Busy, busy, busy
January 30th, 2009
I’m behind getting things ready for the Dirty Show in Detroit in a week. I’ll be driving my stuff and stuff for Gary and Athena up to Detroit on Saturday. Usually I try to have all the stuff done well in advance, but the snow storm this week threw my schedule off. Then I ran out of plastic bags for the store prints and the place I usually get them was out.
But I’ll get it all together by the end of the day tomorrow. And maybe after that I’ll have time for more posts. Meanwhile here’s another photo of the lovely and inspiring Tantila.
Off To A Good Start
January 25th, 2009
This is from my first shoot of 2009. I just did it this past week. I drove over to Indianapolis to shoot with Tantila, who I met because she has also modeled for Antoine de Villiars.
This was what I sometimes call a “get acquainted” shoot. But it went very well. Usually I don’t really expect to get many photos I’m excited about from a first shoot. I do better with models who I work with repeatedly over a long period of time. I like to work with models who get what I’m trying to do with my work and who I get along well with. But after this shoot I find myself with a bunch of photos that I really like and feel pretty sure that Tantila is going to be one of those models who I work with for a long time to come.
This shot was done with available light and my old single-element soft focus lens on my Nikon D200. My “Digital Holga.”
Today I did my second shoot of 2009…photographing three student dancers from Ohio University in my studio. I’ll be posting more dance photos soon…but I have some other things I want to post first. Maybe I’ll be able to pick up the pace soon and post more often again, but I have a ton of work to get done this week, getting entries in to several juried shows that have deadlines coming up and getting prints ready for the Dirty Show in Detroit early next month. More details on Dirty coming soon.
Thank you, Tantila, for a great shoot. Let’s do it again soon.
The French String Continues
January 20th, 2009
Thanks to my friend, Chris at Univers d’Artistes I’ve learned that once again I have a photo in the Jan/Feb issue of French PHOTO magazine. I’ve had a real run of good luck with that magazine, which some consider to be the best general circulation photo magazine in the world. I first sent photos to their annual contest, the largest photo contest in the world, in 2002. One of my photos was chosen for the Jan/Feb 2003 issue. I’ve had a photo in every Jan/Feb issue of the magazine since that year. One year they ran another of my photos in the following issue.
This year the photo they chose is the one above of Brooke Lynne taken in a frigid mountain stream near Rocky Mountain National Park. Thank you Brooke.
Why I’ve had such good luck with French PHOTO is a mystery to me. I don’t have any special insight to the magazine. I don’t know who the judges are or what they are looking for. I don’t shoot with the magazine in mind. I don’t speak French. I can’t even pronounce most French words. I’ve never been to France, though I’ve traveled through most of the other Western European countries. I just pick my favorite photos of the past year and send them in before the contest deadline. Every time I’ve sent in photos at least one of them has ended up being printed in the magazine.
Of course I’m pleased, happy and proud to be included in such a quality publication. Maybe I’ll try again next year if I’m still shooting this kind of work.
In passing…
January 17th, 2009
Well, it’s been another week with no post here. I continue to be far too busy and besides, it’s just too damn cold to think, let alone think of something to post. I need to move south.
But that’s not going to happen any time soon, so I guess I’ll just have to deal with the cold.
I haven’t done any shooting since the new year started. Looks like that will change this week. I was going to post some dance photos I did in the studio right after Christmas, and I’ll get to those soon, but the passing of Andrew Wyeth seemed to require a mention.
OK…so this photo is actually a satirical look at Wyeth’s most famous painting. But still, even a satire pays tribute to the source material. Wyeth was a great painter who painted what he wanted to paint regardless of the changing styles and fashions of the art world. In my view that makes Wyeth an artist.
Thanks to RJ for helping me make my little commentary on Christina’s World.
Vermont
January 9th, 2009
The trip to Vermont over the new years weekend was a good trip, but very cold. I usually try to do a little bit of landscape photography on these trips even if I don’t shoot with a model. But when the thermometer in the van is hovering in the neighborhood of 0F degrees I feel a strong incentive to not see anything that requires me to get out of the car to shoot it.
But every time I’m up there I tend to take this photo you see above. That farmstead is in the view out of my mother-in-law’s living room window. I shoot it through the window simply because that is the only camera location that gives me the composition I’m after. I’ve tried walking all over the yard and road in front of the house, and this is the best angle. But I can’t get the elevation outside the house. So I shoot through the window standing in the living room. It’s warmer there too this time of year. I love the composition and I love seeing how it looks different at different times of year and in different weather. They seem to have painted or sided the house since the last time I shot it, so the color scheme is now different in a way I enjoy.
Life away from the interweb is still real busy right now. My younger daughter is still home from college and my older daughter likes to come over in the afternoon with my new grandson. Life is good. But I’ll be back to posting more often soon.
Quite An Honor
December 30th, 2008
This has been a very good year for me personally and artistically, despite the awful events with the economy. And today it got even better when I learned that Lin and Rich over at Fluffytek had awarded a “Golden Fluffy” to me for “Best Blog Image of the Year.” Wow! I’m amazed that Lin singled out one of my photos for such praise. And, needless to say, I’m extremely pleased to be so honored. Thank you Lin and Rich.
Happy Holidays
December 28th, 2008
That’s what I’m having these days, happy holidays. It’s been a very nice, but very busy Christmas season this year. When I haven’t been hosting my immediate family at my house I’ve been traveling to other relatives’ homes to enjoy celebrations with them. This is the first year in several that all my children have been able to be at our house at the same time for Christmas. And it’s the first Christmas with my son-in-law and with my newly-born first grandson. So it’s been a very happy time.
