Summer Brideg

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"What''ll it be when I grow up?"

The boy wondered as he hugged to the bridge.

"What's over there waiting?" he thought.

"What's on that side of the life's oddly shaped ridge?"

Did he want to go, he wondered?

Did he need to leave this summer place?

"Can't I stay here feeling a while?

Can't I just hold onto this glowing-soft space?"

Summer sprays its indelible inks

Upon memories of the moments we clung

To our first sense of the coming span of time

and the soft-warm moment of feeling so young.

A REAL Photograph?

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It’s called by some
The Simple Life
What the Amish have.

On a Summer day
Riding Lancaster’s
Backroad farmland hills

I wonder if simple
Captures what it means
To live here like this?

Hmmm… Some have wondered if I still take “pictures”? I’m guessing they mean, photographs? In fact friends wonder if I can still take pictures? Okay… here are the basics, right? It looks like a picture, a photo… um… don’t you think? Of course, nothing is reeeeely as it looks, is it? :-)

Near Blue Ball, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
Canon G10, PS4 (pano w/image merge 4 wide-angle pans), custom brushes

NOTE Okay... maybe I did move the barn, um, into the image, uh, along with its cow and pasture. But... but.. it's still a picture, right? And well, perhaps there were only a few of those orange flowers snapping open, but.. but.. well, there should have been more, huh? And yeah, the skyline could have been messed up with a few inconvenient buildings off in the distance. Well who has an appetitie for inconvenience anyway? Not me... nope. But... but... except for those tiny details and a tad of romanticizing the dynamic range and color palette... HEY... basically it's a photograph, huh?

Suppose...

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Suppose that sky
Met the water
Exactly where
A barn
Met them
Both…
Once upon a time.

West Dennis, MA – at high tide, low cloud and old barn.

Canon 7D: Canon EF-S 10-22mm, PS4: Topaz, Alien Skin: SnapArt2, Custom filters & brushes.

Over There: See?

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Brambles always return. We are only so far in front of life’s jungle. But as long as we’ve got the energy and tenacity to keep ahead of the suckers…. To whack ‘em off when they’re little more than scratchy stubble – Well, it is as if civilization’s here to stay. But it takes a bunch of individual effort – an every-day-thing.

Because the jungle’s really just below ground, and sometimes – even in the middle of a city its fingery brambles claw back through like… like…

Over there: See?

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? :)

Gratuitous Fall Picture

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There's a strip mall in the City of Lancaster. When they built it- it became apparent that Red Rose Commons would not be able to spill onto an adjoining wet land. So imagine this... here we have a wild bird preserve that's the result of and virtually a part of a city mall. Cool, huh?

Oh, as for the image look. It's Fall. I take pictures. So I've got to take at least one picture of Autumn in Pennsylvania. Those are the rules in the Ancient Book Of Photographers,right? And this week was the high color. Yesterday I went to Barnes & Noble at the mall, and took this on the way out. Another annual task checked off.

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.

Changings

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Should we love or fear the future.

The folks who live here on the Wellfleet Marsh on Cape Cod can predict that twice each day this place will flood, then drain. The future will be nearly as like the past as possible. Yet no present moment will ever hold. The swings of changing tides, coupled with the beat of changing seasons, coupled with the predictable changes in summer versus winter people... all of these changes result in...

Well let me try my wonderings differently. If nothing changed, would there be a future? If we were eternal... immortal... would the past have still happened? How, if nothing changed, would we compare the future with now, and now with then and.. and.. But if nothing changed, there'd be no sunrises like this one. If nothing changed... would there be beauty? How would we know it... if nothing changed?

How would we know anything? And if knowing is good. Then the first question.. in my first sentence has an answer, right?

Still But Not Hushed

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This stuff we do is "still" photography. Now the question for today boys and girls... Is it "quiet" photography? Can we render images which resonate sufficiently that viewers hear them as well?

