Early Morning
It’s a rough time of the year, the approach to the solstice. Sleep comes slowly, and what little to be found is fitful.
It’s too bright out. It never really feels like bedtime. It seems like I should be out doing something.
The image above: taken at 5:30 in the morning. The sun had risen about an hour earlier, but was still at a sharp angle. You’re looking directly north, with the sun at NNE. I was awake at 3:30 that morning, and it was already starting to get light…
At last year’s rehearsal, I made an image out of these dancing shoes. It was one of my favorites for the year, enough so that I added them to my tenset for 2010.
This year I made another:
Dancing Shoes #2
Seems I have a year-to-year theme going on.
Look closely & you’ll see a lack of detail. Hand-held in extreme darkness with the 50mm f/1.4 lens…
Following three catastrophes in three days, life is slowly returning to normal. The world isn’t quite the same, but I suppose life goes on.
So soon, posting will resume.
Been a rough week already. From Friday to Sunday, over the course of three days, three people in our lives died.
Died. No longer with us. Never to be seen, visited, or spoken with again.
The first we didn’t know too well. Friend of a friend. Possibly a couple more “of a friend”‘s in there.
The second was a recently retired professional acquaintance. Respected, but not too well known.
The third, and least expected, was a close friend, and the father to my daughter’s best friend. A pretty rough shock.
It’ll be a bit before things are fully back to normal, such as it is. For now, just accept: not much activity for the next week or so.
Soapy Abstract
We’re washing the grunge out of the house: we’ve rid ourselves of much of the rocks & pebbles that accumulate over the winter, and washed (finally) the winter’s grime off the cars.
At one stage in the car wash, you’re covered in this stuff. I still haven’t captured quite what I want, but it’s a start.
A study in contrast and dynamic range of light:
Spot the gecko
Taken in Kihei, Maui in March 2011.
I’m reading William Allard’s five-decade retrospective
Mr. Allard is certainly not an author I identify with, with his love for Peru, cowboys, and people on the margins (the Amish, the Basques), but he does ring true as a human being. Although it seems to me that his work is primarily flavored with many stark and iconic images (involving light and shadow), there’s a humanity in it that grabs me. I think that it’s his view of life that I identify with – at least in his earlier sections.
So as I type this, I’m thinking about his introduction; I’m thinking about how he identifies with “Comfortably Numb.” As we grow older, it becomes easier to lose our wonder with the world. I see it in myself: I deliberately numb myself during the long winters up here, so that I don’t notice time passing quite so quickly. I do the same when I’m busy, and need to focus, or when I diet.
And it seems a shame.
I lose much of the joy in life by doing that. I suppose it’s time to stop.
Specifically this one:
Dog in Shades/Too Cool for Me
Meta information is typically information about information. In the case of a photograph, the meta information might be the location, the time of day, f/stop, shutter speed, weather conditions, etc.
A couple of days ago I was given an update from a relative of this dog (well, the owner), making it information about the location where the photo was taken – meta-meta-information. The news isn’t really good, I’m afraid: the owner sold the building, and the new owners apparently don’t allow pets. So out goes the dog and his owner, it seems.
In a way, as someone who has lived in Alaska for some time and who has traveled around, I find this sad. Most places are so homogeneous that there’s nothing special to ‘em. Lahaina is like Waikiki is like downtown Kona is like Cozumel is like the San Diego piers is like Catalina is like Long Beach is like any other beach in California is like… well, you get the picture. And yeah, each location has its own flavor, language, and feel, but the similarities are striking. Businesses strive for consistency, land owners strive for higher property values…
…So it’s rare to find something that really sticks in your mind. Ketchikan does that, if you’re a tourist, but only somewhat: it’s nice, rustic-ish yet homey in a Pacific NW sorta way. When the fish are running, you can catch ‘em right in the middle of town – that’s something you won’t forget anytime soon. And these dogs (there is more than one): You just don’t forget ‘em.
Now Ketchikan is a little more forgettable.
Disclaimer: of course, all of this is predicated on the commenter being honest, but I have no reason to disbelieve the core of the information.
Never let it be said that Twitter is utterly useless. Mostly useless for sure, but not completely. Following Katrin Eismann, for example, left me with this nugget (YouTube link, via ArtInfo).
Shoot, I can do this. I’ll embed it here:
“Women in Art,” they call it, but it’s 500 years of iconic images of women, set to music & morphing from one to another. So really, it’s Women in Art, over time. It’s pretty neat, too – I’ve watched it several times now, each time focusing on something different.
The first time, I watched the eyes. Always open, mostly gazing back at me. They’re clear, a little too large, almost symmetrical. Beautiful, lovely, and exactly what they tell us to do when making portraits.
The second watch through, I watched the lips. Small – almost too narrow to be natural, but delicate and lovely. Over time they seem to shift from thick, to thin, then back to fuller proportions. While narrower, there’s always an implied lushness of some sort in them. What we do with lipstick nowadays, I suppose.
In later watching, I tried to absorb the entire faces. It struck me that there’s always the smoothness, often a bit of a blush – again, what we do with makeup – but they’re also high-key. Watch again: you’ll notice that features are washed out. Similar to a Hollywood glamor shot from the earlier 20th century.
While obvious up front, I noticed that the older images seemed to be more… well, honoring the beauty of the female. As we get closer to the modern age, you’ll see more abstracts images, and more… creative interpretations. While this is certainly a feature of our more modern age, I suspect that similar impressionistic work must have existed in days of old. But it didn’t survive.
I suspect in 500 years, someone could make a similar montage, covering 1000 years. And in doing so, much of what we see today would not be represented.
It make me wonder: what, of my own work (and the modern era) would really stand the test of time?