Burble In The Air

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There are still trails that meander through woods down to fishing holes at sunrise.

Middlebury, Vermont exudes a preposterous credibility. It's a place where you expect Norman Rockwell to scurry out from behind a bush to fidget a leaf or a twig just so. It's the land that tacky forgot. Perhaps it's the ice which preserves it through so many of the months from spoiling?

Dunno, but even in the blue shift of first light the hard scrabble brush seems romantically nostalgic. And the stark grit of big city snarl feels as far away as... it is.

Blooming Analysis

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Told you that we visited Middlebury, VT this past weekend for a wedding. Do any of you recall the last Bob Newhart Show? The Larry, Darrel, and Darrel one where they kept the "Harmony Inn"? Well, the wedding reception was held there - in the place where the exterior shots were taken for that Newhart show. As I ambled the garden out back I recalled a picture of a magnolia I'd taken a week before in Savannah, Georgia - over a thousand miles to the south. Perhaps you'll recall - or you can click here to review it.


Well anyway... as I looked at the fat peonies which grow all over this part of Vermont, I realized how dramatically different, yet similar the two places are. Each at this time of year sports fat fleshy flowers. But somehow in Middlebury, where there's ice and snow from November through early April, the blooms seemed even more magical. Plus there was the wedding thing going on in the background, the music, the party... And I began to wonder how to communicate all of this - the wildly different sense of place captured in the uniqueness of their blooms. Hmmmmm....

A Question About Jessica

<-Click here • Jessica & Greg were married in Middlebury, Vermont last Saturday. Jessica was an astonishingly elegant bride. I was lurking around with my camera during the event, trying not to get underfoot of the accomplished and hard working professional who was the official documenter. I've known Jess since she was maybe 12 or 13. That's when we became friends. Like her slightly older sister julia - these two had an intelligence which let them pierce their way into mature conversations virtually as equals at an early age. They were, and remain, bright, charming - and as you can see from this image, strikingly beautiful. However...


I lacked a high powered strobe, a reflector and all the rest of those things which let photographers capture a stunning woman appropriately. So, without the gear to do pre-processing, I'm forced to make up for the snaphot quality of my shots in post processing. Now... here's the question. While both of these images retain the production values of snapshots... Which captures Jess better? Why? Hulp...

Component

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A magnolia in summer. Dixie, eh?

Might not be here tomorrow. See my message from yesterday.

Once-Upon-A-Time Window

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It was a window that once looked out upon river boat dandies and dock tarts. Once it rattled from the steamy squeals of paddle wheelers' horns. Then pigeons glided just yards to the gaudy decks of great flat stern wheelers mounded with King Cotton hauled from this place to exotic ports and deep pockets packed with gold.

It was a window that watched once-upon-a-time - disappear.

BTW: I am off on some business to New England for a couple of days. May be away from WWW connection. We shall see if I can post between now and Sunday. If not... and you're new... enjoy last September & October's postings, K? I'd enjoy comments on those long lost images.

Happy Flag Day...

What We Do

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"We are not here to do what has already been done." - Robert Henri, The Spirit Of Art P.12

I believe that each color, each shape, each pixel must be an exact record of what I conceived it to be at the moment I put it there. This is not an accurate reproduction of a place, it is an authentic rendering of an idea, feeling and sense of this place.

And that is all it is a record of.

Izzit Worth Photographing?

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You know that I don't want to imitate nature, but I still want to find a formal unity in my images. Okay, so here's a distinct shape, a compact form and smooth colors. It's not so much the real-life feelings I'm trying to frame within my margins, nor a slavish reproduction of what's in front of my lens, nope. What I'm after is my own arrangement of formal classical elements. Here's the test... does the image communicate an authentic feeling, mood, presence? Do you sense a message?

Yeah... that's it. See there's a risk of caricature when you deal with an image like this which has been contrived for cameras. Is there any fresh way to render a novel idea of a structure which was constructed to decorate calendars? This tower is a stage set. It's perfect from evey angle. Tell me, is that even worth rendering? is there any way that the final idea can be mine in any way?

