The Reincarnation of Robert Parker

Parker was dead to begin with. So, when I picked up his latest book, Killing the Blues, a Jesse Stone novel, I assumed it was one he stockpiled before his death.
I love Jesse Stone. The police chief of a small New England resort town, Jesse is a burnt-out, alcoholic, ex-LA policeman. He's also the subject of a series of dynamite novels and an equally dynamite series of movies starring Tom Selleck.
About two pages into this novel, though, I begin having problems. It was Jesse Stone, yes; it was Paradise, yes; it had all the usual elements, but it wasn't Robert Parker. I'm not sure I could have elucidated the differences, but Parker hadn't written this book.
I flipped back to the book cover. Aha! It said, "Robert B. Parker's Jesse Stone," and then, down below, the name of the author.
Once I was able to get my mind around the fact that Robert B. Parker would no longer be writing Jesse Stone novels, I was able to finish the book with equanimity. And it's a good book. I'll read the next one too.
But it's just not the same. Lots of people have tried to take over for dead novelists, and to my recollection, none has carried it off. There have been James Bond books, Sherlock Holmes books, Jane Austen books, Nero Wolfe books.
Sometimes they come close (Sherlock Holmes), sometimes they are way off (Nero Wolfe). I appreciate the efforts, and I read the books, but I do so miss Ian, Jane, Conan, and all the others.

Nine-Mile and the human condition

I spent a day at Nine-Mile canyon this summer. It's actually more like 40 miles, but has been called the "longest art gallery in the world," since it's chock full of pictoglyphs from the Fremont and Anasazi cultures. One of them is a spectacular display. It's right near the road, and there's a parking lot nearby. That's it on the right. This panel is about twelve feet long and about six feet high, so it's good sized.

There are a number of figures on the right side, four of them I think, that have bows, and are apparently hunters. If you look closely, you can see what appear to be wings on the backs of the figures. Here's an enlargement.

The funny thing is that the largest of the figures, the one on the right, seems to be sporting a goodly sized penis. Now, anthropologists will muse about the significance of that penis, and of the "wings," and of the horned figure top center. But they make, it seems to me, two unwarranted assumptions. First, they assume that the piece has a structure -- that it was either done at one time or added to with intent to expand the meaning.

The second assumption is that the intent was serious, even reverential.

I beg to disagree. People are people, whether they live now or 800 years ago. More important, teenagers are teenagers.

I'd venture to suggest that, oh about the year 1000, a couple of teen aged boys climbed the rock one night and when the left the guy on the right had his penis.

Sacrilege, but it strikes me as right.

A good picture ruined

I stated last time that I like subtlties in shade and color. Here's a picture that should have been a doozie. It's a winter scene, foggy day, sun above the trees. When I saw it, I was captivated. I think I used my little pocket point-and-shoot for the shot.

What ruins it, of course, are the four lines running across the picture. I could PhotoShop them out, of course, but I don't like to manipulate photos in more than the most basic ways. After all, if beauty is truth, it ought to be authentic beauty, shouldn't it?

Being subtle

One thing I like in photography is a kind of a subdued tone to things. I'm willing to take garishly colored photos, as much as anybody, I guess. I don't think you can be a serious photographer and not love color. But, some people choose to work in black and white. I like to work in colors, but those that are more subtle gradations.

Here are two shots I took that illustrate this. The one was taken last Christmas, in Prosser, Washington. I didn't mute the color at all with the camera, nor did I tinker with the color afterwards. It's the fog that does it all. The only real color in the photo is on the wreath, with the red bow and the slight read of the binder twine that ties it to the post.

The second shot is simply a flashlight embedded in the snow in my front yard. You can tell it's a color shot by the blue tint of the snow and the yellow in the light cone, but it's just barely there.

Logan in Winter

This is the Logan LDS temple, taken facing west toward the Wellsville mountains. I like this shot because it doesn't have the usual landscape features that are typical with shots of the temple. Instead, it seems to be floating above the trees, as if it were above the concerns of the world.

Left behind

Here's a photo I took at the slough west of Logan, Utah. The old boat had served well, and was now left to rot.

Presenting illustrations

There are a number of ways of presenting illustrations. For print media, they are --in descending order of desirability -- 1) line drawings; 2) shaded drawings; 3) grayscale photos; and 4) color photos. I rate drawings higher than photos because it’s easy to eliminate noise – you simply don’t put it in. Line drawings are also better than shaded drawings because they reproduce well in all sorts of formats. Sling a line drawing on a copier and you get a crisp copy; do the same with a shaded drawing and it’s liable to turn out patchy. I like black and white photos better than color because of the same thing – if you reproduce a color photo as black and white on a copier, you lose definition.
With the advent of PhotoShop and other software, it’s much easier to manipulate photos, of course. The problem there is that you run into ethical and sometimes legal issues, especially if the photo is not yours or if the content is compromised by the manipulation. So, I prefer to keep it simple when possible and use line drawings. Since we’re talking about photography, though, we’ll simply pretend that drawings don’t exist,
For electronic media, most of what I said above still holds, except that you needn’t worry about color in terms of reproduction, so color and grayscale will swap places. The only problem with color in this context is the fact that color hue and intensity will vary from screen to screen, so you can’t be subtle. Use strong tones.

