Not that it matters

At least two paradigms contend with one another in the desiccation of plant life: the original growth and the textures and structures that emerge in the transition back to dirt. That tension reveals beauty.

Children are not just little adults. Their world is as big as ours and they have a more accurate perception of life in the world than we do as adults.  They know that they are not in control.  They are willing to live a life of creativity and risk.  They feel their emotions.

There are really only two kinds of things in the cosmos: other sentient things and stuff.  Both are wonderful objects of the camera and contemplation.  Every other thing, living and not living, is unique.  I will use my time above ground to behold and enjoy them.

A principal service to the consumer of art rendered by a good photographer is the creation for the viewer of a keyhole, not only a point of view but a framed point of view.  Most people go about their business gathering visual information to support whatever they are doing.  Photographers, on the other hand, are constantly framing what they are seeing, constantly assessing the effects of where they are as it affects what they are seeing, and constantly converting what they are seeing to a vision of place.  If I step a foot to my left, the object in the foreground shifts against its background.  What effect does that have on the image?  From which direction is the light coming with respect to the scene and where the photographer is standing?  What effect does that have on the image?  If I stand closer or look in a different direction or wait a few moments or a few hours, what is either added to or subtracted from the image?  All of this effort is how the photographer captures an image of a place and what being in that place feels like.

Can anything be more fascinating than watching people?  I like to photograph people using a long lens, which puts me outside of the sphere of their awareness.  People aware of a lens pointed at them put up defensive armor.  They strive to create in the mind of others an image of the kind of person they want to be.  Aside from being inherently false, composed images are almost always less interesting than an unscripted one.  Spared the self-consciousness, people relax their faces.  Who they are emerges.

What a funny name for this kind of photography: Still Life.  As if life could be still and as if this kind of photography was about living things.  A minority of the still life images I create are about living things.  Most of my still lifes are about dead things, though I prefer the name of this section to be Still Lifes rather than Still Deads.

Some still lifes (SL) images I find, like the wine glasses on the table and the whirls of the broccoli stem.  Most I create.  I love chaos, but I love patterns that emerge from chaos more.  One image here is of colorful wooden shapes.  As a stream of falling pieces passed in front of my lens, I set off a strobe that stopped the action.  Even in this utterly chaotic SL, structure and relationships appear.  It gives me a glimpse of how the human mind works.  The mind doesn't find patterns; it creates them.  I love conflicting paradigms, as when mold and rot (natural processes) overtake and abandoned house (An artificial paradigm imposed on construction materials.)

Generally I don't like abstract photography, much in the same way I don't like poetry.  My best friend is a poet and sometimes I want to shake him and say, "Just say what you mean.  Don't wax poetic."  He would probably say that he is trying as hard as he can to say what he means.  He can't say what he means in prose.  In his defense, I don't get most of what has happened in European culture since about 1905.  Anyway...  I usually capture prose images.  That means to me real content, hard focus, contrast, color, gesture, recognizable places, etc.  But here are some pictures some would say are abstracts.

The fifth, sixth, and seventh images, the ones that look like colorful lines on a black background, are actually abstracted images of fireworks.  I either move the camera or zoom in on the image and have a long shutter time.

Commentary on what street photography is on the way.  Please be patient.  I am still building this site.  And after I have put up new images, street or otherwise, I beg you to be patient.

Every artist must find his own way to shield himself from judgment.  Nothing kills creativity quite as quickly as fear, fear that what he is doing is silly, fear that he has no claim or legitimacy as an artist, fear that he is doing it wrong, and on and on.  The artist must rudely disregard convention to have a chance at success.

The next paragraph was provided by the site-building software as a visual of what written words in this space would look like.  Normally, I would replace the nonsense words with words that I propose are not nonsense.  I decided to keep them in this case because most artistic presentations, in museums or in sites, are accompanied by verbiage designed to allay judgment.  It proposes to open a space for the viewer in which she can see the creation without needing to discover what it "means" or figure out what to "do" with a piece of art.  However, most such commentary is as meaningless as the nonsense words offered by the site-building software.  So I decided to preserve it.  Please use the following paragraph to guide your contemplation of my pictures.  (Not that it matters.)

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These images are all fireworks shot with a slow shutter. Sometimes I move the camera while the shutter is open. Sometimes I zoom in or out. Sometimes I move the camera while zooming in or out.

Most pictures that appear in newspapers are not artistically interesting. A few are.