Let me know, huh?

Details

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Our good fortune was definitely NOT Beaufort's, or that of the city's owners during the Great War Between The States. Seems that the Yankees used their superior naval power to occupy this port city early on during the tempest. The fleeing occupants left their homes for the solders to seize. Consequently all of these buildings were preserved from the burnings which General Sherman routinely ordered throughout this region thus allowing us to get a real sense of the pre-bellum splendor of a planters' town.

Here the photographic details are really not f stops or shutter speeds. Rather you should know: Temperature 97 degrees, Humidity 87% and virtually no breeze at around noon. Recall when these structures were occupied by their sizable families in the early 19th century - air conditioning meant closing the shutters and pulling the drapes against the searing summer sun.

High Noon In Beaufort, SC

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Summer in the south sears. The light is brilliant as Democrats imagine their Presidents to be.

Noon-time shine is the stuff that chases photographers indoors. There's just no way a camera can capture details in highlights and shadows, right? Short of tripods, bracketing, and HDR tedium in post processing... well best not try to capture scenics between 11 am and maybe 4:30 p.

Problem is we were in Beaufort, SC at noon. And we had about two hours to try to get a sense of this old-South county seat that was founded in 1711. This was the heart of King Cotton until the Yankees occupied the area during the Civil War. Oh it made some comeback afterward, but the Boll Weevil ended that a few decades later. The place is reblooming now and fixing up places that haven't had major remods since the 1920s.

So, how to capture the 1920s ambiance while placing Beaufort squarely in Dixie? I decided that runny water colors were just exactly right. They gave me the chance to block some of the highs, while filling up the shadows. Or at least I imagine the effect does. Whacha think?

BTW, if you saw the movie Forrest Gump, and recall Gump being interviewed for TV just after he crossed the Mississippi River bridge - well this is a key place. It's where they sat the cameras for that shot. Immediately to my left as I took this picture is a bridge over the Beaufort River. Since they shot many of the location shots here in Beaufort, they saw no need to travel to the Midwest to get one picture. So for the movie, they changed the sign over this bridge to read "Mississippi River". Hollywood magic!

Cliche

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It is harder to draw information from words than from pictures. Clichés crack the code. They support you in turning data into information… and information into meaning. A cliché grabs from all those dark storage sites of memory and melds them together into a useful pattern.

If you visit the Sea Pines Plantation on Hilton Head Island, you’ll hear of this structure. It was created to resemble a lighthouse as a backdrop to the 18th hole of a golf course - Harbour Town Links - which attracts the PGA. And the PGA attracts TV networks. Which want harbors to look like harbors. They want a picture which tells the audience what this place is. It needs to be a shot that snaps from data to information in a blink.

So this structure’s the highest and most recognizable on Hilton Head Island. It also lets me, in one image, cut right to seaport, summer, sunrise, and for those with the right memory pockets… Hilton Head, South Carolina.

How could I not capture this cliché?

Retro Vrs. History

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Age is the mother of nostalgia, while disruption is the father of history. So? What happens when these two hook up for a night of passion? That’s what I was out to uncover in Savannah – a city where retro and history have formed a cosy rapport. To a lot of Boomers, retro is indistinguishable from history.

I wonder when the latter sucks up the former?

I’ve noticed that the history taught in our K-12 years is overwhelmingly about political figures (Quick: name the guy who financed Henry Ford’s first factory. See what I mean?). But in reality culture trumps everything. Culture rules. Culture rocks. Paris Hilton went to jail because of culture. Congress failed to pass an immigration bill because of culture. It is culture at any given moment which packs the wallop.

I think the difference between retro and history is culture. People begin to notice that the culture that weaned them barely exists. Which sparks nostalgia and creates a retro market. See how that’s working in Savannah? Huh? Huh?

Or have I got this all wrong? Comments?

Award Winner 2007: Mr. Saxovannah

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

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Often it seems the guy was right who noticed that we are merely another brand, jostling for attention on a crowded shelf. Which inevitably drives some clever marketers to crank the flamboyant dial way up - which I guess also explains the market for Wunder-Bras and warmly appealing bearded guys in orange who saxophone a haunting shriek of Amazing Grace.

