Illusion

Wednesday here. Three gourds painted today. All in all, productive, considering my procrastination. 6x6 and various other size board frames on order. Planning on mod podging photographs to them. Some I may attempt to paint upon. Going small format for awhile, though in the closet are some 11x14 and larger prints in need of frames for the new downtown gallery opening. I will give it a final shot there. After that, I do not know what avenue to pursue. Possibly a Art America or one of the they will sell it for you sites.
There are about a dozen birdhouse gourds to complete. I want to return to Mr Markhams farm to see if he has any gourds without the tall neck. I want rounder type in order to try and make boxes from them.
This particular photograph is a double exposure in camera. In the RAW format, I can stack two shots. This will possibly be of use this week-end when I take another set of photographs on the Dixie Lily Ranch. We shall see what is there. We will go down on Friday and return Saturday. I hope to be at the ranch around sunrise, to see what the light is like, hopefully some fog.
I am musing along here. Take care.

Where were we?

Where were we
On her final day of
December 8, 2012
What was I doing
down at the rescue mission?
And did you see Santa
arrive downtown on Madison?
I did.
But I tell you what I did not see
coming
Not even entering my mind
 She was lying there
never to awake again.
To Detour
no more.
And the Thrift store
was closed that day.

Restore

Today the computer, as usual, is acting up. The mouse pad on the laptop, the worn through plastic on the mouse not reacting to the finger, the cracked CD port, from the recent drop, the daily concern all will be lost in a crash. There are times I have tried to set the computer back to a prior date, before all the troubles of slowing it down and the ads popping up began. But usually, it is in vain, for I do not go far enough back in time.
After coming off an Easter week-end in Williston, I so desperately sought that further date back in time. Yesterday, as we sat in the newer First Baptist Church, a deed I had only done once in my life, it felt odd and out of place. I was not supposed to be here. I was supposed to be further up Noble in the First United Methodist Church where my father once preached from 1967 to 1977, a time many, many today do not recall, only the remaining Epperson class members recalling. When I lived in Williston, the churches in town would gather on the fifth Sunday evening for a singing, and we would rotate around. It was then that I would sit in the old brick First Baptist, the one the far sighted committee had torn down, erasing for yet many another memory.
And as we sat in those comfortable pews in the middle of the modern styled sanctuary, there were no little grand kids about in their pretty outfits. No, most were now grown and gone, others had just gone separate ways, over seas, over this and that, finding every reason not to gather as once we all did.
We ate a fine dinner at the Ivy House, just the two's of us, came home and took our own separate naps, not having to pull ourselves into grandma's yard to hide the eggs, to pose before adjusting the fine pastel outfits.
And we awoke finally, gathered our leftovers and made our way home.
The IPhone continually scrolling with the posting of the pictures from others with the fine pastels that flattered and embarrassed at the same time. In the satchel the photograph of Melissa and Nathaniel carried with us, reminding us painfully, that we will never be able to ever again find that restore button.

Day Moon

Do not give a melancholic poet a rainy day. He will turn it into a flood. Musing too long lately. Too much time upon my hands. In desperate need of being paid to muse.
In the wee hours I have stood lately and all but given up the thought of ever getting a message across.
That in turn causes one, namely me, to turn toward bitterness and further introspection. It manifests itself in cursing madly at drivers coming too fast behind me, of things tripping me, of animals just trying not to get in the way of the poet.
We are about to visit Claire Brooklyn at the hospital at noon. That will soothe at the same time smart. For it was in that ward, three years hence, I came to visit my only estranged grandson Nathaniel. It will bring to recall, the entire sordid episode, from the last day in March until today.
It is supposed to rain harder as the day grows longer,darker. I shall have to continue pouring Yeats into the John Clare site. Try and ward off the rain. The day. The melancholy. The flooding.

Praise to the Redeemer

Hymn 25. From Isaac Watts, Watts and Selected Hymns. 1835.

Mighty God, while angels bless thee,
May an infant lisp thy name?
Lord of man, as well as angel's,
Thou art every creature's theme.
Hallelujah.
Hallelujah, hallelujah. Amen.

Lord of every land and nation,
Ancient of eternal days!
Sounded through the wide creation,
Be thy just, exalted praise.
Hal.

For the grandeur of thy nature-
Grand beyond a seraph's thought-
For created works of power,
Works with skill and kindness wrought.
Hal.

For thy providence that governs,
Through thine empire's wide domain;
Wings an angel-guides a sparrow-
Blessed by thy gentle reign.
Hal.

But thy rich, thy free redemption,
Dark through brightness all along!
Thought is poor, and poor expression;
Who dare sing that awful song?
Hal.

Brightness of the Father's glory,
Shall thy praise unuttered lie?
Fly, my tongue, such guilty silence!
Sing the Lord, who came to die.
Hal.

Did archangels sing thy coming?
Did the shepherds learn their lays?
Shame would cover me, ungrateful,
Should my tongue refuse to praise.
Hal.

