By MICHAEL PERKINS

THE WORLD’S MOST TITANIC ATTRACTIONS, either natural or man-made, are almost always depicted from a distance, adorning postcards, brochures or posters from some ideal perch that allows the camera to take in the entire spectacle of The Very Special Thing within a single frame. That’s the way a tourist sees things like the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, or the Grand Canyon; the way they appear in the promotional photograph, the souvenir. For those locals who pass by or through those places daily at street level, however, the view is often very different, in that the part (the thing that I use) varies significantly from the whole (the thing the visitors visit). And that, in turn, provides the best way to see something ultra-familiar in a whole new way.

Example: seen as merely a single feature in a vast panorama that includes both the Brooklyn and Manhattan sides of the East River, the George Washington Bridge looks like a single, continuous flow of metal and macadam, when, in fact, it is a gigantic jigsaw puzzle of millions of interdependent parts…rivets, supports, struts, platforms, staircases, arches…a colossal collaboration of assemblies and sub-assembles. And, in photographic terms, forcing the eye to take in just a subsection of it, as seen here, forces the mind to take the familiar in as a totally unfamiliar thing, allowing for photographs that render an accepted form in a novel manner. It is, in effect, the anti-postcard view…a re-engagement of the senses with something long thought to be complete known.

Cities that attract tourists contain certain visual cues for the visiting photographer, or the urge to capture the super-familiar, to get “the” shot of certain locales. It’s almost as if snapping the expected photo of the Very Special Thing ticks off a box on a list of assignments. But homework and creativity don’t work well together. Struggling to find one’s one version of the super-familiar promotes growth, and, for the viewer, actually broadens our comprehension of that thing. “Nothing new under the sun”, goes the saying, but no one who calls him/herself a photographer can ever accept that proposition. Turn the corner, flip the angle, change the outcome.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

THIS PLATFORM WAS NEVER ABOUT MERE GEAR OR TECHNIQUE. Looking at the blogosphere of a dozen years ago, I decided that it was saturated with how-to’s and equipment reviews, things that I had found had less and less to do with how I was actually trying to make pictures. And so, from the start, The Normal Eye has been about intentionality. What was I trying to do? How close did I come? What was in me that had to change to make images “work” better? And what could I learn that might be helpful to others like myself?

One of the by-products of all this is that it’s taught me to look, photographically, for evidence of other people’s intentionality; to try to chronicle their magical transformation between thinking about a thing and becoming that thing. Take as an example the young dancer seen here, who began her improvised dance in the surf by randomly frolicking down the beach for a photographer friend. I happened upon the scene from afar, using a telephoto to maintain a healthy distance from the pair so as not to interfere with their process. And then I saw something wondrous.

Within a few seconds, the young woman went from letting a thing happen to her to trying, intentionally, to control and direct it. She went from participating to creating. She tore herself loose from the state of being “found” in something planned, to becoming blissfully “lost” in something of her own making. Whatever “this” was, it was no longer a series of poses. Now, it was a dance.

In a moment, I was reminded of what I had been seeking, millions of photographs ago, when I began all this. This blog’s name is subtitled with the word “journey” for a reason. I was learning, day by day, how to trust my own instincts beyond the mere technical mastery of a craft, dancing as intentionally as I could toward the edge of art. Sometimes, it still feels like I am just alone on a beach, twirling around aimlessly. But, in some miraculous moments, my footwork changes. I can hear a rhythm. I leave behind the “found” world and find myself giddily “lost”

And then I can dance.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

PHOTOGRAPHY IS ONE OF THE ONLY AREAS OF MY LIFE in which I am never, ever really finished. Job over? No more visits back to see the old office gang. I’m gone. Move to another city? Lose my number. I won’t be back this way again.

10:0739am, 9/16/07 on a Sony DSC-W5; f/5.6, 7.9mm, ISO 100, 1/200 sec.

But making a picture of something just once, and leaving it at that? No, let’s think more in terms of a carousel. Miss the brass ring on one revolution? Get ready to grab for it on the next go-round. That landscape could be just a little stronger. That skyline could be improved by another try (or another three dozen tries, if I’m honest). It’s sad, but true; there aren’t but a few of the images I’ve made over a lifetime that I don’t imagine might be improved by a do-over.

