What is Photography?

Quick edit integrating an AI-generated image of an “obelisk of mysterious origin” into a photo that I shot in the Ozarks.

With the recent deluge of AI image generators upon the market, and the continued expansion of AI assisted image capture/processing, there has been a lot of understandable discussion about what impact these new technologies will have on photography itself. These discussions range from “AI will destroy photography” and “AI image compositors cannot call themselves photographers” to a general excitement or curiosity (tinged, perhaps, with a bit of reservation). What is generally missing in these discussions is a clear definition of what is or is not photography, a benchmark with metrics for many that would appear to vary as widely as positions on image generation by artificial intelligence.

Mound City Chronicle Book

In late Fall of 2022, my first monographic photobook was published through Vedere Press in Indianapolis. Mound City Chronicle, a current exhibition series and the subject of my book, has been both a labor of love and a voyage of discovery for me since I moved back to St. Louis in 2009. The idea of publishing the work as a book goes back to at least 2014 when I produced a handmade variant using tipped in prints, though the publication process began in earnest back in 2018.

Does a parasite know that it’s a parasite?

All works in series are untitled.

One of photography’s inherit and unique properties is its ability to harness the duality of believability and obfuscation. This alone makes it unique among the arts, which are otherwise only capable of presentation (versus representation). Even a painter that works directly from a subject in front of them creates a product that is understood as an interpretation–an amalgamation of paint, canvas and the artist’s technical ability. We see these things first, before we are able to relate ourselves and to “experience” the subject. In photography, however, the viewer almost always accepts what they see first because the photograph is a recording of something in front of the camera and because photographs, for more than a century, have been both the currency and language of history. That said, a photograph has at least as much potential to lie to the viewer as any of the plastic arts. When the photographer frames, they carve away from reality and begin to manipulate what they see for their own aims. These are not light decisions and they form the basis for this body of my work.

Though all of the images in this series are “straight” photographs, many of them play with the viewer’s understanding of what they see. A photograph of a seemingly serene scene may in fact have been photographed on the edge of a toxic waste dump, a photograph of something that looks like a perversion of nature may in fact be an image of mitigation efforts meant to protect or preserve it, etc. The viewer is encouraged to explore each image individually and interpret for themselves what impact they see.

Mound City Chronicle

STL250 Celebration, from the roof of Saint Louis Art Museum, 2014.

Since moving back to St. Louis (my birthplace) in 2009, my creative focus has been the city itself. I photographed to reorient myself with a place I’d lost familiarity with in an effort to find myself somewhere within it. Over time, this exploration matured into a cohesive body of work that is a testament to this search, but also a chronicle of the forces of change that are ever present in St. Louis–a process exuded by human inhabitants of the region for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

With this process in mind, of emergence and evanescence, Mound City Chronicle was born.

Rokinon 12mm f/2 Lens

Lenses, like cameras, are purchased for a variety of reasons:

1. There are lenses out there that are impeccable, that deliver maximum image quality (loads of sharpness, great contrast, minimum distortion and excellent color reproduction) and are lightning fast (generally f/2.8 is considered fast, though with primes sometimes f/1.8 is considered sluggish), but those lenses tend to come with a few caveats also: they are heavy and expensive.  These lenses are specialists’ tools; their purpose is to be the best in the game for the pros that need them.

2. There are lenses that are the optical equivalent of a Swiss Army Knife, they cut, they saw, they open cans, but they’re often clunky and inefficient when compared to tools dedicated to those tasks.  They are your 18-400’s of the world.  These zoom lenses are generalists’ tools; their purpose is utility and convenience for the enthusiast.

3. There are lenses that you form an emotional attachment to.  These lenses can be zooms or primes, slow or fast, cheap or expensive, but they are always at your side.  These lenses are the ones you pick up when you are going out to take pictures for the day when there is no pressure on you for what you’ll bring back.  They make photography fun. They get out of your way, and let you think about composition and subject.  These lenses are seldom the first ones photographers buy. In fact, they almost always come into the bag after years of shooting, when you realize finally that what is truly missing from your kit isn’t its ability to cover fisheye to super telephoto or to be able to pixel peep every shot at 100%.

The Rokinon 12mm f/2 is this first category of lenses for me, even though it’s an inexpensive, third party option (you’ll see; it’s a lion in sheeps’ clothing, friends).

Fuji X-T20

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I’ve been shooting on Fujifilm now since December, so I figured that’s long enough to begin offering practical reviews of my experiences with that equipment. This article focuses on the Fuji X-T20, a versatile, SLR-styled mirrorless camera that I bought to be my workhorse on location shoots. Did it follow through on this? Read on to find out…

F-Stop Gear Ando 13

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There are many positive things about my switch from DSLRs to mirrorless, though perhaps chief among them is scale. I can now fit an entire kit into an incredibly small space, which has had the ancillary benefit of encouraging me to look at old bags in new ways. One of the “old bags” is the Ando 13 from F-Stop. Read on to find out why it has become my go to bag for EDC and some event shooting.

History of Nature and Landscape Photography, Transition to Artform

George Shiras and John Hammerin a canoe equipped for jacklighting, Whitefish Lake, Michigan, 1893; © National Geographic Creative Archives

Around the beginning of the 20th Century, significant innovations in camera technology, chemistry, and photographic equipment coalesced at a time when photographers were beginning to recognize the expressive potential of their image-making. An era was fast dawning wherein the photograph would no longer be simply relegated to the realm of science or to cheap novelty, but would instead serve to drive culture, both in and out of art.

The Nikon/Canon/Sony Cost Penalty

I promise, this blog will get back to focusing on other aspects of photography soon, but my recent camera brand switch has brought so many realizations that I think warrant sharing before I move on. Among them, perhaps chief among them, is the realization that all brands are not created equal when it comes to cost vs. performance analysis. You might be tempted to say, “Duh!”, but for me, this was a realization of how successfully I had been marketed to as a Nikon shooter in the past, as much as it was a recognition that I have been paying a “penalty” for shooting that line, and increasingly so over recent years. I’ll explain further below.

Sharpening Fuji RAF Files with Lightroom

One of the things that I was not prepared for when I switched to Fuji from Nikon was that my trusty image editor, Adobe Lightroom, sucks at demosaicing Fuji RAF (RAW) files. I did plenty of research with regard to system capabilities versus other camera platforms, and lens availability and performance versus other manufacturers, but somehow missed all of the online content out there on the dreaded “worm artifacts”, until I sat smiling on my couch one evening, just after ordering my new Fujis, and I came across this: