against my better judgment

Posted on by
1

Sometimes the forces of popular culture ensnare you. Most of the time you can ignore them, but every so often some slippery bastard finds its way past your guard. Then one day, against your better judgment, you too put your baseball cap on backwards. One day, you too join Instagram. One day, you too watch KPop Demon Hunters or Severance. One day, you too drink kombucha. One day, against your better judgment, you too play pickleball. It’s not so much that you want to do these things; it’s just that you find yourself thinking, “I dunno, maybe I’m missing out on something? Maybe? What the hell, I’ll try it.”

One day, against my better judgment, I bought the book Dungeon Crawler Carl and turned to page one.

For the last year or so I’ve seen Dungeon Crawler Carl (let’s just agree to call it DCC) mentioned on various social media. I thought it was possibly the stupidest book title I’d ever encountered, but beyond that I gave DCC no real thought. Then, about a month ago, my niece mentioned it. We often discuss books and though she’s more sober-minded than I am, I’ve learned to trust her taste. The last time we spoke, she confessed she’d picked up DCC, started to skim it, and couldn’t put it down. She said she was reading the third book in the series. Her husband was on the sixth book.

A few days ago I finished reading a novel and began to cast around for something else to read. Here’s the problem with ebooks; they’re almost designed for impulse buying. I don’t recall what DCC cost, but it was fairly inexpensive. so against my better judgment, I bought it. And started reading it.

Folks, it really is as stupid as it sounds. Possibly even more stupid.

Also? My niece was right; it’s completely engaging. I just bought the second book in the series.

For those of you who are completely and happily unfamiliar with Dungeon Crawler Carl, here’s a brief summary. At 2:23 AM on January 3rd, every structure on Earth that had a roof completely pancaked. Totally flat, smooshing everybody inside (or partially inside).

If you had any sort of roof over you, you were dead. That included people in cars, airplanes, subways. Even tents and cardboard boxes.

What happens next is…okay, wait, a tangent. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, right? Poet, literary critic, philosopher, theologian in the late 18th and early 19th century. You know, In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree, that Coleridge. One of the things our boy Sam came up with was the concept of poetic faith, which he described as the “willing suspension of disbelief for the moment.” Basically, he was saying readers need to relax into a story and not get fussy about its ‘realism.’ This poetic faith is what allows readers (and movie-goers and television watchers) to set aside their logic and accept a world in which librarians solve murders and sword-wielding women in lingerie-armor fight dragons.

Image by Alemonleaf (Instagram)

Sam Coleridge would applaud Matt Dinniman, the guy who wrote DCC. Right from page one, the reader has to willingly suspend disbelief like a motherfucker. By the end of Chapter One, you not only have to accept that every structure with a roof gets massively smooshed, you have to accept that what’s left of the Earth gets turned into a subterranean reality game show sponsored by some sort of galactic corporation. A game show that echoes every roleplaying video game ever made, in which the survivors of the Great Smooshing become characters fighting monsters (and sometimes each other) as they move through the various levels of the game, while an intergalactic audience watches.

There is absolutely no way this premise should work. I mean, the first five or six chapters are basically a game tutorial. Carl, of course, was NOT inside at 2:23 AM when the Great Smooshing took place. He was outside his Seattle apartment, wearing only a leather jacket, boxer shorts, and a pair of pink Crocs, trying to coax Donut, his ex-girfriend’s prize Persian cat, back inside. Carl and Donut become unwilling contestants in the game.

I am NOT making this up. That’s the story, these two (it’s not a spoiler to tell you Donut becomes sentient and able to speak) fight their way through various levels of the game dungeon. An inordinate amount of time is spent on Carl and Donut setting up their display menus, killing monsters, adding loot to their inventories, gaining game experience, leveling up, assigning skill points.

This should NOT WORK AS A NOVEL. But it does.

Why? For several reasons. First, obviously, is the developing relationship between Carl and Donut. Anybody who has ever shared space with a different species (cat, dog, ferret, snake, doesn’t matter) will identify with this. Like any relationship, it evolves as the characters experience the world and change. The relationship shifts through various stages from ‘Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s annoying cat’ to ‘Carl and Donut.’ And you sense the relationship will continue to evolve in future books.

