I’ve often wondered: When it’s August, and I see a house bedecked with Christmas decorations, are the residents imbibing in the seasonal spirit far too early? Or far too late? Or are they simply insane?

I’ll admit, pessimist that I am, I tend to assume the latter, and steer clear of such abodes and the neighbourhoods in which they sit — one can’t be too careful.

But is that really fair? Could I simply be leaping to conclusions?

Maybe Christmas has no association with a sizeable collection of plastic reindeer mounted atop a roof in mid-summer. Perhaps the home is occupied by a family of aging Norwegian reindeer herders, who’ve retired to a more hospitable climate, and wish to celebrate their heritage.

That inflatable snowman in the shrubberies? Who’s to say the residents aren’t just really into winter? Maybe they recently immigrated from the mountains outside Queenstown NZ, and simply find themselves homesick for the melancholic beauty of an August snow.

Just because someone’s home has every inch of architectural detail lined with a strand of multicoloured lights, doesn’t mean they’re into Christmas. They could just as easily be into ostentatious tackiness. Or engaged in a shrewd attempt to reduce their tax burden by lowering the neighbourhood’s property values.

And it’s always possible that the circular brown fire hazard nailed to the front door is merely there to hide a blemish. Or that a man-sized candy cane on someone’s porch is only an Amazon delivery destined for the inhabitant’s new confection shop. How am I to know? Who am I to judge?

I would hope my own generous attempts to consider such alternate motivations are reciprocated by those who bear witness to my eccentricity — film photography. I’ve seen the sideways glances; the nudge-and-nods extended in my direction; the eye rolls. And I get it. Much like Christmas decorations in August, film cameras can seem potently anachronistic in the year 2021.

Who wouldn’t be wary of a man that’s blatantly disconnected with the ways of modern society? For many, my film cameras imply someone so behind the times, he doesn’t realize the 20th century ended two decades ago. For all one knows, I could have a closet full of bell-bottoms, a Cheryl Tiegs poster on the wall, and a collection of movies on VHS.

To others, the film cameras might imply I’m a prepper — a survivalist working with the mechanical tools of yore, and training for the day when a giant solar flare wipes out the world’s power grid, and all its electronic devices. For all one knows, I could have a bunker full of canned goods, a mini arsenal, and a collection of movies on VHS.

(Editorial Aside: Although doomsday preparations are not my motivation for shooting film, I do recognize — should a giant solar flare arrive — that I’ll be the richest man in town. Once people lose the ability to photograph themselves with narcissistic abandon, I’ll be the only person capable of feeding their need to be photographed looking pensive in front of a hip mural; doing yoga on a rocky bluff; or enjoying a glass of wine at sunset.)

Fortunately, my own Christmas decoration perturbations allow me some empathy toward those who eye me cautiously. And just like the retired Norwegian reindeer herder or the immigrant from the mountains of New Zealand; my film cameras have nothing to do with being either too early or too late. Instead, much like the confectioner’s man-sized candy cane, they simply indicate that I have a passion for my craft and the product that results — an analog photograph. And because of this, I’m neither ahead of my time nor behind it — but smack in the middle of where I like to be.

That said, if I’m out strolling with a film camera and I stumble upon a mid-summer nativity diorama, I’m still hightailing it out of there. Empathy only goes so far.

©2021 grEGORy simpson

ABOUT THE PHOTOS: My anticipation, when I plunge my hands into the dark bag and spool a roll of film onto the reel, is much like that of a child’s on Christmas morning. What wonders lie within? What joy is yet to manifest? If one really wants to experience Christmas all year long, I’d suggest they give film a try. Accompanying this article are just a few of the presents I’ve opened these past several weeks. “Stairway to Heaven” was shot with a Ricoh Auto-Half on Tri-X @ ISO 200; “Dubious Transport” was shot with a Leica IIIc on Tri-X @ ISO 400, and fronted with a Letiz 35mm f/3.5 Elmar LTM lens. “In Peace Rest,” “Solar Flare: Moment of Impact” and “Tunnel Vision” were all shot with a Minolta TC-1 on Tri-X @ ISO 400. All film from all cameras was, as usual, developed in Rodinal 1:50.

REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.

In the summer of 1952, Simon & Schuster collaborated with Editions Verve to publish Henri Cartier-Bresson’s The Decisive Moment — a collection of 126 photographs, coupled with a 4500 word essay.

At the time of its publication, Cartier-Bresson was already a world renowned photographer — having deftly bridged the seemingly insurmountable gap between surrealism and photojournalism, while co-founding Magnum Photos some five years earlier.

The Decisive Moment is a seminal work of art by the most revered photographer of the 20th century — influencing thousands of photographers across multiple generations. Its very title became one of the most overused phrases in the history of the medium, along with ‘bokeh’ and ‘say cheese.’

And yet, between 1952 and 2015 — a span of 63 years — Henri Cartier-Bresson’s The Decisive Moment sold a mere 10,000 copies.

In the summer of 2017, ICBC collaborated with BC Parks to produce a license plate featuring one of my photographs of Porteau Cove Provincial Park.

At the time of its release, I was (and still am) a nobody — having deftly bridged the seemingly insurmountable gap between electronic music product designer and professional parks photographer, without anyone actually noticing.

One cannot cross a street in British Columbia without seeing one or more vehicles adorned with “my” Porteau Cove license plate. I’ve spotted it on everything from economy cars to luxury SUVs to Ferraris.

Last month, I contacted BC Parks to see if they had any sales figures on my plate. They did. Between 2017 and 2021 — a span of 4 years — the Porteau Cove license plate has sold approximately 100,000 copies.

Upon hearing this, several thoughts crossed my mind. First, of course, was “Pffffft! In your face, Cartier-Bresson!” This was accompanied by a little victory dance, punctuated by the spiking of my AGAT 18K camera, which I’ve retained specifically for such celebratory rituals.

But the notion that I’d exceeded 63 years of Decisive Moment sales by an entire order of magnitude — and that I’d done it in a mere four years — seemed positively ludicrous. There had to be a ‘catch.’

Thinking about it, I realized each copy of The Decisive Moment had likely changed hands numerous times over the years, as it passed from collector to collector. Because of this, it’s quite possible that those 10,000 physical copies of the book could have generated 100,000 actual sales, thrusting Cartier-Bresson and I into a tie.

But applying this logic to The Decisive Moment requires I also apply it to the Porteau Cove license plate. And the fact is, while it costs $50 to buy the physical plate, customers must pay an additional $40 every year — just for the right to keep it on their vehicle. In effect (and much like The Decisive Moment), each documented sale of a physical license plate results in multiple undocumented re-sales of the same plate. For example, a single Porteau Cove plate, sold in 2017, has now generated four additional re-sales — one for each subsequent year. So if we allow Cartier-Bresson to claim sales of 100,000 on a production of 10,000 books, I can surely claim sales of nearly half-a-million on a production of 100,000 plates.

So… “Pffffft! In your face, Cartier-Bresson!”

