Sometimes my mind changes. Yours?

I like alleyways. They're where time leaves the most dust. Y'know?

Not Whether... How?

<- Click here






Minutes till start.
Done it before.
Can do it better.
Will!

Not whether…
How?

Canon 7D, Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens 300mm, f5.61/60, ISO 360, hand-held

PS4: Custom texture, PerfectPhotoSuite6, Topaz Adjust 6: custom settings,

To The Soul

<- Click here

In a moment
When lights
Catch.


Eyes window
Outward
In.

Izmir, Turkey
Canon 7D, PS4: Custom filters, Topaz, AlienSkin: Bokeh2, BlowUp3 (Beta), Custom textures.

Now for the fun. Here's the virgin image from my FlashCard. Okay...

Now... NOTE: While I do not work for them, I was invited to beta test by AlienSkin. Their not-yet-released BlowUp3 allowed me to carve an approximate 20% section from this image and enlarge it without degradation to 36" on the horizontal edge. It’s a stunning technology, Huh?

In Konya There's An Emerald

<- Click here
The sky was lit by the splendor of the moon
So powerful I fell to the ground
Your love has made me sure
I am ready to forsake this worldly life
and surrender to the magnificence of your Being.
– Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi

In Konya there’s a museum
Its emerald glow
Remembers its poet.
Its poet remembers
The moon…

Open the love window.
The moon won’t use the door,
only the window.

– Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi

Here’s The Rumi Museum
Looking over Konya, Turkey




Canon 7D: PS4: Custom filters & brushes, Topaz, AlienSkin: SnapArt – Impasto: Custom texture.

Whuuuump!

<- Click here

Okay around here
Once a year
We go to hear
And peer
At things that go
Whump in the night…

Lancaster, Pa
Canon G10, PS4, Topaz, AlienSkin: SnapArt, oil paint, Custom brushes and textures.

MoonStruck

(Click on image)

And when
He did
Music
She
Glowed.

Susquehanna Tree, Columbia, PA
Canon 40D: PS4 Topaz, AlienSkin: SnapArt, Colored Pencil – Custom brushes/textures/filters

Carney • Wheel

I'm just saying...

Emotionally charged?

Part of a small city Carney Series I’m slowly working upon.
Lancaster, PA
Canon 40D, 17mm
PP: PS4/AlienSkin: Xenofex2, Bokeh2,
Custom filters/textures/brushes

City V Townspeople?

<- Click here

There's a difference

Between city and

Townspeople.

Their waking hours.

Andreas Does Duomo

Each moment
Caused by the last
Each tensioned
Without the last.

What moment
Far from the last
Is finally
Free from the first?

Once upon a very early morning Andreas Manessinger and I went to find art among great art that would be different from the art it was among. And it occurred to me that the artist is always a part of the art that is found, but too often not pictured there.

Or something like that? Enjoy.

Canon 20D, Florence/Firenze, Italy.

PS... I once posted something like this but the BAD APPLE - explained there in the right column - made it go away. The magical colors made me bring it back. Hope you'll agree that the effort's worthwhile?

Night Grit

<- Click here
Vic left the club at eleven. He was late... It was the night that was early.

No filters, no textures. It is what it is....

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.

Thanks Flo

<- Click here
Yesterday I uploaded a couple of images that I put together for a friend's jazz group. Take a look at Flo's comments. They were as precisely good as advice gets. The things needed more grit and smoky-jazzy feel. She pointed out that the guys were dressed oddly for jazz. That the drum's backlight was distracting. That It probably needed some wording. She wondered why I straightened the original image when the original cockeyed shot gave it more presence. Yep... all terrific comments. Which sent me back to the beginning... as it should have... Even the typeface I'd chosen wasn't JAZZY enough. And the text colors, while cool as that drum, weren't hot. And even cool jazz is HOT!

Right? Of course right.... Here's take 2. Comments? Lemme know.

Rebecca knew better but...

<- Click here
naughty Samuel had skittered through the door into the darkness toward the crumbling Herr place. She ran behind him in a night momentarily lit by a Fall moon breaking the cloud spattered sky.

Grabbing up Sam, Becca twirled toward home when from the abandoned place she heard, or perhaps felt, a whisper.

—

Camera: my Verizon cellphone’s 1.5 mpx. Had it with me just as I heard… or perhaps felt… the whisper :-)

PP: PS4, Topaz, AlienSkin: Bokeh2, SnapArt:2 -> Pointillism. Custom brushes. Construct from images found at a country tag sale and lonely farm-in-the-night pix.

