THE ELEGANCE OF THE INVISIBLE
By MICHAEL PERKINS
PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE DECORATIVE ARTS SHARE A COMMON MISSION, which is to elevate the ordinary by re-imagining it, transforming things from invisible to elegant. Sometimes, of course, a sow’s ear cannot become a silk purse, no matter how much you fiddle with it, and not everything in the everyday can be glorified by the touch of a designer or shooter. Still, both disciplines can, often, confer some kind of absolute beauty on objects that we’ve been largely conditioned to ignore.
One of my favorite marriages of decorative arts and photography can be seen in the brief reign of what we now call Art Deco, although that term was coined decades after the movement sort of, well, moved on. Less extreme in its flowery ornamentation than its ancestor Art Nouveau, Deco gaily celebrated the furnishings of our daily lives, from parquet floors to wastebaskets to skyscrapers, making them some of the first industrially designed mass-produced objects of the Machine Age. meanwhile transforming consumption in the 1920’s and 30’s. At the same time, Photography was having its first Great Awakening, moving from a mere recording medium to an art form, one which, like Deco-designed works, could suddenly be copied and re-copied endlessly via film and print. The making of images that celebrated the ordinary as well as the extraordinary made for a unique amalgam of style and expression.
Just one look at a simple, typically invisible thing like a public mail drop box from the period (this one in daily use at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego as of this writing) reveals a love of symmetry, of clean, budgeted lines, and a minimalist aesthetic that is about how a thing strikes you visually much more than what its actual function might be. Photographs can not only serve to capture these works before they vanish, but to do for them what they did for our most “normal” tasks, and that is to glorify them. Art Deco and photography have proven, over time, to be one of the happier marriages in the arts. And like all the best lovers, they never let the honeymoon end.
MARCHING OUT OF THE MURK
“We had the TOOLS, we had the TALENT!”——Ghostbusters (1984)
By MICHAEL PERKINS
THE CRY OF VICTORY BY EGON AND COMPANY when the dreaded Sta-Puf Marshmallow Man was defeated could easily be the enthusiastic “Yes!” uttered by many a photographer, once a stubborn technical problem has finally been solved and something like a usable picture results. The struggle is real, and it’s often just as sloppy and gooey as slaying a giant s’more. Being unable to nail an image through a failure of either ability or gear(or both) is as haunting as, dare I say it, a ghost, and exorcising the little sucker can be a true thrill.
One of the personal ghosts inhabiting my brain since 2011 was born the first time I stepped inside the legendary Hotel del Coronado, the lush 1880’s vacation spot in San Diego that stood in for a Florida resort in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959). The brilliant sunshine found just outside, on the joint’s sun porch, becomes a dim memory as soon as you step inside the lobby’s dark, wooded depths, a real catacomb of deeeeep shadow where light (and far too many photographs) goes to die. One look at my first attempt to extract something out of the murk, way back then, tells it all. The camera was a Nikon D60, a basic entry-level DSLR with a 10mp crop sensor and a fairly low ceiling for ISO. Exhibit “A”:
2011: Hotel del Coronado, San Diego, CA. f/2.2, 75mm, 1/60s., ISO 400. Shot on full auto.
Yeah, painful, innit? Now, jump forward about four cameras and fourteen years to my Nikon Z5 full-frame mirrorless, and, well, we almost have a fighting chance. Exhibit “B”:
Returning to the scene of the crime in 2025, and shooting manually. f/2.8, 28mm, 1/250s., ISO 2500.
Certainly, to extend the Ghostbuster metaphor, the “tools” are different; technology marches on. But the “talent”, if that’s not too obnoxious a word, has moved forward a bit as well. I am quite literally not the same photographer I was then, which makes sense, because I only had one direction I could go. If I still couldn’t make this picture by now, I should be spending my time planting zinnia seeds in the back yard or something. So what’s the pitch here? Something on the order of the old saw “never stop shooting”. It’s a musty, dusty, hackneyed slogan, but it just happens to be true. Make it til you make it right.
TO PERFECTION AND BACK AGAIN
By MICHAEL PERKINS
THE FUTURIST JOHN NESBITT, in his classic book 1982 Megatrends, made a solid point about how humans adapt to rapid progress; that is, how they maintain their equilibrium in the face of accelerating change. He coined the phrase “high tech, high touch”, a term that defined a kind of spring forward /fall back cadence in modern life. In Nesbitt’s analysis, people who become swamped by overwhelming “high tech” revert back to the comfort of more tactile experiences from previous times, embracing the comfort of “high touch”.
It’s still a good explanation for the tug of war in photography between the “hands on” warmth of analog and the “all things are possible” allure of digital. We find ourselves, with present tools, going all the way to perfection, and then back again. And then back again and then back again.
