Watching the girls go by...

Watching the girls go by...

Image by Ed Yourdon
This man was sitting on one of the stone benches in Verdi Square, at Broadway and 72nd St. He seems to have brought a brown-paper-bag lunch, and has an elaborate cast on his lower left leg, along with crutches ...

... meanwhile, a gaggle of twittering young school girls (okay, maybe college students, who knows?) in short skirts went traipsing by him, on his left. He couldn't help staring at them...

Note: this photo was published in an Aug 10, 2012 blog titled "Zuschüsse für gehbehinderter Menschen." And it was published in an Aug 11, 2012 blog titled "Baby Boomer Lessons Learned: the stuff no one bothered to tell us when we were younger."


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This is part of an evolving photo-project, which will probably continue throughout the summer of 2008, and perhaps beyond: a random collection of "interesting" people in a broad stretch of the Upper West Side of Manhattan -- between 72nd Street and 104th Street, especially along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.

I don't like to intrude on people's privacy, so I normally use a telephoto lens in order to photograph them while they're still 50-100 feet away from me; but that means I have to continue focusing my attention on the people and activities half a block away, rather than on what's right in front of me.

I've also learned that, in many cases, the opportunities for an interesting picture are very fleeting -- literally a matter of a couple of seconds, before the person(s) in question move on, turn away, or stop doing whatever was interesting. So I've learned to keep the camera switched on (which contradicts my traditional urge to conserve battery power), and not worry so much about zooming in for a perfectly-framed picture ... after all, once the digital image is uploaded to my computer, it's pretty trivial to crop out the parts unrelated to the main subject.

For the most part, I've deliberately avoided photographing bums, drunks, homeless people, and crazy people. There are a few of them around, and they would certainly create some dramatic pictures; but they generally don't want to be photographed, and I don't want to feel like I'm taking advantage of them. I'm still looking for opportunities to take some "sympathetic" pictures of such people, which might inspire others to reach out and help them. We'll see how it goes ...

The only other thing I've noticed, thus far, is that while there are lots of interesting people to photograph, there are far, far, far more people who are not so interesting. They're probably fine people, and they might even be more interesting than the ones I've photographed ... but there was just nothing memorable about them.

MONTSERRAT - Mare de Deu

Image by Fergal of Claddagh
ON AN INFANT DYING AS SOON AS BORN
I saw where in the shroud did lurk
A curious frame of Nature's work;
A floweret crush'd in the bud,
A nameless piece of Babyhood,
Was in her cradle-coffin lying;
Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying:
So soon to exchange the imprisoning womb
For darker closets of the tomb!

She did but open an eye, and put
A clear beam forth, then straight up shut
For the long dark: ne'er more to see
Through glasses of mortality.
Riddle of destiny, who can show
What thy short visit meant, or know
What thy errand here below?
Shall we say that Nature blind
Check'd her hand, and changed her mind,
Just when she had exactly wrought
A finish'd pattern without fault?
Could she flag, or could she tire,
Or lack'd she the Promethean fire
(With her nine moons' long workings sicken'd)
That should thy little limbs have quicken'd?
Limbs so firm, they seem'd to assure
Life of health, and days mature:
Woman's self in miniature!
Limbs so fair, they might supply
(Themselves now but cold imagery)
The sculptor to make Beauty by.

Or did the stern-eyed Fate descry
That babe or mother, one must die;
So in mercy left the stock
And cut the branch; to save the shock
Of young years widow'd, and the pain
When single state comes back again
To the lone man who, reft of wife,
Thenceforward drags a maimed life?
The economy of Heaven is dark,
And wisest clerks have miss'd the mark,
Why human buds, like this, should fall,
More brief than fly ephemeral
That has his day; while shrivell'd crones
Stiffen with age to stocks and stones;
And crabbed use the conscience sears
In sinners of an hundred years.

Mother's prattle, mother's kiss,
Baby fond, thou ne'er wilt miss:
Rites, which custom does impose,
Silver bells, and baby clothes;
Coral redder than those lips
Which pale death did late eclipse;
Music framed for infants' glee,
Whistle never tuned for thee;
Though thou want'st not, thou shalt have them,
Loving hearts were they which gave them.

Let not one be missing; nurse,
See them laid upon the hearse
Of infant slain by doom perverse.

Why should kings and nobles have
Pictured trophies to their grave,
And we, churls, to thee deny
Thy pretty toys with thee to lie--
A more harmless vanity?

