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Great Reads in Photography: February 7, 2021
Every Sunday, we bring together a collection of easy reading articles from analytical to how-to to photo-features in no particular order that did not make our regular daily coverage. Enjoy!
Lawrence Jackson: Black Photographer Will Document Historic White House Tenure of VP Kamala Harris – Culture Type
Lawrence Jackson was named photographer to Vice President Kamala Harris on January 15. Jackson’s career has taken him from rural Virginia’s small-town fairs to meetings in the Oval Office of the White House and beyond.
Jackson was the only Black photographer at the White House during both the terms of President Barack Obama. Recently he was a staff photographer to Harris on the campaign trail.
Lawrence has a talent for capturing the big scene, the iconic images that will help explain our times for future generations. But he also has a unique gift for capturing those quieter moments—the margins of a big event, the pauses in a busy day, some stolen time with Michelle and our girls. — President Barack Obama, in a foreword to Jackson’s book Yes We Did: Photos and Behind-the-Scenes Stories Celebrating Our First African American President, published in 2019.
Check out An Interview with Eric Draper, George W. Bush’s Presidential Photographer
Quiz:
Was Lawrence Jackson the first Black photographer to work as an official photographer in the White House during President Obama’s two terms?
Answer: No. Eric Draper worked as White House Photo Director during the two terms of President George W. Bush.
Who was the first Black woman to be appointed Director of Photography at the White House?
Answer: Sharon Farmer. Sharon Farmer (b. 1951) was the first African-American woman to be hired as a White House photographer and the first African American and first female to be Director of the White House Photography office. She served in the Clinton White House starting from 1993. She was director of the White House Photography office from 1999 to 2001, when McNeely was barred in the Lewinsky scandal’s fallout, and eventually quit in 1998.
Italy is the Best Place for Travel Photography – Scott Kelby
Terry White: “If COVID were completely behind us, and it was 100% safe to travel to anywhere, where is the first place you’d choose to go shooting travel photography?”
Scott Kelby: “Hands down, it would be Italy.”
Why Italy? “It’s one place that pretty much has it all, and because of the country’s small physical size (it’s actually smaller in size than the state of California), and its excellent train system and roadways, you can get to pretty much all of quick and easy,” explains Kelby.
Embed from Getty Images
Stock photography is often highly inaccurate and staged. PetaPixel ran a story in 2016 of models of various genders and racial backgrounds using a soldering iron to repair a circuit board. Instead of holding the iron by the handle, they were all holding it by the element, which could be about 500 degrees Fahrenheit.
Thomas Smith, CEO of Gado Images, took a selfie and ran it through Google Vision, an artificial intelligence API from Google which includes much-used facial recognition features.
The system highlighted his facial features by layering a series of dots and bounding boxes around his face. Smith published this image on several stock photo sites. This photo has now been published in over 50 magazines, making him the face of facial recognition.
15 Photographers That You Should Follow Immediately – BuzzFeed News
The 30 was started by the editorial staff of Photo District News magazine in 1999. It was initially limited to 30 young photographers under 30.
Time has described PDN’s annual list of 30 New and Emerging Photographers as “the go-to outlet to discover up-and-coming photographers, determined on the basis of creativity, versatility and distinctive vision,” and as “a career turning point” for those included on the list.
This original expanded to include all ages and has continued despite the folding of Photo District News. Two former Photo District News staff members — Kate Bubacz BuzzFeed News Photo Director and art director Sharon Ber — are still involved.
10 Photo Archive Websites that Let You Lose Yourself in History – Mashable
Check the article for full details and 7 more websites.
The Roaring ’20s Through the Eyes of a Woman Photographer – BuzzFeed News
Embed from Getty ImagesDora Kallmus, who went under Madame D’Ora, was a Jewish society photographer born in Vienna in 1881.
Kallmus became the first woman to be admitted to the Graphic Training Institute in 1905. In the same year, she became a member of the Association of Austrian photographers in a male-dominated field.
She had studios in Vienna, Germany and Paris. Her subjects included Pablo Picasso, Josephine Baker, Coco Chanel, Maurice Chevalier, Colette, and other dancers, actors, painters, and writers.
When the Nazis invaded France, she was forced into hiding but continued photographing after the war until she died in 1963.
How to Sell More Stock Photos: 9 Things to Avoid for Better Results – Deposit Photos
#1 Underestimate keywording
#2 Ignore seasonal demand
#3 Rely on personal taste only
Check the link for details and 6 more tips.
12 Common Wedding Photo Mistakes That Drive Photographers Crazy – The Knot
- Not Having a Clear Timeline
- Not Having a Backup Plan
- Denying There’s Family Drama
Check the link for details and 9 more tips.
Meet George Masa, the Photographer Whose Work Helped Protect the Great Smoky Mountains -Audubon
George Masa (born Masahara Lisuka in the 1880s), a Japanese immigrant, was an Ansel Adams of the Great Smoky Mountains. His landscape photographs helped create the establishment of America’s most-visited national park with 12.5 million visitors per year.
He struck up relationships with influential people like President Coolidge and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. when they visited the area.
Masa’s photo of Rockefeller ran in The New York Times, and he sent an original print to Rockefeller himself. Rockefeller donated $5 million the same year to buy the land that would become the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Want Some Inspiration for Lifestyle Photography? – Shotkit
- Instead of poses suggest activities
- Connect with your models
- Capture emotions
Click the link for details and 11 more tips!
Why You Can’t Sell Your Photography Prints
Evan Raft, an Atlanta based photographer, explains the concept of “High Placement Value” in print sales.
Photographer David Bailey Helped the Sixties Swing – Daily Beast
Embed from Getty Images“I fall in love with people when I photograph them for that fifteen minutes or half-hour; they become the whole center of the universe.” – David Bailey
Icons of Photography: James Nachtwey – United Nations of Photography
James Nachtwey is the central late 20th-century war photographer – outraged that, after the Holocaust and Vietnam, war is still, shockingly, an ever-present.
