One reason I think that people get tired of blogging.

Ah, the good old days of 4x5 sheet film and large format, black and white Polaroids.

Not a mannequin. Not an office building. Not a sign.

An old test shot for a real, live commercial job.

Rodenstock is not the subject's name. It's the name of the lens company whose lens I used.

Added this for the slower thinkers.

I was enjoying some very light hearted comments from my friend Michael Johnston re: the cessation of the VSL blog when I scrolled down and read, probably for the thousandth time, that all I post are thousands and thousands of photographs of signage, office buildings and mannequins. Discounting of course the actual thousands and thousands of event photos, portraits and even landscapes that I'd shared on the VSL blog. Oh, and the weary idea that I change camera systems all the time.

It was a dick-worthy comment and it pissed me off. Especially as it occurred just after I posted a tranche of many, many different portraits here. I went back and counted the image files attached to the old VSL blog and found that I had posted over 20,000 images over the course of 14 years and fewer than 5% fit into the categories of buildings, mannequins or signage. I also looked back at my camera acquisition habits in the last three years only to find that my allegiance to Leica products as my primary cameras was unassailable. I did help out a friend by buying a medium format camera he was desperate to sell but that camera has been fractionally visible in the blog posts. 

In a way I am glad that the commenter tossed off his gratuitous and snide comment because it helps me explain why I felt the need to shut off the VSL blog. It's mostly because the blog had its own momentum and what I would call its own truncated and compressed sense of history. I could buy a camera in 2010 and extensively review it, use it and subsequently sell it but all many readers ever remember is that I bought it in the first place. They seemed oblivious to the idea that anything ever happened after the initial acquisition. I guess in the minds of some of the slower readers every camera I've ever bought, over a 50 year history of making photographs, is currently resident and spread out through my office -- just hanging out, taking up space and time and, of course, all my financial resources. As though once they landed in my studio the cameras became permanent house guests and made themselves right at home. 

In fact, I don't think I have ever owned, concurrently, more than 10 cameras at a time and some of those would include little novelty point and shoots and some nostalgia models like my first real camera, a Canonet QL17iii. Getting rid of that one would be like pawning your wedding ring for beer money. 

It gets wearisome.

Blogger is interesting. Authors have no power to deny access to selected people. You can either share with the world or take the enterprise private and approve one member at a time. That's too much work. But still, I wish I could just block people who make the process less fun.