Burst Of Swagger

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Escape? Lemme tell ya’…
That’s what you paid for…

Trample the detonator to throttle
A screeching stench of tearing rubber…
Neck-snapping…
Fantasy rush.

Each one of these babies came
With a full charge of swagger.

Say every girl didn’t swoon
At this rocketing past…

Hell…
You believed it…
And perception… that’s a
Big-assed part of truth.
Right?

Were you mistaken?
Like, you gotta’ know,
If you don’t make mistakes…
You ain’t making nothin’.

After that reckless feeling that came with each of these cars… The guy-fantasy of pulling on a super-hero costume that made little-pimply you invisible inside it’s sleek exoskeleton. Every fourteen year old boy’s cloak of seduction. Within this beast you were the rocker who became a movie star with an explosive ball of light beneath your foot. Or at least you figured you’d be all of that if somehow.. you could only grow up to buy one.

Canon 40D, Table top art, PS4: custom filters, AlienSkin: SnapArt3: Water Color, Alien Skin Bokeh2: Custom settings, Exposure4 – custom effects.

Pepper Fears Children

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It’s seventy years since
A nasty kid
Broke off her Salt’s head
And left him dying
In a puddle of powder.

Now she peers wildly
Maddened by the nearest giggle
Hoping to hide from
Hands unable to tell
Play from cruelty.

Canon 7D, PS4: Topaz Adjust5, Alien Skin: Bokeh 2, Exposure 4: Kodachrome II (1962-1974), Custom pop-spot texturing.

Antalya to Konya

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Somewhere in the hills
Of Turkey lies
The debris
Of wandering
Civilizations.

Turkey well on the road to Konya from Antalya. Canon 7D, PS4: custom textures, AlienSkin: SnapArt3: Crayon, custom brushes. My classic Ford truck.


Of course that's my cool desktop TOY1931 classic Ford Model Aclassic, right?

NOW FOR SOMETHING DIFFERENT?



Here's my first experiment with the all new Topaz Adjustment5: Dusk. Whuddayaa think?

It's Beginning To Look A Lot...

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Soon the bells will start
But the wonder-filled sight that will spring
Is the glow that will quietly ring
Deep within your heart.

Sometimes they cloy… but we can’t help it because… Darn… we clutch at hooks to which we can hang an order, a map, an understanding…. a life. Here’s my moose-ical hook.

I found this little orphaned-guy on the shelf at a Goodwill shop years ago. He was tattered... stained here and there... but his grin was so optimistic. Look at him, and like a switch, you smile, right? Someone had breathed that into this ball of wrapped stuffing. I wonder where he is today. Wherever, his aura's here... and there with you, right? Okay, it's corny but still... still... Magical, don't you think?

Canon 7D, PS4: AlienSkin: Bokeh 2, SnapArt3: Watercolor, Custom textures & brushes.

Martini - Shaken

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I stood above
Chris’s Lotus.
And I
Realized
How heat…
Rises.
Canon 7D: PS4, Tabletop, Topaz, AlienSkin: SnapArt, Colored Pencils, Custom: Textures & Brushes

FWOOOOM...

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Chris loaned me his 2007 Corvette.
It's very ... very ... quick.


Especially atop a table.

Canon 20D: PS4, Topaz, AlienSkin: Bokeh2 & SnapArt: Water Color

SIZZZZZLE!

<- Borrowed my friend Chris's Bugatti last Sunday and took it to Musser Park nearby to my home here in Lancaster. Wanted to pop this beast out of the rich lighting. I'm not a MotorHead. But the art of design makes me twitch. And the Veyron ... well now this is one manly beast! And probably a chick magnet, huh?


GEEK STUFF Here's Chris's Bugatti Veyron shot with my Canon 70D through the Canon EFS 17-85mm (f4-5.6) in macro mode. Post processing happened with CS/PS4 • Topaz • AlienSkin Bokeh, AlienSkin SnapArt/Water Color • Custom Brushes • Custom Textures all upon a background captured one night in Intercourse, PA.

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Visited Adamstown again. You probably know that it's the antique capital of this part of the country. There are scores of dealers, probably hundreds and many display their stuff in glass cases where central attendants hold the keys. Toys are particularly popular this time of year as retailers from NYC, Boston, Philly, Baltimore, Washington, and Atlanta shop for their holiday inventories. A lot of these smaller things are used for holiday decorations in Elizabethan buildings.

