Summer Along James River

Summer afternoon along the James River at Palmetto Bluffs, SC

It was wet heat in Beaufort County for our 2016 June stay on Hilton Head Island. You know, the sort of heat that sops clothes like dish rags. It was so chronic you felt a bit chilly when the temp dropped below 95. But then, Hilton Head's in deep Dixie and built atop a mostly drained swamp along the Atlantic's Low Country. This was the heart of the Confederacy where, in my great-grandparents' time the most belligerent of slavery's proponents once lived. In 1850, according to a historic marker in the county seat, this region had 1,111 white people and 8,361 slaves occupying 151 plantations. Cotton was king. 

The James river mixes into the ocean about 5 miles to the southeast from where I found this image so it's tidal at this point. With Charleston to its north and Savannah to the south, Beaufort county's inches above sea level... And well down into reptile and mosquito level. Thinking about this land's people some 150 years ago means imagining a time before air-conditioning. Which is the high tech that finally disrupted how this summer wet-heat went unchallenged. 

For two weeks we largely lived like space travelers on Mars... Locked by choking hot days inside of cooled-air bubbles. I tried bike riding only twice, but even at sunrise - the humidity was so thick that downhill felt like uphill. 

It's not that Dixie's summer days are lazy. No, self defense vacationers tour the place within cars that whisk them between cool bubbles. Down there autos aren't designed so much aerodynamically as they are thermodynamically. Once, decades ago, a southerner criticized me for living where heating costs were so high in winter. He implied that Yankees were energy wasteful. And yet I'm thinking that the electric costs of summer A/C inside of those old high ceiling southern buildings must compete with my gas heat, no? Isn't electric always the most expensive way to do HVAC over the course of a year? 

Ahhhhh well. Southern summer scenes are gorgeously pretty and seem to be accompanied by a deep low voice quietly signing, "Ole man river... Dat ole man river..." And as I scurried back to my car's A/C I wondered just how much fuel, there in the 100 degree plus sun, it took a man to tote that barge and lift that bail... 

Geek Stuff: Took the reference shots with a Canon EF-S 10-22mm (f3.5-4.5) screwed to my 7D. A lot of processing later I'd finally prepared the images for AlienSkin's SnapArt to create this languid late afternoon oil painting into capture the searing sun's glare. As you can see, I try not to use a lens shade and seek opportunities to let the light flare across glass and my wide angle's got a lot of glass surface to attract sunlight. 

Swan... Um... Egret Lake

Okay, I stalked her. Poked my 300mm lens through the leaves to her secret spot across the lagoon. She preened and primped... Maybe unaware of me... Maybe figuring the water was wide enough to keep a lurking human an easy take-off away.

They call ponds and lakes, lagoons in Sea Pines Plantation on Hilton Head island where South Carolina - almost Georgia - summer wetted down the air. If you're outdoors, southern seacoast's grow humidity thicker than the syrup folks pour over breakfast grits. And the heat keeps the air hotter than the bikinis make their beaches.

It's where lots of gin mixes with even more tonic as afternoons commit muscles to low gear. It's when the smarter birds find secret spot to digest their morning breakfasts and recharge for a twilight wade back into the lagoons, oh... and into wherever people were stupid enough to stock coy ponds.

So that gal up there wasn't about to let me get her to do anything unladylike. Which is why I'd mistaken her glowing-white body for a swan and figured that I'd be able to create a post called, "Swan Lake". Wrong... It's actually "Egret Lagoon" where the big birds prowl among alligators for fun and profit.

And so, realizing the story wasn't about swans I figured I'd find me an egret at work in the marshes to work into a painting that captured an impression of both the bird, its hunting, and the POP! of southern American summer color.

A day or so after I invaded the privacy of that beauty up above... I found this guy working his way slow as suitor on a first date toward his prize. And once again my Canon 7D's EFS 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens did its job. Which is a capture that I couldn't have made years ago without a tripod. But the combination of image stabilizers and the camera's processors let me grab tight hold of the moment. Which, thanks to a lot of PhotoShop processing combined with the melding of a number of layers of AlienSkin's SnapArt filtering and texturing, I was able to make my concept visual.

Hot, huh? 

Don't Tease 'Em!

Along Hilton Head bike trails...

