I believe in self explanatory pictures. — Moses Oliver
So, I produce 3 DVD’s for a young man who lost his sight in a boat racing accident a number of years ago. The videos are to promote his work as a motivational speaker. I put $5 worth of heart stamps on the package and send them off. Yesterday the package shows up back in my mail box. Returned as a possible threat – “due to heightened security requirements.” What’s wrong with this world?
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“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.
“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.
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
“A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.” — Orson Welles
In the case of a cinematic camera that would involve pace, meter, cadence and rhythm in addition to composition and proper lighting; perhaps even requiring a editor/poet to maintain that which the camera captured. A still camera, as an eye in the head of a poet, however, has more modest aspirations; a haiku; a short verse; a poetic phrase; a simple, often overlooked truth; a bit of passion; a memory; a mystery; a reminder; a nagging or aching;
seen frozen within
silver halides, thoughts, (past times)
still, reading their signs