Nachtwey has photographed war and conflict in Northern Ireland, Rwanda, Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo, South Africa, Iraq, famine in Sudan, and Romanian orphanages. The day 9/11 happened, he was in New York and lived nearby. He saw the towers burning from his window and immediately rushed out to cover the tragedy.
In 2001, the documentary War Photographer was released, focusing on Nachtwey and his work. Directed by Christian Frei, the film received an Academy Award nomination for the best documentary film.
Check out James Nachtwey on the Power Photography Has to Change Our World
Why I Like This Photo – Alberto Ghizzi Panizza
I am particularly fond of this image because it was one of the first to make me win several photographic competitions more than ten years ago. At the time, the technique of the refraction of water droplets was almost unknown, and many believed it was the result of a photomontage. It is thanks to the development of this technique that I started doing my first photographic workshops. Moreover, over the years, despite having refined the technique and improved the photographic equipment, this is still one of my favorite dew refraction photographs. The arrangement of the drops and the perfect light of the day created the “perfect” conditions.
The most complicated aspect in making this image was maximizing the depth of field to have all the dewdrops and their refractions in focus. In life-size and beyond macro photography, the depth of field is increasingly scarce. For this, I have optimized the parallelism between the camera and subjects. To improve the natural light, I used a small mirror to illuminate the shaded areas using the same sunlight.
For years I had been experimenting with macro photography among the fields and floodplains of my areas. Among insects and natural details, I noticed that the dew droplets that I almost always found at dawn could reflect the background inside them. So, I first started with the reflections of the surrounding landscape. Then I looked for subjects that could be reflected inside but still easily recognizable despite the spherical distortion. This daisy was one of the first experiments in this research.
Shot on Nikon D300, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8D
Alberto Ghizzi Panizza is a professional photographer from Italy who is also a Nikon School Teacher since 2015 and ESO Photo Ambassador. Born in Parma, Italy in 1975, he inherited the artistic vein from his painter grandfather and started using the first digital cameras in 1998. He particularly loves nature and animals in all their forms and is constantly searching for the beauty of the world around us, finding in it its main source of inspiration. Panizza was also the first official Italian tester for the Nikon Z7.
Quote of the Week (or a Previous Week):
There is no such thing as a perfect skin; everyone needs retouching.* – Joel Grimes
*5.27 min in the video above
Joel Grimes is a Canon Explorer of Light and a photographer for over 32 years.
To see an archive of past issues of Great Reads in Photography, click here.
We welcome comments as well as suggestions. As we cannot possibly cover each and every source, if you see something interesting in your reading or local newspaper anywhere in the world, kindly forward the link to us here. ALL messages will be personally acknowledged.
About the author: Phil Mistry is a photographer and teacher based in Atlanta, GA. He started one of the first digital camera classes in New York City at The International Center of Photography in the 90s. He was the director and teacher for Sony/Popular Photography magazine’s Digital Days Workshops. You can reach him via email here.
Image credits: All photographs as credited and used with permission from the photographers or agencies.
TRIPLE Previous Year...
THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF ENFORCING HR 127 PART I
HR 127 will, if enacted, require registration of all firearms and all firearms owners, licensing for firearms owners subject to psychological evaluations, and serious criminal liability for failure to comply, along with some other prohibitionist fantasies. One gets the distinct impression of every bit of prohibitionist wishful thinking thrown together in a box, with little […]The Restless Corpse of Elmer McCurdy
Elmer McCurdy wanted to be an Old West outlaw, but he was particularly bad at it. He and his gang once used too much nitroglycerin during a train robbery and destroyed the safe they tried to break into -and its contents. A bank robbery failed when they couldn't open a safe. And for his last robbery, he targeted the wrong train, which had no money. McCurdy was eventually shot and killed by police in 1911, and that's when his adventures really began.
McCurdy’s body was taken to the Johnson Funeral Home in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. He had no immediate kin to claim the body, so it was preserved in hopes that someone would claim it. Several weeks elapsed, and still, no one showed up to claim the body. The funeral homeowner decided to embalm the body and dress him in a suit. He put up the body for public exhibition, charging people 5 cents just to take a look.
For five long years, Elmer’s body remained in the Oklahoma funeral home, till one day it was claimed. Two men, James, and Charles Patterson showed up at the funeral home and requested the body. They identified themselves as Elmer McCurdy’s long-lost brothers. The funeral director was a bit suspicious of the two, but since the attraction fell out of favor, he decided to let go of the body. He also felt that McCurdy deserved a decent burial after an extended stay in the funeral home.
McCurdy did not get a decent burial until 1977. Read the story of Elmer McCurdy's restless corpse at Sometimes Interesting. -via Strange Company
(Image credit: W. G. Boag)
The C-List Landscape Photographer’s Guide to Financial Success
You missed out on that big first wave of Instagram stardom, you jumped on YouTube too late and now your Facebook page’s dwindling audience lives exclusively in Murmansk.
You feel like your landscape photography is as good as (or better than) all these big-name photographers and you just want a slice of the cake. How can you turn your landscape photography skills into dollars?
There’s good news and there’s bad news. The good news is that it is possible to make money from landscape photography, the bad news is that there are a few hoops to jump through along the way. Here is my guide to the best way to maximize your income.
Lightroom Presets
This one’s easy. Everyone’s looking for that shortcut to a winning shot — a quick and simple way of transforming a photograph from the ordinary to the exceptional. Lightroom presets will never do that — they’re almost completely pointless — but your potential customers don’t know that!
So here’s the drill. Go and download someone else’s pack of landscape photography presets and tweak them very slightly. Now give them pretentious sounding names (such as “Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion”), export them, and bundle them up. Before you stick them on Shopify always remember to give the pack an aspirational and pretentious name like “Autumn Soliloquy”. Add a couple of your better photos (they don’t need to have any relevance whatsoever to the preset pack) and you’re golden. Now watch as a parade of useless photographers queue up and demand that you, “Shut up and take my money!”