Framing

“Framing” is the practice of positioning your photo in the viewfinder or view screen. I am a little old fashioned and like to use the viewfinder. This works well when you are actually seeing what the lens sees. In some cameras, digital and film, the viewfinder shows you the scene, but not through the lens. If that’s the case, there is a slight difference (parallax) between what you see and what the camera sees. Let’s assume though, that what you see is what the camera sees.
Traditionally, the rules of framing were there to make the photo interesting. Thus, you were encouraged to make the photo asymmetrical. You didn’t put the subject of the photo directly in the center of the frame (One picture is way too symmetrical left to right). Nor did you put the horizon directly at the midpoint of the picture. You were encouraged to divide the frame up into thirds, or even a nine-square grid, in order to achieve a striking effect. The other picture is much better in this regard. This advice was based on two notions. The first was that the purpose of the photo was to be striking -- that is, artistic. The second was the (then) reality that changing a picture once taken was a difficult process. Even cropping or dodging required lab work. If I am taking a photo for an artistic competition (which I do every week), I obey the first rule. Since the purpose of this class, however, is not to be striking but to transfer information, the first rule doesn’t apply.
And, of course, the basis for the second rule is dead. In addition, ease of cropping would allow me to eliminate the triangle at the bottom of the picture. For this reason, it's no longer necessary to pay close attention to getting the framing just right. I advocate taking a slightly larger pic and cropping it.

Noise

One of the concepts from information theory that I think is crucial to successful photography is that of noise. In information theory, you have information and you have noise. Noise is anything that is not information. “Big deal,” you say. But hearken. Noise is not only non-information, it is a subtractive quantity. That is, it interferes with the amount of information that any channel can carry. It does this by distracting your attention from the important content. Indeed, in some cases, noise becomes ambiguous and we can’t tell what’s information and what’s not; what’s important and what’s not.
Look at the photograph, which is from the Utah Historical Society archives, and depicts a race car on the Bonneville Salt Flats. Notice all the elements which draw attention away from the important feature, which is (I assume) the man fiddling with the wheel well: the car in the upper center, the disembodied legs and hands and bellies. All these things are noise, and make the picture very messy.

The mind of the camera

There are two approaches to photography. The first (which we will ignore) is the artistic approach. Calendars abound with artistic photography, in which priority is given to the beauty of the image. The second approach is informational. That’s for us. In it, we want to present information to the audience.
In taking photos, there are a number of principles to keep in mind. Let’s run through them briefly.
The camera is a box with a lens. Doesn’t sound earthshaking, but it’s important to remember that. If you are not taking good photos, it’s not your camera’s fault. A piddly phone camera with a 1.3 megapixel resolution can still take great photos, and a 13 megapixel Canon can take lousy ones. Ansel Adams had what would be considered today a laughable camera. And he didn’t have PhotoShop.
The camera sees everything; edits nothing. Let’s say you’re looking at a nice street scene and think it would make a good photo. So, you snap a shot. When you download it and look at it on your computer, you notice that there are power lines running right across the top of the photo. You edited them out as you looked at the scene, but the camera didn’t. There are two correlates to this fact:
1: You need to see the scene the way the camera will see it. This means you have to notice the things that you would normally edit out.
2: You need to be aware that much of what appears in a photograph is “noise,” or non-information. Noise is our enemy because it subtracts from the information in a photo (For a really good discussion of noise, read chapter I of Jeremy Campbell, Grammatical Man, or simply google “information theory”).
The camera isn’t aware of what you consider important. It’s true that a camera will have, in many cases, a weighted focus pattern, but it will still make your subject too dark if you have backlighting. You need to be aware of the tendencies of cameras generally and your camera in particular. You also need to be aware of your camera’s functions as far as adjusting for conditions such as backlighting. You can take good pictures with point-and-shoot, but often you need more control.

Selecting a camera

Note: This is the first of a series of blogs on taking pictures for both artistic and informative pusposes. They are posted in part as information for a class I'm teaching Summer, 2010.

