Coming attractions...

So... what to do in the coming months?  Here are a few ideas -

• DONE - 3 October, 2015 - Paris Zombie Walk - Looking for people with bits falling off in the most ghastly manner possible?  Then this will be the place to be!  If the weather holds I'll likely try my hand at erecting a backdrop and posing the recent near dead in front of le fond.
• DONE - 5-9 November, 2015 - Salon de la Photo - Looking to fondle and touch camera gear and maybe see a few good images or buy some new piece of kit?  This is a huge trade show and all the big photo-companies have their wares on display.  I bought my lovely Sony A6000 at this show last year.  Seriously, all the tasty stuff is here.
• DONE - 27-29 November, 2015 - Vingerons Independent - Looking for a good time or to get lost sampling wine from over 1,100!!! independent producers?  Looking for a reason to walk funny after a few hours of sampling the goods, as it were?  Looking to stock up the cave for the winter? Besides, you _know_ you need help processing those images and the Gift of Bacchus could be just the new "app" you need to "enhance" your sense of creativity.
• 10 January, 2016 - la traversee de Paris - Old cars.  Old motorcycles.  700+ vehicles running the streets of Paris.  Free.  Liberated.  Fun.  Fun.  Fun.  This will be the winter edition and the past three years have been surprisingly dry, if not a little cold.  I hope by saying this I don't jinx the next year's event.
• 3-7 February, 2016 - Retromobile - Old cars.  Old motorcycles.  LOTS of photo-opportunities. I've visited this place every year since moving here.  It's just wonderful.
• 7 February, 2016 - Carnival Parade - Paris is trying to revive it's ancient tradition of celebrating Mardi Gras.  Last year the best groups were from the Americas and boy did they put on a show!
• 6 March, 2016 - Fetes de Femmes - I missed this event last year.  Can't remember why.  But... women and men show up dressed as a queen.  It sounds like fun.  We'll have to see... er... wait.  Hold on.  I'll be away for the month of March.  Something about needing to replenish our supply of porto.  Damn!  Well, a person needs to do what a person needs to do, right?  Good luck.  Have a great time.  

That is all.

This is a rather odd position to be giving a loved one a scalp massage, isn't it?

Textures...

Sometimes an image making theme just shows up all on it's own.  There's nothing I can do when this happens, or so it seems.


This week saw my wife and I on an early metro headed north so she could make an appointment she'd made well before the summer heat had hit us hard.  It was now Fall cool. I tagged along as we enjoy each others company.  Packing my super cheap super small super light camera and lens I wandered off to find something interesting to do.  Inevitably this lead me to a cemetery.

I can spend hours wandering around a good cemetery.  Europe seems to be filled with them so I'm well entertained.  They tend to be quiet and unvisited by tourists and the place I found myself in was just steps away from one of the most tourist crowded places on Planet Earth.  Yet, there I was, all alone with a few feral cats, a couple of squawking crows, and a commanding view of the backsides of rather old artists lofts.  In short, I had the place to myself.


After the usual 20 minutes that it takes to enter into an artist's "mind-space", I discovered one interesting thing after another.  There was something about the light and shapes that captured my mind's eye.  I knew there was a thing or two to be revealed in processing the works later, but I wasn't sure exactly what.

We met friends visiting from our old home town after my wife's appointment.  The man is a photographer too.  He was the one who introduced me to a man who taught me to make hand coated platinum/palladium prints.  He also introduced me to a group of photographers who enjoyed, once a month, sitting around talking "shop" and drinking beers.  I learned a lot from everyone and wish I could meet a group nice people like that here.  It was good to see Patrick and his wife, Mary Jo, again after our several years of living overseas.

The next day I started working on the cemetery images.  I played with the processing just a bit, et voila, suddenly I saw what I'd felt when working the cemetery.  Texture!  Oh, and what pretty texture it is, too.  I had a whole collection of beautiful texture images.


I have to smile at this.  Most of the time I have a very clear idea of what I want and how I will proceed before I start a photo-session.  Not this time.  Serendipity had her way with me.  All I had to do was follow her lead.

The album of images from my hour and fifteen minutes I spent in this magical place can be found on my Flickr site.

Perspectives...

I very much enjoyed the video found in Luminous Landscapes recent article on image making.  I particularly liked Brooks Jensen's point of view.

Have a look and see what you think.

I learned something that I hadn't realized.  Until recently, photo reproduction in magazines and books seldom matched original print quality.  This influenced _how_ we looked at images.

It's pretty easy to understand that even as original print and book or magazine publishing quality approach eachother, _how_ we look at images is strongly influenced by the technologies we now use.

There are some very important insights in these things.  The challenge is how to understand them and use them in my own work.


Yesterday I saw something linked from SonyAlpha Rumors that made me smile.  A German blogger shared his realization that even cheap camera gear can make wonderful images.

It sounded like something I might have said more than a time or two over the years.