Even still, it doesn’t feel quite right to gloat. Maybe it’s the realization that millions of people have seen Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photos without ever owning a copy of The Decisive Moment. So sales figures aren’t a true measure of his reach. Then again, I don’t own a copy of my own license plate (too expensive), but that doesn’t mean I still don’t see the photo a dozen times a day — tooling around town on the backs of all those economy cars, luxury SUVs, and Ferraris. Which means, much like Cartier-Bresson’s book, one does not need to own the license plate in order to see the photo. And though I’m quite comfortable assuming every one of British Columbia’s 5 million residents has, by now, seen the Porteau Cove plate, I still feel somewhat guilty giving Cartier-Bresson the raspberry.

Sheepishly, though, I must admit the plate’s success has gone to my head. Lately, I’ve considered carrying around a Sharpie pen, and asking anyone with a Porteau Cove plate if they’d like me to autograph their bumper. I’ll also admit, if someone tries to cut me off on the freeway, I’ll happily yield the space to anyone with ‘my’ plate, whilst closing the gap to all those sporting one of BC’s ‘lesser’ plates.

But as much as I’d like to wallow in victory, it still feels hollow. Perhaps that’s because I don’t make a dime off that license plate photo. Or maybe it’s because I had zero control over which of my BC Parks photos ended up on a license plate, or how the photo was presented.

For example (and very much at odds with Cartier-Bresson’s philosophy), BC Parks cropped the heck out of my Porteau Cove photo. Originally a sweeping vista, it’s a shot that would be better suited to the luxuriously wide, 5:1 aspect ratio of a European license plate than to the squat 2:1 ratio of a Canadian plate. Alas, French licensing officials aren’t as inclined toward a photo of Porteau Cove than, say, one of the Côte d’Azur. Which, I suppose, makes this the perfect time to inform French licensing officials that I’m available for hire.

But the primary reason I won’t claim victory is because of the implication: that a lazy summer landscape can (and usually will) outsell anything contemplative and thoughtful. Frankly, the Porteau Cove photo isn’t one I’d have bothered to take, had I not been employed by BC Parks. Therefore I can’t rightfully consider the photo’s success to be my success, since it’s so at odds with who I am as a photographer. If I were king of the world, license plates would definitely be adorned more artistically.

For example, New Mexico’s plate would be stamped with Garry Winogrand’s photo of a toddler emerging from a darkened garage into the sunny Albuquerque suburban nothingness. Bumpers in Washington, DC would zip around with Lee Friedlander’s photo of a pigeon-shooing statue of Andrew Jackson, while Nevada gets Elliot Erwitt’s photo of a glassy-eyed woman confronting one of Las Vegas’ notorious one-armed bandits. Heck, if Ireland would slap Josef Koudelka’s photo of four men urinating in an alley onto a license plate, I might just emigrate.

But here, in my Province of BC, I would definitely not have chosen a Porteau Cove sunset shot as my claim to fame. Not even close. In fact, while I have hundreds of photos I’d be proud to see cruising around on the bumper of a Toyota, I’d probably stamp Fred Herzog’s “Man With Bandage” onto the BC license plate before anything I’d shot.

Of course, that would mean relinquishing my title as BC’s ‘License Plate King.’ But sometimes you gotta take one for the greater good. And besides, I haven’t really beaten Cartier-Bresson. You may have noticed that I quoted Decisive Moment sales stats for the years 1952-2015 — a period coinciding with the book’s first edition. But in 2015, Steidl published the long-awaited second edition, and while their printing quantities aren’t public record, I have no doubt this edition’s sales have absolutely trounced those of the Porteau Cove license plate.

Which is just fine with me. Because it means I can stop worrying about gunning for Henri Cartier-Bresson, and start thinking about more important things — like how to get one of my photos onto the Canadian $20 bill.

©2021 grEGORy simpson

ABOUT THE PHOTOS: All four photos were shot with a Leica M10 Monochrom, with “Law of Attraction” and “A Place for Everything” using the 21mm Super-Elmar-M f/3.4; “Suns’ Eye” employing a 28mm Summicron-M f/2.8; and “Three Gyros and a Hotdog” using a mystery lens — not that I’m not trying to be coy: I simply forgot to make a note of my lens usage that day. I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often than it does.

REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.

Last month, my bathroom sink erupted — splattering walls with a geyser of thick, brown, sandy grit, and permeating the condo with the unmistakably pungent odour of sewer gas.

Two hours later, the emergency plumber arrived, and without saying a word, sniffed the air and wheeled his cart right past me and into the offending (and offensive) bathroom. Within minutes he had dismantled my sink, reached his router several feet into the depths of my high-rise building’s communal pipe, and extracted mounds of what is best described as “gunk.”

He turned to me, a thick wad of it in hand, and with a limited English vocabulary muttered, “Cat. You have cat.”

“No,” I replied, “I have no cat.”

“Before you here, they have cat,” he said, thrusting his handful of gunk toward my face to emphasize his point.

“No. I’ve lived here for over 20 years. No cat.”

“Upstairs,” he said, nodding toward the ceiling, “They have cat.”

Satisfied he’d made his point, he returned to his duties, packed his gear, pocketed the $350 I deposited into his gunk stained hand, and wheeled his cart back out my front door.

Because of COVID restrictions and my own innate introversion, this now stands as the longest face-to-face conversation I’ve had all year. My second longest conversation occurred when the checkout clerk at the grocery store asked if I needed any bags. “Nope,” I replied. “I brought my own.”

For me, such a physical void simply leads to more unfettered thinking. Each month, I’ll rifle through the thoughts, select a few that are vaguely cohesive, weave them into a new article, and eject it into the virtual void of ULTRAsomething.

Unfortunately, this month’s contemplations proved too disjointed for a thematically conceived essay, so I decided the best way to package them for satellite transmission was to simply list them. And so, in the spirit of “Bartlett’s Rejects” (2011) and “More Bartlett’s Rejects” (2013), I present “Bartlett’s Rejects Rejects” — the non-awaited completion of the trilogy.

As with all previous Bartlett’s Rejects, some of these quotes are re-statements of things I’ve written in past articles; some are paraphrases of previous concepts; and some are fresh new cogitations. In recognition that ULTRAsomething has moved beyond its photography blog origins, several of the quotes aren’t even photography-related. However, I would argue — since photography is merely an expression of life itself — that all are entirely relevant to my camera-toting brothers and sisters.

Because each article in the trilogy contains a mathematically challenged baker’s dozen declarations, the site’s collection of instantly quotable quotes has reached 42 — each ready to swipe, copy, and paste into your next tweet, research grant application, screenplay, love letter, or legislative bill.

Granted, ULTRAsomething’s pool of quotes isn’t all that deep nor particularly clever. However, it’s their author’s obscurity that will imbue your communication with a scholarly novelty that stretches beyond the perfunctorily common Twain, Shaw, and Wilde quotes that are so lazily referenced by your peers. Plus, astute readers will likely have realized that the number of available quotations — 42 — precisely corresponds to the answer for “the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything,” as calculated by the super computer in Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe.” Coincidence? Who’s to say?

“The crappier someone’s taste in music, the louder they play it.” – grEGORy simpson

“Society honours individuality with exclusion.” – grEGORy simpson

“The irony of social media is that it rewards anti-social behaviour.” – grEGORy simpson

“You might as well be yourself, since all the other positions are filled.” – grEGORy simpson

“The more someone appreciates you for who you are, the more they want you to be someone else.” – grEGORy simpson

“’Most popular’ is not a synonym for ‘best’.” – grEGORy simpson

“Unlike most chronic conditions, those suffering from ignorance rarely know they have it.” – grEGORy simpson

“It takes profound introspection to recognize one’s own shallowness.” – grEGORy simpson

“The better you get at something, the fewer people who will like it.” – grEGORy simpson

“Your self-diagnosed likelihood of having a terminal disease is directly proportional to the amount of time spent googling your symptoms.” – grEGORy simpson

“Knowledge cures belief.” – grEGORy simpson

“I’m not a photographer. I know this because every time I see an article titled “10 photos every photographer should know how to take,” I quickly ascertain that I have absolutely no desire to take any of them.” – grEGORy simpson

“The more discerning you are behind the camera, the less time you waste in front of the computer.” – grEGORy simpson

“We must forgive ourselves for the sins of our past, if we hope to maximize our capacity to sin in the future.” – grEGORy simpson

©2021 grEGORy simpson

ABOUT THIS ARTICLE: One trilogy down. Can the third instalment of the Caffenol trilogy (part 1; part 2) be far behind? Yes. Yes it can. Also, if any of these quotes have already been attributed to some other author, I assure you that it’s the result of ignorance, not plagiarism.

Regarding the photos: The fact “Mad Libs™ – Tagger’s Edition” illustrates a rather nonsensical list makes it the logical choice to lead this particular article. Alas, none of the other photos have any relevance to the subject matter whatsoever. As such, they are simply ‘filler’ material that I siphoned off the SD card these past couple weeks. Everything was shot with a Leica M10 Monochrom and a 21mm f/3.4 Super-Elmar-M ASPH — everything, that is, except “Chilli Night,” which employed an ancient Leitz 35mm f/3.5 Elmar Screw Mount lens instead of the 21mm.

REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.

I’m somewhat of an aficionado when it comes to apocalyptic lore — at least as filtered through the lens of the motion picture industry, which is probably no more fantastical an account than the sacred source material from which it derives.

Though frequently uncredited in films, the original tale was penned around the year 95 AD by a guy named John, who I’m guessing kept a dream journal next to his bed for recording his “visions.” Since John was a fairly common name, scholars don’t agree which John this actually was. But they do agree, given it’s a pretty good yarn, that he must have been one of the famous Johns — so the story was deemed to be gospel, and tacked on to the end of the New Testament. In my own experience, dreams may inspire some interesting plot elements, but they’re definitely not true. If they were, I’d have spent the bulk of my childhood in psychoanalysis — given how regularly I arrived at school stark naked.

In John’s vision, a group of people are hanging around playing harps and imbibing in incense (the precursor to fiddling with iPhones and vaping). Meanwhile, some dude is breaking sealed scrolls and reading them (the precursor to hacking various government and corporate websites). The first seal he cracks contains a cryptic message about a rider on a white horse, who wears a crown and carries a weapon, and is a conquerer. This, the first sign of the apocalypse, has been interpreted by various faiths and researchers as a direct reference either to A) any of a dozen different historical figures; B) Christ; or C) the antichrist. In other words, one’s interpretation depends entirely on whether one identifies with the conquerer or with the conquered. If you ask me, this makes for a rather flimsy first sign.

The next seals don’t make things any clearer. We get a second rider galloping around on a red horse, convincing people to kill one another (which seems rather redundant given the first rider’s conquering nature); and we get a third rider on a black horse, who carries some scales and a price list that artificially inflates grain prices. Most scholars interpret this to mean “famine,” which is why they’re scholars and I’m not — because I just see it as a sign of greed. And honestly, as horrific as famine is, mankind’s propensity for greed is far more likely to trigger its demise. But what do I know? I majored in Electrical Engineering. Breaking the fourth seal unleashes another horseman, who rides a pale green pony and goes by the name of Death. Judging by all the conquering and killing that was unleashed by the first three cowboys, I fail to see what’s left for this guy to accomplish.

Indicative of dream logic, the next three seals careen off into an entirely different direction — forgoing the whole horse thing entirely, until we crack open the seventh seal, which (like the season finale of every series on Netflix) serves only to reveal that there are yet another seven signs to interpret. Only now, instead of horsemen, the signs are unleashed by seven angels — each of whom plays a tasty trumpet solo to herald each new catastrophe.

Why all the poetry? Wouldn’t it be more helpful to have a list of actual apocalyptic signs, rather than a bunch of archaic allegories to interpret? I know I’m the last person who should ever argue against metaphor — but the plain truth is that most people are too literally minded for symbolism to be an effective form of communication. If you have a message that really needs to reach as many people as possible, it needs to be pedantically clear. You know, a message as important as, say, the end of the world.

So it’s ironic that it falls on me, Mr. Metaphor, to alert the world to an actual, tangible, apocalyptic sign that’s manifesting right here; right now. Yes, I’m talking about the Humonkey!

With COVID vaccines and treatments continuing to dominate science news, you may have missed the announcement: Mankind is now injecting human cells into monkey embryos, and birthing human-monkey hybrids. Who needs some wishy-washy parable to signify the end of the world, when we’re staring at this reality?

Strangely enough, it’s not so much the invention of the humonkey that has me concerned — it’s the fact this isn’t our first attempt at building a chimera. Preceding the humonkey experiment were pig-human chimeras (pigmen) and sheep-human chimeras (sheeple). So it’s not just that mankind thought it would be a good idea to merge itself with monkeys; it’s that mankind first thought it would be a good idea to merge itself with pigs and sheep — as if those creatures were somehow preferable receptacles for human DNA. Really? What scientist thought “Who among us wouldn’t want to be half man, half sheep?” Sometimes you just have to wonder how much actual “sapiens” there is in the average “homo sapiens.”

Curiously, this isn’t even the fist time mankind’s travelled down the sheep hole. It’s been 25 years since some folks in Scotland first cloned a sheep, and yet I don’t see any more of them out strolling the streets today than I ever did. Didn’t anyone bother to first check the global supply chain, to see whether there was an actual demand for more sheep? Just like someone probably should have conducted a poll, to see how many humans want to be fused with a pig. Anyone with a lick of sense would prefer a monkey bod — one built for swinging around treetops; flinging feces; and with four times as much physical strength. Not only that, but macaque monkeys easily adopt human behaviours — such as taking selfies that go viral, and engaging in copyright lawsuits over ownership. So the fact it took scientists this long to choose what should have been an obvious chimera partnership doesn’t necessarily presage a utopian outcome.