This one's the best part of a century old, they told me. So I thought I'd see what it told me so I can tell you. It's the fun of art to discover the subject's song as it emerges during the process.

Some Geek Stuff

Hand Held/florescent light
Canon 7D: ESF 17-85mm, ISO800, f4.6@1/8 - 30mm
PP/CS4: Topaz, Custom Filters and brushes.

Nostalgic Or Historic Or Fabled?

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Does nostalgia belong only to the living? Are fables only as real as an imagination? And where does history fit between the two? I'm just sayin'....

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Geek stuff: Canon 7D, texture, Topaz, AlienSkin SnapArt Oil, Table Top Art.

Power Points

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Two in the AM
Sax snarl from speakers
Neon blares power
Careening it back
From designer points
Onto hot summer
Blur.
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Adamstown, Lancaster County, PA
Canon 7D: PS4, Topaz, AlienSkin: Bokeh2, Snap Art – Custom designed brushes.

Geek Stuff: Visited Adamstown last weekend. It's about ten minutes north of Lancaster. AND... it's the antique capital of the Northeast. There are scores of dealers. Two of the largest are in-door walk throughs with vendors renting stalls. One is a monstrous glade with vendors in tents planted beneath huge shade trees. Some are box stores filled with crystal cases, each leased to a different merchant. And others are traditional antique shops.

Which means tens of thousands of things are all out there for my lens. So... I collect the items which let me tell the stories bouncing about inside my head. Or the stories that those things set a-abouncing. Or both.

Adamstown is about inspiration.

Summer Starts Here...

Found this letter. Sort of... maybe... kinda....

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Opening The 7D Box!

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Early Saturday morning it arrived. A decent sized brown box with a good feel to it. I was just finishing a workout, so I left it vibrating on the living room coffee table while I sweated out the last super sets. Yeah - vibrate - I could feel the things inside of that package ... their aura was buzzing me right through the wrappings.

Okay, showered, dressed, I Xacto-knifed the thing open in my studio. It was crammed with another box, two 8 gig storage cards, a spare battery with charger, and an envelope with B&H's three year warranty. Okay... okay... then inside of that Canon box were all sorts of cables, CDs, instruction manuals, a strap, another batter with its charger and a bubble wrapped white pouch.

And in the pouch? Heh... heh.... My brand new, black Canon 7D body. And just a tad of disappointment!

"Huh?" you wonder. Disappointment? Well, just the slightest amount. See, when I traded up from my Canon 20D to the 40D, the body was different. Not enormously, but more than subtly. The 7D though is 90% of the 40D body. The LCD is larger, and the buttons are arranged slightly differently. But the real changes are in the processors, the increase by 50% in the megapixels, and the button just above the lens mount... the button that turns this machine into a HDTV quality video camera. I kinda wish though that they'd restyled it a bit differently from the other D-Series cameras, perhaps a tad more like the Mark-series. Canon could use a good Italian or Macintosh designer.

And now for the learning curve. Canon's played a bunch with the firmwear of this baby. And I have to customize it for the different sort of shooting conditions I do. And there were a ton of chores to do today (Sunday) which left me with not too much time to read the new manual. And now it's late and I've gotta be up at 4:55AM for the gym tomorrow, so it's bed time. And the workweek looms full since we are trying to get a bunch of stuff finished before I leave for two weeks next month on the Peru trip. Plus I'm giving a big speech on the regional economy next week, and leading an executive webinar the last week of the month. So with the large feature piece for the February edition I'm writing on the changes in legal and accounting business law for 2010... things are mucho busy.

So... when to get out with this new thing? Will it be before next weekend? Darn, dunno... even though it's vibrating while I sit here and type this. Why is it the world intrudes upon our play? Sigh.... Stay tuned... I'll keep ya posted.

Summer's Last

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Hmmm.... at first I just wanted to show my buddy Andreas Manessinger what he'd miss by postponing his US trip. We drove over to the Wellwood in Charlestown. That's in Maryland and the light you see reflected in the pitcher's flashing off of the Chesapeake Bay. Which is also wafting breezes across my half dozen bluepoint #1s. The pitcher was filled with Blue Moon, and would be soon again. It was about 5:30 on the deck and the sun was just starting to grow heavily golden over the water.

That's Bay Seasoning encrusted on the shells which is a salty/peppery mix. That explains the beer, huh?

