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Old joke. Sure I heard it on an archive episode of Hancock recently.
Best Comeback Ever (OT)
The honor belongs to Tina Fey, during a friendly impromptu improv with David Letterman: Letterman: I'm not as dumb as I look. Fey: How could you be? [Audience cheers] That's it. Give her the prize. Speaking of comebacks: having not kept up with football at all this year—haven't watched a single...
“The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band”
― Brian Eno
Sunday Support Group (a Day Late): Idle Question
I told my niece yesterday that the problem with my life during the pandemic is that every day is pretty much like every other day. Then I reflected that most of the excitement in the world is the wrong kind of excitement, so I oughtn't complain. Here in the USA, we have to get through Wednesday....
"Blessed are the cheesemakers."
Brief Addendum...
...To the previous post: I want to emphasize that my year-long diet experiment didn't require much "willpower." It's not a calorie- or portion-restricted diet. I eat all I want and then some. In fact sometimes I will look at the giant heap of food I've just fixed and think surely I can't eat all...
The ideal companion for a new light - https://us.louisvuitton.com/eng-us/magazine/articles/billiards-2020#
Dachshund! (OT)
I'm driving to Buffalo today to pick up that pool table light. I'm starting to think I'm just deliberately making this project more difficult than it has to be. It's starting to feel like there will never be a pool table in this shed. It's not like it has to be difficult; but the pool table I wa...
artybollocks.com is looking a little dated to me.
Our work practice must no longer explore but interrogate.
And no mention of narrative?
Sunday Support Group: Catch Fire
I know, it's not Sunday, it's Monday. But I couldn't get down to work yesterday. It comes as a surprise to some of my readers (all of whom are wonderful and above average) when I mention that not every post is for everybody. For example, only 79% of TOP readers are vitally interested in pool. (E...
When were Artist Statements invented? I don't remember them before 1982 when I stopped being an art student here in the UK.
Sunday Support Group: Catch Fire
I know, it's not Sunday, it's Monday. But I couldn't get down to work yesterday. It comes as a surprise to some of my readers (all of whom are wonderful and above average) when I mention that not every post is for everybody. For example, only 79% of TOP readers are vitally interested in pool. (E...
The modern way to isolate subjects is to shoot at f1.2.
No movement or thought required.
It occurred to me recently how using 'slow' lenses forces you to think about the background.
Have 'fast' lenses become a crutch for some people?
Shooting Skills: Contrast for Clarity
Here's a simple shooting skills exercise that might be of use to you if you've never worked on it before. It's best if you give it about two hours. The purpose is to make you more aware of tonal contrast as a way of making a main subject more clear. You can do this with any camera, including a p...
Night time note pads are no good. Cassette recorders are the thing. Ask Keef.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/05/the-technology-that-captured-the-greatest-rock-song-ever-recorded/393254/
An Evening Walk
I should have worked on the Print Crit yesterday, but it was such a gorgeous afternoon I went for a long walk up the hill instead. Welker Hill rises 520 feet in the stretch of a mile, so I take my car up the steepest part and park it on my neighbor Les's field and walk on from there. It's not th...
I'm baffled.
While I do think photographs should be printed I don't get the 'fine print' thing.
Give me a photocopy of a great photograph over a fine print of a crap one every time. I've seen original prints of some of my favourite 'famous' photographs and some have obviously been carefully made, others have been machine prints. The only remarkable thing about them compared to reproductions I've seen on-line or in books and magazines has been their size.
It's all about the pictures for me, and the fact that photographs are pretty much infinitely reproducible rather than unique objects like paintings.
[Well, what's the problem? If you don't care about prints, then you don't. That's okay. Nothing more to say. --Mike]
Print Crit: The 'SPS'
Because last week's print arrived damaged due to inadequate packaging, and I didn't want to discourage myself by confronting that again, for this week I chose a print that came in a box. The box turned out to be oversize, and the print inside wrapped in bubble wrap. Then, there was a crystal-cle...
Border Collies were bred as working dogs. Fetching sheep is in their DNA and they can work out of sight of a shepherd using instinct.
I prefer to watch them doing proper sheep work than demos or trials but I'd rather see this than agility.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpjP3mxv21s
Sunday Support Group: Anybody Wanna Play a Game? (OT)
Hope Friday's second post didn't strike too many people as over the, er, "top." It's true that I'm a health food nut. I have become one. I admit it. But that's only because I feel so damn good. I feel great. I can't get over it. I was experiencing not one but a number of sundry deteriorations of...
All the above seems to me to assume the hunt is for single pictures. Ones I have seen described as 'wall worthy'.
There is at least one alternative: to look to build a body of work in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Picturehunting
I think Michael Perini and a couple of other commenters were right the other day. Sometimes you just need get out with the camera and get the rust off. There's that old expression, "separate the wheat from the chaff." Separating what's valuable from what's worthless. Most of what we do as photog...
Brian Eno and Mark E Smith.
Music Notes: Do You Have a Favorite Musician? (OT)
I suppose a lot of people don't. It's a middlebrow conceit to say "I like everything!" in a chipper voice, which to real music aficionados means that music isn't very important to that person. Nobody who loves music likes everything. Their likes are strong, and their dislikes are strong too—they...
If you aren't precious about prints there's this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eofAtJZDJHs
The Luminous Landscape Videos
Michael Reichmann of The Luminous Landscape interviewing Ctein in 2004 Well this is a nice surprise. Josh Reichmann, son of our late friend Michael of The Luminous Landscape, has given us permission to make available the two videos of MR's visit to Ctein's San Francisco area darkroom fifteen y...
