Portable Fiasco

So I succumbed to temptation and got a new camera.

Uncharacteristically, I got the painfully pricey thing I've wanted for years, instead of making some sensible compromise.

I had rationalizations. I wanted something capable enough that I couldn't possibly blame the camera for my problems any more; something that couldn't creditably be thought of as a bottleneck or limitation.

Those very qualities also put responsibility for failure squarely on my shoulders. Be careful what you wish for, they say.

Once it arrived, I discovered what I had known, intellectually, all along: most of the time, the camera doesn't matter much. Sure, a fancy camera makes it comically easy to snap pictures of ridiculously high technical quality, and this one has exceeded my expectations in that regard.

But no picture is striking or memorable simply because it's perfectly exposed. No emotional connection arises from sharpness (or bokeh) alone.

It's what a picture is of that matters. Well, of course it is.

I've got a long way to go in that regard. And now I really wonder if the use of an enormous, noisy, intimidating professional-looking camera is the best way to go about learning such things. They say people are shy around such beasts, but I wouldn't really know yet - I've been afraid to point it at most people. I've settled for places where people were. After refusing compromise with the equipment, I instead compromise with every click of the shutter.

Cowards die a thousand deaths, they say.

I suppose doubt is a hazard of any hobby unlucky enough to be associated with capital-a Art. A better photographer than I am once said "some nights I feel that all this has been a ruinously expensive exercise in ego and dilettantism." I've felt that way since just after the camera arrived.

But I've got a secret weapon in the war on doubt. I'm just a hobbyist. Capital-a Art may be done for the sake of the final product, but a hobby is done for the sake of the doing. I shall endeavor to remember: I'm the only one I really have to please.

Four years ago, when the federal General Services Administration unveiled its plans for a new border-crossing station here in northeastern New York State, the design was presented as part of the agency’s campaign to raise the dismal standards of government architecture. Even many in the famously fractious architectural community celebrated the complex — particularly its main building, emblazoned with glossy yellow, 21-foot-high letters spelling “United States” — as a rare project the government could point to with pride.

...

Yet three weeks ago, less than a month after the station opened, workers began prying the big yellow letters off the building’s facade on orders from Customs and Border Protection. The plan is to dismantle the rest of the sign this week.

...

“There were security concerns,” said Kelly Ivahnenko, a spokeswoman for the customs agency. “The sign could be a huge target and attract undue attention. Anything that would place our officers at risk we need to avoid.”

-- At a Border Crossing, Security Trumps Openness

This story has been making all the usual rounds for a security-gone-mad story, from BoingBoing to Bruce Schneier. The article itself does a pretty good job of ridiculing the decision, so I won't have to do so much of that myself. It is interesting to see how an organization's subculture can develop enough inertia to stick with ideas that no longer make sense to anyone outside that subculture.

I was surprised that there aren't more photos of this building on the web in easy-to-find places. As a celebrated government project (the government gave the project a design award before dismantling the design) you might think there would be a gallery of public-domain photographs of it somewhere. But I haven't been able to find anything like that.

There's a concept drawing here.

The "Image Gallery" link at the bottom of this page makes it clear that some pretty neat photos exist, but they were hung on the walls of a gallery. Then someone took photos of the gallery and put those photos on the web. So even the virtual experience (looking at pictures of a sight you cannot actually see) is itself virtualized.

Maybe that's appropriate; after all, if The Terrorists are likely to attack the United States by targeting a sign that says "United States," there's no telling how meta they could get. They might target pictures of the sign as well. So we're safer this way. Right?

I was talking with a bunch of people the other day, and someone asked what we were all planning for the Fourth. Quickly, someone said "I'm going to read the Constitution and weep."

My plans are along the same lines. My duds for today: