Around We Go,

And Where We Stop,

No Body Nose.

December 16, 2011   Sony R-1

When I was a little boy I wanted a camera, the magic instrument of shadow images. 

Gray smudges on squares of shiny paper, the secret mysteries of life revealed. 

At college I majored in painting, pictures of the inside of things. 

Seven years of painting from photographs followed, and then graduate school in photography and painting was gone. 

Thirty years of COBOL and darkrooms and digital imaging ensued, until my retirement this summer from the career of my middle years. 

The painting behind me is ten days old as of this post, one more has followed since. 

Looking at the photograph I prefer the painting a bit out of focus, to soften the brush work into stains, levels adjusted to pop the red, the center dodged.

A major issue in art is defining the end of creation, the edge of the work, the borderline between art and the world of common definition. 

The role of the artist is to present a unified view of thought and vision, a record of struggle, leading to the triumph of order.

Perform until, 

Jack and Jill.

Stretched

Fire Island New York

August 31, 2010

Canon S90

This was a hot day, a hurricane was in the far distance, we were a group of three or four family fragments, I was the only man and Solomon was one of two boys, mostly women, girls and dogs. Ferry over in the morning a pleasant day of walking, beaching and photography, ferry back in the evening.

Our group walked together for awhile, the ladies desired lunch on the beach, Solomon and I split off to photograph in the shade and lunch in a cafe with air conditioning.

Long story short, Naomi and Stephanie were hit by a rogue wave and dragged into the surf escaping soaked and sandy. 

Father and son kept their cameras dry and sent the ladies off with a credit card for some new clothes.

"You must leave now, 

Take what you need,

You think will last,

But whatever you wish to keep,

You better grab it fast."

Stumped

Olympus E-620

November 21, 2011

We lost three trees in last month's snow storm, this one missed me by inches.

My Red Bush,

My Bare Bush.

iPhone 4S

November 14, 2011  7:31:38 am

November 17, 2011  7:31:38 am

How odd indeed! I had some thought forming about these images and the three days passed, and then checked the EXIF info and found they were exposed exactly three days apart to the second! 

Seventy two hours, 

Four times Chai, 

Mazel Tov.

This Is Not A Painting

November 16, 2011 10:50 am

 iPhone 4S

I retired from programming three months ago and immediately returned to painting. I never stopped photographing but painting and the entire concept of using paints and brushes and pencils to imagine and then conceive a creative construct disappeared from my life.

When I started as a young COBOL programmer we used punch cards for code, I would keep a stack in my shirt pocket and draw on the blank side, the world of imagination on one side and the rows of numbers on the other. A year or two and the abstract world of Art was supplanted by the invisible construct of COBOL code, applied poetry of the mainframe.

The image above is a photograph of my morning meditation, brushes paint and a canvas, I am down there blending and working an edge, I am focused on the point of a blue brush, licking a red spiral I drew yesterday, the world is at peace and I am at home.

Shalom.

Moonrise At Rockland Lake

Lumix FZ100

November 10, 2011 5:58 pm

What,

me worry?

Brooklyn 20080801 12:38pm

Olympus E-520 

I opened this image in my files randomly, exploring a new piece software I selected a folder and displayed the contents, it matched my mood so I decided to post it, and a ramble of words. 

Three years and almost three months ago I was sitting in a little room sixteen floors above Brooklyn absorbed into a web of COBOL commands. 

Beautifully abstract, an invisible construct of names, actions and reserved words, this is the conscious mind of the machine. 

These thoughts when compiled become the unconscious mind, they function without the light of life, toil in the darkness of the back brain.

 Time stamped in the file shows 12:38 pm, almost lunch time, the director of data processing breaks his gaze from the screen and directs it over his right shoulder, Olympus and the heavens.

Code,

Compile,

Execute.

Goo Laa Laa

Spotted in the neighborhood. 

The Black

(& White)

Swan

I loved the movie, 

I thought it to be perfect, 

It was on my mind last week, 

As I was photographing,

 "Swans On Rockland Lake". 

Seated And Slipped

Bat Mitzvah

Moments

Canon S90   Randolph, New Jersey

The first image is of my uncle Julius Shapiro (the senior member of our clan), enjoying an evening of family nachas. The party is for Julia and Elizabeth, the twin daughters of my first cousin Carol and her husband Bob.

Julius is the second of five children of Sidney and Ida Shapiro, my maternal grandparents. My mother Eva can be seen in the bottom image lower right corner, she is the fourth of five children. My aunt Peshie can be found directly to the left of my mother, she is the third of five children. Solomon the oldest was born in Jerusalem and died in Minnesota, from smoking related cancer, as did his father, a lesson to learn. Carol is the daughter of Esther the youngest of the five siblings.