An early Technicolor camera, of the same typed used to film The Wizard Of Oz.
A recent video on cinematography in movies put forth the idea that today’s films don’t look as “cinematic” as features from pre-digital times, that the very idea of technically removing flaws or inconsistencies from the exposure and lighting of movies makes them look somewhat lifeless, so evenly perfect as to be sterile. The creators of the video drew an especially stark comparison between the lush, tonally rich look of 1939’s The Wizard Of Oz versus the somewhat desaturated, somewhat lifeless look of 2024’s Wicked. Are we merely suffering a fit of nostalgia, or is there actually something that today’s tech is over-polishing, over-supervising images for today’s market, whereas the “flaws” of earlier photographers somehow remain alluring, even beloved?
Before you struggle to answer those questions, a caution: your answers are only your answers. What digital offers for some can seem seem like the ultimate perfection of all past problems, while, for others of us, the problems themselves, from tonal balance to lighting for effect, contain a way to stamp your personal style on something that might otherwise be sterile. Everyone who makes an image decides where to plot their location on the line between “high tech” and “high touch”, deciding how much perfection is just enough, or too much. Photographs need a healthy mixture of “wizard” and “ahhhs”.
SPACE AND SOLITUDE
By MICHAEL PERKINS
ONE OF THE GREAT LIES OF OUR AGE is that being tethered to the internet via a phone constitutes something called “connectedness”. In fact, locking our gaze onto screens is a symptom of seeking connection, not necessarily finding it. Instead of focusing on the life within ourselves, we are now turned eternally outward, seeing what else is out there, or, worse yet, what might be happening without us.
This condition explains why our street images are now swamped with pictures of people staring into devices, wishing themselves somewhere else….or, worse yet, terrified that they might be in this life alone. Shooting on a street used to mean catching people staring off or fixating on something within their immediate world, in a way that often underscored their isolation. We couldn’t possibly know what was on their minds, but that was the point. In trying to make pictures that posited a theory about what that was all about, we imbued our informal candids with power, even mystery.
Fast forward to today, when using a camera to catch a person alone, in a moment of isolated contemplation, perhaps casting their gaze on something distant or illusory, is increasingly difficult. I sometimes think that the only truly honest street work is our depictions of just how isolated we really are, despite our instinctual gravitation toward the black hole of “connectedness”. I make a diligent search for the unguarded instant, the temporary snatches of complete “alone times”. That’s when the impassive mask of false engagement shows itself. And sometimes, the snap of a shutter reveals it before the screens beckon once more, and we again submerge.
RE-BRANDING
By MICHAEL PERKINS
CITIES POSSESS THEIR OWN PROOF-OF-LIFE RHYTHMS, a steady cadence of dying and rebirthing, of collapse and resurrection. Like a sleeping body where you have to look carefully to see the passing of breath, towns of every type inhale and exhale, even if we are not paying close attention. One building comes crashing down, and we complain about the noise and mess. Another building rises on the same site, and we crab about how the sidewalk was re-routed. We learn not to see our cities breathing.
Photographers are people who teach themselves to see things that even they have, too often, passed by without noticing. When they preserve a moment between eras in cities, that’s a very valuable function. We document the old things we once valued; we chronicle the new things what we hope will have staying power. And our best pictures of cities can often be the precise moment that the past hands the baton on to the future. These are images of faith, hope, aspiration.
The proudest moments for a city is when it finally learns the value to be found in refitting the past, of carrying notes or accents of bygone days into new uses, slowing the tidal wave of obsolescence, if only a little. Sometimes we actually wake up to the fact that not everything old deserves to be swept aside, that there is such a thing as enduring value. Strive to be there when you see it happen.
HAND-EYE-HEART COORDINATION
By MICHAEL PERKINS
AS IT WRITE THIS, THE HIT TV SERIES SEVERANCE has, beyond its compelling depiction of a dystopian hellscape, sparked many conversations about what’s come to be called the “work-life balance”, that elusive equilibrium between what we find necessary and what we consider essential about our existence. Admittedly, it would be hard to find a single person alive in these days that has not actively worried about getting that teeter-totter equation correct, or at least close. One corrective force that we should always celebrate in doing so is creativity.
Photography, like any other creative enterprise, is an attempt by the inner spirit to exert some kind of control over our view of the world, or even to actively prescribe for it. Making an image is therefore an affirmation of the self, an insistence that we, as individuals, can order at least a small part of the universe in the way that we desire. To correct not only the work-life imbalance but the horror-delight imbalance. Art is a needed counterweight against despair, and the best thing about it is that adjusting that weight is within the means of anyone.
