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?

Summer's Last

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Hmmm.... at first I just wanted to show my buddy Andreas Manessinger what he'd miss by postponing his US trip. We drove over to the Wellwood in Charlestown. That's in Maryland and the light you see reflected in the pitcher's flashing off of the Chesapeake Bay. Which is also wafting breezes across my half dozen bluepoint #1s. The pitcher was filled with Blue Moon, and would be soon again. It was about 5:30 on the deck and the sun was just starting to grow heavily golden over the water.

That's Bay Seasoning encrusted on the shells which is a salty/peppery mix. That explains the beer, huh?

But anyway... I got to wondering about this fantasy and thought to myself.... "Self. Why don't you see how cool this still life would feel all dressed up in oils?" So, well .... look at this wonderful mixed media.... Can't you smell the crabby steam that's shimmering upward? Which makes me wonder... which image works best? Thoughts?

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GEEK STUFF


About the thoughts? Here's some geek stuff for you. Pre Processing: captured by my Canon G10 in natural light at the Wellwood Restaurant in Charlestown, MD right beside the Chesapeake Bay. Post Processing:Well as you can see by this virgin image taken from my FlashCard... in the first image above, I did some cropping and enhanced the dynamic range with some intense tone mapping in CS4 with the juice-kicking power of TOPAZ (love those tools) which also allowed me to add lights and spot the blue points and beer with some drama. Oh yeah, there' s just a touch of AlienSkin's Bokeh filter around the edges to obscure some distractions. You thinkthis recipe works?

Then... then... in the second image I worked in AlienSkin's SnapArt2 with a medium brush in portrait.... later masking away the oil effect to spot the crabs. I can see either of these blown large on the wall of a restaurant.... lit with one lamp from above on an otherwise dark paneling. How elegant is that? Huh?

So? Wuddaya think?

County Road

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Sun-stained road
slicing through
farm flat
county.

Going to or
Coming from
Home.

It depends, huh?

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The craftsman says, "look, here is what you like."
The artist answers, "Look, here is what I like."

The commercial artist says both of those things.

The academic artist says neither of them.

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Picture by the Canon G-10. Image with AlienSkin Bokeh, Lucis Aperture, AlienSkin SnapArt.... but mostly with... Ted.

Rocco Redux

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Yeah... I've been to this place before. If you click here, you can see my first (award winning) visit to this image. But as a result of a lot of Australian School influence at the RedBubble Forums... texture techniques are becoming more interesting to me.

Okay... okay... they can be a gimmick. And yes, as April has commented on PhotoSapiens.com, they frequently are used to correct what was otherwise an average image capture. Just recently I actually took what I thought was an average snap shot and purposely lathered on the texture

But, like any filter, lens, POV, or enhancement... texture can also be a useful tool. In this case, I was pleased with the original and wondered if a texture could add some additional wonder to the image. Like a lot of you, I don't take pictures, I make images. So techniques which might reinforce the mystery, resonance, or delight I want to communicate are always interesting.. as long as the technique does not wag the dog... so to speak. Soooo..

With all of that in mind, I've revisited Rocco's Adventure. And? Does the texture deepen the story, or pull water out of the emotional pool leaving a more shallow experience? Thoughts?

Un-Captioned?

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One surrealist photographer of the 1940s claimed that the category was about exploring reality in ways that were insensibly sensible. Um.... okay. Does this qualify?

I considered the caption, "Look, it's... it's stopped!" And then I considered "Omagod! It's Coming THIS Way." Or possibly, "Sunset/Sunrise". Or... maybe, just nothing?

One thing that's certain is the the surreal lives only in the imagination. Which seems to be a necessary, but probably not sufficient condition to describe what a surreal image is. I shall continue to ponder.... (rubs chin and mutters, "Hmmm....")

Scooter

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Voice lessons... I take them every day. Like a lot of you who are photographers, I sort of frame things around me. It's a dorky habit, but useful when you want to see stuff through a range finder. Problem is, you look through the range finder long enough and you feel like your looking through it even when you're not.