A tradition among Jews at weddings and B/Mitzvahs is to raise the honoree upon a chair and dance around them, singing and clapping, reach for the sky. 

Whoops, this evening one of the girls slipped and hit the floor, something I have never seen happen at such an affair.

I don't do work for hire, no weddings or B/Mitzvahs but I do enjoy a party and I like to get into the crowd with a camera to capture these moments when people let go and dance in the dark.

Shanah Tovah, have a happy, healthy and sweet 5772!!!!

In solidarity,

I protest,

Amahdinejad,

I detest.

He Went To Cape Cod

And All He could Post

Was This Lousy Picture?

Chatham 20110905    Lumix FZ-100

We had a great time, I created 1321 RAW files, shot some video and then drove home in a heavy rain storm, downloaded the files, starting looking, kept shooting on a daily basis and now of all things I am Painting as well. That is Painting with a capital P, after all these years, I finally retire and give up COBOL to return to Painting. Thirty years of COBOL, compiled and still running, every night as I sleep my invisible construct streams as I dream, should I consider it conceptual art or abstract poetry?

Three Hershey kisses 

or can a retiree

take a vacation?

We had three days at the amusement park and we all had fun. The following three images were shot with a Canon S90 on consecutive days, starting on the twenty fourth of August.

Here they are, my lovely wife and two darling children fresh out of the van and ready to hit the park. What can be more meaningful for any artist than creating a likeness of his family in happiness and harmony. Many artists are not fortunate enough to have a family or be able to maintain an interest in anyone other than themselves or their search for the ideal abstract state of mind.

Day two, I don't remember if we were coming or going, but this image of Stephanie in our motel room wet from the pool is a favorite of mine, a moment unposed and unplanned, an archetype of my unconscious.

Day three, sitting on a bench waiting for the children to get off the Froggy Jumper, I looked over my shoulder and found these lovely limbs opening to my gaze, revealing a perfect state of mind.

A Typical Day

On The Way

Brooklyn

May 19, 2008

Panasonic Lumix FZ-8

I am on the way back to my office, sky overcast, rain threatening. I am wearing one of fifteen identical shirts ordered from Lands End, with a pair of khakis from Macy's, and one of a half dozen black jackets with pockets that zipper. A very attractive outfit for a man such as myself, perhaps I can be featured at the http://www.thesartorialist.com/.

The camera is one of my favorites, the first of three FZ cameras I owned.

The pictured FZ8 I gave to my son Solomon when we were photographing atop Bear Mountain and his tripod blew over in the wind cracking his little Sony video camera. I missed having the flexibility of a super zoom, replacing it with the then current FZ35. This camera was passed on to my daughter Naomi for an occasion, the significance of which escapes me at the moment. Alas once more I missed the camera and replaced it with the FZ100 which remains in rotation as of today.

The image quality of the FZs is not that great due to the tiny chip but the ability to reach out and grab a shot from a great distance is superb.

The post directly below this one titled "A Fine Ferry" was taken with the FZ100 handheld at a distance measured in miles.

A Fine Ferry

I had seven years to photograph Brooklyn, now that the tree is down the measuring begins. My beat was Brooklyn Heights, Borough Hall to the Promenade and back again, and again, and again the same walk, day after day, twenty eight seasons, a half hour to photograph, a quick bite for lunch and then back to the JOB.

The Staten Island Ferry was a favorite subject, some days barely visible through the fog, other days brilliantly lit by a shaft of light through the clouds. The journey between lower Manhattan, across the harbor, negotiating its way through maritime traffic disappearing from view behind Governors Island as it approached the Statue of Liberty, the quintessential New York scene.

The Picture Plain

Atlantic City     Canon S90

Stephanie and I left the Boardwalk for a stroll to the shoreline. We stopped once or twice for a hug and a kiss, before us a shaft of golden light reflected from a chamfered corner of a mirrored casino. We broke our embrace and I took fifty seven pictures of the sand, surf and bits of sky. All that glittered was not a biblical portend, but merely a Trumpian illusion.

Farewell To Brooklyn

From The Promenade  Olympus E620

I photograph every day, perhaps a handful of exposures if I am distracted, or hundreds if I have the time and concentration. I worked seven years in Brooklyn, five days a week I would photograph something, many of those days I walked to the Brooklyn Promenade to watch for a ferry, orange in a blue field, sea and sky. 

Mark Citret's Cat And My Wife

Last night I started out with good expectations only to be flummoxed by a complete lack of response by my van. I was on my way up to the Center for Photography at Woodstock to view a presentation by the photographer Mark Citret. Mark was a classmate at San Francisco State University, a former assistant to Ansel Adams and an excellent artist. He lives in Daly City, California where I visited in February of 2010, after not seeing him for thirty years. The image above was taken by my son Solomon with a Canon S90, Mark's cat Chuckie is in the foreground, my wife Stephanie is in the background. I drove up the Thruway from my home in New City stopping at the Plattekill service center for a monster sized Starbucks ice coffee and gas. I topped the tank and got back in to turn the key and nothing, yes complete nothing, no engine no lights, nothing. A one hour wait for a jump start got me back on the road but knowing the car would not start again sent me home. I missed the lecture and a visit with a friend.

