Mark W Tiedemann

Category: Art

Rubble

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

There are several things in politics that I could write about.  I did post a screed yesterday over on Dangerous Intersection, so I think I’ll do something a bit more personal and, um, artistic here.  Of course, metaphorically, the theme sort of carries.  Ruin, rubble, the crumbling of ancient temples.  The overturned and broken remnants of an Aztec pyramid perhaps?

aztec-rubble-copy.jpg

It was fun to play with some of the values in this image, make it more epic than it already was.  Of course, this is nowhere near Mexico.  It’s an old, abandoned mine down in Bon Terre.  A Kodachrome original, though, and I must admit I’m still getting some of the best transfers from those.…

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Something More On The Bright Side

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

All the negative crap will collect on the psyche after a while and bury you under cynicism, despair, anger, pessimism.  You just can’t let the beauty slip by, though.  Sometimes it’s the only thing that will keep you getting up in the morning.  Like this morning.

morning-glory-2.jpg…

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Soulard Past

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Was a time I wandered around with a camera around my neck and acted like the “cool photojournalist” type.  Another aspect of “career” I never acted on in any serious way.

Except the work.  I loved the work.  The images were all.  (I’d read about Alfred Eisenstadt walking away from his position at LIFE Magazine when a new batch of editors started cropping his photographs with scissors.  He told them it was in his contract that they run his work as he gave it to them, but they said “Pop, it’s just not done that way anymore, you gotta get with the times” and he said “No, I don’t” and quit. …

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Transparencies of Days Past

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Gradually, given enough time, I’ll both learn proficiency with the new digital medium and transfer my best images from nearly forty years of photography.  I’ve been doing this “in between” all the other things on my plate and it hasn’t had top priority, but once in a while I find some old negatives or, in this case, transparencies that make me wonder, for only a moment, why I’m doing anything else.  I finish working something like this over…

abandoned-house-copy.jpg

…and I get a thrill such as I used to whenever I first made a new image that I thought was worth a damn.…

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On The Road Part Two

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

A quick follow-up to my abbreviated MadCon report just past.  Harlan Ellison arrived at the hotel Thursday evening, around eight o’clock.  Only a few of us were in the lobby.  Allen Steele, Peter David, Donna, and myself.  Peter David’s wife Kathleen and their daughter (who Harlan “terrorized” to our surprise and her later delight).  From that point on it became a really good experience.  All the rumors that had been floating around about Harlan’s imminent demise proved exaggerated.  Though he didn’t look his best—clearly he has been ailing—and he arrived wearing a sweatshirt and pajama bottoms (Pierre Cardin, as he repeatedly joked, since he wore them all weekend), as the weekend progressed he came more and more alive.…

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Robert A. Heinlein: Grand Master

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

I finished reading William H. Patterson’s large new biography of Robert A. Heinlein yesterday.  I knew I wanted to write something about it, but I gave it a day to simmer.  Frankly, I’m still not sure what to say other than I was positively impressed.

Basically, Patterson achieved the remarkable goal of demythologizing the man without gutting him.

I’ve read any number of biographies of famous (and infamous) personalities which tended either to be hagiographic (and therefore virtually useless as any kind of honest reference) or a brutal airing of personal failings in some sort of attempt to drag the subject down to “our level” and resulting in a catalogue of reasons to think ill of the person under study. …

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Ideas and Execution

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

A few weeks ago I read a really terrific story by Adam-Troy Castro, called Arvies.  Check it out, it is, as they say, killer.

Last weekend I went to ConText, as I reported.  Usually when I come home from a convention I’m energized, can’t wait to get to the computer and write something.  Not this time.  I was unusually enervated.  Maybe I have too much on my mind.

Maybe.

Last night, though, a story idea popped into my head from something Donna said and I have written the first few paragraphs.  I look at it and see that it is inspired in part by Adam’s story. …

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More Playing With Pictures

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

I had to call a friend to help me set up to scan slides.  It was literally a matter of not having something plugged it.  No, I don’t mind admitting “Doh!” moments.  Learning is filled with them, embarrassment shouldn’t prevent sharing of knowledge.

Anyway, the scanner works for color transparencies now and I have a mother butt load of them in the closet.  Thousands upon thousands.  At least half of them are Kodachrome.

So I began with a couple on hand and started playing.  One I did this morning I have worked up into two versions.  Here’s the first.

merry-go-still-1.jpg

Yes, I said and you read correctly that this is from a COLOR transparency. …

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Photography and Change

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Steve McCurry, a famous photographer whose image of an Afghan girl with brilliant green eyes for National Geographic has become iconic, has been given a great and sad gig—Kodak has handed him the last production roll of Kodachrome to take and shoot.  He’s doing it in grand style, traveling all over the world, with a film crew shooting a documentary about it.

I wanted to be a photographer for National Geographic when I was a teenager.  I knew nothing about how to do that, and for numerous reasons I won’t go into I never found out or took the chance.  I played it safe with a nice steady lab job and didn’t pursue a dream. …

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New Fiction

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

I’ve been working this past few months on short fiction.  You wouldn’t think this would be such a hard thing to do, given my rate of production in the last ten years (almost fifteen novels, scores of book reviews, a few assorted nonfiction pieces, and all the blog entries, both here and on Dangerous Intersection), but short fiction is peculiar.  Hell, anything is peculiar.  If you’re used to writing one form, switching to another can be very difficult.  There are some writers, I know (and some I know) who have no trouble moving between forms, but for whatever reason I do.…

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