Bunch of Squares

A bunch back to back quick because making money to live takes time away from light…

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Waiting for the Sun

Time stands still, Winter Solstice 2015, County M, near Blue River, WI

"Color is the deeds & the suffering of light." Afternoon of the shortest day, Winter Solstice 2015

"Haven't I seen you round here before?" Gone the way of the lead sled, Hgwy 61, WI

Watch the skys, Central House Hotel December 2015.

Time waits for none

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phonography album of questions

Fall fireworks in a small town

WiscoSouthern engine slicing light

Rear of the Central House Hotel, home of the Gideon Bible & purportedly haunted. Priceless hotel bar.

Big Bayou Blue Heron, St Petersburg Florida

Cracker range, old Florida, Marion County

Entrance to Bald Bluff trail, Boscobel

Spring storm across the cornfields, Hgwy 18 W. of Cobb, Wisconsin

Cleaning up my phonography files. Square format Instagram edits- filter paintings would be a good description for these digitally mediated images. Thinking about creating a squarebook to see what language suggests itself as a narrative. Slicing light and putting it to paper now has an entirely different measure of process than in did carried out in darkrooms. And using a phone for capture…facility and facile have the same root. I find myself constantly measuring the weight of my intentions and quality of my focus (not just the lens’) as the fluidity & diversity of digital photographic media makes the significance of all images slippery. And the quantity immense. Thousands of instant images. Transitory. Unrooted, non local, a-historical, protean. Meaning runs off the surface, deliquescent, Daliesque.

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Wreathed, Wisconsin River Bottoms

After an early season, single digit deep-freeze, SW Wisconsin warmed up into the 40’s this weekend. Those kind of rapid temperature swings over a day or two produce heavy, gorgeous fog in the river bottoms. The winter river’s austerity, creaking ice, tufted marshes and the wet, black boughs of submerged trees swaying against the grey cotton skies produce a kind of reverence for a wildness we cannot know, from which we postmodern humans have been divorced and remain, most of the time, estranged. Therein the deepest yearning lurks as our starved eyes feed on the wilderness we’ve lost.

WI River Bottoms, December 2014

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It All Just Happens Right In Front of You

Quick lab video as i work out using Vine. Wrapped around some raw ideas from recent exposures in Madison to PhotoMidwest, LBM, FrakPhoto & PaulVanderbilt. Orthophonic Joy  the 1927 Bristol Sessions Revisted soundtrack sampled in the background.

I used YouTube for the full upload & embedded (since WP doesn’t support unpaid video hosting), and will sample that on Vine. Supporting social media as part of the workflow can seem like a time suck, almost equal or even exceeding the creation/ producing the original material. BUT, the mix-in, cross-inked end results that SM can generate reframe, re-state, & adhere the original work’s ideas in a mashup of free associations.  Which, stripped of intentions reveal alternate narrative, subtext or archetypal surprise. As if the artists’ work turns on its creator to introduce itself as a product not so much of that one person, but of all the raw materials & circumstances exploited to produce the work.

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Madison PhotoMidwest, WI Book Festival, Alec Soth & Paul Vanderbilt

Head’s exploding with stars after yesterdays trek to Madison for Paul Vanderbilt’s Wisconsin Academy Watrous Gallery exhibit Archive as a River, & WI Historic Society panel discussion of his work, which coincided with WI Book Festival, PhotoMidwest, Filter PhotoFestival, FlakPhoto, MMOCA’s Alec Soth exhibit, “From Here to There” and an arts reception at the Madison Public Library featuring FlakPhoto’s curated exhibit of new Midwest works & photo booklist based on MPL’s collection. And Filter PhotoFestival’s new artists’ photobooks display. Great smart visionary creative talk, people & works. This #mindmap of my notes tells some of the story this morning. Here are related links that tell the rest of the story: WI Book Festival , Photo Midwest , FlakPhoto ,  Filter PhotoFestival , MMOCA , Paul Vanderbilt Exhibit , Alec Soth , Madison Public Library Bubbler Additional random images from the day along State Street follow below. These are as shot, manual,  no post editing, Canon T2i DSLR w/ 18-135 EFS

Downtown State Street in Madison

Passing By I

Passing By II

MMOCA Intersection

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Cowculus

Cows and calves are out on pasture everywhere now. These mommas cast a calculating eye upon me, especially the one huge with calf on the right. Hidden among them is the bull, preoccupied with his duties.

Cowculus, Stitzer, Wisconsin

After staring at each other for an hour, these beasts seemed almost radiant with life, entirely present in a way that comes rarely to us, without meditation, yoga or prayer. Chew the cud mantra… all on a glorious, warm, sunny day, the most simple gift so gladly presented and received.

Cowculus II, Illuminated. Stitzer, Wisconsin.

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Tennessee Gateway 1989

Driving across Tennessee years ago, had to stop for a cold one and observe a history lesson. Image produced from a digital scan of a 35mm B&W TMax film negative recovered from materials that survived Hurricane Wilma’s flooding of Key West, FL in 2005.No post scan editing. Exact location in Tennessee has been lost. If anyone recognizes this place, I’d appreciate hearing more about it, thanks!

Tennessee Gateway, 1989

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Muscoda WI, Memorial Day weekend

We drove over to Muscoda on Hgwy 133 Saturday to go to St Vincent’s Thrift Shop. I knew there were several sites / sights in this small river town that I wanted to frame and to think over. Memorial Day weekend always gets my attention anyway. Makes me mindful of what gets taken for granted in the backgrounds of our daily routines. There are the buildings, commerce, highway, past and present colliding. The road signs to tell us where we’re at. And then there’s the flag(s) speaking louder than anything else this weekend.
Here’s a couple of shots taken downtown at the intersection of Hgwy 133 & SR 80; I was testing smaller f-stops, using a remote release with the camera tripod-mounted and longer exposures, ISO 100. One’s “as shot”, the other’s post processed to adjust contrast and saturation. I need a better monitor for editing; this laptop’s color profile was balanced with a Spyder Pro, but I’m still not convinced that I’m seeing what I need to. Would appreciate knowing what they look like to you. Cheers.

Memorial Day weekend, downtown Muscoda, WI

Memorial Day Weekend cruiser, Hgwy 80 & 133

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Roadhouse, Fennimore Hilltop

I’ve driven past hundreds of times, in all light and weather, trying to catch what this old roadhouse is mumbling. Yesterday I thought someone, maybe a country workcrew had sprayed the grass in front with fluorescent blue paint. When I stopped later that afternoon and walked up close, the blue revealed itself to be wild violets. Like a chunk of the sky blow down at the feet of this abandoned dream. (Photo is RAW, no post-processing except resize for web and copyright txt.)

Abandoned roadhouse, trailers out back, April 2014 SW Wisconsin

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