A Basic Guide to Photographic Bliss and Making Better Pictures … A Series of Periodic Musings … #14 Get Out There and Make Photographs!

Seems like a simple and easy thing to do, doesn’t it? But for many it really isn’t simple or easy at all.

Why’s that?

Well, first there can be the issue of gear and Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS). I’ve written about this extensively. Here is a little bit about what I said … I will be the first to admit I like film cameras irrespective of what their purpose is. They are neat, precision mechanical devices and yes I have gone through a lot of gear. One of my friends kindly called it equipment churn.

Look, I don’t have a problem with trying new brands or different formats to see I how like them. While it is true that you can make a great picture with any camera/lens, anyone that says there isn’t something special about the intimate relationship you have with a particular mechanical device and how it works is simply not telling the truth.

So there, I’ll say it; you should be one with your equipment and enjoy what you are using! I am, and I do! I’ve kissed a lot of frogs along the way, only to end up selling them because I felt they were too complicated to use, or they didn’t intuitively enable me to produce what I wanted to produce, etc. And I can honestly admit I don’t have a problem with that.

But I think GAS occurs when you have too many cameras and lenses that you don’t need, and acquiring them becomes the journey instead of actually getting out in the world and making pictures. Let’s face it, it’s fun to buy things and certainly it’s not as scary as having to put yourself out there and possibly fail at what you set out to do, or not enjoy yourself because of unreasonable expectations you or others have created or instilled within you.

This is not to say that it’s wrong to own and use more than one format for different applications, or even two types of cameras of the same format, such as a rangefinder and a single lens reflex (I do). I think where things go haywire is when you start buying much more than you can ever reasonably use because you feel a need to have things that go beyond your true need to use them. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea to own a lens that you may only use ten percent of the time. In fact there’s nothing worse than being in a position where you need that lens to make the picture and you don’t have it. In fact, while it is well known that Henri Cartier-Bresson used the 50mm lens to make the vast majority of his wonderful pictures, he also used other lenses on occasion when the need called for them. On the other hand, the great photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt favored the 35mm lens, but also used others when necessary such as the 90mm for his iconic portrait of Marilyn Monroe.

So do yourself a favor and get the GAS out of your system. You will be happy you did, both photographically and financially!

Great, now you’ve made a great accomplishment, or perhaps you never had GAS at all. But what if you have another hundred reasons not to get out there and photograph.

What’s the point of any of this if we don’t make photographs? Yes, I know we all have busy lives, often filled with distractions … particularly during this difficult time in which we live. Well, guess what … all the more reason to photograph! But more fundamentally, if you are not photographing, or photographing very little, you need to think about what is the point after all. Maybe you just want to collect neat gear because it’s fun. Or you want to spend your time on the forums and watch YouTube channels, or who knows what. If that’s the case then just go ahead and admit to yourself what you are and what you’re not.

I’m hoping you want to photograph and get out there, and if you’re having trouble that you want to do something about it. I’m convinced one of the biggest reasons why people don’t photograph very often, despite having the time available and equipment that would shock many of the greats, is the feeling they need to travel to some exotic location to make great pictures.

Nonsense!

You have to open your eyes and become more aware of your surroundings and the range of possibilities they offer. That means new thinking concerning what’s really important in your life … and for that matter … life in general.

One of the best things I ever did was to create a focus for myself called the Two Hour plan, and I’m quite convinced that among the many things you can do, following it might be one of the single most important ways to get you to stop screwing around, get out there and make meaningful photographs. So what’s the plan? Again, for those that missed it, here is some of what I wrote before … Looking out for and discovering things of obvious and potential photographic interest that are within two hours of where I live. That sounds pretty vague but I actually think it’s a stroke of genius. I can always be on the lookout for interesting and even bizarre and other out of the ordinary events to checkout. Or I can learn about things that are important to those that live near me and hang out with them. And guess what – it takes a lot of pressure off me concerning what to be photographing. Now I’m surrounded by all sorts of opportunities!

So you might say I am pretty lucky to live where I do and that I have an unfair competitive advantage – Bucks County, Philadelphia, the Delaware River, New York City, the Jersey Shore, the Poconos … I could go on. Yes it’s great, and I love living here, but I don’t think I am better off than anyone else. I truly believe that there’s always fertile opportunity wherever one might be if you’re open to it.

And by the way, none of this means I have dispensed with specific projects. Far from it! A benefit of the Two Hour plan is that with enough outings and results new themes demanding additional focus may emerge.

I never thought about this idea before, despite it being so utterly simple and obvious. Now that I’ve had this news flash I feel much looser, less pressured, and yes, somewhat liberated. When I am out and about I feel more creative and have even more fun. Consider the Two Hour plan for yourself. It may be all you need to get out there and experience the same benefits and results I have!

