It would be foolish to forget the role of luck in photography. Just as you can "make your own luck," you can un-make it, too. Luck is an axis, with risk at one end, and operator error at the other. These extremes are not far apart!
Latest crush
Okay, so I really do want the Fuji Natura Black, but here's something I could actually acquire which does pretty just about same thing. This is the Olympus XA, a pocket-sized 35mm with a rangefinder. It's an aperture-priority camera, which means that you can't ever adjust the shutter speed. This is fine by me, as I usually care much more about aperture. I'm looking to pick this up on ebay for under $40 - compare to $600 for the Natura Black. I realize I may not have a sizable photo nerd audience yet (Nicole?), but the big difference between the two cameras is that the XA's lens is 35mm/f2.8, while the Natura Black's is a very awesome 24mm/f1.9.
Turns out there's an entire fansite dedicated to the XA series, which will attempt to convince you that the XA is the greatest camera LIEK EVAR. Sign me up!
Snapshot
I like to think of photography as an instinctive reaction - train a camera on a subject and you should be able to see the shot instantly. Of course that's not true all the time, but there is some unique power to the snapshot that's lost when you start mucking around with tripods. Let's frame it like this: if taking a picture is a matter of instinct, then the most important decision that a photographer can make is to simply have a camera with them! Some photographers carry a camera with them wherever they are. Viewed in this way, the interestingness of their images is then only limited by the range of situations that the photographer decides to enter.
Right now I don't value "refined" images very highly, or I don't like them any better for their refined qualities. I'm happy with the image above because I just barely caught it. A friend and I were sitting in the park enjoying some Chu-His, or Chizzle Hizzles, as he called them. I reached for my camera and got that one shot off just as the skater dudes were separating. (They were having their picture taken by the person at the right, can you tell?) It's far from perfect, but if I'd had any "gear" to deal with I wouldn't have gotten anything.
Reading
Another quote from Setting Sun. This one is from Daido Moriyama, who might be like the Bill Eggleston of Japan. I'll have to look more in to that.
In the end, I may be considered a "professional photographer" only if that category includes blurred images.
DO WANT
This is such a cruel photo for an eBay listing. But one day you will be mine, Fujifilm Natura Black! I can't wait to get my hands on your f/1.9 and oh-so-wide angle 24mm lens, and load you with that specially designed Fuji Natura 1600 ISO film...
Old Curiosity Shop
Junkstorecameras.com, need I say more? This site is especially great because the owner has uploaded photos taken with each camera. Pictured above is the Argus Lady Carefree, which is apparently "more like 'Troublesome Witch.'" It's good to know that someone's out there wrangling with these beasts for the greater good.
Reading
Excerpt from an essay by Nobuyoshi Araki, in Setting Sun: Writings by Japanese Photographers. I picked this book up at the de Young Sugimoto exhibit.
It's not possible to expose the subject with photography. But you can expose yourself. It's not necessary to take photographs in order to expose yourself, but having the intention to do so is necessary. Concretely put, over-explaining, you must plainly lay yourself bare. That is your duty to the subject. But even without that intention, the person who takes the photograph is exposed. Photography is frightening.
Young liars
FJORD is a site that displays the work of internet photographers whose average age I estimate at around 21. It started, where else, "at a café in Brooklyn." The site lists the birth year of each photographer, which is a gesture worth thinking about.
The decision to shoot
The decision to shoot can be one of recognition. The photographer asks, "does this image belong?" The shutter should be released when the answer is "yes."
This decision can be made in other ways.
This blog
To me, the headlines seem to promise much. If I were to post more frequently, they might lose that character.
This is why we need Boing Boing 2
Can anyone explain why this post needs to be written? I appreciate spreading the image, but the text makes me want to bang my head against a wall.
The third challenge
The meat of a letter in response to a presentation by Jan Chipchase of Nokia:
You mentioned that you are working on technologies that will be used 3 to 15 years in the future, but it seems like your project is actually about dealing with the past. What can be measured in human behavior, especially towards the phenomenon of technology, is so conditioned by what's already come before that you could end up in a kind of "feedback loop" of observation. By this I mean that you'd be unable to fully divorce any behavior from the particular history that leads up to it - here's where context fits in of course.
You couldn't possibly pretend that the behaviors you catalog exist in an ahistorical vacuum. In this sense you're left in a position of evaluating (not necessarily judging) the real history of technology. Your research ends up taking the form of Walter Benjamin's "angel of history," with your back towards the future, watching debris pile up in front of you... Benjamin also wrote of a "backwards-facing prophet" which might be more accurate. Suffice it to say that this is an impossibly challenging position to be in!
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