Austin Rain

Edge - Third Visit - Bull Creek, Austin

Last weekend it rained in Austin. Radio DJs marveled between each set list; it was the lead story on every newscast Friday through Monday. Bull Creek flowed for the first time in five months; not deep, not fast, but magically, mystically.

Saturday afternoon I took the camera back to the creek for a third visit. The dusty brown rocks had greened; the algae had merely been waiting for moisture and not dead. Sunday turned cold and rained all day; a London day in Texas. Two inches for the weekend; not an end to the drought of the twelve driest months on record but a reminder that such a thing could happen and a relief from the possibility of more wildfires.

It may be false hope but we will take it just the same.

Synecdoche

Drain Pipe in Rain 3 - Sushi Sake, Stonelake & Research, Austin

Drain Pipe in Rain 3 - Sushi Sake, Stonelake & Research, Austin

Synecdoche: a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole (as fifty sail for fifty ships), the whole for a part (as society for high society), the species for the genus (as cutthroat for assassin), the genus for the species (as a creature for a man), or the name of the material for the thing made (as boards for stage).
      Merriam-Webster

Thanksgiving, after the meal was cleared, a good friend was explaining her need to make art as an outlet for self expression at this stage in her life. She turned to me for agreement on self expression as motive and purpose, but I was mute. I am one of those people that is cast into deep water by the habitual greeting of “How are you?” for which no response is expected beyond “Good, how are you?” If I take such daily questions so literally, struggling every time to compose a detailed and accurate answer, it is perhaps no great wonder that I am thrown off balance so much more by the subtle and complex question of “Why do you make art?”

There is self expression in all art and craft, even in how you make breakfast or tie your shoe, but I don’t think that “self expression” is enough to explain my underlying purpose in making photographs. I don’t write in my journal for self expression, I do that for self discovery. I don’t use photography for self discovery, I use it to investigate the feint possibility of there being meaning in life. I am looking for hope through the glass of my cameras, hence the quote at top of the home page of this web site:

Why is form beautiful? Because, I think, it helps us meet our worst fear, the suspicion
that life may be chaos and that therefore our suffering is without meaning.
      Robert Adams

An abstract painting is the deliberate if not entirely conscious expression of a mind, of the painter’s mind. There can be little or no direct communication though such work as that of Clyfford Still or Mark Rothko and yet it can appeal at some non-linguistic level; its ultimate source is in its resonating with a shared sympathy and primeval recognition within us. If we stop trying to read such images for their meaning and instead allow ourselves to simply feel them then we may indeed find some common ground between ourselves, the artists, and our fellow viewers. When my viewfinder contains some abstraction of the world around me, what is it that I am communicating with at that moment? What is the source of that drawing by light?

Photography is a form of stop-motion Zen participation in the common moment before it is an expression of myself. A photograph, a true photograph rather than a Photoshopped invention, is a re-presentation of a narrow slice of the physical universe. My contribution to the expression is in the timing, the framing, the focus, the exposure and the color saturation – all selections from the palette offered by the universe. The image is as at least as much made by the world expressing itself as it is by the one holding the camera; the world draws itself onto another portion of itself.

I do not expect to find God through a Nikon lens but I am looking for the suggestion of some connection, some fabric, some tissue, some value that extends beyond my isolation and coming termination; some larger pattern in which I fit and to which I belong.

That is the synecdoche I seek; the part that speaks for the whole. That’s why I make photographs.

Adobe Is A Synonym For Arrogance

About that big! Star of Texas Rodeo, Austin, 2003

Adobe is the software vendor to whom I have paid the most over the years; more even than to Microsoft (who have lost my business altogether) and the only software company to whom I can still expect to regularly pay hundreds of dollars more in the coming years. Over the last 18 months my dependence has shifted from Photoshop to Lightroom but there are still rare occasions where Photoshop is my only option so I have to have it. Or do I?

What a marvelously greedy cash cow Adobe has built on the back of digital camera progress! I have not needed or cared about a single new Photoshop feature since version 6 but I have been forced into upgrade payments to gain Camera Raw support for a Nikon D100 and then again for a Nikon D300. And the last time, to CS4, so that I could move from Windows to a Mac – sideways hardware moves are only allowed if you are on the current version. The timing of the last two upgrades has sucked, being forced to occur just weeks before the expected announcement of the next Photoshop version and so just failing to qualify for an automatic upgrade.

Now, the news out of Adobe is that they are changing their longstanding upgrade policy: no longer will upgrades be supported for two three versions back but only for one. If I want to get to CS6 next year, I will first have to upgrade to CS5 or put myself back to square one and have to pay the full whack for CS6 and beyond. There goes another $400 for nothing, not a single function that I need or care about.

It is always a red flag when a company’s marketing declares “New Choices for Customers.” New choices generally means new ways for customer to pay more. In this case I will have the “choice” of $50 a month to join the “Adobe Creative Cloud” and, for $600 a year, make myself even more inextricably bound to them with my files stuck on their servers. THAT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

Adobe holds a virtual monopoly on this market and they are making the maximum Machiavellian use of it. They are losing their Flash monopoly to HTML 5 (Apple’s refusal to play that game has given courage to the rest of the world) and now they look to be replacing their lost revenues from the pockets of photographers and graphic artists.

