Back from the Sticks

I spent a day in the country, Dutchess County (Rhinebeck). There were a lot of cows around and I spent time photographing the critters. Actually, the light was great and I think I may have something that Bill Emory could use on his site.

Being in the country was just what I needed. I've got to get my taxes taken care of first, but then I'll soup the two rolls of film and see how the cows and one big black bull turned out. The bull was sort of scary close-up for a city guy.

Snow Monkey on Subway

I was on my way down to B&Walmart to pick up some film when the train was halted and we were told to evacuate because a snow monkey had escaped from the Central Park Zoo and was on the train somewhere.

I just managed to get this shot before the police arrived. They were going to write out a ticket for photographing on the subway when the monkey suddenly took off and they all raced after him. You should hear something on the news about it tomorrow. I heard that his name was Hal.

Camera: Leica digi-mahn. Lens: nocturnalux - f0.01

Matt Weber Interview

Short interview with Matt Weber can be found here.

Grand Central, Catacomb

Gum Bichromate Catacomb

This is more of a painting than a photograph. Most of the figures of people were touched up with quick darkening brush strokes; and the entire lighting effect with the textured walls and various accents was added. Oh, here's the original shot. I have reached the point finally of being very comfortable with the tablet / pen. I wish it wasn't quite so smooth. I wonder if anyone has a tablet addition that gives you the feel of working on rough paper.

Anyway - when I first looked at this underexposed image of Grand Central - I immediately got the idea of trying to make it feel like a dark fungus-filled catacomb.

Leaky Toilet

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide told prosecutors President Bush authorized the leak of sensitive intelligence information about Iraq, according to court papers filed by prosecutors in the CIA leak case. - New York Times

OR

President Bush authorized White House official I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to disclose highly sensitive intelligence information to the news media in an attempt to discredit a CIA adviser whose views undermined the rationale for the invasion of Iraq, according to a federal prosecutor's account of Libby's testimony to a grand jury. - Washington Post

In other words - if you remember President Bush being asked about all this and saying he would get to the bottom of it - I wondered whether the president would have plausible deniability or not. Apparantly not.

"The White House did not challenge the prosecutor's account of Bush's and Cheney's role in orchestrating the effort to discredit Wilson yesterday." - Washington Post

No - it's not so amazing that the President authorized the leak; what is amazing is that he has been caught doing it.

All along the campaign trail - the Bush administration has been able to maintain plausible deniability with things like the Swift Boat ads; and the attacks against Max Cleland.

And they've been able to have plausible (somewhat plausible) deniability about their own beliefs and reasons for the Iraq invasion. But if you pull one card out - such as this authorized leak - then the house of cards tumbles.

They've just made too many enemies in the establishment: CIA, FBI, ARMY, AIR-FORCE etc. And my theory is that the real powers are fed up.

busy

things have really picked up during the last week. today i matted and packaged about 30 small prints for three orders. two orders going to - europe. i am surprised that the small 5 x 7's are selling as well as they are. what surprises me is that i personally like this small size, and usually if i like it - then it doesn't sell. this is the exception.

i've actually got a nice little template setup in photoshop so that i can print four 5 x 7's at a time. pretty neat.

the only thing that i've really got to keep an eye on is cat hair getting on the paper while it's still wet. at that point it's just about impossible to get the hair off the print without leaving a mark.

buddy, oh buddy - how'd you like to be a skinhead for a while?

Times Square, Night Montage

Times Square, Night Montage

liner notes for this image:

Camera: Leica M3, Film Tri-x. 2006

o.k. possibly i was trying to be funny saying this was taken with the M3 and Tri-x. four different cameras were used to make this picture. two different film stocks. the pictures were taken over a period of about ten years. the skyline is from Sedona.

none of that matters. what does matter is that i felt from the beginning that times square needed to be like a big garbage bin filled to the brim with shiny things to keep the natives happy.

it should feel like a giant headache.

it was too big to fit in one frame. it really needed to be faceted. three different perspectives of the marine recruiting station.

times square is now: MULTI-NATIONAL CORPORATION AMUSEMENT PARK.

this is simply a big showcase for the biggest corporations. and it feels like Las Vegas - which is how the tree skyline made it's way into the shot.

