Dartblog

Audiophilia, check. Hello, photography. My latest expensive entry into a new science—this makes up for the quantitatively destitute nature of my daily, written work; I imagine that it keeps both halves of the brain agile—is optics. Like many a man who eventually let Leica into his wallet, I have always been able to wheedle good pictures out of fussy point-and-shoot fixed-lens cameras. The only thing more fun than taking probative photographs was doing the things which led to them. But it is the only art, to my mind, in which confrontational detestation is prerequisite. Brassai, who photographed the lounges of Paris in a series that will live forever, thought it an art-less pursuit originally. But he, like so many photographers, came around to the view that simply taking trim recordings of the world and assembling them together was a creative scaffold around which one could dispense satisfying artistry. He was probably right, even though my computer does not yet contain anything anyone could call art.

The first thing anyone does who wants to take good pictures is read reviews of the photography scene. Cameras change yearly. (Although lenses do not. A good $2,000 Canon lens purchased today can be sold for $1,500 a decade later.) Time was the poring over of the technicals of cameras was interesting, and exploring the features seemed to expand the artistic mind. Presently it becomes nothing more than an obstacle, and the chaffe is shed, leaving a clean and fluent language of aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and focal length. All else is folly.

I myself am reaching that point, preferring to experiment with the ontological points of view of different lenses rather than the clock-speed of Canon’s latest DiGIC IV image processing chip.

It has been a good half-year in the markets, and so yesterday I took delivery of a fresh 16-35mm f/2.8 lens and Rodenstock filter, and, despite burden of puppysitting, found time to take a few pleasing shots. Dougie, the whipped cream Maltese, objected to every one of these, so the reader will forgive their imperfections.

Canon 40D, 16-35mm f/2.8L, Rodenstock MC UV HR filter.