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THE SLOW FADE

By MICHAEL PERKINS

IT USED TO BE SAID OF CERTAIN RAMSHACKLE STRUCTURES that, if the termites inside it ever stopped holding hands, they would disintegrate.

Over the years, roaming with a camera through every kind of borough, village, burg and town, I’ve often wondered what force inside them was still “holding hands” strongly enough to keep them from collapsing or merely blowing away. Photographers, for reasons rooted in too many years of bias and cliche, are naturally drawn to decay, to the impending end of stuff. Not only do we seek out those things that are just about to vanish, but we feel a near moral obligation to document them, ofttimes spending more time capturing the twilights of buildings than we do their grand openings. And so it goes.

Sunbury, Ohio, about twenty miles northeast of Columbus, is a town that has taken its good old time vanishing beneath the waves. It is a master class in the fine art of the slow fade. As far back as I can recall, it has always been in the process of, if you will, going out of business. Its central square comprises nearly the entire town (village?), its businesses in a content state of near vacancy. There are thousands of such towns all across the midwest, places where, at some time, it seemed a good idea to nail two boards together and start some kind of enterprise, driven by jobs, nature, religion, or just an urge to get good and goddamn far away from wherever it was you started. Who knows why we head out for parts unknown, or how we know, yes, this is a good place to stop wandering.

In such places, the storefronts that promise Good Eats, Cafe, Breakfast, or Dine-In-Or-Take-Out act as these towns’ few solid pillars, as if the attractive force of their various Tuesday Lunch Specials is enough to keep the entire encampment from vanishing in the next strong wind. I am drawn to whatever effort is put forth at such joints to dress things up, to liven the display window, hang a little color from the porch, hand-letter the street signs. Now that this picture is about a year old, I almost wish I had walked inside the world of the Sunbury Grille on that day and checked out that was on offer. I’m always careful, however, when snapping images of these places, as if I’m obviously branding myself as an Outsider, someone who is Not From Around Here. Traveling through small-town America is like riding an an uncertain wave that may crest on a high of hospitality or founder on a beach of Otherness. All I can tell, in clicking off a frame or two, is that something in this place is still keeping the lights on, still holding hands.

Posted by  |  May 10, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Ex Machina

By MICHAEL PERKINS

A quick primer on making a camera exposure in the early 19th-century:

  1. Lens cap off.

2. Lens cap back on.

3. Repeat.

4. Pray.

The photo-tinkerer Thomas Sutton may not have been the first to improve upon this stone-age method of allowing light onto media, but his early mechanical shutters, introduced in the 1860’s, were refined and imitated endlessly across the photographic community, becoming the first essential tool for the control of exposure rates. From that era to this, every camera made anywhere in the world has had some variant on the Sutton shutter as the principal gatekeeper for light. It is the most essential of features, and, as the last purely mechanical component in the picture-making process, is on a kind of extinction watch. It won’t happen quickly, but it’s en route.

Most major manufacturers have, for some time, included in their designs the option for a purely digital shutter, with the mechanical shutter as a default, meaning that you must opt in for the digital. Traditional shutters have “curtains” ahead of the film or sensor, and are opened and closed in micro-seconds. Digital systems are not true “shutters” at all, as there are no physical curtains per se, merely an electronic signal sent to portions of the sensor to be more or less light-sensitive in different parts of the frame as dictated by the exposure chosen by the shooter.

Already, as has been the case when other mechanical camera systems have neared their respective sell-by dates, people are choosing up sides as to which choice is better. Those who favor mechanicals will talk of superior flash syncing, great performance with artificial lighting sources, and more than 150 years of refinement and improvement. Digital shutter fans will point to their much faster speed ranges, reduced vibration and noise, and, most crucially, the lack of material wear-and-tear. Both systems have their boasts and dings, meaning that, for the moment ( A.C.E. 2026 at this writing) both will have their armies of frothing fans, delaying the decision by manufacturers to dump mechanical for good in the name of cost-cutting, customer input, or both.

Many of us, er, revered elders (translation: old coots) have lived long enough to see one mechanical function after another obviated in the modern era, just as the complex systems of analog processing were supplanted (not replaced outright) by digital imaging. One man’s modern miracle is another’s sacrilege, and so the shutter wars will take a while to shake out. Eventually, we find ourselves asking just was a camera is, with the only logical answer being the eternal one: that which facilitates the making of an image.

Posted by  |  May 6, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

RANDOM SHOTS FROM A BULLET TRAIN

By MICHAEL PERKINS

MANY OF MY PHOTOGRAPHER FRIENDS NOW SHARE STORIES WITH ME, not about the great shots they bagged or the selling points of this or that bit of kit, but of the physical costs of staying in the game. Now, of course, I should mention that most of these friends are also, like myself, getting pretty long in the tooth, and that the rigors of making images have become more pronounced with every new day. Cameras, no matter how compact or streamlined, still have to be lugged from one place to another, and since the shooting experience is crammed with variables, from topography to weather to one’s own mortal carapace, said lugging can exact a toll as time progresses. Many of my birding friends, for example, frequently suffer a muscular crunch known as “birder’s neck”, induced by too many skyward searches for titmice and flycatchers. Others get it in the shoulders because the only lens for a certain job is also the most likely to louse up one’s upper arm. And so forth.

Cambria, California, September 6, 2025, 180mm, f/6.3, ISO 100, 1/640 sec.