I think I'm going to hang out there more often and do some more Times Square montages.

Another Stop

Another Stop

In my never ending quest to photograph every subway stop in New York - here's another station. This was on the way out to Coney Island, and I actually got off at about six stations because they looked interesting. I suppose this is a harmless sort of fanaticism.

Come to think about it - I always liked movies about trains. Did you ever see The Train with Burt Lancaster? That's what this shot reminds me of. Another great one, maybe the best film ever made where the New York City Subway was the star: The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3. Final frame for you trivia buffs was what?

In case you care about such things: HP5 with the Hexar Classic.

5 minute snow

we had a five-minute snow storm. i looked out the window and was startled to see big flakes. frankly, i have had enough snow but then matt called and said he was outside and this was the big-flake flurry.

i was warm and cozy and finally getting around to matting some prints, just about finished for a west coast customer, but i haven't been shooting much and so even though i had put the big yellow parka away yesterday - i pulled it out and downstairs i went.

the storm lasted about 5 minutes. the snow flakes were massive, maybe 5 inches wide (at times) and i stood on the corner and tried to do things with the trees that were in bloom, the guy trying to hail the taxi (impossible in this weather), and the big gusty flakes.

i decided to shoot at as high a shutter speed as i could manage because this time i was out to freeze those frozen flakes so I shot wide open at f2.0 and 1/500th. sometimes i need some quasi-tech thing like that to get me going. one shot intrigues me - as i bent down to tie my laces and may have pulled off this sidelong shot of a woman in black with a strange curved hat, against a black umbrella and the fluffy blizzard-looking scene. but who knows.

did the best i could in the new york minute snow. now back to matting.

Origami Ceiling

Local Japanese Restaurant - A couple of days ago. Best thing about the place are the little hand-made birds dangling from the ceiling. Reminds me of what I looked up at when I was a baby - you remember - those bird mobiles? Blue for the boys. Pink for the girls. Some of them you wound up and the birds moved around. Later on they got fancy with battery powered jobs.

These paper birds are wind-powered. When someone opens the restaurant door, a bit of a breeze and the birds all flutter.

Blizzard on Fifth

Steichen Striken Back

I was going to make up a story for April 1st about how I went to this garage sale and found this old print that was signed by Steichen and it was in an large envelope with a glass plate negative. But then I plumb forgot to pull the stunt or thought it was too dumb - if that's possible. But this was the photograph to go with. I was going to Photoshop the sign out - but as I worked on it, I began to like it and decided to let it just live or die on its own.

31 + 28 + 31 + 3 days ...

... Cigarette Free. But today I am missing them.

Other than that - orders for prints - especially the smaller ones are coming in from overseas. Last night I added Belgium. Yes, Belgium - tomorrow -- who knows, maybe New Jersey.

It's just that I don't want to tinker with the cart code to internationalize it, so I end up doing it country by country. Brilliant.

What else: I'm printing everything on the Silver Rag (small prints included). I've been doing two at a time on the roll paper without a problem. The roll paper is by far the cheapest way to go, because you can usually fit the image to the paper so you aren't using extra paper. The only thing that annoys me is that before I do any final printing - and if I haven't used the 4800 for a day or two - then I want to print a test pattern. But that means pulling out the roll paper, using the paper tray - and eventually going back to threading the roll paper through.

I guess there's just no way around that - you've got one paper path at that point and if the roll paper is threaded - then you can't use sheet feed. So what you want is automated feeding. I think that will be a long wait. Automated roll threading for you Epson 1MG.

And I decided that as far as having too many pictures - you may be right, but I'm going to keep going with it until I hit 150 online images for sale (that was my first goal).

I have them tagged by keyword, so at some point I'll categorize them. I always hate that:

PEOPLE : PLACES : THINGS

STILL LIFE : STREET SHOTS : NATURE

I don't know how to categorize my shots. I don't even see the point. No, I think most people would prefer to just browse through 'em all.