Lessons
You’d rather be out taking your own shots and picking out keepers to hang on the walls of your very own gallery, but you’ve got to pay the bills, right? This step to financial independence is the famous photographic one-to-one. You offer tuition to people with all the photographic intuition of a spatula and earn filthy lucre for whoring yourself out. It’s simple.
Simply advertise your services on your social media platforms and offer half or full-day packages, out in the landscape, where photographic novices can learn all of the secret skills such as ‘light’, ‘composition’, ‘the rule of thirds’, ‘tripods’ and ‘capturing the serenity of nature in all its glory’.
In order to make it look like these sessions are over-subscribed, remember to put the occasional post on social media saying that you have had ‘cancellations for a fully booked session’ the following weekend, but that if they are quick they can ‘secure one of the strictly limited spots’.
Calendar
Almost certainly the only way you’ll ever make actual money from your landscape photography. The photographic calendar is a mainstay of the C-List Landscape Photographer’s money-making arsenal, a guaranteed annual pay-off, and rare ray-of-hope in an otherwise bleak financial landscape.
Simply try and find 14 decent shots from the tens of thousands you took over the course of the last year and stick ’em in a Snapfish calendar template. Give it a suitably arty name, such as “Resplendent Vistas of the Artichoke Peninsula” and you’re good to go.
Remember to get them on sale by July though, it’s no use trying to sell them in December because your customers will all have bought your competitor’s effort.
Prints
Sometimes people will message you on Facebook, raving about your photography and asking you for a print of a particular photograph you took. You will excitedly go off and get a quote from your local printers and send it to the eager beaver customer and then you will never hear from them ever again. This is because nobody wants to pay any more than about $50 for a two-meter stretched canvas with a floating oak border, including delivery, and if your quote exceeds that they will simply go and buy a generic print of palm fronds from their local DIY superstore.
So if you want to make money from prints you have to dispel the notion that you are selling ‘fine art photography’, embrace the bargain basement and sell $15 prints you produced yourself on your Canon Pixma printer and framed in plain white $3 frames from K-Mart. Easy.
Stock
Nothing screams maximum-effort-minimum-return like licensing your photographs on stock libraries. All you have to do is upload your photograph, spend an hour painstakingly selecting appropriate keywords, then add a title, category, location, description, and model release and you’re good to go.
Now just repeat this several thousand times to ensure that a few make it past the stock agency’s reviewing panel. As you’ll only be earning about $0.75 for a print resolution license of your photograph, it’s important to try and get as many photos up there as possible. If you apply yourself to the task, you might earn enough in a year to buy yourself a cappuccino.
Copyright Infringement
This is one of the leading growth areas in revenue for C-List landscape photographers. As with most photographic sectors, a corporate middle-man will do better than you out of the process, but that shouldn’t stop you from pursuing this worthwhile money-making enterprise.
Simply sign up with an agency such as Pixsy or Copytrack and then add your images to their database. They will then scour the Internet searching for websites that have used your photograph and when they find an offender, alert you to the infringement. Then all you have to do is give the agency the go-ahead and they will pursue the offender and seek financial redress from them.
Unfortunately, most copyright infringement is centered in China and no agency will ever bother pursuing financial compensation from Chinese businesses as they have free rein to steal whatever they want from whomever they want and use in any way they deem necessary. Also, any image you ever uploaded to a stock library can’t be pursued. However, you will still find there are plenty of hapless idiots out there who think anything that’s online is fair game and you can sue them for all they’re worth or, you know, the market value of your shot.
YouTube
If the success of famous YouTube photographers has proven anything, it’s that looking excruciatingly uncomfortable in front of a camera is not a barrier to financial freedom. If you’re prepared to film yourself out and about taking your photographs and then spend a full day editing your video and then uploading it to YouTube, it’s possible that you might attract an audience. Spend several years building a subscriber base that climbs out of the double digits and eventually Google will deem you worthy of carrying advertising on your channel. Then just sit back and wait as the monthly payments for $10 or $15 make all those endless hours, days, and weeks of effort worthwhile.
Patreon
It’s the photographer’s dream, encapsulated in one word … Patreon. Oh, how we love you Patreon. If enough people pity you sufficiently to throw in a few bucks, it’s entirely possible to eat out once a month on the proceeds of your Patreon fund. Unfortunately, it’s also entirely possible that nobody will throw a few bucks in your direction and you’ll end up looking like that toothless harmonica player busking outside the nearest strip mall with a few coins and a button in their begging bowl.
Influencer
It’s pretty tough to become an actual influencer in this day and age. Unless you are a spectacularly beautiful young woman, then you will find it hard to achieve the sort of social media follower numbers that businesses consider influencer-grade. But do not despair!
These days there’s a thing called a “micro-influencer”. Micro-influencers are people who have crawled over enough broken glass on their hands and knees to achieve between 1,000 and 50,000 followers. That’s right — with as few as 1,000 followers on your Instagram account or 2,000 subscribers on YouTube you are officially classed as a micro-influencer. This does not mean you will be invited to stay at five-star beach resorts in the Caribbean or comped free business class seats to events and festivals. However, you might score a new set of ND filters for your camera or a cheap Chinese-made knock-off of a Fitbit watch. And who doesn’t like knock-off Fitbit watches, right?
Affiliate Links
We’ve all seen them, the little list of blue links in the description of the YouTube video, or the bullet points in the ‘My Kit’ section of a photographer’s website. They’re Amazon affiliate links and if someone clicks on that link and then buys something – you get a cut! It’s virtually free money – you’d be crazy not to!
