As children, many of us likely had at least one moment of serial stupidity that caused a parent or teacher to wag their finger and dutifully mutter the platitude, “two wrongs don’t make a right.” Although the intent of this statement has always been perfectly obvious, I still couldn’t help but wonder, “so how many wrongs does it take?”

Sadly, no one’s ever actually answered this question. Nor, surprisingly, has anyone shown the slightest appreciation at having been asked. Maybe this is why I never outgrew my propensity for doing so many things wrong — perhaps I’m continuing to search for that elusive answer.

Recently, I had a particularly generous spate of wrongs contribute to the photograph shown above. Allow me to enumerate them, should you wish to duplicate these results for yourself:

1. Load a camera with film when you actually have no idea what you plan to shoot or when you plan to shoot it.

2. Neglect to make note of the manufacturer, type and ISO speed of the film you loaded.

3. Sit the camera on a shelf. Allow one year to pass, then make a wild guess at what’s inside. Assume something like, say, Kodak 400NC color negative film, and enter this into the iPhone app that you’re now wisely using to track which film is in which camera. This way, you’ll remember to always expose it at ISO 400.

4. Let the camera sit on the shelf for another 2 years, thus guaranteeing that whatever film resides within has well and truly exceeded its expiration date.

5. Make sure you’re good and woozy with a particularly obnoxious head cold, then choose the rainiest possible day to finally take the camera out for a walk — this will insure that you have neither the energy nor the inclination to care about how messy and horrible your compositions might be.

6. Since this is a dreadfully dreary day, and since the long-neglected camera just so happens to be a pinhole camera, long exposure times will be necessary. So go ahead and calculate reciprocity values for 400NC film — even if you’re not really certain that’s what’s inside.

7. Happen upon a pair of abandoned sunglasses, and erroneously assume that the juxtaposition between those sunglasses and the inclement weather will actually register on a fuzzy, wide angle pinhole shot.

8. Meter the scene. Start the timer on the iPhone, then open the shutter on the camera. At the end of the 90 second exposure, turn off the alarm on the iPhone, but forget to close the camera’s shutter.

9. Pick up the camera and start moving it around, even though the shutter is still open and the film is still being exposed.

10. Recognize your error, close the shutter and advance to the next frame — only to have the film jam.

11. Take off your raincoat and wrap it tightly around your forearm and the camera, fumbling beneath the damp and constricting nylon to unscrew the camera’s back and fiddle with the film transport — most assuredly fogging the film in the process.

12. Consider retaking the photo, only to notice upon closer inspection that the glasses aren’t actually sunglasses, but 3D TV viewing glasses.

13. Walk around in the driving rain to finish the roll, then extract it from the camera to find you’ve actually been shooting Ilford FP4+ ISO 125 B+W film and not Kodak 400NC ISO 400 color film. Shrug it off and hope that your now erroneous reciprocity calculations compensate for (rather than compound) your exposure errors.

14. While still wearing wet clothes (courtesy of your mid-downpour jacket removal), pop the film and tank into the changing bag, where your wet hands and sleeves cause the film to stick to your fingers, making you screw up loading the reel… many, many times over.

15. Develop with a solution of Rodinal that’s so old it’s now indistinguishable from industrial-grade maple syrup.

16. Reach for the fixer, only to remember at this precise moment what it was you forgot to buy while you were in the camera shop last week. Resort to using the last bit from an old jug that expired 7 months ago.

17. Wash film, then drop it on the shower floor when hanging it to dry. Re-wash film.

18. After film dries, drop it on the floor under your chair, then roll over it (twice) in your haste to pick it up before the “3 second rule” causes it to collect any dust.

In the end, I somehow wound up with a shot that I sort of like. Maybe it’s precisely because of the jumbled composition, the strange fogging, the eccentric exposure and the dubious development. Maybe it’s because of the scratched and dusty scan or the obtuse observations of a fevered mind. Or maybe it’s simply because, by all rights, it’s a photo that shouldn’t even exist. Most likely it’s all these things. So apparently the answer to the question, “how many wrongs make a right?” is “18.” Unless, of course, it was wrong of me to post this photo.

