OK, there you go

She hates this pic because she does not like her smile. I think it is right on.

nice digital pic

One of the first nice digital pics I took. Waiting for a wedding rehearsal to get going. I was the only one on time. Fine flower, but what makes it for me is the sexond flower out of focus in the background. THis is also one of the first I took with a prime lens instead of the plastic cheapie zoom that came with the d50.

Sorry about light posting

So here is my son as a little angel to make up for it. I have been waiting for court. They pay me too much money to sit around until I can be not at all very helpful. Very boring and unsatisfying. So while I wait for the pizza man, I will post.

fun surfing

I have been enjoying surfing some other photoblogs. I am compiling a list of my favorites and will post them here. Some are great, some are weird, and some are just OK. Many are really wonderful. It is interesting to contrast and compare this little blog. One thing I noticed is how un-avant-garde I am! Kinda prosaic actually. No biggie though. The other is how unpretentious and low key this blog is. None of the other blogs I saw posted any pics that didn't work. I have posted at least two and am strangely proud of that! This is more a blog about my thoughts about my photography than it is a presentation of my most excellent work. I like that, it is cool and easy. Hope you enjoy this pic!

Good dog

Beautiful dog, nice snow, but that line of barbed wire bugs me. I guess I COULD photshop it out, but that would be a major pain and undertaking. So I have decided to live with it.

and again

At first I was gonna fix how my dodging her face left a halo. Then I thought about it and left good enough alone.

You are welcome

Just something lovely. I used to feel that my photos had to be gritty and even ugly. Now I really enjoy a lovely image. This is my youngest daughter, God blessed me with beautiful children. I hope this brings you a bit of joy.

nice panorama

This looks like fun about now. I like the intense grain, and it is all actual grain, no faux grain at all. A bit flat as far as contrast goes, but it was a grey day. The fisherman's expression is rather sullen, so it does not look like it was a productive day.

empty chair technique

The title is from a therapy technique, the pun is this is one of my attempts to take an evocative picture of an empty chair. Doesn't work for me. Not the right angle, the light is wrong, and there is no emotional evocation. Aside from that, great pic. Heh heh.

Happy Monday

There is something good about pics of children that are not cute, when they have an intense expression. Diane Arbus knew this. While this pic is not disturbing, I like that it is not too cute. She is intent and thoughtful. Well, at least she looks that way! Beautiful color too. I might crop it a bit, tighten it up, or I might not.

Happy Monday

There is something good about pics of children that are not cute, when they have an intense expression. Diane Arbus knew this. While this pic is not disturbing, I like that it is not too cute. She is intent and thoughtful. Well, at least she looks that way! Beautiful color too. I might crop it a bit, tighten it up, or I might not.

Is it reall the end of April?

Not shure what this pic has to do with the end of April, but there you have it. Kinda bizarre, what is she doing in the water, why does she have that pose? Honestly, I do not know either. But it is a Monday and I have posted! More coherent postings may follow!

nice portrait

I am thinking about softening her skin a little under her left eye, but maybe not. It is real the way it is, and beautiful. No need to make it too plastic. An old image, 1981 or 80, shot on Agfa slide film. It has a different color cast, almost golden. I really enjoy the agfa slides I have for this reason.

Heh

Well, I finally got a comment sent by someone else. It was spam.

Figures.

But at least it is a start!

more beach

OK, I have stayed away from the beach pics for long enough. Time for more! Isn't this great? The joy and comfort in the girls' faces, the cozey child, the slightly embarassed older girl. The relationship and their individuality. Nice colors and technique too. This one will get a large print soon.

beautiful

Difficult morning at work dealing with some tragedy perpetrated on some children, so here is a wonderful, beautiful pic. I won't say more than that. I hope this makes you feel good, it makes me feel better.

bayou scene

My father took this photo, and I think it is one of his best. Early in his painting career he would look through my pics and use them for his compositions. He struggled a bit with knowing what to paint, but he could really paint! This composition shows his growth in seeing. I like the composition and the subject matter. I will try to put on a pic of the painting he did from it later. He did two or three version till he got the approach he liked best.

dreaming

I just love this pic, especially since it is real, i.e. not posed. It is nice that his body language is almost as relaxed as hers. But she is leaning into him for shure. From Chapel Hill, NC, where I spent my 6 years of undergraduate college. Too busy taking pics and being stupid to get out in 4 years.

