civilized ku # 143 ~ coming home to roost

Which came first? • click to embiggen'Round these here parts you can never be sure until you're sure regarding the idea of a white Xmas. Snow can come and go with amazing speed at this time of the year. It's not uncommon to get a 8-10 snowfall followed by 2 days of rain that manages to wash it all away.

That said, unless we have a rainfall of biblical proportions, a white Xmas seems very assured - by the time this weekend draws to an end, we will have accumulated about 2 feet of new snow from 2 distinctly different storms. It's truly a beautiful Winter Wonderland outside.

But the unusual thing about this weather event is the bone-chilling temperatures that have accompanied the snowfall. It has been single digital numbers since Friday and last night it was -9F at our house. Even during the bright sunny day yesterday it hovered around 9F - which was the the temperature in which the wife and I went out for a brisk 5km XC ski workout at the Olympic Sports Complex - we did a modified Three Trails Loop. We skied during the break between the 2 storms.

This morning we awoke to the start of the 2nd storm which is forecast to be the more severe of the 2 storms. It's snowing quite heavily and there is a travel advisory in effect. So I thought it was a good day to just hang out and count my chickens before they hatch.

civilized ku # 142 ~ a sign of the times

I am not closing • click to embiggenAs promised, or, depending upon your POV, as threatened, here's this week's socio / economic / political words of wisdom / rant / puerile crap. Feel free to mix and match or even add words of your choice to describe how you feel / think about this Landscapist "feature" presentation.

One of, if not the mess, that our new president faces is that of our economic predicament. It is a total train wreck of nearly unprecedented proportions. The challenges facing Obama are incredibly difficult in terms of dealing with (and redefining) cultural wisdom, socio-economics, and things political.

IMO, that is because some long clucking chickens have come home to roost and, to make matters even worse, they're crapping all over the place. And the biggest chicken on the block, in fact, the mother of all roosters, is the one that needs to have its head removed. That would be the one that wears the one ring and is also the one that has been constantly crowing (for the past 4-5 decades or so) that most seductive crow of all - you can have it all, you can have it now, and don't worry your pretty little head about the consequences.

It's gonna take some doing to gut that chicken.

But here's the thing. That chicken is going to live to a ripe old age and keep passing his/her siren-song DNA down through the ages if we don't learn how to re-think the very notion of our "economy". One of the best pieces that I have encountered lately on the subject of re-thinking that notion can found by following this link to Jonathan Rowe's article, Our Phony Economy.

I highly recommend the read because if we, the people, can not wrap our pretty little heads around the concept presented therein and learn how to recognize and support those in government and business who understand the idea, we better start learning how to talk to chickens because they'll be the ones ruling the roost.

Now, on a photography-wise subject, does anyone wish to discuss (ad nauseum, ad infinitum, ad captandum vulgus) which would be the "best" camera to use to picture chickens?

civilized ku # 141 ~ enjoy your meal

Choking • click to embiggenI have always found it to be just a bit off-putting to encounter this sign every time I enter a restaurant (at least here in NY State).

man & nature # 82 ~ through the eyes of a child - an addendum

a shared vision • click to embiggenOk. That's it. My brain is officially and completely fried.

After reading today's entry Hugo's dad sent me a few of Hugo's just plain stuff pictures that he made this past Sunday evening. His is the one on the right.

The one on the left is a picture that I made this past Tuesday and, honest to Betsy, I had not seen Hugo's picture until just 30 minutes ago.

OK. That's it. My brain is officially and completely fried.

ku # 543 ~ through the eyes of a child

Ice patterns and erractic • click to embiggen
Mom, dad, and grampa • click to embiggenMy recent ruminations regarding "pure" pictures may have had an instigating circumstance that I really hadn't thought about until I viewed the 2 pictures presented here (on the left).

These pictures were 2 amongst many made by Hugo (he's 4 years old) on the day before I encountered the previously mentioned become as little child bit. He made these pictures at a restaurant while we were waiting for our dinners (after our family visit to Santa's Workshop). His modus operandi was simple - he just roamed around the restaurant dining room and the adjoining barroom and snapped merrily away making pictures of whatever caught his interest. After each and every "snap", he beat feet back to our table to show us what he had pictured and once the chimping was complete, off he dashed to look and picture some more.

What struck me at the time was how fun he was having to be making pictures and how excited he was to share them with us. What I also found interesting was what he found interesting enough to make pictures of. With the benefit of hindsight it has become obvious to me that Hugo, by means of his picturing and pictures, was giving us a glimpse into his "hidden" personage in a manner that he is not now capable of doing with words.

