Here are two delightful woodland sprites I discovered dancing beneath a magic mushroom at the Jacksonville Arboretum.   (Film)

It's been a while since I've posted anything here.  I just haven't made any photographs I'm happy enough with to share.  There is an arboretum in Jax that I discovered a week ago or so that was interesting to visit.  Within is an actual ravine with at least thirty feet of drop off that is the first inland place I've encountered here that isn't dead flat.  But this image is about something much simpler.  (Film)

It's been about two months since my last post. (sounds like I'm going to Confession...lol!)  As I've written several times before, I am finding Florida a difficult subject away from the ocean.   True, there are places one can travel to that are interesting, but in NY I found much to photograph within a mile of where I lived.  So, this is in honor of that kind of proximity.  It is a scene from behind our house.  The trees are loblolly bays that are as close to the light bark of birches or aspen as can be found around here.   (film)

As I've written, the beach is just a 20 minute drive from where I live.  Unlike the New Jersey or New York seashores, access is unfettered by fees, windshield stickers, or "No Parking" signs except in some exclusive residential areas.  In fact, Jacksonville Beach has free parking lots with porta-potties.   So, to not take advantage of what's there is to really waste an opportunity.  Rather than go to the gym today,  I walked on the beach below.  I didn't realize how strong and steady the breeze was until I turned around to go back.  Yikes!    (digital)

Since posting this in color, I was curious to see it in monochrome.  In Photoshop Elements 11 it was simple to extract the chroma, futz with highlights, midtones, shadows, contrast and brightness with the following effect.  Better?  Not really....just different.

The area of Jacksonville where I live has quite a few corporate parks.  They're landscaped to a fare thee well, but not very interesting to photograph (and...I've tried...a lot!) as the design isn't from nature, but from an architect.  All the housing and corporate developments built in the last several decades are required to include retention ponds to compensate for the acres covered by buildings and pavement.  The effect is nicely verdant with trees, shrubs and ponds, but not visually compelling.  This little tree was difficult to isolate, and it's the best I could do with it.  (film)

It's been a while since I visited Kingsley Plantation.  I wanted to wait until the light was different than it had been last spring and early summer.   It's now more oblique, and casts shadows that weren't possible when directly overhead.  There's much more visible texture now, and forms are better defined as well.  These were taken somewhere close to noon, and I want to go back at an earlier hour for even more oblique light.  It is my intention to make as many images as I can, and then choose twenty or so of the best.  So, there may be repetitions in the meantime!  (film)

 

I've not gone to the ocean for a while...stupid, really, because it's only 20 minutes away, and it's always different and always a pleasure.  So, I thought I'd take my mountain bike to the beach and ride it there on Friday instead of going to the YMCA gym.  When the tide is out, there is a lot of packed wet sand that's perfect for biking, and the knobby tires and rear fender are great for traction and avoiding splashed butt syndrome.  I rode a good long distance and came across the posts I photographed below.  I hadn't known they were there until that ride, and was eager to return with the camera the next day.  Here's one from that second visit.  (film)

I don't think I've ever included an acknowledgement of another photographer's work here.  But, hey...it's my blog, and I shouldn't feel restricted as to what I post, so here's something different.

 I have at least five books of Michael Kenna's work, two retrospectives, one anthology, and two monographs of singular subjects.  France is the most generous and sumptuous monograph I've collected by any photographer.  Knowing his work from these books, I've concluded that Kenna's so-called minimalist, long exposure images are just one segment of  his overall body of work.  The majority of the photographs are just superbly composed and interesting images of subjects that are a pleasure to look at.  (In fact, the long exposure minimalist images do not appeal to me with nearly the power as the rest.)

As I've written before, I am utterly disgusted by what passes for contemporary 'art' photography.  It's boring, careless, and poorly crafted in every sense.  It should be an embarrassment to those who champion it, but they're intent on proffering what hasn't been seen before even though it likely wasn't worth seeing in the first place. But, it's new! And...there are legions of visually illiterate viewers who will follow anyone that appears to be an authority no matter how flimsy their credentials and background. 

