My book,
Engaging Ambience, takes a look at how we research the rich, everyday contexts of communication.
It’s an academic book, so it’s written for a specialist audience—other
researchers, like me, and advanced students of rhetoric, writing, and
communication studies.
But I’ve been heartened by interest in the book from people who are
not part of that specialist audience. And good portions of it
were in fact written for a general audience.
This post is for anyone interested in the book’s ideas—a guide to
the most accessible sections for anyone willing to give it a go.
If you just want the page numbers and sections that are most accessible,
feel free to scroll on down!
Engaging Ambience In a Nutshell
Let’s say you get into an argument with your significant other on an
ordinary Wednesday afternoon inside a chain sandwich shop. It’s been
simmering for a while, this argument, and for whatever complex set of
reasons, it boiled over while you waited for your BLT with vegan bacon.
What factors play a role in this argument?
Surely the quality of the sandwich shop service has nothing to do with
it, right? Nor the Muzak versions of Ke$ha piped overhead? What about
the spotty air conditioning, or the smile—flashed at you as you walked in—from that good-looking stranger in
the corner booth?
Surely none of these things are the root cause of the argument.
But some of these things might matter, not only here and now, but because of experience with
previous iterations of similar routines—monthly trips to the
sandwich shop, road-trip Ke$ha sing-alongs, the uncanny resemblance of
that good-looking stranger to your ex…
What kinds of things actually matter in any everyday
communication scenario?
That’s the question this book tries to answer, by suggesting theoretical
and methodological approaches that can better account for
everything that might matter.
The Background for Engaging Ambience
In the last 30 years or so, scholars in rhetoric and writing studies
have turned their attention to the materiality of communication
in all its forms. How do things matter in any given communication event? How do our material and ambient surroundings condition communication?
This “turn” in the theory and practice of rhetoric has gone by a
few different names, the most common of which is “new materialism.” Many
scholars in rhetoric and writing have borrowed and built on ideas from
philosophy, theoretical physics, gender and women’s studies, and several
other disciplines to re-examine what rhetoric is, how rhetoric
works, and where rhetoric shows up in the world.
For me, one of the most influential books published in the last 15 years
is Thomas Rickert’s Ambient Rhetoric, which came out in 2013.
So, my book is responding to a couple of major developments—
new materialist ideas and their relevance to rhetoric, and
Rickert’s notion that rhetoric is ambient—that rhetoric, in
fact, is how human beings tune into the world.
What motivated me most, though, was this:
if rhetoric is indeed ambient (it is!), then how would we study that
ambience empirically (i.e., through observational studies and
fieldwork)?
The idea that rhetoric is ambient—that the muzak in a sandwich shop
might play some role in how we communicate with one another—is
simultaneously wonderful and bewildering.
Empirical researchers in rhetoric have long focused on what people
say, what they write, and to a lesser extent, how they
move their bodies or present themselves visually.
We’re a discipline of words, primarily.
So how should we study things like vibes and feelings and clothes and
background music?
Most of the book is me trying to answer this question, while showing how
those answers played out in a variety of empirical studies.
Much of the specialist discourse in the book is about methodologies and
methods—what are some ways that we might better account for things like
muzak, glances across the room, and spotty air conditioning—with
rigorous and well-triangulated approaches.
In order to do this for my audience of specialists I’ve had to do some
deep dives into the literature of my field, the literature of related
fields (such as visual anthropology and sociology), and the foundational
theories informing the new materialist “turn” and Rickert’s
Ambient Rhetoric.
This is the stuff that’s inside baseball, and that non-specialists may
want to skip (but maybe come back to later!).
Things to Keep in Mind
If you’re a non-specialist, here are some things to keep in mind as you
read the more accessible sections of Engaging Ambience:
rhetoric is more than just how humans communicate with one
another—it’s our primary filter on reality, how we understand
everything that we experience (even and especially those things that
can’t be put into words);
humans aren't the only ones doing rhetoric!
rhetoric is not only a way of knowing the world, it’s a way of
being in (and of) the world;
in any given chapter, I’m trying to understand and present ways of
researching all of the above.
The Good Stuff
Here are the sections of the book most accessible to non-specialists:
5–9 (the entire first section of the Intro)
15–17 (section start to break) for a snapshot of what the book’s about
24–26 for a condensed overview of the book
27–30 for a fieldwork vignette
36–39 for a fieldwork vignette
43–46 juxtaposes visuality and visibility (academic, but potentially
interesting to many)
53–57 on this-now-here-ness (theoretical, but hopefully accessible)
58 (first two paras)
70–71
87–90 for a fieldwork vignette
106–111 for analysis and explication of the previous vignette
111–116 if you want more on that field site
119–124 for an overview of Eucharist research
132–137 for fieldwork vignettes
137–143 for an in-depth exploration of one participant’s experience of
Eucharistic Adoration
143–148 theory–heavy, but crucial section for understanding the next
chapter
149–154 fieldwork vignette, chapter overview
159–162 set up of the research for the chapter
[162–170 is one of the most heavily theoretical sections of the book,
but not *academic*; iow, any thoughtful person can hang with it, but
it’ll take some work]
170–187 is certified banger status that anyone can read, and my
favorite part of the book
191–200 tough in spots, but should be intelligible to most
non-specialists
200–201 on the origin and meaning of the word “photography”
208–210
If you read any of the book, thank you! I’d love to know what you
think about it.
