Spring, season of hope - calendar bookmarks

Originally I had the spring set ready months ago but in the last minute decided to change all the images to reflect something more cheerful, especially since we have all been experiencing an extended winter, including here in northern California where it has been raining even last week. 

To download the PRINTER version, click here

It was my original intention to photograph not only our cherry tree just outside the kitchen, but a variety of other flowering fruit trees, especially one of my neighbors just up the street. Unfortunately the storm front we had the previous weekend had devastated their trees blossoms and mine were still very small buds, while the apple trees or any of the other fruit trees that I planted earlier this year were just beginning to show signs of growth and far from having any flowers.

The creative objective was to express the delicacy of these flowers and their etherial nature that masks them so beautiful, before their short-lived existence is plucked by a breeze, when numerous petals burst into the air, descending gracefully like giant snowflakes, resting scattered about on the ground.

As of last Thursday the weather decided to be somewhat cooperative by offering decent light, while on the other hand winds proved the whole photographic session nothing more than a challenge; yet during the attempts of achieving my photographic goals I was surrounded by the activities of bees. These industrious insects were moving about very fast, that by the time I had found one in my viewfinder, it was too late, the bee had moved on and I had not even begun to compose the shot. Apart from the bees and a couple of small birds arriving at the bird feeder, I was not alone. Another insect had made it its mission to explore more closely some of the flowers for any hidden meal ticket lurking about.

It was not until this weekend that we experienced spring like weather with temperatures above normal and even shattering a few records. Even the wind had settled down a bit to be considered nothing more than a breeze, offering brief glimpses of hope and opportunity for me to capture numerous more exposures, so that I old have a decent number of frames from which to select three.

Since the completion of the painting ‘White on White,’ I have begun to paint several smaller versions from the Typography Graveyard series, including a much larger painting based on an inner-city industrial wall. When these paintings are completed, I shall share them with you.

Thank you for your visit

and comment . . .

Egmont

My 2011 calender for you

As we begin the year, I would like to share with you some of my images recently posted for download in the form of bookmarks. These 2011 Calendar Bookmarks  cover the first quarter of this year and feature three of my favorite ones captured in 2010 from the Berkeley telephone pole series Typography Graveyard.

For downloadable PRINTER version, click here and enjoy

In general things have been slow all last year due to my being in cardiovascular rehabilitation and though I graduated at the end of August, I since returned six weeks later till early mid-December. The year 2011 will remain guarded, yet I have decided that health issues should no longer dictate my life as it has these past two years., this also means no longer bringing it in future posts.

A few days ago, during meditations I scribbled a few words in my notebook, then revisited them the following day. The following line represents my path for this year.

“The dreams you have sealed away,

give them the breath of life so that you may experience living.”

In closing I wish to thank you dear reader for having ventured with me these last nineteen months and though I cannot predict what this years offerings will bring for us, my notebooks have been filled with ideas which deserve another closer look.

Thank you for your visit

and comment . . . 

Egmont

Typography Graveyard

Typography Graveyard Slideshow

Rains have come early this year, altering the landscape of paper layers into a fusion of fibers. While pages of colour slowly bleed, leeching their tones into the depths like a toxin contaminating others; new fliers are added as the weekend draws near with the same vigor and speed as before. Just like the traffic that varies little with the hour until much later in the evening, then returns six-seven hours later to start the cycle all over again.

This network of telephone poles which has become the unwilling participants in another form of communications has also become an obsession and though the series has slowed to a trickle in 2007 and 2008 as my visits to Berkeley became less regular, I also felt I had exhausted the subject matter. It became more difficult to find points of interests that differed from what I had previously photographed, yet with my return to cardiovascular rehabilitation that occupied a good portion of this year, I had another closer look.

The renewed interests had me returning to certain street where the concentration of these types of telephone poles where at, continually searching for the exceptional.

        

        

        

An expression of my gratitude

I rose early to arrive in Berkeley as we were engulfed by fog that still had not been burned off by the rising sun, in order to cruise specific streets where fliers are regularly posted onto layers of stables and paper remnants. Once I have found a section of a couple of blocks, I park the car and gather the necessary equipment; all of this feels like I am going out on a safari, hunting my objective, the elusive, random ephemeral abstract beauty. Because I am using my friends’ 1:1 ratio macro lens, I am searching for specific abstracts that are a little larger than a few postage stamps, not easily achieved.

Once a possible section has been found, the tripod is set up, the camera positioned. A few more critical observations and calculations are made before three variable exposures are quickly achieved. A few more adjustments to tripod and camera for another angle and the whole process is repeated for the next set of multiple images. This process is repeated several more times until I have squeezed every possible second I have remaining of the early morning before I have to be at my cardiac rehabilitation class.