Carollers are carolling, partiers are partying, and capitalists are capitalizing on the wallet-wresting effects of garish ornamentation mixed with insipid music. Yes, it’s the Holiday season.

We photographers are no less immune to these mawkish manipulations than those who partake in most any other hobby. And it’s quite likely that many of us have already populated our Holiday wish lists with all manner of desirable goods — each of which, we hope, will hasten our ascent to photographic nirvana.

A new camera is likely to top many such lists — a sleek body’s unfamiliar contours and mysterious buttons are a time-tested motivator for photographers seeking renewed inspiration.

Other lists are likely adorned with one or more new lens selections. When we view the world through the altered perspective of a different focal length, all our hackneyed old subjects suddenly appear fresh and compelling.

Clever (i.e. “older”) photographers — who have now shot their usual subjects with 37 different cameras and a lens assortment numbering in the hundreds — will usually add “travel” to their Holiday wish lists. Nothing inspires one to reach for photographic nirvana quite like the experience of having something genuinely new to photograph.

Introspective photographers might feel the urge to add some nice photography monographs to their list. After all, discovering creative new ways to interpret familiar subjects can be every bit as liberating as actually finding new subjects.

So what’s on my photographic Holiday wish list? What’s going to drag my butt up Mount Nirvana?

Clothes.

Yes. That’s right. Clothes. And I’m not talking about such absurd accoutrements as photo vests or those silly harnesses you strap to your body to help secure your camera. I’m talking about your basic, run of the mill, everyday clothing.

Now I must admit that new clothing doesn’t work in quite the same way as a new camera, lens, travel destination or photo book. Those purchases are all designed to cause an effect — better photographs. New clothing, on the other hand, is the result of an effect. Specifically, new clothes are the result of better photography.

Perhaps I should backtrack…

About three months ago, I altered my diet and exercise routine. I stopped eating glutens and significantly reduced my carbohydrate intake. I also added 30 minutes of aerobic and anaerobic exercises to my daily workout routine, thus increasing it to… well… 30 minutes.

Curiously, I didn’t do this because I considered myself to be either unfit or overweight. Over the last two decades, I gained about a pound a year — a nearly imperceptible rate of change, and one which I readily dismissed as “the inevitable result of aging.” Cloaked in such denial, it would obviously require a rather potent impetus for me to willingly forgo such indulgences as bread, beer, pasta and pastry — and that impetus was migraines.

For over 30 years, I’ve suffered through frequent, protracted and debilitating migraines. Every new pill, procedure, lifestyle change or bottle of snake oil gets my rapt attention. So when I read that a common benefit of a gluten-free diet was a reduction in the frequency and severity of migraines, I took action.

Within days of my gluten banishment, a strange thing happened: the digital readout on my bathroom scale began to display steadily declining numbers. Suspecting a faulty battery, I swapped it for a new one. The decline continued. Encouraged by this and by an increase in my energy levels, I started reading some health and nutrition books. One in particular, called Grain Brain, filled me with a terror far greater than any horror novel, and provided the necessary incentive to stick to my routine during those early days. Soon, it wasn’t fear that motivated me, but success. I grew lighter, healthier and happier. And as I did, I would go out for increasingly longer photo walks. No neighbourhood was too far; no day too rainy; no morning too foggy; no night too dark and cold. I realized how lazy I had recently become, and how this laziness translated into a lessened and compromised photographic output.

It took two decades of denial and ignorance for my weight to peak at a full 9 pounds above a healthy, normal BMI range — a statistic I spent the last year leniently assuming meant I was “just barely overweight.” In contrast, it’s taken a mere three months for me to lose 15 pounds, which puts me back comfortably within the “acceptable” BMI range for my age and height. But as with most things I undertake, “acceptable” isn’t good enough when “superlative” is within reach. And “superlative,” according to an amalgamation of various ideal-weight formulas, means I still need to lose another 10 pounds — which, when achieved, will put me at the same weight I was at in my early-20’s.

