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The problem

The problem with buying something like the M9 (now known far and wide as “That pretentious piece of crap that serves only as a tool for the undeservingly wealthy to oppress the downtrodden masses yearning to breath free”) is that it is backordered.

And that means that I am spending time sitting around thinking about it, which is pointless, instead of going out and making photographs, which is something that would improve my life and thus is not pointless (at least to me).

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Molting

  

I’ve been engaged in the photographic equivalent of molting – getting rid of a lot of old equipment I no longer use. The film processing stuff is gone. The rest of the darkroom stuff will be gone soon. And new stuff is coming in, of course – just not as much as the old stuff going out.

Yesterday, I gathered up a big pile of lenses, camera bodies (including the much beloved Canon EOS-5d and the long time favorite 100mm f/2.8 macro), and took them to the local camera store, where I traded them in against an order for a Leica M9 and a Canon 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS.

It’s amazing how much stuff you can accumulate over time. Some of that stuff has some very fond memories attached. But I feel surprisingly released – I hadn’t realized how much *stuff* there was and how much emotional drag it generated. And I’m very much looking forward to that M9.

Off, now, to take a walk with the new lens and the old dog.

Spotmeters for sale!

I’ve got three spotmeters. I don’t really need one, let alone three. Two of them need to go.

1 Pentax Digital Spotmeter (36141), mint except for minor scuffing on sides, complete with cap, strap, case, manual & box. Works perfectly. $350

1 Zone VI modified Pentax Digital Spotmeter (same as above) modified by Zone VI Studios (with zone system sticker on barrel and Zone VI sticker on handle), cap missing, strap replaced with quick release webbing lanyard, with the original case, manual, and letter and receipt from Zone VI. Shows some minimal wear from use, works perfectly. $400

If you’re interested, send me some email (email address is at the bottom of this page)

PDF size

Yesterday, I got together with my friend Alex, to go over the process of generating a PDF portfolio. We spent a little time exploring the PDF options you get in the Export menu in InDesign.

What we discovered was that changing the settings to downsample the images to 150 dpi and setting the compression level to ‘medium’ dropped the size of the PDF file generated for one of my online PDF portfolios from 23MB to 8MB.

Even better, looking at the two PDF files side by side and flipping back and forth full screen, we couldn’t see a difference.

I guess I will be generating new PDF files for my static website.

Subject

There are a whole host of interesting comments on this post. It’s forming an interesting group conversation, really.

Niels Henriksen wrote:

The one problem I am having with these discussions is the definition of subject. I have a feeling that we may not all have the same meaning.

I suspect Niels is right about this. There’s no single definition being used, and that’s confusing things. I don’t know an easy way around that problem other than suggesting a single definition, and then it just because an argument about the definition.

Take Ed Richards comment:

Hmmm. I am a bit surprised. I thought that a major point of your only shooting what you see when you walk the dog was exactly a Rockwellian exercise in shooting without subjects. As opposed, say, to dragging your camera to the Oregon coast to shoot SUBJECTS. In a sense, subject matters because it is in the picture and has to be dealt with, but I read Ken as trying to get people away from the notion that they have to important subjects to make great pictures. Perhaps the contrast between an AA print of Half Dome and a wonderful Josef Sudek print of a glass by the sink.

What I am photographing these days is, by and large, what I see on the walks with the dog. That’s partly convenience. The basis for the experiment, though, was observing that every single workshop leader or teacher I’ve had has told me to photograph what I know and love. Ruth Bernhard told me to sell the large format camera, buy a small camera, and make photographs of my family, for crying out loud. When Ruth Bernhard told you to do something, by God, you at least listened and considered.

And so I photographed on the beach because I found it a fascinating place, and I discovered that photographing a place is a great way to come to understand it. I photographed my kids, because I love them and knew they would not be children forever. I photographed in the valley near where I live, because in some large sense it’s where I live, and it’s important to me. And now I’m photographing in the forest where I live, because it’s the specific spot I decided to put my home. All of those things matter to me. There are uncountably many other things to photograph, and I might one day decide those things are important, too, but until then I’m not drawn to photograph them.

