Paris Chic 4

Model: Marti Armstrong

A grey, damp, chilly parisian winter morning. 

As my friend Andreas Manessinger knows I'm uncomfortable with graffiti. Bur a visit to Pompeii's softened my resistance since that ancient town's walls are covered in the stuff. My disapproval's leaning against an acient... maybe even primal... instinct for humans to scrawl, paint, scratch their presence onto history. How much do graffs differ from the plaques under statues, the etchings onto stone monuments, or for that matter, the carvings dug into tombstones? Is it fine for a minor politician to have his/her name chiseled onto to stone, like the guy who wrote that he made the Partheon left this huge inscription across the top of the portico:"M*AGRIPPA *L* F* COSTERTIVM*FECIT".  Which in English sort of means, "M. AGRIPPA L.F. COSTRTIUM*MADE IT"!

And that differs from tags, how? When it's kid that tags a wall, that's conceit but when old Agrippa does it... 

Okay, there's a place for autographs - but the front of my city home isn't one of them. The "graffiti artist is stealing some of my property value. Theft's theft, huh?Should it necessitate major repair it's Grand Theft.  In the U.S. most municipalities have some sort of laws allowing the protection of personal property from thieves which can trigger (yeah, pun intended) an owner who is legally armed. Now it probably should not come to that especially since a spray can ain't a weapon equivalent to Dirty Harry's Magnum revolver. Still, I'd be cautious about spitting paint onto most private homes today. 

My first trip to Europe decades ago was a major shock... so much graffiti. Rome is a stinking dirty mess of the stuff. So too Holland, Spain, and most recently France. While both Austria and Germany sported less of the stuff, it was still a pox. I guess to avoid the possibility of retaliation, most U.S. graffiti seems to get painted upon public buildings and surfaces.An exception seems to be RR cars that scoated heavily. 

L.A., Baltimore, DC and NYC seem to have the least self respect among American cities I've visited recently. Philly's got bad neighborhoods along with the largest Jersey cities. Generally speaking the smaller the American town, the less scribbling's on walls. Maybe because the taggers are less likely to be anonymous? Amsterdam was the first place that I visited where street markets sold kits filled with small spray cans in color coordinated six and ten packs. These came with shoulder straps so the 'artist' could both access them easily, and run quickly. 

Which brings me back to Paris - which is almost as dingy as Rome. The romance of its reputation eludes me. Why, even as they remodel buildings, they sell facades which cover the remodelers for giant billboards to sell products! Block long and stories high boards  that are a form of graffiti themselves. The crumbling street in the scene above is a major boulevard just off of the Bastille. It is as if Parisians have lost a sense of dignity. 

Much of the city is not merely tacky but lurches toward the vulgar. Odd, since I'd never have equated Parisian tastes with vulgarity. In the sense of style, Parisians have convinced us that they're the gold standard. I'd expected high tailored men, and haute ladies. Nope... that kind of fashion walked the streets of Rome, Vienna, NYC, and Valencia. 

But... But... look how the street rubble works in those portraits of Marty up above. I love the contrast. Hmmmm... 

Parisian blocks have most in common with the ruins of Pompeii. Who'd have thought?

Cut To The Chaise

Canon G10 processed in PS6

It's election time in the USA. Promises are inflating like a fat guy at a complimentary smorgasbord. Each politico to the mic's piling on more free stuff. Until that ape up there. How's anyone going to top that slogan? How about universal credit cards that have 100% NEGATIVE interest rates? Hell, why stop at 100%...

Hmmmm.... what comes after infinity?

Someone's suggested I call this image, "Don't Cry For Me Socialista". But isn't that show-tune already playing for a while in Caracas: Right? 😁

Dappled Street Art

Musser Park, the Green Heart of Lancaster, sits fifty feet from our front door. It's the city's only central green space. Weather permitting, it fills with lunch-baggers, free-range kids, rallies, pick-up games, family picnics, music groups, holiday events, sunbathers, young loves or readers on benches, chess players, dog walkers: like that.

