People being human

Imperfect pictures of an imperfect world

A hard-wired world.

Does Art reflect life? Photography certainly does.

My constructed nightmare visions of the Adirondacks without the Adirondack Park Agency.

The Life without the APA body of work was created as a visual counterpoint to those who would dismantle or render ineffective the adirondack park agency. The pictures illustrate nightmare visions of what life in the Adirondack Park might look like without the protection of the forever wild amendment in the NYS Constitution and the PAP’s roll in the oversight and implementation of the amendment’s protection of all lands within the park’s boundaries.

These pictures were constructed using many selected pieces of my vast library of Adirondack pictures. With the use of Photoshop, the pieces were blended together onto Adirondack scenes in order to create a realistic vision of how unrestrained development might alter the character and quality of life within the Adirondack Park.

Chance encounters with the natural world

I photograph any thing + every thing that pricks my eye and sensibilities. A picture making propensity I call discursive promiscuity.

I am always on the look-out for form-meaning the correct configuration of line, shape, space, color and value within my imposed frame-as I see it in co-opted segments of the quotidian world.

These pictures-a limited sampling-are presented as book pages.

From above. Eyes cast downward.

Monochrome always seems the right format for “street” work.

Street scenes in Tuscany featuring me reading a newspaper.

The joy of Instant Photography is infectious both to the maker and the subject/viewer. Photos in this gallery were made for advertising and editorial clients. A few were made for personal use - the portraits of my 2 sons and the picture of the nude reader (my ex).

Techniques include: straight SX70 prints, manipulated SX70 prints (pushing emulsion around before print dries), 1 hand colored, manipulated SX70 print, 4x5 Polaroid image transfer prints.

“Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn’t photogenic.”  ~ Edward Weston

In this body of work, I have reduced Weston’s yardage to approximately 20 yards or so. That is typically the distance I walk along the roadside from my car (parked along a roadside) to make a picture.

What pricks my eye and sensibilities along the roadside is the abundance of tangles, thickets, and clusters of bio-diverse, indigenous flora / detritus which present a riotously complex visual cacophony of color, line, shape, and texture that, when isolated and “organized” within my imposed frame, create photographs with a high content of visual energy / complexity which conspires to give the eye no place to rest.

as found and seen random / serendipitous arrangements in my kitchen sink

All photos made with my iPhone. Color > BW/Monochrome conversion created using the Lightness channel in LAB Color Space.

All photos made with the iPhone 0.5 lens (14mm full frame equivalent). I use this lens, not for its extended field of view, but rather for the emphasis it creates on the visual elements of line, shape, and space as seen across the 2D plane of a photographic print.

Street Photography has traditionally been created with use of BW / monochrome materials / processes. Nevertheless, inasmuch as color is integral to my vision, literally and figuratively, I can see life on the street in no other manner.

Because I like to look

The transient subtle beauty of impermanence and decay

Early, c. 10/2003, landscape, aka: ku, pictures. All pictures were made on a few overcast, rainy days in October. iMo and to my eye and sensibilities, Autumn color is best seen and pictured when it whispers rather than when it screams.

All photos made with a 4mp Canon P&S camera.

A potpourri of pictured referents which give evidence of the iPhone's image quality capabilities for making good pictures. With my use of the 13 Pro Max, I have become somewhat enamored of the Portrait setting, not for necessarily for portraits but for all-around picture making.

FYI, update, top 8 pictures were made with iPhone 13 Pro Max.

I began using the iPhone for "serious" picture making in the early Spring of 2017. That undertaking was incited by my re-reading / viewing of the book, The Art of the American Snapshot. A book in which one of the authors of one of the book's essays quoted a reviewer's comment from his/her review of a 1944 MOMA exhibition, The American Snapshot ...

.... [the pictures] "constitute the most vital, most dynamic, most interesting and worthwhile photographic exhibition ever assembled by the Museum of Modern Art."  The pictures were praised as being "without artistic pretensions" and coming "nearer to achieving the stature of true art than any of the inbred preciosities in the museum's permanent collection of in any of its previous shows." The photographs were applauded as "honest, realistic, human and articulate."

Even though my eye and sensibilities have remained unchanged, I have slowly, but not exclusively, adopted the iPhone camera module as my snapshot camera-inasmuch as I consider all of my photographs to be “snapshots-of choice. I keep it simple inasmuch as I select focus and adjust exposure to protect the highlights - both of which are accomplished with a simple finger touch on the iPhone screen.

The resultant image files receive some basic processing for exposure, color balance, highlight and/or shadow adjustment and the addition of my "standard" corner vignetting. Processing which is often accomplished on the iPhone-using Snapseed-or occasionally on my desktop computer. While the black border can be added on the iPhone, I normally add it in Photoshop on my desktop computer.

The finished pictures print beautifully up to 20x20 inches.

.WORD OF ADVICE: if you take the time to know and understand how the picture making device works, the 13 is a very capable picture making machine. No apologia / excuses needed.

From the ego-centric perspective of the inside looking out

A tiny sampling from my 400-picture / 40-year compilation of “snapshots” made in the Adirondack Park / Region.

The pictures were made with a variety of cameras-film-based 35mm / 8x10 view cameras and an ever-evolving number of digital cameras-over a period of approximately 40 years. The bulk of the pictures were made-and are still being made-since my move the Adirondacks in 2000.

All of the original pictures have been “converted” to my snapshot format with the intent of creating a more “casual” presentation and subsequent viewing experience for my audience.

