Accidental Art

We'd like to know a little bit about you for our files
We'd like to help you learn to help yourself.
Look around you all you see are sympathetic eyes,
Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home.

 - "Mrs. Robinson" by Simon and Garfunkel

I was reminded when a clip of "Mrs. Robinson" played on the radio of how impressed I am with the lyricism of Paul Simon's work.  This first occurred to me when "Graceland" came out in 1986.  It's not that I was unfamiliar with his stuff before (How could anyone who lived in the 60s and 70s not be?) but that I first noticed how finely built the words in his songs were.

It's not that they are musical, or even poetic.  They seem to rise out of normal conversation, but in those moments of golden, accidental beauty that occasionally happens, phrases that flow so easily -- even when they are commonplace, or seem commonplace -- that they become musical.  It was while listening to the songs in "Graceland" that I first thought the Simon was actually an incredible writer of short stories who happens to set them to music.

Not to take anything from Simon -- I'm sure he labors mightily over ensuring just the right word lands in just the right place -- but this makes me think of what I've come to call "accidental art."  In my case, it usually comes in the form of things that have fallen in a perfect place, things that I find it hard, if not impossible, not to photograph.  This is one of the reasons I'm never to be seen without a camera, if not several of them.

Ironically, many of the pictures I make in these circumstances are done with the iPhone, because it's not only convenient but the right medium for the ephemeral purpose for me of many of these pictures.  I shoot 'em, put them on Facebook, and move on.  Others, however, are more permanent and either get shot with the Leica or double shot.

These columns, pulled off and stacked in front of a house undergoing renovation, were an irresistible subject to me for weeks, and I'm sure I will feel delight in their rediscovery when I finally process the film.

But the point here is: It's all accidental.  These things weren't placed or sculpted or planned.  They just fell where they did.  The art comes in the seeing of it, and then the capture.  Paul Simon could have overheard all those phrases in "Mrs. Robinson,"  but were they in that order?  And how the music slides with and compliments them ...

Tumbling Along

So I got on Tumblr some time ago because a friend pointed out that all the "experts" were saying it was The Next Big Thing, and if you wanted to stay current, you had to be on it.  Problem was, I wasn't quite sure what it was.

Was it a blog?  Was it like Facebook (which was The Last Big Thing then)?  Pinterest was yet to come, but that answered another thing that it wasn't.

Anyway, I built my site nonetheless (and posted a few lamentations that I didn't know what to do with it) and let it lay for a while.

Now, it seems to have matured into its own, and I have a sense of what it is, even if I don't think I do that well.  Others do, like Modern Hepburn or The Fuller View, both more photography based and so obviously more interesting to me.

And while some are interesting because of everything from odd subject matter to layout, I wanted to write about the two above in particular, because I think they show what to me is an interesting style (perhaps a new trend?) in photography. 

The pictures are of pleasant things, clean and somewhat nostalgic of good times gone by, but clearly current, indicating that the life they show is still attainable.  They are somewhat reductionist, showing only essential fragments of the whole, either saying that this perfect detail is what makes the moment, or perhaps that they don't need to tell the whole story.  Like a Zen poem, it's delivering just enough for the viewer to build all the rest.

The bee emerging
from deep within the peony
departs reluctantly 

                                              - Basho

The sun shines in the pictures, no laundry waits to be done, no garbage needs to be taken out.  The people are not idle, but they are not preparing to rush out to dreary jobs.  They are very satisfying images, little moments of peace and wish fulfillment, successors perhaps to Slim Aarons' pictures of the debutantes and aristocrats of the 1950s.  They seem both new and old at the same time; I struggle to articulate what attracts me to these images.

It's just that I sense something attractive and interesting ...

... And Also

I seem to have an ever expanding list of websites that I want to point out or comment upon, and I keep putting off doing it because I try to do the collections all at once, or in a theme, but I think I need to just start doling these out as I get it done.

There is, for example, this warning about the inevitable creative and work plateau everyone will face.

"Society has a funny way of reminding people that there’s this order for things, and at this point your Facebook wall is exploding with friends’ puppies and houses and engagements and marriages and babies. And you start asking yourself… what have you done with your life?!"

Next, I'm always amused by and interested in a blog post that gets your attention cleverly, and delivers by being more clever, like this one.

"Let’s do some math," Etienne Schottel writes.  "What can we get for $2,800 (which is quite something I must admit)?

"A) The Sony RX1 killer-camera-that-fits-in-your-pocket-alas-not-in-my-French-undersized-pockets. ...

"B) A Leica lens which is so sharp that it is considered as a weapon in some countries.

"C) A one-year flight ticket which will offer you so many good moments and pictures that you’ll never regret it.

"Yes, my answer is C. This is the price of the ticket (for one person) we paid for our one-year trip. But, you can change the amount for something smaller, even $300 my answer remains “C”. I will always prefer using my money to go somewhere I don’t know that any new camera and that is my Grail. Period (I love them)."