It’s impossible to age without eventually fixating on how much the process seems to be speeding up, or, in photographic terms, how many shots we’re likely to be around to take. We are, suddenly, one backache, one misplaced step, or one out-of-warranty ailment from obsolescence, inducing the feeling that even our most considered frames are random shots from a bullet train. It’s as if dusk is approaching and we’re trying to squeeze in just one more somersault on the summer lawn before our dad calls us home. It thus becomes tricky to remain calm, to remind ourselves that, even were we to top the century mark, we could never see or shoot it all. We have to learn to be okay with limits. Because, simply, we have no choice.

And so we learn how to choose….our place, our time, our approach, our moments of abandon, our rhythm of patience. We become photo editors of the soul, posing the everlasting questions, what can be done? With these conditions? With this stretch of time? With how I feel right now? This is not despair, merely a recognition of the tools and time we have. It’s really the same calculation that all photographers have always had to make, except that time (or its imminent disappearance) has now rendered the choice more urgent. I keep hearing Adam West’s Batman rousing his partner to the chase with “QUICKLY, ROBIN! THERE’S NOT A MOMENT TO LOSE!” in that stentorian call to arms that was his melodramatic specialty. And so it is with the making of pictures. There is still time to play, along with more carefully adjusted and efficient ways to do it. The bullet train races on, but not everything out the window need be a blur.

Posted by  |  May 3, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

THE JOYS OF RE-ASSIGNMENT

All Roads Lead To, 2025

By MICHAEL PERKINS

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY’S UBIQUITOUS AND EXHAUSTING USE OF THE TERM “ABSTRACT”, especially in artistic circles, took a word which should have been as precise as a scalpel and hammered it flatter than a cow chip. Anything in a painting, a photograph, a piece of music or a work of literature that didn’t adhere readily to easy definition or analysis was bumper- stickered with the word, as if that alone settled the argument. Lazy beings that we are, we can’t relegate an unknown thing to a handy drawer or convenient category fast enough, and so, Picasso was “abstract”, Joyce’s Ulysses was “abstract”. If I had boysenberries on my corn flakes instead of bananas, I was now eating an “abstract” breakfast.

I myself don’t use the word often, at least as an adjective, but I do appreciate its use, in photography and the other arts, as a verb. To abstract something means, then, to take something out…out of its original context or use. All objects that we see in life are more or less assigned to be seen/used in context with something else. A wheelbarrow looks “correct” when it’s standing next to a hoe or a shovel or a barn. A piece of fruit looks “right” when arranged with other fruit in a bowl. Taking those objects and abstracting them, then, frees them from how we’re accustomed to seeing them, and forces us to assign all-new values to them, something that truly frees the interpretive artist. Now the thing is exclusively what we say it is. Exciting.

The fruit bowl in our previous paragraph is worth further examination. 20th-century art movements took explosive aim at the classic still life, deliberately tearing it loose from the several centuries of examples of its place in visual art. The results could be disorienting, but these revisualizations in both painting and photography led us to revere design and composition as absolutes, and to recognize in objects only the values we personally gave them, blasting away our habitual conceptions of them. A seashell became a dissertation of geometric design. A nude became, in some artists’ hands, another kind of seashell. And so on. There are many questions that rattle around inside a photographer’s brain both before and after the shutter click. What am I looking at? What am I supposed to see? What do I want to say about it? Do I leave it undisturbed or try some mischief with it? What do I want others to see? As in everything else in visual art, you get the best answers when you pose the best questions. Cameras are already abstracting the world, extracting a part or an aspect of it to create an impression. It’s really just about how far you push that process.

Posted by  |  April 29, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

BUY THE DREAM. FORGET THE PACKAGE.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

I BREAK OUT IN HIVES every time I see ads for cameras that claim they can “make you excited to shoot again”, which is really one of the more transparent pitches designed to make you believe that gear is an end unto itself. Specifically, our gear, which, more than their gear, will actually bring you fulfillment and mastery in a way nothing else can. Those hives turn into itchy, bleeding boils when the ads explain that it’s your bulky, uninspiring, cold, and impersonal camera that’s holding back your art, and that our warm and cozy, tactile clutch of knurled knobs and analog-ish switches will remind you of the joy you once had in making pictures, but lost…..until we came along.

Now, I would never be stupid enough to suggest that sleeker, simpler, more romantically designed cameras can’t re-ignite one’s fever for photography. Sexy stuff sells, and has frequently been sold to me. However, when your creartive flame starts to flicker, it’s vital to seek the real reason that things have gone cold. Is it really about products, or about process? Can you only bring back your original ardor for shooting just by re-tooling its mechanics? You’d never ask whether a new Maserati would make you a safer driver, nor would the Maserati people sell you their product based on technical reliability. Far from it: that sporty little monster is selling you a feeling, a sensation, some intangible lightning-in-a-bottle that will, magically transform even the experience of driving to 7-11 for a loaf of bread. For the very same “if you only had this” approach in photographic terms, see the copy in the vintage Leica ad shown above.

Gear purchases are supposed to be practical, in that we seek the perfect tool for what we want to create. However, said tool, no matter how many warm and fuzzy contours and menus it offers, can only take us so far in the pursuit of excellence. The oldest questions asked by photographers, i.e., “how will it help me do what I want to do?”, “is it enough camera?”, “is it too much camera?” or “am I really as likely to use it as to admire it?” must still be asked and answered. Manufacturers are selling a dream inside a package. Investigate and buy the dream, certainly, but realize that the package is, after all, just the box the thing came in.

