civilized ku # 2223 ~ back in the day

Mom, dad, and me ~ Back in the day • click to embiggenOn the entry a trip on the way back machine, Bulldog (no link provided) asked/stated, "Maybe a photo of mom n dad??? Isn't this site about photos (in some way)?????

OK, here's a picture of some pictures from back in the day - (l-r) me, circa 1971; me, 1965; mom and dad, circa 1979. FYI, all pictures, except my senior picture, made by me - the one on the left was pictured by me using a mirror. The color picture is of my son's (Aaron, aka the the cinemascapist) 3rd grade class, 1986.

So, bulldog, there you have it because, in some way (say what ???????), this blog is about pictures.

civilized ku # 2222 ~ a coincidence

Genesee (beer) Brewery ~ Rochester, NY • click to embiggenGenesee River ~ Rochester, NY • click to embiggenOn Sunday past, the day after all of the Alumni / Athletic Hall of Fame events in Rochester, the wife and I were roaming around the city on a (for her) sightseeing tour of sorts. During the tour, I made a picture of the Genesee Brewery as it sits above of the Genesee River.

That picture was made from the bridge which can be seen in the Genesee River picture (the brewery is to the left of the bridge in that picture). The Genesee River picture was made circa 1980-81 with my 8×10 view camera using long-exposure color negative film. I made that picture during one of longest, hottest, and most humid spells of summer weather - hence the dense atmospheric conditions - I have ever experienced.

In any event, the coincidence of which I speak write is the fact that, a few days after making the Genesee (beer) Brewery picture, I received a request, totally out of the blue, for use of the Genesee River picture in a new magazine being published in Rochester. The publisher/editor, with whom I have no connection, must have been trolling the internet / flickr and came upon this picture.

Funny how, at times, that all works out.

civlized ku # 2221 / 2221a ~ picturing what you see vs "making" a picture

Vineyard ~ Peru, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen
Vineyard # 2 ~ Peru, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenIn a previous entry, civilized ku # 2156, I used the following quote by Stephen Shore:

... I was aware that I was imposing an organization that came from me and from what I had learned: it was not really an outgrowth of the scene in front of me ... I asked myself if I could organize the information I wanted to include without relying on an overriding structural principle ... Could I structure the picture in such a way that communicated my experience of standing there, taking in the scene in front of me? ...

Yesterday, while out and about, I came across the scene depicted in the pictures which accompany this entry. After making the vineyard picture with my "normal" 20mm lens (40mmm, 35mm equiv.), I then spent a few more minutes making vineyard # 2 picture with my 45mm lens (90mm, 25mm equiv.). To a certain extent, I made the second picture as a "test" of sorts.

IMO, after viewing the results, the vineyard picture meets Shore's idea of structuring the picture in a way which communicates my experience of standing there, taking in the scene in front of me. While that picture certainly exhibits an overriding structural principle, that structural principle is far less evident than that employed in the making of the vineyard # 2 picture. In the making of Vineyard # 2, I did, in fact, impose an organization that came from me and from what I learned.

In a very real sense, the vineyard picture is much more true to my way of seeing, whereas the vineyard # 2 picture is much more of a "made" picture. The difference between the 2 pictures is, to my eye and sensibilities, all about my picturing MO of being there - as mentioned in the ku # 1441-43 entry. Again, to my eye and sensibilities, it's all about picturing what I see while engaged in the act of seeing.

The other part of this "test" was an attempt to find an answer to the burning question, do I need another lens? Specifically, the 14mm lens on which I have my eye. The answer is quite simply, "no". I need another lens like I need a hole in my head.

The thought that I might need another lens is a vestige of my commercial picturing days wherein I did, in fact, need a rather extensive variety of lens for all of my picture making formats - 35mm, 120mm, 4×5, and 8×10. That need was driven by a wide variety of picture making requirements as dictated by a wide variety of clients and their specific needs. However, those days are gone, although I still have all those cameras and lenses, just in case the need arises - which it still does from time to time.

