civilized ku # 726 ~ night light

Lamp light ~ The Hedges / Blue Mt. Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

civilized ku # 725 ~ Autumn color # 46

Beach and treeline ~ Long Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenSome thoughts well worth considering while you're wandering on the road to learning how to see ....

I discovered that this camera was the technical means in photography of communicating what the world looks like in a state of heightened awareness. And it’s that awareness of really looking at the everyday world with clear and focused attention that I’m interested in. ~ Stephen Shore

One might compare the art of photography to the act of pointing. It must be true that some of us point to more interesting facts, events, circumstances, and configurations than others. [...] The talented practitioner of the new discipline would perform with a special grace, sense of timing, narrative sweep, and wit, thus endowing the act not merely with intelligence, but with that quality of formal rigor that identifies a work of art, so that we would be uncertain, when remembering the adventure of the tour, how much our pleasure and sense of enlargement had come from the things pointed to and how much from a pattern created by the pointer. ~ John Szarkowski

ku # 825 ~ Autumn color # 45

The wife canoes into the West ~ Blue Mt. Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

civilized ku # 724 ~ Autumn color # 44

Yellow Adirondack chairs ~ Long Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

ku # 824 ~ Autumn color # 43

River foam / Oswegatchie River ~ Wanakena, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenThe foamy residue on the shoreline is not the result of pollution. Foam such as this forms when gases are trapped in water as bubbles and these bubbles are stabilized (do not readily burst).

Many substances can cause the stabilization of air bubbles in water. Naturally occurring organic compounds and detritus from river organisms can cause the bubbles to stabilize and not burst readily. Bubbles form more readily in roiling water (where air and water are mixed because of the turbulence of the water) so we get more bubbles formed in turbulent rivers and these bubbles are then stabilized by the presence of organic compounds.

The foam seen here was pictured below the rapids in Wanakena, NY.

civilized ku # 723 ~ Autumn color # 42

Rain water and detritus ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenI have often been asked about why it is that I have such a hard-on, re: pretty pictures and the "masters" who make and promote them. Well, as an example, take this statement as another fine display of why I get all incensed:

Photography is used only for its most obvious ability: to record things as they look.

This moronic statement - photography used only for its most obvious ability - is being doled out as advice and expertise on how to recognize a "snapshot" as opposed to a "fine art" photograph.

GIVE ME A F**KING BREAK!!!- demeaning and disparaging the one unique characteristic of the medium of photography that distinguishes it from all of the other visual arts, i.e. it's ability to records things as they look. HOLY S**T!!! If you're interested in making visual art that does not record / represent / illustrate how things look, why not take up painting, drawing, or sculpture?

Oh, wait ... I know why - it's because virtually all of the art-making-challenged individuals who dispense such nonsense about the medium of photography are talentless hacks. Their idea of creativity and making "fine art" photographs revolve around / are dependent upon such trite picture making approaches such as "giving consideration to flipping an image left to right", or, "tilting the camera to the side to try both horizontal and vertical compositions", or, "cropping to a format different from the format provided by the camera", or, "attempting to create a specific color palette" (that is, of course, a color palette that is not true to the thing pictured), or, slavishly adhering to the dictum that "clean edges and controlled image borders are trademarks of carefully composed photographs", or, consider this vision-killing idea - "considering the audience and the audience's needs" when making your pictures.

GOOD F**KING GRIEF!!! Each and every one of those notions is little more than a crutch for those who don't know how to see and, if one remains dependent upon them, one will never learn to to see .... and that, in a nutshell, is what pisses me off the most - these "masters" and "experts" are dispensing simple-minded crap dictums that are the primary obstacles in the road of learning how to see.

To be certain, if all one is interested in is making pictures that look like what you have been told are good pictures, then much of the preceding is worth considering. Truth be told, for those lacking in vision, creativity, and imagination, there is little else for them to go by. And, here's a clue to determining whether or not you have even a modicum of vision, creativity, or imagination - if you have any photography books that contain the word "mastering" in their title, you're most likely "mastering" nothing of importance relative to the most important picture making notion of all - seeing.

civilized ku # 722 ~ Autumn color # 41

Wanakena waste/water treatment facility ~ Wanakena, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenWhen you just let "the light" chase you around - rather than the other way around - you have to be ready to picture it, even if it catches you at a waste treatment facility.

ku # 823 ~ twig alert - Autumn color # 40

Rain soaked Autumn tangle ~ NYS Rt. 28 near Raquette Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenEven when I go driving by at 60-65MPH, colors, shapes, lines, and their dynamic visual relationships grab my attention like a sharp poke in the eye.