Posted by  |  April 26, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

COMMENCING THE UN-ESTRANGEMENT

By MICHAEL PERKINS

Earth Day, 2026

THE FIRST RUSTLINGS OF THE AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTALIST MOVEMENT, which, by the end of the 1960’s, had peaked with the first Earth Day, served as a kind of eco-kindergarten for many who had never been properly informed about the growing estrangement between humans and the planet they inhabit. In simpler terms, we simply had never known how little we knew: we had no automatic mental link between our causes and the world’s effects. We weren’t stupid; we were ignorant. And, for a time, that newly-imported knowledge translated directly into action. Cleanups. Laws. Modifications of our basic behaviors. And, incredibly, the feeling that our governments had entered into a kind of partnership with us on the planet’s behalf.

What a difference fifty-five years can make.

As a photographer, as well as a plain old human being, I can certainly attest that many of the pro-earth crusades we undertook in 1970 have borne fruit. We have trained ourselves to a certain higher level of mindfulness. We have demanded, in some cases, that those we vote into office make themselves accountable to the health of the planet. And several generations of photographers have exhaustively and dutifully documented those changes.

And yet, in some cases, we are worse off than in the days when even Richard Nixon championed the formation of the EPA. Our current government is not only non-supportive of progressive remedies for climate change; they have deliberately worked to thwart protective measures designed to forestall absolute atmospheric Armageddon. Science is sniffed at and disdained; solid evidence of the world’s impending eco-collapse is regarded as hoaxes or fairy tales, while regulation that would protect us from billionaire despoilers is shredded, with short-term profit as the only alibi.

Photographers have a duty, no less than print journalists, to counter lies with visual fact; to say the uncomfortable, to show that the woods are on fire; to remind us that, unlike 1970, we no longer even have the excuse of ignorance to justify our inaction. Just as poverty relief, health initiatives and peace crusades have variously been “sold” via images in ages past, the welfare of the planet must become The Urgent Message Of The Age, and now. Pictures like the one up top, which I was privileged to make of the central California coastline last year, must not become mere souvenirs of a happier time. We must not only fight, but constantly remind ourselves of what we’re fighting for. Like Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman and our other great national poets, we must be prophets for our own time. We must visually measure the distance between us and nature, the better to help close that gap. Let the great un-estrangement commence.

Posted by  |  April 22, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

ONE CLICK AWAY FROM NIRVANA

By MICHAEL PERKINS

Stop me if you’ve heard this one:

A little girl is taken to a house with many rooms. As she starts to walk through, she notices that, in the absence of any furniture, each and every room is filled from top to bottom with manure. The farther she goes into the house, the happier she seems, until she is actually skipping and giggling with delight. Asked by an adult why she is so happy, she says, “with all of this” (indicating the mounds of manure), “THERE MUST BE A PONY NEARBY!!!”

I like to think that that little girl grew up to be a photographer.

One person’s mess is another person’s opportunity, and in evaluating the world, creative types have to err on the side of hope. The world can be a hideous grab-bag of nonsense and chaos, but all of that disarray can prove merely a thin upper layer, with treasure just beneath it. Photographers, like writers, painters, and sculptors, take the world on its own terms, determined to “find the pony” in all the manure. That abiding faith is what leads shooters to maintain the belief that our next image at least has the potential to be our best. How else to maintain the excitement, the anticipation which creatives need to keep turning the page? If what we see in front of us is, indeed, all there is to see, how can we even get out of bed in the morning? No, better to even have our hope dashed from time to time than to go into battle without that very precious armor. This particular shot may not have “clicked”, but we are still only one click away from Nirvana.

Like anyone, I often fear that “there’s nothing to shoot”, or, more terrifyingly, that I’ve already done my best work, and am on an inevitable decline. Both statements are illusions. I still shoot far too much manure to suit myself, but, if I keep a shovel/camera at the ready, there is always the chance that a pony is nearby.

Posted by  |  April 20, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

THE TOUGHEST CAMERA ADJUSTMENT

By MICHAEL PERKINS

ONE OF THE MOST INTRIGUING THINGS about studying the lives of photographers who are blessed with longevity is tracking the evolutionary changes within their styles. Edward Steichen is an amazing example. In his ninety-plus years, he was, alternatively, a photorealist, an impressionist, a stellar portrait artist, an amazing industrial photographer, a student of macro images with flowers, a curator, a printmaker, and an essential influence on fashion work. At each stage of his life, as he struggled to master himself, he also adopted, mastered and moved onward through the photographic discoveries and movements of an entire century. His was no mere technical adaptability, however, but a coordinated effort between self-discovery and its application to his art. You cannot creatively have one without the other.

We contend with many forces in life, with the ones between the ears being the most indicative of what art we will create.

I have often told my friends, as I myself slide further into antiquity, that the greatest gift you can receive as a human being is, simply, to get wise to yourself. You must be able to catalog and identify your every limit, possibility, failing and talent, and time’s impact on all of that, to make anything of value. If you stagnate, your art will follow suit. Getting to this promontory of self-knowledge is no easy feat, as you must abandon the convenient moral habit of seeing your every failing as someone/something else’s fault, and of giving yourself sole credit for your every success. It’s beyond cliche to refer to yourself as a “work in progress”, but it is simply the signal trait of a successful life. You can’t grow as a photographer, or a potter, or a golfer, or a fry cook without steadily increasing self-awareness, and that is won only by very hard, consistent effort.