These are the times that try men’s souls, goes the saying. The phrase always sounds so fatalistic, but, in the work of creating art, we do “try”, and perfect, and refine our souls. We decide, purposefully, to shine, and to imbue other things or people with that selfsame glow. A photograph is a way of resetting the terms under which we engage life, no less than poetry, literature, or music. It is a way of viewing all the hardship, grief and trauma of being alive, in this or any age, and adding two words: yes, but……
It’s a priceless process.
Coordinating the hand and the eye is the way art is executed. Making a photograph concerts that two-way connection into a three-legged stool by incorporating the heart. That’s the solid foundation of art, for survival of any kind. Generate a picture and you generate hope.
IT’S ON A SLIDER FOR A REASON
A landscape of standard contrast, pretty much straight out of the camera.
By MICHAEL PERKINS
WHEN YOU FIRST TAKE UP PHOTOGRAPHY, it’s important to feel that you’ve nailed “the rules”, or whatever basic laws apply to the science part of making a picture. Focus. Composition. Depth of field. As newbies, we take comfort in knowing that we can competently follow the A-B-C-‘s of how to get a decent result. We see ourselves using various foundational pillars on which to drape our own technique. Color inside the lines and get a dandy image.
Then, of course, we enter a second phase in which we delight in selectively bending or shattering those rules, of taking out a pillar here or there, hoping that it’s not load-bearing. Our approach, our style, our artistry enters the mix more and more, perhaps not leading us to break every rule, but to know which ones to break, and when. That’s when we make the transition that we frequently talk about here, in the journey from taking pictures to making them.
Same shot with the contrast backed way out. Not a fundamental difference, but a palpable one.
One such pillar, for some people, is the whole issue of contrast. You can work your fingers to the bone doing web searches on various shooters’ takes on whether bold or flat gradations of tone are the ne plus ultra of pictures. Some say landscapes benefit from a flatter rendition, while others swear that the opposite is true. Some champions of soft, intimate portraits can also favor less severe demarcations between light and shadow, while others say a harsher take is the only “authentic” way to go. I myself have used contrast to completely re-make shots long after I thought I had done everything else I could to perfect them (see an original shot of average contrast up top and the flattened out version, just above). If I’m honest, I’ve also used it as a repair tool for shots that were slightly less sharp than I would have liked, but that’s a guilt trip for another day.
My point is that, if God hadn’t wanted us to play with contrast, He wouldn’t have put it on a slider. Few images are perfect SOOC (straight outta the camera), so a little nudge one way or the other doesn’t knock out one of those Sacred Pillars. Flex a little. The roof won’t cave in.
PLEASE ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF
By MICHAEL PERKINS
ONE OF THE FIRST BENEFITS, IN THE NINETEEN CENTURY, OF THE NEW ART OF PHOTOGRAPHY, was in providing a visual connection between disparate peoples around the globe. In the age of the steamship, long before mass media had annihilated space and time, huge parts of the world were complete mysteries to other parts of it. We had literally no graphic evidence of what much of our planet, as well as the things in it, looked like. Photographs provided a revolutionary kind of connective tissue.
In our present age, we can mistakenly assume that everything has been photo-documented; labeled, archived, identified, covered by oceans of images. And yet there are gaps, vast canyons of things we do not comprehend visually. This is increasingly the case in our widening estrangement from the natural world. The data on visits to monuments, state and national parks, and other scenic wonders are impressive, until you measure them against how much of nature no one has seen, or have only experienced second-hand. This, in the twenty-first century, charges photography with what can only be called a sacred mission; to reacquaint us with the parts of our world which are thrillingly alive, but toward which we have learned to turn a blind eye.
Can’t we all just get along? Cormorants and pelicans share a California seal sanctuary, 2025.
My own journey in this regard accelerated years ago, when my love of photography was paired with a growing interest in birds, and then, in turn, was linked to an examination of how birds and their environments connected with all other living things. It sounds absurdly simple, but, the fact is that, had birds not pulled me into their world, I might never have visited the physical places where I have now also developed a sense of connection between birds and all other elements of the natural world.
This, then, is my dream for photographers in our time, an age in which public lands have already been plundered and politicized for private profit, an era in which more and more extinction and threat make documentation of our environment absolutely essential, both for our own appreciation of it in the present and as an invaluable document against the losses of the future. Our cameras are the eyes of the planet, more than at any other time in our history. Images create linkage, and the task of re-introducing ourselves to nature is beyond urgent. We cannot protect what we do not know. See, and know more.
CHANNELING THE MIGHTY “MISC”
A famous snap at a 1950’s 3-d movie audience from Life magazine’s popular “Miscellany” page.
By MICHAEL PERKINS
I GET THESE MOMENTS.
If I were the talent of a Henri Cartier-Bresson, the protean street photographer, I might call these brief flashes of humanity/absurdity, and the the pictures they produce “The Decisive Moment”, HCB’s phrase for the perfect collision of factors snatched from the timeline at precisely the correct instant to make something magical. As it is, at my level, such moments are more like “things that make you go ‘hmmm'”. Same aim, vastly different results.