Good point, in its way.  As I've blogged a couple times before, and mentioned on The Guy with the Leica,  truly the best camera is the one you have, and having something decent while in an interesting place is a good combination.

But maybe not a great one.

I think he misses two points: That the camera used can affect the picture, and there are pictures everywhere.

I have blogged before about my love of the Leica M and in particular the ones I own.  As I've said before, the M style camera just makes me see things differently, basically with more awareness.  Another, more esoteric way I have put it: The M makes it clear to me what a 50mm lens is for.

However, what's more important, I think, is the idea of putting your head in the right place to shoot.  Why is it that things are more interesting and somehow more visual when you're traveling?  Why is a small Chinese child in Beijing photogenic, but your neighbor's toddler cute, but just another kid?  Try looking at your world as a visitor.  It might actually surprise you what you now see and what becomes interesting.

Finally, there's this cri de coeur by a wedding photographer.   She relates how she made herself crazy looking at other photographers' work, but then just stopped cold turkey.

"Instead? I read books. I listened to music. I drank whiskey with my friends and had impromptu dance parties in my living room. I binge-watched TV shows and ate entire boxes of doughnuts. I took road trips, stayed up all night, slept in all day. I snuggled my husband, my sisters, my nephews. I wrote and drew and sewed and took pictures with my iPhone — my iPhone, for heaven’s sake!
 
"In short: I lived. And I discovered that if I would just live my life and be a person, if I would commune with other people who live and love and ARE, inspiration grew. It blossomed out of me like herbs in the windowsill, taller overnight, greener by the hour.
 
"And instead of incessantly reminding myself of all the ways in which I fell short — the money I wasn’t earning, the gear I wasn’t acquiring, the pictures I didn’t even know how to make — I stepped back and saw that wedding photography — this beautiful, terrible, exhausting, wonderful thing I called my job — was really a direct path to communion."

It's a good lesson, I think, for all of us.  We became what we are, and became good at what we do,  not because of imitation, but because of us and all the learning and studying and various influences of all the things that interest us.  You don't have to "find your joy," it's right there, where you put it down.

Editing

For the longest time, I've thought it would be interesting to do a book on the world's top news photographers.  Each one would get two pages: on the left, a portrait (by me, naturally), a paragraph or two of text explaining who it is and why the photographer rates being considered in the "top," and a small print of his or her most famous picture.  Then, on the right, would be the photographer's favorite picture from his portfolio, along with a quote explaining why.

I think this would show two things: That a photographer's favorite picture is rarely the one others consider his best, and that photographers are usually bad editors of their own work.

Does this say "Beauty" to you?

Recently, on my "phlog," The Guy with the Leica, I posted three pictures I chose to send to a contest with the theme of Beauty.  Aside from having to plow through a lot of archives (the only requirement was that the picture was shot with a Leica camera), it took a surprising amount of thought and time to pick the pictures I sent in.

Personally, I hate editing my own stuff, especially if I have to do it right after the shoot.  I think I'm still too "in the moment," remembering what happened and what I did to make the picture, rather than simply looking at it as a photo, the way a viewer who hadn't been there would.  Often, I am mystified when people react strongly to a picture I have shot recently -- either positively or negatively.  After some time, I can feel a bit better about it, but things still carry memories and meanings for me that the uninformed viewer would not get.  Better to let a good editor come at it cold.

I have this problem with writing too, which may be another reason I have trouble blogging as often as I should.  I hate all my writing initially, then grow to tolerate it as time passes.

Wandering the Internet ...

"Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography."

 - George Eastman

I have a nascent lecture that I noodle with (noodling being that thing where you think about it from time to time, but don't actually write anything down) that explains that all photography is nothing but light.  I'm still working on how to make it comprehensible and even a little profound, so you'll have to forgive this over-short, lunken version, but basically it revolves around the fact that, in physics, things don't really have colors.  Rather, they absorb all of the light rays of all the other colors in white light, and just reflect the wavelength of the color we perceive them as.  So a red ball isn't red as a state of being, but is something that reflects red light to your eye.

By extension, by the time you get to photography, you're not really making pictures of things, but rather you are capturing the light that reflected off those things.  Pictures aren't of things, but of light.

Get it?

Yeah, I'll keep working.

Anyway, over the past months I've been saving some websites on photography and other things that seemed worthy of mention.

One is a blog by Cheri Frost explaining that, like any profession, photography can't be learned through one simple, miraculous training session.  "Instead of allowing Experience to teach, the industry has gone another route: they have replaced Experience and her years of wisdom with Mr. Fast Track," she writes. "Oh, he’s smooth, real smooth, and hip and trendy. He’s like the photography equivalent of Weight Loss Pills-guaranteed to work overnight. He’s got answers for everything AND a workbook, forum, DVD and/or downloadable e-book."

