The Online Photographer

An automobile shipping yard at Hitachinaka city in Ibaraki prefecture shows hundreds of cars thrown together like pebbles on a beach by the massive force of the tidal wave. Note the rows of cars halfway up stacked almost neatly, each one jammed on the hood of the one behind. Photographer unknown. Photo: AFP/Getty Images, from The Big Picture at boston.com

Dominating the day, concern for our friends in Japan. See the extensive feature "Massive earthquake hits Japan" at The Big Picture at boston.com for a selection of the terrible and amazing images that are already coming out of the affected area.

Picture number 40 at the link shows schoolchildren in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad holding signs that echo the world's reaction, and ours: "Japan we are with you"; "Japan we share your grief."

Mike
(Thanks to IG and others)

ADDENDUM: Thom Hogan of bythom.com is reporting (there's no direct link; go to his site and scroll down to the news item titled "Japan Quakes") that Nikon's Sendai plant is potentially endangered by the tsunami. Thom notes, "Initial reports said that the Nikon plant was not significantly affected, but almost certainly there are power, people, transportation, and perhaps even more issues that will directly impact the plant, even if it wasn't hit with the water." Nikon Sendai is Nikon's flagship DSLR plant, where the D700, D3x, and D3s are built. The anticipated D700 replacement and the upcoming D4 would also be manufactured there.

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Featured Comment by Steven Ralser: "If you look at cobbles in a river, you will see they also line up like this. This is called imbrication, and it can be used to tell which way the current flowed. (Bringing out the geologist in me.)"

Featured Comment by Dean Johnston*: "I'm out of Japan at the moment, staying in New Zealand, and arrived not long before the Christchurch earthquake here.

"Yesterday I just by chance Skyped my friend in Tokyo at the exact moment he came inside from being out in the earthquake. He was visibly upset, and described cars bouncing around on the road and hunks of the ceiling at his local train station falling in. I could still see his apartment shaking, so I had a live feed for the aftershocks.

"Right this moment I'm skyping him with instructions on how to turn his gas back on, as he can't read the instructions off the internet (neither can I, my wife's doing the translating). Isn’t the internet great!

"I know people who were in the Christchurch earthquake, and they greatly appreciated the concern and support from afar, and I know the folks who read TOP in Japan will too, so thank you for that."

*No relation to Mike, but a longtime reader of TOP who lives in Japan.

Featured Comment by David H.: "Although the quake was quite strong in Tokyo (I believe it was about 5 here) and was the strongest I have experienced in my 11 years in Tokyo, the damage in this part of Japan is relatively light. The last information I have is that 5 died in Tokyo, 9 in Chiba just north of Tokyo, and 3 in Kanagawa prefecture (Yokohama/Kawasaki etc).

"The worst damage was in the tsunami hit areas including Miyagi and Iwate prefectures. Sendai looks badly affected from reports on TV, but I am not sure I'd say it was 'leveled.'

"I had just gotten home at 2:30 pm and a few minutes later a tremor began. That's nothing unusual for Tokyo, but it lasted a bit too long and then increased in intensity and continued to increase. Not sure how long it lasted, but it seemed 2–3 minutes. Still, my neighborhood near Denenchofu/Okusawa/Jiyugaoka seems mostly undamaged. The biggest effect was the stoppage of trains which had people walking hours or buying bicycles to get home.

"I have seen several photos on Flickr which purport to show the skies over Tokyo filled with smoke from fires after the quake. However, most of that was clouds as it began to rain as far away from central Tokyo as Yokohama within 30 minutes or so of the quake. Although there were a number of fires, including a large gas tank fire in Chiba, they weren't large enough fill the skies of such a large with smoke over such a short period.

"The Tokyo area is still being hit with aftershocks—the strongest in hours hit as I typed this—but life in my neighborhood seems to have mostly returned to normal. Surreal considering the loss of life and tremendous damage in the northern parts of the country and the reports of a possibility of a meltdown at a Fukushima nuclear plant."

Featured Comment by Jim Kofron: "Sigma's factory in Aizu has been damaged as well, but no one was hurt in the quake. This comes from tweets from Kazuto Yamaki, Sigma's COO. Prayers for everyone dealing with this disaster."

