Photographs, Photographers and Photography

Notable for its absence

For my many years as a California resident I have voted against every single proposition – these appear about twice annually on the ballot – which asked whether the government should borrow more. These propositions address a gamut of pork barrel issues from school funding (why would you waste money on the worst schools in the nation run by a corrupt cadre?) to – I kid you not – storm drain bonds in areas where rainfall is a few inches a year.

My reasoning is simple. Starve the beast of government and you return money to the people.

Until last week, nearly every such proposition was carried by a two thirds majority yet, ask any voter where he thought the money would come from and your reply would be a blank stare. Something finally happened to shake voters into the real world last week when four tax propositions were defeated but I had long ago concluded that America’s greatest disease was financial illiteracy. Why else would you get workers borrowing egregious sums with no prospect of timely debt service in some pie in the sky belief that their real estate would inflate in value indefinitely? This financial illiteracy, exploited by unscrupulous lenders, has brought America to its knees, a status it’s unlikely to emerge from for at least a decade. If it emerges at all, that is.

So blind ignorance, brought on by an educational system that favors populism and sales over hard work and numerate skill, is America’s Number One disease.

Number Two?

It’s easily seen by its absence in this great 1942 picture by reportage snapper Wegee (Arthur Fellig):

Coney Island, 1942

America’s Number Two disease, which is crippling the finances of the responsible and padding the pockets of the unscrupulous is, of course, obesity. Simply stated, if you are fat, I am subsidizing your medical costs. My responsible behavior and healthy eating habits are penalized by your gluttony. Go to any public place in America and you will see that fully two thirds of the people around you are not just overweight. They are grossly over weight. Obese. And it’s a disease which modern prosperity, pushed by those same sales skills taught in schools, coupled with a constant need for one more fast meal because we are too busy to cook healthy food, has created.

Skeptical?

Can you see a fat person in Wegee’s picture?

The picture was taken 67 years ago. The crowd is from the lowest social demographic and, hence, the least likely to eat healthy foods. Yet there’s not an obese person in sight.

Dying for lack of funds

While the plumbers and wrench wielders (they are wrongly referred to as ‘astronauts’ by the media) perform some of the costliest repairs on earth (oops, outside Earth) it’s clear that the magnificent piece of imagination-turned-to-reality known as the Hubble space telescope is on its last legs. That’s a shame. Still, unlike the guy with the beer belly who gets $100 an hour for turning up when he feels like it and charging you whether it works or not, at least the NASA plumbers turned up more or less on time.

The Hubble space telescope

The pictures that Hubble has sent back are like nothing else we have seen before, and doubly exciting for that.

I still remember with amusement, if without surprise, the debacle when the Hubble was first launched. A Hughes subsidiary – yes, you guessed it – owned by who else but General Motors? – royally cocked up the manufacture of the mirror so that the results beamed back to earth compared unfavorable to snaps taken using the bottom of a Coke bottle for a lens. In a world where we prefer being nice to enforcing accountability, no heads rolled and the taxpayer had to pay up as usual for government incompetence.

In this case, let it be added, the fix was brilliant and it’s one I have been advocating for camera makers for ages. It’s the software, stupid!. Some engineers a good deal smarter than the clods at Hughes who made the mirror wrote code to correct the aberrations introduced by the badly made mirror and all was sweetness and light. Lousy lens, great software. Far cheaper than the other way around. Here’s what I’m talking about:

Hubble space snaps before and after the software fix

This is what good DSLR lens design so needs – small lenses, huge zoom ranges and great software to fix what ails the design compromises.

But the Hubble is a pleasant reminder of America’s technical genius and ‘can do’ spirit, coupled with a broader sense that sharing all these great images with a curious world can only be a good thing.

On to Mars!

A pleasant memory

Yesterday’s column reminds me of my Air Force One experience. We were told to line up just so and under no conditions were we to take pictures. Probably five to life at Guantanamo if you dared.

Screw that, says I. I own a part of this plane – I paid for it. Or, as its last custodian once famously remarked when some leftie tried to cut him off at a meeting he had funded – “Mr. Chairman, I paid for this microphone!”

Aboard Reagan’s Air Force One

A moment’s clandestine work with my point-and-shoot digital – near silent and unobtrusive if the flash is off – is all it took. The guard securing this national treasure and repository of military secrets – in reality a 40 year old Boeing 707 which you couldn’t give away for scrap – was but two feet away.

You can enjoy the same experience by making your way to the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, just north of west Los Angeles, and while you’re there, you can learn about the last great leader our nation enjoyed.

The line waiting to get in:

Pricey snapshot

The WSJ reports that the flyby in NYC, causing so much panic, cost $300,000. The intent apparently was to take a snap of Air Force One flying by the Statue of Liberty – a laudable idea, but …. $300 Big Ones in these times suggests a certain disconnect with the working man, no?

The resulting picture

One of the costlier pictures of 2009. Though I must add it’s simply a show stopper. Beats me why they didn’t erase the clutter in the background.

Spotted in Morro Bay, CA

Just messing about, not really looking, I came across this wonderful Austin FX4 diesel taxi abandoned in a derelict lot.

It pays to take the back roads.

5D, 24-105mm at 24mm

As a kid in London I can only remember having been in these twice, a scarcity directly correlated with my lack of money (or poor parental choice, if you prefer). The smell of the leather was simply intoxicating.

With Bert the Border Terrier, that is

He senses my moods, he shares in my joy, he never gets mad and always sees only the upside in life. Totally giving, asking for nothing but some loving in return, he has established a deep bond of mutual love and respect with his master.

I write, of course, of that gay boulevardier, Bertram the Border Terrier who is ten today.

Now that’s not a sly introduction to trick you into sitting through a barrage of family snaps. Quite the opposite.

There’s but one photograph in this adulatory piece, and here it is:

My wife Elenia with Bertie when he was four.
Leica M3, 90mm Asph Summicron-M, Kodak Gold 100, Novatron studio flash

This was an especially happy time in my life, and you really couldn’t ask for lovelier subjects.

Now you need to know about my friend Bobbie. Bobbie, whom I got to know professionally in New York in 1981, was clearly going to breach the glass ceiling and end up as the first female CEO of a really big American household name corporation. But she chucked it all and dedicated much of her life to fighting for the cause of animal rights.

Bravo!

What I only learned much later was that Bobbie was an extraordinary painter of animals. I don’t mean ‘good’. I mean jaw dropping oh-my-God great. And, having turned her back on capitalism, Bobbie refused to accept money for her works, preferring that the new owner make a donation to the Humane Society. We approached her about painting a picture of Elenia and Bertie and a week later a copy of the snap was in her hands.

And this is what has graced our wall ever since:

Bobbie, there’s simply no way we can thank you enough.