Sometimes it's where people assemble to do politics in the sunshine. Then, thousands come to learn and share beliefs. It's a civics place that allows for loud and quiet reflection. Over the last handful of decades we've renamed parks, now they're public spaces (as if they weren't before). Even among public tumult, even when hundreds or thousands of people swirl around... A man can sit in the grass, and try to figure out a moment in time. 

In Musser Park, more than sunlight dapples. 

Bernie Came To Town - 4

So? Is Bernie Sanders controversial or mainstream? Izzit possible to be both? Who decides whether something is "controversial". To some President Trump is controversial, other find Mrs. Clinton leads their list of controversial folks. By the way, is there something wrong with being "controversial"? Is that a negative label? Miriam Webster defines controversy as, "a discussion marked especially by the expression of opposing views." And "controversial" the dictionary define as, " Of, relating to, or arousing controversy." Are these bad or even dangerous things? 

I'm going to guess about this happy mother and child that, even if she finds Senator Sanders, controversial, that she neither finds him bad, nor dangerous. Mothers rarely expose their babies to hazards. In fact, to the degree that she finds the Senator's views to be in opposition to others, they don't seem in opposition to hers. Hence - there's no controversy here. Yet, someone has defined this Senator, the present President, and the views of so many others to be controversial. Who are the labelers? 

A supporter of AFSME vigorously supports Democrat Congressional candidate Jess King.

Yessss... there are people strongly invested in Senator Sanders and Jess King's views. And frequently they represent groups to which they belong. For example the enthusiastic lady above wears a tea shirt sporting the emblem of the American Federation of State and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union which feels changes in legislation or the courts might be difficult to deal with. 

Nobody likes change. Many hopefully endorse it, yet find its disciplines uncomfortable. Hope's a fragile business plan. Now I'm not writing about trends here... Trends are like the ocean's currents that move things along in a kind of predictable way leaving lots of time for, well, assimilation to a trend's dynamics. It's when people notice changes in trends that they go like, "Huh"?

Where's Waldo? Is Democracy lost like Waldo, or has it found it's
setting among the large  audience in  Musser Park, PA?

Then they wonder where their world's going... or went. Irving Kristol, wrote "The leverage of ideas is so immense that a slight change in the intellectual climate can ... twist a familiar institution into an unrecognizable shape." Which is when people wonder, "Where's Waldo?" What's happened? 

A random grab shot of about a dozen of the thousands of faces listening to
Senator Bernie Sanders speak  in  Musser Park, Lancaster, PA. 

Political rallies can be about groups or individuals... Forests or trees. It's the trees that I like. The emotional waves that beam from faces: each telling a separate story. Here's an exercise, click on the image above then plumb each expression and let it plop you onto a story arc. I  learn the most about forests when I pay attention to the trees. 

Niccoló Machiavelli, the father of modern political science, taught his Prince, "Whoever wishes to change the government of a city to his whims and wants it to be accepted and to maintain it to everyone's satisfaction, will have to retain at least the shadow of the ancient ways, so that to the people nothing will seem to have changed although in fact the new laws are in all respects completely alien to those of the past." 

When  "reform" changes things - politicians aren't above faking a tradition when necessary. The appeal to tradition is useful both to sustain a social experiment or to destroy it. Think of the phrase so many politicians are quick to tell us when they oppose opponents of the impact of their experiments, "That's not what America is about." 

Waldo is about the forrest, faces tell the story of the trees. 

Bernie Came To Town - 3

Once I read a guy who wrote, "We regard politicians as self-interested opportunists and nothing else."

At 7am noises began for the 10am event. Sanders fans began swirling onto Musser Park's quadrangle.  The media likes contention. But most political gatherings in the U.S. are filled with happy, enthusiastic people which dials down chances for unpleasant, click-bait, stuff. So the average rally doesn't get much coverage. See this fella below? He came to hear Bernie Sanders, but happily waggled a Jess King lawn sign at me. That's the deal, Sanders is the headliner and opening act, the local Democrat candidate follows up as the main event. Point is that the campaign trail for every candidate is lined with believers and audiences who love a parade. Regardless, the price is right and most folks are in a great mood.

Speaking of signs.