After a while though you stop looking at what you are looking at. Say what? I mean you start looking at things as if they are about something different. It's like someone learning a new language. Sooner or later the breakthrough comes and your dreams are now in that tongue. That voice. And it's what happens to most artists. They see things and wonder about them. In frames. First you wonder what they are saying, and then you wonder what you might say with them. Not what they say... but what they might say.

You find your voice. But like a singer, each day you exercise. I find that the city does that. All the time it gives me voice lessons... Like Scooter here.

See his expression? That wonderful look of comfort and confidence. No fear. No worry. All boy-to-man in a brightening light, still colored with the vapors and innocence of kid-world. What a moment, eh? No... not necessarily this specific moment, no... that last moment ... or first moment... between then and now. And here's how I see it... in my voice.

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BTW... want to see the virgin image from my FlashCard? Well here. Enjoy.

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

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....

Grainy Romance

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J'ver notice how memories get grainy, contrasty, and misty all at the same time?



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Tah-Dah:The original local couple along Sausalito bay looking West to Oz.

Sausalito

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We spent last weekend in and around San Fransisco.

Sausalito is a sort of fantasy spot. I'll never live there, which is probably a good thing. I've only visited a dozen or so times and each as a day-tripper over from San Fran there on the other side of the Bay. Which means I have surface knowledge: Know what I mean? It is for me what I want it to be. So it is the place I'd like to live, because that's the way I want it to be, a town that overlooks the glimmer of Oz as the sun fades into the west. It is at the end of the world... or its beginning.

Yeah, it's a fantasy.

My 1934 Ford Coupe

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It's been a while since we've visited the sand dunes of E. Dennis Massachusetts at sundown. Recently I got a new, old, car. Look at this pristine 1934 Ford coupe I bought this Christmas from a guy who owns a convenience store in Pittsburgh. It's a pale lemon/cream with two seats and a stick shift on the floor. Better yet, it was kept so perfectly since its manufacturing, and driven so little - that it's needed NO refurbishing. I was able to take it from here in Lancaster to the sandy dune road with no difficulty at all. It's astonishing how quickly we covered that 350 mile distance.


Okay, the sunset's a tad over the top, but it overcomes the chill of January don't you think?


Here's another view I took a few minutes ago where I keep it parked here at my studio. It looks, I think, more impressive on Cape Cod - don't you agree?



Ooops... the caption on this picture is wrong... should read 1932. Sorry!

The Limits To Photography

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Where’s he coming from and how long has it taken him to arrive here? Where’s he going, and has he time left to get there? From the light can you tell? Has he a day ahead of him, or is he racing an oncoming night?

My camera can only seize the midpoint of an unknown tale. Even with all the power of my tools the still image blocks my ability to do more than shape your thoughts and emotions. Here is a peculiar and poignantly eloquent moment of a bicycling man in the light of an angular sun. An instant in time, arrested and acutely realized in an extraordinary setting with all the intensity that I can command.

But his story, like all stories, will pass through life’s complications until it’s resolved. I’m not sure that a photograph can ever resolve stories. And if it can’t – can it tell them at all? Or do photographers instead pump story ideas into your imagination machine?

Simply put, this image is theatrical, or cinematic, but I wonder if still photographs can ever be theater or film. Hmmm…..

SOMETHING SPECIAL

Today's image kicked up a deep discussion on an important forum. There were allusions to the enhancements which I did to try to create a story. Here's what went into my process.

I recall standing at a Florentine street corner that was historically ornamented by stunning medieval v artists. I was wondering what I could bring to this place when I saw him coming down that hill to the left and I immediately began to take pictures... four, five, six. But the pedestrians packed my frame, each with their own stories to tell. So, I decided that I'd choose one of the images and use the others for parts later on to cover over the other people with doorways and fountain, and roadway. I don't work with a tripod, so I tried to stay as still in the location as possible and to take a number of shots.