This is a variant on something I've ranted about before, especially when a couple of these charismatic session people were accused of plagiarism (and the reporter writing on it completely missed the point -- this point), 

Meanwhile, Mark Manson notes: "In our instant gratification culture, it's easy to forget that most personal change does not occur as a single static event in time, but rather as a long, gradual evolution where we're hardly aware of it as it's happening."  He's talking about the things he learned in his 20s that he wishes other 20-somethings would know before that special period of life slips by, and I couldn't agree more.

And while you're learning those lessons, there's also this.  Normally, I find these things overly technical, or reflections of the sort of flashy, pointless stuff the Superstar Photo Seminar people mentioned above do, but Jeff Meyer's suggestions are all good ones ... and not coincidentally, I think, resemble what you would have to do if you used an all-manual, film camera for a while.

Now I guess I have to get on that "post a photo a day" thing, maybe over at Guy with a Leica.

 Avedon portraits of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in 1976 (left) and 2004.

Finally, I find Avedon's work interesting in a paradoxical way.  Part of me thinks it's brilliant -- simple, unadorned, straight-on shots in front of a plain, featureless background; the subject stands alone.  Part of me thinks it's a rather simplistic, easily imitated trick, overdone even by Avedon.  I have that feeling about others who have "trademark" styles (like William Wegman or Joyce Tenneson), but then again, if it works ...

Anyway, there was an interesting little blog in the New Yorker about Avedon's efforts to make a portrait of the recently deceased author Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  I wonder what it was he so disliked about the 1976 picture ...




RANDOM BONUS THOUGHT: Some April Fools Day, the cable company should list the "80s Porn Channel," which would be a signal that never descrambles.

The Miracle of Digital

David Turnley writes the other day on his Facebook page about moving to digital:

Happy Birthday to Apple MacIntosh and the Digital Age.

In 2003, I spent a month mounting a clandestine mission to be smuggled from Turkey across the Tigres and Euphrates Rivers in the middle of winter across white water rapid rivers the size of the Mississippi in a truck tire inter tube by Peshmarga Guerrillas, to avoid being “embedded”, to cover the war in Iraq. I was almost killed twice. For the first time, covering this war, I was working with a digital camera. On one of these first days, shells had landed in a Kurdish village killing members of a family. With my translator, and an ex- English Special Forces soldier who I was accompanied with while on assignment for CNN we rushed to the scene and made pictures. As we drove down a country road, at the end of this dramatic day, I downloaded a flash card. Suddenly, with the sun setting, my Apple laptop computer, with the northern Iraqi mountains looming in front of me through the windshield, began to play my photographs as a slide show, to Beethoven, the default that the computer was set to in itunes. I began to cry- the years around the world- that I would never see my work for weeks after I had shipped film back to New York or Paris from some distant land, or managed to create a makeshift darkroom in a remote motel and spend a night trying to transmit one negative through an international telephone line. As we drove, these images were being transmitted over a satellite dish on the roof of our SUV to Atlanta, and five minutes later, several hundred images had arrived, to be set up to be transmitted over this International network to millions around the world as a three minute piece. For me, this was the beginning of the digital era, and I have never looked back. 

©David Turnley, From Baghdad Blues, all rights reserved, 2003.

David and his twin Peter are both photojournalists in the high stratosphere of the profession, to the point where it has become a joke among others at their level that one can judge the importance of an international event by whether one or both of them shows up to cover it, thus making it either a "One Turnley" or a "Two Turnley" story.  Tienamen Square in 1989 was a Two Turnley event.

Anyway, this reminded me of my earlier post on what I called The Devil's Bargain, where I asked what I would do if someone offered to replace all my film Leicas with one of the new digital Ms.  It does move the needle a little in the direction of "Yes," I think, but still remains with a caveat: If I sold every Leica body I owned (weeping with each departure), I don't think I'd have enough even then to buy a single M(240).  Not sure about an M9 or (better, in my opinion) M9P.

So I guess I'm safe from the Devil for another day ...

Light Reading

I do look a lot at other blogs, if for no other reason than to try to figure out how they manage to post so often.  A couple caught my attention today as they addressed things I have either blogged on or referenced vaguely before.

Photography Talk has an entry on the "Six Most Annoying Trends in Photography" that I pretty much agree with.  I must admit I blanched a bit when I got to Number 6: "Professional Know-It-Alls," but was relieved when I found I hardly fell into their definition, which involved those who live by rigid rules. 

Meanwhile, Japan Camera Hunter (an oddly named blog these days, as it has expanded into a rather interesting spot for thoughts on street and film -- as opposed to digital -- photography) has a piece titled "Why your phone is not your friend."  The hed caught my eye, and again I feared that it was something it is not. 

Lately, on my other blog -- or "phlog," as I like to call it, as it centers more on my pictures -- I have been forced to admit that, though Leica is in its name ("The Guy with the Leica") I've not been able to process the film I've been shooting in my Leicas.  It's a money thing that's been going on for some two years now, and frankly I choose not to blog about that merely because I think it would come across as whining.  That's neither here nor there.  My point is (and, as Ellen Degeneres would say, "I do have one") that I've had to substitute pictures I've shot with digital Nikons and, more often, my iPhone.

