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SERMON FROM A TOPPLED PULPIT

By MICHAEL PERKINS

(FIRST OF ALL, a loving welcome to all our most recent subscribers. You are the nourishment that feeds this beast. Thankee.)

TO RESTATE THE TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT for anyone entering this movie after the first reel, The Normal Eye has never been a photographic “how to”, since the world at large is fairly overrun by technical experts who can offer much more qualified testimony than I can, on gear, or what makes it work. If anything, this little small-town gazette is more of a “why do”, a perpetually unanswered question on the motivations behind why we make pictures. I can only safely recount what has worked for me, and me alone. If something in my process sparks an idea for you, swellwonderfulgroovy, but my notes here are just diary entries, not preachments. You do you, and all that.

I mean, think about it.

I’d really have to have some nerve to recommend or prescribe anything for anyone when, a significant portion my work fits into a very fat “WTF” (Weirdly Troubling Fotos) folder, composed of stuff I myself do not understand, as if, looking at them long after I shot them, I’m actually reviewing the work of a complete stranger. I’d actually love to have a picture of my own expression as I leaf through this stuff, always with the same questions. What is this? Why did I think that would be a picture? Why don’t I remember ever having done this?, and so on and so on. Far from communicating some golden eternal truths to the world at large, some of my photographs manage to confound even me. Especially me.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this. You no doubt have some kind of WTF folder of your own, stacks of misbegotten, weird-ass orphan images that seem to have jumped, unbidden, out of your camera. How could you not? Creative urges are just that, urges, and ofttimes make no more sense than one’s decision to, yes, please, have a third hot dog. And so, as we go forward, I always like to pause a mo, to re-state that The Normal Eye is more of a journal (journey? journal!) than a blog. Over its fifteen years, it’s been the closest thing to a running testimony on where I’ve tried to go as a photographer, and as a person. It’s not a blueprint for anyone, nor a bread crumb trail to help you find your way out of your personal dark forest. It’s justa buncha pitchers, flavored by some random ruminations, with all the lucky keepers at the front of the stage and all the WTF detours as a painted backdrop. Cheers and welcome.

Posted by  |  June 21, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

WHAT ARE WE SELLING HERE?

By MICHAEL PERKINS

PHOTOGRAPHERS WHO ARE ALSO BABY BOOMERS learned their craft in a unique pocket of time, a period that saw an astounding series of breakthroughs in the art and science of picture-making. I could make a day of just ticking off aspects of the art that have been revolutionized, miniaturized, re-formatted, re-invented and re-tooled in my lifetime, which tracks from 1952 onward. However, just to zero in on one fundamental change, there is the transition from the last days of the complete dominance of monochrome to the global default to color. It was like learning to chew with baby teeth and then doing your serious, growed-up eating with your “keeper” teeth.

I shot this rusty door in both color and monochrome. In this particular case, mono “sold” the worn texture a little better. It’s all about choices….

When I first picked up a camera, many amateurs had not yet made the jump to color, mostly for economic reasons. B/W was just cheaper. For others, home developing largely involved mono, while color processing tended to be the domain of labs. Black and White was more hands-on, with its various steps and stages serving as a part of an immersive, complete sequence of creativity. And then there was the distrust of color by creatives at the level of an Ansel Adams, who grudgingly worked in color but embraced monochrome, given that, in his opinion, the reproduction science for color work in print had not yet been perfected, and while he could easily control (and predict) the results of his mono images. Given these factors and several others, I, like many others in Boomerville, cut my particular set of baby teeth learning to make acceptable pictures in black and white. My dad, who had an actual job, and thus a little more disposable income to play with, shot in color.

