I haven’t written much here recently. Indeed, I haven’t done much worth writing about, in the context of this blog. Yesterday however I did have the chance to reflect as I laid back in the dentists chair and suffered an hour of scheduled routine maintenance (no major issues discovered), and during that time I came up with several erudite, fascinating posts and pretty much sketched them out in my head.

Naturally, I’ve completely forgotten what they were.

But I really feel I should write something, so here we go - a totally unfocused ramble, let’s see what comes out.

Actually I have spent quite some time on my experimental migration to Squarespace, copying over as much content as possible, and working on the structure. I’m still not all that convinced I want to do this, as Squarespace gives me a lot less freedom of choice - which is possibly as much of a plus as a minus - but also once set up clearly requires far, far less time to manage. But certainly it will be a less personal, less idiosyncratic of presenting myself on the web.

I haven’t done a lot of active photography. First of all, time has been a scarce resource. But when time did permit, the weather, oscillating between either constant heavy rainfall or photographer-hostile clear blue sky, did not play along. When the weather was actually attractive, I was otherwise engaged. So that’s another autumn wiped out.

Blue Sky - a day out with the Hasselblad

On the other hand I have spent some time constructively revisiting my archives, and, if not finding lost gems, at least finding some stuff which was more interesting than I expected. In order to lose gems, I’d have to have some in the first place. This in turn led me to carry out some long-needed updates to some software I use ... which in turn pushed me to take a huge risk and update to macOS Monterey.  I’d had a disastrous experience with its predecessor, Big Sur, from which I made a panicked retreat to the the oasis of stability, Mojave. But thanks to the ongoing need Apple has to rake more and more money into its coffers, and be driven almost entirely by Marketing, “old” versions of operating systems get ever shorter lives, and customers are forced into largely pointless upgrades built ever-declining standard of software engineering and testing. Many would say Saint Steve would be rotating in his grave. I doubt it. Under the superficiality, he was at least as much focused on raking in money as his successors.

Anyway, so far - 5 days in - macOS Monterey is more or less behaving itself. Most of the time.

Blue Sky - a day out with the Hasselblad

Of course with all this faffing about, inevitably thoughts turn to Gear Acquisition / De-Acquistion.  Before leaving for Lofoten back in August, I did manage to convince myself that the new Olympus 8-25mm wide angle zoom would suit me more than the Olympus 7-14mm wide angle zoom I’ve had for ages. However the order I put in fell through and the lens could not be delivered in time. Somehow though I managed to end up placing another order, and in mid-September the lens turned up.  Eventually I had to try it out. It’s not bad at all, and has the major advantage that normal filters can be used on it, unlike the 7-14.  The loss of one stop (f/4 to f/2.8) is not very material for a wide angle lens, so I ended up selling the 7-14, at a fair price.  Of course, it is a smidgeon less wide, but that will hopefully mean slightly less shots with my feet or a tripod leg in the frame.

Still, I’ve got far too many lenses.

And cameras, but we’ll get to that later.

Next, along came the announcement of the new Olympus OM Systems 20mm f/4 PRO lens. I was mesmerised. In particular as OM Systems seem to have a slightly better idea of how to market to old men than Olympus did. Sucks for various other (boring) old men getting thrown off of their “Olympus Visionary” perches, but that’s progress for you. Anyway, initially I was just a hop and a skip away from clicking on PREORDER NOW, but somehow I held back. I remembered several things: 1, the old Panasonic 20mm lens that was an absolute must-have in the early days of Micro Four Thirds never much appealed to me. I bought it, and sold it. I already have two fast 17mm Olympus lenses, the f/1.8 and f/1.2. I actually had the f/1.2 on sale, but I pulled the auction. And I also spent a little while reacquainting myself with the 17mm f/1.8, one of my all time favourites. Conclusion, I really do not need this new 20mm f/4. Then again, when has that ever stopped me?

Who needs a 20mm f/1.4 when you have a 17mm f/1.8 ?

Before that there was another burst of GAS with the announcement of the Ricoh GRIIIx with a 40mm equivalent lens - coincidentally the same as the above-mentioned OM 20mm. I’ve been a huge fan of the Ricoh GR cameras since they first came on the market in the dark days of film, but always found the 28mm field of view a bit limiting. The new 40mm FoV is far closer to my favoured 35mm, so this was really a must have. Ok, the price is a little off-putting. But anyway I ordered one, in early October, with a promised delivery in 5 days. Those 5 days turned to 10 days, then to “er, we’ll get back to you on that”, so I cancelled my order. Apparently it should be available in January. I assume they mean 2022.