Hey… it’s a plan. Right?

Energy Tree

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The renowned photographic teacher Craig Tanner in a recent podcast mused, "We are drawn toward the highest energy." Hmmmm.... Or maybe some draw the highest energy within their frames? Are all ideas energy? Is the vice versa? Let me try that differently. Are good ideas disruptive? And is that what generates energy?

Much of what draws the serious lens is upsetting to the status quo. Which is the role of innovation, right? As I do the galleries here in Hilton Head and Savannah - I see a tide of stereotypical art. An hour ago I saw a mass of excellently rendered shots of the Savannah mansions for sale at a shop. The photographer captured wonderful palettes, warm lighting, tack sharp detail... and yet this high craft produced mind numbing goo. It's as if he froze the scenes in mirrors - and simply reversed them. I could sense no part of the guy's mind in the interpretations.

Do you recall garage bands that sounded just like pop-hits? They weren't artists, they were impersonators - or live recording/playback rip-off-ers. Most photographers are not artists... their images never pass through a bath of energy. They are visual stenographers.

I agree that Craig Tanner's pictures, at least as posted at Light Diary seem drawn to the highest energy. But I don't agree that most people's photographs capture high… or even any energy. They are not art, they are, even when originals, reproductions – copies of a moment.

Yesterday I confronted something foreign to me. This tree must be so commonplace to denizens of the deep south. So, how to show them, as well as people like me, that there is something unusual about this tall guy? So how to tap the energy here and make it spark out at you. How to make it shimmy and snake upward toward a commonplace sky?

So here’s my way of sucking the highest energy out of someone else’s humdrum. Does it work?

Jungle

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Bluffton is a tiny town in the southeast of South Carolina. Residents are determined to turn it into an artsy/antique stop for upscale traffic flowing from Hilton Head to Savannah, GA.

Civilization, like tree rings, happens in layers. So does jungle. Oddly they both build over the present. We dig down under most cities and we find the debris of those who came there before us. Dig down farther though, and we find jungle. Jungle was here before us… and in many spots on earth… it came after us.

Look at how the builders of this house - once a home - took care. Oddly, the colors have survived the materials they packaged.

Not far from this place Bluffton people are remodeling and building anew. A block away they are constructing an entire main street soon to be filled with shops with facades that will capture a retro charm of the 1920s and 30s.

But here at this crumbling place soon a decision will be made, either by developers or by jungle. One thing though: in the Low Country so close to the coastal swamps, developer decisions will only - for a geological moment - distract the jungle.

FWOOOSH!

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The photographers I envy can pour whole buckets of meaning into each image.

See, we’re vacationing in Dixie. Tropical Storm Barry came north as we drove south. Imagine: you’re riding along and a forest-fire-fighting tanker plane dumps overhead. “FWOOSH!” And imagine that it doesn’t stop. “FUH-WOOOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!……………..”

Now swirl in tractor trailers sporting mud flaps which cover their spray less effectively than Britney Spears' skirts cover crotch. Sheeesh! Hours of that make you long to curl fetal.

You know how I felt when we got here? Here... Look at this image.... THAT'S how I felt when we got here. Yeah… Sometimes it’s insufficient to say, “Hey! It rained.”

Pepsi Tanks

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Pity how much detail is lost in this image when it was compressed for the web. The sky is super detailed at 19X13". And Emporia can use every bit of detail it can get. It's a place you can spend a couple of weeks in - overnight.
What I liked were the world class sized tanks of Pepsi. Guess you gotta' store it somewhere for all of those soda fountains, eh?
There are those who say that the sweet light of morning can make anything look compelling... enticing... inviting. Dunno about that. Considering Emporia at sunrise, you decide. You want to visit?

Richmond Birds

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Just off of Shockoe Slip in Richmond, VA there's a rehabed wharehouse filled with a store called, These Four Walls. It's strewn with guys like these. As charming as they are I wonder where in China they're made? There are lots of cool shops across America filled full with charming Oriental clutter. Why are empty spaces an insult to women? Okay... sounds sexist, but it's, like, true - right? Clear coffee table? Vacant room corner? Bare ledge? Every woman I know will feel drawn to plop down silk flowers, another lamp, a decorative book, some shells, or a piece of mass produced sculpture like this.