Second, periodically we’re reminded that the Great Smooshing was an incredibly traumatic event. Not only that, but the injustice of forcing the few survivors to fight for their survival—sometimes against each other—as a form of entertainment is a recurring emotional trauma. And even though the reader knows Carl and Donut will survive their adventures (at least for now), other characters don’t. Carl often has to decide how far he’ll go to survive and/or keep Donut alive. There’s real emotion here.

Third, the story addresses issues involving the entertainment industry in general and game shows in specific, as well as aspects of corporate greed. To improve their slim odds of survival, Carl and Donut need to be popular, to attract fans of the show. That can mean killing in spectacularly gory ways. This is made more problematic when they discover the ‘monsters’ they fight are essentially replaceable slave labor, whose suffering is real.

I used to teach fiction writing. I always told my students that a writer has one overarching job: to get the reader to keep turning the page. Yes, there are hundreds of other things writers need to do, but if you want people to read your work, you have to find ways to make the reader want to turn the page—to need to turn the page, to find out what happens next.

Matt Dinniman does his job well. He’s got me turning pages. Is this art? Nope. Is it literature? Nope. But it’s solid, clever, thoughtful workmanship. I don’t know how many books are in this series. I don’t know if I’ll read them all.

But I know I’ll read the next one.

may in monochrome

Posted on by
1

A few days ago I posted some photographs I shot during a rainstorm, which disrupted a planned photowalk. I casually mentioned it was difficult to think in terms of color having just spent “a month of shooting mostly monochrome.” And I realized, I’d failed to write about my May in Monochrome project. So…here.

May is the month when Spring really takes hold. April gets credit for getting it started, but May is when everything seems to change overnight. That whole April-showers-May-flowers business is pretty accurate. May is a colorful month.

So what in the hell was I thinking when I decided to do a month-long monochrome project in May?

I suspect it had something to do with the release of the Ricoh GR IV Monochrome camera back in February. Even though I’m not considering buying one (at least not until they come out with a 40mm equivalent model), I checked out a lot of reviews of the camera. That means I saw a LOT of amazing black-and-white photographs. (Okay, I suppose we have to address the “Is there a difference between ‘monochome’ and ‘black-and-white’?” question. Technically, the answer is yes; monochrome means ‘one color’; we’re talking a single base color along with its different shades and tones. You could, for example, do a monochromatic photo in shade of red. But for most photographers, we use the terms interchangeably. Sometimes because ‘monochrome’ sounds more cool, sometimes (as in my case) it’s because we’re lazy and it takes fewer characters to type than ‘black-and-white. It takes even fewer characters to type ‘BW’ so guess what I’ll be doing for the rest of this post.)

I grew up shooting BW. That was mainly because BW film was less expensive than color film and much easier to process in the darkroom. But shooting BW taught me a lot about line and form and tonality. The release of the new Ricoh camera got me jonesing for BW again, so I decided to devote a month to shooting mostly monochrome. It was just my luck that the new Ricoh happened just before May.

Just to be clear, when I say I shoot BW, I mean exactly that. I never (well, almost never) shoot in color then shift to BW in post-processing. When I shoot BW, I set my camera to BW; everything I see in the viewfinder (or on the display, with the Ricoh) is in BW. I do that to remove the distraction of color. I want to see the world in shades of tone rather than hues of color. When you strip away color, then texture, contrast, light, shadow, and specularity become more critical.

There’s a better than even chance you’re not familiar with the term specularity. It refers to they way light reflects off various surfaces. When light hits a flat surface (like the side of the buildings in the first photo or the surface of the pond in the second) it reflects differently than when it reflects off the rough, bristly side of a longhorn steer. That specularity becomes significantly more important in BW. Specularity makes you decide whether you want hard, sharp, contrasty images or soft diffuse ones. I say ‘you’ have to decide, but in truth the subject matter is often the deciding factor.

If I’m shooting in the city, I tend to go more contrasty (I’m pretty sure that’s actually a word) than when I’m shooting in the countryside.

Removing color from a photograph removes any number of visual distractions. Oddly enough, that makes it more difficult to shoot good images. An ‘okay’ color photo can, to some extent, be rescued by the introduction of interesting colors. They draw the eye; color can be visually satisfying in itself. With BW obviously, there’s no ‘interesting color’ rescue. The image succeeds or fails entirely on its composition and tonality. BW photography is more unforgiving.

