blood red balloon placenta

I love this photo. I'd love to be absorbed into this image.

I'll be out of pocket for a few days so hold on to you pants if I don't post your comments immediately. No, I'm not fleeing the law. On drug charges. There are no drug chargers. Why are you being so rude?

I will be taking photos, however. From jail. Because of the drug charges.

Wait, that's not right. Again with the rudeness. No, I'll be taking photos of pretty little flowers.

SOUTH DAKOTA IS IN DA HOUSE!!!!!!!!

Oh South Dakota, how I love you. You of Badlands fame, the Black Hills. I've always loved you, and now I see that you love me, too.

I just love everything about you.

I'm so happy.

I don't know why I'm so happy.

pretty plastic phlowers

eros

Figurines at my sis-in-law's house. A negative image.

portrait in black and white

Negative image of pancake drippings on the griddle

Trippy, eh?

Who's the genius now?

Summertime is bee time.

It's a shame how long it took for these photos to be posted. The ball was dropped. Mistakes were made. Whatever happened happened. It's behind us now. Let's move on.

It'll stare you down, sister

The Blue Door

Oh, you're so smart. You think that all there is to my photography is snapping pics of old or, preferably, old and broken stuff. Well, you'd be wrong. So very wrong. There's a lot more to it than that.

A lot.

Like.....well, you gotta find the broken stuff first. Didn't think of that now, did you, huh? And then you have to have to make sure that there's room on your memory card. And juice in the batteries.

So hah! Hah I say! Hah hah on you!

Recycled blue

Every once in a while I take a photograph that reminds me why I do this. This is one of those photos. The morning light was streaming into my office when I noticed how beautifully it lit up the plastic lining bag in the recycling bin. I placed the bin on my desk so its bottom end was facing the window. And here's what you have as a result. I love the color, and I like the folds and movement and contrasts. Not pure abstraction--since it is, in fact, a perfect representation of the inside of a recycling bin--but close enough.

Extenze

Sometimes you stumble upon a box of Extenze near a creek. It happens. I was driving the stretch road from the Mountain Campus, where my wife works, back to main campus when I pulled the car over because I wanted to take a picture of the stream pictured below. I pulled into the grass and walked down on some concrete from the bridge to the water. And there on the ground was this box.

That's how things work in life. Sometimes you stumble upon a box of Extenze near a creek.

And I'm glad because the photo of the creek blows.

"But what does it mean?"

Well, it's not a proposition, fool. I mean, what does a symphony mean? And if it were meant to be a proposition, it'd be a proposition. In a book. Or magazine. Or blog. And you wouldn't have to go to an art museum to see it.

My last photo from my New York visit. (Maybe.)

Euro-couple

The beautiful people at the MoMA. What a great pose they struck; I couldn't resist. Floor-high perspective.

Nobody puts baby in the corner!!

Haven't seen the movie, and I only figured out what the quote was referring to a couple of years ago. I still don't quite get it.

the fall

No photographic trickery. As simple as a sculpture and a reflecting pool.

Tangerine Dream

I quite like this photo and don't want to ruin it with commentary apart from saying I didn't know what to call it.

It's time for a caption!!

Note the pigeon. (BTW, I've chosen the last caption winners.)

From my middle child:

* If you don't mind, I'll just sit here for a while.
* Now all I need is a tour guide!

From my third child:

* Off my head. Or else!!
* Your hair isn't as soft as a nest.

From Andy D.:

* "Tally-ho!!"

* "Johnny, your hair looks like a real bird's nest this morning." (taking 3rd child's, but 'I did a twist on it...')

* "I told you to go with a more conventional scarecrow, but you HAD to go classic Greek with it."

* "Just ignore him, Pidgey. He's taking our picture, but JUST, IG, NORE, HIM. He'll leave soon."

* "You should see what I could do to this statue if I hadn't already evolved from the dinosaurs."

* "I'm the King of the World!"

* "Coach Jackson, I really think we should go back to our old Laker uniforms, rather than your 'nude with birds on heads' idea?..."

From Technoprairie:

* Tremble, all you mere mortals! My warrior pigeon and I are here. Prepare to be conquered! Prepare to grovel.

From Justcurious

* Pretending I don't see the hint of statue junk...

* Lot's wife's life strifes

From Timekeeper

* And the Lord said, "You shall leave the Garden of Eden and never return with only this pigeon for comfort."

