Ladies Do Tea: Knowledge Versus Wisdom

Relearning Photoshop craft is 33% boring, 43% frustrating, and 24% fascinating. Is this like Physical Therapy:  PT for the mind? Is this a sort of MT? 

Nudged by friends to send them samples of Turkey thoughts... the gap between knowledge and wisdom's growing larger. Our 2011 visit created a legacy of thousands of images...which is a reservoir of knowledge. A handful of them got extracted back then and can be accessed on the right if you tap on keyword "Turkey". Hundreds sat, never again visited, as newer stuff sang its own  luring song. 

This little Turkey MT project triggers an urge to poke mental plungers through my brain's constipated dendrite piping. Y'know, to kind of clean the shit outta my mind's pathways. As you can see from these last few posts, I'm visiting previously worked images to crank down my habit of over-processing: To remove the way it blocks the bridge between knowledge and wisdom. 

Anyone recall The Lovin' Spoonful's...

Hot town, summer in the city

Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty

Been down, isn't it a pity

Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city

All around, people looking half-dead

Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head...

What's "Ladies Do Tea" tell me about Turkey?

As the curtain opens... 

1. Setting: It was around 3pm, the hottest part of any day - and on July 20th in Istanbul ... hot means HOT!

 

2. The set was the storefront of an ancient two story building on an off-street about a block from perhaps the world's largest bazaar. 

3. The set's details are wonder filled. On the first floor a step-down into a small business called "Corner Cafe", its name splendidly displayed in an elaborate, hand tooled, wooden frame, in English. Look at the detailed lamps, the aquarium  piled with fresh oranges, the lamp stanchion, and the permanence of the detailed  table and chairs. 

4. And the second floor window passes through to its mate on the far wall. Is that a private apartment up there? And is the café's interior narrow as its second floor? Yet it looks so upscale. Which implies that with little room for tables, that the Corner Café needs to make its money on markup rather than volume.

 

5. Or something else... See the window beneath the sign? That appears to be a fine silken sundress hanging on display. Is this something other than a café, or something less? Surely this single outdoor table cannot be the sole source of this place's revenue? 

6. Then there are the two separate stories: one of Ladies Who Do Tea arranging themselves downstage and another of the busy waiter. 

7. And those ladies? See the new arrival there stage left in her elaborate scarf, ankle-long dress, and is she wearing a tag? Is she on break from a conference, convention, or forum? Is she visitor or resident of the city? Again, recall that it is the hottest hour of the day and look at her dark, long sleeves and head scarf. How warm? You know it's sunny: How? See in her left hand? She's about to drop her sun glasses. Is her costume a cultural uniform of some kind which armors her against streets hotter than a match head?

8. And then there's the other woman... in jeans! She's not head scarfed, yet wearing a sweater? So much going on in the silent film... How to explain the rules which must require these two distinguished ladies to flout the thermometer. And yet in a historically patriarchal society... to do it publicly without male companionship? 

9. How to tell they are distinguished? Their expressions, quality of their makeup, clothes, demeanor at a pricier café and their body language indicating both education and a familiarity with the place and their place in it.

10. And finally, there're the dramatic difference in the ladies' costumes. Hair scarves versus jeans? BTW, enlarge the image to look carefully at the new arrival's head, there's a large hair-bump covered in the back.

Is this a picture of a country well into cultural transition? Or are secularism and modernism in a tense struggle against tradition with victory unpredictable? That image's a rectangle of knowledge which makes it craft... the question: Does it ignite wisdom which makes it art? Hmmm.... 

A whole lotta MT's going on...

 

What?

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Truth is universally
Objective…
Emotion is universally
Subjective…
Ambiguity is what
Happens when
They collide.

Which is, I guess, what artists do?

Canon 7D: Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens.
PS4 (custom brushes): Topaz3, Alien Skin: Bokeh2 (beta)

Then Constantine Went North

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What we leave out is as important... Maybe more.

Which is about art...
And life.

Right?

Canon G10
Topaz
AlienSkin Bokeh

Quartet

Perkins, Cash, Elvis, & Jerry Lee

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Tuesday was our 42nd anniversary. I took Rita to NYC to see The MillionDollar Quartet. It's the romanticized story of the legendary 1956 reunion night in Sam Phillip's Sun Records. Apparently it really happened and the tape's finally been made into an album of Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis jamming in front of the live mics. The story goes that it was the evening when Cash and Perkins told Phillips they were not going to renew their contracts.

The story's a thin reed to showcase actually five featured musicians and two backup players. How good is it? They made Rita scream when they whipped the audience into leaping frenzy. This is Broadway where America's very best theatrical talent work. If these people want to ignite a frenzy over a floor sweep... that audience will frenzy.