The whole humonkey thing wouldn’t be quite as terrifying were it not for one of Elon Musk’s recent experiments, in which a device implanted in a monkey’s brain enables it to telepathically control robots from thousands of miles away. Yeah, what could go wrong there? Sure, I know this is being developed to ultimately help humans create things by simply visualizing them, and that the desire behind all this technology is to better the human experience. But wasn’t that also the idea behind social media? And we’ve all seen where that’s lead us. And ask yourselves this: is it a coincidence that the monkey used in these experiments was also a macaque? As if it weren’t already bad enough that mankind’s creating a litigious race of humonkeys, we’re now creating a litigious race that can sue one another telepathically.

Sadly, I’m sure we humans will all ignore this apocalyptic sign and blithely carry on with our lives. After all, it’s not like we ever really bothered to address any of the previously identified existential threats. Remember how we were all going to die if we didn’t stop using antibacterial soaps and hand sanitizer? Now, thanks to COVID, the manufacturing of hand sanitizer has become the second largest industry on the planet (I didn’t bother to look it up, but I’m sure it’s true). Show me those humans who don’t own at least 14 jugs of hand sanitizer, and I’ll show you the rag tag army of survivors who will be left to battle, and ultimately succumb to the rise of the humonkey.

Mark my words: As soon as the first humonkey telepathically generates a video that goes viral on Tik Tok, it’s all over. Put that in the Book of Revelation.

©2021 grEGORy simpson

ABOUT THE PHOTOS: As you can easily see from these photos, I’m already channeling my inner monkey in preparation for the upcoming apocalypse, though I’m obviously no macaque. All were shot with my trusty M10 Monochrom, with “Not Easy Enough” fronted with a Minolta 40mm f/2 Rokkor; “A Personal Apocalypse” with a Voigtlander 50mm f/1.5 Nokton; and “Cross Eyed” and “One for the Ladies” both snapped with a Minolta 28mm f/2.8 Rokkor. Also, much like I must frequently apologize to physicists for my cavalier interpretations of their life’s work, so too must I apologize to theologians. Suffice to say, if you’d like to see your area of expertise recklessly paraphrased on the internet, ULTRAsomething is the site on which it will probably happen.

REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.

I’ll admit I’m not much of a sports fan. I can’t tell you exactly when it was I last watched a football, baseball or basketball game — but it definitely wouldn’t be this century.

Hockey is the one exception — my singular concession to the manly art of yelling at the television and grumbling about biased referees, bonehead plays, and archaic rules. Unfortunately, watching hockey requires subscribing to various premium sports channels — channels I would never watch were it not for hockey. When a game ends and I turn off the TV, the cable box remains tuned to the sports channel. So the next time it turns on, I’m greeted by the site of some sport other than hockey. And more often than not, that “sport” is poker.

Can someone with less atrophied grey matter explain, exactly, why poker is considered a sport? I truly don’t understand.

Perhaps, as a one sport guy, I should recuse myself from pontificating about this. But try as I might, I just can’t find the “sport” in sitting around a table, playing a game of cards. I’ll admit to having had similar doubts about curling, darts and billiards — but at least those activities generally require standing. That’s not to denigrate various sitting sports: Rowing is no easy task; and many Paralympic sports look to be truly gruelling. If nothing else, auto-racing is a test of human endurance. Even bobsledding requires that you run as fast as you can before settling into a nice sleigh ride. But poker? Poker?!

What sets the bar for an activity’s designation as a sport? Poker’s inclusion would suggest that “plopping your butt in a folding chair and engaging one another in some form of competitive bidding” clears that bar. So why can’t I grab a 6-pack, kick back, and tune into a local art auction on one of those sports channels? That’s something I might actually be inclined to watch.

This got me thinking. There’s money is sports. Big money. So if bog snorkelling (Wales), pumpkin kayaking (Nova Scotia), and wife carrying (Finland) can all be sports, why not photography? Plus, unlike those sports, photography’s appeal is international. Which makes it more conducive to lucrative sponsorship deals and, dare I say, inclusion in the Olympics. What’s more, photography could fit comfortably in both the summer and winter games, doubling the sport’s exposure on the international stage.

So naturally, in my unending desire to quit my day job and grow ULTRAsomething into a global media empire, I’ve decided to establish photography as a competitive sport. But unlike those sports you’ll watch only during Olympic years (like luge or pole vaulting), or those you’ll never watch (like bowling), I’ll make sure photography is a sport that’s seen every hour of the day, every day of the week, and on at least one premium sports channel — just like poker. To this end, I’m proud to announce that I’m establishing the Intergalactic Photography League (IPL).

Like poker, the sport of photography is a game of chance, and its champions are those who are best able to apply wit and ingenuity in order to escape a particular statistical outcome. Unlike poker, photography’s winners are determined subjectively rather than objectively. It’s not a sport that can simply award the trophy to whoever threw the javelin the furthest, or ski’d through the slalom course the fastest — there’s an element of artistic interpretation involved. This makes it more akin to snowboarding, figure skating, gymnastics, or high diving.

Judged sports are obviously more susceptible to tainted results. Sentiment, human error, emotion, favouritism, corruption, and other such foibles will inevitably afflict the judging. Fortunately, there is not one single tangible metric that makes one photo better than another, so the inevitable controversy and online bickering generated by each IPL match will only bring more attention to the sport — along with the occasional lucrative mainstream media coverage that accompanies a juicy judging scandal.

In fact, I would go one step further. Instead of televising only the announcement of the judging results, the IPL will televise the judging process. All the judges will be mic’d up and tossed into a pit, where viewers will see them argue about the relative merits of one photo over another. I’ve judged numerous photo contests in my day, and I can assure you that several have nearly come to blows. Just watch our ratings soar when the cameras capture one IPL judge throwing a chair at another IPL judge.

Additionally, I would suggest all judges be drawn from a pool of cancelled celebrities. Not only will they be publicity starved, and thus willing to work for free, but their notoriety and the outrage they’ll attract will draw even more viewers to the sport.

Because professional photography isn’t a team sport (like football or volleyball), there’s no need for silly uniforms. But as a solo sport (like tennis or golf), there should be some sort of dress code to identify the participants as professionals worthy of idolatry, while still allowing for artistic individuality. I suggest we all adopt jet-black shaggy haircuts and head-to-toe black clothing, à la Daido Moriyama. Having a cohesive yet individualistic look expands sponsorship opportunities above and beyond the obvious gear-related endorsements. Imagine the earnings potential if Columbia Sportswear had a line of ULTRAsomething logo’d black, seam-sealed waterproof jackets — practical enough to transport a rangefinder and a couple Summicron lenses, while stylish enough to meet with your agent at the trendiest new restaurant. Good luck trying to get past the maître d’ dressed like your favourite hockey player!

Unlike exclusionary sports like track (gotta be fast); basketball (gotta be tall); or baseball (gotta suffer from jock itch); the IPL is inclusionary. This means that participating in the event whilst smoking and drinking (like darts) is both accepted and encouraged — thus increasing the sport’s appeal to the commoner, and creating a society in which every young boy or girl can dream of one day being a professional photographer.

