Picture Notes

This is my 2nd favorite river in the United States, the Shenandoah River as it flows through the Shenandoah Valley near Front Royal, VA.  My favorite river is The Rainbow River in Marion County, Florida, an unbelievably clear deep river originating in a spring.

There is a new exhibit on Pompeii at the National Gallery of art and it reminded me of this poem that I wrote about Sarasota when I lived there.  Herculaneum was on the other side of Mount Vesuvius when it blew up in 79 AD and the town was covered with 20 meters of lava, mud and ash and lay hidden, intact, for 1600 years.  According to Wikipedia the town is still being excavated.  Sarasota may be lost because of rising ocean levels due to global warming.

Sarasota,

In a thousand years
people will come here
to dive for artifacts
in a world that was lost
like Herculaneum.
We’ll be found in closed rooms
in fetal positions
with coffee cups lined on shelves
and bags of black beans
and garlic in our closets.
Among our bodies they will find
the song of Sarasota,
a place of dancing,
where only one building
was too old to tear down,
and art was worshiped.

They’ll find me smiling,
ages lines removed by a surgeon
who lived in a marble palace,
and they’ll find my closet
still full of shoes
and my dressing room
with a tuxedo
always ready for an opera.

Originally published in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, May 22, 1994.

Over the years I’ve done hundreds of portfolio presentations to local advertising agencies and companies that needed photography done and wanted to see samples.  Much like this goat, many times I was asking for work, or in the case of this goat, food; it’s pretty much the same thing.  Unlike the goat I’m now on the other side of the desk interviewing photographers. And in the last week I’ve been contacted by several photographers who want to work for us.  We use many photographers and are usually looking for more.

Presentation is important, as is something you leave behind - resume, printed piece or business card, but I want to know what you think of your work. Is the presentation sloppy and disorganized or is it crisp and sharp or homey and nice. This isn’t graded, but pass - fail. The samples are important and I like to see paper portfolios instead of just work on a web site, but you’d better have web samples because our organization is web centric and I want to see that you can re-size images for use on line.

Another thing is to research the company you want to work for.  This is easy now but 15 years ago it was a little more of a challenge.  We have a photo library that’s on line, go there and see what we do.  Pretty simple.

I just saw what Google is doing with Panoramio and it could change the way everyone does travel photography.  What they are showing is a grouping of photographs on the same subject called Look Around (British Museum, London) and letting the viewer page through the different images without having to go back to the map and click on the next photo.  All at once you are getting different views of the same thing from different photographers.  This is mind opening, or should I say door opening, keeping with the key hole idea.

It’s not different views by the same person, but by many people who have a unique way of seeing the same thing.  It made me realize that I’ve been looking at the subject in just one way and selecting the shot before shooting. I’m not sure there is anything wrong with this approach, it’s what everyone does, it’s just now I can easily see how other people view the same thing, which up until now, has been very difficult to do.  It should now be a simple to advance my photography and make more interesting photographs.

I need to explain.   I block the frame drawing from my own experiences and what I want to see and say about the subject.  Probably 95% of the photographs in any of the Look Around series are things I saw at the time and discarded.  But then there is a new idea or a different approach that is really great because of the way they blocked the shot and thought about the subject.  I can’t be right about everything all the time, it’s not possible.

To draw from my current job, because I’ve been around for awhile and made some mistakes, I want to help by sharing this experience and knowledge with others who are about to make what I think to be mistakes. This is the error I consistently make right now and I need to allow everyone to have their own life lessons.  How can I really be sure they are making a mistake?

Hey!  What’s up there, the high ground?  Only one question was on my mind last night and it wasn’t the economy.  I don’t think either candidate has a clear idea how that is going to play out and we are far from the bottom in the stock market or the marketplace.  So Joe may have a business with a gross of $258,000, I bet he only pays taxes on around $15,000, it should be easy for him to work his net down there for tax purposes.  What a stupid argument, it’s just flack.

