Category: Natural World

Photography is not… or what is photography?

“Photography is not cute cats, nor nudes, motherhood or arrangements of manufactured products. Under no circumstances is it anything ever anywhere near a beach.” – Walker Evans – American Photography, 1984, 23 – 24. [“EW:100 – Centennial Essays in Honor of Edward Weston”, “Carmel: Beneficial to Bohemia” p. 48, Untitled 41, The Friends of Photography, Carmel, California 1986]

A basket full of goodies came as a Christmas gift. Now empty yet remaining on a kitchen counter; Cheech has claimed it as one his preferred places to rest.

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what do you look at? why?

“I’m looking for things I’ve never seen before.” — Robert Mapplethorpe

“Constantly ask yourself, ‘what the heck would what I’m looking at look like framed, still, two-dimensional, in black and white?’ If the search for an answer gets your heart pumping, makes your throat dry and you become kind of gooey inside, it’s love. Don’t fight it. Take out that Leica M that you’re still paying off and start shooting.” — Mason Resnick

“my window” — George Lottermoser

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Images held within us

“You cannot carry nature with you, but you carry images of nature. When you go out to make a picture you find you are moved by something which is in agreement with an image you already held within yourself.” — Frederick Sommer

yesterday:
attached the 400 mm f:6.8 Telyt
to the Visoflex and M8
for the first time
then took the kit for a brief walk

this — hand held, without shoulder stock or pod,
cropped from about a quarter of the M8’s full frame
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Good morning winter

“I think the main ingredient, or a main ingredient for photography is curiosity. If you’re curious enough and if you get up in the morning and go out and take pictures, you’re likely to be more lucky than if you just stay at home.” – Elliott Erwitt

home
with camera and shovel

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Our man won and fresh snow fell

“A good photograph can penetrate the subconscious – but only if it is allowed to speak for however much time it needs to get there.” — Ralph Gibson

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The first moment after MSNBC declared the first Irish-African-American winner of the 2008 presidential election.

first snow fell last night
this morning, cold, lovely and
new visions to catch

photographs about secrets

“If I had to pick a single word to describe what my pictures are all about, I would say ‘secrets.’ As a child I always had a secret world and my favorite book was A Secret Garden.” — Joyce Tenneson

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Each time the shutter clicks I’ve always had that feeling; as if my little black box may have just captured something like a secret. Something no one else has seen. When I opened the above image I felt as if I’d stepped back in time, to those wonderful fall days, as a boy lost in fantasies of adventure, at the edge of land.


A photograph is not what is photographed

“…the fact of putting four edges around a collection of information or facts transforms it. A photograph is not what was photographed, it’s something else.” — Garry Winogrand

My good friends at the Leica User Group have created a tradition called Friday flowers. I offer these in the spirit of that tradition. The blue flowers are a mere 5mm in diameter. Both of these were photographed with a 20 – 30 year old 65 Elmar lens on an M8.

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Last week I walked to the mail box and found five of these walking about in my front yard. This one seemed to be saying, “dude – like back off!”

Fall has arrived and new forms and colors delight the eyes.

Click this link to view additional images on these themes in a flash slide show