Tag Archives: texture

March 10, 2017 – It’s A ‘Sin’

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While wandering around in Creel, Mexico, I gathered tons of images of posters, signs, storefronts, and interesting garbage. This one, obviously, is a play on words, as ‘sin’ in Spanish simply means ‘without,’ which is a radical departure from the English ‘sin.’ Nevertheless, I found the textures and layers of this weathered advertisement really dazzling. I know that minimal and semi-abstract imagery isn’t everybody’s particular cup of tea, but I know that there are some of you out there who understand.

I hope you like today’s ‘image of the day’ and scroll through other images from this sprawling project.

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March 08, 2017 – Mexican Streetside

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For the life of me, I can’t remember the name of this small town. Somewhere about a hundred and fifty miles south of the port of entry in Naco Arizona (Naco Sonora). Cracked facades and faded paint jobs are common in these little towns. On the surface, these places appear inhospitable – and I’ve heard plenty of horror stories – but I’ve never had a negative experience in these places. People are friendly, the bodega owners are more than happy to take your money, and there’s always at least one fantastic restaurant or taco cart.

When traveling through the smaller villages in Mexico, there’s no “I just need to find a McDonalds” option. You pretty much have to trust the local food. Either that, or eat nothing but flamin’ hot cheetos and drink nothing but coca cola. And what’s the fun in that?

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February 28, 2017 – Desert Rot

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One of the things that photography, and the volumes of underlying science, have taught me is that there is an aesthetic beauty implicit in the process of decay. When the veneer is stripped away, and as common objects are vulnerable, new textures surface. When we peel back the skin, we see new things – and we usually spend most of our waking lives trying not to see what’s beneath the surface.

Gray’s Anatomy. Diagrams of dissected bodies. Scars and scratches on once-pristine buildings, automobiles, billboards. We close our eyes in most cases, turn our heads, and ignore the viscera. I’m rather attracted to it.

Here’s my proof.

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February 22, 2017 – Old Car

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Today’s image comes from Opera Drive, a winding road on one side of the canyon known to local Bisbee, Arizona residents as Brewery Gulch. There’s new money in the old mining town, and some old money – but mostly there’s no money. Anybody who walks far enough up Brewery Gulch will see the junk houses and the yards filled with splintered lumber, old tires, bathtubs, and rusted cars. The paved road terminates, giving way to a gravel pathway with sharp rocks and small remnant shacks from the old mining days, when Bisbee produced more copper than any other mine in the United States.

Up on Opera, looking down on the gulch, are houses perched on the hillside – some little more than remnant shacks, others renovated by the nouveau riche. Regardless of income or social standing, the views are just the same, and always fantastic. I made this picture of an old car parked on the roadside while I was hiking up to the end of the gulch, where the road splits into a couple of hiking trails that wind around into the surrounding hills in the high desert.

“The goal of abstract art is to communicate the intangible, that which eludes the photograph and normal seeing.”
~Curtis Verdun

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February 21, 2017 – Textures on the Trail

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My fondness for abstract photography is inexhaustible. This image was made in the open spaces of the San Rafael Valley, in Southeastern Arizona, in a small and underutilized ranch. This is a piece of farm equipment captured in my camera’s macro lens. There’s something about the texture of rust and chipped paint that I’ve found beautiful and fascinating, like a small little landscape the size of a human thumbnail.

“I understand abstract art as an attempt to feed imagination with a world built through the basic sensations.”
~Jean Helion

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February 20, 2017 – Analogue Landscapes of the Digital

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This is probably my favorite thing about photography – it’s a tool that lets the photographer share images with the world that would otherwise remain in the shadows, ignored, misunderstood, or unrecognized. This is a photograph of the metal casing and interior parts of a computer hard drive. The steel case has corroded from humidity, giving it an organic and interesting texture, and edits have been made to the color.

There is a whole world that exists in our bedrooms, in our pockets, inside our car doors. We never see what’s inside of our television, and we usually don’t question how the light-emitting diode actually functions, even though we’re obsessed with all of the flickering screens in this modern world competing for our attention.

