Our River and Old Man Winter

Several times this past summer, I escaped from my personal box to “fly” - last May with the Zero Gravity experience (previous post), in a hot air balloon, and then in a helicopter. I crawled though a lava tunnel in the Crater’s of the Moon volcano park (click my Facebook badge).

Aside from knees scraped and jeans ruined while I navigated the tunnel, the experiences were thrilling in and of themselves, but my joyful disorientation did not magically present inspiration and ideas, as I’d hoped. Those I must break a sweat for, regardless of where I am and what I’m doing.

What photographer wrote that if you can’t photograph your own neighborhood, you can’t photograph Europe?  I’ve returned to my home turf, inspired recently by fickle climate and amazing clouds. Our weather changed from 70-degree sunny days to snowstorms in a single day. 

My Zero Gravity Experience

Part of my work as an artist is to look for the experience that gets me out of my daily habits of keeping order, my treads on the road, my nose to the grindstone, ad infinitum. These kinds of experiences are essential in meeting my goal of ongoing perceptual revelation that entails the ability to see everything in new and different ways.

To celebrate my seventieth birthday, I treated myself to the Zero Gravity experience, launching with a group of 18 other passengers from San Jose International Airport, May 12, 2012 in a Boeing 727 designed specifically to carry us to weightlessness and back. About 15 times (I lost count) we were weightless for 30 seconds before landing on the floor, as our 727 flew in a parabolic pattern. (Images by Steve Boxall, official Zero G photographer).

 How will this help me to see everything differently? Although I’m sensing a kind of shift inside, I won’t know for a while. Time will tell.

Thanks, NYT, for this portrait of Cindy Sherman

OMG, an inspiring portrait of Cindy Sherman! Sherman’s the master of stills for stories. In her photographs, she includes herself depicting every type of character her imagination can suggest. In my stills, such as the three here, there’s nobody, just an environment where a story (invented by the viewer) could possibly take place.





Link to a wonderful portrait of Cindy Sherman:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/arts/design/moma-to-showcase-cindy-shermans-new-and-old-characters.html?hpw

Microscopic Worlds

Using a dissection microscope, I’m searching for that accidental beauty seen in close-up views, when a tomato can become an otherworldly, surreal landscape.

After months of searching for a microscope, I turned for help to a microscope specialist who works at a nearby lab that conducts research on infectious diseases. She showed me three types: the electron (way out of my price range), the wet (requires slide preparation), and the dissection microscope.

From AmScope.com, I bought a Canon adapter and the 7X-45
X Trinocular Stereo Zoom Microscope with Dual Halogen Lights. You can illuminate a translucent subject from beneath, as well as from above. Through enough toil, trial and error, you can capture that perfect “microscape”. I still need a lot of practice "to make perfect".