Along the edge of the crowd, a critic of the Senator and the local Congressional candidate hefted his argument into the sun. It seemed to me that the lady was in kindly debate mode. Cynics say we have lost belief in politics as a source of betterment in our lives. Believers who pack into Sanders or Trump rallies haven't lost faith in politicians' interests in their dreams. 

Bernie Came To Town - 2

And the beat goes on.

Street portraiture's a bit like fishing. I cast my lens into a pool hoping to catch a prize... Something worthwhile. There are two kinds of artistic images. The first is a question, the second an answer. Oh, ok... maybe there's a third - the image which both asks then answers. Frankly, answering questions is above my pay grade. Personally I feel that asking questions is what the best art does. Answering can too often become a polemic.

So I look for questions that each visitor to my work answers alone.

The first in this series set the tone for the questions that occurred to me on May 5th. Here's another, more will come and perhaps the entire set may contain an answer. Synergy happens when the whole becomes greater than its parts. When each sentence is a question, perhaps the impact of the essay is what Sextus Impericus invented maybe 2,200 years ago? You know, a set of questions which while each is seemingly unrelated the whole allows inductive insight?

Truth is revealed from the bottom up. Now don't get me started on "truth" - OK?

What can we conclude from this man and young woman? He wears a wedding ring. They each carry signs... His read, "America Is For All Of Us", and her's "Jess King For Congress". Each of the signs were given to early arrivers, but no one had to take them. Bernie spoke as I grabbed this image. They were rapt, nodding to his points. Can we tell more? He wears a fashionable stubble. Her ears don't appear pierced. I'm imaging that this is a father/daughter pair, their jaw and cheekbone lines suggest a familial relationship. Can you find more clues? Their expressions are serious, attentive. Awaiting Senator Sanders, they'd stood and squinted into the sizzling Spring sun for hours. 

GEEK STUFF: Same equipment as the first in this series. However the afternoon's sunny contrast pulled me to use Alien Skin's Exposure 4's powerful emulation of Kodak Ectachrome EES to take advantage of its saturated palette and low contrast. It's was a workhorse film with a tiny grain structure and reasonably wide tonal range at low ISO (ASA) settings. Plus my 300mm lens permitted a sufficiently narrow depth of field to pluck my subjects from the large crowd surrounding them.

Bernie Came To Town - 1

Democrat Congressional Candidate Jess King addresses a large
crowd in Lancaster's Musser Park on May 6, 2018

Last Saturday May 5th, Senator Bernie Sanders, a previous Democrat Socialist candidate for President of the U.S., arrived in Lancaster to endorse a local Democrat candidate, Jess King, for Congress. Some 2,800+ Sanders' followers joined him in Musser Park which is about 500' from my home. With press credentials hanging about my neck I did street photography of the crowd. It was a warm sunny Spring afternoon with the audience in a happy mood. Here's the first of those portraits.

Geek Stuff: Agfachrome slide film presented my favorite color palette. Thanks to Alien Skin's Exposure X3, I can approximate both that palette and its grain structure. Of course my Canon EFS 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens was easily hand held on a Canon 7D MrkII producing needle sharp images. I guess I was, on average, about 50' from subjects - but I made no effort to hide: The park crawled with press photographers. 

Incidentally: I estimated the crowd's size at 2,800 by breaking the lead pano in this post above into 21 quadrants and meticulously counting the people in each. I then similarly analyzed two other panos I shot from different angles - angles which revealed the additional numbers to the left and right of the pano atop this posting. 

BTW, Lancaster has about 55,000 residents and Lancaster County (where few homes are more than 45 minutes from Musser Park). 

HDR Experimenting (1)

Thanks to my friend and gifted Austrian photographer Andreas Mannesinger (See his link there on the right?), I got a guided tour of his Vienna on Wednesday August 2, 2017. I'll have much to write later about that day, but I've nostly used the outtakes of that shoot for this HDR experimenting.

