Daily Photo - Day 18

Just one today. I shot more but they were not related and wouldn't have made a good group. I hiked along country roads today. It had rained hard last night and I didn't want to get wet again like I did on the Sugar Island hike. Hiking/walking along the road is harder than hiking in the woods though. In the woods, I feel like I am inside a field of natural energy that the forest shares with me to keep me going. Road hiking is draining.

The photo is a willow in the ditch on the opposite side of the road from me. Like me, it has its struggles but I liked its shape, even the broken limbs. I like trees in general but especially those that are surviving in spite of less than ideal situations. I liked the feathery quality of the leaves, the lines of the trunk and the broken limbs. I applied a pseudo-infrared effect to emphasize the tonal relationships. Beauty is not always the result of perfection in form. Sometimes it is in the spirit that shines through struggle.

Winter and My Discontent

I have been taking a course in Mindfulness (the one by Kain Ramsey) through Udemy. In the past I have read several books on mindfulness and Buddhism, all of which recommend the practice of sitting in a certain position for a period each day and "following your breath", that is focusing your attention on each breath in and each exhalation as a way to develop mindfulness. None of the books I read really explained how that leads to mindfulness or even what mindfulness is. Kain's approach is much more pragmatic.

As a bit of background, I have several times had it suggested to me that my belief system was primarily Buddhist in nature. A couple of online quizzes placed me at 95+% Buddhist but I have always had a couple of major objections to what I read of Buddhist belief, the major one being the notion that "all of life is suffering."

Now I'm not exactly a happy go lucky bubbling with joy type of guy but "life is suffering"? Come on now. There is a lot about life, the majority by a long shot, that I really dig, and if that is suffering I say "bring it on!" As Kain explained though, 'suffering' is probably not the best translation of dukkah, the word that the Buddha used. A better translation would be dissatisfaction or discontent. Okay, I can see that.  Nothing in life is perfect and we are always looking to make things better. I'm reminded of the cooking shows Diane likes to watch where the judge says how delicious the pastry is but... the crust should be a bit crispier. I see it in the photos I make after I get home and look at them on the computer I often think "I should have framed that better." We humans are never quite content or happy no matter what, but I don't feel like I am "suffering" because of it." It's just life, just the way it is.

Longtime followers of this blog have probably noted that I do relatively less winter photography than other seasons. Winter is, for the most part, something I endure. We have had a rough week here in the far North of New York, frozen plumbing, vehicles that won't start, heavy snow to remove, etc. Lots of dukkah, things to make me think about warmer climates. But then I think about hurricanes, alligators, bugs, and sinkholes down South and decide I'll continue to put up with this. The frost patterns, like the one above on our garage door window are interesting and a diversion from the dukkah. I would never see them in a warmer clime.

To close I will throw in a winter photo processing tip for Lightroom users. Lightroom has had a "Dehaze" slider in the "Effects" section for a while now. It acts sort of like a polarizing filter on skies, separating close tones into more discreet ones by stretching lower end of the brightest tones downward. Because that also compresses the middle tones below them and that may be undesirable, the same slider is available in selection tools like the graduated filter, the radial filter, and the adjustment brush. That allows you to apply the Dehaze to only the portion that you choose.

Here's the 'winter' photo tip. Dehaze works on snow too. Too often, snow renders nearly monotone on the linear curve that is characteristic of RAW digital images, especially if you are of the "shoot to the right" school and you lose the subtle ripples and undulations of snow drifts. I tend to deliberately expose in the center of the histogram with snow scenes so that I have room on the right to pull the whites up and the highlight tones down but you can also do it with the Dehaze slider as I did in the shot below.

Happy new year by the way.

Perception and Reality

Over the past year, I have repeatedly encountered the notion that our perception ‘creates’ reality. The idea is based on the fact that in addition to the empty space that separates the stars and planets, there is a lot of empty space even inside things we think of as solid. Essentially everything that exists is made up of energy and its solidity is an illusion according to this view. Those things we perceive as solid are actually made up of atoms that have a good deal of space between them relative to their size and even within the atoms which are made up electrons, protons, and neutrons which in turn, it is argued are actually energy, not “solid”. From this, some writers, notably Robert Lanza author of Biocentrism, conclude that it is our perception of energy patterns that brings things into existence. The idea is that before we observe them, objects are merely potential and that when they are removed from our observation, they recede to being mere potential again.

