Almost Blinded by the Flash
Another recent self portrait which just goes to show that behind everyman there's a woman. And, the woman behind me in this image was kind enough to suggest that this picture was extremely creepy looking, and that I looked dead. Nah...I just didn't want to get blinded by the flash. Although after looking at myself in this image my vanity whispers, "consider plastic surgery". Nah...I earned everyone of those wrinkles and grey hairs, one by one.
Moment2Moment
After taping my fifth 30 minute TV show on local public TV, I thought I would drop in the opening - the first image of my Polaroid book: A Couple of Stops Down at the Speed of Light. This past show and the one next week focus on my Polaroid work dating back to the mid 1970's, up until when Polaroid went belly up, and stopped manufacturing film. By the way, the name of my show is Moment2Moment...35 Years Behind the Ground Glass.
This post also includes the opening title to my show which I designed. Since starting to get involved in TV production and video several months ago, I've immersed myself in video animation, editing and special effects. Needless to say, this a daunting universe and the learning curve is big and steep. But I am surrounded by extremely talented and generous staff, who painstakingly answer all my newbie questions, and they tirelessly make available the TV studio's equipment as well as their own expertise.
Guest Hand Towels
May and June light are amazing on the East End of Long Island; that is, when the sun comes out. Actually, the fog light has been pretty amazing as well, and it seems we've had a lot more of that than sunlight. Anyway, afternoon sunlight was pouring into my downstairs bathroom yesterday, and it splashed all over the guest towels. I was walking past the doorway with my little four-thirds panasonic in my hand when I saw this.
Alex in the Morning Sunlight
My 16 year old son, Alex, is home from school for winter break. I was about to step down into the kitchen this morning when I saw him sitting at the kitchen island about ready to have breakfast. The sunlight pouring all over his back from the glass wall was just too stunning to ignore. My little four-thirds cameras was lying on a table close by and I made this capture before he moved or I had to ask him to pose which he usually hates.
There's Been This Octopus Sitting on my Desktop
Several weeks ago, I photographed octopuses for a post on my foodblog, www.2gourmaniacs.com. A couple of days afterwards, I was looking at images on cellphone's memory card, and I found a capture of an octopus in a colander that I made at the same time as the octopus shoot. And, yeah, I seriously manipulated the digital file in Photoshop; something I really don't do all that often. Anyway, I like this one: it has that painterly-cartoon quality which is pretty interesting, and I like the positive-negative of the holes in the colander and the suckers on the octopus's legs.
Wok the heck.
I was photographing my Chinese steel wok for a submission for my food blog (2gourmaniacs.com) to tastespotting.com. They're celebrating their fourth anniversary on line with entries entitled tastespotting100. I put my wok on the floor in my dining room and I had a single strobe bank overhead. The image I captured wasn't exactly what I had in mind; in fact, it wasn't the image I ultimately chose for my submission. But looking at this image with the catch light in the center of the wok started me
thinking about parabolic curves, college physics and long forgotten (and never to be remembered) mathematical formulae to describe what I was seeing in this capture. It looked very Asian, it smacked of a science that I use to know something about...
...or I could just have a very serious case of cabin fever here in snow bound Southampton.
Another Foot of Snow
I'm house bound today, possibly for the immediate future. It snowed another foot or so last night, and with the high winds, there seems to be some significant snow drifts. Finally this afternoon, the sun broke through the clouds, and I went out to make a few captures. The little pond is on a golf course which borders my property, and it looked incredible in the weak afternoon light with just a little blue sky.
And this a piece of my gnarly wild cherry tree next to my driveway. I've photographed a lot of times in the past, especially with snow on it. I really like the sculptural quality of it and of this image.
Snow Dune
As I mentioned in my last post, I've spent a lot of time wandering through coastal sand dunes in the winter, especially after snow storms. The storm we had a couple of days dumped a foot or so on Eastern Long Island. So, I made several photographs out in Napeaque, one of the few remaing, sparsely developed areas left between Southampton and Montauk. I especially like this one. If you want, you can see an entire portfolio of my early snowscapes from Plum Island, Ma. I've set them up as a separate tab under"Phatlandscapes" on my home page; just click on the Black & White Beachscapes link and follow the navigation buttons.
Here's Looking at You, Barnie Newman
Last Monday, I took my son, Alex, to the Museum of Modern Art for his first visit to what he calls a "big time museum". MOMA is showing their huge collection of NY Abstract Expressionism. It is an impressive show; heavy on Jackson Pollock, Hans Hofman, Adolph Gottlieb, and Barnett Newman. My son is taking AP art at George School, and although he wasn't very familiar with abstract expressionism, he understood the concept of the "movement" and he had some interesting things to say about various pieces that we saw. In particular, he was amazed that Barnett Newman always used the same format of equally dividing space in his large canvasses.
The image I made was captured on MOMA's second floor in their bookstore, overlooking the huge atrium and the lobby downstairs. I had Alex stand with his back to me and made a capture, and then I made a capture of just the space without him. Obviously, I combined the images with Photoshop and then ran the darker blue stripe right down the middle separating the two images. This one's for you, Alex.
Ghosting Along Offshore
On one passage offshore, I brought my handheld 5x7 Linhof Technica. It's definitely not the smallest point and shoot camera in the world. With a 210mm lens and film holder it weighs a little over 12 pounds. Mine has a universal view finer, and focusing is accomplished through a split plane parallax system combined with a dedicated focusing cam for a particular focal length lens. This is a 100% mechanical camera. Think of it as a giant Lecia M series range finder camera. The rest of the top side crew were amazed the fist time I hauled it out on deck to photograph.
As I've said in a previous post, being at sea on a large sailboat is like being a NYC cop, 98.5% not doing to much other than your job, the other 1.5% of the time being scarred to death. This image made with my 5x7 Linhof is a good illustration of what days at sea are like. Obviously, we were nearly becalmed; and the planet's eco-system is doing it's job, evaporating water into the atmosphere until it condenses into rain showers or little squalls providing a dramatic afternoon "late show". The wonderful thing about sailing on the ocean is how little effect you have on the biosphere, how little damage you do, you don't even leave a foot print. One of the sad things about being a thousand miles offshore is seeing all the evidence of our collective disregard as stewards of our planet: there's plastic and human manufactured crap floating everywhere. Any that's just on the surface. What will take to stop polluting our oceans? (Oh, I have an idea: each nation contributing to the ocean's pollution has to get it's dumbass politicians and environmental policy makers out on sailing ships, and go out there and pickup all the crap floating around (funded from that nation's defense budget): that would be a start.)