I took a new camera to a 14 day European river cruise on the maiden voyage of  Teeming River cruises which included a day and a half in Vienna. It's a 7D Mark II. I upgraded from my 7D Mark II instead of going full frame so my three lenses would still be compatible. In addition to the cool reviews of the Mark II's processor's ability to conquer low light and high contrast, I was very interested in it's HRD and GPS capacity. While I generally switched on the GPS software, I've not yet examined the results. Instead, I've first examined the HDR capabilities in cooperation with Photoshop CC's built in HDR Pro. I own Photomatix Pro 5 and expect to eventually pair it with the 7D's HDR files. But first here are some immediate results with the PSCC + Canon features.

NOTE: I expect to add to this posting over the next days, as I work upon additional HDR images. Recall also that HDR is essentially exposure bracketing. Meaning the camera fires a burst of images, one which the meter judges as right on, and others that either over or under expose around that initial setting. Thus some of the images expose for shadow detail, others for highlight detail. By combining the images Photoshop CC HDR Pro (PSCC HDR-Pro) attempts display the average exposure, then pull in detail in both shadows and highlights from the other images made in that burst.

For example.... (1)

Subway Bustle

Here's an entirely meaningless grab shot from the Vienna subway. You may click on any of these images to enlarge the details. I purposely used a slow shutter speed to enhance the sense of commuter hustle-bustle. So the effect I intended is enhanced but so are the details in the shadows and highlights except for the streaks of dark and light where I intended to enhance the tone with some dramatic color slashes. Comments? Without HDR, this RAW image is entirely flat. Incidentally, PSCC HDR-Pro flattens the various shots from a cluster shot into one that is 16 Bits deep. Say what? Think of the image laid flat on a tabletop. Now take a ruler that measures in Bits instead of say inches or meters and measure the depth of the image. The thicker the image the more information that  sits at any one spot. Information that can be mined. In PSCC you can dig into layers to reveal the photos that exposed for highlights or for shadows revealing that information from above.

OK... Now most RAW images are 8 bits deep... jpg images for example. RAW images can be much deeper and PSCC allows us to dig into either 8, 16, or 32 bit deep surfaces. Here I chose 16 bits which allowed me to pull out those vivid yellows and see the flashes of green and blue? Hence while details are blurred, the color glimmers add an illusion of sharpness to the image.

Then here in (2)...

Street Worker

I wondered how a grab shot of a Viennese beggar might work when rendered as an impressionist painting. The lighting was viciously contrasty on a Viennese mid-day in August. I'm not at all happy with the result. I opted to leave the blue cast of the shadows, perhaps removing it might enhance the overall impact, but it just appears gimmicky and forced to me.  

In (3)...

Lineup

So I decided to combine HDR with heavy texture to play with the wonderful human shapes lined up to refill their water bottles in downtown Vienna. The skin tones are perfect, and the shadows invited the texturing revealing suggestive detail and glimmers of color. Here I think that HDR will allow a lot of conceptual narrative. But this particular meaningless image was ready for the trash yet it provided a good chance to even out a harshly high contrast moment where the figures were in full sunlight and background in shadow. Oddly, as I look at it there seems to be a Norman Rockwell something wafting from this image. Y'think?

Now (4)....

265

Here the spooky colors of HDR totally pop. I could have muted those blues in particular but their drama seemed too dramatic to overlook. Notice the depth of field (DOF) here in the early morning sun (all images were hand-held) allowing for a smaller lens opening while utilizing a higher shutter speed. Thus the image is sharp while DOF is dramatically deep. You can easily peer down the street. There's really no value to me beyond craft in this image... It makes no comment beyond those that the building's owners might enjoy. Still it is high-craft thanks to the ability HDR allows for digging into highlights... Look at the sun and  window reflections while revealing the detail I wanted (note the area beneath the  under-hang under the number 265). 

Now here's (5)...

Maybe A Church?

Crunchy? U-huh. this one of those typical church-like buildings which seem to pock the streets of European cities. It may not even be a church steeple, perhaps a library? Regardless, it's pretty, but says little more to me. However there's a postcard attractiveness that sucked in my lens. Here I experimented with the Edge Glow and Edges Strength sliders in PSCC-Pro. Which results in a crispy-pop to details. I can sand my nails on the texture in this image. To what effect? The image is pretty without meaning and the effect's reduced its underlying charm. However it does show the power of PSCC-pro to inflate the edges of knife-like details. I can imagine using it sparingly in some images to create a purposeful distraction. I also almost completely removed all shadows from this mostly back-lit tower which also makes my brain say... "Whu?" It's a terrible fake, useful only when I might want to create a terrible fake to make a statement. And again, particularly in the blues, the colors are, well, creepy, don't you think?