And finally, because all other sports are filmed in high definition, IPL matches will be filmed on hand-cranked 8mm cameras using expired Kodak film stock. This ensures that all IPL events leap from the screen— catching a couch potato’s eye as they surf a thousand channels for quality sports entertainment.

There are still a few details to work out. For example, it could be quite difficult to pit a landscape photographer against a street photographer. One practitioner would more likely win with a black & white, lo-fi, metaphorical or funny subject found out in the wild; whereas the other would prevail with a searingly sharp, saturated, heavily processed concoction requiring the ultimate in sensor technology, quality hiking boots, and trendy Photoshop skills. Part of me wants to tell the landscape guys to start their own damn league (after all, why invent a sport unless I, myself, can win it). But then I think how much more violently entertaining the judging discussions will be, so I’m leaning toward a league in which all genres compete on equal terms.

I can’t believe I’ve spent all these years grumping about poker being a “sport,” without ever seeing the forest through the trees. Money. Fame. Prestige. All are within reach. And the icing on the cake — we’ll have the hippest trading cards in the whole wide world of sports.

©2021 grEGORy simpson

DISCLAIMER: This article means no disrespect to the many fine men and women who participate in any of the sports mentioned in this article. But if it makes you feel any better, you’re welcome to cast shade on the Intergalactic Photography League once it’s up, running, and stocked with a first class legal team.

REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.

Welcome, hordes of new ULTRAsomething readers! I hope you find this site both educational and inspirational, and that you enjoy your journey through its 13-year archive of photos, articles and music.

To you handful of returning readers, thank you for your continued support. Please treat the new visitors graciously, and be sure to share your wit with them, as you have with me.

In case you’re wondering what’s going on — why I’m welcoming new readers, and why this site has recently shifted to a faster and more robust server — the answer is simple: I have honed the art of writing seductive headlines, and am preparing for the voluminous traffic that will surely result.

Prior to this month, I was blithely unaware I even had a headline problem — believing, quite ignorantly, that my titles were the crème de la crème, and that my ability to artfully misspell a word, turn a phrase, or infuse a double- or triple-entendre was what made them so.

But that all changed when I wrote last month’s Superfluouuus article. Right before publishing, I noticed a new widget crammed into the corner of my site’s Admin screen, which said “28/100.” That’s it. No words. No context. Just a fractional number.

Curious, I clicked the widget and discovered it was provided by a newly installed Google Analytics plugin. Its sole purpose is to rate the ‘quality’ of the article’s title — and thus determine the likelihood that Uncle Joe and Aunt Josephine will actually read it. In other words, it’s my article’s clickbait score.

I thought the need for such a feature silly, scoffed at the ridiculously low rating assigned to Superfluouuus, and published the article anyway. “What does Google know?” I thought.

Apparently, the answer is “a lot more than I do,” because Superfluouuus had the lowest first-month readership of any article in the history of ULTRAsomething. My knee-jerk reaction was to attribute this to the article sucking. But that’s obviously not the reason, since people would need to actually read the article in order to know that it sucked. This could mean only one thing: it’s the title that sucked — apparently unclickably so.

So with renewed determination, I decided to rethink my entire titling strategy. I would learn the art of clickbaiting.

Previously, I would compose a title after the article was written — choosing something I felt reflected the subject matter and its mood. Perhaps I needed to reverse this procedure, and echo a technique used in the 1960’s by legendary B-movie director, Doris Wishman, who wouldn’t start writing a screenplay until she’d first thought of a title lurid enough to warrant the trouble.

In a way, Doris was an early practitioner of the art of ‘clickbaiting’. Only, in Doris’ case, she wasn’t looking to capture clicks; she was looking to capture cars cruising past the drive-in marquee on the outskirts of town.

I typed a few of Doris’ titles into my new Google Analytics toy — curious to see how Google rated them. “Keyholes are for Peeping” scored a 42, and “Bad Girls Go To Hell” earned a 48. Curiously, “Too Much Too Often!” only managed a 28 — the same rating as the disastrously inadequate “Superfluouuus.” Clearly, even Doris could have benefited from an online algorithm.

Remembering lessons I’ve learned from the many years spent publishing this site — that creativity is anathema to the masses — I decided to abandon the idea of writing titles that I like, and instead write titles that Google’s algorithms will like.

According to Google, an average title scores between 40 and 60. Anything less and you’re wasting server space, and haven’t any right to a carbon footprint on Google Earth.

My four previous titles — Onerousity, AI, Dinosaur and Nocturnes — each scored a paltry 23, making Superfluouuus’ 28 rating seem somewhat good in comparison. In fact, out of all nine titles on ULTRAsomething’s landing page, only In a Gotta-Do Vida made it into the “barely acceptable” range of 40-60, scoring an impressive (for me) 54! Checking my web stats, I confirmed that, indeed, In a Gotta-Do Vida had the highest readership of those nine articles.

Google suggests web publishers craft titles that score 70 or higher, in order to attract clicks. Because my readership stats are dismal, and so many of my titles rate in the 20’s, I decided to go ‘all in’ and learn to compose Google-worthy headlines.

After extensive trial and error, I figured out which words Google’s algorithms liked (and which it didn’t), and eventually gained the skill to consistently churn out titles with a 93 rating (such as the one adorning this very article).

Unfortunately, I never found the right combination of words to score a perfect 100. But that’s probably because I lost interest in using the tool for its intended purpose, and grew far more interested in using it to glean insight into modern society.

For example, compare these two titles: “5 Surprisingly Beautiful Uses For Your Mystical Underpants” and “5 Surprisingly Inspirational Uses For Your Mystical Underpants”. The first scores a 93, while the second scores only a 68. The only difference is that I replaced the word, ‘beautiful’ with the word, “inspirational’ — but that single change resulted in a 25 point penalty, and the title’s banishment to the bowels of mediocrity. Beauty, it seems, is far more important than self-actualization.

Upon learning of society’s lust for beauty, I then tried to amplify the score through specificity. Personally, I’d rather something be ‘ravishing’ or ‘beguiling’ than plain old ‘beautiful.’ Yet the use of either adjective also resulted in a 25-point reduction in my score. Apparently, generalities are hot and poetry is not.

Employing just the right adjective is definitely a key component toward satisfying the algorithm. For example, using the phrase “hauntingly beautiful” instead of “surprisingly beautiful” results in a 3-point reduction, while other replacements for the word ‘surprising’ yield even lower results — informing us that ‘surprise’ is a particularly important human motivator.

Nouns, it seems, are totally meaningless. Which suggests that what you write about doesn’t matter one bit, just as long as you hype it properly. To me, the most clickable part of this article’s title is the phrase “mystical underpants.” But to Google, it’s irrelevant. “5 Surprisingly Beautiful Uses For An Old Bedsheet” has an identical rating. As does a list of beautiful uses for “your green mascara,” “vintage chainsaws” and “a deceased muskrat” (which is the one I’d be most likely to click).