And so, for me, to have lived long enough to enter a third phase, in which black and white has made it through the unofficial runner-up status conferred on it when color first hit its stride…to come out the other side of that time tunnel, newly empowered, newly valued as just one of many valid ways to make a picture…well, it’s exciting. When I shoot now, I frequently toggle between pre-programmed settings profiles for both color and mono, taking several different tonal versions of nearly everything. I can then make a determination, later on, on the major questions in photographic narrative: what are we selling here? What tools get the storytelling most effectively done? What tone, what texture, what range of value will convey what I’m seeking? And, most importantly, can I be open when something I was not seeking comes through by happy chance? I was born a mono kid who became a color shooter as an adult and then came to embrace everything, everyday, all at once as a senior. Lucky.

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Posted by  |  June 17, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

HOORAY FOR STANLEYWOOD

One of the figures of the three muses (Music, seen here), dance, and drama, created by sculptor George Stanley for the monumental fountain which serves as the entrance to the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

LA LA LAND, BEING THE CHIEF MANUFACTURER OF DREAM IMAGES FOR THE WORLD, has seen, in its century-and-a-quarter history, many of those images flicker and be forgotten once the title THE END flickers off the screen. However, both in and out of the movies, Los Angeles at large has seen visual souvenirs of its various eras survive to become icons that outlast time, forever emblematic of a city that feeds on the frenetic energy of hope. These symbols of L.A. life are visited or seen by millions, their origins rendered irrelevant, as if they, like the mountains and the tar pits, have simply always been here.

George Stanley’s sculpture of Sir Issac Newton (at right), taking its place among other sculptors’ tributes to great astronomers at the entrance to Griffith Observatory in L.A.

The names of some of the creators of these landmarks survive, and others, like sculptor George Stanley, morph into questions on Jeopardy or side entires on Wikipedia. But that’s a little ungrateful of us. as we adore the man’s works with no notion of the man himself. Like many Angelenos, George Maitland Stanley was an immigrant from within greater America, arriving in the 19-oughts from a small parish in Louisiana, growing up in the town of Watsonville near Monterey Bay. In 1923 he enrolled in L.A.’s Otis Art Institute, where he studied and later taught sculpture, before transferring to the Santa Barbara School for the Arts, where he was also on the faculty. George’s first major commission, and the one which made him renowned to this day, was the sculpting for the Oscar statuette, which he designed in 1927 from a sketch by an MGM executive and which can arguably claim to be the most famous sculpture in the world.

The first third of the twentieth century was an insane growth spurt for Los Angeles, and George Stanley had a literal hand in the symbology for some of its most enduring destinations. The circle of statues that celebrate the world’s essential astronomers, which graces the front entrance to Griffith Observatory, was a collective work, with a separate commission issued for each of the scientists on the plinth. Stanley sculpted the figure of Sir Issac Newton in 1934. Just six years later, he created yet another indelible marker of California culture, creating the streamlined Deco fountain that ushers concertgoers onto the grounds of the Hollywood Bowl. The triple sculpture that crowns three corners of the two-hundred-foot-side fountain base, depicts the three muses of Music, Dance and Drama, and stands over twenty-five feet tall. Situated just where freeway traffic exits the 101 and spills onto Highland Avenue, the fountain has become a kind of unofficial front gate for Hollywood itself.

Stanley’s frieze for the entrance to Bullock’s Department Store on Wilshire Boulevard, 1929.

Stanley’s other works, some of which do not survive to the present day, include the dramatic frieze atop the main entrance to the majestic Bullock’s department store building, as well as some reliefs and murals at various churches scattered across the state. In a town that worships image, he created the visual signatures of many essential local landmarks, and photographers and historians alike have long realized that you cannot tell with story of Los Angeles without citing his elegant touch.

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Posted by  |  June 14, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE

In shooting children’s activities, you only have a nanosecond to find the central story.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

IF YOU WERE TO CONNECT THE ENERGY OF A ROOMFUL OF CHILDREN to a dynamo, you could power the eastern seaboard and have enough power left over to make all the marquees in Time Square blink “Happy Birthday”in Morse code. Making photographs of kids is just slightly less challenging than snapping images of summer lightning. They are dynamic, unpredictable, driven by whim, and poised on a knife’s-edge. And that’s their resting state.