And as I enter my third month of dealing with a failed open-heart by-pass graft, I reflect upon the past two and the five to six hours I spend each day I attend the program, the progress has been marginal, suffering a few setbacks, leaving me with no clear answers and still too many uncertainties. However, focusing only on the negative means I am allowing the situation control me and though it is still a major distraction, I have been trying to find a balance.

One of the goals of the cardiac program is to be generally more active, especially accomplishing more walking and to achieve this, we were given a pedometer to guide our progress. So today I looked over the numbers I have been recording in my notebook to see that in seven weeks I have covered 181.53 miles (292.144 km), averaging 25.932 (41.734 km) per week, or 3.70 (5.955) a day, with the most in one day being 8.46 miles (13.615 km) when I visited the Pacific coast.

Now to help pass the time during my walks, I have been combining it with photography; especially focusing on the series I began a little more than five years ago. Walking down Ashby, Haste or Dwight , holding my extended tripod with camera securely mounted, inspecting each telephone pole, searching for the visual gem.

As I continue to cope with the disruption to my previous routine and life style, the past two months have felt like being stranded, isolated in a time warp from which there appears to be no escape. I have missed visiting your blogs, to see what you have been up to and leaving a comment, wile sharing with you my own creative events.

Please feel free to download the full size version of

the bookmark page by clicking here to gain access.

As I bring this update to my ‘Leave of Absence’ to a close, I wish to express my sincerest gratitude to those who have sent me letters, cards and emails, checking up on my progress, sending me encouragements and wishing me well, I also desire to say thank you to those who have stopped by either of my blogs, just to see if there was anything new.

I would also like to say thank you to those who have decided to become a follower during my absence and in due time I shall also return the honour and list your blog at my blog roll and resource blog, The DIRECTORY.

I would like to reciprocate by sharing with you a few images of my excursions that I have designed into a page of bookmarks that you can download in full size here, then print out on card stock. You then have the option to punch a hole at the top for a string or ribbon.

If you would like to check out my other version of the books, please visit Four Seasons in a Life.

Wishing my American friends a wonderful and safe forth of July.

I thank you for your visit

and comment . . .

Egmont

A leave of absence

In the last two months I have fallen considerable behind on many levels, this includes responding to those who have commented and especially my visiting your blogs with any regularity.

Many of you also know of my medical challenges that have been a major distraction, particularly the previous month learning after an angiogram that the reason for always feeling tired and short of breath was due to a collapsed graft from the open heart surgery three years earlier.

Since some of the lateral veins to the artery have tried to take over, the current method of dealing with this is through medication and a three-day a week’s cardiac rehabilitation program that will last for three months,

Because this program occupies a large portion of my day, I would only fall further behind and so I have no option other than to take a leave of absence while I am in cardio rehabilitation.

This does not mean I will not be looking in now and then on your blogs, just that I shall not be posting. The decision was not taken lightly as I have worked hard these passed months building my blogs.

Typography of the forgotten - series

As the medical center is in Berkeley, I will have the opportunity to continue a series on telephone poles that I have been observing and photographing these passed four years. Their abstract appearance has intrigued me, even influenced some of my paintings, and now I have a chance to capture with greater frequency and regularity their continued temporary change and evolution.

I look forward to my return in August, sharing with you stories and images I have been working on.

Thank you for your visit

Egmont

Trial by fire

Much of my abstract inspirations come from industrial sites where corrosive elements coincide with fabricated structures, however this time I found myself in a parking lot, behind Barnes & Noble bookstore, admiring a dumpster.

What made it different from the usual ‘beat-up, graffiti spray painted’ and just trashy dumpster was, that at some point it had endured an internal fire. This caused the exterior to undergo some very interesting and dramatic changes to its surface and over time nature’s elements added to the outcome of the fire, including that of the refuse collectors and the stores personnel.

Full moon rising among planets

Though the dumpster is in plain view, I am sure little attention is given to its presence, except for someone in need of boxes for shipping, storage or a move, for the stores stockroom person has broken down and nicely folded their shipping boxes and deposited them in the ‘paper and cardboard only’ dumpster.

Blistering steel

The garbage container with its two metal covers swung back and filled to the brim with cardboard boxes appeared of no special interest at first glance, especially from a distance. After a second look, one that was more direct and focused to its mid and lower section, I was dragged into its seductive trap.

Upon closer examination it became clear that it was time to pull out the tripod and camera from the trunk of the car, grab myself a couple of the shipping boxes from the dumpster to serve as ground cover to sit upon and I begin taking pictures for the next forty or fifty minutes.

