1st Snow 12_11_19 • iPhone 11Pro Max

N. Lime St. Lancaster, Pa • 12/11/19

This is an iPhone snap as I left for the gym. First snow dusting w/temps around 39 degrees and little breeze. Age is drug resistant, in fact it's everything resistant, except for the elliptical trainer and weights. Tried the gym's pool but it disconnects me from everything but my mind. Which water totally too isolates. Need the other folks, my buddies in battling decline. We whine together about the weather, the icy streets, the Philly Iggles and Washington.

GEEK STUFF:  I just got an iPhone 11. This is the first picture. Pretty sharp, good tonal range, reasonable color dynamics. The light was actually a bit darker since the sun was only breaking through. I like the way it peers into shadows while holding onto the highlights. My feeling is, it just doesn't feel like a camera that's as serious as the thing's tech specs. Is this photography's future? What's to become of those pros with fifty or sixty pounds of equipment? Well, there' yet a need to lug lights, which won't work well with the iPhone. So perhaps there's still reason not to throw away my Canons?

The mirrorless. cameras are replacing my DSLRs with lighter boxes. But why? For less than the price of a new prosumer body, I get not just an iPhone camera but all the other stuff in that sliver of computer. Plus the whole thing fits in my back pocket.

Problem is, it doesn't make me feel like either a photographer or an artist. That image up there is a snap shot... with all of the information that my Canon 7D Mk II  would have gathered, perhaps even more. Culture shock? Aging? Maybe the solution to this is on the elliptical trainer and in the weight room? Where I can listen to photography blogs through my iPhone.

Daybreak Commute • Florence, Italy

Firenze Fall 6:45am 10/09/07

That Autumn morning demanded a painting, right? I liked the way the ancient colors began to glow as they absorbed a new-day's energy.  

In a way, we're ashamed of epiphany. Instead we like to boast of a solid line of intention. Huh? Well, anyone remember Inspector Jacques  Clouseau from the Pink Panther? Probably not, that movie's from 1963! YIPES! Peter Sellers, once a comic genius, died at just 54 and his bumbling Clouseau made the otherwise bland 50s-like whodunnit flick a classic. 

"You are pro-bab-ly vundering vy ah deed dat, Eh?" he'd bark after a prat-fall or a wall-collision. And his absurd question reverberates each time I marvel at a processing opening. With my cameras, I hunt for conceptual metaphors. Sometimes there's a pre-conception that sets me stalking but during the safari there are unrelated shots which get dropped into a warehouse. Why'd they get flash-frozen into digital boxes? 

They leave me... "Vundering vy ah deed dat". And then, rooting through my boundlessly big bag O' tools, those images get poked and picked at like a boiled lobster. Did Michelangelo sense 'David' in his stone? Or was he hunting for a shapely madonna only to accidentally release Goliath's nemesis? Did he mutter, "What the hell's this?" as he chiseled away marble? 

How much of 'David' was concept, how much epiphany? Would anyone dare ask the maestro, and would he admit the amount of - found - art? When I write an article, I start with a concept, research it, then, as carefully as possible, frame the story I'm going to tell. Ordinarily that process massages the original concept so the story arc's at least minimally different from its origins. The act of writing causes yet further molding so that the final work usually surprises me. 

Was Michelangelo the genius who took an initial concept and rendered it in marble? Or did the process of rendering 'David' reveal epiphanies? Maybe bridge engineers create a final product that is indistinguishable from an architect's concept. Even in such cases, isn't it likely that construction will reveal opportunities? 

The lady-commuter in my image up there caught my attention as I attempted to find an ancient meaning in her street's structures and palettes. But instead what I found in the digital stone was a

sunrise moment quarried from a vein of glimmering jewels. 

Leaving me  muttering, "What the hell's this?" and smiling at a whispered echo... "You are pro-bab-ly vundering vy ah deed dat, Eh?"

Art asks questions... even to the artist. 

GEEK STUFF: Canon 40D, standard lens. Post in PS2019, assist with myriad tools particularly Alien Skin & Topaz, plus custom brushes and actions. 

Mourning After

Fern Bench

The first freeze finished Fall - overnight. There's a whimpery thing about Autumn:  it lacks a happy ending. Spring triggers hope but Fall-fans know it brings scouring squalls: then flash-frozen rubble of summer memories and wintery worry. Yeah... The  mourning after Fall ends is best framed in black, huh?

GEEK STUFF: Nothing special. A Canon 40D grab shot finished in PS2019 with an assist from Exposure 7 and A.I. Gigapixel (plus a texturizing screen mesh). The grey daybreak result is both morn-full and mournful.

And so another still life filled with obvious purpose. But a feeling of medieval palette?