Now lettuce look at (6)...

He's Eyeing Me!

Here the intention was to go surreal with a surreal Viennese billboard. In monochrome which I'd then selectively recolor by hand. Okay... technically it works, but it's a podge of purposelessness. Hey, everything doesn't sear into deep meaning, okay? 😥 However I got a lot more of that crunchiness in the grass and the horizontal slats in the upper right than intended. Apparently the edge sliders are considerably more powerful than they appear when working in PSCHD-Pro. Moreover the colors I chose are even creepier than the stuff that comes out of HD. Ugh! But the tonal map here is generally more believable and coming under better control.

Which brings me to (7)...

TWA? What's That?

Better. The idea was to create a travel poster for the Teeming River Cruises. Have you ever seen the classic TWA travel posters? They generally depicted paintings of  high-key iconic scenes from far-away places that hung behind the desks of travel agents. Here was my first chance to intentionally exaggerate the edge slider power in PSCC HDR-Pro. See how there's a white fringe around the edges? While I deleted some where it was most distracting, I emphasized it in this image then processed it through Alien Skin's SnapArt 3's oil painting filter. 

Okay, that's not Vienna, you caught me: But this image combined so many of the iconic Slovak details of their capital city along with their fearless use of primary colors that it cried out for the TWA treatment. For the first time the tools created exactly the feeling I'd preconceived. And note how even with the distraction of the oil effects, there are still shadow and highlight details where I intended them?  Okay, I'm getting somewhere... Um, right? 

Life's about learning, right. Critique and comments madly accepted either here to through the email on the right. Thanks...

OK, It's Worrisome, huh?

And these scholars are protesting fascism! Sigh. What the hell's happening on campus? Look, I'm a registered Democrat, at least through the next primary. After that? Grumble. Sorry, don't mean to be political, but once upon a time colleges seemed to be the place where beer and debate made the word "sophomoric" fun. Do fires, beaten women professors, speakers run off, and "debaters" like this gal seem kind of self indulgent. 

Question... by calling her a "gal" have I put my peace and quiet at risk of frazzling? Can you still say "gal"?  Or am I now unspeakably evil? If gal's gone, wuddabout "guy"? You get the feeling that there are flash fads frenzying flash mobs packed with nasty neurotic nut jobs? OOPS... NNNs are probably poised to give anyone a spontaneous dose of psychopathic proctology - which, may be the field of study that's replaced Western Civ? Is this a snarky transcendent moment or what? 

This gal and her pack of NNNs, waft the stink of 1930s Germany or Cultural Revolution China. Maybe both? 

It's worrisome, huh? 

Disclaimer: The basic image here isn't mine. It popped up on some news site without attribution. The processing is mine. I'm sort of glad I wasn't standing in front of this new-age beauty even with a very long lens. If anyone knows the photographer's name, please let me know - I'd like to celebrate her/his gonads. 

Valencia • 10/27/16 • 5:31p • Street Artist

Came across other North African street merchants last time I was in Italy. See the look on the guy's face? Before I could take a second shot, he'd swiveled to face into that doorway. The move seemed casual, graceful as a dancer. But he was hidden.

The work was nicely executed but probably computer stuff that was gone over with brushes. See how similar many of the images are? A man and his wares have probably stood against that ancient wall for centuries. Tough way to make a living from the swirl of passers-by. 

Here's the art business where rubber meets road. 

Tell Me A Story • #5 - When to say, "Done!"

Runner • Lancaster Race Against Racism • 4/16

There're novels behind every face. 

Every artist understands the challenge of when to say, "There. That's finished! Now I can turn to another work." While we all know that a work is never finished. Nor is any one interpretation or conceptualization adequate. But the composer enters a last note, the poet a last word, and the novelist a last feeling. So do I. You? Do you know that anything ends sufficiently to write "Finis"! after a work? 