Here above is the original of my bike rider. You can compare it to the final image above to see how I tell... not so much the man's... but my story in which he stars. Like any dramatist, I enhanced the palette, lighting, textures, angle, and emphasized the linear perspective to create the illusionist art that photographic story tellers do (whether in advertising, photojournalistic,or pure fictional imagery).

I'm pleased with my image and with the narrative it illustrates in my mind.

Hope

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You’ve seen this Piazza Della Retunda before here last November 19th.
There’s a reason I aimed high for this image, which was the same reason I aimed low back then. Last time I wanted to capture the people who crammed the square around me as this sun set. This time it was the Pantheon which somehow spoke of its two millennia of almost continuous use.

Optimistic solidity… That’s what I felt from the ancient temple. Look at that architectural bridge. This design has one leg here among the classical buildings going up in every important world city… and the other among the Caesars. Even the type font along the arch seems formally and elegantly modern.

I wanted to get all of that into this moment between a Roman day and night – a moment which the Pantheon has shared about 730,000 times!

Put that into perspective: the average business computer lives about 1,100 days while each of us get about 27,000 sunsets. After seven hundred and thirty thousand sunsets, what’s astonishing isn’t that this place is so old, but that it still feels so hopeful.

Home In Lancaster - A December Fall

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You know, with all that I can control as a photographic artist - it's maybe the most critical thing which I cannot.

Your mood.

Your mood can forgive a ghastly image, or turn a masterpiece to dung. So I've got to take a range of moods for granted and figure out some way to pierce through as many different sets of feelings as possible. It's a burden that every creative artist carries about. Just as a novelist or playwright has to find ways to get the audience to suspend disbelief - we've got to find techniques to get our viewers to suspend their very lives for the instants they view our work.

I wonder if the best technique is distraction? Just as baseball pitchers have their change-ups, we've got to have curves, sliders, fast... even spit balls ready to lob in front of our unsuspecting visitors, or else a sameness of craft excellence will allow all of life's distractions to overcome whatever we hope the viewer will feel. Sometimes we not only need a unique voice... but a loud one as well.

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As I look at the images of friends from all over the world, I am struck with the fact that the leaves on the trees around here are still close to full color. And while we've had one or two freezing nights, the city has protected its foliage from the worst. Tonight a snowstorm... or a slush storm's... expected to flow in. So in the grey of a pre-storm evening I went out back just after sunset and grabbed some of the last colors of fall. Fall on December 1st. There's the pure color in the opening triptych and here's a tad less abstraction. Incidentally the zooms and blurs were preprocessing enhancements all done in camera.

Enjoy... perhaps I'll return to Italy tomorrow night.

Florence 6: Crinkled Vista

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And this is the view from the great room window of our apartments in Florence at sunset. That's the Arno River which, as a result of a drought, is running somewhat low. There are gypsy-type people living beneath that bridge on this side of the river. They are invisible to people from the up-market eighteenth century buildings that line this side of the Arno.

There's an oddity to this image. It is not a panorama that's been stitched together from multiple images. But, note the middle of the bridge. The way that it's been built created a distinct fold or crinkle which was reinforced by its reflection. I tried to minimize that peculiarity, but it leaps out at me whenever I look at this image.

Now, let me tell you that our facilities and hosts throughout this two week tour were terrific and their facilities wonderful in every incidental. In a week or so, I'll list their websites, addresses and other contact information. I hope, if you are planning a Rome or Florence trip, that you'll consider either or both of them.

Dance of the Bricks, Glass, and Sunset

"When new tools appear, new artistic possibilities arise." - Bayles & Orland, Art & fear, P. 58

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Frankly I pictured this sunset window (aiming due west) this way, because I can. Well, also because I wanted to. Okay, I wanted to and I'm able to. So, I did. But why does this tiny place up there catch the eye in the first place?