Stay well,

Michael

Can Film Help Us To Maintain Our Sanity During These Difficult Times?

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In a time when every day brings a new dump of bad news and holy sh*t moments, can the act of making a photograph with a film camera help maintain our sanity?

The answer is yes!

Constantly being bombarded with unhealthy information, unwelcome alerts and messages from a wide range of digital sources, seen on the many screens we own can be a real downer, not to mention a mind numbing experience. Getting out and using your film camera with its sheer lack of digitalia, packed with a roll of film containing a finite number of opportunities to make something meaningful, we are forced to slow down and take notice our of surroundings. We have to think about the creative possibilities in front of us and enjoy the entire tactile and connective experience of setting the controls, focusing the image and finally pressing the shutter release to capture a moment that will never occur again.

I’ve written about this before, I believe there’s so much waiting to be seen and captured if your heart and mind’s eye are truly open to all the possibilities. Using a slow and deliberative approach to “seeing” what’s out there really lets you experience life in a way you normally don’t. That is the film camera/film experience and it’s worth living!

Damn!

Just think for a moment how important this could be for your wellbeing, for the rest of us you know, or who’s lives you influence in some way you’re not even aware of or can’t even imagine.

Instead of taking your free time and squandering it with missed opportunities, pick up your camera and load it with film. Now you can think about the discovery awaiting you and do something about it … and experience something better.

Stay well,

Michael

Can One Person Ruin a Nation?

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Having just passed the one year anniversary of regime change in America, it seems a fair question to ask.

The short answer is no. It is easy to think that it’s all the fault of the individual that sits in the Oval Office, but it’s not. Sure all his toadies do what he says, but he is surrounded by true believers that influence his behavior in support of their agenda and his insanity. Then, there are the Republican members of Congress … unfortunately very few profiles in courage to be found here.

But wait, there’s more! Republican governors and legislatures that do his bidding and seek to maintain their power at the expense of others. Corporations that got what they wanted. Media, law firms and universities that caved in to pressure. Citizens that are afraid of losing something or focusing on their self-interest. And then there are those Americans that wring their hands or sit idly by and don’t do anything for whatever the reason.

America is not Germany during the 1930s or Russia during the early 2000s. We have three more years to go, but we have a chance to change this … to stop and turn around what is a slow but accelerating national suicide … and the potential destruction of the NATO alliance that has helped maintain international stability, the growth of democracy and American prosperity since 1949.

Commemorating Martin Luther King Day, the great historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote:

“You hear sometimes, now that we know the sordid details of the lives of some of our leading figures, that America has no heroes left.

When I was writing a book about the Wounded Knee Massacre, where heroism was pretty thin on the ground, I gave that a lot of thought. And I came to believe that heroism is neither being perfect, nor doing something spectacular. In fact, it’s just the opposite: it’s regular, flawed human beings choosing to put others before themselves, even at great cost, even if no one will ever know, even as they realize the walls might be closing in around them.

It means sitting down the night before D-Day and writing a letter praising the troops and taking all the blame for the next day’s failure upon yourself in case things went wrong, as General Dwight D. Eisenhower did.

It means writing in your diary that you “still believe that people are really good at heart,” even while you are hiding in an attic from the men who are soon going to kill you, as Anne Frank did.

It means signing your name to the bottom of the Declaration of Independence in bold script, even though you know you are signing your own death warrant should the British capture you, as John Hancock did.

It means defending your people’s right to practice a religion you don’t share, even though you know you are becoming a dangerously visible target, as Sitting Bull did.

Sometimes it just means sitting down, even when you are told to stand up, as Rosa Parks did.

None of those people woke up one morning and said to themselves that they were about to do something heroic. It’s just that when they had to, they did what was right.

On April 3, 1968, the night before the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a white supremacist, he gave a speech in support of sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Since 1966, King had tried to broaden the civil rights movement for racial equality into a larger movement for economic justice. He joined the sanitation workers in Memphis, who were on strike after years of bad pay and such dangerous conditions that two men had been crushed to death in garbage compactors.

After his friend Ralph Abernathy introduced him to the crowd, King had something to say about heroes: “As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about.”

Dr. King told the audience that if God had let him choose any era in which to live, he would have chosen the one in which he had landed. “Now, that’s a strange statement to make,” King went on, “because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around…. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.” Dr. King said that he felt blessed to live in an era when people had finally woken up and were working together for freedom and economic justice.

He knew he was in danger as he worked for a racially and economically just America. “I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter…because I’ve been to the mountaintop…. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life…. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!”

People are wrong to say that we have no heroes left.

Just as they have always been, they are all around us, choosing to do the right thing, no matter what.”