Lanza’s book is not the only place I have encountered this idea. It also appears in the writings of Eldon Taylor and in at least some strains of Buddhism. It is an extension of the old question “if a tree falls in the woods and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?”. To those who believe “perception creates reality” the answer would be “no” but I believe that is a semantic distinction. What we perceive and interpret as sound is a series of waves in the air and vibration in the ground and those would exist whether any sentient being that had ears was there to hear it or not. A blind and deaf person could still be aware of the tree falling by sensing that ground vibrations through their feet or even their skin from the changes in the motion of the air as the tree fell if they were near enough to sense the resulting draft.

But this notion carries the idea even further to suggest that even the tree does not exist (or the forest or anything else) until we observe it. That strikes me as a rather egocentric view. Obviously, you exist whether I am actively observing you or not, and I exist whether or not you are observing me. Likewise, the tree had to exist as more than just potential before it could cause the sound (vibrations and waves) that alerted us to the existence of the tree and the fact that it was falling. If you were deaf and had your back to the tree as it fell on you, you wouldn’t be any less dead for not having observed or heard it as it fell. Thus the distinction of what is reality is a semantic debate over what constitutes “sound” rather than a question of the existence of the tree as more than just energy that is a potential tree unless it happens to be observed. One only has to look at archeology, geology or cosmology to realize that lots of things existed as more than just potential long before human perception was around to ‘create’ it by observing it.

In reality, all of these things exist in potential simultaneously with the physical existence that our limited senses allow us to observe and even the physical existence has aspects that we are unable to see or that we routinely overlook. An insect or a bird or other creature with a differently constructed sense of vision will see the flower very differently than you or I but they are not ‘creating’ the flower by their observation of it any more than we do. The totality of the flower is greater than we are able to perceive. Our “creation” upon observing a flower is not the flower itself, but merely our limited impression of the flower and, if we photograph it, an artifact of that impression. This is what Minor White was referring to when he said “Don’t just photograph what it is. Photograph what else it is.”

The role of the photographer (and other artists) is to stretch beyond merely seeing the obvious and to present in their creations an impression of the greater reality of the subject. So how do we do that? We must cultivate a mode of observation that does not merely see and label what we see but sees beyond labels. As Shakespeare said "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” We cannot show the smell in a photo, but there are many other aspects to the rose that we can relay to our audience. That is our goal.

Double Self-Portrait

I shot this yesterday morning as part of a series I am working on. For the purpose of the project it wasn't intended as a portrait but in retrospect, I decided that it is (in a sense) a double portrait. Not only do I appear in the mirror, but I am the creator of the mirror. If it is true that an artist reveals himself through his work, then I am in this photo twice.

Lean-to Maintenance & Why I photograph

A couple of friends and I hiked to "my" lean-to (I am the adopter of Scott Clearing lean-to) on Saturday to do a semi-annual cleanup and check for needed repairs. The streams were all running high from the heavy rains that had fallen the day and night before. On the way back out we stopped by Rocky Falls and I made the above 3 frame panorama.

When I posted it to Facebook one person thanked me for bringing the scenery into her home and that is part of why I photograph but only part. I know some wilderness photographers who make their photos as a way to encourage preservation of wilderness and Ansel Adams' photographs have been credited with convincing congress to preserve some western parks but Ansel was also a prolific advocate of wilderness. He wrote letters almost daily and was very active in the Sierra Club. While the photos played a role, they were secondary to his activism IMO. I belong to the Adirondack Mountain Club but mostly as a low key member. I participate in the lean-to adopter program and I donate use of my photos but I don't kid myself that my photographs are going to play a significant role in preservation of the park.

So why do I do it? Mostly for myself. Photography is a way for me to connect with the landscape more deeply than just hiking through. It makes me think about what attracts my attention and how best to represent that in an image. There is also the discipline of observation that goes along with photography. That discipline makes me a more keen observer of my surroundings. Practicing any visual art medium can develop your observation skills but photography appeals to me the most.

The photographs aren't entirely for me alone of course. The process is for me but once I have made an image I think is successful I like to share it and while people may enjoy seeing them I hope they will also be inspired to go out and spend time in nature themselves. The very best photographs I (or anyone) can make are pale imitations of the experience of being there. If anything is going to convert a person to being a preservationist it is the experience of being in the midst of nature and realizing that we are a part of nature that will achieve the conversion, not my photographs. At best the photograph inspires them to wander off into the wild to see what's there and be open to what wilderness has to offer.

The photograph below was made along the trail on the left bank of the brook as we were going back to the main trail after visiting the falls. After looking them up on the web I find that white Moccasin Flowers are not uncommon but this was the first one I'd ever seen so I felt it deserved a portrait.

Thinking About Art

Recently I watched “The Monuments Men”, a movie that I recommend although this isn’t a review. This is more of a mulling or pondering of the rationale the main characters used for their mission in light of how the world has changed since WWII.