I have known for quite a while that Hugo has a very active "life" inside his head - the kid's brain is constantly working, working, working. He internalizes so much of what he sees and experiences and he has expressed what seems to me to be a very heightened curiosity and desire to understand it all. I must admit that, at times, that characteristic in him scares the hell out of me.

Nevertheless, that is the reason that I gave him a nice camera for Xmas a year ago. I had a sense that Hugo, if dad consistently fostered the idea of putting a camera in his hand, would just naturally start showing us what he was interested in / curious about. And those pictures, in turn, could tell us much more than words ever could (at this stage of his life) about the person Hugo is and is becoming.

While it can literally be said that Hugo is seeing things through the eyes of a child, I absolutely believe that his picturing responses to things visual is directed by things internal that are very much a part of his unthought known. Even at his young and tender age, he is making choices about what to picture and I can not image what is dictating these choices other his "pure" connection to what he finds interesting.

And here's the thing, I find his pictures very interesting and engaging - not so much the 2 presented here, but some of the other ones of just plain "stuff". I am acutely aware of his desire to show us what he finds interesting - an activity that he can not possibly consciously understand as an attempt to tell us something about who and what he is. In that sense, his pictures are quite "pure".

And, if there's a picture-making lesson in all of this (and I believe there is), it's that, if we care to listen to and try to understand what he (and, by extension, many other picture makers) is telling us, the world just might be a better place.

BTW, the other lesson one could come away with it's that the rules of composition don't mean s**t when it comes to making an engaging and interesting picture.

civilized ku # 140 ~ Zeb

Zeb • click to embiggenAs unlikely as it might seem, I am at a loss for words regarding Zeb.

ku # 542 ~ then again ....

Decaying, hanging fruit • click to embiggen... as Groucho Marx once opined on the subject of art:

Well, art is art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.

Update on Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 07:30PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Matt wrote: "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

my response: Sure, sure. But ... time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

ku # 541 ~ that which stands in the thin shadow of what I know

Ice, twiggy things, a few leaves, some leftover grasses and some things that lie beneath the surface • click to embiggenPicking up on the "pure" picture thing, Andreas Manessinger left this comment regarding seeing with the eyes of a child:

...For me it means to see things without their attached meanings, seeing them pure, without context, without any judgement that is beyond the realm of the visible ... if my meaning of "pure" correlates with yours at all, then seeing "pure" is only a beginning. I see something, bereft of meaning, but when I make it an image, I put meaning into it, and that can be completely unrelated to what normally would be associated with the subject ...

Well, let me state, right out of the gate, that Andreas' meaning of "pure" does correlate to a great extent with mine.

Without a doubt, when I am out and about making pictures I do respond almost exclusively to the world around me in a cognitive manner that is purely in the "realm of the visible" - on a cognitive level, I make pictures of things because of how they look. On that level it really is that "simple".

On another level, I am also very comfortable with my purely subliminal unthought known regarding what it is that I find interesting about the way things look - those things that I am seemingly preternaturally attracted to during the act of picture making. In other words, I don't think about why I picture the subjects I picture, I just picture them. To use Andreas' words, at the moment of picturing, my referents are essentially "bereft of meaning".

Andreas also stated that "...when I make it an image, I put meaning into it...". I tend to agree with that idea in as much as when I make an image, I have, at the very least, elavated the particular referent in question to a status of being worthy of my attention.

In a very real sense, I am randomly collecting "specimens" for later study and inspection. And, for me, that's where the medium of photography gets really interesting.

Sure, sure. I really do like to just look at my pictures. I find them to be very visually engaging, interesting, and attractive. To be, in fact, quite beautiful. They look very nice hanging on a wall or in a POD book. But, of course, as I have frequently stated, I prefer pictures that both illustrate and illuminate. So it should come as no surprise that it is the illuminating qualities of my pictures that I find quite interesting.

It is on that level, the one in which I start to discover meaning(s) in my pictures "that can be completely unrelated to what normally would be associated with the subject" that I begin to really connect with my pictures. It is becoming increasingly obvious to me that, the more I can be engaged in the process of discovery of meaning in my pictures, the more I think that I have made a "pure" picture. It seems that way because any given picture that so engages me seems to be drawing me in because it is telling me something about my self and and my self's relationship to the world.

All of that said, it appears that my notion of a "pure" picture is coming a bit more into focus.

FYI; Lest you think that I am engaged in photographic form of extreme narcissism, it should clearly understood that I find many of the pictures made others to hold the same pureness that I find in my pictures. Their pictures often engage me in a similar process of discovery in ways that are every bit as illuminating as any of my pictures are to me.

An outstanding example of pictures made by others that engage me - in this case, those of Michael Lundgren - can be found here. Be certain to read the his statement.