That point was driven home to me again recently when I found myself walking past the precise spot in New York City where, in 2007, I first attempted a shot of the 30 Rock tower, the anchor of Rockefeller Plaza and pretty much on the bucket list of any visitor to The Apple. The original shot was passable, i.e., not truly embarrassing, and I even had an enlargement of it hanging in my workroom for more than a decade, having told myself that the image, basically a snap from a Sony Cybershot in full auto mode, was pretty much a home run.

11:0419a, 10/14/24 on a Nikon Z5; f/9, 28mm, ISO 100, 1/500 sec.

Zoom forward to two months ago, when, once more, I was standing along the southern side of Saks Fifth Avenue on East 49th Street looking across Fifth Avenue at the entrance to one of the two lesser plaza buildings that stand a block in front of the main tower. Even though I was now using a full-frame mirrorless Nikon Z5 with about a billion more options built into it, I shot the picture fast, just as I had done it in ’07. Later, I was struck at how many differences I saw in the two quickie snaps, fourteen years apart from each other.

Most noticeably, I had positioned myself much closer to Fifth Avenue in the re-do, eliminating the huge black block created in the original by the shadowy side of Saks, thus revealing more of the target. This closer framing also got rid of the light pole in the ’07 shot, which is either “urban atmosphere” or clutter, depending on your viewpoint. Of course, the Nikon is far more capable of delivering more nuanced color than the ancient Sony, and the custom settings I had dialed in to an assigned aperture priority button also helped deliver a wider overall range of tones than the earlier camera could ever dream of.

As to any other key differences, the verdict is yours as to what worked better when. I did not take the recent shot with a deliberate mission in mind; that is to say, I was not so much trying to consciously improve on the original, wanting instead to shoot the new frame quickly and instinctively, as I had done back in 2007, allowing whatever changed instincts I had accrued over the intervening years to dominate over any intentional calculation. It thus stands as a fairly honest testament as to the evolution of my style, or changes in how I “pre-see” a picture. Who knows? I may revisit the scene again in 2041, perhaps as the Ghost of Snapshots Past.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

ASKED IN 1974 BY AN INTERVIEWER ABOUT THE LEGACY OF THE ACTOR JAMES CAGNEY, director Orson Welles replied that while Jimmy “broke every rule”, “there’s not a fake moment” in any of his movies. He further explained that the star of Public Enemy, White Heat and Yankee Doodle Dandy worked counter to all the conventions of what was supposed to be “realism”, and yet created roles which were absolutely authentic. Cagney, in effect, bypassed the real and told the truth.

As do many photographers, it turns out.

We all have inherited a series of technical skills which were evolved in an attempt to capture the real world faithfully inside a box, and we still fail, at times, to realize that what makes in image genuine to the viewer must often be achieved by ignoring what is “real”. Like Cagney, we break the rules, and, if we are lucky, we make the argument that what we’ve presented ought to be considered the truth, even though the viewer must ignore what he knows in order to believe that. Even when we are not trying to create a so-called special effect, that is, a deliberate trick designed to conspicuously wow the audience, we are pulling off little cheats to make it seem that we played absolutely fair.

The first time we experiment with lighting, we dabble in this trickery, since the idea of lighting an object is to make a good-looking picture, rather than to mimic what happens in natural light. If we are crafty about it, the lie we have put forth seems like it ought to be the truth, and we are praised for how “realistic” a shot appears. The eye likes the look we created, whether it bears any resemblance to the real world or not, just as we applaud a young actor made up to look like an old man, even though we “know” he isn’t typically bald, wrinkled, and bent over a cane.

In the image above, you see a simple example of this. The antique Kodak really does have its back to a sunlit window, and the shadows etched along its body really do come from the slatted shutters upon that window. However, the decorative front of the camera, which would be fun to see, is facing away from the light source. That means that, in reality, it would not glow gold as seen in the final image. And, since reality alone will not give us that radiance, a second light source has to be added from the front.

In this case, it’s the most primitive source available: my left hand, which is ever so slightly visible at the lower left edge of the shot. It’s acting as a crude reflector of the sunlight at right, but is also adding some warmer color as the flesh tones of my skin tint the light with a little gold on its way back to the front of the camera. Result: an unrealistic, yet realistic-seeming shot.

There’s a number of names for this kind of technique: fakery, jiggery-pokery, flimflam, manipulation, etc., etc.

