Good Morning Florence

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An oarsman snaps
His way along the
Mirrored Arno.

The light enwraps
Its coat over the
Ancient feeling.

Canon 40D, PS4: custom brushes, Topaz, AlienSkin: Exposure4: Color Slide: Agfa RSXII 100 <- My favorite film ever!

Bosporus Bustle

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Gilt party boats
Crazy sway
In waves and wind.

A two arm gap
Over an
Ancient alley.

Istanbul, behind the Blue Mosque
Mixed Media, Canon 7D, PS4: custom brushes and textures, Topaz, Alien Skin: SnapArt: pastels.

Composition

The world is sweet, mysterious, and beautiful. Sometimes.

Middelbury, VT.

Here's a second take on the image... I'm trying to find a 1920's feeling here in the stillness.

Got A Question For You

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I've been wondering... What is the use of art? Matching the couch? Covering a hole in he wall? I know that a large number of furry little rodents decorate their burrows. Ditto the way a lot of birds weave stuff into their nests. Hmmmm.... are some animals driven to decorate? How do they decide between worthwhile decorations and junk?Are there more, um, fascinating decorations? Do some decorations resonate more than others? Is there a collection instinct? If there is, upon what is it focused? How do collectors of decoration decide? Do they have advisors? Are there experts? Critics? Educators? Analysts?

Apparently all human cultures collect art just like those cute rodents. Even ancient peoples seem, well, driven to decorate their graves with shiny things, drawings and statues. Decoration seems to be almost a necessary condition of human-ness.

So what are the uses of art? Body decoration? Balancing the palette in a bathroom? Is the value the picture, or inside the picture? Is art an object or a package?

Okay... my head is hurting now. Think I'll go find a Rolling Rock.

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Oh yeah, the picture here: I took it at dawn in Wellfleet on Cape Cod as the tide gurgled in under my feet. It actually does gurgle and hiss, oozing seemingly out of the muddy ground. Charming though, and it makes the sort of picture that blown up and framed... Well it goes pretty damned well with the couch, huh? :)

You've Seen This Before But....

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See this? Yeah, I posted it before during the Summer, just click on the keyword "sailing" below to see the series. That's not the point. Fun is the point.

Steve wasn't posing here. I was standing in the gangway to below decks, taking picture for so long that I became invisible. Now I like it that this mid-afternoon picture is something that we can do today that used to take me a bank of lights to create back in the day. But that's not the point either.

The point is that Steve's just had a major birthday. So I took the image over to Dave at Poppit Studios and he blew it up for me to a size that would get big-time attention. The idea was that Rita and I would invite Steve and Maria to dinner at a top of the line restaurant. And we'd arrange to get a table off to the side last Saturday night where we could prop the image against the wall behind a covering. And of course we'd rip away the cover during the meal, and well... embarrass the hell out of him... heh heh heh...(Okay, women won't get this... but to men it resonates, right guys?) Think of it as a really big Birthday card.

So Dave, he blows it up... and up... and up... to FOUR feet by SEVEN FEET!!!! SEVEN FRIGGIN FEET!

You should see it. It is tack sharp (where it is supposed to be tack sharp) and the colors ROCK! And I invited my buddy and partner Steven and his wife Julie so we could carry the thing and.. and...

Well Dave doesn't own a truck at Poppit Studios. And we couldn't get the print into any of our cars. Or into our station wagon. And well, what the hell to do? The practical joke careened back on me! How to give it to him when I couldn't take it out of the printer's studio?

Meantime Dave was so proud of it that he set it up right by the door of his place (the guy owns massive printers, and cameras, and even a large device that will computer-cut images out). In fact he offered to have it cut Steve out of the big image as a stand-alone figure. Have you noticed, or imagined, that he's life size in the image? I took it with my old Canon 20D and you can count the hairs in his mustache... it's that detailed. Imagine what my new 40D will do... but I digress.

So what to do? Well finally my colleague Tammy, the layout artist at my magazines brought her huge RV over to Poppit and last Friday we got it to my house. So.. we changed plans and had a dinner party for the six of us.

During cocktails my partner and I went upstairs and hefted the thing down the steps et voilá .... we swung the thing around to reveal... "Heroic Steve At The Helm".

Great reactions... Everyone loved it. Super fun... BUT.. BUT!!!!!! He couldn't get it home. The BILLBOARD is sitting in our living room. YIPES... Didn't see that coming.

Steve's first reaction was, "Holy S**T, that thing will cost a grand to frame!" Um, well, yeah. It's printed on a fairly solid substrate so it stands up by itself. But what do you do with this .. object the size of Romania?

I suggested he take it to his plant, frame it in busy golden gilt, and put a tiny plaque engraved... "Our Founder". Mount it right behind the receptionist, right? Get her a tiny sailor uniform.... Somehow Steve isn't crazy about my suggestion. Particularly my plans for installation of track lighting. Pity.... Some folks don't have enough imagination, huh?

What do you do with a 24 foot square heroic image? Steve told me that "It ain't my problem!" He's right. It was fun, but I'll probably throw it away tonight.

The moral to all of this? A four by seven foot portrait might not be the best idea. Bummer.

Back For A Week In dixie

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The deep South in Summer. Yesterday's humidity was 100% at 10:30 am. The mosquitoes swarmed thick as swamp vapors. This guy wanted to get a bass before it got hot.

I'm grabbing a part of this feeling for myself, and part of me from the feeling. They're not entirely separable things all caught up in an image of soon-to-be-evaporated-memory. Each time I return the image will release a foggy ether of something I shared... The image will be the memory... Or at least its color, shape, and form, sounds and smells.

And behind this image... Can you feel the way the rod sits in his hand? The way he steers with his knees? And the satisfaction he's got rocking there deep in this bayou, content in a placid silence where light, heat, water, and peace all swirl from the mists?

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Here's the virgin image.

April Sail #10

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Now for the last in this series. My friend Steve is the guy who chartered our yacht and who contracted Jeremy to instruct him toward his sailing certification. He was my host for the weekend.

So through all of these images I've practiced to find the way to build him the most compelling image for his office. It comes down to this portrait of Steve At The Helm.

Huh? Wuddaya think?

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Here's the virgin image from the FlashCard.

April Sail #9

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Epic?
Jeremy Hopkins spends his life at the helm.Across oceans, through inland waterways, lakes and rivers - he rides the bridge and regardless of how things pitch, his muscles compensate to craft and sea. Confidence wrapped in experience.

I've been diddling with the things that make up an epic image. Think this one's getting there? Lemme lnow, K?

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Here's the virgin picture from my Flash Card

April Sailing #8

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Okay... I tried this pointing thing before, right? Which you can find if you click here And Jeremy is a teacher, right? Teachers point. Especially when they have things to point at. Now Steve is hoping for the BIG picture to put in his office. As much as I liked that earlier image, the grouping here is really powerful, don't you think?

So? Have I found that six foot on a side office image? Huh? Huh?

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Here's the original...

Un-Enhanced?

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Hmmm.... yesterday's post is bothering me. Well, actually some of my friends are bothering me. They, er, sorta... dislike yesterday's post. So here's today's post....

April Sailing #7

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This image took a while... Days actually. I've worked on it... gone away.... worked on it... gone away. There's an evocative moment here where the Chesapeake meets suburbia. There's something abrupt about this place. The people who live along its banks are likely to have nothing to do with the sea. This area is so close to cities where people's incomes are generated by the throb of suburbia, commerce, industry, and professional services. In Europe and Asia homes along the sea belong to sailors and their families. They belong to those who eke their living from water. And somehow their designs reflect that fact. They are ocean homes. Here the homes could be found in most of suburbia. It is as if America ends abruptly at the water's edge.

But the water is their playground. While others with a view of mountains might hike, hunt or camp. Here they sail, motor launch, or sport fish. What I see is a watery backyard - very wet fields. It is decorative rather than functional water. That's what I tried to capture and I worked on it... went away... worked on it... and... here....

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If you are interested, here's the original out of the camera....

