What About The P-Word?

1925 • Packard • Paddy Wagon

Trigger Alert...

See on the rear side of the Fort Lauderdale cop wagon? It says "P" Wagon. Odd about this. People use the “P” word with impunity, but never the “N” word? Hmmm... and the Ps came here to escape the Brits’ attempt at genocide during the potato famine, were discriminated against and despised (No Irish Need Apply). and here’s a 1925 vehicle with the “P” word painted right onto it??? My family lost uncles who were impressed off the boat into the Union cause where they died to end slavery. Yet we celebrated St. P*ddy's Day earlier this month when millions got falling down drunk.

Wonder what’d happen if someone painted “N-Wagon on a cop vehicle today? Don’t ask, I know.... Sigh...

GEEK STUFF: Fort Lauderdale has an internationally acclaimed Packard museum. The collection's totally hot. I captured this 1925 Paddy Wagon (Look at the back panel... that's what it reads) with my Canon 7D hand held then washed it through PS CC with help from my tool-making friends at AlienSkin and Topaz. Oh, the classic cop-truck runs wonderfully.

A Snapshot

Are all images fictional? Okay, maybe not snapshots. Perhaps they are the only virginal captures of reality? Or at least past reality? Maybe the phone-grab clicked off with as little pre-processing thought aren't the imagining of an artist? After all, all art is fiction, right? 

Wikipedia defines fiction: "Fiction is content, primarily a narrative, that is made from imagination, in addition to, or rather than, from history or fact."Dictionary.com defines it: "The act of feigning, inventing, or imagining."Websters.com says that fiction is:  "Something invented by the imagination or feigned."

Say you move around a subject to avoid some background annoyance, a telephone pole, annoying single, wires... Or you move to include Uncle Joe, intriguing signage, or maybe the Acropolis behind Mom. It's called point of view, right? POV. Have you feigned, invented, or imagined some "improvement" which is to say imposing your ideas or feelings on reality. Now, how about DOF... depth of field. You crank open a lens to compress away a background into a bokeh-glimmering setting. Then what about cranking out the zoom to crop away things inconsistent with your idea or feeling of the moment? Screw on a polarizing filter to create a dynamic range invisible to the human eye? Then twist down the camera speed to capture a blur in say a waterfall that's not captured by the human retina? 

Now, what about lighting? If you stab through the gloom with a flash, or by goosing the ISO to peer into gloom where a person cannot possibly see. Now NONE OF THESSE TECHNIQUES involve post processing. I can add to the list, can't you? I mean just the choice of lens, camera body, or tripod support imposes the artist's imagination upon the image. 

And what about pre-processing? Makeup (which are pigments of the imagination)?  Costume? Set design? Or travel to a specific location at a specific time of day/season, etc.? Forget the post processing upon Caitlyn Jenner's iconic Vanity Fair cover, howzabout any of Annie Leibovitz's "portraits"? Again, ignoring the post processing on her work, her budgets for; set, wardrobe, hair, cosmetology, and cast (human and animal) are all focused upon pre-processing... processing before the various things I discussed up above that happen consequent with the shutter getting snapped. 

Now, let me get to the image up there... That 1950 Pontiac parked menacingly in the night in front of ... In front of... What? What's it mean? A snapshot it ain't, right? Or well, is it? How does it differ from the snapshot that's preprocessed, processed consequent to the shutter click, and then post processed through some software either in the camera, or by a software that 'enhances' the dynamic range or cropping at the click of a button? 

Up there I've posted a concept that's layered together from pieces of my imagination. Which leads me to wonder ... And you thought I"d never get to the point right?... Are all images inherently manipulative? Look, it is not the degree of manipulation which makes an image fiction. Just as you can't be a little bit pregnant, you can't be a little bit fictional. 

So, welcome to the most honestly named photo blog on the internet :-) Right?

Radical Chromectomy

Because we can. 

You know, fine art photography's a lot like Everest. Why climb it? Because we can. 

Once upon a time an amateur fine-art photographer lacked the budget to do much creative color work. It was not just expensive, it was tedious. And with the fumes, the process was even a tad dangerous. It was always unpredictable and it ended in unreproducible results. Today full jacket chrome is ordinary as a mini-skirt in Spring. No, that's even too rare... It's ordinary as boy with lust in his heart when he spots a mini-skirt in Spring, right? 

So we're challenged with the emotional goo that chrome pours all over every image. The challenge is multiplied by a zillion. Hence the allure of B&W image making. Here, look at this 1949 Ford Anglia Bristol van that a Killarney shop's got in the middle of its floorspace. It glows with colored feeling. 

OK, and now, instead of finding ways to add chrome to our B&W darkroom-world, we can perform radical chromectomy. Like this...

Okay, have I added by subtracting? Or have I subtracted by adding the chromectomy? How much emotion is ripped away in B&W? Or... are these dramatically different messages, each as complex? But how can something be made differently complex by taking a scalpel to it? Hmmmm... 

Gotta' think on this :-) Should the age of mono-chrome be over? Or is mono really a surrender to the complex challenge of the colors of life? A retreat? 

Thoughts?