The 13th

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A friend quit today. Oh, and it snowed. A dirty, icy, sniveling snow. The sort that coats things in hard pebbles. Kid useless snow. It makes things drab, bitter... grey. Today's the thirteenth of the month. I suffer from triskaidekaphobia.

For a rational guy, it's an irrational thing. But sad, or bad, or ugly things have too often happened around the number 13 for me to dismiss it as mere chance.

My Rita says it's a self fulfilling prophecy thing. But did I make my colleague quit today? Did I will my wife to fall in a hospital room numbered 13? And... and... Nope... no need to belabor the grimness of 13th days like this. 13th days that snow dirty, and mark the quitting of a good friend to go otherwhere and leave us missing her.

Damn 13s.

Two Painters And A Blonde

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Can there be a cinematic quality to still photography? The evocative photographer John Sexton thinks so. He feels that the best works capture a flow. That they speak of more than an instant. He says, "Once you make the exposure, you're always looking backward in time."

Hmmmm.... Look at this image i've posted here of a scene from a grassy lane on Nantucket Island. Yeah, in a sense we're looking back upon it. But, as you look around inside the frame, don't you start to take the story farther? Look at the guy on the roof. Look at the model, not looking at the guy on the roof.

I'll tell you something. I'll be the faceless narrator. The painting on that easel puts the woman exactly in that scene, in a vibrant and seductive gown from the early 19th century.

Will you imagine where the storyline goes? And if you do, are you looking backward, or rolling the scene you've never seen... forward?

Yes, I've cranked up the drama of the setting. And yes, I've added a painterly quality to the moment of two painters imagining a beautiful woman somewhere else - in time. The painter at the easel is imagining her backward in history, the painter on the roof is also imagining a beautiful woman, but probably not backward, but forward in time.

And the woman? What is she imagining?

Is there a cinematic quality to this crisp, still, late fall moment in the gardens of a Nantucket Lane? Can you compose the screenplay in your mind?

Grand Daddy's Furniture Marsh

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Arnold Newman thought that, "Photography is 90% moving furniture and 10% inspiration." That late great photographer, like the bulk of artists I've discussed it with, felt that much of his finished work was discovered during the process of creation. Notice... not intentionally sought out, then revealed by technique and craft, but discovered during the application of craft. Yet, there's an organic movement among photographers who cannot abide post processing PhotoShop techniques (PP in PS) which "add stuff" to the picture.

Odd that the greatest artists believe in the creative abilities of process, and yet there are others, mostly amateurs attempting to master their grandfather's photography, who are anxious to replicate the discoveries of say... 1930, or 1960. It's as if generals were brought onto a new battelfield with the ability only to fight the last war.

Look at Marsh#10 I've posted today. It's one of those chestnuts I hid away last Fall so that I could gnaw at them during the fridgedest days of February and March. And as I moved about the furniture in that frame (and as you can see, the frame itself) I discovered the nuances which attracted my eye during that October sunrise over the great Wellfleet marsh. That's not a library sky... nope... it hung up there just like that. This isn't HDR. Nope, that was the tonal range captured by my Canon 20D. I haven't cranked up the color intensities or added polychromatic washes. In fact, I haven't even sharpened the print. It's what my Canon's 10-22mm captured.

But I did create multiple layers of ideas. I have blended and masked them together into this final image which my craft was able to discover among them. Is this "manipulation" or "enhancement"? You know what? It doesn't matter. I brought PS tools to bear in PP which never existed before this moment in time. And I've discovered an image which couldn't have existed before now. The relevant question isn't about PS in PP. The relevant question has to do with whether the image resonates with you and how.

If it does. And does it properly. The photographic based image works. Anyone who denies him/herself those tools - is fighting the last war with grand-daddy's furniture!

Snapshot

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Point and shoot at a Summer day? You decide if this snatch of nostalgia feels like more fantasy than reality... particularly when the February wind-chills are 3 and 4 BELOW zero.
BTW - this scene sort of happened last July 4th along the Susquehanna River across from Columbia Borough - looking South toward the "New" Memorial Bridge. The pilings in the foreground are remains of an older covered bridge that was torched to delay General Lee's soldiers arrival at Gettysburg to the West.

Closing

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Cold, then colder.
Color's out there
I'm not
The house grows
Smaller.

Anyway

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See, what I wanted to do was post a video tonight. I've played with iMovies which came bundled with my new MacBookPro... and made a cool little movie about some of my gear. But... that was three hours ago... I'm sleepy,and I can't figure out how to export the final product in a format which I can post. So... here.... here's a weed. A big weed.
Grumble.
Oh, the weed's okay. Dandelions grow large on Nantucket Island. And I like the way the wide angle lets the thing dominate everything around it. And I like the way that the mid day sun works in this image to create a high key composition that's almost an abstract.
But I'd have liked it better if I could have figured out how to post my video. Damn.

Weary

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Baffled
The warrior
Dreamt of home.
Older

Growth

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Render unto me
your information
And I shall judge it
And by judging
Learn
For even in rejection
There are glowing pebbles

Grand Whirl

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Bustle is what you think about when you think of Metropolis. And an epicenter of bustle is Grand Central Station. How to get that across in the middle of a grey day? And how to portray the abstract concept of busy-ness without losing the sense of New York City? Easy... get a taxi in the image, right?
So? How my doing?

