ku # 415

There is a purity to natural happenstance. Things just happen. No reason. No meaning. No malice aforethought. Just being...a part of the eternal flow.

Rob White ~ a "happy shot"

This shot was what I call a "happy shot"-one that I grabbed that turned out somewhat decently. My wife and I were on the way to Highlands, N.C. When we came on Moon Lake dam. From the road, you can see almost a mile across the lake it forms, and my intent was to try to get level with the top of the dam and take a shot showing the lake stretching on forever-or so I thought. Instead, I saw that I could scramble down a roughly seventy-five foot deep path and get to the river bottom at the base of the dam.

This is what I saw, and what I photographed.

What attracted me was the pattern of the water falling off the dam in kind of a "diamond rope" pattern. What I got was that AND the tumult of the rocks to the right side. I hope this photo gives all of you the pleasure it has given me, and I look forward to sending some good shots when my skills improve.

A Lost Love

Before digital instant photographic gratification meant Polaroid - in this case, the venerable SX-70. Man, how I love(d) that camera. I have 3 of them. The problem is, with Tine Zero film gone, they're now relegated to the status of photographic curiosities. Damn...another part of the photographic medium gone, just flat out gone. Ahhh, progress.

One has to wonder how much longer the Polaroid Corporation will be around. However, if it were to disappear tomorrow, there can be no denying that one of the most incredible collections of photography ever created - The Polaroid Collections - will stand as a unique and enduring legacy of the medium of photography and a photographic era.

Since the inception of instant photography over 50 years ago, Polaroid Corporation has promoted photography as art through its Artist Support Program. The program grew out of an early collaboration - essentially a research activity - between Polaroid founder Edwin Land and Ansel Adams (check out this Adams Polaroid self-portrait). 50 years later, Polaroid's support of photographers from around the world has created a polaroid photography collection that numbers over 23,000 photographs by more 1,000 photographers.

Simply amazing.

For those who love photography, not just Polaroid photography, a must have book is The Polaroid Book. With 287 images, it gives a glimpse of one of the world's most incredible collections of photography. It is a vibrant and engaging testament to a rich and rewarding benefactorial relationship between a photographic corporation and photographic artists that will never be seen again. Tragically (not in the human catastrophe sense), it is also a sign post of a passing era on the road of "progress".

the photograph(s) ~ SX-70 photographs by Mark Hobson Allegheny Commons - Pittsburgh, PA

Immersion idyllic

People speak of being wrapped in nature's embrace, but I think that the operative word here is rapt. On a long hike in the Adirondack woods, we encounterd a garden of mossy eden. The temptation to roll around on/in it was too great to resist. Years later I learned that my 10 year old son and his friend had sneaked back for a surreptitious glimpse...

the photograph ~ 35mm Polaroid Instant BW slide film photograph by Mark Hobson along the trail to High Falls in the Five Ponds Wiilderness Area- Adirondack Mts, NY

a ku-less urban kinda autumn

A landscape of a different nature. The gaze of an 8x10 view camera (with color negative film) renders the denoted with a rather stunning sense of the real/truth. Does this effect the connoted in any way?

the photograph ~ by Mark Hobson Downtown park along the Genesee River - Rochester, NY

Jim Jirka ~ Marsh Color Diptych

The smell from the decaying vegetation in the stagnant water, to me is very aromatic. The water has not been replenished this summer due to the lack of rain, in this, one of the driest summers on record in the Pacific Northwest.
Somehow the marsh is still vibrant in many ways. It still has a subtle presence in nature, if one would take the time to enjoy.

ku # 413

Simplify, simplify, the advice so often given as bible to photographers-in-gestation, seems to imply that most observers of photographic prints are inherently, well, simple-minded - that in order for a photograph to be understood and applauded, the photographer must pander to the lowest common visual denominator using only the easiest to read "words" in the visual vocabulary (most commonly refered to as the "rules").

Ignoring the rules - in this case, "simply" - often leads to the criticism that a photographer is ignoring the rule "just to be different" for attention-getting sake. Complexity, of the denoted and connoted kind, is apparently too much to be endured.

Photopop 7.0

a shutter release is really all you need to shoot a nice photo of existing art.

ku # 407

Ana asked, "in your previous post you mentioned 'photographers use this defining visual characteristic of the medium (i.e. the camera is capable of faithfully recording the object of its gaze) to create untruths.' I'm not sure what you were getting at. What are the untruths you were thinking about when you made that statement?"

Well, as Paul Simon crooned,

"Kodachrome, they give us those nice bright colours
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the worlds a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a nikon camera, I love to take a photograph
So mama dont take my kodachrome away"

Other examples - political propaganda, Playboy centerfolds, Velvia landscapes, absolutely flawless automobiles/women wearing makeup, amongst many more...i would also venture to write that these apparently-true-but-untrue denoted(s) create untrue connoted(s) as well. Photographers deliberately distort the camera's gaze to create the unassumed-to-be-"real" as a kind of set up (for the uncritical/undiscerning/naive) with the intent of serving a connoted untruth...

ku # 408

An Adirondack morning commute , on most days, looks something like this traffic-wise.