This image is a meditation on that invisible world.

“Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph.”
— Matt Hardy

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February 19, 2017 – Painted Brick

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Midtown Tucson is slathered with foot traffic, dotted with some reasonably questionable neighborhoods, and absolutely covered in the shittiest graffiti you’ll ever see. There’s no real artistry to it, just a level of “this is the mark I’ll be making” level of hooliganism.

About a decade ago, when I last lived in the neighborhood, I remember there were several efforts for graffiti abatement; billboards and hotline numbers to report graffiti, paint donation programs through local hardware stores, and private homeowners who opted to foot the bill on their own. I used to walk the mile and a half to work at Jones Photo, Inc – it wasn’t uncommon to see a fresh coat of paint on an adobe wall on my walk home, only to see fresh spray-paint scribbles on my walk to work the next day. Folks quickly stopped even trying to match paint and they’d take whatever the hardware store was handing out, or they’d buy the cheapest primer; the walls and garage doors, businesses and restaurants, were slowly covered in sloppy bands of mismatched color, rolled despairingly over the tagged scribbles.

It’s frustrating, to be sure, but my photographer’s eye also found some interest in these textures. And it seems like the plague of artless graffiti has largely subsided – at least, compared to years ago. Most of what you’ll find today are grease-pen scribbles on light posts or at bus stops, or markings on defunct businesses, in back alleys, and on abandoned buildings like the one pictures above.

Naturally, if I have my camera with me, I’ll be taking pictures.
Until tomorrow, my friends, I hope you enjoyed today’s photograph.

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”
— Elliott Erwitt

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February 16, 2017 – No Parking

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Today’s image of the day is simple and clean, but I was attracted to the faded paint and texture. I’m often criticized for making pictures that don’t have meaning, but I think there’s meaning embedded in just about any picture that anybody takes – not just professional photographers or self-proclaimed artists.

So much of the time, I really simply enjoy taking a small detail from the world and printing it big.

“I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.”
— Diane Arbus

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February 13, 2017 – Alvernon Plaza

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When I was in college, almost ten years ago now, I used to go on what I would call “urban hikes.” I would put my headphones on, tethered to my Discman (yeah, before iPhones and iPods) in my backpack. I would listen to music and walk for miles around town, looking for interesting things to photograph. I would look for cracked paint, old signs, compelling shadows, and every category of garbage tossed into back alleys.

I went urban hiking today, to the tune of about ten miles, just walking around midtown with music in my ears. It was a great diversion. I had forgotten how calming and meditative this practice had once been for me, and I think I’ll be doing this more often, now that I’ve moved back to Tucson and life is starting to make sense again.

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February 08, 2017 – An Antique Land

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The difficulty with making anything that could even closely be mistaken for art is that art is entirely subjective. We live in a highly interconnected world, and there are volumes of online videos, written articles, marketing books, and web pages dedicated to “hacking” yourself into financial success. That’s fine, except it reduces art to a craft – identify your niche in the market, and then do nothing but the same thing, over and over and over again until it’s time to retire.

There’s a lot of beautiful work made by incredibly talented people who adopt this model of marketing, but I can’t quite seem to hop aboard. I don’t want to sit down, do some social media research, and then spend the rest of my life making different versions of the same picture. I suppose this is why I haven’t ever struck it rich as a creative professional – but I’m definitely satisfied when I finish a piece.

This is the newest image in a series that I started about a decade ago, called ‘An Antique Land,’ a line borrowed from Percy Shelley’s poem. To me, this series of architectural ‘portraits’ taps into the impermanence of our communities. But I prefer not to comment much beyond that; I don’t like to tell people what to think about this kind of work. My interpretation, or my intent, doesn’t imbue this images with significance. I like the idea of people looking at this kind of work and bringing their own ideas to the table.

Until next time, folks. I’ll be seeing you soon.

“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.”
— Diane Arbus

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