I want to know who this kid is that’s supposed to be leading the recovery?  Why did experienced veterans of “the street” get passed over for this guy?  He’s just another political appointee, like the head of treasury, and not some kind of economic savant - ha, now there’s an oxymoron.  I’m sure the markets will respond to this in their own way and the media outlets are already making too much of a “big deal” out of this correction. All markets correct, that’s what they do, and sometimes they correct deeper and broader when an unregulated industry has it’s way.  The markets now have to correct for the toxic mortgage mess and an inexperienced government during an election cycle.  It sounds like the perfect storm since the credit markets aren’t creating wealth anymore. Hey guys, lower those interest rates again, will you?

What’s on my mind and what I think should be on everyone’s mind is which candidate will restore habeas corpus?  Once this administration changes will the government still have an appetite for our private conversations and emails?  I would be happy to cc the FBI on any of my emails or teleconference them in to any of my phone conversations.  I think the government should still have to prove their case in a court of law before they send people to prison or rendition.  If we aren’t a nation of laws what exactly are we?

OK, it was one of those days.

When a trip to the country was the best part of the weekend.  There’s lots to see in the Shenandoah Valley and this was clever and funny, sort of like our stock market.  Does anyone think this is over?  Let’s vote on it.  I wonder if the stock market will make a change in the supply of treats for the children on Halloween? I won’t stiff them, I don’t need any tricks, there have been enough of those lately.

This reminds me of someone I once knew so I tried to find a really odd angle and keep as much of the nose in focus as I could.  Fall is the best time of year.  I know this mild weather could be the result of global warming but I admit that I like it and and winter will show up and it will snow.

I had this other kind of strange idea the other day when I was thinking about the stock market melt down and the “toxic” mortgages.  How many of us would turn down a mortgage that we know we really don’t qualify for in the first place?  Like most of us I’m honest to a point but with something like a loan I don’t really qualify for I’d be laughing as I walked out the door with the money. So in a sense we (the American home owners) did it to the banks and the economy.  When you are at a closing who is the expert in the room? If you don’t close where are you going to go?  To a hotel?  I don’t know.  There is pressure to take what ever is offered on the table, especially when they say you qualify for it.

Let’s start paying attention to what they are doing to us.

Just where should the focus be?  I couldn’t decide and did a series with different planes in focus. The raindrops on the winshield of this London Bus as it entered the Piccadilly Circus area of London was my favorite.   In general I like the London transportation system and the city as well.

Right now there seem to be too much focus on the banks when in truth it is us, the consumers, who drive the economy.  They’d better fix us before they can start fixing the banks and there are lots of people hurting right now, caught up in this investment bank greed melt down.  I wonder what this all will look like as we go forward.  I have a new favorite financial ipod program:  NPR: Planet Money.  You can also find it on the Apple itunes store.

The Season that is…  Let the government bail out your company.

I found these at a cooking store, they are made from chocolate and it’s all I’m eating for Halloween while the US Government once again bails out the banking industry for their greed, or “drunkenness”.  I wonder how many times it will happen.  This looks like a major world-wide meltdown.  The 2nd Great Depression?  Only time will tell.  I wonder who would loose the most (which individuals) if these companies were allowed to finish their life cycle in the capitalist economy.  Instead we have socialism and we’re protecting people from some really bad investments, individuals who should have to pay the price for taking these kind of chances.

The government bail out made me think about Roosevelt and how he brought the US out of the great depression just a few years ago with legislation and regulation and most importantly, leadership.  Most of those regulations have been taken apart and there is no leadership in sight.   This depression will be how this administration will be remembered in the short term, in the long term we will only remember the leadership that comes along and puts the regulations back to the way they were in 1935.   Unfortunately, the guys “debating” last night, (it sounded more like a love fest with the phrase “my friend” being thrown out like they were at a country club) aren’t the ones that can do it, at least I have no confidence in either one.

There are well run, excellent companies who did not dip into the cookie jar of junk mortgages and even those good companies are being sold off right now.  I hope the people who created this “2nd great depression” are the ones who will pay the most but it looks like congress has already decided to protect them and make “The Average American” pay, so let’s just write a check and be done with it.  No, let’s pay with a credit card.   700 billion dollars divided by roughly 300 million people.   This was all predicted about 10 years ago.  The problem is that in our system credit creates wealth and when people start paying off their credit cards it creates real problems.