“When photographing I want to reach and touch something that I feel is at the core of people.” — Mary Ellen Mark: 25 Years
she lay on the ground
propping the camera with sticks
set the self timer
ran to her friend and posed
they repeated this dance several times
then enjoyed the tiny screen
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“The ground we walk on, the plants and creatures, the clouds above constantly dissolving into new formations — each gift of nature possessing its own radiant energy, bound together by cosmic harmony. …Light is my inspiration… …profoundly significant, it caresses the essential superlative curves and lines. …the energy upon which all life on this planet depends. …Today is the day!” — Ruth Bernhard
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Herring Gull
Canada Goose
“I thought I made a mistake once but it turned out it was a creative moment.” — Scott Fleming
Have you ever approached your lover, intending a kiss good bye, then felt a warm breeze flow from their face to your own? Not speaking of breath here; rather an in-the-moment-hyper-awareness of the 98.6 degree F, 37 degree C, body temperature slowly flowing from loved one toward self. I did. This morning. Lovely.
Happens all the time.
Appreciating it does not.
Then spring arrived.
—
difficult to hold
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Yellow-rumped Warbler (probably Myrtle type)
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Downy Woodpecker
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle type)
“A good documentary photograph transmits the information of the situation with the utmost fidelity; achieving it means understanding the nuances of lighting and composition, and also remembering to keep the lenses clean and the cameras steady.” — Sam Abell, Seeing and Shooting Straight
Sunday morning:
cold wind bites the skin
even as the sun melts fresh snow
spring appears unsure
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the birthday party – delightful
“The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking.” — Brooks Atkinson – 1951, Once Around the Sun
some times the impulse
simply will not manifest
as on this foggy day
—
beauty seen yet no
proof beyond an impression
left on aging eyes
—
her youth and allure
spilled atop the lunch counter
splashing all over us
Perhaps the virtue of the written word is not the power it has to transform the author into a poet, but the impulse it gives him to keep expressing thoughts; however feeble.
“…words and pictures can work together to communicate more powerfully than either alone.” — William Albert Allard
As a young man Kevin Meyers lost his sight in a boat racing accident. Since that life changing event he has earned two degrees, works at Northwestern Mutual’s IT department, and become a motivational speaker. We’ve created this video to help get his message out to folks.
“A photograph is always invisible, it is not it that we see.” — Roland Barthes
Networking (day two) continues: Stephanie Reynolds, the friendly freelancer, hosted the Well-fed writers at Barnes & Noble in Bay Shore Mall, Glendale, WI. Martha Carrigan, President and CEO of Big Shoes Network offered valuable suggestions on the subject of networking. Wesley Manko, of DefenseWorks, recently published How to be Safe No Matter What; and also provided some useful ideas. David White also offered his insights. A few other snaps from the evening can be viewed here.
“You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” — Ansel Adams
Networks: My dear friend, David White, currently finds himself studying and testing networking concepts. He invited me to an event hosted by Katie Felten of MKE Live, a local chapter of LinkIn; a networking site for professionals. My interest, as always, revolved around “what does professional networking look and sound like? And, do attendees need and recognize the value of high quality photography, video, and graphic design services for themselves and their businesses?” To see more photographs from the event – look here.
Content is the name of my game. Images, words and videos which make the web, print and our walls come alive with interesting and useful information.
“The photographic image… a message without a code.” — Roland Barthes
Last week McKim Stropes phoned to inform me that Spider John Koerner would perform at the UWM Fine Arts Recital Hall. Memories flooded my mind. Back in the mid sixties some part of my awakening as a young man occurred at the Avant Garde listening to “Blues, Rags and Hollers” from Spider John, Dave Ray and Tony Glover. Last evening John took me and others back to those days; and even much further back; as he carries hundreds of years of folk-blues tradition in his spirit; delivering it, pure, through his 12 string guitar and finely tuned, folk, vocal cords — his right foot the perfect metronome. See more photographs from the concert.
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More from Roberto Bolaño’s Infrarealist Manifesto, “Risk is always elsewhere. The true poet is always leaving himself behind. Never too long in the same place, like guerrilla fighters, flying saucers, and the white eyes of lifers. LEAVE IT ALL BEHIND, AGAIN. GO OUT ON THE ROADS.”
“I dreamt that a man looked back, over the anamorphic landscape of dreams, and that his glance was hard as steel but still fragmented itself in multiple glances each time more innocent, each time more destitute.
I dreamt that a storm of ghostly numbers was the only thing left behind by mankind three billion years after the earth had ceased to exist.” — R. Bolaño, “A journey through literature”
those ones and zeros
blowing about the winter
without human kind