Divertemento

Just a closed window processed in the Lab color space. A process practice. Amazing what can be done in the Lab color space.

Who lived in it? I found the house yesterday while driving from Florida to North Carolina. It was by the road. A lonely shell. Some windows and wild bushes all around.

Dream tree

Another compositional no-no...that makes me feel really happy. A total out-of-technical focus but in-meaning focus image that is full of vitality. A dreamlike feeling even though we have a centered image. I like also the graylike color gradient going across the center. I wish most of my photos have the same character...of course, then I would be pinning myself down and that is something I do not want to happen. Let the next image be a surprise both in style and technique, however I want to stick to my images as a meaning creating dialogue between the photo and the viewer.

Blind innocence

Here is another violation of another standard composition rules: keep the image streight.

I feel that this image would not tell the story of a falling and blind inocence while life is calling us to be present, if the photo were standing up.

Imagination

A lone woman walks on the street. A multitude of elements in balance and contrast: her blause and her skirt, her loneliness and the clowd, the bands of upper and lower lights and the inner conversation between the woman and the model picture.

A joy to see this image captured on the blick of the moment of a late evening street walk.

Note: because it was getting late, I was pushing hard on the ISO, so the image is really noisy which gives a dreamlike atmosphere to the photo.

Light, balance and contrast: these are my main elment of work.

When I walk along the street, I entertain myself watching what people display on their windows. This is a window in Old Winston Salem. I like the contrast between the real and the unreal world suggested by the lower pannel with the candle and the upper pannel with flowing old glass. Also I like very much the second contrast between the lower deep dark to the semi-structure recticular reflection of the upper righ corner of another window accross the street.

Visitation

An abstraction riding a truck on the Streets of Berlin. Total warm color balanced on a centered cold triangle. An experimentation on shapes.

Another try

This morning when I was printing the last photo, I thought that maybe a tighter crop would serve better. Here it is. I like it.

Hold me tight

Walking around the path on Saturday hike, I saw this door hook. It called me. I took the little camera I had with me at that time. I pointed carefully. Then I saw the duality of hook and spike. I saw the expanded light balancing the contrasting dark. I was happy.

Boredom or Beauty

Just an image among many. It captured my fancy.

Maybe I am bored or tired after a long day.

I play with the pixels, I feel to erase it.

My wife says it is beautiful. I think that it is just

a postcard. A lonely hand of a tree of a late Fall.

Cloth studio 1

Compostion exercise: white cloth, very noise image. I think I might do a series. I want to explore its compositional posibilities.

Images either talk or spell you. Here are two. One of them was taken just leaving work and the other was taken on a forgone road. Which is which?

The last walk

So much to see in this image: the West actitude toward the East, the individual versus the group, the "one way" sign suggesting that everyone is going in the wrong direction, the hanging rope yelling "turn or you will be hanged", the way people are separated fromt he new world which is the flow of history.

It is hard to believe the plethora of meaning in this simple photo taking a group of people waiting at a Sidney bus stand.

Another World

Sometimes one get lucky. In a visit to Australia, I walked around Sidney and I was taken random shoot of the passing people. Among those photos I found this. I like the contrast the white and black masses and of the women attitude. They seem as to be in a daze. I guess they might thinking about is coming and what is already gone. Very surreal.

Hills to nowhere

I took this photo several years ago on a visit to Santo Domingo: A journey from the country to the city; I was trigger happy. It is hard to capture the spirit of our past. I hope I captured something about this land that I love so much. Regardless...it is beautiful.

Probably I could have cropped the upper segment but then the high cloud structure would be lost and that is a no-no for me.

And this one, what is it?

No much but a good reminder that I do not need a fancy camera to see the world around me. It was taken with a toy one. It is just about 1 megapixel and a 4x6 might be even too large. Still it does look good to me in the computer screeen and I definetily will have in my digital frame.

Sometimes -or most times!- I do not know exactly what will touch my heart.

This photo violates one of the most important composition rules: splitting the center. Well...this image just does it. However, does it please me because of the balancing act between the heavenly clouds and the earth trees? Or maybe because of the high contrast between the gray sky and the orangish forest? You figure.

Just light reflections. What do I find interesting? I donot know but it feels right. I am the little branch inmersed in the world.

Back home

This is a study in composition. A lot of postcard feeling. Masses tied with bar wires and an open space held to the earth by a dark foreground.

Present moment

I love this photo, however I do not know why? Is it the mix of sharp and unsharp areas or the sexual implication of the image itself. Who knows? There is so much here that I believe that I will return eventually again to play with.

Sacred moment

Who says that we need 20 Megapixels camera to take a shot that might touch us. Here is another iphone photo. I did significant cropping since I was at some distance of this fire. It feels as if there were dragons fighting among themselves trying to escape from a the center of the earth.

Morning mist

Early morning, we only have to look around and interesting images pray for our attention. This photo I took it from my room on a misty morning. I like the balance of white and black as a ground for a misty day waiting for me on my way to work.