I Am the Light of this World — Michael Parker | 4.28
The Art of Brevity — Greg Faulkner | 4.30
Greeks Bearing Gifts — Philip Kerr | 5.2
The Secret Pilgrim — John Le Carré | 5.8
Sam — Allegra Goodman | 5.15
The Every — Dave Eggers | 5.15
Singer Distance — Ethan Chatagnier | 5.22
Sportin’ Jack — Paul Strohm | 5.23
The 4-Hour Workweek — Timothy Ferriss | 5.28
Summer Lightning — P. G. Wodehouse | 5.29
The Committed — Viet Thanh Nguyen | 6.3
The Lover — Marguerite Duras (Trans. Barbara Bray) | 6.5
The Thin Man — Dashiell Hammett | 6.6
Goodbye, Things — Fumio Sasaki (Trans. Eriko Sugita) | 6.14
The Undying — Anne Boyer | 6.17
Gone to Dust — Matt Goldman | 6.24
Der Löwe Büllt — Tommy Jaud | 6.24
Smart Brevity — Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, & Roy Schwartz | 6.28
Fuccboi — Sean Thor Conroe | 6.29
Blue Like Me — Aaron Philip Clark | 7.3
The God of Small Things — Arundhati Roy | 7.10
Heavy Weather — P.G. Wodehouse | 7.14
Arlington Park — Rachel Cusk | 7.17
The Spectator Bird — Wallace Stegner | 7.18
Northanger Abbey — Jane Austen | 7.21
Eurotrash — Christian Kracht | 7.27
The Highland Witch — Susan Fletcher | 7.27
Dark Earth — Rebecca Stott | 7.31
Stay True — Hua Hsu | 7.31
Thinking 101 — Woo-kyoung Ann | 8.1
Far from the Madding Crowd — Thomas Hardy | 8.8
King Lear — William Shakespeare | 8.10
Feed Them Silence — Lee Mandelo | 8.10
The Tao of Pooh — Benjamin Hoff | 8.10
Bannon — Louis L’Amour | 8.14
My Man Jeeves — P.G. Wodehouse | 8.15
The Elegance of the Hedgehog — Muriel Barbery (Trans. Alison Anderson)| 8.17
Red Memory: The Afterlives of China’s Cultural Revolution — Tania Branigan | 8.18
Shy — Max Porter | 8.19
The Orchard Keeper — Cormac McCarthy | 8.20
Heart of Darkness — Joseph Conrad | 8.21
Blood Meridian — Cormac McCarthy | 8.27
LaserWriter II — Tamara Shopsin | 8.28
The Quiet American — Graham Greene | 8.28
Blueprint for a Book — Jennie Nash | 8.29
Girl with a Pearl Earring — Tracy Chevalier | 8.31
The Secret Adversary — Agatha Christie | 9.2
Elements of Fiction — Walter Mosley | 9.3
The Dogs of Riga — Henning Mankell | 9.8
Firefly: Generations — Tim Lebbon | 9.11
World Without Mind — Franklin Foer | 9.18
Fairy Tale — Stephen King | 9.25
The Inimitable Jeeves — P. G. Wodehouse | 10.1
Blindsight — Peter Watts | 10.4
The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time — Will Durant | 10.9
The Walk and Other Stories — Robert Walser (Trans. Christopher Middleton) | 10.9
Stonefather — Orson Scott Card | 10.11
All Quiet on the Western Front — Erich Maria Remarque (Trans. A.W. Wheen) | 10.14
Write for Your Life — Anna Quindlen | 10.16
The Einstein Intersection — Samuel R. Delany | 10.23
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man — James Joyce | 10.30
The Creative Act — Rick Rubin | 11.6
A Room with a View — E.M. Forster | 11.6
Euphoria — Lily King | 11.13
Broken Ice — Matt Goldman | 11.18
We Are Too Many — Hannah Pittard | 11.18
Atonement — Ian McEwan | 11.24
A Quiet Flame — Philip Kerr | 11.26
Things We Lost to the Water — Eric Nguyen | 12.4
The Hustler — Walter Tevis | 12.7
The Morning Star — Karl Ove Knausgaard | 12.16
The Crossing — Cormac McCarthy | 12.16
You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me — Sherman Alexie | 12.24
The Mutual Admiration Society — Lesley Kagan | 12.29
Small Mercies — Dennis Lehane | 12.31
It was a year for great titles: Fuccboi, Eurotrash, Hummeldumm (German for “dumb ass”), Token Black Girl, The God of Small Things, LaserWriter II.
Young Mungo, like Shuggie Bain, was exquisitely crafted. I think I may have liked Mungo even better than Shuggie, perhaps because I identified with the former’s plight more than the latter’s. There’s an immediacy to the themes in Mungo, something more palpable and arresting.
“He looked like a man who’d enjoy a long swim in January.” Douglas Stuart, Young Mungo
The Passenger is the first of two novels Cormac McCarthy published in late 2022. I’ve read almost all of his oeuvre: McCarthy sure loves a frighteningly and generationally brilliant male protagonist that essentially lives like a hobo, either full-time, or for some of the time.
Interior Chinatown was smart and entertaining and thought-provoking.
The Sense of an Ending might be my favorite of the Julian Barnes novels I’ve read. Understated, reflective, and a thrilling exploration of the banal, the accumulative effects of ancient decisions that still shape the now.
How Far the Light Reaches was so well done, in terms of weaving natural history with memoir.
Sam is an excellent, realist, contemporary coming of age novel that does a fine job with pov at the various stages of the protagonist’s life. Super relatable for me. I was rooting for Sam so hard. Haven’t felt for a character like that in a while.
Found the Wallace Stegner randomly and ended up enjoying it a lot. Currently reading Crossing to Safety, so that'll be one of the first books on my 2024 list.
Eurotrash was pretty great, in concept and execution.
Stay True was a nostalgic rip through the early/mid-90s for me. Well-written, introspective, and full of place-names and bands and brands I grew up on.
Thomas Hardy sure likes the word “incipient.”
The Elegance of the Hedgehog takes itself a little too seriously, tries to cover too many concepts/ideas, and is a bit heavy handed at times, and still I liked it very much. I love when novels take on art and philosophy—so much better than reading critics and philosophers.
Why Wodehouse? One of my blind spots—I certainly was aware of Jeeves, but I’d never read any Wodehouse, nor did I know anything about him (spoiler: he's a controversial figure). I was re-reading The Secret History for my course on Dark Academia last spring, and Richard, the narrator, tries to read Wodehouse as a diversion. I started with two Blandings novels before jumping to Jeeves. One of the pleasures of Wodehouse is reading the slang of his time. See P.G. Wodehouse in the OED.
I'd like to read your 2023 list, if you have one. Find me on Instagram (@bmcnely) and share!
How to Read Literature Like a Professor — Thomas Foster | 9.16
Sojourn — Amit Chaudhuri | 9.20
My Salinger Year — Joanna Rakoff | 9.21
Der Tote im Strandkorb — Anna Johannsen | 9.21
You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train — Howard Zinn | 9.25
Second Place — Rachel Cusk | 10.9
Safe Houses — Dan Fesperman | 10.16
Save the Cat! Writes a Novel — Jessica Brody | 10.18
Movieland — Lee Goldberg | 10.31
Companion Piece — Ali Smith | 11.1
The Terrible — Yrsa Daley-Ward | 11.12
Dark Fire — C.J. Sansom | 11.14
Now is Not the Time to Panic — Kevin Wilson | 11.21
The Beginning of Spring — Penelope Fitzgerald | 11.21
Fearless Mind — Craig Manning | 11.23
The Old Woman with the Knife — Gu Byeong-mu (Trans. Chi-Young Kim) | 11.24
Freedom Road — William Lashner | 11.27
The Cyclocross Bible — Alexander Forrester | 11.28
Disappearing Earth — Julia Phillips | 12.5
An Impossible Love — Christine Angot (Trans. Armine Kotin Mortimer) | 12.5
Long Story Short — Margot Leitman | 12.10
Preparing for the Future — Jeremy Eaton | 12.10
The Name of the Wind — Patrick Rothfuss | 12.17
Land of Big Numbers — Te-Ping Chen | 12.18
American War — Omar El Akkad | 12.21
Remarkably Bright Creatures — Shelby Van Pelt | 12.23
Acts of Desperation — Megan Nolan | 12.25
Managing Expectations — Minnie Driver | 12.25
Das Mädchen am Strand — Anna Johannsen | 12.26
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy — John Le Carré | 12.28
The Making of Incarnation — Tom McCarthy | 12.29
Cleanness — Garth Greenwell | 12.30
Rainbows in the Mud — Paul Maunder | 12.31
Once again, I read fewer books this year than last. I started cycling in 2021, and that cut into my reading time. I started racing bikes in 2022, and that cut into my reading time even more. It's a happy trade-off, though.
