Half A Friendship

<-Click here

Stu VanOrmer met me years ago by listening to my radio shows. And he was flattering enough to remember when he heard my name at the Ranck’s picnic last week in Strasburg.

Odd thing about what I once did, you try to be honest, genuine and authentic. And if you really succeed – people grow to know you: one way. Whether it’s through reading your writing, seeing you on video, listening to the radio – whatever – a one way friendship is struck. You become trusted by delightful strangers who you rarely meet.

This web has changed that. Now I can throw my stuff onto the virtual byways, and people will respond. Friendships can become two way.

On the Fourth Of July, Steve and I reminisced over times when though we never met - we shared thoughts. And I learned that he is one of America’s finest designers of fine art furniture. And his wife Roberta is an engaging jewelry designer. Don’t believe me? Click here.


And they let me take their picture – as if I’d known them as well as he knew me - which was flattering beyond his ability to understand.

As I processed their portrait I recalled some great artist arguing that the hands were the hardest things to draw. And I realized that Stu’s is the hand of a man who makes precious and very large things out of rare woods. And that’s maybe why, when a hand can reveal so much, that they are so hard to draw.

Even more importantly, I realized as I looked at this image of Stu and Roberta, how thrilled I am that he allowed my ideas into his inventory – all those years ago.

Vicarious

<- Click here

Got rocked today by a posting at Passion N' Frames. Click here to see it. PNF has cranked the power-art dial beyond 10.

And it left me wondering how to-do-dat? How to take an image from the Fourth Of July picnic I'm working on this week - and ramp up the pep. And I also wondered if you would find the image - accessible? If it would leave you going "Wow!" and "Hmmmmm...." - thinking AND feeling what I enjoyed as this image revealed itself.

Background: A momentary downpour submerged the party for some minutes. At first the children raced with the adults toward the trees, when abruptly one screeched, "KICKBALL!" And everyone under 15 scampered back to the softball diamond - playing again like... like kids on the Fourth of July. And I got a chance to picture their wonderfulness, and feel my legs, arms, and body happy like... like... a cavorting boy in the rain.

Sunset Memory

<- Click here
Spoke with my buddy Mick Ranck today. He was, um, startled by the portrait quartet I posted on Sunday. I'm glad that some of you are giving me cover on this week's postings. I kind of hope that there's an artistic thread that sews my week of Fourth of July postings together. Heck, I know that this stuff is art, I just hope it's seen as my art. That somewhere here in all of this that You can sense an authentic-voice-of-Ted, a style, a life-view which makes it a tad unique? Which communicates what I think and feel in a way that's got some value. After all, that's what art is about, right?

Which brings me to today's post. I know from Google Diagnostics how many hundreds upon hundreds of visitors come by here each week and that an astonishing large portion are from way beyond our American borders. And I know that you know that we celebrate our independence each year on July 4th. So I wanted to let you visit pieces of The Rancks' annual party. But instead of showing crowds, flags, and grills loaded up ... I find instead I'm showing dogs, girls, and now today... at twilight a boy of summer.

Every country's annual patriotic celebration is at heart wonderfully romantic. And it's about boys, girls, and dogs. Because it's about a legacy. It's about an idea that we are passing off in celebration to our youth. Just as self preservation is the primary direction to a species... so too is it primary to a culture. In celebration and ceremony we communicate group memories. And maybe some are as simple as a handsome boy, with a great big ball, basking on a carpet of grass that's a-sparkle in the dazzle of a memorable sunset. Maybe it's as simple as the hope that the kids will have many more of these feelings that our celebrations are all about. Eh?

Puddled

<- Click here
Here's beautiful girl standing in a puddle at the Ranck's Fourth of July picnic. She jumped about in the thing until her mom called. And for a moment it occurred to her that she might stop. See! See the thought flit across her face.

But it only happened for this precise moment, and then SPLAAAAASH! SPLAAAAASH! SPLAAAAASH! SPLAAAAASH! SPLAAAAASH! SPLAAAAASH! ...SPLAAAAASH!

This is an authentic moment. The only one where manners, and propriety overcame her. It was an instant when grown-up rules interrupted the child. Didn't last long.

