part of our natural adaptation to the planet, but there are degrees of it. Don't let yourself get too down.

It gets better from here on out!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

A plea: I don't usually beat my drum too hard, but desperate times call for...no, I'm just riffing, I'm not desperate. But, if you are going to buy stuff this Christmas / Hanukkah (they overlap this year), would you please consider doing some shopping through my links? It helps out a lot. To get to B&H Photo you can click on any link to them (and I'll put links at the bottom of every post from now till Christmas break), and they're lenient—you don't have to do anything special for them to give me credit for it. For the big A-word, I put links on specific products, for example, recently, Kodachrome Memories or the new deluxe edition of Los Angeles Spring. After using any of those links, you can buy anything from any department, but you have to both put it into your cart and also complete the order on the same visit. If you put something in your cart or on your Wish List, then return at a later time to purchase it, they don't give me credit for it—even if both visits originated from TOP links.

A thanksgiving, small t: And thanks to all of you who help with this little enterprise in any way: by donating monthly through Patreon, by using my links, by sending cash gifts, by sending gifts in kind, by taking the time to write comments, by sending tips privately, by advising me, or simply by visiting and reading. You are the reason I have done this for 19 years, and you are also the reason I've been able to keep going.

A reminder—if you're signing up for Patreon, don't do it through the Apple Store's Patreon app. If you do, they will take 30%, because, well, where does a bear sleep in the woods? Answer: anywhere it wants to. If you use the Android app or go directly to the website, the bear's surcharge won't affect your contribution.

Thanksgiving, capital T: I don't know if you'll be able to read this through whatever paywall is in force, but I really like Ellen Cushing's idea, in The Atlantic: she proposes that we in the USA should emulate our Canadian neighbors by moving Thanksgiving to October. She proposes the Thursday before Canadian Thanksgiving. In addition to all the sensible reasons she cites, I think it would also help preserve Thanksgiving, which is being swamped by Christmas. It used to be that retail businesses gave their employees Thanksgiving off so they could feast with their families in peace; no longer. It used to be that Christmas decorating and Christmas shopping didn't start until the day after Thanksgiving, eventually named "Black Friday" because it was the day that businesses went from the red (negative earnings for the year) to black (positive profit for the year), at least symbolically. That isn't observed any more either. Traditionally, Black Friday was actually on that one specific Friday instead of smothering many days and even weeks surrounding it. I say we should reinstate those traditions but also give businesses what they want by allowing the Christmas run-up to start earlier—they're doing it anyway, and it's not like we can stop them.

Big history: I have two video recommendations for your consideration. The first is is a tiny kernal of dense information that expands hugely in only 18 minutes—David Christian's "The history of our world in 18 minutes." The picture from the perspectives of physics might not be the final world—we continue to learn—but it suitably blows my mind every time I'm given a glimpse of it. The Big Bang still seems improbable. Curious that nothing in the video or the description tells us who David Christian is.

Kenneth Tanaka, Chicago, June 2024

The second one is more on topic: Beau Lotto's demonstration of how we evolved to see in context, "Optical illusions show how we see." Again, nothing about the presenter, and this one, although it seems to originate from TED, has a strange unrelated little tail about traffic appended to the end—why? I don't pretend to know the mysterious ways of YouTubery. This one sent me off down a long trail of meditating on just how many contextual illusions we rely on to render glimpses of the visual world on two-dimensional little rectangles of paper or glowing video screens. It's very sophisticated when you think about it, and yet we're insanely good at it. It's amazing that in photographs we can so readily see traces of the four-dimensional real world in such detail, and relate it to the storehouse of sights in our real experience. Fun video, at the very least.

Happy Thanksgiving! I will be posting tomorrow too, since it's also The Online Photographer's 19th birthday.

Mike

B&H Photo

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Zyni: "I liked the David Christian video.

"You are right that the big bang seems implausible. One way to see how weird it is is to think of another implausible thing: in the 1960s, Roger Penrose showed a remarkable thing: that the collapse of stars to form black holes was inevitable, and that this collapse continues until...well, really until the laws of physics we understand no longer hold in the incredibly fierce conditions. This was a truly remarkable result, and I think very unexpected: before this people had assumed that black holes were just a toy thing that never really would happen.

"Well, Stephen Hawking then did a brilliant trick: he took Penrose's theorem and showed that you could make a modified version of it which works backwards, and applies to the whole universe (this does not mean the universe is a black hole run backwards: it is more subtle than this). So if you run the whole universe backwards you inevitably get to a point where things become so fierce that the laws of physics we understand no longer work. Which is the big bang.

"We physicists like to pretend that this was 'obvious' but that is not true: it seems deeply implausible...but we have learned that God does not care about what we humans think is implausible, merely what must be.

"(David Christian makes one small [but actually very big] error: he says the universe was initially very small ('smaller than an atom'). This is not what we currently think most likely. As best we can tell the universe is infinite in space: we are mot certain of this but measurements we can do show that is at least very close to the conditions needed for it to be infinite. Is a slight get-out here: it could be finite but wrapped around on itself. This case seems unlikely but people do look for evidence that it might be true.

"If the universe is infinite in space it was infinite in space right back to the big bang. This becomes almost impossible to visualise! However, what is true is that the great majority of this infinite space is 'outside our past light cone' and the part of the universe we can see the history of was indeed very small close to the big bang.)"