Category: Interlude

When you have a dozen or more backup singers you’ve really got to raise your voice! Our world 50 years ago.

I’ve lost my eye. I think I might know how to find it.

“It is always the simple that produces the marvelous.”
– Amelia Barr

Congratulations, you’ve made it to the second half of the week! Here’s a little music to work/play by.

Enjoy

Two skill sets are involved in capturing a great sunset on film: a good eye and technical know how. Of the two the eye is hardest to acquire . When photography was all film we worked quite a bit harder to ensure everything was perfect; the scene, framing, light, timing, etc. There was nothing worse than doing all the work, and spending all of the time, to process and develop the film only to find crappy prints on the back end.

I was into film in the early 80’s and used a Mamiya C330 Twin Lense Reflex. It was unwieldy but brought great calm as I worked to understand what aperture setting and shutter speed would produce a decent image on the back end. There were times that I set up the camera and then waited for an hour or more for the light to get just right for the shot. A real calmness, a oneness with the subject, would come from photographing that way.

Sometime in the future, when all the worlds problems are solve and mankind moves into a higher plane of existence, film photography will return and with it the great calm that comes from managing time and light.

I’ve heard that Kenny Rogers passed away last night; he was 81. That’s a good number of years.

Here is an old video of Kenny singing “Just Dropped In” This was taped more than 50 years ago and while almost no one remembers Kenny Rogers as a rocker (let alone a psychedelic rocker) those are his roots.

Kenny had a love for the ladies and managed to marry five times. He once said “This may seem like an absurd statement, but every woman I married, I really loved when I married her.

Thanks for the music Kenny—find your rest in God’s comforting arms.

This is said to be one of the greatest live performances ever filmed. Can you recognize the face at the 3:30 and 5:25 mark?

How about a little motivational tune to push you through Monday.

These photo’s by Eric Houdoyer show another way to appreciate our surroundings: color and form. If you can learn to see this way, it opens up a new surreal experience to an otherwise mundane day.

I’ve often spoke of how some photographers seem to have an eye for what subject, angle, light, or composition of objects will work together to make an interesting or emotional piece of art. I’ve called this ‘having an eye’ for photography. Now, more than ever before, having an ‘eye’ for what post processing technique will aid in evoking the desired response is as much a part of the art as any other aspect.

I guess that a purist would hold that photography shouldn’t diminish itself by resorting to such post processing techniques, but for my part I encourage it. After all, evoking the desired response is more important that the purity of the means by which it was achieved. I don’t mean this as a end justifies the means statement, but rather a means to achieve an artistic end.

The above, by Abe Frajndlich, reminds us that there is always something that can be seen (or imagined) behind a simple image. It takes a good eye to see something deep in a seemingly shallow moment.

I saw the video below over at IOTW Report and thought about the great talent and promise this little one had.

Her words seemed a little slurred and I thought that she may not enjoy English as a first language. I Pulled on that thread and found the comment below on Youtube:

Another pulled thread got me this:

Where the hell did that old guy come from? !

There is a great series of photo’s by S. Mahe posted over at the Eye of Photography. Link is here. Some of the words that accompany the series are:

Somewhere is a sequence of images that are articulated like a feverish breath in which each photograph is autonomous and offers the possibility of a beginning.

“It’s a place where time is fading. A place where the physical contours of matter disappear. Here photography finds the delicacy of the nineteenth century pictorialists. In his proposal, Stéphane Mahé opens a window on an impalpable elsewhere and invites us to take a step aside, in search of a second reality. Somewhere on the edge of the world. The place, the time does not matter … Here, he/she who looks interprets, invents, tells his/her story.

It’s well worth the look.

Y’all have a great evening

de Kersauson has a series of photo’s at The Eye of Photography that he titles “Marine Symphony” It’s good looking work done at sunset on the beaches of Normandy. All of his photos are taken freehand, slow exposure accompanied by a deliberate and studied movement of the camera.

He has a great perspective on the his subject: “When I look at the sea, I walk in the time of the world.”

I’ll be cranking up the zero turn mower and the weed-eater later in the day to knock down the tall stuff that has popped up around the farm. I know you working stiffs will be doing the same thing (albeit with wrenches, keyboards, and hand trucks) at sundry work spaces across the country.

Y’all have a great day. Keep the sun in your face and the wind at your back.