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.