Doll Face Puddle

<- Click here
Found her at Valley Forge. Really. She seems right for that encampment, eh?

I've begun to notice that I don't seem to have a dark side. I look at my images and yeah, they hit the three bases... they appeal to visual, emotional, and intellectual puddles of the mind. I'm happy with the way they communicate what I want them to... It's just that dark side stuff is considered so... so... DEEEEEP, right? Everything else splashes about in shallower puddles.

Ah well... she's charming... and I'm guessing that there's still a tiny place in a lot of us for sweet, huh?

On the other hand.... maybe I'll go upstairs and think some dark thoughts... I'll letcha know :-)

Al Lewis

><- Click here
Before he retired Al and I were partners in a still super-secret project. He's a legendary criminal attorney and was, once-upon-a-time a District Attorney and then Chaired the Pennsylvania Crime Commission responsible for the labor/mob convictions of the middle of the last century. He was the minority counsel chairman for the joint Congressional Committee investigating the Kennedy assassination. He's also a good friend. Which, of all of that stuff, is the most important to me.

---

Again i took the picture in natural light with my Canon G10. 1600 ISO makes some noise. BUT... once again, after asymmetrically cropping for the square I'd composed for... I knew that I was going to process the image first with Bokeh to control the enormous depth of field of the G10. Then I reworked the lighting to create the right setting for the Edward Hopper palette. And lastly I pulled in an impasto tool from Snap Art intensely reworking the dynamic range in Photoshop.

It is all about mood.

Pastoral

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I've become fascinated by the possibilities in the SnapArt filter that AlienSkin makes. So I stopped the car by the roadside last weekend just over the Maryland border to the south of Lancaster County. I was hunting for a pastoral that i could make speak eloquently as an oil painting. I stitched a pano together in PhotoShop, then found a dramatic sky from some I found over Cape Cod. I wanted a sky that would set off the palette perfectly and reinforce the wonderful orange highlights in the scene.

This is a robust tool, eh? Especially when you have the gamut of PhotoShop devices to selectively draw out the feelings. As I studied the site, I focused upon the tranquil balance of water, hillside, and the way that the vegetation has, over a lot of years, embraced the bridge and fit it into the natural flow of this place.

That's what I wanted to communicate in a final image... I think I've got it. Wuddaya think?

Re- Scootered

<- Click here

Maybe you'll recall this by clicking here. Last September I posted that earlier conclusion on the version above. But as you know, I'm growing obsessed by the possibilities in AlienSkin's Snap art. But.. but... but... I do mean possibilities. See, while its interesting to see what happens when I try the presets that they give me.... I'm a lot more interested in what the image says than what the engineers at AlienSkin say.

It's a problem that photographer's have. Some of us believe that photographic purity means determinedly filling the frame that Leica engineers dreamt up... that purity in image making means that truthfulness to a final image means never going a pixel beyond what lenses and cameras offer up to the sensor.

And as you know.. that's an attitude that drives me NUTTY!

So I wondered how this new technology could let me dig out even more from an image that I reeeeeely liked. And since ScooterGuy is among my favorite graphic accomplishments... well... I fired up the SnapArt, and the Bokeh and I dug!

Now whether this is better than the original is one interesting question. But a discovery was how much more robust these tools are in working out alternatives. But.. but... the most interesting thing is how much fun the process is. Wheeeee!

Whoa! EarthMonster!!!

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WOW! Some weeks are reeeeely unforgettable. A couple of days ago I told you about AlienSkin's featuring my work. BUT.. BUT... BUT... This is infinitely HUGE.... . I have just learned that the increasingly influential EarthMonster Illustrated has named ME the featured artist for June! Click here if you don't believe me. YIPES!!!! Look at the artists they have discovered on that elegant monthly E-Zine and they've added ME!

YIPPPIE!!!!

(Slap!) Um, thanks, I needed that.

Okay, I've stopped panting an I'm calming down and I'm chanting my mantra and my heart's slowing nicely...

