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...

 

The Date • Duden Waterfall Park • Antalya Turkey

 

OK... IT's been a while since I've been able to do image making. Long story... short version - one day, a couple of years ago, I returned from a vacation and woke to discover that I could no longer work any Adobe products! Scary, huh? So I figured that page of my life had turned and the other pages filled my attention. Last March, friends at a party asked about my impression of Turkey, especially when they learned we'd visited that country back in 2011. The Turkey visit snagged my attention and I've tried to follow that nation ever since. 

Culture trumps everything! It overwhelms economics, politics, and and... virtually the commands of every institution. In fact causation works the other way... kneading a people's institutions to its own commands. To understand (if possible) others... Well, study their culture.

So I've returned to those Turkish images, this time to present a sense of an extraordinary people who live upon history's busiest land bridge... between Asia and Europe....and of course Africa. Moreover Turkey's in a tough neighborhood - surrounded by some of the world's proudest yet unique cultures. Turks are tough which means their culture is muscular. 

Anyway, I slowly reviewed Turkey pix I've already posted, and am beginning to seek more of the Turkish culture from other of the hundreds of images which sat awaiting my return. And once again there was "The Date". Frankly I think I over processed that moment in the past. This time an ancient adage seemed to silently scream, "†he eyes are the window to the soul." 

What's the back story here? Where are the clues? That's the way great poets and novelists work... Your turn... There is, I sense, a universal story of courting up there. You want to try to tell it? First person? Or maybe as a narrator? Or???? 

Or this story's narrative is totally in that young woman's eyes. There's a feeling that's got to be universal among women... Am I right ladies?

Enjoy... 

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?

Daybreak Commute • Florence, Italy

Firenze Fall 6:45am 10/09/07

That Autumn morning demanded a painting, right? I liked the way the ancient colors began to glow as they absorbed a new-day's energy.  

In a way, we're ashamed of epiphany. Instead we like to boast of a solid line of intention. Huh? Well, anyone remember Inspector Jacques  Clouseau from the Pink Panther? Probably not, that movie's from 1963! YIPES! Peter Sellers, once a comic genius, died at just 54 and his bumbling Clouseau made the otherwise bland 50s-like whodunnit flick a classic. 

"You are pro-bab-ly vundering vy ah deed dat, Eh?" he'd bark after a prat-fall or a wall-collision. And his absurd question reverberates each time I marvel at a processing opening. With my cameras, I hunt for conceptual metaphors. Sometimes there's a pre-conception that sets me stalking but during the safari there are unrelated shots which get dropped into a warehouse. Why'd they get flash-frozen into digital boxes? 

They leave me... "Vundering vy ah deed dat". And then, rooting through my boundlessly big bag O' tools, those images get poked and picked at like a boiled lobster. Did Michelangelo sense 'David' in his stone? Or was he hunting for a shapely madonna only to accidentally release Goliath's nemesis? Did he mutter, "What the hell's this?" as he chiseled away marble? 

How much of 'David' was concept, how much epiphany? Would anyone dare ask the maestro, and would he admit the amount of - found - art? When I write an article, I start with a concept, research it, then, as carefully as possible, frame the story I'm going to tell. Ordinarily that process massages the original concept so the story arc's at least minimally different from its origins. The act of writing causes yet further molding so that the final work usually surprises me. 

Was Michelangelo the genius who took an initial concept and rendered it in marble? Or did the process of rendering 'David' reveal epiphanies? Maybe bridge engineers create a final product that is indistinguishable from an architect's concept. Even in such cases, isn't it likely that construction will reveal opportunities? 

The lady-commuter in my image up there caught my attention as I attempted to find an ancient meaning in her street's structures and palettes. But instead what I found in the digital stone was a

sunrise moment quarried from a vein of glimmering jewels. 

Leaving me  muttering, "What the hell's this?" and smiling at a whispered echo... "You are pro-bab-ly vundering vy ah deed dat, Eh?"

Art asks questions... even to the artist. 

GEEK STUFF: Canon 40D, standard lens. Post in PS2019, assist with myriad tools particularly Alien Skin & Topaz, plus custom brushes and actions. 

The Communications Room

Istanbul, Women pray separately in the Blue Mosque.

Do women have a separate channel to the spiritual world? So many religious sects conclude that the male pipelines sit somewhere apart from the female. Do they head off in different directions? Run parallel? Is one vertical, the other off into some fifth or ninth dimension? As the West seems baffled around the edges by gender, much of the cultural worlds are emphatic about their strict definition and distinct differences even when it comes to divine communication. If one can use the prefix "co", before that word at all.

Up there are three devout people working to meld their beings with the infinite as they've been taught to understand the way this stuff works. They're devoted to processes that are pretty ancient for us humans. I wonder if the crowd that built, say, Stonehenge, understood different gender channels to the divine? And are we the first to atomize those genders or did they have dozens of networks on their prayer comm-sets?

Or... maybe... in the clichéd words of horror-creature movies.... "Professor be careful: There are some things that man was not meant to meddle with?"

GEEK STUFF: Canon 70D through its  EF-S17-85mm glass handheld then posted in PSCC 2019. I got permission to take these shots from that male official you can see in the upper left and lower right squares after he studied my media credentials. Nope, he did not demand a tip. 

Flamenco!

Flamenco @ La Palacio Andaluz

Seville: If you can make it there (in flamenco) you can make it anywhere, right? The Palacio is a dinner theater with perhaps the best dance ensemble. Review: Really liked it. Good food, great dance, and since flamenco is theater… Well, there’s the hat trick :-}

Oh:  And La Palacio encourage photography.

Geek Stuff Canon G-10. Processed in PS/CC employing myriad tools by: Photomatix, Topaz and Alien Skin’s new Exposure X2. Stage lighting’s a challenge, so I try to make lemonade – y’know?

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. 

Tell Me A Story • 4: Madonna

Race Against Racism runner(a)  • 4/30/17 • Lancaster, PA

Mysterious eyes. 

When color's surgically cut away, is there more or less identity... More or less story... More or fewer clues? I wonder: Do blind people understand others at a deeper or more shallow level? Is radio in anyway superior to video in communicating the depth of personalities? 

There's a resistance to digital post-processing, dismissing it as inauthentic. The word manipulation is the common verb that describes digital post work. I prefer augmentation, even revelation since manipulation sounds what? Dreary? Calculating? Callow? Shallow? Never mind that painters, for example, do nothing but manipulate... augment... reveal... the realities they imagine. Ditto poets, novelists, and composers. Can you imagine someone charging a symphonic composer of manipulation? Playwrights routinely manipulate the emotions of audiences, don't they? Is that a bad thing?

Yet somehow describing digital post processing as manipulation is dismissive, even insulting. But that's not my real point here. Those most likely to critique the idea of augmentative post processing argue that purity lies only in the image which comes out of the camera, right? Now I've written about pre-processing (lens choice, lighting constructs, filters, makeup, wardrobe, scenery, POV... and like that), and even what I guess you could call immediate processing involving the manipulation of panning, framing, and DOF. All of that manipulates what comes out of the camera. And that doesn't even begin to touch the things camera engineers have built in to manipulate sharpness, color and dynamic range, Etc. 

But none the less, purists who reject digital post processing as in-authentic have no memory of the wet darkroom where printmakers first selected among radically different developer chemistries/timings/heat, then chose between diffuser versus condenser enlargers, contrast/texture/pigment of papers/substrate, developer dynamics, hold-backs, burnings-in, solarizations, and on and on to create a one-of-a-kind final print, even in monotone. The opportunities to create one-off darkroom prints in color increased exponentially. The fact is that there never was a final print that was not processed heavily by at least the photographic artists and perhaps different darkroom technicians, and retouchers (both on the negatives and prints). 

