Simple

One bird, a row of jasmine, clouds. The simple landscape. Trying to cut down on the clutter continuously.
Often a difficult exercise when one is taken in with a scene. The tendency is to try and take it all in, go with a wider lens. But then, in the end, when the download has occurred, the ones I tend to gravitate toward are the simple. So why do I not always take simple shots? Because often, it demands more. It requires one to see through the wide and down into a macro sort of way.

Today I pulled from storage the old Yashica Mat-124G 120 camera. In the coming days I hope to go to the Freestyle Camera site and order a changing bag, some Acufine or Dektol, stop bath and such. I then plan on ordering some pan film, either Ilford or Fuji in 120. I hope then to be able to shoot negatives, and somehow scan them into the computer, printing them, either through a lab online or up to 8x10 on my bottom of the line Epson printer. It will be a good blend of the old and the new.
I hope this venture plays out and I do not put it off like so many other projects I have good intentions for, bad follow through.

Balance

Continuation of seeing sideways exercises. I had to update on Facebook what it was. Terry said it was pretty. I do wonder if she even noticed if it was sideways? Goes to show. The day was spent at the quiet gallery, almost quiet, as Rex and I sat it out. What a crock. The print I thought had sold last week still sat on the desk, never picked up. I called the customer and he said he would be down. He never came.
Tonight I went through the prints I currently have at home. I plan on switching out all the prints tomorrow.
What to place in the gallery?
We shall decide tomorrow.

Mercy Drops

The back yard is once again a pond. We thought the dirt we had hauled in several years ago remedied the situation. We just have to wait it out and soon it will recede. In the past, the back yard would get so deep, it would come into the house. I had a sump pump to drain some, but the constant use burned the pump up.
I took the Canon S95 out for some azalea shots this morning in the short time the sun and blue sky appeared. Later on, I traveled down to Alligator Lake and walked along, spotting some remaining white pelicans and two ospreys. Earlier, I was at Watertown Lake trying to out wait two eagles on the limb, waiting for them to fly. Unfortunately, I was using the D40 with the dust spots galore on the sensor. Upon downloading, few if any were usable. I will just have to stop using the camera that got me started in digital DSLR. It would cost more than a new D40 would cost if I sent the camera to Nikon for repair.
I am also coming to the conclusion that the 180mm 2.8 is a hit and miss, sometimes sharp, other times terribly fuzzy. But...that could be attributed to my poor focusing ability as well.
It would be nice to invest in the 70-300 or a 400mm.
Melanie had two interviews today from home. One, at Columbia Correctional, nine miles down the road, offered her a job. She is hoping the other, which would be what she is doing now, from home, will offer her the job. She really does not want to work in a prison and I cannot blame her in the least.
My prospects for a job remain dim, but hope I hold out that sometime before I die or get too old to work, I will find a job I do not mind doing. I have little hope for that.

Learning to See

I am re-reading, but it seems like I am reading for the first time, Freeman Patterson's book, Photography and the Art of Seeing. I have yet to make it through the second chapter. I guess you could say that I am still on lesson one, learning to see sideways. Patterson gives several exercises in thinking sideways:
1) Draw up a list of some photographic rules; then go out and break them.
Rule 1. Always hold your camera steady.
Rule 2. Be sure the centre of interest is in sharp focus.
Rule 3. Follow your light meter.
Then, take this list and, with various subjects, make pictures in direct contradiction to the rules.
Breaking Rule 1.
Jump up and down in the forest, and press the shutter release as you jump.
Run as fast as you can toward a parked car, and press the shutter release as you run.
Make sure the strap on your camera is absolutely secure. Set the shutter at a slow speed, and activate the self-timer. Then, swing your camera in circles, or back and forth, until the shutter has released.
Breaking Rule 2.
Make a series of pictures in which the main subject matter is clearly out of focus, but other things are sharp.
Shoot a sunset, a flower, and the surface of backlighted water, entirely out of focus.
Breaking Rule 3.
After you have read your light meter, make a series of photographs with five different subjects in which you overexpose each one the equivalent of two full f/stops or shutter speeds. Overexpose ever more if you are using black and white film. Then repeat the exercise while underexposing two full f/stops.
When you look at the resulting slides or negatives or digital images, you must view them in the same frame of mind as you took them. If you don't, you may reject them all as disasters. Keep on behaving as if the old dominant ideas no longer exist. Remember, the whole idea of these exercises is to break away from what you've been doing.

And so you can see, lesson one on learning to see sideways can go on and on.
We are reluctant to become rule breakers. I am one. I get stuck in ruts of doing the same shots over and over with the same predicted results. There is comfort in that. But there can also be burnout, or boredom. If all you ever did in a relationship was every night, sit at the same table quietly and eat your meal silently, soon, the relationship would end. The same with photography. Turn over the tables, look someone in the eye and start fresh.

Adopt An Artist

The thought recently occurred to me when visiting the Art Co-Ops in Cedar Key, how patrons blessed with means could be such a blessing to the arts. It is truly a blessing when a patron who has a heart for the arts,   give of their means to advance the arts, benefiting the entire community. Can you imagine the wondrous works Rembrandt could have produced, had he not spent his days in poverty, painting government officials portraits to make ends meet, or if Theo, Vincent's brother or a patron could have supported Van Gogh?
If you are such a person and find that you have a heart for the arts, take the initiative, or gather a circle of your friends and invest if you will, in an artist. If you are not familiar, visit the Co-Op's and local galleries. The two in Cedar Key were full of wonderful works. Most artists are by no means people of means. A few are. They dabble in the arts as a leisure past time. I am not speaking of these people. They have their own means of support. But seek out a true artist, one who would paint or photograph or sculpt in poverty, because it is their passion, their life force, their testimony. Who knows, you may be discovering the next Adams or Monet, hidden in some obscure gallery in Levy County.
Help this person by purchasing their work, by commissioning them, by gifting them with creative support funds so they can continue in their endeavor, purchase paints, paper,etc. Many artists, unfortunately, were not given the gift of being financial wizards, of dabbling in stocks and bonds and investments. There is a reason they are artists. They long ago found little interest in the analytical, but gravitated toward the spiritual, the ethereal, the mysterious.
You, the patron, if you will, can help these wandering souls to find some security, to find shelter from the harsh world they are attempting to interpret for us, allowing them to pursue the interpretation of our dreams.
A true artist will paint a scene, often with a passion, forgetting or even abhorring to bring into play the distasteful subject of funds. That is where you, the Patron must step in and partner with the artist. Place a gift in the offering plate, if you will. No true minister would refuse to preach until the plate was passed. No true believer would dare receive a gift, a blessing, without doing their part in giving the free will offering.
 In the least,  give to your adopted artist, the tithe, if you will, in the form of purchasing their work, offering studio space, promoting their work to your friends.  There are many creative ways to help, even if quiet and anonymous. It will be a blessing to you, knowing you have carried along the torch of  the arts, and it will be a blessing to the artists, as a few perhaps will know that they are appreciated and  the yellow lights can swirl  under a starry, starry night.

Scouting

In a steady rain, we drove over to Raiford for Melanie to interview for a job at the Lake Butler Correctional Center. She said she would take it at last resort: night shift, mental prisoners. In Lake Butler, we stopped at Skip's Deli for lunch. We then drove around town, down by the lake, along the lake, then back to Lake City via the back roads leading to Providence. The water was really rising in the ditches, overflowing the roads in areas. There were many stops I could have made, but due to the weather, drove on. We did stop at the Midway Church and cemetery. I do not know why I never noticed this church before in all the bike rides Roger and I used to take on this road. I will have to return again when the weather clears.
I do not always get a haircut, but when I do, I prefer McLeod's.

Gator Day

It was early sunrise and we were heading down to Williston on Saturday for day of photographing per a request and then on to Cedar Key. It was SEC tournament time and Florida was in the final with Kentucky, the team I root for, having lived in Kentucky and attending school at Asbury College near Lexington. Florida won 61-60. It was a good sign for Florida.
There was a discussion on when one is taking landscape photographs for a person who requested you to take them, do you ask for a fee up front, or do you just take the photographs and trust the person will give you some form of appreciation? As it was, I took nearly 200 shots, did post processing, put them in a smug mug album and sent them to the person. My hindsight told me perhaps I should have handled it somewhat differently. One friend told me to have a price list and be up front. As usual, I broke the rules and payed.
We automatically assume if a lawyer or any other professional does any form of work, there is going to be a fee. Why we consider artists doing their work gratis is beyond me, but that is the way it is.

Eighty for One

The hummers were returning and I sat out on the patio in the lounge chair with the D3100 and manual 180mm and 2x attached. Light was low and I had to up the ISO to 400 in order to maintain a minimum of 125 shutter speed. I was shooting manual, as that is the only way I can shoot with the old legacy lenses.
The hummers were mostly sitting on the rose bush limbs and resting between trips to the feeder. This time, the male hovered long enough in one position to allow one quick shot. None of the photographs I took were sharp by any means, I think that is just the nature of having the 2x attached, but the light was sweet in the background and sharpness was not critical.

