Category: ekphrastic

Goodnight Ramona

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Even as retirement looms
Tension unabates
Everything is important
Costly
One mistake
Can ruin everything

Detail and compliance
Rule my life
A sense of hurtling
Through space
Its friction
Burning
Tearing through my space suit

This new place.
A walk behind the house
Up the side of the mountain
Signs
Reading “Property Boundary –
National Forest Behind This Sign”

It’s quiet here.
A bark in the distance
Children’s voices bounce endlessly
Across the vale

Ten weeks
And I hit the wall
Or
Fall off the cliff
Either way
It will be an adventure

In 1984 I started my glazing apprenticeship. The last 32+ years with the same company.
We have grown to a sizable concern, glazing many hospitals, universities and such.
April 1, 2023 will start a new chapter.
https://www.towerglass.com/

(Photograph -a sunset in Ramona CA)

Banished

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We stand upon the precipice
A thousand story edifice
The constant threat
All comes to this

What shall I do with my day?

I have heard it said many times that photography is dead. Too many cameras. Too many photographers. Now, with AI, the human element of photography is superfluous. Humans are simply not needed any more for this endevor.
Perhaps.
This brings fear to the surface and it is only at the surface.
A photographer performs this for themselves first. It is cathartic. It is the challenge that brings us back. It is discovery that makes our pulse race. It is the satisfaction of story and message, nuance, detail and blur, color and tone, and the mastering of the sun’s energy that drives us.
Too many cameras? Too many photographers? Ok. Each have their own journey.
AI? Ok. Without photographers, AI would have no reference to make its art. Machine art. Souless, lifeless machine art. If that is what the masses want. So be it.
Photographers know each other and the shared struggle to create.
Machines, not so much.

A simple walk:

Birds on the trail

Mist in the Towers

Oak Among the Boulders

Wide is the Trail

Western Blues

Stay frosty, keep shooting

Oakey Dokey

on By 2 Comments

A walk in the natural world
Does wonders for the soul
It is not magic
Nor does it make all problems go away
It just sets persepctive in its proper place
Hmmm
Maybe it is magic, a little

Life comes at us so fast and sometimes we just get caught up in the swirl of it all.
Our “new” digs came with a couple of years of required maintenence fixes and upgrades in our future.
Floors, paint, appliance/fixture fixes/upgrades, leak reapirs. You know, the stuff that even black holes avoid.

In the meantime I allowed my WP payment to lapse and I was punished with having to “recover” my account.
“If you’ve lost access to your WordPress.com account, our Accounts Recovery team will get back to you as soon as possible to help you gain access to your account again. Please use this form…”

After 10 or 11 password attempts/changes I think I’m back.

Cover image is a 10-stack/stitch effort of an oak made on the Ramona Grasslands Preserve. (Trail is too close to it and I was using the 200-600)
I cannot image oaks without thinking of Alexander Kunz, who is a master at imaging these stately trees.Thanks for the inspiration Alex. you can find him here: https://www.alex-kunz.com/
I also have to say that I am thinking of you Alessandra and I my hope for you is to eventually see beyond the abyss.
My heart goes out to you.

The same tree, different perspective. Photographers seek different perspectives

Oak on Ramona Grasslands Preserve

Sky Trippin’

on By

Searching for Andromeda
Finding Cassiopeia
Tripped over Jupiter
Looking for Saturn

These first renderings are so amateurish and yet so satisfyingly fun.
What a ride this is becoming.

Spent some time processing the Andromeda Galaxy. It took some searching, but I found it after multiple tries.

Andromeda

While searching for Jupiter I found Saturn! Very tiny. Barely 40 pixels wide on the originals!

Saturn

Jupiter was a horrible mess to process…too much atmospheric interference. These are all good lessons for future imaging. Looks like there are a couple of rogue pixels in there still. And the moons are a little hot as well.

Cover photo is of the Cassiopeia constellation…though I’m not sure it really looks like that!
Here are the separated channels it took to get to the final output: