Monday, May 23, 2011

Robert Frank hankering for a pastry

An empty coffee shop, and a lighted display case full of beckoning pastries.  With a tip of the hat to Robert Frank's mesmerizing juke boxes, illuminating the American night.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Broadway Maple Tree--Different Vision

I've been scanning some images from last year, trying to understand what I was doing at that time, and why.  This was shot with my Mamiya 645, probably handheld, using my 80mm f 1.9 lens and some Ilford Delta.  It is the same patriarchal maple tree on Broadway that I blogged about back in February of this year.  The silhouetted branch is at the tenuous edge of sharpness....beyond that everything else is out of focus.  I find something very poetic and haiku-ish about this image...even more so than the last image I posted.  The lack of perfect sharpness, the curved, gnarled shape of the branch, the black sky full of flying snow.  It was a poetic scene...but I am uncertain if the sense of mystery and the ephemeral nature of the moment are adequately conveyed by the image.  I think I am searching for an understanding of the inverse relationship between technical mastery and poetic attainment.  In other words, it seems that a soft, gesture of an image can sometimes speak volumes, while a tack sharp paradigm of technical skill will generally have little of importance to say.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Tiger Hotel with spring blossoms

Another attempt at visual haiku, an act which can only be blamed on spring.  This one written with a 40-some year old Canonet GIII rangefinder.  Hence the soft glow emitted by the neon, the palpable texture of the April-night blossoms, the warmth and radiance of the scene.  I've got a series of images taken with this camera last spring; I plan to post them in sequence.  To me, this one epitomizes late April in the midwest.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

The Heidelberg on a warm night

Last week I was out on a night photography shoot with my digital photo class from Access Arts Studio.  To say that we had a perfect night for shooting is an understatement.  But I must admit I was a bit envious of the crowd outside the Berg, slowly meandering in for a beer during late happy hour.  It doesn't take a crowd at Heidelberg to bespeak spring in Columbia, but it certainly is an endearing feature of a warm, spring evening in downtown Columbia.