If you are not a regular visitor to EarthMonster Illustrated, you're missing something cool. Some of you noticed it first when I recently added it to the bar on the right under: PHOTOGRAPHIC COMMUNITIES/FORUMS. Well for those who didn't, I hope that you'll drop on by and thank Mark for his labor-of-love in assembling such a wonderful site for us, AND for hunting out all of the featured thoughts and people on that column on the right of his site. And of course I hope that you'll scroll down his page and enjoy the artists he's featured before me in previous editions of EarthMonster Illustrated.

Did I say...

YIPPPIE!!!!

AlienSkin Feature!

<- Click here

This is pretty cool. Jeff Butterworth the CEO of AlienSkin likes the stuff here on ImageFiction. So he asked if it'd be okay to mention it in his company's May 09 Newsletter Blast and here on the AlienSkin blog! And he reeeely liked our friend Steven Issell's work and even used his fighter plane as their cover image.

You know that I'm becoming convinced that pixels exist to be enhanced, right? So click here to see the AlienSkin page I've posted above along with a passel of enhancements!

Sidewalk Girl

<- Click here

Alrighty.... Let's think about a little city girl, sitting on the sidewalk, watching stuff happen all around her as the evening comes on. Well, why think about her... instead, here... Think on her. K?

Enjoy..

---

You're right. I rarely EVER remove major pieces of color information from my images. Well, okay, but this isn't a monotone. FAR from it. But I sensed a nostagic eeling when I saw here sitting there outside of her house, her dad sitting behind on the door stoop. She felt like a long ago memory, and I wanted to show you that memory even more than I wanted to show you the Sidewalk Girl

---

And then there's Snowball..

Poster #9

- Click here

The Race was miles long. She ran it... against racism. I'm guessing she's run that race throughout her life - actually as opposed to this morning when she ran it metaphorically.

Her exhaustion is so wonderfully mixed with a satisfaction... that brings the word 'dignity' to my mind. You know, I believe that all of our hopes may be minor, except to us, but some things matter because we choose to make them matter. And so this lady just ran for miles, and her satisfaction is what it meant to feel, "Everyone won..."

===

Once again - here's the virgin image from my flash card. Again the image was captured with my mighty Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens.




As with the others in this series I drew this image into a square template by replacing the contents of the smart filter in my template (where the text already existed as well.)
I simply moved the original about within the square frame to maximize the composition. In post the problem was to deal with the explosion of confusion. Which first required the AlienSkin Bokeh filter to deal with the depth of field. That easily allowed me to convincingly blur the background. I then created a series of adjustment filters to restructure the dynamic range. Of course this also allowed me to re-arrange the highlights and shadows along with the color range and vignetting. One again, I over balanced the lightig and effects so that I could once again turn to the AlienSkin SnapArt filter.

Once again I opted for the oil painting option to continue the style of this series. I adjusted the stroke length and depth, lighting, contrst, and color balance... particularly in micro areas throughout the plane. Settling on an image I saved the effect on a new higher level. then Masked away with various brushes each set at about 30 opacity so the effect cold be gently introduced. This allowed me to bring back skin texture and perspiration highlights particularly on her arms and on the right eye region as we look at the image.

I merged the layers, duplicated the result and pulled out the Topaz Adjustment filter. This llowed me to draw considerable texture and vivacity into the image. Of course I applied a mask to this layer as well... at full intensity, so I could selectively brush in dramatic elements at full, well... Topaz, so to speak.

Finally I used an adjustment layer to reduce and balance the saturation throughout the image and then after flattening those layers I duplicated this layer, ran it through the smart filter, fully masked it, then brushed in sharpness and texture in key areas, particularly around the eyes and hair.

Simple? Um, well no. But if you're looking for some filter which will create result like this at the click of a button... well Buddy, luck ain't with you :-)

Poster #8

<- Click here
Okay... so I lied.

Really intended to end this series a few days ago, but then I started to run into people around Lancaster and they wondered about it. And they've asked if there were more pictures. And well, I'm really really really easy is what. It'd be cool to find a place to show this series. So if you'll put up with it... I've a few more that are nagging me to come onto your monitors.... Okay?

----

Would it help if I shared the process a tad more than usual? Okay, Again I took this virgin image through my mighty Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens on the D40.

And I've created a template for this series which involves a square smart object so the framing's automatic.I composed the image in the square frame. Then using various adjustment layers I arranged the lighting. and dynamic range to a heightened contrast. I followed that with the AlienSkin Bokeh filter to get rid of the annoying left foreground details. I also brushd in some green color into that area that I sampled from the upper background. Then puling up Topaz Labs Adjustment 3, I rearranged the areas of emphasis both with respect to saturation and detail. Again the arrangements were designed toward the top of the options. See, I've discovered that that sort of preparation's best to get the AlienSkin SnapArt options to cut well.

Then it was a matter of flattening the image, reducing it to 72dpi and 800 pixels on an edge then saving it as a jpg.

Gesture

><- Click here

Photography is acutely sensitive to gesture. I look for it, emphasize it wherever possible. Not just human, or animal gesture. Culture can gesture. History can gesture. Feelings.... feelings can gesture more than anything else.

Here's a man who stood in that halfworld that exists in the city. Have you ever noticed that space by the ocean's edge that's half covered by tide and half not depending on the clock? Cities are that way around the mouths of buildings. During some hours people and things tumble out onto stairwells, porches, entranceways, porticoes, alleys, and entranceways. Technically people are outside since there's nothing really between them and the open air. Yet they're still within, under, atop, things that are parts of buildings.

Those places pull at my camera lens, and later at my imagination. People there are like the hermit crabs who move into the shells of others. Many simply stay there. They're not passing out, or into a facility but holding a place in that antechamber. During certain hours it is where the are supposed to be, then during other hours, like the tide... they are gone.

---

Interested in the virgin photo from my FlashCard? Here it be. Again it was taken through my mighty Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens. I processed it carefully into the squares I seem to be momentarily obsessed with. In this case the bokeh belong to that terrific lens that I fired wide open (ISO 80 on my Canon 40D). In this stage I wanted a max contrast between the colors. I copied that layer and then applied my own custom version of AlienSkin's SnapArt pencil filter, bringing out the rough paper texture. Then, I used a B&W adjustment layer in PP to remove the color, added a layer above where I created a useful dark sepia tone (applying a blending mode to it) then finally I took the first adjusted full color layer, brought it to the top of the stack, and used a pinlight blending mode which I reduced in order to return the strong suggestion of a full color palette to the image - yet the pinlight blending mode allowed me to condense the color range so that it complimented yet set off my subject's gesturing.

Other stuff? Yeah, probably... subtle things around the image to bring out the most useful dynamic range so that the image will pop.

Does it work? Does for me... I wanted to discover a denizen of that city half world I described above. A man who stands in the partial shade of a building's awninged entrance way... to watch life pass by... and to comment upon it as it happens. Sort of like me, huh?

County Road

<- Cick here
Sun-stained road
slicing through
farm flat
county.

Going to or
Coming from
Home.

It depends, huh?

---

The craftsman says, "look, here is what you like."
The artist answers, "Look, here is what I like."

The commercial artist says both of those things.

The academic artist says neither of them.

---

Picture by the Canon G-10. Image with AlienSkin Bokeh, Lucis Aperture, AlienSkin SnapArt.... but mostly with... Ted.

The Race Is Over #6 & #7

><- Click here
I sense by the traffic to this site that this Race Against Racism series may have imposed itself beyond your tolerance. Okay, so let me end it with a fireworks display.. K? Out of the six images that I haven't yet posted these two were always intended to be the final act. The blazing rockets. I love each of them. But then, I'm a sentimental mush-ball when it comes to image making. I just can't seem to reach in and pull out the dark stuff. Maybe there isn't any darkstuff? Hmmmm... gotta think on that since darkstuff seems to be what critics want artists to do, right?

Okay, I will think on how to make gritty statements about the human condition's inevitable overheating of the earth, inhumanity toward one another, tendencies toward senseless savageries, and of course its trigger for wars and ancient obsessions for revenge. Sigh...



But before I go off to do dat... Howzabout we ponder these last two images- the end of this posted series - together. Yeah, they're sweet enough to make your teeth fall out... so clamp them tightly together... hopefully in a smile? K?