Goldilocks chose...
A Very Interesting...
...Size comparison. Mike (Thanks to John Igel and others) Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. Amazon.com • Amazon UK • Amazon Cana...
S'funny. I find photography fun regardless of what camera I use.
As for camera complexity. Turn the dial to 'A' and have done with it if you don't like complicated.
Open Mike: Fun, the Final Frontier
["Open Mike" is the Editorial Page of TOP, expressing Yr. Hmbl. Editor's own idiosyncratic opinions exclusively. Readers are neither required nor expected to agree! Visitors are encouraged not to take umbrage! Open Mike appears on Wednesdays on TOP.] - For the last 20 years we've been amusing ou...
Taking photos has got easier with every technical advance. Making good pictures with photography will always be difficult. It might even get more difficult.
I read this the other day which may be pertinent - https://medium.com/@kennethjarecke/will-photography-ever-walk-on-two-legs-again-a3a858035c64
Has Photography Gotten Too Easy?
Is photography too easy? Maria Popova—along with Virginia Woolf(!)—suspects that maybe it's gotten to be. Their point is that when something is rare and valued, more effort and care is expended on it. By becoming thoughtless and easy, it also tends to become trivial and devalued. Maria, the Bulg...
I dug out my copy of the Szarkowski book to see what the fuss is about.
Seems to me the Erwitt pic clearly falls into Szarkowski's 'humorist' category. Especially given Erwitt's penchant for lighthearted photographs - jumping dogs for example.
I guess some folk can't see the joke. Or maybe they take photographs too seriously?
One Good Book: Guest Counterpoint [REVISED]
[Ed note: Working in a rush, I made a big, bad editing mistake and posted only a truncated version of this article yesterday. This is the full version. If you already read the first part here yesterday, please skip to the subsection with the heading "Then and now" and continue reading to the end...
Dim light doesn't bother me. Not being able to see the print because of reflections in the glass it's behind does.
Museum Tricks
Many (even most) photographic prints look best displayed under strong or generous lighting. It makes them technically better: brightness makes prints more vivid, improves their contrast, and makes colors richer and details easier to see. And not only is it more comfortable to look at well-lit ob...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEmn0Oqzrf8
Open Mike: Evidence-Based Nutrition
[Ed. Note: "Open Mike" is the anything-goes, often off-topic editorial page of TOP, wherein we let Yr. Hmbl. Ed. off the leash and allow him to indulge in tracking behavior*. When all is well and the moon is in the Seventh House, "Open Mike" appears on Wednesdays.] There's lots of putative infor...
If you don't want to see the crusty mascara use a camera without IBIS.
Best Comment Ever
All in, I believe we're approaching 270,000 comments on two different sites since I became a blogger in 2005. This might be the #1 best one ever. It's a bit dense, but be patient with yourself. Relax and read it over a few times. "The problem is that photography has always been a technical pursu...
Pocket billiards?
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pocket%20billiards
[See what I mean? Ruined. Damned English! --Mike]
Your Shot of the Day (OT)
Chris Melling's insane runout—three "shots of a lifetime" in one rack. In competition, no less. The first shot (my favorite but the one the announcer makes the least fuss over) is so inventive most players would never see it; the second shot is the kind of trickshot YouTubers try over and over a...
Coincidentally I am currently in the process of scanning the 'best' pictures from my black and white film years (1977-1982) in order to put them into a book using an online printing service.
I try to make at least one such book of my digital pictures each year. Hard copies not only have a chance of outliving me, they're much easier to show to people than digital files.
Preserve Your Photos!
We heard from David Sparks about the Black Skimmer post. You might want to check out his response if you enjoyed that post. David, who is 80, said, in part, "The Black Skimmer project and the other projects I am working on now is an effort to preserve some of the successful images in a format th...
British photographer Sophie Green has used pairs in a number of projects.
e.g. http://www.sophiegreenphotography.com/gypsy-gold/
I've done it myself a time or two. I also like to make longer sequences and grids of pictures.
Somewhere, Martin Parr said, "I never think of photographs as being individual. Always as a group."
All too often photographers think only in terms if single images. What might be called 'iconic images' these days. When in reality the pictures which photographers are remembered for are often taken from a body of work.
The Diptych (But Not Really)
Image pair. iPhone 7 Plus, taken last Tuesday. This one's still in progress, no pun intended. Although it masquerades as being altrusitic and exalted, the Art World (cap-cap) is a lot about status. That's why we call pictures "images" now—because photo-based artworks that were not strictly st...
There are people out there trying to get photo stories seen.
e.g.
https://www.instagram.com/documentingbritain/
Saying Something
Photo-sharing sites are well and good, as far as they go. (Which is too far, of course—limitless expanses of "captures" receding, with perspective, back in time to infinity.) But one thing I wish existed was a robust site for the construction of deliberately authored and edited photo essays or p...
"Up my street", surely?
Mind you, we don't have alleys round here we have ginnels.
Random Excellence: Judy Dater by Ernst L. Wehausen
TOP is a two-way conversation, and many of the things it turns up are an ongoing pleasure. After I posted Judy Dater's picture of Graham Nash the other day, Ernst L. Wehausen sent me this great portrait of Judy herself that he made in the mid-'70s. I've always had a keen interest in portraits ...
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