Thomas Malory, 1470, edition published by William Caxton, reprinted as an eBook from BlackMask.com

Top ten archaic words from Mort d’ Arthur that deserve to be brought back into the common lexicon:

1. dight: orderly, proper, or adorned. “And at the last he entered into a chamber that was marvellously and well dight and richly…”
2. maugre: in spite of, notwithstanding. “… yet had I liefer die in this prison with worship, than to have one of you to my paramour maugre my head.”
3. hight: to call or name. “It was a king that hight Meliodas, and he was lord and king of the country of Liones…”
4. liefer: prefer, rather. “…for there is no knight that I saw this seven years that I had liefer ado withal than with him.”
5. wood: mad, insane, raving. “Then was the king wood wroth that he had no knights to answer him.”
6. yede: past tense of to go. “Then he yede and armed him and horsed him in the best manner.”
7. siker: certain, secure. “So was there sikerness made on both parties that no treason should be wrought on neither party; …”
8. paynim: Pagan, non-Christian, especially Saracen or Muslim. “Then the damosel sent unto Corsabrin, and bade him go unto Sir Palomides that was a paynim as well as he…”
9. sithen: since. “Now tell me your name, sith ye be a lover, or else I shall do battle with you.”
10. chiertee: tenderness, affection, cheerfulness. “Howbeit it hath liked her good grace to have me in chiertee, and to cherish me more than any other knight…”

Peter Biskind, Simon & Schuster, 1998

This is really only the second book I’ve read on Hollywood, the first being David Niven’s Bring On the Empty Horses. The books are about very different eras, and they are, not surprisingly, very different books. Empty Horses is a raconteur’s reminiscences, a participant’s tales retold with a certain charm and tact, even when dealing with scandal and excess. Easy Riders is a much denser history, more concerned with the facts, and is written with a distinct thesis. There’s another obvious difference, with Niven focusing on the stars and Biskind focusing on the Directors. But there’s deeper stylistic differences as well. Niven’s recountings each have their own arc, segueing into one another, perhaps, but mostly episodic. Biskind’s retelling is much less linear, telling chronologically parallel stories.

I can’t remember when I have read anything that throws such a bewildering quantity of names and facts per page as Easy Riders does. Lacking Biskind’s encyclopedic understanding of the names and interrelations of the people involved, coupled with his tendency to refer to a person by first name, then last name, then nickname, then role (sometimes all in a single paragraph) I was occasionally left confused.

Yet even with this confusion, I thought the book did a remarkable job of telling the tale of the rise and fall of a generation of filmmakers, gave insight into their movies, and even helped explain the Hollywood of today. It also sketches out the attributes required to become a successful director or producer in Hollywood.

Like Empty Horses, Easy Riders left me with a sense of the personalities behind the movies, but, more importantly, gives some texture to the zeitgeist from which the movies sprang.

After trying a lot of different approaches, I am now getting close to the results I want when photographing teapots. I figured it would be worthwhile to share my system in the hopes that it’s helpful to someone else, and with the idea I might get some suggestions from others.

First, the goals:

• A clean image that shows detail of the piece.
• An image that’s reasonably accurate in color reproduction.
• An image that gives a little drama to the piece, rather than a cold, clinical look.

The Lighting Equipment:
I’ve tried several approaches. The one that I find best (so far) is not the cheapest approach. It involves about $300 in lighting equipment, not including the cost of any photographic gear.

(click for bigger view)

I started with a kit from Table Top Studios. It included a 30″ light tent and a two-light set. I bought a graduated backdrop from another photographic supply house, which I needed to trim to size — Table Top Studios now sells a custom sized backdrop which seems to be ideal. One other word of praise for Table Top — I was facing a deadline, when one of the bulbs burned out. They were extremely helpful and overnighted me a free replacement, so I was able to make the deadline. That made me a loyal customer from here on out.

I set up the tent on a card table in the overstuffed Meier Quagg Library. I installed the nylon sweep, and used clothespins to fasten the graduated backdrop to it. Because the light tent has a lip, I raised the front portion of the sweep using the two-volume Oxford English Dictionary. The 1982 version is perfectly sized; you might want to use something else of the same general shape and size.

Before placing a teapot upon this stage, I metered off of an 18% gray card, oriented vertically. Then, I tried it with a teapot. I did a lot of experimentation, bracketing, spot-metering, etc, and, to my simultaneous delight and dismay, found that for both digital and film, Nikon’s Matrix Metering was spot on for the best exposure. To get the best images, I stopped down to f/11, which necessitated a fairly long exposure time (on the order of a quarter second), which, of course, makes a tripod all the more necessary.

To see how these results compare with my previous efforts, compare:
before to after (obviously, different teapots!)

anonymous, circa. 1100, translated by Whitley Stokes, read as an e-book from BlackMask.com.

This is a curious old Irish tale, which seems to fall somewhere between standard historical epics and fairy tales. You can still hear quite a little of the oral tradition in its structure, but it also has some surprises. The beginning is very much fairy tale, about how Conaire becomes king, and how he learns of his personal taboos. This portion is mystical and fantastical. It is followed immediately by the tale of how the good king brings peace and prosperity and then, in one grand binge, violates all his taboos. The tale then takes a short detour, setting up the Reavers (the agents of destruction), and giving us their history and descriptions, with each being more terrifying and strange than the previous. After this short detour, we take a very long detour, where these agents of destruction have resolved to destroy Da Derga’s hostel (where the king is spending the night). They review and catalog each individual within the hostel, sparing no details, and their seer predicts how many of the reavers will be slain by each. This is by far the longest section of the tale, and seemed to have been a great opportunity for retellers to toss in their own creative additions. The actual destruction is something of an anticlimax.

anonymous, circa. 1100, translated by John O’Hagan around 1885, read as an e-book from BlackMask.com.

There are three kinds of war reporting: the first, by journalists who are independent of any side in the conflict, who wander around in harm’s way to report what’s going on; the second, by so-called “embedded” reporters, who are essentially information officers of one of the sides in the conflict; and the third, by the historians and tale-tellers who were not present and who recast any events according to their own studies, prejudices, and opinions. The Song of Roland falls beyond this last sort, and forces us to concede a fourth type of war reporter, viz, the mythologist.

The Song of Roland is a medieval propaganda piece designed to show the nobility of dying for your monarch, especially if it involves taking a few hundred thousand infidels along with you. As is to be expected from a mythic retelling, the noble are absolutely noble, and the base are absolutely base. Interestingly, though, there is a certain nobility amongst the royalty of the infidel enemy (an “Emir of Balaguet” is honored with the statement “were he Christian, nobler baron none,” shortly before meeting his demise).

But the noble Frankish chavaliers are a pretty bad-ass bunch. When slaying this or that infidel knight, they were not content to merely hew them with swords or pierce them with lances, oh no, we are given almost pornographic gleeful descriptions of swords passing through helmets and heads, down through armor and chest, down through the saddle, and splitting the spines of the unfortunate steeds. In case we don’t pick up on the fact that the noble Frankish chevaliers are tough, we get this scene repeated with minor variations nearly a dozen times.

Reading this made me realize that popular narrative hasn’t changed a great deal in the last thousand years. Sure, there have been some localized shifts in values here and there, but The Song of Roland was not unlike the Rambo of its day. The good guys win because they’re Good (and God is on their side), and the bad guys, for the most part, are lance fodder. The spoils of victory have changed somewhat; while Rambo emerges unscathed from the conflict, anxious for his sequel, Roland’s victory is a noble death, the praise of his monarch, and guaranteed entrance to heaven.

It also pointed out how much religion has changed. Christianity seems far less concerned with the glory of martyrdom today, and shies away from the forced conversions for which The Song lauds Charlemagne. The ignorance of the beliefs of the “infidels” certainly remains (witness statements by various Evangelical leaders in the U.S.).