This was not shot with a Leica.

from The Gut with the Leica "phlog"

When I first broke down and posted the iPhone pics, I did it under the "camera you have" rule (as in: "The best camera is the one you have with you"), but I've got to say as I've returned to them, they're not that bad.  Maybe, I feared, I was missing something.  Nope.  Japan Camera Hunter is merely afraid that, with one's head down on the little smartphone screen, one is missing the real world passing by. 

Finally, here's another from the endlessly fascinating PetaPixel site, "Five Painless Steps for Getting Rid of the Fear of Street Photography Once and for All."  Again, I'm not sure that it's directly on the mark implied by the title (which is a real mouthful -- don't they have copy editors over there?)  It will only take a minute to read, but I can save you even that by saying it comes down to two things: Engage with people to stop being afraid of them; most people like having their picture made.  Still, worth the minute to get all the thoughts and encouragement in between.

Amongst those thoughts was an interesting take on the famous Robert Capa quote, "If your photos aren't good enough, you're not close enough."  The author, Oliver Duong, thinks Capa has been generally misunderstood by having his words taken far too literally.

"What Capa meant was to get closer to your work, to what you are doing," Duong writes.  "If your photographs aren’t good enough, you are not connected enough. How does that help in regards to fear and street photography? It tells you that you do not have to get physically close to your subject as the sole goal."  Frankly that sounds more like Cornel than Robert to me, but I've been very wrong about things like that before.  (Remind to tell you my embarrassing story about "Stonewall" Jackson someday.)

I think his point is valid -- I once read that Henri Cartier-Bresson complained about having to use his 35mm instead of 50mm lens too much when he shot in the US -- but I think Capa is misunderstood on a much more literal level.  Many new photographers are afraid to get right into the midst of the action, and so they produce pictures that reflect their distant, stand-offish attitude.  A better picture brings across the feel and swirl of events, and usually that requires the photographer to get right in on top of them.

Also, let's remember Capa was primarily known as a war photographer (though I'd bet war pictures only make up about a third or a quarter of his work).  An AP photographer once told me he covered war with a 20mm and a 300mm lens, as the action was either right next to you or really far away, and I noticed pictures of another photographer friend, Frank Johnston, when he covered Vietnam, inevitably showed him with only two camera bodies: a Leica with something wide angle (a 28?) and a Nikon F with the immortal 105.

Look at all those great war photographs.  I'll bet you can count the ones shot with a long lens on one hand.

Frank Johnston shooting for UPI in Danang in 1967.

From UPI

Also, when I called it up, there were some intriguing titles at the bottom, like "Joel Meyerowitz Says He Despises Bruce Gilden's Attitude, Calls Him a Bully."

For the Love of ...

Okay, I know I said I wouldn't go on about this any more, but I just saw this TV ad for Lynda.com (which I would post here, but no one has it on YouTube yet).  The theme is that you can be whatever you want to be, just go onto Lynda.com and watch the appropriate tutorials to learn how.

Fair enough.

That is, until they start having the happy actors list off what they want to learn: "Business  management," chirps a woman dressed as a baker.  "Spreadsheets," says another, and then a man with a consumer DSLR on a tripod says, "Photography!" and they move on.  Photography?  So someone who is a professional cook and wants to learn a few tricks in managing her business and expand it, and that's the same as starting up a profession I've spent 30 years working at?  Yeah, just watch a few video tutorials and you're the next David Hume Kennerly!  Start working on that Pulitzer acceptance speech now, friend.

And why am I upset (again)?  Because: look at the other things they list.  Learning about spreadsheets  is a technical thing involving a tool.  They don't say, "Learn how to be a sculptor!"  Rather, it's like saying "Learn how to choose a good piece of marble."  One is a skill that is part of a profession, the other is a profession.

Ugh.

"Can I take this post as an opportunity to speak about photojournalism?"

So a long time ago, I learned to not read the comments on news stories, especially those on websites that are aggregators.  But this was recommended on the NPPA Facebook page, and I couldn't resist.

Maybe I should have.

"FrederickBarnes" felt the need to share his thoughts.

"Can I take this post as an opportunity to speak about photojournalism?" he asked.

"I realize some people are just not 'artistically inclined'," he explained, "but taking photographs like the ones that regularly fill a newspaper is not exactly 'difficult.'"  You're already way ahead of my reaction here, I bet.

"I realize," he said, obviously not actually realizing the depths of ignorance and irony into which he has already plunged, "not everyone is a fucking genius, but today, in the age of digital media and manipulation, its not exactly difficult to take good photographs. Understanding a few tenets can have the person of average intelligence taking photos of the technical level of any Pulitzer winner.
So really what makes a great photojournalist has little to do with the technical aspect of photography. Its much more to do with being there and having the strength to be in some places. Once more, any photographer can now take hundreds or thousands of high resolution photographs in the space of minutes. Out of that many, some would be good just by accident. Its like playing baseball and having a batting average of .001 and being lauded."