Last Shot

I rode the one mile distance from the house on the mountain bike to the Price Creek Cemetery. It was windy and the sun was coming in and out rapidly. I knew the dogwood tree was in full bloom and I wanted to capture it in full sun, with shadow of the old oak framing it. Of the nearly fifty frames I took, from various angles, this was the last frame. Was it the best, the culmination? I would not necessarily say so. Sometimes, we are simply lazy and do not feel like taking the time to study critically the details.
I used the D3100 with the 18-55lens, with two ND graduated filters stacked. One just doesn't darken enough for my liking. But, the gradated point is square in the middle of the frame so some of the nice dogwood was darkened. In this last frame I did not use the graduated filters. I have a set of square graduated filters I forget to take along that would have allowed me to hold the graduated spot higher up above the dogwood. Then, I would have needed to take the tripod along, which I should use, but again, too lazy to carry it on the mountain bike. How much better we would be if we weren't so lazy!

Tush, tush

This is an example of another photograph that no one got. I took it down from FB after only 56 views and one like, no comment.  It begs another question, do people get humor or do they only look quickly at a photo and judge instantly if it is worthy of comment or further thought? I visualized this shot instantly as I was standing next to this lady watching the two men load the huge fishing boat at the pier at Cedar Key.
The man's over-alls were falling and it looked as if the lady was capturing it, as she actually was.
I enjoy street photography, capturing frozen moments in time and creating a story within the constant movement of life. This was one such. It was not beautiful. It failed.

Post Haste

The first photograph was originally presented in black and white with the Holga application. The Holga application blurs the edges, heightens the contrast and gives a look to the photograph I sometimes utilize to either mask poor initial exposure, cover distracting elements or simply give the photograph a sense to detachment. These photographs I took in 2011 when my father was near death in the VA hospital in Lake City. He had lingered for nearly a month in and out of consciousness, never recovering his speech. He would try and communicate with us but it was most difficult. As usual, as in every event, always, I had a camera. It is second nature. I would not know how to manage if I had no camera with me. I am continually thinking in terms of light, composition, expression. My wife can be sitting before me telling me if I do not quit acting the child, get some responsibility, it is over, and my thought is, how the light falls upon the frowning.
The third photograph is of my sister, the first child, the apple of my fathers eye, the spoiled child, if you will. She just happened at the time to be working as a Hospice nurse in the Serenity Ward where my father spent his last days. The photograph is the moment of death. Before that photograph, my father had been lying silent, the breaths further and further apart. Suddenly, he opened his eyes wide in wonderment, looking out toward the window in front of him to his right, then closing them, sinking down in the bed in death. Earlier in his stay there, he had communicated that an angel was standing there by the window.
There were other photographs, but at this point, three years hence, I am too close to the scene. Perhaps further down the road I will post the entire set.

Beautiful

I hold my fathers hand for the last time.

Something I find to be true is people for the most part just want to see something beautiful. And, they do not want to engage beyond viewing, then moving on. This I find to occur often, one example being when I posted a scenic of Cedar Key from long ago. It got around three hundred views. I followed this up with a photograph of the old Sundance bar and a couple and their little dog fishing from the pier at Cedar Key. To me, these two photographs were much more interesting and intriguing. But they both received around fifty views.
I am almost to the point of growing weary of posting photographs that receive the beautiful moniker. I really do not know what I am after, for I too gravitate toward beauty, it is in our redeemed nature. But on a deeper level I desire to go beyond the surface, obvious beauty of a scene to the essence level of portraying pathos, sorrow, hope, joy, anything but beautiful. Steve Coleman the photographer from Australia uses a Mamyia7 film camera capable of producing some of the sharpest photographs imaginable, yet he deliberately chooses to blur his images by hand holding long exposures. He is weary of the arcane, landscape cookie cutter, beautiful scenes so many crank out with their Canon Mark threes.
I would ultimately strive for the photograph to touch people on a deeper level, even to make them squirm, maybe question a reason for something, to cause a reaction, an engaging. And is that not what is at the heart of art? To convey a worldview of the artist? To cause one to view the world on a deeper level beyond the easy beautiful and moving on to the next beautiful.
Ray Stevens said Everything is Beautiful, In its own way,  and he was right. It is also a terrible cliche and each time I receive a beautiful remark, I think of the song and say, whoops,I did it again, stayed upon the surface.
And I will admit, we all are out for recognition. We are busy tooting our horns and screaming for notice.
It is difficult to shun the adulation and dare perhaps offend or challenge by offering photographs or works  that go to another level, even a darker level, for it is sometimes in darkness where light is fully appreciated.
I think of the photojournalist Eugene Smith.  In the seventies I was greatly moved and influenced with his photographs of the children and families in Japan sick from mercury poisoning from a chemical plant in their community. The birth defects were rampant. Smith captured in stark black and white the pathos, the sad humanity, and yet, the boundless love of a mother to hold dearly her deformed child.
Moving stuff. Way beyond the beautiful I am too prone to. Images I hold in my mind to this day. Who holds the beautiful sunset with azaleas I just took? Few.