Featured Comment by Joe Cameron: "With all due respect, this is not an appropriate time to worry about the availability of Nikon DSLR cameras...."

Response by Thom Hogan: "Everyone who's emailed me isn't exactly worried about product availability. It's a form of displacement, really. If you don't personally know any of the people in Japan, you know them through the products they've created or the plant that created them. Thus, concern about Sendai is really concern about the people that work at Sendai. At least that's how I read it."

Featured Comment by Ken Tanaka: "I have to loudly agree with Joe Cameron. Concerns of camera supply interruptions are utterly inappropriate and tasteless in the immediate wake of such a horrific natural disaster."

Mike replies: I think Joe and Ken are absolutely right, but I also think Thom's right. People need to bring big disasters back down to human scale. "Six million Jews murdered in Germany" is not a human disaster—it's an abstraction. Too big a number, and simultaneously not enough to wrap one's mind around. But The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank—that is all too human, intensely heartfelt, extremely relatable. It's the details that we can relate to.

It's just the sort of specificity at which photography excels, by the way—maybe "Bosnian atrocities" is not a relatable concept, but a photograph of a nicely-dressed matron of Sarajevo in high heels running across an area where she is exposed to snipers, her face a mask of fear and anxiety—that can give me a physical reaction, it's so immediate and so visceral. I find it difficult not to sympathize with her—difficult not to imagine myself in the same situation.

I'll tell you where my thoughts went when I read Thom's post. First, to the local park where I tried out John C.'s loaned Nikon D3; then, to my memories of photographs I've seen of workers in lab coats and hair nets at Nikon Sendai, men and women who might well have worked on the very camera I held in my hand—and from there to my own imaginings of those peoples' immediate and short-term crises—is my family okay? Is my home damaged? Who do I know who lives near the water? How can I help? Will I have a job to go to next week? Do I have electricity? Am I insured? Do we have food?

How that person might be experiencing the earthquake and the tsunami gives me a window into the event. I'm not saying Joe and Ken aren't correct. And I'm certainly not trying to lecture them or anybody else, don't get me wrong. But both tragedy and sympathy lie in specific cases, I suspect, not just big statistics. Talking about Nikon Sendai is a way of saying, hey, you and I know these people—they're part of our lives.

Featured Comment by Marcelo Guarini: "Last year, February 27th to be precise, we had a massive 8.8 quake here in Chile. Its characteristics were quite similar to the one that now hitted Japan. It was the last day of our summer vacations and we were at 160 miles from the epicenter. The shake was so intense that we were not be able to stand in our feet. It lasted for more than three minutes. Most of the breakable things in our summer vacation cottage were broken (dishes, glasses, bottles, etc.). Fortunately Chile is quite an unpopulated country, twice the size of Japan with only 17 million people, so there were only around 550 killed people, most of them also due to the tide waves. An advantage of Chilean geography, which also contributed to the small number of victims, is that the land elevates very quickly from sea level. Two days after the quake, we draw from our vacation place to Santiago, a 6 to 7 hours trip took us almost 24 hours. We saw a lot of destruction in our way. It was very sad. What I see now in the pictures from Japan is much worst, and makes me feel very sad and very sorry for the people in Japan. I really hope those nuclear reactors don't melt down, it will be horrible if that happens."

It's still a remarkable fact to me that we here at TOP have a number of readers in the Southern Hemisphere, where summer is beginning to draw to a close and fall is on the way.

Here in the old Northwest, however, spring is just around the corner. Spring, to me, marks the start of the photography season. Lengthening days, more accommodating temperatures, changing greenery. Last night it got down to the teens here—that's minus 7 or 8 Celsius—but the strengthening sun did some work on the sidewalks yesterday even so, melting some more ice, and I no longer need to turn the porch light on when I turn the dog out at 6:15 a.m. Most importantly, the more varied, frequently dramatic daylight of the springtime months make for more interesting visual opportunities. The air and the skies are more changeable for a while.

