So I Got This Problem...

Nature

The house teeters up there, its hope simultaneously resting behind boulders piled against the nature of the North Atlantic, and a cardboard sign against the nature of humans. But I wonder: isn’t the latter intended to protect the structure from the whims of taxpayers who erected the former?
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How fragile security seems when looked at from behind a pile of rocks that won’t alter the nature of climate, nor signs that can't change the nature of humans.
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The morning after a stormy night my Canon 7D's wide angle 10-22mm  found some steps rising from Corporation Beach in E. Dennis, Massachusetts on the bay side of Cape Cod. There's so much color smoldering to life at sunrise... Maybe too much? Perhaps this palette shrink-wraps reality behind a romantic patina that distracts us away from life's harshness? Maybe colors are the tools of poets and cynics while monochrome is a tool of realists and skeptics?
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Or maybe this is just a house perched atop a dune? :-)

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But that's not the problem in the title of this post. Well over a half century ago I started thinking about palette and photography. That meant struggling with all sorts of color theory and its aesthetics. The thing is that down deep I like a lot of chrome. I mean I want it cranked up to 11 on a dial that goes to 10! And now, thanks to technology, I can twirl that dial all the way... WHIP!

Looking back, you'll see a few recent posts here that got monochromed... FWUUUP! The sound of color sucked away to reveal the haunting underlayerment of feeling. But monochrome's a false choice in most cases. Kicking away everything but 50 shades of gray... Well, that'll make for a hot commercial novel, but the power of my original narrative here, in this image... Isn't best served by sheering away the color fabric, is it?

I've found that full-on color grabs attention, but it's like deep cleavage, y'know? It serves a certain, um, function, but it's hard to get the audience to look in your eye...

So I've got this problem... How to overcome an addiction to chromo-blasting? Wall space is so scarce. Without a story arc, there's no reason to return to an image... It has no aura. No wonder... And art without wonder is merely craft. If I can't get something new from an image each time I return to it, well, I don't want to live with it. Won't give it a piece of that scarce wall space.

As you climb the stairs to my office, the walls and the landing are filled with photographs wonderfully lit by indirect sun light. Some are mine, others are by resonant minds that make me VERY careful which of mine I dare hang near them. Increasingly I've found that the work which endures has the color cranked down to six or seven. Yet, first-time visitors invariably are drawn to pulsating color.

Okay, I should please myself, forget others. But that would wall off learning and growth. Nope, not a good idea. Any suggestions? As you scroll backward in this blog, look how blatant the image colors are. But would you... could you... live with those neon palettes?

What therapy do they do at a rehab for color addiction?Thoughts?

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Here's the just-before-sunrise-original...

Melancholy

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Autumn sometimes gets me down. Rita and I were homebound this weekend. Missed a nice evening at friends' home. It is true, Autumn is a time when one starts to miss things, huh?

Of course this is a rework of an image I did some Autumns back at East Dennis on Cape Cod.

The first freeze came this morning and killed the flowers. Some seemed startled in their crystal casings especially the youngest blooms which had only begun to blossom. They were caught in that clear syrup of glassy death which only after minutes of sun caused them to wrinkle, brown, and droop from their leafy homes. I'm guessing they felt pretty safe last night... but somewhere in their sleep... Their season ended.

And they are among the things that Fall causes you to miss, huh?

Yellow Plus Blue

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Hmmm... Is there a difference between discovery and creativity in art? Lemme try that differently. Is it all about process or maybe its more about concept? Okay... okay... still not clear, right? Sigh. When Michelangelo decided to pull 'David' out of that enormous hunk of stone... well, how much did he know before he began hammering? Had he imagined the boy/man and then dug him free from the marble? Or did he find him as he chiseled away pieces of rock?

I started this concept out by watching a man on West Chestnut Street in downtown Lancaster. And I used my EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens to snag him free of the crowd. Then I went to work in PS/CS4 to reveal his character which originally attracted my lens - by building up tonal maps that let me dig into shadows and highlights. But as he emerged on my digital palette he demanded a setting. A moment... Yeah, his presence was the concept but the process wanted a place to both compliment and amplify it.

And I thought of the rugged coasts of Northern California where the yellows of the hillsides complimented the yellow of the guy's shirt. And then... then... a palette of yellows and blues all seemed exactly correct - perfect to balance the way that the coastline seemed too romantic for this portrait. So... so... process led to discovery. And where does creativity come to visit? Maybe that's a judgement for the visitor to make? Maybe we cannot conclude we are creative, merely presenters or discoverers... eh?

A FOOTNOTE: I built this image yesterday but before writing this tiny essay I rode my bike through Musser Park, next to my home here in Lancaster. And there on a gorgeous Sunday were two young painters from the Pennsylvania College of Art And Design each working in palettes of blues and yellows. While we each discovered very different images, I wonder. Is there a yellow/blue something in the air here in the Historic District? Cool.