A few days after professor Richardson’s piece appeared an equally important article was published in the Atlantic by outstanding scholar and columnist Robert Kagan. In it he said:

“The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy made it official: The American-dominated liberal world order is over. This is not because the United States proved materially incapable of sustaining it. Rather, the American order is over because the United States has decided that it no longer wishes to play its historically unprecedented role of providing global security. The American might that upheld the world order of the past 80 years will now be used instead to destroy it.

Americans are entering the most dangerous world they have known since World War II, one that will make the Cold War look like child’s play and the post–Cold War world like paradise. In fact, this new world will look a lot like the world prior to 1945, with multiple great powers and metastasizing competition and conflict. The U.S. will have no reliable friends or allies and will have to depend entirely on its own strength to survive and prosper. This will require more military spending, not less, because the open access to overseas resources, markets, and strategic bases that Americans have enjoyed will no longer come as a benefit of the country’s alliances. Instead, they will have to be contested and defended against other great powers.”

There are many difficult days ahead. I know this. On Saturday another innocent American citizen was murdered by ICE. But I don’t believe the end is upon us. Not yet, anyway. If we act and stand up for what’s right and good about America, including pressuring our members of Congress to do what’s necessary to stand by our friends and allies and honor our commitments to them, then there will be brighter days ahead. There’s a lot worth fighting for and it will take a lot of work by us all.

Will you help?

Stay well,

Michael

A Nice Little Surprise

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Sometimes, when you’re out and about you get an unexpected bonus and learn something new. That happened to me on my recent visit to the International Center for Photography. I had walked from Penn Station but arrived about a half hour before it officially opened. Good thing I tried the doors. They were unlocked so I walked in, found someone and asked if I could sit down and wait. Turns out the café/bookstore was open so I looked around. And there sitting on a cart was a single copy of book by the photographer Peter Kayafas called O Public Road! Photographs of America.

I had never heard of the book or the photographer, but the cover looked interesting so I picked up and took a look. Just the kind of book I really like … road trips that document America. Think Robert Frank’s The Americans, Walker Evans’ American Photographs and Jeff Dunas’ American Pictures.

Well, O Public Road! Photographs of America is a beauty and discovering it was an unexpected nice little surprise which made my visit to the International Center for Photography all the better! Not only did I see two great shows, but found something very special to own and enjoy.

Now, more the ever, good surprises are great!

Stay well,

Michael

Takeaways from the Graciela Iturbide and Sergio Larrain Photography Exhibits

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Last week I stumbled onto the news that there were two shows about to be wrapped up at the International Center for Photography in New York. Graciela Iturbide: Serious Play and Sergio Larrain: Wanderings.

Needless to say I jumped at the chance to see this great doubleheader, but I had to rejigger my work schedule and figure out the best day to travel in order to avoid the wind and cold rain the Northeast has been having. That way I could take a nice leisurely walk instead of riding the subway from Penn Station.

I had seen some of Graciela Iturbide’s work before and previously wrote about it here. I also had purchased her book Graciela Iturbide’s Mexico and was given a very beautiful signed small book eponymously titled Graciela Iturbidepublished the Throckmorton Fine Art Gallery. I had never seen Sergio Larrain’s work in the flesh but own one of his books, Sergio Larrain.

The Iturbide exhibit was the first retrospective of her work in New York City and included portraits and documentary work of the Seri people and other indigenous Mexican cultures and their traditions, pictures of the Oazaca Botanical Gardens, landscapes and found objects, self-portraits and perhaps most interestingly pictures made in the artist Frida Kahalo’s home bathroom that was turned into a museum.

The Larrain exhibit was drawn from Magnum Photo archives and focused on the early part of his carrier; mainly portraits of children and others, as well as street and rural scenes made during the 1950s and 1960s in Santiago, Valparaíso, Santiago, Paris, London, Peru, Bolivia, Italy and Chiloe Island.

The beautiful black and white images from both exhibits range in size mostly from 8X10 to 16X20. But to me they appeared to be on the dark and moody side. Was this an artistic decision, a lighting issue or me? Not sure. Nevertheless, this didn’t distract from the magnitude of this dual show.

What did make me feel a little bit off was viewing the important work of two incredibly talented artists at a time when the regime is trying to take over a Latin American country for all the wrong reasons, while horribly mistreating Latin Americans in our own country … just part of a long history of our looking down at Latin American peoples, their cultures, their talents and their countries of origin.

Unfortunately both of these wonderful shows end today, so unless you live nearby or are in the area and can get there fast you’re out of luck. But not completely … turns out there’s another Iturbide exhibit in New York at the Throckmorton Fine Art Gallery which runs through February 28th! In any case, I urge you to see their work when the opportunity comes up. Otherwise, think about picking up one of their outstanding monographs. They’ll make a fine addition to your library!

