Bosporus Sun

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Squint in the glare
Of summer.
Not though from
The sun's searing light.

Squint at Turkey's
Deep color.
Un-bleached from
The day's blasting bright.

Along Istanbul's Bosporus • July 2011 • Canon EOS 7D • Canon EF-S10-22mm @ f/3.8, 1/320, ISO200 • 4 panel pano • custom dynamic enhancements in PS4:AlienSkin: Various textures created in SnapArt3, Custom brushes. Sky imagined in PS4.

The Grubb Mansion, Lancaster

<- Click here Almost next to my home sits the Lancaster Museum of Art inside of the restored 18th century Grubb Mansion. Behind the museums Musser Park occupies a city block. The park’s bordered on all sides by largely single family homes which also pre-date the Civil War by fifty to a hundred years. The Museum’s recently announced the appointment of a new Executive Director. My wife and I will hold a reception next month to introduce her to the Musser Park and Historic District neighbors. We need an illustration for the front of the invitation…. Here it is. I’m anxious to capture the dignity of the old building, and its haunting personality. Moreover, it seemed correct to present it at dawn… together with the mood of a new day for the director and this grand old lady of urban art. Canon G10, 6 panels merged in PS4: Topaz Adjust5 (custom settings), Original textures designed in Alien Skin: Exposure 4 (custom settings). dynamic range spot layered in PS4.

Ike Spake...

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"Things are more like they are now than they ever were before."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th president of the United States


During the 50s, the Technicolor order of the time irritated intellectuals who detested the glue that held the cultural moment together.

Daddies worked in grey flannel or denim so that mommies could raise kids in families that drove to Dairy Queen for a weekend after-church treat. One job was good enough to handle all of that with health care, and pension dreams... During the 50s, when there was too much sun.

Things are less like that now than they ever ware before... Eh? And intellectuals have bleached away the Technicolor sheen from memories snap-shot... during the 50s.

Biking just out of Lancaster I stalked Ike's thoughts in the squint-glare of mid-day. Canon G10, ISO 200, 30.5mm at f/3.2. PP in PS4 w/AlienSkin: Exposure 4: high contrast enhanced AnscoChrome faded. Filter custom designed w/SnapArt3 - tailored layering of impasto rendered as cellphone strokes.

Christmas 2012 (1)

Went to visit the grand nieces... Hard to imagine of the holiday without kids lurking somewhere, eh?

1. Here's the eldest... Katelyn, she's three with the specter of 10 month Samantha growing in the background. First born's first Christmas with the baby crawling about in Samantha's wake.... Heh... heh... heh...

2. Katelyn though is old enough to glow from the Christmas moment...

3.Tiny Samantha though's getting the idea about glowing lights and sparkly packages... and the attention that baby's attract...

4. And off in the corner sit the gang from Katelyn's Christmases past...

Merry and happy everyone... I'll mine these flash card throughout the winter. Funny how we squirrel away these hundreds of nuts to feed us into the darkest and coldest months... eh?

Just Like The Ones....

Merry, blessed, holy, happy, loving... And all of the other joys of whatever you Enjoy with those around you And those you recall. All my best everyone...

Ted

That's my own little blue Ford.

Canon 7D: Canon EFS 17-85mm (f4-5.6): Macro mode, PS-4: Filtered through Alien Skin's Bokeh 2.

Pastoral

Artists stalk
The unexpected feeling…
To wall mount.

Canon G10: PS4 – Custom textures, AlienSkin: SnapArt•OilPaint – Custom settings & layer brushes. AlienSkin: Exposure4: Custom lighting. AlienSkin: BlowUp3 (500%)

Settings: Bargers: Chevy Chase, MD • Woods: Lancaster County, PA, Sky: Custom textures

Summer Brideg

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"What''ll it be when I grow up?"

The boy wondered as he hugged to the bridge.

"What's over there waiting?" he thought.

"What's on that side of the life's oddly shaped ridge?"

Did he want to go, he wondered?

Did he need to leave this summer place?

"Can't I stay here feeling a while?

Can't I just hold onto this glowing-soft space?"

Summer sprays its indelible inks

Upon memories of the moments we clung

To our first sense of the coming span of time

and the soft-warm moment of feeling so young.

Sunset On Middle Street

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“Just once,” the old worker muttered,

“Just once in anyone’s lifetime I’d like to see…”

(Was that a tear? Or did the sun make him squint?)

“Just once I’d like to see…

a recession start in Washington. Or at least…”

(Yeah, it was a tear…)

“Finally hit the hundreds of thousands of bastards down there gettin’ fat…”

He shrugged toward his mailbox hung on crumbling bricks

“Off the bills they cram into that!
Winter’s comin’,” He whispered. 

“We gotta’ make ’em STOP!”

