Street People'08h

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Creation is a combination of epiphany and discovery, right? I mean that you recognize an idea or a feeling which you initially capture, then a tension kicks in between where you are and where you sense that you can go. Discovery, I am thinking, is when creation is allowed. Who allows it? Why you of course as the concept is converted to reality.

I found this kid today, inking up woodblocks and splashing herself and everyone around with thick colors.

Hallucinations #2

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We say an artist has a voice. We say an image has an attitude. Okay, so what's the difference?

Hallucinations #1

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So what's the difference between hallucinating and fantasizing? Is a hallucination a fantasy gone quirky? I'm trolling for answers here... How does the one differ from the other? We know there can be an evil fantasy, can there be a noble hallucination?

And what does that mean for art?

First Friday - August, '08

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First Friday evenings in Lancaster the five blocks of N. Prince St. swirl with people. Along this strip sits the Fulton Opera home of the symphony and our Equity theater. A bit farther along is the Pennsylvania Academy Of Music and its crisp new music hall. A couple of blocks farther up, the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design's galleries are filled with shows. And among these anchors are the dozens of commercial art galleries each opening a new show on First Friday evening. The art shops have begun to spill into the cross streets with two of the most challenging: Lancaster Galleries to the South and DePaul Gallery up on the North. From Spring till Fall their are musicians and street artists all along the sidewalks. Even the office and professional buildings have opened lobbies to mount shows on First Fridays so Lancaster has turned fine art into a performing entertainment.

It's a night when restaurant reservations are impossible to get and the jazz and rock clubs get filled a little earlier with singles who come first to walk the galleries then go off to dance and drink. Which means that the crowds are all ages and family sizes. It's a carnival of art each month that kicks off around 6 or 7 and bustles till 9 or 10. There's talk of closing N. Prince Street on First Fridays but the street's a major city artery and frankly the traffic feeds the urban pulse-beat.

Much as rural and suburban living offers some peace, I don't think we'll ever give up the city's pace. I'm not a camper, hiker, fisherman, or hunter. Just never learned to like that stuff when I was young and impressionable and riding my bike around the busy streets of Philadelphia. And now I do it in Lancaster. Or walk wherever... To market... to restaurants... to the library... professional appointments... And we walk those blocks on First Fridays, getting off on the imaginings of brilliant artists, listening to wonderful music, watching the theater, and.. and... sensing that things on First Fridays all blur into an abstract art.

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?

Guardhouse On The Hill

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Once upon a time, up on the hill, there lived a guard house. And its keepers were Arnex and Dazie. And all day and all night for so many years they guarded. Until the orange letter came from Sacramento...

No Reason

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I've been playing with lyricism.

Huh?

Bernie Taupin.... You know him? He wrote, for example, "Philadelphia Freedom". Ahhhh.... but you thought Sir Elton John wrote that melody. And you are exactly right. Elton wrote the melody, but hid DID NOT write Philadelphia Freedom. Nope, the words... those were Taupin's. Yes, you can call it poetry. But while all lyrics are poetic, not all poetry is lyrical. Lyrics rhyme. They are percussive, and their timing slides within the melodic discipline.

So, how to do an establishing shot that is lyrical? That sets up the melody to come and with color, texture, and an array of elements the provide the coming story arc with everything it needs? Hmmmm.... What better place than Cannery Row to set the scene? And how to mix mystery, with portending (great word huh?), and sufficient ambiguity that the viewer begins creating the melody? Lyrical... get it?

Street Shots - August '08

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Is it what the artist brings to the image, or what the viewer takes away? This is one of those great primal questions, like which edge of the scissors does the cutting.

This dude sat down, kicked off his shoes... pulled off his shirt... wrapped that towel around his neck... and... Was he waiting? Resting? Why the towel? Why the display? Shorts or briefs?

Pew Nude

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Found her sittting in a pew last evening. So of course I took her picture. Did I ask permission? Uh, sure. Right. Of course...

Night Truck

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Here's the virgin image of Night Truck - direct from the FlashCard

America To Me

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So what to do under the glare of the Dixie sun in mid summer? What to do when you're standing in the parking lot of a monster discount store? What's the story... the feeling... the idea... What runs together as the heat melts even primary colors down into streams of a place that's like the places that every American goes? How to turn the commonplace into a thought about the commonplace? As you feel the sun sear your skin to a bubbling consistency?