This was a sunrise last October over Wellfleet. That's a village on Cape Cod. In its middle is this tidal marsh. The water was rushing in. All around me were gurglings. Within minutes the momentarily dry footing I perched upon turned soggy, then sank beneath feet of swirling salt waters. Birds awoke loudly. And somewhere behind me a lumber mill's "blahhhhhhhhh" ripped apart logs.

As you look at Marsh #11 I wonder if you hear that morning music? Is it only because the image transports me somewhere inside my memory that I see the racket of sunrise? Or have you heard enough of them to make this still photograph, noisy?

Grand Daddy's Furniture Marsh

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Arnold Newman thought that, "Photography is 90% moving furniture and 10% inspiration." That late great photographer, like the bulk of artists I've discussed it with, felt that much of his finished work was discovered during the process of creation. Notice... not intentionally sought out, then revealed by technique and craft, but discovered during the application of craft. Yet, there's an organic movement among photographers who cannot abide post processing PhotoShop techniques (PP in PS) which "add stuff" to the picture.

Odd that the greatest artists believe in the creative abilities of process, and yet there are others, mostly amateurs attempting to master their grandfather's photography, who are anxious to replicate the discoveries of say... 1930, or 1960. It's as if generals were brought onto a new battelfield with the ability only to fight the last war.

Look at Marsh#10 I've posted today. It's one of those chestnuts I hid away last Fall so that I could gnaw at them during the fridgedest days of February and March. And as I moved about the furniture in that frame (and as you can see, the frame itself) I discovered the nuances which attracted my eye during that October sunrise over the great Wellfleet marsh. That's not a library sky... nope... it hung up there just like that. This isn't HDR. Nope, that was the tonal range captured by my Canon 20D. I haven't cranked up the color intensities or added polychromatic washes. In fact, I haven't even sharpened the print. It's what my Canon's 10-22mm captured.

But I did create multiple layers of ideas. I have blended and masked them together into this final image which my craft was able to discover among them. Is this "manipulation" or "enhancement"? You know what? It doesn't matter. I brought PS tools to bear in PP which never existed before this moment in time. And I've discovered an image which couldn't have existed before now. The relevant question isn't about PS in PP. The relevant question has to do with whether the image resonates with you and how.

If it does. And does it properly. The photographic based image works. Anyone who denies him/herself those tools - is fighting the last war with grand-daddy's furniture!

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.

DarkMarsh

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At first the sun isn't really a glow. Nope, at a certain time of morning your eyes start to make out objects in what was just black only moments before. For some few moments it's almost as if your sight improved, or if things somehow pulsated color from within themselves. It's a brief time when the essence of shapes come out.
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This is the post I promised to make here. Finally I am back on sched. Sorry about the delay, life has a nasty way of intruding upon my hobby.

Light Bursts

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A certain image can seem like a ball of light beneath one’s mouse – on the verge of bursting. And light is one of the most vivid dimensions of our experience. Leonardo wrote that a painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light. He felt that there was a value in starting with shadows. It is light that invents color, and color that finally bursts things into being. If existence is about being, then light is a necessary and moving condition.

Ornamentation

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Grief... that's what I've gotten recently for my abstract posts. "What's happened to your organic center, Ted?" Some ask. "Have you no sense of the decisive moment? The photographer's responsibility for reportage?" Stung... Yep, I am stunnnngggggggg! But, not a tad apologetic. All photographs lie... Hold that... They are to truth as music is to truth.
A composer presents a melody, then varies it through changes in texture, changes from major to minor, and ornamentation... Yadda... yadda.... So does a photographer. Through choice of perspective, framing, lens, filter, film/camera, exposure, f-stop, speed, depth of field... chrome or monochrome... A visual melody is changed until the moment that shutter allows light to hit film or sensor. All the stuff that happens in post-processing is ornamentation. And it as much a part of the process as purchasing a tripod - only more essential. An artist lives within the process. Before him comes an insight or idea... after him comes a completed work - but it is in the process where the entirety of the artistic thing happens.
Here... see this image above? I took it at sunrise on an October morning following a stormy night. This tidal spillway was drained in a daily cycle that's been going on since glaciers choked it dry. Can you sense the channel? Can you feel how life is coping with that force? Can you sense a primal moment? If so... the image of pre-sunrise light upon an ancient marsh expresses my concept... my feeling. It is true, and it was process that made it so.

