Out the Window

When I was a kid I always wanted to sit in the window seat; these days, I'm an aisle man 100%. I'll take the extra wiggle room any day of the week. On this flight, however, I was stuck next to a window with a fixed lens camera and did what I could to come up with something interesting on the way from ATL to SFO. The windows are not designed with optical excellence in mind, so a monochrome presentation ended up working the best.

Urban Hieroglyphics

Most people probably just walk on by, but I've always been a little bit curious about the signs and symbols spray painted in bright colors on paved surfaces in most cities. It is a language I don't pretend to understand, yet the patterns can be interesting to photograph. Could be I was just plain oblivious like everyone else, but I don't remember seeing these markings when I was a kid. Perhaps what they really signify is that our infrastructure is aging and in need of repair. 

Street-ish

There was a period of time when NYC was like a second home to me, an era that has long since passed. A fine, shiny time before the internet, cellular phones, and apps. In those dinosaur days, one had to figure out one's own way of dealing with the city, learning from personal experience. Like, for instance, where the hell the public bathrooms are in each neighborhood. That isn't the only reason to love the New York City Public Library, of course, but it sure is a good one. This is a photograph from the modern era, taken on my way to the bus to La Guardia airport. It was one of the coldest days I ever spent in the city.  

Deep Fried Chicken Skins

With extremely flat feet, it has to be a pretty special occasion for me to put on my fancy shoes. In this case, I was happy to oblige because we were visiting a new restaurant. Hyper-local food, nose-to-tail eating, that kind of thing. After suffering through an afternoon of lace ups, my dogs were barking, as the saying goes, and I was very happy for a chance to sit down and enjoy a nice meal. Funny, I don't remember much about the experience except that I ordered a plate of deep fried chicken skins as an appetizer. Welcome to the South.

A Real Legacy

Our neighborhood is on fire right now, with all the maples in full Fall color, I mean. I'm not talking about the fires that arise from deep frying a turkey that hasn't been fully defrosted (story for another day). Fall is over most places, but here in the deeper south, it is peak leaf. Apparently, in our neck of the woods at least, planting a few Japanese maples in your yard was a thing back in the 1950s when the place was developed. Now, seven decades later, these trees are fully mature and the current owners of the homes can still enjoy the awesome display each fall. Now that's a legacy as far as I am concerned.

Serendipity

This was just a quick grab, but, as John Cage would have it, the world was in an interesting state, now permanently recorded on film. It was cold and sunny so we were both wearing hats and coats.

Happy Thanksgiving

I took Studio Cat in for his annual check up and challenged myself to find one decent photograph somewhere in the parking lot in the twenty minutes I had to wait. To my surprise there was a ginkgo tree in the corner of the lot in full Fall glory. I was using a new $50 lens from a company called Ttartisans. Fun.

Groovy Shadow Play

During most of my childhood, my parents had a mobile hanging in the house comprised of images of eyes. It was a hippie thing, I guess, and if you google hippie eye mobile, you'll find it right away. Funny thing is, my parents were pretty much the Platonic ideal of the anti-hippie couple. Go figure. Perhaps unsurprisingly, mobiles have been a constant fascination for me, so I was keen to see what my wife would come up with at the mobile making workshop she recently attended. Maybe mobiles are having another moment? I sure hope so. Groovy.

Remarkable?

A picture of a dead bird on the sidewalk is child’s play by Joel Peter Witkin standards, but have you ever asked yourself how far you would go to get a ‘remarkable’ shot? Is that the goal, to make remarkable work? Would you document the death of a loved one, for example? As for me, I have a handful of images of dead things found along the way. That’s about as far as I want to take it. I’m not going to volunteer at the morgue anytime soon.

Literate Lizard

 

Recently, I’ve noticed that the studio cat has been interested in my bookshelves, and I finally figured out why. It ain’t the critical theory, that’s for sure. With temperatures dipping into the legitimately cold range, I’ve seen a few lizards indoors of late. This little fellow seems to have found a safe place to spend the winter, but we will see how long he lasts. I’ve already found several dismembered kin scattered around the studio.

Creating Memories

A major house renovation not only provides new amenities for improving one's quality of life, but also some cool photo opportunities. Not sure this image will make the cut for my next (ha, leaving that in!) MoMA show (will keep you posted), but in the meantime it pleases me as a composition, and years hence will remind me of all the little trials and tribulations we encountered on this particular journey.

Its Complicated

This tree is a complicated mess, which makes it both interesting as a subject, and a bit difficult to position within the frame. Not sure about you, but my tendency is to want to simplify things, to impose order, but sometimes the best move is to just embrace the complexity.  

Joys And Sorrows of a Koi Pond

In general and overall, I'd say that our koi pond has been a good thing, a feature of our home that adds to the positive vibe of living here. But periodically the neighborhood raccoons come by looking for water, discover that there are fish present, and do their best to catch them for a quick snack. The resulting chaos is definitely not okay. Fish in a barrel kind of thing. Mostly the fish are good at avoiding capture, but every once in a while one goes missing, which is a real bummer, and not only for the fish. The other thing the raccoons like are the black stones at the bottom of the pond. They fish them out of the water and leave them on the side, as a warning, I reckon. We'll be back.