Is all of this sounding defensive? Okay.... look at this:

Race Against Racism runner (b)  • 4/30/17 • Lancaster, PA

As I roamed the park next to my home here in Lancaster on the morning of this year's Race Against Racism run - I consciously looked for a series of faces to speak to you dramatically in monochrome.I could have set my Canon 7D to bleach away all color and make captures only in monochrome. Why do that? Why not allow all of the information possible to reveal narrative arcs? 

So first I processed this image above as a square (you'll note that this and the next images will all be square-cropped, since my Hasselblad days, that format's been a powerful challenge to me). And I processed it for the most haunting dynamic range and sculpting, adding a touch of glow to offset the overcast lighting of that morning. Then finally worked in monochrome to release the image at the start of this essay. 

But the geek-stuff all involves focusing powerful tools to carve out a narrative arc that allows the lady to tell her story. So, what is it? Once again, Tell Me A Story - THE story which you read from faces. I'm convinced that every street portrait needs to trigger at least  a short story - and perhaps a poem, novel, or epic. Hell, maybe even a sonata, if you won't accuse the composer of manipulating the notes - or the mysterious eyes :-)

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? 

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. 

And this, even though it's before the next is Dump Part #2!

Now, are these related in any useful way? Is there a pattern? You tell me, okay? As usual, click on any image for a larger view.

1. Here's Samantha Grace. Did I post her before.... Too many images too few dendrites and neurons...

2. Another in the Aura series but I've forgotten which. Misty huh?

3. See... see how the floor mystically floats. I like this still life. You?

4. And here again is Katelyn Rose who is Samantha Grace's big sister. Nice moment?

5. And continuing with my portraits of Race Against Racism from this Spring... Handsome guy, right?

Okay... Here Comes a Dump Part 1, K?

Okay.... I'm way behind in my posting. Here're four that I've recently done that seem just about unrelated in any way... sigh...  As usual, click on any image for a larger view.

1. Here's a runner in this April's Race Against Racism.

2. Here's you-know-who...

3. Here's one of the grand nieces... Katelyn Rose flirting with her Daddy...

4. Here's a bearable moment... At the office...

There will be more... Gotta' catch up. Wheeeeee!

Auras 12: Samantha Grace

<- Click here

I guess I could not allow her sister Katelyn Rose to steal away her christening party day, right? But babies are soooooo hard to photograph. If you could only get 'em to sing and dance - then... then... you'd have something to capture, right? Okay... Here's Samantha #2. Wuddaya think? Infant picture hints anyone?

Auras °2

<-Click here
Aura filters facts
Through the soapstone
Of feelings and myths
To become what
We understand even
When we don’t
Know… Answers.

Lancaster, PA – Street portrait
An exploration of aura °2
Canon 7D, Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens, PS4: Custom texture/brushes, Toos: AlienSkin Bokeh 2, Topaz Adjust 5, AlienSkin Exposure 4

Auras °1

<-Click here
Aura filters facts
Through the soapstone
Of feelings and myths
To become what
We understand even
When we don’t
Know… Answers

Lancaster, PA… Tea Party
An exploration of aura °1

Canon 7D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm (f3.5-4.5), PS4: Custom texture/brushes, Toos: AlienSkin Bokeh 2, Topaz Adjust 5, AlienSkin Exposure 4

Halloween Hand

<- Click here

Can the
Costumes of
Daytime
Become the
Magnets of
The night
Time
Stalker?
Bwa-Hah-Hah-Haaaaaaaaaa!

Canon 7D, New York City, All sorts of PS/Topaz/AlienSkin/Textures... Wheeeee!

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?

Her Eyes

<- Click here

"If only
He’d put away
The damned camera
AAARGH!"

Antalya, Turkey – Duden Waterfalls
Canon 7D, PS4: custom brushes/textures, Topaz

Now of course if he had a Canon, he’d be taking pictures of her, right?

After Her Paint Faded

<- Click here
Memories are dreams
When they’re the only
Way to repaint a
Hope seared of color
By the flame of choice.

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

Somewhere in the Appalachian mountains of Pennsylvania.