As I have mentioned before in these pages, in my youth, the weekly arrival of the new Life magazine at the house was something of an event. Many illustrated news digests, in that golden age of periodical publication, tried to hit the perfect balance between essential current events coverage and “man in the street” photo essays, but Life, for my money, remains the standard. My favorite feature over the years was always found on the final page, just inside the back cover, a one-more-for-the-road picture called “Miscellany”. The photos in it were apropos of nothing beyond themselves. They weren’t connected to a hard-news story or editorial content. They were merely bits of whimsy, most of the “can you believe this happened/can you believe we shot this?” variety. Fun stuff.
You Talkin’ To Me??, February 2024
I still feel those images in my bones during street work. Bizarre juxtapositions of the beautiful and profane; strange meet-ups between the serious and absurd. In the case seen here of the two mature ladies walking past a recruitment poster for some kind of foundation fantasy, I saw these ladies approaching from just outside my right periphery while I was composing what would have been merely a shot of the shop window. As they walked closer I realized that they were going to cross in front of it, and, just like that, my brain clicked in Miscellany mode. How could I not bring the two factors together. It was ridiculous. It was fun. Click.
Photographs can often act as comedy relief, or at least a safety valve, against the buildup of pressure from issues that hang on us far too heavily. Sometimes you just have to step back and smile. Or remind others too. Channeling the mighty “misc” is one way of getting there.
QUIET CONVERSATION
“I am sort of a spy..”—-Vivian Maier
By MICHAEL PERKINS
THERE IS AN IRISH STREET PHOTOGRAPHER that I occasionally see on a favorite photo-sharing site that may be the most unabashed eavesdropper I’ver ever encountered. He only shoots with a telephoto, always from a very long and safe distance, and his entire output consists of unposed candids of passersby. He finds them in shoppes, at fairs and markets, waiting on buses, whatever. The images usually show the complete upper bodies of his subjects, but often they are merely headshots. His passion is the unguarded moment, the sudden revelation of humanity when the mask of civilization slips a tad. In this he is not unique; many street shooters focus on such studies. However, it is nearly 100% of his output, and, since he posts so frequently, the viewer is liable to witness many hits among his misses.
Now, I leave it to you to discern the ethics of merely spying on passersby in pursuit of some kind of enlightenment. I myself give in to the urge now and then (as seen here), and I regularly argue whether this qualifies me as investigator or sneak-thief. Perhaps a bit of both. Shooting on the fly while a human interaction is ongoing certainly records the complete gamut of emotion, and that in itself can be hypnotic. But why? Is our understanding of our own secret selves somehow enhanced by looking over the shoulder of others’ lives? There have been enough debates about this one aspect of street work to fill up the Library of Congress.
Sometimes it’s a single shot that seems revelatory. Other times, as seen here, a sequence of shots may have a certain allure. Shooting in burst mode can be a bit like making a very short movie and viewing it a frame at a time on a film editor, like the ancient Movieola editors. And then there is the question every photographer must answer. Is more really more, and, if so, more of what? I find I tire when a shooter’s work is totally composed of random candids. I would feel either stuck or lazy or both if that was all I shot, but everyone to their own style. I do recognize that other people’s lives are occasionally fascinating, but I have still to explain why that is.
PULLING BACK FROM THE REAL
By MICHAEL PERKINS
ONE OF THE GREATEST LEGACIES of the first two hundred years of photography has been the ability of images to be either anchored to, or completely thrown clear of, the literal world. Pictures may have been originally made to document, or prove, or demonstrate elements of reality, to preserve time in ways previously impossible. However, they soon revealed the photographer’s urge to interpret, not merely set things down on salted paper. This was the creative instinct, the demand of the individual to see life in distinctive and unique ways, commenting, rather than merely cataloging.
There has never been a better time to be a photographer. Never.
Phantom Squadron, 2024
This is not because of any one technical development or scientific breakthrough. It’s because the accumulated power of the billions of images made every day has removed the last few barriers to photography as an art. Given the flood tide of choices we enjoy at present, we can’t even agree on what constitutes a “camera” anymore. Devices don’t matter except that they sometime free us in other ways, like allowing us to shoot anything, anywhere, and make it look like whatever we want. Even without the influence of A.I., which like any development, will either be a miracle or a curse, depending on the user, we are already virtually unhindered in being able to technically render any kind of image we can imagine. Our eyes must be master of our tools, to be sure, but there is no longer any limit on what those tools can be.
