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 -- Update

Saw this today on Facebook from photographer David Burnett:

Dave Burnett

tonight, running around the net, found this cogent description of the "new phone" photography: " .....it's fine, it's fun and funky..looks artsy...but i get tired of photographers acting like they're now 'artists' when it relies so heavily on the phone to do the effect..they're not even making cool effects in their printing or even photoshop..they're just picking an app...." geez, sounds familiar!

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?

Don't Fear the Reaper

So the commute in to work at 3 in the morning can be a peaceful time.  It can also be a frustrating time, but that's for another day.  Today, I want to talk about the odd moment recently when, hurtling down the interstate in the predawn darkness, my radio scanned to an FM station playing the old Blue Oyster Cult song, "Don't Fear the Reaper."

It was one of those moments, like when you catch a special, familiar aroma, when memories suddenly flood back.  You are totally in a moment, that moment so long ago, that it takes an effort to return to the present.  Slowly, you rise back from a waking dream.

I was in my family's Datsun B-210 hatchback again, returning from a dozen parties in the 1970s, plunging through the Washington, DC, post-midnight darkness.  "Don't Fear the Reaper," along with Boston's first album and any amount of other music, was new then.

My mind wandered to how often I have found myself driving alone through the dark at odd hours.  After those parties, traveling to and from college, heading out to assignments for wire services.  The last time I remember being so conscious of that moment, that circumstance, was some 25 years ago, rushing out into Northern Virginia from DC to photograph a train derailment.  As I headed off the main highway and into the countryside beyond Leesburg, I remember thinking how oddly alone I was, sweeping down the two-lane highway as the trees that bordered it flashed by, making an even whooshing sound.  Nothing but the blackness of unlit farmland around me, my headlights lighting the road lines and those trees.

At the time, I thought it would make a good transitional element for a movie, opening with that metronomic sound, like breathing, the undercurrent of the car motor beneath, the lit trunks sliding past, in and out of the headlights.  Whoosh ... Whoosh ... Whoosh.  Whenever the film came to a turning point, we could return to that moment, as the protagonist moved further down his memories of the story, back to long childhood trips and forward to angry departures from lovers.

But this day, on my commute, I reveled in the simple experience of having all this come back, bathing in the memory like a hot tub, and honestly clinging a bit to the feeling of being young again, in high school with the world full of possibilities and nothing denied you by time or bad decisions yet.  How strange it is to be at the other end of the timeline; I don't think I ever really expected to be here ...

Blog more, Facebook less?

Just going back through my Facebook posts (perhaps a bit egocentric, but it has its place, I think; sort of like Googling oneself), and it occurred to me that there is the fairly frequent posting that really could be nicely posted as a longer blog post.

However, I have this ... well, "philosophy" is too grand a word for it.  Feeling, perhaps.  Anyway, I think the blog should actually be used to say something, something that is hopefully interesting and fairly well written.  Something that you might actually enjoy reading.  Otherwise, a blog is little more than the scrawlings of a self-centered pre-teen in her precious diary.

On the other hand, as I said once before here, I see this as the place to expound on ideas that strike me as worthy of some thought, the sort of thing that strikes you in a quiet moment when a number of seemingly unconnected concepts come together to form something that is maybe not profound, but hopefully intriguing.  And to tell the occasional story.

Nonetheless -- see above -- I want that thought to be fully expressed, and that takes time, as well as some effort to write well.  Whereas Facebook just makes it so easy: link to a clever picture, make a snarky comment, and sit back for your friends' reactions.

Perhaps I need to put more thought, and time, into my life, and fewer quick, easy one-offs...

What Does This Image Mean?

There's a story that when Dadaist artist Jean Arp (if I recall correctly) was asked what one of his works meant, he simply recited the alphabet back to the questioner.  The meaning wasn't for him to tell, but for you to figure out for yourself.

Lately, I've had a real run of interest in surrealist images, just because it amuses me.  This, from work today, struck me as being in that vein ...



Secondary note: It's a digital image (shot on a Nikon D80 with a 17-55mm zoom lens), and it is clearly such.  Electronics look so ... electronic when shot on electronics.  This would have a whole different texture, and perhaps a whole different feeling, shot on film with the Leica.  Is that important?

What I haven't been telling you ...

There's a few things that I've decided not to write about here, despite the occasional agonizing temptation to do so.  First on the list is politics.  There are enough political blogs out there.  We don't need another.

That's not to say I don't have my opinions.  As a matter of fact, those of you who know me in the non-electronic world know that I have rather strongly held opinions that I am not only content but eager to civilly debate.  (I like to test those opinions, and have occasionally changed them; and I have managed to maintain very good friends who oppose me politically in many ways because of these debates.)  However, I don't want to do that here.  The internet is not a civil place for politics.

Secondly, while I'll often talk about my life, I shall rarely if ever get into things overly personal.  Not only is it really none of your business, I think it's boring for you, the reader.

Thirdly, though I'll occasionally wander into the world of religion, especially if I encounter something that strikes me as profound, I'm no evangelist.  I can't take myself that seriously.

Finally, and this is where I'm going in a way, I do read through these things before I hit "Post."  Sadly, this doesn't mean I catch every typo (and sometimes I purposely leave them after I found them, feeling that any ex post facto correction is a form of ... lying?)  Sometimes, I start rather extended posts, and then realize that they're not saying what I want to say, or saying it so poorly it could be misinterpreted.  Lately, I've had two that I've all but finished, then left in the "Draft" bin.  They're rather complicated, in some ways paradoxical, comments on mortality.

I'll keep working on them, and I'm beginning to think they are really one, long, deep, philosophical point ... of a sort.  Maybe not.  Maybe I'm just getting above myself.

After all, let's keep this in perspective: This is a blog with seven followers that gets, at best, 20-some-odd hits a day.