---

Tech stuff? As before the photos came first through my mighty Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens onto the 40D's processor. I used Topaz, and the AlienSkin Bokeh + SnapArt filters to tease out the thematic style that held this series together. If you'll click on the word IMAGEFICTION in the masthead way up above, you should be able to scroll down and look at others in this series along with the virgin photographs that I pulled directly from my FlashCards. Questions about technical details for this series? Leave them in the comments, or like most people, drop me an email to the address you'll find in the column there on the upper right. Hope you've enjoyed this series as much as I have making it.

Poster #5

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Okay, sorry about that diversion... so now onto the latest race post....
-------


<- Click here

Kindness moves in the opposite direction of everything else. It is paid, granted, bestowed, lavished in return for what comes the other way. Think of it as an outer circle that keeps everything inside from tumbling out. It's not a gender thing, a racial thing, a liberal or conservative thing. No religious denomination holds a monopoly upon the stuff, nor any single idea. And why do we do it? That is one of those kinds of questions that is larger than the sum of its possible answers.

---

And here ladies and gentlemen is the virgin photo pulled directly from my flash card. This guy glowed from the exhaustion and satisfaction of his run. Once again, this went through my mighty Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens and then Topaz, Bokeh, and SnapArt tools. Each were carefully stroked in through masks after I'd worked upon the original image.

Poster #4

<-Click here
Have you noticed that images come to us as sequels, even though we've never seen the original! This fella was Ethiopian, and the race's runner up. He came a long way to run a little farther that morning.

---

here's the virgin image from my FlashCard. Once again the picture came through my big ole Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens. But I teased the image up through both Bokeh and SnapArt from my AlienSkin arsenal. This series has been terrific fun for me. Is it good for you :-)

Poster #3

<- Click here
Every culture adds to a city's mosaic - and each lives among the markings of past cultures. Cool thing is that environment evolves... you know: the streets, signs, walks, buildings, institutions... Hard things. But they change so much more slowly than the culture. Well except after catastrophes like war or nature. But I digress...

See the culture of the moment is aswirl with new ideas, feelings, colors, and sounds. Soft stuff. And those curl and wipe up against the hard things. Which is what makes cities so damned much fun where the soft mash up against the hard.

---
And here's the virgin image pulled from the FlashCard (which you can click on).
Once again I'm playing with a bunch of neat stuff. First the mighty Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens was perfect for wandering around Musser Park during the race. Then I brought the twin AlienSkin filters to bear Bokeh to cream up the ... well... bokeh, and then SnapArt for the painterly pop-ability. Once again they help give the Race Series a common style. Like it?

Emery

<- Click here

Emery DeWitt sat in my painting studio, the north light of late April streaming across his face. Unfortunately the light held for only about four hours at a sitting so I had to work fast. Even so we had to schedule seven dates to let me block in enough that I could fill it the rest of the way without him. Oil painting's so tedious and, I don't care what they say, it's an unforgiving medium if you lack a clear intent from the start. I've found that "a better idea" really isn't possible with a portrait since spontanaeity isn't, as they say, in the oils.

Heh.. heh.. heh...

Yeah, there was a time that the portraitist did all of that as his subject struggled to hold a pose, hour upon hour. In this case Emery sat across from me at lunch in Café Chuckles while I showed him my new Canon G10, the company's top of the line point-and-click camera. "What the hell," I figured, "why not point and click?" So I did at 1600 ISO. This evening I did the color balancing, adjusted the dynamic range and enhanced the sharpness and shadows in PhotoShop before working the image through AlienSkin's SnapArt filter. I took about ninety minutes for the entire process... far longer than it probably needed, but I wanted to capture Emery's animation and wonderful personality, just so... Y'know?

You oughta' see this puppy blown up to 10"X10"... it ROCKS! I can only imagine how it would look say three feet on a side printed on canvas. Woof! Anybody feel like shelling out a couple of bucks to find
out? :-)

Poster #2

<- click here
Odd thing about red haired guys, there aren't many of us... especially in the movies and TV. And when we do show up, we're usually the sidekicks, or the other guy. In the movies, red headed guys rarely get the girl - as opposed to real life where we ALWAYS do. But I digress. See, here're two redheaded guys crossing the finish line simultaneously. Cool.

