By MICHAEL PERKINS

PHOTOGRAPHY IS JAMMED WITH MADDENING PARADOXES, conditions that can work to either promote or thwart creativity, or, insanely, do both at once. One of the more maddening of these conditions came about with the dawn of the digital age. Suddenly, the unforgiving economics of film, which had made people work slowly and deliberately (lest they click their way into the poorhouse) shifted in favor of the photographer. Now, in essence, once he bought the camera, he was virtually shooting for free, meaning, in practical terms, he could produce more images, at shorter and shorter delivery times, than had previously been possible. Good, huh?

Well, in terms of the learning curve for making good photographs, swell. Being able to shoot hundreds of shots in a fraction of the time that it used to take to crank out dozens sped that curve up dramatically. This meant that there was at least the potential to get good in a shorter stretch of time. But with those instant mega-batches of pics came a price…measured not in money or convenience, but in precision.

Simply put, shooting at the speed of instinct obliterates the careful pre-planning that film used to enforce on us. It’s an anti-contemplative way to make pictures, since the fact that we can make so many of them so quickly begs the issue of whether we should do so, or whether we might merely slow down and make fewer but better photos. Some photographers have tried to steal back those precious moments of deliberation by using simpler, more purely mechanical cameras, forcing them to pause and think before every shot, in order to compensate for a device that can’t do nearly everything by itself. Others have decided to give film another try, again to make mistakes costlier, make the results more uncertain, and thus promote a more painstaking prep for each frame.

Point That Thing Somewhere Else #354, January 2023. 1/800 sec., f/6.5, 2000mm, ISO 200.

In my own case, my recent accidental wanderings into more wildlife work, dictated by the narrowed range of safety during the pandemic, has had the extra benefit of making me take more time to shoot fewer pictures. First of all, both the focus and zoom functions on the camera used in this capture of an American kestrel are sloooow, meaning that firing multi-bursts at a rapidly moving object is just a waste of time. And beyond just having to wait on the camera to respond, choosing a moment when the bird is moving the least is another calculation that slows the decision-making process. You must simply wait for the shot to come to you rather than just firing off a fusillade of frames and hoping something works out.  Presto. You’re working slower, and with more mindfulness.

When it comes to creativity, speed doesn’t necessarily kill, but in many cases there is nothing to be lost by interjecting the occasional “why am I doing this?” into the process. It takes longer, but it was that very reduced speed that accompanied many of the greatest images that were ever made, in the days before we could shoot as fast as we could press the shutter. Taking a breath sometimes resets the mind and solidifies the intention.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

THE APPEAL OF PHOTOGRAPHIC PHONE APPS lies not in their efficacy or even the overall quality of their output, but in their sheer, I-just-thought-I’d-try-this convenience, the ability to immediately scratch whatever creative itch has just come over you. Given the amazing speed of even formalized editing suites from Photoshop on down, apps are thus shortcuts within shortcuts, immediate gratification for the most extremely ADD among us. And certainly there is no harm in this kind of Veruga Salt I-want-it-now impulse processing, unless, of course, you mind the substantial reduction in pictorial quality that accompanies many of them.

In the case of the symmetry design app called Flipper, seen in use here, so much compression occurs between the resolution in the iPhone master shot and the final processed shot that the picture is no longer dense enough for use as a printed image at any useful level of enlargement. Its lowered rez restricts its use to life on social media or other on-screen sharing. Shared back from the app to a site like Flickr, for example, it barely passes muster in terms of quality. Worse, importing it into Photos or similar traditional libraries causes even more compression. It’s a shame, because the very ability of apps to give the shooter editing options galore, anywhere, anytime is a potentially great benefit, but one which can create pictures that are at once creatively liberated and technically hobbled.

This makes total sense in terms of marketing, of course. The photo app industry operates at the pleasure of the phone format. It has no interest, frankly, in solving many editing or creative problems for people who intend to re-work phone images for use in other formats or media. The cel and the app are perfect partners, each amping up usage and adoption by the other, and so all apps have to do is find out how to make people take and share more phone images. The rest of the photographic universe, for them, is basically moot.

And so there is no real incentive to expansively improve the image integrity of app-derived photos, because they look good enough on what they were designed for and for the users to whom they are marketed. And that’s not likely to change in the near future, if ever, which makes apps of limited value for a substantial portion of the photographic user base. Certainly we use apps to mostly “see what happens when I do this”, but ideally, we also want pictures that rise to a certain standard of quality, regardless of how they’re eventually to be used, and we’re a long way out from that particular harbor.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

SINCE EVERY PHOTOGRAPHER, LIKE EVERY OTHER LIVING PERSON, tends to cast himself as the hero in his own story, we love to close out the calendar year with, at least, a lenient assessment of what, in our art, has passed for progress. Whether honestly or not, we are wedded to the idea that we should be x-times further down the evolutionary plane on Dec. 31 than we were at January 1st. We always entertain the idea that, at bottom, we have, at least, not lost ground.

Like most self-diagnoses, this method is fraught with the possibility of self-delusion. Especially at the remote remove of time, I freely admit that, in some years, my picture-making was flat, even retrograde, mired in unwise habits or moldy with old ideas. This year, I’m not really certain where to place the crayon mark on the growth chart. It’s easy to list the uber-moves, the obvious ways my work changed, less easy to nail down what, if anything, I managed to create. In most years, I’ll settle for a solid B, with an A for Effort if I’m feeling generous, or drunk, or both.

I started the year by turning seventy and making the shift from DSLRs to mirrorless, a decision I still regard as defensive rather than visionary, convinced, as I still am, that manufacturers have decided (prematurely in my estimation) to abandon one good format for another good format, creating an “either/or” market that could easily have accommodated both. And while I am admittedly happy in Mirrorlessland, the main reason I fled DSLRville is because I had finally worn out my shutter mechanism and found myself in a world in which both product support and forward development for such devices was going to be summarily yanked.

The jump into the new format also meant working at full-frame instead of cropped dimensions for the first time in a decade, which meant getting the full visual field out of my old collection of lenses, all of which had been shooting at a 1.5x reduction. Finally  24mm meant 24, not 36. This factor alone redefined my sense of composition.

I also spent 2022 rediscovering the delights of 50mm primes, since I had finally found one of the many great third-party pancake lenses being introduced for the Nikon Z format. The Normal Eye originally grew out of a solid year I had spent with an earlier “nifty fifty”, and I found that working for long stretches with the flexibility of this simple glass was like meeting an old friend on the street.

Finally, after experimenting with a recipe of pre-sets for in-camera monochrome that I truly enjoyed, I locked them into a handy  dial button and spent more than a solid month shooting nothing else. For that reason, I believe that a black-and-white shot, like the one that’s posted here, is most representative of my work in ’22. I later acquired a similar recipe for the best faux-Kodachrome simulation I’d ever worked with, again, completely in-camera.

Did all these new toys and tools result in better pictures? Experience has taught me that it’ll actually take a lot longer than twelve months to determine that. However, every shift in procedure or technique has at least the potential to unlock something fresh within the photographer’s normal eye. Perhaps at some point, I’ll find out if that potential was realized.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

PHOTOGRAPHERS WHO CUT THEIR TEETH ON ASSIGNED SHOOTS, usually at the behest of some outside employer or editor, have a natural propensity to cut to it, to speedily seek out the heart of the action and eke out the central story. Arrive at the scene of the fire. Determine who is in charge, and where the crisis of the immediate moment is. Shoot pictures of same. Lather rinse repeat. 

But even those trained to shoot the very peak of drama in a given scene can occasionally find something interesting in what has not yet happened or what just happened. Many events seem to emerge with some advance staging, and some yield either interesting aftermaths or epilogs if you’re patient enough to look for them. In our visual reporting, we understandably focus on the books on the shelf, but in fact the bookends, or the vase of flowers to the left and right of those tomes might also have something worth capture. 

On the morning I shot this, I was understandably eager to get beyond the parking lot of a Ventura beach and down to the beach itself, assuming that the day’s typical harvest of dog-walkers, swimmers, and surfers would give me a few easy grabs. To be honest, a big part of the reason for taking this frame was to test my settings and see how my telephoto would compress things that were fairly far away from each other….a worthy consideration when shooting tight over really vast spaces. But just as you might find interest in a shot of actors and stage hands milling about just before the theatre curtain rises, I kinda liked the smashed composition of several folks talking, flexing, lifting and unloading as they prepared to hit the beach. I liked the “nearly there” aspect of it. Life as it almost is, or is about to be.

I firmly believe that sometimes we either shoot too early or too late on either side of a central story. But I also think that time is just a lot of little major and minor stories stitched together, and so there are always choices as to which of an infinite number of narratives we decide to extract in a given moment. Turns out, I lucked into several others on this day. But showing the seams where one story ends as another begins can be a good gig, as well. 

By MICHAEL PERKINS

BEFORE I CAN SURPRISE ANYONE WITH A PHOTOGRAPH, I myself must be surprised. It’s true that by re-examining familiar subjects, I can occasionally bring some under-appreciated feature of it to light, but, in the main, I do my best work when I have little or no idea what’s coming next. I have to be dislocated to some degree to feel at home.

I have to jump-start the section of my brain that inclines toward a fresh perspective or a novel approach. Placing myself in the position of A Stranger or A First-Time Visitor throws me enough of a sensory curve to knock me back off my comfort perch and see with something that approximates an original eye. And the culture I have inherited from thousands of generations of seekers shows me that I am not alone in this. 

The film director Sydney Pollack once said that many of the greatest stories in history involve being thrown out of Eden, lost from home, forced to navigate what Star Trek calls “strange new worlds”. His thinking was that, from the Odyssey to Huckleberry Finn to The Wizard of Oz to E.T., an amazing transformation happens to all of a culture’s heroes due to their being, at least for a while,  outcast from their points of origin. In terms of photography, while I can’t say that my favorite images always result from striking out into alien territory, I am firmly convinced that the feeling of estrangement, of being, for a time, banished from one’s factory settings can create the spark for creativity. Images that come from that insecurity act as a kind of reset button for the senses. We are on heightened alert when we’re tossed out of the nest, and that informs the pictures we make. 