Summer's Started

Down in Hilton Head, SC last week. Summer comes to Dixie with an early muscle, especially in the Low Country... along the the Atlantic Coast. Hilton Head Island's shaped like a running shoe and we stay very near it's flat instep. Once a bog, it's flat and canal-irrigated to draw the brackish water back to the sea. If the ground's not everywhere as damp as once-upon-a-time the air's still wetter than a stoop-laborer's back And twice as thick. Mid-day's are for beaches, pools, and air-conditioned spots cluttered with books and adult beverages.

Bike Shed

Out back we store ... Well, have you noticed that the word "shed" is double entendre? As a noun, it's a place where we keep stuff. As a verb it's the act of discarding. A bike shed sort of promises both of those things. And this flat island teases you into believing that you'll shed the vacation belt-lime baggage if you''ll peddle your bike from the shed. Getit? In a way, nothing says island summer like this lazy morning image of those backsides poking out and teasing me to wrap my fat legs around their fat saddles. And yeah, why not, huh?

Jungle Glade

To circle the jungle between me and the sea. And the way it dares me to leave the bike and wander trails that wind somewhere. Which I almost did except a snake rolled and wriggled out of those leaves there to the lower right and coiled blink-fast onto the trail and then off into that underbrush. So much for the dare... Back to the biking... When, just to my right,  I heard water plop down from the bike-path's bank and jerking around I saw...

Primordial Lurk

this thing and peddled like hell away, parked, and tip-toed back, my Canon 7D with it's 70-300mm lens cranked all the way out. Through which... I watched it, it watched me, I focused, shot, and backed way up. After gasping a bunch, I went back and kept shooting while it lay there watching, only its eyes flicked, the rest of that body flat... still... cocked... and stinking up the thick swampy air. You know the word, fetid? Yeah, now imagine this thing's breath and you've got a match.

Night Watch

Oh yeah... Wildlife thinking reminds me that I probably forgot to post this wild herd I captured in Uganda's Queen Elizabeth Park. Okay, that was last summer and there are crocs, not gators in Africa so the segue's kind of hard to explain. Hmmmm... But these pix are all summery, right? RIGHT! So it's a theme :-)

Full Scale Model

Early morning bike ride deep in Dixie.

It was damned hot last week with the kind of humidity that paints your body.

Storm

<- Click here

When the heavens open in the tropics - it's as if the air abruptly becomes solid.

Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

<- Click here
Does this need a comment?

Sidney Sees

<- Click here

Sidney does not see
What we see.
Instead his world is felt
Inside his mind where
Sidney repairs a future
That will be different
From what we see
When it happens.

Dixie #2: Sunset

<- Click here
The friendly natives do their ancient dance to the sunset on Tower Beach, Hilton Head Island, SC.

And so day two ends in the Heart of Dixie. Um, it's NOT a dry heat. A technical note. I've borrowed a Canon lens from a friend... a 70-300 mm with image stabilization. I can't seem to hold it steady even in the intense light of sunset.So I decided to make lemonade here. I realized that I was having problems with the lens, so I intended to capture the children as abstracts of color, form and motion. I thought I'd try to distill out childhood joy at sunset. The results make me happy. As for the lens, I don't think I'll buy one like it.

OOOPS! When you discuss a sunset, guess you need to show the sunset, Eh?
Sooooo... Okay, here's what the natives celebrate every night on Tower Beach.

---

For those who follow this sort of thing, here're the dancer images from the FlashCard

Amateur Standing

<- Click here
So I'm wondering: is there a fine line between photographic art and unsalable imagery? Art is what the art establishment says it is. I'm not upset by that, just realistic. For example, would Andy Warhol's "Brillo Boxes" have sold in the 17th, or 18th centuries? What art is... is not determined by artists, right? So if you want to sell art, you have to look up the definition du jour and do that. Or you need to skitter together some of the people who are in charge of the definition today and get them to go, like, "Whoa! Yeah Baby, you give good art.! Let me sell it for you, okay?"

Take for example Andreas Serriano's "Piss Christ" - a very large super sharp color photograph of a crucifix floating in a glass jug of urine. The original is said to be magnificently lit, and the amber fluid creates mysterious glimmerings and..... And it not only would not have sold in the 1600s, Serriano would have hung. Which brings me back to my question, is there a fine line between photographic art and unsalable imagery? And do you have to be on the Serriano side of that line today to attract an audience that will part with money? And is parting with money the final arbiter of whether a work is ultimately both art and good? Or is there still a role for Amateur Standing?