For every successful sale you point in Jeff Bezos’s direction, you’ll earn an amazing 4% of the purchase price, after taxes and deductions. So if someone buys a $2,000 camera within 24 hours of clicking on your link, you’ll get $80. How good is that? So get yourself an account and include a load of links to very expensive equipment that you ‘recommend’. Make sure you don’t put that list on an About Me page on your website which no-one apart from your mum’s ever looked at – preferably stick it somewhere click-baity that you can generate a ton of views on. Maybe reach out to a young female bikini influencer, do a travel photo-shoot at a scenic location and refer to the camera equipment that made the photos possible with links to your Amazon affiliate account. Easy money.
Blogging
The key to earning money from blogging is to lie through your teeth. People don’t want to hear the truth, they want to hear pipe dreams. Articles that do well on photography blogs tend to be ones that suggest it’s possible to earn a living from landscape photography. So go with things like, “How I Earn $200,000 a year from landscape photography” or “How I Made $50,000 in a Year from Calendars” and then pull a load of made-up facts and figures straight out of your a**. The reader will have no way of checking their veracity and you can clean-up with all those lovely AdSense dollars and affiliate links.
Easy Money
Being a C-List landscape photographer is to accept a life of graft and solitude, but with diligence and perseverance, it is possible to earn a salary comparable to that of a French fry attendant in a fast-food restaurant or an entry-level call center operative for an insurance company.
Maximize the income streams available to you, never pass up an opportunity to shill yourself, and moderate success in a tightly-defined local region will surely come to you.
Author’s note: This is a self-own and a bit of fun. I am a proud C-list landscape photographer, so please don’t doxx me and leave angry comments just because my little article rang true.
About the author: Andy Hutchinson is a photographer and journalist based in South Coast, New South Wales, Australia. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. You can find more of his work and words on his website, or by following him on Facebook and Instagram. This article was also published here.
Explained: Why The World’s Biggest Telescope Will Span Two Countries, 131,072 Antennas And 197 Dishes
Hong Kong Orders Schools to Teach Sweeping Pro-China Curriculum
This bottleneck is at an angle for easy fill and drinking
931 points, 101 comments.
Orchard Heritage Park in Sunnyvale, California
Sunnyvale, a Silicon-Valley city chockablock with tech and aerospace companies, once looked very different. Stone fruit orchards once covered its landscape and employed its citizens, and old-timers still speak fondly of oceans of pink-and-white flowers in the springtime and the summer fruit stands selling sweet apricots and cherries.
There aren't too many orchards left. But the city has preserved one 800-tree swath of the sweet, delicate Blenheim apricots that were once the local pride and joy. The orchard wraps around Sunnyvale's community center, and features an outdoor exhibit on the entrepreneurs and farm workers that once grew fruit in the area. But the orchard is not merely decorative. Workers still pick the apricots in the summer and sell preserves and dried apricots year-round from the white Bianchi Barn alongside the orchard, a preserved redwood barn originally constructed in 1918. At the height of Sunnyvale apricot season, around early July, the park also sets up a fresh apricot stand in the community center parking lot.
What Does the Title 'Esquire' Mean, Anyway?
The minor debate over First Lady Dr. Jill Biden’s title, which came up shortly after her husband’s election, may seem completely ridiculous and insulting, which it is, but it’s also the latest in a line of kerfuffles relating to how people in power in the United States present themselves. The extensive intricacies of British titling, and the power those titles conferred (and to a lesser extent, still confer), have left a lasting residue in some of the empire’s former colonies.
Those who think Dr. Biden should not use her earned title suggest she simply go by “Mrs.,” which signifies only that she is married, or “Madam,” which signifies only gender. The unstated goal of all this talk is a gross collection of sexism, elite gatekeeping, anti-elitism in general, and a simple partisan attack on the Biden administration. The idea of attacking someone in power by attacking a title is not a new phenomenon, and “Dr.” is not the only target.
One of the weirder movements in modern American political action attempted to attack a title so vigorously that it would have essentially collapsed the entire history of the American government. The movement didn’t succeed, because it was both factually wrong and wildly misguided, but it was wrong in a really interesting way. It relied on the title “Esquire,” which is one of the more common but most unusual ways a person can ask to be addressed.
That movement, born from the right-wing conspiracy forums of the early internet, purported that there was a “missing” Thirteenth Amendment that would have made the current Thirteenth (which abolished slavery) actually the Fourteenth. This phantom amendment, called the Titles of Nobility Amendment, was written in 1810. By law then, and now, the American government cannot bestow titles of nobility in the way that the English government once named new dukes or barons. The brief text of the amendment would have made these existing prohibitions even stronger: Any American who accepted a title of nobility or honor from a foreign government would be forbidden to hold office, and would be stripped of citizenship.
In 1983, a conspiracy theorist and researcher named David Dodge found an 1825 copy of the U.S. Constitution in the Belfast Library in Maine. The copy included that Thirteenth Amendment, and Dodge wrote several articles about it that made some rather assumptive leaps. Those leaps were: 1) The amendment had been legally enacted. 2) “Esquire” is a title of nobility. 3) “Esquire” also refers to lawyers. 4) The amendment rescinds the citizenship and the right to hold office from anyone with a title of nobility. Therefore, no lawyers have, since 1810, been allowed to serve in government or even hold citizenship. Therefore, given that over half of the country’s presidents and a huge percentage of its elected officials have been lawyers, everything you thought about this country’s history is a gigantic sham. At least that’s what Dodge argued.
It amounted to a huge attack on perceived elitism, and has been wielded repeatedly, though never effectively, as a weapon against Democrats. In 2010, the Republican party of Iowa attempted to include recognizing the missing Thirteenth Amendment as part of its platform, meant in this case to remove then–President Obama from office. Obama did pass the Illinois bar exam, making him a lawyer, and had also received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, which would, if you follow the odd logic to its totally illogical conclusion, have disqualified him for the office of president. There’s something of a libertarian and populist bent to it.