I am a classical musician, and have the utmost respect for excellent intonation, tonal purity, beautiful sound, and expressive interpretation.  Kenna meets parallel visual standards with supreme virtuosity.

 (digital, and with a tripod! lol)

These towers are often very compelling to look at with billowing steam jetting into the clouds.  I expect to photograph them as often as I can when the conditions make them particularly interesting.  From up close, they're huge, and their exhaust impressive.  (film)

I never imagined that there would be a vibrant wine industry in the south.  New York wines are middlin' at best, and don't really compete with California wines I think.  But, Georgia?  Who knew? 
These two photographs were made at Wolf Mountain Winery ...the real deal and truly on a steep-to-access mountain top.  The place is exceptionally elegant and beautiful, and the members of the family I met who own it were really, really nice.  (film)

 http://www.wolfmountainvineyards.com/

After seeing my son in Atlanta, Georgia, the rest of my eleven day trip focused on photography.  I didn't shoot nearly as much as I'd hoped to, but did make a few images that I'm happy with.  This is the film version of the digital image I posted on October 10th.  It's interesting that the aspect ratios of the two pictures are so different.  The digipic is nearly a panorama, while the film image is much less wide (both were cropped a bit on the sides).  Even online, the difference between a hand held p&s image, and one made with a medium format (6x7) film camera on a tripod with an excellent lens is quite obvious to me at least. 

Having only glimpsed cotton fields after they'd been harvested, my recent trip to Georgia had me there when 'the cotton was high'.   It's an interestingly heliotropic crop whose bolls aren't even visible from the side away from the sun.   As I drove past a field, I only realized what was growing there when I glanced in my rear view mirror and saw the vast ocean of white.  It's a crop that has very powerful associations with slave labor, and seeing the density of the planted field, visions of men, women, and children with sacks suspended beside them with straps, laboring in the broiling sun were quickly called to mind.  The irrigation apparatus is, of course, a contemporary device.  (film)

I almost missed this as I zipped along a two lane rural road approaching a little Georgia town.  It caught the corner of my eye, and I turned the car around and went back to it.

One of the pleasures of using a point and shoot camera is the sense of freedom to photograph anything at all.  My 'serious' film camera sits on a tripod ready to expose a frame to a carefully metered and focused scene.  But, the little digi gets handheld, and manages exposure and focus on its own.  That's a treat!

I didn't realize scenes like this still existed.  I thought laws protecting the environment from this kind of air pollution (and, some fog as well) had put an end to it, but, apparently not.  This is a Georgia Pacific paper mill belching out smoke and steam on a bright October weekday morning just outside of Brunswick, Georgia.  It's going to get worse if the forces of stupidity and greed trying to roll back environmental regulations have their way in Congress.

Chattahoochee

Splattintootree,  Splittintwoshee, Gladditsnottmee

Before you accuse me of hypocrisy regarding photographs of sunsets, let me declare up front that these pictures are not posted here as art!   They're P&S digicam snapshots, but they are nice to look at.  They were taken from the "Club" floor at the Sheraton in Atlanta after a stormy day while I was visiting with my son who was here on business.  He travels more air miles than Santa Claus, and I get to spend time with him when his work is done. 

Though I could have converted them to monochrome, sometimes color is the whole point of the photographs, and these are some of those!  ;-)

One of my friends said, "What is lacking here in interesting scenery is compensated for by incredible clouds."  It's true. There is a fairly consistent pattern of cloud formation that often leads to rain in the afternoon and evening.  (It's 6:30 PM and raining now in fact.)  I was getting the mail at about 5 o'clock and was dazzled by the western sky.  I am beginning to enjoy having my little Canon S100 digital for immediate gratification, and grabbed it quickly to record a bit of the drama. A little futzing around in Photoshop dumped the color, and hyped things up a bit.  Still, it ain't REAL photography! ;-)

Well into adulthood, I admit to having had a fear of  'the south' that was linked to the awful behavior of mobs and individuals during the '60s in response to desegregation and the civil rights movement.  Bombing 'black' churches, lynching, burning down houses of African Americans who chose to speak out and up, fierce police dogs attacking peaceful protestors, yahoo bigots screaming racist slurs and a host of other despicable practices made the region anathema.  And, of course, the slave cabins and images from Kingsley Plantation continue to reinforce the notion that this is not a region to visit let alone live in if you are a white, liberal, Yankee.

