Category: Photography

Art

Coolth

Weather patterns are insane. It’s over a 100 in the Pacific Northwest and here in Missouri this morning it’s 70. It’s July.  Our civilization is lurching toward solving what may be the greatest civil engineering project in history and hopefully reversing the last century (or more) of human-contributed climate change.  (You know, I used to have arguments about this back in my 20s and the counterargument was always “The planet is huge! Do you know how much pollution goes into the atmosphere when a big volcano erupts? How can we possibly add so much that things could change?” On its face, a certain logic, but you have to leave out key obvious factors, like the constant production of the greenhouse gases, and the fact that the planet, if we assume a certain homeostasis with natural systems, was already at an optimal point of balance.  So how much extra does there really need to be added to what was already being produce to tip it over the edge?  Not a lot.  In fact, about what we’ve added. Anyway.)

That all said, I have nothing much more to say. So, something to assist with cool thoughts.  Have a good weekend.

 

Art

Strolling

We had a chance to take a walk in a garden recently. After a year of basically hunkering down and avoiding the world, our limit was reached and we went to the Missouri Botanical Garden the first weekend of May. It was so good, so surreal, and so necessary.

Consequently, a couple of shots.

 

 

 

Art

Triptych

I like series photographs. A set of images, either telling a story or simply variations on a theme. I haven’t done many, but here’s one I think worth a look. I took these in the early Eighties, somewhere in the country. (I am horrible at documenting my visual work, the where when who why and how of things. Oh, well.)  Anyway, maybe someone will find them compelling enough, either singly or as a set, to hang on their wall.

Each is linked to the gallery.

Art

Winter On Your Wall

One of the images that came of our recent Polar Vortex Event. I’m rather pleased with this one. I like abstracts that are clearly Something. Anyway, click on the image and it will take you to the gallery, and if you’re so inclined, you may hang it on your wall.  (Especially you folks in Florida who seem to have “weathered” this all in fine form.)

Art

Two Views

It snowed. For a photographer, this is an opportunity to make images that will literally vanish if not made at once. Long ago, this was the only reason I looked forward to snow, which is otherwise, for me, a major inconvenience.  (As long as I can sit in my warm house, with a hot cup of coffee, and just gaze out at it, I’m fine. If I have to go anywhere…well.)

But I did make some photographs this time, just around the house, which fortuitously offers quite a few settings for interesting images.

I am a lover of good black & white, but I confess that color has enamored me more and more since my last lab job and I was forced to learn color printing. I hated it, actually—the chemistry is more toxic than b&w ever was and the fey unpredictables of color filtration frustrated me no end, but I got reasonably good at it, and I learned to appreciate it.  Since going digital, I like its possibilities even more.  But black & white is my first love.

It’s hard to decide, though.  Some things self-evidently declare themselves for one or the other, but often it’s too close to call. So I offer two versions of a recent photograph and leave it to you to judge. Which do you like better?

 

 

 

Art

Picture For A Sunday Afternoon

When I was a kid there used to be a number of “movie” shows on television. We had three major networks and a couple of local independent “affiliates.” Paltry choices compared to today, and yet there always seemed to be plenty to watch. As older films became available to lease by networks, these shows proliferated. The Three O’Clock Movie during the work week, then later some prime-time selections, but I always remembered the Picture For A Sunday Afternoon as my favorite.

It was nostalgic, even then. And kind of arty. We saw a lot of films that didn’t have much to do with Oscar winners or things like that.  And it was all in glorious black-and-white, because we didn’t have a color set. Even if we had, most of these films were from the Forties and Fifties and were shot in black-n-white.

I have always loved black & white photography. I even have a slight preference for pen-and-ink and charcoal drawings. The one time I had a conversation with the late Kelly Freas, he and I both geeked out on the superiority of black & white illustration.

Art

Old (New) Image

I’m getting acquainted with the new scanner and having to learn its tricks. File size being one of them.  But.

There are some images a photographer goes back to again and again, trying it one more time, reinterpreting, finding a new or better way of bringing it out.  This is one such.  From New Mexico

Enjoy.

 

 

 

Art

We Have Toys

Finally, after two trips into the wilds of computer land, I have my new scanner, all set up and ready to go. Below it my first scanned image.

 

I will get better at this, once I learn the various buttons on the new ‘chine. This is an old image, a 4 X 5 negative. To my pleasant amazement, the detail is still astounding in these things.

So in the space of a week, I have the ability now to once more make use of my (huge) library of negatives (only 50 + years of photography), and I have sold a new story—a novella, no less—to Analog. Not a bad start of a year that could have turned out a lot worse.