For those who aren’t familiar with the movie the plot (based on real life) involves a group of art specialists who set out to save the art that has been stolen by the Nazis in their advance through Europe. They volunteer to serve in a special unit to find, identify and retrieve great works of art as the Germans retreat after D-Day. The rationale for the mission is that the art represents the culture of the invaded countries and if it is lost or destroyed it will mean the destruction of the culture. As the lead character puts it, people can be killed but new generations will be born and the culture lives on through the art, thus it is important to preserve the art.

As the Germans gathered up the art in their retreat they stored it in mines and it takes the protagonists some time to learn where it is. The rest of the army is too busy fighting to provide more than minimal assistance and pays little attention when the Monuments Men do succeed. The only discovery they make that gets attention is a cache of gold in one of the mines. That gets everyone’s attention including the media. Over the course of their self assigned mission the Monuments Men save and return millions of pieces of art, paintings, sculpture, etc. In the process they lost two of their unit plus two members of the team from allied forces. In the final scenes, Frank Stokes, the leader of the unit is reviewing the mission for his superiors and is asked “Was it worth it?”. He responds that it was.

After the movie I wondered about his premise in terms of the modern world. In prewar Europe I can see where it could be argued that the art and architecture was the embodiment of the culture in which it existed. In today’s global society I’m not sure that still applies. Yes, there are remnants of that old culture but it is rapidly fading and art is more an expression of the individual artist than of the culture and values of the society in which the artist works. Would any art curator today risk life and limb to salvage Damien Hirst’s pickled shark on the pretext that it represented our culture? Or how about Raffaello D’Andrea’s robotic chair? I wonder.

Visual Poetry?

I read a number of other blogs on a regular basis. One is an artists hosting site that frequently posts things from member blogs. Today I read an article about painting by Doug Hoppes that fits very well with the topic I have been discussing in other recent posts, seeing and translating what we see into images that communicate what we see to our audience. In it he quotes one of his teachers, Stapleton Kearns, as saying "The arts are purest as they approach poetry". For the curious the article is at http://doughoppes.com/blog/67282/how-to-fix-that-%93something%94-that-im-missing.

I'm a believer in the idea that artists of all mediums have a lot in common and can learn from one another. The techniques to render what we see and try to represent may be different but the core of what we do is the same. The ideas that Doug Hoppes expounds in that post can just as easily apply to a photograph. Where a painter may take a certain amount of "artistic license" by leaving out distracting elements or emphasizing others to direct the viewer's attention in a representational work, so may the landscape photographer use both in camera and post exposure controls to impart the "feeling" of a scene.

In the case of the image above I used an exposure that left detail in the brightest portion, the sky. But even then the sky was basically a flat grey with little variation. My eye which has the capacity to see a much greater dynamic range than the camera and thus differentiate the subtle shadings in the sky had seen more. In order to make the image closer to my vision of it I selected the bright areas and applied a curve that translated the subtle differences into a range of tones that a computer can display. That left the line of mist behind the islands and some other foreground details too dark so I dodged them on a merged layer in order to bring them back up in relation to the surroundings. The result is how I remember the scene, how it felt. Hopefully it is a poetic representation.

Is Renown an Aesthetic Trap?

Brooks Jensen writes today on Lens Work Daily that he got a copy of the new Sabastião Salgado book Genesis and expressed dismay at the grain that is apparent in the photographs. As a landscape photographer Brooks likes smooth gradations of tone and wonders aloud why Salgado chose to make the images so grainy and choose to do so he did. An earlier discussion of DXO Film Pack on The Online Photographer revealed that Salgado now shoots digital but runs the images through DXO Film Pack to simulate Tri-X 400 or T-Max 3200 and then prints the images to 35mm recording film from which he makes prints. He does this complex process to make the look like they were shot on aforesaid films as he feels that is part of his style that makes his work recognizable.

If you have been following this blog you may remember that I did a review of several B&W conversion plug-ins and that DXO Film Pack was among them. I commented at the time that I did not purchase the DXO offering after using the trial copy because its primary aim was to simulate film (including the characteristic grain) and that was not my objective so I suspect you will not be surprised that I tend to agree with Brooks Jensen's puzzlement and dismay at Salgado's decision to deliberately degrade otherwise beautiful landscape images solely to conform to the look of his more renown street photographs which were made in the decades before digital photography came of age.

Like Salgado I began photography well before digital and like him I shot a lot of Tri-X  and T-Max 400 35mm film. Unlike him I did not and do not regard the grain pattern as part of my "style". It was simply a by-product of the technology available at the time. Whenever I could I tended to use larger format and slower (smaller grained) films which I then developed to minimize the grain. What I regard as my style is the subject matter I am attracted to and the particular way I see and photograph it.