By Its Cover

<- Click here

Andreas & Me

<- Click here

Early one morning I met Andreas Manessinger outside of this place. I went clockwise, he went the other way. We met back at the front doors. Yeah, doors. There are a bunch of them.

I cannot imagine how many photographers have sucked pieces of the place onto their film or flash cards. And yet... yet... she seemed to be able to present herself to us as if those others had never been there. She made us both feel as if it were her first time. What a gift, huh?

=----


Hmmmm.... You know it is hard for an artist to decide that the work is done. Of course you know that. And you know that we run a risk of turning a perfectly competent work into bovine dung if we don't say to ourselves.... "Self, you have diddled with this enough. Put it out of its misery. And yet... yet... we wonder if another thought might tease yet more feeling out of the things. And.... well, that's what happened here. Wuddaya think? Should I have quit while I was ahead (or a foot, a leg or ... )????
-------

Canon 20D w/ Canon EF-S 10-22mm (f3.5-4.5) - Hand held and shot at 10mm, f4.0-1/8, ISO=800

Then...

<- Click here

We lugged all of that stuff from the college darkroom up on the second floor behind us. It was the middle of the night. See the big thing right in front of me? That's a Korean War aerial camera. My buddy Jim Furlong found it somewhere, got us some film and found a single engine, three seat plane with an overhead wing. We took the door on my side off so when the plane banked I could dangle right over the city held only by the seat belt. BTW, that monster camera didn't have a neck strap so I held onto it hard as the ground sped ay below.

We've got those odd expressions because we'd created a timer for the big ole 4X5 Speed Graphic camera. We just sat there waiting and waiting until PHWUMP! Flashbulbs popped all around us. Yep, flash bulbs! Funny, that one shot took all sorts of planning and set up (not to mention break down) and yet, who cared? We were young and time and muscle was what we had.

Jim Furlong was the most important photographer who ever lived. Because he infected me with a graphic obsession that's never gone away... that's why. I always wonder as my work comes together, what Jim will think. He created hurdles, and rewards.

Late last month Jim died. But I always wonder as a new image happens, "What will Jim think about that? You've got to have a standard, right?

After The Times Square

<-Click here
I'm re-studying expressionism. It demands complex, well planned images with parts that are worked by the artist to the point of distortion in order to communicate the feelings of the moment.

Here's Broadway, an explosion at night. Blasting color over every part of you... Throbbing with shocking energy. Noisy, fast, a cacophony of sheen. Too much to compute.. Too big to focus. Too massive to step back far enough. Neck hurting high and needling its way into the black curtain up there.... Puncturing it.

Broadway's a vertical thing at Times Square after the Times stupidly left the party.

Allegory 2:

<- Click here

Hmm.... so in the rear view mirror, what do you see back there? And is it getting closer? Are you careening ahead of it? Who's at the wheel? Huh? Huh?

Night Fishing

<- Click here

Wasn't Going To Post This

Entry Into A RedBubble Challenge

<- Click here
I suppose many of you know of the Red Bubble forum? I'm fascinated by the talent of many of its participants, I'm finding them both instructive and VERY challenging. They accept all sorts of art including short stories, poems, and other fiction. One of the groups, WMG - The Writer's Market Group is bringing out an annual "Best Of" E-Book and this year they will apparently combine submissions from 2008 which shared "Epic" as a theme.

To that end, they challenged group members to submit entries into a contest to design a cover. Now since it is an eBook I decided to break with the convention of a horizontal book format (so far I'm alone in entries which have done that). Of course all of the text on the cover can/will be eventually tailored to the forum's specific needs. However it seems to me that a graphic which screams EPIC needs to have some pretty common elements, right?

(1) VAST... It's gotta be BIG... HUMONGUS... SWEEPING! Hence the panorama format.
(2) Sexy... Gotta imply all sorts of moist liaisons which of course demands a blonde... Obvious, hun?
(3) Weird, scary, sinister villains.
(4) A mysterious object.
(5) A palette that oozes something spooky either reds or yellow-greens, or cold-cold blues.
(6) Suggestions of edgy texture? Gritty.
(7) Action.

Now I probably should have had armies massed in the background along with booming cannons, lots of smoke, and squirming bodies. But, lacking any squirming bodies ... well y'gives it what y'gots. Right?

Wuddaya think.... does it screech "EPIC!!!!"

Hope so, if you're Red Bubble members... please vote for the sucker. K?

OOOPS!!!

Okay.... I should read the rules. Seems that the dimensions had to be A4 size.... Sigh.... I still think that the pano screeeeechs out EPIC!!! But if it has to be book cover size... well, hey.... I can do dat.... Which do you prefer? Choices?