There is a reason why all of the great philosophers share some version of the admonition “know thyself”. Shakespeare famously said that if you are true to yourself, you cannot be false to anyone else. Phrase the same sentiment in the more hackneyed language of a pop song, and you get “I gotta be me”. Same message, your translation may vary. Photographs are more than mere recordings. That what seismographs are for. Creating a picture means that you start at the back of the camera (actually behind it) with an idea, then press that concept forward through the machinery like a vintner pressing a grape until the ideal marriage of willful mind and obedient machine produces something that reflects the value of both. Adjustments within the camera are mostly practice and craft. Adjustments behind the camera measure something far more precious.

Posted by  |  April 15, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

STATEMENT / SUGGESTION

By MICHAEL PERKINS

PHOTOGRAPHY CAN BE INCREDIBLY DIRECT as a means of conveying visual information. The terms of certain images are bare, even stark, with subtlety sacrificed in the service of immediacy. Some of the greatest pictures ever made tell their stories in very clear and simple terms. Nothing, for example, can surpass the power of the grainy immediacy of the photos taken of the explosion of the Hindenburg. Smack. Wham. No detours, all force, everything arriving in the now.

The choice between black-and-white and color in pictures is often a choice between that sharp, sudden newsfoto impact and a slower, more layered appeal to the senses. Scenic titles, at least over the last one hundred years, have seemed to cry out for a wide array of hues versus rendering the same subjects in variant tones of the same single color, or monochrome, and so color has become the default choice for several generations of shooters, with mono reserved for special effects or moods. We have developed an innate sense that, for certain “beautiful” things, shooting in a narrow range of tones is somehow “less than”…less than real, less than splendorous, less than lovely.

But do we have to automatically accept this proposition? Can monochrome images convey their own unique idea of beauty, equal to or even superior to color-splashed tableaux? Having been raised on mono from my first days with a camera (mostly an economic choice, given that color, while certainly popular, was pricey), I learned to work within what I then regarded as a constrictive box of narrow options, imaging how much better this or that would look in color. Now that color is the general default, I almost feel as if I must prove that a given shot would work better without it…that is, I have to have some kind of “note from teacher” to justify mono’s use, as if, of course, you need to shoot this in color, unless you’ve made the case to do otherwise.

Strange.

Photographers are often needlessly neurotic, of course, and so most of our “problems” are of our own making, but that’s the creative process for ya. I long ago formed the habit of clicking between pre-loaded recipes of settings, shooting multiple versions of more and more subjects, especially the ones that are “supposed” to be in color. Snapping off an additional exposure in mono costs me nothing and often affords me the chance to….what else..?….have yet another unresolvable argument with myself.

I really must seek therapy some day……..

Posted by  |  April 12, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

(SHIFTING) POINTS OF PRIDE

by MICHAEL PERKINS

IT’S HELPFUL, OCCASIONALLY, TO CAST MY MIND BACK SOME FOURTEEN YEARS to the very first days of this blog. The initial motivation for starting The Normal Eye was to at least try to create a photograph platform different from those I was finding online at the time. It seemed that the dominant energy of most articles in those days involved product reviews and technical how-to’s, which I wanted to avoid, both because I felt that that “market”was already being saturated, and because I felt under-qualified to preach or pronounce on much of it. By way of contrast, trying to chronicle my own challenges and growth as a photographer felt easy and at least honest, and the idea of using TNE to emphasize motivations rather than mechanics felt like my most authentic path.

Since then, I’ve been gratified to also make connection with other shooters’ personal quests and alternate truths. They’ve kept me curious, grounded and humbled. Reluctant to act as little more than a student, I’ve inherited hundreds of teachers. It’s been a great arrangement.

This all came slamming back into my mind a few days ago, when I stumbled on this self-portrait from 2012, the year we launched The Normal Eye. After dealing with the initial shock of how much more hair I once had, as well as how much less I apparently weighed in those days, I was grateful that I had framed the shot wide enough to preserve at least a sample of my first “photo wall”, which consisted…what else?…of the work that I was proudest of at the time. In noting that not one of these images hangs on a wall where I currently live, I was reminded of just how and where (and why) I had made all of them. They were exercises in technique as well as hardware, making it easy to peg such-and-such a picture as having been taken “three cameras ago” or “before I really learned to do whatever I was going for there”.

The shots shown here, then, are a chronicle, a diary, reflecting my first extended work with prime lenses, montages, macro work, HDR processing, and a deliberate move away from flash and toward available light, but they are also a timeline, reflective of what I held to be important at the time, thoughts that made their way directly into TNE posts. In the most perfect way possible, my journey was the blog and the blog was my journey: the two streams of inquiry flowed back and forth into each other. I still believe that there are other voices far more qualified than my own to discuss hardware and tech, but I remain confident that I can still trust my instincts as a photographer, and that I can convey them into words that might at least encourage, if not teach. And for that, I am grateful.

Posted by  |  April 8, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , | Leave a comment

SEND FOR OUR FREE CATALOG

By MICHAEL PERKINS

IN “VOICES OF OLD PEOPLE”, THE POIGNANT SOUND MONTAGE of eldercare patients assembled by a young Art Garfunkel for the 1968 Bookends album, one sentimental senior, unable to find an old snapshot, remarks that he would give “without regret, one hundred dollars for that picture”, a sentence that is saturated with a longing that can no longer be satisfied. That one utterance imprinted on my sixteen-year-old self, forever establishing the value of both the photographs left behind, but, even more, the ghostly essence of the images lost to time. Now, as I have reached (and probably surpassed) the age of the old man in that montage, I find that photographs are, more than ever, a kind of testimony for me, as well as a trail of bread crumbs for my children, who may be even more keenly aware than I that time is running short, and that certain information must be mustered.

