Speaking Of Which

Three years ago exactly, I decided to post images and words to a blog every day. Yes, I realize that I missed the blogging trend by about a decade. Story of my life, if I'm honest, and in that sense, a very fitting thing for me to do. It doesn't matter that much in any case, cuz, like, I'm in search of neither money nor fame. 

My goals were pretty basic: keep in touch with a handful of family and friends scattered around the world without having to rely on social media, which I kind of hate; and get into the habit of writing down my thoughts about photos. Nothing profound. Just simple stuff, really, stuff I wish someone else was writing, but they weren't. 

Mission accomplished, then. In the meantime, the world has opened up again, I can mostly keep in touch face-to-face. And I've established a writing habit, which I can continue in a private journal. 

Perhaps I am like a dog, marking the fire hydrant and moving on. I'll leave my little project for other dogs to find and know that I passed by before.  

Anyway, I'm off to Japan next week, so sayonara, y'all! 

Whither Your Pandemic Projects?

Most of us likely documented our experiences of the pandemic, more intently as we realized that it was more serious than we first thought. And most of us wisely kept them to ourselves, these 'projects'. Wisely, too, judging from some of the utter crap we've been exposed to from others, including well known artists. 

You know. Dirty N95s strewn across sidewalks and into gutters. Some of this imagery seems a bit cringy to me now, barely months later. According to the NYTimes, the early 21st Century is among the least interesting periods in cultural history. 

But still, what are you going to do with the work you made? Me, I created a series of imaginary landscapes from TV shows we streamed. Deep stuff, sure, but still a few turned out kinda decent.  

Sources Of Inspiration

As visual artists, it of course comes as no surprise that the natural world is a major source of inspiration for our work. Looking at the patterns of these leaves more closely, I think I'd say the same about our local baristas and their latte art. Cheers!

Halloween-ish?

Is this some kind of color code the city uses to tell someone on the maintenance team to please go ahead and grind these stumps already? Or is it some kind of chemical or pesticide treatment? I'm not privy to the codes, so it'll just have to remain a mystery. One thing I'm pretty sure of is that it wasn't done for Halloween. Or was it?

Hyper Local 2

I suppose I should have gotten my ass out to Texas or New Mexico to shoot my very own personal ring of fire eclipse shot, but I had more pressing matters to attend to, a life to live, etc. At any rate, for most of the morning it was very overcast, but toward noon the sky began to clear. And, the patchy cloud cover actually worked to my advantage here, reducing the brightness of the sun to a manageable level. This shot of the partial eclipse was taken with my 11 year old X-Pro1, which I've been messing around with lately.

Shoot local, y'all.   

Hyper Local

In certain parts of the Deep South, you gotta be careful when telling folks you're from LA. You see, LA can also mean Lower Alabama. No, really. To avoid confusion, just go ahead and say 'Los Angeles'. Then folks'll understand right away why you have a funky accent. You won't have to explain. And just go ahead and say 'University of Texas' when you tell 'em where you went to school. If you say 'UT', they'll ask you about your favorite places in Knoxville, TN.  

My Name Is Smith, And I'm A Workist...

About twenty years ago, I had the once in a lifetime beautiful experience of watching a building I used to work in get demolished. From the comfort of my new office, but still. I loved the show. I have a series of documentary photos taken using my old 3 megapixel digicam. 

For many years, I was a committed workist. Work = me. Man, I've got to live with that tattoo for the rest of my life! Thankfully, the scales did ultimately fall from my eyes, and I never turned into a cockroach, but still. They got their pound of flesh!

Good light this weekend, fellow traveler.

Fun, Remember Fun?

There is no practical need, or a need of any kind, really, for a huge negative such as the massive one I exposed here using the Fujifilm BL690. Six times nine square centimeters of pure goodness. One hundred percent. Seriously, what is the point of such a large negative in today's world? But anyway, practicalities aside, it is just nice to have such a big juicy negative in one's possession. Swimming in detail. Crisp as hell. It is just fun. Remember fun? If not, it comes highly recommended.

A Pond

This may look like a very mundane water retention pond to the untrained eye, but to me, this morning at least, it was a very pleasant landscape to take in. You see, I was at the dentist's office getting my teeth cleaned and making an appointment to repair an old filling. This is the best view I've ever experienced while seated in a dental chair. It is the real reason I'm a repeat customer.

Tasting notes: Fujifilm X-Pro1, TTArtisan 27mm lens.