Wildwood, New Jersey-on the South Jersey Shore-is reclaiming some of what remains from its 50s heyday. Riotous funky kitsch is the most apt way to describe it and that is how I picture it.

I miss the use of my 4 SX-70 / Time Zero cameras. Over the years since the demise of Time Zero film, there have attempts in the digital domain to create camera apps or emulation software which mimic Polaroid pictures . None have gotten it right.

The Impossible Project, now known simply as Polaroid, appears to have finally produced a Time Zero print film which has a high level of quality control built into the manufacture.

Time for me to order some Color SX-70 film.

FYI, these faux Polaroid pictures are created from pictures made with my iPhone.

Excerpts from my album/book 35 Days at Rist Camp. My intent was to create snapshot-like family vacation memory pictures for use in an album/book. That album/book was printed in multiple copies-1 each for family and friends who came to visit at Rist Camp.

Red in isolation

all pictures with iPhone 7s camera module

It is obvious that we are in an era of promiscous and discursive snapshot making the likes of which cause to pale any preceeding snapshot era. While KODAK managed to place their snapshot cameras into the hands of as many people as possible, in today's digital times it seems like everyone has a "camera", aka: a cell phone. And, the overwhelming number of the pictures made with those devices are made without artistic pretentions. Indeed, the new snapshot.

On an average 1.8 billion digital images are uploaded to the internet every single day. That's 657 billion photos per year. Another way to think about it: Every two minutes, humans take more photos than ever existed in total 150 years ago.

Increasingly sprinkled amongst those pictures are those snapshots which have undergone the application of a photo-effect app. I can not write why people are applying effects to their snapshots but I can write that I am doing so in order to mimic the look of snapshots which have survived from an earlier era.

6 days - November 26. 2016 > December 1, 2016 - of picture making presented chronologically and as the same size as in the book of the same name.

Infrared digital picture making requires a sensor modification in order for it to record only light in the infrared spectrum. I may convert one of my last generation µ4/3 cameras for this use.

In the meantime, making pictures with my iPhone and utilizing the infrared filter (effect) in the Abode Photoshop Express iPhone app, along with some processing modifications on my part, is the method I use to create an infrared-ish look.

I Agree with Meyerson

"Light produces color. Light can be soft or intense; color can provoke or excite. It can also inform. At their best, light and color can come together at a moment in time to create an atmosphere, an emotional response and/or a sense of place. And for me, that is the power and joy of the color of light.”     — Arthur Meyerson

The NHL Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Penguin broadcaster, Mike Lange, has a veritable library of hockey one-liners (Lange-isms) that he uses in various game situations. One such quote is; "(insert player name) doesn't know whether to cry or wind his watch!"

When I am picturing weather events, I am often in a similar state inasmuch as I don't don't know whether to run for cover or stand in awe. Most frequently it is a combination of both choices - stand in awe of the power and majesty, get the picture and get to shelter.

Mysterious secrets and stories in the dark

Chaotic order

Subtle manifestations of the natural world which inspire quiet contemplation and emotional response. 

Eventually, every thing reaches the stage, in its presence on the planet, of having seen better days. However, that past-its-prime state does not necessarily mean the end of its useful purpose. While some of the things pictured here are abandoned, patinaed testaments to better days, most are actually still in use and are places of ongoing businesses.

From top to bottom in groups of 6:

IRELAND

NOVA SCOTIA

SCOTLAND

TUSCANY

Is it a window on the world?

A door to a different dimension?

A mirror / reflection of the real?

Art?

A sign / signifier?

A mere snapshot?

IMO, yes it is. However, what it is for you depends entirely upon what you bring to the making / viewing experience.

Isolotated objects of interest.

What the camera sees and the eye cannot.

For whatever reason, virtually all of my perspective pictures are made away from my home region. The pictures presented here were made in France, Scotland, Ireland, Tuscany, Canada, Washington DC, NYC, Pittsburgh (PA) and Amsterdam (Netherlands). One exception is one made in Essex, NY.

Pictures about the medium of photography and it apparatus

The camera has the native capability to "see" things the eye does not. Wide open apertures and slight overexposure renders selective segments of the world as a soft impression of color and forms which the eye cannot discern as the camera records them. 

Memory provides a fragile image. Eye witnesses to an event give divergent testament to what was seen.  Photography provides a precise record of a memory's genesis. 

Trees. They are made manifest in a seemingly
endless variety of species, shapes and sizes. 
Trees are affixed with an equally bewildering
array of adornments capable of seasonal color
mutations which delight the human eye and
fuel many autumnal economies.

Trees house us, furnish our abodes, feed us,
and give us crackling warmth in the cold and
coolness in their rustling summer shadows.
They help clean the air we all breathe. And,
when clustered in forests, trees provide rich
Gan ʿEḏen environments which foster and
shelter many of the earth’s wildlife species
and plants.

In short, trees are a precious resource to all
of the planet’s living things. And, despite their
wealth of benefits, I find trees at their most
grand and glorious as I encounter them in their
natural setting where, quite simply, they are
just being trees. 

Joyce Kilmer wrote that only god can make
a tree. Theology aside, it is well worth noting
that only humankind can kill trees more
effectively than Ash Borers and their ilk.

Water, water everywhere and not a drop the same.

Everyday life within the confines of my house often presents a tableau vivant of simple visual beauty defined by light , color and shapes. Once noted, recorded and subsequently viewed as a printed (or otherwise presented) image, these small scale vignettes evince an aura of serene intimacy which can be seen in the most ordinary environments.

Constructed pictures in which my imagination moves toward the surreal, the imaginary and the mysterious.

More to come.