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If I Had Another Lifetime
Continue ReadingIf I had another life to live, and could be newly born today (when we have reached the Promised Land of photographic technology), I think I would become an image specialist. I would take pictures of dancers more or less exclusively, and not just professionals but amateurs also — like these I observed in North […]
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There Is No Explaining This
Continue ReadingThere is no explanation for some things you see in public. Analysis fails. You must let the mind dissolve into pure experience and refrain from judgement.
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Acknowledging Eliot Porter
Continue ReadingIt is safe to say I would not have made this picture without my study and assimilation of Eliot Porter’s images. I did not have any particular composition in mind from his body of work. It is true his most important work appears in color, and my photo above is monochrome; however, the motif here […]
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Some Beginner’s Luck
Continue ReadingThis is my first photograph of the natural world in the digital era. Despite technical flaws, I think it still works. I believe I had in mind an image by Ansel Adams entitled “Burnt Stump and New Grass,” so there is a copycat element here. Any journey worth taking begins with baby steps, often leaning […]
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The Scarecrow As Esoteric Sculpture
Continue ReadingImagine you are out for a walk in the park and you encounter this fellow. It could be the death mask of an ice-age human, with the huge nostrils for warming and moisturizing dry frigid air, but the goatee is not well-synchronized with the Middle Paleolithic. Clearly it has been borrowed from the fake beards […]
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A Desert Benevolence
Continue ReadingHere olives prosper In dry and doubtful ground. Bestowing restful tonic, A soul-refreshment On truth-thirsty travelers.
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The Pleasures of Light and Dark
Continue ReadingChiaroscuro in my words means modeling objects and human figures (traditionally done by painters) using definite contrasts between darkness and light, as in our two photographs on this page. Often you will see deep shadows and luminous whites in the same composition, abruptly juxtaposed. Why does an image made with this technique give us pleasure? Michelangelo […]
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Irrepressible Clichés
Continue ReadingIt is tough to resist the platitude, the tug of a superficially important image. When you see tasty low-hanging fruit, you just grab for it by conditioned reflex. The lone figure on the shore, the lonely tree in a vast undulating meadow; the single red umbrella among an ocean of black ones — it goes […]
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Taking Liberties, Example #1
Continue ReadingModern editors of photographs have well-stocked tool boxes, and stand at the leading edge of an intricate history during which every imaginable style, viewpoint, composition and technique have been tried in photography. It’s all legitimate; each special wrench or brush delicately used can be helpful on occasion. A simple reversal (as above) can bring out […]
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Embellishments On A Tired Idea
Continue ReadingIf you have spent time studying photographs — especially in monochrome — either among present day examples or in compositions from our past extending back now almost 200 years, you will have noticed recurring themes. These become stale and impotent with repetition and enter the realm of hackneyed ideas. They exist in their millions almost […]
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