April Sailing #4

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Ever heard of N.C. Wyeth? He was the patriarch of the Wyeth artists, the father of Andrew, grand dad of Jamie. A lot of his egg tempera paintings had sea subjects. last weekend's sail caused me to recollect on his brilliant palettes and rigorous action compositions of sailors and pirates who handled the oceans like you or I deal with a country road.

Nothing nailed the way Jeremy so casually dealt with the pitched and rolling deck without reaching for support as this moment when he pointed out to Steve the 'tell-tails' dancing on the mainsail. Life sure is easy when you know how to handle it, huh?

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And the original photograph? Here it is. So, wuddaya think?

April Sailing #3

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The Blue Cloud is where we slept last weekend... and played last weekend as Jeremy taught Steve how to sail the thing. Ever been out on the Chesapeake Bay? We live just above it a few miles from the Susquehanna river that feeds the Bay. Still, with Friday night traffic it took about two hours to drive to Annapolis where they berth the yacht.

A stateroom bed sloshed gently by the water's a tonic for sleep. It took me three days to get rid of my sea legs though.

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For those who like to see the originals of these images... here's what the image above grew from. Pretty ordinary, no?

April Sailing #2

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My buddy Steve contracted with Jeremy Hopkins to teach him to handle the 36 foot sailing yacht he chartered. Jeremy learned his craft in the Royal Navy and he's got papers that will probably let him captain an aircraft carrier. He's charming, and more importantly he can teach. It's in his manner actually, he's one of those people who not only loves what he does, but shares the passion - y'know what I'm sayin' here? He teaches by letting the student do. Impressive.

I like this triptych ... it's nuanced to say a lot about the guy's seriousness, charm, and humor. Add in competence and well... character matters, eh? And it's that kind of strength that can turn a student's resolve into action. Which gets me back to the teaching point.

April Sailing #1

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Went sailing on the Chesapeake last weekend from Friday through Sunday. My friend Steve Cornibert chartered a 36 foot something or other yacht. He hired Jeremy, a master seaman, to teach him to master a boat of this size. So this was a training voyage for Steve, work for Jeremy, and for me... manly leisure.

Saturday was sunny and almost hot. Here I am on one of my few appearances above decks. Hmmmmm.... Actually Saturday I spent a lot of time up there mostly picture taking. Tried my hand at the wheel, and dropping anchor. Did my best to avoid pulling sheets and mucking with the sails. Mucking of course is a nautical term, along with luff, jib, and head. Speaking of heads... here are a couple of mine that I took myself with my wide angle lens. Behind me in the first is Jeremy and Steve in the second.

As Promised

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Penelope stopped struggling , perhaps because of the rope that held her snug to the mizzen… Or perhaps because of the scoop of her neckline that held her far less snugly with each new fidget. Regardless of her motives, the plucky lass froze and watched through bomb-bursted air as the mighty ships engaged.

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I found Penelope in a far back corner of a marine supply store along San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf. She seemed abandoned atop a heap of rigging and ship fittings. I suspect that she was carved from wood and may be an authentic masthead from an 18th century brigantine. I'm guessing that she is tied to that pole until a buyer gives her a new home. At any rate, I pictured the image and found the tiny cheap Tall Ship models at at a tacky tourist shop a couple of stores up from Penelope's present home. This images came together almost exactly as I'd envisioned. Hope you enjoy.

Fabulous Fotos - NOT!

To Everyone Whose Sites I Normally Visit: My MacBook Pro has crashed and will be gone for a week to the Macintosh repair shop. I do my site visits on that machine while I am near to wife/friends/people. I do my images up here alone on my "good" machine. So.. I hope until the laptop returns, you will forgive my absence from popping around?

And now for the rant-of-the-day...

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HATE IT! HATE IT! HATE IT! HATE IT! HATE IT! HATE IT! - when I do this. See this perfectly exposed night time shot? See that it's perfectly framed? Perfectly colored? See the perfect reflection shimmering across the Tiber in down-town Rome? See how the composition is a textbook square? With textbook inner framing of the leaves? See how the mass of the boat in the lower left just balances what I think is Hadrian's tomb lit against the night-time sky? See how controlled, how .... how... perfect, perfect, perfect every little detail, including the color palette is?

