sweet sixteen

It's easy just to take a quick look at this and dismiss it. It needs to be savored, though, just like the sixteen pieces of white chocolate candy that I photographed here. Give it a little time. Allow your eyes to adjust and you'll find it's not as simple an image as first impressions would indicate.

still life with orange vase

I can just imagine this as a 2.5' x 6' metallic print. It would look awesome.

growing up

True story: She is eleven and her dad is about to get remarried. She doesn't know why, but it seems quite important to her that she wear these shoes today. And she will, all day, even though her ankles will get sore and she'll have blisters on both feet.

It is not until late into the reception that I see she's finally taken them off. Actually, both she and her new step mom have their shoes off and the two of them, laughing like school girls, are dancing with the happiest man in the world.

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This was one of those rare instances when a quick shot taken while photographing a wedding — something I noticed out of the corner of my eye while busy shooting something "more important" — turned out to be really special. Here's what the original looked like:



As you can see, it took a bit of work to get it to tell the story I wanted it to, but it was worth the effort.

on the line

She has quite a bit of shadow still to grow into, doesn't she?

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Low Elevation Aerial Photography (LEAP)

the tree's biographer

I love how leaves appear to have the trunk and branches of a tree in them. It's tempting to say they are like fractals—smaller versions of the tree from which the tree, itself, is made—but they really aren't. Still, they seem to be about the tree. It's as though they are wanting to tell you about where they've come from.

2 a.m.: gas station

Taken late at night in Fresno, California, through the side window of a car while stopped at a signal. Compare with this photograph.

focus

fo-cus (v. tr.)

1. To cause (light rays, for example) to converge on or toward a central point; concentrate.
   
2. To render (an object or image) in clear outline or sharp detail by adjustment of one's vision or an optical device; bring into focus. To adjust (a lens, for example) to produce a clear image.
   
3. To direct toward a particular point or purpose: she focused all her attention on maintaining her posture.
   

Definition adapted from: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 20 Feb. 2009. Dictionary.com.

washington monument with cloud

This was taken with my old Nikon 4300 P&S while in DC to visit my youngest daughter in 2006. It's become one of my favorite shots from that trip because it is abstract enough to get people who have seen hundreds of images of the monument to see it again from a new perspective. It looks like you can run down the side of it and jump in, like it's a pier going out into a lake.

time after time

This was, originally, a photograph I took at the home of one of my sisters — a rather simple still life consisting of a clock with two vases, one with flowers in it. It's not until I had spent quite a bit of time with it in post-processing that I got the idea of adding a picture of the picture up on the wall. If you are a very astute observer you will have noticed that the clock in the picture on the wall shows a different time and that the flowers are drooping some meaning the picture is from a later time than the one containing it. One person commenting on the finished image said it reminded him of Douglas Hofstadter's book, Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. I couldn't be more pleased. That was one of my favorite books for many years.

2 a.m.: hospital ward

The quiet side of a maternity ward late at night. I took this a few hours after my second granddaughter was born.

old masonic temple in glendale, california

This is somewhat reminiscent of a Cartier-Bresson photo, taken in Madrid (1933). And as long as I'm name dropping, this is also taken near Edward Weston's old home town of Tropico (later to become part of Glendale). I'm not positive, but I don't think Weston ever saw this building. I believe he'd moved away from the area before it was completed.

The building (seen here in Google street view) was designed by a local architect, Arthur George Lindley. It was completed in 1928.

apple

about the truth

To quote briefly from a poem by James Turner (source):

The truth is a woman who
looks like a man who looks like a woman who
stands in front of a mirror opposite a mirror
in a room within a room
at the end of a circular corridor in space.

She's a bastard.

I've been thinking quite a bit, lately, about truth and photography. I'll have more to say about it here, shortly, but for now let me leave you with this thought: a photograph is never truer than at the moment it is taken.