Jol A. Silversmith, a lawyer who works primarily with aviation law, took a side interest in this whole conspiracy business when he was in law school. “The right-wing groups are factually wrong, but did latch onto the fact that this was a very poorly documented amendment,” he says. Silversmith wrote a definitive article on it in the Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal in 1999, debunking just about everything in the conspiracy theory. For one thing, the amendment was never ratified by enough of the states to be enacted. It was printed in some legal texts as though it had been ratified, but Silversmith writes that, due to a chaotic government (dealing with both new states and new wars) and poor communication infrastructure, there were frequent misprintings and uncertainty about what exactly was and was not in the Constitution.
There were frequent misprintings of the Constitution and uncertainty about what exactly was and was not in it.
The other fascinating part of this whole saga is the assertion that “Esquire” is a term of nobility in the first place, and its one-to-one connection with the legal profession. When we talk about “titles of nobility,” the sort that the failed Thirteenth Amendment was trying to block, we’re talking about titles conferred on a person by a government, not by trade.
The term “Esquire” comes to the United States from medieval Europe, and more directly from the United Kingdom, a place absolutely mad for nobility and titles, though admittedly less now than it used to be. The governments of the countries that make up the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) have the power to confer a wide variety of titles on their subjects. And there’s a pretty wide variety of ways the United Kingdom and its imperial predecessors could bestow these signs of nobility. The peerage system creates an aristocratic network of families outside the royal family; those might, at different points in history, come with an obligation to supply military forces to the king, or with a seat in government. Titles in the peerage system include duke, marquess, earl, viscount, and baron. They are historically passed down to future generations, as fans of Bridgerton or Downton Abbey well know.
Go down a level and you get to those who have lesser titles granted by the government, generally referred to as “Sir” or “Dame.” There are the baronets, who are kind of a weird outlier, given that they’re referred to as “Sir” as well, but also pass that title to eldest sons. They’re the gibbons of the aristocracy—not really a great ape like the chimpanzee, but certainly not a monkey.
Another step down is the knights. Prior to around 1000, the word “knight,” or its equivalents such as knægt, kneht, and cniht, had no noble connotation; it just referred to a professional soldier. The best of those soldiers were sometimes given land or money by lords, and slowly they began to enter noble society. If a lord wanted to hire a bunch of mercenaries to defend or attack or invade, knights could provide that, at a cost. Eventually the social distinction between the two was fairly slim. Knights, after all, had to be wealthy and command their own soldiers.
During the Crusades, as roving bands of knights became a social problem, the Catholic Church embarked on a quest to set up some kind of social restraint through a chivalric code. It worked, kind of. Knights weren’t restrained, exactly, but some did acquire wealth and social status. During the 13th century, the role and position of knighthood really changed as the ideal of chivalry took hold. Knights became an elevated class of their own.
This is where esquires come into play. The word itself derives from Old French, and in turn from Latin, where it means something like “shield-holder.” In the 1200s and 1300s in England, a variety of languages were used, so such figures might be referred to as the Latin armiger (“arms-holder,”) or scutifer (“shield-bearer”), or the French escuier, which became “esquire.” These terms all refer to roughly similar people. This role was generally considered moderately prestigious for young men of some wealth, but at its core it was a service job. You carry a knight’s stuff, tend to his horses, that kind of thing. “Esquire” and “squire” were names for the same gig for a few hundred years.
In 1363, the esquire’s place as a respectable social rank was codified in the Sumptuary Laws, which were essentially a huge list of what different groups of people could and could not wear. That list included esquires as a social group, alongside gentlemen and anyone else below the level of knight who actually had money and land. This was the same time that the idea of a gentry emerged in England: People who are not noble, but certainly not peasants, either. They were people worthy of being ranked above somebody in the social hierarchy.
So esquire had come to suggest moderate respectability with a dash of prestigious servitude. By the 1500s, knighthood no longer necessarily had any connection to soldiering and had begun to be used simply as an honorific, a nice title a sovereign could hand out to pals. A similar process occurred for esquire, and divorced it from its roots. By 1586, a writer named John Ferne had already described the term as basically meaningless and kind of annoying, used by rich guys who wanted to seem noble-adjacent.
Successive writers tried to pin down what it actually meant, with no great success. Ferne, who was himself also a lawyer, noted that it was often used by those in the legal profession. Later definitions suggest someone adjacent to power, maybe the son of a knight or the younger son of a titled noble who would receive no other title of his own. But also, consistently, it included someone in a legal profession: a justice of the peace, a barrister, a sergeant-at-law. It was never recorded, explicitly, why this might be.
Successive writers tried to pin down what the title "Esquire" actually meant, with no great success.
"Esquire" soon migrated across the Atlantic. Virginia’s Colonial Council, which held meetings just before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, used a variety of noble-sounding but not actually noble titles for its members, including “The Honourable” and, of course, "Esquire." It also continued to be used for law-adjacent Americans; such as a justice-of-the-peace esquire from 1797.
Over the following two centuries, "Esquire" began to fade in the United Kingdom. In the 20th century, the country slowed and then stopped giving out hereditary titles; the last one granted was in 1984. Social changes—immigration, new forms of wealth besides land ownership, fame and adulation going to entertainers and athletes instead of merely the obscenely wealthy—left the aristocracy intact, and rich as hell, but no longer at the forefront of social consciousness. “Esquire,” as it had become a term of straining toward nobility, became less useful.
In the United States, though, it persisted, specifically in its connection with the legal profession. This profession is largely state-regulated, and most states don’t really care about the use of the term by people in or out of the profession. Some states have penalized people for it, though. In California, Arizona, and the District of Columbia, local bar associations have penalized or advised against any non-lawyer (or suspended lawyer) from appending “Esquire” to their names, as it may erroneously signal the capacity to practice law.
American lawyers all could call themselves “Esquire,” inasmuch as anyone can, and for lawyers it wouldn’t be misleading. But not many do. “There's not a huge amount of debate, but when it does come up, there's a sense that this is a kind of archaic term, it's somewhat embarrassing,” says Silversmith. “It's something where, in my personal experience, I would never use it. It would be horrifically pretentious to do that.”