Paul Caponigro -Not

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"Color is too close to the real world,"Paul Caponigro told Kay Kenny for the December 2005 issue of Focus Magazine. He felt that monochrome allows him to pull images into an internal world to manifest an image. Caponigro is one of the greatest living photographic artists, but I disagree that color has to be too close to the real world. In fact, I think the challenge of this generation of photographers is to discover their vision with the astonishingly tack sharp optics, and full dimensional colors which are so simply accessed with today's technology.
I watched this sunset last summer, and pulled up the photograph today. Caponigro credits much of his success to post processing in his wet darkroom. Today's masters need to find success in digital space. Here look, is this color any closer to the real world than a monochrome might be? Is it any less romantic?
And besides, it's February. It's cold. I wanted to go beyond the real world of ice to a place where a warm sun set over twi-light glowing beach grass. That's an escape into an inner world which you've got to admit, is really hot, huh?

Romantic Anxiety

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Seduction is little more than replacing knowledge with persuasion. Which is a workable definition of advertising!

Jersey Boys

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Forget... That's what you do when you haven't been to Broadway for some time. You forget that there's a filtration process and that the people whose product arrives on these stages are the very best that the American theater's got. The writers, directors, producers, musicians, and actors are all at the peak of their crafts and of their careers. So it comes as a startling astonishment to the people like me who get here every few years ... at just how good these people are.
Jersey Boys is about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. It won the awards last year. So these are the best of the best who are working just now. The audience went panty-throwing nuts. Women were hooting, men were shouting, the place rocked. See the way this image explodes! Imagine the pounding melody behind it. And then listen for thousands of hands clapping, and their owners standing up and screaming. You don't have to imagine this... I was one of them. It is that good. This time, I'll try not to forget.

Grim? Nuh-Uh!

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Last Wednesday (January 24th) I said I'd bring you inside of The Barclay at 11 East 48th St., um... then I didn't. Okay... so here's the payoff. Now you see why, on their visits to Metropolis, four generations of Byrnes have hoteled at the Barclay. Questions?

Tripping

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Sunday as we awaited the New York train chugging into Lancaster's station, a steely sky colored things blue as the daybreak's cold. As the winds snapped this door about I realized the box contained a track just as real as the one in the background. Each can take us somewhere. One, at the speed of light, can whip ideas around the globe. The other, more sedately, can start bodies on a worldwide trip. Two doorways here on this 19th century train platform... when do you think the technologies powering the second will match the speed of the first?

Fantasy V. Beauty

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Walking along Macy's windows, each an evocative piece of art, each setting off some sort of fashion statement. And when you add them together, well something nagged at me. You know when you enter a familiar room, and something's out of place, but you can't quite?? Um... You know how you cannot really overcome a sensation that things seem off kilter? And then on that chilly and breezy afternoon I saw her, and FWOOP! The fantasy fashion became as inconsequential as PR hacks proclaiming Angela Jolie, the new Mother Theresa.

2007 Award Winner: Limit-less

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

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The cabs in this image look as if they are skittering about a living room. Everything seems to be reduced to scale. Yet, NYC is beyond any scale. There are two cities in the U.S. that have such a massive presence that it's impossible to back away far enough to capture them with even the widest lens. Every image seems to grab just a detail. The first is this place, the other is Vegas. The difference is that you can dash quickly to Vegas's city limits. Here, there are no limits - if y'know what I'm sayin'?
And yes, this is a rather straight wide-angle shot (about 10mm). Until January 20, the city was increasingly windy and frigid. On January 23, the winds and arctic weather blew back. But for just two days, there was this hole in winter's severity... everywhere except up there... in the sky.

New York State Of Mind

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Dye your hair, you become a blonde. Someone knocks off your hat and you wonder, "Why did he hit me?" Collide your bike and you say, "I ran into a pole!" But these are all things... hair coloring, wigs, implanted boobs, bikes, dentures, hats, suits, heels... wuddever. Still, wear them and you extend yourself, right? Okay... okay... heavy stuff.
My point is that the line between who we feel we are and our immediate environment blurs. Get into a tank,or a big SUV... and we feel stronger, bigger, muscular, lethal!
So the question for the day, boys and girls, is... If you live in NYC, if you are a New Yorker (as opposed to a blonde), are these pictures in any sense - WHO you are? And isn't that different from say the folks who live in E. Dennis on Cape Cod Bay? Or in Lancaster? Waco? Or... well you get the point. So, like, what's the answer? Do these streets make these people different? How?Hmmmm....

Puppy Rocco

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The little guy was three months old when we met him. He lived in a box at a farm, inside of a barn, with other puppies. I think he saw the outdoors and sun the day we brought him home. Which was the day before I took this picture. It was hidden in an old file. The camera was a primitive digital with maybe three magapixels. And there wasn't much light in the bedroom. But somehow all of that works to create a storm of grit and wonder. Notice the only color is in the lens glare there on the lower left. I like that. Rocco's become a good friend. And he's adjusted pretty well to city living outside of his barn cardboard box.

@ Playwrite

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we stopped at the Playwrite for lunch and other things. It's an Irish pub, Chris on the other hand is of German stock. None of which accounts for gin & tonic after Labor Day... Nope, thirst accounts for that. This place is in the middle of the theater district just off of Broadway and served up the piles of corned beef and cole slaw on bread. I sort of hoped we'd catch some actors filling up before their matinees. Still, it's a typical downtown Manhattan bar. Chris will publish a story about out trip in one of his papers next month. As you can see, we captured the flavor, which happened to be, in this case, the flavor of tonic seasoned with gin.

Crammed

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So how to get a feel for a typical street in Manhattan? Well, maybe there's no one 'typical' street, but at least, how about a grab of a scene that would resonate with a New Yorker? I've tried that a bunch of times. And one of the first things I noticed was overload. Details are everywhere. There's so much, in such sharp focus, in so many colors that the jumble actually becomes... Well, you know how your mind is hard wired to find patterns? New York at first fights that, and then it just imposes a different sense of pattern atop whatever you're used to. Here... look at this image. Do I have it? is that 'typical'? Can you hear the horn section?