The photograph above was made on film some years before I switched to digital, probably in the early 1980s. Even with medium format there is considerable grain in both the snowy foreground and the sky. While the grain does not necessarily detract from the image I don't feel it really adds either. Had I shot it with digital I certainly would not choose to add imitation grain. I suspect Mr. Salgado's desire to make it look like his earlier images derives for a need to have a consistent "look" with those for which he is known.

As technology improves so can the work we produce with it. To tie one's style to the limitations of an earlier era so that your audience will recognize it seems sad to me. We are in a changing world and we should all be growing and changing with it. I want to make it clear that I have no problem with modifying images for aesthetic effect when the image calls for it but going to great pains to tie a new and unrelated body of work to an earlier body by imitating the earlier technology suggests that Salgado feels trapped by the earlier work, that he has to create an artificial connection to his earlier work for the new work to be accepted by his audience. Of course he may simply like the look of grainy images but, like Brooks, I wish he had chosen to take full advantage of the capabilities he had available for the new work.

The photo above is of a barn in Gabriels, NY in the northern Adirondacks. It was made with a 645 camera on T-Max 400 and has been cropped top and bottom. I don't know the date. I'm a lousy record keeper and unlike digital, film cameras didn't record such things. I couldn't make this photo today. Although the barn is still there a number of trees have grown up in the foreground and there are the beginnings of a housing development behind it. The world moves on and we have to move on with it.

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Some Thoughts about "Seeing"

This post was prompted by Guy Tal and Dan Baumbach’s inter-blog conversation on the role of seeing in photography. In my youth I enrolled in the Famous Photographers Course which was a part of the Famous Artists School. They also ran a Famous Writers School as I recall. All three were based on lessons prepared by or under the advice of well known practitioners. The group behind the photography course consisted of Richard Avedon, Richard Beattie, Joseph Costa, Arthur d’Arazien, Alfred Eisenstaedt (one of my heroes at the time), Harry Garfield, Philippe Halsman, Irving Penn, Bert Stern & Ezra Stoller. Needless to say the course had a distinctly photojournalist/commercial bent. There were no art photographers on the list, indeed at that time (1963) photography as art was still a debatable topic although it was making headway.

The reason the Famous Photographers Course comes up now is because of one of the beginning lessons which talked about seeing, a lesson that immediately came to mind when reading the above mentioned posts by Guy and Dan. The lesson began by defining “seeing”. They said (paraphrased) that most people only “look”, they don’t “see”. Looking will show you where the door knob is so you can open the door, it helps you navigate your way through the world but you don’t truly see what is around you. Looking does not help you relate to your surroundings in a deep way. That lesson has probably been the most influential force on my photography in the ensuing 50 years.

I have learned (and taught) a great deal about photography, mostly of a technical nature, since then but technology changes, sometimes subtly as with the development of newer films like the tabular grained B&W films, to the more radical switch to digital. And the technology is important as a tool for translating what you saw into an image. Likewise the aesthetics of composition (leading lines, “S” curves, the so-called “rule” of thirds, etc.) are tools, but none of that is the message. The message is what you “saw”, the experience of the subject, the vision that impressed itself enough on your consciousness to inspire you to photograph it.

Even experienced photographers and artists spend a lot of time looking but not seeing. It is a necessary function of life. Not just “where’s the doorknob” but where is my fork, where is my coat & hat, etc. A generalized awareness of your surroundings is necessary to daily life and survival. Seeing is a kind of concentrated attention that deliberately shuts out the non-essential of a specific experience. If you have ever fallen in love you have done it (beauty is in the eye of the beholder). For the photographer/artist it is a practice similar to meditation in which you consciously devote your attention to the aspect of the subject that has inspired you to make a photograph (or draw or paint) and what needs to be done technically and compositionally to force your audience’s attention to that same aspect of the subject. This is true whether you are trying to show an object itself or the way the light falls on the object or some other aspect to tell your ‘story’ of the subject. The techniques you use should support what visual aspect of the subject inspired your vision of it. For me seeing is the core of photography. The rest is details.

Although I have been photographing for more years than anything else, in college I studied fine art, courses in drawing, painting, printmaking and ceramics (my major). Those who draw and paint do essentially the same thing in terms of visualizing their subject matter that photographers do but I have to say they have a distinct advantage when it comes to creating their images. If something detracts from the image, the draftsman/painter can simply change it or leave it out entirely. The photographer has to figure out how to work around such things, minimize them visually, find a different viewpoint, etc. The details of photography.

