21st Century Hieroglyphics

Yesterday I made my second visit to and old quarry in Quincy, Massachusetts. An area that at one time was filled with water has been filled in with earth, probably to prevent people from being injured or killed diving into the quarry water. The result is a grassy space surrounded by rock cliffs that have been liberally decorated with a wide variety of graffitti.

Looking at these granite walls, you are assaulted by a visual cacophony of abstract designs, haunting beings, social commentary, and even memorials to those who have passed on.

Having photographed the graffitti last year in detail, and with my follow-up images, I am planning an exhibit at the Contemporary School for the Arts and Gallery in Hagerstown, Maryland, opening September 5. Revisiting the site gave me a chance to reshoot a couple of things from a year ago and capture some new views.

Here are a few more from the raw files from yesterday:

I’ll have more details about the exhibit in a future post.

Boston

We made the drive to Boston on Tuesday and are staying for a few days with my friend Allen in Braintree, a suburb south of Boston.

The weather yesterday was magnificent so we took the commuter boat from Quincy into downtown Boston and trekked around enjoying the day and the sights. We worked our way to the Back Bay area, which is the “other” downtown.

The new John Hancock Insurance headquarters building is an astonishing architectural achievement by I. M. Pei and Henry N. Cobb.

Depending on which direction you approach it from, you might see what looks like a basically rectangular structure which lacks design. But as you walk around the building, you notice that the corners of the building are not right angles, but the footprint of the building is a parallelogram, giving the impression of a knife edge from certain angles.

Walking around the back Bay area the building dominates the view but in many ways the farther away you get from the building the more impressive it gets.

The building’s surface is like a mirror, reflecting all around it and esssentially using the surrounding area as it’s facade.

At right, The “old” John Hancock headquarters building is reflected in the mirror-like surface of the “new” tower.

Boston is a fascinating city with some great architecture spanning literally centuries from colonial times up to the current century.

Workshops

The other night I went to the first meeting of a 3 month workshop/course let by Benita Keller, a West Virginia photographer and teacher.

I was attracted to this workshop because of the emphasis on stretching my vision but will require me to go back into my memory to remember how to work with black and white film in the darkroom.

I have gotten so committed to digital that I had to buy a 35mm SLR so I could participate in the workshop. As it turned out, I found a good Nikon N90s on Ebay for $97 plus shipping!

The course covers the genres of landscape, events, portraiture and photojournalism and the goal will be for the participants to photograph people, places, and events in Jefferson County, WV for the next couple of months and then present the results of our work in an exhibit in October. The whole thing got me fascinated enough to buy the camera so I could participate.

The first meeting was mostly introductory, with several of the eight participants having little or no experience in a darkroom. So much of the discussion was an overview of darkroom procedures and a orientation to the community darkroom in Shepherdstown. Although I did a lot of black and white film processing and printing back in the 80s and early 90s, I found the review to be very useful to get my brain focused on the process. It’s been something like 17 or 18 years since I made a serious black and white print in a darkroom.

Anyway, tomorrow I will be going in for a hands-on introduction to the equipment and maybe try to make a print.

Meanwhile, I will be missing the next two meetings of this workshop because I will be leaving next week for the Maine Media Workshops where I will take a week-long workshop with fine art photographer and teacher Tillman Crane. I am really excited about this because I have wanted to take one of their workshops for many years.

The title of the workshop is “Extraordinary Images in Ordinary Places.” I was really attracted to this concept because I do not have many opportunities to travel to “extraordinary” places. I also really like Tillman’s work.

Hopefully, I will be able to post some impressions and stories about these experiences. Stay tuned …

“Vortex” at the Ice House

One of the new images I am currently showing at the Ice House Artists’ Co-op is called “Vortex”. The Ice House Gallery is at Independence and Mercer Streets in Berkeley Springs, WV.

"Vortex"

No, this is not a Photoshop creation. It is an actual digital photograph captured with my Nikon D300 and post processed only minimally. So what is it?

At the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, there is a tunnel that goes under the street from the original gallery building to the new east building. Along the wall is an incredible light display of moving lights. I captured a number of shots of this but I was waiting for the display to fill out into this view.

Juried Show at VisArts in Rockville

The Metropolitan Center for the Visual Arts (VisArts) in Rockville, Maryland is the evolution of the Rockville Arts Place, which was where I first showed work in a juried photography exhibit back in the early 1990s. I discovered the latest incarnation of this organization in March when I was in the Rockville area and decided to drop in to see what it was doing. If you look at their web site using the link above, you’ll see that it is a fabulous facility with a wide range of programs.