Innate combustion — Into the inferno’s abyss

What I had discovered was a wonderful abstract realistic palette of only the primary colours, including a host of varied textures, all of which were interacting with the random marks of human intervention.

Petroglyphs

Each image was carefully framed in the viewfinder until it satisfied personal compositional sensitivities and what I saw and tried to illustrate before pressing down on the shutter release. While with each passing minute the metal surface began unfolding more and more of its encrypted stories like a good book. There, in the depths of the pages, the Shamans hand points to the petroglyph, where the sun’s rays bless the land, there the buffalo and antelope roam plenty along the a river that empties into the lake.

Warnings too are foreshadowed, for when the full moon rises among the planets, from the depths of the inferno’s abyss, the land will shifts, erupt in a combustion of energy and its force will swell to the surface, unleashing a tsunami that travels the seas until it reaches the land of blistering steel.

The Tsunami

If we let our imagination be free to interpret what

our eyes have witness, we will see so much more.

For “the job of the artist

is to always deepen

the mystery”

—Francis Bacon.

Thank you for your visit

Egmont

We are not alone

Dreams taking flight, #N004232 — May 1, 2007

Today a heavy fog has blanketed the area as it lingers, filtering through the landscape with the stillness of a dream; winters melancholy soon shall pass, bowing out to an approaching spring that slowly rises from the darkness. Though morning light has crossed passed the mountains ridge, there are no shadows but in my room, as candles flames flicker to the slightest movement, as its warm amber light baths the surroundings with solace.

Though I am alone physically, I am not. Your words to ‘Life’s Fragility’ have given me company and turned an ordinary day into one filled with compassion. It was a difficult post for both the reader and the author, as any obstacles were overcome by courage.

In these last weeks I have visited your comments often, I feel we have become closer, as you so graciously shared your thoughts and something about your own life or of the ones you love.

A spirit set free, #N004778 — May 4, 2007

Recently I came across a quote that expressing what many of us who blog have come to experience, myself included. They are of the German romantic poet and playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), who’s ‘Trauerspiel’ and accompaniment of Beethoven’s OP-82 that I was ceremoniously named after. The translation is not perfect, though multiple sources seem to agree on the words, it is not perfect as translations go, it still retains Goethe’s thinking.

Goethe in the Campagna, 1786

by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein

The world is so empty if one only thinks of

mountains, rivers and cities;

but to know someone who thinks and feels with us,

and who, though distant is close to us in spirit,

this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.

I have been deeply touched by everyone’s visit and with what you wrote, more so than I could ever express and I hope, I had replied to each one of you individually as promised.

The images of the iris flowers are from our garden and I wish you to have one for yourself as a reflection of my sincere appreciation for your presence. If you would like a digital file at high resolution to print out for your home, please send me an email and tell me which one you desire, also make sure you are able to receive a PhotoShop electronic file that is 15-17 MB in size or if you prefer a much smaller JPG document.

I wish you all a wonderful day,

Egmont

Life’s fragility

Yesterday I lit a candle to mark the fourth birthday in my second life, commemorating the day I was to have passed only to cheat death, when doctors performed a triple-by-pass open-heart surgery. The residual consequences have been mixed and though I am grateful to be alive, the side effects of the surgery have become an almost daily battle. Especially the bouts with depression have become more numerous these last one and half years, lasting longer and becoming more sever, that I have even begun to question if the quality of life gained has been worth this daily struggle.

Following the months after the surgery I was very optimistic, looking forward to a better life. Knowing I had better chance, more then most men, to possible live beyond the national average. I would like to regain that optimism, making whatever few years I do have left seem like a lifetime. As the candle celebrating the birthday slowly burned, its light flickered now and then, to unseen currents, when a little hot wax dribbled down the tapered shaft, marking the beginning of my forth year, which was now more important than ever before.

As I reflected, I could not help but also encompass the events that are unfolding by the hour ever since an earthquake had struck the city of Port au Prince, Haiti. It is events like these that we are reminded how fragile life is; unfortunately it takes a disaster or a personal crisis for most of us to understand this.

The arrival of winter as autumn passes

Wildcat Canyon Road, Berkeley California - December 27, 2005, #22281

In many ways this series of photographs reflect life’s fragility. They were taken one week after my collapse, which was later determined to have been a heart attack, and two weeks prior to the open-heart surgery. To this day they are some of the most personal and best work I have produced in the last four decades. Not only do they represent a pivotal moment in my then fifty-six years, they also reflect life’s last will and testament that was voided on January 16, 2006. And so whenever I think about the surgery or the month of December or the month of January, the mind recalls those several days in which I visited a small stretch of earth with tripod and camera in hand, searching.