Of course in Photoshop we can eliminate such things but those of us who come from a photo journalistic background have a tendency to avoid major alterations in post exposure processing. I guess it’s partly that old habits die hard but it is also true that I tend to relate to things as they are. I know artists who can paint abstracts from nothing but a concept or fantasy images of things that exist only in their mind but I am fascinated by the world as it is and when I edit images I try to do it in a way that accentuates the particular aspect of the subject that attracts me.

I have often been asked by students “What should I photograph?” and have even read where some teachers have told students of landscape photography that to get good photos they have to go to where the good landscapes are, the Western National Parks. That advice might get you a remake of some of Ansel Adams photos, or some other more contemporary photographer but it won’t give you your photographs. You need to develop your own vision of the landscape. I used to show a lot of well known images in my classes and encourage the students to look at images they like while asking themselves why they are attracted to those images, why the images ‘work’ visually. It might be partly the subject and partly the composition but frequently an image grabs the viewer even though it violates “the rules”. The trick to making good images is to look deeply and deliberately until your looking evolves into seeing. Technique will help you render an image that communicates your seeing but only if the seeing was there first. And those occasions when you see something that you can capture with little effort?  That does not diminish the quality of the seeing or the image. Just say a quiet thank you for the gift.

Links to the posts by Guy and Dan are attached to their names above.

The photo at the top was one of those fortuitous images that presented itself to me and, with nothing more than judicious framing, I was able to capture exactly what I wanted, the diagonals of the individual lines and the overall shape against the reflection of the evening sky on the gently rippling surface of the pond. Plants emerging from the earth through water reflecting the heavens above. 

As always please do not repost without permission. Respect my copyright and link to this page if you wish to share.

Happy Holidays

It's that time of year again. I'm happy to see that there is less rancor this year over how we wish one another peace and good will, which after all is the main theme of the season regardless of your religion or lack thereof. I considerably less happy with the recent weather which delayed the arrival of our holiday guest and is eating up our wood pile at a frightening rate. All said though we got less ice & snow than some. We lost power briefly during the night last night but many others have been without it for 2-3 days and some of those won't likely get it back until the coming weekend. That will certainly dampen the holiday spirit for them and the crews that will be working straight through the holiday to get power restored. It does give us cause to remember how much we depend on each other for the things that make life easier.

The photo is of decorations on our back porch. The lights on the trees are enhanced with Topaz Star  Effects. The text overlay is standard Photoshop technique using a bevel (contour & texture) with added satin effect. None are at the default settings. I played to get the look I wanted.

Wishing you all a great holiday whatever your reason for celebrating even if it's just because you enjoy it. After all, you don't need a reason to be happy.

Thoughts on Aging and Attitude

The photo is from four years and almost nine months ago. I made it on the way to join my friend Rick Reed who was completing his climbs of the 46 Adirondack High Peaks on Whiteface that day. It was my pleasure (and honor) to present him with a 46er pin when he reached the summit (see http://www.adk46r.org/ for an explanation of 46ers). I post it today because it is the same peak on which I finished climbing the 46 in 1993 and I will be repeating the climb as a 20th anniversary hike on the 17th, a little less than two weeks from today.

In the process of preparing to do this I have on occasion suffered a bit of self doubt, thoughts about being 20 years older, can I still do this, etc. Upon expressing them I have heard some of them echoed by others. On the other hand, inside my head I hear my eldest brother Bruce who was known for saying "there's no such thing as can't", On my daily walk this evening, which is longer than the distance up Whiteface, albeit not as steep, I pondered the business of age and concluded that there are three aspects to aging.

The first is chronological, the calendar, and you can't do anything about it nor in a larger sense does it matter. Time supposedly passes, that's how we experience things, but realistically all there is is NOW. The second aspect is physical. Our bodies do wear out with the passage of time but we have considerable control over how and how quickly they wear out. Abuse your body in any of a number of ways and it will wear out more sooner. Eat right, exercise (motion is good for you), generally take care of it and it will last longer. The third aspect is mind/attitude, the thing my brother was talking about. We have (almost) total control over that. I threw in the 'almost' because some of us will suffer from things like Alzheimer's. For most of us though, we choose our attitude when we wake up in the morning and with each encounter throughout the day. We can stay interested in life and the world, we can stay positive or  not. It is our choice. I've known people who were young in mind well into old age while others were mentally old at 40. Research has shown that learning new skills (learn to dance, learn to play a musical instrument, learn a new language) keeps our minds young.

