Absolute Blogmusings from an absolutely blank mind Pull over, I see a Tree!OK, I’m not really that excited about trees. What really grabs my attention is a certain quality of the light – and perhaps the possibility to photographically isolate the interesting elements in the landscape. I say “possibility”, because almost every shot depends on luck to some extent. This one more than most.  
The Last Outpost Click here to see this image in the gallery. The first piece of luck was being able to pull onto a barely used frontage road sandwiched between a busy freeway and the railway tracks. I had noticed the fast-moving clouds dragged their shadows across the dry hills as they raced by, constantly changing the scene in a mesmerizing game of “what will the spotlight shine on next”. Once set up, my ultra-wide-angle lens allowed me to include both the sky and the foreground in a nice dramatic way (it does distort quite a lot, but you’d never realize it unless you knew the railroad sign was really vertical!). With the unpredictable light changing so rapidly, the perfect shot needed more than a little luck. My approach was just to keep shooting, in the hope that one of those shots would catch that magical moment with exactly the right play of light and shade. Most of the time, the scene was either all sunny or all overcast – really quite dull – but for one fleeting moment the simultaneous light on the rusty sign and the distant tree pulled it out of the ordinary and made it a keeper. Good thing I saw that tree and pulled over! Fireworks in the Rain
Skyfire 2012
July 4th – the day for fireworks in the USA – and everyone has their camera out. The problem for a photographer is that no matter how great your photos turn out, every shot you have has been done before and there’ll always be a better photo than yours. So this year, despite attending one of the most spectacular firework displays in the country, I decided to turn the camera around and focus on the watchers and other elements of the scene that were transformed by the fireworks. The one element I never anticipated? Pouring rain! As the show drew to a close I decided to beat the crowds and head for the train station. As I walked away the finale exploded behind me and I turned and took this image of the amazing light-filled sky reflected in the rain-pocked puddle. SerendipityWhile looking for a featured “picture of the month” for June, I came across this image from last month’s Maker Faire in San Mateo, California. 
The Boy in the Pink Shirt See this image in the Gallery. I was looking for images that might be suitable for an exhibition entitled “Alternative Realities” which, although mainly seeking images created using alternative photographic processes, professed to be open to other interpretations of the title. We’ll see! Of all the possible candidates I found, this one caught my eye and stuck in my head like one of those musical earworms – probably because of the strange surrealistic quality it possesses. I honestly don’t know whether or not it’s a good picture, but I DO know it’s one I can’t forget – so it probably has some deeper meaning that I’m not consciously aware of. In case you were wondering, this is NOT a double exposure or a computer trick – just a regular picture taken as I (and the boy in the pink shirt) chased a flashing neon robot shark around a darkened warehouse… each for our own arcane reasons. The strange astronomical vortex they appear to be running towards is simply a light pattern projected onto the floor as part of another Maker exhibit. So is it just me? What do you think? Too Much CoffeeOne of the reasons I keep coming back to SPARK (The web project that pairs artists and writers for mutual inspiration), is that it often takes me into places outside my photographic comfort zone. This time (SPARK 16), the wonderful poem from Lisa Nielsen, “The Vaguery of Us”, took me to a more familiar venue. The Coffee Shop. The image that first came to me was actually the opposite of the one I ended up with. In my mind’s eye I saw a couple in still, sharp, detail surrounded by the swirling and indistinct blur of people in motion. Where to find bustling activity on a holiday weekend? Why a shopping mall, of course! Two shopping malls later I knew this idea was not going to work. Even in a busy place like a mall food court, most people are just sitting and eating at tables. People eating actually move a lot less than you might think – even with an eight stop neutral density filter pushing my exposure time to 20 or 30 seconds, all I got was a bunch blurred people at tables. Not what I wanted — and the neon restaurant signs in the background didn’t fit the ambiance of the poem at all. Plan B: (Plan B is always the best plan!) Now I’m looking for an actual coffee shop …with a couple …at a table …who I can covertly photograph from a close distance(!). My new idea is that the couple is motion-blurred and the surroundings are in sharp focus. Naturally this was not as simple as it may sound either, and I was soon cursing the people who put free wifi in coffee shops. It seems every coffee place in Silicon Valley has been taken over by students and the new work-from-anywhere generation who sit there for hours, alone with their laptops. How these places make any money is beyond me. Several latte’s later I was starting to give up hope. What I needed was a place I could reliably find non-techie people who actually wanted to talk to each other. The answer: The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) …or their cafe, anyway! Just for once, luck was on my side. The place was spacious and airy, not too busy, and there were a few couples, of various gender pairings, in animated conversation. …and next to one was an empty table against a wall! Now for a covert picture… Bear in mind that I’m not using a little hideable point-n-shoot or a camera-phone here. I have a full size professional SLR camera with a lens the size of a couple of fat coffee mugs! I attached a remote shutter cable, and my neutral-density filter (it’s black and opaque – looking a bit like a shiny lens cap) and set the camera on the table (pointing toward the couple) amongst a bunch of my other photo junk. Then I studiously ignored them, read a book and drank my latte. (…all while taking shot after shot with the remote.). Eventually they finished and left. As did I. I couldn’t be sure what I had until I got home and feared that I might have to repeat the exercise, but this picture seemed, miraculously, to capture the poem perfectly. After a little experimentation, I discovered that removing color made the image stronger, emphasizing the contrast between the sharpness of the objects on the table and the couple, blurred by their movements as they talked. As a result, this is one of my rare black-and-white images.
The Speed of Love
The Vaguery of Us
There is constant motion
Cornered in a café
Fingers form steeples
If these lips could talk
At the same time, I provided this image as an inspiration for Lisa. Her wonderful poem in response, is below. 
The Prospect of News
The Jagged Key The jagged key’s anxious dance
I want a moratorium declared
Have I become so desperate
Yet, a wish is made that I will open
Thank you MaryFollowers of this blog, and my work, will know about my participation in the web project called SPARK (I’m engaged in another round of SPARK as I write). This week, one of my prior SPARK collaborators, writer and novelist Mary L. Tabor, noticed my post about the exhibition in Vermont, and suggested I write an essay for her blog. An essay? Why anyone would even think of suggesting I write is beyond me. I’ve never written anything before (other than here!) but I’ve often toyed with the idea – like many of us I suppose – of writing a book (in my case, young adult fiction — topic for another day.). I figured an essay is short enough, and decided to take a shot. It took me a couple of hours to write (probably helped by the fact that I was at work and had something much more important I should have been doing!), followed by a couple of days of obsessive tinkering with vocabulary and punctuation, which really didn’t change that much. In fact, the hardest part was that Mary asked for a picture to go with my bio! As you may imagine, these are as rare as hen’s teeth, as I usually manage to be behind the camera and thus avoid the indignity. Thanks to the wonders of digital technology. however, I was able to cut myself out of a group picture from a few years ago and satisfy the request. Anyway, the result is now available for all to see on Mary’s blog here.
If you haven’t discovered Mary’s work yet, click over to her blog and check out her current work (it’s all available from Amazon – including for your Kindle!). Mary was a senior executive in corporate America before going back to college to study creative writing and publishing her first book at age 60. Mary’s deeply personal writing reveals intimate stories of life, sex and love – including her own very personal story of loss and ultimate self-discovery which started life as a live blog, documenting her experiences and feelings as events unfolded. She has also had many essays and stories published in journals, reviews and anthologies. Mary’s third book, a novel, will be published soon. I’m excited! |
|