Now I don't find that offensive or even annoying. Nope, once I see it... hey... I like it well enough. But an open space just doesn't tractor beam me to scour shops like These Four Walls. What feminine instinct creates this lucrative Chinese market? Ideas anyone?

Emporia, Virginia

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Surprise! Found a wireless service in an Emporia room.

We drove for hours due south. Stopped here, just eight miles before the North Carolina border. Emporia seems to be a place where people stop between. It's a muddle of motels, franchise food, and gas stations. It's rumored to be one of those vicious speed traps which pepper rural America in places between places. On our way tomorrow, we'll drive carefully out of Emporia to I-95, about a rock's toss from this room here between.

Trinity In The Window

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I'm off to see the world tomorrow. Well, okay... off to see America. Um... The American South. The east coast of the American Deep South. Where hanging moss decorates the great elms. And mint juleps are served on silver trays. Where the pace and charm are southern. Where people work smarter, not harder. Heat teaches them all of those things.

Which means I may not post much until the eleventh since someone else will be here in my home. But before I go to see a an old friendly place with fresh eyes - here's a look at a place which no one has ever seen before. This image shows the facade of a grand old department store once owned by Watt&Shand families. They've carefully peeled off this facade to build a grand Lancaster Convention Center and multiple star hotel behind it. And for just this moment in time you can peer through that Gay 90's wrapping and see the colonial grandeur of Trinity Lutheran Church in the setting May sun.

By Fall the windows will fill up with Convention Center things leaving this the last time that visitors will see Trinity once again from the city square. Here... share this moment with us. Remember what may never happen again.

Mr. A.S. Groff's Hope

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I went out this evening determined to grab some good news. Some uplifiting image. Something bright and shining. Adios El Grimmo!

And then, in the middle of the Lancater Convention Center construction site... Look... look at Mr. A.S. Groff's hardware store. See the sign there... Well in fact no one's seen that sign for... for... A hundred years? Who even knew they once sold hardware there? They scraped away false facades and brought down some of the building's neighbors and "Pop!" ... Up came Mr. A.S. Groff's sign bravely announcing his ambitions, his optimism, his joys, dreams and brave expectations. There they are, painted on the side of a building just below a door that now opens onto nothing and... And I can feel how happy Mr. A.S. Groff and Mrs. A.S. Groff were the day they looked up and saw their names up there way over South King Street.

And in the golden setting sun of the last days of May here in 2007 I felt Mr. A.S. Groff's joy - as the twilight gently painted it bright on these few weeks before it gets covered again...

Then it shadowed over.

More Walls

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Organic... That's what this is. None of my pixel pushing or poking... just a wall pierced sometime ago with a window type that they don't do much anymore. It looks so solid... at first. But look... look how it's been scraped away by the corrosion of days rubbing against it again, again and again.

This is one of my themes isn't it? Grim seems to get all over my lens. That's not happy. And I'm such a happy guy. Except when time hollers my name from a wall and I twirl and shoot and grab another view of the way the gravity of nostalgia has picked at something. Okay... I'm aware a veil of history diffuses my images like a soft filter. Let's see if I can unscrew the thing tomorrow and find more potential than accomplishment. Hmmmm... That's a plan.

Geek Stuff: Sunday 5.27.07-2:56 pm: 1/100 @ f/6,3: Canon EOS 20D, Meter Mode Auto,Exposure Program: Normal, ISO 100, Lens Canon EF-S 10-22mm (f3.5-4.5), Focal Length 10 mm, Exposure Bias:-0.33, RAW: PP in PS-CS3

Walls

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Once upon a time kids imagined they would fly about crystal cities seamed together by gleaming chrome supports. And since they were children, there was little need to deal with the challenge of the bricks and mortar which weathered all about them. Youth invent new structures while adults perfect the old.