For a photographer, shooting kids is both a treat and a trap. A treat, because, within seconds, you are presented with more visual information than you can use in a year, and a trap, because what you select or capture out of that flow can either be the very definition of storytelling or its dead opposite. Happening by when a flock of children are sharing an activity, with all the joy, risk and, yes, competition that’s on display (Mom! watch me!!), a photographer has to make insanely fast choices of what to scoop up and what to leave alone. With luck, he/she delivers a great narrative, a shot which contextualizes and explains itself in an instant, a document of the joy of being young. But, without luck (or judgement), the result is, well, a picture of kids playing.

One slider, many background participants. But is this the story you’re seeking?

Of course, such moments cannot, dare not, be coached or posed, meaning that their importance must be weighed, then gathered or rejected, in an incredibly short amount of time. No one second can be repeated or replicated: it’s either caught or it escapes. If the overall story line of the two pictures shown here is “sliding down a hill”, that message can actually be muddled by the right mixture of visual information. For example: how many active sliders need to be shown in motion at one time, when getting the number wrong can potentially drag the eye all over the frame without asking it to focus on a central impact? If the emphasis is on the throng, then the top shot is an example of a potential keeper. However, if one child is all that’s needed to demonstrate the activity, with the other kids shown in various stages of preparation, then the second frame will deliver. Of course, in all candor, I’ve not shown, here, the other seven frames I originally took, where all these “missions” get even muddier or less organized. Child photography is true photography, in that the act of extracting an instant from the constant flow of time could not be clearer than in trying to isolate an ideal illustration of their play. Getting it right really is equivalent to capturing lightning in a bottle

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

THE ZOOM AFTER THE ZOOM

A sort of “Where’s Waldo?” zoom shot in which “Waldo” is played by a well-concealed baby Bullock’s oriole.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

PHOTOGRAPHERS, AT LEAST ON THE LOGICAL HALF OF THEIR BRAIN, know that purchasing X kind of gear will not necessarily solve all of their picture-making problems. Screwing on a fresh lens or body is, by itself, no guarantee that you will “get” any more satisfying images than you do at present. I mean, put one of us on a polygraph and ask, “do you believe that this new whatsis that you bought will transform you into a master shooter, and we’ll answer “no” without hesitation.

That’s the logical answer, after all.

Of course, creatives are not wholly logical, and so, when breaking in a new bit of kit, there is a decidedly emotional honeymoon period during which you do, briefly, dream that, now, all your problems will be magically solved. And so, getting past that phase, and realizing that, yes, despite the new toy, you still will come home empty some days, and, yes, you still will make mistakes and blow a percentage of your pictures.

THERE you are, you little bugger…

My recent move up to a 600mm lens for nature work was, for a short while, one such honeymoon. I would now bag bundles of elusive birds in a fashion never dreamt of before! Slinging a five-pound optic on my aging shoulders for hours at a stretch would be transformative! I would wonder how I ever managed before this day, etc., etc., etc.

Somehow, I still find that the gear, as well as myself, has limits. Check the initial frame, at the top of the page, that resulted from me trying to find a baby oriole in a twisted mass of rusted fencing from about 100 yards away, zoomed all the way out to 600mm. The bird is actually in the image, but it took “the zoom after the zoom”, i.e., a severe crop of over 50%, to reveal the little guy, a move which also resulted in the final image having barely enough resolution to make it fit for viewing on a monitor. The lens did everything it could, but it’s not a mystical portal: it’s a physical optic with limits, those limits being largely defined by, gulp, its user. Of course, I can talk myself down by noting that most of nature photography invokes the Maxwell Smart phrase, “missed it by that much!” and that using my equipment better will eventually up my average. But all such thoughts involve logic. Truth is, this little bird brat has hurt my feelings, and I want to marinate in that for a moment. I need a cuppa tea.