 Well, it goes on, providing little more in terms of illumination.

So let me tell a little story.

When working in Washington, DC, I volunteered for the White House News Photographers Association contest committee.  It was a purely selfish act, as I wanted to decipher what would be the most clever method to win prizes.  (There is with all contests in photojournalism a continuing myth of how to strategically win through clever use of categories or trendy photographic techniques or whatever.)  I never came up with a system, but I did happen to coincidentally be working the year that Carol Guzy shot her Pulitzer-winning photo of a Marine in Haiti.

It's a helluva' picture, and there's no denying she deserved all the prizes she got for it.  (She cleaned up in the WHNPA contest too.)  But here's the thing: the US deployment of troops to Haiti that year was the story, and a lot of press covered it.  The small riot that brought the Marines out into the street that day got everyone's attention, so there was a crowd of photographers around that Marine, and because I was on the committee and sorting the entries, I got to see all the pictures that everyone thought were "just as good" as Carol's.

They were wrong.

They were wrong because it took more than just being present.  You not only had to figure out what was going on around you (as apposed to sitting in Port au Prince airport or some other part of town) and get there, but then position yourself in the right place (a lot of the losers were off to one side or another, missing the dramatic composition of the arms reaching out directly towards the camera), and finally hit the button at the right moment.  Banging away with an iPhone just won't hack it.

Okay, I've posted on this way too many times now, and I'll let this subject rest for a while.  But "FrederickBarnes" so perfectly articulated the thundering idiocy that results in acts like dismissing the entire Sun-Times photo department that ... well, I just couldn't let it go.

The Love You Take ...

Every young photojournalist -- or at least when this photojournalist was young, it was true of me -- approaches every demonstration with visions of Stanley Forman's Pulitzer winner, or some other great moment that every old guy has overlooked in his nonchalance.  And every young photojournalist eventually becomes one of those old guys, knowing how every demonstration plays out the same as the last one, aware that moments that win Pulitzers are rare and special things ... and something that could happen at any time.  So, yeah, they go to the demonstration with the exact same hopes.

Really, photography is a special thing, a giving of yourself that everyone gets to see and, eventually, criticize.  And if you make a career of it -- a real career -- it's something that you have to dedicate yourself to wholly.  If you go to that demonstration thinking, "I'll just grab the usual couple pictures of the speakers, maybe a nice reaction shot of the crowd and a wide to show the size, then I'll be done in time for a nice lunch" ... well, you're just not trying, and you will be at best a mediocre hack.  You always need to be looking, hoping, convinced that the one great picture is out there, no matter how boring and commonplace the event.  Every parade might have a little boy talking to a cop on the sidelines.

By extension, if you're just doing this on weekends, if you're the most dedicated of hobbyists, if you have real talent and all your friends say your pictures are better than what they see in the magazines, but you still are doing the day job, well, you may make photographs, but you're not a Photographer.

I have friends who fancy themselves photographers.  They've spent money on gear and time perfecting their craft.  Some have shot jobs for pay.  I look at their pictures -- they're often quite good -- with patience and care, commenting as honestly as possible while remaining polite, but I still can't help regarding them as photo tourists, slumming for a while in the artsy scene, then claiming the title and expecting respect.

I resent that they think they can dip into photography, make some pretty pics in their spare time and collect a prize or two at the local art fair, and then go on with their more profitable lives.  It's like someone putting in a decent time in a 10K and then claiming equality with an Olympic athlete.

You can point out that they've made some great pictures, and I won't disagree, but a weekend softball player can make an astounding triple play ... and he still doesn't deserve to be in the majors.

Here's the thing -- and perhaps I'm now stretching the sports metaphor to the breaking point -- pro athletes didn't just wake up one day and say: "It would be fun to play ball for a living."  They start working in childhood, practicing, going to summer camps, refining their skill in order to reach their level of work.  Many don't make it; are they treated as equals?

I just think that professional photographers -- people who have worked at it, given things up for it, dedicated their lives to it -- deserve some respect for the time and effort and success that we have now spent a lifetime on.  (God knows we'll never be paid appropriately.) And you're welcome to put in that time and sacrifice and join us.

In the meantime, I'll look at your pictures and praise your talents, however meager or grand, but don't act like you're a true Photographer until you've committed everything to it.

This is the problem with things like the Chicago Sun-Times firing ALL their photographers and replacing them with iPhones.  Or, rather, it's one of the problems.  They fail to value photography because they've put no effort into it.  The "leadership" at that paper, and at all the other places that think they can use viewer videos and reporter snapshots and unpaid interns and freelancers who are really housewives and dentists and stuff, of course are happy with second rate material from people who aren't full-time professional photojournalists.  The new "photographers" are people who have not given themselves over to photography, and so they do not value it.  They're happy with a cutsheet and maybe $30.  "Wow, look at me, I'm a real Photographer!  Would you like fries with that?"  This is the easy way for the editors, and less effort is required, less dedication to the craft (and that means the craft of journalism as well as photography) is necessary all the way around.

