Tenacity of Instinct

We're still waiting for spring weather. Here's a reminder that life goes on, no matter what: a caterpillar morphs into a butterfly.

Spring Forward

This spring’s fever hit me much harder than it has in the past, I think because the season arrived so late and so suddenly. Days went from being in the 40’s and overcast, to being in the low sixties and sunny, with birdsongs starting before dawn. I hope you enjoy my tributes.

Not for the Human Eye

Another path to inspiration is to learn about phenomena about which I know absolutely nothing, most recently atoms and molecules. Here’s my animation of a water molecule, which is made up of an oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms. The idea of synergy, when elements join to form something larger than the sum of the parts, is loaded with visual possibilities.

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".

Mining for visual nuggets in what’s commonly overlooked.

It’s a struggle to capture something I haven’t seen before, something that’s more skillfully executed than what I have in mind at a given moment. Also, an instructor advised, if you are drawing a blank in terms of inspiration, go out and shoot anyway. Our recent fire season ruined the atmosphere, obliterating what we would normally see during a favorite time of year, late summer and early fall. This series, for now called “Worried Climate” needs a lot of work to offer the kind of originality that I have in mind, but here’s a start.

Photo-manipulation of Natural Phenomena

Since my digital photography upgrade this summer at Rocky Mountain School of Photography (Missoula, Montana), I’ve been photo-manipulating my shots of natural phenomena you wouldn’t ordinarily look at or think about. If you're interested in seeing more, please open my PhotoShelter Portfolio link.

Making Sad Warnings Permanent

To continue my December 27, 2010 post, a showing of my “Relics” is scheduled for December 2011 at a local gallery (Frame Shop and Gallery, Hamilton, Montana). But the effects need more work. Blacks blocked up. Lighter areas looked bleached. Earlier this summer, I plunged into an intensive digital photography upgrade to get a better handle on the editing software, Photoshop (Rocky Mountain School of Photography, Missoula, Montana). Now I can understand the problems evident in my “Relics” series.

While in the program, I took every opportunity to manipulate an image in Photoshop, specifically to duplicate, flip, and blend a single image – which works better than trying to blend several different images. In one class, the instructor asked us to think in terms of a concept and produce a series based on that concept.

Mine: commemorative roadside crosses disintegrate and are forgotten. I wanted to conjure up a way to make these sad warnings permanent. As four-way symmetry is a metaphor for eternity, from each photograph I took of a roadside cross, I designed a square made up of four blended layers, each lying at a different 90-degree angle.

Scarves can be permanent, handed down from one generation to the next. I converted the above square into a silk scarf, and it looks just fine.

Please don’t drink and drive.

The Otherworldly in Macro

I love the effects of some extreme close-up views and decided to give Macro a try. From last June through the early fall, 2010, I conducted Macro tests. My equipment: Canon EOS 20D with a Canon Macro lens EF 100 mm 1:2.8 IS, using a remote shutter release, mounted on a Slik AMT tripod

The closer you are to a subject, the shallower the depth of field. To try to “fix” that, I used Photoshop, version CS4. I took multiple shots of the same subject, each shot with a different focus point. For each shot I created a separate layer, selected all layers, auto-aligned, and auto-blended them.

Essential help came from iStock contributor Kevin Jay on the site’s photography forum. I learned:

The best light is bright and even; avoid direct sunlight. I shot indoors, placing the subject in front of a window and away from direct sunlight. Sometimes I used a light box under the subject, or a swatch of black velvet; or I painted the subject with a flashlight.

F 16 is the smallest aperture you can use and still get sharp focus. Lock up the camera’s mirror for exposure times slower than 1/60 of a second. When mounted on a tripod, the camera does not need its image stabilizer. If you leave it on when using a tripod, the result can be soft images as the lens spins and fights against a still platform.

Except for the single Macro photograph seen here, each resulting image had something wrong: a blemish on a petal, overexposure, underexposure, blurriness, flat and dull lighting, unintended see-through effects, and/or poor color balance. The worst was posterization in a few images, which can be corrected by shooting and processing in Raw. Raw has more color flexibility than JPEG. I haven’t gotten to Raw yet.

From the beginning, I asked, “What can I do with Macro that I don’t see anyone else doing?” I like to capture what looks like an otherworldly environment. Come spring when the flowers bloom again I’ll give Macro another try.

"Relics"

Moving into winter I started getting cabin fever. You sit around not sure what to do next, space out, sleep during the day, can't pull your thoughts together. Stuck with my art and just about everything else, I decided to start reading about innovation. The best book in the pile is Scott Berkun's "The Myths of Innovation". One of the myths is that to get started, you must develop an enormous list of ideas.

Instead, he suggests that you start working with one idea, preferably a project already underway. Gradually I fell back on track. While reading, I worked at my art and strangely, seemingly out of nowhere, I came up with a new effect. Here's a sample above. When I create enough pieces, I've been promised a show in my neighborhood sometime in 2011.

Artist Julie Mehretu's awe-inspiring mural for Goldman Sachs in New York

Goldman Sachs commissioned an enormous abstract mural for their new office building in New York by the artist Julie Mehretu, for a wall inside that’s visible to the outside through wall-sized glass windows.