I wasn't really blown away by anything I read this year. Usually there's at least one book that stays with me in the best way (e.g., Dark Eden, Remainder, M Train, Bluets, Against Art, Sweet Days of Discipline), but this year nothing really followed me past the last page. Second Place was remarkable, and I'll say more below, but it didn't haunt me the way Dark Eden or Remainder did.
So it was an odd year of reading. Lots of good books but nothing really astonishing. I'm not sure why people love The Overstory so much—I did not love it. Hummingbird Salamander started out white hot, then ... was kind of boring? I read books from Ali Smith and Tom McCarthy that were ... not as good as their other books. Sigh. Here are a few books that stood out:
Second Place — Rachel Cusk
Second Place was brilliant, and Cusk’s prose is sparkling and insightful. For me, a good novel will have four or five stunning sentences full of wisdom and insight. In the second half of this book I was highlighting such sentences every handful of pages, sometimes page after page. I’m just in awe of her skill with simile and metaphor—Cusk is an amazing prose stylist.
The Arrest — Jonathan Lethem
This plot was pretty ingenious, and the themes were thought-provoking.
Acts of Desperation — Megan Nolan
A solid contemporary novel, notable (to me) because it was the first #booktok-recommended book that I've read.
Transmission — Hari Kunzru
Kunzru is becoming one of my favorite writers. He has a fantastic ability to weave complex narratives that comment on our peculiar times.
Disappearing Earth — Julia Phillips
This was thoughtful and well-constructed, and the opening chapter was just heartbreaking and disturbing and so well done.
Sojourn — Amit Chaudhuri
My favorite kind of contemporary novel—dreamy, pithy, wise.
Zero History — William Gibson
Zero History closes a trilogy in an unexpected way (or, at least, in a way that I didn't expect). This was especially satisfying given that I read (and loved) Pattern Recognition so long ago and saw little connection through book two and most of book three.
C — Tom McCarthy
Reading C was kind of like reading China Miéville’s Bas Lag novels—disorienting and strange and mesmerizing, especially as you acclimate to the world. That McCarthy does this in provincial, late Victorian England is credit to his ability to render the strangeness of that world and time. Did I love this as much as Remainder? No. But it was fascinating and weird and compelling.
But I also finished The Making of Incarnation this year, and it was ... not great. If you've read Moby Dick, then you surely remember those long chapters on the technical details of whaling, crammed full of archaic and odd vocabulary. Incarnation was almost exclusively whaling chapters, if you'll stay with the analogy. I wanted to love it, but it was so difficult to hang in there, page after turgid page. McCarthy is clearly brilliant, but sometimes one can be too clever.
Managing Expectations — Minnie Driver
I've got basically no connection to Minnie Driver. She's British, she was in Good Will Hunting, and she has noteworthy hair—beyond that I couldn't tell you much. But I found this book by chance, liked the cover, read a bit, and discovered: Minnie Driver is a very good writer and storyteller. I enjoyed this memoir very much.
Rainbows in the Mud — Paul Maunder
This one is admittedly self-indulgent, but this is my list after all. A good friend of mine is a track cyclist in Indianapolis. He once described track cycling as "the niche sport of a niche sport." This is so well-said, and also true of cyclocross. I don't know why, but I thought I might like cyclocross, so I decided to jump in this year, with zero experience or understanding of the sport. Another cycling friend in Lexington said: "why? No one does cyclocross around here. No one cares." But I thought: "why not?" It turns out that I'm well-suited to the demands of cyclocross, and it's got a vibe that I absolutely love.
Maunder's Rainbows in the Mud is a wonderful ride through the history and culture of this strange niche sport. I'd often read his recap of a given race and then put the book aside to scour YouTube—I almost always found the exact moment he described, and this back-and-forth enlivened my experience of the book and the sport. Given my interests, I was bound to be happy with this one, and it was such a fitting book to close out 2022. But anyone with even a passing interest in cycling as a sport and cultural phenomenon will get a lot out of this book.
My guess is that I'll read fewer books in 2023. I'm ok with that. I'd like to read your 2022 list, if you have one. Find me on Instagram (@bmcnely) or on Strava, and share!
I read twelve books in German this year—eleven novels and a nonfiction book about through-hiking America’s three long-distance trails (Laufen, Essen, Schlafen). At the end of the year, I’m pretty happy with my reading comprehension and speed—both improved measurably from January to December.
I had trouble, though, with Mittagsstunde (because of its use of dialect) and Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied (because of literary vocabulary, figurative language, and idioms). I’ll read the latter again—it’ll act as a good barometer of progress. Books auf Deutsch that stood out were Neu Jahr and Alles Richtig Gemacht. I have a story to tell about Neu Jahr, but I haven’t figured out, yet, how to tell it.
I did not read anything longer than an Instagram post in Norwegian. Maybe 2022 will be the year I read a kid's book or graphic novel?
Overall, I read fifteen fewer books in 2021 than I did in 2020. The reason for this is clear: I started cycling in June. Since then, I’ve ridden almost 5,000 miles, and that has cut into my reading time.
Here are a few books that stood out:
Remainder — Tom McCarthy
Remainder is the most inventive novel that I’ve read since The Universal Baseball Association. A fully realized imaginative world that I longed to inhabit—not to be there, in the narrative, but to be inside the book each night as I curled up in bed, my Kindle screen lighting my rapturous reading face. I still think about the world McCarthy created, perhaps once a week. Absolutely fantastic.
A Month in Siena — Hisham Matar
This reminded me a bit of María Gainza's Optic Nerve, a book I highlighted in 2019. Both are excellent reflections on art and existence. As with McCarthy, I'll definitely be reading more Matar.
Dear Committee Members — Julie Schumacher
I'm obviously the target audience for this book, and I laughed out loud several times. But this one also broaches the profound and discomfiting in a wholly unexpected way.
Green Girl — Kate Zambreno
Roxanne Gay discusses Green Girl at length in Bad Feminist. I'm glad of that. Otherwise I might not have read this excellent novel.
Weather — Jenny Offill
Offill has become one of my favorite authors, full stop.
What Are You Going Through — Sigrid Nunez
What I said about Offill? Nunez = same.
Deaf Republic — Ilya Kaminsky
I almost never recommend books because reading taste is so subjective—I might think something is wonderful and you might think the same book is trash. But I'm recommending Deaf Republic to you, dear reader. Buy it, read it, keep it. Buy it for friends and family.
The Constant Rabbit — Jasper Fforde
A clever, engaging satire of contemporary nationalisms and tribalisms.
Night Boat to Tangier — Kevin Barry
This is the book to give to folks who like reading thrillers but who avoid literary fiction. Barry is a superb stylist, and there are pages and pages of crafty dialogue that make this a snappy read.