That may be why, as Marian and I took on the daunting task, two years ago, of disposing of over half our earthly possessions in order to downsize to a more manageable space, we very deliberately photo-catalogued many items that were too troublesome to carry forward, but which still might have the power to spark fond memory, for us and especially our kids. We were caught up in the newly popular practice of Swedish Death Cleaning, the discipline involved in just leaving less stuff behind for others to sort through and clean up once one leaves the stage. These pictures of various trophies and keepsakes were not rushed, like random snapshots, but done in as close to studio conditions as our very short timeline permitted. After all, they have to capture the elusive essences that made us hoard the objects for long. They are storage batteries for a very personal energy.

The diorama that Marian’s daughter made of her dream dance studio back in grade school (top) and my fond farewell to my enormous “kit bag” of electronic connectors and adapters (above) shared the same fate, i.e, the “discard” pile, but not before they posed for their respective close-ups. They shared “studio” space with wall art, old book friends, Art Deco teapots, shirt-pocket radios and a swarm of other life markers. It’s amused us to consider that, having gotten rid of one kind of junk pile, i.e., the actual physical souvies of a lifetime, that we merely swapped it for an electronic cache that will also have to be decoded by our loved ones, if they are so inclined. Hard to know if that’s really progress, but……

At the end of Simon & Garfunkel’s Bookends song cycle, as two friends, both advanced in age (“how terribly strange to be seventy..”), share a park bench, they again underscore the value of a physical memento of their shared adventures:

long ago, it must be……I have a photograph…….preserve your memories…..they’re all that’s left you……..

Posted by  |  April 5, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

SIZE (STILL) ISN’T EVERYTHING

In photography, as in so many other things, one man’s luxury is another man’s bulky nuisance….

By MICHAEL PERKINS

THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY IS AT LEAST PARTIALLY ABOUT barriers to good picture-making, and how they were overcome. This means that, when a solution to a longstanding problem is introduced, let’s say a technical or ease-of-use breakthrough, the new way of doing things is celebrated by someone saying that the old ways are now “dead”. Digital imaging? Oh, it’s the death of film. Better sensors? Well, that’s the death of lo-fi images. And cellphone cameras? Well, that’s obviously curtains for the compact camera.

On that last one….

Camera phones were an amazing bend in the road, redefining the traditional appeal of point-and-shoot with even more size convenience and eliminating the need for a separate, dedicated camera. The impact of cels was so huge that, initially, it even allowed us to overlook just how technically primitive the first generations of them were. The shock wave was most measurable in the shipment figures for compact cameras, which were nearly cut in half between 2010 and 2020, when the decline began to slow, and then partially reverse. An entirely new class of compacts, smaller in size but more expensive than their predecessors, began to lure customers back by boasting more fine-tuned control than point-and-shoots of previous years and specs and performance that rivaled DSLRs and even full-frame models. The tide was further turned by two simple words: Tik. Tok.

Again, the actual user universe makes the final decision on what photographic format or system is “alive” or “dead”, with Tik-Tok’s immense social media platform beginning new dialogues on whether cels or new compacts produced better pictures, along with a comparison on the experience in shooting this way or that. Shooters could go on TT and see side-by-side views of pictures of the same subjects taken with cels or one of the new compact superstars like, say, the Canon PowerShot G7 X and post their impressions. Will the pricey, sexy new compacts spell the “death” of iPhone photography? Not bloody likely, no more than the highly touted rise of cels spelled “death” for older compacts.

There will always be mega-millions who opt for a cel’s ease of use, which, paired with its rapidly advancing technical prowess, spells convenience that a separate camera often can’t deliver. But at least we can agree that greeting a new development in the art of photography doesn’t automatically render everything that went before it obsolete. No craft rooted in creativity can afford to be that close-minded, and we’ve seen far too many cases in which, in our very individual pursuit of pictures, we declare everything old to be new again.

Posted by  |  April 1, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

FOR WHICH IT STANDS

By MICHAEL PERKINS

PHOTOGRAPHY, SINCE IT TRAFFICS IN FROZEN MOMENTS OF TIME, is, of necessity, in the business of symbols.

We have scant, stolen instants in which to try to simplify complicated ideas, to improvise a visual shorthand for concepts that the philosophers fill bookshelves explaining, or attempting to. And symbols are the key instruments in that shorthand, as we mean for this to stand for this, or for that to imply that, and so on. The tricky thing about symbols, however, is that they convey different things to different people. They are fluid, mutable. Personal.

So who owns the symbols of unity? Of freedom? Of defiance? Dedication? Memory? Pride?

Patriotism?

As America counts down the final weeks to the 250th anniversary of its founding, we can easily forget that flags, decals, banners or badges are not pure in their power, nor are they universal in their meaning. There are too many of us that have lived too many different kinds of lives for any one set of symbols to say the same things to all of us. And so, in an era of almost unparalleled division, it’s only natural that we disagree also over who “owns” this things. If I wear the Stars and Stripes on the seat of my jeans, am I celebrating my freedom to do so, or disrespecting the rigid ritual of Old Glory aloft on a flagpole? History is layered, and symbols can be tweaked, exploited, or shanghaied to serve the programs of many people with many aims. Photographs of the various ways we decide to celebrate something like a flag can explore nearly infinite interpretations, and therefore the visual subject cannot be exhausted. Every depiction of a widely-used symbol merely underscores how non-common, how very personal it is.