Mom in the snow

I just love this pic of mom in the snow. Kodachrome slide from early 50s, she was from Louisiana, this must ahve been some sight for her. Poor thing, she is awkward and does not know what to do with her hands. Dad must have been proud of this picture. The color is magnificent in the original, sharp enough to shave with. A wonderful keepsake for me as her son, and a great pic by dad.

See what I mean?

Kinda blah. Interesting shapes and compositon, but no contrast and snap. The red pitchfork and the green background are gone leaving a grey mishmash. Well, I tried, but I did not visualize the print well enough. I have worked on the image, but it just won't shine.

Still life

I have a black and white version of this that just does not work. The negative is not great, but the tonal ranges are too similar in the monochrome. Here, the familiar farm red and the green give the image some chromatic diversity where there was not tonal diversity. The black and white just blends in together, I will try to post one of those next. But this is nice and calm and interesting to me.

Finally

Whew, this is about the sixth time I have tried to upload a pic in the last day. This time it worked. I need to get some of the roll paper for my Epson 2400. The paper is 13 inches wide and 6 feet long. This would be nice that way. Glad to have a pic up, will post more as the program or bandwidth allows.

Grrrrrr

Can't get any pics to upload to blog. Grrrrr.

even more no water shots

Nice pic of the Tetons. I would get up at dawn on these camping trips and put a chair at the next camp site while my camping companion stayed in the tent. Gave me a chance to get out and get some nice early pics. This one is great, especially big. But then you knew that already! Wonderful country out there.

On a side note, doing the blog has energized me to scan more pics. It is not like I am running short, I have over 400 scanned, but I want more! The associations that these bring up are spurring me on to post other specific pics. I printed out a bunch for friends at church for Easter, that was fun. I also printed a couple for myself, because I could. Happy tax day, I hope last year was prosperous and you really hate seeing how much our government takes to do silly things while avoiding the important things that they need to be doing. Nuff said.

Look ma, no water

Too much water in previous posts. This was from Poland in 1980 or 79. The Pope was visiting his homeland, and we were goodwill ambasadors from the States. 4 am, early morning light and severe jetlag. Think De Stijl. Nice and modern. The radio was a tubed model that sounded FANTASTIC. Cause tubes sound that way man. The white thing is a vase. Great shadows. I bet this one would make a great computer background or pic at a bar. Hope you like it.

Child by the Bayou

Well, I know that one person has seen the blog in that I showed my wife last night. So I have that going for me. Which is nice.

I am cooking the mahi mahi for dinner, actually, I am just getting the coals going now. How great is wifi? Smoking a cigar, the wind is blowing, the whining kids are inside. Cool. We had a nice Easter Egg hunt today, but the candy leavs the children CRANKY. I am cooking, and the wife suggested that I grill. Is there any wonder why I love that woman?

But back to the pics. I have always been drawn to water. I consider it God's providence that I have not driven into a stream or lake as I was rubbernecking. So there are plenty of water pics over the years. This one is a keeper. The child seems isolated. Actually just good cropping as the family is just stage left. But in the pic the child looks alone and nervous. Bayous are mysterious places, they can be full of gators and 6 foot long gar. So there is a sense of menace and vulnerability.

shells

My father did a nice version of this in watercolor. He added a wave, which was a nice touch and would have been a real tough job in photoshop!

enough with the shore already

I was boring myself. This is from Biwabik (sp?) Minnesota. Nice composition. I wonder if rednecks take the best snow pics because it is so foreign and new to us?

Sorry about the beach fixation

But since I usually post these in a down moment at work and I am currently editing the vacation pics, well, these images are on my mind. Nots to self, get the negatives from the vacation developed too.

This pic of Thomas, my youngest son by two minutes, is transcendant. He is stepping into the sky, up in the air, with confidence and joy. God bless you son.

And here it is.

Same day, same nice young lady. 1979 I would guess.

Good Friday

Happy Good Friday. An interesting holy day. I was watching Narnia last night, and moved to the point of tears at Aslan's ressurection. Wasn't too bad when he killed the winter witch either. I wonder if the director et al knew that they would be speaking so eloquently to their Christian viewers? Well, I think this photo was taken on a Friday, which is relevant enough for this ADD blog. We traveled from Chattanooga to Fall Creek Falls park, I got in water up to my neck with the camera over my head, and I took this. I have one more doog one from this Friday, I will try to find it too.

Well, how did I get here?

So technically speaking, how did these get here. They come from two primary sources, transparencies and original digital photos. The transparencies are scanned with a Minolta Dimage II to large files, about 100 meg Tiff files. They will print at over 19 x 23, the largest parper my printer will spit out. I photoshop to fix them up, and then save a small jpeg of about 400 k. Then Blogger shrinks them to about 80k. LOTS of compression and loss, but they still look OK.

The original digital images were taken on the Nikon d50, the images cleaned up with Photoshop, then saved as smaller jpegs which are imported. The original artwork is either scanned or captured through a negative which I scan. I figure it is easy to throw away un-needed pixels, but impossible to creat resoloution. So I store them large and share them small.

woman by tree

This one is another of dad's. Mom beside the petrified tree. I feel such nostalgia for these, not for the times per se, but for my parent's being young, traveling around, having a ball. Being alive. I wonder if they have the same evocative power for other people or if they are just pics of people you don't know, like portraits in an antique shop. Is their meaning only for me because I know those portrayed.

religion in photography

Another pic from Jamaica. To me there is a spiritual undercurrent in this. For some reason it reminds me of Jesus and Mary. I cannot figure out why, the presence of the little girl makes no sense. It is not like the Pieta. What is striking is how beautiful and real the people are, how none of them are looking at each other or even in the same direction. The boat, the three generations, the poverty and the beauty. Perhaps it is just the spiritual power of hard work, perhaps it is in the turning away of the son from the mother, but a Christian vibe pervades the pic for me.

some thoughts

It is interesting that I have known many of these images for years and yet I feel that I know and see them differently now that I am sharing them through this blog. Many are old friends. I have no comments, and do not know if I have had a single visitor here. Still, the images strike me differently once published here.

I was scrolling and was struck by the quality of the work in a different way. I felt proud and accomplished in a different way. So do it yourself, make a pic blog. It feels good and is fun. Even if nobody sees! But if you want, drop me a line and I will look.

Trey

two points

Two points.

1. When you are shooting digital, shoot too much. Way more than you think you need. It is completely easy to throw them away. It costs nothing. There is no excess in making digital images. A moment can be an eternity. Seconds make all the difference. See above.

2. I like the somber one better. Pictures of upset, pensive, or rage filled children are more evocative for me than the happy ones. There are more than enough pictures of happy children, but that is not all that children are. Be brave, take, keep, and share pics of your children with other emotions. They make for good, intense, and important pics. See above.

Boys of Summer

I really enjoy this type of horizontal pic. Nice and wide. It seems easier to pull off with landscapes, but this one works with people. More dynamism in the hyper horizontal I think.

To bad next is what you see first

A few moments earlier than the photo below. These would be nice printed next to each other. I might do that tonight. I also might warm this one up a bit to get a little more red in it.

my take on a classic

OK, so this was taken from the same place that most tourists take it. But I am happy that I got the exposure and the light right! I also got one before this that has a more yellow/orange cast to it. Maybe I will post it next.

Man on steps

Early 80s, probably taken with 20 or 24mm lens. Weird perspective and strong graphics make this one a fun one for me. Nice monocolor too. I used to not think much of my color work, but that was perhaps because I worked so hard at my black and white printing. When scanned, I like the results of the color photos much more. Perhaps the technology I could afford for the color prints was not up to the work I could do on my black and white. I miss the darkroom, the smells, the craft, the fun! Working in photoshop is not as fun. Oh my goodness it is faster, and my fingers are not stained unless I am eating Cheetos, but it is not as fun as the darkroom.

POST 25!!!

P0st 25, cool! Celebrating with a favorite pic. Extreme shallow depth of field, and I used a developer called Rodinal to give it a very sharp and grainy look. OK, I blacked out the background with photoshop because it had little lighter spots that were distracting. Just spots, the shadow is real, only intensified. A nice example of using scale to make an everyday object less representational and more graphic.

flower

1978 or so, pre Nikon. Not really super sharp, but the color and water make up for it. Makes a great computer background.

Monday morning

I think of this one as not quite black and white.

From our recent church picnic on Wednesday. Wonderful pic, 24 mm fixed lense, works as a 36 on the digital camera. People ask about the camera when admiring the pics, but it is the lens that makes them sharp and clear. Mom in trying to get out of the pic makes a wonderful composition. Great light, wonderful colors. I made a nice, large print for the family on watercolor paper, it looked smashing.