Posted by  |  June 7, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

GASLIGHTING WHILE GLASS PLATING

By MICHAEL PERKINS

THE 19th CENTURY ENTREPRENEUR P.T. BARNUM, the Victorian era’s grand master of humbuggery, marketed the unbelievable and the fantastic to millions with a wink to his audiences, as if he knew that they knew that this or that latest marvel was an utter fraud, but that it was all in good fun, since his customers loved to be lied to almost as much as he loved taking their dimes and quarters to accommodate their desire to be snookered. In that way, Barnum foretold the relationship we in the 21st century still have with fakery. It is thus easy to see how A.I. slop has continued to blur the line between the real and unreal, especially as regards photographs. If you want to see what we’ll fall for, look back at what we have already fallen for.

In 1861, the re-use of an improperly re-cleaned glass plate in the lab of photographer William Mumler made his finished print appear to show his own self-portrait “accompanied” by the shadowy figure of a girl. Mumler wrote the whole thing off as a lark, and forgot all about it until a spiritualist journal concluded that he had, in fact, captured a ghost inside his camera. Such publications were thriving in the back half of the 19th century, as the world was enthralled by the study of paranormal phenomena, and, smelling an easy payday, Mumler began marketing himself as the possessor of a unique “spirit camera”, scheduling sittings for bereaved people eager to pose with their departed loved ones. Insane? Well, consider in context: photography was such a new craft at the time that many were uncertain just what feats were even possible for it. After all, a soulless machine that could freeze time? Create a convincing record of reality with greater fidelity than the most skilled painter alive? What couldn’t the camera do?

Mumler made mad stacks of cash, and not only from the suckers, er, sorry, believers who flocked to his studio to be photographically reunited with the departed; he also played upon the grief and sentiment of the public at large, selling prints of the widowed Mary Todd Lincoln, seeming to be comforted by the ectoplasmic presence of her slain husband. The entire business seemed threatened when the Grand Fakeroo of the World, no less than P.T. Barnum himself, commissioned a photographer to create an image of himself with a shadowy presence in the background to demonstrate how easily the “spirit” effect could be achieved, and testified personally against Mumler at his trial for fraud. Acquitted by a judge, Muller simply started up where he had left off, cranking out the ghost pictures while also conducting legitimate experiments. At his death in 1884, he was celebrated for his greatest technical success, a system that made it possible to generate affordable and accurate prints from photo-electrotype plates, a technique which is still called the Mumler process. These days, with fraud walking hand-in-hand with art in the new golden age of manipulated images, it’s fascinating to remind ourselves of just how baked-in fakery has been across the entire history of photography. The camera may not lie, as the old saying goes, but the person holding the camera will often bear watching.

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

PLANE GEOGRAPHY

By MICHAEL PERKINS

Three Worlds, M.C. Escher, 1955

LOOKING THROUGH MY FAVORITE IMAGES, either hand or camera-created, I have always been drawn to those that ride a tightrope between discovery and mystery, balancing delicately between what is revealed and what is concealed. For me, viewing a composition, whether in a painting, drawing or photograph, I am, of course, intrigued by what the artist chose to include in the frame, but I am just as fascinated by the decisions that were made as to what to leave out of it. By choosing something, the framer is un-choosing every other possible choice. That very deliberate action, to me, is the essence of picture-making.

I once heard a boorish person described as someone who could add something to a room just by leaving it. I probably have been that person several dozen times without knowing it. But in visual art, subtractions can often function as additions of a sort. The act of creating a photograph, as I myself practice it, is the presentation of certain information that also implies information that I’ve withheld. Three Worlds, the M.C. Escher illustration show above, is a perfect example of how these artistic choices can spur curiosity. Here, in the single plane of the water surface, both the life of the forest above and that of the pond below are suggested, and yet the three “worlds” remain more suggested than displayed. We never have the complete reality of either the forest or the pond spelled out in full. In fact, there is more detail provided in the leaves floating on the water than in the selective depiction of the other two realities. The leaves act as a portal between two other disparate states that will forever remain largely unexplained. The result is tantalizing, a tease for the mind that results in deeper speculation. The viewer’s mind is fully engaged.