Late August’s sun lowered over Middle Street.

Sunday evening. Canon G10, Topaz custom enhancements, spot masked dynamic range adjustments, OnOne Hollywood Glow.

Ambition's Peak

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The big reach up from

A small town’s dreams

Ended at the peak

Of it’s tallest

Building…

Back then.

Do you hear talk of RECOVERY? How nations and states and cities and towns will rebound? Have you ever looked around to wonder how many never recovered the roar of the 1920s? Has Argentina? Has Moscow? Has Cincinnati? How much ambition and hope expired eleven, twelve, or thirteen stories up… up there at the roofline of a town’s tallest building? When the Roaring Twenties went… mute.

The Griest Building, Lancaster, PA.

Canon 20D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm (f3.5-4.5), PS 4: Custom cloud textures, Topaz Adjustment, AlienSkin Exposure 4 (custom settings), SnapArt3: custom watercolor, custom wet brushes, spot-added color shifting adjustment layers.Created to be printed 5’ on vertical edge

Just Off Nantucket

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From boat-deck.

August, Summer, Hot, Night.

Canon, 7D, Canon EFS 17-85 (f4-5.6), PS4: AlienSkin: SnapArt3, Impasto, custom brushes.

NYC: 5th Ave. At Central Park

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Consensus disciplines perception

Perception focuses judgment

Judgment triggers conviction

Conviction colors streets nasty.

Found on July 12th 2012 as I walked along 5th Avenue.

Canon 7D, Canon EFS 17-85mm (f4-5.6), PS4: Topaz Adjustment, Custom texture, AlienSkinExposure 4: Color Films – Polaroid/faded-darkened, Snap Art Blow Up 3 (300% enlargement). Custom spot-applied color shift adjustment layers, original created to be printed at 27" X 36".

Crayon New York City °1

In high July color

Bubbles and melts.

Like flamed-plastic toys.

Like feeling-seared film.

I walked through New York’s mid-day tropics… Storing stuff in my memory-bin that’s marked Summer In The City. I found new image puddles – left out in the noon-day sun – that melted right over those I’d stored in that bin before. These new ones were like casings to harden around stacked feelings that burble and glow when I poke around for memories of city summer.

Crayoned Impressionism: Canon 7D, Canon EFS 17-85mm (f4-5.6), PS4: Two square details carved from a 3 panel vertical pano, Topaz Adjustment, AlienSkinExposure 4: Color Films - Polaroid/faded-darkened, Snap Art3: Crayon. Custom spot-applied color shift adjustment layers, original created to be printed at 30" X 60".

Epiphany or Serendipity

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As you swirl your

Stew of meaning

With a spoon of craft...

Do you discover

That epiphany is

Serendipity?

Here's a runner preparing for Lancaster's Race Against Racism on a cool April morning. The thing about the Race Against Racism is that.... Nobody loses... Y'know what I'm saying'?

Canon 7D, Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens, PS4: Custom texture screen, Alien Skin: Exposure 4/Color Films - vintage/Autochrome

4th of July '12: Moods

Don't know where I want to go with this... First I thought, "Why not show this girl like... well, here?

But then she seemed happier, like this.

.. So.... Wuddaya think? Low key? High key? You got any key preferences?

See, the deal is, I'm diddling with mood. It's astonishing how the key... the chord... changes feeling, eh? So musical. Right?

Took this out in the garden in the early morning light with my Canon 7D. Used the Canon 17-85 EFS zoom lens and manually focused close up in its macro mode. But the fun came in processing. See, I walked out front onto the Lancaster City street and grabbed a way-out-of-focus shot down the sidewalk through the tree canopy toward the oncoming traffic which now switches on headlights in daytime.

Okay... I used that street scene as a filter layer... see the bokeh in blue? Those are the auto lights. Right... Topaz's Adjustment let me play with various strengthening effects, and I masked them in at key spots to emphasize different textures and shadowings. Of course I adjusted the dynamic range throughout thanks to the latitude which RAW images allow. AlienSkin's Exposure 4 came next... and again, I employed a bunch of different adjustments on different PS4 layers, masking them into the various crags and crooks of the flower's body. Finally a curves adjustment layer let me paint in shadowy depth.

Of course the process varied in each of these images so that in the first image low key could be explored and high key emphasized in the other. Even though I'd intended to conceptualize the extremes of mood, it's still wonderful to discover so many unexpected alternatives during the processing.

In fact, there's no such thing anymore as "post-processing" from the moment of conception, through collecting images, into the computer exploration... it is now all just "processing". How many tools we've got as visual artists today! What a wonderful time, huh?

Gallery Row °1

"The past is permanence," the girl smiled.

"It whispers to us. Directs and guides."

"But... but..." I wondered. "What if we don't hear?"