In the here and now, if I had just 1 lens for my picturing needs, it would be the one I already own - the 20mm lens. It really does meet all of my picturing requirements simply because it fits, quite perfectly, the manner in which I see.

Not that I don't, on occasion, use my 45mm and 17mm lenses. I do, but rarely for making pictures which are part of my ongoing personal vision picturing. While the 17mm lens could be a reasonable substitute for my 20mm lens, the 45mm lens is, picture making wise, a horse of a different color. That said, it just might be that I will use it for a different way of seeing / body of work.

But for now, it's just me and the 20mm lens, as I go on picturing what I see as opposed to making pictures.

Any thoughts / questions on the matter?

FYI / pictures on walls

Prints on walls • click to embiggen
Prints on walls • click to embiggen
Prints on walls • click to embiggen
Prints on walls • click to embiggenAs previously mentioned, I have been selling quite a few prints for office walls, Here's how a recently completed installation of 13 prints (only 10 are pictured here) looks.

Update on Thursday, June 14, 2012 at 03:01PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Steve Andre (no link provided) asked: "I'm guessing by the images you've posted: 22"×22" printed images framed to 28" × 28" right?"

my response: Andre, there were 2 sizes - the 3 prints in the receptionist area (+ 3 in a conference room, not shown) are 19 inch images on 24×24 inch paper, mounted on foamcore with no mat, and framed to 24×24 inches; the prints in the common area are 22×22 inch images on 24×24 inch paper, mounted on 32×32 inch off-white mat board, and framed to 32×32 inches. In both sizes there are no over matting or glazing.

civilized ku # 2217-20 ~ how sweet it is

Sunset / Lake Ontario ~ Webster / Rochester, NY • click to embiggen
Dock and boats ~ Raquette Lake, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen
Plastic chairs ~ Blue Mt. Lake, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen
Utility poles / wire ~ Long Lake, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenOur recent trip to Rochester began and ended with a couple pretty nice sunsets.

We encountered the first sunset on the evening of our arrival in Rochester. The sun set while we were having dinner with my brother and his wife-to-be on a restaurant deck on Lake Ontario. I was not the only one making pictures.

Sunsets 2-4 occurred during the evening of our drive home. While we never actually saw the sun set, the light emanating from it was warm and pleasant. As we drove from lake to lake - all the waters were still and calm - on the road through the park, SE > NE, I made the 3 pictures, presented above in chronological order (1-r).

One of the many things I enjoy about living in the Adirondack PARK was typified during the drive through the park - during the 3 hours (approx. 150 miles) it takes to get to our house after entering the SE edge of the park, we encountered as many cars as one could count on all of digits of my hands and feet. I wasn't actually counting but it's very possible I could have lost a hand or foot and still had enough digits to make the count. And, even though we passed through 10-12 villages and towns on the drive, there are only 4 traffic lights along the road.

Along the way, we stopped for dinner at the Seventh Lake House, where we dined on the canopied deck and enjoyed the great food and fresh air. I started with crab cakes and lobster bisque and followed that with the Triple Meatloaf -- veal, beef, and pork baked with herbs and spices wrapped in pastry and served with an onion sherry sauce. The wife shared the crab cakes, had her own lobster bisque, and a beef dish (the name of which I can't remember, sirlon tips over something with some kind of sauce). After a relaxing dinner, we continued on with our drive, during which we experienced the sunset scenario(s) as well as a number of other vistas and views.

And here's the thing, the 3 hour drive seems like a really pleasant 3 hour stroll through a park - a mini vacation of sorts. Not only are the landscape and the villages in the park easy on the eye, but the pace of everything is nothing like that experienced in the real world. It truly is home sweet home.

civilized ku # 2216 ~ avec un Brownie

Les "Brownie" Kodaks ~ George Eastman House / International Museum of Photography - Rochester, NY • click to embiggenA child may make nice photographs with a Brownie.

a trip on the way back machine

Mom, dad & me ~ Rochester, NY • click to embiggenSome guys ~ Rochester, NY • click to embiggenI'm back from spending 3 days in Rochester (NY) attending some HS Alumni events. The reason I attended was to take part in the 1963 football team (of which I was a member) Athletic Hall of Fame induction ceremony. 15 of my teammates also attended and it was definitely fun to see some of the guys. FYI, I was one of the few without a new hip or knee.