Picasso the cat

Well, I just call him Picasso. This is another pic from Jamaica. Things were interesting down there. THis is the day after I saw the Devil in Jamaica. We were minding our own business at dinner, when the devil asked if he could sit down. Now it is harder than you might think to tell the devil that he may not sit down. He is after all, the Devil, and as a powerful entity, you do not want to piss him off too much. I just thought he was the devil at first, then he said that he was waiting for his cocaine connection and asked if we wanted to use some of hte last of his cocaine. See, I told you it was the devil. I said no, saying that I had already used a lot of cocaine and was worried about dying from a heartattack if I did any more. Truth be told, I had not done any cocaine, this was Jamaica, not Peru, and I was lying. But, the last thing the Devil wants is a big enquiry and a dead tourist. Bad for business.

Well, one of the people at my table who shall remain nameless because I forgot his name because he was Stan's brother and a ninny, says "Sure your Satanic Majesty, I will partake of your evil." He sniffs the Devil's dandruff and his face goes numb for two hours. But this long preamble of a cautionary tale is to say it was a weird morning the day after lying to the Devil and there was this cat and the composition looked vaguely cubist and so I took the pic and called it Picasso the cat. Looking closer at the cat these many years hence, I am not so sure that it was indeed the Devil or one of his familiars. The cat has a nasty look about it.

this is rare

Not the reptile, it is rare that I got a good photo from a trip to the zoo! I generally take my camera to the zoo and the aquarium etc, but it is not often that I get a good pic. This one works, took a fair amount of photshop, and it may be a digital original, not sure. But I like it, and it is not too obviously a shot from the zoo.

coming? going?

How cool. Way diff pics, seconds apart. I have not straightened them yet. Seems I am neurologically incapable of taking a pic with a straight horizon line. So I set them straight in photoshop. Not yet here. But, this feels like a nice editorial choice. Little differences, not so little change in impact and emotional communication. For me she is making choices in the first and trapped in the second. Cool.

newer stuff too

This is recent work as well. Family vacation in Alabama, made the commitment to get up EARLY and traipse around with the camera and tripod. I bought up a lot of old Nikon glass. Digital age means more people getting rid of their film stuff. Good for me. Come to think of it, I buy a lot of records too. Hmmm, must be a contrarian at heart.

But, this is one of the pics from that time that I am happy with. I like the two moons, that works for me. Good exposure and everything, but the two moons draws me in. Is it the moon, is it the reflection. OK, I am sounding like Pink Floyd, but it is an element of the problem of perspective, perception, and subjectivity. It is clear which moon is the moon, but until you figure the white blob is the reflection of the moon you don't know how to put it in context. Then there is the whole photoshop question. Half of what you hear, none of what you see?

Probably a 28 f2.8, barely an AI lens. I love the old glass I picked up, I am still looking for a 200f4. I have the old 28, newer 35, newer 85, older 105, real old 135. The 135 has NO depth of field, it is such a gas to use! I can use some of them on the N50, but not the pre AI ones. I need to get them converted so that I can.

flying

More beach. This one is happening. Sharp, well exposed, beautiful, and what a moment. Thomas was holding his arms out so that he could see himself fly. I love that you can see it in the shadow but ot see his face. I am so happy with this pic. I think I will print it out tonight at home. The joy and uninhibited nature of childhood, the freedom of the imagination, the bizarre quality of the pose, it is rich and evocative for me.

It is rainy here so I wanted a sunny pic. The sea is big and my boat is small. His concentration and size in the empty space are great. Another decent "real" landscape. Well, ok, there is a human in there, but it is a long shot that focuses on the space, not the detail. He seems stopped in decision, "Should I, shouldn't I." That water is cold son, just wade for awhile, you will have more trips to the beach.

Dad's flowers

This is a tiny painting my father did. I think it was more an exercise or a study than a finished painting, judging by the size. It was fairly loose for him. His teachers always told him to loosen up his style. He was a born super realist. He was after all a surgeon with amazing small muscle control. He listened to them and worked to loosen up , but this is about as loose as it got. I have this as a nice print on watercolor paper. It is blow up to about 10 inches tall. The transformation is interesting because it makes it look loose as the brush strokes are magnified.

Jamaica

1981 or 82, Nikon camera, Kodachrome. This was taken at the place my friends and I had morning fresh squeezed OJ. The children are the owners. We were making conversation and asked how many children he had. "17" he answered. We shared our amazement. "Sons" he added.