Her look turned thoughtful, "We always hear.That's not the point."

"Um, what _is_ the point then?"

She quieted for a time then swept her hand along this street's facade...

"How distinctly it whispers. See? See? Does that murmur loudly enough to understand?"

A portion of Gallery Row early on a June Saturday along N. Duke St. in Lancaster, Pennsylvania._

Canon EOS 7D, Canon EFS 17-85mm (f4-5.6) in RAW/RGB space,PS4: Various spot adjustments to enhance dynamic range, Topaz Adjust 5, Mixed media... photographic with AlienSkin; SnapArt 3: OilPaint applied as. custom textures through spot layers. Color space altered to SRGB for web display.

Original: 60X26"

Once Upon A Mid-Summer's Night

The less you try to

Make sense of each

Of summer's tiny parts

The more that

The whole thing of

Summer makes...

Sense.

Lancaster Catholic High School has a summer fair. It's a-swirl with memories past-made, mixing with memories now-making. And it files itself somewhere in a folder labelled "Summer" which, when we open it ever-after looks... well... like this. Right?

Hot Saturday Night at the Lancaster Catholic late June Fair, 2012

Canon 7D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm (f3.5-4.5), PS 4: Custom brushes and textures, layered diddlings with dynamic range then... Topaz Adujstment, AlienSkin: Adjustment 4: Polaroid Creamy Brown Highlights, OnOne: {Perfect Effects3 (custom), AlienSkin: SnapArt3: variations of Crayon as a texture screen.

NOTE: Filters are tools, much like a painter uses different implements to move, build, apply, and texturize oils. Hence I use various filters in Photoshop layers and then spot apply them to reveal my concept.

Water Street Bindery

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Here's a house and a half... Circa. 1730 along Water Street in downtown Lancaster, Pa. a couple of blocks from my house on Sunday morning May 27, 2012. That's my bike there by the bindery. It was one of those days when scattered thunderstorms lead to summer sunlight shining through sudden rain..

Canon G10, 4 vertical image pano, PS4: Alien Skin: employing Snap Art 3: Watercolor as spot filtering.

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!

Aura °14: Narrative

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Photographic art is a

Perpetually running

Narrative machinery.

The Aura Series.... °14: Narrative

"There is no reality...

Only perception." - _Dr. Phil_

Face paint guy... Race Against Racism: Lancaster, Pa

Canon 7D: Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens, PS4: Topaz 5, OnOne, PerfectEffects 3, AlienSkin: Exposure 4. Custom motion filters, custom brushes.

Mono By Three

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And here's a bigger version, click to enlarge it.

Some animals fail
To see in color
Which may mean that they
Can know things that
People may never
Know.


For over forty years I shot overwhelmingly in B&W denied spontaneous access to colors by the complexity of processing and a kid's wallet. So now, when I see artists working in monochrome I wonder why they've performed such serious surgery on their imaginations. But... but... sometimes I hear a tiny voice,

"Ted," it whispers... "remember me? Remember when we were more than friends for countless hours in an orange-dark room? Remember my scent of Dektol and how my fixer turned your fingernails a mottled mahogany? Remember how I left my traces on your clothes,,, spotted and smelly? And remember how I revealed your imagination in those steel pans? You do," the voice cooed.... "You do remember me...."

Lancaster's _Race Against Racism_ April, 2012... A contestant warms her hands against the early spring chill... Canon 7D: Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens, Spot Focus. PS4: custom layering, AlienSkin: Exposure 4: Tri-X, pushed four stops.

Auras 12: Samantha Grace

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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?

Aura11: Perception

Auras °5: Noise In The Neurons

Auras filter facts

Through the soapstone

Of feelings and Myths

To become what

We understand even

When we don't

Know... answers.

The Aura Series °5: Noise In The Neurons

*

Self portrait

Canon 7D, Canon EFS 17-85 (f4.5-5.6), PS4: Custom brushes, AlienSkin: Bokey 2, Topaz Adjust 5, AlienSkin Exposure4 - Custom texturing layers.

Aura °3

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Auras filter facts
Through the soapstone
Of feelings and myths
To become what
We understand even
When we don’t
Know… Answers.


The Aura Series…. °3

Lancaster, PA – Street portrait

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 °2

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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

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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

Not Whether... How?

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Minutes till start.
Done it before.
Can do it better.
Will!

Not whether…
How?

Canon 7D, Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens 300mm, f5.61/60, ISO 360, hand-held

PS4: Custom texture, PerfectPhotoSuite6, Topaz Adjust 6: custom settings,

Burst Of Swagger

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Escape? Lemme tell ya’…
That’s what you paid for…

Trample the detonator to throttle
A screeching stench of tearing rubber…
Neck-snapping…
Fantasy rush.

Each one of these babies came
With a full charge of swagger.