What You Do ...

There's a saying: Morality is what you do when no one is looking.

I got to thinking about that the other day, when a Facebook friend posted a blog link that coined a phrase I plan to callously steal: The Vivan Maier Test.  It's an interesting piece in and of itself, and you should follow the above link to read it, but it got me going on a tangent.

Lately, you see, I've continued to shoot stills on film, but I haven't the money to process the film (or, for that matter, buy new film -- much of what I have shot lately has been on old stuff that's been aging like fine wine in my fridge.)  Yet I still do it, because ... well, because that's what I do.  I am a photographer, and this takes me to The Vivan Maier Test.

She, as you hopefully already know, was the Chicago nanny who had quietly and privatly shot thousands of photos, apparently for her own amusement.  The quality of the stuff is, frankly, stunning, yet she was completely unknown until some of her negatives were sold in a storage bin auction.  Soon there will be a documentary on her story.

Anyway, here's the point: she shot this stuff without an outlet, apparently without any viewers at all for that matter.  She seems to have done it, I guess, just for the creative satisfaction of it.  How ... pure.

It makes me think of discussions I used to have with friends in college. Mind you, this was in the late 70s and early 80s, so the big media were magazines and newspapers and stuff like that.  One friend had found the rate for a full-page ad in TIME -- some astronomical figure that sounded like the yearly income for a common worker.  With a little additional math -- models, transportation, other accessories -- we figured a major ad campaign ran up six figures of costs alone pretty quickly.  Again, in the early 80s.  So, we laughed, when a top photographer demands thousands of dollars before he even picks up his camera ... well, as a percentage of total cost, that wasn't so much.

But that was an image and phrase that stuck with me: He won't even get out of bed unless someone writes a check for X-thousand dollars.  Frankly, it was an appealing image.  It engendered dreams of a luxurious life in a beachfront hammock.  "How much?  Oh, very well ..."

However, either age or the changing times has shifted me toward the purity of Vivian Maier ideal: to shoot because it needs to be shot, to make a picture for its own reasons.  I wouldn't turn down the thousands -- and it could be argued that the shift for me has been in some way inspired by the profound absence of people offering hundreds, let alone thousands, for my presence -- but there is a true nobility and grace and beauty to the idea.

Apparently, this is a growing feeling.  David Burnett recently did a quick posting on the joys of film, and Vincent Laforet just blogged on a similar experience.  "Somehow, for the first time in awhile, the end result – the resulting 'still photograph' was beautifully overshadowed by the pleasure I felt with the simple act of 'taking my time,'" he said about going out with film as part of a challenge.  But, you see, he still needed to be challenged.  I'm talking about a compulsion.

So, I am a photographer, and I'll keep shooting pictures, ideally with the cameras I'd like to use and on the media (film or digital) that I wish, but I'll do it with whatever I can, even if it's out-of-date film that I can't afford to process. 

What's Wrong with These Pictures?

I was in the kitchen the other day, when a simple still life struck me as interesting.  But, here's the thing: It wasn't just the subject and light that caught my imagination ...

You see, it's interesting and all -- nice, soft, raking light, reflections, lots of exciting colors and shapes -- but in this image, it's not really striking.  It's not something that would make you stop walking by and look.  But what I saw in my head was this:

Now that's much more arresting.  Still not satisfying for me, though, as we lost the bright colors.  So I tried one more thing:

That was more like it.  Perhaps not perfect -- I think a painting, say oil or watercolor, might be even more what I want -- but it was good enough for the moment.  And then I paused. What really did I think I was up to?

With the rise of the iPhone and its many photographic apps, there has been an accompanying rise in controversy (like when a New York Times photographer made a bid for the Pulitzer).  First, it was bad enough that digital cameras made amateurs think they could be professionals, because the cost-free making of thousands of exposures while the ever-increasingly smarter cameras did all the complicated exposure calculations for you allowed them to actually make a nice frame or two.  But now your ever convenient phone did the same, and had a bunch of options that took care of the processing and Photoshopping process for you too!

Secondly, these effects -- effects that in the past required you to actually know how to handle film in particular ways or, for that matter, make a wet plate exposure using techniques a century old (see second exposure above) -- were far more dangerous than merely relieving the "photographer" of any need for knowledge or experience.  They tempted one to make frankly bad or nonsensical exposures, overlay them with a thick coating of special effects, and then act like they were somehow now "good."

So what the hell did I think I was doing when I made those two artsy images?  And are they really better than the first one?  (Actually, the first one is the last, timewise, as it occured to me after making the other two that I was leaning, as so many have, on the iPhone's fancy apps, and I wanted to blog about this.  So I shot it untouched using the iPhone as a "control" of sorts.  It was frankly too much work to get out a DSLR and make an even more conventional control.)

