City Court

                                                           Union City, Indiana/Ohio

TGIF: Return

                Amish School

Enough downtime already.  With the aid of a monopod/cane, picked up the camera bag and headed out the door towards the car.  Today we photograph! 

The first new image in over a year is important.  Subject should be chosen with care.  What is selected should illustrate how time away was spent, in addition to a return to active photography. 

In many ways this return is a fresh beginning.  Having spent some eighteen months viewing - not making - photographs, ideas and feelings as to what is important have grown and in some cases changed.  This time away from producing photographs to viewing others work has been an opportunity to study and review with the goal of enriching future results.

I have been in school and am now ready to apply what has been learned.

TGIF: Plan B

In athletics, the advice often given is to play your game.  This is good advice until an opponent is able to understand what you are about and has an “answer” for what you are doing.  This is when you need a Plan B.

In the last few years, professional photography has turned out to be a hard way to earn a living.  Some photographers continued what they had been doing for the last twenty or thirty years.  Now hard copy outlets like newspapers, magazines and catalogs are fading away as more and more folks obtain information electronically. The result was that as their photographic  markets vanished so did they.    They needed a Plan B.

A few photographers changed direction, reinvented themselves and offered solutions to serve the new electronic world. Video and web production were added to or replaced still photography offerings.  New markets opened up and they have been successful.

In today’s world you can’t remain in the past.   What worked yesterday needs to be updated or replaced.  Need to grow, refine, vary and improve your offerings.  

The advice – play your game – is still good advice.  What has to change is your game.

 Plan B: Update your game.

Monday Morning Coffee: Form / Fame

 

 

 

Recent time has been spent watching both tennis - Wimbledon - and cycling - the Tour de France.

Wimbledon represents tradition from clothing - white - to surface -lawn grass. While winning is rewarded, it is the opportunity to play that really matters. There can only be a single winner, but the reward of being "in the tournament" and playing on the grass courts, lasts long beyond the winning/losing of a match. Wimbledon is form.

 

The Tour de France is, and has always been about winning. In it's early years riders used a variety of chemical aids to increase their performance which caused the death of at least one rider. This chemical use of drugs and blood supplements has continued in recent times. Need only recall the recent Lance Armstrong confessions. The Tour de France is fame.

An early personal encounter with form/fame.

 

When starting to play tennis, a peer player approached and suggested that it was much more important to have correct strokes and play gracefully, rather then simply striving - at all costs - to win. Seemed to be a "crazy" suggestion. After all, wasn't the purpose to achieve victory over an opponent?

Wasn't until years later as cycling replaced my interest in and ability to play tennis, that the wisdom of this suggestion became apparent. Long distant biking allowed movement thru the landscape without regard to time. Simply ride from a starting location and return. Enjoy the landscape and the folks - if any - riding along with you.  No need to win. No striving for victory. It's the form not the fame.

 

The last eighteen months have been physically and mentally difficult. Many are the hours in which "victory" - no matter the means - over the physical and mental problems was the only goal.

As in tennis and later cycling, the mental and physical problems are being slowly resolved without winning. Once again it's the form that matters not the fame.

 

These days photography is slowly replacing cycling. Again it would be easy to select subjects and moments that would assure "winning" images. In sports, we say "let the game come to you". Don't impose yourself, rather allow the subject present itself.

Learn to think about the subject and how it relates to the space around it, how to use that relation to present it the way that suits it best. Once again it's the taking/making  form that matters not the  fame of the result.

 

Form is an long lasting inner belief/feeling within yourself of correctness. Fame is a short lived outer response/belief of others.

 



TGIF: Closure

 

Closure: a feeling that an emotional or traumatic experience has been resolved.

 

Grabbing my camera bag, wallet, car keys and two small canisters, I "crutched" my way out the door to the car. With some effort, managed to get behind the wheel, start the engine and backed out into the world. While advised that I needed to wait a bit longer before driving, my head and heart said now was the time. 

 

Destination was a little used county road north of town.  

 

 

In the past many quiet, enjoyable hours were spent walking this road.  Often the girls - Reba and Scout - joined in the journey.  While Reba stayed on or near the road, Scout plunged into the grass/weeds that grew in the ditch on the side of the road. 

 

 A mile or two was enough  for Reba.  Scout never seemed to tire and would continue to seek out whatever beagles seek out in the brush.  These were good times.  The three of us together, enjoying the each other and the landscape.

 

                                                                    Reba

 

                                                                     Scout

 

 I stood standing along the road - holding the two canisters - pausing for a moment of silence and quiet reflection.  With effort, opened the tins and offered the remains of my two companions to the landscape we explored and enjoyed together.

 

Once while cycling I was struck by a car on a rural road not unlike this one.  Have never returned to that location.  For some unexplainable reasons, never wish to be in that spot again.

 

Will return to this little used county road again.  It is here we explored and enjoyed our short time together.

 

Closure.

 

 

 

 

 



Lonely

No photographs today.  Spent the time wandering -slowly as still using crutches - about inside and outside. 

 Couldn't settle down to choose/edit any images. Favorite rooms and locations seemed empty.  Keep looking about for my faithful companion.  Gone. 

Thursday June 6th, is the scheduled day for surgery to correct my hip problems.   This is to be followed by some six weeks of rehab.  With that in mind, this will be the last post until some time in July.  Hopefully by then my favorite rooms and locations will once again be alive. Been a lonely day in the World Headquarters of Today's Image.

Scout The Most Noble Beagle

 

Scout 1996 - June 4, 2013

 

Goodbye my faithful companion.