Maybe the best way to show respect for a symbol is to acknowledge all the ways it has been used; as tribute, as memorial, as rallying cry, as bludgeon, as emblem of hope, or badge of error. To photograph people who are “rallying round” a flag, or any other talisman, is to document all these uses and imply many more. Pictures thus become more than mere documents, but evolve instead into a kind of testimony.

Posted by  |  March 29, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

GENTLEMEN, START YOUR LENSES

By MICHAEL PERKINS

NEW CAMERA START-UP PACKAGES IN THE YEAR OF OUR FORD 2026 are marketed in almost the opposite way they were a generation ago. Back in the days of Ronald Reagan, manufacturers that had been accustomed to selling permanently attached lenses to their bodies suddenly saw an explosion in SLR sales, and with it, the demand for detachable glass in various focal lengths. Thus came the idea of the “kit” lens, which, for quite a while, tended to be of a single focal length. Indeed, lots of us elders’ first “grown-up” cameras came with a 50mm or 35mm prime. Back then, this made more sense than equipping bodies with lenses of variable focal lengths, since zooms of the period were bulkier, slower and more expensive. Primes were more compact and reliable.

Fast forward to the current market, and you see the complete reversal of this thinking. Selling a kit lens with a variable focal length, say, a 24-70 or 18-55, is now thought to afford new photographers more versatility, an easier break-in period for a wider range of techniques. This has been made possible by vast technical improvements that allow zooms to be smaller and far more responsive than was the case forty years ago, including greater ranges for maximum aperture. There is also the consideration of price, as a variable optic allows the user to save money on the purchase of separate specialized (limited?) optics. As a consequence, new cameras today are almost never packaged with a prime as its kit.

These days, both a prime and a zoom can make this shot, but the prime is still faster and sharper by far.

This where we inject the Joni Mitchell line about “something’s lost, but something’s gained”, since, in photography, new choices often obliterate old choices. Fact is, there is still an argument to be made for primes as a learning tool for newbies, if for no other reason than that, since they contain fewer glass elements than zooms, less light is diffracted on its way to the sensor, which greatly affects sharpness. Primes’ performance at lower light is also still leaps and bounds beyond that of zooms. And, of course, even primes can be “zoomed” to a degree (an old technique we call “walking”), which actually promotes more compositional mindfulness than just hitting the “tele” toggle.

My point is that, still, today, some photographers might be more than glad to learn on a prime, if it were on offer. I would therefore love to see manufacturers offer two basic kit packages when introducing a new camera, one with a zoom and one with a prime. Neither option should obviate the other for the consumer. This is merely reflective of the fact that there can never be just one way to gain experience, and that no options are strong enough to be universal decrees. I can really only speak to what works for me, and yet I strongly support more choices for more platforms. Camera tech needs to be as inclusive as possible so that photography can fully thrive.

Posted by  |  March 25, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

HERE TO STAY

By MICHAEL PERKINS

IMPERMANENCE IS GENERALLY THE ONLY PERMANENCE HUMANS KNOW, with the world collapsing inward and rolling back upward like kneaded bread dough. No sooner does one of this world’s societal textures surface but it gets folded under and turned out of sight. And within that “general” pattern there is an even more insistent rhythm of change that is uniquely American. We Yanks feverishly worship the new and doggedly discount the old, tearing down just as speedily as we built up. Having reverence for age, experience or context is often too tall an order for us. And so, in America, the demolition crews and the construction gangs are in a continuous tag-team flow.

And if this is generally true in American cities in general, it is even more so in places designed for high turnover, like resort spots or beach towns, where a dizzying worship of the novel confers a kind of gypsy status on most local businesses. That’s why, as a photographer, I am not only impressed but amazed to find places that have lasted and even thrived for more than six months straight. As one example, my new hometown of Ventura, California, a beach town’s beach town, has been in the heart of a major regentrification boom for the past decade or so. Lots of that new energy naturally flowed from the business district’s forced improvs in the wake of the pandemic, when everything in town adopted a change-or-die mentality. After the smoke cleared, it was easy to see which local joints had the best staying power, because, well, they stayed.

I will always slow my roll (and break out my camera) for any place sporting an “in business since (year)” sign, and so I absolutely had to check out both the street face and the bill of fare at Tony’s Pizzaria, just three blocks off the Pacific, and, as it says up front, “est. 1959”. I always shoot the entrances of such places head on, as if they are sets in a stage play, and I always hope to convey their true atmosphere by catching some customers In The Act Of. And in case you’re wondering, why, yes, I did try the pizza, and other than losing the top-half of a molar crown that was already on its last legs (roots?), I rate it a wondrous experience. I’d like to think that someone could drive past Tony’s in 2059 and marvel, as I did, that some things, even inside a centrifuge, can last.

Posted by  |  March 22, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

LAST BOW

By MICHAEL PERKINS

IF YOU THINK THAT LIFE IS ABSURD, consider….death.

Not the mere fact of the end of life. No, properly viewed, that final human stage can lead to some fierce contemplation, maybe even a revelation or two. No, it’s our own hilarious method of experiencing or marking death that reveals it for, at least some of us, one final shot at vanity. At mattering. Ranking.

We shop carefully for the precise spot where we or others we love will “spend” eternity, even though none of the surface elements we employ….the rituals, the tributes, and so on, are, themselves, of the eternal world. They’re expressed instead in the physical media that we understand. Mighty monuments. Pondrous headstones. Majestic crypts. It’s our last stab at distinction; my mausoleum is grander than yours. My farewell drew more mourners.

And so on.

