The Mindful Eye Challenge

The Mindful Eye is a forum which can be found here. It's a comfortable group of photographers of varying experience that was formed years ago by the gifted Craig Tanner and friends to develop technical and aesthetic talent nascent among its members. It's since developed into a community of supportive people who will criticize and comment. Recently they asked me to lead a community member challenge. Flattered I agreed and challenged them to create images which communicated the passing of time. The only restriction was that they could not use any device in their images which specifically measured time, such as clocks, sundials, hourglasses... like that. I posted a reference picture of mine as an example of what I meant....

A number of the members took my challenge which ended last Saturday. I promised to provide comments on their submissions by tomorrow night (9/23/13) on TME. Here, for your review and comment are their submissions. Enjoy...

Bike Freedom

Once upon a time

Maybe last week

I was well... well-er

Maybe it was yesterday.

And my bike was

Freedom. 

I could go... and go

And there were no tanks

Or batteries

To make limits.

And I was eight

And the wind whipped

Through my mind

And my hair.

And there was

Everywhere that

I could go.

Wind whipping

Pedaling

Free as my bike

And the mind-wind

And maybe..

Maybe it was yesterday?

That I had hair

And mind

For the wind to whip

And freedom...

Bike freedom...

Was I eight again

Yesterday?

Time Passes

Had this challenge, "Communicate the concept of time passing without showing any timing machines (clocks, hourglasses, metronomes... like that)." So, I did this. Wuddaya think? Huh? Huh? Huh?

I'm way behind... Soo... let's go huh?

I've been away, then working, then the dog ate my  homework :-) Soooo.... Howzabout I upload almost a dozen and hope someone likes something? Lemme know K and I'll tell ya the story around the image you might like.

A) Let me first return to Ireland:

1. Here's my major favorite... a street scene from downtown Dublin..

2. Wanna get stoned? Visit Blarney Castle..

B. I'll come back to Ireland in the next upload but I've also been shocked by a guy who wondered what he'd feel like after retiring from a senior management position...

D. Then there were the girls already set for their own job interviews at BoyFriends R. Us... 

E. I went back to the archives to look again at Hank's Love Shack in the now razed Lancaster Stock Yards which has become a job creating high tech industrial park. Love the sunset here...

F. Okay, while revisiting the abandoned Stock Yards some six years ago I wandered along what was, once-upon-a-time the main street of America's second largest stock yards at the turn of the 20th century.. The jungle returned..

G. Up in New England two weeks ago I visited my buddy Joe and his grandson Matt. Great moment, eh?

H, Sunrise on Cape Cod... The bayside after the storm... From a 3 panel pano..

I. My friend Andreas and I roamed the streets of Florence a few years ago on an early morning photo shoot. We got separated and I found an early morning market... Tried entering this image in a show a year or so ago. It got rejected... They didn't know how to categorize it. Wasn't art huh?

I. Since the Stockyard file was open, I decided to revisit an image that I originally worked in 2006. It's fun to see how much I've changed.. maybe learned. Regardless, it's also fun to assess the emotional change that the image now evokes in me...

J. Which brings me to a Sunday bike ride in the very early morning this month through the streets a couple blocks from my home here in Lancaster... This is where Grant Alley crosses Shippen Street. We're looking into the sun searing down Grant.

Okay, I'm kind of caught up. Unfortunately I've not yet reduced a small smattering of images that I've formatted for printing with dimensions way too large to post. I'll get them formatted soon. Comments anyone? Suggestions? 

OMG! A Ghastly Pink Horror!

“They used to be everywhere… And now they’re not anywhere. And I don’t know where any…” Her wet eyes jerked about fixing on this and that…

“Wait,” I reached at her arm but she pulled away. “Wait… What? Who? Used to…”

“The birds! The Birds! The flamingos… FLAMINGOS! ” Her voice screeched as her hair whipped about, knuckles pressed against her cheeks. “I finally… Last night… I went out looking because once they were all over the place. Like a giant flock had landed on lawns, Y’know? And by driveways… On the porches… And you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing them…” Her words spat, spat, spat.