All this world

Sometimes when I step out of the house, I am surprised by the light dancing on the world. What else to do but to pick up a point and shoot camera that I carry in my pocket and take the image. This photo took me quit some time to fixed because of the noise in the shadows and also because there a car on the lower window that I decided to remove. I like very much the semi-circles and the rectangles composition.

In the beginning

Art work expresses what the artist is at that moment in time. For example, if the artist is happy or at peace, his images will show joy or peace.

Today, I selected this image. At the beginning, I did not know what it was about it. I even doubted it that I took it. Then I saw the man face in the rock. Somebody created this mistical stonned man.

What does it about my soul? What is its message? That is something to think while I engage today on the world affairs.

MOMA

Several years ago, I went to the MOMA. I took this picture. I do not know why I like it so much. That huge empty space and its color balancing the man coming down the steps. That is it!

A lock

I love old cemeteries. This picture I took in a Queen's cementery. I always wonder if walking around the dead is a good idea. Still it is better than asking help from people to let us take their photo. I prefer it.

What I like about? The strength of the links and the lock holding them together. I feeel that they bind life and death together and tha if they ever become loose then I would be gone. I feel a strong sense of security on watching this picture. It is odd aht the photo is a hold on a grave that keep the dead in or the living out? You figure.

Evening shot

One evening on a Yale walk, I saw this composition. It was dark -my first thought of a missing opportunity-but I pulled the camera and I shot it. When I got home I found a beautifull game of light among the dark pixes. The light spots break the monotony of a simple image. The separation of shadows and hightlights, crossing diagonal from the upper left to the lower right, is very pleasing to me.

Ramdom thoughts

Now that I am back into photography, many thoughts are in my mind. For example, every DAY millions of photos are taken, what is the worth of a single photo among them? Probably nil...but the fact that we took it. Who care if others appreciate our photos? Maybe the sharing is the thing after all...maybe just that we took a camera, pointed and capture a vision.

So if others do not see what we see? then what? No much...if I care, then we might need psychological counseling because of a weak self esteem, etc.. And finally, why do we take picture? that is really simple, we just like it. I feel really right about it. That is enough.

You might or might not like my pictures. Sorry, that is not even important. I know that my photos, if seen at all, will be seeing for less than 5 sec, so it is not really so important to be seen but to be...what? That is an interesting question that I would not dare to answer.

So why do we take pictures and why do we see pictures? I think that it is really worthwhile to pounder about it. Maybe we find something...maybe it is light emerging from the Real that come to awaken us...a reminder that we exist among things that claim us.

Ruminations on digital display

I walked on the park today.
Now that I returned to photograpy,
I see good pictures everywhere.
All things shout "take me, take me."
What I have? A tinie little camera: Sony Cybershot DSC-220.
Shame, shame, shame.
I use this camera to take pictures at work.
My old trusty D70 is hidden behind boxes in
storage after our move to NC.

Thanks God the D90 is coming this Tuesday.
But still 4 years without engaging photography.
What is my view? Photoshop feels overwhelming
and the mind is set on NOT taking images to be
printed but to be digitally displayed.
I want to have images that talk to my soul
and to enter in a dialogue of beauty and wonder.
What a change!

I think that the days of printing images are over.
-Hey..I am a photoprinter expert, that I know.-
Still, I think that the future looks like full of
wonderfull images on hanging digital frames.
So maybe instead of of purchasing a new Epson printer,
I should be considering purchasing digital picture frame.
Oh well, that is something for later...
the photo art world is quickly changing and I believe that the
days of photoprinting are over.

Here is an image that I composed several years ago. It is somewhat complex,
full of meaning..Still....it is too intellectual and lacking depth.

A first love, a first love.
So many memories riding on my old D70
soon to be replaced with my upcoming D90.
Sky or heaven...
give me a picture and I am happy.
I give you this old one,
greeting me 4 years back.
"Embriatos, the young."

Today I wonder...
Poetry and photography.
They have so much in common.
That blend feels right.

However, that is a topic for another day.
Here is my dancing ghosts.
I feel joy watching this image.
Why?
A conversation between multiple elements.
I love colors...
even though it could be a nice B&W..
But then we would lose a magical blue.

First image

I tell you a secret:
I took the last image with an iphone camera.
Really?
It just happened. I did not intend it.
I saw the birds flying and I thought: take it, take it....
so I pulled the phone and took the image.
When I reviewed the photos I was amazed:
A great composition ;
See how the upper and lower side of the image talk to each other.
How the hightlights and the shadows talk to each other;
How the birds arrived and listen to the clouds and share their
long stretched views of life:
a light conversation. A delight.
Oleh!!!!

I am alive-->Just created.
Photography.
Why?
Because I like images?
Why?
Because I do.
A moment...please...
Let me show you my last image...
here it is:
welcome to my world.