I felt pretty darn good in my early-20’s. Looked good too… had endurance in spades…

Making these lifestyle changes has been ridiculously easy. And the benefits — not just to my photography, but to my overall well-being — are demonstrable. Going gluten-free has eradicated my excess weight, eliminated my frequent and varied collection of digestive “issues,” and infused me with enough energy to grab a camera, head out the door and take the time to explore and experiment. The only real problem is my clothing. Nothing fits me anymore. At least not the way I intended. My tailored shirts billow and flap about like a tarp in a hurricane. My tight rock ’n roll jeans have gone hip hop — slipping south of my waist, where they’re now held aloft only by the remnants of my butt and a belt cinched to its minimum circumference. Its excess length wags before me, to-and-fro, like some sort of leather dowsing rod. In another few weeks, I won’t even be able to pull off the “hip hop” look. Instead, I’ll be sporting the “senile old man with his pants around his ankles” look…

In fact, the only thing that my new gluten-free lifestyle hasn’t improved upon is the very thing that inspired it — the migraines. They seem, thus far, to be relatively unaffected. But in spite of this, I still feel as if I’ve stumbled upon the fountain of youth. Which is good because, if I live forever, the odds I might one day take a decent photograph increase substantially… and all it would have required is some new clothes.

This article is going to be a little bit different than most — it’s not going to be all about me. Mostly about me? Of course! But all about me? Nope.

Ostensibly it’s an article about Littlefields Photography Magazine, which is edited and published by my friend Jim Clinefelter in Portland, Oregon. But it’s also about photography as a whole — and about how we view and consume photography in today’s digital, web-centric world.

For many of us, a “magazine” is something that contains a hundred or so pages of shiny, ridiculously thin paper bound together like a book, and sold at newsstands or at the corner market. We might think of Vogue, National Geographic or Sports Illustrated. Or, more apropos, we might think of Popular Photography, Photo District News or Aperture.

In reality, this is a very limited and restrictive definition of the word “magazine.” Historically, a magazine is defined simply as a container for a related collection of objects. As tablet users know, magazines don’t necessarily need to be bound like books, nor even printed. To an iPad owner, a “magazine” is a collection of articles, photos, videos and advertisements bundled together within a single digital download. For a gun aficionado, the word “magazine” takes on an entirely different context — as something that holds a collection of bullets.

So when I tell you that each issue of Littlefields Photography Magazine is actually a collection of ten unbound 4×6 prints housed in a hand-made envelope ensconced within a custom-made sleeve, you shouldn’t be surprised. It might not bear much resemblance to that five-year-old issue of People Magazine in your dentist’s waiting room, but that doesn’t make it any less of a magazine.

Further challenging the popular definition of “magazine” is the fact that the ten unbound photos within my issue of Littlefields might be completely different than the ten unbound photos contained within your issue. That’s because Jim doesn’t just assemble 10 photos for each issue — he assembles 20. Or 40. Or 60. Each magazine is therefor a random collection of 10 photos drawn from a larger pool of photographs, all designed to play upon a particular theme. Based on the laws of probability, this means each issue is likely unique from every other issue (or at least rarely duplicated).

So what sort of photos are in each issue? That depends on the issue. Right now, I’m looking at Issue Number 7, which is called “Oregon III” and features photos taken by Jim himself. The photos appear to mostly depict the quirky assemblage of buildings, houses, vehicles, structures and storefronts that populate the equally quirky town of Portland, Oregon. There’s a healthy dose of Eggleston to this particular collection, mixed with a dash of New Topography, and topped with a fresh dollop of whimsy. Because the photos are unbound, you can view them in any order you choose — and the order you choose seems to affect the meanings you extract from each photo (as well as from the collection). I like this aspect of Littlefields, since it speaks somewhat to the techniques I explored in creating my “Masquerade” vBook, which I discussed in the Reject Intent article.