Against Racism... Poster #1

><- Click here

Thousands come each year. They fill Musser Park and the streets around it. They run for prizes, they run for fun, they run to be together... Together... Yeah, it's the annual Race Against Racism, and it's about 'together'. Nobody loses... You know what I'm saying?

---

First I turned to AlienSkin's Bokeh filter then, to create a powerful poster, once again AlienSkin's SnapArt, this time the impasto filter pulled out exactly what I needed to say. The morning broke cloudy so that light was wonderfully flat and my mighty Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens was the work horse that day. But then again, it's a wildlife lens, right? Plus the image stabilization holds it steady as a surgeon's fingers.

For those of you who enjoy it.... Here's the virgin image direct from my flashcard (again, just click upon it for a larger image). When there are models like this, I guess I could have used a cellphone camera, huh?

The Look II

<-Click here
Once the event was called "The Patriot's Day Parade." Designed by conservatives to balance liberal opponents to the Viet Nam war in the 70s: the event's still going but its name has changed. Now it's called "The American Spirit Parade." There are few soldiers, no rolling weapons, but there are rolling fire engines and sparkling ambulances. Some Civll and Revolutionary war recreationists ride on floats, and a beauty queen blows kisses along the way. There are still lots of flags, a marching band or two (including a Mummer's contingent from nearby Philadelphia) and even the Porta-Potty business drives a truck filled with its standing coffin-like devices. What're they parading for now? Or against? It's nowhere clear.

And there are crowds. Families still line the sidewalks atop their portable lawn furniture. It's the people that tug at my lenses... street moments. Like this... look.

***

This images pushes at the edge for me. You'll recall Idiscovered that Alien Skin's marvelous Bokeh filter (pronounced bouquet) has done as much to ignite my imagination as LensBabies seem to have done for my friends. So I went back to AlienSkin and downloaded a trial version of their SnapArt filter for PhotoShop. I needed to pull out of this image... well, what I've pulled out of this image you can see up there. And it occurred to me that SnapArt had ways to bring it farther. I needed the image to be about that look. (BTW I see this as a mate to The Look 1) . This was a feeling based almost entirely upon a single eye. But without the swirl of a sense of place, it lost its power.

SnapArt's allowed me to make it explode. Can you feel it?

By Request

(Click above)
A participant in last Wednesday's event at Musser Park emailed me. "Ted, I've seen those gatherings portrayed on TV and in print, yet none seem as sensitive as the handful of pictures you've posted here over the last week. I wonder if you could put some together for me... perhaps in square formats... that I might get framed to hang? I'm thinking that this is a quiet footnote to history and I'd like to keep it in my home office."

How flattering. And of course I have done that... and here are the results. He went on to tell me that he might want as many as three, each to measure about twenty inches on a side. So here's what I prepared for him.

Have any of you comments? They do look handsome... and somehow quietly seem to glimmer at that size. It will be interesting to see them matted and framed, huh?

Bokeh Revisited

<- Click here
Whoa! Got an email yesterday from Terence Tay, the lead developer of Alien Skin's Bokeh. As you'll recall last Saturday (April 18th) I posted a quick doodle I did using the demo version of that application. I'm more than pleased. In such little time I was able to get the effects you can see in that image. I posted other examples of my Bokeh-play on other sites which seems to have gotten a bunch of you interested in the PhotoShop filter. Actually I did the Saturday image about ten or twelve days ago when I first downloaded the Bokeh demo. Then I started applying it to the images I captured on April 15th in Musser Park during the political demonstration.

It's my strong feeling that filters are to us as brushes are to painters. You use them sparingly to tease out the ideas and feelings that you want your art to communicate. I hope that the Bokeh filter was used so subtly in this series that you actually don't notice it since there are a range of other tools at work in each of those images.

My point is, that I'm finding the AlienSkin application increasingly useful, and today's posting from that same Musser Park demonstration would not have been possible in the same time without the Bokeh filter. And yet... I hope that even when you study the image that you won't be easily able to track down the specific elements of the piece which Bokeh helped me create.

