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.

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.

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. 

Tense and Nervous, Can't Relax

Sometimes the world is a bit chaotic, and instead of seeing formal compositions I tend to notice tensions, conflict in the frame. I also tend to prefer monochrome, but sometimes color won't be denied... 

Never Been To Dusseldorf

Although I spent a couple of years in Berlin, I never made it to Dusseldorf. Still, I do enjoy casually documenting the industrial decay around me. There aren't any major typological studies of grain hoppers in my future, though it was enjoyable to process this monochrome image. I'm slowly learning the behavior of a monochrome digital camera. I think the results are uniquely different from film and from conventional digital (color) photography.

Tasting notes: Pentax K-3 Mark III Monochrome, Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens.

Attract, Capture, Digest

I've always been fascinated by pitcher plants. Ever since my first semester in college as a botany major. Meat eating plants, what's not to admire? They turn the standard paradigm on its head. The pitcher plant has a simple, winning, three-step strategy for survival: attract, capture, digest. Simple, and it works. Respect. Alas, there's no such straightforward algorithm for human survival, at least that I've come across. Photography, maybe... Anyway, the last couple of times I've encountered pitcher plants, I've only had black-and-white cameras with me, film and now digital. Luckily, they look good in monochrome.

Tasting notes: Pentax K-3 iii M, Sigma 30mm f/1.4.

Good Bones

When speaking of an older home, it is common to hear the phrase, 'it has good bones'. I guess this residence is well past that point in its decay. But the structure and construction of the fireplace is interesting in its own right I suppose. And there are no complaints about the location within the landscape. The tree may have been in the original front yard, or perhaps it is more recent. It is hard to be sure.

Good light to you this weekend, fellow traveler. 

Business Casual

It was a small town in the middle of nowhere. The town's mail was out on the loading dock. Just sitting there. Nothing ever happens in this town.

Have a pleasant weekend, with good light, fellow traveler. 

The Poetry of Hard Facts

I've studied the history of art, and especially photography enough to have a certain aesthetic stamped on my brain. A certain set of expectations about how a photograph should look. Some admixture of Bresson, Kertesz, and Atget, I suppose, when I'm in Europe at least. Sometimes, though, the reality in front of you appears not to align with what the art historians have written. Luckily, I took the shot anyway, and over time I've come to accept this photograph for what it is. There really was a lot of goose shit and old feathers in the water that day.

Clouds Go By

I had to act quickly because it was so windy, but in the end I got a workable image. These days, I'm happy with the person standing in the frame. The bench, on the other hand, kind of bothers me, but I think I'll live with the image a while before doing any serious Photoshop work.

Heavy Metal

Slowly, and maybe a little reluctantly, I'm learning to allow some humans to make their way into my photographs. It was easy enough to compose the shot in a way that the worker was hidden behind a piece of sculpture, and just as easy to allow him in the frame. In this image, I waited until the broom was just visible so it would look like the sculpture was being pushed. In the end, I think I prefer this version of the shot. I wonder what this person thinks about as they sweep the floor each morning.

Off The Wall

This unique temple is an easy walk from my brother’s place near the town of Komoro, but since it was so bloody cold, we drove instead. I was a bit nervous about going up there, but didn’t really understand how precarious it was until I came to this spot. 

Winter Scene

It was cold as hell, but on the positive side, there were almost no tourists around when we visited Matsumoto Castle the other day. There was no photography allowed inside the structure, unfortunately. But the weather outside was clear with a more than pleasant view of the surrounding mountains. The appearance of the swan in the frame was just icing on the cake.

It’s Not All Temples And Rainbows

The farmers in the area are all burning their fields at the moment and this changes the quality of the light. The inversion layer doesn’t help. As a result, I’ve struggled with the color balance of my images. The atmosphere is a little smoky is all. But there are any number of greenhouses scattered throughout the landscape that have caught my attention. They are interesting to photograph, with no tourists to contend with as an added benefit. The real Japan you might say.

Homogenized

I still remember the first time I took the train through the Bronx and saw buildings covered in graffiti. It was pretty wild stuff, a bit like being on the set of a dystopian movie, as corny as that might sound. At any rate, these days, you no longer have to travel very far to get a similar experience. This photograph was made in the Deep South. Could it be that Professor Baudrillard was right after all? 

Good light to you, fellow traveller.

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. 

The Public View

Increasingly, the good views are becoming privatized and kept behind gates. No public access. Period. And so, the vast majority of us must settle for standing among the telephone poles and mud holes and appreciate nature as best we can. Of course, I could have moved a few feet to the left and cleaned up the distracting wires in Photoshop, but these days, I'm feeling much less inclined to do so.

That Place We Went

To me, this looks like a place where a certain generation of young folks went at night to drink, hang out and all the rest. It is a pretty familiar story. The building is located in a secluded part of town and, when I photographed it, was covered with old signage and new graffiti. Then, a few years ago, someone bought the property and started a major renovation project. Today, it's been transformed into a family's home. There will be plenty of new memories, I am sure. But for a slightly older group, it'll always be 'that place we went in high school'.

Good light to you this weekend, fellow traveller.

Nice glass!

We came across this hellaciously large chandelier in Nashville, TN. Some old warehouses had been repurposed as commercial space with maybe a few artist studios thrown in for good measure. It was a pleasant enough experience, but the lighting fixture looked like a separate galaxy, and was the highlight of the visit for me. As you can see, the old industrial scale windows were also pretty great. Anyway, I resisted walking underneath the chandelier, in case it fell. I used the Leica R6, the 35mm f/2 lens, and a roll of Kodak XX film. By the way, the Summicron-R really is a nice piece of glass in its own right.

Too weird for my mother in law

A few years ago, I decided to make a series of notecards based on botanical subjects. Straight documentary images of beautiful flowers and such. Dead, dying, or wilted things were not part of the plan. For one thing, I wanted to brush up on my technique. It is not as easy as one might think to shoot flowers, but I eventually got there. I used a range of lighting strategies, HDR approaches, and focus stacking methods to get some damn fine images from both an artistic and technical point of view. Thing is, there isn't a huge market for notecards these days. That said, my mother in law writes a lot of notes, so I decided that giving her several boxes of cards would be a good thing. Which it most certainly was. And, of course, I eventually broke down and made images of the dead and dying, too.