True urban creativity happens in the crack between those searching after an opportunity for the fresh in places filled up with a perfectly serviceable legacy. What’s true for buildings, walls, and windows – is true for ideas, imaginings, and dreams. When you run out of room for stuff, conservers will always struggle against replacers.

Techie Stuff: Sunday 5/27/07, 2:46 pm: Uncropped: Canon EOS 20D, Lens Canon EFS 10-22mm, Focal Length 10 mm: ISO 100: Exposure Bias:-0.33: 1/320 @ f11. Enhanced PS CS3.

Crack Work

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Both the historian and the artist take their cracks at describing facts to us. In real life, I'm a journalist, which is neither an historian nor an artist. We're supposed to exist in the crack between their two worlds. Writers like me are challenged, in the best of all worlds, to assemble the facts into a pile through which historians and artists sort.

But here at ImageFiction I indulge that part of my brain which layers some emotion over some facts to present up, what? My wife Rita has a spectacular garden here in the city. From early spring to late fall there are dots of joy like this guy who's stretching awake in his sunrise shower. Now my organic photographer buddies believe that beauty, harmony, and energy are the natural subjects of what we're supposed to do. They insist that the final print should mimic nature to the degree that the viewer BELIEVES!. That the viewer accepts the image as true-to-some-original.

As you can see, I'm not down with that. Here's what I either saw over coffee last week, or what I wanted to see. As a journalist I'm not allowed to write about what I wanted to see, hear, smell, touch... But this is why this place is called ImageFiction. Get it?

Benched

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When does summer start? If reality is a matter of perception (think on that line.. heh heh heh). Well, if our own reality is what we believe it to be, then in the United States, summer begins on Labor Day Weekend.

Which brings me to thoughts of hideaway benches and places like that where peaceful dappled sunlight flows over good books. Here's one hidden in Stauffer Park in Manheim Township just outside of the City of Lancaster.

Happy Memorial Weekend

I am BB-Qing tonight. Little break, maybe for a couple of days. Summer's kicking off Monday... That's what we seem to memorialize here in the ole USof A. We shall talk again, maybe tomorrow, right... when summer's come.

Carriage Port

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If you stood staring directly into my lens here on this 19th century carriage porch - you'd see the Lancaster City eastern boundary maybe a hundred yards behind me. And you'd feel the same early summer sun warm you from head to toe.

I like these ports that were built to cover grand carriages from the elements. I can imagine the noise of the tack, the hooves on those bricks, the chatter of ladies in fluffy dresses, cigar smoking men in tall hats, boys in short pants all circled by dogs happily welcoming them. What I can't imagine is the heat of summer burning down on those corseted ladies, and their men in woolens. Nor can I imagine the smell of those sweat soaked horses.

In the now breeze whispering stillness of a mid-day in May, I wonder how long this portico's awaited the next carriage to come home?

Resemblance V. Meanings

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Simple elements can combine in complex ways so that resemblance remains but meanings morph.

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Hmmmm.... let me try a second take on this with CS3.

Gas Savings - Guaranteed!

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Got this last Thursday. My home is quite near to my magazine offices. You've seen my Beetle. Question: with less than a two mile commute, why use the VW, especially during summer's sunny days? Well, because I am a big deal executive with meetings all over the region. Because we have different Business2Business Magazines in four large counties here in Pennsylvania. Because as a member of the media elite, I am invited to all the important, decision-making, hidden rooms filled with the people who make every important thing happen. And besides, the company limo and driver are at my call, so why even think of driving?

NOT!

In fact, most days are spent in front of a my office Mac with a headset talking and writing to folks all over the footprint which our publications cover. I am virtually everywhere yet actually stuck in my office. So... I got this guaranteed-to-get me more miles to the week device which just might also get me back into shape for the European trip we're planning in the Fall (they tell me that people actually walk in Europe - yikes!).
Pretty thing, huh? And so far.. terrific fun. I haven't had a working bike for about twenty years. Wind whipping through my hair - I feel ten years old again. Wheeeeee!