Skywalkers, Michael Perkins, 2026

In the other image, the very under-explained aspect of the reflective surface is designed to ask more questions than it answers. The viewer is free to speculate, to wonder, to try to decipher what, actually, he is looking at. Most importantly, no final answer needs be rendered, just as no explanatory caption is required. The image simply is, whether or not the individual attaches anything extra to it. The wall between reveal and conceal is inviolate, and should be. Any discussion is legitimate, as is no discussion at all. Pictures can be “about” things, or they merely be about themselves. Riding that tightrope between “is it?” and “it is” is a big part of the fun.

Posted by  |  May 31, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

GOING HOME FULL

By MICHAEL PERKINS

I KNOW SEVERAL PHOTOGRAPHERS who evaluate a shooting day the way they might evaluate a round of golf, as if they had to total up a score of some kind to measure either success or failure. Their internal grading systems declare a given outing to be a bust, a win, a waste of time, or a revelation, with many bemoaning those occasions on which they “go home empty”, which, I guess, means they either “found nothing to shoot” (an idiotic notion IMHO) or “didn’t get any good shots”(another concept I have a problem with, since all photography is instructional and thus cannot be wasted time unless you waste it yourself) The idea of putting a day’s shooting into some arbitrary “pass or fail” column strikes me, to say the least, as missing the effing point.

Taken on a birdwalk in which the birding was marginal but the walking was divine.

When I began birding, I found I had to re-think what the object of a photo shoot was. I first went into it the way a fisherman might judge the day’s catch, that is, by how many trout were in the creel when I headed home. In such a mind set, any day I did not “bag” the correct(?) number of bird images was a bad day. It was as if I had been assigned by some cosmic editor to bring back a certain amount of “product” and had failed the assignment. Thing is, watching birds isn’t about what the rest of the world wants or demands. It’s about mindfulness, about being fully present in the moment. In terms of photographs, it’s the only way you will be able to even approach snapping subjects that are generally elusive and non-cooperative. Only paying full attention to what’s in front of you will mentally prepare you to make a visual comment on it, which is what happens when you choose to photograph, well, anything.

The other thing that anchors me in the moment is being just as mindful of my immediate surroundings beyond the birds. Not all walks are birdwalks, but all birdwalks are walks, each with its own features and compositional possibilities. Some of my favorite landscape images were the byproduct of days when days on which The Birds Aren’t Happening, or when I was far less adept than my companions at spotting this or that species and naturally began to look for something else to train my gaze on. Happily, I now can head back after a day when no usable bird pictures resulted, yet still not feel as if I “went home empty”. Empty is a manifestation of the mind. It’s just one of many mental program switches that you can toggle on or off. Photographs don’t just happen when everything’s perfect, or else no one would ever shoot anything. Run what you brung, shoot what comes along. It’s the attitudinal equivalent of A Bird In The Hand.

Posted by  |  May 27, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , | Leave a comment

SAME CANVAS, FRESH STROKES

By MICHAEL PERKINS

DUCK INSIDE ANY GIFT SHOP IN A BEACH TOWN and you are immediately awash in paintings, shirts, mugs, posters and assorted other bric-a-brac of the area’s most familiar tourist attraction, captured and immortalized in any and every medium. Want a potholder that will remind you of your great time in Lake WhattaLoada every time you take a sheet of cookies out of the oven? Right over there, sir. Lotsa sale items, too.