Earlier, I noted that when I shoot BW, I set the camera to BW. A lot of photographers choose to shoot in what’s called RAW format. This captures ALL of the physical information about the intensity and color of the light, which necessarily means it produces an image of unprocessed color. RAW files are meant to be processed later on the computer; they allow you the most control over the final image. In truth, RAW files will produce ‘better’ monochrome photographs.

So why don’t I do that? I’m not entirely sure. I tell myself it’s because when I shoot BW, I want to commit to the image. I don’t want to turn a color image into a BW image. But, again, it might be because I’m lazy and don’t want to spend the time fussing with a lot of post-processing.

The thing about BW photography is that it feels timeless. I admit, that sentence reads like the sort of bullshit photography purists say when they want you to take them seriously. But there’s some Truth to it. The photograph above, shot in May of 2026, could just as easily have been shot in May of 1986 (the apartment building in the center of the frame was built in 1985). The longhorn cow and calf could have been shot in the 1930s. That’s part of the appeal, isn’t it.

It was fun and challenging to spend a month shooting mostly monochrome. But I’m not likely to do this again, at least not in the foreseeable future. I’ll still shoot BW photos when I see something that feels like it should be shot in BW, just like I always do. But after a while I deeply missed color. Some images are just better in color. In the selfie above, that ceramic cat is orange; the roof of that building in the background is bright blue; the wallpaper was a soft sort of lavender; the sewing machine was hot pink. There’s nothing wrong with the selfie in monochrome; it’s just incomplete.

Maybe that’s the thing. Maybe that’s the challenge. Some images can feel complete (or more complete) in monochrome. And some just can’t. The photographer has to be able to know the difference.

rained out

Posted on by
8

I was supposed to meet a friend yesterday and do a sort of photo-walk. He’s got something planned that requires a specific sort of urban photography–street scenes without people. We agreed to meet at the top of a parking garage at 0930. That would give us the last of the morning light, and at that time of day most city workers would be at their desks instead of loitering around the street. The delivery drivers would have unloaded most of their goods by then, and the unemployed folks would probably still be in bed or having coffee.

We hadn’t counted on the storm, which arrived almost precisely at 0925. My friend had the good sense to turn around and go back home. Me? I’d arrived early (an old PI habit; you always get there early and check out exits). I was atop the parking garage watching the storm come. It was impressive. Lightning, thunder, wind, the complete package.

I do love a good storm. My camera, however, does not. My little Ricoh GR isn’t waterproof. It’s not even weather-resistant. I’ve had it out in a light sprinkle, but that’s it. This wasn’t the sort of storm that begins with a few tentative drops; this arrived as a goddamn deluge. I took shelter in a rooftop elevator lobby…at the opposite end of where my car was parked.

I was dry, but effectively trapped. That gold Prius in the photo below? That’s my car. Without a camera, I might have made a run for it. But nope.

I didn’t mind being trapped, really. I was dry, my camera was dry, and I figured the rain would let up eventually. I just had to be patient (which reminds me: a million years ago when I was in high school and got in trouble (again), the Boys Advisor told me that patience was my only redeeming quality). Besides, there were windows in the stairway beside the elevator, so I had stuff to look at. And, as I said earlier, I enjoy a good storm.

After about ten minutes, I remembered something obvious. The city of Des Moines has a skywalk system. And (I believe) it connects every public parking garage in the city center. So I wasn’t trapped at all. I just had to find the skywalk entrance and I was free to wander around.

I used to spend a lot of time in the skywalk system. It’s been somewhat diminished over time; a major urban fire cut off a large central chunk, as did some urban renewal. It’s not quite as extensive as it once was, but it still covers about four miles and connects over fifty buildings and parking ramps. The skywalk is climate-controlled–heated in the winter, air-conditioned in the summer. There are coffee shops, barbers, law offices, restaurants, small markets along parts of the skywalk. It used to be one of my favorite places for photography.

The thing about the skywalk is that it zigzags all through the downtown area. It not only connects building (hotels, banks, businesses, apartment buildings), it sometimes passes between them or behind them or through them. It crosses streets, rambles above alleyways, sidles up against structures, and reveals parts of the city you might otherwise never see. And reveals them from perspectives you wouldn’t otherwise get.