If you were to ask if I knew what it was that was being sought those last days in December of 2005, the answer would have always been met with a blank gaze, then followed with utter silence. I just knew that regardless of the weather I was compelled, no driven if you would, to capture an image. Only months later did I come to understand that the image was the message and that it was meant for me. It was nature letting me know that my life was like the many leaves that had fallen and now represented my very existence that was about to expire. Yet I am here, facing doubt and an uncertainty, while still trying to make sense of it all.

Though I considered January 16 to be my second birthday and not just an anniversary, I did nothing more than light a candle, watching its bright amber flame slowly burn, while the candles scent began to settle all around the room. Though birthdays are meant to be celebratory, I did not wish it so, besides no one remembered and I did not say a word. It just seemed that some birthdays are best spent with ones self.

A last hurrah

Wildcat Canyon Road, Berkeley California -December 28, 2005, #22294

The inevitable hope

Wildcat Canyon Road, Berkeley California -December 29, 2005, #22326

December’s blanket

Wildcat Canyon Road, Berkeley California -December 30, 2005, #22349

Rain-washing away the sins of the day

Wildcat Canyon Road, Berkeley California -December 30, 2005, #22351

Technical Notes:

Camera: Sony DSC-V1, 5MB, Full Frame

Computer: Macintosh G4

Post work: Photoshop v8 (CS-I)

Post work notes:

Levels, Curves were all individually set.

Channel Mixer for all images at R+40/G+50/B+20/Constant-5
Afterwards converted to Duo-tone for secondary colour

Gaussian Blur was applied to all images

Irving Penn remembered

Irving Penn, June 16, 1917 – October 7, 2009

Regardless of ones profession, there are those in our field whom we admire and excel to be like, so when I heard from a friend more than a month after of Irving Penn’s passing away on Wednesday, October 7 at the age of 92, I sank into my chair feeling hopeless, feeling I had just lost my best friend.

Even though I never met Irving Penn, his unique style had a significant impact upon my own work when photographing people. I first became aware of his work when I purchased “Worlds in a Small Room”, which was published in 1974 by Penguin Books. This thin square publication now well worn with kindness over the past thirty years, it is still my most favorite cherished photo book.

What was striking about this collection of black and white photographs was that the sets were bare of any distractions; this way the focus was always on the individual or groups pictured. In addition the lighting remained consistent, always a cool natural northern light that produced considerable details and deep dark shadows, which were rich in depth.

Despite a number of the photographs in the book were taken inside a building with numerous large windows facing the north that flooding the interior with an even flat neutral light that painters love and Irving embraced, the majority of these photographs were shot in a large ‘make-shift’ tent that Irving traveled with. It’s large size, that of a modern day living room, allowed Penn complete control of the daylight, while the tents canvas also served as a perfect backdrop.

The combination of these features I applied to my photography when photographing clients and friends, though my tent was the inside of a studio and the northern light a single strobe light inside a large soft-box, it emulated very well Irving Penn’s vision. The only thing I did was add a large fill card opposite the light source to bounce light back at the subject, softening the shadows and also maintaining the details in the darker areas. Even today a number of my digital still-life photographs are set in a room that has the northern light exposure.

Besides Irving Penn's lighting approach to photograph, I admired his compositional style of angles, shapes and the drama the elements created as he filled the frame with the person or model when working for Vogue magazine. Above all, Irving Penn never stopped growing as an artist by resting on his laurels. He was always exploring new ideas, not only in what he photographed, but also investigating and trying different printing methods, including producing a number of his images as palladium prints.

With his passing, he was the last survivor of three who defined for several decades what fashion photography was all about. Now Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton and Irving Penn are all together again. May they share a glass of wine and reminisce how their lives paralleled one another.

Irving Penn, June 16, 1917 – October 7, 2009

Richard Avedon, May 15, 1923 – October 1, 2004

Helmut Newton, born Helmut Neustädter, 31 October 1920 – 23 January 2004

Irving Penn’s “Small Trades” exhibit at The Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

September 9, 2009–January 10, 2010.

     

Irving Penn

Small Trades

Virginia A. Heckert and Anne Lacoste

J. Paul Getty Museum

272 pages, 9 1/2 x 12 inches


259 tritone illustrations

ISBN 978-0-89236-996-6
hardcover, $49.95

NOTICE: All images featured in this article retain their original copyrights to whom they were issued.