Wild Persimmon

For years, vines were choking the wild persimmon growing in our front yard. A few orange blobs of astringent fruit would drop to the ground each year around this time. Even the squirrels declined to eat them. Not long ago, we had the area cleared of the vines and brambles and now the persimmon is thriving, with an abundance of fruit. With the vines gone, I also noticed the bark for the first time. I liked the way the film rendered the colors, too.

Tasting notes: Leica R9, 35mm Summicron, Lomography Color 92.

The Tale My Thoughts Would Tell

I have heard plenty of photographers weigh in on the topic of memory. Artist statements are full of such musings. While it is not a big stretch to link the two, photography and memory, the details of the relationship can be a bit murky and hard to disentangle. Some associate photographs with imprints on memory, while others say basically the opposite, that the act of possessing a photograph of a thing weakens the imprint on our brains. Like relying on your phone too much. Maybe the key is to take a sufficient number of photographs such that each one is no longer precious to you, then put them away for a period of time. Then, later, go look at 'em again and see if they cause any neurons to fire. Or maybe you just feel confused? Time to make an appointment at the memory unit, son. 

What A Difference A Day Makes

Yesterday, we got our first taste of real Fall weather. Welcome back, old friend! I decided to chuck a roll of the new Lomography 92 film into my R9 and just snap away. The dog days are gone, for a time, for a time. And the Fall light sure is sweet. After lunch, I mixed up a fresh batch of C41 chemistry and processed the film myself. It is definitely a grainy film with a coolish color response. Something a bit different, though, just what I was looking for. Just what the doctor ordered. These are our wild crepe myrtles looking like a forest.

Phone Or Dedicated Camera?

A friend of mine loves to shoot his food; he's one of a new generation of food documentarians out there putting their phone cameras to good use. He told me he uses Portrait Mode to get the best subject separation. That's certainly what I'd do if I wanted to have a permanent record of my dinners. But, I have to admit, I don't have much interest in documenting my meal experiences. 

Still, I did really enjoy the way the liberated pomegranate seeds looked in this bowl. It's funny, in the kitchen, I'm not at all in favor of owning tools that only do one thing, like pitting an olive, for example. I'd rather just bash the olive with the side of my chef's knife and take out the pit with my fingers. But in photography, it seems, I really do prefer using a dedicated camera to make images. 

John Is Bored At Work

On LingQ (language learning app) the other day, I encountered the sentence "John is bored at work" in Japanese. What a funny example! Yet again, I reflected on how many people spend a significant fraction of their work day dreaming about a better job, and probably learning a second language... Anyhoo, there was a time about 20 years ago when my workaday fantasies revolved around food blogging as a possible alternative. You see, I was a devoted foodie with the pear-shaped physique and elevated insulin levels to prove it. My plan was to start by documenting as I went about preparing meals. What I discovered is that my cooking got worse and my cameras and lenses got covered in a layer of grease. No thanks.

Take heart, it is almost the weekend, fellow traveler...

Reflections ATL

Near the end of his life, Harry Callahan lived in and photographed around the city of Atlanta. I don't think this body of work is particularly well known, but the time frame coincides with my own relocation to the area. I'm interested in it for that reason. I suppose the lesson is, if you see something interesting, shoot it. Decades on, this work will be interesting in its own right. To someone.

Bathroom Gallery

It can certainly be rewarding to trade work with other artists or just give it away to a friend with good taste. But seeing your work hanging in someone else's bathroom, well, that can be a bit of an emotional experience. Never mind that it is the first thing seen in the morning and the last thing seen at night, there is just a certain stigma associated with the bathroom. The outhouse, doghouse, crapper, etc. Which is why one of my own images always hangs over the shitter, if that makes sense.
 

Maximum Entropy, Minimum Gear

On my first trip to Italy, I brought a backpack full of camera gear, including every lens I owned at the time -- about ten or so. Not only was the payload rather heavy, I was so uptight about theft that I didn't enjoy myself any where near as much as I should have. Fast forward a decade or so, and I found myself traveling with a one lens one camera set up. A shorter lens might have been preferable here, but I still like the photograph I came home with. As time goes on, I find myself embracing minimalism more and more. 

Interesting And Popular

Seems like it takes longer and longer to get things done. Everything is complicated, somehow. Ain't no such thing as simple, no sir. I just spent the majority of the day getting three major errands run. Life stuff, nothing exceptional. So, I'm writing this about eight hours later than I usually do. And I'm pretty dull; can't imagine what it would be like if I were interesting or popular.

