Why must fasting be limited to food? Why should our stomachs be the only organs to suffer the martyrdom of neglect? Recently I went on a five week fast of a completely different type — a photographic fast.
Linguistic economy is most definitely not the hallmark of a typical ULTRAsomething article. But every once in a while, I do manage to articulate my thoughts in a pithier than normal manner. I did this a couple years ago with an article called "Bartlett's Rejects," which simply listed 14 of my own personal quotes about photography. This article is the sequel — cleverly titled "More Bartlett's Rejects," it contains another 14 photography quotes, ripe for copying and pasting into signatures, tweets and term papers.
Another article filled with psychobabble and theoretical illustrations? Yep. It's almost as if ULTRAsomething believes that learning about oneself is, at the very least, every bit as important to one's photography as learning about the latest hip camera gear.
In this article, I offer the generous gift of a stand-alone ePub version of my 10,000 word Leica M Monochrom review, "A Fetishist's Guide to the Monochrom." In exchange, I ask only that you read my bellyaching about how annoying it is to create such a thing.
In this article, I explore the idea of a "photographer's parable," and soon realize why there are so few of them out there.
Reincarnation is a romantic notion, but no one ever bothers to consider the dark-side: What happens when your new life begins before you've achieved all the desires of your previous life? Fortunately, I'm here to tell you. Not only that, but I even manage to offer up a quasi-review of both the Leica IIIf and the Rolleicord Vb. That's a whole lotta value packed into a single article!
What does Leopold von Sacher-Masoch have to do with my celebration of ULTRAsomething's 100th post? Everything, most likely.
Once every three years, as if possessed by some inner-biological masochism clock, I'll inexplicably grab a camera on the way out the door to watch Vancouver's annual Celebration of Light fireworks competition. It's a curious act for someone who's violently allergic to fireworks photos.
We need to fit the term “photographer” with a pair of concrete shoes, and drop it in the nearest lake. Photography is no longer a unique ability — but the numerous tasks we can accomplish with photography ARE still unique. And this uniqueness is how each of us, moving forward, must define ourselves.
In this article, I struggle with the idea that my rugged, he-man camera of choice isn't peddled in a depot, market or shop — but in a boutique! And I attend the opening of the first Leica Boutique in Canada in an effort to get to the bottom of it all.
"Memory Lane," as I define it, is "a long strip of acetate with a silver halide coating." I consider my film cameras to be miniature time capsules — my past self records a person, scene or event that it thinks my future self will find interesting. This article discusses one such trip down Memory Lane, and how it isn't quite the way I remembered it.
There is no such thing as technical perfection. There is no perfect camera. There is no perfect lens, flash, film or Photoshop plugin. There is only the perfect image — and people have been taking them for well over a hundred years with some amazingly imperfect gear. So why do we, as photographers, spend so much of our time wading about in the gear guano canal?