Hands!!!!

Hands. So so beautiful. And this is dude is holding his right hand in the most beautiful pose--horizontal and relaxed. Breathtaking.

My youngest saw the first photo and said recent movie-inspired, "Boom! Bang! FIREpower!!" My middle child thought it looked like someone stretching in the morning and said, "Yaaaawwwwwn."

old and new york

Big foot

Pizza, two beers, looking through the NYC photos. Life is good.

Silence

Title provided by Middle Child.

The first question my children ask when they see people on the blog is "Who is that person?" To which I inevitably reply, "I have no idea." Which is true for these shots as well. But I am grateful for the theatricality of their gestures.

How to create art by ruining it in nine easy steps

A sequence revealing my insight into the nature of art.

Step one: Find a sculpture at Princeton University that looks like a Henry Moore, though you can't be entirely sure about it. Be entirely too lazy to look around for a placard. Okay, so I see you've got that. Good.



Step two: Do not be intimidated by the fact that Moore is one of the two greatest sculptors of the 20th century. No, completely disregard the artist's intent. By no means try to take a picture of the sculpture as others see it--or as the artist would have you see it--but peer into it, finding its flaws and weaknesses, its disrepair. Or reflections of eyeballs. Then when you find the beautiful disrepair, take a photo of just these parts, making sure that nothing of the original meaning of the sculpture remains. This step is essential, and you see the result here.



Step three: Now that you've ruined the image of the sculpture, begin to ruin your own image by cropping it further. This is not essential, but it is quite fun. Make sure to overcrop, leaving most of the good stuff out. Make sure you save your bad editing so that it's impossible to go back and fix it. I'd give myself a "D-" for this job, as seen below. Just not enough cropping.



Step four: Okay, now look for weird things in the photo. Do you vaguely see a face? Sure you do. Good, you're on to something. Do what you need to amplify the faceness of the face by digitally manipulating it. For example, here you probably want to punch up the colors (punch out the face?) and convert the photo into its negative. And what you have is a creepy photo of a face.

That only you will see.

Much to your frustration.



Step five: do all that you can to convince other that, drat it all, there IS a face in there. Why can't you see it??!!

Step six: Discourage others from treating your own photos (as seen above) in the manner that you treated Moores' art.

Step seven: Pretend not to be hurt when they promise that they wouldn't have thought to have done that and you actually do believe them.

Step eight: Make sure you don't fall asleep but instead worry why you can't take photos worthy of being destroyed by others.

Step nine: After a lousy night of sleep, you're nice and full of angst--which is perfect conditions for starting it all over with step one.

The world and elsewhere

For my daughters

Unexpected March snow in NJ

Eye of the Tiger

As you can see from the reflections of the building on the left, I was standing in basically the same place for both of these shots. The images inside the window were changing.

Salt

Angelina's in the crowd somewhere starring in the film "Salt." Yeah, that's right. We're pretty tight, Angelina and I.

Actually, I didn't see her. There would be movement in the crowd being filmed and the paparazzi (above) would scurry and start taking pictures, but I could never see anything of note. Which is to say I didn't see her.

Pout.

However, while waiting for a glimpse at greatness, I did strike a very nice conversation with a woman from Utah now living in NYC who assured me that she's not a Mormon (what do I care??) and that her husband is a student at NYU.

FYI: Angelina genuinely is stunningly beautiful. Angelina naysayers, you're just wrong though I can't confirm this from meeting her up close and personal.



Which reminds me of a story I once heard from a woman who saw Monty Clift in NYC who said that he was....almost otherworldy beautiful. Just different. Reader, did you tell me that story? I forgot the source.

Monty Clift really was very beautiful. Stunningly so.



When I was a boy, my parents took me to see a concert of "Space Music" performed by an orchestra (The Kansas City Symphony?). Much of it, naturally, was the music of John Williams, and there was a spoken part narrated by Dirk Benedict, who played a character on the original Battlestar Gallactica series. After the show we were walking out and Mr. Benedict passed us in the hall, so I got to see him up close and beautiful, as it were. And here's what I have to say about that experience. People can talk all they want about celebrities being airbrushed and so on, but this man simply looked different than anyone I had ever seen before. Stunningly beautiful. Breathtakingly so.

In a very heterosexual way, of course.

Diddy Snap(ple)