“The trouble is, you think you have time.” Buddha’s Little Instruction Book
Time Enough at Last
Tag: Still Life Photography
Ansel In The Valley
I wanted to get my four dollars worth out of the roses I bought Wednesday so I set them up near a sunny window. I used spot metering and a wide aperture but had not planned to convert to black and white.
I did plan on adding an effect in ON1 Effects and for some reason chose one called Ansel In The Valley. Ansel Adams is famous for saying you don’t take a photograph, you make it. So this one’s for you Debra.
Note: Aldi has very good quality flowers for next to nothing, but you have to bring your own bag and shopping carts cost a quarter. The upside is that the one in Lancaster has horses in the back ready to pose for pictures.
To Be There or Not to Be There
“What is perfect? From the Zen mind, perfection is not being there.” Frederick Lenz
The Boredom and Sadness of Being
I’m going to be working on another project with my friend Alena Shminke but we’re having trouble figuring it out. This morning she suggested that we make it out of the boredom and sadness of being, which to me sounded perfect.
This is my first take on the theme, only today I had a fantastic day and wasn’t bored for a second. Fortunately I’m Bipolar so my mood changes as fast as a Cheetah on meth.
Scratched film texture added in ON1 Effects.
Luck Be A Lady
In this case luck is a very talented lady named Alena Shminke who I had the pleasure to work with again on a still life project called Imaginary Road Trip Without Destination.
You can view the collection of images here: A Photography Co-Project
For Those About to Rot
“Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.” Lao Tzu
Still Life with Questions
I pulled into the parking lot of a huge farm stand to try to get a good photo of pumpkins. I tried different angles, apertures and focus points with both of my cameras. Suddenly a smiling Amish guy comes out and asks me if I’m with the newspaper.
I told him no and continued shooting while the light was good. A minute later he was standing right next to me. This time I decided to enlighten him to what I was doing and why. The conversation went like this:
Q. “Are you a photographer?
A. “Well I guess that’s a matter of opinion.”
Q. “Why are you taking so many pictures?”
A. “I’m trying to get one good one.
Q. “What do you do with these pictures?”
A. “I have a website (I figured saying I had a blog was too confusing).
Q. “How do you make money doing this?”
A. “I don’t, it just gives me something to do.
This went on until the clouds burned off and it was too bright. I took a chance and actually asked him if he had a computer to show him some of my stuff but of course he didn’t.
I wanted to explain to him what that great philosopher Charlie Brown once said: “If we could see the miracle of a single pumpkin stem clearly, our whole life would change,” but I thought his head might explode.
I said goodbye and got into my car and he said Beheef dich! It sounded like he was calling me an insulting name in Pennsylvania Dutch but it turns out that the phrase just means behave yourself.
Boom.
Thinking outside the Box
“It is not possible to think outside the box. If I am thinking, I am always and only inside the box. The mind itself is the box.” Red Hawk, Self Observation
Bad Onions
I believe it was Edward Weston who said there are no bad onions, only bad photographs of onions. So when I saw the Free Onions sign I stopped to grab some for a still life. But they were all bad and I didn’t want to stink up my car.
I took a few shots to see if I could capture their beauty even though they are basically pig food now. I’m not sure if this is a good photograph because I’m not a professional onion photographer, but it’s my best out of thirty five.
Weston also said something that I’ve always liked: “Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual.” Now all I have to do is explain that to the Amish farmers.
The Aim of Man
“The greatest risk to man is not that he aims too high and misses, but that he aims too low and hits.” Michaelangelo
Fun Fact: Excusado is a famous photograph by Edward Weston taken with a large-format camera in 1925. For two weeks Weston photographed and studied the toilet in his house near Mexico City from different angles.
It has been on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Edinburgh International Festival, Edinburgh, Scotland and The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