I don’t know quite how to explain this except by example. A photographer who met Harry Callahan gushed enthusiastically “I’m so glad to meet you because I, too, photograph nudes!”, and Callahan responded by saying that he didn’t photograph nudes, he photographed his wife. This seems an essential distinction to me; if form and composition are all that matters, it shouldn’t make any difference whether you photograph your wife, or some other randomly chosen woman of the same proportions. And yet it matters. It matters a lot.

Ken Rockwell in one place tells us that subject doesn’t matter. And yet, not very much further along in the page in question, he writes about punchlines. And yet, if it’s all about treating the subject as something that doesn’t matter beyond providing things to generate strong, graphic compositions that grab your attention from 100 feet away, how can it matter that this blob over here is a person looking at that blob over there, and that blob over there is actually a person looking back? Either a blob is a blob is a blob, or else it matters what sort of blob it is. If exactly what sort of a blob it is matters, then I’d say subject matters.

If what is being said is that we can’t separate the world into two disjoint sets, one of which is good to photograph and the other not good to photograph, then I agree. People care about different things, and while I happen to care about trees, some folks don’t. I should photograph trees, and those people who don’t care about trees might find it helpful to photograph something else. So it’s possible, I suppose that Rockwell and I are in violent agreement. But I don’t think thats the case.

If what is being said is that the subject only matters in the sense that it provides compositional fodder, I am at a complete loss. Why, then, does Sebastio Salgado go to great effort to travel to the places he does and photograph the people he does? Surely there are people close to his home who are roughly the same size and shape and would be a lot more convenient.

As several commenters point out, it’s wise to stay away from absolutes. So in the end perhaps all I can say is this: subject matters to me, and it appears that it matters to some other photographers as well. Maybe that means I’m doing one thing, and Ken Rockwell is doing something different, and the two activities are connected only because both involve cameras. And that’s just fine, if somewhat confusing.

Necessary/Sufficient

Just to clarify…

What Ken Rockwell says is “in photographic art, it’s never about the subject.” [emphasis mine] and “The actual subject doesn’t matter.” [again, emphasis mine].

What I am trying to say is that subject does matter.

Here’s a useful distinction. If something must be present for the photograph to be successful, then that thing is necessary. If the presence of something guarantees that the photograph will be successful, then that thing is sufficient.

Rockwell appears to be arguing that subject is not necessary, and that strong, graphic composition is sufficient.

I am arguing that subject is necessary, and that strong graphic composition is not sufficient. It is, for all practical purposes, impossible to make a compelling photograph by making a strong, graphic composition of brightly colored idealized featureless geometric solids resting on a featureless geometric plane.

Here are some arguments I am not making:

1. strong, graphic composition is never helpful.
2. when deliberately striving for a strong, graphic composition, it is not helpful to ignore what things are, and instead think of them as three dimensional solids projected onto a two dimensional plane.
3. subject matter is sufficient – that is, given very strong subject matter, composition no longer matters.

Comment Policy

Today, for the first time in months and months I’ve deleted a few comments. It’s time for a little clarification.

I neither want nor expect commenters to agree with what I write, and I’ve never deleted a comment just because it expressed disagreement.

I will delete comments which contain ad hominem attacks as soon as I see them. I will delete comments which are insulting as soon as I see them, too, regardless of what person or group of people is insulted. Ideas are fair game. People are not.

Example: disagreeing with what Ken Rockwell says is fine. Saying rude and disparaging things about him is not.

Carry on.

Adobe PDF reader security

Those of you who were concerned about the Adobe PDF security issues revealed nearly a month ago (see this post) will be relieved to know that Adobe have finally issued an update to fix the issue.

I used the regular Adobe Update feature in Adobe Reader to pick up the update successfully.