urban ku # 26 ~winter carnival

Mandatory morning hockey drills • click on photo to embiggen it
Hugo and tiger • click on photo to embiggen it
Ice Castle, Saranac Lake Winter Carnival • click on photo to embiggen itWhile Hugo's parents are off on their car trip to So. Dakota to pick up a new puppy, we've got the little smarty-pants for an extended visit.

Yesterday, after his morning hockey skills workout, we went to the kid's parade at the Saranac Lake Winter Carnival, then on to the Ice Castle.

Note the ultra-cool hat Papa made for Hugo. Someday, maybe I'll tell you about how I got a big clump of my nearly 12inch long hair spun around the shaft of my electric drill - right down to the scalp - while screwing those little critters on the visor.

urban ku # 25 ~ whining about the weather # 2

More winter grey, albeit with a ray of sunshine.

urban ku # 24 ~ whining about the weather

from here to there • click on photo to embiggen itI'm back. There was no entry yesterday because I have been without cable/internet for the past 24 hrs. A construction crew severed the main optics cable for the entire region.

The From here to there diptych was photographed late Thursday afternoon around 5pm. The obvious referent in both photographs is Whiteface Mt., which, at 4867ft., towers over The Flats in Wilmington (in the LH photograph). Also notice the grey pallor and crusty snow.

The connoted in this diptych, at least for me, is that of a melancholy winter-of-discontent. As has been the case for the last few winters, there have been no winter storms and only sporatic snowfall. There has been lots of extended way-below-normal cold spells - night temps well below zero and daytime single digits - which are always accompanied by significant wind with brutal wind-chill factors.

The net result is a winter(s) that make staying indoors a very desirable, but highly unsatisfying, activity...or should I say, inactivity. And this from a guy who loves to head up into the High Peaks for a few days of sub-zero winter mountaineering/camping - bagging a peak in a driving snowstorm, waking up to and smelling a thick blanket of fresh fallen snow, snowshoeing/xc skiing though birchy alpine meadows/glens in an almost eery snow-dampened quiet, eating a warm dinner by candle/latern light in a snug and cozy winter tent.

Let me tell you, there's a huge difference between a -5F with gentle snowfall day in the woods and a +10F with -15F wind-chill day in the woods. No matter how prepared you are, the first is a distinct pleasure, the second (as a steady diet) is usually pure agony.

FYI - The big move

All of my blogspot archives, including comments, are now here on SquareSpace. Use the new link - Blogspot Archives on SquareSpace - to see them. I'll get around to getting them in categories a little bit at a time.

As always, I am working tirelessly, for you, The Landscapist visitor.

civilized ku # 3 - The intrinsic perniciousness of camera club and academic views of photography

Potatoes and plant amongst other things • click on photo to embiggen itIntially, I was going to use the word "evil" instead of "pernicious" but thought better of it. After all, camera club-wise having a hobby and enjoying the making of things (in this case, photographs), isn't a bad thing. And, while photography-wise academia is prone to some wretched intellectual excesses, I'd rather live in a world with it than in one without it because, if you can tolerate sifting through and deciphering the obtuse jargon, there are some pearls of wisdom to be harvested.

But, that said, it's my opinion that both schools obfuscate the notion of Art.

Simply put, the camera-club mindset seems to sublimate/bury the emotion of Art behind a wall of technique/craft. The academic mindset, with its obsessive addiction to intellectual concept, seems to suck all the emotion out of Art. In both cases, I am talking about Art, Photography Division.

And, in both cases, I am talking about emotion. Neither school seems to deal very well with emotion. It seems to me that camera-clubbers don't recognize any emotion other than "wow" and that academia is just flat out suspicious of it. Either way, I think the operative word is "fear".

Why "fear"? Well I think that what they both fear about the notion of Art is best expressed by the famous sportswriter, Red Smith, who stated (about his Art), "Writing is easy. All you do is sit at a typewriter and open a vein"

Featured Comment: Paul Butzi wrote, "I once attended a talk by Amy Freed. Someone asked her about support she'd received as an artist. She responded "The support I've been given has enabled me to take the biggest risk an artist can take - the risk of being understood."

All that obfuscation is just a way of avoiding taking that big risk."

FYI - Can photographers be plagiarists?

Thanks to the wife for this link which, at its root, is an interesting take on the notion of originality in the medium of photography. Check it out (and then maybe leave a comment).

My thought is to quote here (again) a good take on the notion of originality by a fictitious preacher (from a dime-store detective novel I read recently), who, when accused of not being very original sermon-wise, stated, "I milk a lot of cows, but I churn my own butter."

ku # 456 ~ punctum - I can smell the jeep

Graveyard • click on photo to embiggen itWhen I stayed for over-night visits at my grandparent's house (Mark Hobson - The Early Years, 3-8), my long-gone great uncle James, who lived with my grandparents, use to take me along on walks with his dog, a german shephard, in the big cemetery which was just across the street, up a small embankment and across the railroad tracks from the house (Syracuse, NY). The most memorable highlight of the walks was trying to find the gravestone which was a full-sized effigy of a reclining german shephard.

This photograph is not of that cemetery. It is of the one and only cemetery in my little village of Au Sable Forks. There is no reclining german shephard gravestone and, when I created the photograph, there were no conscious memories of walks with great uncle James.

When viewing the photograph, the memories have come rushing back - great uncle James, his dog, the walks in the cemetery, the german shephard gravestone, the window light in my grandparent's bathroom, and great uncle James' broken down jeep. When I visited their house I think spent more time "drivng" that broken down jeep than I spent with my grandparents and great uncle James.

Of course, the jeep never actually left its final resting place there in the driveway, but, man, the adventures I had and the places I went on my "drives"... I couldn't begin to remember any of those "trips", but now, 55 years later (give or take a few years), the smell of that jeep interior is as vivid as that of this morning's coffee.

Are you ever surprised by an unexpected punctum when you view one of your own photographs?

Featured Comment: Billie Mercer wrote: "Strange how images can help us remember smells. I have one of Linda Butler's images from her Shaker series. It is of knit gloves and when I look at that image I remember my Mother's hands buttoning the back of my dress and tying my sash but most of all I remember the smell of hands. Strange because I can't remember my Mother ever wearing a pair of knit gloves."

FYI - they're all gonna look like freakin' Annie Leibovitz shot 'em...

This one's been around for a while now, but, if you missed it, it's really rather funny and well worth seeing. Kodak-Winds of Change