A Time for Everything — Karl Ove Knausgaard (Trans. James Anderson)
This isn't on the list because I loved it. Though this is brilliant at times, it was also a slog more often than not. I had to put it down for a month or so, even though I was 80% in (more on that below). It's on the notable list because (a) it's mostly bizarre and (b) there are hints of what Knausgaard would do later in My Struggle (especially in the book’s Coda, which is in the voice I’ve come to expect from Knausgaard). Bonus: this recent review by Patricia Lockwood in the LRB, of Knausgaard's latest novel, is truly amazing.
Old Filth — Jane Gardam
This was unexpectedly great. Unexpected because I'd never heard of Gardam or the Old Filth trilogy (even though these are famous novels) and because this is the book I turned to when I could no longer stand reading about the tiresome plight of Noah and his stupid ark (Knausgaard—see above). It was a Kindle deal, and the perfect palate cleanser when I needed it. (Read on for one more anecdote about Old Filth).
Underland — Robert MacFarlane
Fascinating, timely, and superbly written.
Red Pill — Hari Kunzru
300 pages of slow-burning existential dread for our times. Another book I'd suggest for people who don't normally read literary fiction.
The Untouchable — John Banville
It's possible to not really love a book but be blown away by the prose. That's the case, for me, with The Untouchable. Kind of slow, kind of stodgy (both by design, btw), but filled with clever and insightful prose. I read this thinking "I'll never be able to write like Banville," with nothing but admiration in the thought.
One consequence of reading a lot is encountering the happy accident or overlap. Near the very end of Alles Richtig Gemacht comes this bit of dialogue:
“Was liest du?”
….
“Jane Gardam. ’Ein untadeliger Mann.’”
“Gut?”
“Tröstlich,” sagt Stephanie. “Wie Earl Grey trinken und Scones essen.”
“Comforting,” Stephanie says. “Like drinking Earl Gray and eating scones."
I’d not have registered this at all, let alone gotten the significance of the reference (and what it says about the protagonist and his relationship to his wife, Stephanie) had I not read Old Filth just two months before. That the cross pollination occurred across languages, times, and countries—East Germany, Ireland, and reunified Germany (Alles Richtig, 2019), the United Kingdom, Malaysia, and Hong Kong/PRC (Old Filth, 2004), and the United States (me, as reader, 2021) makes it even more satisfying and interesting.
And Their Children After Them — Nicolas Mathieu (Trans. William Rodarmor) | 8.29
Emperor of Thorns — Mark Lawrence | 9.2
My Vanishing Country — Bakari Sellers | 9.5
Hiding in Plain Sight — Sarah Kendzior | 9.11
No Country for Old Men — Cormac McCarthy | 9.12
The Year of Magical Thinking — Joan Didion | 9.13
Everything is Fucked — Mark Manson | 9.20
Autumn — Ali Smith | 9.21
Cherry — Nico Walker | 9.24
Der Fotograf von Mauthausen — Salva Rubio, Pedro J. Colombo, & Aintzane Landa (Übersetzung: Leo Gürtler & Milena Merkac) | 9.26
Topics of Conversation — Miranda Popkey | 9.30
Ego is the Enemy — Ryan Holiday | 9.30
How to Pronounce Knife — Souvankham Thammavongsa | 10.5
Dreyer’s English — Benjamin Dreyer | 10.15
Bad Feminist — Roxane Gay | 10.15
How to Write a Sentence — Stanley Fish | 10.24
Oliver Twist — Charles Dickens | 10.25
Almost Interesting — David Spade | 11.1
The Witch Elm — Tana French | 11.2
Clap When You Land — Elizabeth Acevedo | 11.4
How to Live: A Life of Montaigne — Sarah Bakewell | 11.6
Maigret and the Good People of Montparnasse — Georges Simenon (Trans. Ros Schwartz) | 11.6
I Am The Brother of XX — Fleur Jaeggy (Trans. Gini Alhadeff) | 11.10
The Discomfort of Evening — M.L. Rijneveld (Trans. Michele Hutchison) | 11.24
The Queen’s Gambit — Walter Tevis | 11.27
Momo, oder Die seltsame Geschichte von den Zeit-Dieben und von dem Kind, das den Menschen die gestohlene Zeit zurückbrachte — Michael Ende | 11.29
The City We Became — N.K. Jemisin | 11.30
Dressed: A Philosophy of Clothes — Shahidha Bari | 11.30
We Germans — Alexander Starritt | 12.1
Nothing to See Here — Kevin Wilson | 12.8
What a Plant Knows — Daniel Chamovitz | 12.11
Little Gods — Meng Jin | 12.14
Sigh, Gone — Phuc Tran | 12.19
The Great Railway Bazaar — Paul Theroux | 12.21
The Unbearable Lightness of Being — Milan Kundera (Trans. Michael Henry Heim) | 12.22
Agency — William Gibson | 12.25
Nutshell — Ian McEwan | 12.26
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects — Jeffrey J. Cohen (Ed.) | 12.30
Age of Legend — Michael J. Sullivan | 12.31
The Plague — Albert Camus (Trans. Stuart Gilbert) | 12.31
I had hoped to read at least one book in Norwegian this year (Erlend Loe's Naiv. Super.—I read it English in 2019). I didn't get around to it but I'm looking forward to doing so in 2021.
My German reading was kind of plodding along in the winter and spring, but I had a total breakthrough in the fall. I had started Momo earlier in the year, then put it down for a few months. When I picked it up again, I zoomed through it. I'm reading most things now with excellent comprehension. AnkiApp tells me that I've done almost 100,000 reviews of my German vocabulary flashcards, and it was like all that accumulated effort finally just clicked. I think 2021 will be a very good year for reading in German.
I started learning Russian after the fall semester ended, so maybe I'll read my first book in Russian in 2025?
There were some strange resonances between pairs of books, randomly selected and read at the same time. For example, Nunez and Luiselli complemented one another well. Jenny Boully (Betwixt and Between) and Jenny Offill (Dept. of Speculation) have similar names, similar styles, and similar paragraphing. Each has a chapter on the Voyager records, too. I found one Jenny much more profound than the other.
Here are a few books that stood out, for a variety of reasons:
Sweet Days of Discipline — Fleur Jaeggy (Trans. Tim Parks)
Jaeggy's prose is sharp and precise and haunting, and Parks's translation is masterful. I don't really recommend books, but if you asked me to identify the one book that was a revelation in 2020, it's this one (which I liked much, much more than Jaeggy's short story collection, which I read later in the year).
The Witches are Coming — Lindy West
I've been reading and loving Lindy West since she wrote regular columns for The Stranger. This didn't disappoint.
Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation — Rachel Cusk
I guess there's a whole group of literati that positively hates Rachel Cusk. I don't know why, nor do I care. She's one of my favorite contemporary writers.
The Friend — Sigrid Nunez
One of the most important characters in this book is a dog—need I say more?
The Man Who Saw Everything — Deborah Levy
Levy's prose is fantastic, and there's some interesting narrative work in this one.
The Sellout — Paul Beatty
Holy hell this book is a trip.
Exit West — Mohsin Hamid
I had picked this up and read the first chapter in a bookstore at the end of 2019 but didn't buy it. When I finally read it, I regretted not doing so sooner.