“You went looking last night for Flamingos? You mean those pink things on the lawns?”

“YESSSSS! Oh yes. Where are they? They were everywhere, remember? You remember don’t you? Say you remember. SAY IT! And suddenly they weren’t anywhere. So last night I went out where I last saw one… Out by the stream. Out in the woods… I saw their crazy faces. There’s a war on. They must be stopped from…!!! And I know now! I KNOW, I TELL YOU! ”

Her body froze with that look that you see when people watch a roller coaster buck a rider from off of its highest point… “The Flamingoes… I KNOW WHERE THEY”VE GONE! ”

****+++***

Found this warrior  through my Canon 7D  at _South Of The Border_. Found the pink  thingee on a lawn near Reading, PA. The brook runs through a Lancaster County farm. Mashed them together in PS4 using AlienSkin's Exposure 5 to affect the moody sense of weirdness through a film emulation that almost brooded upon the dynamic range. 

Cliffs, Crags, Prows

Looming ships of

Ancient giants

Slice deep and 

Through foamed

Enigma.

The Cliff of Mohr guard the southwest coast of Ireland. Imperfectly though: Their walls breached by Celts, Vikings, Normans, and Brits - but never by Romans. 

Confronted by mid-day sun – The photographer's nightmare – I chose a hand held five piece panorama with my Canon 7D through its ES-S17-85mm at f/14 - 1/400 dialing an ISO of 1000. Then significant stitching and post processing with PS4 involving custom textures and various adjustments layering with AlienSkin and Topaz Suite tools. In order to deal with the searingly burnt-out mid-day skies, the clouds are hand painted in PS4 as are the mists. 

Reconsolidation

Reconsolidation: Some profession, maybe the psychologist's, created that word which means, "the moment you remember is the moment you forget." Here's a promontory poking from Northern Ireland's Giant's Causeway into the gush of the North Sea. Immovable object slams into irresistible force. Or maybe the other way around? 

The camera stops time in sharp focus... but reality does neither of those things. Impressionism explains memory from a stream of glances. It's been written that, "an artist's vision is centered in wonder rather than in an eye." Art pokes into recollections to pluck out what we cannot see. Never saw. What we remembered or felt. Feeling's what impressions are about. 

Art without wonder is merely craft.

The Giant's Causeway's southern end sits here on the Northern Coast of Ireland pointing toward it's other side eleven miles to Scotland. It is one of Britain's most visited natural site. See that sky, only minutes before it drove a May hailstorm hard at us.

Canon 7D, EF-S17-85mm, ISO 150,  Triple image pano knit in PS4 for dynamic range adjustments. 

Pieced-Impressions

Dunno where in Ireland I captured this. We watched thousands of these homes drive past our windows. They filled my memory with their colors, boxed shapes, and tidy; lines, walks and alleys. 

They weren't like American memories... not exactly. They weren't like European memories... not exactly. But they weren't foreign. Weren't exotic. They fit onto my story arc comfortably: Abstract pieces of box-color with plenty of fireplaced-space inside.. Each with doorways that open, uninterrupted by porches or stoops, directly onto the world's-rush. The world that bussed us past their un-barred windows to leave a sense of color-brushed security.


Canon 7D, EF-S17-85mm, ISO 1000,   AlienSkin: Snap Art 3: various layers of mixed media, Exposure 5, Kodachrome 20 ASA. Custom textures/brushes.Hand drawn sky and features to reveal pieced impressions.

Killarney Sweet Shop

I live in America's Amish country. The old order has largely stopped its technological clock somewhere in the middle of the 19th century. The towns of Ireland, I've found, have stopped their urban  street clocks somewhere in the late 1930s or pre-war 40s. So much seems as familiar as nostalgia. Here on Killarney's Market street's a powerful example... Look at the candies in the crystal jars. Can you read the flavors? These are the penny-sticks lurking almost beyond memory of most of us today. Killarney, like most of Ireland's small cities, is a well-crafted memory.