It was wonderful of Terence to contact and thank me for featuring his filter. I hope he enjoys this image as well. More importantly I hope that you all do... and appreciate the strength of this man I've pictured here. His strong personality demanded, I think, a dramatic presentation... and yeah... Bokeh seems to help do that.

Enjoy....

Another - Bokeh

<-Click here
Here's another from the political demonstration in Musser Park last Wednesday. It's also another of my uses of AlienSkin's Bokeh which I discussed yesterday. So?

I have the feeling that the event was rich in cinematic moments... even quiet epic feelings. Here's one. Does it work?

Have You Found Bokeh?

><- Click here
The software magicians at Alien Skin have a new application called 'Bokeh'. Oh, alright, I don't know how new it is, but I just discovered it. There's a free thirty day download and you can play with all of its functions.

I discovered Belle on a shelf in a run down tourist trap. See there on the bottom of this post? That's where she stood among a bunch of Gone With The Wind flotsam.

I never could figure out what to do with Belle. She seems to niggle at me to find her a place in an image. And maybe I shall some day. But that's not the point. Nope, I wanted to try Bokeh out on something, so I pulled Belle up and in about ten minutes this is what I made. I can see so many subtle (yeah, I know this one's over the top... don't nag me... K?) ways to use the effects this PhotoShop fllter allows. I'm in love... I think. Wuddaya think? Let me know, and if you try their free demo offer, let me know where you've posted your experiments, this looks like a silver bullet, huh?

Oh, and here's the link to AlienSkin's Bokeh , enjoy...

---
And here's the original...


Click There




----
And here's a last variation.... Hmmmmm.... Not real manly though... Gotta think on this one, eh?

Crushed

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She was among Wednesday's demonstrators in Musser Park. Her fingers squeezed at a sign that she dwarfed behind. Here was a teeny person with a large scrawl that screamed, "CRUSHING!"

Bill Died

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I'm tired tonight.

Sometimes life wears us down,huh? I missed Billy's funeral this morning.He died quietly in his sleep last weekend. The mass was in Palm Beach and there was no way to get down to Florida in time... too many balls in the air here. And that's my point about life... it's exhausting keeping all that stuff aloft.

You may recall Bill Manson. Click here to see the original posting back on December 9 of '07. It remains one of my favorite portraitsr... because I can find Billy in there. I can see him in those eyes and the slightly pursed iips. I can feel the dash of the memory he wafted the way a clearing in the April woods tingles at all of your senses.

I miss Bill even though we rarely saw one another... and to be fair, as he unpacked his memory's baggage, he long ago forgot me. But inside my mind are the times that he and Gerry made my parents laugh. The way he'd show up from somewhere in the world with stories and charm... the way he made a young boy dream that things could be wonderful way away... and yet come back here - so that the farthest part of the world was only days away from home. And as I sit here now remembering all of that... I realize that we're all links... his was a strong one.

Men are like that.

---
Incidentally, his daughters Lisa and Amy chose this picture as the front of Bill's funeral card. I'm glad they also find him in there.

Expression

<- Click here
They met today. In Musser Park. I live beside the park so I saw them meet. Hundreds of them. Today is important in the United States. It is the only day where there is virtually unanimous participation in a civic action. Today is April 15th. To citizens, or legal residents - it is the only fixed date which we must adhere to or face the potential of large men coming to our homes. With guns. It is a day enforced by coercion. There is no other coercion day in this country. If you don't, um, celebrate it the way you are told... that is if you are accused of not following its rules... you are guilty of the charges unless you can prove innocence. That is the only exception to the rules of American justice prescribed in the country's constitution.

Today there were demonstrators in Musser Park, in Lancaster, PA. Hundreds of them. It wasn't an accident that they chose to gather on this date. CNN has labelled their meeting, anti-government. CNN is known around the world. Perhaps you know what it is. And perhaps you know why April 15th is symbolic to the people who met in Musser Park to express themselves?

Is there a Freedom Of Expression?

Oh, by the way there were no elected officials in the park today. No mayors, no City Councilors, no County Commissioners (Lancaster is a county seat), no judges, no state representatives, state senators, no governors, federal congressmen or senators. Nor were any of their staffs present.