If there is, I'm there: with images like this I created from a rainy morning at the Salty Dog's docks along Hilton Head's inlet.

***
Here's what the original looked like to my camera...
GEEK STUFF: Canon EOS 20D, 6/3/07,7:24 AM: Lens 17-85mm, Focal Length: 30mm, Exp 1@f/25, ISO 400, Metering Mode: Auto, Exposure bias -1.67, Camera RAW

Where'd That Come From?

<- Click here

When an artist works upon a canvas he can tease out a third dimension from that flatness. He can find consequences in that blank space which are able to enchant our childlike wonder. We can stare over his shoulder as he outlines shapes, forms, and textures that we just didn't see there. And out of thin air... or flat surface... he conjures balances and resemblances that were apparently on that thing all along - but only he saw them well enough to brush them to the front. I'm drawn to people who are like that with ideas. You know the kind who find them in everything and relate them to others and choreograph their dancing so that I don't just believe their conclusions... I enjoy twisting and turning them around like a child with a gemstone. Or a youngster peering over an artist's shoulder on a hot June night night on Hilton Head Island deep into South Carolina.

GEEK STUFF: Canon EOS 20D, Canon EFS 17-85mm (f4-5.6) ,1/6@f/5.6, exposure Bias value: -2, ISO: 400, Focal Length: 72 mm, Date/time: 6/3/07: 7:45 pm, Metering Mode: Pattern, Camera RAW

Izzit Worth Photographing?

<- Click here
You know that I don't want to imitate nature, but I still want to find a formal unity in my images. Okay, so here's a distinct shape, a compact form and smooth colors. It's not so much the real-life feelings I'm trying to frame within my margins, nor a slavish reproduction of what's in front of my lens, nope. What I'm after is my own arrangement of formal classical elements. Here's the test... does the image communicate an authentic feeling, mood, presence? Do you sense a message?

Yeah... that's it. See there's a risk of caricature when you deal with an image like this which has been contrived for cameras. Is there any fresh way to render a novel idea of a structure which was constructed to decorate calendars? This tower is a stage set. It's perfect from evey angle. Tell me, is that even worth rendering? is there any way that the final idea can be mine in any way?

Let me know, huh?

Cliche

<- Click here
It is harder to draw information from words than from pictures. Clichés crack the code. They support you in turning data into information… and information into meaning. A cliché grabs from all those dark storage sites of memory and melds them together into a useful pattern.

If you visit the Sea Pines Plantation on Hilton Head Island, you’ll hear of this structure. It was created to resemble a lighthouse as a backdrop to the 18th hole of a golf course - Harbour Town Links - which attracts the PGA. And the PGA attracts TV networks. Which want harbors to look like harbors. They want a picture which tells the audience what this place is. It needs to be a shot that snaps from data to information in a blink.

So this structure’s the highest and most recognizable on Hilton Head Island. It also lets me, in one image, cut right to seaport, summer, sunrise, and for those with the right memory pockets… Hilton Head, South Carolina.

How could I not capture this cliché?

Energy Tree

<- Click here
The renowned photographic teacher Craig Tanner in a recent podcast mused, "We are drawn toward the highest energy." Hmmmm.... Or maybe some draw the highest energy within their frames? Are all ideas energy? Is the vice versa? Let me try that differently. Are good ideas disruptive? And is that what generates energy?

Much of what draws the serious lens is upsetting to the status quo. Which is the role of innovation, right? As I do the galleries here in Hilton Head and Savannah - I see a tide of stereotypical art. An hour ago I saw a mass of excellently rendered shots of the Savannah mansions for sale at a shop. The photographer captured wonderful palettes, warm lighting, tack sharp detail... and yet this high craft produced mind numbing goo. It's as if he froze the scenes in mirrors - and simply reversed them. I could sense no part of the guy's mind in the interpretations.

Do you recall garage bands that sounded just like pop-hits? They weren't artists, they were impersonators - or live recording/playback rip-off-ers. Most photographers are not artists... their images never pass through a bath of energy. They are visual stenographers.

I agree that Craig Tanner's pictures, at least as posted at Light Diary seem drawn to the highest energy. But I don't agree that most people's photographs capture high… or even any energy. They are not art, they are, even when originals, reproductions – copies of a moment.