Other issues of Littlefields address other topics, and several issues feature the works of photographers other than Jim. Some photos may appeal to your aesthetics, and some may challenge them — but all are intriguing. And each image reveals more of itself through repeated views, just as each collection reveals more connections with each reshuffling of the deck.

The first question most people ask when they hear of a product like Littlefields is, “Why would I want to pay to see a periodically published, curated collection of ten printed photographs when I can look at ten million uncurated photos on Flickr every day for free?”

To me, the answer is obvious — and the fact that such a question needs to be addressed sits at the root of what’s wrong with the way we consume photography in this second decade of the 21st century. Essentially, it’s a topic I’ve poked at in at least 50 different ULTRAsomething articles throughout the years. So in the interest of (relative) brevity, the following two sections will illuminate just two of the many reason why we need publications like Littlefields.

A Song Is Not a Gallery of Pretty Notes

Photography is more than a visual medium — it’s a language. It’s poetry. It’s music. Looking at a sampling of photos on the web is like reading randomly selected words from the dictionary and calling it a novel. It’s like listening to individual musical notes without the context of harmony, counterpoint or rhythm.

As I once discussed in More Poe than Van Gogh, one of the greatest disservices to photography is that it’s more closely associated with painting than with poetry. I believe photography is at its most powerful when it’s sequenced and assembled into collections. I believe its true potential is revealed when we establish connections between photos and that, like poetry, it’s most enjoyable when these connections are tentative, malleable and open to interpretation.

A collection of photos chosen for their connections and implications can be so much more powerful than a collection of photos chosen in isolation. Choosing two “lesser” photos may, in fact, provide greater impact than choosing one “better” photo. Photo editors and curators understand this. They know how to let photographs “breathe.” They know that when different types of photos come together and juxtapose, they create new emotions and a different energy level than would be achieved by a single image, or by a lump sum of miscellaneous “best” photos uploaded to an online gallery.

Consider this: If every member of a symphony orchestra played a “C” note, it would sound quite nice — a rich and beautiful note. If every member of the symphony orchestra played an “Eb,” it would sound equally rich and beautiful. Yet neither performance would elicit much of an emotional response. The orchestra could play a “D#” or it could play an “E.” The result would be the same, and the audience would quickly grow bored.

But what happens when the orchestra combines notes? What happens when half the orchestra plays a “C” while the other half plays an “Eb?” Suddenly, the listener might feel some kind of emotion — perhaps a sense of melancholy (since minor thirds are often used to suggest ‘sadness’ in music). If half the orchestra plays a “C” while the other half plays a “Db,” the listener might suddenly become irritated or edgy since these two notes create a harmonic dissonance. If half the orchestra then played a “C” while the other half played an “E,” the listener might feel a sudden sense of relief, since the tension between the previous two notes had been resolved, and the resulting major-third interval is a ‘happy’ sounding interval.

The combining of notes — along with their sequencing and pacing — are how composers create music with emotional impact. And it’s no different with photography. It’s why photos need to be edited, curated and sequenced. I believe that viewing a random selection of photos in an online gallery is no more soul-satisfying than listening to someone play a random note on a piano once every beat. And it doesn’t make any difference if that random selection of photos is of the highest quality or not — it won’t make their emotional impact any stronger. If you use a $175,000 Bosendorfer Imperial Grand to play a single, random note once every beat, it’s not going to sound nearly as good as a $900 tattered old Baldwin spinet piano on which someone plays a collection of sequenced notes curated by, say, Bach.

Photography Demands Tactility

Historically, a photograph has always been a THING — an object you hold in your hand, hang on a wall, or bind into a book. Only recently has photography become DATA — something you view on a computer screen. I assert, plain and simple, that this is the absolute least satisfying way to view a photograph.

Clever readers may think I’ve written myself into a paradox. After all, I argue that photography is best approached as a form of poetry or music, yet an appreciation of poetry doesn’t require that it be read on a printed page. Nor does an appreciation of music demand that it stream forth from a vinyl album or CD. So how can I possibly assert that a photograph needs to be printed in order for it to be fully appreciated?