Scott Kelby, president of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, has written an open letter to Adobe on this subject. Let’s hope someone is listening.

Me? I am seriously motivated to kiss Photoshop goodbye.

“Of” and “Is”

Evidence of a Failed Gasket

No photograph is truly abstract. All photographs are ultimately representational and, as such, are separated by a wide gulf from abstract paintings. Photographs are always “of” something before they “are” something.

The appearence of a photograph may resemble the work Clyfford Still, Cy Twombly or Jackson Pollack but where an abstract painting simply “is” itself, a photograph always points to the “of” from which it was drawn. This is true even of Man Ray’s “rayographs” and the road tar lines of Aaron Siskind.

The image above is abstract, but before and after its abstraction, it is a photograph of the tire prints left by the old Mercedes that parks in the garage slot next to mine at my work. The car leaks oil to a degree that only an aging European luxury car can and yet still be loved by its owner. The tires track this machine ink across the dividing lines of the vehicle’s alloted space as the driver pulls out to go home each night.

Flu Shots, Post Boxes and A GF1

Post Boxes - Regal Arbor 8, Great Hills Trails & Research Blvd, Austin

The family piled into the mini van and headed to the doctor’s office for our annual flu shots on Saturday morning. I used to figure that flu shots were a waste of time until ten years back when I spent Christmas week laid up in bed while the vaccinated remainder of the household happily traded presents by the tree; I have not been so foolish as to skip my appointment since.

I took the Panasonic GF1 just in case an opportunity arose for making a photograph; the girls wanted to pick up a take away lunch from Firebowl Cafe on the way home so I had ten minutes in the parking lot. Now parking lots are one of my favorite places to be with a camera – like I said in my last post, I’m strange that way.

I am still a little surprised and delighted by the quality of the images that this small machine produces; it does not look especially serious but it is. The low resolution viewfinder leaves much to be desired but the output, with the 20mm pancake mounted, is detailed and crisp. The grid of squares in the example above would betray any hint of distortion from the lens; there’s nothing significant to be found. The auto focus can hunt some on low contrast subjects, but that’s easy enough to work around. And I have grown to love the extra composition real estate of the 4/3 aspect ratio; I am starting to prefer the world in that frame over the classic SLR 2/3 ratio. It is perhaps ironic that I chose a sample image that virtually self crops itself to 2/3 format with its foreground tarmac.

With 11th hour timing, Panasonic has at last acknowledged the enthusiast market and unveiled the GX1 as the true air to the GF1 throne. The GX1 is not a revolution in design but is a significant incremental refresh, starting from a strong foundation. It looks to be just what the doctor ordered despite the still separate viewfinder. The Sony NEX-7 is seductive; its ‘Tri-Navi” controls and integrated high-res OLED viewfinder are ground breaking in a compact however, on paper (web page), the GX1 offers enough improvement to retain my loyalty. Final decisions won’t be made until I actually get to look through the finder and see for myself if the 6x increase in EVF detail and faster focusing is sufficient but I am hopeful. I foresee my SLR bag being left behind for our trip back to the UK next summer; replaced by an REI fanny pack with room for two 4/3 bodies and three or four lenses; that will save my back in the airport.

I must admit to still being tempted by the Leica M9. I made the mistake of taking my M6 out of its storage place to ponder the question; handling it again did not help. I might just be able to afford the body and one lens. I only have Voigtlander 35mm and 15mm for the M6 and there is no point in spending $7,000 or more for a body and not putting Leica glass on the front, that glass is the point after all. There, that’s all I needed to do, write the numbers down – there is no way I can justify $9,000 on one camera and one lens. I am not speaking for everyone else here, I do understand the Leica effect all too well, but I just won’t make enough use of any camera to support an expense of that scale. There’s a school I know of in Guatemala that can put that kind of money to much better use. I can add a GX1 body and two lenses for the price of a Leica 50mm Summicron.

I’m Strange

Sidewalk Rorschach 1, 5th & Lamar, Austin

Fine art landscape photographers, the kind that might make a living from their prints, will scout a location and calculate what time of day to come back for the most dramatic lighting. Some will go as far as figuring the date when the moon will rise at sunset on the left side of the crest then plan a return visit to the area on that date. That’s not me. I am an opportunist with a schedule that is defined by family and work. I am also lazy and impatient; I will never be able pay for more than a very rare meal for two with my pictures.

So it came as a surprise that that I would see a subject and make a plan to go back the next day with a camera. And when the result was not quite what I had in mind (bad framing in the poor Panasonic GF1 EVF), to go back again with a different camera. Again not satisfied – the afternoon sun glared off some of the elements – choose to go back yet again, before 11am and on an overcast day. That’s not my usual haphazard M.O.

And what majestic scene was it that drew me back three times? Was it a Moon and Half Dome (Ansel Adams)? Was it Shiprock Storm (Mitch Dobrowner)? No. It was tar splatter on a downtown Austin sidewalk.

I’m strange that way.