Since the Hipstamatic Tinto 1884 package came out, I've noticed a lot of my photographer friends using it.  And, to be totally honest, I promptly sought it out as soon as I learned what to search for.  It's a cool little effect, and I have been interested in the look and technology of wet plate photography (though I haven't had the chance to try it) for a while now.

However, though I may be able to rationalize my hackneyed use of the Tinto by claiming an interest in photographic history, I have to ask whether I and all my friends are just leaning on it as a crutch to make otherwise mediocre or uninteresting pictures somehow fascinating and artsy.

This reminds me of an anecdote I love to tell when the question of photo manipulation comes up.  I was standing with another photographer, he older and working for a newspaper, waiting for the start of a Pentagon news conference one day.  It was still in the days of film, the earliest versions of Photoshop were just gaining acceptance.  He told me how a young, techno-savvy photographer was showing him all the things that could be done with the program, saving under- or over-exposed pictures, correcting faults, evening out bright and dark spots, and so on.  He ended with the punch line: "I asked him, 'Wouldn't it be easier just to make a proper exposure in the first place?'"

So I have to wonder: Wouldn't it be easier just to make a proper, interesting photo in the first place, rather than something that depends so on special effects to be attractive?  And, countering that, is this yet another example of Marshal McLuhan's overused axiom that the medium is the message?  Is art what you make of the tools, and art designed with certain tools in mind (just as I shot the second picture above specifically with the Tinto package in mind) still art?

Selling Out ...

I just checked the date on my last entry, only to discover it was in MAY! May? Really? That's embarrassing. Actually, it's worse than embarrassing. It's humiliating.

For one thing, I'm one of those people who gets frustrated when a website -- any website, but especially a blog -- is left idle for extended periods of time. The ease of use, not to mention the rapid pace of the internet, all but demands constant updates and changes. If a blog I follow doesn't update regularly (ideally daily), I get frustrated. If it sits idle for two months, odds are I'll get bored and move on. (You don't want me to have the TV remote control, either.)

Now I have had a couple of excuses. For example, while I have several entries I want to put in (and will put in immediately after this one), they have photos that go with them. And it has been a while since I got into the darkroom as well. Now I have the negatives, and just need to scan them.

Also, it's not like I have a lot of idle time these days. I'm full time now at WDBJ, which consumes a remarkable amount of time and (to my surprise, actually) energy, both physical and mental. I'm lucky if I get home and have the time to read some blogs, let alone write one. However, I have resolved that that is going to change. And my life is all about change these days.

You see, the biggest reason I haven't had the time or concentration or, frankly, creative heart to produce this stuff is that I'm bankrupt. Literally.

That's why I chose the title above, a phrase that strikes me as having a useful meaning (if counter to its commonly used one). We're selling out of our overwhelming debt. The bank is taking back our house -- a particularly poignant aspect of the whole thing, as we built the place with plans to never leave. I used to joke that, one of the great pleasures of moving in there was that I'd never have the chaotic agony of moving again. And that's just one small part of it.

We now live in a cash economy. I'd read about this -- usually about poor people and illegal immigrants (and I realize that is often redundant) -- but never thought I'd experience it. (If you're curious, it's because the credit card companies will go into your account to get payments, even though a declaration of bankruptcy is supposed to stop that. And it simply became absurd; the account was more often than not overdrawn at the end.) I simply cash my paycheck the day I get it on the way home, and we dole out the money on gas and groceries, etc., through the two weeks in anticipation of the next check. Happily, the check cashing place also sells gas and fried chicken. (Welcome to the American South.) So everyone gets a treat on Friday.

Needless to say, there's much legal activity involved. And it is surprisingly expensive. Why does a process to declare to the world you have no money require a fairly substantial chunk of money? Where exactly do they expect us to get it? It's not like we have thousands of dollars laying about; don't they think we would use it to pay our bills to, oh I don't know, keep our house?

However, I've got to say, the legal process is sort of confessional. You have to delineate all your debts -- and thus face what you've done -- and all your assets. It's a good thing to do, placing yourself in terms of exactly where you are in the physical world ... and in my case, causing me to ask how we got there. And where we go from here.

I don't mean to make excuses. This is no one's fault but my own. I can see where I could have done better, how I've had a pretty comfortable life. After all, I'm a photographer and writer. It's not like these are real jobs. I get to do what I like ... and I plan to continue, but with a wiser eye to money and monetizing the process, and with a firmer hand on self-indulgence.

So now we're moving -- a smaller rental house, but big enough for the traveling circus that's my household, and it's kind of cute. We're painting this week, and have to be in soon, because the bank's goon squad will be at the door in about a month. But I'm gonna' get on this blog thing. You'll see...

As someone else was saying...

All the photo blogs are afire with the recent establishment of Life.com, which allows private blogs (like me) to upload and use pictures without payment or permission.  I've got to try this (more to come...), but I also have to agree with what I perceive as the consensus that it's a bad idea.