I hope your weekend goes swimmingly, fellow traveler.

Working Distance

Poison ivy. Over the years, I've had plenty of personal experience with the stuff, such that I know that I want nothing more to do with it. Luckily, when you use a camera to investigate the world around you, you have a little working distance between you and your subjects built in to the process. You don’t have to touch the vines. At the quantum level, it's well known that the act of measuring perturbs the system. I wonder, do the camera and photographer leave a trace even at the normal scale of human experience?

Catching Up With My Inner Child

When I was but a wee lad, my first 'serious' camera was something called a Sears TLS. I saved up my allowance money and bought it to document the life and times of my pet iguana. That was a thing back in the day, I guess, pet lizards. Anyway, after the requisite reptile portraits were in the can, one of the first photography experiments I tried involved misting my UV filter with a little bit of water, placing it in the freezer for an hour, then re-mounting it to my lens, and snapping a few photos of the lights on our Christmas tree. You see, folks, photographers have been interested in diffusion and blur since, like, forever. I must have read about that little parlor trick in Popular Photography. Fast forward a couple of decades to when we first moved into our current house. There were quite a few spiders occupying the place at the time. The old window glass had enough imperfections to create some pretty interesting bokeh. I suppose you could say that I got back in touch with my inner child as I framed up this little snap. Is that such a bad thing?

 

But I Like It

So, one fine Sunday morning not too long ago, I woke up to find that a rather large package had been left on the deck. Turns out, it was a very fancy pressure washer that I had not ordered. I had a quick glance at the address label and figured out that the intended recipient was about a quarter mile away on an entirely different street. No idea how the miss delivery happened. I suppose I could have just kept it, but I have no interest in pressure washing, so I loaded the beast into the back of my car and delivered it to its rightful owner. Turns out, my neighbor had just poured a new concrete drive way that I thought looked pretty cool. It is just a formal composition, but I like it -- to paraphrase Professor Jagger.

What You Give Up When You Drive an SUV

During the early days of the pandemic, I purchased a used camera with a micro-four thirds format sensor because of its ability to automatically stitch together 80 megapixel photographs from four 20 MP images taken in rapid succession. I do a lot of work that involves photographing subjects on a copy stand, and a high resolution file can come in very handy sometimes. It is a pretty convenient way to digitize medium format film negatives as well. Anyway, I found that I really enjoyed using the little camera off the copy stand, too, and have been checking out some additional lenses for it. Recently, I discovered a compact 35-100 mm f/4-5.6 lens for $100 that seems to be a bit under appreciated, probably due to the variable aperture. The fact of the matter is, it produces fine images in good light. And, when I saw the image above, I really appreciated the old school bokeh. The little lens is an extremely compact telephoto zoom that would be perfect for travel...

Battle Tested

Let me tell you, son,  the orchestra pit is a far more dangerous place than you could ever imagine, especially for a large, unwieldy and delicate instrument like the double bass. I can't begin to count the number of times my poor instrument has been kicked and bumped due to the close quarters on stage sometimes. The only time I ever leave it unattended is for bathroom breaks, unavoidable during three hour rehearsals. Still, over the course of some twenty-odd seasons, that's plenty time to accumulate a few scars. Image captured using an old Fujifilm S5 Pro (ca. 2007) with a Nikon 105 mm f/2.5 lens. Not yet sure if I like this camera or not...

Bologna In Color

The internet provides plenty of opportunities to fritter away one's precious time here on Planet Earth, but every once in a while, if you are just a little bit lucky, you can also find some useful, dare I say even productive, ideas. A few years ago, I came across a blog post from Julieanne Kost (www.jkost.net), from Adobe, about a series of abstract images she created to explore the color of a specific place. She described her process in detail, so I decided to give it a go using a series of images from a trip to Bologna. While it was an interesting exercise, it ultimately wasn't my cup of kombucha. But the idea of abstracting from a series of images and then recombining the fragments in unique ways is something I continue to pursue to this day.

Work Life Balance

No way could I ever afford to live in the Beacon Hill section of Boston, but there sure are some cool places there, like these condos that were undergoing a renovation at the time I visited. Yes, I do indeed think it would be fun to live in a concave building. Back when I was a cubicle dweller, I would often travel to Boston for conferences and found myself hitting the eject button as the talks got increasingly dull and my ass got increasingly sore. By the second day of the conference folks were typically playing hooky in droves anyway. Wonder what they got up to when I went out shooting? I guess that is what they mean by work/life balance?

Good light this weekend, fellow traveler.  

Tasting notes: Fujifilm X100S digital camera.

Guess What This Is?

One of the oldest tricks in the book, photography-wise at any rate, is to momentarily confound the viewer with an image that is devoid of context or scale. Like this one, for example, or like the aerial perspective photographs of agricultural fields made by Mario Giacomelli back in the 1980s. Those images really surprised me when I first saw them in a magazine, back when there were magazines. Later, when I found out that he actually drew in some the trees on the negative using a felt-tip pen, I knew I had discovered a kindred spirit. By the way, the image above is of a hand-stamp used to print patterns on fabric.