Our attitude is key for keeping our bodies in shape but I think there is a part of our brain that is like Hal in Space Odyssey 2001. It has a 'prime directive' to preserve our body which it interprets as seeking ease and comfort above all  else. Unfortunately, that is not always what is best for our physical well being. The Hal part of my brain tells me it's too hot to go for a walk and I have to shut 'Hal' off, listen to Bruce's voice instead and go anyway. So my thought for the day is ignore the calendar and adopt an attitude of caring for yourself and the world, and a attitude of "I CAN". See you on the mountaintop.

Out Standing in my Field

A photo of a bumble bee on some Cow Vetch. The field is really coming alive with wildflowers. The former owners mowed the field every year with a brush hog and not much grew there last year. I spread some wildflower seeds Monday to encourage even more variety. If I start to get trees and shrubs where I don't want them, I'm remove them selectively rather than just mowing everything. I'm not a big fan of mowing where there's no real reason. Back when I first retired I spent the first summer taking walks along the country roads around where I lived and photographing the wild flowers along them with my first digital camera, an Olympus 4040. Part way through the summer I discovered that the sides of the road had been mowed by the town highway department and wrote this:

In The Shadow of a Goose

Two weeks ago there were wildflowers

on the shoulder of this country road,

and as I walked along that day I stopped to photograph

Queen Ann’s Lace, Mayweed, and Bladder Campion.

Purple clusters of Vetch and

pink trumpet blooms of Bindweed

climbed the tall grasses

reaching for the sun.

Then the highway department came through,

a big tractor pulled a huge mower

that cut anything smaller than your thumb

leaving in its wake a mass of mangled green.

Now, the grass is getting tall again,

almost as tall as it was, and ragweed is thriving,

but the wildflowers are gone from the roadside.

It’s neater now, everything the same height and all green.

The wildflowers are still in bloom of course,

just over the fence, in the farmer’s field.

Here on the public right of way,

things are neat and orderly, not wild.

Off to my right a dozen or so geese rise from a wetland.

They fly across the road, between me and the sun.

The shadow of a goose passes over me,

over the fence and over the wildflowers in the field.

Pondering Impermanence With The Way Back Machine*

In October of 1993, the same year I finished climbing the 46 High Peaks, a group of Tibetan Monks were visiting St. Lawrence University. During their stay they created a sand mandala (photo above) in the art gallery. We went to the final ceremony. Before the ceremony there was a step ladder from which I (and others) were allowed to photograph the mandala.

During the ceremony the monks swept the  sand to the center and stirred it before scooping it into a glass pitcher. Those who wanted were given a small amount of the sand as a souvenir. Above my monitor as I type this there is a small silver box containing about a teaspoon of that sand. Following the destruction of the mandala and placing the sand into the pitcher it was taken to the river where it was poured into the water to wash away.

One of the purposes of the creation and destruction of the sand mandala is to demonstrate the impermanence of all things. Tonight as I was scanning these old negatives I was struck by the irony that the mandala lives on in these photos and not only mine. In the second photo where the sand is being poured into the river I count no less than 5 still cameras and one movie camera, not counting the one I took the photo with. In addition to that there were dozens, if not hundreds of photos taken during the several days that the monks worked on creating the mandala in the gallery. Those of us who photographed the mandala and ceremony took a demonstration of impermanence and made it permanent, at least relatively permanent. Certainly more permanent than the monks intent.

I recently read about a group of photographs that were shot into space on a geostationary satellite with the expectation that they will still be around millions of years from now. It seems in spite of the message that the monks brought to Canton, NY nearly twenty years ago we humans are doing our level best to create permanence in an impermanent universe and photography seems to be our chosen tool.

* With apologies to Sherman & Mr. Peabody I've taken to calling my camera "The Way Back Machine".

Merry Christmas

I really should have saved yesterday's photo for today but this one will do. I made this photo yesterday too. It is the same sugar shack I ran a photo of a short time ago.

Between the horror of the school shooting in Connecticut and then yesterday's shooting of firemen responding to a fire in Webster, NY along with all the other turmoil in the world this is a Christmas of very mixed feelings. On one local blog that I follow some comments expressed the view that evil is in firmly charge and that good has lost. I confess to feeling some dismay at the state of the world myself.

I do not believe in a God who magically impregnates women any more than I believe there is a real Santa Claus living at the North Pole. We know for a fact that the designation of Dec. 25th as the birth of Jesus (not even his real name) was an arbitrary decision made several hundred years after the fact and that has only a one in 365 chance of being the right date, but it is what the various traditions symbolize that is important, (re)birth and renewal.

 There are not a lot of things I 'believe', things that I accept without proof, but one thing I do believe it is that the triumph of good is inevitable, it is programmed into creation by whatever power brought forth the universe and sustains it moment to moment. I believe that system and human nature are 'rigged' for good in the end. At this point in the year when the ancients saw the day shrinking and figuratively dying, it begins to lengthen again, to rise anew. They created holidays to mark the rebirth of the sun, the beginning of a new cycle of nature. That is what we celebrate, that no matter what we humans do, good or evil, the cycle goes on, life begins anew.