The five principals: Levi Kreis (Jerry Lee), Robert Britton Lyons (Carl Perkins), Lance Guest (Johnny Cash), Elizabeth Stanley (a fictional PC correct female edition) - and to a lesser extent Eddie Clendening (Elvis) are more electric than their amplifiers. Imagine the best concert you've seen - but stage it by top broadway directors, producers, lighters, sound engineers, and designers. Put it into a relatively small theater where every sight line is perfect... And you will get a sense of this thing.

Some months ago we enjoyed Jersey Boys on Broadway. This is its equal. It does not matter whether you like or hate rock-a-billy music. The theatricality of all of this is designed to slam you breathless. In fact, the last quarter of the show happens as a reprise. At a certain point, they drop all pretense of a drama, turn the stage into a concert hall, face the audience, and crank up the energy level to 11.

It is full frontal Broadway. BTW, the audience seemed to be wildly intergenerational. We were not the oldest couple and way far from the youngest. Its worth a trip to NYC. And, oh yeah. I booked the entire trip (except for Amtrak) through Broadway.com. We stayed at the Times Square Hilton, ate at Maison, and got center section, second row mezzanine seats (my favorite place to watch) from the company which I've used before and will exclusively use again.

It was a wonderful anniversary. Don't wait for your 42nd... call Broadway.com now (an unpaid testimonial). :-)

What Are You Doing New Year's?

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Here's a variation.... a touch of New Year's fun while I'm awaiting ordering my new camera. Some of you might recall the original of this babe I posted some time back. Here she is again, all dressed up... and ready to PARTY.....

BEST WISHES EVERYONE!!! Happy 2010, and thanks for all of your support, suggestions, and comments both here and the passle who continue to lemme know what you think exclusively by email. That's why I've posted an email address over there in the colun on the right. You're my buddies... and you've made 2009 a nice year. In Angel's lingo.... MIL GRACIAS!

State

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The boy he got admitted to State. It's so good that he's goin' off the farm and... Me and Birdie raised him good and we both miss her and I'm goin' to miss him and... and.. It's good he's goin' off... Real good... And... Here comes the night bus... And... good that he's goin' off...

The story is so moving. You can see that words here have ended and memories kicked in. They are still close enough to touch, but no longer close enough to talk. The father and the dog are already recalling an eight year old buddy... and the young man is wondering about tomorrow. Each of them are there together on the running board, with time running down... as it tends to do, only not quite in heartbreakingly dramatic moments that are caught so forcefully well. In moments these three will begin to build different memories.

We are treated here to a doorway into a father's sense of oncoming loss of son and perhaps his own ambitions... A son's sense of nervous expectation... And another best friend's sense that something beyond her understanding is about to happen.... Oh yes... and a doorway in time.

(SLAP!) Thanks... I needed that... I get sappy every now and then. Must be drinking too much milk.

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Went off to Adamstown today. It's a Lancaster County town a few miles North of Lancaster City that's the capital of antiques. Hundreds of dealers. Thousands of pictures. Stories. Imagination. Here's an original Norman Rockwell sculpture I found in a glass case. It's theater, huh?

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.

Threesome

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Shot on the Roman streets where, after all, antiquity is little more than a set for The Play. Girl meets, gets, loses, and maybe gets boy again? Here's where the, um, rubber meets the road?

Okay, the movie camera's running... go ahead - set the scene, explain the details, write the dialogue.

Whew... after yesterday's rant - it's good to be back in the theater where life isn't so much about details as it is filled with them.

Motive

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Can photographic images take on a cinematic quality? I've asked that before, right? It seems to perplex me. And if they do, can they focus their intent?

I sense that there are photographers with an inferiority complex. Outside of photojournalism, there are artists working in this medium who seem to think that they can only reproduce "found" realities. That they are always skittering along the edge of plagiarism. "An artist," one told me, "expresses himself through his medium. But we are left only with technique to do what we do. The actual subjects are created by other people, or in many cases, by God."

So the emphasis upon technique has become an obsession for many. They seek to maximize the "natural"... This is the Organic Movement. Regardless of how un-natural their mechanisms are, if the viewer accepts their final image in a way that allows for the "suspension of disbelief" so effectively that all "manipulations" seem transparent - then they have succeeded.

But the "suspension of disbelief" is at the essence theater and cinema. I contend that the ultimate objective of The Organic School of photography is to achieve a "Wow!" which is synonymous with the theatrical moment. I think that the aesthetic drive of critical photographic practice has become identical to that which builds the tracks for theatrical and cinematic acceptability.

Serious photographers are playwrights and directors rolled into one. They create the text and its display. Whether its a radiant vista, or a Norman Rockwell story-box, or an abstract or a macro exploration of texture, color and light... this is what is going on. And the end result is considerably greater than the sum of the found parts. Photographers, like the Edward Albees’, Tennessee Williams’, David Mamets’ and others - have become message bringers to an audience.

Or not... Your call...