In The Raw

Or do you sleep in the nude?...

Desert Rose among thorns.

The image I posted prior to this post at midnight today was also posted on Google+ and I was asked by someone who viewed the photo on my Google+ stream if I would mind posting the original photo. I'm not sure why fiona munday is interested in seeing the original but I agreed to do so for several reasons.

My photography and this blog have evolved to where the images are no longer SOOC (straight out of camera) or slightly edited. Rather they've become something else, Visual Art that has been edited or "processed" to either retain the essence of the original image or alter it into something entirely different. The artwork produced is not pure photography and it is not a painting or drawing or some other visual medium since it was not created directly onto canvas, paper or something else. It is digital and resides in a file on a computer until reproduced through some printing process. I consider this no different than creating a painting, drawing or some other visual art by using a photograph as guide or by projection. It is taking an original photograph and turning it into something visually appealing whether it is an enhanced recognizable version of the original or artwork that is completely different.

This is a topic of controversy among some photographers who are purists and I choose not to wade into what is "real" photography and genuine photographs. It seems specious to me since every photograph has been altered in some way depending on what camera you're using and if you're using special lens somehow it's changing what is "real." In any case I haven't thought of myself as a photographer since I used a 35mm film Hanimax Praktika camera in the seventies and eighties. Along with being a writer I consider myself a visual artist that creates images. I also don't think any photographer, painter, sculptor or artist of any kind is under an obligation explain how they do what they do and how they arrived on a particular piece of artwork. If they choose to do so I find it interesting but I believe it is a matter of choice. Generally I don't share the originals or explain exactly how I processed a photo, very often because I don't write down step by step what I do and I don't have a standard process it is continual exploration. In a sense I think it also takes the mystery out of the piece and doesn't allow the viewer to make their own interpretation of it.

I share the original photo, taken on my Droid X 1 using the app ProHDR straight out of the camera, to show the progression from original photo to final artwork. I use primarily three editing programs and I'll leave which I used for this final piece as an enigma although an experienced pro I'm sure can figure it out. What I will say is I adjust, edit and upload on the smartphone camera as well as on a PC. A final word on the topic is that although I think every decent photograph has the opportunity to become something special through processing you still have to start with a basic decent composition. There are flaws in this one with that I can see but all anyone needs to do is read my post from May 9th of this year "Rules, There Are Rules?" to further understand my point of view about rules, flaws and creative endeavors.

In Dark Of Night

The secret life of trees...

Working for The Man

Working in the fields you get your facts learned...

and I got my facts learned real good.

This economic climate is like the weather, we have no control over it. The storm is gusting winds, huffing and puffing and blowing houses down, rain is flooding the basements and lower floors and no amount of sandbagging is going to stop it. Politicians and bureaucrats egos may lead them to believe they can do something about it but most of the population has figured out that we're in a disruptive contraction that will run it's own course.

Personally I don't believe the unemployment figure is going to remain stagnant and only go up or down a notch or two as the so-called experts predict. It's widely agreed that unemployment is going to be a problem for a long time and it is my opinion it is going to go higher. Already it is higher than official numbers reflect. The broken record is that this is an economic contraction due to overleveraging of debt by individuals and government. If people are not employed they cannot pay debt or taxes. That is a fact.

Our country has created people with a mindset of a job or career working for a large or medium sized employer with an implied contract of benefits and a pension. The Man. No longer is he willing to carry the contract though. This administration has also done everything it can to kill many of the remaining average micro entrepreneurial enterprises as well as small businesses out there that might have employed a few people or kept a family going. A "jobs program?" Really? My additional thought is there is no point in retraining or educating for careers unlikely to exist in the coming years. Working for The Man is past tense. Small businesses must rework their way around the obstructions. Thinking otherwise is a delusion.

Individuals work in the present to plan for a different future.

The people who are thriving and will thrive are those who are thinking creatively while looking down the road and taking control now of what they can. They aren't putting themselves into debt or deficit spending and if they are in that position they are digging their way out of it. The Americans who are making it are those who are achievement oriented, still have a sense of reward for hard work and self-reliance, cutting a swath for their own path. Perhaps that means working at a job now as a means to an end but the end game is not to work for someone else in the sense we have been. The primary intention at this juncture is a future forward assessment of skills that are of value and develop them alongside additional ones.