The month of March has gotten steadily more important to me as I go through more and more annual cycles. I've come to like the folksy old "in like a lion, out like a lamb" mantra—I'm always rooting for the lamb. We supposedly have a big storm on the way that might hit us on Saturday, so the lion has still got its hold on us. But the lamb is coming. I did see a kid walking from school in shorts and a T-shirt the other day. But the ground was covered with snow and it was in the 30s (about 0°C) so he was just being a tough guy.

Robins, before- and after-work sunlight, and kids with no coats on—the signs of spring in Wisconsin.

So–you ready? Got your gear in good shape, your cards cleared, bag packed (if you use one)? Straps on the cameras? Workflow in good trim? Lenses chosen for this year? A project or two, or at least some spots picked out you intend to hit? Some time cleared in the schedule for shooting?

My plans are to shoot 50 sheets of film this year with the view camera. But I don't have any ambitions for that work. That's just an exercise, to get conversant with the equipment and the materials, to start getting a feel for that way of working. I won't know whether I want to work with that camera seriously until another year has gone by. Meanwhile, I still haven't decided what I'm going to shoot with this spring. I have a few promising pictures from the little Panasonic that seem to be pointing in one promising direction, and I have the K-5 to get to know. And I now have several medium format film cameras, and have been thinking about doing some serious work with one of those. I need to get all that sorted out for this year. It's time.

Midsummer, for me, is nearly as bad as midwinter for shooting. Not quite as dull, and certainly not as dark. But not as good as spring or fall. Photographers talk about the "golden hours"—the transition times between day and night. But the transition between seasons is equally important as an opportunity for photography.

If you're not prepared for this year yet, there's still time.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Bryan Hansel: "I'm a little further north of you on the north shore of Lake Superior, and, although I'm looking forward to warmth, I'm sad that winter is leaving. This winter offered lots of interesting ice formations, open water and some of the best winter sunsets out of the last few years. It's been a great winter for Lake Superior landscape photography."

Mike replies: It's an interesting feature of photography that virtually anything any given person can think of that's preventing him or her from photographing—night, winter, underwater, war—there are other photographers who actively seek out those conditions for their work. Even cloudiness—that would obviously stymie an astrophotographer, but the Bechers, who we were talking about a couple of posts ago, did all their work on overcast days against dull, featureless gray skies. I even knew a photographer who did a project in pitch darkness (bodies in a darkened room with infrared film. Her camera had a visually opaque red filter on it, and she aimed her zone-focused camera by ear. It was good stuff, too).

Featured Comment by Ken White: "I'm a little South of you in San Antonio, Texas. We are already well into spring weather with some 80 degree days in the last week. My plan for this year is to shoot with the Fuji X100 as my primary camera and blog about the results. Not exactly a one camera, one lens, one year commitment, but as close as I can muster. Can't wait to get the little guy. Happy Spring or Fall as the case may be."

Mike responds: Sounds like a plan!

Having your cake and eating it too....

Mike

Featured Comment by Paul McCann: "Don't get it. Is this football related?"

Mike replies: Your instincts are good, Mr. Holmes. A Chicago baseball team was the first to use the term "cheesehead" as a label of derision for the fans of Wisconsin's baseball team, and, as with many such terms, it was embraced by those it was intended to embarrass, and has come to mean any resident of the Badger State, especially one who is a sports fan. Cheeseheads now wear giant, bright yellow wedges of cheddar made of foam on their heads to sporting events. Google "cheesehead" for some pictures, at which point the cake should begin to remind you of something. The "G" on the cake is the logo of the fabled Green Bay Packers, our sixth-seeded football team which went on a tear through the playoffs and resumed its rightful place atop the glorious throne of football yesterday evening. (Am I getting carried away? It's hard to know.)

SA*

We all have our preferences in camera styles. The country of Kuwait, however, has taken its camera preferences to heights never before seen in the history of the world! In a move sure to bolster the fortunes of the new class of mirrorless cameras in the small, oil-rich country of 2.7 million, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Social Affairs, and the Ministry of Information have all banned the use of DSLRs in the entire country by anyone except accredited journalists.

