Tag Archives: lavender

A Lost Portrait

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FINE ART PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE
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Almost ten years ago I was laid off from work. It was like being dumped for the first time – I didn’t know quite how to take it or what to do, and it hurt. I had recently moved into an old cinder-block garage that had been converted into a guest house. A dreary place with low ceilings, no climate control, swarming with termites. The air was so thick during the monsoon season that my photographic prints stuck to each-other, ruining them, and the lower areas would collect pools of water.

In short – it was an adventure. Enough time separates the ‘then’ and the ‘now’ that I have some fond memories of sitting on the “living-room” floor with my friend Tammy, playing songs on the acoustic guitar by candlelight when the monsoon storms knocked out the power, a ceramic plate between us on the floor with tobacco and rolling papers. I spent all of my time reading the backlog of books in my collection and would go on bike rides around town.

Another of my friends, Megan, spent a lot of time being a lazy bastard with me, too. Many, many years ago I promised her I’d make a painting of her. As time passed, she would always remind me and I would always tell her I’d get to it eventually. While digging through some old hard drives looking for material for the ‘Image A Day’ project, I found an old folder with some snapshots from that summer of uncertainty, alongside a halfway completed digital illustration. I decided to set everything aside and finally finish it.

The irony, of course, is that Megan has vanished from social media, so I don’t even have the pleasure of tagging her. Smart phones were barely a thing, I was too poor to have one at the time, and none of my old flip-phones survive. So she’s lost to the ages, floating out there somewhere. With any luck, this post will magically cross her path.

In either even, it feels good to cross another project off the infinite list.
Onward and upward.

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April 24, 2017 – Lavender Sunrise

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FINE ART PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE
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OTHER ‘IMAGE OF THE DAY’ PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE

“In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.”
~Alfred Stieglitz

Capturing a moment in time – it’s one of the most satisfying things that the camera can do in a world that is constantly in flux. Whether it’s capturing an athlete in freeze-frame action – something we simply cannot do with our eyes alone – or locking-in a body of reflective water. We watch the world inhale and exhale around us, constantly, and so very little in the world actually manages to sit still long enough for us to absorb it.

During a monsoon flood in Tucson, I drove south of downtown, where there are warehouses, artist studios, and train tracks. The whole area was flooded, virtually impossible to drive through. I walked around and got my feet wet, and found myself training my camera on the ground, rather than the buildings and textures around me. The rippling water, frozen in time, captured my imagination.

Where one reality ends, another begins. Above the horizon line, static light poles and structures – below the horizon line, ripples of water reflecting everything above. There’s a magic to it, at least to me, and that’s why I’ve never stopped making pictures.

SEE YESTERDAY’S IMAGE OF THE DAY
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