But lawyers, unlike doctors (medical or otherwise), have no other title-based way to signal what they do, or, to be somewhat uncharitable, that what they do is special, and therefore that who they are is important. Lawyers are simply not conferred a title when they pass the bar. “Esquire” steps in there, but the very fact that it is optional conveys a sense of self-marketing that many lawyers may find unbecoming. That sense, though, is perfectly in line with how the term has always been used.
Despite all these facts—that “Esquire” is not a title of nobility, that it does not necessarily refer to lawyers, and that the “missing” Thirteenth Amendment was never ratified in the first place—the anti-authoritarian cause still pops up from time to time. It is an early populist meme of the internet age, one that took root in message boards and forums, picking up some minor momentum despite being both impractical and wrong. Today, of course, when the power of these memes actually invaded the halls of American power, the arguments of the Thirteenthers seem almost quaint.
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Freshlist's Seasonal Produce Clock in Charlotte, North Carolina
Designed to highlight the agricultural diversity of the Piedmont region of the Carolinas throughout the year, this seasonal produce clock was completed in 2020.
Measuring nearly 12 feet in diameter, the installation features a custom-built clock hand that makes one full rotation per year. With 12 o'clock aligning with the winter solstice, the hand slowly progresses through the seasons, passing over hand-painted illustrations of dozens of unique fruits and vegetables.
Intended to promote local agriculture and the importance of eating seasonally, the concept was created by Freshlist, a local food hub headquartered in the building where the clock was installed.
The project was initiated during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 with funding and support from the City of Charlotte and the NoDa Neighborhood Business Association. It was also designed as a way to support local artists and create engagement within the surrounding Belmont community.
Several artists who contributed to the project included: Jackie Hurd, Ashley Bonomo, Jason, and Jeremy Calamusa. Freshlist's seven team members also painted one item of their choosing.
A full list of the produce featured on the clock include:
Rainbow carrots, collard greens, Chioggia beets, watermelon radishes, Kassia limes, romanesco, kalettes, kumquats, Meyer lemons, bok choy, easter egg radishes, kohlrabi, peas, asparagus, morel mushrooms, garlic, red onions, strawberries, ramps, pickling cucumbers, cherry & heirloom tomatoes, blackberries, Chinese long beans, peaches, corn, raspberries, orange watermelon, red and green okra, butter beans, persimmon, figs, pawpaws, honey crisp & granny smith apples, delicata squash, peach sugar rush peppers, purple sweet potatoes, broccoli, napa cabbage, Carolina gold rice, blue hubbard squash, spinach, and peanuts.
The "Sacconi Rossi" Crypt in Rome, Italy
Rome consists of several contrasts between life and death, opulence, and decay.
The Tiber Island considered a sacred enclave across the centuries hides one of the best-kept secrets in its subterranean world, the burial crypt of the Sacconi Rossi Brotherhood.
The confraternity, whose complete name was Brotherhood of the Devotees of Jesus at Calvary and Holy Lady Mary of Sorrows in Relief of the Holy Souls in Purgatory was established in 1760. The institution was founded by young Christians to redeem souls suffering in purgatory and to support the deceased. They wore red hooded capes commonly known as the “Sacconi Rossi.”
The main goal of this charitable organization was the dignification and burial of abandoned bodies, especially people who drowned in the Tiber and went unclaimed. Their mission was carried out at night in torchlight processions.
Their headquarters was located at the Franciscan Missionary College beside the Basilica of St. Bartholomew, built above the ancient temple of Asclepius. In 1784, the community obtained permission to build a crypt in the basement to bury their deceased members.
The bones of the dead brothers were used to decorate the walls and the niches. The ossuary was regularly damaged by floods and was used until 1836. During this time, cholera had ravaged the region and the pope banned these types of burials.
French troops sent by Napoleon III to suppress the 1849 Roman Republic damaged the crypt and transformed the space into a dormitory. However, today it is still a very solemn and enigmatic vault, with the imposing presence of the skeleton attributed to a great master located in the main altar.
Despite the fact that Pope Pius IX authorized new burials in the crypt, the brotherhood almost went extinct when the Kingdom of Italy mandated that all burials happen in authorized cemeteries.
Since 1988, the Order Ospedaliero di San Giovanni di Dio Fatebenefratelli took control of the oratory and crypt to ensure its survival.
On the evening of November 2nd, visitors can join their candlelit procession that descends from the church of San Giovanni Calibita, to the banks of the Tiber to bless the waters and lay a wreath of flowers in homage to those that have drowned.
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Turning Doomed Old Houses Into Eye-Catching Art
There’s a certain kind of magic in old houses, whether you’re restoring a home to its original glory or just daydreaming about moving across the country for one. Likewise, it’s always a little heartbreaking to see a time-tested beauty demolished, even if you realize you’d never have been able to fix the place up yourself. Patrick Hayes knows the feeling well. “It’s really a shame,” says the founder of Nashville’s 1767 Designs. “You have this town with such a rich history, and beautiful homes that were built with such an attention to craftsmanship and quality. These homes deserve a better fate than to just be thrown away.”
Hayes can’t save every beautiful old house in Middle Tennessee from demolition, but he has figured out a way for their old bones to enjoy a second life. His company, 1767 Designs, repurposes discarded wood from torn-down homes into coffee tables, wall hangings, and even custom-built geometric installations such as the ones at Music City hotspots Urban Cowboy and the Thompson Hotel. The idea sparked in 2014, when Hayes bought a small bundle of wood from a neighbor in Franklin whose contracting job left him with an abundance of the stuff. “He said, ‘Why do you want that? It’s garbage,’” Hayes recalls. Undeterred, he paid a fair price for the stack, ultimately using it to build his first coffee table on the balcony of his apartment. “The rest is history.”