What such displays demonstrate is just how closely we all tend to agree on “what’s to see around here”, as well as just how tough it is to bring anything fresh or new to the 5,000,000th view of the gorgeous local waterfall, the awesome local ruins, the vibrant local boardwalk, etc., etc. Strangely, this can mean that, say, the Eiffel Tower may be among the hardest things on earth to photograph, because everything, but I mean everything, has already been said about it. Every visitor “destination” presents a similar challenge, as you become just the latest schnook to try to snap that town’s Great Historic Whatsis.

In Ventura, California, the G.H.W. is the local pier, which, in one form or another, has stretched into the Pacific just opposite the downtown since it was opened in 1872 as a transportation hub and commercial wharf used to bring merchandise and lumber to the area and to export the area’s agricultural products and crude oil. These days it is used for fishing and as a pedestrian walkway with views of Ventura and the Channel Islands, which stretch North and South about an hour’s sail from shore. Over the years, Mother Nature has spanked, split and splintered her dozens of times, and time and time again, the city fathers/mothers choke up the cash to patch her up for the tourists and locals. It is impossible to imagine Ventura (original town name San Buenaventura, given that every third locality here is named after a saint) without the thing.

And so, now that I myself am a local, it photographically haunts me, or rather dares me to find something, anything fresh to do with it as a subject. I attack it from every angle or aspect, and always seem to snap into the same track as all the other human satellites orbiting around it. And, as I say, the shops in town are like a kaleidoscopic gallery of all the various attempts made by folks like me. We’ll never actually master it. But taking our shot is beyond irresistible, like trying to swim against the tide. The canvas doesn’t change; the only real difference is which brushstroke we choose…….

Posted by  |  May 24, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

HONEY, I (SHOULDA) SHRUNK THE CAMERA BAG

By MICHAEL PERKINS

TWO YEARS AGO THIS MONTH, I changed residence for the first time in a quarter century. The actual implementation time for the relocation was in short supply, as the last weeks before the vans rolled were jammed with weighty decisions. Given that Marian and I were moving to an apartment half the size of our house, tough calls had to be made. I jettisoned thousands of CDs, hundreds of books, a Goodwill store full of outdated apparel and a crap-ton of assorted junque.

However…

I brought every single lens with me.

No tearful goodbyes for the various speciality glass and one-trick optical ponies I’d accumulated over the past twenty-five. And it’s not that certain gadgets here and there shouldn’t have gone to their glory. I just lacked the guts to push the button, and so a short life-time of gear and gimmicks made the journey with us, even as my ongoing evolution in technique had, in recent years, seen me taking pocketfuls, not bags, of kit on my shoots. To put it simply, most of the time, I use fewer and fewer lenses to do more and more. Many days, I go out only with whatever’s mounted on the camera. And, looking around, I am not the only aging shooter who’s come to that decision.

Closest thing I have to a single “go-to”, a manual Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 from 1977.

That said, I never really saw myself as a one-lens-for-everything kinda guy, and so it was amazingly easy to sell me on the wondrous properties of the next lens I’d buy. Surely that next hunka glass was going to address whatever shortcomings there were in my style and vision. And yet, I could be spare when I wanted to. It wasn’t as if I couldn’t make fewer lenses do more. After all, The Normal Eye was borne out of my exclusive use of a 50mm, or “normal” prime lens for an entire year, not to win a bet or a dare, but because my work needed re-grounding, a re-set after too many years of pictures that were little more than family candids. Keeping the emphasis on my own mindfulness rather than on tools accomplished that. Regardless, my interest in other, more specialized optics grew over time, even though I would actually use many of them only on occasion, and hardly enough to justify lugging them all around with me on trips “just in case’. Oscar Wilde, on his deathbed, reputedly remarked, “either that wallpaper goes, or I do.” Similarly, either my work was going to grow, or the goodie bags needed to haul an increasingly unwieldy arsenal of glass were. So it’s time for a little tough love.