It’s no wonder Doris Wishman never transcended her status as a ‘cult’ director. Without access to Google Analytics, she had no way of knowing that “Keyholes are for Peeping” would have increased its box office receipts significantly had she simply retitled it, “5 Surprisingly Beautiful Ways to Use a Keyhole.”

Anyway, much like how Doris and other old exploitation directors employed “square up” reels to keep the duped audience from feeling cheated, here is my half-hearted attempt to fulfill the promise of this article’s title:

1. Fashionable COVID mask
2. Party toga for your sock monkey
3. Gerbil hammock
4. Bitchin’ bowling ball bag (Men’s Size XXL only)
5. Trailer park bathing suit

And if you’re wondering where, exactly, you go about finding mystical underpants, stay tuned for next month’s article: “3 easy ways to mystify your undergarments”.

©2021 grEGORy simpson

ABOUT THE PHOTOS : Upon completing this article, I felt a moral obligation to better square the deal with anyone who clicked through with an expectation of at least some mysticism. So the accompanying metaphorical photos are designed to stimulate discussion and debate amongst the more spiritually inclined readers. Conception begets birth — where the future is unwritten. Are the blanks filled in through Free Will? Or through determinism? And if determinism, then by the divine intervention of Gott I’m Himmel? Or via the duality of a Ghost in the Machine? Then forward, into the light Toward Bardo, to burst forth again into another conception.

Of course, it’s entirely possible I made all this up and that the photos are nothing more than random shots from a Leica M10 Monochrom, with “Conception” using a Voigtlander 50mm f/1.5 Nokton; “Free Will” and “Gott im Himmel” employing a 21mm f/3.4 Super-Elmar-M; and “Ghost in the Machine” and “Toward Bardo” both utilizing an old Canadian-made 35mm f/2 Summicron (v4). The fact that Toward Bardo was shot in Tokyo could either be an additional indication of the Buddhist implications of the photo; or perhaps a sly nod toward my own personal concept of heaven. Or maybe it’s just anther random coincidence. God only knows… or, more accurately and less colloquially, I only know… which may actually be very Buddhist of me… or not. Feel free to debate amongst yourselves, but please do so on another forum: As we all know, this is strictly a serious, pure and unadulterated photography website.

REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.

Vancouver’s entertainment district has endured a steady decline this past year. With the pandemic shuttering the nightclubs, forcing thousands of college students to seek debauchery within the constricted confines of illegal house parties, the street is barely recognizable. Gone are the spent beer bottles, abandoned stilettos, and puddles of teenage vomit. In their place are spent hypodermic needles, abandoned encampments, and puddles of junkie vomit.

The other night, walking past the Vogue Theatre, I glanced up at the resplendent art deco sign rising six stories above the theatre’s marquee, and noted that one of its letters — a large neon ‘U’ — had burned out. Through the lens of the district’s new milieu, my first thought was to catalog this as nothing more than an apt metaphor for the current state of Granville Street.

But upon further thought, I realized I might be letting my own cynicism taint my rationale. Perhaps the extinguished ‘U’ isn’t a sign of decline, but a sign of ingenuity?

As establishments like the Vogue continue to navigate the pandemic, they walk a financial tightrope — weighing the cost of current losses with the promise of a considerable post-pandemic revenue stream. The greater the public’s pent-up demand, the greater the number of cash spewing patrons, lusting for social interaction, who will eventually storm their lobbies.

So it’s in their best interest to keep the neon lit — taunting the teens like a carrot on a stick — feeding society’s yearning for what it currently cannot have. But lighting all that neon is a costly gamble, and with neither income nor a known end to the ongoing pandemic, each establishment needs to make crucial decisions. Do they light the neon only on certain nights, and thus risk fading from memory and receding into irrelevancy? Or do they sink deeper into debt to keep their beacons of hope aglow?

Perhaps the Vogue has found a solution. There are five letters in the word ‘Vogue’, but only one of those letters is superfluous — the ‘U’. If one removes the ‘U’, the pronunciation of the word remains unchanged. The ‘E’ at the end informs us that the ‘O’ is a long vowel, similar to the way we know that ‘not’ and ‘note’ are pronounced differently. So, in practice, it makes no difference whether their sign reads “Vogue” or “Voge” since they sound the same — ensuring memories of happy times at the Vogue remain linked to the promise of even happier times at the Voge. And it was all done with a 20% reduction in cost! Clever folks, those Voge people.

So naturally, self-reflective introvert that I am, I started thinking about my own life, and whether it was plagued by any unnecessary ‘U’s.

My low hanging ‘U’ is probably that second bathroom of mine. Does a domicile of one really require two bathrooms? I suppose there’s some merit to the idea of a ‘guest’ bathroom, but self-reflective introverts don’t have guests. And even if we did, COVID laws forbid it. If this was 1991, I would have converted it into a darkroom by now. I once considered installing a room-sized hot tub, but in the absence of guests, all that extra bathwater seemed no less superfluous than a second toilet. Ultimately, there’s not really anything to be done about my redundant bathroom, other than rent it out. But that sounds like more bother than it’s worth.

Mentally touring my apartment — already a shining example of minimalism — I could think of only two other seemingly superfluous possessions: my synthesizers and my film cameras. One could argue that I have too many of each. But I would counter that not a single one of them is unnecessary — each has a different strength; a different character; and a different way of helping me voice whatever it is I wish to say. So what might appear superfluous to a non-existent guest is perfectly fluous to me.

Perhaps my own extraneous ‘U’ isn’t something physical at all. Maybe it’s abstract? Listening to my own music, I sense a tendency toward dense production and harmonic complexity. And looking at my own photos, I see a propensity to include a lot of elements in the frame. Neither inclination yields a product that’s easily consumed in a single swallow, which suggests that my artistic inclinations could stand some pruning. Except all that extra complexity isn’t superfluous at all — it’s fundamental to the music and photography I wish to create. So, since most people consider multiple engagements with the work to be superfluous (and since my own work is designed to require multiple engagements), perhaps what’s truly superfluous about my creative output is its very existence. And if my music and photography are what’s superfluous, then what does that make me? Am I the ‘U’?

At that point, with my introspective dive only a fathom or two away from exploring a nihilistic shipwreck — that humanity is, itself, one big evolutionary ‘U’ — I resurfaced; took a shot of the sign and carried on with my evening stroll.

The next night, as I walked along that same stretch of Granville Street, I glanced up at the marquee I’d found so inspirational the previous night. The Voge Theatre had once again undergone a name change, and was now simply called the Vog Theatre — its ‘E’ having followed the ‘U’ into disrepair, thus invalidating the very crux of this entire thought exercise. And it was then that I realized it’s not my creative output that’s superfluous — it’s my propensity to assign meaning where none exists. As Freud once said, “sometimes a chunk of burned out neon is just a chunk of burned out neon.”

©2021 grEGORy simpson

ABOUT THE PHOTOS: Superfluous? was shot on Tri-X and developed in Rodinal 1:50, using a Leitz Minolta CL and a Minolta 40mm f/2 Rokkor lens. Superfluos is this month’s lone digital shot, coming courtesy of the Rocoh GRIII. Megafluous spooled out of a Widelux F7 on a strip of Tri-X, developed in Rodinal 1:50. Superfluous!, also shot on Tri-X and developed in Rodinal, popped out of a Hasselblad Xpan fronted with its drastically underused 90mm f/4 lens. Obviously, this is all superfluous information.

REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.

I know this is going to sound pathetic, but this monthly publishing schedule of mine is quite the arduous task. Thinking of an entertaining and imaginative topic (much less an unimaginative one) is difficult enough, but then having to illustrate those words with fresh photographic content? What am I? Superman?

Over the years, some readers have helpfully suggested that the photos aren’t necessary, and I should just write essays. Meanwhile, other readers have suggested the opposite — that I should just publish more photos and forget about the writing. But it’s my belief that both are essential. That way, one medium can prop up the other in the all-too-likely event that either is particularly substandard that month.

Living smack in the middle of North America’s largest (and only) temperate rain forest certainly doesn’t help with the photography aspect — especially in the winter, when weeks can pass without a break in the rain. Personally, I don’t mind donning the seam-sealed clothing, grabbing a seam-sealed camera, popping on a seam-sealed lens, and heading outdoors. Unfortunately, my fellow citizens don’t feel the same way — and when the rains come, the streets empty. So if you’re someone who’s fond of photographing humanity, the pickings get mighty slim.

There’s also a certain melancholy sameness to photos taken in the rain. One can only have so many poignant ‘lonely traveler beneath an umbrella’ shots, and I’ve probably achieved my lifetime quota. Now and then I’ll get lucky, like the time an unseasonable rain drenched a large street festival, resulting in a decade’s worth of such photos. But that was nine years ago, proving “now and then” is more often about the “then” than the “now.”

Consequently, prior to this year, I settled into a pattern of photographing ‘things’ in the winter and ‘people’ in the summer. But the current pandemic has locked my photography into ‘things’ mode for the past 13 months, and I’ve struggled a bit creatively. One thing I’ve discovered about ‘things’ is that there’s not a limitless supply, and I’m rather certain there’s not a single ‘thing’ in downtown Vancouver that I haven’t photographed a dozen different times, on a dozen different days, from a dozen different angles, and with a dozen different cameras. So the only way this winter differs from last summer, is that I’m now photographing what all those ‘things’ look like when wet.

That said — though I’m rarely happy with the results — I quite enjoy the act of photography. The arduousness of monthly publication stems not from a lack of enjoyment, but from a lack of quality content that springs forth from that act.

Far more burdensome is the essay itself. This probably has a lot to do with the fact I quite dislike the act of writing. What I do like, however, is having written something. Unfortunately, the latter isn’t possible without the former, meaning I spend two days a month living in the glow of self-satisfaction and twenty eight days a month irritated that I have to do it all over again. I’m sure this is some mild form of insanity. So to prevent the encroachment of more advanced forms, I just keep nurturing this one. ULTRAsomething’s in its thirteenth year now, and my walls still aren’t rubber, so I persevere.

Now and then, I do consider shifting my emphasis more toward music, and less toward wandering around aimlessly with a camera and self-flagellating myself into another essay — but my web stats are dismal enough without subjecting the site to such a seismic creative shift.

Fortunately, complaining is one of my fortes — so whining about writing essays has birthed this actual essay. Likewise, whining about taking boring photos has justified their publication for illustrative purposes. So, just like that, another article arrives. In a typical 30-day month, I would now warm myself within the two-day glow of self-satisfaction. But this isn’t a typical month — it’s February. And with only 28 days until the calendar turns, I’m forced to forgo this month’s glow and face the void of another looming publication deadline. I can already feel the tingle of onerousity.

©2021 grEGORy simpson

ABOUT THIS ARTICLE: As this month’s article is about the article, the “About This Article” part of this article is rendered superfluous. Check back next month when, more likely than not, “About This Article” will have returned to its usual function of providing artificial justification for whatever springs forth from the void.

REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.

What is intelligence?

If the erudite and respected literary scholar fails to grasp even the most rudimentary functions of smart phone use, can we call them “intelligent?” What about the mathematician whose groundbreaking theories revolutionize mankind’s understanding of the universe, but who’s incapable of passing a fourth grade geography test?

Intelligence is a word wielded in bias — assigned in accordance with the adjudicator’s own prejudice.

Dictionaries often define intelligence as an accumulation of knowledge — a definition that my own bias rejects absolutely. Suggesting that intelligence equals knowledge creates a class structure that excludes anyone without education. That makes absolutely no sense — one should not be able to buy their way into an “intelligent” diagnosis. An educated dolt is still a dolt; and an uneducated genius is still a genius. Besides, everyone has knowledge of something others do not, so the standard definition degrades to utter nonsense.

My personal belief is that intelligence and knowledge have little to do with one another — a belief that’s no doubt prejudiced by my own proclivity to calculate and derive, rather than draw from a database of knowledge. Since I don’t believe the possession of knowledge implies intelligence, I certainly don’t believe possessing more knowledge implies even more intelligence. Rather, I believe intelligence relates to how one applies whatever knowledge they do have. Remembering a million bits of trivia is not intelligence. Going on Jeopardy so you can leverage all that trivia to win a stack of money — that’s intelligence.

And don’t even get me started on the whole anthropomorphic aspect of the definition, in which humans have deemed themselves the most intelligent species on earth. We pants-donning primates are so arrogant, we even rate animal intelligence by how closely their cognition resembles our own. But I bet you Cousin Tammy, unlike an octopus, doesn’t have two-thirds of her brain’s neurons dispersed throughout her limbs. Sever an octopus’ arm and that arm will continue to function in support of the creature — finding food and feeding it. Cousin Tammy? Her severed arm isn’t gong to do a damn thing but lie motionless in a pool of gore. Sure, the octopus hasn’t a clue how to colonize Mars, but neither does Cousin Tammy.

Troubled as I am by the word “intelligence,” you can imagine how I feel about appending the word “artificial” to the front of it. It’s like using one totally arbitrary word to modify a second totally arbitrary word.

Yet here we are — living in a world where Artificial Intelligence (AI) is all the rage. As best I can ascertain, all these newfangled AI products are really just LE products — but it’s a whole lot harder to market “Laziness Enhancement” software than it is to woo customers with the notion of “Artificial Intelligence.”

Now don’t get me wrong — I’m all for software that lets me be as lazy as possible. The less time I have to spend preparing my taxes, buying socks, or transferring files to someone, the better. The greater the number of rote functions a machine can learn, the happier I am. The problem is that companies are developing AI to make our creative and aesthetic decisions for us. The whole reason I want my software doing the rote stuff, is so that I have more time to do what really matters — the creative and aesthetic stuff.

Think about it. If you want to create something that you actually care about, are you going to turn over the decision making process to an algorithm? Particularly an algorithm that’s designed to produce a result in the most pedestrian, middle-of-the road, unimaginative way possible? A way that looks or sounds the most like everyone else’s AI-derived results?