A few projects later, Hayes booked a booth to sell his furniture at the Nashville Flea Market. To his surprise, a customer asked if she could buy the coffee table without the legs: She wanted to hang it on the wall. “That was a light bulb moment for me,” he says. “This is art, and it can function like that in any respect.” As 1767 Designs continued to grow—from balcony to garage to studio space to storefront, and from a single artisan to a team of twelve—the company also expanded into hangable wall art and other stylistic offerings such as a serving tray and shelving, with custom-built commissions available alongside an increasing number of limited-edition statement pieces.
Each design sold gets tagged with information about the materials used to create it, including the year the house that supplied the wood was built. And while the studio’s most recognizable works may be larger displays in restaurants and bars, 1767 Designs offers plenty of smaller pieces, too. “I want anyone to be able to have a piece of what we’re doing,” Hayes says. “Art is meant to be shared and enjoyed.”
For all the success of his company, Hayes still doesn’t necessarily consider himself a woodworker, and he’s quick to correct anyone who mistakes 1767 Designs for a one-man operation. Every job is a team effort, and employees share the task of salvaging wood from demolitions, stripping out nails or other construction debris, and conceptualizing new collections. The work continues to attract a particularly eclectic group of makers. “We’ve found that those are our people: people who are inspired to create in some way, whatever their medium is,” says Hayes, noting that the pandemic has added even more artists and musicians to the company’s ranks as tour cancellations have grounded many Nashville creatives. “I think we’d have a pretty slammin’ 1767 house band,” he jokes, “if we ever wanted to start one.”
For inquiries of the non-musical variety, check out what 1767 Designs has available for immediate purchase on the company website. The forthcoming Birdsall Collection, a line of statement art inspired by the native birds of Tennessee, is now available for preorder. And if you happen to know of a doomed old home you can’t bear to see go, 1767 Designs can accommodate requests with your materials, too, transforming a disappointing loss into a pretty piece of the past you can continue to cherish.
The post Turning Doomed Old Houses Into Eye-Catching Art appeared first on Garden & Gun.
1954 Aston Martin DB2/4 Drophead Coupe
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Carroll Shelby's 1965 427 Cobra Roadster
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Zippo Pipe Insert Lighter
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Castagnola Heritage 9.9 Yacht
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Miller High Life Toast From Afar Glasses
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1974 BMW 3.5 CSL IMSA Batmobile Race Car
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1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 Coupe
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36 Awe-Inspiring Sun, Moon, and Milky Way Photos of 2020
The popular outdoor photo planning app PhotoPills has picked 36 of the best Sun, Moon, and Milky Way photos captured by photographers in its community over the past year. If you need some photo inspiration and enjoy night sky shots, this is the gallery for you.
Photos in this gallery were submitted to the PhotoPills Awards, which awards a $3,000 cash grand prize to the best overall photo.
Sailboat with an Omega Sunset
“Sailboat with an Omega Sunset” captured in Valencia (Spain) by Toni Sendra (@sendratoni). Canon 5D Mark IV | 400mm | f/8 | 1/4000s | ISO 800.
Sendra is the winner of the 2020 PhotoPills Awards and the cash prize.
Sunrise in Nynäshamn
Man shot from a cave during the last Sunrise of 2019 in Nynäshamn (Sweden) by Philip Slotte (@philipslotte). Nikon D810 | 16mm | f/16 | 1/13s | ISO 100.
Star Trails on the Road
Star trails over the Bixby Bridge on the Pacific Coast Highway in Central California (USA) by Marcin Zajac (@mrcnzajac). Nikon D600 | 15mm | f/4 | 5min | ISO 100 | Stacked photos.
The Moon and the Windmills of Consuegra
Moonrise on December 11, 2019 over the windmills of Consuegra (Spain) at Sunset by Juan López Ruiz (@j.lopez1989). Nikon D750 | 600mm | f/11 | 1/25s | ISO 100.
Solar Eclipse
Man over the solar eclipse in the Andes (Chile) by Michael Ostaszewski (@michael_ostaszewski). Canon 5D Mark IV | 800mm | f/8 | 1/100s, 1/50s, 1/25s, 1/13s, 1/6s, 1/3s, 0.6s | ISO 800.
Milky Way Reflection Over Uyuni
Man over the Milky Way reflected on the Salar de Uyuni (Bolivia) by Jheison Huerta (@jheison_huerta). Canon 5D mark IV | 16mm | f/2.8 | 20s | ISO 6400.
Full Moon Behind the Mallorca Cathedral
Full Moon with the Cathedral of Mallorca (Spain) by Jaume Llinàs (@ja1met). Sony a7 III | 560mm | f/8 | 1/40s | ISO 1600.
Red Earthshine
Twighlight earthshine over a silhouette of the vegetation in South Chile by Yuri Beletsky (@yuribeletsky). Nikon D810a | 200mm | f/5.6 | 1/20s | ISO 400.
Bivouac Under the Snow and the Milky Way
Bivouac in the snow under the winter Milky Way, next to the Veronica Cabin Refuge in Picos de Europa (Spain) by Pablo Ruiz García (@pablo.ruizgarcia). Nikon D810 | 14mm | f/2.8 | 25s | ISO 6400 | 3800K.
Spinaker Tower at Sunset
Portsmouth’s Spinaker Tower at Sunset, taken from Hayling Island (UK) by Trevor Owen (@tre_o_photo). Sony a7R III | 500mm | f/9 | 1/4000 | ISO 125.
Color Circumpolar
Circumpolar above some trees by Mario Konang (@lightrecords_mario_konang).
Moonset Behind Monserrat
Moonset behind Montserrat mountain by Miquel (@somriualacamera). Canon EOS 80D | 300mm | f/6.3 | 1/500s | ISO 800.
Sunrise at The Caddell’s Folly
Sunrise over The Caddell’s Folly in Naul (Meath, Ireland) by Pawel Zygmunt (@breaking_light_pictures). DJI Mavic Pro 2 | 28mm | f/3.5 | 1/200s | ISO 100.