Selecting a Camera

Traditionally, cameras are divided into two general classes. The first, the “point and shoot” category, has long been considered for amateurs and snapshots only. For serious photography, one needed a single lens reflex (SLR) camera. An SLR camera had three enormous advantages.
First, as you viewed the scene (framed it), you saw what the camera saw.
Second, you could interchange lenses. If you needed a wide-angle lens, you could switch to that. In recent years, zoom lenses have changed the equation somewhat, but the versatility of an SLR camera was still a selling point.
Third, you had control over the camera. You could adjust time, depth-of field, and a host of other options.
In recent times, the gap between the two kinds of cameras has been narrowing until now it’s more of a crack than a chasm. The very best point-and-shoot cameras aren’t really point-and-shoot anymore. A top of the line single lens camera such as the Canon xs20 is very nearly as versatile as an SLR. With a 24X magnification, such a camera is the equivalent of a SLR with a 38-600 mm lens combination. And that’s potent.
In fact, the only thing that a high-end point-and-shoot can’t do is adapt to a very long lens, such as a 1000 mm lens, used for wildlife photography and the like. Best of all, they are much cheaper than an SLR camera. So, unless you are really serious about photography and are willing to invest thousands in a camera outfit, I’d recommend a high-end point-and-shoot. I’m serious about photography, but have discovered that I don’t really need an SLR for my needs. I gave the SLR away and got a Nikon P90. So far, the only thing I can’t do is get a closeup of a hawk on the wing. Except that I can. I’ve discovered that with the 12.5 megapixel resolution, I can take a long shot and blow it way up with no loss of detail and sharpness.

Some photos

Here are some miscellaneous photos I've taken in my travels:

A section of highway 22 in Oregon leading west out of Sweet Home.

This is the schoolhouse in Las Palomas, New Mexico, a ghost town. My mother went to school in this building, which has adobe walls nearly two feet thick. Notice the cross in the foreground. There's a cemetery there, and the kids used to play in it during recess. The schoolhouse is on a bluff overlooking the Rio Grande river.

These are the sarsen stones that circle the hamlet of Avebury, England. There is a huge berm outside the stones, and you can see it as the horizon. The stones form a circle one mile in circumference.

Art mirrors art

I have to be the first to say this: The new Sherlock Holmes movie is based on the TV show House. It least, the characters are. Go see the movie, you House fans, and note all the similarities. The characters of Holmes in the movie and House in the series are identical. They are both cynical, unshaven slobs with a wisecrack for any occasion. And Watson is Wilson, House's sobersided friend. Holmes spends half the movie trying to torpedo Watson's romance with Mary (And haven't we seen that in House).

Here's what I suggest. Go to the movie, compare what you see, and then say you saw it here first.

Poetry

I remember where I was standing when I got the idea for this poem. It was west of Logan, at a park on the banks of the Little Bear River. A summer night.



Nolo Me Tangere (touch me not)

We stand, close but not quite touching,
She with her back to me, watching
The darkness climb the mountain.
Arms crossed, curve of back, hips just so,
Head slightly to one side.

She is
Soft as twilight
Calm as the river
Lovely as the sunset
Distant as the mountains

What if I should put my hand, palm out, near her back,
Just where the spine flows into hips?

Would lightning fly from my fingertips?
Would small arcs of fire dance about her back
Driving away the shadow that steals up the mountain?

Would she turn, give a slow smile,
Blank and compassionate, then
Turn back to the mountain?

Oh Lord, why so many nerve endings in our hands,
If not to touch?
Why the slow clip and mend of evolution
If not to bond person to person
With a stroke to a cheek,
Or a hand in a hand?

Or to touch a shoulder,
Look, point, there is a hawk.

I drop my hands to my sides.

Bonneville

One of my favorite places in the world. The Bonneville Salt Flats is about as far from anything as you can get. The black line in the picture is about nine miles long. It's a guide for the cars that race at the salt flats, sometimes attaining speeds of 450 miles an hour. The mountain on the horizon is 13 miles away.

Sarah on the Mountain

I love this picture. This is my daughter Sarah on her wedding day. She's standing at the top of a mountain that's the highest point in Benton County, Oregon. In the background, in the distance, you can see the fields of the Willamette Valley.

Sunset

You just can't beat a sunset for sheer overwhelming beauty.

Stonehenge

Perhaps no structure in the world is as storied and mysterious as Stonehenge. It's not really that large, but it is an imposing structure nonetheless. I wanted to capture the sense of mystery that surrounds it, so after I took the picture, I polarized it and added the "wind" feature. I wanted to give the sense of the dark secrets that Stonehenge holds, and also that it was gradually being eroded.

Lighthouses

What is it about lighthouses? We are fascinated by them, and we preserve them, though they have no use anymore as instruments of navigation. Maybe it's the old hymn, "Let the lower lights keep burning; send a message o'er the wave; some poor drowning, struggling seaman; you may rescue, you may save."

This lighthouse is on the Oregon coast, toward the north. It was a Sunday, and there was nobody there but me and the gulls.

Ninemile

In the central part of Utah is a canyon that's been called the "longest art gallery in the world." It's Nine Mile Canyon, and it's much more than nine miles long. If you go, take a truck or a car you don't care much about, 'cause it's dirt road.

It's a canyon full of Anasazi and Fremont petroglyphs. They're right there, by the road, where you can see them from your car or hike twenty or thirty yards up to them.

They are mysterious, eerie, beautiful, and fragile. So, if you go, step lightly. Here are some photos of the petroglyphs.