"We're actually not entirely sure how this happened," explained Mohammed Al-Shepwoop, the Ministry of Information's Infidel Liason, at a press conference for puzzled foreign journalists in Kuwait City. "Maybe it got a little out of hand. A bunch of us were just sitting around arguing about the Micro 4/3 standard, and somebody said he doubted EVFs would displace DSLR viewfinders entirely no matter how good they get—and then the Emir, who'd been real quiet, blurts out, 'Damn all DSLRs anyway! I wish everybody had to choose some kind of mirrorless! Micro 4/3, Sony proprietary, X1—people should take a stand and make a choice!' It kind of stopped the conversation. I mean, what do you say to that? It was probably just a moment of pique, but he's the Emir."

There is no word on possible punishments for non-journalists who dare to show up in Kuwait with DSLRs, but Al-Shepwoop muttered darkly about secret prisons with 386 machines, 80MB Memory Sticks, and unsupported ex-newsroom Kodak DSLRs left over from the '90s.

"I mean, it's not like every guy in the ruling elite is over the moon about mirrorless subcompacts or anything. The Minister of Finance, naturally, is a Leica guy. He could care less about DSLRs. I think his last DSLR was a 10D.

"As for the Minister of Information," continued Al-Shepwoop, "We think he's just disgusted with the bigs. I spoke to him the other day and he's like, what, do Nikon and Canon think they can rub the fat bellies of their market share forever? He's got a point. We're all sick and tired of waiting for Canon and Nikon to get off their butts with their mirrorless offerings. I mean, come on, already. It's like they think tomorrow is yesterday."

The Minister of Information, who speaks little English, had told journalists earlier, "We wait, we wait, we wait—no mirrorless, no mirrorless. Well, good then. No mirrorless, no more oil money for you!"

Al-Shepwoop again: "But now the Minister of Social Affairs—well, he's probably behind this when you get right down to it, although I wouldn't want to get beheaded for saying so. He's been a Panasonic fanatic from the get-go. Really, the guy's the biggest Panny fanboy in the entire Middle East. And that's saying something—we get some extremists here, as you know. But if you get seated near him at State Dinners, you're just going to Allah, 'Please nobody mention photography, please nobody mention photography'—you know what I mean? Once you tick his engine over you'll be hearing about things like GH1 firmware updates and video modes til midnight."

Kuwait has already also banned Cuisinarts, electric toothbrushes, the television show TMZ (quite sensibly), riding lawnmowers, belly putters, wall-to-wall carpeting—"and American so-called country music," added Al-Shepwoop bitterly. "Nothing past Bill Monroe, so help us Allah. I'd rather be buried up to my neck in sand and stoned to death than have to listen to some of the camel poop that passes for Nashville these days."

Asked if film SLRs are also banned, the Minister of Information looked surprised and said, "They still make film? Really? News to me."

Mike

*Satire alert.

P.S. Seriously now: I have to say I'm skeptical about these reports of a Kuwaiti DSLR ban, even though they're all over the web. They might be true, but they have somewhat of the smell of "internet wildfire" about them to me so far. I could be wrong. We'll bring you confirmation if and when a formal statement comes from the Kuwaiti government.

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Featured Comment by Dave: "Hmm. I can't seem to find the URL for Craigslist Kuwait."

Featured Comment by Davis Littlejohn: "You really have to include Merle Haggard."

Infidel Liason M. Al-Shepwoop replies: First you let in Merle Haggard, then Carl Perkins, and before you know it you're at Bobby Bare and "Drop Kick Me Jesus." It's a slippery slope.

Featured Comment by Jim: "Honey, I need to buy an M9 for our next trip to Kuwait because...."

I've got a bit of a "picture hangover" this morning...I don't know about you, but looking at large groups of "hits" like those National Geo contest winners we featured yesterday gives me a too-much-cotton-candy-at-the-carnival feeling.

Plus, I blew some shots I took. We had some extreme weather here—as I've remarked before, Wisconsin used to be north of Tornado Alley but has lately moved into it—and a cold front raced (at 65mph/104kph) across the state yesterday evening, kicking up storms as it went, including at least one tornado.

I saw something I don't think I've ever seen before—I was out on the porch at dusk watching the weather, when a bright white line appeared on the southern horizon. As I watched, it moved up the sky—rather quickly.

