Category: Natural World

The great lake Michigan and sculptural gates

“Adopt the pace of Nature; her secret is patience.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A week or so ago I had the opportunity to return to a subject I’d photographed last spring. This gate, created by Dan Nauman, fits so well into its environment that photographing it becomes very difficult during daylight. The natural surroundings seem to absorb the organic forms of the metal. We created these night photographs in an effort to separate the organic metal forms from their natural environment (for an upcoming magazine article). If you open and drive through this driveway gate you will arrive at the residence, above the great lake Michigan seen in the black and white photographs above.

Out and about with Bert and camera

“Photography is not about cameras, gadgets and gismos. Photography is about photographers. A camera didn’t make a great picture any more than a typewriter wrote a great novel.” — Peter Adams

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yesterday afternoon, lunch with Bert Stitt

then a walk about
the “east side” looking

and a drive to see Sophia

“Give a man color film …sooner or later you’ll catch him in the garden…

“Fashion, flowers, nudes and portraits — they’re all the same: light, form, color. And mystery. And mystery is very important. When I started photographing flowers, I thought, ‘My God, where have I been?’ I’m totally addicted to this project. I’d never seen the mysteries of a flower. We walk by wonders every day and don’t see them. We only stop at what shouts the loudest.” — Barbara Bordnick

“You give a man color film, and sooner or later you will catch him out in the garden taking pictures of flowers. This seems inevitable. He just can’t resist. He’s got this colorful film, y’see, and he spies this colorful flower, and… well, not being a chimp, he does realize that there are enough flower pictures in the world already, and that the one he’s about to take isn’t going to be of any use to anybody. But he can’t help himself. It’s too great a temptation to resist. He succumbs to the weakness.” — Anonymous – from his 1/18/04 Sunday Morning Photographer article

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A straight photograph cannot be abstract

“They are imbeciles who call my work abstract. That which they call abstract is the most realistic, because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things.

When you see a fish you don’t think of its scales, do you? You think of its speed, its floating, flashing body seen through the water… If I made fins and eyes and scales, I would arrest its movement, give a pattern or shape of reality. I want just the flash of its spirit.” — Constantin Brancusi

yesterday: a leaf

fell as I walked to the car

evidence of change

(Leica R8/DMR, 6omm Macro Elmarit)

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Photographers love the way the world “looks”

“I believe that photography loves banal objects, and I love the life of objects.” — Joseph Sudek

one of Dad’s vises

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“I have no way of portraying the lives of others. I portray my own.” — Jan Saudek

Scheme to put yourself in the path of beautiful landscapes, buildings, art, and creatures.

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chasing butterflies and blue skies

as a child i chased
butterflies with a net
now i chase images

Once caught, I never knew quite what to do with the butterflies. I looked at them under a microscope. I marveled at their color and delicate lightness. I ended up feeling uneasy that, as I studied them, they became less beautiful; battered and wounded. In the end I gave up catching butterflies in nets. Now, catching fleeting moments on a light sensitive surface, I find the opposite. The images become more beautiful as I study them; push the edges around; pull information from them; adjust the colors, tonality and contrast. Yet, I still don’t know what to do with my catches.

Yesterday, arriving at a favorite bluff, overlooking the great lake Michigan, I found and caught the following:

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Nathaniel Reinartz creates friday flower

Recently I’ve begun to work with Nathaniel Reinartz. We’re upgrading his presentation portfolio and discussing possibilities and usefulness of web sites for blacksmiths. This young man’s work certainly demonstrates attention to detail, impeccable craftsmanship and a fine aesthetic sensibility.

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“Oh my son’s my son till he gets him a wife, but my daughter’s my daughter all her life.” — Dinah Maria Mulock Craik.

Ann and Erin at Irish Fest, on Ann’s birthday, August 17, 2008.

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creative object as stepping stone to a realm of meaning beyond itself

“It should be possible for even the photographer — just as for the creative poet or painter — to use the object as a stepping stone to a realm of meaning completely beyond itself.” — Clarence John Laughlin

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