The Digital Domain - A Painter's Feedom

[digidom]

A PAINTER'S FREEDOM - A defence of the digital photograph


"The camera cannot compete with painting as long as it cannot be used in Heaven or Hell."(Edvard Munch 1863-1944)

The early history of photography is littered with the deprecating comments made by artists of traditional media who, had they lived to see the current acceptance of photography as an artform, would have been appalled. The appearance of the photographic process was treated with contempt by those who had learned their crafts over many years and to whom the immediacy offered by the camera's lens was anathema. The traditional image of the solitary man of vision labouring long and lonely hours at his chosen craft was certainly a far cry from the freedom of the snapshot which was quickly granted to an eager public by refinements rapidly brought to the initial discovery of the silver image.

Nonertheless the invention of photography hugely affected painting, not least because it put many of the less gifted workaday practitioners out of business. It also was largely instrumental in the rise of the Impressionists who turned to capturing their impression of things rather than fastidiously recording things as they were seen to be, as this was now being done with unprecedented accuracy and realism by the camera.

From the earliest days of photography an antipathy existed between the parvenu and the established methods of producing hand-crafted imagery. To a large extent this enmity has now abated but there are still pockets of resistance, most notably in the European old guard, that refuse to entertain the notion that an image made in a machine and capable of easy facsimile should ever be referred to as Art. I can attest to this lingering snobbery in England where, in recent years, I and a fellow photographer were asked to leave a gallery which we were visting for the purpose of showing our folios. We were imperiously informed that photography belonged in newspapers, magazines and wedding albums and certainly not on the walls of respected art galleries.

The American continent and some of the more enlightened European countries appear to have missed out on these small-minded spats. In the case of America this is probably due to the fact that the United States and photography are near contemporaries and have largely grown up together, fostering a sympathy for the camera arts not earned so easily in the old world.

America's first trains were documented by photographers whereas England's earliest example of locomotion was famously captured in oils - admittedly by one of the few artists to emerge from the sceptred isle who dared to use his imagination. Nonetheless the quaint notion that a work of art must be old to be considered of value still persists today and for the time being most works of photographic art are still too youthful. Unfortunately this emphasis on the aged article is already establishing its precedence in the appreciation and valuing of photographic art, where the hunt for the 'vintage' print is on.

"All photographs are accurate. None is the truth." (Richard Avedon 1923-2004)

In 1984 I and some fellow students of photography paid a vist to Manchester University in the north-west of England to experience first-hand a new machine that was slowly making its way around Britain's lesser-known seats of learning. It was a Quantel PaintBox, reportedly costing a quarter of a million pounds (US$ 500,000 at today's rate of exchange) and designed to digitally manipulate imagery. In truth I can remember very little about the machine, other than it was very large and was probably far less powerful in computing terms that the laptop that I am now using to type this sentence. We returned to our 10x8 cameras, studios and darkrooms blissfully unaware that we had just been introduced to the future of photography - a computing machine that would radically alter the way we made our future livings.

Almost a quarter of a century later I find it hard to believe that this first meeting with the digital domain created such a small impression as I am now irreversibly smitten by its everlasting possibilities. In truth, I was so immersed at that time in the joys of lighting, shooting and processing 10x8 transparencies to take much notice of the world outside the studio and darkroom but twelve years later I had bought my first workstation and there was no turning back.

"Why do photographers bother with the deception, especially since it so often requires the hardest work of all? The answer is, I think, that the deception is necessary if the goal of art is to be reached: only pictures that look as if they had been easily made can convincingly suggest that beauty is commonplace." (Robert Adamns Beauty in Photography 1996)

I wonder what those antagonists of the mid-nineteenth century would have made of the digital realm if they were still alive to see it. No doubt the introduction of yet another box into the workflow would only have served to increase their indignation. But these grey boxes have at last granted to photographers the freedoms which were once theirs to lay sole claim. Belief in the efficacy of these creative freedoms was the pricincipal cause of their original distrust of photography.

From the viewpoint of those artists of yesteryear photography was second-rate because it did not allow much room for the imagination, for the individual stamp of the individual mind which had been the yardstick of art for centuries. A painter could begin painting his canvas with only his imagination to hand but the photographer could only create from that which already existed; that is to say, in artistic terms, the mundane.

The freedom of design now afforded by the computer has released photographers from the monotonous recording of the world as it is and offered them the opportunity to inherit those values so jealously guarded by the artists of yesteryear. Paradoxically, these technologies allows us to fashion imagery which those old painters would more readily recognise as art, facets of our imaginations in which the transparency and negative are as the pencil and charcoal studies of yesteryear; merely preparations for a more complex and contemplative finished piece.

''...a harmoniously conducted picture consists of a series of pictures superimposed on one another, each new layer conferring greater reality on the dream.'' (Charles Baudelaire 1821-1867)

David Hockney in his controversial book Secret Knowledge has suggested that prior to the Renaissance artists had learned how to use lenses and mirrors to trace the various elements that went into their compositions with some rather unusual effects ( most of which go largely unnoticed until they are pointed out, at which point they become glaring beacons of the obvious).

According to Hockney's theory it is no exaggeration to state that many of the masterpieces of art history owe at least some debt to the lens and that the photographic process is not so distant a relative of the supposed finer arts as we might have previously believed. Would not Rafael and Titian have gladly made use of an image that held fast to their canvases in preference to one whose transient qualities was a caprice of wanton light?

It has always struck me as a sad reflection on our skills that the artists of the pre-photographic era had a greater understanding of the possibilities of light than we who can now capture it firm and forever on film and microchip. Who would claim that there has been a photographic artist who could compete in this respect with Rembrandt or Rubens? Adams and Horst would be my nominations for a contest I feel sure that we would lose. In our defence we can consider the thousands of years that passed between the time the first lines were made on cave walls to the glories of The Rennaisance, and remembering that photography is not yet two hundred years old, forgive ourselves our immaturities.

If we wish to shrug off our 'poor relative' tag once and for all we photographers of the early twenty-first century must grasp the opportunities that technology has granted us. Art has forever been the master and craft its faithful sevant and the union of the photographic discipline with the freedom of expression previously known only to painters has, I believe, the potential for genius.

[David R Munson]

An excellent essay. I encourage you to try to publish it (aside from on this forum, I mean), if you have not already done so. Also, I might suggest that you make it available as a formally-formatted, downloadable PDF. I would be happy to provide this service gratis if you would like.

[Annie M.]

I disagree with most of your assumptions about genius/freedom/photography/creativity & ....

The genius in inherent to the artist not his medium... an artist can be infinitely creative within very stringent limits... more keys on the piano does not necessarily lead to more inspired music... 'the monotonous recording of the world' is what tourists do... there are some very inspired eyes & minds out there in the contemporary photographic art world and gallery and auction sales indicate some serious interest... photography is young there is much much much to come... and just a personal thing... I like my magic discovered not manufactured... it is just a different way of being in the world

[digidom]

I disagree with most of your assumptions about genius/freedom/photography/creativity & ....

The genius in (sic) inherent to the artist not his medium... an artist can be infinitely creative within very stringent limits... more keys on the piano does not necessarily lead to more inspired music... 'the monotonous recording of the world' is what tourists do... there are some very inspired eyes & minds out there in the contemporary photographic art world and gallery and auction sales indicate some serious interest... photography is young there is much much much to come... and just a personal thing... I like my magic discovered not manufactured... it is just a different way of being in the world

Hi Annie,

Thank you for your response. It contains some interesting discussion points.

I would not rely on gallery and auction sales as an indication of the state of health of the 'contemporary photographic art world'. We do not judge Art, Time does and I suspect that, as in all eras, the flavour of the month is likely to remain just that. Gallery sales and auction prices are much more an indication of Art World fashion than Art itself. In any case the real interest as I understand it is in the work of photographers who are no longer with us and most especially the 'vintage print'.

"I like my magic discovered not manufactured.."

It seems to me that the mistake that most of us make is that the essence of photography resides in front of the lens whereas in truth it lies just behind it. Our imaginations are the most important piece of photographic equipment we have and simply to travel to an unusual geographical location and photograph it is simply not enough to produce 'ART'.

You may know Jacques Henri Lartigue's advice to young photographers to listen to "the ideas and suggestions of God" which is the most eloquent definition of the imagination that I have come across thus far.

The digital domain is merely an adjunct to the imagination.

"more keys on the piano does not necessarily lead to more inspired music..."

Forgive me but you are very wrong in this assumption. More keys on the piano would unquestionably provide us with music that we cannot even dream of confined, as we are, by our current limitations. Only one more piece of ivory would provide us with a vision as yet unforeseen.

Kindest,

Dominic

[Wayne Lambert]

I admire Dominic's work; his images are compelling. I hope, however, all, or even much, of photography doesn't go that way. Annie expressed my view, "I like my magic discovered, not manufactured." (Boy, I wish I had said that.)

[Marko]

Annie expressed my view, "I like my magic discovered, not manufactured." (Boy, I wish I had said that.)

Maybe you should be glad you didn't.

How could you possibly reconcile that statement with your own description of your photographs?


All of the photographs are original hand-coated platinum/palladium photographs printed in the darkroom by the photographer.

:)

By the way, I do admire both your photographs and Dominic's.

[Wayne Lambert]

I felt the zing. It will take me awhile to figure out how to reply. If I can.

[Marko]

I felt the zing. It will take me awhile to figure out how to reply. If I can.

You just did, very gracefully at that! :)

It wasn't meant to be a zing, though, I should've been more careful with the wording.

[Wayne Lambert]

Thanks, Marko. No problem.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

I don't understand your essay. Is it your premise that photography can now be art because photoshop allows you to do everything you can do in a darkroom only easier?

This seems a weak premise to me and not exactly a great defense of digital.

You wrote:


A painter could begin painting his canvas with only his imagination to hand but the photographer could only create from that which already existed; that is to say, in artistic terms, the mundane.

Hmmm, tell this to Jerry Uelsmann. I beleive this statement to be way off the mark. Ask any photographer on this forum and I bet you 9 out of 10 will tell you that their final photograph has nothing to do with the original scene and they did this long before digital arrived (well those of us who have been doing it for more than 20 years).

I agree with Annie, art is limited by the imagination and the talent of the author, not by the tools they use.

[jetcode]

You may know Jacques Henri Lartigue's advice to young photographers to listen to "the ideas and suggestions of God" which is the most eloquent definition of the imagination that I have come across thus far.


Contact me and I will take you to some definitions of the imagination that go far beyond the concept and reality of god.

[jetcode]

Hmmm, tell this to Jerry Uelsmann. I believe this statement to be way off the mark. Ask any photographer on this forum and I bet you 9 out of 10 will tell you that their final photograph has nothing to do with the original scene and they did this long before digital arrived (well those of us who have been doing it for more than 20 years).


The final photograph has everything to do with the original scene as this is the original source of the final image.



I agree with Annie, art is limited by the imagination and the talent of the author, not by the tools they use.

Since the term "Art" is completely subjective Art cannot be limited by the imagination as there are no limits to the imagination or the notion of Art. This doesn't mean some expressions aren't registered as more pleasurable then others or that opinions have formed concerning Art. That notion belongs to personal interpretation, experiential response, and the collective.

Tools are tools, secondary to the original process.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

The final photograph has everything to do with the original scene as this is the original source of the final image.

Ok... :rolleyes:

[Kirk Keyes]

"more keys on the piano does not necessarily lead to more inspired music..."

Forgive me but you are very wrong in this assumption. More keys on the piano would unquestionably provide us with music that we cannot even dream of confined, as we are, by our current limitations.

Yeah, it gives us microtonal music. Have you listened to that stuff???

Anyway, I really did enjoy the essay.

[Annie M.]

'forgive me'... I forgive you Dominic

now you must forgive me... I have a broken wrist (again!!) typing is difficult so my response may seem a little disjointed.

A small point on photographic history... photography was actually accepted as an art form in England before it was in America.

'We do not judge Art, Time does' .. please enlighten me... how is the flavor of the century more valid than the flavor of the month... your statement implies some kind of linear time line where the real art makes it to a finish line somewhere in the future... I think the paradigm is much more fluid and convoluted.

'It seems to me that the mistake that most of us make is that the essence of photography resides in front of the lens whereas in truth it lies just behind it' ... I think very few photographic artists make this mistake... it is like saying a painter believes the essence of painting is somewhere amid the bristles of his brush.

'Forgive me but you are very wrong in this assumption. More keys on the piano would unquestionably provide us with music that we cannot even dream of confined, as we are, by our current limitations. Only one more piece of ivory would provide us with a vision as yet unforeseen.' ...more keys only provide more notes ... harpsichord or piano... digital or analog they are only instruments to enalble the manifestation of the artist's vision.

For me when I want 'A Painter's Feedom (sic)' I paint... It does not feel any freer or more inspired it is an entirely different thing not to be compared to when I photograph.

... Annie

[Vaughn]

The final photograph has everything to do with the original scene as this is the original source of the final image.

For me it has everything to do with the light reflected off the original scene (making the original source the sun). A subtle but important difference...at least to my own image-making and print-making. YMMD...

vaughn

[jetcode]

For me it has everything to do with the light reflected off the original scene (making the original source the sun). A subtle but important difference...at least to my own image-making and print-making. YMMD...

vaughn

What if the original scene is a nightclub or concert or night time sports event. Is art is restricted to nature?

[Maris Rusis]

"Digital photography" is mechanised painting. Consider the remarkable parallels.

The first need in mechanised painting is a mark-making machine which would place spots of colour of exactly the right value in exactly the right place. We pretty well have it now. It's called an ink-jet printer. Its operation is remarkably analogous to the painter's arm, hand, and brush tranferring pigment from tubes of colour to the painting's substrate.

Next, the mark-making machine needs a plan to follow to produce a picture. This plan is a description file, a set of electronic values which encode the final picture. The painter also needs a plan. This is his/her mind's-eye picture which consists of a coded array of electric, electro-chemical, and neuro-peptide values distributed over a neurone-axon network.

The mark-making machine needs to know how to turn the electronic file into a picture. This is achieved by software called a printer-driver. The painter also needs to know how to turn a mind's-eye picture into a painting. The software for this (the painter-driver) may take two or three years to download at art school.

The picture file that underlies both the output of the printer and the painter is synthesised in a data processor (computer core or painter's brain) from a number of sources. Picture files can freely include machine static or painter's whimsy but for realist work they mainly come from the suitably processed output of an optical sensor array.

A machine type optical sensor essentially consists of a large array of sensitive elements (CMOS, CCD, whatever) called pixels which may number in the millions - megapixel sensors. The output of the sensor is a stream of electrical impulses which are processed and stored in memory.

The painter's sensor is the eye. It includes a fixed array of various sensitive elements accumulating to about 100 megapixels. The output of the eye is a stream of electro-chemical impulses that are processed and stored in memory.

Everywhere you look there are compelling analogies and equivalents in picture production by human painting and by the mechanised equivalent; robot painting or digital "photography".

I reckon it is no accident that painting has been the premium medium of visual art for at least the last 800 years. It has a huge inherent capacity for versatility and expressiveness. There is every chance that mechanised painting, or "digital photography" as it is now called, may be greatest thing for the next 800 years. The pictures it can make are limited only by the imagination, the capacity to collect or synthesise picture data and, of course, sufficient data processing capacity to crunch the numbers.

Tradition photography, in which a physical sample of subject matter flies through the air, gets organised by a lens, and impacts into a sensitive surface to cause a picture to form where it hits is a very different thing. It is limited by the operation of the laws of nature and cannot make pictures of just anything the imagination cares to conjure up.

I believe it is this austere limitation of traditional photography, no data, no files, no computing, no software, which will lend its pictures, few though they may be, a separate credibility and persuasive power.

[Annie M.]

Dominic you got me thinking today today about Fuentes of all people (maybe it was the old world/new world thing)... and the bit at the beginning of Terra Nostra where he writes of the first boiled water...astonishing... miraculous.

The simple boiling of water can be seem as rather a mundane occurance but it is not... it is indeed magical every time it happens... I think seeing the world as mundane is a form of self-deception... if the world is mundane it is because it is not truly percieved.

Every object and the light that touches it is a miracle we just need the imagination to truly see it.

I see by the way this thread is going I may not be an appropriate contributor... my ideas are simple and transparent... I admire your work... you are a complex person indeed.

regards, annie

ps... is that a self portrait of you up there in your signature... if so I see you have put yourself up on a little pedestal... as you can imagine I find that very amusing.

[Struan Gray]

I like microtonal music. I also agree that boiling water is an everyday miracle - and as a physicist I have often seen the yet more miraculous sight of water boiling in a bell jar at room temperature.

But. Dom is fighting a battle that was won years ago. Photography has long been accepted as art, provided that it addresses the issues that the art world regards as central. The only 'problem' is that the photography that art afficionados regard as art is often not regarded as photography by photographers. The issue rests in the photography world, not the art world.

Welcome to lf.info Dom, and thanks for posting a longer, more thought through piece than our usual fragments. I think you're wrong - but in an interesting way :-)

[digidom]

Welcome to lf.info Dom, and thanks for posting a longer, more thought through piece than our usual fragments. I think you're wrong - but in an interesting way :-)

Thank you Struan,

If I am always wrong and never dull I shall be quite content.

Kindest,

[claudiocambon]

Dominic,

I think it is one thing to argue about process, and on the other to evaluate final results. I am ultimately not interested in whether an image, or to what extent, was, so to speak, 'manually' manipulated. I am interested in the vision that manifests itself in the finished photograph. That the more 'manual' approach is more gratifying to you is in the end merely a question of preferred working methods, a personal choice. Whether or not it is superior is another, vaguer issue. It is in the hands of the practitioner, as others have said.

Much as I loathe categorical definitions of art, because I feel art should probably be nothing more than beautiful (in the deepest sense possible of the word), and shouldn't harm anyone, I find that what makes photography so compelling is the conveying of a sense of something having happened, having existed in time, whether it is a street scene, a pine needle, or whatever. Whether or not it actually did is irrelevant; it is the sensation that it either did occur, or could have happened that gives a photograph such strength as a "true" trace of reality and time. Dominic, your pictures conform to this ideological definition, and although the probability of some things believably happening may on a surface level seem slim to none, the image presents them as such, and challenges the viewer to accept this visual reality as existing. That it seems improbable is jarring, and this dynamic mechanism forces the viewer to ask what the relartionship is between good ol' seeing and believing. According to this notion of believability (which, again, is an ideological more than an aesthetic criterion), your work is strongest when it hides its own tools, in other words, when it asserts this believability most un-self consciously, because it appears to exist in its own right, free of the hands of its creator. (It generally does, from what I remember seeing.)

Does the computer give more tools to photographers to shape the reality they want to portray? Of course. Is it more, or better than what we currently have, in expressive terms? Not necessarily. That to me is like saying that Magritte is a better painter than Botticelli because he is more explicitly surreal and dreamlike. All images are manifestations of our inner dreams, for that matter. Are we entering an age in which this sort of constructive approach is more appropriate to our Zeitgeist, and therefore, feels more apt, relevant or true? Perhaps, but only time, as measured by all of our photographs, will tell.

[digidom]

To take a piece of paper, coat it with a million silver halides and then to arrange for light and chemicals to caress it in such a way that it leaves an impression of one's imagination is an unparalleled joy which no amount of criticism can dilute.

Tools and processes that afford us a greater degree of control over the subtleties of the final print should be welcomed by all except the most belligerent of Luddites.

As many respondents in this thread have correctly asserted all aesthetic arguments are won and lost in the final result and this itself is wholly subjective. Essentially this discussion is an exercise in dialectics and none the less enjoyable for that.

The argument that the camera's charms lie solely in its ability to capture a precise moment in time seems to me particularly specious and one that is largely responsible for what I (perhaps unkindly) referred to in my essay as "the mundane". The camera's true potential is as yet undiscovered and my conclusion that the digital domain can help us greatly in our explorations should not be seen as contentious.

Equally false is the claim that the magic that occurs within the digital realm is any less discovered or worthy than those that occur outside it or that the joy of seeing a digital composition slowly reveal itself on a monitor is any less ecstatic than that of seeing an image emerge onto a wet piece of paper in a darkened room. I know the joys of both and would be the last to claim that one is superior to the other. For what it is worth my prints are toned silver gelatins so I can enjoy the best of both worlds.

A few years ago I had the privilege of meeting and exhibiting with Jerry Uelsmann in Seattle. Although I would not wish to put words into his mouth I think I can safely say that we would be in broad agreement on our approach to photography. The principle difference between our working methods is that Jerry makes his compositions in a traditional darkroom and I make mine in a digital darkroom. I do maintain that the controls available in my darkroom are more subtle and varied than those afforded by enlargers and masks but I would not wish to go to war with those who disagree with me.

Further back, in February of 2000, I attended the AIPAD Fair in New York and visited numerous galleries whose sole mission was to exhibit photography. I was astounded at their number (in the hundreds) because I was aware of only four galleries in London that were exclusively showing photographs. It may well be that the English preceded the Americans in accepting photography as a legitimate art form (I am not sufficiently conversant with photography's divergent transatlantic histories to argue otherwise) but it was a short-lived infatuation as comparisons today would surely prove.

Art is often referred to as the search for Truth and Beauty. Artists who set out to reveal the truth will quickly find themselves unemployed. The best we can hope for is to record our honest impressions of the lies which is the closest we humans have to a truth. Beauty is measured in degrees of deceit; the greater the beauty the greater the deceit.

Deceptively yours,

[claudiocambon]

Tools and processes that afford us a greater degree of control over the subtleties of the final print should be welcomed by all except the most belligerent of Luddites.

The argument that the camera's charms lie solely in its ability to capture a precise moment in time seems to me particularly specious and one that is largely responsible for what I (perhaps unkindly) referred to in my essay as "the mundane". The camera's true potential is as yet undiscovered and my conclusion that the digital domain can help us greatly in our explorations should not be seen as contentious.


Art is often referred to as the search for Truth and Beauty. Artists who set out to reveal the truth will quickly find themselves unemployed. The best we can hope for is to record our honest impressions of the lies which is the closest we humans have to a truth. Beauty is measured in degrees of deceit; the greater the beauty the greater the deceit.

Deceptively yours,

Just for the record, Luddites were not opposed to technology per se, but to its rapid introduction in such a way that granted more profit to the mill owners at the expense of the very social fabric of the mill workers by unemploying them and devaluing the need for their craft, turning them from skilled artisans into machine operators, ravaging the economic and social health of their families and communities. It was the dehumanizing rate of introduction, as well as the underlying profit motive, an overall class warfare, that angered them.

When in the early 90's camera companies started selling us "the future," already religiously asserting the power of digital technology, which for a long time was inferior to what analog did, photographers such as myself took one look at the quality, the rate of obsolescence, and the price tag, and said, no thanks. Film at the time still seemed unparalleled. Remember the $30,000 CD burners? We WERE asked to buy such stuff! The end result is that a lot of us got a bad taste in our mouths, and have taken a while to adapt.

Again, I think your classification of certain kinds of photography as 'mundane' is, more than unkind, specious in itself. What counts, as I said in my earlier thread, is the suggestion of a moment in time. Whether it actually happened, or whether it was assembled from various moments in time, and composited is irrelevant, or rather, is merely a choice in working methods. What counts is how believable the unified surface feels. Photographs ALWAYS ask us to experience something AS IF it has occurred as a moment in time. This is the medium's cognitive function, and its great appeal. As you imply in your last paragraph, whether it is the 'truth' or a 'lie' is not the main issue; it is what it appears to be, what it asks us to believe, that matters. As Errol Morris says in his blog piece that Tim linked, it is very hard to 'know' a photograph anyway in and of itself. We bring a whole apparatus of belief to the image, and that is what animates it.

Ultimately this remains a discussion of technique more than results, and on that level I heartily concur with you on the ways that digital adds to the toolbox, and allows us to intervene. I used to hate color printing, and now, with scanning and inkjet, I am very happy with the color I can get. I used to be surprised by how good someone's images looked published in ink, and how bad they looked as a print on the wall. I have not yet entered into the world of black and white, and hope to start with it soon. I think, in the end, that I would rather, for many reasons, especially a level of control, adjust a print on a monitor than in a dark, smelly room, much as I am attached to the darkroom.

All this to say that I would avoid rhetoric about those who are enlightened and those who dwell in the shadows. What is in question is an overall attitude to the medium, and I don't think that a choice of working methods automatically dictates a certain kind of result.

[Annie M.]

time... there is 'painterly time' and 'photographic time'... to me Dominic's work is imbued with painterly time... not the Kandinsky musical time but a Rennaissance portrait time... it is eternally still.

The moment in time is incidental to the 'feeling of time' in photography... photographic time is something that to me has incredible creative possibilities... and I don't mean the extended shot of flowing water... I practically had to chew off my own leg to get out of that trap.

I never meant to imply that the magic of digital collage was somehow inferior... I just have a personal preference for the magic of the world outside myself... it has a different flavor (plus it's chewier)

must go... big storm yesterday and the rollers smashing the beach this morning are huge.