All of which begs the question, why does it matter whether we reveal how we created a given shot? One, the only thing that really matters is the result, and nothing about a strong picture can be made any stronger by explaining that it was made by using X and Y to accomplish Z (so throw away the captions on 99% of the pictures hanging on museum walls). Two, even if we share the absolute step-by-step “recipes” on how a given shot was made, the execution of that recipe will still vary from artist to artist. We simply can’t create a uniform version of either reality or unreality. Which is to say, as we always do in these pages, feel more than you think. Convey rather than record. Always be shooting, and always ask yourself about how much of you makes it into the final picture. What else is there?
AS LOUD AS A WHISPER
By MICHAEL PERKINS
THE GRAPHIC ARTIST CHARLEY HARPER was dead and buried some twenty years or more before his balletic interpretations of the natural world were “discovered”, even though, during his lifetime, his commercial work was published in the world’s most popular magazines and generations of school kids viewed the illustrations he created for their nature and science books. What happened to make Charley a newly “found” treasure was twofold: first, over a lifetime, he steadily streamlined and simplified his style to convey animals, insects and the elements in fewer and fewer lines, constantly learning how to put an idea across without excess ornamentation; and secondly, and perhaps equally important, his audience, which had always accepted Charley’s eye as a natural way of seeing the world, came to realize just how difficult it was for him to make it all look so effortless.
Photography, never a final product but a lifetime process, works the same way. The first versions of our visions can be cluttered, busy, an audition for attention (or “likes”, if you prefer) as the artist struggles for acceptance. We tend to throw everything into the soup. We initially regard words like “minimalism” with suspicion, as if the work done under that term is somehow incomplete. However, if we are lucky, we come to see mere compiling of detail as occasionally unnecessary for the task at hand, which is to convey an idea.
I don’t always have the discipline to shoot with the bare essentials in mind. I defer to sharpness; I become fixated not with the bridge but with the billion bolts holding the bridge together. Pulling stuff out, doing more with less, is never instinctual to me. If I were a small child making a drawing of a sunset, such as the one seen here, I would likely make it about simple shapes, basic colors and a direct message. Unfortunately, I grew into an adult and started gilding the lily. In terms of writing, same same. This blog tends to bloat in its first drafts, whereas the posts I re-write the most somehow become shorter and clearer. In viewing our images, especially those from earlier versions of ourselves, it’s worth asking whether we could have upped our impact by turning down the distractions.
Sometimes we use our cameras to shout. Sometimes, a whisper will suffice. Charley Harper knew that he was in a partnership, a conversation, with his audience. He was thus free to use his simplified style as an opening remark, waiting for others to jump in and supply the rest of the thought. When we conform that kind of relationship with our photographs, connections with our viewers become truer.
Stronger.
THE PHANTOM MENACE
Eagles with the jitters: jagged lines and poor definition from “heat shimmer”.
By MICHAEL PERKINS
CATCHING THE PERFECT GLIMPSE OF A SKYSCRAPER is more luck than craft, and, in a city like New York (okay, there is no city like New York), you have a million different vantage points from which to view a sliver or slice of buildings that are too generally immense to be captured in their entirety. You pick your time and your battle.
One of the short cuts to the perfect view of these titans is, of course, a telephoto lens. I mean, what could be easier? Zoom, focus, shoot. Except that, with very long lenses, even the most sophisticated ones, things happen to light that are very different from how illumination works at close quarters. One problem for zoomers is the dreaded “heat shimmer”, the thermal layers that occur in between camera and far-away subject, warping straight lines and turning fine detail into mush. Sharpness in zoom shots can suffer because heat waves, which can vary widely depending on prevailing weather conditions, are bending the light and confusing your camera’s auto-focus system. The tight shot of the eagle gargoyles at the 61st floor of the Chrysler building, seen up top here, is a good example. They resemble a charcoal sketch more than they do a photograph. This image was shot from about a 1/4 mile away on the banks of an inlet bay near Greenpoint, Brooklyn, looking across at the Manhattan skyline. It was taken on a Nikon Coolpix P900, one of the brand’s so-called “superzooms”, allowing me to crank out to about 2000mm.
Still an imperfect shot, but snapped at the same focal length with somewhat straighter results. Wha?
And yet, consider the other shot, also of the upper floors of the Chrysler, and also shot at 2000mm just minutes away from the gargoyle image. Lines are generally solid and straight, even though shot from just about the same distance. Here’s where we get to the key word “variable”. Everything I shot in this batch was in the early morning, and so the sun was actively burning off a light overcast, which, I assume, made for shifting air temperatures in nearly everything I photographed. The P900’s small sensor, which is what happens when your put too many glass elements in a compact lens, pretty much shoots contrast to hell at long distances, as you can see in both shots, and responds to anything other than direct light with zooms that are, to be kind, soft. Still, being mindful of heat shimmer as a real factor in your telephoto work can sometimes result in pictures that, while far from perfect, are technically acceptable. The phantom menace can’t be eradicated, but it can be tamed.