When I was out photographing yesterday in the silence that is winter I could feel the new beginning that the Christmas story stands for. Some of those in despair are sure that there is a 'war on Christmas' but, as I see it, they are too caught up in the details of the story to sense the message behind it. There probably wasn't really a stable or a star, those are symbols in a parable to remind us that hope comes from humility and often seems to shine in the far off distance. The Wise Men symbolize those who seek in spite of difficulties and those who would deceive them. I find my truth in nature. I hope that my photos bring your some sense of what I find there. Happy Holidays whatever belief you choose to follow. May you have a wonderful new year.

A Snowy Christmas Eve Morning

I had an early appointment this morning and drove into town through a snowy landscape that brought "Over the river and through the woods" to mind. Where I grew up we attended a one room country school and walked 1½ miles each way. This morning's drive took me back to winter mornings walking to school wrapped in the exquisite silence of winter with snow flakes fluttering down.

We seem to spend all our time surrounded with man made sound these days; TV, radio, even wearing MP3 players to constantly blast us with music while we do other things. I could not help but remember the joy of no sound at all on those winter mornings, snowflakes landing so softly that nothing disturbed the silence. I hope that you all make time for some silence this season, an opportunity to commune with nature and experience peace.

Along with getting ready for company over the holidays I'm still working at scanning old negatives. Many memories come flooding back in the process along with an acute sense of how the world has changed over the last 3-4 decades, an awareness made even more poignant by the massacre of school children and teachers in a Connecticut elementary school. When I stood on the Thousand Island Bridge about 40 years ago to make this photo I never imagined I would see such events unfold on the evening news.

After such things (and there have been far too many in recent years) I have often wished that I had some sort of time machine so that I could go back to the day before such events and warn the authorities to take preventative action. Alas they would not be likely to believe me. I would be dismissed as some kind of nut case.

I find some solace in looking back at images I made in better times. The irony (it seems there is always irony) is that I didn't think those were better times when I made the image. If I tried to walk up the bridge with camera in hand these days I'd be arrested as a terrorist plotter. The line of the fence, the broken windmill and the abandoned farm buildings still speak to me across the decades reminding me that all things change and the more they change, the more they stay the same. Life does go on.

Image Quality

A friend has been looking at mirrorless cameras with an eye toward getting one that he could easily carry around. He is insistent that he wants one that is capable of the same or better image quality as his Nikon D80. In our conversation he mentioned some photographs he had missed back in film days because he didn't have his SLR with him and that he bought a small rangefinder camera but the image quality wasn't up to his SLR so he only used it once. He doesn't want to do the same again with digital.

That reminded me of Jay Maisel who has an incredible eye, not just for the obvious photograph but for finding top notch images in the mundane. Somewhere, on one of my old hard drives, I have a video of him talking to another photographer at lunch in NYC and the other photographer says that he passes up photos where the light is too dim or "not right", images that won't be high quality. Jay's response was "To hell with quality. I just want to get the picture". It must work. He is probably the most highly successful stock and assignment photographer ever.


Technical image quality is only one aspect of a photograph and not necessarily the most important one, often in fact it is not all that important. What is important is the emotion, the way the scene feels and how well that comes through to the viewer. The real challenge of photography is determining what is most important about the scene before you and how to best convey that with the least distraction by other elements in the photo.

The last couple of days I've been scanning and playing with some 35mm images I shot back in the early '70s but never got around to printing. I had no darkroom at the time but could develop film in a daylight tank so I simply filed the negatives away to print 'someday'. Someday arrived for this roll. It was undoubtedly shot with a Miranda Sensomat, the only camera I had at the time, and the 50mm lens that came with the camera. It was made on Plus-X Pan and would have been developed in D-76, my stock developer back then.

My personal favorite from the roll is the Winter Corn Field. Why? I like the arrangement of the bands of trees & brush, the small hill rising in the background, the sweep of the rows of corn stubble and the tractor tracks cutting across them in the snow. I like the dark sky. Overall it reminds me of photos and engravings from the 20s and thirties, the sort of images my grandmother hung on her living room wall. To that end I toned it, a way to heighten that feeling. Is it sharp? Not especially. It is quite grainy. I shot that scene about 40 years ago and don't remember doing it but I look at the scan and know exactly what I saw and why I shot the scene. The feeling is there. My challenge today is to interpret the negative in such a way as to convey those emotional qualities and I don't believe that absolute sharpness and clarity are necessary.