But, having now been a full time resident of north Florida for more than a year, I feel there has been significant change, and my discomfort has abated.  I know there was no dearth of racist intolerance and bigotry in many other regions as well, but the consequences of red-lining, block busting, unfair hiring and firing and a host of other sins didn't make the headlines the way what happened in the segregated south did.  A bad rap?  I don't think so, but now is not then...thankfully!

So, it is wonderful and refreshing to read the story linked below, and view the images of a North Carolina itinerant photographer made of different stuff.  

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28838957

Yeah, I know...no kittens or sunsets!  Well, Scooter is 14 and by no means a kitten.  He's a retired cat who can be so laid back that a squirrel will walk past him and not even notice he's there, nor will Scooter twitch a whisker in his direction (true!).  He doesn't have many teeth left, but could still defend himself with claws if he had to.  Perhaps cognizent of his seniority, he is far warier than he used to be and often prefers to be on the screened in porch (or 'lanai', to use the local term) looking out rather than actually being outside...less stress I think.  He periodically adopts perching places that range from a pile of clean laundry, to an empty basket for magazines, or a favorite padded chair seat, and now, to this little table by the front door.  His one principal interest is napping, and he's extremely good at it.  After these pictures were taken, he walked away, jumped up on his favorite chair, and went to sleep.  The perfect retiree!   "I am kitty!  Hear me snore!"

N.B.  As I am now posting the occasional digital image, I'll identify film from pixels for most posts.  These are scans of film exposures made on a tripod with the P67, 135mm lens on Delta 100.

This will be an odd post, and there won't be a photograph or two included.  Rather, I am posing an open question and looking for serious answers.

I am at a total loss as to the way certain contemporary photography disregards most of the criteria I consider essential to a good picture.  In my email today was a new issue of an online photography magazine that baffles me. What I see there over and over again is haphazard lighting, indifferent color...usually somewhat washed out, random composition that seems to deliberately disdain coherent organization, centers of interest that aren't interesting, subjects that wouldn't hold my attention for a moment in reality, a voyeuristic view of people who have no apparent reason for being photographed, and a host of other sins of omission, and commission.  These photographs get published on line and in books, and garner praise by virtue of their being chosen, but without an explanation of why.  (I find it hard to believe anyone would buy any of these pictures for their walls, and I'd love to know how many copies of such books get sold.)

The alternative isn't kittens and sunsets, saturated and over sharpened color landscapes with pristine, dead calm water and snow capped mountains.  I realize that stuff is often kitsch, and is as guilty of  egregious sins as the work I am referring to in the paragraph above.  I make no brief that plodding along with endless variations of Yosemite in winter and the like would be preferred alternatives.
Nor do I  think umpteen Kennabe long exposure style photographs should be thought of as 'better'  art, whatever that is.  I am not writing in praise of stagnation. I also do not contend that my own photographs should garner any particular attention.  But, at least they're honest attempts to meet  standards that have been well established over time. And that's the heart of the question I'm posing...why have those standards been abandoned, and why does deliberate ugliness command the approval of the arbiters of 'fine art' photography???   

So, if you have a comment that will enlighten me, please make it.  If it makes no ad hominem attacks, and uses presentable language, I'll post it.  I apologize in advance for the 'captcha' nonsense that blogger.com imposes, but I can't seem to disable it.  Comments are delayed until I can check them, but I won't ignore any that meet the two criteria I mentioned.  Thank you in advance!


photoeye.com publishes a wide range of photobooks that run the gamut from wonderful to execrable, so look there for examples of the best and worst.