The only time you would want your software making aesthetic decisions is when your end goal isn’t the creation itself, but to do as little as possible to create it. In which case, why create it at all? Why contribute more noise to a noisy world?

AI is designed to produce an outcome that will generate the widest appeal amongst the lowest common denominator — and it’s very good at doing that. It can mix and master your music so that it sounds like the mixing and mastering of the most popular songs; and it can process your photos and videos so they match the appearance of the most widely liked photos and videos on social media.

AI is an ouroboros — a snake that eats itself. The more frequently people rely on AI to make creative decisions, the more the algorithms will feed into themselves — further narrowing the scope of acceptability and further precluding true creativity and self expression.

Some have opined that AI technology is a dangerous path — one that will take us toward a dawn in which machines become more “intelligent” than man, and thus our overlords. I fear the exact opposite — that AI will take us toward a dawn in which machines become so narrow-mindedly unintelligent and prejudiced that mankind’s reliance on them will render us incapable of expansive thought. Sadly, both theories achieve the same end — mankind is toast. So, you might want to stock up on your favourite jam.

Call me unfashionable, but I believe one’s creative output should be an expression of oneself, not the algorithm they purchased. Otherwise, the ‘likes’ that someone gathers on social media are every bit as artificial as their intelligence — however you choose to define it.

©2021 grEGORy simpson

ABOUT THE ARTICLE: In case you can’t tell, I’ve been messing around with the newly released Luminar AI photo editing software. For now at least, my belief is that mankind is safe, since the product seems to be more a collection of ‘presets’ than it is actual AI. But there’s still an insidiousness to some of those presets — particularly all the ones designed to sham your Instagram feed with altered faces, idealized bodies, and stock-imaged skies. But if you stay away from that kind of crap, Luminar AI does have some decent (albeit typical) editing tools hiding just below the surface.

In any event, no Luminar software (nor any AI) were employed in the creation of the hodgepodge of film and digital AI metaphors included with this article. I have no doubt my webstats will suffer accordingly…

REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.

Several years ago, while forced into chit-chat duty at some evening event, I wandered into conversation with a young graduate student. It’s my tendency, during such obligations, to keep only one brain cell engaged and idling in neutral — so I don’t recall exactly how or why the topic turned to high school. But I do recall her grousing about the difficulty of writing so many research papers.

“They didn’t teach you everything you needed to know, so you had to spend extra time googling the topic!” she exclaimed exasperatedly.

This struck me as a curiously nonsensical complaint that warranted further exploration, so I stepped on the gas and shifted my single solitary brain cell into first gear.

“I dunno,” I answered, “isn’t doing research one of the main components of learning? Plus, having it all online is far better than driving to the library and searching through stacks of encyclopedias, like when I was in high school.”

She cocked her head, furrowed her brow, and gazed off into the distance — as if trying to make sense of what I had just said.

“Oh,” she replied, relaxing her expression with a sudden glint of recognition, “I’ve heard of those. They were called CD-ROMS, right?”

“No, this was before CD-ROMS,” I said.

Her countenance transformed once again — the blankness of her gaze informing my need to elaborate.

“CD-ROMS,” I added, “only existed for a few short years in the 1990’s. They weren’t around when I was in high school.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They were actual books,” I said. “Every year, encyclopedia companies would publish a three foot high stack of books, which contained information about thousands of subjects, all arranged alphabetically.”

Her jaw dropped and her eyes bugged out like an old Looney Tunes cartoon. “Noooooo waaaay,” she exclaimed. “You had to use books?!”

I flashed back to my own similar moment of disbelief — around age 7 — when my grandparents casually mentioned listening to plays on the radio. “Noooooo waaaay,” I exclaimed. “You didn’t have television?” Recalling how this revelation filled me with questions about humanity’s existence within such a void, I offered the woman a few elucidating tidbits.

“Yup,” I answered. “And since encyclopedias were really expensive, libraries rarely replaced them — which meant you were often looking up information that might be 10 years old.”

Watching her recoil in horror, I quickly doubled down. “So before there was a web to surf, I’d sometimes surf the encyclopedias for fun. I’d just grab a book off the shelf — Maybe the “G” book today, or maybe the “T” book, and randomly read all about whatever subjects began with that book’s letter.”

“Wow,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s terrible. I can’t even imagine what that must have been like.”

At that point, another gentlemen sauntered into the conversation, telling the woman, “That’s right, my parents told me about those days.” And as they began to discuss how lame people were in the past, I shifted my single brain cell back into neutral — slinking off to the corner in an effort to avoid any additional chit-chat.

I have since identified this evening as the very moment when I first stepped into the tar pit. Other instances have followed, such as the time an incredulous techno musician, upon finding out I designed, developed, tested and documented electronic music synthesizers for a living, exclaimed, “How can you know anything about synthesizers? You’re old!”

But there is probably nothing that makes me feel more like a dinosaur than watching the changing nature of music and photography. Unlike many of my Mesozoic brethren, I do not believe either medium is ‘dead.’ On the contrary, they’ve never been more alive. The difference is in what people choose to communicate, and the channels with which they communicate it.

Any kid with an iPhone and a few free sound loops can assemble a collage of beats and publish a new dance tune — and they do. Tap another app on that same iPhone, and an entire team of Silicon Valley A.I. engineers spring into action — applying every algorithm necessary to compute an image that will match all the most popular attributes of similar images. Photography, like music, has become democratized and disposable. Neither are particularly vital anymore, but both are ubiquitous. They are a part of the fabric and currency of everyday life. That’s not death; that’s full adoption.

The problem is that democratization leaves little room for creativity. When everyone’s music employs the same rhythms and sounds, and when everyone photographs the same subjects while hoping for the same results, the opportunities for anyone wishing to express themselves outside accepted parameters become more limited. Of the dozens of musical genres I enjoy, exactly zero have a dedicated channel on Apple Music. The photography I like is never seen on Instagram, but rather in those same dusty, antiquated, paper tomes that once held every high school student’s collected knowledge.

And so, little by little, month by month, I sink deeper into the tar pit — still consumed by a desire to pen an opera for those who only want to dance, and driven by the need to mount an exhibition of murky, black & white, metaphorical photos to an audience only accepting of the sharp, colourful, and literate.

One part of me is comforted by a dream that some future generation might one day unearth my bones and — appreciating them for their love of hard bop trumpet licks and crunchy silver halide crystals — choose to display them in a museum. Another part of me recognizes that museums will likely no longer exist — having themselves become dinosaurs.

But tar is like quicksand — the more you struggle, the deeper you sink. And so I’ve learned to simply accept the inevitable — that there is no future in becoming a dinosaur, and yet we are all destined to become one. In my case, I’ll just get there a few years earlier than the grad student.

©2020 grEGORy simpson

ABOUT THE PHOTOS: Speaking of dinosaurs (and murky black & white), this month’s compliment of photos springs forth from my latest roll of Tri-X — exposed at ISO 200, and spooled through a Ricoh Auto-Half, which is a half-frame film camera from the 1960’s that I enjoy using perhaps a little too much.

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