Milky Way Arch Over the Grignetta Shelter
Milky Way arch over the Grignetta shelter at the Bergamo Alps (Italy) by Stefano Pellegrini (@pels_photo). Nikon D850 | 20mm | f/1.8 | 30s | ISO 4000 | Haida Clear Night filter.
Parishenge at the Arc du Triomphe
Parishenge at the Arc du Triomphe in Paris (France) by Carole Coiffier (@carole_coiffiercolas). Nikon D850 | 200mm | f/8 | 1/8000s | ISO 160.
Full Moon Behind the Edge NYC Sky Deck
Full Moon behind the Edge NYC sky deck in New York City (USA) by Jeff Casey (@jeffrcasey). Nikon D850 | 390mm | f/9 | 1/50s | ISO 64.
Milky Way Over a Rock Arch
Milky Way over a rock arch in Picos de Europa (Spain) by Pablo Ruiz García (@pablo.ruizgarcia). Nikon D810 | 14mm | f/2.8 | 25s | ISO 6400 | 2-row panorama (foreground) and 1-row panorama (sky).
Solar Eclipse Silhouettes
Solar eclipse silhouettes by Kareem Khalaf (@kareemkhalaf_photography). Nikon D850 | 800mm | f/22 | 1/1000s | ISO 100 | ND 10 stops.
Moon Silhouette
Moon silhouette in La Pedriza (Spain) by Paco Farero (@paco_farero). Canon 5D Mark IV | 840mm | f/13 | 1/400s | ISO 3200.
Comet Neowise Over Heastone Rock
Comet Neowise over Heastone Rock in Josua Tree National Park (California, USA) by Chris Olivas (@cholivas). Sony a7S II | 200mm | f/4 | 10s | ISO 12800.
Full Moon and Jupiter with its Moons
Full Moon and Jupiter with its moons over a climber silhouette in La Pedriza (Spain) by Dani Sanz (@danisanzfoto). Canon 6D Mark II | 300mm | f/5.6 | 1/15s (foreground), 1/60s and 1/125s (Moon) | ISO 3200 | 2x teleconverter | 3-shot blending.
Sunburst Behind the Sassolungo
Sunburst behind the Sassolungo in the Dolomites (Italy) by Davide Donati (@xandet). Nikon D750 | 30mm | f/13 | 1/100s | ISO 100.
Comet Neowise Over Stonehenge
Comet Neowise over Stonehenge (Wiltshire, UK) by Declan Deval (@decsphotos). Canon Ra | 150mm | f/5 |15s (foreground) and 30s (sky) | ISO 1600.
Full Moon Rising Behind Cape Byron Lighthouse
Full Moon rising behind Cape Byron Lighthouse at Byron Bay (New South Wales, Australia) by Bob Charlton (@oz_nippon_images). Canon 5D Mark IV | 1200mm | f/13 | 1/125s | ISO 1000.
Sun Setting Behind the Virxe Do Porto
Sun setting behind the Virxe Do Porto in Valdoviño (Spain) by Daniel Viñé (@danielvgphoto). Sony a7R III | 12mm | f/16 | shutter speed bracketing | ISO 100.
Milky Way Arch Over the Barcience Castle
Milky Way arch over the Barcience castle in Toledo (Spain) by Luis Cajete (@luis_cajete). Nikon D750 | 14mm | f/2.8 | 25s | ISO 3200 | 3700K | panorama.
Full Moon Behind the Belltower
Full Moon behind the belltower of Menorca’s Cathedral (Spain) by Josep Benejam Enrich (@j.benejam). Nikon D7100 | 400mm | f/5.6 | 1/4s | ISO 280.
Full Moon Over an Industrial Chimney
Full Moon over an industrial chimney in Spain by Jesús Manzaneque (@forilmanza). Nikon D500 | 600mm | f/6.3 | 1/100s | ISO 400.
Sunset Silhouettes
Sunset silhouettes in Mumbai (India) by Amit Solanki (@vasco_di_gama). Nikon D3500 | 90mm | f/7.1 | 1/250s | ISO 200.
Milky Way at the End of the Road
Vertical Milky Way at the end of the road in Yecla (Spain) by Jaime Gil (@jamesgilro). Canon 6D | 35mm | f/1.4 | 10s | ISO 2500.
Sunrise Behind the One World Trade Center
Sunrise behind the One World Trade Center (New York, USA) by Alyssa (@amc811.photos). Sony a7R III | 600mm | f/6.3 | 1/4000s | ISO 100.
Milky Way Aligned with the Salinas de Fuencaliente
Vertical Milky Way aligned with the Salinas de Fuencaliente (La Palma, Spain) by Pablo Ruiz García (@pablo.ruizgarcia). Nikon D810 | 14mm | f/2.8 | 25s | ISO 6400.
Full Moon Rising Behind the Campo de Criptana Windmills
Full Moon rising behind the windmills of Campo de Criptana (Spain) by Jesús Manzaneque Arteaga (@forilmanza). Nikon D500 | 600mm | f/6.3 | 1/25s | ISO 100.
Solar Flare
Solar flare captured in Chile by Mariano Srur (@marianosrur). Sony a7R IV | 600mm | f/11 | 1/60s | ISO 100 | 5875K.
Native American Petroglyphs Under the Geminids
Native American petroglyphs under the Geminids Meteor Shower (New Mexico, USA) by Igal Brener (@igal_photo). Sony a7R III | 28mm | f/2.8 | 10s | ISO 1600.
Elliott and E.T. Silhouette Behind a Full Moon
Elliott and E.T. silhouette behind a Full Moon (Madrid, Spain) by Kike Bustos (@kikebustos.fotografia). Canon EOS 77D | 600mm | f/11 | 1/6s | ISO 800.
If you’d like to read the stories behind these photos, you can find them over on the PhotoPills blog. 365 of the featured photos have also been published in the free PhotoPills Awards ebook.
Image credits: All photographs courtesy PhotoPills and copyright their respective photographers.