I roamed the skywalk for maybe half an hour, then the storm passed, the rain stopped, and the sun came out. I found the nearest exit to the street level, stepped outside and shot this photograph. The post-storm light was delicious…for about ten minutes, at which point the city became unbearably humid. I should have stayed in the skywalk. Instead, I hiked the streets back to the parking garage, got in my car, and went home.

I didn’t get to meet my friend (we’ll reschedule for next week) or shoot the sort of photographs he needs/wants. But I had a good time and stayed mostly dry. After a month of shooting mostly monochrome, it was difficult to think in terms of color again. I did shoot a lot of high contrast monochrome photos during my walk, but I decided to stick to color for this blog. It was refreshing to think about color again. Refreshing…I guess that’s what rain is for.

It worked.

in which i look at an old photo (part 9)

Posted on by
8

Back in May of 2024 I read an article that suggested photographers could benefit from looking at their old photos as if they were made by a different person. At the time, I was skeptical about the idea, but what the hell…I did it anyway. And here’s me doing it again, for the 9th time.

What’s weird is the fact that I’ve never been at all interested in looking at my old photos. I understand a lot of photographers do that, but it never made much sense to me. I mean, I shot those photos; I know what they look like. I’ve already seen them; I want to see something new.

Without rereading the original post (or the original article), I can’t quite recall the actual point of this exercise. I think the idea was that by looking at one of your old photos as if some other photographer had shot it, you can learn more about yourself as a photographer. That doesn’t sound quite right, but I’m pretty sure it had something to do with dissociating yourself from your work and evaluating it. Whatever the point was, it was apparently enough for me to go rummaging through my digital archives.

Which brings me to this:

7:43 PM, Saturday, February 11, 2006

I shot this about two months after buying my first digital camera–an Olympus C770UZ. We’re talking four megapixels. I’d put away my Canon A1 a couple years earlier, bored with photography (most of the photos I’d shot in the preceding years were job-related: forensic photos of crime scenes or surveillance photos). A friend had bought one of those Olympus cameras and it looked like fun. So I bought one and started playing with it.

This photo was shot at night, a 15 second exposure, illuminated with a flashlight. It’s just one of my old arson boots, jammed full of dead grass I’d gathered during the day, and set on top of a clay flowerpot. No idea why; I must have been in a Dadaist mood. I even gave the photo a title: Vase.

You know, I’m starting to understand some of the value of looking at old photos. I was a lot more playful with photography back then. I think having a digital camera–being liberated from the expense and constraints of film–gave me more freedom to just try weird shit and immediately get a sense of whether that weird shit worked. I recall getting several friends to simultaneously throw objects into the air, which I’d then photograph. Things like footwear or toys or pieces of fruit, hovering in the air.

Now I think of it, my first foray into Instagram was a project I called Things on a Table, which had a somewhat Dadaist anti-art nonsensical vibe, and was also sparked by the purchase of new tech; in this case, a cellphone with a decent camera. Since it wasn’t a ‘real’ camera and Instagram wasn’t a ‘serious’ photo app, I could just fiddle around with them. The project involved finding a thing, putting that thing on a glass-topped patio table, then photographing the thing. I wrote about Things on a Table back in 2014.

I may have to consider doing some sort of Dadaist project. Preferably one that doesn’t require buying new tech.

is he making this up as he goes along? “obiviously.”

Posted on by
6

As you almost certainly know, Comrade Trump was recently asked how much thought he was giving to the financial situation of Americans in his negotiations with Iran. His answer:

“Not even a little bit. The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran—they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing—we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.”

For the moment, let’s just ignore the fact that Iran has NO nuclear weapons and currently lacks the capacity to create them. Let’s just focus on that statement and the reaction to it. Obviously, a LOT of US citizens were offended and angered by it. But what about Trump’s base? Specifically, let’s see what the Trump-loving ‘patriots’ at FreeRepublic had to say about it.

You may be surprised (well, I was surprised) to find Freepers were almost evenly divided about Trump’s comments (and his ‘excursion’ in Iran in general). I expected the majority to be maximally Trump-brained, and some most certainly were.