Yesterday I confronted something foreign to me. This tree must be so commonplace to denizens of the deep south. So, how to show them, as well as people like me, that there is something unusual about this tall guy? So how to tap the energy here and make it spark out at you. How to make it shimmy and snake upward toward a commonplace sky?

So here’s my way of sucking the highest energy out of someone else’s humdrum. Does it work?

FWOOOSH!

<- Click here

The photographers I envy can pour whole buckets of meaning into each image.

See, we’re vacationing in Dixie. Tropical Storm Barry came north as we drove south. Imagine: you’re riding along and a forest-fire-fighting tanker plane dumps overhead. “FWOOSH!” And imagine that it doesn’t stop. “FUH-WOOOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!……………..”

Now swirl in tractor trailers sporting mud flaps which cover their spray less effectively than Britney Spears' skirts cover crotch. Sheeesh! Hours of that make you long to curl fetal.

You know how I felt when we got here? Here... Look at this image.... THAT'S how I felt when we got here. Yeah… Sometimes it’s insufficient to say, “Hey! It rained.”

Paul Caponigro -Not

<- Click here
"Color is too close to the real world,"Paul Caponigro told Kay Kenny for the December 2005 issue of Focus Magazine. He felt that monochrome allows him to pull images into an internal world to manifest an image. Caponigro is one of the greatest living photographic artists, but I disagree that color has to be too close to the real world. In fact, I think the challenge of this generation of photographers is to discover their vision with the astonishingly tack sharp optics, and full dimensional colors which are so simply accessed with today's technology.
I watched this sunset last summer, and pulled up the photograph today. Caponigro credits much of his success to post processing in his wet darkroom. Today's masters need to find success in digital space. Here look, is this color any closer to the real world than a monochrome might be? Is it any less romantic?
And besides, it's February. It's cold. I wanted to go beyond the real world of ice to a place where a warm sun set over twi-light glowing beach grass. That's an escape into an inner world which you've got to admit, is really hot, huh?

Spigots

<-Click here
So you begin to tell something, right? Open your mouth, waggle your tongue, words tumble out and in an instant or two, there's an imaginary period that completes a new sentence which no one ever before heard. Including you!

Where'd it come from? That sentence. When you started your tongue going, did you know all the words that were about to stream out? The sentence completed an idea. Where'd that come from? Do we have, like a faucet at the end of a hose that connects a glowing passel of squirming idea soup somewhere in our minds... one end's connected to that place, with its spigot spraying its contents onto our tongues? Hey! Where'd that idea come from? And say, you're walking through a woods on Hilton Head Island and you come upon a hacked tree part that'd been carefully fit across a sharp gulley. And as the light sparkles through a high tree canopy – what does your spigot spray out? And if you're alone, with no ear to hear it...

Do you make a sound? Or is that the entire purpose of a place like this? Quiet reverence? Maybe there are places where the spigot has no function? Places that exist solely as input... So later, somewhere far away, our spigot has something to output?

Syllogism

<- Click here

The sun sets on trees
Hilton Head has trees
Therefore the sunsets on Hilton Head

Some things are intuitively obvious... like the trees, drenched in Spanish moss, hugging the shoreline against the glare-gold washed skies of a South Carolina sunset. They are (is this a word?) syllogisitcally correct. While humans float around in words which can mean this or that... contentions which can mean anything... the sun, the sea, the rocks and the trees dance together into a performance which means exactly one thing... There's solace in their honesty, no?

BTW... I missed posting this yesterday by three minutes. But, well, I just wanted to get the image the way I understood it wanted to be gotten. It took three minutes too many... So be it. Sorry, but sometimes art just won't cooperate with the clock :)

Syllogism

Newmadicts of Bleumere Royo

<-Click there
It poked from the earth – down in the borderland’s mists where even sunray darely visited. Here in Mythwerld where whisps hung like spells and The Meki had long since sunk into the dank bogs… It lay there, a last above ground clawing of the Pumpmaster’s madness… A still pneumatic threat to all who came too near.

Imagine, even my Bombi guide was terrified as I took this picture just an instant before we smelled the sound of…

META: 6/27/06, 12:31: Canon 20D, Camera Raw, ISO 400, 17-85 mm lens at 30 mm, 1/100 at f/8. Processed in PS CS2 v.9.