# 6815 / (un)common things ~ what the hell is going on?

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WE ARE EXPERIENCING A 5-DAY CONVERGENCE OF EVENTS. To wit…

Thursday > Friday a significant-12-18 inches-Nor’easter snowstorm. And, just to make it interesting, one bolt of lighting and one extremely loud, long, rolling thunder clap during the snow storm + power and internet outages.

Today there was an 4.8 earthquake, centered in north Jersey / NYC, but felt here in our house.

Next up - mid-afternnoon on Monday, a total eclipse of the sun. Our house is directly under its path as it traverses the US from the Southwest to the Northeast treating us to a 100% black out of the sun.

Makes me wonder what’s next? Maybe a plague of locusts?

# 6506 / common places • common thing • winter ~ I don't want / need no stinkin' metaphors

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IT WAS WRITTEN BY SOMEONE somewhere (or so wrote Stephen Shore):

Chinese poetry rarely trespasses beyond the bounds of actuality… the great Chinese poets accept the world exactly as they find it in all its terms and with profound simplicity… they seldom talk about one thing in terms of another; but are able enough and sure enough as artists to make the ultimately exact terms become the beautiful terms.

If there were to be a credo for making straight photographs-bits lifted from the visceral world with such tact and cunning that they seem true-iMo, this would be it.

# 6389-95 / common places / things ~ free and easy

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DISCLAIMER: OVER MY YEARS OF READING ANY THING I COULD get my hands on (books) or find online, re: the medium and its apparatus, numerous words / phrases / paragraphs / et al have popped up which, to my way of thinking, have relevance to my manner of making pictures. And, over those same years, I have used many of those descriptors on my blog(s) or when talking about my work. ASIDE when using a full paragraph, aka: excerpt, I always include an attribution END OF ASIDE.

That written, one characteristic of my pictures, about which I have made plain, is the fact that my eye and sensibilities are pricked by the quotidian, aka: the “stuff” of everyday life. Or to put it another way…I like to take into account, picture making wise, much that barely impinges, for most, on consciousness, even though it makes up the usual stuff of our lives.

Consequently, since my mind and eye is open to any and all picture making possibilities, I never know where in the world I will “find” my next picture. And, it is precisely that “uncertainty” / openness-my complete lack of previsualization-that allows my seemingly innate vision to impose its will upon / respond to how I “see” / “feel” the correct configuration of visual elements of any slice of the world that pricks my eye and sensibilities.

Simply written, I do not “work” a subject nor I do not “think” about what I am doing. I spontaneously point my picture making device toward whatever has prick my eye and sensibilities, adjust my POV-guided by what I see on the device’s display-until the configuration of the subject feels “correct”-quite obviously determined by my eye and sensibilities-and then activate the shutter. Wham bam, thank you mam.

On those occasions when a picture making effort “works”, that picture is something of a visual delight / revelation to my eye and sensibilities. And that is the reason why I can not stop making pictures.

# 6383-88 / common places /things ~ winter

WINTER IS NOT PRIME TIME PICTURE MAKING for my eye and sensibilities. That is most likely due to the fact that the white landscape does not normally possess the visual complexity that pricks my eye and sensibilities. However, when I am driving about the place, I do encounter some picture making opportunities; emphasis on driving about inasmuch as most of my winter pictures made over the past decade or so have been made from the roadside about 20-30 feet from my car.

That situation is somewhat ironic cuz, prior to moving to the Adirondacks 23 years ago, most of my winter pictures were made quite a distance from my car - at 5,000+ft. elevation, above treeline, many miles from my car, in 0ºF weather, in the dead of winter, deep and high in the Adirondack High Peaks Wilderness Area. FYI, the Algonquin pictures below were made with my Pentax 110 SLR. I have the complete system - extra body, film winder and 4 lenses.

climbing Algonquin in a near whiteout blizzard ~ we eventually dropped back down below treeline to pitch camp and find shelter from the raging wind. c.1982 (embiggenable)

Algonquin at sunset ~ c.1982 (embiggenable)

Algonquin pre sunrise ~ c.1982 (embiggenable)