Window To Nothing

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Here's a memory. Well it will be quite soon when the one guy on a mini bulldozer finally gets around to tearing this part of the Lancaster Stockyard down. Only rot demolishes things slower than this guy. Maybe it's already a memory in a way. It's what's left of a shell around this building. For the moment it's like a fossil, an imprint in space which looks sort of like what the painted and bustling place must have appeared fifty or eighty years ago.
I crank awareness up in my images. In fact that's what happens when each of us frames things. The choice we make in moving the borders makes for memory boxes. In this case, nothing outside of these borders will exist soon. Only what I've imagined in this cubicle. There's a difference between art and life. It has to do, I think, with the way life passes through memory to become the image. Just like this window, which is now not what it was, and might even be as you read this, no longer anything.

Locked In

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In the stockyard I'm, like, hunting. Maybe that's too strong... I like beef stew, especially when the meat is cooked really tender, and the sauce is so thick it almost needs to be chewed. And as I fork through, I'm careful to mix things. You know, carrot and onion for one mouthful, maybe meat and potato for another. It's not a big deal, I'm not manic about it, but the jumbled mixtures add to the dining. Every taste is different.

I think that's what happens to me at the stockyard. i want to mix textures and colors, shapes and shadows. Like the stew, the platter is always the same but each lensful is different. Each time I go back there seem to be new hues, the wreckers are slowly revealing new layers. They are demolishing the place in such slow motion - since I started visiting last summer, they've pulled down about half of the structures and torn up most of the roads. The patterns of utility are disappearing. Leaving behind onions, carrots, and hunks of well cooked meat. Soon there will be little left but unintelligible rubble. Meantime there are locked doors to no place... or empty place... or...

Remnants

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Everyday places become symbolic when they lose their purpose. And the esteem in which we hold their symbolism has to do with what?

We stick old cannons on park pedestals. There’s a Congressman’s office lovingly restored in Baton Rouge and the guy’s not near dead. We slavishly reconstruct churches, theaters, even privies. I’ve seen historic markers outside of taverns, barns, gas stations, and a farm that grew the world’s largest geranium! Allegories all.

And then there are places like this. It employed thousands over a century or so. And as the largest stockyard east of Chicago it fed millions. But now it’s a decomposing dump. How come it has no constituency?

Look, I’m not proposing anything – this isn’t a weepy poem – I’m merely probing at the meaning of acres of decaying structures which are crammed with garbage strewn by night-time bozos who are too cheap to buy a pass to the county landfill. And of course I am looting the ruins for meaning – or at least a pattern.

Is this decaying place a symbol of anything? A metaphor? Is there something noble in the memories or lessons that it might pass to us? Or is the expanse just as much trash as the trash that’s coating it?

Nothing lasts forever and I guess this is neither a sad nor strange moment of transition– merely puzzling and a tad grim.

The Ambiguity Of Wonderment

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In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries they called the middle state between ignorance and knowledge: wonderment. Have things changed much? I like middle states - they are where ambiguity lives. And that might also be another way of expressing wonderment.
This image is an ambiguity... or a conundrum. Is it of something going in, or coming out? If I clicked an instant later, or earlier - would that have resolved it all? Does time overcome ambiguity? And wonderment? As we age, is that what cynical is about? Is that what time does? Is maturity the death of wonderment?

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Okay... and now for all of you who've wondered wuddahell this thingee is... Look! It's the new drainspout sitting within the old drainspout outside of my old historical home... Hence the iron collector at the bottom. I guess i cheated by turning it into a horizontal?

Got My Bike...

My bike came tonight. Got it all set for my morning commute tomorrow. This has been a reeeeeeely long week. I'm going to bed to pedal in the glow of sunlight tomorrow. Meaning.... no image post. Sorry... other fun has intruded. Worse yet... there's something wrong with Blogger, it won't let me post a graphic tonight. Que Sera... G'nite...

