Beginning Monday, February 11th 2013, Patrick Dougherty's sculpture, "Diamonds in the Rough" will begin to be dismantled by staff and volunteers at Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens. Pictured left in 2011, the stick sculpture has been enduring the elements and giving children hobbit-sized rooms to hide in and endlessly frustrate parents. Peter Jackson would be so lucky to capture something like this with his wack 3D.
The sculpture is a true, living work of art that has to be seen to be believed. But it's going soon! On Sunday, February 17, portions will be sent up in a Community Bonfire. Finally, art you can roast marshmallows over.
You can learn more about the event here.
For you camera nerds:
All digital - Canon 5D, 16mm, Lightroom and Photoshop editing with some judicial split-toning and color treatments.
One of the more confusing and powerful lines from a song. I heard it growing up just like so many other people did, but it wasn't until later that I really heard and was perplexed by it. From what I understand, Paul McCartney is singing to Julian Lennon, John's son. Trying to help him deal with his parent's divorce and moving on - about not carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
He sings about finding someone to perform with (Linda McCartney?), letting it out and letting it in (breathing, meditating). It's probably as much for Julian as much as it is for him. Paul initially wanted to remove the "movement you need" line, but John insisted he leave it in, saying it was the best line in the song.
With a new year comes so many things:
- trying to make right what you feel went wrong the year before
- losing weight
- getting to places on time for once
- solving the world's problems
- dealing with breakups, new relationships
- fixing the cruddy roads in Richmond
- getting your car's alignment checked
- cleaning the gutters
- getting the song "Some Nights" out of your head once and for all, etc.
It's a good time to just calm down, step back and breathe. Accept the movement that's been on your shoulder all along.
Some people may be perplexed by this picture. One head is completely cut off and the other doesn't even include the eyes. Is that food on the table? The thing that makes this picture work for me is the light. The way it streams in through the door and windows and dances around the shoulders. It's subtle and that's what I find myself looking for more and more in my photography and it happened almost completely by chance.
Fairly recently, I bought a 1942 Argus C3 from an antique store off of Forest Hill Ave in Richmond, VA. Once it was lubed up, the thing worked like a charm. A week or so later, I met a friend of mine and his son for lunch at Mamma Zu's and brought "the brick" (as it's known) to take some test shots. I sat down and decided to flip the trigger with it resting on the table. I aimed it up as much as I could while still keeping it braced against the tabletop knowing the shutter would be open too long for a handheld shot. Without checking the framing through the viewfinder, this is what I got.
The lens is un-coated which is how the highlights get that hazy glow. I love it. It will take some work to get a handle on the effect and I'm sure chance will play its part.
Happy New Year everyone...
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For photography, I sincerely believe we've entered a whole new era with this phone. The picture above was taken on it using it's 8mp camera, AutoStitch, Snapseed, and a minor off-board edit with Photoshop (some nasty street lights had to go). But make no mistake, this picture couldn't have happened without my trusty new friend. I mean phone.
Long story short, I've decided to start taking walks at work during lunch in an effort to bring my equator closer home. Along the way, I'll snap pictures around the city and tweak them all on the phone, WHILE I'm still walking around. Then, I'll post to FB and/or email to some unsuspecting person all WHILE I'm still walking around, bringing the ol' equator to a decent orbit. As a hopelessly creative type, this is beyond wonderful because it allows me to get outside and interact with the world and create something, anything right there on the spot. I'm in heaven. Truly.
Now, the picture: it's the Carpenter Theatre. It's black and white with some cool Snapseed treatments. The building is awesome and you need to go there and purchase some tickets to see the equally wonderful, revitalized inside. Now, I have to go get ready for dinner and venture out somewhere and maybe capture some more scenes with my little buddy, my iPhone.
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For the "First Fridays Free Download" in January, 2012 I think it's only fitting to use a picture showing a view of what's passed by. You know, it's a New Year and all...
Personally, there's a lot going on with this photo:
- The building in the mirror was in one of my favorite shots.(I think I say that a lot, but it's definitely true here)
- That same sunset-painted building was an old bank - I'll leave the politics for the news channels but will say how good it'll be to see the recent economy drift quickly away and fall out of sight.
- This was shot on film made by Kodak, a company that's apparently on the verge of filing chapter 11 bankruptcy. The influence Kodak has had on photography, art, not to mention people's lives and memories goes beyond words. In the mass exodus to everything digital, so many have lost sight of what came before. As they snap their Hipstamatic and Instagram shots and put on those cool filters, do they realize those treatments came from film? What will be the inspiration for future filters? Will people 20, 30 years from now be aching for that pixely, over-compressed, jpg filter? Will they be Googling for a way to get that blown out highlight look that makes people's skin appear as if they've drunk themselves to an early liver death? Something tells me no.
- This picture is the background on my brand new iPhone 4s. Yes, the two worlds can coexist very nicely. The very device that I cradle with care and shoot my own Hipstamatic and Instagram shots also stores a photo I took with a camera made in the late 40's that I picked up for $30 in an antique store and restored like the camera freak I am.
Number 1 is at the top for a reason. I wasn't thinking about #'s 2, 3 or 4 when I took this picture out of my side window, I was just moved to capture something that caught my eye, just like that first shot of the old bank building and just like every other picture on this site.
It's my hope in the coming year to create many more shots like this one and post them here so you can have the chance to enjoy them with me. And remember, every month I'll be posting a photo free to download at its highest resolution. So if you're feeling it, download and use as a background on your iPhone or Android or horrors, make a print and hang it up somewhere!
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It was my third trip out to this area of Virginia and when we finally found our way to the perch, I took out every camera I had brought, got them all ready to shoot and started firing away. I looked a bit like a freak - I’ll admit it. One of them, my Canon A-1 went into diva mode and decided it only felt like tripping the shutter when I moved the film advance lever. After a handful of throwaway shots, everything seemed to be back on track and I set it aside to concentrate on the other cameras. This photo was amongst the “throwaways” – proof that getting a gorgeous picture here is akin to shooting fish in a barrel. The film I used is Kodak’s Portra 400 – one of their newer emulsions that caters to skin tones. But basically any scene will benefit from this incredible film, not the least of which, one with shades of red. This beautiful fall day did not disappoint on that account. I ended up getting it developed at my favorite CVS, scanned it (with love) on the Epson 750 then brought it into Photoshop for some enhancements. The final product really blew me away, but I couldn’t help putting on one last touch: a tilt effect. In short, this effect mimics a tilt-shift lens which can create a “false” shallow depth of field, making the image look more like a miniature model than a miles-wide landscape. The resulting picture ends up highlighting the lives and structures in the valley as if they’re the backdrop to a fairy tale’s story line. It’s an incredible section of not only Virginia, but our little world.]]>
Shot on Kodak's Ektar 100 film using a Canon 620 and 16-35mm lens. Scanned on an Epson v750. ]]>
Maybe it's the font of the Byrd sign coupled with the parapet walls along Cary St. and the relentlessly red/yellow hues that make me see tumbleweeds rolling into view.
This has been shot on red-scale film - a technique found by accident in a time when color film had just come on the scene. The photographer would load the film into the camera but load it backwards making the back of the film the first thing to see the flash of light from the shutter. This is the red spectrum's domain and will react to light sooner than the green and blue spectrums. So what you see is almost purely red and yellow hues.
This picture is best enjoyed with a smokey whiskey and a steak bomb from Coppola's. ]]>