Canon 7D, EF-S17-85mm, ISO 300,  Double image pano in PS4 for dynamic range adjustments. Custom brushes/textures. AlienSkin: SnapAr3 Custom Textured oil for shadow texture/vignetting, tExposure 5,Agafachrome to capture rich European 50s color depth.

Dunluce Castle's In Ruin!

Okay, yeah... it's a hair pretentious, huh? But fun though. I found this frame among the collection at the National Gallery in Washington. They let us photograph all of the masterpieces since, well, we own them... Right? Anyway, the image is another one I grabbed last month in Ireland.... Here's the scoop... This is

Dunluce Castle is a now-ruined 13th century medieval castle in Northern Ireland. It is located on the edge of a basalt outcropping in County Antriim, and is accessible via a bridge connecting it to the mainland. The castle is surrounded by extremely steep drops on either side, which may have been an important factor to the early Christians and Vikings who were drawn to this place where an early Irish fort once stood.

In 2011, major archaeological excavations found significant remains of the "lost town of Dunluce", which was razed to the ground in the Irish uprising of 1641. It may have contained the most revolutionary housing in Europe when it was built in the early 17th century, including indoor toilets which had only started to be introduced around Europe at the time, and a complex street network based on a grid system. 95% of the town is still to be discovered.kay, yeah... it's a hair pretentious, huh? But fun though. I found this frame among the collection at the National Gallery in Washington. They let us photograph all of the masterpieces since, well, we own them... Right? Anyway, the image is another one I grabbed last month in Ireland.... Here's the scoop... This is


Dunluce Castle is a now-ruined 13th century medieval castle in Northern Ireland. It is located on the edge of a basalt outcropping in County Antriim, and is accessible via a bridge connecting it to the mainland. The castle is surrounded by extremely steep drops on either side, which may have been an important factor to the early Christians and Vikings who were drawn to this place where an early Irish fort once stood.

In 2011, major archaeological excavations found significant remains of the "lost town of Dunluce", which was razed to the ground in the Irish uprising of 1641. It may have contained the most revolutionary housing in Europe when it was built in the early 17th century, including indoor toilets which had only started to be introduced around Europe at the time, and a complex street network based on a grid system. 95% of the town is still to be discovered.

And now for the GeekStuff: Canon 7D, w/Canon EF-S17-85 IS USM, F/16@1/800, ISO 1000. 6 image pano, merged in PS4: AlienSkin, SnapArt... mixed media: Oil, Watercolor.

The Great Hunger: 1845-52

Once upon a time, England ruled a conquered Ireland. It's native Irish people labored as tenants – forbidden by British law to vote or own land – paid in the potato crop they raised on a quarter acre of marginal land allotted to each tenant family. The rest of the rich earth produced corn, grain, vegetables, and livestock as rent for the British – frequently absentee – landlords. Between 1845 and 1852 a virus annihilated only potatoes, while the majority of remaining land produced rich yields for export. There was abundant food, but none made available to the Irish tenants who farmed it. They starved by the millions suffering not in a great famine but a Great Hunger. Other millions emigrated, many to America, Canada, and Australia. The country has never regained that mid 19th century population.

In Dublin stand these specters of The Great Hunger's victims.

Canon 7D, Canon EFS 17-85mm (f4-5.6), PP in PS4 Paint and custom textures created with AlienSkin: SnapArt4, Impasto. Custom brushes.

Invited Up To See His Etchings

At Waterford he sits
Digging into sparkles
Peering from the outside in
To a crystal ball
Filled with
Tomorrow.







We went wandering last week in Ireland (4/28-5/5/13), PP in PS4 to enhance the dynamic range of this etcher's magical aura. AlienSkin Bokeh 3 masked in to create depth.

Bosporus Sun

<– Click here












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?