Following Jay's advice, I believe it is better to get the image with the equipment you have or can afford, under whatever conditions you encounter than to pass it up waiting for a better camera, better light, whatever. This roll of film that I'm playing with is not the only one that I shot and never printed because I didn't have the resources at the time so I'll likely find others in the future but I have the negatives and that's what counts.

Darkroom Goodbye

No photo to offer my readers today, just thoughts. I spent the day clearing out the bathroom/darkroom in our old house. I haven't actually made any prints in it for probably 7 or 8 years. It had become more of  a store room during that time gathering all sorts of non-photographic "stuff". All the same it was a bit depressing to pack up the enlarger along with all the other paraphernalia. My darkrooms have always been makeshift affairs. In college I covered all the windows of our apartment with black plastic and worked at night to produce news photos for a local chain of papers. I finally quit when after 2½ years I figured out that I was netting all of 40¢ per hour between travel, shooting and printing minus expenses.

This latest darkroom was in a former (and now renewed) bathroom in an upstairs apartment that we chose not to rent out. I had at last acquired some decent equipment (a couple of pieces were better than decent) just about the time digital came on the scene. Although I still occasionally shoot B&W medium format film, I scan it and print digitally these days. In my estimation there is no reason whatever to shoot color film any more except perhaps to burn through any you have stashed in your freezer. The best color film scan can't match a good RAW file, it's not even close.

In spite of that, shutting down the darkroom formally was a bit of a downer for me. I have a lot of pleasant memories of working late into the night in my make-do darkrooms. For those who have never done it (and there seem to be a lot of you now) darkroom work has a very different quality than editing photos in the computer. Lest anyone feel ire at that, I'm using the word "quality" to mean a difference in kind rather than implying that one or the other is of greater value. I spent most my time in darkroom work doing it alone or in the company of my wife who assisted me with it in college. Printing in the darkroom was a withdrawal from the world to a darkened space, almost like retreating to a cave to meditate on and perfect the images. And once your got it right for any given photo, your job was to repeat it as many times as you needed to make the required number of prints, each exposed, dodged and burned to match the others as closely as possible.

No typing a number into a dialog and clicking the "Print" button to run off a batch while you grab a cola. Instead we had a direct and visceral communion with each print, handling each sheet of paper, pulling it from its light tight box and wrapper, placing it in the easel, making the exposure, watching it appear in the developer, following it through the wash and drying process. I was doing a lot of split filter printing on multi-contrast paper with separate dodging and burning to each of the two exposures for each print.

Perhaps those years in the darkroom are why I am sometimes uncomfortable with the relative ease of editing and printing digitally, a nagging feeling that I am relying too much on the software, the keyboard/mouse/stylus creating a barrier to the tactile relationship with each print that was intrinsic to the wet darkroom. Those of you who began photography after the digital revolution or who never printed your own work will never be thus troubled but for those with a past of chemical stained clothes and fingers there is a  lingering sense that we are somehow cheating when we print digitally, a sense that it isn't really us and our skill producing the final image.

An Old Friend

I have been driving by and frequently photographing this tree for years. I think its days are numbered though. Most of the leaves you see in the photo are a vine that is using the tree for support. The actual number of leaves on the tree is down significantly from last year and I'm wondering if it will leave out at all next year.The roots get the energy to carry a tree through the winter from photosynthesis in the leaves through the summer. With this few leaves the tree may be winter killed.

Despite all the times I've photographed it, pondered its persistence in spite of being "challenged", and generally appreciated it aesthetically, today was the first time I attempted to identify it. I took my tree guides with me and as near as I can tell it is a Black Walnut although there is a chance it might be a Butternut. I could only go by the leaves and they are both sparse and somewhat stunted so they might not exactly fit the standard shown in my tree identification books.

As a result of our move I soon won't be going by it frequently if at all. I'll miss it like an old friend and wish our parting could have come with it in better health.

Acres of Sky

Our new place has an open meadow in back of the house that gives some great views of the sky. We were surrounded by trees at the old place which was nice because we were in town and the trees gave a sense of privacy to the one acre lot. Here I'm enjoying watching the sky, especially around sunset and the twilight just after sunset as in this view. The former owners used to brush hog the field but I like it as a natural meadow with wildflowers. I mowed the meandering path to the woods. I'll leave the rest. If something starts to grow back there that I don't want I'll cut it individually rather than mow everything as a preventative measure. Come August 11 I plan to park a lawn chair out in the meadow with the back reclined as far as it will go so that I can go out at night and watch the Perseids. I hope it will be clear that night.


Canon 7D. Three vertical frames stitched.