More from the previous post

Last night the photo file upload gizmo was messed up and only the last photo would stay on the server....it was late, so I gave up trying to redo it again, hoping "this time it might work." Naaa, it didn't.

Today it's working, and since paying with some of my life source to those damn ticks while making images, the least I could do for my own piece of mind is post a few more from that day. Also, the chicken wings Kenny made were incredible. The pork loin was amazing, as I mentioned, but far less photogenic...

When following after photos might not be worth it.

A couple of weeks ago when my friend Kenny decided to have a bar-b-que at his new digs I noticed the back yard was a treasure trove of stuff his housemate relegated to being strewn helter- skelter. While an amazingly good smelling pork loin was cooking on the charcoal grill, I headed down off the deck to make images among the plethora of textures, colors and shapes laying about on the ground. What I didn't know until the next day was that there were also ticks out there in the yard....and I am a magnet for them....omg.

A few days later, after plucking these nasty things off my legs, and feet, still itching like hell, I went off for a scheduled trip in NYC. Not more than a day later of walking around there, my right foot was swelling up and one of the places where I'd removed a tick began to look like something biblical...along the lines of the plague of boils. I finally gave in and spent Saturday night waiting to see an attending doctor in a Manhattan ER. Not fun.

North Carolina has more ticks than I'm willing to deal with to go off shooting in or near the woods here again, at least until I get whatever that evil smelling stuff is that wards off pestilence.

Night Again

Last evening while leaving the Common House of a co-housing community in Carrborro, where I was meeting with photographer friends, I notice a large dark yellow wagon to the side of the door, looking quite interesting in it's setting of fence, houses and darkness behind. I mentioned to my host that I was going to stay around and photograph the scene, but had to go to my car, parked outside the walkways, to get a tripod. It was rather late, and I spent a quiet 15 or so minutes shooting the wagon. I wasn't all that excited about the results in the camera viewer but thought something might look better larger....turns out, they sucked.

Lately, I've not been so drawn to shooting at night, and this less than satisfying experience with the wagon solidified the notion I was done shooting at night, at least in the way I've been at it for the last 3 years.

The walk back to my car was very sweet; the night was quiet, still and damp from the Seattle type weather we've been experiencing lately here in our part of NC. When I got to this area, my awareness heightened and soared....I sensed a soft coalescence of air, space and some unidentifiable quality that drew me to stay and photograph.

The night still calls me.

Flower Trash

In a vase where the roses died, there were some live filler flowers that lingered for many days longer. I don't know the name of what they were. At the time of their demise, petals, leaves and stamens fell on the counter in a lovely arrangement.

It was evening and I didn't have anything much pressing to do, so I got the camera and eventually, after shooting some straight compositions using the ugly overhead kitchen lighting, grabbed the only flashlight handy and began again. The low batteries created a soft addition of shapes and shadows, making everything much more intimate and dramatic.

I really like when situations seem to create themselves as I go about my daily life. For the last year or so, almost each day I shoot at least a frame or more as I move through my day and night. The Canon G10 is always at ready.....like a gunslinger always has his pistol on his hip. It's a weird analogy, perhaps, but I've discovered that sometimes it's like that...the constant practicing...the quick draw when it comes to instantaneous people shots that happen when I'm out and about, sitting in a cafe, on the road, wherever. Then there's the other practicing, which is more like this flower trash situation....the inanimate stuff of life that shows up, or makes itself known if you remember to keep your mind quiet, your eyes new and alert. That becomes what I think of as "sketching". These kinds of studies are fun, playful, and often quite satisfying.
 
These kinds of images may not directly inform my "serious" work but they consistently go the distance for me, filling my heart with the joy of wandering in the boundless realm of creativity.

Sri Ganesha

I have no idea what I'm doing up at 2:23am and how this image created itself from a small Ganesh that's been on my desktop for the last few weeks.....have no idea where I found it, either.
But here he is, now, in this form....Ganesha, Ganapati...son of Shiva & Parvati. He who stands at the threshold of Time...the Lord of Beginnings....the Destroyer of Obstacles. Om Ganesha.

Om Eckadanthaya vidmahe
Vakrathundaya dheemahi
Thanno danthi prachodayath.

Om, Let me meditate on that one tused God,
Oh, God with broken tusk, give me highter intellect,
And let the elephant faced one illuminate my mind.


Perhaps this marks the beginning of something....we'll see.

Show at Durham Art Guild

REFLECTING ON REFLECTIONS

For the last few weeks my mind's been cluttered up with extraneous things, like the economic mess, watching network tv series at night, and being pissed about the small percentage of a sale that as a fine art photographer that isn't well known receives.After the gallery takes their 50% cut, and I've paid a quarter of the total for expenses, I'm less and less willing to sell work for my pitance when I continually realize that the reason for the sale in the piece in the first place, is that the buyer likes the image....and, that's the part I'm responsible for....the image, damn it. When that photograph is hanging on the wall in someone's house or office, it's because that person wants to live that particular image.

My rant has nothing to do with these photos, except to explain that I'm not shooting much these days. What's also going on is I'm taking a video production class, which is dragging my head away from stills and leaving me in the middle of nowhere, because I haven't started filming anything yet. Hence, tv shows are appealing... paying attention to the editing that goes on, particularly.

But, today, while drinking a cup of coffee out on the back porch, I noticed the reflections of the trees in the glass behind me, and so, fueled on joe, hauled out the camera. It came to mind that there was a connection to some reflection images I did over Xmas in NYC. These city window shots were done at Bergdorf''s on 5th Ave.

Double pane glass gives a bit of a stuttering to the image, which I like. The angle at which the camera was held to the glass decided how it would record the reflection.

I don't know about how other artists find their connections and similarities of the way they look at things, or come up with variations on a theme or subject, but for me, over the years of shooting, threads of ideas continue to show themselves, sometimes dormant over a period of months or years, only to surface again and again in a slightly different way, informed by a maturing or shift of consciousness on my part. Creating books seem like the best way to make myself pick through the archives of negatives, and slides, scour the boxes of prints, hit the hard drives of digital files, and get this lifetime of photography so far organized in some fashion. I do think that the process would reveal a great deal of insight into the heart of my passion and set a compass for the future.