# 5744-50 / nocturnal • landscape • people ~ round and round it goes, where it stops nobody knows

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

BEEN OUT AND ABOUT DOING A VARIETY OF ACTIVITIES. Hikes, night walks, evening dining cruise, tourist cabin searches, to name a few. Also revisited my favorite Adirondack glacial erratic-16 ft tall and fractured. And, I am making a surprising number of pictures.

All of that written, as I sit here making this blog entry, I continue to be rather flummoxed, re: trying to imagine a continuing direction / purpose for this blog.

The fact of the matter is, to be quite honest, I wonder about the viability of the entire photo blog milieu. It seems to me that the only photo blogs with "legs" are those which fester on gear or those that offer up a healthy dose of the cult of personality...2 topics which hold very little interest for me and certainly topics I do not wish to pursue on this blog.

One site that has been holding my interest is Cluadio Turri ~ immagini da un diario. It continues to hold my interest cuz: 1. I like the pictures, and, 2. it is all about pictures (no words). And, as I have repeatedly mentioned, for me, the medium and its apparatus is all about the pictures.

All of that written, I do enjoy reading (and writing) about the medium of photography and its apparatus (aka: apparatus = conventions and practices).

# 5737-38 ~ excelsior! - onward and downward

killer raccoon ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

view from the porch ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

IN A RECENT ENTRY I MENTIONED THE IDEA of bolting my butt to a chair here at Rist Camp. The idea seems especially attractive after the last 3 months of traveling the country from one ocean to the other including parts in between. Best I call tell, we have probably rack up over 6,000 miles. So, sitting in one place, feet up, seems like a damn good idea.

In any event, the pictures in this entry were made without my getting my butt out of a chair (no bolts employed in the making of these pictures). This activity has made me conscious of the fact that I have made many pictures without assuming the standing position. Which realization, in turn, has caused me to undertake the challenge of making a making pictures while sitting body of work-during my stay at Rist Camp-in response to a regional arts center's recent open call for work for a juried exhibition of regional artists' work.

FYI, the picture making will not be limited to sitting at just Rist Camp. I am certain I will sitting in a wide variety of places...in a canoe, on a beach, on a tour boat, somewhere during a wilderness hike, on a tee box on a golf course, and many other places too numerous to mention. That written, I will try to keep it "honest" inasmuch as I will make a picture after noticing something while sitting as opposed to noticing something and then sitting in order to make a picture of it.

# 5735-36 / civilized ku + landscape ~ back where I belong

rist camp view ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

tourist cabins ~ Tupper Lake - (embiggenable) • iPhone

SETTLING IN AT RIST CAMP FOR THE NEXT 5 WEEKS. JUST ME and the cat for the next couple days.

Cool breezes rustling through the trees, pack of coyotes right behind camp yowlin' and howlin' in the night, loons calling on the lake, and a flock of geese making a ruckus on the lake shore below the camp last evening. This sure ain't the Jersey Shore.

While it is tempting to just bolt my butt to an Adirondack chair on the camp porch, smoke cigars and drink whiskey-bourbon, scotch, and even some Irish and Japanese whiskey-and watch the clouds go by, my picturing intent is to get out and about and find some seldom pictured Adirondack stuff. Some of that out-and-about will be all-day trips inasmuch as the Adirondack Park is larger than the state of Vermont and is the largest park-national or state-east of the Mississippi River. Larger than Yosemite, Everglades, Grand Canyon, and Yellowstone National Parks combined.

One referent that comes to mind is the once ubiquitous tourist cabin clusters (such as seen above). Some have been lovingly preserved / restored while others sit vacant and deteriorating. Many, of course, are long gone. However, unlike the Jersey Shore where the past character of the place is dead and gone, the Adirondack region is dedicated, by intent and zoning decree, to the preservation of its long standing character, both the man-made and the natural world.

FYI, the natural world in the Park is protected by the 125+ year old amendment to the NYS Constitution, the so-called "Forever Wild" amendment. The Park is the largest protected area in the continental U.S. And, much to my ever-lasting pleasure, it is where I live.

# 5729-31 / civilized ku-landscape ~ it ain’t what it looks like

(embiggenable) - iPhone

(embiggenable) - iPhone

(embiggenable) - iPhone

YESTERDAY AS I WAS MOVING ABOUT THE WEB, PHOTOGRAPHY SECTION, I came upon a site entry wherein the author wrote: “I’ve been taking images in earnest for over 45 years now. You think I’d be bored with it but even on the worst days there’s something amazing about watching beautiful light cascade over objects of equal beauty…..”

My first thought was that how sad it is for someone to have been making pictures for nearly half a century and still be addicted to “the light”, aka: the golden light hour of sunrise / sunset bathing a dramatic landscape in heavenly color. Or, as I call it, the zombie-like photo cliche that can not be killed.

All of that written, I did not have another thought on the subject until this morning when I was processing a couple files made yesterday evening. That thought took on the form of isn’t it rather ironic (hypocritical?) that you fled the premise last evening in pursuit of a location where you could make a picture to include the late day light?

My answer to that question is….of course not. I’m better person / picture maker than that. I was just intending to include some evidence of the golden light merely as a compositional element. Most emphatically, I was not chasing the light.