Just hundreds of people... expressing. It's never happened there before. About April 15th.

Painterly? Yeah... painterly.

<- Click here
I've been this way before which you can see if you click here.
But this time it's an exercise. I wanted to see how painterly I could make this image, and how surreal that effect would make the final image.

The idea of surreal is fascinating. Our minds evolved to seek patterns. If we could see a puma in the leafy bushes, we had a better chance of survival. So we've become hardwired to discover relationships among facts. The surreal image presents a number of sharp facts which are, essentially un-related. It's a kind of artistic tease. You know a picture of a salami, a mound of sand, and the back of a man in a derby hat. Surreal.

Now my question here is, can you remove enough of the image ... the facts ... to leave a pattern which is not explicable? Of course by linking this to the earlier version as I've done above perhaps defeats the deal. I guess I should have chosen an image for which you had no anchor, huh?

Hmmmm... Okay, back to the drawing boards... Literally! Grumble

The Poet Wrote...

<- Click here

"For beauty's nothing but the beginning of terror." - Rainer Maria Rilke

Sigh, don't you love great German poets? Explode-the-milk-through-your-nose FUNNNNY! You get the feeling that Rainer Maria Rilke had a dazzlingly pretty mother... Who gave him that middle name.

Which wasn't totally funny in high school. Um, well not to Rainer Maria Rilke. I've always thought, as I read Rilke, that his mommy's beauty probably talked his dad into a lots of stuff. Like naming his boy, Maria. Which results in either a totally tough youngster... or a kick-ass sour poet. I'm guessing that Rainer wasn't what women call a bad boy, huh?

Boys Dream Of Angels

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There's a myth about Victoria's Secret angels. They're supposed to be the fantasy of healthy young boys. When in fact the angelic dreams of the healthiest boys I knew had nothing to do with jiggling women in sparkly underwear. YUCH!

Nope, we dreamt at a time when things like cars were made NOT to feed the nightmares of grim governments obsessed with sanding away anything powerful, dangerous, wasteful, or romantic about them. Uh-uh. Then they were sleek, muscular, responsive, and melodic angels gleaming squint-bright through our boyhood night-times.

They let us drive a glowing enthusiasm that's somehow dimmed.

Ahh… but those were childish times when leaders preached optimism and its reward was angels that glimmered in a boy’s sleep.

The Photograph Is A Fact

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It's not the difficulty of technique that makes something into art. Nope... nope... it's the challenge of what an image expresses, you know what I'm saying? Hmmm.. Lemme try that differently. The greatest thoughts have been expressed by the simplest technique... writing.

A photograph is a fact... well it is a couple of facts. What it is about is factual. And the thing itself... you can see it, examine it - its very existence is factual.

An image on the other hand. This thing here... It is not about something factual. But you can see it, consider it. It exists. And its existence is a fact, right?

So... so.... What it is is NOT a manipulated photograph. What it is is a feeling that I've enhanced. And how was I feeling? Um, well... just like that image there. Right?

And that's a fact!

+++

By the way, the feeling I mentioned was all about what's going on in America right now. Urban ideologies are pouring over the countryside. The liberal has broken through the conservative. The taxis are swirling through the covered bridges. How will they be received? Are the country roads two-way? Will they? Can they - ever go back? Are urban feelings way out of place in a foreign country? Or are they the ones that we have been waiting for?

Eats

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Recall the tale of the ant and the grasshopper? Like a haunting tune, it's hard, just now, to get out of my mind. I think it's a news thing? Anyway, it's cheerful to have this memory - the kids will cherish it, huh?

Just Flowers

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Longwood Gardens is about forty miles from my home in Lancaster. It's in Bucks County not far from the Brandywine Museum we visit frequently. A legacy of the Dupont Family the gardens sprawl both outside and inside. Last week we stopped by and while the March air was still frigid... well, the arboretum encapsulated what's just about to happen outside the house here in Lancaster.

I don't do flower pictures. If you scroll down to the keywords below this post you'll see "Flowers" and if you click there, well I don't think, of all the images on this blog, that more than about five are actual flowers. There are two reasons I don't do flowers..... (1) they are too damned easy. I mean after all you aim the lens click the shutter and there's a flower picture. And usually it's colorful and all that but (2) They are too damned hard. It continually amazes me to see terrific artists who make flower images that resonate with a new intensity. My flowers are so... so... booooring. They simply don't ROCK!

