I've moved, or...a new frame of reference.

If you are fond of chronology or linearity, and would like to visit the first post my new blog, click HERE.

If you want to visit the new blog and view the latest post...click HERE. 

If your not sure it's worth a visit, sneak a peak. Here is a frame into my new world:

I've decided to buzz off....

...and start anew. If you want to see where I landed,

pollinate here.

I C U, C'ing Me, C'ing U...

[August 5, 2009.] We drove to the Ammersee, a lake west of Munich, and had planned to ferry across on a steamboat. Shortly after parking, I saw a few men in Lederhosen, some of them carried musical instruments. While waiting for the steamboat to arrive, the music started. A contagious dialect of Bavarian folk music. Then, the crowd broke out in dance.






Two women dancers bore a striking resemblance to each other. One of them glared back at me in presumptive disapproval, the other smiled. In an instant different emotions were summoned, and contrasting reactions glared at my lens. I still can't decide which expression is more honest. I still can't decide which expression I like more.

a Beetle at the BBC...

Today the BBC's photoblog, Viewfinder, led their post with a familiar set of footprints.


You can check out my beetle photograph and the others selected this week for the theme of Repetition. Click here for the gallery.

In Trance-igent Transit...

Nostalgia is either...the barren landscape itself, the terrain that invites us to trespass and revel in hallucinations of the past; or perhaps, it is a determined spirit, cloaked in exoskeletal darkness that simply relishes the journey itself.

(Sicilian Sand Beetle, Colonna Pizzuta Beach)

The most gratifying element of travel is domesticating the memory of experience in the desert...dissolving yourself in the hourglass. Here are some of the mirages, as best I can remember...



If you prefer to make your own travel arrangements, click here.

WNYC, Street Shots

The Big Apple's WNYC hosted a street photography contest last year and posted a video of the winner, Joe Wigfall, on their site.

Take a look. You will be pleasantly surprised at Joe's dedication to the art of street photography. He doesn't earn a living doing what he does in the video, but he makes a powerful argument of engaging the streets with his camera...art for art's sake. (And, he doesn't rely on a camera that looks like a piece of field artillery. You will see him carrying a bag from which he draws a small point-and-shoot camera, as well as a more common DSLR-type.)

Joe has his own technique for capturing images as he negotiates the schools of New York City's pedestrians, taxicabs, and bike messengers. He sees with his hands.

Flashback Flourish...

Daniela's Onkel Hermann has an incredible garden, a Blumengarten to be precise. Last week, I spent many early morning hours pacing around the colors with my lens. The flowers were a stark reminder of transience. So, much of the week in Bavaria, I relished the present. The colors. The shapes. The perfumes. The pollen. Trying to push back the inevitable end to a vacation.

Tonight, I revisited the past...one petal at a time.



If you prefer to take your own time, click here.

Photolocutions...

Monday. Back at work. Thinking in pictures. Dwelling on options, alternatives...reality and constraints. Pause. Read a few photoblogs...and found some worthwhile wordy pictograms from some icons in the field.

Antoine d' Agata:
"I don’t believe in photography as art or a job or anything. I think of photography as a language and I think a language should be used to speak, to say what you have to say. So the only things I have to say about my life and what I know about the world, is the way I see it. So, it’s not about photography… I think people should just use photography to say things and not just photography for the sake of photography… The world is full of talented photographers. The problem is just so many of them just don’t know what to say, they think life is one thing and photography is another but they don’t realize that photography is just a way to reflect what you are."

Joel Meyerowitz:
"I think about photographs as being full, or empty. You picture something in a frame and it 's got lots of accounting going on in it - stones and buildings and trees and air - but that 's not what fills up a frame. You fill up the frame with feelings, energy, discovery, and risk, and leave room enough for someone else to get in there."

Agata's framing of photography as a fluency, a language of self-expression made think, for a long time. Then I felt at a loss for words. Meyerowitz's talk of space and the challenge of evoking emotion made me wonder about scarcity and exuberance. Then I felt a bit of cabin fever.

So, I went for a walk, and remembered a series of lines from an article written by the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset. The article, written decades ago is titled, "The Difficulty of Reading." I do not recall the precise quote, but Ortega y Gasset wrote about the nature of language, and the act of reading. He wrote about how reading was always a negotiation between a text that said too much and too little...an act that teased and tantalized...indeterminacy and meaning.

I felt wedged between a philosophical banality and an alluring photographic arrogance. I kept walking and thought to myself...depressing the shutter is a brief, but complicated enterprise.

Still Monday. Back to work.

Fußgängerzone Follies in München...

The "Fußgängerzone," or pedestrian area in downtown Munich is a street photographer's paradise. My eyes seized on many more opportunities than my lens, but I did not dwell on missed opportunities for too long. This strip of human congestion is a living museum, a collection and arrangement of human complexity, and I am going to miss it. Here is a series of thirty-something street glances....mostly from the hip.



If you prefer to linger in the Biergarten and finish your Weißbier at your own pace, click here.

Setting Sail...

(Ari soaks in one last Sicilian sunset in Marzamemi.)

Tomorrow we leave Sicily and the Mediterranean cousins, and will track north to Bavaria. Tonight's farewells were full of tears for some. The last few days we have meandered through a few notable cities in the southeastern corner of the island.

I wish that I could do more than share images. I wish you could hear the guttural melodies of the local dialect, taste the culinary delights...as complex as the history layered about the land, breath in the aromas of sea salts, sand and wild sage, but I leave you with some of my favorite impressions...