You can always count on CBS to slice out a piece of a Trump statement to make it sound as bad as possible. Keeping the nukes out is well worth the price but the Trump haters have no vision beyond that hatred.
by gibsonguy

Nothing would destroy the USA financial well-being like an Iranian nuke going off in a major city.
by ProtectOurFreedom

America first means doing what it takes to remove the Iran nuclear threat. How is this so hard to understand? I would gladly pay $7 at the pump if that’s what it takes.
by Kleon

Why aren’t Liberals mad at Iran for the high gas prices and general disorder in the mid east?
by Az Joe

As the leader of the free world you need to lead by example and through the strength that you possess to do the right thing and stand up for other democracies… Israel is the only Democratic country in the Middle East. By standing with them you instill discipline within the world community, and establish your credentials as the leader of the free world.
Imagine if you will, letting Israel flounder and allowing it to be nuked by Iran… That would be a terrible example and other countries would start losing respect for America. The United States must lead… Sitting on your arse is not an option.
by jerod

Terrorist muslims bent on death to America with a nuclear weapon is the GREATEST threat to our national security that I can think of.
Trump is not doing this because he wants to but because he cares more about America than those who preceded him office and likely cares more than those who will likely succeed him.
by Biblebelter

That’s pretty much what I was expecting to find. But hold on to your keffiyehs, friends, because a surprising number of Freepers are angry and disgusted with Trump and his war against Iran. Who’d a thunk it?

I watched that video and proves Trump is out of touch with the average American but he is more worried about his Stock Market pals… He will pay a steep price for being out of touch. Wonder what happened to America First!
by dpetty121263

Americans who don’t watch CBS, who voted for Trump, are also economically hurting right now.
by CondoleezzaProtege

If Trump is dead set with Iran not having nuclear weapons then he needs to put troops on the ground instead of doing it all by air right now. He also would not be negotiating.
He is making things worse by negotiating. This is his screw up. The economy is going to crap. Republicans will lose big. Either pull out or go all the way in.
Obiviously he is making it up as he is going along and this adventure was poorly planned.
by moviefan8

Tucker says Iran is no where close to having a nuke. Tucker has intelligence that is so much better than Trump’s. Trump just wanted to go to war because, well because, er well…cause Epstein.
by Sir Bangaz Cracka

What most likely happened was Trump believed he was going to replay his grand Venezuelan victory out in Tehran. It blew up in his face, and now we all have to pretend that we were going to get incinerated at any moment if Trump had not blundered into this stupid war
by hcmama

There you are. Trump, being Trump, naturally had to double down on his comment. When asked about it after his return from China, he said, “It’s a perfect statement. I’ll make it again. Everybody agrees.”

President Xi Jinping and…you know, that guy.

He’s right, sort of. Almost everybody does agree–that Trump doesn’t know what the hell is going on, isn’t capable of understanding what’s going on even if he knew, and doesn’t have a plan to deal with what’s going on. Obiviously (which is probably how Trump pronounces it).

ENDNOTE: Just to be clear, at present Iran has neither the material nor the capacity to make any nuclear weapons. The CIA has confirmed it would take at least one year to create a nuclear weapon IF they had the technologies necessary to produce enough fissile material and to design and implement a delivery system with a proper detonation system. And they don’t have that. Obiviously.

iran 1, america 0

Posted on by
2

Okay, this is humiliating. The United States initiated an unprovoked war with Iran…and we lost. We lost in every measurable way. In the 250 year history of the US, we’ve never suffered such a calamitous and decisive strategic loss.

The US military may never recover from this. Oh, sure, over time we can rebuild our weapon stockpiles. And we’ll maintain technological military superiority over (most of) the world. But in terms of reputation and confidence, we’ve shit in our pants. That stink won’t go away.

We have Comrade Trump and Pete Hegseth to directly blame for this. But it’s not only the fault of those fuckwits. We elected Trump. You and I may not have voted for him, but there’s no escaping the fact that we, as a nation, elected him a second time, knowing exactly who and what he is. We elected him and, again, that stink won’t go away.

