I am overwhelmed. I struggle to keep up. It is hard to keep faith. If I had a towel I would surely throw it in. Signs of a well executed plan. Flood the zone. Drain the brain. Laugh whenever plebeians complain.
I am done laughing.I can no longer maintain.
Place pastels upon your palette and cue the music the sunset show is begun. Grab a big old dry brush and move your paints across your canvas with speed. Be confident in your motion; haste, but don’t waste. It’s your heart and mind funneling down the arm and into your hand summoning magic unto the page. You are an artist, and you’re doing great.
Hobby more.
Connect more.
Live.
Grow.
Hope.
Strive.
Exercise and breathe.
Eat the good food. Laugh. Dream again. Be better for all of us.
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2024 coming in hot! At this point years flip about as fast as single pages on a tear away calendar. It’s a gift to grow old. An opportunity to experience the relativity of time mounting years speed ever swifter.
Continuing my quest to rip through my 2023 backlog. I made this photograph at Dock Road on 30 November 2023. Happy to have another motion blur shot. I’m developing quite a gallery in this style, and it is a trend I will continue.
How are we feeling heading into 2024, friends?
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All my years making photographs in southern Ocean County, and I never before tread at Cloverdale Farm County Park. All this time a wonderful bit of landscape has sat in wooded hiding mere miles from my home. I had no idea. The park itself is an old cranberry bog, and it features wooded trails, duck blinds, and numerous shallow pools full of bramble and sedge. I wish I had this in my spot rotation years ago.
Here we have another blurry pan shot photograph. Only this time the camera motion is top to bottom vertical, instead of left to right horizontal. While we have an out of focus image, we know where we are, what we are doing; walking along a golden sun lit wooded trail at golden hour.
We are but a few days away from 2024 and I still I try to work through my 2023 photography backlog. With luck I will get a few more pictures posted before year end. Right in time for the best of 2023 year in photos retrospective. For reference, I made this shot on 2 December 2023.
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In my last post I talked fishing. Fishing and photos. Here I offer another sunrise photograph made on 12 November 2023. A simple left to right pan shot to pull the colors across the frame. And what wonderful dawn colors were pulled that day.
For a few years now I have been near all in on panning my landscape frames. And if anything, its personal appeal only grows with time. I often think of ways to articulate my fondness but stumble with awkward, poorly expressed thoughts. An art critic I am not. That said, I’ll stick to basics.
First is color. By moving the camera during shutter depress lines blur, details merge, and color is most of what remains. It breaks down form into little more than moving color. And this color shines best at sunrise and sunset.
Second is movement. The blurred streaks come from panning the camera left to right, level to the horizon. Motion blur. Simple as that. Through this technique the movement of your hand during the exposure works as the hand of the painter brushed upon their oils. Moving the eye, moving the heart.
Third is line work. Sharp line work. At first blush this statement may read contradictory and absurd, but hear me out. By keeping a level camera plane throughout your pan, flat horizons become a razor’s edge. Sharp and defined. This grounds the viewer, placing visual queues of where and how to look. Amid the blur and soft focus it reveals the scene, which brings me to. . .
Abstraction. Fourth is abstraction. Through color, movement, and sharp line work our blurry puzzle is near completion. Even though the often crucial presence of sharpness and detail is missing, the photographer yet conveys the scene with a full, albeit distilled effect. You know this photograph, despite its blur and motion, you know this a beach glowing in the splendor of dawn.
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Obligatory it’s been a while. I have no idea what is going on with my photography these days. I find myself mired in this strange in between space of wanting to make more photos again, and an unwillingness to make any kind of time for it. This polarity and my habit of hesitation has put any chance of a break through into suspended animation. If I want to get back after I need to build back with discipline and active purpose.
Further complicating all this indecision is the fact I miss writing on this here website. If only for my own practice, having this space to put down my thoughts alongside my photography creates my own little paper trail. A small proof of my inner workings, breadcrumbs feeding my own development across the years. I enjoy the process of scouting the late afternoon sky, going to the marsh, framing an exposure, returning home to filter and process, and then to wrap it all up with a blurb that may or may not have anything to do with my image. It is this sounding pangs of this urge that call me back the loudest.
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I called 9-1-1 this week. Tuesday, May 31, 2022, at 11:25 p.m. Hopefully a first time, last time situation. I was sitting on my couch playing Hollow Knight when my left side chest tightened and within moments my heart rate spiked, and I felt as though a 200 pound person was standing on my chest. A contradictory numbing yet tingling session worked its way down my left on. In a panic I called my mom.
Even though she was on her way to check on me—we live in the same neighborhood—my condition deteriorated. The pain and pressure increased, and I feared I was going to lose consciousness. As I did on March 17, 2022, in Epcot. Worried and frightened, thinking I was having a heart attack, I dialed 9-1-1.
Within a few minutes of interview style questioning, my mom showed up. Immediately followed by a police officer, and then followed by two ambulances and five paramedics. Fortunately by the time everyone was there the acute chest pressure had nearly subsided in full, and my heart rate was back in check. From there it was standard procedure: EKG, blood pressure, some standard issue question and answer. Upon first look there was nothing wrong but I still took the ambulance ride to the hospital. My second such ride in 10 weeks. It’s not what you want.
No one knows what went wrong. Why it went wrong. Or how it went wrong. I guess panic attacks can result in this kind of chest pain and pressure? The lack of answers is unsettling, and I have been dealing with heart issues for years now, which deepens my fears. Diagnosed with atrial fibrillation in 2016, followed by hypertension, followed by high cholesterol. Suffice it to say my ticker ain’t it, and it really bums me out. Now I sit here and can only describe my headspace as shaken.
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You don’t need me to tell you life is an all out blur these days. An all out conflagration of the senses; body, mind and soul blasted by a raging inferno of the world’s lit fuse. Our defenses bested, our heat shields destroyed. Systems are critical and who will quench us now?
It is here and now we must look to ourselves and to our small pockets of control. Let’s do what we can to keep things neat and tidy, lest the traveling embers of wonton destruction set our own backyards ablaze. Things may look and feel hopeless, with authoritarianism, strife, conflict, and death on the move. We must not allow such malevolent actors strip away the clear view to what matters most in this world—each other, our children, our communities. Instead of a sniping some stranger with a quick hit feel good response of toxic emotion, give yourself a moment or three to respond with the soothing power of love and grace. It is our kindness and compassion that will save the world.
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