For The Birds

Birding is one of those genres of photography that has been greatly facilitated by developments in technology. In contrast to say, conceptual work, which, should you ever feel so inclined, could be carried out with whatever shit camera happens to be lying around. To be honest, I never felt a burning desire to try photographing birds before the arrival of digital cameras, having a strong gut-level intuition that my main accomplishment would be to waste a lot of expensive film. These days, however, why not? After all, I'm no photo-snob. So, yeah, I've tried it a few times, mainly with owls, which are inherently interesting and thankfully sit still for long periods of time, and the vultures that circle overhead looking for dead things to eat. Once I even chased a woodpecker around the yard and got a few decent shots. In future, if any cool birds turn up around here, I'll know what to do. In the meantime, I've got a conceptual series in mind involving a murmuration of starlings...

Get Lost!

Everything looks just fine and dandy from the front of most store fronts and galleries, with all the modern amenities on full display. But if you take a wander off the beaten path, or simply get lost on the way to the bathroom, which is what tends to happen to me, then you can end up discovering how things are really put together. The random patchwork propping up the entire operation. Catch a glimpse of the wizard if you are lucky. No particular luck with the Wiz on this day, however, just evidence of his chaotic empire.

Deceptive

If it’s really and truly Fall, then why the heck is the AC pumping cold air into my face right now in early November? Many of the visual clues of the supposed season are indeed present, like the pumpkins and orange fallen leaves I photographed yesterday. I’ve even seen a few Christmas trees make their appearance already, too. But the humidity is back up in the tropical range and the temperature is going to be in the 80s this afternoon, another record high. Then, there’s the fact that it will drop back into the 30s later this week. Looks like its going to be another wild ride.

Primroses To Mark 750 Blog Posts

Today marks the 750th post of this silly little blog. With but a handful of readers on even the best of days, I've thought often about shutting the whole thing down. What's the point really with fame and monetization completely off the table?! But with family and friends scattered around the country and the globe, I've discovered that writing an obscure daily blog post is a worthwhile exercise, without many of the downsides of dealing with social media. Good old fashioned Web 1.0. Putting together a daily post is a fine way to center my thoughts in the morning as the coffee kicks in, with the added benefit of creating something that lets folks I care about know what's up with moi. Plus, there's also the off off chance of connecting with a random human being or two somewhere in the world every once in a blue moon. Which reminds me of the children's concerts I used to play every season before the pandemic shut them down. I'd look up at the thousands of middle school children in the audience and hope that maybe one of them would be inspired to listen to a little classical music from time to time later in life, or perhaps even to start taking lessons on an instrument. 

Unintended Consequences

Our mission was to have dinner at the Hot and Hot Fish Club in Birmingham, Ala., but we stopped off at the botanical gardens before hand. It was so hot and humid that afternoon that I had to change my clothes in the public restroom before heading over to the restaurant. Yes, we had planned for that eventuality. Anyway, I had never seen lily pads unfurling like this before, so I was glad to get a series of photographs. It is only when looking at the thumbnail of the image that it looks like a frowny face. Pareidolia it's called.

Eine Kleine Yacht Art

Greetings, friends and collectors! Welcome to to the technicolor view from my ranch burger home in the hills! You've undoubtedly heard of yacht rock. Well, cue up your favorite track and pour out a sweet libation, because I am pleased to present a little Yacht Art* for your enjoyment and delight this fine Friday morning. A little orange cuz it's Fall and a schtickle of magenta cuz, you know, magenta. 

Tasting notes: All yacht art is captured using the most recently released state-of-the-art photographic equipment, and post-processed with eye-wateringly expensive computers and software. As you might imagine, the specifics change in real time, so please rest assured that our NFTs will be updated appropriately. (Best viewed on a 16K monitor in a 64-bit color space, but you knew that already).

*Dude!!  ...your boat!

Still Streaming

 

We tend to associate excessive screen time with our current state of affairs, and of course it is undeniably an issue. But for most of us alive today, the fact of the matter is that screens have been a fact of life since we arrived into this world. I remember going over to friends’s houses and seeing televisions in every room running in the background all the time. Back at my own home, the television my parents could afford was barely larger than one of today’s jumbo iPads. When I moved into my first apartment, one of their old sets came with me. 

Some things never seem to change. There simply is no beating deep heating. 

Living In A Glass House

There is something intrinsically photographic about green houses, I think. The transparency of glass provides a natural depth to the image. Reflections and diffusion of light are also provided free of charge. Plus, you can see how the structure is put together. Remember the 'Visible Man' kits? At the moment, we are having a new roof added to our home. Looking up, we can sometimes see the sky. It is a bit like being an exotic plant (personal preference) in a glass house.

Tasting notes: Olympus Pen FT, Ilford FP4+.

Les Feuilles mortes

I don't typically associate the crepe myrtle with Fall foliage. That being said, this year I'm finding the colors to be pretty spectacular. Soon enough they will fall to the ground, and I will try to enjoy them in the mean time.