Obviously, starting a war with Iran was massively stupid in the first place. Hell, starting a war with any nation instead of using the soft power of diplomacy is massively stupid. But Jesus suffering fuck, if you’re stupid enough to start a war, at the very least you need to make sure you have a solid, practical plan to win it. At the very least, make sure you have clear objectives that are attainable militarily. At the very least, make sure you have a plan for after you’ve achieved those objectives. At the very fucking least, make sure you can justify the war to the families and friends of the troops who’ll die in it.

But all that would require professional military leaders. We don’t have many of those left. Pete Hegseth saw to that. There’s never been a Secretary of Defense so blatantly unqualified to hold that post as Pete Hegseth. A long history of serious alcohol abuse should have been enough to disqualify him. A repeated history of fiscal mismanagement (of both Concerned Veterans for America and Vets for Freedom) should have been enough to disqualify him. A history of marital infidelity and sexual abuse of women (including an accusation of rape that was derailed by a financial settlement with the accuser) should have been enough to disqualify him. His lack of military leadership experience should have been enough to disqualify him. Hell, his arrogant and offensive personality should have been enough to disqualify him

How can the US lose a war against Iran? Put this bonehead in charge.

But no. Trump wanted him and MAGA gives Trump whatever he wants. Hegseth is the only Secretary of Defense whose approval to the position required a tie-breaking vote by the Vice President. No Democrat voted for him; only three Republicans opposed him.

Hegseth proceeded to recreate the military in his own image. White, male, arrogant, reckless, careless, vindictive, testosterone-poisoned, extreme Christianist, and deeply deeply stupid. He and Trump approached Iran like schoolyard bullies. And Iran kicked sand in our face.

The United States is weaker now–weaker in almost every respect. Our international reputation is shit; our military has been effectively embarrassed, our economy is in shambles, any claim the US ever had to moral/ethical leadership is now as dead as Marley’s ghost.

Like I said at the beginning, this is humiliating. And (assuming this nation survives Trump and his MAGA lemmings) maybe that’s a good thing. Our only hope to regaining a place in civilized international society is to learn a little humility. We can’t just insist we’re great. We need to aim at just being decent, and hope we can make it so.

doesn’t really matter

Posted on by
4

I generally think conspiratorial thought process are the province of cranks and folks who watch too much television. So I find it sort of alarming when people I know to be thoughtful, intelligent, reasonable, and logical start suggesting that the recent incident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was staged.

I understand some of the reasons they feel that way. Let’s face it, it was a weird and improbable event in itself. Much of the apparent weirdness is compounded by the fact that most folks don’t really understand how perimeter security works or how difficult it is to shoot a moving target. There’s no reason they should have an understanding of those things. But a little clarity might help.

The moment Allen Cole ran through the security magnetometer

People keep asking how Cole Allen (I don’t know why everybody keeps calling him ‘the shooter’ since even the Secret Service agrees he never fired a shot) got through so many security personnel. Why, they ask, weren’t the security staff paying more attention? And how did the Secret Service officer firing his weapon at Cole Allen miss him?

Here’s why the security staff wasn’t paying more attention: their job was done. Once all the invited guests had been cleared and admitted into the ballroom where the dinner was taking place (one level below the checkpoint where Allen was stopped), the ballroom was made secure. The ballroom doors were closed and guarded, as were the elevators, stairs, and escalators leading to that level. At that point, the duty of security had been passed to a different team. Perimeter security is relaxed and the physical apparatus can be dismantled. It just saves time. The fact is, staff aren’t very concerned about intruders because there’s no place an intruder can go. When Cole Allen scooted through the magnetometer, he only succeeded in boxing himself in.

How did the Secret Service officer manage to fire at least four times at a target only a few feet away from him and miss? I blame this on television, which gives viewers a wildly unrealistic understanding of firearms and shooting. Hitting a moving target with a handgun is hard, even with training. The faster the target is moving, the harder it becomes (and Cole Allen was fast). Toss in the stress and adrenaline produced by an event of this kind, and it becomes harder still. Most often, you end up firing at a space the target occupied a fraction of a second earlier. It’s not all that surprising that the officer missed (well, missed Cole Allen, anyway; it seems likely he accidentally tagged one of his fellow officers).

