47 since

 Now that its been forty-seven years since....  I really have come to miss....going into that office beneath the stairs....seeing the ole turkey feet paper clips...the gallery of familiar photographs.... hung from Sopchoppy to Monticello to Wilmore to Williston....the bald is beautiful sign...Goliath the boxer beneath the desk....flipping through the theology books.... the  sound of cars across Noble stopping at Travis Station...the familiar smell of well-aged wood and carpet...these are the things I shall never forget.

Monday metaphor

 Moody Monday

They are the worst moments

These mid-March Mondays

Musing morbidly cursing my

Taming longing again for the 

old purple shades of sin

Flesh wars raging in the warm

Golden morning light

The crow diving over the 

Calm red-shoulder hawk

Making a metaphor for me

Sitting atop that pine 

While Cat Stevens I guess

Will forever chime

Oh baby it's a wild world.

Steve Coleman

 Photographer John Stokes posted some soulful thoughts about his frustrations and his weariness of 'The Beautiful' photograph. And why a beautiful, yet shallow photograph, is often more lauded than a photograph with less 'surface beauty', despite that photograph having a deeper, richer story and character and soul. 

Of course, 'audience reaction' is all dependent on your audience. So you do need to choose your audience wisely. Nonetheless, it is also true in life. We only need to reference Justin Bieber, Kim what's her name and the Housewives of, well any number of cities. A quality which many of us would like, is often hijacked by the masses. 

Here is John's post. I'll 'cut and paste' here so more people see it (Facebook does not like links) but I will post the link later in the comments section. And thank you John for the nice mention of me. ( I get embarrassed when people do that ) 

"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." ~ John Stokes

Flee the dream

 Hidden hawk

All in a split second the red shouldered came crashing from the trees, barely enough time to swing and shoot, much less to check settings.

Hidden hawk

 Hidden hawk

All in a split second the red shouldered came crashing from the trees, barely enough time to swing and shoot, much less to check settings.

Price Creek

 On a hill beside the Price Creek

The pioneers sleep

Some since eighteen thirty two

Before Columbia was a County

Fought in most all the wars

From Indian uprisings

To the far foreign shores

Settled the land made a stand

And the dogwood blossoms drop

Quietly so not to disturb 

The pioneer sleeping. A very beautiful and timely post, John Clare Stokes. Buried in Price Creek Cemetery, along with his wife and a number of their family members and descendants, is Private Theophilus Weeks, who served in the Continental Line, North Carolina troops, during the Revolutionary War, the only documented Revolutionary War Patriot buried in Columbia county and one of our earliest pioneer settlers, with many descendants in this area. On Saturday, April 20th at 11:00 AM, the Edward Rutledge Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, and a number of descendants of Private Weeks, will dedicate a DAR Patriot marker, present an historical program and lay a wreath at the gravesite of Theophilus Weeks. The Sons of the American Revolution are also participating in this event. The public is invited.

March of madness

 The March of Madness past

Like an American Pie do you recall the day

the madness died?

When all the boys in blue knelt during the anthem

Claiming the black lives mattered more

Were you standing on some asphalt court

free throw line?

And did you hurl that ball over that chain 

link fence?

Or did you just sit and throw the old K hat away

I know it will always be the day we drove 

The Chevy to the levee

But the virus wouldn’t die.

But to me it will always be the day

Little boy blue removed his finger from 

the dike.

The stolen child

 The Stolen Child

W. B. Yeats - 1865-1939

Where dips the rocky highland

Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,

There lies a leafy island

Where flapping herons wake

The drowsy water rats;

There we've hid our faery vats,

Full of berrys

And of reddest stolen cherries.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses

The dim gray sands with light,

Far off by furthest Rosses

We foot it all the night,

Weaving olden dances

Mingling hands and mingling glances

Till the moon has taken flight;

To and fro we leap

And chase the frothy bubbles,

While the world is full of troubles

And anxious in its sleep.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes

From the hills above Glen-Car,

In pools among the rushes

That scarce could bathe a star,

We seek for slumbering trout

And whispering in their ears

Give them unquiet dreams;

Leaning softly out

From ferns that drop their tears

Over the young streams.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,

The solemn-eyed:

He'll hear no more the lowing

Of the calves on the warm hillside

Or the kettle on the hob

Sing peace into his breast,

Or see the brown mice bob

Round and round the oatmeal chest.

For he comes, the human child,

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand.

Ghee

 The tigers turning into ghee

Johnclarestokes 

Who recalls before the days of PC, the story of Little Black Sambo, how the four tigers took Sambo’s clothes and ran around the tree, claiming they were the prettiest, until they turned to ghee, or butter, of which Sambo’s mom made pancakes?

I loved that story!

Photo composite

Egret in light

I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on

    the foam of the sea!

We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can

   fade and flee;

And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low

   on the rim of the sky,

Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness

   that may not die.

YB Yeats

The White Birds

The pull

 with every deep pull...the blackness parted...swallowing the light...leaving me helpless upon.... the gasp of  light...in the taking under

D850

 D850 history

Tell me, will it make me a better photographer? It can’t hurt. I still need after all these years, all the help I can get. I began my photography history with a Yashica 35mm Emile Santiestiban(sic) my high school science teacher sold me for $25. It came with a 135mm telephoto and sekonic light meter. He let me use the darkroom at Williston High, as all I shot was monochrome Tri and Plus-X. For graduation, with the money I received, I went to Harmon’s in Gainesville and finally purchased a Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic with a 50mm super takimar lens. It had the internal needle meter. I used this, along with eventually several screw mount lenses purchased from a photo shop in Sylvia, NC until the mid eighties when I purchased a Nikon FM2 and FE2, later a F3. When digital arrived I gave in and started with a Nikon D40, which I still love. I’ve had several digital crop sensor Nikons but could never afford a full frame, which would replicate the old Nikons. Enter my son Jordon Stokes, who, home on leave from Korea in the Army, on his next assignment to Sicily, Italy, did for me one of nicest things a son could do for a photographer father, purchased me a top shelf  Nikon D850. After many delays, yesterday it arrived in the evening. I stayed home all day waiting. So this morning, in honor of the old Nikon lenses, I attached the 35mm 1.4 manual lens just as the vulture flew into the pine and landed. A fitting start if one appreciates my story of the vultures and how they were such an inspiration to me in the 2009 time with Melanie in Orlando with H1n1. So begins the era of what’s your excuse now? Oh, I will just have to have that latest, greatest lens, and that motor drive, and that computer to process....but for now, don’t call me, I’m too Stoked to talk.