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What Is The Subject Here?
Continue Reading“Photography performs one function supremely well: it shows what something or somebody looked like, under a particular set of conditions at a particular moment in time. This specificity has been, and remains, photography’s boon as well as its bane …. An earnest and honest appreciation of subject matter is the genesis of a clearer, deeper […]
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Black and White Purity
Continue ReadingIf you survey current, ultramodern monochrome photos you will find an abundance like mine above, where near-coal blackness juxtaposes with higher-valued tones without much progression in between. This captures a West African musician at the climax of his performance; however usually the subject is landscape, cityscape or architecture, made with equipment designed to produce […]
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Giza — Deep In December Haze
Continue ReadingLooking northeast toward Cairo from the hill above Giza Pyramids on an opaque winter morning, I could see just five blocks into the closest neighborhoods. The rest of the gigantic city lay obscured by dust, haze, mist, and smog. Nothing prepares you for the grandeur of the Giza complex. Its artistic theme and layout impresses […]
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Photographic Quotations, Vol. 1
Continue ReadingI take it quotation differs from homage. Homage is a gesture of respect, made by a lesser artist toward one considered on a higher plane of accomplishment. A quotation on the other hand is an intellectual cross-reference. To illustrate I share above a typical homage — to Harry Callahan — an esteemed photographer who seemed […]
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Backyard Beauty
Continue ReadingThere is loveliness next-door. Applied perception can endow commonplace objects — even a poisonous one like this — with elegance A landscape plant growing along highways in Arizona and California, the botanical foot-soldiering Oleander can survive and flourish many months without rain or irrigation. Here I think it transcends its utilitarian, garden-variety self.
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Figures in the Landscape
Continue ReadingHuman figures add interest and comprehension to a landscape. However, it is not often possible to include them in a photograph; it involves patiently waiting for people to appear, and then waiting longer for them to arrange themsevles into an interesting configuration in relation to the earth. Or you can get lucky occasionally, as […]
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Mountain Gloom or Mountain Glory?
Continue ReadingWe see what artists have taught us to see. “During the first seventeen centuries of the Christian era, ‘Mountain Gloom’ so clouded human eyes that never for a moment did poets see mountains in the full radiance to which our eyes have become accustomed. Within a century — indeed, within fifty years — all […]
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Palms In Sonoran Heat
Continue ReadingWith outdoor temperatures reaching beyond 110° Fahrenheit, I went to the yard to make a picture. I think palms especially beautiful under intense light with abundant infrared rays in the mix.
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Taking Liberties, Example #2
Continue ReadingHaving fun with a little palmetto — on the ground floor of a forest.
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