What a thinking ahead person is doing in one way or another is fashioning tools in every moment of spare time. They're figuring out how to make a living or already are in the coming new period and create a different way of life. In stormy weather they're holding fast to values in order to rebuild lives above the flood line. There is not a politician or bureaucrat that can provide the ingredients necessary to prepare and act to accomplish the reconstruction required. While this economic contraction is running its course simultaneously individuals and communities are reinventing themselves on their own. People are or will be working for themselves, either in their own enterprises or as free agents for another enterprise by choice. The government can't machinate that. Only individuals and communities can engineer the kind of renovation our economy needs for our country to fully function again.

(With apologies to Springsteen on this Labor Day.)

Stop Motion Economy

Square dancing in a monetary blur...

We're weathering a time that not even the experts and historians who study these things understand what is really happening with our global economy. If they claim to they're either bluffing, deluding themselves or lying. We are in an historical upheaval of epic proportions that contains common threads with similar chronological events of the past yet is different because it is distinctly in the here and now.

It is disquieting to our daily lives and will not be truly understood until the future. Meanwhile we are stuck in the present square dancing with partners we may or may not know and doing our best to keep time with the fiddle at a hoedown we'd rather not participate in. We're romping in a blur of light and dark, clarity and reflection, in a utilitarian fashion to keep our balance.

On the continuum of personal finances it's fair to say that many people are not being truthful to themselves or others. An old ethic that one never talks about money has revived with a strong resurgence; probably because there isn't a lot left to brag about. Almost everyone has been affected in some way and if they act and say as if they're not, then they are either bluffing, deluding themselves or lying. No one will come out of this decade without some markings of having changed for better or worse.

Meanwhile all we can do is square dance in a haze making sure we keep time and keep our footing while we whirl around. It's "Places all. Bow to your corner, bow to your partner, three hands up and around you go. Promenade around the ring, big foot up and little foot down, make that big foot jar the ground, back you go and forward again. Allemande left with the old left hand, meet your partner with a great big smile, promenade across the floor and now your home, bow to your partner, bow to the gent across the hall. And that is all."

Remaining positive during a hazy tenuous new economic age that expands beyond our known boundaries goes a long way to calming the disquietude of the storm. Coming up clean, being honest and truthful will not explain the disorder of economic, social and political change of the big picture but will comfort us individually on the home front.

Moving On

When a city has lost a way of life...

How a western city became a model of modern boom and bust.

There comes a time when it is time to move on, get back to where you started from and remove yourself from the once small city that grew up around you and become a big one. You can't change a place, only your attitude toward it or remove yourself from it, especially when you feel as if you no longer belong there. You have the choice, the control and the ability to move on and improve your way of life. Living is not to be wasted in a place you don't want to be because it is no longer what it once was.

This city and I have a long history with each other. There was a brief moment of time in the late sixties and seventies when it was just the right size and mix of people. It still retained an air of a western way of life, live and let live, without being totally bereft of the conveniences of city life. In hindsight real change began to occur after the floods of November 1978 through March 1979 which paralyzed traffic in the metro area. This was followed by floods the next winter season of 1979-1980 where flood waters were polluted by sewage. The infrastructure couldn't sustain what growth that had developed. This was also an era of unexpected political change coupled with public reaction to the floods and the legacy that led to is too lengthy for this writing. The summary is the infrastructure was built and the people did come. In droves. That was the beginning of a series of events that brought us explosive growth that really detonated after the recession of 1992-93.

The nineties was a pivotal period when most of my family left and returned to our original hometown of Prescott. I fled for Tucson that by 2000 started beginning to quickly replicate the frenzied thoughtless growth of Phoenix. The few things it had going for it couldn't be fought off by the housing boom that was occurring all over the country, particularly the western and southern regions. Fueled by subprime money coupled with shrinking employment made for a combustible mixture that caused me to leave in 2005 and return to Phoenix for better employment. It was at the height of the craziest years to be here when it seemed as if every inch of the city was crammed with people and oversized houses and automobiles. The proverbial jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Even with good employment it was impossible for people like myself who were not borrowers to keep up with the pace and cost of living.