Warm 'N Dry

In recent years the weather pattern is for warm and dry weather this time of the year, and 2023 in no exception. Just a few sprinkles the past few weeks. Things are dry. The milkweed in the garden has gone to seed in recent days and makes for an interesting subject to photograph.
 

Shooting Through Vintage Glass

This photograph of the shadow of a building was taken using vintage glass. No, not an old lens from a bygone era. What I mean is, although the camera and lens were both modern pieces of kit, I was looking and taking photographs through one of the old picture windows of our house. This window in particular is highly distorted, which can be further amplified if you shoot indirectly. The use of a telephoto focal length in combination with the distorted glass yielded a pleasant abstract image directly out of the camera. 

Rhubarby

The last time it rained around here I happened to be out in the yard with a camera. It happens. Sometimes I wonder what I would photograph if I were recovering from the likes of knee replacement surgery. But I digress. By now, I have come up with about a dozen or so go to 'shots' around the grounds of the estate that I use whenever I happen to be testing out a camera, lens, film stock, etc. I'm sure you're the same. Every once in a while, though, I'll end up pointing the camera in some new direction and end up with a fresh image. I forget what these plants are called, but the stems were wet from the rain, so I held the camera in the middle of the grouping and exposed a few photos. 

Good light to you this weekend, fellow traveler.

And So It Goes...

In the days before everything in our lives went online, displaying our vast collection of books was a convenient way for us to flex. You know, covering all of the available wall space in the house with those black aluminum bookshelves nearly toppling under the weight of the Derrida and Foucault? Later upgraded to Ikea shelving. Our friends most certainly must have been impressed! They kept coming over to our house after all. 

But wait, there's more to it... Let me explain. At some point pretty early on, I quit pretending I had much interest in French philosophy and converted from hoarding scholarly works to cookbooks. I don't really cook from them in the typical way, not wanting to get 'em dirty. But I've read through them all and in fact, that's how I learned to cook. What I'm saying is, I think that good food was important, too. 

Sadly, these days, with all the specialized eating, I tend to shy away from doing that much fancy cooking. Fortunately, our walls are now more or less completely covered with our art. And so it goes...

Fall-LOL

As I was untangling the garden hose to do a bit of watering, I noticed a little Fall color in the yard. That would be the little yellow patch of leaves toward the center of the photograph. It was 30 C (88 F) so you'll hopefully forgive the fact that I wasn't in a particularly autumnal frame of mind. I wiped the sweat from my brow and grabbed a camera. I told myself that the trees were responding to the light, not the ambient temperature.

Just Stop And Take Some Photos

Like the proverbial big game hunters from a few generations ago, we photographers all have stories about the ones that got away. The cat in the culvert, that was one I missed simply due to being too damn lazy to take my camera out of my backpack. It still smarts. Anyway, it can be especially hard to stop for pictures when one is driving, even casually, as a harried mindset seems to be par for the course. But you just gotta stop. I've passed this spot many times on the way to and from Atlanta, never actually taking the exit and grabbing a few photos. So, this one time, see, my wife, she just like gets off the highway, and we sneek in and make some photographs. That's the way it is done, son.

A Million Years Ago

It's true, our expectations for playgrounds has increased exponentially in recent years. These shitty chainlink monstrosities that were probably erected in the '70s just don't cut the mustard any longer. Not to pile on, but there isn't a proper playing surface, just red dirt. Anyway, they thankfully were bulldozed a few years ago and replaced with way better stuff. Still, I am glad I took the time to document these old relics. 

Walk On By

We grew up in a household bathed in Muzak, did my brother and I. How many folks can make a claim like that? That their parents preferred to play elevator music all day? We picked up the lyrics to a thousand songs by simple emersion, a skill with absolutely no practical value I can think of. But I digress. Most folks just walk on by interesting scenes, which is why some of us feel the need to photograph them, I suppose. 

Cuppa, Canna, Glassa...

For some, a cup of warm liquid is central to the morning experience. But, not for me. Nope. I am afraid that pour moi it revolves around the caffeine. I've explored all the alternatives, but what I am looking for is a jolt, a boost, a perceptible increase in brain activity. Sorry. The delivery system can be a warm cuppa black tea, a cold mugga leftover coffee, or a canna Celsius. There is nothing the least bit romantic about that, of course. So, while I enjoy fancy tea as much as the next person, I often have no choice but to chase it with a Red Bull.