Stay well,

Michael

Happy New Year 2026

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2025 … and oh what a year it was! But here we are at the beginning of another new year and I am increasingly optimistic that the beginnings of the end of our Trumpian national nightmare are starting to unfold. Sure we have three more years of this s..t show to live through and there will be plenty not to like, but I really think he and whatever his movement was about is beginning to unravel. Not that much because of what our political figures have done, but because of what every day Americans have.

But just as there is renewed hope, it’s a time when someone so unpredictable and increasingly unhinged may attempt and do some strange and dangerous things, like a trapped feral animal that is being cornered. Venezuela for starters, Greenland, the Trump Class Destroyer, the East Wing tragedy, ICE insanity, Epstein coverup, the lame and grammatically stupid renaming of the Kennedy Center, the midterm elections and much more.

Yes all of this could happen. 2026 just kicked off with the stunt in Venezuela, coming right after the release of the former Special Counsel Jack Smith congressional hearing transcripts and Justice Department’s continued lack of compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.. Funny how that works. But the more Americans stand up, the stiffer the backbones of politicians will become … same goes for the legacy media, law firms and universities … at least that’s my hope!

So don’t get discourage and don’t give up. That is what they want and it’s the only way Trump and the true believers that surround him … the Vances, Millers, Voughts, and Patels of the worlds will win.

And here’s something else … have fun and do what makes you happy. That’s what maintains a healthy balance during these trying times! So how do you do that? Beyond friends and family make time to get out there and photograph, and yes, develop your film and print some meaningful pictures!

So let’s all together make a resolution to make 2026 a great year, for all the right reasons!

Stay well, be vigilant and have a happy, healthy, and photographically wonderful New Year,

Michael

Jeff Dunas, Highway 61 to Honeyboy

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Can a book also be a tiny gem? Most certainly!

I don’t write about my books all that often, and never write about a book by the same photographer within a short span … but this is special! In the video interview of Jeff Dunas that inspired me to feature American Pictures, he mentioned a book he had done with Nazraeli Press. It intrigued me so much I had to get a copy ASAP!

Highway 61 to Honeyboy is a small limited edition book published by Nazraeli Press and it’s like nothing I own. Part of it’s One Picture Book Series, it’s made of the best materials, is limited to 500 numbered copies, and includes a removable, signed, original 5×7 print by Dunas that is slightly smaller than the book itself. When I first held the book in my hands it I felt like I was looking at a handmade object of art and a beautiful portfolio at the same time. At $60 it’s both a wonder and a gift!

According to the publisher, “US Highway 61 runs for 1,400 miles between New Orleans, Louisiana and the city of Wyoming, Minnesota, generally following the course of the Mississippi River. This highway has been referenced in the lyrics of music by myriad artists with roots in the region. The junction of US 61 and US 49 in Clarksdale is the mythical crossroads where, according to legend, Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for mastery of the blues guitar style.

The Blues Highway portion of Highway 61 follows its path North from New Orleans to Chicago, passing through Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, past the western tip of Tennessee and through Missouri. It was here where Jeff Dunas headed in the mid-1990s to photograph many of the true blues legends for his portfolio and monograph State of the Blues.

For his contribution to our One Picture Book series, Jeff Dunas has retraced his steps from that journey, presenting here a selection of landscapes and portraits with accompanying texts describing what he saw, and why it is as important as ever.”

Yes, there are only eleven pictures in the book and yes it’s small, but short of a few even more limited edition softbound books I own, it’s like nothing I have and a new prized possession.

In a time of meaningless mass produced schlock and AI generated sensory insanity, this is a little breath of fresh air and something to be savored while sitting in a comfortable chair.

I love this book!

Stay well,

Michael

The Higher Cost of Printing

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I recently ordered some film and supplies and decided to check out maybe getting some more paper. With only a couple hundred sheets of Foma left it was about that time. I went to the B&H site and quickly became shocked when I saw the price of $176.99 for 100 sheets of 8X10.

#$%^&*()??!!?$#%^&!

The last time I purchased the paper it was $149.99 and before that $99.99. I’m sure everything costs more to make these days but this is a little nuts!

I’m certain though that the latest price increase is brought to us care of the dear leader’s tariffs or maybe even something worse. Maybe he thinks analog black and white photographers are democrats living in blue states and it’s another act of retribution. Like withholding clean energy funding from sixteen states, or dismantling government operations like the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado because the governor won’t do his bidding.

So what do I do? Hold off and hope things return to a somewhat more normal or buy now because of the fear that the price of foreign made paper will go even higher? Who knows, with you know who’s cowboy foreign policy and appeasement proclivities, Putin may just decide to invade the Czech Republic and I won’t be able to get my beloved paper at all!

I think I’ll wait until the new year and my next credit card billing cycle to take another look.

Stay well,

Michael