Pepper Vision

This picture just resurfaced, lighting a flame of recognition in my funny bone.

When you fill your vision with the pepper seeds, you can't focus on the squirrel. Yet you can feel the squirrel's presence; It feels like the squirrel is alive

Let's face it: Catching oneself in a misperception can be fun. Especially for people who think there is a need to know everything. Of course the soft brass patina, the softening camera focus, selective and peripheral vision aid this illusion. But that's just a causal explanation and not much fun.

It's been months since I invited the brass squirrel to lunch on these pepper seeds. I am grateful for his demonstrating yet another reason why it may be important to save seeds.

Time to change one paradigm since today's amusement came from seeds unplanted.

Now I'm unplanting them again.

The Last Glacier

I was almost done eating dessert when a thought occured to me:

Might this look like the last glacier?

Margins of the Gulf

Margins of the Gulf is an ongoing photographic theme that continues to intrigue me.

I'm interested in watching that strand of land that geographers call the littoral zone; essentially the land between high and low tides. This long strip of land follows the sea coast all around the world. It's magnetic in its appeal to people seeking the peaceful rhythms of the sea.

I look to catch a bar or two of visual melody here, the melody being played by strollers along the littoral staff. To my eye, people become dancers and notes on the littoral staff. Click title link for more ...

Man Blames Cat for Porno

It was a short article. A space filler really. But it jumped out at me from the Sunday newspaper. From Stuart, Florida, the headline read: Man blames cat for more images.

Keith Griffin told sheriff's investigators that 90 child pornography images downloaded onto his computer when his cat jumped on his keyboard while he was downloading music. I asked my cat, Popi, if that claim was possibly true.

Popi laughed. "Of course, it could have happened that way," she said. "Tabbies are notorious troublemakers. I once knew a Tabby who wrote D.O.S. with her hind quarters. She hacked her way into the Pentagon simply because she smelled a rat."

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Someone's always telling someone to go somewhere or do something. That makes me mad in the same way television ads make me want to go deaf. I will eventually seek refuge in Norway.

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I like this graphic in spite my disinclination to follow directions. It's a strong, simple composition. It probably looks more dynamic to people who read their newspapers from right to left. But it's a kinetic image with the potential to move a viewer's eyes in ways the body can feel.

There is an invisible force or connection between the arrow image and your everyday memories. When you look at the arrows sweeping downward, you can feel the movement in your gut. Eye to subject to gut. That's photographic triangulation; a big part of my personal mapping system (PMS).

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Did I post this image of the bus stop in Laerdal, Norway before? I think so. However, I did take a second look at it and decided to bump up some contrast and color. The original shot was grayer, less interesting.

This Image is all about color quality. In a recollective world, I see this print as a signature of bus travel in Norway. Yet, you don't need to know the where to appreciate repetitious forms struggling in an ice cold (?) winter field. And the dark spot I see as oil drippage seems such a human thing ... could it also refer to a hole in the Universe?

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Reviewing last year's trip I came across this sweet little fellow. Found him on the sidewalk of a very classy Norwegian hotel.

The understandings you carry into any visual experience affect and may transform the meanings that come out. Even dogs, we discovered, have a visual intelligence. They learn by observing, too. The mouse was so soft and furry... He had come out of the garden to die.

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Who doesn't love mushrooms? Get serious! These visually tasty fellows were hanging around the new old Stave Church in Bergen, Norway. Go little fellows, go! Don't let the trolls eat you! ;^ ) Such fecundity makes me remember.

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Gully, gully. One good tern deserves another. This remarkable piece of sculpture makes this photographic image a carrier of great consternations. That's why this sculpture is showing its face again here.

There seems to be something elemental to be learned here. As a sculpture it brings Myth so much closer to home. Must one be a seafaring Norwegian to completely understand?

Cave Art

Two caves have long occupied spaces in my head: Plato's Cave from The Republic and the cave paintings of Lascaux, France. I have a fascination for walls.