Two of the more articulate spokesmen on it are Vincent Laforet and David Burnett, who both make the simple point that, if you don't value your product (both literally and figuratively), then no one else will.  Laforet (like John Harrington) is pretty straightforward -- if you say your picture doesn't cost anything, then it becomes valueless -- with the secondary existential question of, "What is a private blog?"  Burnett takes an historical turn, remembering when photos had obvious value, because you personally actually bought them in the form of Time or Life magazine.

 Secondarily, there comes word of layoffs and "delays paying freelancers" at Outside magazine, which touches on a pet peeve of mine.  Apparently Outside is notorious (according to FishbowlNY) for taking as long as six months or a year to pay its freelancers.  Thanks, large corporation, for making us individuals float you extended loans.  I'll let VISA know, when they start calling about that late payment, that you'll get right back to them.  (This is something I find particularly frustrating when doing commercial jobs.  The payment doesn't come and the producer -- this usually happened to me doing camera work -- explains sorrowfully that the client hasn't paid him yet.  Do I care?  Does my mortgage holder care?  Did I make a deal with your client?)

As digital cameras have made photography for the common man easier (using the fish roe theory particularly -- a thousand eggs will hopefully result in one good fish), it becomes harder and harder to explain my business and why it costs what it does to people...

Our viewers are our eyes...

I actually heard this on the local news tonight.

After showing a collection of photos of our weather -- a surprisingly strong snow storm -- the Sunday anchor said, "We love our viewers' pictures.  Really, our viewers are our eyes and our ears out there."  Now let us pause for a moment to contemplate the many meanings of this.

First of all, aren't you the news show?  As viewers, shouldn't we be waiting at home for you to be our eyes and ears in the community? I know you can't be everywhere, but we as individuals can be only in one place, and be there not as professional observers and reporters.

Secondly, as a professional journalist and especially as a photographer, I'd like to make my public declaration of objection to the increasing dependence on free pictures sent in by innocent people.  This is wrong in so many ways, and before you say it's sour grapes on my part (I'll squeeze those grapes in a moment), let me say that they are ripping you, the innocent who sent in his picture, off.  You should be paid for this stuff.  You put in an effort, and you expended some (although with digital photography, minimal) expense.  They owe you for your work.

And this is work, which gets to the sour grapes.  I do this stuff for a living, people, and you're just giving it away?  And they'll gobble it up, because that means some smart, creative, hardworking person won't have to be paid.  How would you like it if someone just walked in and did your job for nothing?  "But," you'll say, "I'm a doctor" or lawyer or insurance salesman or whatever.  "It's dangerous for any old person to do this.  They'll screw it all up."  Well, believe it or not, you can screw up photojournalism too.  Ever heard of the phrase "out of context?"  How about "misidentified?"  All of this leads to the lawyers doing their job, called "libel" ... at best.  At worst, a large part of a community can be left with a very wrong impression about something.  After all, they saw a picture, and photography is never wrong ... right?  But let's just let out the sour in the grapes: you do your job and I'll do mine.  Okay?

Finally, I can't help but be amused (and in some ways impressed) by the philosophical conundrum in the statement.  "Our viewers are our eyes."  Einstein would have had a field day, or maybe Heisenberg.  Can the viewer be the viewed?  Or create the object the viewer views? How does that affect the reality of the thing viewed?  Is it trapped in an infinite loop, like when two mirrors reflect one another?  Does that mean, in a philosophical sense, the local TV news has an audience of one ... over and over and over and over again?  What would be the Neilsen rating for infinity?

And so it starts...

I'm told that one must do things like this to increase one's profile.  And I'm told that one must increase one's profile (sadly, not solely through good food and wine) to increase one's business.  And as I'm rather fond of good food and wine, business must be done.  So, at least my friends will be relieved of some of the burden of listening to me go on about my latest interests...

As a start, I'll explain that "cat typing" is a term I discovered on the Word Spy website (www.wordspy.com), defined as: "The random keystrokes made by a cat as it walks across a computer keyboard."  My thoughts are often about that organized, but hopefully somewhat more interesting.

I was sent to Word Spy by a friend, who had found the term "The Arsenic Hour."  If you're a parent, it's worth looking up.

The tradition in navy wardrooms (or the gunroom, where young junior officers messed in the days of sail) was that conversation was not allowed of politics, women and religion.  Those subjects would often end in arguments, and when at sea for months at a stretch, arguments and hurt feelings are not productive.

My plan is to avoid mainly politics, a sure path to unresolvable disagreement, often marked by ad hominem attacks.  Religion and women are not really an open subject for me: Both have been long resolved by church membership and marriage, and thus would be rather monotone subjects of discussion.

Thus, I may be limiting the level of readership.  But I do hope to be somewhat clever and generally diverting as I write about the things I have discovered, photographed and generally become interested in...