I make a lot of photographs of cemeteries when I travel. Not out of some ghoulish need to hang with the dead, but because I find that what we try to do to comfort the living is, by turns, both elegant and idiotic, prosaic and foolish. There is also the endless pictorial variety in graveyards. Many are similar but none are truly alike. And then there is the acidic scar that time etches onto the “eternal” markers we’ve erected, creating mystery about the dead that their inscriptions, washed away by the decay of centuries, cannot answer. Initially, we are just dead; eventually, we are also forgotten.

Images from various boneyards can sometimes anchor them in their surrounding communities. They provide context, even commentary. One age’s sacred ground becomes another generation’s industrial development site. It’s as if, by trying to erect permanent tributes to our mortality, we actually underscore the futility of that very task. But the attempt goes on, and the pictures that come serve as a kind of barometer of how we see ourselves, and what we think we’ve amounted to.

Posted by  |  March 18, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

THEY ALSO SERVE WHO ONLY STAND AND WAIT…..

By MICHAEL PERKINS

STREET / NEIGHBORHOOD PHOTOGRAPHY IS LARGELY A STUDY OF CONTRASTING ROLES, of bearing witness to the millions of tasks, large and small, that are our daily assignments. We go here and do this. We always open this, or close that, or wait upon he, she, it, etc., etc, as if we were pre-cast in some larger production. Or as the Beatles famously sang of the pretty nurse, selling poppies from a tray, “though she feels as if she’s in a play, she is anyway….”

For me, there are endless narrative opportunities in just isolating these roles, these tasks, and by looking at them a little closer, elevate them a bit from mere “work” or “this is just what I do.” I try to find people that are lost in repetition, locked into the mechanical rhythm of doing certain things over and over. And just as there is fascination in seeing how the gears and wheels of a massive timepiece mesh together for a common result, there is just as much of a story to be read in just one of those gears….its design, how it is meant to fit into its larger context. What it (or who) was designed to do.

I can’t speak specifically about what caught my eye about this greeter/ticket-taker/stage door manager sitting the check-in desk at a community arts center. He just seemed to perfectly fit where he was placed, and thus was as atmospheric as the surrounding furniture or fixtures. As is the case with many photographs, it was very much a thing of the moment, and what constitutes “a moment” for me might leave you utterly cold. So be it. So be the pictures. It’s a Sunday morning and I am lazily looking back at images of different people doing what they themselves would term “nothing special” and musing over my attempt to see, and show, that they are actually very special indeed.

Posted by  |  March 15, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

MEANS AND ENDS

By MICHAEL PERKINS

And if you don’t know where you’re goin’, any road’ll take you there—-George Harrison

THE PERSON WHO COINED THE PHRASE, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat” may not have been a photographer, but he/she certainly summed up a key truth about picture-making. Ever since we first started freezing images in boxes, we’ve been trying to craft shortcuts to the creation of our favorite effects, generally adopting the idea that results are about just that, results, and who really sweats what tool or technique you used to get them? Some of the earliest problems in photography, like engineering media sensitive enough to make immediate exposures, took decades to solve, as did the puzzle of providing supplementary flash without, you know, setting fire to the drapes. But we are now at a stage when the tinkerer’s first version of how to pull off something is followed up by simpler shortcuts in less and less time.

More and more, we initially discover how to do things by fairly laborious means, only to turn around seconds later and see a digital or A.I. shortcut that performs the same magic trick at the flick of a button or swipe of a screen. This convenience, wonderful as it is, is sometimes met with suspicion, as if a thing can’t be worthy or good if it comes too easy. This view, that only shooters who bravely grapple with unwieldy processes are making “real” pictures, is a snotty country-cousin to the belief that only those who shoot all-manual are “true” photographers. Me, I’m fine with painting a big wall with a paint brush, but, if I can do it just as well in half the time with a roller, then, yes, please, hook me up.

Selective “Lensbaby” focus, achieved in post-processing with a quick pinch and swipe via the Hipstamatic phone app.

Take, as an example, the recent love affair many have struck with the manual lenses that allow for selective focus to be achieved in-camera, as marketed wonderfully well by Lensbaby and other optics houses. With such specialized glass, a floating “sweet spot” of sharpness is preselected by the user, placed wherever he/she may desire it, surrounded by a soft haze that serves to call extra attention to the subject matter within the selected focus area…all of it done in-camera. These specialized lenses are fairly costly and tend to be one-trick ponies, in that their optics may not be optimum for all the uses found on standard glass. And then there is the time spent in climbing the lens’ learning curve, since uniform results are far from guaranteed.

Now, contrast that to a single trick among dozens of offered post-processing effects within a single phone app, which, in the case of our illustration, is called Hipstamatic. Selecting “depth of field” among the choices, and applying a little stretch-and-pinch of the fingers, renders the Lensbaby effect immediately, and with even greater flexibility, since, with the ability for endless re-dos of the effect before locking in the final version, there is no standard trial-and-error. Also, since you are basically working on a copy of your original, it remains pristine and ready to be taken in other directions on another day, based on your whim. All for the one-time cost of the app, which, in this case, was zero.

Having once invested in the speciality lenses required to make such a shot, must I regard the app-rendered version “less than”? Certainly not in the quality or effectiveness of the final result, and certainly not when it comes to any yardstick of economy or efficiency. The app does what I ask of all photographic processes; places as few barriers as possible between my vision of an image and my ability to hold the result in my hand. Sometimes, as G.Harrison implies, you want to calmly saunter down the old dirt road. And sometimes you want to take the expressway.