But that misunderstanding of how the world actually works is just part of the reason folks are leaning toward the belief that the incident was staged. Another reason is that nobody trusts the current administration to tell the truth about anything. Representative democracy depends in large part on the assumption that 1) the government use of power is legitimate and 2) the citizenry can generally rely on the government to be consistent and relatively honest. Neither of those assumptions apply anymore.

It’s not just that everybody in the Trump administration lies, or that there’s no penalty for lying, or even that they don’t care if everybody knows they’re lying. Down at the bone, the consistent, pervasive, ubiquitous lying erodes the very concept of Truth or shared reality.

For a lot of folks, what actually happened at the WHCD doesn’t matter as much as what they believe might have happened.

thisness and whatness and something more

Posted on by
6

I find I’m less and less interested in photographing stuff. By stuff, I mean things. Objects. Including people. Back in the late 1980s, William Eggleston declared, “I am at war with the obvious.” I’m not at war with it; I’m just no longer interested in it.

When you photograph things…and it doesn’t really matter what that thing is… you’re basically saying THIS is important. This thing, this object, this building, this person, this whatever. It’s an acknowledgment that THIS very specific, individual thing is worth your attention. Almost all photography is about THIS. I’ve spent most of my life photographing THIS. Look at THIS. This is how I see THIS.

There’s a term for that–the ‘thisness’ of things. Haecceity. Yeah, it looks like I just chucked a bunch of vowels and consonants into a jar and shook them up, but it’s an actual word (by the way, it’s pronounced hek-SEE-ity; I know you’re wondering about that). It refers to the unique, irreducible, often undefinable properties and aspects of a thing that distinguishes it from all other similar things. It’s what makes each identical twin an individual. It’s what makes your dog special. It’s what makes that elm tree distinct from all other elm trees. It’s the dings and dents and scars of life that makes this different from all of that. It’s the thisness of a thing.

If you’re interested in learning more about the concept of haecceity, do a search on John Duns Scotus, the 13th century Franciscan friar who put it together. I considered adding some of that in his post, but decided I’d rather pound a nail through my foot. My specific individual foot.

Much (maybe most) photography is an attempt to capture the haecceity of a thing. Every photograph of, say, a flower is an attempt to reveal the beauty of that specific individual flower. Every photograph of a water tower or a puppy or a pickup truck or a pair of old boots is an attempt to say THIS puppy or THIS boot is unique and special and is worthy of my attention. And let’s face it, most of those attempts fail.

Instead of capturing the haecceity of the thing, we more often capture the quiddity of the thing. Yes, quiddity is also a real word. It refers to the qualities and properties a thing shares with others of its kind. That photograph of the puppy or the boot is more likely to reveal a sense of puppyness or bootness. It’s the whatness of the thing…the thing that makes it a puppy or a boot.

That’s not a criticism. Depicting the essence of puppyness or bootness can be captivating. People familiar with that specific puppy or that particular boot may recognize it as an individual, but a lot of folks will look at your photograph of a puppy or an old boot and think, “Yeah, now THAT is what I call a boot, right there.” Which is another way of saying they appreciate its bootness.

I began this by saying I’m less and less interested in photographing stuff. These days I’m less interested in the thisness or the whatness of things. I still shoot those photos, of course. It’s most of what I shoot. But for the last few years I find myself trying to photograph something less tangible, and I’m not even sure I know how to describe it. I want to photograph…I don’t know, moods? States of mind? An ambiance maybe. A feeling.

I want to shoot photos that can express a sense of what it’s like to be there.

Yesterday on Bluesky I posted this photograph. It’s not about the haecceity of the dog (who was a wonderfully irreducible and highly individual dog named Luka) or his quiddity (although there was a lot of dogness going on with Luka) or the guy or the street or the city. It’s not about any THING.

I want it to be about being up early on a wet, chilly morning, bringing take-home breakfast back to your apartment while gainfully employed people pass by, isolated in their cars, trying to get to work on time. I want it to be about the dampness of the air and the noise and smell of traffic and the softer sound of a dog’s feet on cement. I want it to be about two beings who care for each other and are comfortable in their companionship, even though they’re of different species.

I want it to be about all of those things. But that’s a lot to cram into a photograph, and I don’t feel like I succeeded. It’s not quite there–not quite what I want it to be–but I like to think I’m getting closer.