Anywayzzzzz.... You'll recall I wrestled with this man's image in late May. Then I had run into tech problems, which never did resolve themselves. But his story continued to haunt me... And then it occurred to me to think that he was best "penciled in". Uh-huh, that his story was difficult to capture and is best rendered in zillions of strokes. 

In this "Tell Me A Story" series, I'm interested in your thoughts/feelings re. this man's thoughts/feelings. Faces trigger us to wonder, then tell ourselves their story, right? So? If you found this as the illustration above a serious magazine's short story... What would it be about? Hmmmmm? 

Tell Me A Story • 3: Cryptic Moments

Philosophy Unbounded?

Shard-sharp

Lens glass

Slices life

Into

Cryptic

Moments.

Ambiguity: To the artist it's a window, to the craftsman it's a wall.

I try to make my pictures about something, y'know? I'm searching for images that resonate some thought and feeling. Anne Leibowitz once wrote, "A photographer hangs frames around pieces of life. In every direction I look, I'm framing." Works of art are about something, but where to find the answer to their questions? In the artist's mind? I don't think so. In fact when the creator supplies an unambiguous answer to that question we modify his title... We call him a commercial artist, right?  Which is a lot more craft than art.

And what about interior designers? Are they artists? Is decorative art - art? When we buy an image to coordinate with the couch, have we purchased art? Or does the art exist independent of, the couch? Should  a professional artist care? Uh-oh, when someone adds, professional to their title, that means they expect to augment their income from their work, right? So they are driven by some market's interest.

Which brings us back to the creator supplying an answer to a market's question. Of course there are situations where a market finds an artist's work which was created without an expectation to specifically answering someone else's question. But once again I've got this niggling question:
What is the difference between creativity and adaptability? Does the weight of survival inexorably shape the meaning of a professional artist's work toward answering some market's questions?

Art, they say in art school:Art lacks constraints - it is philosophy unbounded. And yet the product of art schools are artists who want to survive through their work. Which is one hell of a constraint, huh? No wonder we call 'em starving artists.

Oh, the picture up there is another in this year's Race Against Racism 2016. I'm enchanted by the beauty of this woman. Her face is a portraitist's dream and this slice of life is about... about... Well okay... What's the answer?

Geek Stuff: Another hand-held capture through my Canon 7D's EFS 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens. It's razor sharp... perfect for slicing life into cryptic moments, huh? 

Tell Me A Story • 2: Suspending Disbelief

Runner in the April 30th, 2016 YWCA Race Against Racism

We live across the street from Lancaster's YWCA. Since the turn of the century the Y's held a Saturday April morning Race Against Racism attracting thousands of runners. Nice of them to flood the street out front and the park we adjoin with a sea of puzzling faces. And As I wrote in the last post... "A face ignites its own explanation: Which is a dramatic narrative." So wandering through the crowds with my long lens (Canon 70-300mm) lets me pluck out wondering, y'know? 

Take this young guy. Someone said he's a 16 or 17 year old high school student. Hmmmm.... He looks like a movie star, no? It's hard to pry out tales from young faces, particularly when they are way attractive. Still, although it looks like the young man's won a lot in the gene lottery, I'm guessing that those shoulders and arms took a bunch of discipline to pump, right? And his caramel skin and curly hair seem latin? About thirty feet from this guy sat a collection of food vendors where he could have grabbed candy, fries, pretzels, and pastries. Instead he chose that apple. 

Uh-huh, there's discipline there and add the 5 kilometer run he just finished the guy's got an athlete's instinct. Do we instinctively trust handsome or pretty faces? It's like attractive people have a unique muscle that works emotionally. But it also defends them like an armor... protects them from probing. Maybe that's why lead actors are so good-looking: so that we'll believe whatever character they'll pull on for a performance? 

Does beauty make it easier for an audience to suspend disbelief? Hmmmm.... 

Grabbed the shot hand-held with my Canon 7D at 160mm (perfect length for portraits, huh?), 1/1000 sec and a low noise 400 ISO. The morning was slightly overcast and still early enough for sweet light. 

Tell Me A Story

A face ignites its own explanation: Which is a dramatic narrative.   

