I'm going to be an optimist about this ...

But if you close your eyes
Does it almost feel like
Nothing changed at all?
And if you close your eyes
Does it almost feel like
You've been here before?
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?

 - "Pompeii" by Bastille

Sometimes it seems that, every time I see the end of our long, hard slog, a new problem, delay or expense comes along.  Every time I think that I can finally relax into a reasonable, comfortable schedule, more urgent things must be done, or whenever we've finally locked down a good income stream to climb out, it evaporates.

But I am going to be an optimist about this, even as the dust settles down around us ...

... Addendum

A new review of the Leica T from the Red Dot Forum:

"The Leica T looks like it might have emerged out of Apple, as its sleek uni-body aluminum design more echoes a MacBook Pro laptop than a camera."

"The camera just exudes quality and is simply gorgeous to hold and look at. And, yes, for those wondering, it is made in Germany at the new Wetzlar factory, proudly signified by the writing under the rear LCD: 'Leica Camera Wetzlar Germany.'"

from Red Dot Forum

"And yet, the camera is much more than just a pretty face. Leica is synonymous with image quality, especially with regards to optics and the T is no exception. The first of many lenses to come in the new autofocus T mount prove to be excellent. Two lenses will be available at launch, a midrange zoom and a wide-normal fast prime."

Okay, time for me to butt in here with a typical anecdote.  When Canon came out with the EOS system, I was a happy Canon user in a sea of Nikons.  The F1s I owned, I thought, were great and significantly cheaper than the top-of-the-line Nikon F3.  But now Canon had forced a choice on me.  The new EOS mount, while providing better autofocus and autoexposure function (the mounts actually started with a few more contacts than they had uses, anticipating future requirements), was completely different from the F mount I had heavily invested in.  I could stay with the F, haunting flea markets and estate sales for old glass and gear for all time, while technology passed me by, go with the expensive EOS system, or switch to Nikon.  Nikon was, as usual, playing catch-up in the autofocus business, but doing it while retaining a lens mount that accepted older glass.

I sold everything and went with Nikon.

Now Leica thinks that, for their new system, I'm prepared to invest in a whole new line of Leica lenses?  I know that they're planned to be cheaper than M, R and S glass, but still ...

"An M Adapter-T will be available as an accessory to the T for $395. Like all other Leica-made lens adapters, the M Adapter-T features solid metal construction with polished lens mounts."

I dunno'.  It's pretty and all, but I stick with my opinion about the photographic experience.

But read the review for yourself.  

The NEW Leica!

The new Leica T System

Normally, no one is happier than I when the words "new" and "Leica" come in the same sentence, and I understand that when you make a premium product (eg: expensive ... well, incredibly expensive), you need to reach out to as many customers in that limited demographic as you can, but lately I've had a stunning disinterest in some new releases from my favorite camera company.

First, it was the X Vario, and now the new T System.  It was announced in one of the big events Leica has specialized in since its glorious 9/9/09 revelation of the M9 -- a camera I would most definitely be interested in.  People are acting very excited, despite Leica releasing what PetaPixel called "The Most Boring Ad You've Ever Seen."

I still have to drill down into the technical stuff to better understand what this is, but from the company descriptions and stories about it I have glanced through, it may yet be another Leica that's not for me.

I recoil at the happy snap look, despite the Rolex-like, carved-from-a-solid-metal-block construction.  Maybe I should be more open minded, not judging the camera just by its appearance (and Leica's regularly pairing with designers from Audi or Volkswagen or some fashion house; what does that have to do with photography?)

But here's the thing: what I love about the M system is the way it makes me think and act and See when I go to make a picture.  I explain to people that those cameras make me look at the world in a different way, and approach it to make a picture in a different way.  You can't just hand me some rich man's tourist toy and expect the same reaction.

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.

So, Where Ya' Been?

I have a friend -- well, I still call him a friend, and indeed I hope he still thinks as well of me -- who I fell out of communication with a while ago.  A while, like 25 years.  It's embarrassing, really.  We were the best of friends in college, and kept up for some time thereafter, but then literally fell out of contact for no good reason.  I failed to answer a message from him, and he had no obligation to nag me into staying in touch, and after a certain time, it became uncomfortable to try to call or anything.  "Hi!  Sorry I ignored you for a bunch of months.  Nothing personal, okay?" 

I think now's the time -- especially as it's a good exercise for Lent -- to reach out to him, explain that it was just stupidity and distractions and finally embarrassment over it all that kept me away, and it's frankly ridiculous.  I want to write a letter.  But Lent is almost over, and I still haven't found that quiet time to sit down and work it out.

Which brings me to this moment here.  I have always said that I get frustrated with blogs, especially good ones, that don't update regularly and frequently.  This is the internet, the land of 24/7, and if you don't feed the beast all the time, you clearly don't understand the medium.  Thus, those times when I fail to show up here for weeks and months at a time are an humiliating bit of hypocrisy, for which I apologize, no matter how busy or tired or not in the mood I might be.

The name, "Cat Typing," refers to the random keys punched by cats as they walk across the keyboard, and is meant to give some hint of the uncontrolled nature of what I might say.  Lately things have gotten a bit deep and occasionally theological.  I plan to take us back out of the thick reeds and more into things like photography again in the near term, but one never knows where we may go.

At any rate, I do want it to be more frequent, so that (I hope) is the one thing you can be certain of here.

Ashes

Remember, you are dust,

And to dust you shall return.