As we mature, those moments lengthen. We pause longer between our puddle leaps. Until we stop splashing around, and call to the child who we see... her feet in the puddle. And it's our turn to inject a crack of adult-ness between - SPLAAAAASH! SPLAAAAASH! SPLAAAAASH! SPLAAAAASH! ...SPLAAAAASH!

Bubba

<- Click here

As you can see below, I'd not expected to post tonight. But I hate to break a tradition just because of some silly excuse like... THE INTERNET!!! GRUMBLE....

Um, anywayzzzz... Last night I posted an image, actually multiple images, of Bubba's master. If Mick Ranck was host of his annual family Fourth of July picnic to which hundreds are invited in Strasburg, then Bubba is the host dog. Everyone knows him. Has for years. His long time grizzled presence is a sign that something important about the world has been revealed. So... in this week of portraits in the Ranck Fourth of July Gallery rooms, it seems important to include this guy and his personality. Frankly, he was easier to capture in one image than Mick was last night.


NOTE: Below this line -------------- is a rant. It was all I expected to post tonight. I call it...

WITCHCRAFT

"A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from witchcraft!" Those are the words of sci fi writer Ray Bradbury.

In the past two weeks I have spent almost eleven hours on the phone with either Verizon or with Apple attempting to make my Airport Express/Airport Extreme wireless WiFi network work throughout the house. It operated perfectly for about two years. Then abruptly last week my wife found she could not send email. Nine hours later... after an early misdirection from a Verizon cretin... everything appeared fixed. By everything, the various tinkerings by a parade of telephone technicians resulted in not only the wireless system crashing, but also my hard wired interconnect here in my office.

Then tonight at dinner, my wife said, "I can't get my mail." What I uttered was one, smelly, expletive.

Now three hours later, after Apple again disabling everything and rebuilding it... we are partially working. However, until I trash some of Rita's preference files, and reboot her machine... all will not be stable. Unfortunately she has lost her sys admin password for her machine... and if I trash those preference files we will be polled for that PW upon reboot.

There is a workaround. It involves reloading certain elements of the system for her iMac from the original discs. Okay... except, she has this odd notion that all of this should act like a utility. You know, you set it up, pay your money, and use it from that point on. Like telephones, electricity, water, gas... a utility. How quaint. She expects that it is supposed to just work!!!!

So of course she does not carefully file her sys discs like the rest of us who are geeky enough to understand that ... well this is witchcraft. In order to make this thing operate we need to know exactly how far to leap off of the ground while twisting in the air and spitting...

What all of this means is that I am off to find the sys discs (along with incense,crystals, and an Asian guy with long needles)... then to get the instructions which Apple promised to send to my email account... then to print them out... then to go into Rita's office and follow those instructions to reboot in a manner that allows me to change the password. Which I shall etch into her desk with an X-acto blade.

It also means that there will be no image posted tonight since I have been otherwise occupied. Life should not intrude upon my hobbies. But even worse... neither should the internet. At the moment we seem to be gridlocked on the internet highway. And all I can do is honk. Check back tomorrow... okay?

Thanks for visiting...

Grumble &^&%$$$!!

Ted

Independence

<- Click here
You know, new ideas occur to me a lot less frequently than practical ones. E-mailers have asked to see more of my portraits, which are among the funnest things to do. So, at his Fourth Of July picnic in Strasburg last Wednesday I portrait-ed my friend Mick Rank. Unfortunatley, I over portrait-ed him... took a bundle... multi-angled him... Had a good time.

And what I got were a number of images which TOGETHER showed more about him than any one capture. So... how to get the idea of Independence day picnic and a sufficient selection of closeups to do justice to his personality? Hmmmmm.... Howzabout a practical compilation... a great big artifact sitting in the center of his own gallery room?

Okay... now how to pull that off? Hmmmm?

Outta Space!

<- Click here

My images filled up a 500G drive last night. Which abruptly left me with no place to save an image today. So my friend Steve drove us down to the Mac store where I picked up a brand new LaCie 1 Terabyte drive which puts about 1.75 T totally on line now to deposit stuff. I recall when I bought the external 500 G LaCie that filling it seemed unimaginable. But big graphic files, some diddling with video podcats (I wonder if they can be attached to this blog... anyone know?), and my Mac-Tunes library have elbowed away the free space. Worse yet, there just wasn't enough space to backup either of those folders. I looked at the 2T LaCie, but the consumer reviews on both the Apple website and at Amazon were so lousy that I've decided to go with just an additional terabyte until it's time to move on up to a new Mac Pro at around Christmas.

Now, with a long ... long ... backup in progress - it's just not possible to produce the image I'd hoped for today. So, I peered about four years back into my archives to find Grant St. Puddle. I present this image as a failure. Yep... there was a long ago forgotten goal for this image, however I did it at a time when I was unable to exercise any useful discipline. So each time it appeared finished, there came to mind one additional design thingee that could be tried. Probably there are some ten hours of time in this thing... perhaps a lot more. I recall that it kept calling me back... and back. I don't think it ever snuck out of its original folder - until finally it seemed useful today (given that I can't actually do something new) to flash the mess around.

Here's an example of what not to do. And how not to do it. Think of it as a companion piece to yesterday's tacky art. Okay, perhaps it was a learning experience, allowing me as it did to try out dozens of effects.

Anyone who wants to download and diddle with it is welcome. Who knows, perhaps you can find the one silver bullet which will actually turn this into art? Enjoy... Tomorrow with storage back on line, I'll stop with the mistakes, satires, and dreck.

Tacky?

<-Click here
Recently a magazine needed to illustrate a story on "Tacky Motel Art". So of course, the editor turned to me. The article was about that sort of painting you find in the "Starving Artist Sales" which bloom all around the United States. At these things you poke through hundreds and hundreds of "real art" painted by "real artists" done in "genuine paint" on "real canvas". Frankly I don't know where they do get the - mosty unsigned - stuff they sell for $19.98 - about a third of the price of the frames they peddle.

BTW... have you noticed that the real money in the art biz is in framing? But I digress

Anywayzzz.... I took a picture of Rita's flowers in the back yard. I brought the image up in PhotoShop, grabbed the smudge tool and with different brushes swirled the colors around for a couple of minutes and... WHEEEEEEE! Here's what I filed, and what they printed.

So, wuddaya think? Will it sell at a "Starving Artists Sale"?

Palette, Texture, Shape & Form

<- Click here
Here's a background. There's really no subject, just another window... or set of windows - this time shuttered. I'm not certain what to think about images that are this static. And I do want to think about an image. Still, this grouping is just so perfectly executed by the artists who first imagined it, and the craftspeople who executed it.

So here... I've plagiarized it.

Or no... since the caption tells you the place - I suppose this is more a quote than a steal. And maybe it tells you something about how a current culture has dealt with the challenge of windows. Yet... you will note that they are not windows. Those shutters don't open, nor do they admit light or air. So even though they are dug through the walls - they're essentially decorative exterior objects which have been walled over on the inside. In a world where form follows function - these guys are odd. See, they have only an aesthetic function, yet they mimic a form. Viewers expect windows to decorate a building, so here form follows expectation.

Interesting idea... which seems to also fuel women's fashions. Or... does it?

Independence Day Beyond Paradise

<-Click here
It's Independence Day in America.

On the Fourth of July some of us become patriots. Others of us visit towns like Paradise in Lancaster County's southern end where prosperous farms dapple the rolling hills of the richest non-irrigated soil on earth. Yet on Independence Day memories intrude even upon this tranquility. We're struck with the moment in history where we live, and the rights to this peace we enjoy here just beyond Paradise.

For an instant in the golden twilight... We think of how fragile are those rights we claim: how easily they've cracked in other places and other times. We can almost see horrific glows scratch at the darkening sky of this gentle day. And for the instant... perhaps even the most jaded among us become patriots as well?

Picturing Intangibles

<- Click here

It’s been said that words and images mix like Paris and Elizabeth (That’s Hilton and Tudor of course). Oddly much of our best writing is obsessed with the visible – in fact our language is at heart metaphorical, words that were imagined from visible objects and things. Meantime the best image making has become immersed in the sensual, philosophical or even the spiritual.

