Snow, 2018

After waking and reading for a bit in bed this morning i got up and opened the curtains and behold:

I have not lived where it snowed since i lived at Tassajara in the '80s - i love snow and was delighted to see the white world laid out before me.

I made hot chocolate and stood at the open door enjoying the warmth of the sweet drink and the brisk cold of the morning - ahh paradise!

Bee

Love taking photos of bees - they never seem to mind and are so beautiful ... this one has 'nectar bags' (my words, don't know what they are called) on its legs which are not so clear but that is the gold look 'tween its hind and middle legs.

Wolf's teachings and Biltmore Estate

I spent about six hours with Art Wolf, http://artwolfe.com/blog/, on Creative Live website yesterday. If you are not familiar with Creative Live, it is an amazing teaching site and i highly recommend it. I just clicked on the site, https://www.creativelive.com/courses/photography-as-art-art-wolfe?autoplay=true&via=student-snapshot_2 and discovered that they are playing Art's class today - so if you are interested in learning about his photography and learn something of his skills, go over there now.

So, spending a day with Art, his works and teachings is amazing and i'm hoping to apply what i learned to more of my images.

And, the day before that we visited Biltmore Estates to which some friends had given us tickets. Visiting there is expensive and i'm thankful for our friends generosity as i doubt we'd pay so much to visit. The grounds, gardens, lakes, etc., all of which have walking/biking paths, are beautiful and we very much enjoyed walking among the trees and lakes.

In a lot of rooms they had costumes set-up from a film and the film's identity on a large board as you see above. After seeing half a dozen of these set ups and not understanding what they had to do with the Biltmore House, i finally asked a guide what was the connection. And she said something like this:

"All these costumes are from movies and those movies came from books. Those books are in the library here in the house. That is the connection"

While i found that a most strange reason to create scenes of clothing from films, clearly most of the views were enjoying the clothes. 

It was a most interesting afternoon - glad i went and doubt i'll ever go again. This is the off-season for tourist and still there were hundreds of people there ... must be a bit overwhelming during the summer.

Beginning Anew

I see that i began this particular blog upon returning from Asheville in June of last year, 2016. I'm glad to learn that it was started with the possibility of moving in mind and then that happened: we moved. There was a visit in Oct-Nov of last year to be sure we really wanted to live here and then we learned that the house next to our friends, who have been waving us on in this direction, became available for rent and so we are here.

I have this idea, sorta a project, that i can work on scanning into digital format many of the negatives i have from the shooting i was doing before digital came along. I have a decade old but good scanner that i'll give a try and see what comes up and how much work they will take to get into a usable state. This is sorta exciting as i had a lot of photos from that era that i liked but haven't really had access to - we shall see.

Moved

I have recently moved from the west coast -the SF bay area- to the east coast, the Appalachian mountain area, Asheville, NC to be more accurate. As of this writing i have been here for a bit over 7 weeks and haven't really been doing much photography. This house, the first time i (actually we as it is my wife and i who moved and are living here) i've lived in a house not an apartment in decades. The consequence of which is that there is space for a total photographic set-up: shooting, process via a computer and matting and framing. The whole nine yards. Now there is no excuse for not doing whatever photographic work i want.

Still, i've not settled in and am usually feeling a bit lost although i understand that will change as i get to know the surrounding area better and learn where is available.

This area, our back porch faces east and the rising sun creates amazing and beautiful sun rises almost daily. Even when it is overcast and it often is as this is the winter season, the sun beams flit thru the space tween the horizon far out east and the local cloud coverage long enough to create some breath taking mornings.

Such as:

Early morning sun

I want to use this new time, new place to work on a different kind of photographic presentations ... more abstract, more questioning: is this really a photograph?

As these are photographs in process i wonder about not showing them until they are finished but my current thinking is that maybe seeing the 'in-process' work will offer a larger range of possibilities as i see pieces of the work.

Thoughts

Well, this certainly has been a big disappointment as i began this blog to write about my photographic and non-photographic thoughts and haven't done so. I don't know what is holding me back, what my resistance is to something i want to do - or do i?

Last weekend we attended the SF Aerial Arts Festival ... it was amazing:

Yes, that's right, she had her head in the water ... an amazing dance with the bay as her partner. 

There was some kinda regatta going on as there were many of these sail boats with crews of half a dozen to a full dozen and they came quite close to the wall before making the turn back towards the bay. It was a cold, windy and somewhat dreary weather day - typical SF August weather. I love it but the tourist that are unprepared for our winterish summer, tend to spend the days fairly cold.

Somewhere . . .

I know that, somewhere, i have a photo blog but am not able to locate it now - so much like pieces of my mind: i know i know this or that but just can't seem to locate where that is.

I have, again, been encouraged by the macro work of Danae Wolfe, http://www.wolfemacrophotography.com/, and her working with a pancake lens plus an extension tube ... i've tried the same via renting the lens and using extension tubes and it worked but no better then the 60mm macro i already have. However, the flash diffuser, a Graslon Spark diffuser, is an outstanding inexpensive piece of camera equipment that i am integrating into the macro system i use. I understand why she used the pancake lens as it doesn't cast a shadow when shooting closeups and with a longer lens, the top of the lens often gets in the way of the flash. Still, there is a way to learn to work with that and i'm planning on learning how.

A few samples:

All shot with 60mm macro and Graslon Spark flash diffuser. I like the results.