The priest murmurs it as he swipes the ashes onto your forehead on Ash Wednesday.  To dust you shall return.  Remember that, for all your grand goals and ambitions, for all the inflated belief in your own value, your purpose and necessity, one day it's worm food for you, pal.

Lent is especially striking this year.  I want to use the word "cloying," but not in the negative way, indicating something of, say, an overwhelming saccharine sweetness.  Rather, the season claws at my soul, demanding a different kind of humility than usual.

For the first time ever, I am jarred by people who take these days lightly and dismissively, like the fellow in the newsroom who announced with a chuckle that he was "giving up religion for Lent."  Normally, I'm okay with the fun and games; I'm rather difficult to offend.  But now the piling on by the irreligious, or even non-Catholic, seemed ignorant and to be missing the point altogether.  This is a moment to pause and reflect on the real purpose and intent of your life, not a diet plan.

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

 - Matthew 6:24

These days, I scramble for inflated belief in myself and my future.  As I've said before, worries about money can suck the joy out of anything, and sometimes it seems that the hole is not only deeper, but that all my furious efforts are only resulting in me digging in more, not in digging out.

Yet I can hardly complain.  The Sunday before Ash Wednesday, a priest who works for Food for the Poor spoke at Mass.  He described the stunning poverty, the astounding smell, of the nightmarish Cite Soliel area of Port au Prince, Haiti. 

I live comfortably, even well, probably beyond my means, but not extravagantly.  I do what seems reasonable, and I work hard to make enough income to cover it, and yet ... 

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

-"Sixteen Tons" 

The trick here, I think, is to be sure to despise the correct master.  I mean: we really have to work for money.  It is the rare person who can simply exist from moment to moment without any thought as to where the next meal or payment will come from.  After a while of living in anything but the most ascetic of ways (like a monk, for example), one acquires obligations and responsibilities, like family and rent bills, expectations of food and clothing, and to be honest a certain style of living (whatever that style may be -- the monk can afford to live with only his robes, but the office expects something besides the same tattered outfit every day.)

Lent -- to return to the main point -- gives you an opportunity to step off of the treadmill for a moment and take a look at just what you're doing.  How much of the above is just rationalizations ("I really must have that new outfit for the office to be respectable."), how much the unthinking indulgence in little pleasures?

"When I fast from meat today, do I do so because it's a rule, or to unite in solidarity with those without access to meats and food?" asks a Facebook friend, the sort of Christian I can only aspire to be.  "There are an estimated two million living in Syrian refugee camps, moms and dads who look for something, anything to feed their kids. Isaiah 58 makes very clear the kind of fasting preferred by God."

It can be hard to fast in a normal, American day, when friends are snacking and going out for burgers and pizzas.   It should make one think because many Americans have to, well, think about ways to not eat.

“Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.” 

  

-Ambrose Bierce

So, not to keep hammering on the money thing, but right now I have a dollar in my wallet, as in: a single dollar bill.  Everything else is allocated to gas and other basic survival expenses (groceries, medicine and the sort).  Especially for Lent, but in my life in general these days, there is rarely "spare" money.  (That's a term that's always amused me, especially when panhandlers ask for "spare change," as though I carry some extra money around like a spare tire in a car.  "Oh, this?  It's extra money; I have no use for it."  But perhaps this is another posting, and I am getting sidetracked.)

My question is: what do I do with this dollar?  Part of me wants, as I buy aforementioned gas, to get a lottery ticket.  I've long since dispensed with hopes of any of these massive wins of hundreds of millions; a little payout for a small game with better odds would be helpful.  Just a few thousand dollars would make an immeasurable difference.

But the above always comes to mind.  No matter how much I think I "deserve" even a small win, no matter how deeply I pray God take pity on me, facts are facts and math is math.  The odds are deeply against me; I might as well give the dollar as "spare" money to the first deserving looking person I meet.

For that matter, why not formalize the donation?  Why don't I, as the basket goes by, simply drop the dollar at church?  If I want God's help, surely it can't hurt to do Him a good turn, can it?

Of course, I know that logic is both practically and theologically suspect.  If I want to give it to church or charity, I should do it because churches and charities need money, and I wish them to prosper.  I should do it because I think that dollar will function better in that place than in the lottery fund or at the bottom of a fast food cash register till.

Maybe I should just shove it in an envelope with any other small amounts I come across.  It's always good to save, and even in paltry amounts, money eventually adds up.  Will it add up quickly enough?  Is it more practical to "leverage" that dollar, as a financial adviser might say of a significantly (significantly) larger amount, and put it to use somewhere ... like as a lottery ticket?

And we return to question one ...

Hello Again ...

I've mentioned before how I don't really understand how traffic on this blog will spike or not.  Often, it would make mysterious jumps for no reason, and other times (when I thought I had posted classic "click bait,") it would lie there like a dead fish. 

A few times, I have delved into the options offered by Google to show statistics on traffic, but never really got it.  For a while, it seemed, I was getting traffic from India.

But today, I drilled down into it again (after my last post generated a remarkable 38 hits -- not exactly Gizmodo or Upworthy traffic, but remarkable for me) and found the clicks are coming from Google, this site itself (I guess that means people typed in the address directly) and something called ighome.com.

So I went to see what it was, and it appears to be a personalizable (is that a word?) dashboard where you can have a series of sub-windows open to check your favorite sites.  Cool.

So thanks for clicking in.  Check out some of the really old posts while you're here; I do that myself occasionally, and am surprised at what I have forgotten.