But anyway... I got to wondering about this fantasy and thought to myself.... "Self. Why don't you see how cool this still life would feel all dressed up in oils?" So, well .... look at this wonderful mixed media.... Can't you smell the crabby steam that's shimmering upward? Which makes me wonder... which image works best? Thoughts?

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GEEK STUFF


About the thoughts? Here's some geek stuff for you. Pre Processing: captured by my Canon G10 in natural light at the Wellwood Restaurant in Charlestown, MD right beside the Chesapeake Bay. Post Processing:Well as you can see by this virgin image taken from my FlashCard... in the first image above, I did some cropping and enhanced the dynamic range with some intense tone mapping in CS4 with the juice-kicking power of TOPAZ (love those tools) which also allowed me to add lights and spot the blue points and beer with some drama. Oh yeah, there' s just a touch of AlienSkin's Bokeh filter around the edges to obscure some distractions. You thinkthis recipe works?

Then... then... in the second image I worked in AlienSkin's SnapArt2 with a medium brush in portrait.... later masking away the oil effect to spot the crabs. I can see either of these blown large on the wall of a restaurant.... lit with one lamp from above on an otherwise dark paneling. How elegant is that? Huh?

So? Wuddaya think?

Rapture

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Sometimes it pours like syrup... it's stuff we can touch, and feel it run across our skin. And if we peer into it, eyes closed, it's a warmer than a baby's giggle.

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"You know," she said with a peculiar smirk, "you're never more than four feet or seventy seven seconds from wonder."

"Huh," I looked up from my book at the woman in the seat across the aisle.

"Actually," she wasn't really looking at me... more through me, "wonders are so commonplace that they're frequently invisible to us. Artists though... artists they recognize every one of them. Or at least I think so."

"Huh?" I said again. Not terribly original but I wasn't really in a conversation with her so much as I seemed to be her very small audience.

"Yet you know, they're not all of the same moment, um, import," there was a childlike quality about her. "But even then it takes an artist to understand the differences. Most are just moving, passionate, instants. And then there are those few wonders which can move the artist to.... to..." Her eyes flittered. Hunting that word sent her head moving almost as if she were a little girl on a midsummer's night adventure tracking a dancing lightening bug.

"They can move the artist to what," I heard myself murmur willing the word to come to her... to have her reveal it to me...

"To... to... _rapture_."

The rest of the trip we both sat... silent.
***

Apple pulled its service today. Now http://homepage.mac.com/byrneprintmaker/ sits up but my door's closed. I can't remove it, change it, or alter it in any way. I guess if I stop paying for my mobile me subscription it will vanish in a puff. But since MobieMe is a cloud where I sync all of my machines, that's not likely.

So it will bob up there on the virtual seas. Odd huh?

I gotta find another place to store my images. Suggestions?

Doll Face Puddle

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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 :-)

Have You Found Bokeh?

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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...

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And here's the original...


Click There




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

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!

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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?

Academic Freedom

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Actions have consequences
Rights have responsibilities
Unless... You have...
Tenure.






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I'm still experimenting with my new Canon G10 so again - for the geeky folk like me who enjoy this sort of thing... Direct from my HD card, here is the virgin photograph of my professor just as I caught him at ISO 400 in the existing light "on campus" in Adamstown yesterday afternoon. Nice automatic color balance, eh? And the painting effects? All done with assorted brushes in PhotoShop... Enjoy.

Chick Magnet?

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Parked outside of Madison Square Garden my Mercedes 500K Special Roadster glimmers in the city, huh? It belongs there with its top down and motor purring. Purring.... it's a sound that attracts, right? :-)

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Okay, here's another shot, a virgin photo of that 1936 Mercedes on my office desk top pulled right from my HD card. Sigh, I like it better in NYC. Whadaya think?

Getting Ahead

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I've figured out that in life we have to deal with loud noises, abrupt bangs, and metal lumps like this that can trip us up if we're not looking down. Which of course is a problem if we walk around looking up.Hmmm... There's a moral here, right?

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The way I look at it, a photographic artist works backward from a painter. See, a painter starts with an empty canvas and edits it full, we start with a full frame, and edit down. Or at least that's the way it used to be. Now we start with a full frame and fill it up more even while we toss stuff away like in this image. It's a lot more complicated what we do today. Painters sure have it easy.