The following day, I took my plaque to my parents grave site. I wanted to honor them for their hard work and support which allowed me to attend an all-boys private Jesuit high school. That said, they both followed the '63 team - to include all of our away games, none of which were closer than a 4 hour chartered bus ride away - as part of the Parent's Athletic Booster Club.

The visit to the grave site was bitter sweet, although it was made all the sweeter by the fact that, literally and figuratively, they and all of the other parents had a hell of a fun ride because (in part), unlike the football team, they had liquor on their bus.

FYI, the wife made the teammate picture so that I could be in it.

ku # 1141-43 ~ being there

Butterfly ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen
2 butterflies ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen
4 butterflies ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenFor what seems like forever, I've been festering / ruminating upon the notion of what picture making and pictures mean to me.

There is no question that the making of pictures, both on and off the job (commercial and personal), has been a central theme to my entire adult life. However, it is only over the past 15 years, as I began to disengage from photography for commerce (as my business card stated) and to start to concentrate my picturing efforts upon the personal / for art picture making arena, that I realized that picture making is a large part of who and what I am.

Exactly why that is, is still open to question and may be forever so. I suspect there is some genetic / preternatural component to the equation, wherein my visual apparatus and senses are a bit more finely tuned than they are in some others. That belief is triggered by the fact that, as far back as I can remember, I have always been acutely aware of my surroundings and, in a sense, somewhat compelled to make an image (of one sort or another) of that which I see. That has always just seemed to be the natural thing to do.

But, leaving aside the why of it, what has been on my mind is the what of it. That is to say, exactly what is it that I picture?

My referential material is all over the map. I have many focused bodies of work which vary widely in what they depict. I even came up with the phrase discursive promiscuity as a cover label for all of that visual diversity. And, while the phrase still fits, I have come to an additional conclusion which sheds a little more light on the subject of exactlywhat it is I am picturing ....

The conventional picture making wisdom, re: finding your picture making groove / vision, is to picture that about which you have a passion or focused interest. I belief that bit of advice to be valuable only if one can accurately identify one's passion(s).

For some, that passion resides in the visually obvious - some identify it as mountain ranges, waterfalls, or other specifics of the nature world. Others connect with things found in the human made world or with human beings, themselves. Suffice it to state that, the planet has features aplenty on which to focus one's passion and camera and, as a result, there are more finely focused bodies of picture making work than there are marbles in a host of guess-how-many-marbles-are-in-the-jar jars. And that's a good thing.

But, what if, as is the case with my picture making, one's focus is from here to infinity? What if the gaze of one's camera is all over the map? What if, at the end of the day and in a total body of work, there is no obvious connection amongst the various visual components thereof?

My conclusion, such as it is, was derived in the course pondering those specific as well as related questions - in one of those the-light-goes-on moments, it occurred to me that I am not picturing things, per se. In fact, what I have been doing is (as conventional wisdom dictates) pursuing my passion, which is, in its essence, the of act seeing, in and of itself.

In effect, my pictures are about the act of seeing. They are about the act of living with 2 eyes wide open (thanks for that slightly modified phrase, Mary) and paying attention to where you are - everywhere you are, not just the "hot" spots. In a very real sense, they are about the surprises, discoveries, and joys to had from the act of plain seeing.

From my perspective, all of that means that I am not all that passionate (if at all) about what I picture in the purely physical / literal sense. I mean, as an example, how passionate can one be about the crap and mess to be found in one's kitchen? Which is not to state that I don't really care about everything I picture because, in some cases, I really do care. A lot.

However, for the most part, I am rather dispassionate about the referents depicted in my pictures. But, on the other hand, I am very passionate about them inasmuch as they are part and parcel of an awareness about the world, the here and the now, in which my existence is centered. And in that world, there is no detail (short of information overload) so insignificant as to be ignored.