And now see that it adds absolutely nothing to our package of ideas? The feeling's been captured a zillion times by anyone passing this point with an Instimatic. GRUMBLE!!!!

So why the hell did I waste my time taking this thing? And I've got dozens and dozens of images like this on my Italian discs. Why do we feel a compulsion to repeat what others have done at least as well? I could have walked forty feet to a tourist store and bought dozens of postcards with this view. Why is it that our own imagination becomes stunted at moments like this? All that I saw was what others saw more times than your Hollywood star goes to rehab.

I'll tell you why... Because our imagination leaves us at these moments. It's as if a mass of photographic ghosts suddenly SCREEEECH all together with such din that they overwhelm our own ideas and feelings. It makes me want to cover my ears and scream...

Instead... I take their picture rather than my own, and come home and grumble.....

The moral: When it isn't your idea in the viewfinder - Don't trigger the shutter.

Wheels #5: The End

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Of course, in a pinch, there's always one last way to deal with a sun-drenched image (See the texts from September, 10-14). Just move the puppy to a friendlier spot, like this. See, the sun dappling looks like street-light dappling and it solves the problem, right? Actually when I saw this old rumble seat open - I imagined it all set to fill up with a happy couple for a night ride through the downtown. I have vague memories as a kid of riding in somebody's ancient but restored jalopy with my Mom in one of those things. Wind-in-hair it was a giggly ride for little boy, like an amusement park attraction that ran right down my street and into the driveway. Wheeeee!

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But when I got to digging into the image it provoked an addtional thought. Don't you think this was the kind of car that the owners took down to the Lancaster Municipal docks to work on their boat? Doesn't it look right out there next to one of the smaller craft? From shore to ship, the perfect way to end my Wheels week, don't you think?

GEEK STUFF Sunday 9/9/07 1:41pm: 1/80s@f/7.1 : Canon EOS 20D, Meter Mode Auto, Exposure Program: Normal, ISO 200, Lens: Canon EFS 17-85mm (f4-5.6), Focal Length 33 mm, Exposure Bias:-0.33, RAW: PP in PS-CS3

Putting Descartes Before The Horse

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Recently I heard of an early twentieth-century anthropologist named James Frazer. Seems he had a theory about what he called Sympathetic Magic.

Now if I got it straight, he argued that “things that have once been in contact with each other continue to act upon each other at a distance, even after the contact has been severed.”

Hmmmm… see those boats in today's image? There is no body of water nearby to the City of Lancaster that would permit ships like them to operate. Now, see the bricks, and the window arch? See the repeating arch over the coal-bin window to this building’s basement? I’m told you’ll find exactly this design routinely throughout the British Isles.

Do these two things point just one way – toward the truth of Frazer’s Sympathetic Magic? Somehow bricklaying and ship building techniques are just as real here in one of Lancaster’s lovely alleyways as they were when they were bumped up against sometime long ago. These two images, one made from brick, the others from wood and canvas are both material objects yet they are signs from long long ago, and far far away. What’s most magical is that we accept the fusion here on this tiny street without a thought.

And yet because they are, therefore I think. How would one say that, Sum ergo cogito? Sympathetic Magic, eh?

Marsh#9 And A Half

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Last Wednesday's post (January 17th-"DarkMarsh") was about a marsh boat at dawn. As I prepared that image for posting, an entirely different idea occurred to me. Here it is. Same boat, same camera click, different emotion.
That's what we do isn't it? We hold wildly different emotions and ideas simultaneously. As we skitter back and fro among them, we seem to feel firm only in the last one we examined. And we're firm until we examine them again. I have no idea whether my Wednesday idea about this moment I've posted here on Friday was better. I know it was more correct, Wednesday. Today, I'm going with the ramped up saturations of this feeling. Wonder what tomorrow will bring?
It's that wonder that keeps us agile, don't you think? Of course, if you didn't think, you'd not be coming back to this website. So, do all of us a favor (according to Google Analytics there are a bunch of you who come here every day)... Do us all a favor and think at me.
A thought is one of the few things you can give away and have more remaining.