Self-portrait with shattered mirror

There have been a number of self-portraits over the last thirty-five or forty years, which have marked periods and events in my life, and over the course of these many years the photographs have captured various stages of appearance and the state of my health. Mostly all but one were shot in a controlled environment, carefully setting a stage in my studio with a proper background and lighting, including an extra long cable release. However ‘Self-portrait with shattered mirror’ was unplanned and completely spontaneous.

I had been on another one of my photographic excursions, documenting empty structures that were surrounded by a new residential and part business redevelopment on a former company owned community referred to as The Hercules Dynamite Factory. The majority of the former homes and other structures were boarded up, but in some cases, concealed openings could be discovered that teenagers had created looking for adventure and excitement.

Self-portrait with shattered mirror

Ladies Room — Hercules, California, May 22, 2005

Digital duo-tone

Through one of these openings I had entered and explored for the past hour or so, a number of smaller rooms that were adjacent to the ballroom and dining hall, all of which looked as though it dated back to the early 1940’s. I had closed my eyes, pretended to hear the Andrews Sisters singing and stomping their feet to Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B or Rum or Coca Cola, with walls reverberating the energy of the band and the sound of a clarinet. Yet all that could now be heard was a deadening silence interrupted by an occasional vehicle passing by.

I continued photographing, focusing at times on areas of the building that could tell a visual story of a child being physical and mental abused and that which it had suffered be reflected in the remains of these interiors, when I came upon the ladies room and a shattered mirror.

From a technical standpoint this is not my best work, when viewed from the esthetics and especially what it represents personally, the photograph captured the essence of a childhood lost through the eyes of an adult.

Influences

Artist working with different kinds of medium experience from time to time different phases, adjusting ones visual compass, afterwards returning to any project left undone and seeing it with a new vision. As I have looked back these numerous weeks upon the body of my work, from writing, photography, collage, painting, or drawing, even my attempts at combining any of these expressive forms, it seems I am still seeking a different structure of expressing my thoughts or creative urgings, not having settled into a comfortable set of combinations with a predictable outcome.

A repetitious humdrum of beautiful patterns

Engine World, Emeryville, California

Digital duo-tone photograph, June 12, 2006

In reviewing my body of work, I look for a common thread that unites these various elements and forms in the end a unique composite identity by which I am identified and one recognizes the artwork as being of my hand.

Yet there is also the work that is an exploration of an idea or an opportunity, one that is infused with the influences of time and distance. What is created is not entirely ones own, rather the results of ones education, ones exposure to the ever changing surroundings. And though art is what we make it, it is still a reflection of what surrounds us.

My artwork is no different; it has not escaped these influences, despite my reclusive lifestyle.

The industrialization of the machine

Engine World, Emeryville, California

Digital duo-tone photograph, June 12, 2006

Like many of us, we remember one or two things with vivid detail going as far back as our childhood, even if it is just an image we remember. For me I recall when Mr. Crawford, my sophomore high school art instructor and for an additional two more years, showed us paintings by the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian. Unbeknownst to my instructor, the exposure to Mondrian’s work and class assignment that followed, which was to recreate our own version of Mondrian’s artistic style had forever a profound impact in how I viewed everything around me and how I would interpret what I saw in artistic terms.

The primary coloured squares and rectangles acting as weights to balance the vertical and horizontal black lines, intersecting into non-representational form in neoplasticism style of De Stijl, these areas became for me mathematical sequences with which to build upon a compositional idea that is then overlaid onto the sectio divina (Golden proportion).

March of the machine

Engine World, Emeryville, California

Digital duo-tone photograph, June 12, 2006

Though Mondrian’s compositions continues to have a considerable influence, it is occasionally draped by supplementary influences affecting my other work and as I photograph the rows and rows of transmissions, motors and other vehicle mechanics, I am reminded of Margret Bourke-White’s photography. In 1929 she started working for Fortune and a year later for Life magazine, when she became the first Western photographer allowed into the Soviet Union, capturing industrial images at a tractor factory in Stalingrad. Her career as an industrial photographer in which she captured the beauty and power of machines, later became known as the photographic essay technique.

1513.C — 3.0-1 Transmission

Engine World, Emeryville, California

Digital duo-tone photograph, June 12, 2006

While the many images I produced at this location are not consciously following in the style of Margret Bourke-White’s photography, a selection of images were treated as rich duo-tones with a slight overall softening to emulate a series of industrial photographs she took. The photographs I represent with this post, not only pay tribute to her body of work, but also remains true to my own vision and voice as a fine art photographer.

Infinite

Engine World, Emeryville, California

Digital duo-tone photograph, June 12, 2006