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Here are the virgin pictures from my FlashCard... Comments?

2007 Awards Continued

Thanks a bundle for all of your mail and comments on other sites congratulating me for inclusion in The Canon POTN Collection Of The Finest Images of 2007. I hope I am not breaking any rules since the final announcements have not been made, but in reaction to your requests you will find the images which the judges selected if you click here.

Of course I'd appreciate any comments you'd like to leave on the images. I've collected this year's selections together with the three images of mine which were selected for inclusion in the 2006 Canon POTN compilation. I don't yet know when the book will go on sale (or come from the printer for that matter, since I was only asked last night to approve the copy which will be placed upon each of my images).

Again, thanks for your support.

YIPEE!! Awards!

I have just been informed that seven of my images have been selected for publication by Canon POTN in their Best Images Of 2007 for a Fall 2008 book. THIS IS HUGE! My images were selected from worldwide submissions by a group of distinguished judges and the votes of thousands of POTN members. As the publication date nears, I'll post links to the chosen images here. Meantime I am reeeeeeely psyched.

Isn't this cool? Last year I was overjoyed that three of my images were chosen for their first book of The Best of 2006 - but seven! There were only nine categories for which I could possibly qualify.... Seven of nine? YIPPEEEEEE!

Um.... cough.. Okay... getting it together.... Calming down and.... YIPPPEEEEE!

Naughty

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Found her in Savannah... Where else?


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Here's the virgin (!) image.

Time

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Legions shook mighty fists
While priests and druids
Hurled fearsome oaths.

In the end, time
Stormed against them.
To blunt their edge,
Their youth,
Their glimmering muscle.

Time is the gap between

Reign and rain.




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Here's the virgin image from my Flash Card.

Framing

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You know what, in every direction I look... I'm framing.


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Here's the virgin image from the flashCard

Completion

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What defines what? What completes what?

For example... is it the shoe that finishes the foot? Or the foot that finishes the shoe?

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And here's the virgin image from the disc.

Street People '08g

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Found the Magic Man just off of N. Marion St. last weekend. He had a small table and a tiny parasol. On that table he did tricks that left kids agape. Left me agape.

Agape is a goofy thing.

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Here's the virgin image from the Flash Card

Street People '08f

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An advantage of candid street portraiture is to capture the way personalities waft across the subject's face almost as quickly as we can pull the trigger. And each personality opens us into another short story.


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Oh, here're the virgin image direct from the FlashCard... Whudaya think?

Street People '08e

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Nope, didn't ask permission. And once again there's an instant just before her mask comes down. And you look inside her soul.

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For those of you who want to see the virgin images... Here we go. Thoughts?

Street Portraits '08d

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Now for those of you who're sure that EXPLOSIVE! is the only setting on my saturation slider... Well take this! Another street candid with that long lens that won't always behave... in the middle of the day. But yet the subject was so pretty... and well... howzabout we swirl on just a touch of the romantic, eh?

Wuddaya think, a touch too far?

Let me know..... K?

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And here's the virgin image from the FashCard

Street Portraits '08c

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Here's the third in this series of semi-candid street portraits. In some cases I ask permission, but after taking a few shots I go away, only to return later from a distance (the lens has an effective focal length of 450mm) and grab a few more. Sometimes the subjects are aware of the second series and sometimes not. Here's a case where the girl wasn't aware.

I'm convinced that a candid shot captures more personality... resonates more in my mind... than one in which the subject composes, then poses. Once again, there was a battle here with 1:30pm lighting. Increasingly I'm learning both how to win that battle and how to use it to dramatically pull out more of the my attitude about the subject.

Street Portraits'08b

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Street Portraits
Marti
Fun

Street Portraits'08a

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Street portraits. Penny. Sweet.

Soliloquy #1

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In a giggle of
Moon-breeze
Carolina tumbled
Against Jeb
A last time
Forever.


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I've been thinking about conceptual art a lot. This is an example of a concept I wanted to picture before I got on my bike and pedaled over to Lancaster Cemetery. I didn't know that I'd find Caroline and Jeb, but I knew that I'd find a great love and the lightness of giggles. And I did.

