Deacons Bench

I recently sold this print at the old gallery uptown by McDonald's before the move. I was determined that I was not going to continue at the new gallery downtown, due to lack of sales. Then, Rex called and the buyer wanted to speak with me about the print, where,what,when,etc. So he purchased it. One of the last sales at the old gallery, along with another matted 8x10 of Falling Creek.
And so I changed my mind and went into the downtown gallery. I think I sold three-four on the opening Saturday. 8x10 prints and one 6x6 block square of the turkey.
I have this printed in a nice square frame as is. I like the film data on the edge of the frame. If anyone is interested, it will be available for sale at the gallery for 59.00.
I ordered a $185 camera, the Canon S110, so I need sales!

Too good to be true

I was going to order the Canon S110 from Adorama for $249. Tonight, after returning from the Watertown Lake, having again used the Canon S100 over the Nikon D3100 DSLR, I saw where Ritz Camera offered this deal:
Canon S110
Pixma 100 Printer
16G SD Card
Canon Paper
all for $185 after $400 mail in rebate.

Looked liked a deal breaker to me. The Epson printer I have is an Ink hog.
And, it looks like perhaps this one will print a bit larger than 8x10.

Now to be able to afford to pay the $185. Come on folks, buy some prints at the Gallery.

Another point, this one exasperation. Folks continue to not look at the photograph of Mt Tabor Methodist Church. Two recently said, I know where this church is, too bad it cannot be restored to its glory. I think that person was referring to Verbenadale. The other, I have photographed that church. I love it. Present tense. I suppose she is referring to Falling Creek or Lord knows where.

Again I say, How can you not see that this photograph is of MT TABOR METHODIST? This church burned down around 1986. It is gone.

What level moves you?

I posted this photograph last evening. Now, on the building, it tells the name. In the bottom left it tells the name. Yet, when I posted it to Facebook, around ten people speculated what the name was and where.
I had to chime in and kind of scold people for quickly looking and not really looking, then moving on.
I originally posted something along this order, which I changed this morning:
If this photograph does not move you on several levels, you are either:
Not old enough to know what a "negative" is
Not a photographer
Not a film photographer
Not a medium format photographer
Not a darkroom photographer
Not a historian
Not a church goer
Not a friend
A "friend" who could care less and never comments on anything I ever post.

I changed the last two lines to:
Or just not moved on several levels...LOL.

So far, as of 11:30 Friday, it has received 55 likes with 37 comments, excluding my many comments along the way, so a lot less comments than 37.

It kind of proved the point that no one really is interested in what you post beyond a cursory look. The other day I posted a church photograph and over Christ I inserted Charlie, The Revelations of God and Charlie Christ. It was a take off on Charlie Crist running for Governor again of Florida. I called it the second coming of Charlie Christ...

No one got it. No one commented. And is it any wonder?

Last evening, around midnight, I got one of the best photographs yet of a jet intersecting the moon. I sat there for nearly four hours. Pondering, waiting, praying, thinking. While I suppose inside the world was scrolling along at a rapid pace.  Ponder-ment, my new word. Akin to wonderment.

Watching Corn Grow

Taken on the way home from the gallery to see when i work today, which is 1:30 to 5:30 in the new downtown location. We be interesting to see. Planned on re-hanging smaller work, but looks as if all the arms for hanging are taken, so will wait.
Posted to the Blue Boy Shoots Pinkie album on Facebook. Told Melissa in a message that after all this time on Facebook, since 2009, it still miffs me when she is the only person to like anything I post.
What trivial miffing I do.
I have chosen, I think, the two prints for the upcoming library show. One of Bellville bridge over the Suwannee and the other the soldier sitting in the graveyard. I may change my mind by Saturday due date.
About time now to head to town for my shift today and tomorrow to get it out of the way for the month.

