diptych # 72 ~ day and night (I'm back)

flowers ~ Chaffey's Lock, CA • click to embiggen
chip wagons ~ various locations / Rideau Lakes Region, CA • click to embiggen
wartime emergency food wagon - forerunner to the chip wagon? ~ Canadian War Museum / Ottawa, CA • click to embiggenAfter a two week hiatus, blogging wise, I'm back. One week was occupied by hockey camp transporting / observation and the other week to a birthday trip return to Chaffey's Lock (Rideau Lake Region in Ontario, CA) where one of my birthday gifts was a visit to the hospital in the lovely village of Perth to tend to a return of my AFib. The only casualty of my hospital visit was the time lost - the visit killed a day - which had been allocated to a picture making pursuit of the so-called chip wagons which are found throughout the lake region.

Chip wagons are made of resurrected conveyances / vehicles - most often delivery trucks, aka: wagons, of one kind or another - which have been converted into roadside food stands. The featured edible at chip wagons are french fries, aka: chips. Other menu items are also available, with a heavy emphasis on those food stuffs which can be deep fried in grease. As is evidenced by those depicted in the chip wagons triptych, the chip wagons have a great deal of character, if not healthy eating.

FYI, one common chip wagon menu item, which I sampled for the first time, is poutine*. Poutine is a common Canadian dish, originating in Quebec, made with french fries, topped with a brown gravy-like sauce and cheese curds. Not exactly what the doctor ordered but quite tasty nevertheless.

I hope to return to the area in a few weeks in order to make a sizable dent in my chip wagon picture making aspirations. My only reservation is that I might put on a few extra pounds of body fat.

*poutine

diptych # 71 ~ weekend afternoons

Saturday + Sunday afternoon ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK / Old Montreal, CA. • click to embiggenI am spending most of this week as the hockey bus driver and hockey camp observer / evaluator (of Hugo's performance). Consequently, wordified blog entries will be scare - the wife has volunteered to be tomorrow's bus driver which may give me enough time to bloviate, re: art, Photography Division.

In the meantime, consider this:

I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100. ~ Woody Allen

diptych # 70 (civilized ku # 2753-54) / ku # 1278 ~ the actual world is full of surprise

sunset ~ Duck Island / Lower Saranac Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
dresser tops ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

If photography is about anything it is the deep surprise of living in the ordinary world. By virtue of walking through the fields and streets of this planet, focusing on the small and the unexpected, conferring attention on the helter-skelter juxtapositions of time and space, the photographer reminds us that the actual world is full of surprise, which is precisely that most people, imprisoned in habit and devoted to the familiar, tend to forget. ~ John Rosenthal

IMO, 'most people' in our modern culture - especially so in the good ole USofA - have not forgotten about 'the deep surprise of living in the ordinary world'. In fact, most people are hard at work avoiding the ordinary world. The pursuit of consumerist diversions, in which they invest their meaning of life, is what they believe the world should be. For them, the next big thing is where it's at - next up, wearable computers.

This predilection also manifests itself in the picture making world. For most serious amateur picture makers the pursuit of the grand and glorious takes precedence over the 'merely' ordinary. And, even when encountering the grand and glorious, they tend to trick it up beyond all recognition, aka: the world as it actually is. In their heart of hearts they want everybody to feel good (not a bad thing, per se) - don't worry, be happy. Ain't life grand.

While, I would not try to deny those picture makers their picture making happiness, I do, nevertheless, believe they are sending the wrong signals. Sure enough, life can be grand for some, but, for me, the grand life - and good pictures - is found in other quarters.

diptych # 69 (civilized ku # 2745-46) ~ eating, drinking and puffing

bartender + patrons ~ Lake Placid, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenLast evening I attended the Beer, Bourbon, Barbeque and Stogies event at Freestyle Cuisine in Lake Placid. The gathering featured an 8 course meal (small plate) with a bourbon and beer pairing for each course followed by a good cigar. The food was excellent, the bourbons and beers were much above average and 80% of the attendees were women - a good time was had by all.

diptych # 67 (civilized ku # 2736-37) ~ seeing (recorded by, aided by cameras)

No direction home ~ Port Kent, NY - in the Adirondack PARK / Ottawa, CA. • click to embiggen

The photographer was thought to be an acute but non-interfering observer – a scribe, not a poet. But as people quickly discovered that nobody takes the same picture of the same thing, the supposition that cameras furnish an impersonal, objective image yielded to the fact that photographs are evidence not only of what’s there but of what an individual sees, not just a record but an evaluation of the world. It became clear that there was not just a simple activity called seeing (recorded by, aided by cameras) but ‘photographic seeing’, which was both a new way for people to see and a new activity for them to perform. ~ Susan Sontag

IMO, if one does not have an acute visual awareness, aka: seeing, of what's going on around him/her - in its absence I believe it could be fostered and acquired - the chances of developing 'photographic seeing' are pretty slim. And while the physical act of acute seeing is a critcal component of 'photographic seeing', the pyschological ability to think and feel during the act of seeing is equally important.

IMO, sight + thought / feeling = 'photographic seeing' is a slightly more encompassing notion of Sontag's idea.

In either event / idea, I believe that once one has developed 'photographic seeing', aka: the notion of 'vision', the results of viewing one's pictures in a critical manner (as if someone else had made them) will aid immeasurably in refining one's physical act of seeing. An enhancement which, in turn, will aid immeasurably in enhancing and refining one's 'photographic seeing. The refining / enhancing works in both directions.

Which is why, assuming there is thought and feeling in the equation, the old adage of "the more you make pictures, the better you get" is, in so many words, spot on the money.

A question: have you developed the ability to view the pictures made by yourself as if they were made by someone else other than yourself? In other words, separating the thoughts and feelings experienced and invested in the act of making a picture from the experience of viewing the resultant work.

diptych # 66 (civilized ku # 2716-17) ~ feeling the current

interior / exeterior • late day light ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenIt was Renoir who stated, "You have to be cork, a cork in the current, You have to follow the current." It was his son, Jean Renoir, the renown film maker, who added, "Of course, the cork has to be a little intelligent, not completely stupid. It has to try to shift to the right or to the left so a to choose the moment when the current is best suited to it and to move a little in this direction, but the general direction is determined by events, by the current." Then, writing of currents, there is this:

The artist one day falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment he is following the dark rapids of an underground river which may sometimes flow so near to the surface that the laughing picnic parties are heard above. ~ Cyril Connolly

I bring up the notion of the cork, the current, and the dark rapids of an underground river as a follow up to the recent being original / finding your vision entry (triptych # 18 ... variety is the spice of life / on being original). IMO, being like a cork (with a little intelligence, not stupidity) and flowing in the current of what you see in the dark rapids of the underground river part of life - got to get through that bramble patch of filtered seeing first - is a fine way to find your vision.

Of course, that course of action depends upon the corks ability to "feel it", because unless you feel it you will never understand it ....

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs. ~ Pablo Picasso

diptych # 65 (civilized ku # 2714-15) / civilized ku # 2716 ~ renewal

from the upstairs bathroom window ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
from the upstairs porch windows ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenSpring seems to have finally arrived. It was a long time coming this year.

Some people are still unaware that reality contains unparalleled beauties. The fantastic and unexpected, the ever-changing and renewing is nowhere so exemplified as in real life itself. ~ Berenice Abbott

diptych # 64 (civilized ku # 2702-03) ~ arches • unter/über

Arches ~ Washington, DC / Toronto, CA • click to embiggen

Why does man create? Is it man’s purpose on earth to express himself, to bring form to thought, and to discover meaning in experience? Or is it just something to do when he’s bored? ~ Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

Good questions.