I’ve spent the two years since the move going through the lens trove, attaching each of them in turn to bodies, and taking each out for a run to see if they really still justify their continued status as dust collectors. I already know that I am going to continue to run leaner in terms of what actually gets packed up to accompany me on shoots. My last trip anywhere saw me leaving the house with two, count them, two lenses total. That, for me, is crash diet. The question is whether I can actually divest myself of the extra junk or continue to haul it out for occasional sessions of polishing and dreaming. I keep hearing Ralph Waldo Emerson’s exhortation to “simplify, simplify” and contemplating just how much camera I actually need to get a given job done.

It’s a process.

Posted by  |  May 21, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

LET’S BE TOGETHER, ALONE

By MICHAEL PERKINS

PHOTOGRAPHERS NATURALLY SEEK PUBLIC SPACES, looking for the individual stories that travel through great halls, museums, places of worship, centers of commerce. If you want to observe the ants, your must seek out the anthills. Certainly, we are also drawn to quiet venues that are less densely populated, but to get a sense of interaction, of human-on-human transactions and encounters, vast, crowded places have a definite narrative appeal.

But grand spaces, at least for me, can act counterintuitively if the crowds in them on a given day are too sparse. That is, they work counter-intuitively. Big areas that are only partially filled, or even nearly empty, can strike me as lonelier than a single solo stroller on a rural road. It’s the contrast, visually and emotionally, between designs that were made to accommodate thousands and the empty feeling created when only a few dozen are on hand to fill those huge cavities. In images, it can be made to suggest a very intense isolation created when an individual is patrolling areas intended for huge throngs. The scale of things changes the terms.

A single seeker in a big woods looks like an idyllic communion with nature, whereas a solo wanderer in a huge man-made space suggests loneliness. I can’t explain it; I only know that, pictures-wise, the setting shifts the effect from Guy Getting Away From It All to Last Man On Earth. Context in photography isn’t everything, any more than any other single element. But it is a lot when it comes to showing the difference between “alone” and “lonely”. Some of this goes to the biases of the individual photographer, of course, and that’s why there is more than one of us trying to do this job. Still, I am always surprised when a single factor in the making of an image goes from important to crucial. Space, and how it gets filled or not filled, is one of the most decisive of those factors. We show what we see and we see what we feel.

Posted by  |  May 17, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , | Leave a comment

CONTEMPLATING THE FLICKER

By MICHAEL PERKINS

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!—William Shakespeare, Macbeth

I AM NOT THE TYPE TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO TRAIN THE MICROSCOPE on the details of my private life. In my view, there are some things to be shared, and some things to be held in reserve. I know that, in the age of full viral disclosure, such a sentiment is counter-intuitive, maybe even quaint. Can’t help it. I go through a lot of things as a human, and some of them are simply not for public consumption.

All of which is to say that, as I write this, I am sailing through some tricky emotional waters. Neither the cause nor the cure is the point, really, so, again, most of what I’m feeling will be of an inner-dialogue nature only. It’s enough to say that certain mileposts make you more mindful of the fleeting quality of existence, especially as the years advance. And for me, as a photographer, I also wonder if I’ve made anything of lasting value, or at least narrative clarity, as I contemplate the many clicks I’ve accumulated over a lifetime.

That sends me rifling through past work, looking for something that looks how I’m feeling. Sometimes it’s an easy search; other times it’s a slog. What you see here matches my sentiments of the moment, although, when shot, it was merely my way to salute what, for me, was a particularly poignant work of art. Somehow, right now, today, this moment, it’s hitting me in a distinctly different way. Photographs can do that. You snap off a frame for one purpose and find that, over time, the damned thing has grown a whole separate set of arms and legs beyond anything you could envision at the moment of its creation. Some might call that art, although, to me, it’s more like alchemy. Magic.

Anyway, here’s hoping that your most powerful inner feelings occasionally find themselves conducting through your finger to a shutter button, and, from there, to something more lasting. As long as we continue, so does the search.

Posted by  |  May 13, 2026 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

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