I read with interest because I want to know how it feels to paint without reference material with as much passion as I feel when I’m using reference. When I’ve tried it, I cover a surface as randomly as I can with shape, color, and line – not thinking, just letting it happen. I hide that painting from myself for a while. When I look at it again, within it I might see an arrangement that would look well in a finished work. The results get fairly good responses, but I wonder how other abstract painters feel when working.

It turns out that Mehretu does use her enormous collection of references, anything and everything that she thinks might work down the road, all of which she converts to abstractions. What interested me was how she paints in layers. Some layers contain her interpretation of the references, others intricate line work, still others shapes of very bright colors. Sometimes she sands down the final layer(s) and finds what she’s looking for in the way of a work of art. Most important to me is how powerfully her work speaks to her intuitively, how it tells her what to do next.

“Mural” is an ocean of abstract shapes, lines, suggestions of architecture and things related. Looking at the reproduction in the magazine, I felt as though the elements were carrying me along with them at great speed, reminding me of what happens when I’m Scuba diving a short distance above the bottom of the ocean floor, when the current is strong.

The link to the article doesn’t show the mural, so I’d recommend looking at it in the March 29, 2010 issue of the New Yorker; the article, by Calvin Tomkins, is titled "Big Art, Big Money". If I took a photo or a screen grab of it to post here, that would not do it justice.

Watching Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are"

Here are some thoughts while I watched Spike Jonze’s movie “Where the Wild Things Are”. A good, satisfying dream world requires a lot of work, whether you need it for escape, or for ideas for your own art.

To escape from the struggles of your real life, you create a dream world, and launch yourself there. Your breakaway is exhilarating. You transport yourself to a place that you can manipulate to satisfy your emotional needs. Sadly, all your dream world has to draw on is your experience in real life. Stay too long in the dream world, and it will begin to deliver scenarios and objects similar to those you are trying to escape. To improve your dream world you must improve what you experience in life.

“Where the Wild Things Are”, a fascinating movie by Spike Jonze, is about the dream world of a boy named Max. His real life is typically American: his single mother struggles to support his sister and him, and apparently to find a new father to replace the one from whom she is divorced.

Over the phone, Max’s mother hears that she has to re-write a report for work and have it ready the first thing the next morning. Watch her canoodle with a date in the living room. Max fails to get her to come up to his bedroom and climb into his rocket ship made of blankets and lamps.

Instead Mom wants to prepare dinner. Max, dressed in a wolf costume, and Mom fight. Max runs out of the house into the dark night. Still a “wolf”, he commandeers a little sailboat for two nights and a day until he arrives at a place “Where the Wild Things Are”.

At first, the “Wild Things” look like humans dressed in costumes like Max’s. But these beings, each a unique fantasy creature, are enormous. Their apparent costume features are their actual features. This movie deserves a rave review for its special effects alone. To protect himself from the creatures, Max spins a yarn about power he’s demonstrated in another world. The creatures crown him their king, and all goes well for an enjoyable, rollicking while.

Sadly, Max’s experiences of humans in his real life intrude. Jealousy among the creatures results in a serious fight. They inform Max that they realize that he’s a fake king. When he confesses, the gig is up. Everybody realizes it’s time for him to return to his real world.

Whether or not Max is able to infuse his dream world with new ideas is left up to our imagination. The ending is promising in that regard. Left up to my imagination is whether or not this film will inspire me to create new kinds of animations. The movie’s influences on me need time to gestate. Already: how can I best depict the fight and the resolution? Sounds promising already.

Experiments with animations

Here's my abstract animation of a water flow pattern.

Inspiration for any kind of artist: Spike Jonze

In May, 2009, I launched my first animations into cyberspace.

The catch is to create a clip that is unique and original, that also has universal application. Unlike photographs and illustrations, which can be placed in both still and moving media, animations are limited to the Web and television. Who would use them and for what?

To find out, I watch television and browse websites that use them. At this point, I’m not in a position to expound about what they are used for, by whom, where, why, or how. Although I’m pleased that a few of my clips have sold, I’m also disconcerted by the fact that many have not. To scrutinize, analyze, examine, and ponder my own portfolio to look for a pattern is too myopic an approach.

I backed off to look at the grand scale in a story in the New York Times Magazine.

Spike Jonze, producer of movie hits, “Being John Malcovich” and “Adaptation” struggled for about ten years to get “Where the Wild Things Are” into theaters. Similarities to my small-scale operation: Who is the audience? Why would anyone want to see this movie? It’s a story for children, but during early test viewings, children screamed in horror for their parents to take them out of the theater.

Over time, Jonze and the movie studios arrived at a version that will be in theaters next month. I can’t wait.

It was fun to read about how Jonze inspired himself. Imagine the inside of a recording studio that contains a wealth of props and production equipment. When he and his collaborators, the Beastie Boys, got an idea, they produced it, the crazier and dumber, the better.

Jonze and writer Dave Eggers co-wrote the screenplay of “Wild Things”. To prepare themselves, they watched “Wizard of Oz” and skateboarded around Jonze’s house firing BB guns.

