Raft

New panorama:

It's entitled raft and I am really pleased with how this came out. The bird was given to me by my neighbor, the raft came together with twigs from the yard, and the water environment was composed from creek bordering our property. The raft was photographed with the bird skeleton floating in a deep blue water table (this is shared equally between our son and our dog Barley-Rox who despite being a sixty-pound boxer, can still find a way to lay down in the table).

I started this off with the intent of showing my students that they could be creative with their current panorama project in digital photography class. The panorama doesn't need to be typical in the sense that the the photographer needs to complete a 360 degree rotation in pictures. Moving some objects around a bit in Photoshop can work as well. This work was composed of four images covering about 160 degrees.

Like the other works in this series, I will print the image out on cloth and adhere it to a plywood frame. It is then coated with multiple layers of wax.

Left Nut

I think the title of this one is still up in the air. But the work is done. I think I'm happy with the way it came out. It was such a powerful initial photograph that I was not quite sure how to do it justice. And, like all creative works, it's quite possible I didn't. The full 360 degree panorama is on my website.

Any suggestions for a title? I'd give my...

Now I can get to work on my beer labels for Indie's Mutt Brown Ale.

Back to work...

I'm back to working on my Dig series. I'm pretty happy with this one I'm calling Oracle. It took me a bit to figure out what exactly should be emanating from the dead frog (thanks to Malena Bergmann for allowing me photographic access to her dead things collection). I had originally had an oil rig placed on the mountaintop, but this seemed far to obvious. Like all the images in this collection, the work will exist as a printed piece on cloth with a wax coating. It's already published as a 360 degree Flash-based panorama on my website.

What? Digging for oil isn't good for the environment?

So, I went with two frogs and smokey breath. As are the other pics in the series, the landscape comes from my poor attempts at charcoal drawing. Hooray for low-fi!

Squirrel, You Will Find a Home.

Today was a visually productive day. Or at least it will be. I photographed a friends bone collection. Err, well, her collection of dead things. There were a few incredibly fascinating specimens.



Like this squirrel whose arms were spread as if it had been crucified. As soon as I framed it in my viewfinder I knew...I will use this image.

And now I feel as if I have some sort of responsibility for it. Not the dead squirrel, but the image of the dead squirrel. You see, the image, bathed in it's white surround - it's such a beautiful metaphor already. I just want to use it and not fuck it up.

And we digital artists and digital photographers do this some time. We take things top far. We make the real artificial and in doing this it becomes superficial. So squirrel, I promise you this. You will find a home within my imagery (hopefully, within this Dig series I'm currently constructing), where you belong. A visual home that makes you metaphorically stronger. You will be the amazing bionic dead squirrel.

Don't Eat My Rainbow

A recent word gem from my two and a half year old son - "Dad, don't eat my rainbow."

Quinn clearly has a love for words as the complexity of this phrase - well, it strikes me that this is his first metaphor. And a powerful one as well. It reminds me of the classics - "Don't take my sunshine away" and "Don't rain on my parade" but with a greater degree of depth and nuance. Now I can guess what your thinking. He's two. You are his dad and reading more into this than you should. He can't even get his colors right half the time. Yes, you would be right on all accounts.

But still. Consider this. When he blurted out this gem we were in Florida for his grandmothers memorial service - she had just passed away after struggling with a wicked cancer for two years. A general sense of melancholy and loss hung about. Quinn is a very observant little boy and picks up on these things. So, when he adamantly suggested that I should not "eat his rainbow," I really think he was saying that he'd found a moment of reprieve, that after the storm of events the skies were clearing, his rainbow had appeared in some form. So you see. He's brilliant.