TOP:
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2007/09/along-with-teac.html
On style, gimmick, and allegiance
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/why-i-hate-infrared.html
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2008/03/commentary-on-t.html
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2008/08/micro-four-thir.html
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2008/11/the-nikon-d700.html
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2008/12/the-worst-photo.html
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2009/10/on-city-streets.html
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2011/10/eschew-clich%C3%A9.html
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2011/10/temptations.html
Dear Mike, I think the extension to Bob Nadler’s Axiom: “No one cares how hard you worked” should properly be known as the Nadler-Johnston Corollary, thusly: “No one cares how hard you worked…but they will notice if you didn’t work hard enough.” pax / Ctein
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/04/dxomatter.html
‘Maturity as a viewer and appreciator of photography or any other art starts to come when we give artists enough credit to believe their choices are deliberate, and we can both give them room for their own intentions and also respect their right to shape their own work into what they want it to be. Only then can we really start to work out whether their art can speak to us or not.’
‘That’s where your own personal response comes in, and it’s why you need confidence in your own taste and your own aims in order to work as an artist. You need to give yourself permission to go your own way and do your own thing. This is especially difficult sometimes when you have a picture that you know might appeal more immediately to more people if you went a different direction with it. “Selling out” like that doesn’t work in the long run, however—it just results in conformist, pandering pictures with superficial appeal and no deep integrity. One big distinction between art photography and other photography is that you don’t give the audience what they want, you lead them to see and understand (over the course of many pictures) what you want. You can’t do that unless you’re being true to yourself.’
‘’One test for art—what you would call a diagnostic criterion, if you were defining an illness—is that it convinces you. You can tell from looking at it that it amounts to something more than a mere record, that it has expressive content, that it possesses the aura of an object. (Walker Evans called it “quality.”) ‘
‘One thing this interest requires and assumes, though, is integrity on the part of the photographer. If the photographer won’t be honest, or if he or she imitates a generic style, or allows other people to tell him or her what to photograph, or merely pursues superficial technical effects, then it gets harder to tell what they’re really all about. These days, the biggest impediment to integrity in photography is the divergence between what individuals would do if left to their own devices, and what they often must do with their photography in order to earn a living****. I think this accounts for my general dislike of professional photography, and of generic photography, and explains my constant stumping in favor of what I call “authentic” photography: I always want to see the artist behind the art, and, moreover, I want the art to have a chance: a chance to succeed, to communicate, to convince.’
Yes, you need to experiment at first to find out what your thing is; of course you should stretch yourself to stay limber; of course you should go ahead and shoot what interests you where you find yourself, if that’s what you want to do; of course you can learn by setting yourself challenges and working outside your comfort zone. Naturally. I wouldn’t tell anyone not to do those things.
But we also should act like maybe we’re going to die one day in the future, and that maybe time isn’t literally unlimited. It’s better not to noodle around for too long. Give a variety of things a shot, yes—but be realistic, too. Get down to it. Take a fearless inventory of your past work, appraise your strengths objectively, and find the thing that has energy for you and that you’re good at and then don’t be afraid to give it some commitment. It’s okay. You don’t have to do everything.
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2015/10/why-not-heres-why-not.html
“Speaking in full frame terms, I feel that we ‘sense’ in 21mm, we ‘perceive’ in 28mm, we ‘see’ in 35–40mm, we ‘look at’ in 50mm, and we ‘examine’ in 75–90mm.”
Platinum printing:
“A camera to me seems to contain infinite promise. Photographs grab hold of the unknowable phantasm of life; they fish magic talismans of permanence out of the always-vanishing river of experience. They are tokens of memory, and they defy time. They honor the things we’ve loved as those things pass by into emptiness. Sights vanish forever with the passing instants—but not quite entirely, if you have the right camera and you snatched a particle to keep for yourself. The Buddhists say the world is an illusion, that you cannot lean on the world, you cannot hang on to now. The camera whispers seductively in your ear that you kind of can.”
on sharpness:
The Power of 2 editing exercise
OM lenses
http://olympus.dementix.org/Hardware/olympus_hw.html
That ‘genius’ thing:
And again here:
Be Your Self (or… Learn the Difference Between Creativity and Emulation)
Another great (paraphrased) Jane Bown quote:
“I realised my best pictures were usually the first and the last shots, so I just decided to stop taking the ones in between”.