Street portraits capture what? Maybe the first words, of the first sentence, of a story. They’re about portents. They’re like keyholes. We plug our imaginations into them to create a dramatic narrative. We expect a face to have more meaning than what it communicates. Its first jolt to our imaginations is processed by our emotions to hunt for collateral messages. We’re programmed to find order that creates meaning. A face ignites its own explanation: A dramatic narrative.

A face sliced from an infinite number of instants at 1/500^th of second is like an onion-skin-thin slice of tree. The texture and rings give up some knowledge of age and maybe species, perhaps gender… It gives back something about the tree’s experiences with physics, biology, and even how it leaned against nature’s propositions. But we’d need to see a lot more of the tree to release secrets of its coping mechanisms. It tells of the way life’s winds and weather whirled about its location. What stunting or enabling happened as it aged.

Street portraits trigger speculation. The best of them are purées of nuanced ingredients which fuel then steer the engine of wonder. And art without wonder is merely craft.

Who is this man? What a tantalizing hint he gives us both with his fleeting expression and with the way he’s allowed years to chisel his face. See how he’s chosen to permit and resist life’s propositions?

My take? Here’s a strong, alert guy… A skeptic but not a cynic… He knows there’s enough evidence to make decisions. Learned to cautiously seek it. And learned to learn from it. He doesn't suffer fools gladly. 

About a century ago, the now forgotten journalist and humorist Ambrose Bierce wrote, “Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum… I think I think, therefore I think I am.” And I think that the man I pictured up there, would think carefully about that joke… and smile.

On the last Saturday of April 2016  Lancaster’s YWCA held its annual Race Against Racism right outside of my home. For the past 16 years I’ve hunted among the many hundreds of runners and spectators who participate for these storybook faces. This year I gathered them through my Canon 7D’s EFS 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens, then tried to decipher their stories. 

Dos Vecinos

These young guys live around the corner. They've been friends for years. Best buddies since they came to Lancaster six years ago, maybe a little longer.

Come the first fall breeze they'll pull out their parkas. Most of a lifetime in the Gulf's blue water islands leaves their buffers to chill not quite as hefty as mine, or other North Eastern lifers.

But while the afternoon sun thickens my body-motor oils, it perks the energy of these fellas. Last week while the August heat melted me into a park bench, I watched them kicking their futball. They kidded me puddling in the hot, humid, hazy high-summer. It was revenge for my giggles at their early Fall and late Spring parkas.

Odd isn't it that heat is a byproduct of solar energy, right? So why's it suck mine away? I've got a buddy who wonders since heat rises, why not vacation on Mt. Everest? After all we think of the Caribbean being "down south" right? So how come with that heat rising thing...  it's colder up here? :-)

One thing though about the afternoon summer sun... it channels the golden tones of the renaissance masters particularly when it glow-coats Latin skin-tone patinas. A lot of my friends despise image gathering in the afternoon glare. Okay, I like the blue hours around sunrise, and the red moments at sunset... but since necessity's forced me a zillion times into the midday sun, I've found that today's; RAW imaging, super-sharp laser-coated lenses, and pre & post processing power've opened all sorts of opportunities to sculpt the high and low key moments of hot contrast.

Okay, it's harsh light for wide angle landscapes, but that just demands we're more careful. I understood that this was going to be a low key portrait. That's what I metered. Consequently the shadows smothered away background distractions. Yeah, you can do that with bokeh. But contrast is an alternative tool, right? Besides, it's not the impenetrable shadows that cause us to reject mid-day imagery as too harsh... It's the transitions... Soften them and... well see the results up there? Noon-time softness that makes personalities dance.

You agree?

Chary

Girl Scout, Mityana, Uganda 8/14

A white man
Pointed a
Long lens at
Her....

Which made the
Girl scout.... chary.

A friend asked me how to create original moody backgrounds for portraits. This was the product of a tutorial  exercise I did for her using a candid image of a lovely, but suspicious girl scout I met in Mityana, Uganda and captured through my Canon 7D through its EFS 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens, hand held. The post was done as  usual in PS 4 with custom background and textures. I mention my skin color since we were the only folks sporting that hue for perhaps fifty miles around us. It is very possible that this girl may have seen no more than a handful of us in our white flesh, outside of Hollywood videos that were everywhere.