The hood of my van can be seen in the lower left corner (of this iPhone Panorama), the location is Sears at the Nanuet Mall, known for the Weathermen/Brinks/Robbery/Shootout of 1981, the event that marked end of the radical left and the death of two policemen and a security guard. 

The mall is an empty shell awaiting rebirth or demolition, Mark and I graduated from SFSU with Masters in Photography at about the same time the Weather Underground committed a triple murder in Rockland County.

I bought a new battery this morning and now the car starts. Some scars will never heal.

Context: Two Views Of Atlantic City

Apropos of everything below I will discuss the two images above. The top image is my former neighbor from Seacliff in San Francisco, Mr. Paul Kantner of the Jefferson Airplane. I lived at 7004 California Street, corner of 32nd avenue. Paul lived down the block on  El Camino Del Mar, possibly with his wife Grace Slick and their daughter China. I never saw the ladies at home, but Paul would zoom by my window in his Porsche. I would often climb down the cliff next to his house, the area is called Land's End and it truly is that. Baker Beach is at the bottom, foggy most of the time but when the sun burned through, the western end became a nude pleasure spot. Ansel Adams grew up a few blocks away on 26th avenue and I am sure that he too must have climbed down those cliffs as a young man, perhaps he too swam nude.

The picture of Paul was taken at a concert on May 24, 2009 near the boardwalk in Atlantic City, with the current (at that time) incarnation of the Starship. I used an Olympus 620 with the 25 pancake lens, the image is cropped a bit and could use a black border especially against the white background of this blog.

The surf was shot with a Canon S90, August 11, 2011 in Atlantic City, two or three blocks from the concert site. Ansel published a series of surf images of similar proportion to the one above, but each moment is unique in time and each observer occupies their own space, so play on Paul and thank you Ansel.  

What A Long Strange Trip

Perspective please! Yes that skinny little guy is me, 1974 Berkeley California at the Darkroom Workshop Gallery. The images around me are from a show I had up called "Nightside Of The Mind". I was exploring the alternate reality of the unconscious and the inside out of dream states in my work at the time. The image is a self portrait shot with a Graphic XL Superwide attached to an RB 67 roll film back, triggered by the shutter selftimer. I found this print in a box of 8x10s from that period. The paper is a strange thin kind of waxy Kodak paper long extinct, the only example of both the image and the paper stock in my collection. The negative I imagine is in my files but I have not bothered to research it. Upon examination I believe that I used a quarter inch border 8x10 Speed Easel and printed it at the Darkroom Workshop, perhaps as a publicity photo for press purposes. I am now one week into the third act of my life, this image is from the first act when as a young man I stood at the forefront of visual consciousness and challenged the photographic orthodoxies of the time and place. The most unusual aspect of this image is the fact that it is shot on a tripod and it is not blurred because at that time all my work was done hand held with slow film and small apertures allowing for long shutter speeds so that I could move the camera during exposure. Every negative that I felt was a success was not a literal representation but an abstract expression of my own experience, explosions of light and life.

Two more images from the session of August 9th, before the rain at Rockland Lake.

I photographed for many years along the banks of the Wissahickon River in Philadelphia. I used film of course back then, only black and white for me, almost all medium format. I used a Rolleiflex D2 a Plaubel Makina 670 and a Pentax 67 with 45, 90 and 165mm lenses. A body of that work can be found at http://tarnished-silver.com.

I like to walk alone along a shoreline with a camera, the water alive with motion and the light from above reflected from the surface, the body contained by the far shoreline or the opposite bank or the infinite horizon.

Light and time and the meaning of it all, that is photography.

I am back to this blog, a place saver for years and now an awakening.

Friday August 5, I retired from a life of government service, entered into after receiving a graduate degree in photography from San Francisco State University.

I survived, ready for the third act of life.

I took the photo above yesterday in my home with a Sony R-1, an irreplaceable camera, almost six years old yet still producing beautiful RAW files.

I made sure that I still reflected light with a self-portrait, and then headed out to Rockland Lake to see what I could find.

The fishing pier was near and I took a couple of dozen shots of five or six views before answering a phone call from my Mother.

By the time we convinced each other we were indeed okay the rain came and it was time to do car pool duty at my children's day camp. Such is the life of the Father and the Son.

Two of the more satisfying images follow.

That is all for now, I hope to post again soon.