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.

What’s in my Camera Bag, 2022?

photo by Harper Gray (my oldest son)

It has been a while since I have shared a true, “what’s in my camera bag?”-style peek into the gear that I use on a regular basis. I am going to take the opportunity to really deep dive into what I pack in my primary kit, my everyday carry, and for travel or street photography. I will also summarize my thoughts on Fuji, after three years of using this system as my primary choice.

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).

History of Nature and Landscape Photography, The Beginnings

Sir Henry Fox Talbot; early 1840’s

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Photography has had a preoccupation with nature almost from the very beginning. In fact, it was probably a preoccupation with nature that led to photography in the first place. The Pencil of Nature was a photobook published in the mid-1840’s by Sir Henry Fox Talbot, who was the first to successfully develop a reproducible negative.

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:

Big Announcement: Switching to Fuji from Nikon

For all of my journey as a photographer, I’ve been a Nikon shooter, and let me just say that that’s no light commitment. The cameras by this manufacturer that I have owned over the years, spanning film and digital, include:

1. Nikon FM2
2. Nikon EM
3. Nikon n8008s
4. Nikon n6006
5. Nikon n90s
6. Nikon n80
7. Nikon n65
8. Nikon D100
9. Nikon D50
10. Nikon D200
11. Nikon D300
12. Nikon D7200

Real world reviews of some of those can be found here.

So why on earth would I switch to Fuji in 2018, and why stick with crop sensor?

Photography is No Monolith

Photography, at its root, is two things: 1. the recording of light phenomena (sometimes invisible to the human eye); 2. a means of communication (sometimes for a conversation that we have only with ourselves). In the overlap between these two, we see all of the photographs ever made, which of course, says very little about the purpose of their creation. This distinction, the photograph’s “purpose”, only becomes apparent once the relationship between the photographer and viewer has been established. For instance, a message delivered through a megaphone that never reaches the recipient renders the projection device meaningless, or without purpose. In this way, the purpose of a photograph that sells to an ad agency is commercial, while the purpose of a photograph that sells to a Museum is cultural, but this is also an oversimplification, since photographs that originally sold to ad agencies have wound up in Museums (a photograph’s purpose can change over time or a photograph can have multiple purposes simultaneously).

My Go-To Equipment in 2017

Understanding what cameras and lenses you use most often provides all sorts of data, and is something that I always think is pretty interesting and can be very helpful. For instance, in the pie chart above (based upon the images I selected for My Best of 2017 posts 1 and 2), I know that I leave the bigger, heavier cameras at home at least 25% of the time (or at the very least, I use the iPhone 7+ to document things that I don’t feel warrant the use of a DSLR- I included documentary images in this metric). What’s more, my second backup body, the D200, makes an appearance because my primary body, the D7200, had to be sent in for repair this year.  Also, knowing my stats from last year, I can see that I am using the D300 less and less often, which means that I greatly prefer the images that the D7200 makes, even though it has been a problem-prone camera for me (if it is worth putting down for posterity, I am going to try to do that with the best quality equipment that I own).

F-Stop Gear Guru

Several years ago, I converted over to using f-stop Gear‘s line of products as a solution to the problem of transporting my camera equipment and accessories.  These packs are expertly designed, and there is  a bag for virtually any purpose desired. I’ve previously outlined the ecosystem of their Mountain Line, so this review will focus on the Guru Version 1 that I use as my primary hiking ruck.