Skeptical Lady

Yep, she's skeptical, but not cynical.

There's a difference you know. The Skeptic is looking for sufficient proof, the cynic can never find enough proof. I'm a skeptic... Like her.

She's from Mityana, Uganda. So are her friends. I hope she liked me as much as I enjoyed meeting her. Either way, it was an important moment for me.

I like my Canon 7d with that EFS 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens clicked on. With the image stabilizer it's easily hand-held and sharper than the razor I used this morning. I've always admired platinum prints. They have a glowing presence that captures imagination like epoxy. Look at the tonal range platinum creates. Haunting, huh? 

I processed this to print LARGE! It's about three feet on the horizontal edge. And so crisp you can see me in those catchlights in her eyes. Click on this image and let me know what you think... Or feel. 

3 Farmers' Daughters

Girl Scouts of Uganda. In the village of Mityana. Beautiful farmers' daughters gather with their families at twilight. In the middle of rich farmland, the town's in the south central part of the country about 50 miles west of Kampala.

Almost all of Uganda's elevated well above sea level, So even though the town's about 25 miles north of the equator it's almost 4,000 feet high so it's 3,500 folks may need blankets and coats at night and tee shirts during the day. The village is a central place, equidistant from its circle of farms and their families. I've written before... Ugandans are physically fit and attractive people. The kids are charming and anxious to be photographed. 

Once again I framed these girls through my 7D's EFS 70-300mm late on an August Saturday. Have you ever used Polaroid large-format film? Its colors actually felt thick. Amazingly, AlienSkin's Exposure 7 can mimic my memories. It's as if Eposure's's poured a syrup of glowing colors, like molasses, over a waffle.

Baltimore • 4/27/15

Baltimore, its feelings snapped open like a box of nails. One night last week it insurrected. Is that a verb? To insurrect?

For a decade I commuted there where a very large number of people watch TV nightly to see places they can never go. Economists call that the demonstration effect. It's a force that might in an instant twist everything we know into an unrecognizable shape.

There's a micro-thin line between riot and insurrection.

For 60 years our War On Poverty has strictly applied the stick of zero tolerance against lawlessness while the carrot of aspirational jobs and career ladders has gone flaccid at best. Baltimore's a symptom of that squeeze without escape. It is more insurrection against the policy than a riot of opportunity.

This is a montage of AP photojournalists'  images. I'm not reselling them, just emoting through them utilizing PS4, Topaz Adjust, and AlienSkin's Exposure 7.

Blog Sites?

Maybe I'll break down and lease me a website service? But which one? It'd be cool if this image expanded to fill the top of this page. So much research exists to show that on every printed page, the visitor's eyes go first to pictures, secondly to their captions, next to headlines, and lastly toward body copy like this. 

So I'm leaning to the conclusion that a page dominated by a strong image will grab eyeballs to that graphic and then immediately to the text below as its caption. Thus with no distracting headline the process of image to copy is reeely improved. Here, with that weakly sized image up there falling way short of page dominance, visitors have so much less to pique their imagination and to drive it downward for answers. 

In other words, blogger.com is not an artist's best blog platform. Which brings me back to the impetus to think about a leased website service, one that's affordable and whose learning curve won't distract me from spontaneously using it.

Expanded significantly, that image up there is full of questions, right? Don't you want some explanation? Which is the challenge of conceptual art, it needs to be filled in with meaning. OK, I understand that it's the viewer, not the artist who carries the responsibility to give art meaning. Still, I want to give my interpretation for whatever it's worth. What I felt, and concluded when I took, then processed this image.

So two questions for you...

(1) Any recommendations from you re. the perfect blog service for photographers (including costs, or at least directions where I can discover them easily) which will allow me to curate a gallery of ideas led by an image? And,

(2) What's your emotional reaction to that image up there at the top of this posting? Does it ignite a question (s) that either you can enjoy answering, or a question re. the meaning of this image tat will stimulate me and everyone else who stops by, toward a thoughtful answer? 

Anyone?