And some simply call it photography.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

ASK THE AVERAGE PHOTOGRAPHER TO NAME THE GREATEST TECHNICAL ADVANCE of this general era and you will get an incredible range of responses. Given the breadth of technique out there, that’s to be expected. I have my own list of nominees, from lenses to ergonomics to processing platforms, but the one thing that has produced the greatest boost to my work is the superior light gathering power of today’s cameras, a revolution that dates to the first days of digital. That comes down to ISO, and how intuitive and simple it has made every kind of photography.

Consider this image. There is absolutely nothing artistically distinctive about it, but it is nonetheless remarkable, because, just twenty short years ago, it would have been nearly impossible for me to take it in the same way I can take it today. It was captured inside a museum gallery where the only light available was illumination directly next to the exhibits; everything else was swallowed in darkness. It’s hand-held, shot at a 50th of a second, and the lens, a 24mm prime, is fully open at f/2.8. But those things alone cannot deliver a shot like this, unless you factor in the sensor’s light-capturing performance.

Attempting this photo in the analog era, I would have had to purchase the fastest film available, likely with a maximum ceiling of around 800 ASA, and would likely have also had to provide flash or some other illumination to get color registration at this level. A time exposure on a tripod would have helped simplify some of that, but there would have been no getting a sharp shot of the museum guide without a strobe. Overall, a recipe for fuss, gear, expense, and a high degree of unpredictability, especially for an amateur. But that, folks, was film. And speaking of film, cameras that used it could only use one speed per roll. To change to a faster film from shot-to-shot, a separate camera loaded with that specific kind of film would be needed. Not handy.

However, with today’s sensors and processing, shooting this at 5000 ISO is just a matter of dialing it up and doing it. High resolution, low noise, faithful color (since I can also just select the white balance that I want without intricate calculation….another plus)…..it’s all, reliably, just there. I can shoot fast, simply, and with no great mental pre-occupation or guesswork, meaning I can concentrate solely on getting the shot. What other technical innovation over the last generation can possibly compete with that?

Tools and approaches vary by the individual, of course, and no one tech revolution will solve all problems for everyone. But. But. We are quickly approaching the point in photography in which nearly every major obstacle to making exactly the images we want has been overcome. And if that’s not the biggest news ever, then I can’t imagine what is.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

EVERY HOLIDAY SEASON SINCE 2014, THE NORMAL EYE has cast a nostalgic glance backward to the days when the Eastman Kodak Company was the undisputed titan of home photographic supplies and film. The supplies…the cameras, lenses and tools, were mainly sold just once; however, the film was sold and resold endlessly, as the company marketed the concept of capturing life’s most precious moments, convincing us, in fact, that an experience was not quite complete if it were not frozen in time on our billions of Brownies and Instamatics. And nowhere else was Kodak’s perpetual consumption campaign more powerful than at Christmastime.

Over many a yultide, Kodak introduced the point-and-shoot camera, the portable pocket camera, the first practical color print film, and the first affordable systems for producing slides and home movies. The holidays were always high season for get-togethers with loved ones, hence an amazing emotional lever for Kodak. It’s just not a family gathering without pictures, lots of them! And we’ve made it so fast, so convenient, so….normal. No skill our experience needed, encouraged the ads. Just put a Kodak under the tree (tagged with the company’s holiday mantra, “open me first!” and let the snapping commence. Something fun/happy/wonderful may escape into mere memory, so be ready with plenty of film. flash bulbs and batteries.

Kodak Christmas ads were equal opportunity guilt generators, with Mom and Dad sharing the responsibility for a complete chronicle of every happy moment. Pop busy putting together the model train for Junior? Then let Mother step in and catch a few candids of all the joy. Mom showing Sis how her new Tiny Tears doll works? Then it’s Papa to the rescue, immortalizing every instant of happiness.

Years past Kodak’s glory days, today’s photographic habits are now so ingrained that we can no longer separate experiences from the need to document them, often treasuring an image of how happy we were even as the actual details of that happiness fade to gray. But such is the strange contract we all have with photographs. They have been called “a lie that tells the truth”, and sometimes, some strange and wonderful times, that has to be enough. Incredibly, like some sort of Christmas miracle, sometimes it is.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

PHOTOGRAPHERS, BEING MORE OR LESS AS HUMAN as the next guy, are given, at this time of year (December), to compiling “years in review” or “best of” lists, in an effort to encapsulate the previous twelve months and, who knows, make some sense of it all. Such rosters are the go-to crutch of editors around the globe, who lazily assign their worker bees the task of ranking the top rutabaga recipes, the greatest moments in sports, and, inevitably, their own or someone else’s top images.