It was a contrail, being pushed along all in one piece, sideways, by the fast-moving winds in the upper atmopshere. I grabbed the camera, unfortunately forgetting that I had just been taking a picture of an LP and had the exposure compensation dialed way down. So these pictures didn't "come out," I'm afraid. (D'oh!) Sorry about that. Still, you can get an idea:

Only two minutes and forty-four seconds separate these two shots, so you can imagine how fast the air up there was moving. The contrail scudded across the sky like a wind-driven cloud.

The contrail moved all the way across the sky without breaking up, disappearing to the north, over the house. At one point, an invisible jet streaked along parallel to it, laying down another crisp contrail as it went.

Back inside, I switched on the news and heard something I thought was funny. The Fox News weatherman said something like this (I'm paraphrasing): "If you're in Walworth [where the tornado was sighted] and you get any pictures, you can send them to us at [email protected]. Not that we're telling you to go outside and take pictures for us. In fact, the opposite. We'd rather you stay someplace safe. Indoors. Preferably in your basement. But if you do take any pictures, you can email them to us...."

From your computer in the basement. Heh.

It's cold and pretty today, and no one was killed in all the atmospheric commotion last evening. As for yours truly, I think I need to consign myself to do a little penance with the instruction book today. Wish that K-5 would get here....

Mike

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Featured Comment by Tim F: "You saw a donuts-on-a-rope contrail. Most people think that it is caused by pulse detonation wave engines, which are supposed to power whatever the Air Force has to replace the SR-71. Nobody really knows for sure, except that those contrails often come with a buzzing sound and always seem to follow something going really fast."

Mike replies: Tim, here's a frame that shows more clearly the donuts-on-a-rope effect:

Featured Comment by Dave: "The donuts on a rope effect is actually caused by wing tip vortices. I have a close up aerial view of this effect on my blog here."

There's a new magazine out in Britain called Advanced Photographer. I'd show you the cover but there's no clean image of it at the website (growl. I wish I could lecture all PR people and rap their collective knuckles with a ruler). TOP reader Roger Bradbury of Milton Keynes, England, bought the maiden issue and says he's impressed with it and will be looking forward to issue #2.

Just a WTTW to those of you who save and file archives of magazines (as some of my friends do)—the first issue is usually the hardest one to find after the fact. I'm just sayin'.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Geoff Wittig: "While we're on the subject of collectable magazines, I would like to point to the latest issue of View Camera magazine. The entire issue consists of a wonderful portfolio of Paul Caponigro's photographs. Although it's labeled September/October, it only hit the shelves about a week ago.

"It's hard to exaggerate what a gem this issue is. Most of the 59 photographs have never been published before. The page layout and the lovely typography for the introduction are by Eleanor Morris Caponigro, one of the finest book designers and typographers of the last 40 years. The reproduction quality is excellent, up to current book standards. Anyone who appreciates Paul Caponigro's work should waste no time finding a copy before it disappears from the shelves. Caponigro's work is not well represented in print, considering his artistic importance."

Michelle Sank, Man Asleep on the Golden Mile, Durban, South Africa

Congratulations to Michelle Sank, who has won the Single Image Category in the British Journal of Photography's International Photography Awards, with this shot of a man sleeping on the grass...

...Wait, what?

This shot? Really? Maybe I should go skim that article again...let's see...powerful shot...surreal and disturbing...picked out from 338 other entries...microcosm of South Africa...wins a Sigma DP2s...right, 'kay, guess that's right then.

I'd like to humbly suggest we stage our own contest. The TOP Post-Exposure Reconceptualization Processor Award for the person who can come up with the invented caption that manages to make this nondescript picture interesting. I'll kick things off with two attempts of my own:

"M'bato Ngyui of South Africa demonstrates his celebrated divining technique. He presses his left ear to the ground for several hours and then advises villages where to dig their wells. He is paid in bread."

"The Monstunto Corporation, reacting to charges that it cares little for the welfare of farmers, has responded by developing a genetically modified turf that is comfortable for unemployed homeless farmers to sleep on. It drains well when wet and is said to be 'delightfully spongy.' "

(Note also the comments under the original article....)

Mike
(Thanks to Hilton)

UPDATE: I contacted Diane Smyth, the BJP Deputy Editor who wrote the article. She confirmed that the article was not a spoof and that the shot really is the winner (I wasn't 100% sure).

UPDATE #2: As a further indictment of the choice, the prize-winning image is entirely uncharacteristic of the work of Michelle Sank, who is a portraitist with a very definite style (usually full body or three-quarter-length, head-on color environmental portraits of one or two people, usually using light fill flash, sometimes a little foreground-heavy)—and one who very distinctly works in terms of groupings of pictures organized around sociological concerns. (I.e., not in single images.)

Here's a characteristic Michelle Sank shot from her website:

It's from a set called "Into the Arms of Babes." In describing the project she is characterically blunt about her intent: "England has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in Europe and this statistic is of growing concern. In this project I am exploring the current phenomenon of teenage mothers, and in some cases, teenage parents. Essentially these parents feel like children themselves, and it is this vulnerability that I am trying to convey. I am also interested in showing the relationship and bonding that exists between young parent and child as well as revealing the dynamics that are apparent between the mother, her partner and the extended family."

And finally, we need to retain a sense of perspective here: saying a picture isn't a standout single image worthy of an award isn't the same thing as saying the picture is totally worthless or that it doesn't have any meaning for anybody. The prizewinner here just isn't special. Fail. I think "period," although I sort of admire those with sufficient confidence to disagree.

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Caption by John Krumm: "A contestant participates in the annual 'worm whispering' derby. Earthworms are most active at night and can be lured to the surface with the proper call."

Caption by Judith W.: "After 37 years of her nagging him to tie his shoelaces, Samir suddenly realized what a smart woman his mother actually was."

Caption by Ned: "Trapped coal miners encouraged by voice from above."

Featured Comment by Ed Hawco: "Nice capture! ;-)"

Featured Comment by David S.: "The comments on this post remind me of the reaction when William Eggleston had his first exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art: 'It's a picture of a tricycle!  My kid could have taken it!'

"Your first mistake is to confuse technique with meaning. Perhaps you would have preferred a nice HDR photo of a sunset?

"Art is not about technique. The fact that it's a photograph most of you would never have even bothered taking doesn't invalidate it. It just means the photographer saw something you were incapable of seeing.

"Photography is not a 'difficult' medium. All photographs are, by definition, 'easy' to make—you just push a button. The value of the medium lies in the photographer's calling a moment in time to our attention—a moment we might otherwise have missed—and saying 'this is important.' It takes something simple and fleeting and turns it into something emblematic.

"Art is not about pretty pictures.  It is first and foremost about the human condition.

"The photograph is about murder. It's about latent violence, and the brutal, animal nature of human existence. Dostoyevsky would have loved it. Weegee would have loved it. It demands the viewer's active participation in parsing out its meaning and its narrative. The picture might as well have been taken 50,000 years ago—a photograph of a man and his most basic tool, a blunt instrument of violence."  

Featured Comment by Nick: "P.S. It's a loaf of bread, not a brick."

Featured Comment by Daniel: "What a crock of sh*t! I know many have commented already, but here's my local take on this image, considering I'm based in Durban and a photographer. This gentleman is most likely not poor; it's actually very common to see people taking a quick nap on the grass during the day. It doesn't mean they have no-where to sleep, they are just having a siesta.

"Seriously gobsmacked...."

Featured Comment by Andrew: "I live in Durban and often photograph on the Golden Mile. To suggest that this photograph is 'a microcosm of South Africa' is ludicrous. South Africa is a complex multi-cultural society historically burdened with extremes of wealth and poverty. This image represents none of that. He is not the epitome of 'poor' in South African terms—he has servicable clothes and a loaf of bread. If you want 'poor' then photograph the AIDS orphens living at rubbish dumps, but for God's sake give them a loaf of bread, they desperately need it. There is no sense of place, juxtaposition of cultures or fortunes or personal story. It's a sad reflection on the BJP."

Featured Comment by Mike Chisholm: "Mike, I'm not immediately impressed by this image myself, but aren't you—as a professional contrarian—even a little bothered by the strength and unanimity of the negative response to it?

"Think back to the reactions to f64, New Topographics, John Gossage, Paul Graham, Alec Soth...almost always 'Why, these aren't proper photographs! They're so banal!!'