Does the image marry the lyric? Is it a song? A poem in two parts? It's certain though that both parts are essential to whatever meaning and feeling that the work has. They are necessary and sufficient conditions to explain Carolina as I conceived her, just as playful now as then, and ever will be... Because I'm convinced that...

it's the good that makes most people's memories...

... and most people memories.

Self Important

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Didja' ever notice how, um... important almost anything can be made to look if it's simply matted and signed? Why izzat?

Dixie #10: River Street • Savannah, Ga

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I had to come a great distance
To find these feelings.

And now they have come
A great distance to find you.

They are an old new message
In a new old bottle...

Addressed to the finder.

Dixie #9: River Street • Savannah, Ga

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Hush for a moment along River Street. If you gaze intently as a cartoon-watching child you’ll feel it… an echo… of Bourbon St.

It’s a waft of bawdy Southern culture… the one that comes out at night along the waterfronts of Dixie’s cities – hawking the teasey patina and paint of fading flashy ladies waiting for the sailors.

Dixie #8: Hush... Don't Wake It

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In school, photographers have been taught to pre-visualize so that the result will conform to their, and the client's, expectations. And for most of the genres of photography (forensic, fashion, wedding, sports, etc.)... this is perfect advise. But for art photography, the principles are broader.

Of course I frequently set out with an idea or a feeling that I want to capture. But today, we get two bites at the apple. We can pre-visualize before we click the shutter. And/or we can pre-visualize as we bring our images up in Aperture, LightRoom, Bridge, or whatever application you use to sort pictures. In this second place we can pre-visualize before the post processing.

This is a new space for photography in most cases. Oh sure there were artists in the old days who did spectacular enhancements in the darkroom. These were the pioneers for the digital enhancements we can now achieve.

Which means that in art photography the whole needn’t be the sum of its parts. Putting parts together is adding thoughts and feelings to them through the new power we have to express our imaginations. We can arrange pieces of moments the same way that novelists can arrange facts. And the final result needn't mimic reality at all.

Dixie #7: River Street • Savannah, Ga

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Dixie #6: River Street • Savannah, Ga.

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Dixie #5: But... Izzit Art?

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Ever been to Tybee Island, Georgia? Been into the biggest restaurant on the beach? If you have, you've seen this (welll the male half of you have). Okay, so why's it here?

(1) It is one of the most colorful sites on Tybee. Somehow it sums up my feelings about my visit. It's a good humored good-ole-boy scruffy place. Um... colorful.

(2) In 1917 Marcel Duchamp went down into art history by submitting a porcelain urinal from a plumbing equipment manufacturer which he mounted on wood and signed R. Mutt. He then submitted it into an UN-juried art show. It was refused. Now notice the show was UN-juried and yet the organizers wouldn't allow him to exhibit what he called, "Fountain". It whipped up a furor over who decides what is art.

Look at the color of this image. Look at the texture. Look at the formality of the composition, the shape, the form... And of course look at the lighting. I get grief for my enhancements. Folks who insist that images must look, well, 'real' don't like the way I carve holes into my images through post processing techniques that allow the viewer fly through the image plane into their own narrative.

So here's a non-enhancement. But... but... it still provides a plane ride, right? Is it art? Was Duchamp's 'Fountain'?

Hope so, but it's your call...

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No need for a virgin image today... up there... that's it.

Dixie #4: River St. • Savannah, GA

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My friend Craig Tanner's crib is Savannah, Ga. And he guides the fresh eyes of gifted photographers in his workshops around the old South's grand city. Eventually they come to River Street. Unfortunately my eyes are no longer fresh, dimmed by many visits over the last thirty years or so. But like Craig, I'm compelled to take them down to River Street at least once a year to grab images, ideas, and feelings from the characters and color of this crusty seaport.

So? Wuddaya think?


Let me go farther into this image in more detail as a result of some questions from viewers...

I try to conceptualize what I'm after... what I want an image to say. The triptych form is almost cheating... it lets me expand the canvas and to create more sophisticated texture. You know, cram a greater range of nuance into the thing through collage.

So the question I wrestled with yesterday was about "Fresh Eyes" on River Street. And then there is the whole double meaning thing of "Fresh". Plus I was anxious to gently have fun with the wonderful character studies generally seen in Savannah portraits. Lastly I wanted to subtly create a sense of place. But different from a lot of my past takes on River Street...

Particularly studies of the street itself as a character. Click here to see an example

Or if you like, click here to see a number of my prveious years' River Street and Savannah images (including street portraits).


If you've been to River Street in Savannah you know that it is a epicenter for tourists, prol-food restaurants, bars, ancient buildings which once created the enormous wealth of this city that have been repurposed for instantaneous commercial fun, and yeah... a number of shops where ticky is losing a wrestling match with tacky.

So... how to wrap all of that into one image for viewers who lack so much of that context? Huh? Huh? Huh? How to create an image that is fun all by itself, but can pull people who want to take the trip through it to explore the underlying thoughts and feelings?

Hmmm... since this was about "Fresh" eyes... Howzabout I take a gaggle of faceless tourists and mix em up with the saucy eyes of some ticky-shop denizens? What is the feeling of this River Street place? Can you pile together its parts to create something greater? Like a lot of my stuff, its conceived to give you a moment's reward, or more if you wanna hang around for the show.

Long way around... but that's what I was after... when I dropped that gang of menu-viewers between the two other characters of River Street. It's all in the 'fresh' eyes from either side that tie the entire thing into a narrative... Um... I hope..

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And here my friends are the virgin images fresh from today's FlashCard.

Dixie #3: The Bridge

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Eventually life presents us with a bridge.


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And here is the virgin image from the FlashCard...

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

Back For A Week In dixie

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The deep South in Summer. Yesterday's humidity was 100% at 10:30 am. The mosquitoes swarmed thick as swamp vapors. This guy wanted to get a bass before it got hot.

I'm grabbing a part of this feeling for myself, and part of me from the feeling. They're not entirely separable things all caught up in an image of soon-to-be-evaporated-memory. Each time I return the image will release a foggy ether of something I shared... The image will be the memory... Or at least its color, shape, and form, sounds and smells.

And behind this image... Can you feel the way the rod sits in his hand? The way he steers with his knees? And the satisfaction he's got rocking there deep in this bayou, content in a placid silence where light, heat, water, and peace all swirl from the mists?

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Here's the virgin image.

Viejo Si. Pero, Muy?

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“Muy viejo,” the man held it out to me, this black piece of clay-coated pottery. He plucked some of the earth away. “Mire, él es antiguo,” he insisted, hefting the thing mostly encased in an earthen ball. He wanted me to hold it.

BACKSTORY: Early June in 1966. We’d ridden out of Bogotá at 5 AM and by 9 the Land Rover brought us up into the Andes where, just above the tree line, we mounted ponies. By noon we passed through a place too small to be called a village… along a trail that was just a deep hoof-etched crack into the rich dark earth.

And there this man walked along beside us, showing me a piece of thing, hidden mostly within a ball of dried mud. “Ciento cincuenta pesos,” He wanted, about fifteen dollars.

“Offer him diez pesos,” a friend laughed from behind. I did, he took it, and I slid the thing into a saddle bag. Late that night as we drove back to the city, beneath the mud I found a black cup which might hold 16 ounces of liquid.

See, see the scar above the face where it probably cracked in cooling? There’s a chip out of the head where it meets that break. And there’s another chip on the base at the bottom-right just beyond where you can see in this image. Some mud still clings in there.

The crafting is primitive. Look there at the top where the handle meets the cup at how the surface is uneven. For a half century it’s held pens atop my desks. The thing’s a time capsule. I look at it and remember that day’s adventure and the things which happened within minutes of meeting the man.

None of that’s the point here. And it’s taken me a long while to get to it, eh?

What I recently began to wonder about was whether our images were art or something else. Suppose fifty or sixty years from now someone comes upon one of them. Will they pluck from it a capsule of ideas or feelings that we’d packed carefully inside? Will they find a message or will they find at most some piece of our culture? Some jagged chunk of this part of the century which echoes some of the things which we collected through our lives about what and where we are?

Will they find art or artifact in our work? A pencil holder that will get trashed with our stuff when it’s finally collected by whoever survives us, or something that contributes to a deeper reflection? Are we sending off answers to any questions?

I’m putting the pencils back now into that cup.