I did finally manage to soothe my bursting wallet with an opportunistic lunge at a “refurbished” (i.e. new, but the box is a bit scuffed) Olympus E-M5 MkIII at a shockingly low price. So far I’m very pleased with it; despite the outcry that it is made of, shock, horror “plastic” (polycarbonate actually) it feels just as good as my all metal MkII (which moves into a backup role). I would say that some buttons are rather cramped on the MkIII compared to the MkII, but the move to a layout more consistent with the E-M1 MkIII is very welcome.

First ever photo with my new Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III

And finally, back to the elephant in the corner of my room - the Hasselblad X1DII. Without a doubt it is a beautiful piece of engineering and ergonomic design, which delivers technically fantastic results. But so far I cannot honestly say it is fun to use. It still leaves me perplexed, and I really cannot think of one memorable photo I’ve taken with it. Technically impressive photos, yes, but memorable as photos, not really. I think it is down to the lenses. They are certainly absolute top level in terms of sharpness, rendition, colour, all of those “image quality” things. But they have nothing to some key characteristics of the Olympus lenses, for example close focussing. Sometimes it feels like closest focussing distance should be measured in kilometres. And of course they are very expensive, generally about twice the price of the nearest competitor, Fuji.  I do actually think that the Hasselblad system is in general superior to the Fuji - if I give up the Hasselblad, it would not be to go to the Fuji MF system, just to “retreat” to Olympus.  I guess a fundamental issue is that I had in mind some very specific travel destinations which would justify medium format, and the way the world has turned it seems those are destinations I’ll never reach.

...perchance to dream

So I finally made it to one of today’s most over-exposed photographic locations, the Lofoten Islands. Very, very late to the party, but then again, most of the party seems to happen in the depths of winter, rather than late August / early September - which, in Lofoten, also apparently counts as winter.

It wasn’t a dedicated photo trip, more a combination of tourism and hiking with a camera thrown in. So I didn’t bring the big guns, just the Olympus E-M1 Mark III, the super-flexible 12-100 f/4 lens and the 7-14 wide angle zoom.  I did also bring the 17mm f/1.2 and the 14-150II, but used neither of these. The vast majority of the shots I took were with the 12-100.

The weather was miserable. Either frequent violent squalls with brief interludes, or unrelenting rain. These combined to create really unpleasant muddy hiking conditions, so the amount of hiking we did was less than planned.

The locals were also miserable. Oh, I get the whole stoic, grim, independent Nordic thing (although it sits uncomfortably with the huge SUVs, huger flat screen TVs, and hot dog convenience food culture which seems to dominate). You get a similar vibe in Iceland, but Norwegians, in particular in Lofoten, have taken it to a whole new level. They’ve also taken schadenfreude from the Germans, turbocharged it and made it entirely their own. The general attitude of disdain and extreme passive aggressiveness towards foreign tourists is not only unpleasant, but really rather sad and pathetic. Basically they want the money from the tourists with the inconvenience of actually having to do something to earn it. Of course, there are exceptions. But the more friendly people inevitably turn out to be foreigners, or from Oslo (which appears to amount to the same thing to the local trolls).

The landscape is impressive, but on a people level, I cannot think of a more unpleasant place I’ve been to.

The photography didn’t work out too well either. Apart from the weather, which really was not inspiring, I never got into much of a groove and ended up with only random snapshots.

Grim up north

Certainly there is photography to be done in Lofoten, and actually I’m sure there must be some very good stuff I’ve never seen. But so much is dominated by the leaden clichés of winter shots taken from a bridge near Reine, featuring snowy peaks, stormy skies, and the inevitable red “rorbuer” fisherman’s huts, which are of course almost always nothing of the sort in 2021.  Rather they are expensive tourist accommodation, part of a rapidly encroaching Disneyland version of Lofoten which has switched fishing for cod to fishing for tourists, and can’t wait to get started again.

Pah!, basically.

Over the coming weeks or months I may try to salvage some kind of photo set, but right now I’m heading off to Puglia for some heat therapy.

So here I am, sitting in seat 2F of an Icelandair Boeing 757, on my way to Greenland via Reykjavik, about 20 years and 1 month since I was doing pretty much exactly the same thing. Back then, I had some idea of what I was looking for. In fact it was two things: a life reset following a disastrous relationship breakdown, and a attempt to reconnect with the high latitudes. Photography was not really a part of it, which is just as well as 95% of my film exposures were ruined.

Twenty years later the world has moved on. I’m really not at all sure what my reason for travelling is this time. I’m neither the person of 20 years ago looking for a new direction, or indeed the passionate photographer of 10 or 15 years ago.