So there. How’s that for a rationalization? Or, as a character in the film The Big Chill said, “Rationalizations are more important than sex. Did you ever try to make it through a day without at least one rationalization.”

# 5875-78 / landscape•civilized ku ~ onward and up-rightward

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

AFTER 20 YEARS OF MAKING SQUARE PICTURES-my "serious" work-I find it a bit flummoxing to be tinkering around with the rectangular format.

During the tinkering-playing with horizontal and vertical format full frame picture making-several thoughts have come to mind. Setting aside the square format signature identity thing-the more I think about that, the more it fades into the background-a thought I never really considered before has risen to the fore. I.E., the predominance of pictures made with the horizontal format / aspect (especially landscape pictures). FYI, I have no numeric stats to back up that thought but, it does feel right.

Hardware wise, that idea does make sense inasmuch as, throughout the history of photography, an overwhelming number of cameras have had viewing apparatus that is oriented to the horizontal format / aspect. Especially so in the modern era. The major exception, camera wise, being the (predominantly) medium format square format cameras.

Picture making wise, there are exceptions to the horizontal aspect /format procivility. Most notable is the portrait genre wherein most portraits are made in the vertical format aspect (group portraits excepted). Also, in my commercial photography life, I would guess that 90% of the pictures I made were in the vertical format aspect. That's cuz most of my pictures were made for the printed page-magazines, annual reports, etc. And to my previous point, hardware wise, Making vertical format / aspect pictures required turning the come on its "side" (its "natural" orientation?), or in the case of a view camera, rotating the back.

All of the above aside (and back to the signature identity thing), in the Fine Art Photography World, format / aspect matters inasmuch as most Fine Art picture makers rarely mix formats / apsect in a given body of work. That is to write that the format / aspect they work with is an integral ingredient of their vision / the manner in which thet see. That proclivity (amongst many other "rules") is as sacroscant in the Fine Art World as the one-camera, one-lens MO. Like it or not, good thing or not, the Fine Art World demands, if a practioner wishes to be taken seriously, a consistent artistic vision, technique and concept wise, in a given body of work.

That written, the Fine Art World is OK with an artist creating a new body of work that differs from that of a previous body of work. So, as I mentioned in an earlier entry, I am considering my full frame pictures to be a new body of work. And, to be rigorously consistent, I am leaning toward the veritical retangular format / aspect for all of the work.

# 5861-68 / landscape•civilized ku•people ~ curiosities and wonders

high desert ~ New Mexico (embiggenable) • iPhone

wedding~ Pittsburgh, PA (embiggenable) • iPhone

Mormon temple ~ San Diego, CA (embiggenable) • iPhone

Zippo sign~ Bradford, PA (embiggenable) • iPhone

dancing figure ~ Santa Fe, NM (embiggenable) • iPhone

ice cream stand ~ Canonsburg, PA (embiggenable) • iPhone

Harley cycles ~ Pittsburgh, PA (embiggenable) • iPhone

WHEN MOVING ABOUT THE COUNTRY / LANDSCAPE / PLANET WITHOUT A rigid itinerary, one never knows what one might encounter.

For the most part, that is how the wife and I like to travel. In doing so, serendipitous meandering and chance encounters have served us well cuz we love the unexpected sites, people and places we find. And traveling off-season, not for the reduced expense, but rather for the fact that we most often have wherever we are and whatever we are doing almost completely to ourselves is its own reward. Needless to write, I find a lot of picture making opportunities.

That written, I recently landed, thanks to a reference from a friend, on SIGHTSEER. The pictures, while reminiscent of the work of Martin Parr (technique-wise, using flash-on-camera to light subjects), are quite intriguing. Very good stuff.

# 5822-26 / landscape•civilized ku ~ good stuff

New Mexico ~(embiggenable) • iPhone

New Mexico ~(embiggenable) • iPhone

New Mexico ~(embiggenable) • iPhone

New Mexico ~(embiggenable) • iPhone

Arizona ~(embiggenable) • iPhone

NEW MEXICO / ARIZONA ARE PLACES APART FROM THE REST OF THE USA. Both from the culture and typographic points of view.

Although, from the pov of the recent presidental election they are both Blue States, albeit that Arizona was a swing state. Good stuff.

That written, from the picture making pov they are both target rich environments.

# 5808-09 / landscape•ku•fauna ~ f8 and be there

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

I AM CERTAIN THAT IT HAS BEEN SAID that the iPhone is not suited for making wildlife pictures. To which I write, "HA!" Just have the cojones-or, perhaps, the lack of common sense-to get out of the car walk, slow and quiet, up to the subject like you own the place. Easy, peasy.

Pictured in this entry are; 1. Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep. That picture was made in close proximity to their place of residence, the 2. Rio Grande River Gorge (just a ways outside of Toas, New Mexico). At this location, the gorge is 800 ft deep.

The sheep, which were driven nearly to extinction in New Mexico, were reintroduced to a 50 mile(?) section of the Rio Grande gorge a few decades ago (?). There is now an established herd of approximately 350-400 animals. Yesterday, apparently a few of the herd emerged from the gorge for a late afternoon snack and I was just in the right place at the right time.