From the highest throne in glory,
To the cross of deepest woe-
All to ransom guilty captives!
Flow, my praise, forever flow.
Hal.

Go, return immortal Saviour;
Leave thy footstool, take thy throne;
Thence return, and reign forever;
Be the kingdom all thine own.
Hallelujah.
Hallelujah, hallelujah. Amen.

Edge of Day

Lines were long

Edge of Rail

Face to face

Preset the focus to infinity. Set the sunny sixteen. And off we go. These three were the most compelling...to me. Some of the most fun I have is in the drive by shooting. I wasn't kidding Shelley today when she said I should drive by and see her amaryllis majestic. I said I liked drive by shooting.

With vision, the photographer fails.

This was a more involved selfie. I do not think many noticed the taped on eyes on the Yashica camera. One liked the hat. I said, I was a Barry Gibb Wanna BEE...gee. Stayin' Alive. Probably all...huh?
No one looks, no one comments. I do these funky things ever so often just to try and see again, IS anyone out there?

Whither?

For beauty, for significance, it's space
We need; and since we have no space today
In which to frame the act, the word, the face
Of beauty, it's no longer beautiful.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

There comes a time of diminishing returns, when one puts forth daily, beauty, only to gather in return, no space. In the effort to connect, to inspire, to converse, their is empty.
Pink Floyd says for me, "Is there anybody out there?"
Whither do we go? Whither do we do this?
For the diminishing. For the few. And whither this diminishing?
Reds turn to jade and people become a shade of jaded.
What we once called beautiful, is no longer beautiful.

Subtract

Photography is as sculpture. You take a cluttered scene, like a lump of clay, and you begin peeling away.
Eventually, the form that remains is the sculpture. In painting, the blank canvas is added to until a painting emerges. Addition.
Photography is concerned with subtraction. Seeing only what is necessary for the scene. Discerning what we can whittle down to the essence of the scene. The most powerful photographs are the simple.
It should be the daily study we undertake. To subtract from the scene what we can. The uncluttered landscape. The uncluttered life.
In our culture, it is usually the addition we dwell upon.
Most difficult to live Thoreau's adage,
Life consists in the abundance of things we can afford to leave alone.

Break Down

Three weeks off the foot. No mobility. We are juggling about between Allison having her girl and Meme in her broken left leg above the ankle. Tough times. Melanie exempt for she is the only one with an actual job.
Testy times. I do not think anyone really wants to be doing what we are doing. I do not want to be unemployed, I will not speak for the others.

Dreaming of Shooting with the big boys

New friend on Facebook John Spohrer from Apalachicola, a master naturalist, daily posts really good close-ups of wildlife and plants, along with landscapes. When I asked him today what he used to get such close clarity in his night heron, he said he used the Canon 800f5.6 on the Canon EOS 1 DX, top of the line pro camera and lens combination. The lens goes for around 14K, the camera around 8K.
We can only dream. On reading about the EOS, it sounds grand. Totally weatherized, you can continue shooting in salt,mud and rain. The 800, while a monster, is fast and really brings in the wildlife from afar.
Some day I am going to dare ask these pro guys how they afford such equipment.
My pitiful D3100 with the old Nikon 180mm on TC-201 is a sad excuse for trying to capture clarity clearly.
But, it hasn't kept me from going out and using it and trying to get the best that I can from it.

Pondering the Palms

I took the poem, The Palms, written in 2009 from Orlando Regional Medical Center, as I pondered the palms surrounding the hospital, and re-adapted it to today's Palm Sunday.
It was told as if two were journeying the day after the actual triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem upon the donkey, with the fronds being laid upon his path.
We are continuing upon that path today.
May you have a day of lifting your palm in praise.

Down the way we came
weary in our journey
we had to stop and rest
unable to continue on
beneath stars of night
by embers we laid
where the path led
trying not to think ahead
beneath the palms
our pathway strewn
with broken fronds
upon journey end
then we learned
upon our path
the Lord had come
we took a trampled frond
and held it high
Hosannah in the highest
To you we lift our cry!

Christina's Lake

Always be ready. I was up at the Alligator Lake pavilion looking at the red-shoulder and red-tail hawks, taking casual shots,mainly watching others snap away, when this little girl ran out to the shore line. In my mind I immediately visualized Andrew Wyeths 1943 painting of Christina's World. It is a perhaps Wyeth's most famous painting of the crippled girl looking up the hill of the farm toward the barns.
In the first photograph, I cropped to the near horizon line of the original painting. I probably should have cropped the girl further to the left as well. In the second, which I originally on facebook tinted all the way through the clouds, I liked her stance. Here, I reworked it to leave the clouds alone and only tint the foreground a brown tone. I likewise used infrared, backing it off, to mute the bright red of her shirt.
In the third, it is as taken from the Canon S95.
I notice that I need to watch my placement of the horizon line, as I seem to like the 50/50 split in these.