Beautiful morning light, a kind embrace, wonderful color. The children have such lovely, dark skin, you can see a purple cast. The little boy was patient and loving with his sister. Yet there is a wistful quality to his face. When he saw me taking the picture, he gave a large grin, but this is the one I prefer, the calm, detached face, looking off camera.

more typical

So here are the Smokies, and a more typical nature pic for me. Close up. Not so much since of space, no sense of vista. I used a central composition here, which is rare for me, but maybe the diversity of the mushrooms themselves, their jumble, made it easier to go with the central composition. OK, it is not dead center, but more central than I think I tend to. This one is a proud full frame pic. I did my work in the moment, in the viewfinder, the composition is done, final. Crop that! OK, you probably could, but not easily. The spot color is enjoyable, as is the life from death motif.

I like this one, much of the reason is that I was able to get a sense of depth and the big picture that is not so easy for me to capture. Much of my work is more claustrophibic, "look at this little thing" or "here is an interesting angle." This is a real landscape. It is from Yellowstone, one of the places my soul feels most at home. Another such place is the Smokies.

precursor

This was late 70s, may not have even been a Nikon camera. I was not yet 20, and the shadows and lines just looked worth capturing. I like now how the modern seems to invade the old, the wires sloppily pasted against the cabin exterior. It goes well with my flat work, but predates it considerably. That abstract quality is here though, long before I had heard of or been exposed to the Bauhaus movement or modernism. Well, not that I am aware of.

underwater

I used to do some diving, and I had a Nikonos. My favorite shots were taken with a close up attachment. The pics take on an alien quality because of the size tension. This one is nice and the subject matter is recognizable. The liting is good despite it being from a flash. This one always struck me as a good magazine cover. The film was Kodachrome.

Man, this one really works for me. I tried to crop it for a print for a gift, and any crop I tried diminished it. Great lighting, the composition rocks, the flowers are evocative. This is one of my favorites. It was a found composition if I recall, 80s, kodachrome and Nikon. I used to worry and think about where the composition was found or not. No more, I outgrew the purist approach.

Very recent, last week as a matter of fact. Brothers. Sure, they are on the beach and the girls are in the water, but they are together and the girls more separate. Developmentally they will seperate, but now they are together. My boys, two of the triplets. They share a bond together that they do not share with their sister. This is a snapshot of them together, their brotherhood.

I have no brother. But rather than lament that, this celebrates what God gave them. Each other among other blessings.

And aren't polarizers wonderful? This is a digital image, and the polarizer works its magic on the scene, bluer blues, a prettier ocean that it actually was. But it is about the boys. I love you boys. I am glad we have each other.

This one is from college, likely early 80s. Great use of selective focus, without the shallow depth of field there is no commentary, it is just a scene. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but the tension and the comment and the interest come from the out of focus men walking up on the reading, in focus woman. There is nothing nefarious in this one, nothing ominous in the approaching men, but they are unseen and out of focus.

That brings the questions. Her relationship to men becomes interesting, all women's relationships to men becomes interesting. Why is the woman in focus and the men out? Is it OK that she is not interested in the men?

Breaking the fourth wall, she was also unaware of the third man, me. I was watching her not watching us. And I was focusing on her not focusing on us. Looking at the pic now, I wonder if a more interesting cropping would be waranted. As it is, there is a nice balance, I wonder what it would be like to unbalance it. In the old days, I was a full frame or nothing kind of a guy. I even paid extra for a negative carrier that printed the edges of the negative, so you could see that it was all I took. That was a kind of purity I am no longer interested in. Now the print is more important than the negative.

Mom and Dad

Mom and dad, 1950 or so Kodachrome taken on a camera I still have. An Argosy, common, cheap, and obviously nice glass when stopped down sufficiently. Mom is looking at dad's copy of the same camera. My Uncle Ray took this. He survives while the rest have left. What an amazing image. The bridge is in Washington or Oregon. The scene is classic, razor sharp. It did not take too much restoration to get to this. Again, looks amazing large. Mom is proud, dad befuddled. He had not yet stopped the pipe. In looking at this picture he enjoyed it for a couple of seconds then made a disparaging comment about his posture! This is one of my favorite pictures. I need to print it for my office. This week. I hope you like it.

My brood. They were looking out the window at a cat in a neighbors yard. We were in Shreveport, LA to bury my mother in law. Shots of the back are a challenge. This one works for me. The light ir right, there is a sweetness in the rapt attention being paid to outside. The outside exposure is bright, but not too. Kinda like the walk to paradise garden, the pic pulls you inside. The print is lovely, rich, warm colors. There is also a sweetness in the relationship shown between my eldest and my youngest, her cheek touches his head. They are almost straining to see. Calm and yearning.