Say every girl didn’t swoon
At this rocketing past…

Hell…
You believed it…
And perception… that’s a
Big-assed part of truth.
Right?

Were you mistaken?
Like, you gotta’ know,
If you don’t make mistakes…
You ain’t making nothin’.

After that reckless feeling that came with each of these cars… The guy-fantasy of pulling on a super-hero costume that made little-pimply you invisible inside it’s sleek exoskeleton. Every fourteen year old boy’s cloak of seduction. Within this beast you were the rocker who became a movie star with an explosive ball of light beneath your foot. Or at least you figured you’d be all of that if somehow.. you could only grow up to buy one.

Canon 40D, Table top art, PS4: custom filters, AlienSkin: SnapArt3: Water Color, Alien Skin Bokeh2: Custom settings, Exposure4 – custom effects.

Love-Worned and Abandoned

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Sad how it seems
When your past forms your dreams
Of that time when
Wishes came true.

Then no one was lonely
Back when love was there only
For you.

What is more poignant than a lonesome little thing dreaming – of finding one more hug? She stood there tagged in life’s shadows… Eyes closed… dreaming of what? New love? Old love? Any…. love?

Canon 40D, PS4: AlienSkin Exposure 4, Custom textures

Chris Herr's Rotary Memorial Resolution

Rotary asked me to compose and read a memorial resolution for my friend Chris Herr. Fearing I'd break up as I read it, instead I pulled together this short slideshow. Hope it links properly here. Lemme know, K?

A Tree Grows In Ephesus

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Its roots growing into a Grecian cellar, its limbs embracing a Latinate erection… A tree thrives in the Turkish air above what was once… the greatest city of its age… second only in size to Rome.

And now the mighty port city, trapped miles inland from the Aegean…. houses only marble ghosts… And trees like this that suckle upon subterranean leavings of empires down where legends feed the hungry roots.

Canon 7D, PS4, Topaz Adjust 5, Perfect Photo Suite

Found a Tree In Ephasus

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Paradise Panels

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What is the difference
Between picturing
A truck and
Pondering
Truckiness?

And if something
Is trucky yet just
Pieces of
Things that are
Trucky-like
Have we then
Merely pondered
Trucks?

The truck ruins sit garaged, or barned in a place nearby to Paradise, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. And since I found it in parts… it seemed best displayed… in panels, huh?

great big

Canon G10, PS4, Topaz Adjust 5, Custom photo-pop brushes and texture screens.

Rockier Still

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Well, it's interesting to discover from the mail I've received about the Cappadocia Fairy Chimneys that most people were, like me, unaware of them. Fact is they were a delightful surprise when my host bought us there. Apparently Turkey has a treasure here that so many have never heard of. Unfortunately for me our schedule got us there at the worst time of day for the sun was glaring down almost directly. Oh well... That's what a lifetime of technical experience prepares us for, right?

So... here's a three shot pano with some heavy PhotoShop lifting to recover the dynamic range sufficiently so that shadows and highlights are not terribly lost. It's a bit more detailed than my previous Fairy Tunnel explorations.

Canon 7D, Pano stitched together in PS4.

Winter Nears Blue Ball

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When you’re in summer,
The warm goes on forever
And winter’s little more than
A figment at day’s end.

When you’re in winter
Each wind is much colder than
The memory of summer’s
Way of making things live.

Near Blue Ball, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

Canon G10, PS4, Topaz, AlienSkin: SnapArt, Water Color, Custom textures and brushes.

Fairy Tale

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There’s a living space
Behind a tree
Dug in the rock face
Where fairies lived.



Or that’s what they say
To explain it
There off the roadway
Long here abandoned.

Empty of all proof
Of the digger’s
Not really being
An ancient fairy.

Some Fairy Chimneys of Cappadocia, Turkey.

Canon 7D, 4 image pano, PS4: Custom textures and brushes, Topaz Adjust 5, Alien Skin: Xenofex2: Fluffy Clouds, Exposure 4: Jaws Color Shift: Custom Adjustments. Custom plaster filter.

Good Morning Florence

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An oarsman snaps
His way along the
Mirrored Arno.

The light enwraps
Its coat over the
Ancient feeling.

Canon 40D, PS4: custom brushes, Topaz, AlienSkin: Exposure4: Color Slide: Agfa RSXII 100 <- My favorite film ever!

Pepper Fears Children

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It’s seventy years since
A nasty kid
Broke off her Salt’s head
And left him dying
In a puddle of powder.

Now she peers wildly
Maddened by the nearest giggle
Hoping to hide from
Hands unable to tell
Play from cruelty.

Canon 7D, PS4: Topaz Adjust5, Alien Skin: Bokeh 2, Exposure 4: Kodachrome II (1962-1974), Custom pop-spot texturing.