I gathered the walls below by electronically painting colors and forms, then subjecting them to filtration by mathematical algorithms. The bouncing and bending of light across a sensitive electronic cave wall was captured. I call it my cave. It is now present on your monitor.

The circus show girl is for Sarasota, the circus city where I live. Here she becomes transformed into Anima Muse, a character in my personal mythology. I reversed her colors to negate any smattering of personality imposed by a tonal photo portrait. The colors work well in the cave. Anima Muse vibrates with enthusiasm ... like a cheerleader.

The Leaf and Me

The Hubble space telescope focuses on distant galaxies and astronomers see our Sun in another 4 billion years. I look out the window and spy a mystery in my swimming pool: A flat leaf floating on the surface of the water casting a grape-clustered shadow on the bottom of the pool.

I am neither an astronomer nor a botonist, but I knew the tiny lens on my Kodak camera could record the mystery.

How can a spade like leaf cast such a shadow? What properties reside in the water? the leaf? and the sun? Where is the closest physicist with an answer?

Despite my ignorance, I like the geometries of this composition. The triangulation between the leaf, the shadow, and the camera lens takes me along a deep space route to a shadowy nebula. Even the cracks in the pool light up like runway lights pointing the way.

And then there's that guy over there, out in nebula space, with the shadowy camera. Looking over a high wall at parallel worlds? A reflection of the viewer who is seeing and being seen?

I love a good mystery.

The Swamp II

The CSU band cheers the brave Buccaneers of Charleston Southern U as they take a half time break. Behind in the game 40 to 3, the second half would get better for the Bucs as they held Florida's second string offense to 22 points.

CSU's band leader takes a half time break as Florida cheerleaders line the field. I had good reason for leaving my DSLR camera at home: fear that history might repeat itself. I lost my first camera long lens years ago at a football stadium when the person next to me knocked the lens onto the concrete at my feet.

I find that shooting pictures in a crowd is difficult to impossible. One of the problems with a small Kodak digital is that crowds are unruly and they love to demolish compositions before trigger fingers can do their job. And another problem is the lack of focal length that could clear the scene.

I asked my neighboring bandsman if he had any idea how much money the Charleston Southern athletic program was bringing to the school by playing big time champ Florida.

He told me that Charleston Southern would receive $450,000. Not bad for a night's work! Even if you have to work on the Sabbath in The Swamp.

The Swamp

We drove to Gainesville last weekend to attend our first University of Florida football game at The Swamp. We skipped the tailgate party scene and took a bus to the game.

It was Saturday, the Sabbath, but there were a few things I didn't expect to find at the game.

This fellow, I'm told, brings his banner to all the games.

And, oh man! I love that tune I was hearing. Had it been that long since I'd been on a college campus? Here in the middle of upstate Florida we came across our first Hare Krishna singers in a long, long time.

As I remember, they used to be younger.

I thought we were going to a football game, not a religious convention. But then I should have figured it out. It was the first game of the year, a warmup game, and national champion Florida was playing Charleston Southern, a small Christian school from South Carolina.

Ah, here's one thing I expected to see: a lot of young people wearing blue and orange.

We got great end zone seats, right next to the Charleston Southern band and cheer squad. They seemed a bit uncomfortable in The Swamp. CSU is a school of about 3,500 students my neighboring bandsman informed me. The University of Florida has about 50,000 students. The Swamp was filling up with Florida fanatics.

90,000 people assembled in The Swamp to watch the University of Florida Gators play a brave Charleston Southern team who actually beat the 63 point spread that Las Vegas gave them.

The Gator Chomp illustrated on the big screen at our end of the field.

Continued in next posting ...

Red Pepper Dance

Adrian's Birthday Pepper

Adrian's birthday pepper.

Early morning light through the kitchen window. Red pepper awaiting breakfast. Trusty red Kodak at the hip. Happy Birthday, Sonny!