And it will continue this coming week with a trip to visit relatives in Vermont. Hoping for good weather for the drive. It will be a short trip this time, so no time to do any figure photography, though you may get to see a new landscape photo here if I see something worth shooting besides the family gatherings.
So, that’s my excuse for not posting much recently. I’ll try to pick things up after the new year begins. We’ll see if that happens. I have one shoot scheduled for this coming week before we leave. That will be a studio dance shoot with one of the best dancers from Ohio University’s School of Dance. A few more of their best dancers will be visiting the studio for photos in January if all goes well.
The deadline for the Krappy Kamera exhibit at the Soho Photo Gallery is this week. I’ve already mailed my entries to them, so I’ll be looking at other shows to enter in the coming weeks. But I thought I’d go ahead and share a photo taken quite a few years ago with my old Sima soft-focus lens. This is not one that I entered in the contest this year, though it may go to next year’s contest. It was shot in New Albany, Indiana in 2004. The model is Nnetti who lived in New Albany at the time. I hope to work with her again this year when I’m in Florida.
Reruns and Politics (and Political Reruns)
December 21st, 2008
I’ve posted this photo before. I shot it in Hawaii (on a beach, though you’d never know that if I didn’t tell you) with Leona Anne back in September. I enjoy watching the lives of my photos. Some immediately strike me as successful photos, but soon or eventually they lose their charm and I no longer find them interesting. Some are overlooked at first but gradually find their way to the top of the pile. Some are clearly fine photos, but because they get so much attention I eventually grow tired of them and find myself wishing people would pay more attention to my newer work.
I think this photo of Leona is different. It immediately struck me as a great success. It accomplishes what I wanted it to do. It was pre-visualized. As soon as I saw those plants I knew exactly what I wanted to do with them and Leona. And I was fortunate to have a model with me who could understand what I was after and pull it off. The photo continues to draw me. I’ve made it the wallpaper on my desktop, partially as a test to see if I could dull my enthusiasm for it. I continue to take a sharp breath every time the computer powers up.
In short, I love this photo. I think it may be the best photo I’ve ever taken. I may change my mind. I usually change my mind. But for now I’ll continue to put this one on top of the pile.
Politics? Did I say politics? Well, yes. I saw a report on the news tonight that was questioning the qualifications of Caroline Kennedy to be a Senator. Just had to say something about that. I frankly don’t know much about Caroline Kennedy other than the obvious stuff of who her father was and the many tragedies her family, and our nation, have experienced. But I am absolutely confident that she will be a fine Senator. Better than most. Why? Because she doesn’t need the job. The only reason she could have for seeking that Senate seat is because she wants to, and thinks she can, do some good for our country.
Give Caroline Kennedy the job. We could do (and have done) one hell of a lot worse.
Caught a Soul?
December 20th, 2008
I shot this photo of Phoenix Kelly today. I was playing around with some fabric and my 50mm f/1.4 lens used wide open to play with shallow depth of field. She just wrote to me to say this about this photo, “Love this. You caught me. On camera. That’s the first time that I recognize the girl in front of the camera..”
I like it too. So now you get to see it. Is there something of Phoenix’ soul in there? Who knows? Maybe Phoenix knows…
If you are reading this you know that the church ladies found my blog and reported it. The warning about “objectionable” material started showing up. I’m still thinking about how I want to respond to this. It’s annoying, but not all that big a deal. The number of visitors is down, but I’ve never been all that concerned about how many people come here. I figure I’m more interested in quality than quantity of readers. And I’m sure my friends…the readers I care about…are still going to be clicking through. I’ve never cared a bit about the wankers who may come here to see naked women. I don’t shoot for them and I don’t blog for them. But I also don’t think the warning will have any affect on them, other than to possibly draw a few more of them in.
So, what should I do? Ignore it and go ahead? Or maybe just move the blog to another place where I don’t have to worry about the church ladies. I guess I’m most annoyed at the attitudes that would lead anyone to say what I do with photos is objectionable. I object to that. That’s an attitude that truly is objectionable.
Oh well, life goes on. It’s not like this, or any other, blog is important. It’s just something I do. And I suppose I’ll keep doing it until I don’t want to anymore, and then I won’t. If I decide to move somewhere else I’ll give plenty of notice, of course, and leave a link here. But I won’t be doing anything for a while.
More Krappiness
December 13th, 2008
I’ve spent a good deal of time this past week looking through my old photos for things I’ve done with various kinds of “Krappy Kameras” to find things to send to the juried show in New York. I have way more than I can send, but I think this one is going to make the cut. That’s Rachel on the coast of Maine back in 2003. The camera was a Nikon D100 with a 100mm Sima single-element soft-focus lens. I’ve had that lens for many, many years. It might be considered a forerunner of the Lensbabies that are so popular (and so overpriced) these days. This lens is a simple tube inside a tube with a big single lens mounted in the middle. The aperture can be changed by placing pieces of plastic with different size openings on the front of the assembly. Focusing is done by sliding the tubes back and forth. It’s an f/2 lens, but I usually use the f/4 aperture insert to get a bit more sharpness. Take it down to f/8 and it actually gets pretty sharp, in an old-fashioned sort of way.
There’s much too much going on in my life right now for me to be spending much time updating this blog…but it’s all good stuff and I’m looking forward to a very nice Christmas this year.
I’ll be back here now and then to post updates.