If you want to share in our nostalgic farewell at your own pace, click here.

Sightseeing in Sicily....

Yesterday Daniela and I visited Vendicari, a nature preserve. The walk through the now parched marsh led to the beach and the stone carapace of a three-hundred year old "tonnara," a site into which fishermen would herd tuna and trap them.

Later we escaped the heat traveling to another beach. The kids have been running around with their cousins. I've been walking around the garden. And we've all been enjoying the fruits of the sea, and other food oddities.



If you want to peak over my shoulder at your own pace, click here.

La Sicilia...un pezzo di paradiso

I arrived yesterday, and joined the rest of the family. Daniela and the kids are sporting a deep terracotta hue. They gave me an opportunity to catch up. Today was a warm Mediterranean Sunday, and Sicily reminded me of other islands with their unique customs, faces, architecture, and oddities. It feels so familiar...timeless in a way.

A handful of images from today...



If you prefer to explore at your own pace, click here.

Two Stripes Makes It Three at the BBC...

I'm partial to geometries, grids, lines, contours and contrasts...abstractions, desolate spaces, a few faces, and industrial places. Once in a while, I have found it good practice to cast aside my preference for cold and dark moods, and photograph moments of a different nature.


(If you want to view the slideshow, click here.)

Pylons, Perspectives and a Few People...

This morning, I set out to test my new tripod. The Jefferson monument, as seen from across the Tidal Basin, was deserted. So I gathered up my gear and headed west to visit Honest Abe. By 0815 the place was teaming with early risers eager to beat the heat. I saw an opportunity for a shadowy self-portrait and took it, but before walking towards the colonnade, I noticed the array of square granite pylons next to me, a poorly disguised but well-designed security barrier.


Those pylons, the ones I glanced over upon my arrival at the edge of the Reflecting Pool, turned out to be the key to an enjoyable series of shots. After watching people flow along and through them and walk across their shadows, I gained a new appreciation for the blocks, and their design. You probably won't share my enthusiasm for the granite cubes, but take a peek anyway.




If you'd like to weave between the granite, at your own pace, click here.

Camera-Ready Conveyance...

Shaun Irving turned a truck into a camera. He then toured the Spanish countryside and took incredible large format pictures. "That tour," he writes in his website, "made me realize that in the truck, meeting people, and taking photos is where I need to be." I envy his focus.

If you are ever near Richmond, Virginia...you should visit him. Here is a gallery of his work:




Here is a short movie about him....

Curiousity Cabinets...

Museums...they display, exhibit, arrange, catalog, categorize, expose, feature, and showcase. And one of my favorites is the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, a particularly intriguing social space always swarming. For a few hours this Saturday, I dissolved myself in the crowds. The Tourists. The Spectators. The Voyeurs...those infused with a nostalgia for the past and for human exploits over nature, those are the people-objects I came to see. (The displays in the cases bore me after a few minutes.) The museum experience I relish is the interplay between the gazers and the objects they confront, ignore, gawk at, pass over....

Among the curios and curious, I spied innocence reclining near the remains of the past.

Take a look for yourself, and eye the Other(s) and their interactions.

If you want to collect specimens at your own pace...click here.

ISO-metric Imagery...

It was a dark and grainy night...photographically speaking. How it ended up that way, I'm not exactly sure. Perhaps it was the hours I spent at the pub with other fans before the game and my affinity for the graininess of Guinness draught. Perhaps it was the compulsion to change the textures and experiment a bit...to reflect the upcoming noise at the Stadium. I vaguely remember taking a deep breath, adjusting the ISO setting to 3200 and then heading to the nearest Metro Station. Two stops later, we arrived at RFK Stadium to watch the US Men's National Team play Honduras. The National team played well, and fans on both sides provided much of the entertainment.



If you want to go against the grain, at your own pace...click here.

Back in Black...at the BBC

A few months ago, I planned an early morning weekend visit to the steps behind the Lincoln Memorial, and Ari volunteered to tag along. We sat on the steps and watched the crew teams row along the Potomac. We talked and we took pictures. I saw that his shadow was taller than mine, and I couldn't resist musing about the omen and its interpretations. Click. After about an hour, he gave me the look , "Are we done?" So, we headed to our favorite bagel shop for breakfast.

That day will arrive soon enough, the day foreshadowed by the moment when a father sees his son's shadow reach beyond his own. For now, I'll defer the future and focus on the specific moment...that hour on those steps.

__________

The category was Black. Click here to read the BBC Blog Editor's comments, or sidestep the narrative and click here for the gallery.

[Image 10 of 10]

Halting Hesitation...

There are times when we pause, and contemplate what lies ahead. Sometimes we self-consciously hide these moments. Transparency seems more opaque after the onset of adulthood.

(Click anywhere on the picture for your own close-up.)

Here, my nephew ponders and processes, frozen in pose as he looks up at the slide. I was lucky to be a few feet away and able to memorialize the indecision. He was so honest about his assessment. It made me smile.

Garden Variety Geometries...

Most of my workday includes sitting under fluorescent lights and walking over synthetic carpets. Today, the artificiality of such labor induced an urge to take a long lunch. So, I walked around the US Botanic Garden just a few blocks away. Cellulose curves. Fibered forms. Colored chaos. Festive furrows. I decided to alternate between multicolor and monochrome, a tale of a tour, told in ten pictures.



(If you want to search for your own garden groove, at your own pace...click here.)

The distraction came to an end, and it was time to head back to work. The fluorescent lights were still dull, the carpet still fabricated, but the greenhouse...should still be there tomorrow.