Keith's Odyssey to Planet Fitness: Books and comments

I haven't done a book read blog, or a comment commentary for a while, so today you get a double dose. Plus a fun link to a documentary film about the SAIT darkroom that I appear in for a few seconds. Blink and you'll miss it, the two times it happens.

Where I Find Myself by Joel Meyerowitz.

Lots of great photos, but the interesting thing was that it was arranged in reverse chronologic order. I read it the normal way, and intended to read it again from back to front, but never got the chance. This busy retired life, you know. I'd take it out of the library again to do that.

At Work by Piet Oudolf.

He is a well known garden designer, and the book is filled with lovely garden photos, and diagrams of how the gardens are laid out. Linda bought this one.

Truth Telling by Michelle Good.

The Ansel Adams books. These are a gift from a long time friend. They are considered classics in the photography world, but in one sense they are tough reading. They're quite dense, and they were written on the order of 80 years ago. That seems incredible to me. Part of the difficulty is that much of what he took for granted, such as papers, chemicals, and films, no longer exist.

The Art of Photography and The Essence of Photography by Bruce Barnbaum.

I would buy these and read them again. He talks about what lies behind the camera, that is, what is in the mind of the photographer.

The Last Launch by Dan Winters.

Lots of shuttle related photos.

Comment Commentary.

My regular readers know I love getting comments, and lots of times I'd see them as the start of a conversation. Except often even just getting a comment through Blogger is difficult, and it's a stupid way to try to have a conversation. What follows is comments on some of the comments. I last did this about a year ago.

Janet said here:

"I watch Midsomer Murders when I'm at Mom's (PBS carries it with other British shows on a Sat. night) and don't mind it. That being said, we can get it on Knowledge network (Canada's answer to PBS - which, btw, carries Brokenwood, a New Zealand detective show you two might enjoy), but have yet to watch it with Ron. Too many other (better) crime drama on our Britbox (another suggestion, Shetland...pretty sure it's on Prime and it's really good, dark but good).

Right now, we're hooked on Unforgotten - a cold case type of show!!!"

We loved Midsomer Murders, and have watched up to the last aired episode. Not so fond of "the new" Barnaby. And we just finished binging on Brokenwood. We'd seen some of the episodes on disc, out of order, and wanted to start from the start. We can't wait for Season 11. From there we just started on The Almighty Johnsons. Lots of the people from Brokenwood show up on this show. Linda was watching New Tricks, about reexamining cold cases in the UK. It didn't appeal to me though.

Sean said here:

"I understand about not feeling the groove. There are times when I am excited or committed to a project or living. There are other times when dragging my ass is as good as it good as it gets. And then there are the days when I just procrastinate. I hope you and Linda have a good day.

Speaking of software, I would like an operating system that does only that and isn't trying to make my life better."

I'm bad for procrastination. It's easy to stay in a nice chair, providing the demanding cat with a fuzzy blanket lap, reading a good book with a cup of coffee or mint tea nearby. A bit of that is fine, unless there's something that actually needs doing.

On the software front, I am quite sure the current photo computer would still be perfectly adequate if Lightroom hadn't bloated up their software. I am seriously contemplating having to buy a new laptop with associated necessary stuff and going through migration hell, or deciding that I can continue to suffer through the experience of processing many hundreds of photos at once from a race or community association event. It's not hard, just slow, and takes a bit of babysitting.

Both Janet and Sean liked the Sept IotM. (A closeup of Linda smiling. She says thank you so much!)

This is the first one that got printed at SAIT, and I have to say the print came out much nicer than the digital version. I actually did a run of 5, numbered and autographed. #1 is framed and on our mantlepiece, and the other 4 were sent to Linda's sisters. I don't know who got which print.

Janet said here:

"I'm not sure how you even manage to contemplate Image of the Year with all the photos you've taken - mindboggling. That being said, I do love your choice - haunting <3"

One of my photo buddies once expressed amazement that I could edit many hundreds of race photos and post a link to the edited version later that same day. When I asked how long they took to edit a photo, they said 10 to 30 minutes, sometimes more. I was shocked. I cannot imagine spending that much time on a random photo. The vast majority of my photos probably have less than 1minute edit time. The camera tweaks the output for what I want, and I usually nail the exposure and focus. I don't do a lot to the race and community photos. The few that get printed to be framed or to go in a book, or are part of a panorama, or might need special treatment for some reason, will get whatever it takes, and I can guarantee you it still isn't 30 minutes.

It's sort of like the high end stereo sales person flogging $$$$ things that make the source sound "better". Or so they say. If I can't hear the difference, why buy it? Think about photos. Almost all of mine are viewed as fairly small JPEG images on the blog. I know perfectly well what I see in Lightroom is not what gets seen via the blog. Plus, I'm using a 4K Retina iMac, so I'm seeing lots of pixels. If nobody (including me) can see the difference between a 1 minute edit, and a 10 minute edit diving into local changes with tiny changes to the sliders, why do it? I make up my mind, come up with the 80 or 90% solution and move on.

Similar for selecting for Image of the Month or Year. Most photos are not under active consideration. Boiling down to a short list is fairly straightforward. I keep in mind what one photographer said, I no longer remember who. Paraphrased, they said most people think editing is tweaking sliders in a photo program, but really, editing is saying, no that's not good enough, a lot.

When I do get down to the short list it gets hard. I've talked about the dithering. And yet, I know they're all good photos, or at least as good as I could make them at the time. The criteria I make up drive the selection. I know I've used different criteria over the years. And even using the same criteria, I know that if I were to go back and look at the same short list, I might make a different choice today. So I think about it and dither for a while, long enough to enjoy the process, but then I make a decision, and move on.

I think the important thing about this is that I took the photos for whatever reason seemed good at the time. The digital versions have whatever molestation the camera software and Lightroom does, plus whatever happens along the way via blogger and the inter-tubes, plus the software used to view it. The film photos are much cleaner, almost virginal. Someone might like a photo, or not like it, and that's them.

The advice George Webber gave one of the darkroom students was "Do you want to be a second class Vivian Maier, or a first class xxx (her name)." I'd rather be doing what I enjoy doing for my reasons, rather than doing what someone else thinks I should be doing.

Sean said here:

"This sequence makes me smile. Cheers, Sean"

There is another, similar sequence. Maybe I should blog it one day.

Sean said here:

"Well I am not as far behind in my comments as I thought. Congratulations on getting your 1 week chip (even if you are the one giving it to yourself). Yes, FB makes it easy to have our minds vacuumed. It is not a conspiracy to make us stupid - it is just business to them. Anything we can do to keep our creativity alive and fed, and away from vacuum cleaners is a good thing."

As I said here, and only needing to add social media to the mix."

I completely believe there is an alien conspiracy. Some of them walk among us as TV and movie producers. Their evil plot is to turn human brains into tapioca pudding via insidious broadcasts and commercials. They happen to like human brain tapioca pudding, and are patient. The harvesting will happen any time now. Even human brain tapioca can go rancid, and there are lots of signs of it happening. Which is why I don't watch much network TV or see many movies anymore."

Sean said here:

"2,3 Ah I have a soft spot in my heart for that bridge. I am not sure that the right hand third of #3 helps the image . My eye travels in a rough circle on the left side of the image, which I like. I wonder if this image would be stronger as a square. Cheers, Sean"

I barely looked at 3. I saw the vertical bright line and spent a bunch of time pondering exactly how that happened. The line is actually on the negative. Plus all the dust spots, and faint lines, and not liking it enough to have another go at cleaning the dust and trying again. I might try printing it, since I can frame it so that line isn't in the print, and drop out the rightmost part of the image.

For those that are wondering, this is the pedestrian bridge over the Bow river just south of where Deerfoot Trail crosses the Bow.

Here's the promised link to the short film.

https://youtu.be/FGj_wBLUlBs

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)