I love this shot. Phone cameras have rendered photography so artless (the way blogging has sucked the art out of writing) that when I see a well rendered shot I’m taken aback. I think the ease of the technology is the problem…it’s so quick, and so cheap, no one hesitates even a second to consider if something is worth photographing, or even to set it up right. Why bother? You can take a zillion shots and some are bound to be OK. OK…that’s the standard for photography now. It looks OK. And the technology is so piss poor, I am constantly amazed at how even the most lovely women are rendered plain by the phone camera..facial features flattened, shading lost, lighting a glare. And the most lovely scenes look like rejected stills on the cutting room floor.

As for blogs. Everybody blogs. Everybody. The first thing that pops into someone heads is poured into a blog and posted. There are no second drafts, and the concept of an editor is perfectly medieval.

Digital technology has made everything possible, alas it has made everything possible.

(After posting this essay I found out the photographer goes by the splendid name of El Imagenero. You can find much more of his work on his sites here and here, not to mention on Flikr and Instagram. Well worth a long luxuriant look or two.)

“It’s All About the Music”, photo by El Imagenero, taken at the Typhoon Restaurant this past summer (2012). He used a Nikon. That is the brilliant saxophonist Benn Clatworthy in the background with Aguabella Nuestra Era. In the foreground are charts (well, copies of the charts) from the late great Francisco Aguabella’s own book.