Me

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Primary Election Day Today

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Today the Republicans and Democrats nominate their candidates for the November elections. Lancaster County is overwhelmingly Republican. So the fight for County Commissioner is held in this primary. Charlie Smithgall was the past mayor of Lancaster City but he did not get the endorsement of the Republican Party bosses for this primary. He's running against the machine. It's a lonely thing to do. All he has to offer is his name and whatever reputation that promises to voters.
Did I get that across here? People are voting as I write this. Before bed tonight we'll know if he'll be less lonely come Fall.

TED'S NEWS ALERT: Out of 80,389 votes cast, by 460 votes - Charlie Smithgall lost!

Floating By Ted

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Upon a time I did sports photography. Long enough to realize how hard it is. Long enough to make some money at it. Long enough to realize how good the best craft-sports artists were. How much astonishing work it would take to approach what they did on their worst days. So I stopped doing that. See, you not only have to want to take good sports pictures... you have to love sports. Understand them the way a jazz musician understands scales. Whoa... that is so wonderful when you see it. So I learned enough to become a very satisfied spectator of, not so much sports, but great sports photographers.

Still, every now and then an easy shot floats by. And I'm so very pleased that I can sometimes make my camera sing like that jazz guy does with his horn. When you take a terrific image, of magnificent athletes... for an instant you appreciate them even more. And in my case, it's nice to know that my muscle memory still recalls all of those thousands of sports shots I took ... upon a time. And lets me do this - when two guys do this.

Life is good.

Jiggling Lines

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Optical truth reveals the lie of nature's perspective. You come across this settlement through a field - and as you see it up there on the hill it's all right angles, yet through a 10mm lens it falls off differently ... like in an imagination's snapshot of this cluster above you in the gold/blue first light. Lines seem to have their own mind jiggling to some crazy gravities. Who's to say which reality is "real"? Wait... wait... I'm to say it... and do, here. This is what I saw. I swear. My memory's my source, my authority. And after all, pictures don't lie. They aren't fluid, like say taste, or… or … romantic fantasy. Right?

On Preservation

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Michael Kimmelman in his fascinating book The Accidental Masterpiece wrote, "Sometimes it's useful to preserve what is wonderous to show us what is rare." Or something close to that.

Which is how I feel about how sunrise coats things like syrup. It appears to come filled with a kind of glowing peptide which fuzzes up the edges of things in golds and blues. It's hard to mess up at sunrise, don't you think?

Squalk!

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At the Carney last week in Lancaster there was a game-table where the barker could attract no attention. She pleaded with passers-bye, cajoled, and finally insulted them. Called a grandmotherly lady the sort of names you expect to hear from a rapper on crack. Nothing. People rushed on past. The odd thing was that her loudspeaker was hidden under this bird. You got the impression that the penguin needed anger management rehabilitation.

Short Term Memory

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Once upon a time I took baby pictures for $$s. Mothers taught me what they'd pay for. It was labor intensive and price sensitive. But school bills had to be paid, so the little darlings' images got churned out the way Hershey makes Skittles. It was one of the reasons I came to hate photography. Weddings were another.
Now I refuse to charge. If mothers or brides or mothers of brides don't like what I see... I don't really give a damn. Frankly, my baby and bridal pictures have improved explosively. Odd when you won't put a price on your pictures, people will offer you large prices. Go figger...

Zippered

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Why do we love these things? This carnival oblong ride has ferris wheel seats swaying along its outter rim. That rim slides fast - sometimes clockwise, sometimes counter clockwise – splaying its chairs wide outward . Then the oblong spins in a direction differently from the chairs. Girls squeal, boys yowl. It clatters in a coating of raucous 50's Rock N' Roll. Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers mix all through the screams'.

I've always wondered, even though I do them... Why we ride these things? Why we eat jalopenos? And "Why," as Frankie ponderd, "Do Fools Fall In Love?"

Rails Scraped White

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The sons of Pullman porters ride their father’s magic carpet
And the rhythm of the rails is a gentle heal….
The Warren F. Bennet sways along a metal highway that once lashed America together with a tenacity tighter than politics, entertainment, revivalism, and the greenback dollar all mixed together and baked in a Bessemer oven. There are still patches of glimmering steel scraped white by the Warrem F. Bennet’s wheels. And inside there’s still the air they breathed when Lincoln rocked along toward Gettysburg to tell about forefathers, nations, Liberty and equality – and to remember how some short distance to the west from Lancaster a great cause – caused so many to bleed. When the Warren F. Bennet rode a younger magic carpet made of steel.

