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This blog is intended to showcase my pictures or those of other photographers who have moved beyond the pretty picture and for whom photography is more than entertainment - photography that aims at being true, not at being beautiful because what is true is most often beautiful..

>>>> Comments, commentary and lively discussions, re: my writings or any topic germane to the medium and its apparatus, are vigorously encouraged.

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Wednesday
Oct112006

ku # 413


Simplify, simplify, the advice so often given as bible to photographers-in-gestation, seems to imply that most observers of photographic prints are inherently, well, simple-minded - that in order for a photograph to be understood and applauded, the photographer must pander to the lowest common visual denominator using only the easiest to read "words" in the visual vocabulary (most commonly refered to as the "rules").

Ignoring the rules - in this case, "simply" - often leads to the criticism that a photographer is ignoring the rule "just to be different" for attention-getting sake. Complexity, of the denoted and connoted kind, is apparently too much to be endured.
Tuesday
Oct102006

Photopop 7.0


a shutter release is really all you need to shoot a nice photo of existing art.
Monday
Oct092006

ku # 407


Ana asked, "in your previous post you mentioned 'photographers use this defining visual characteristic of the medium (i.e. the camera is capable of faithfully recording the object of its gaze) to create untruths.' I'm not sure what you were getting at. What are the untruths you were thinking about when you made that statement?"

Well, as Paul Simon crooned,

"Kodachrome, they give us those nice bright colours
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the worlds a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a nikon camera, I love to take a photograph
So mama dont take my kodachrome away"

Other examples - political propaganda, Playboy centerfolds, Velvia landscapes, absolutely flawless automobiles/women wearing makeup, amongst many more...i would also venture to write that these apparently-true-but-untrue denoted(s) create untrue connoted(s) as well. Photographers deliberately distort the camera's gaze to create the unassumed-to-be-"real" as a kind of set up (for the uncritical/undiscerning/naive) with the intent of serving a connoted untruth...
Sunday
Oct082006

ku # 408


An Adirondack morning commute , on most days, looks something like this traffic-wise.
Friday
Oct062006

ku # 406


Photographic truth and the real - so my question is, what's not true or a reflection/trace of the real here?...
Friday
Oct062006

Michelle C. Parent


This past year has been a full of changes for me. My somewhat cozy life was ripped apart when my then husband asked for a divorce. Well, things like that rock one's world on many levels. In my world, I started to find dissatisfaction in other parts of my life. I was already seeing a counselor for childhood issues and she became invaluable during this troubled time. I noticed that I talked to her about spiritual things as well as my photography. I found that I was cleaning house on the physical level with moving him out and rearranging things to cleaning my inner house out. This led to me finding my photography dissatisfying. I would go out to shoot pictures and the time out in nature was very soothing, but then I would pop the flash card in, process the photos, and feel no emotional connection to the shots. They looked like anybody could have done them, to me. I felt that I was doing that same old thing. I began to think about how I used to feel about nature as a child. I remembered how I loved fairy tales and how I thought that certain places used to look like they were part of the fairy tales and I used to imagine that there really were fairies and elves living in there and it made it more fun and magical and mysterious for me. I wanted to recapture that feeling and transmit that into my photography. I decided my photography needed to have more emotion, magic and mystery. So, I have been spending my time in the fields and woods, reconnecting to my childhood feelings of magic and mystery and hoping it is transmitting itself to my eyes and hands as they do the physical act of creating the photograph. I am still in flux, so to speak. I still feel unsure and wobbly, on my newfound legs in this new photographic endeavor I have embarked upon, but I hope to grow as it grows.
Thursday
Oct052006

photopop 7.0 ~ entropy and order


Crumbling is not an instant's Act
A fundamental pause
Dilapidation's processes
Are organized Decays.

- emily dickinson
Wednesday
Oct042006

ku # 405


"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." ~ Sigmund Freud (attributed but unsubstantiated). I do like it though when the cigar is true to the idea and the formal characteristics of "cigar".