The World's A Stage

I was sitting on stage trying to relax as the crew were getting everything ready for last evening's orchestra performance. To my eyes, it is a pretty complicated situation up there in the rafters. At the end of the day, all I can say is that it just an interesting composition, because I have no earthly idea about how it all works.

Good light to you this weekend, fellow traveler.

Contemporary Still Life

It is kind of amazing, and not in a good way, that almost every piece of fruit we encounter these days has a sticker attached to it. The satsumas came in a bag, which is the only thing that saved them from the same fate as the pomegranate. Why bother removing the stickers before taking the photograph? It would probably just lead to confusion. I *am* happy that the pom was grown in the States...

Frog, Lurking

 

While at the gardens, we ran into another photographer who pointed out the frog lurking in the background here. Took me a minute to be able yo see it, actually.

Sanding An Oil Painting

Film simulations, Lightroom/Photoshop plugins, in-camera RAW processing... Whatever you want to call it, whatever approach you want to take, this is a popular topic in the online photography community these days. Seems like it to me anyway. Don't get me wrong, I do absolutely get the attraction of these tools, techniques, filters, etc. In general, I like the aesthetic and I've gotten some results I am legit pleased with. But the thing is, if I'm being honest, the results don't really look all that much like film to my eyes. All these filters, skins, and presets are basically doing one main thing: taking the edge off of the rather clinical output produced by digital image sensors. Kind of like sanding your oil painting...

Monday Morning Musings

Funny, I've never noticed this particular shadow pattern before, and I thought I was pretty familiar with what goes on around the house. Unlike the cats, who notice literally everything. I have not yet reached the level of attention of a cat, and I guess I probably never will. 

That's why we keep cats around, I suppose. As ones who notice... Anyway, I'll go back and do some mental ray tracing to figure out exactly what I just photographed... I'd like to see a cat do that...

At least I feel that the end of summer doldrums are starting to pass. You know, those couple of weeks when the light is bad, or at least not good, the humidity is still high, and the leaves are turning yellow from the heat.

Behind Glass

A few years ago now, we took a spontaneous trip to Chicago for a long weekend. It was a very fun little excursion, but it was also pretty damn cold most of the time, especially for a couple of Southerners like me and my wife. My main camera on the trip was loaded with black-and-white film, so I took this photograph using my phone from the comfort of the Art Institute. Through a window, in other words. The original capture was marred by some nasty reflections of the interior lights bouncing off of the windows, but with a few clicks of the trackpad in Photoshop, I was able to get the image into presentable condition. 

Methinks It Is A Weasel...

Storms, with their strong winds, will often knock accumulated tree rot down to earth. You find it distributed over the yard the next morning after the storm. All that is left to do is collect the detritus and take a few images. I once met a person at an art opening whose artistic focus is pareidolia. Really. She talked my ear off about seeing faces in photographs. Several times during the conversation, I felt like mentioning the connection between pareidolia and dementia, but I held back. 

Look Closely

If you look closely, you will see that there is an arrow spray painted on the sidewalk in addition to the one printed on the No Parking sign. And those on the asphalt, of course. It was just a pointed moment, is all. Hehe.

Good light to you this weekend, fellow traveler. 

Wait, What?

Last night, I noticed that an update was available for Photoshop, so I downloaded it. Lo and behold, the generative fill functions are out of beta and available for everyone to use. So I took advantage of the new enhanced crop tool with generative fill to actually fix the image I showed the other day. I think Ps did a pretty convincing job of it, actually. Although I am not inclined to use such features very often, who would ever really know if I did? Ready or not, I am sure photographers are going to find interesting ways of using the new technology...

Insomniac Photography

At first, I thought it must be insomnia, but as it turned out, it was just that the bastard cat had pushed the hall door open, allowing the street light to blast into the bedroom with the brightness of a hundred suns, causing me to wake as I rolled over in bed. While I was up, I decided, what the hell, I might as well photograph the scene. I used my jpeg camera, an ancient Fuji X-Pro 1. I think it did a pretty decent job of recording the eerie light.

 

The Surprising Benefits Of Turd Polishing

There were two massive guy lines in this composition that totally marred the otherwise wonderful vista. Which lead me to frame sloppily. What I mean is, my subconscious awareness of the one explains the other. Yeah, and I'm sticking with that story. At any rate, the modern version of Photoshop lets one remove power lines and similar distractions with a couple of mouse clicks. I suppose I could use AI to fix the crop, but that is still somehow beyond the pale for me.

SETI

Looking for a couple of viewers to complete the experience. That's basically it, what we do., what it all boils down to. Right?

Fingers crossed.