Take this attempt to illustrate an idea about a feeling which I don’t think words could convey. Isn’t it odd that words will describe specifically but whether fiction or real – the image exists on a plane that is representational. Hmmmm…. Yet conventional wisdom concludes that pictures show objects, and words describe emotions. Go figger.

These horses grazing the lush fields of a prosperous Amish farm are the result of envy. Have you visited… pnf’s photographic blog? If not click here. Her special talent for capturing animals makes the process appear so simple. And that drove me down to the southern end of Lancaster County on Sunday evening to grab some snaps of horses in the sweet twilight. I did, only to discover how challenging these beasties are. First off, they are BIG SUCKERS! And they are very horizontal. To someone used to his animals standing on two legs for vertical framing, well It’s really hard to… no… it was impossible for me to come away with thin, tall images of any use.

So here is one of my first horse ideas. Now, go visit pnf… and then lemme know… is this even worth trying again? Or do we just abdicate this field to the master… um… mistress of the horse?

Society's End

<- Click here

It seemed to me that a society ended at the edge of that strictly controlled brick circle and something else happened in the darkness at the trail's end. And I wondered if anyone dared to escape a perfectly planned life on that rich crescent to a future down the uncertain path?

Yeah... what if the future called from somewhere behind that foliage... and she went to seek it. Who did she leave in anguish on that disciplined swirl of perfectly laid bricks? Dear friends? Children? Parents? Family? Lovers? Who stood there peering down the pathway to... to...

All of this occurred to me Saturday along the Brandywine - yards away from yesterday's image.

My imagination is quite rich...

Wish I were....

June Was Bustin' Out...

<- Click here

Here in Pennsylvania, seasons nourish our projects. Regardless of the granular idea or feeling that rustles about in our creative cranial places, it’s the seasons which manipulate the possibilities we face in expressing ourselves. Now I know many visitors to ImageFiction come from places without climate swings. And others live in spots where the oscillations are either small or quite rapid.

Here in South Eastern Pennsylvania I enjoy a full measure of seasonal performances. And regardless of my artistic intention to impose an inspiration upon nature – more often I’m its servant, my hormonal dance gliding to its rhythms and possibilities: How frequently seasons are the dog and my whims its tail.

Yesterday I was beside the Brandywine Creek, which meanders through Chester County just East of me here in Lancaster. It was the sort of afternoon, which would dissolve if you thought about it too much. The sort of Saturday in which June had produced a final magnificent blossom – as if to say with a smirk, “Okay July, top this one, I dare you.” That’s the sort of taunt that sets an artist’s agenda. Facing the full bloom of a boasting month, my charge is to remember it at you. The question’s so simple: can you feel summer on The Brandywine Creek?

Hear Stephen Foster?

<- Click here

Evocative Southern images have an air of being made from pictures of the past. The continuity between then and now gets firmer the farther you meander below the Mason-Dixon Line.

Once a photographic image maker had to work within the laws of nature and gear. Back then explaining the way a mid-day-lit pre-bellum façade set off a bursting southern palm was extraordinarily challenging – maybe impossible. Either highlights got burnt to a crisp, or shadows were harder to penetrate that Stephen Hawkings’ latest book.

Now we can present the authentic place in a way that transcends the tyranny of gear and nature. Now we can allow facts to bleed together in ways that recreate the reality of a moment that never was .

Here’s tack sharp texture, saturated by a gentle palette which describes a sense of place. You know that should I pan down, you’ll see a white-suited gentleman tipping his Panama hat to skirted lady dressed to go shopping. Or at least you’ll not be surprised to watch them do their dance along Bay Street’s storefronts in Beaufort, South Carolina.

From this image you’ll agree with the place. But does it tell the time? Which is, after all, my point.

Spanish Moss

<-Click here
Meaning-making has become a collective thing. Truth is consensus. Problem is that we now live in a world of different whirls of consensuses... Um, izzat a word?

Old fashioned - I like my truths when they come with some wrinkles and jowls. I want them tested over more than the latest news cycle. I want them dressed nicer than any given rap or rock group. And it's good when they have the patina of endurance.