Posted by  |  March 11, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

VISIONS FROM OTHER KINDS OF EYES

By MICHAEL PERKINS

IT TOOK ME OVER HALF A LIFETIME OF STUDYING WHAT I CONSIDERED THE “GREATS” OF WORLD PHOTOGRAPHY to realize just how biased my own eye was, how it was inclined to see all cultures mostly as my own culture was inclined to see. The first images I loved were basically travelogues, that is, scenes from so-called “foreign” nations, as interpreted almost exclusively by Western photographers. “My” people, looking at “their” worlds, traveling afar and coming back to me with stories whose truth I took at face value.

It has taken me a long time, too long, to seek out the visions of people my cultural prejudices regarded as “the other”, to delight myself in the storytelling of indigenous people reporting and commenting on their own worlds, instead of waiting for outsiders (us) to tell those stories for them. It has led me to amazing work, and, lately, to a remarkable Chinese artist named Fan Ho, a visionary whose career spanned over seventy years, ending in 2016, and standing as a true chronicle on the evolution of China since the close of WWII. He was a street photographer long before such a term existed, developing an instinct for what Westerners called “the decisive moment” that elusive instant when all the narrative powers of an image are in perfect sync.

Born in Shanghai in 1931, Ho began snapping at an early age with a Kodak Brownie box camera, graduating to a Rolleiflex K4A, the camera that would be his career-long tool, when he was just fourteen. Developing his film in the family bathtub, Ho was almost completely self-taught, insisting that equipment and technique both took a back seat to emotion, and that he “didn’t work with any sense of purpose”. “I’ve always believed that any work of art should stem from genuine feelings and understandings”, he told an interviewer in 2014. “As an artist, I was only looking to express myself. I did it to share my feelings with the audience. I need to be touched emotionally to come up with meaningful works.”

By 1949, Ho’s family moved to Hong Kong, then beginning its rocket-sled ride into the fraternity of super cities, and experiencing unique growing pains and turmoil as it did so. Ho’s mastery of contrasting tones and shadows made for some of the most impactful black-and-white photography of the twentieth century, a magical balancing act between revealing and concealing. Beginning in 1956, his entry into exhibitions earned him over 280 international awards for excellence, and by the 1950’s, he segued into his second career in cinema, becoming a director a few years after and producing feature films until around 1980. Re-locating to San Jose, California in retirement, and encouraged by friends to return to still photography, he instead chose to curate his old negatives to gain access to shows in the United States, where many critics discovered the breadth and range of his output. At this writing, the easiest way to see even part of his work is in online image searches, as nearly all of his formally published collections are either out of print or seriously expensive…when they can be found.

I am one of many who wound up being late to the Fan Ho party, but a party’s still a party no matter when you arrive, and I am grateful for the chance to learn still another way to see, regardless of where the lesson originates. After all, the only real chance you have to learn anything is to admit how little you know.

Posted by  |  March 8, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

KICKED OUT OF THE NEST

By MICHAEL PERKINS

“YOU MUST SUFFER TO BE BEAUTIFUL“, runs the old adage, which I always took to mean that anything worthwhile comes with some degree of sacrifice. Without musing too much about what happens to all of us who suffer and still are ugly, let’s at least admit that, like it or not, beauty, or art, has to be coaxed and groomed into existence, which I suppose is why the noun artist is so frequently preceded by the modifier tortured. The take-home of this, at least for me as a photographer, is that no real growth or improvement comes unless you risk frustration and/or failure. There’s a reason why many mommy birds teach their kids to fly by simply kicking them out of the nest. Comfort is the enemy of creative evolution.

That’s why this entry seems to cry out for an ornithological illustration, as I myself have found the pursuit of bird images to be the perfect vehicle for kicking myself out of my own creative nest. Other than landscape work, I find that shooting birds requires greater amounts of patience and humility than anything else I’ve ever undertaken in photography. Even with sixty-plus years of experience under my belt, making bird pictures puts me immediately back at Square One, feeling like an ignorant child who doesn’t even grasp which way to point the bloody camera. In terms of applying what I’ve learned over a lifetime in pursuit of greater success with my feathered friends, I keep thinking of the old Firesign Theatre comedy album, Everything You Know Is Wrong, and I fantasize that, had I the temperament of a Buddhist monk, I might, somehow, have gotten better than I am at the whole game.

The image seen here is typical of thousands of bird images that I’ve attempted that fall into some murky grey zone between Almost Good and Bloody Embarrassing. You’ve also taken pictures like this, with one or two elements showing promise and others that seem to say Sorry, I’m New At This. “Suffering to be beautiful”, in the case of my wildlife shots, means taking what’s an average “hit ratio” of decent-to-failed pictures and learning to be satisfied with less. A lot less. Turns out that living creatures who must spend all day, every day, just trying to stay fed and alive are remarkably unconcerned with whether or not I get the shot. Go figure. That means that my photographs are made at their whim, not mine.

I have to think of myself, therefore, as a witness to a great picture rather than as its author. The number of things under my control in a standard shooting situation shrinks to near invisibility for bird work, and so, whenever I get lazy or stale, I really ought to “sentence” myself to a bird shoot just to be forced to work at the highest level of intentionality and mental focus. Returning to our opening meditation on birds leaving the nest, it’s worth remembering that some youngsters who fledge from precarious perches, like a spiny Saguaro cactus for example, have one try at flinging themselves clear of the plant to avoid being impaled on it. Now that’s someone who understands something about leaving your comfort zone.

Posted by  |  March 4, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment