Sunday, March 27

What About The P-Word?

1925 • Packard • Paddy Wagon
Trigger Alert...

See on the rear side of the Fort Lauderdale cop wagon? It says "P" Wagon. Odd about this. People use the “P” word with impunity, but never the “N” word? Hmmm... and the Ps came here to escape the Brits’ attempt at genocide during the potato famine, were discriminated against and despised (No Irish Need Apply). and here’s a 1925 vehicle with the “P” word painted right onto it??? My family lost uncles who were impressed off the boat into the Union cause where they died to end slavery. Yet we celebrated St. P*ddy's Day earlier this month when millions got falling down drunk.

Wonder what’d happen if someone painted “N-Wagon on a cop vehicle today? Don’t ask, I know.... Sigh...

GEEK STUFF: Fort Lauderdale has an internationally acclaimed Packard museum. The collection's totally hot. I captured this 1925 Paddy Wagon (Look at the back panel... that's what it reads) with my Canon 7D hand held then washed it through PS CC with help from my tool-making friends at AlienSkin and Topaz. Oh, the classic cop-truck runs wonderfully.

Friday, March 18

Once There Wasn't Color




Standard Oil tycoon Henry Flagler built his Palm Beach palace, Whitehall in 1902. It was the photographic age dominated in America by Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen, arguably this country's fathers of fine art photography. Kodak disposable cameras were around for over two decades when Whitehall went up, democratizing photography by stripping it away from heavy metal priests who lumbered under giant 8X10 monsters, speaking in a tongue reserved for initiates into a secret craft.

But the Big Camera artistes were finally breaking into galleries with exquisitely exposed and focused large format prints of very still objects captured in squint-bright sunlight to maximize depth of field and tonal range.

The marble urns on Whitehall's front portico ooze out the feelings of the Gilded Age, don't they? Look at their perfection. Imagine the skills of their unknown crafters. I see these twin prints framed large on the walls of an old-money mansion. Or perhaps the waiting room of a great city's largest white-shoe law-firm or  brokerage house. They belong to a hushed-place thick with the scent of money.

Now we can do this without tripods on a Canon 7D through its standard sense with the help of the custom controls that PS-CC allows Alien Skin's Exposure X to bring to bear.

Wednesday, March 16

Winter in Miami

Miami • Late February • 2016

Poke around in your memory banks. Look for snapshots. They're impressions. We recall in art? This image is what's in my cerebral hard drive. As opposed to what's recorded on my digital storage space. In fact, I like this image more than what came off of my flash card. It's more reassuring. It's cool to have the skill to display my memory as opposed to my snapshot. What do you think? Is memory a feeling? 

Winter in Florida, BTW, is a feeling. 


Wednesday, March 9

It's a Pelican, Right?

Pelican • Boynton Beach, Fla. • 2/29/16
We went to Florida a couple of weeks ago to stay for ten days and got back last week. February's the cruelest month in America's Northeast. Which is why so many of my buddies and neighbors become snowbirds... Most of them December through March. Work's never allowed us to do it, so their winter tans have always fed a lot of envy. Thanks to an invitation from friends, we finally took the AutoTrain on its overnight run from Virginia to Sanford, Fla. then drove down to the Palm Beach/Boynton Beach area.

It's weird to walk through bone chilling winter winds into the train's door, and walk out into mid summer. And since the ride's through darkness, you can't see the snow disappear and the palm trees sprout. It's as if you nod off in the arctic and awake in the tropics. It's kinda/ like a Twilight Zone thing.

Anyways... Tropics have their own beasties... Like this girl sitting beside our restaurant's dock in hopes that something tasty'll drop. She was about five feet away at twilight and easy to grab through my  Canon 7D's  EFS 17-85mm (f4-5.6) normal lens. Of course I snapped up the dynamic range in CCPC.