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Here's an image of the coastline which is really the result of three virgin images stitched together into a pano in Photoshop, which were taken with my Canon 20D through its EF-S 10-22mm (f3.5-4.5) at approximately the same time as mu subject on an equally sunny day.

A Child Is A Future Probe

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Buried deep within our children: a time capsule. To be opened... When?


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At Andreas request.... Here's the virgin image from my FlashCard. Comments?

Tensed

There's a difference between the artist and craftsman. "The artist," it's said, "Does not picture things as they are."

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And here's the virgin image directly from my FlashCard... Comments?

Guardhouse On The Hill

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Once upon a time, up on the hill, there lived a guard house. And its keepers were Arnex and Dazie. And all day and all night for so many years they guarded. Until the orange letter came from Sacramento...

Dixie #2: Sunset

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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.

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

Heroic?

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Brant Point juts out into Nantucket Harbor. Odd, it's almost impossible to render a lighthouse image that doesn't seem heroic. Why is that? After all it's just a building. Do we bring our own psychic baggage to making or viewing their images? Thoughts?

Un-Natural Palette

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It should have been a lot colder the morning I took this picture. By late October Cape Cod Bay is usually whipped around by winds off the North Atlantic and the color largely gone from the beach grasses. So this is an image of two seasons overlaid in ways that they don't usually. It's almost a summer morning picture, yet it looks too brisk for that. And it's almost a winter picture, yet the foliage just doesn't fit. So I tried to tease as much out of this strangely mixed palette as possible. I think this has a calm-before-the-storm quality. But the storm is something larger, perhaps this year, or next - regardless - nature will adjust.

Leaf It Alone

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I guess someone will eventually remove all of these leaves? Or maybe they will be part of the aesthetic charm come next summer? The kids left everything where they last played with them, and left their summer place. And then the leaf blizzard coated everything before the coming snow blizzards, eh? The circle of life?

Sun Spill

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Saw this on Cape Cod in October. The sunrise caught by the morning dew makes a glimmering flow that's shuffled one way by the breeze and another by the sun's rising direction. The currents give me a buzz.

Trial of a trail

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It's often hard to get from here to there. And even a summer can make it tougher. There was a trail up this dune last winter. The workers used it then. But they stopped coming. When this winter's storms arrive, the roof's blue tarp on the bay side probably won't last. Somebody must have run out of money, rights, or enthusiasm. Maybe all three.

Makes you wonder how much restoration those things can stop. Makes you wonder if they're the speed bumps of history. Makes you wonder if the paths between wherevery you are, and wherever it could be interesting to go could all be swallowed up by growths that are just lurking in wait for the exhaustion of money, rights, or enthusiasm. Fragile, this civilization thing, eh?

DATA: Friday, 10/06/06, 7:36AM: Canon EOS 20D, Meter Mode Auto, Exposure Program: Normal, ISO 400, Lens Canon EFS 10-22mm, Focal Length 22 mm, Exposure Bias:-.20, 1/160 at f/10, RAW

Award Winner 2006: Is Up Better Than Not?

Note: Accepted as one of the world's finest Travel Images of 2006 for Canon POTN Book published in the Fall of 2007.

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Didja ever wonder how much of life goes to places that... Well you just can't tell where it's going from where you are? You can be standing right in front of a way that looks like it's going up – You with me here? And the passageway seems as if it's been there a while and that means others must have passed along... but yet.
Are all things that go up, worth the climb? And when it looks as if the way hasn't been taken in a while, well... the hell does that mean? And suppose that you're not certain if the time's right to climb? Like you can't decide if the sun's setting or rising on the whole idea. Well, didja ever wonder? Huh? Huh?

DATA: Friday, 10/06/06, 7:34 am? pm?:Canon EOS 20D, Meter Mode Auto,Exposure Program: Normal, ISO 400, Lens Canon EFS 10-22mm, Focal Length 10 mm, Exposure Bias:+.85, 1/200 at f/9, RAW

The Cape

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If you've lived in much of the Northeastern part of the United States, it's known by just those two words.
"Hey, where y'going?"
"The Cape."
"Ahhhhhh..."

Then you'll get questions like: Ocean or bay? How far out? What part? Or from those who love it... "Where 'bouts?"

We're going about half way out on the Bay side. That's where I took this snapshot last year in the Fall. The color could be nice next week, but it doesn't much matter. In a lot of ways, even the weather doesn't matter a lot. Oh, it'll be cool to see them harvesting cranberries (I don't think I missed that). And the beaches will be nicely empty now that the kids are back in school. And you know what? For miles and miles, whether you look out at the water, or in at the shore... the view will be the same one that my parents and grandparents saw. See that house up there. I could snatch you from anywhere in the world, whip off your blindfold and one look at it and you'd figure where you were.

The Cape.