DATA: Wednesday, 10/06/06, 7:16 am: Canon EOS 20D, Meter Mode Auto, Exposure Program: Normal, ISO 400, Lens Canon EFS 17-85mm, Focal Length 33 mm, Exposure Bias:-.67, 1/125 at f/9, RAW

Sundown

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We're going to the Poconos this weekend. Leaving tomorrow so, no postings until maybe Sunday night. These are part of the Appalachian Mountain range which runs down the east coast of North America. They're particularly ancient mountains without volcanic activity, and their highest peaks are up in New England. The Poconos are the name of the range as it passes generally through northeastern Pennsylvania. The color should be just past its peak, but we should get interesting images.
So... it seems as good a time as any to set the sun on my early October visit to E. Dennis, Massachusetts on Cape Cod. I like the light over this marsh. The sky was angry, but the storm never hit us. See the red flowers? They're somehow harbingers of Christmas, don't you think? By now, I suppose the frosts have killed them off up there in the north country. And snows are only weeks away from the Poconos. We'll get there just before Fall's window closes. Cool.

Marsh-Mellow

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It happens that we can lose faith in so many things as a source of betterment in our lives. Sometimes we regard even revered institutions as pesky ideas that exist, at least in part, to disguise essential truths. And news is seen as the opposite of objectivity, there to create enough tension to attract an audience or distract thought.

When, as someone wrote, prominent professors of literature regard polysyllabic gobbledygook as the best way to write, and law or medicine momentarily seem a scramble for profit with doctors and lawyers becoming speculative business people for whom neither justice nor curing have special value... It's time to recharge. To sit on a dock, aside a marsh and count the glacial stones. Ignoring for the moment those storm clouds but instead focusing upon the meaning of the distant, golden glow. Every form of human discomfort it seems is susceptible to the magical powers of burbling water. It is the ancestor of insight, recovery, superstition, optimism, and therapy.

DATA: Sunday, 10/01/06,1:02 PM: Canon EOS 20D, Meter Mode Auto, Exposure Program: Normal, ISO 200, Lens Canon EFS 10-22mm, Focal Length 11 mm, Exposure Bias:-.33, 1/125 at f/7.1, RAW

Shhh! Hear It?

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Consonance versus dissonance - is the struggle composers do when they're working to create a harmonic support to a melody that's pleasant yet just sufficiently unbalanced to be interesting.

In this visual triad I've combined texture and classic composition together within a clash of reds, yellows and greens to stage the startling fortissimo of a Wellfleet sunrise. Now, if I can only learn to hold my camera straight... I'd resolve this thing on a much happier note.

Seriously, "harmony" comes from the Greek word, harmonia, which means "fastening" or "to join." If I did this image correctly, the cant to this thing reinforces the way I've tried to balance the dissonant elements. Does it sing?

Din

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Here's a tidal marsh. It rises quicker than an Irish temper. This sunrise was announced by birdsong and water burbles which sounded nothing like a Debussey tone poem. Nope, the meter was odd, and the notes discordant. I imagine that the fuss is an aquired taste to sleepers behind those windows.

There's nothing still about a seacoast morning. Water birds seem as grumpy about daybreak jostling their sleep as me. Up the coast a block or so, a timber mill's already sprung to life, its saws and claw trucks stirring additional whines and grumbles into the thickening sound stew. But those reeds and the colors seem to compensate. There are those who love early mornings. I'm not one of them.