civilized ku # 2526 ~ room with a view

Lower Manhatten / Freedom Tower ~ Hoboken, NJ • click to embiggenThe view from our Thursday night hotel room. It's what you get for $500US/night (parking is included) which, fortunately, is expense account covered.

Today (Saturday), it's off to Chelsea and some photography galleries. Let you know if I see anything of note.

diptych # 33 (ku # 1242-43) ~ leaving a shape belonging not to the subject

Seaweed and rock ~ Blue Rocks - Nova Scotia, Canada • click to embiggenJohn Szarkowski wrote, when writing about The Frame as one of the medium's five inherent characteristics:

The edges of the picture were seldom neat. Parts of figures or buildings or features of landscape were truncated, leaving a shape belonging not to the subject but (if the picture was a good one) to the balance, the propriety, of the image.

IMO, not a whole lot more needs to be written / stated about the subject of good "composition".

diptych # 32 (civilized ku # 2524-25) ~ my thoughts on taking or making

A sign of things to come ~ Peggy's Cove - Nova Scotia, Canada • click to embiggenIn a recent blog entry, Termin -al -ology on TOP, Mike Johnston wrote about the concept of the taking v. the making of pictures. For the most part, the entry and subsequent comments revolved around the idea that depressing the shutter button constituted the taking of a picture and that the making of something (for display of some kind) from the raw material is, by definition, the act of making a picture.

I disagree.

Not that, at least in one sense, Mike's assertion is wrong. However, IMO, while the act of taking may be limited to the mere pressing of the button, the making of a picture - as opposed to the making of a print or viewable jpg file - starts and essentially begins and ends in the head of a picture maker. That is not to write that various printing techniques which might be employed in the making of a viewable presentation plays no part in the making of a picture. No, not at all. However, what I am writing is that the choice of referent and the technique employed in realizing that vision at the moment of image capture is where any subsequent making is primarily determined.

To wit, if a person with a camera does not apply considerable attention to Jon Szarkowski's 5 elements (as proffered in his seminal book The Photographer's Eye) of photographic vocabulary - The Thing Itself, The Detail, The Frame, Time, and Vantage Point - the resultant pictures will indeed be merely taken and not made. And regardless of how much time and attention is employed in the making of a picture's presentation, I don't think that it's possible to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, or, in more crude terms, turn shit into shine-ola.

Consider this from the way-back machine:

The value and rank of every art is in proportion to the mental labour employed in it, or the mental pleasure produced by it. As this principle is observed or neglected, our profession becomes either a liberal art or a mechanical trade. In the hands of one man it makes the highest pretensions, as it is addressed to the noblest faculties: in those of another it is reduced to a mere matter of ornament ... ~ Sir Joshua Reynolds Director / Royal Academy, c. 1768

Could not have written it better myself.

diptych # 31 (civilized ku # 2522-23) ~ not my eyes that see / pictures + words project

Waterfront planks and stuff ~ Blue Rocks - Nova Scotia, Canada • click to embiggen

It was something in the street and it moved a little in the wind, as a leaf would. A wrapper? Something about it. It's beautiful, I thought. Did I... just think trash was beautiful? This was a strange place. A place where veils were lifted. Not only did I see a thing but I saw it as something beautiful; I saw its curve and shape; I saw the light in it. I nearly wept. My eyes, I thought, they keep changing. But it is not my eyes that see. ~ Cynthia Hecht

Update on Wednesday, May 29, 2013 at 01:09PM by gravitas et nugalis

FYI As I think about it, the thought comes to mind that a fitting subtitle for the pictures + words project could be, in the words of the "Human Jukebox" (aka, Sleepy LaBeef*), It ain't what you eat, it's the way how you chew it.

I am also coming to the conclusion that a proper working title for the project is simply On Seeing.

*I would really like to see Sleepy one more time before he's not around anymore.

civilized ku # 2520-21 ~ Fisherman's Monument at Peggy's Cove

Trap lines ~ Peggy's Cove - Nova Scotia, Canada • click to embiggenFisherman's monument ~ Peggy's Cove - Nova Scotia, Canada • click to embiggenEven though Peggy's Cove is a top tourist destination in Nova Scotia, the only reason we went there was to see the Fisherman's Monument ...

William Edward deGarthe was a painter and sculptor and his artistic work was devoted to maritime subjects after his move to Peggy’s Cove. His “Fisherman’s Monument” was sculpted out of a 100 foot granite face of rock below his home. It depicts thirty-two fishermen and their wives and children enveloped in the wings of a guardian angel. The sculpture and his home (now a museum to his work) were donated to the province of Nova Scotia after his death. It is a beautiful piece of art meant to honor both the living and those lost at sea.

IMO, as it turned out, the little village of Peggy's Cove itself is well worth a visit although we visited off-season and had the place to ourselves. In season it must be wall-to-wall tourists. During our visit the fog made the place especially picturesque (IMO).

Update on Wednesday, May 29, 2013 at 11:46AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Cindy Raine wrote (in an email): "Your latest Peggy's Cove picture, the colored ropes, it looks to me like a perfect diorama, as if at any moment across its open decks and seas a mouse could suddenly scurry, B-movie huge and perching on houses with ease, sweeping the trees with the wake of its tail."

my response: nice.

triptych # 10-11 (ku # 1236-41) ~ water and atmospherics

Water and atmospherics ~ St. Mary's Bay - Nova Scotia, Canada • click to embiggenIf the wife had not been with me outside of Digby, Nova Scotia, I could have spent the better part of 4 days picturing the ever-changing view of the water and atmospherics from the deck of our rental house.

PS Because of the no-so-good results of downsampling these pictures so that the triptychs fit on a smaller screen, I have presented them @ a 2000 pixel wide. By using your browser's Zoom Out function, they can be debiggened to fit your screen.

ku # 1233-35 ~ Nova Scotia interuptus / Adirondack Spring rain

Notch island / Au Sable River West Branch ~ Wilmington, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen
Jay rapids / Au Sable River East Branch ~ Jay, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen
The Notch / Au Sable River West Branch ~ Wilmington, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenInterupting the Nova Scotia picture parade are 3 pictures made today of the Spring rain swollen West and East Branch of the Au Sable River.

diptych # 30 (civilized ku # 2518-19) ~ good things come in/from small packages

Pot still / Pear Eau de Vie with the Pear in the Bottle ~ Lunenburg, Nova Scotia / Canada • click to embiggenAs promised here is a fully processed version (slightly different view) of the picture - a quick iPad processed one - as presented in the entry, civilized ku # 2504.

FYI, we brought home a variety of products from the Ironworks Distillery, to include an rather incredible rum and an very unusual rhubarb liqueur.