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Benches
Benches are so much more than merely a place to sit. Arranged around campus they seem like sentinels watching over a particular vista or guarding a quiet corner. Should you happen across one, it invites you to pause and maybe even to linger. Alone or with a friend, passionate conversation or silent observation, it matters little. Benches don’t care. Their insistence on reflection and contemplation put them at odds with a world that celebrates busyness.…
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Pursue Your Own Goals
Following the lead of others requires little effort and less courage. “Innovate and iterate” while a route to financial success and often a means of improving our efficiencies rarely produces genuinely new and imaginative things. To strike out on your own requires conviction and courage. To pursue your own goals wherever they might lead demands trust in yourself. Better to get lost having set out alone into parts unknown, than simply to tread an established…
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In Praise of Chaotic
Minimalism. A dominate subject. High contrast. Rule of thirds. Composition. Complementary colors. Symmetry. Leading lines. Framing. There is a smörgåsbord of rules I can choose from to guide my shooting, to shoehorn my photos into a recognizable and recognized style. But what if I don’t want to. What if I want not just to “break” them but to reject them? Or replace them with a different set of rules/guidelines? Rules and guidelines are useful for…
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Snow Storm
Winter has happened this year, or at least February has already been properly cold and snow-filled. We’ve had some wonderful days of blowing, bitter snow storms. A thick layer of snow covers the ice on the local pond. The storms keep people inside, and so naturally I’m compelled to be out, wandering the streets and parks and open spaces. Even through the haze of snow and the monochrome winter afternoons, the promise of spring lurks…
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Originality
Often I want to be alone, to avoid the company of others. I am no misanthrope nor do I aspire to be a hermit, but the constant din of daily life does little for me. I much prefer solitude, the restorative companionship of quiet, both in an acoustic and in a psychological sense. But it’s hard to be alone. Robert Frost, I think, understood the desire to be alone. Yet he acknowledged the futility of…
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Travel, Weddings, COVID Casualties
It was early, sometime around 7:00 AM. She sat there swiping at her phone, her bright red dress blazing against the grey stone. The only movement was her finger, flicking up and down on her phone’s screen. Her partner was a flurry of activity, directing the bride and groom where to stand, how to pose, which direction to look. He moved them around the courtyard and the parapet and the stairs. For more than an…
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Colored Doors
Dublin’s colorful doors are legendary and even staid London has a long tradition of colored doors, though not as dramatic as Dublin’s. Lots of photographers produce series of photos of these doors, photos that end up on countless postcards and posters, typically with catchy names like “The Doors of [fill in city name].” Now that we’ve moved into a post-postcard world, snapshots of those doors probably fill social media feeds. When I find myself in…
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Celebrating Imperfect
The patterns created by the stairs and shadows intrigued me, as did the contrast between the parallels of light and dark, on the right, and the smooth, evenly lit surface on the left. I like the photograph I made that summer afternoon, I like it because it reminds me of the afternoon wandering the gardens, and I like it because I think the two halves present an interesting contrast. But somehow the photo doesn’t capture…
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A Promise of …
Stairs always promise something, escape, adventure, death, the unknown. What waits just out of sight past that last step? What lurks below in the gloom that devours the stairs? Moqui steps scratched into soft sandstone, the ruins of some steps leading to a long-gone building, or modernist stairs in a city museum. Stairs are always more than the physical steps. They are a promise of something new. They are an echo of something lost. Who…
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Postcard Archive: February 2021
With the new month comes a new postcard. This month’s postcard comes from a local state park. Winter seemed to demand black and white. Let me know if you want a copy. Just days later the freezing temperatures and snow would come. But this morning I enjoyed the mild weather and the lovely falls.