Here's hoping you have a good week.

Seeing Things

The beautiful muted color palette of the rotting, decaying leaf were what first attracted me. It was only much later that I noticed the butterfly shape. Was that reading somehow operating at a subconscious level in my brainpan as I framed up and clicked the shutter? Some would say, yes. Moi, I tend to think it was just a happy accident? And I'm good with happy accidents.

BNLS SKNLS CHKN BRST

All artists tend to obsess about the appearance of their images, but sometimes it seems like photographers take things to an entirely new level. Presets, filters, skins, all applied to your images in an effort to give one's photographs that certain je ne sais quoi. A unique appearance, a signature style. The problem is many folks end up liking the same looks, compounding the problem of uniqueness... It's all a bit like drenching a boneless, skinless chicken breast with the same brand of sauce. 

Well, anyway I was smothering one of my own images with a 'film simulation' recipe. And to be honest, it doesn't really look very much like any film I ever shot. Yet it does kind of sort of look like one of the darkroom papers I used to use, provided I squint a little bit. Better stated, it looks like what I remember my darkroom prints looking like. 

Which is all fine by me. I'll happily eat the sauce and leave the dried up chicken on the plate. Yes sir.

Cheers

This was an easy enough photograph to pre-visualize, but in fact, it also turned out much more interesting to look at than I thought. 

Good light this weekend fellow traveler.

Stay Curious

He may be 14 years old, which is downright elderly in feline terms, but our Norwegian Forest cat is still curious about the world around him. I'd have to say, he is aging gracefully. He takes full advantage of the floor to ceiling picture windows.

Tasting notes: Pentax K-3 III Monochrome, ISO 12800.

Draped In Velvia

Due to the Labor Day holiday, the grounds keepers were all present and working on Tuesday morning at the botanical gardens. Someone was actually wading in the water and pruning the lilies, and I got a nice glimpse of the prickly underside of a mature Victoria leaf. I decided to give the photograph, taken with my ancient Fuji X-Pro 1, the Velvia treatment, which worked out pretty well in this case, I think. Green can be such a difficult color, expecially in digital photography...

Look Up

Sometimes all you have to do is just look up. And that's what I did here. You might say it's part of my process these days. Anyway, Labor Day tends to mark the end of summer, and I hope your day is a good one. 

That's My Scorpion

All of us have dreams of becoming famous, of being written into the history books. Famous writers, famous scientists, famous actors. Most of us fall short of those ambitions, cuz, you know, fame is a lil' bit like a Ponzi scheme. Some lucky few of us end up writing advertising jingles, formulating new and improved shampoos, modeling for catalogs. If I was an insect sculptor, I would be over the moon to have an enormous scorpion commissioned. Every time I went to the park I'd think, "That's my god damned scorpion".

Signifying Nothing

Quote of the day:

Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut.

-- William Faulkner

Translate Slowly

I can still remember watching Steve Jobs make a big deal about Apple existing at the intersection of the Liberal Arts and Technology. It was a somewhat corny thing to say, for sure, but nevertheless I was always grateful that at least one technology company was trying to keep the engineers at arm's length. Photography is another discipline hanging out at the same intersection, and for a much longer time, too. Sometimes it seems like the art side is on a logarithmic trajectory while technology's path is exponential. Maybe I just need to rotate the image counterclockwise by ninety degrees...

Good light to you this weekend, fellow traveler.

A Strange Lens From The Past

My most recent online auction adventure started with the purchase of a set of old photography magazines (mine are all from the 1970s) and ended with the acquisition of a funky old lens. The magazine was called simply 'Camera' and was published in Switzerland. I thought I had heard of most of the famous magazines, but obviously not. The artwork is interesting certainly, especially the early work of some now famous photographers, but my immediate fascination was with the advertising. For instance, I saw an ad for a Sigma 135mm lens with a special 'pan-focus' setting of f/64. A pan-focus, telephoto lens, hence the label Pantel. Hehe, I get it. So, I decided to see if any were for sale. Sure enough, I found a mint condition copy for $30. It is a nice enough chunk of glass and metal. While I haven't had the opportunity to test the pan-focus function yet, the lens isn't too bad as a regular imager. 

Dog Days

This photograph reminds me that soon enough the humidity will drop some, and along with it, the temperatures. It was taken in early September a few years ago. It's that in between time of the year when you might feel the hint of a cool breeze in the morning but you know it is still going to get miserably hot and humid later in the day. And once the humidity drops a little, my photographs will start to look better, too.