Autumn — Ali Smith
The first great Brexit novel?
Topics of Conversation — Miranda Popkey
Popkey builds tension so well that I will probably end up going back to this book several times to see if I can figure out how she does it.
The Discomfort of Evening — M.L. Rijneveld (Trans. Michele Hutchison)
This is one long punch to the gut, a pain you want to endure.
The City We Became — N.K. Jemisin
I didn't know anything about this book, and only a little about Jemisin's work. This is a fantastic commentary on America, circa 2016–2020, dressed up as multiversal science fiction.
Agency — William Gibson
I never realize how badly I need a new Gibson novel in my life until I finally get around to reading a new Gibson novel.
Nutshell — Ian McEwan
I grabbed this as a Kindle deal because I like McEwan's work. I knew nothing about the book and was blown away when I realized what McEwan was doing here.
Berlin: Steinerne Stadt — Jason Lutes (Trans. [into German by] Heinrich Anders) | 5.22
Waiting for Fitz — Spencer Hyde | 5.22
The Condition of Secrecy — Inger Christensen (Trans. Susanna Nied) | 5.24
The Good Thief — Marie Howe | 5.26
Inessential Solidarity — Diane Davis | 5.31
The Moneyless Man — Mark Boyle | 6.2
The Art of Fielding — Chad Harbach | 6.3
It — Inger Christensen (Trans. Susanna Nied) | 6.8
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel — Alexander Chee | 6.20
The Philosopher’s Club — Kim Addonizio | 6.28
T. Singer — Dag Solstad (Trans. Tiina Nunnally) | 7.1
Internal Rhetorics — Jean Niencamp | 7.11
Awake — Dorianne Laux | 7.12
Berlin: Bleierne Stadt — Jason Lutes (Trans. [into German by] Heinrich Anders) | 7.15
Paper Girls Book One — Brian K. Vaughn, et al. | 7.20
Goblin Market and Other Poems — Christina Rossetti | 7.23
Lost Time — Józef Czapski (Trans. Eric Karpeles) | 7.26
Living with a SEAL — Jesse Itzler | 7.28
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams — Peter Handke (Trans. Ralph Manheim) | 7.30
Most of What Follows is True — Michael Crummey | 8.2
My Struggle, Book 6 — Karl Ove Knausgård (Trans. Don Bartlett & Martin Aitken) | 8.7
Optic Nerve — María Gainza (Trans. Thomas Bunstead) | 8.14
Paper Girls Book Two — Brian K. Vaughn, et al. | 8.25
Laurus — Eugene Vodolazkin (Trans. Lisa Hayden) | 8.25
Lola Rennt — Tom Tykwer | 8.26
The World Goes On — László Krasznahorkai (Trans. George Szirtes, et al.) | 8.27
Mourning — Eduardo Halfon (Trans. Lisa Dillman & Daniel Hahn) | 8.29
Berlin: Flirrende Stadt — Jason Lutes (Trans. [into German by] Heinrich Anders) | 9.8
In the Distance — Hernan Diaz | 9.12
Endure — Alex Hutchinson | 9.15
The Poetic Species — Edward O. Wilson & Robert Hass | 9.17
Less — Andrew Sean Greer | 9.29
Coming Up for Air — George Orwell | 10.16
The Death of Democracy — Benjamin Carter Hett | 10.23
Tree Leaf Talk — James F. Weiner | 10.29
Too Loud a Solitude — Bohumil Hrabal (Trans. Michael Henry Heim) | 10.30
Out of My Head — Tim Parks | 11.6
The Public Image — Robert Hariman & John Lucaites | 11.11
A Philosophy of Ruin — Nicholas Mancusi | 11.11
In Praise of Shadows — Jun’ichirō Tanizaki (Trans. Thomas J, Harper & Edward G. Seidensticker) | 11.14
What Doesn’t Kill Us — Scott Carney | 11.21
Drifting Dragons — Taku Kuwobara | 11.22
The Argonauts — Maggie Nelson | 11.29
Britten and Brülightly — Hannah Berry | 12.5
Can’t Hurt Me — David Goggins | 12.5
Francis Ponge and the Nature of Things — Patrick Meadows | 12.6
Desire — Haruki Murakami (Trans. Jay Rubin, Ted Goossen, & Philip Gabriel) | 12.10
The Door — Margaret Atwood | 12.10
Taking Control of Devonthink 3 — Joe Kissell | 12.11
A Little Book on the Human Shadow — Robert Bly | 12.16
Als Die Nacht Begann — Thomas Fatziner | 12.20
My Life as a Russian Novel — Emmanuel Carrère (Trans. Linda Coverdale) | 12.23
West, West Texas — Tillie Walden (Trans. [into German by] Barbara König) | 12.31
Like last year, I didn't have a reading goal, and the number of books I finished is just the number of books I finished. My book reading slowed down a bit in the summer after I subscribed to the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, and The Paris Review.
There were a couple of personal milestones in my reading this year.
First, I read my first "real" book in German—Wolfgang Herrndorf's Tschick, a young adult novel about two teen boys roadtripping through the German countryside. The book has been translated into English (as Why We Took the Car) and was made into a film in Germany. I also read, in German, Bov Bjerg's Auerhaus, Tom Tykwer's Lola Rennt (a book adaptation of the film Run Lola Run), and a handful of graphic novels. I'm still learning, obviously, but it was a major milestone to complete full books in German for the first time.
Second, I read the sixth and final book of Knausgaard's My Struggle opus; I actually put this off for a bit, mainly because I didn't want the experience to end. I read his book on Munch (So Much Longing in So Little Space) when it came out, and I've got A Time for Everything in the queue; after reading the latter, I'll have read all his stand-alone books that have been translated into English. I plan to read, too (in German) "Das Heimatland," which is included in Heimatland, a collection of stories and essays from Norway that hasn't yet been translated into English.
I also read all of Kafka's collected works, and all of Rimbaud's poems, essays, and letters. I continued to read works of contemporary Norwegian literature in translation, and I've been slowly reading important contemporary German authors in translation (e.g., Handke, Erpenbeck, Sebald, etc.). I intentionally read more poetry in 2019 than I did in 2018, and plan to continue doing the same in 2020.
Finally, here are a few books that really resonated with me:
Bluets — Maggie Nelson
If you haven't already read this, you should. It's incredible.
Killing Commendatore — Haruki Murakami
Is this Murakami's best novel? For most people, probably not. But if you like Murakami, you'll like this.
Against Art — Tomas Espedal
Bergeners was in my highlights list last year, but this is probably the most sophisticated and compelling Espedal book that I've read so far. How he does what he does with the narrative threads is mystifying, and I can't really explain it—you just have to read it.
Optic Nerve — María Gainza
This book embodies all the best qualities of autofiction.
Out of My Head — Tim Parks
Parks explores the "spread mind theory" of consciousness with his novelist's sensibility.
I'll probably never read another Krasznahorkai novel, mainly because he doesn't seem to believe in paragraph breaks.
Two or three years ago I began to note my daily reading (books only) in a moleskine. For 2018, I decided to log books after I finished them. What follows is a list of all the books I finished in 2018.
After the list is a brief commentary and a shorter list of especially resonant works.
Age of Swords — Michael Sullivan | 1.4
A Wizard of Earthsea — Ursula Leguin | 1.11
It’s Not Yet Dark — Simon Fitzmaurice | 1.15
Still Life with Woodpecker — Tom Robbins | 1.22
Fluent in 3 Months — Benny Lewis | 1.27
M Train — Patti Smith | 1.29
Faceless Killers — Henning Mankell | 2.4
Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil — Rüdiger Safranski | 2.6
No Longer Human — Osamu Dazai | 2.7
Writing Tools — Roy Peter Clark | 2.12
Cities of the Plain — Cormac McCarthy | 2.15
Poetry, Language, Thought — Martin Heidegger | 2.23
Steering the Craft — Ursula Leguin | 3.6
Mother of Eden — Chris Beckett | 3.6
Winter — Karl Ove Knausgaard | 3.9
Ahoi Aus Hamburg — Andre Klein | 3.9
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas — John Boyne | 3.19
Meeting the Universe Halfway — Karen Barad | 3.29
Wilderness — Lance Weller | 4.5
In Other Words — Jhumpa Lahiri | 4.6
Madame Bovary — Gustave Flaubert | 4.8
Go — Kazuki Kaneshiro | 4.17
The Practice of the Wild — Gary Snyder | 4.28
The 7th Function of Language — Laurent Binet | 4.30
Mythologies — Roland Barthes | 5.7
Asymmetry — Lisa Halliday | 5.8
Religion for Atheists — Alain de Botton | 5.9
Cruel Optimism — Lauren Berlant | 5.12
Elmet — Fiona Mozley | 5.15
The Order of Time — Carlo Rovelli | 5.16
Here — Richard McGuire | 5.16
How to Live in Denmark — Kay Xander Mellish | 5.20
Bullshit Jobs — David Graeber | 6.4
The Promise of Happiness — Sara Ahmed | 6.4
The Ice Swimmer — Kjell Ola Dahl | 6.4
Spring — Karl Ove Knausgaard | 6.12
Anticipate the Coming Reservoir — John Hoppenthaler | 6.12
Fun Home — Alison Bechdel | 6.16
Ask the Dust — John Fante | 6.23
Barbarian Days — William Finnegan | 6.28
Neither Here Nor There — Bill Bryson | 7.6
Arctic Dreams — Barry Lopez | 7.22
One Secret Thing — Sharon Olds | 8.3
My Struggle, Book 5 — Karl Ove Knausgaard | 8.5
With Deer — Aase Berg | 8.6
Keeping an Eye Open — Julian Barnes | 8.7
Lauras Lied — Corbeyran & Thierry Murat | 8.8
They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us — Hanif Abdurraqib | 8.12
Call Me By Your Name — André Aciman | 8.12
Proust — Samuel Beckett | 8.13
Sting-Ray Afternoons — Steve Rushin | 8.24
Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics — Steven Shaviro | 8.24
The Hobbit — J.R.R. Tolkien | 8.25
Consider the Lobster — D.F. Wallace | 9.4
The Thief’s Journal — Jean Genet | 9.5
Age of War — Michael Sullivan | 9.7
Disquiet — Noah Van Sciver | 9.8
Lolita — Vladimir Nabokov | 9.9
Summer — Karl Ove Knausgaard | 9.14
Blind Spot — Teju Cole | 9.14
The Child in Time — Ian McEwan | 9.15
You’ve Been So Lucky Already — Alethea Black | 9.17
Lives Other Than My Own — Emmanuel Carrère | 9.21
Wait Till Next Year — Doris Kearns Goodwin | 9.23
Sonnets — William Shakespeare | 9.24
Silas Marner — George Eliot | 10.2
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek — Annie Dillard | 10.3
Maisie Dobbs — Jacqueline Winspear | 10.14
The Reminders — Val Emmich | 10.18
Inadvertent — Karl Ove Knausgaard | 10.19
Goethe: Life as a Work of Art — Rüdiger Safranski | 10.23
Sapiens — Yuval Noah Harari | 10.25
Devotion — Patti Smith | 10.28
Guardians of the Night — Alan Russell | 10.28
The Voice of Things — Francis Ponge | 10.31
A Girl in the Woods — Aspen Matis | 11.9
Wonder Boys — Michael Chabon | 11.13
David Lynch: The Man from Another Place — Dennis Lim | 11.15
Classical Music — Julian Johnson | 11.20
Faust: A Tragedy, Parts One and Two — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Trans. Martin Greenberg) | 11.25
Embassytown — China Miéville | 11.25
Here in Berlin — Cristina García | 11.26
I Have the Right to Destroy Myself — Young-Ha Kim | 11.27
Notes from Underground — Fyodor Dostoevsky | 11.30
Slaughterhouse Five — Kurt Vonnegut | 12.2
The Power of Language — Francis Ponge (Trans. Serge Gavronsky) | 12.5
The Face in the Frost — John Bellairs | 12.5
Selected Poems — Francis Ponge (Ed. Margaret Guiton) | 12.12
All the Pretty Horses — Cormac McCarthy | 12.15
Soap — Francis Ponge (Trans. Lane Dunlop) | 12.17
Visitation — Jenny Erpenbeck (Trans. Susan Bernofsky) | 12.18
The Primal Blueprint — Mark Sisson | 12.19
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance — Robert Pirsig | 12.23
Lock In — John Scalzi | 12.24
Bergeners — Tomas Espedal (Trans. James Anderson) | 12.29
The Art of Living — Epictetus (Ed. Sharon Lebell) | 12.30
Selected Poems & Fragments — Friedrich Hölderlin (Trans. Michael Hamburger; German/English edition) | 12.31
I didn't have a reading goal for the year, and the number of books I ended up finishing is just the number of books I finished.
Most often, I read three books concurrently:
(a) what is typically (but not exclusively) a non-fiction, general interest book (e.g., Sapiens or Arctic Dreams) or a something for a course I'm developing (e.g., Bullshit Jobs or Writing Tools)
(b) a scholarly book (i.e., something directly related to my own research, e.g., Meeting the Universe Halfway or Blind Spot)
(c) what is typically (but not exclusively) a work of fiction that I read for fun (e.g., Cities of the Plain, Lock In, Summer)
There is some overlap, and every so often I'll read two books concurrently in any given category. I read mostly on my kindle, and frequently read library books. That's part of the reason why I kept a list in 2018: I was curious about what I actually read since I couldn't look at titles on a bookshelf. It's easy to log a book after finishing, and satisfying in aggregate.
One last note before a brief list of resonant books: if you know the German word that describes the feeling of possibility, hope, joy, and wonder that one has after finishing a book and facing the delectable prospects of immediately selecting a new one, please let me know. (Das Gefühl danach schmökern, bevor weiter schmökern.)
There's something to like in nearly every one of the books on the list, but, for many reasons, some books resonated more than others. There were two books on the list that I absolutely hated, one of which is canonical. I won't call them out beyond that.
So, what do I mean by "resonate"? A book resonates when I am forced to pause, to think, to step back, to wonder. How and where and in what ways a book resonates has much to do with where and how I am at the moment of reading, but this can't be all of it.
Some works resonate because they are different, because they're a doorway opening into an affective charge, into possibility, into change. In a list of almost 100 books, these resonated. I'll try, in a sentence or two, to describe why.
Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil — Rüdiger Safranski
Safranski's philosophical biography of the very complicated Heidegger is nearly magisterial, and the English translation by Ewald Osers includes snippets of Heidegger's work that haven't been previously translated.
Cities of the Plain — Cormac McCarthy
Blood Meridian is easily my favorite McCarthy novel, and one of my favorite books, full stop. I read All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing years ago, but realized this year that I had never finished the trilogy. Cities of the Plain might be the best of the three.
The 7th Function of Language — Laurent Binet
For the right audience, this book is hysterical. I am the right audience.
Asymmetry — Lisa Halliday
This is now my go-to example for the mantra to "show instead of tell." What Halliday does in the novel's first section—with almost zero exposition—is stunning.
My Struggle, Book 5 — Karl Ove Knausgaard
It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Knausgaard. The fifth book in his autobiographical novel takes place in Bergen, in the rain, during early adulthood.
With Deer — Aase Berg
This slim book by the Swedish poet Berg (printed in both Swedish and English) is indescribable. Reading it is like being fully present for every possible thing that happens during your own furious, fever-induced delirium.
Blind Spot — Teju Cole
Cole's book of photos and accompanying prose poems and meditations is a wonderful exploration of travel, identity, and the everyday.
Lives Other Than My Own — Emmanuel Carrère
Carrère is often mentioned alongside Knausgaard as an exemplar of contemporary autofiction. I found him to be almost nothing like Knausgaard, and this book was not at all what I expected. And even given all that, this was one of the best books I read in 2018.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek — Annie Dillard
Dillard, in 1973 and 1974, was doing what I'm trying to do now, in my own work. This is a gorgeous, overflowing ontological meditation.
Visitation — Jenny Erpenbeck (Trans. Susan Bernofsky)
I'm looking forward to reading this in German, and even better, to reading more of Erpenbeck.
Bergeners — Tomas Espedal (Trans. James Anderson)
This was a Christmas gift, and I enjoyed nearly every page. As with Erpenbeck, I can't wait to read more of Espedal's work.
tl;dr — This is a long post, so here’s the gist: Cameras don’t really matter, because they all work basically the same way. What, how, and why you make photographs are more meaningful questions to ask when you’re getting serious about photography.
Grab something, anything—even your smartphone—and make photographs deliberately. A deliberative, contemplative, and reflective approach toward the images you make and share is much more important than the camera. This applies to visual researchers, but I’m pretty sure it applies to most image-making scenarios.
Every so often I get an email or message from someone who writes to ask: “What camera should I buy?”
This is a tricky question to answer, and I usually respond with questions of my own: What are you going to photograph? What do you want your camera to do for you? How much can you reasonably spend? Do you care about having multiple lenses? Do you care about how your camera looks, as an object, in addition to how it sees?
I’ve answered the question of “what camera to buy” enough times that it occurred to me to write a post about it. It’s weird that I even get this question, though; I’m nowhere near a professional photographer, nor do I keep up with gear. If you say “I’m thinking about buying X Camera,” it’s quite likely I’ve zero experience with that camera.
I use cameras to make photographs in the processes of conducting research, and in the processes of living everyday life. That said, I have learned a lot about what I want from photography (and cameras are pretty important to photography), so if reading about what I’ve learned is useful to others, then please to enjoy…
Leveling Up as a Photographer
The folks at DigitalRev recently posted a video that pretty well mirrors my own journey as an amateur photographer. It’s very tongue-in-cheek, and well worth five minutes of your time:
Thankfully, I skipped Level 1; I’ve experienced several of the remaining levels to varying extents, though. For example, I did completely geek out on gear (Level 2) before I became a student of photography (Level 3) and embraced the philosophy that a camera should go with one everywhere (Level 4). I dabbled in the hobbyist phase (Level 5), but became bored by message board arguments and the gear pedants and zealots that thrive there as an invasive species (see Level 1).
I’m nowhere near an “Online Legend,” Level 6, though I have had a couple of photos make Flickr’s “Explore” page, including this one, which picked up 300 faves and over 20,000 views in a 24 hour period. That was a trip, since I’m lucky to get 1,000 views and 20 faves on any given Flickr photo. Flickr and Instagram mystify me. Images that I think are well-composed and interesting, such as this one, rarely receive much love. DigitalRev’s take on this is spot on, but I digress…
Obviously, I don’t earn my living as a photographer, so I kind of sidestepped Level 7; like many photographers, amateur and professional, I strive to reach Level 8, in my own way. But it takes a while to figure out what you want from photography. It has taken me the better part of the last 3 or 4 years, shooting and editing almost daily, to kind of be happy with what I’m doing and to get what I want from cameras—to get them to see what I see with my eyes and brain. Your mileage will vary, of course.
So, What Is a Camera, Anyway?
It’s a box with a hole in it. Seriously, that’s it. Every camera, ever, is a box with a hole in it. Despite the dizzying array of dials, buttons, and menu options on contemporary digital cameras, the damn things are just boxes with holes in them. I wish someone explained this to me many years ago.
“Wait a second,” you’re thinking. “Surely it’s more complicated than that.” Well, yes, I need to add one other element: material that’s sensitive to light. The predominant light-sensitive material used in photography for 100 or so years was film. Now, our predominant light-sensitive material is a digital sensor.
So, a camera = box (that shuts out light) + hole + light-sensitive material (film or digital sensor). Really and truly, that’s it. Have you ever heard of a pinhole camera? Box, itty-bitty hole, film.
“Wait a second,” you’re thinking once again. “Surely it’s more complicated than this.” It is more complicated, but not much. The things we add to cameras are simply variations on the theme of box, hole, light-sensitive material.
For example, a lens helps us focus the light that comes through the hole and hits the film or sensor. Blades inside the lens help us control the size of the hole, known as aperture. Controlling the size of the hole lets us adjust to different light sources and intensities, and lets us control what’s in focus and what’s out of focus (known as “depth of field”). A shutter gives us control over how long we allow light to shoot through the hole and reach the light-sensitive material. And something called ISO allows us to choose the sensitivity of the light-sensitive material.
Are these things—lens, aperture, shutter, ISO—very complicated? Not really. The first three are all simply improvements upon characteristics of the hole; ISO is an improvement upon the material where light is written. [1]
In sum, the composition of any given photograph involves light passing through a hole into a light-proof box (that is, the light can’t spill out the sides or back) onto film or a digital sensor. You can make a camera with a roll of film and an Altoids can.
If you already knew all this, then I apologize for making you read the last few paragraphs. I write this because I didn’t know this stuff with this kind of clarity until a couple years ago, even though I’d been making photographs since the early 1980s. In fact, it wasn’t until I started seriously shooting film again, in the spring of 2014, that the simplicity of the technical aspects of photography clicked into place for me.
Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO
This is the stuff to learn, no matter what camera you shoot. What’s the definition of a “user friendly” camera for most people? One that doesn’t make you think about these three things.
But you want to think about these things, because they’re the only things that matter when it comes to the technical side of photography. And once you learn them, they work on any camera. Any camera. Because all cameras work the same way, remember?
Aperture. The aperture is the size of the hole, period. Bigger hole, lower f-stop number; smaller hole, higher f-stop number. F2 means the hole is wide open, while F22 means the hole is really small. Big hole = small focus area. Small hole = everything in focus.
Shutter Speed. Fast shutter speeds freeze movement. Slow shutter speeds blur movement. Want to take a picture of a waterfall? You don’t want to shoot it on automatic mode, with a 1/2000sec shutter speed. Why? Because you’ll get a crappy picture of water frozen in time. Instead, put your camera on the ground or some other stable surface, switch over to “shutter priority mode” and shoot it at 1/2sec or 1 second. Your rocks and trees will be perfectly sharp, but the water will be a smooth, pleasing blur.
ISO. It used to be that you could only control ISO within a very limited range of film sensitivity—between about 50 and 1600 ISO. You selected your ISO when you bought your film, and once that film was in your camera, you were stuck with it. With today’s digital sensors, we can adjust the sensitivity to light (ISO) on the fly, shooting one picture in broad daylight at 100 ISO and the next indoors, in very low light, at 3200 ISO. Because digital cameras are so good with this, you basically almost never need to worry about ISO. It helps to know how it affects your images, though.
Here’s a great little infographic with everything you need to know about how aperture, shutter speed, and ISO affect your shots. This is the stuff to learn.
Shooting Modes
Pretty much any digital camera you can buy nowadays comes with these basic shooting modes:
Automatic: camera controls aperture, shutter speed, and ISO
Aperture Priority: you control the aperture (e.g., “I want my background to be blurry, so I’m shooting this at f2”), the camera controls shutter speed and ISO
Shutter Priority: you control the shutter speed (e.g., “I want the water in this waterfall to be a silky-smooth blur so I’m shooting this with a 1 second exposure”), the camera controls aperture and ISO
Program Mode: basically a fully automatic mode, but with a little more control (e.g., “I don’t want the flash to fire, but I want the camera to figure out everything else”)
Manual Mode: fully manual—you choose aperture, shutter speed, and ISO
Most professionals and hobbyists shoot in manual mode, right? Wrong. In my experience, most shoot in aperture or shutter priority mode.
When I’m shooting digital, I’m usually in aperture priority mode. I also have my camera in “Auto ISO” mode. This means that I tell the camera: “shoot between 200 and 3200 ISO, depending on the available light.” (I don’t want it shooting over 3200, because the pictures become grainy in my particular camera—yours may shoot fine up to 6400 or even 12800 ISO).
On the technical side, the only thing I’m thinking about for most everyday shots is the aperture and depth of field—what do I want to get in focus in a given shot? I select the aperture and let the camera figure out shutter speed and ISO. Easy. If I’m shooting something where I either want to freeze movement or show movement, then I’m probably switching over to shutter priority mode.
Put simply, aperture priority and shutter priority modes cover roughly 90% of my digital photography.
If I’m shooting with a flash, or if I’m shooting film, that’s when I’m in manual mode. My film cameras are all fully mechanical—there are no batteries, no electronic components, and so everything is set manually for each exposure.
So, What Camera?
The first thing to consider in any digital camera is whether it has all of the shooting modes I detailed in the previous section. If it meets this very, very basic test, you’re good to go.
The next thing to consider is: fixed lens, or lens system?
I’m not going to delve very far into this at all. But here are some basics:
“Kit” lenses—those that come bundled with cameras such as the Nikon D3300 in an Amazon deal—are serviceable, but not great.
Zoom lenses, unless very very expensive, tend to be of lower quality than prime lenses.
Prime lenses have a fixed focal length—e.g., 50mm.
Prime lenses typically have a greater range of aperture options, which gives you more control over the creative and aesthetic aspects of your images.
Prime lenses may be extremely expensive, but they are also sometimes super affordable—Canon and Nikon both make stellar 50mm and 35mm lenses for around $200.
That should suffice. Back to the question: fixed lens or lens system?
A fixed lens camera has one lens that cannot be swapped out for another. If you buy such a camera, you’re stuck with that lens. For many digital cameras, that fixed lens is a zoom.
Lens system cameras allow you to purchase the camera body and lenses separately, giving you lots of flexibility and room for growth over time.
I own several fixed lens cameras (one digital and four film), and two lens system cameras (one digital and one film). They’re all great, and all used to make different kinds of images. My fixed lens cameras are much better looking, as objects, than my lens system cameras, which are big, bulky, and kind of awkward.
Right now, I’d say 95% of my photography happens with a fixed lens camera; I pull out the lens system camera for special situations (photographing written artifacts, shooting portraits, etc.). Don’t make anything of this—it’s a personal preference based on the kinds of things I like to shoot and how I like to shoot right now. It will likely change, so this not an evaluation or endorsement of either approach.
What camera should you buy?
At a minimum, one that has the shooting modes above, and one that will serve you in what you want from photographs now and in the near future (2–4 years or so). If an inexpensive digital camera with a good sensor, full shooting modes, and a competent zoom (or prime) lens will serve you well, go for it. If you want to have the option to add lenses and do specialized kinds of shots, go with a lens system camera.
The stuff that follows is more important, though…
What do you want from your photography?
What do you really want to shoot? Landscapes? Slices of everyday life? Your kids? Archival materials? All of the above?
How you answer these questions will in large measure dictate the kind of camera you buy. But really, no one cares about your camera.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve become most interested in street photography. This is not the art of making shots of streets, but of simply capturing everyday life, unposed, unscripted, as it happens. It’s really hard to do well for a variety of reasons, but my best street photos have emotion and heart, and they make me really happy when they turn out well.
I could shoot my street photos with my digital lens system camera, but it would be… not exactly joyless, but less joyful. Instead I use a small, fixed lens rangefinder camera, either film or digital. I recently finished a research project using only one of these cameras, and it was very satisfying, both while shooting and during processing. The camera fit the project so well.
The thing is, I didn’t know what I wanted from photography until I’d spent a few months shooting every day.
My advice then, is simply this: Grab something, anything—even your smartphone—and make photographs deliberately. A deliberative, contemplative, and reflective approach toward the images you make and share is much more important than the camera. This applies to visual researchers, but I’m pretty sure it applies to most image-making scenarios.
BTW, improvements to the box are responsible for most of the complexity we feel are part and parcel of digital cameras. But the fact that a very complex computer now sits inside the box doesn’t really change anything about how cameras work. ↩
I study everyday affects, sensations, aesthetics, and contexts, exploring their relationships to rhetorical theory. I teach courses in visual rhetorics and cultures, rhetorical theory, user experience research, and technical and professional writing.
