decay # 3 ~ flagrante delicti

8 day old banana • click to embiggenIn a somewhat brazen display of chutzpah, this AM the wife was caught red-handed disposing one of my carefully cultivated rotten bananas. Shame. Shame.

decay # 2

1 week old wishbone • click to embiggenOne of the primary stumbling blocks to my Decay series is going to be the problem of breaking the wife of her filthy habit of not being filthy. Or, to be more accurate, of her habit of not wanting to keep decaying matter around the house. Even though there are times when I want her to be a dirty girl, this not one of them.

Case in point, yesterday's pepper had to be rescued from the garbage bin which I had already placed at the curb for pickup. In the wife's defense, the pepper was put in the garbage by our cleaning lady who said that she didn't realize that it was an 'art project' - an excuse I'll accept once and only once.

But the cleaning lady is not who I am worried about, she's only on the case 1 day a week. The wife on the other hand is on the case 24/7 (except, of course, for that time when she is out of the house making a living in order to support me in the manner to which I am accustomed). It will be interesting to see where the line gets drawn.

On a different line of thought, as I work my way through the first few picturing sessions, a number of considerations about the series are coming to mind. One that I have thought long and hard about (approx. 3-4 minutes), is that of 'light'. My first thought was to haul out the studio lighting equipment - power packs, strobes, umbrellas, soft boxes, scrims, snoots, diffusers, reflectors, etc. But, the more I thought about it (another 3-4 minutes), the more I liked the idea that, by utilizing window light, the light would NOT be a constant.

I like the idea that the characteristics of the light will be a variable. Contrast and color will be the primary variables. The series may end up having a 'direct sunlight' sub-category
4 day old pepper #2 • click to embiggenas seen in the Pepper # 2 variation, which, by the way, is an HDR image - an HDR image that I worked on for quite a while so that it not look like and HDR image.

In any event, I'm not sure yet about the direct sunlight. Maybe yes, maybe no. The direct sunlight picture is very 'seductive' and, perhaps that why I might reject the idea. It's a bit too seductive - more like the advertising stuff I used to do. So. I'll let that particular wrestling match begin and determine over time whether it's a variable that works for or against the series as a whole.

FYI, I am also working on an Artist Statement for Decay. More on that later.

decay # 1 - you saw it here first

4 day old pepper • click to embiggen
detail of decay #1 click to embiggenEven though I have been trying, I can no longer ignore or resist the siren song of my studio still life past. While everyone else is out and about making staged event pictures, it seems that I must stay indoors and return to my studio days of making 'constructed' still life pictures.

Of course, during my studio still life 'salad days', I was asked to picture things that were burnished to within a inch of 'perfection', the object of the exercise being to create an all-consuming lust for all of those most desirable objects in the world. Not so, my Decay series.

I am not about to give up my ongoing ku pictures, but I will definitely be focused for a time on my decay series. As many here know, I am very enamored of decay. My initial interest seems to be with the decay of things we eat but that will by no means be the extent of my investigation of decay.

Metal decays. Albeit slower, plastic decays. Fibers decay. Road-kill decay. The list goes on and on. The visual constants will be my kitchen counter top and floor, the plate, and the light that comes through my kitchen window.

The technical constants will be digital capture, ISO 1600, a Zuiko 11-22mm lens, and really big prints.

Stay tuned. I hope I don't lose the room but it's something I just gotta do.