"For sure, I'm not saying this is an outstanding photograph—it looks very ill-considered to my 56-year-old eyes—but it is very typical of what some thoughtful young photographers are producing, perhaps in reaction to what us oldies hold dear about our photographs.

"I think it's wise to try to stay open to the 'Hendrix Moment' ('Coltrane Moment,' if you prefer)—when something new arrives that trashes certain expectations of a previous generation. This may or may not be such a moment.

"I hope not, personally, but I'm reserving judgement until I understand what is really going on. I don't know about you, but my instinct is always to head in the other direction to the baying of the Flickr crowd...."

Mike replies: Mike, I'm secure enough to accept being part of the reactionary crowd if that's to be my role here. I feel I'm reasonably open to exploring how photographs work, and to engaging with work that doesn't immediately appeal to me.

Still, I'm a middle aged white man, for better or worse. Heck, I don't like piercings or tattoos either for that matter. That marks me as part of my generation and social class, but the fact remains that I am indeed part of my generation and social class. So, so be it. That's not going to make me pretend to like tattoos.

Back to the picture: sometimes bad is good, but, to quote a song of our generation, sometimes bad is bad.

Featured Comment by Stan B.: "I've finally gotten off the initial 'high' this photo first inspired. Michelle Sank (you wouldn't know it from this photo) is a very gifted portraitist. And while I can see some of the things this photo almost has going for it (e.g., the shape of the shirt, the disembodied hand, the muted color palette, the contrasting patches of grass, and the extraterrestrial loaf of bread)—it's still an 'almost' shot, one ascended from two of photography's laziest beginner genres, the sleeping student on the lawn, and the down-and-out guy. Do we really need yet another picture of a down-and-out person of color—even if supposedly operating within the realm of 'Fine Art?'

"I hope Ms. Sank uses the money to produce more of the fine photography she is so capable of...the kind that may not win her this prize, but that does both her and her subject matter justice."

Featured Comment by Lynn Burdekin: " 'Man Asleep on the Golden Mile.' I beg to differ. He is obviously just loafing."

Featured Comment by Craig Lee: "In the end, any contest comes down to the opinion of the judge/judges. Theirs is the only one that really matters.

"I myself was recently in a local photography competition where the 'Best in Show' was generally regarded as a snapshot by most of the visitors to the gallery. When I mention being in this particular contest and show to other area photographers, the first question I get is 'What did you think about the winner?' The next few minutes are descriptions of the photograph that are very similar to most of the reactions in this thread to this particular image.

"My response is that it was just one person's opinion and not something that I'll loose sleep over. There were many beautiful photographs in the contest's show that I would never have seen before, and I've met several local photographers that I would not have know before. Besides, the judge had to know what he was doing since I placed third in one of the categories.  ;-)

"A judge's opinion just doesn't raise my blood pressure all that much. Different images will speak to different people in different ways. I am constantly surprised when someone likes a photograph of mine which I thought was a reject. They see something that I captured, yet didn't notice myself. That is something that, to me at least, makes photography a most surprising art form."

Mike replies: That last paragraph is a great insight. A classmate of mine, Pam West, found a shot of mine on my contact sheets and convinced me to print it. I had ignored it completely. Yet if I end up printing a 'best of' portfolio of my own 35mm work in my new darkroom, that picture will make the cut.

Very interesting. Very mysterious.

In an interview at Photokina, reports quesabesde.com (relayed to us via 4/3 Rumors), Miguel Garcia , Marketing Managing Director of Olympus Europe, has confirmed that Olympus has stopped development of future lenses for reflex 4/3 cameras. Although the E-5 will not be the last 4/3 body, according to Garcia, Olympus will concentrate its future development on Micro 4/3. There will be a professional Micro 4/3 body in 2011, and the lower-end Micro 4/3 camera will be updated as well.

He mentioned that in Japan, mirrorless cameras have already captured 40% of the market, and he emphasized that Olympus has a big lead over some of its competitors in the development of these systems.

About Micro 4/3 lenses for the future, he said Olympus has lenses in development that will be "spectacular for all levels [of photographers], not just consumers."

Mike
(Thanks to Archer Sully)

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