What do I have in front of me? A dog, a rural setting, a home, a car, a remote-controlled garage door; kitchen appliances; fans, standing lamps, a Mac Book Pro with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Flash software; a camcorder, and two Canon still cameras, a digital SLR and a mini.

Could the appliances fight one another? What would my dog dream about? Could the garage door bite off my car’s engine?

Jonze says: “Just come up with an idea and make it.”

So I’ll just come up with an idea. Just?

Anonymous

"Anonymous", by Robert Flynn Johnson, is a collection of photographs taken by anonymous photographers. Most of these captured moments occurred sometime in the early twentieth century. Immediately I wanted to call the book a breath of fresh air, but that's too tepid. I’d say it’s more of a kind of hurricane that rejuvenates rather than destroys, leaving in its wake a clean, freed-of-human-junk landscape and upgraded homes.

The photographs were all taken for fun and/or someone's family photo album, rather than for commerce. There was not a trace of self-consciousness, taking me back eons to a time when I just drew, painted, and took photographs merely for fun. What’s fun for me? I looked for the photographs I wish I’d taken.

An African American boy of about seven or eight, a pacifier in his mouth, holds a rifle.

Holding a scythe like the grim reaper, a white-bearded elderly man on an antique three-wheeler bike, looks over his shoulder at a little girl standing next to her relatively “contemporary” model bicycle.

A middle-aged man, dressed like a lord of a manor, rides an ostrich.

An elderly man in a cart drives the team of pigs that pull it.

The most intense photograph for me was the scene of an automobile accident that decapitated the driver, his head lying on the road a few feet from the wrecked car. It looked as if a photojournalist or a police photographer took the image. I am glad not to have been that photographer. I probably would have fainted or vomited.

Out of all the images in the book, I wish I’d taken only four. Why those? I think that they are strictly first-class photojournalism, all telling a story literally or metaphorically. All other aesthetic considerations are limited by the amount of time the photographer has to take the photograph.

I recommend “Anonymous” to photojournalists.

Information:

“anonymous: enigmatic images from unknown photographers”, edited by Robert Flynn Johnson. Paperback edition published in 2005 by Thames and Hudson, New York, New York 10110.

No More Images to be Displayed in this Blog

I just deleted almost two years’ worth of blog posts and images here when I realized how easy it is to steal imagery in cyberspace. Normally I’d be flattered if anybody liked an image of mine enough to steal it.

But now, another party is vulnerable, the online stock agency that represents me, iStockphoto. An image stolen from me is also one stolen from iStock, who sells my images. I’m told to watermark my images to make theft more difficult, but then I hear how easy it is to remove a watermark.

A month or two ago, I cancelled my Flickr account because of the site’s warning of theft. Recently, a photographer who posted images on Flickr was the victim of a massive theft, but the thief wasn’t done. He opened an iStock account and posted the stolen images there as his own. Immediately, iStock discovered the fraud and removed the thief’s site.

I’ll need to rethink where I’d like to go with this blog humchum.

Blog Traffic King/blogtrafficking.com (cute play with words)

The Blog King, Yaro Starak, is a friendly but extremely professional presence in cyberspace, and a good writer to boot. He makes a point of answering every email with specific answers to your questions. Starak operates a network of blogs, as well as his e-commerce site. As you navigate, you receive information about drawing traffic that is useful enough in its own right; he doesn’t push you to buy anything in order to uncover some big secret.

To maintain individual contact with inquirers, he offers to email you a newsletter, a promise he keeps. The one he sent me this morning included reviews of blogging products and a warning not to SPLOG, a word coined to combine “spam” and “blog.”

“Splogs are set up to get traffic to other sites,” Starak writes. “They are automatically generated and the owners have no intention of producing a useful website — they just want to get traffic. Essentially, they are the SPAM of the blogging world.”

He goes on to say that not all blogging systems distinguish between splogging and niche blogging, where an operator might link all of his sites to one another. He sited a niche blogger whose sites disappeared, erasing all income from the display advertising on his sites, because his blogging system forbids what they consider splogging under any circumstances. Starak gives niche bloggers advice about how to avoid such a misfortune.

I believe you’ll enjoy The Blog King and his information-filled advice. His site address is:

http://www.blogtrafficking.com

True Dog Story

A moment ago, a friend emailed me this story that she swears really happened:

A plane flying from Seattle to San Francisco stopped for a layover in Sacramento. The flight attendant explained that there would be a delay, and if the passengers wanted to get off the aircraft, the plane would re-board in one hour.

A passenger noticed that everyone was leaving the plane except for one man, who appeared to be blind because his seeing-eye dog lay quietly under the seats in front of him throughout the entire flight. He could also tell that the blind man had flown this flight before because the pilot approached him and, calling him by name, said, "Keith, we're in Sacramento for a while. Would you like to get off and stretch your legs?"

The blind man replied, "No thanks, but maybe my dog would like to stretch his legs."

The pilot put on his sunglasses and led the dog off the plane. When people at the gate saw the pilot wearing sunglasses leading a seeing-eye dog, they scattered, not only cancelling their reservations but changing airlines.

Things aren't always as they appear.