There's a feeling of comfort in peering at a grand old truth nestled among bundles of swaying moss - dangling from ancient oaks. Wisdom is not a monopoly of the elderly. But cautious analysis, is frequently found in mature places. And perhaps that's where we get our understanding of elegance?

Describing It

<- click here
We can't feel, hear, or even see everything that is. We write musical notes so that melodies can be molded. Imagine managing time without a calendar or a watch. Then there are sometimes things we can feel and yet not represent. Someone once pointed out that if we don't have a name for something... well it doesn't exist. Don't believe it? How about cyberspace? As far as our minds were concerned, was there such a thing until it was described and named? The name actually made it a thing.

So I walked around Middlebury to watch the way a Saturday morning sunrise described this place I'd never before visited. And I rounded a corner and abruptly there was this. I wanted to capture the way it felt in the sweet dewey light of dawn. But tonight as I pulled up that memory from the captures my camera gave me... I found that there were a magical quality that went beyond what the lens had caught. My camera, sharp as it is failed to replicate the aura of those moments.

But now - I've teased something more from the vista ... like a watch or a musical score... I can now better feel something that was. Can you see it? Huh? Huh? Can you see an emotion? Has my excursion beyond the photo described it to you? Is it real now?

Naked Image

<- Click here
So a guy, calls himself, "Lurker", sends me an email. And he asks, "Okay Ted, so I see that you need to pimp up your images in PP (um, that's Post Production techniques, for those of you new to the jargon). In fact, you seem addicted. Fine. That's what you do and you do it really good. But, what do your naked images look like? Take that Middlebury, Vermont series. Can you show us a virtually untouched image... or does everything you take need assistance? I dare you. Double dare you. Show us even one naked!"

Whoa... a double dare! I mean what self respecting boy ever welched out on a double dare? Um... alright... except for adjusting the basic values in this one... and of course cropping it for composition... And adding just one teeny touch. How'z this? Huh? Huh? Huh?

Can I go naked, or what?

Dilution

<- Click here

Dick Cavett once mused on his TV talk show, "It might be said that the United States is the first known case of a civilization developing through disintegration."

Do you find you get some great thinking done in the morning shower? I guess the warmer blood steams up the dendrites to a hotter sparkle, eh? So this morning that Cavett quote got retrieved from some cranial storage spot and tumbled around with all the stuff that's going on in Western nations regarding immigration. Now... not to get into a political debate, or even a discussion... it occurred to me that civilization is a pretty heavy word. But how'ze about culture? I wonder if it isn't driven by dilution as it mixes with new paradigms? Huh? Huh? Or izzat so obvious (even without pulling Hegel off the shelf) that it's too shallow to dignify?

Anywayzzzzz.... There's a big gap between tumbling mixtures of cultures and the concept of civilization, no? Barbarism is just as likely, right? Or ... or... a gallup with the Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse. I wonder how many cultural mixes it takes to finally get a civilization? And how many cultural dilutions it takes until people realize that no one recalls how to fix the potholes in the Appian Way?

1st Congo

<- Click here

A pity, but some things have to be pictured - the visitor lacks a choice. Middlebury, Vt. is built all around its First Congregational Church which sits atop the highest hill in town. And they've built this atop that. Unfortunately I had only six hours in the area to take pictures, and no research. So from sunrise to about 1:30 in the afternoon, I drove, walked and let the hamlet's major features attract my camera's lenses. But unless you rode well out of Middlebury, the shadow of the First Congo's magnificent steeple drew down.

As many of you recall, I have often photographed the steeples of Lancaster, which meant that a novel approach to Middlebury's greatest tower was hard, particularly with such little time. So... here's the obligatory snapshot of their most prominent feature. I'd really like some suggestions. This is a conventional, "Wow!" image, but it just doesn't make me wonder. Doesn't appear to be a metaphor for anything larger. It's merely pretty.

Is that enough for anything beyond a calendar or postcard? Let me know, huh?

Men Communicate

<- Click here

Men know everything about talking in vision. There are looks we never practice, and of course unless facing a mirror, we never even see.

Joe kissed her, passed Jessica to stand before the altar, put out his hand to Greg and without uttering a word... said this.