My absolute favorite pictures over a lifetime are the ones that I had no plan for in the moment, no prior experience that could help me know what to do about them, no other clear motive other than the certainty that I wanted to make them somehow. Let’s face it, few of us would deliberately head out to see what a car wash looks like after dark in a forgotten midtown neighborhood of Los Angeles as seen through a rain-smeared windshield, but once I saw one, I wanted to capture it. Don’t ask me why. It’s not my favorite picture in the world, but it is my favorite way to allow myself to stretch a bit.

“I photograph to see what something looks like photographed”, said Garry Winogrand, who shot with as pure a sense of impulse as any photographer I’ve ever seen. And I can come close to that purity of purpose when I’m out of my element. Sometimes that means going to a physically different location, but other times it might merely be achieved by going into the left side rather than the right side in a museum, or visiting an anteroom you’ve somehow ignored the first 10,000 times you entered the same building. 

Some operate from the principle of familiarizing yourself with your surroundings before making a picture. I often hit pay dirt when I shoot despite the fact that I’m unsure of where it’s all heading. Both approaches have gifted me with images that surprised me. In the meantime, you may find that admitting that, yes, you’re a stranger here pries opens your eyes, and in turn, your heart. 

By MICHAEL PERKINS

SMALL TOWNS ACROSS AMERICA STILL PRACTICE a way of observing life that many of us have more or less abandoned, the idea of our homes as reviewing stands for humanity’s passing parade. Porches, as we built them in our smaller, slower days, were more than mere entrances into our homes: they were places to visit, observe, and comment. The wraparound verandas and shaded repose that we designed into our houses were like a buffer layer between the raw world out there and the warm world beyond our thresholds. Porches, in the days before the stubby stoops and short step-ups we feature today, were for something.

Visit someplace that has been lucky enough to survive the transition from village life to city life and you will find these places still personalized and painted, still decked with mini-gardens, flags, and seasonal decor, still serving as a distinct middle world between inside and outside. The idea of the street as a kind of low-impact entertainment, with neighbors and newcomers alike filing past, some to be actively engaged with, some just serving as moving scenery, has a slow, simple appeal in an age dominated by screens, scrolling and infinite entertainment options. But you have to pause, and breathe, and be patient to get the full effect.

It’s worth lingering over, and that is why, in visiting small towns, the very first place I go is the main residential boulevard. That’s where the action is. The sad fact is that we are often moving too quickly to see that action. It’s like trying to train yourself to observe the movement of the hands of a watch. Getting yourself aligned with the steady but imperceptible pace of the timepiece takes practice, and learning to see the gradual reveal of a house’s heart by first taking the measure of its porch is a habit that we have long since lost the natural knack for. But there is a reward in it, and there are pictures in it, and therefore it is worth doing.

The published take of Steve McCurry’s immortal “Afghan Girl” and the frame that was nearly chosen in its stead.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

THE ENDLESS DEBATE ABOUT WHETHER GOOD PICTURES ARE “BORN” OR “MADE” shows no sign of abating anytime in the next foreseeable millennium. In fact, it’s kinda fun bickering endlessly about whether success stems from the concept of an image (nature) or the loving care afforded by processing and editing (nurture). It’s the kind of infinite chicken-or-the-egg loop that enlivens all the better cocktail parties. I myself have fought fearlessly on both sides of the aisle at different points in my life, but my latest thoughts on the subject are becoming a bit more nuanced.

While I marvel at the astounding raft of choices born from the use of various post-processing platforms, I reserve the specific word editing for the mental judgement, the trained eye that can not only distinguish good pictures from bad, but great pictures from good ones. Sadly, all too often, our emphasis is on how we can improve or “fix” a picture with processing, trying to salvage shortcomings that should have been weeded out by the conscious, deliberate act of editing.

Recent articles on NatGeo’s Steve McCurry’s iconic “Afghan Girl” portrait (the Face That Launched A Thousand Camera Purchases, not to mention selling a crap-ton of Kodachrome) have centered on one of the alternate frames taken at the time that lost out to the final image. Both pictures, as you can see, are marvelous in distinct ways, and so it took McNally’s discerning and experienced eye to separate the gold from the platinum and select the photo that was not merely poignant, but, in a way, transformative, the final visual word on a tough subject. It’s not the kind of decision that can be made by merely boosting the color, cropping, or filtering the shot through a dozen afterthought layers, even though such operations can place the cherry on top of an already strong photograph. It’s the ability to criticize and evaluate one’s own work, fearlessly and in depth, which must exist in the photographer’s mind.

The best pictures are always improved by tools, but they can never be about those tools. In the interest of humility, I keep entire folders of near-misses, images I could not, even with infinite fiddling, rehabilitate. In case after case, I used post-processing to complete the task of story-telling that I only partly achieved in the making of the master shot. Not quite lipstick on a pig, but clearly the work of someone who is covering his tracks. To have a “McNally Eye” takes total honesty, a skill which is harder to master than all the technical know-how in the world. A great job of tweaking can never compensate for a bad job of narration. It’s the different between a girl with a plaintive look in her eyes and a girl with a stare than can sear its way into your soul.