TWO-WAY MIRROR
By MICHAEL PERKINS
GLASS IS BOTH A REVEALER AND CONCEALER in photography, acting in equal amounts as truth-teller and liar. Light neither bounces perfectly off a glass surface nor permits 100% transparency, and so individual shooters have to strike an arbitrary and individual balance between seeing into and seeing onto. This artistic see-saw is one of the most intriguing calculations anyone can make with a camera.
Even if it were possible, optically, say, for a window on a building to allow us to only see in or only see reflections of what is behind the camera, the mixture of see-in/see-on would still be very seductive. The pioneering French photographer Eugene Atget, in documenting shop windows around Paris in the 1800’s, was also documenting the texture of street life in the city as it was reflected in those windows. And over the subsequent centuries, what a certain type of viewer might see as an error went on to become a standard form of commentary by succeeding generations of photographers, from Garry Winogrand to Robert Frank to Walker Evans and beyond. Certainly, this idea that a window is both portal and mirror caught on so universally that it has become something of an urban cliche. But, of course, things become cliches at first because they are undeniably true.
Just as Jerry Seinfeld once said that “men aren’t interesting in what’s on TV; they’re interested in what else is on TV”, I’m never interested in just looking in or out of a window. Noticing, and exposing for, and composing for, what else is impacting that window keeps me interested. If nothing else, showing the world beyond the glass plane, even when reversed and distorted, contextualizes the story that a peek through a window only begins. For me, it’s like imagining a really strong beginning sentence, and then realizing that, based on where I place punctuation or accent marks, I can steer that sentence to deeper meaning. Clear as glass.
HURT TIL IT SMILES
By MICHAEL PERKINS
WILDLIFE HAS BEEN SUCH A SMALL SUBSET of my overall photographic work over a lifetime that it holds a very special challenge for me. In shooting nearly everything else, I have landed at what might be termed a plateau of competence, an ability, through repetition and practice, to predictably deliver a decent result in a variety of disciplines. However, immersing myself in nature subjects places me so far outside my comfort zone, so far from any smug illusions of mastery, that it involves real risk. Ironically, more than ever before, that is where I am deliberately placing myself. Art doesn’t always thrive in the danger zone, but, on the other hand, doing what you’ve always done means you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.
Green heron perched on a boat. Best to take the freebie and relax, but….(see next)
Bird work is a subset inside a subset, occupying a larger portion of my nature output in recent years, and offering equal portions of satisfaction and frustration. Birds are unlike other subjects for portrait work because they don’t care what I want and aren’t here to make me a success at it. They exist in their own sphere and under their own impulses and needs, and whether I can focus fast enough to catch them on the wing, or compose well enough to properly showcase them is of no importance to them. I am, by habit, caught up in what I want to achieve or capture, or, technically, succeed at. To properly photograph a bird, you have to shift every normal emphasis of style and approach. You can’t go out with a given quota or “yield” in mind, as conditions shift so quickly, so consistently that, on many days, you’re fortunate to have even a single usable shot to show for your effort. But that’s not really a negative. In fact, quite the opposite.
…Mr. Heron decides he’s out of here, and you’re too slow, boyo. In otherwords, a typical day.
To, as portrait photographers used to term it, “watch the birdie”, you have to develop a different kind of watching than for any other form of photography. You have to slow down. You have to listen as well as see. And you need to silence the part of your ego that instinctively thinks of the photograph as a trophy, as one more scalp on your belt. It sounds very New Age-y to say that you need to “let the picture take you”, but that is, at least, an approximation of what you’re aspiring to. Finally, given the sheer number of blown shots you must walk past on the way to the keepers, you need to be all right with failure, or at least be able to find a new definition of “success”. Art is not something that’s logged on a scorecard; it’s peeling away all the wrong versions of something until the right version is revealed. You hurt ’til you smile. Nature work is its own separate discipline, in that it’s defined by how well you manage yourself, rather than whether you tame the subject.
UM, THANKS, I GUESS
By MICHAEL PERKINS
PHOTOGRAPHERS WHO ARE EVEN MINIMALLY HONEST WITH THEMSELVES learn early on how to own their mistakes, to admit that sadly, such-and-such a picture just did not work out. Even if they are slow in learning this, they will no doubt be forced to answer the question “what happened here?” from other photographers. This acts as a double-strength multiplier for humility. Good photos speak softly in praise of their creators. Bad photos wear loud colors and walk around with a bulls-eye on their behinds.
The one chance a shooter has to pass off a poor shot is if the result, however comprised in his own estimation, actually manages to “speak” to someone else. All it takes to break us out of a sell-pitying sulk is for someone, anyone to ask, “oh, how did you do that?”, allowing us to glibly remark along the lines of “oh, you see what I was up to, did you?” or “yes, that’s what I was going for all along..” In such cases, it’s forgivable to just take the win, rather than answer the viewer with “are you nuts? This pictures stinks!”
Sunrise Over Bard Lake, Simi Valley, near Thousand Oak, California, 2/3/25
I recently had positive reaction to such a shot, a picture that I had already rejected as close, but no cigar, a landscape that you see here. It was the result of an early dawn enveloped in bright hazy glare combined with a superzoom, needed for the bird walk I was starting, but which, due to its tiny sensor, was guaranteed to render details mushier the farther in I cranked on my subject. And so you see a very soft, muted rendering of all the tones, resolving into a look that photogs have come to term “painterly”, which is French for “not as sharp as I’d hoped for”. Still, several people had given me oohs and aahs on it, so it was very tough to tell them they didn’t know what they were talking about. The scene is, after all, very dreamy, and might still have been on the mushy side even with a more sophisticated camera. The aggravating thing for me is when a picture works for everybody else but me. Makes me wonder how many art museums are brimful of works their creators regard as flawed. I’m sure the math on such a study would be surprising.
In the meantime, thanks, I reply, adding, as a post script, you oughta see what happens when I actually know what I’m doing. The P.S., of course, is silent. And it damned well is going to stay that way.
COOLNESS IS NOT CREATIVITY
By MICHAEL PERKINS
OKAY, ENOUGH OF THIS.
As analog photography has, in the twenty-first century, fallen out of ubiquitous use, there has been a mounting wave of nostalgia for the hands-on nature of film-based technology. In some cases, that yearning has actually revived some niche sub-worlds of old, such as in the rebirth of instant cameras. There has also been the “lomography” and Lensbaby movements that sparked a renewed interest in the visual artifacts of (mostly cheap) film cameras, the ones that leaked light, over-saturated or mangled colors, or sported plastic lenses instead of glass, all in pursuit of the “unpredictability” or “authenticity” of pictures over which you have less control. Blur? Hey, that’s an artistic choice! Double-exposures? Why, they’re spontaneous and random! This entire trend, which results in sales for a fairly large market of hipster-driven products, has proven particularly attractive to people who find digital imaging a cold, idiot-proofed process that has been drained of all of its humanity.
But the sterility that some digital photography can be said to possess isn’t in the technology, and neither is the warm magic falsely attributed to analog. Last year, Flickr, arguably the world’s biggest photo-sharing community, saw work posted to its site from shooters using over seven thousand different kinds of captures devices, devices that ranged from standard point-and-shoots to medical sensors to things that created pictures with sound, or heat, or….you get the idea. The fact is, nearly anything can record, refract and interpret light patterns. It’s not the product that delivers a cold experience. It’s the user. Analog photography has received too much credit of late for being more “genuine”, more connected to the human soul, than other methods, and that, as they say in Holy Scripture, is just a load of crap.
We would never allow writers to bully each other about which pencil or notebook yielded better prose or poetry: it likewise would be ludicrous to say a song was less rhapsodic depending on whether it was delivered to the listener with a pair of drugstore earbuds or a Bose 791 Series II ceiling speaker. And it’s frustratingly stupid for us to argue about what device captures the picture. Because a human heart, a human eye needs to be behind that device, enabling it, controlling it, or there simply is no picture. There are no shortcuts, no foolproof recipes, for making compelling images. There is only the work, the real, tough, slow sweat in search of mastery of one’s self. Once that mastery manifests itself, any camera will yield miracles. Without it, all gear is junk.
360 DEGREES OF SPECULATION
By MICHAEL PERKINS
A good photograph is knowing where to stand.
ANSEL ADAMS MAY WELL HAVE HAD HIS TONGUE FIRMLY IN HIS CHEEK when he made that famous remark, given that he devoted his life to all of the technical mastery of photography that lay well beyond the mere skill of composition. However, many of us following in his footsteps adopted the sentence as Holy Writ, governing our very sense of how to capture a scene, based on where you choose to see it from.
One of the reasons I love to work in museums so much is that the quiet and measured pace of reality within their walls. It makes even the most fevered brain hit the brakes, slowing our roll to the point where tiny things that might not reveal themselves out on the street spring up out of the shadows and whispers. This serves me well when trying to deal with a ton of brand new visual information, and, in turn, trying to answer the question “what do we make of this?”
The three shots you see here, all of the entrance foyer to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, were taken over the space of an hour and a half, under slightly different lighting conditions and with a slight variance in exposure and color strategy. Each one presents an opportunity for a narrative, but trying to select a so-called “best” shot among them is really irrelevant. What’s important is that slowing my process, taking time to digest the subject matter, resulted in several distinctly different takes on the same scene. That means options, choices, and a kind of photography that is the polar opposite of a snapshot.