I find myself at some disadvantage in trying to evaluate my own work, and so I steer away from “best of’s” and stick with “some of’s” instead. I don’t mind compiling galleries that illustrate what I lived through in a year’s time, but I shy away from assigning any absolute value to any of them. I usually take notice, for example, of the tabs that you see at the top of this page, which click to small photo essays on given themes, and I consider refreshing them from time to time, as I have just finished doing with the current choices you see up top. The photographs in these new tabs, Going Coastal, City, Sweet City ’24, and Westward On A Wing, are not intended to stand as my finest work, but merely a chronicle of what larger adventures shaped me between January and December 2024.

Just A Walk At Twilight, Ventura, California, 2024

The biggest change in my life, for example, was deciding to move to California after twenty-five years in Arizona. That has resulted in what I call oceanic immersion, or a glut of images captured near the Pacific Ocean. Going Coastal, then, contains no great artistic breakthroughs; it’s just that the subject matter, especially for a noob, has me, for the time being, under its spell. City, Sweet City ’24 celebrates my return to New York after an absence of over five years, a long stretch in my experience, and Westward On A Wing celebrates my current stage of development as a bird photographer, which also rounds out to about the last five years. Think of the tabs as diary entires, minus the mooning over that cute new girl at school or pressed prom flowers.

As I said at the top, I find myself quite inadequate to the task to determining what my “best” images are. I can really only attest to what has been engaging or fulfilling for me. That’s why it’s a hobby. And, as with all hobbies, I can never really be “done”, which suits me fine. I prefer a life that’s a process instead of a product, a work in progress, a snap away from either success or failure. It’s fun balancing on that edge.

( All twelve years of THE NORMAL EYE are archived, and you can easily search any month or year by clicking on “Post Timeline” at the very bottom of any page. Here, from December 2018, is a look at the history of the Kodak “Colorama” and its huge role in holiday traditions. )

THE IDEA OF AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHY, the once-revolutionary notion that virtually anyone could own a camera and produce good results with it, came about at the exact point in history as the birth of mass-market advertising. Inventors made it possible for the average man to operate the magic machine, and wily promotion made him want to own one, and, by owning, adopt the habit of documenting his entire life with it. Some companies in the early days of photography excelled in the technical innovations that ushered in the amateur era, while others specialized in engineering desire for the amazing new toy. And no company on earth combined both these skills as effectively as the Eastman Kodak Company.

A super-sized Kodak “Colorama” transparency from the 1950’s.

From the beginning of the 20th century, Kodak’s print ads used key words like “capture”, “keep”, “treasure”, “preserve”, and, most importantly, “remember”, teaching generations that mere memories were somehow insufficient for recalling good times, or somehow less “real” without photographs to document them. The ads didn’t just depict ideal seasonal tableaux: they made sure the scene included someone recording it all with a Kodak. Technically, as is the case with today’s cel phones, the company’s aim was to make it progressively easier to take pictures; unlike today, the long-term goal was to make the lifelong purchasing of film irresistible.

Kodak’s greatest pitch for traveling the world (and clicking off tons of film while doing so) came from 1950 to 1990, with the creation of its massive “Colorama” transparencies, the biggest and most technically advanced enlargements of their time. Imagine a backlit 18 foot high, 60 foot wide color slide mounted along the east balcony of Grand Central Terminal. Talk about “exposure”(sorry).

Sporting the earliest and often best color work by Ansel Adams and other world-class pros, Coloramas were hardly “candids”. They were, in fact, masterfully staged idealizations of the lives of the new, post-war American middle class. The giant images showed groups of friends, young couples and family members trekking through (and photographing) dream destinations from the American West to snow-sculpted ski resorts in Vermont, creating perfectly exposed panoramas of boat rides, county fairs, beach parties, and, without fail, Christmas traditions that were so rich in wholesome warmth that they made Hallmark seem jaded and cynical. It was a kind of emotional propaganda, a suggestion that, if you only took more pictures, you’d have memories like these, too.

More than half a century on, consumers no longer need to be nudged to make them crank out endless snaps of every life event. But when personal photography was still a novelty, they did indeed need to be taught the snapping habit, and advertisers were happy to create one dreamy demonstration after another on how we were to capture, preserve, and remember. The company that put a Brownie in everyone’s hand has largely passed from the world stage, but the concept of that elusive, perfect photo, once coined “the Kodak Moment”, yet persists.