Twenty years ago we could sit around and wonder at the first public ruminations on climate change. Indeed these were nothing new to me as up until that point polar climate research had been my career. It was all a bit concerning but somehow a long way off, and anyway, surely “they” would see sense and Do Something. After all, even the Wicked Witch of the East, Margaret Thatcher, recognised that it was a serious issue. Then again, Thatcher was a scientist, and with hindsight, not totally evil. So we all waited. And waited. And here we are. I think that the correct description of our current status is “totally fucked”. Rather than stumbling towards at least some kind of enlightenment, we are hurtling head on to extinction, not only of our own miserable species, but also of the whole amazing biosphere we are part of. Led by imbeciles like Trump, Johnson, Putin, Xi Jinping, Bolsonaro, Salvini and countless others, along with the shady cohort of “advisors” and billionaires who pump in the money to enable them, we are accelerating into a brick wall. It is hard to understand what motivates these people. They’re not all stupid, far from it, and they surely must realise what the real situation is. But they don’t care. Applying Occam’s Razor almost leads to the conclusion that the Legions of Hell are a real thing, and these people are the vanguard. Do they really believe they can eat, drink and breathe money?

The not so slow-motion collapse of the Arctic ecosphere is not highlighted as a last chance alarm bell, as Thatcher surely would have done, but, unbelievably, as a chance for Trump, sodding Putin and Xi to drill yet more oil. Presumeably to throw onto their mate Bolsonaro’s fires.

And yet, here I am, ranting on about this, while travelling in splendid isolation, somewhere over France, in a Boeing 757 spewing out carbon dioxide, so I can take a few photos of what remaining icebergs we might find. By all rights I should not be able to afford this flight. The true cost is far more than I can pay.

I see no reason for optimism. None at all. Sure, there are a lot of good people out there, but there are no good sufficiently empowered leaders. The problems that need to be resolved are immense, and complex on all sorts of levels. The issue of over population needs to be addressed, because this is a root cause. The planet certainly can sustain the current and projected population, but not with the current wealth imbalance.  Us Europeans and North Americans cannot continue to grab 90% of the world’s resources. The misery in much of Asia and Africa, and to some extent South America, need not exist if we had equitable distribution of wealth and resources. Certainly our living standards would need to drop a little (actually not so much) and I would not be sitting on this plane. But is this going to happen, at least peacefully? Not a chance. And that’s before we even start to look at really bring greenhouse gas emissions under control. But hey, even if we solve THAT intractable problem, there’s that little issue we have with plastic pollution. And all the rest of it.

On balance I’m relieved that I don’t have children, and that I was born early enough that I will, probably, escape the worst of this.

And yet, the USA will doubtless re-elect Trump. After all, what alternatives do they have? The numbskull British will obey the Daily Mail and elect Johnson, because Johnson offers the Daily Mail’s billionaire owners, and the billionaire friends, more money. And they’ll come up with some way to bribe the populace with some baubles in exchange for a livable future. They won’t elect Jeremy Corbyn, a thoroughly decent chap with the Achille’s heel of being far, far too honest for today’s politics. Even though Corbyn could save them and navigate a path to a sustainable future. They won’t do that, because they might have to pay a smidgeon more for their beer, and maybe take the bus sometimes rather than the SUV. Of course this is all really Darwin’s law in action, expect it’s in action on us, not on some esoteric concept like the Dodo.

So what am I doing here? If I had a following, or were An Influencer, perhaps I could claim that my matchless photography will open the world’s eyes to these issues. But it won’t. We’ve seen enough photos of Scoresbysund - it is indeed a remarkable place, perhaps we should let it be. No, I’m going for purely selfish reasons. It will be great to meet up again with my friend Daniel Bergmann, although it says something about my ability to form friendships that I have to travel halfway across the Atlantic to do so. And maybe I’ll make some new friends, who knows. But I have no expectations of making any photography of any consequence, and certainly not of alleviating the problems that my very travelling is significantly contributing to.

One hour and twenty minutes out from the slow gentle descent into Keflavik gazing out over the pink tinged clouds shrouding the ocean, it all looks so peaceful and timeless. But when we go down, as we surely will, we’ll doubtless take it with us. All that remains is, for those of us fortunate enough to have the opportunity, to enjoy it while we can. And take some photos.

From the vast amount of stuff I’ve read about photography, I can really only come to one conclusion: my own photography is basically worthless.  My take away from Landscape Photography pundits is that to have any worth, photos have to have some deep and mystical connection to the natural world. A photo of a tree is not of a tree, it is a representation of the photographer’s relationship with the landscape. Well, in my case, the photo is actually of a tree, and the reason I made it is because for whatever reason I liked the tree. There’s no message in there, there’s no whispered pseudo-religious revelation. There probably isn’t even any “pin sharpness”.

In the past few days I’ve been editing my latest haul of photos of Venice. Some are geometrically interesting, some have nice colours - some have both geometry and colour - and a few have people in them. Almost all are technically more than competent. All are, unfortunately, totally soulless. I’m not going to kid myself, they may look nice in “Lights Out” mode in Lightroom on a black background, but they have zero artistic or cultural value. They do not in any way communicate the emotions I feel when wandering around the outer zones of Cannaregio or the Giudecca. In the cold light of self-analysis, they’re worthless.