But still, when I roam through Longwood gardens it's as if my camera fires by itself. And I come away with discs crammed with bazillions of boooooring flower images. There's probably some secret to it. Sigh... But nobody's ever told it to me.

Anywayzzzzz.... just as I only posted one Fall picture last year... here's my one spring flower thingeee.... Suggestions?

Dare Me

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Shiree challenged me. She made this image available with a dare to "Do what you will to me." She wants a new square dramatic avatar. Otherwise... Well, it's my call. Now I figured a couple of things. Her screen name is Magicat. Okay... there's that 'magic' thing. And the virgin image shows some skin, eh? Moreover there's that low key background and the high contrast flash-bulb club lighting. I'm not the only one she's challenged.

Hmmm.... attractive woman, huh? Young. Sexy. Looking for an exciting image - an attention grabber. Look at her features. A couple reeeeely pop right? But that lighting... ohhhhhh that lighting. Fine... that's the challenge. And here...
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Here's my solution. So? Wuddaya think?

The National Gallery • Washington, DC

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Went to the National Museum of Art last Thursday to see the Dutch Cityscape paintings. Pity they refused photographic permission in that show. They were all examples of the mid 1600's Golden Age of the Dutch. And they were astonishingly photojournalistic. Interesting that this sort of razor sharp drawing no longer has much market today. By the mid 1800s photographers had wiped out the market for that craft almost completely. And now, with the arrival of digital tools, photographers are closing in on the impressionistic imaginings of today's fine artists. Hmmmm..... Wonder what's next?

The Artist

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Regardless of what art is... there's another question: Why do people do art?

Hmmmm.... I've got three reasons:

(1) They have an instinct to gather parts of life for themselves or,
(2) They want to save parts of themselves for the future or,
(3) They want to stuff a market in a bottle cast into the tides of time...

You want to add more?

New Link Under Ted's Essays!

Lookit! Yippee, Vonne from The Fine Arts Composite Group at the explosively popular RedBubble forums interviewed ME! And she probed into my photo/art influences, what triggers and maintains my inspiration, what I want to get across artistically, the hardest obstacles, my plans, and my advice to the novice.

I'm psyched. If you've wondered about any of that stuff that I wonder about... just click on the link under "Ted's Essays" in the right hand column and enjoy... and gimme your reactions here... K? That'd be reeeeeely cool and visitors will get a chance to react to your reactions and on and on... Kew-el!

The Second Largest Fantasy

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There are studies which show that the second most frequent fantasy of both men and women is time travel. And overwhelmingly the travelers want to explore history. They want to walk yesterday's streets.

I'm guessing that's why cities try to preserve large swatches of their downtowns. They're like living Disney Worlds. I call them 'squint streets'. You know, if you squint into the light just right, well you can can imagine that abruptly people are dressed differently. That the signs, and streets morph back into time. And... and... see... see... I have not squinched my eyes to peer back reeeeeely far, just to the 30s in Florence. But I'm guessing the next time you walk through this place, you can squint yourself way back farther, eh?

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Once again, I've posted here the virgin images direct from my memory cards. The first was taken with my old Canon 20D through the 17-85mm at f6.3 at 1/100. The ISO was 800. It was still early morning at around 8:05 looking generally northeast. The 1930s Ford pickup truck is a utilitarian beauty. Built Ford-Tough when that meant something - these babies worked their way through the depression on both sides of the Atlantic.

And the street wending it's way through Florence has watched vehicles evolve for hundreds of years. Not sure what car's actually sitting half onto the ancient sidewalk. Is it an Audi? A Bugatti? Anyway, here's my tabletop shot grabbed in my office with direct light. I shot it with my new Canon G10 at an ISO of 400, f2.8 at 1/13th of a second. Handheld as usual (you know I have that tripod phobia). It's part of an antique miniature vehicle collection I keep on my office shelves. Why? It's a man-thing. If you want to see larger images, click on the thumbnails.