(Charles Lamb)

Ancient Art Show Material Discovered

Image by Boogies with Fish
www.messersmith.name/wordpress/2010/03/26/ancient-art-sho...
Regular readers may note that my mind wanders more towards the end of the week. This is because I dive on Saturdays and I usually have enough pretty pictures beginning on Sunday which I can intersperse with mind numbing jibber-jabber to fill a page. Heaven knows that I seldom have anything important to say. I do, however, strive to say it with some degree of flair, if not true style. Polish is way beyond me. If I could polish prose, I'd be making a living from it. Prose polishing doesn't run in my genes. I'm more of an assembler. I'll screw and glue the chair. It's someone else's job to polish it.

Which leads me to . . . well, nothing. So, instead, I'll concentrate on telling you more about me,  my favourite subject. Write what you know about, eh?

Yonks ago, when I was a young feller in my mid-50s the Madang Country Women's Association up and did themselves an art show. Being a dilettante artist, I decided to try my luck. It was all for charity, you see. That usually means any fool can pretend to be anything he likes and pretty much get away with it.

If you're a regular here, you've seem my so-called art work. It's pure fakery - the purest kind. I take pretty pictures and grind them up in a computer and it spits out something that, when printed on paper, might fool bumpkins into thinking that the producer has some sort of talent. That, of course, it the whole point of the excercise.

Not wanting to get caught in a lie, I had to coin a new word to describe my wholesale pimping of digital excretion as art. Thus the novel term "Photostylizations". I even adopted the Americanisation of inserting "z" in place of "s" to further confuse the issue: That's the poster which I prepared to introduce my "work". That's more or less how I looked at 50. I'm considerably more handsome now.

One of the "pieces" that has enjoyed the most longevity is this Beach in Christmas Bay  from an image I captured at Bag Bag Island: It didn't sell. So it, along with several other of these, is still hanging behind the "Blue Dolphin Bar" at our house to give the place a little class. I've also used this on several wedding program covers as a background image.

This is an old favourite of mine. It's titled Fletch.  It's based on a photo of Jan Fletcher which I grabbed at Kar Kar Island.  She was free diving down into a fresh water spring just off the coast: All of these were framed and numbered 1/1 meaning that they would never be printed again in the same format. Some people in Madang own 1/1 MadDog originals which will be worth a fortune when I'm dead. I hope that they laugh all the way to the bank.

Here's a nice little pair of Clark's Anemonefish (Amphiprion clarkii): And another lone one: This is a Many-Spotted Sweetlips (Plectorhinchus chaetodonoides): The common name is obvious. The taxonomic name, not so.

And this, regulars will recognise as a Spinecheek Anemonefish (Amphiprion biaculatus): Above is the mom.

Below is the baby: Cute, eh?

This is a Shadowfin Soldierfish (Myripistis adusta): It does have a bit of the military look. Maybe it's the chain-mail armor.

This one I titled Piscus Psychedelicus  for obvious reasons. It's really a Midnight Snapper (Macolor macularis)  with its colours radically modified: The colours on this one came to me in a dream.

Another little fellow who will be familiar to regular readers is the Reticulated Dascyllus (Dascyllus Reticulatus): The title of that one was Size Doesn't Matter,  one of my favourite phrases.

Just because I could, I threw a gratuitous flower into the show. Straining my imagination, I titled this one White Flowers: The Madang Country Women's Association apparently never recovered from the Art Show, though it was a financial success. I think that my stuff alone garnered about K500 and I was among possibly twenty genuine artists.

I hope that they do it again someday. My legend needs constant nourishment to stay alive.

8c10061r

Image by Children's Bureau Centennial
Title: Nurse Shamburg weighing Ira Dencie Pettway's baby in project clinic. Gee's Bend, Alabama
Creator(s): Wolcott, Marion Post, 1910-1990, photographer
Date Created/Published: 1939 May.
Medium: 1 negative : safety ; 3 1/4 x 3 1/4 inches or smaller.
Reproduction Number: LC-USF34-051576-D (b&w film neg.)
Rights Advisory: No known restrictions. For information, see U.S. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black & White Photographs(www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/071_fsab.html)

Call Number: LC-USF34- 051576-D [P&P]
Repository: Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division Washington, DC 20540 hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
Notes:
Title and other information from caption card.
LOT 1617 (Location of corresponding print).
LOT 2316 (Location of corresponding print).
Transfer; United States. Office of War Information. Overseas Picture Division. Washington Division; 1944.
More information about the FSA/OWI Collection is available at hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.fsaowi
Film copy on SIS roll 5, frame 1623.