On that trip, I met John Hoover, the Director of Photography, who told me of their plans to further expand the Photography Program into a real center of creative photography learning and activity. This was very exciting to me since I have bemoaned the lack of such an organization in the DC area, or at least within a reasonable drive from home in Martinsburg, WV.

I was delighted to receive an email yesterday that two images had been accepted in the 2009 VisArts (Rockville, MD) Members Exhibition. One of the images is “Ghost in the Machine”, which was shown in my previous post.

The other image for VisArts is called “View from the Court”.

"View From the Court"

This was a high dynamic range capture during one of my recent trips to DC. I did an HDR merge of five exposures and then converted to black and white using Nik Silver EFX Pro.

The VisArts exhibit opens August 2 and the reception will be Friday, August 7, 6:30-8:30pm.

More From 2008

In the effort to get caught up with the highlights of last year and get into more current activities, here is another my favorite images from 2008. It was captured in Cass, WV, the home of the Cass Scenic Railroad Park, a West Virginia State Park.

The park has a collection of old Shay locomotives, which were designed specifically for pulling train-loads of lumber up and down the hills of West Virginia timber country. This shot is a detail of one of the engines that was being prepared for the excursion up the mountain. The steam escaping from various places reminded me of ghosts.

"Ghost in the Machine"

First HDRI Efforts

A am planning to try to get caught up with the blog, which has been mostly idle for a year.

For starters, I have two images from a shoot at the old Interwoven Sock Mill complex in Martinsburg. Interwoven was at one time one of the largest (if not the largest) manufacturer of socks in the country and was one of the major employers in West Virginia. The buildings have been empty for quite some time but are generally structurally solid even if they are pretty messy at the moment.

Having been studying and experimenting with High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI) for a few months, I wanted to try the technique on a real subject. The end result was quite satisfying:

Interwoven Mills Martinsburg WV February 2008

The Second image is one of my favorites, and was very successful having earned an “Award of Distinction” from the 2008-2009 West Virginia Arts and Crafts Guild Biennial Competition, and also was selected for exhibit in the 2009 Cumberland Valley Photographic Salon at the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts in Hagerstown, MD.

"September 1970"

I’ve been doing more HDRI and as I learn more about it, I my appreciation of the power of the technique grows. I’ll be writing more about this in the future.

New Image June 16, 2009

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted here. I am going to try again to update on some regular basis, at least posting a new image.

I’ve been traveling to DC this spring and last Sunday I made my fifth trip to photograph the monuments and other architecture from Capitol Hill to the Lincoln Memorial and in between. Although it is a bit of a trek to get there and back, there are many good photo opportunities there.

Here’s one of the images from last Sunday:

Jefferson Memorial

Trigger Image

I have established a gallery on Trigger Image, based in the United Kingdom, which bills itself as “The Creative Alternative for Stock Photography.” Trigger Image provides a platform for world-wide rights-managed licensing in a creative environment that rejects the commonplace stock images that are so common.

This is experimental for me since I have been hesitant to put my best work out there in the stock arena. Since this is a rights-managed system rather royalty-free “microstock” I am hopeful that if someone licenses my work it will provide a reasonable payday.

Art in Architecture at the Ice House

One of the oldest forms of art is architecture. Artistic design of living, working, and ceremonial spaces enhances all of our life’s activities. The Morgan Arts Council presents “Art in Architecture”, an exhibit to explore how architecture is depicted in art and how artistic design of architectural elements can enhance a living or working space. The exhibit will be in the Special Events Gallery at the Ice House in Berkeley Springs, WV.

The exhibit will feature a wide range of work from painting and photography to fine wood and metal work, stained glass, and jewelry.

I will be exhibiting several prints from my “Cityscapes” series and the “Interwoven Mills” series. I am also the curator for the exhibit.

The exhibit will feature a total of 16 artists. Here is the full list:

Rip Smith (Photography)
Alice Webb (Digital photo art)
Judy Rand (Cabinetry)
Becca Jones (Wood sculpture)
Lee Badger (Metal sculpture)
John Fisher (Torii jewelry)
Jerry Smith (Stick furniture)
South Mountain Creations (Carved sink)
Peter Wood (Metal sculpture)
Steve Adams (Wood bench)
Mary-Jo Bennett Photography)
Ralph Gonzalez (Stained Glass)
Doug Ritenburg (Photography)
Kat Cimaglio (Acrylic painting)
Wilson Webb (Painting)

There will be an opening reception Friday, April 4 from 7:30-9:00pm at the Ice House Gallery.

Directions here.

Hope to see you there!