And my answer is this: looking at a photograph is a more interactive experience than these other endeavours. Photos change appearance under different lighting conditions — something which does not occur with a backlit computer screen. Similarly, the texture and characteristics of the paper on which a photo is printed will greatly affect the mood and emotion of a photograph (much like the choice of musical instrument changes the feeling of the tune that’s played). The very touch of the paper on which it’s printed can alter one’s perception of a photograph, as can the printing method one chooses. Printed photographs have far greater resolution than those viewed on a computer monitor — even those printed digitally. For example, an 8×12 print made on my Epson 3880 has 360 dots per inch, meaning there are 12.5 million pixels defining that image. That same photo, displayed at the same 8×12 size on a computer monitor, is made up of only a half-million pixels — a mere 1/25th the resolution of the print (and fraught with all the downsampling artifacts and issues inherent with removing 96% of the image detail from a photo).

Computer monitors and tablets are very rigid in how one must interact with the content they display. For example, most photographers exhibit their images in online galleries — but only the most dedicated of viewers will likely see every image in the gallery. If a photographer chooses images so that their juxtapositions tell stories and create emotions, their efforts are lost on anyone and everyone who randomly clicks on only a few of the photos. It’s no different than if someone reads only a line or two of a poem, or listens to a few seconds here-and-there of a symphony. Even if someone does manage to sit through every image in an online slide show, the image sequencing is static and the timing is rigid. Pacing and rhythm (a key element in poetry, music and photography) is lost. This is the reason why, when I do publish a collection of my own photos online, I now try to do it in my new vBook format (as shown in the earlier link to the article about Masquerade, or in 47 Photos of Rain).

Also, when viewing an online gallery, people are often distracted by something else — an email coming in; a friend’s Facebook post; a link they saw on the gallery web page. Viewing printed photos is a committed act, and commitment yields satisfaction — particularly if we really do consider photography as a form of poetry, where time and effort are needed to absorb what the images mean to you and how they make you feel.

Hope For the Future

Like a morbidly obese glutton who consumes food so rapidly that he neither tastes it nor enjoys it, so too does our society gobble up online imagery. With a flick of the finger, an image appears on our smart phone. And with another flick it’s gone. Forever. Consumed and disposed. A vapid snack of hollow calories. Like a piece of candy. Eye candy. Anti-nourishment for an atrophied brain.

Publishing a small, independent photography magazine within our culture of visual superfluousness is, perhaps, one of the most radical acts a photographer could take — yet it’s an act rooted firmly in tradition. In fact, Littlefields is pretty darn similar to the model Alfred Stieglitz used when he edited and published Camera Work Magazine between 1903 and 1917. Camera Work is an icon — a photo classic and an artistic statement that continues to inspire, influence and divide photographers 100 years later. I’m not creative enough to imagine a world in which a photographer — who only uploads photos to an online gallery — will be held in similarly high esteem 100 years from now. And that’s because I can’t imagine a world in which the ephemeral nature of the internet will allow these photos to survive, much less register any sort of lasting impact.

Three years ago, I began to work on the concept of creating a photography magazine of my own. Two years ago, I designed the magazine, defined its purpose and created a maquette. Today, it remains an unrealized dream — a project I hope to undertake “if the world ever changes.” Well, guess what? The world isn’t going to change unless people like you and I help it to change. Jim Clinefelter’s already started. His Littlefields Magazine (and others of its ilk) fill me with hope for the future of photography, and with the inspiration I need to finally begin publishing that photography magazine of my own.

Of course, having now announced my intentions in writing, there can be only one of two possible outcomes: Either 1) I’ll be forced to make good on my plan to begin self-publishing a photography magazine, or 2) that same internet ephemeralness — the one that will render us all irrelevant in a few years — will also dictate that everyone who reads of my intentions will completely forget I ever wrote them…