As for the technical side, well, actually, I think they’re ok, but perhaps I really don’t know. I’ve read about all this stuff on DPReview and countless blogs, but when I set the slider to 0 I still can’t see this infamous “noise” in the shadows, or all this (lack of) dynamic range. I guess I just don’t have the skill to see it.

I might once have aspired to reaching some sort of higher level of vision or something, but I got stuck at the snapshot stage, and that’s all their is too it.  There are so many other ageing white male engineer-types trying to pretend they have an artistic side by buying camera gear - some of them call themselves Fine Art Photographers, especially if they’re American - that I just got lost in the crowd.

This realisation that I really not any good at any kind of artistic expression has crept up slowly on me, so it isn’t much of a surprise. I’ve known about it for some time. It also impacts on wider things, sometimes in a good way. For example when thinking about places to travel to or go on vacation, these days I don’t start wondering about what gear to take, or how to get “the good light”.  I just go with the flow - I might take some snaps, I might not, but I don’t feel bad about not being that guy wandering the streets with 20kg of camera tech strapped to his back.

At the same time I’m getting more and more weary with all the photography chatter in Twitter and everywhere else. I’m not the only one who can’t take a meaningful photograph, but I seem to be the only one who realises it. Even more, I’m fed up to the back teeth of people who are convince that a totally dull photograph becomes a work of genius because it was shot on film (or even better, expired film).

So, does this mean I’m giving it all up? No, I like taking photos. But I’m not going to keep stressing myself reading all this stuff about how I should “take it to the next level”, “find a a philosophical basis for what I do”, make a rock be “more than a rock” or all the rest of the depressing psychobabble. I’m certainly not going to dive in some kind of ersatz conceptual art.  Vacations will be vacations, not “photo tours”. I’m just going to take (hopefully) pretty pictures of things and juxtapositions that grab my attention or resonate somehow, enjoy the process of doing so, and enjoy looking at them. And I’ll publish a few here on my website too, just in case they give a few fleeting microseconds of pleasure to others.

Last week I received a very unwelcome email from Phase One, current owners of the venerable MediaPro DAM application, announcing their decision to discontinue the product.

This isn’t really a big surprise, but it reflects very badly on Phase One as a company. They took over MediaPro from Microsoft in May 2010. I suppose their idea was to bolt it on the Capture One in some way, so as to have a more complete competitor to Lightroom and Aperture. In the event, some Media Pro concepts and design concepts have made their way in Capture One, but they didn’t need to buy the product for that. I doubt that they recruited any developers along with the acquisition, as the original team was hired by Microsoft when they took it over in 2006, and since almost no further development was done, probably that team dispersed.

It is a massive compliment to the original developers that MediaPro could still be a valid tool, and indeed in many ways a benchmark, after about 15 years of almost total neglect. It had a few pointless corporate make-overs, and the catalogue size limit was raised, but apart from that, zilch, apart from the (usually late) integration of the Capture One rendering engine.  Indeed, on the Mac some menu items are unchanged since pre OS-X days. And yet it is still elegant and very effective.

The problem appears to be that, unsurprisingly, the codebase is now completely obsolete, and will soon stop working at least on new macOS releases.  But this is nothing new: if Phase One had done a little due diligence back in 2o10 they would already have known this. The best case scenario is that they failed to do so, and hence were incompetent. The alternative is that they knew damn well it was heading for a cliff, did nothing, and milked whatever remaining customer base there was for all they could until finally they could pretend no longer.  The last full release, the grandly named Media Pro Second Edition, brought precisely nothing to the table, apart from a standard Phase One inflated price tag.

Their proposal now is that users switch to Capture One, which as a DAM, has far less functionality, and is frankly a joke compared to MediaPro for cataloging.  They are not even offering a discounted, or (gasp) free CaptureOne license as an apology. They are basically saying “thanks for your money, now fuck off”, or some Danish variant thereof.

Well, frankly, that seems to be par for the course for PhaseOne. I will certainly not be a customer of theirs any longer.  Their hardware is obviously out of my league, and their CaptureOne software is actually nothing special, and is ridiculously overpriced. Sadly a lot of people fall for the garish, overblown default look that CaptureOne applies to Raw files, and then get sucked in to its clumsy gasworks of a user interface and terrible catalog performance. Yes, it can all be dialled down, but side by side I’ve never seen anything that Capture One can do that Lightroom cannot do equally well or better.

But in any case, their behaviour with MediaPro shows just how much contempt they have for their non-megabucks spending customers.

I will be migrating to PhotoSupreme from MediaPro.  In many ways it is not as elegant, but it has a lot more functionality, and as far as I can see, the best alternative on macOS.

The iView website, back in 2000. Interesting that it was already available in Danish…