No surprise... I've got one of my hairbrained theories... Imagine that you walked past any modern middle class suburban tract home. I don't care if you're in Manheim Township Pennysylvania, just outside of Dallas, in the burbs around Boston, Atlanta, or Seattle. The things constructed in the last fifty or so years provide few details like this. And those that do exist were overwhelmingly manufactured in big numbers by some factory making windows, or frames or walls. I think what captures attention here is the obvious fact that somebody wanted to see sunsets. And some builder found a unique way to do it. And both of them did it at at time when people proudly finished their work. They punctuated it with the stuff they learned from classical teachers.

So we get this half-moon window which from the inside will frame the sun going down on East Chestnut street every night. Which means that inside this home, nature is framed on a wall right next to other pieces of art. And the dance that the builder and owner did to make that happen can be seen by anyone who chooses to look up, particularly at sunset.

I like to watch great dancers, even when they are anonymous - like these are. All you need is some music, right?

GEEK STUFF: Canon EOS 20D, 08/14/07:4:57 pm: Lens 17-85mm, Focal Length: 73mm, Exp 1/80@f/5.6, ISO 200, Metering Mode: average, Expoure bias 0, Camera RAW

2007 Award Winner: Rocco's Adventurel

Note: Accepted as one of theworld's finest Nature Images of 2007 for Canon POTN Book to be published in the Fall of 2008.

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My little buddy saw Fall down the pathway and scampered his furry body to meet it.

You ever think that we've lost the color, sound, and odor of the past? Start drilling down into history and pretty soon you're left only with the art collections of the rich. They're what pass along whatever lined the tunnels you dug. They were the windows that let you look through any level. The deeper you dig, the fewer windows remain. What did the average guy, walking home on the first evenings of Fall smell? Hear? What colors bathed the walkways and what colors did those rays mix together in the facades on either side?

If you walked down a decaying pathway behind a furry friend on a night like tonight in say 1007, in oh... Belfast, or Florence... Well, you have no way of knowing what was there. Will pictures like this survive so that in 3007 someone will have a window to peer into as he digs through my layer of his history? What will he make of our time as he watches Rocco prance into Fall?

This Wouldn't Happen Now

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What's changed in America? Here's Lancaster's City Hall. Built at the turn of the Twentieth Century it was so blatant in its optimism and celebration of the future. Look at the resources that went into this public art.

It could not be built today. Abrasive critics would tear off every ornament. They'd resist materials and textures that reflected any ambition on the part of designer or town leaders. It's difficult to get the dollars to maintain structures like these. What's happened? Where has the willingness of citizens to contribute to civic pride gone? Now every public dollar seems drawn into some consumption demand. Now we need to create governments which don't so much celebrate our pride as they redistribute our wealth.

When this building went up, governments reflected a public joy, now they seem to speak only for the crankiest n public. What's changed in America?

Lightenment

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As many of you know, Rita and I are off to Rome then Florence for two weeks on Sunday. Just spoke to the house sitters (who will live in and dog sit my buddy Rocco).

So since we're visiting the epicenter of the enlightenment, I decided to look at this evening's first sunrise of Fall as an attempt to try to outrageously mix the emotional content with the Greco-Roman aesthetics of proportoin, balance,poise, and simplicity. The enlightenment was characterized by formalists who bristled at non-conformity, experimental techniques, and unpredictability. So...how to capture that within a block of my home?

Here's a neighbor's stoop on East Chestnut Street. So? Is there a mastery of form here? Is this sufficiently lyrical to at least qualify me for a visit to places still moist from the Age of Reason? Enough expressive texture? Tone?

Okay... not a masterpiece, but I'm trying to get in the mood for Europe. Mood... yeah... Gotta work on capturing mood this week.

Chris Weds Catherine 2

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There are a couple of moments just between late afternoon and twilight when you can walk into a shady grove and the light is thick enough to slow everything. Even the butterflies scurrying home, flutter more slowly, as if the light's become sweet syrup. And if you go there the transitions are as romantic as... as... Catherine on her wedding evening.