Downtown

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I'm intrigued by the city shots friends send back from their European travels. Apparently everything they see is quaint. Well we've got quaint right here. There are facades which get quaint all over your image. See here? See the colors? The stone? The artfully trained leaves? The windows. Even the texture along the sidewalk screeeeeeeem out "Lookit me... I'm just as quaint as anyplace, anywhere, anytime... " Got that?

Spooky House

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Spring along Indian Marker Road seems to speckle the place with a sort of ominous color. Everywhere else in the world, Spring elates the spirit... but here... it pokes at it a tad. Even pricks it in a way that's just the tiniest amount discomforting. Can't quite put my finger upon why... Can you?

Shell

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For the eighth torrid day, Lancaster sweltered. And on that August morning, as I passed under the Amtrack overpass, this was on the side. The car parked, I walked back to see this hardened shell of leather, perfectly formed as if molded onto a body. But, as if a crab had left its shell, the body was gone. Why a winter's jacket during the tropical heat? What'd happened here the night before? Was the person sucked away into some alien's ray, leaving behind only his exoskeleton of tough leather? There's got to be a reason for its appearance and two days later for its disappearance... Leaving behind only one record that this jacket-shell was left on an urban beach.

And this is that record.

Urf City

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Okay... so there's this creature who's a part of a foamy time bubble in Urf City. And he's either dissolving into, or emerging out of, the clamorous color of a carney ride. And it's really noise, rumbling and sqeeeeeeeking around in a circle there in Urf City - from where it never escapes but runs and runs and runs... against the currents in the river of life.

Innocent Fun

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Look at these faces. You can't fake that wildly happy excitement. These girls are well... look... look how you can look at them and see ten year old joy. Feel it! Love it. I'm so pleased that I was there tonight. That they were so delighted in that moment. And that their sheer loveliness got captured for all of us to grin along with their squeals. How very, very fine. Carnivals belong to the kids... inside each of us.

Silly

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Listened to an inspirational speaker tonight. I guess I am inspired. Not sure about what though. This is what came out after the inspiration of the speaker took hold of me. Hmmmm.... Maybe you are in a better position to judge this inspirational mood than I am?

Twi Light Knight

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The carney's come to Buchanan Park. Each year it arrives during the first week of May. There used to be something called the Loyalty Day Parade. It got so expensive the committee brought a carnival to town to raise bucks. Still they didn't get enough, so the parade died. But the carney comes every year to raise funds for Buchanan Park. And as they set up tonight I saw this guy, protecting the children from the oncoming night.

BTW: My enhancements to this image were made in CS2. I contacted one of the filter makers today. I was told that upgrades won't be available until the Fall. So, while I've installed CS3 onto my PowerBook Pro, I still haven't installed it onto my G4. Frankly I don't expect a speed augmentation on that machine, and I don't want to lose the availability of the filters I mentioned in yesterday's post. Oddly, this image, which I think expresses exactly what I sought when I took it, did not involve the use of any of those filters. Still, it's good to know that they're there.

A WORD ABOUT FILTERS: I've found that filters are relatively useless as stand alones. They scream out that the artist has taken short cuts. They dominate the image... and when you start noticing the makeup, the actor is in trouble. Moreover, filters quickly become clichés as soon as everyone begins to slather them on. However... they allow an artist to work on pieces of an image, especially when applied multiple times with different settings to tease out the details. There is no filter that I own which creates an effect that I couldn't do without using it. BUT... why take all of that time (this image took just less than an hour from downloading into PhotoShop to the final uploading of this written blog posting)? I see them as tools to be used in combination with others... just as lenses, lights, lens filters, and the like are tools. If you are dependent upon a filter to affect your style... well.. I wonder if you have a style... or whether you've simply purchased it. And if you have... then anyone else can as well. Not the sort of vulnerability an artist should have, eh?