Still Stewing

i do not expect everyone to like everything i post. but it gets somewhat frustrating and tedious, when not getting much input, the one input you do get is from a jerk in Alabama that blasts everything I wrote in prose form about the place we once knew. i would not have been as upset had he given constructive criticism, but to go off on saying i of had a troubled childhood to like the things of old, to make fun of the creak of the porch swing, to say, who would build a porch of lighter wood, and on and on. way too on and on. it miffed me to the point i blocked him from my facebook. the only other person i did that to was the girl in lakeland who totally did not get humor or sarcasm or double meaning and went off on me, calling me all sorts of things.
i suppose had the fellow knew the circumstances that led to the loss of the home place, of not having a place to call home, never able to go back, then perhaps he would have been a bit more sympathetic. i did not keep him an acquaintance that long.
i am not one that relished the old ways, i did not personally have to live through the hardships. we did not have hot water at the old place like home, we boiled water on the stove for baths. it was no hardship. it did not have central heat and air like home, but the wood stove was fine. and so, it was like going to hunting camp, or camping out, it was not our way of living, it was week-ends, vacations. we went back to the modern conveniences. \

A Lamp Rant

highly,highly over the top processed. the front yard at the end of the sidewalk lamp post. used at the john clare site to illustrate a poem by Anne Lindbergh. used also to illustrate that while one does not have to go beyond the end of the walk to get a shot, sometimes it helps. this one was a double exposure. first the lamp, then added the pine trees in the front yard swirling with a slow exposure. again, did not have to leave the yard, but sometimes it helps. if your work is becoming repetitive and boring, perhaps you are spending way too much time in one location, maybe stuck on the sidewalk. sometimes, all it takes to break the monotony of the same results, is to change the location. go beyond the sidewalk, beyond the end of the yard, beyond the county line, the state line, the ocean line. anywhere, just GO!

and....by the same token...if all you ever do is go,go,go....always going to that exotic location...even there you can become bland and ho hum in your always capturing the extraordinary....come home...simplify...spend some time on the sidewalk....there is more to life than always being on the GO!
so there...two perspectives on GO! now go...

Fine Art America

Wacahoota. Posted this today, with two others. So far with the Fine Art America site for $30 a year, I have added 79 photographs, 76 if you subtract the three gourd photographs for illustration. I do not have much hope of selling anything there, but if I never did anything, neither would I sell anything either. So we do what we can. I uncheck the send to Facebook box on most of the ones I added, not wanting to overly saturate, but that seems what one has to do. I added the cycling shots. I am as usual, probably in the process of over boarding, adding too much. But, it is easy to delete prints and add.
This week the old gallery is closed for the move downtown. I am still reluctant to go down and help. At some point this week I will need to go down and get the prints and move them to the new gallery.
Then, I will show up Saturday to take photographs.
I am waiting Amazon for some frames and prints. I again made probably a mistake of ordering too old stuff.

Gallery

worked my second four hour day yesterday. worked with Rex. was supposed to help downtown. the new downtown Gallery opens the 31st. rex called today, said they needed a cook. i suggested Herb. he called. herb will be the cook. i am the official photographer.
do not yet know what i will put in my 3foot 30 dollar for three months space. i took about six prints to carol today for her to cut mats. 10.00 a mat so there goes fifty.
the rest of the morning was spent finishing the many 4x4,6x6 blocks, painting and gluing photographs onto them, then modge podging over them. next to place name on back. one or two i placed a photo on the back as well. nice affect. not sure if these will be worthy to place in gallery.
but, they will be reasonable and maybe place them somehow in the gift shop.
trying, really trying here.

A thousand times!

I gotta love my sisters optimism concerning my photography. Yesterday she texted me a photographers work from the TPC who said, "All I did was post my work on Flicker, the jobs all came to me, I did not have to do anything else." She said, OMG, you are a thousand times better than him!
Maybe so, I do not fathom how one measures such, but one thing is certain. You can be a mediocre artist with savvy promotion skills and people will flock to you. I am the opposite. I shoot all the time, practicing if you will, all the time, for the big game, sitting on the bench, if you will, awaiting the starters to foul out. They never do. They never will. There will always be a new recruit. A thousand times the artist. The promoter.
I wistfully tell my sister I appreciate the confidence and go about my business, thinking, hmmmm...I may just have to post to the big easy Flicker and bring some of that fame my way......