Of course, some pictures do actually spring fully-born out of the moment, and they need to be respected for the miracles that they are. Other images build slowly. You turn your airplane around and take one more pass over the field, and then another, and another. It’s that fear that “I may not really have it yet” that makes it likelier that you eventually will get it, or at least get something deliberate, something considered. Going for just one more take is particularly valuable when you’re shooting something that has been shot to death, like an international landmark. Nailing the expected postcard shot can be gratified, but it’s always valuable to hear Uncle Ansel’s voice in your head, and asking yourself if there’s a better, different place to stand.
SUM OF ITS PARTS
I’ve just seen a face / I can’t forget the time or place where we just met / she’s just the girl for me / and I want all the world to see we’ve met……. John Lennon/ Paul McCartney
By MICHAEL PERKINS
WHEN IT COMES TO STREET PHOTOGRAPHY, there is a reason that we use the phrase “a face in the crowd” rather than “the face in the crowd”, because, just as there is no single solution to the challenge, “go shoot a sunset” there can be no one face that satisfies the desires of every photographer. The combination of features, textures and expressions that compose the human visage come together in billions of combinations, some of which will entice and enthrall us, others that will repel us, and yet others that may not register at all. The human face is one of the grand, miraculous intangibles of visual art, which is why, centuries after old man Da Vinci laid down his brushes, we still can’t agree if the Mona Lisa is coquettish, innocent, wise, or a dozen other states of mind. And that’s great news for picture-making.
If I were to be assigned an essay to try to explain why the face of this young woman spoke to me on a certain day and a certain place, I would get an “F” or at least an “incomplete”. How can you quantify any of this? The face’s appeal can’t be reduced to mere physical beauty, since that phrase, in itself, produces no general consensus. Terms like plain, homely, comely, intriguing are likewise useless in describing what makes a photographer, or a novelist or a painter or a songwriter, for that matter, want to glorify a particular person. And then, beyond that, as Lennon & McCartney put it so well, there’s the random circumstances behind the discovery of the face:
Had it been another day / I might have looked the other way
And I’d have never been aware / But as it is I’ll dream of her tonight…
There are many, many things captured in an image that have no objective reason to be there, but the human face might just be the one thing that absolutely confounds any attempt to answer the question, “but why that one?” Some mysteries are impenetrable, and, wondrously, should be allowed to remain so. The truth is simple: I’ve just seen a face.
thenormaleye 
A PLAUSIBLE FIB
Birthday self-portrait, 2/8/25.
By MICHAEL PERKINS
WE HAVE SCRIBBLED MUCHLY in this humble gazette over the years about the seemingly insurmountable challenge of the self-portrait, or, more precisely, the difficulty in balancing the arts of awareness and artifice to produce one that is essentially honest. We know ourselves, but with limits; we know how to technically present ourselves, but within limits; and while we logically stipulate that any good selfie should strive be a compromise between commentary and performance, achieving that balance is something else again.
This week, I continued with a birthday ritual I began a while back in posing for the one formally planned selfie that I do per year. There are other, quicker self-snaps, some of them accidentally adequate, but I only have one day a year that I purposefully set up lighting, a specific setting, a shutter release and a tripod, spending several hours snapping dozens of frames in search of an expression that approximates my true inner mind as I’m crossing from one year to another. Each year, I take into account the images that preceded the present year, trying to vary my poses to show some other side of myself that may not have been present in the earlier editions. This year, I was definitely out to strike a contrast.
Last year, just ahead of my birthday, I experiences a week of excruciating back pain that had me bed-ridden and nearly crazed for lack of sleep. I was just emerging from that semi-hallucinatory state when I dragged myself in front of a camera for The Birthday Shoot. What emerged staggered me a bit. I was trying so hard to muster a hopeful smile, some clue that I was trying desperately to reboot my body and spirit. However, what I actually captured was about the most honest portrayal of myself as I’ve ever managed, albeit an honest portrayal of faith vainly trying to burst through a cloud cover of anguish and anxiety. It was, beyond play-acting or performance, the real me, and it scared me a bit. Even a year later, it hurts to look at it.
This year, I am in better shape physically, mentally, even geographically, having undergone a transformative re-location to California during 2024. I have a lot of actual reasons to want to answer last year’s picture with an expression of hope. And yet the world around me, which I must react to in order to maintain any pretense at art, is convulsing, twisting itself into the same pattern of pain I myself wore last year. And so you see the result here. An expression of mild amusement, as if I’m a math professor trying to decipher a tricky equation. Not real joy, but perhaps the willingness to take on the problem, as well as gratitude for being able to still be in the game. This Portrait Of The Artist As Eternal Optimist may be a “plausible fib” at best. But it’s the face I, and perhaps all of us, need right now.
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February 9, 2025 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: Commentary, Portrait, self-portrait | Leave a comment