Point and Post

The first light over the yard today, I waited until it hit the newly blooming amaryllis then struck out. Oh, there were others before that, the shot of Nathaniels little yellow rake, the flycatcher going into the wood duck box, etc. After the shot, took the Canon S95 to the computer and downloaded them. Then printed a few out and mounted them on the little boards ordered from Cheap Joe's. Instant art!
The process was interuppted by having to put the little kitten out of its misery. I had tried catching it for several days. I finally did by acting like a mother cat, purring and cooing to get it to come to me. It did. Melanie and Jordon took up with it immediately and mothered it, but this morning, whether Jordon slept on it and smothered it, or if it had another malady already, it died.
I then had to work at the gallery. While there Ron Pinner came by and we chatted about concepts and ideas, then went over to McDonalds for tea. Rex said I should be down at the Gallery downtown working, but I did not feel up to it. While at the Gallery, my leg cramped up badly. Funny to Rex and Ron seeing me dance around in pain.
I was going to stop volunteering and move my work from the new gallery, but paid thirty dollars for three more months with only a three foot, smallest space. I figure if I use the little blocks, it will hold enough.
Tomorrow I am going over to the framer down the road from me to get some mats cut for the prints I ordered for the upcoming Library show. If I should be so fortunate to win a prize, then my thirty dollars will be paid back. Dream on.

I must decrease

Facebook can be dangerous in that we are continually promoting ME. I grow weary of the self-promotion, of throwing out for the world to see, the continual updating of the inane activities of daily life. I am just as guilty, continually shouting ME via the photography, wanting a larger share of onlookers,admirers,followers,likers,comments....
And when that does not occur with the breadth expected, it garners frustration. The ME has a unsatisfied appetite.
In the decrease, something must increase. And as John the Baptist said so well, (the first tattoo scripture verse Landon placed on his arm) He must increase, but I must decrease. Satisfaction can only come in a dying to the ME, the self-promotion. To slay the flesh and its desire. The desire for the world, the shunning of things spiritual, Christ-like.
A most difficult task especially for the artist-types, who dwell much in the flesh, the world, the things of this world.

Art Dart

Arrived after seven downtown to the first annual Dart for the Arts 5K. Kim, the organizer immediately showed me a map of North Lake City with the route drawn out. She said she needed someone to lead the runners over it. I asked her, if it was marked, she said no, that she had been busy with blood bank. Uh Oh. I made a quick decision, four laps around the lake would be much safer and simpler, even if it would be 3.2 miles, not 3.1.
I did not tell her I used to direct races in the old days. I did well. I recall back when, when I turned over the reigns of the Blue-Grey 10k, that I showed up to see how things were going. They had forgotten the pins for the numbers. I went ballistic. Today, I remained calm and collected. Even though there was absolutely little planning, thankfully, the twenty who walked and ran got through it with a good work-out, a tee and a water bottle for $20.
I re-connected with Ron my photographer friend and all went well. Sometimes, it just isn't worth sweating over details. But....a little planning next year would go a long ways toward tripling the turnout and money raised for the gallery.
From there I went up to Lake Shore where we discharged my mom from the hospital and took her home.
It was a blessing to see her marked improvement and no need for any surgery or rehab nursing home.
She then came to our house for the afternoon where we watched the Preakness horse race, had supper.
We took her back to my sisters around 8PM after Jeopardy.
In the meanwhile, Melanie said that I need to get over the anger and all at everything, that I need to continue on at the gallery. So I suppose I will tell Rex Tuesday, I will go in the new gallery downtown.
Lord knows I am doing nothing else at this time.
Three prints came today I had ordered, odd sizes unfortunately, that I will have to get matted custom! But, I hate to crop my prints. I shoot too close to the corners I suppose and loathe taking anything out. I need, I suppose to learn somehow what aspect ratio to set the camera at so it crops to 8x10 and 11x14 without cutting off the edges.
Two I need for the upcoming June show, ten at least for the gallery. More expense....