We are a contemporary ghost town now. Although there is some job growth in low paying jobs, higher paying employment and many well educated people have fled. Housing is essentially frozen, suspended in some tract that no one really knows what is going to happen. There is not a political answer although we have elected city officials and bureaucrats who have an over-inflated view of themselves and their sense of control. We are an urban heat island with searing heat summers, year round pollution and rarely does it rain now in the urban core to wash of the dust and ash.

The economic crisis hit hard here and by now the entire country has awakened to the fact that this is a long term disruption that will take a decade to resolve itself into whatever the new average standard will be. Since I didn't buy into the frenzy that preceded the crash I am maintaining and have preserved enough to be able to build for the future. My attitude has adjusted to accept that I may be here a little longer. I am of the fortunate ones not living on borrowed money or time and that I am not alone and share a life with someone else with similar ideas. Neither one of us grew up in large city Arizona but the smaller cities of the state. When I left in the nineties I didn't feel as if I belonged here and haven't since I returned. It is now time for a call to action and a plan to remove ourselves as soon as we are able.

Day Sleeper

Killer of the night...

High Chaparral

Juniper and Pinon nestled in granite boulders...

A Man and His Hog

He Rides Alone...

Americans like to characterize people and put them in categories of what they think they are and how they will act. If they don't think of bikers as having a bad reputation at the minimum they believe they're on the fringe of society. There are outlaw riders, motorcycle club riders, boomers out for the thrill of it, Harley riders, Kawasaki crotch rocket riders, people who ride them because they like to or it's their only means of transportation. Mostly my experience has been a lot of bikers who look scary to others are pretty much regular people. They choose to live life differently, out of the mainstream culture, just as a lot of people do who do not fit in.

There are many people who do not fit into everyday society nor do they want to. You can make of them what you want but they are integral to what America is really about. You don't have to conform if you don't want to although there are a lot of people who will argue that you do. In the sixties and seventies the common quip about those who had long hair and wore jeans and boots were not noncomformists at all but actually conforming to a different norm. They missed the point. They were refusing to follow the standard rules of society, go to school, wear the usual clothes, get a regular job, get married and have kids.

Zen and the Art of Maintaining Individuality.

Some of us held on to an independent life for awhile and then tried the norm. In the vernacular: "Hated It!" It didn't take many of us long to realize that we would never fit in no matter what we tried. It's in the head, the personality type, the thinking brain and there's no changing it, so why fight it? I decided a long time ago that I was not cut out for a "career" and that I didn't need the stress or hassle not only of trying to meet the compliance a corporation demanded of me but that it also required me to work even harder at fitting ino being somebody I wasn't.

Far, far easier to be comfortable with myself, be who I am naturally with people that accept me for what I am and in turn I accept them for what they are. My friends and acquaintances run the gamut. I have friends in their seventies who are livelier than people who are in their forties. There are retailers in their twenties who are the best conversationalists I know and much more interesting than talking with lawyers I've worked with. I'm familiar with an architect who is the dullest person with a small imagination. On the other side of the coin is the handyman that does work around here and is probably one of the smartest guys I know, not just in craft work, but also in worldly topics.

Make your own noise. If you're happy being an accountant I'm happy for you, all I ask is that you be accepting of the rest of us who don't want to do that. If you want to travel cross-country in an RV go for it. What we all should remember is that America was built on people who were different and that is why they left where they were and came here. Don't characterize anyone who doesn't conform to what are considered societal norms because the most creative ideas and innovative products usually emerge from those that others consider unconventional. What is not in the mainstream culture very often later becomes accepted as the norm. Then the cycle begins again.

Kiss Me Quick

I just want a hit and run...

Sun Obscured by Dust Storm

Particles casting heliotrope reflective glow...

Drive By Reflections

Shattered store front image...

Arizona Sunrise and Sunset

Azure sky tinged with indigo, gold and copper...

In Arizona it's not difficult to get photographs of spectacular sunrises and sunsets. Like most people here I probably shoot too many but I try to get something a little different in mine. A theme of some kind.

On my list of "top ten" things I like to photograph is telephone poles, crossboxes, cannisters, workout terminals, lines, switching stations. It is kismet that I would work for the old Bell System for almost thirty years since I was fascinated by phones and communications before I can remember. An old family photo taken by my father is of me playing with a telephone. There is something intriguing that telephone lines are cables with strands of copper, which is a color mirrored in the sky.

Street lamps, power derricks, cell towers, traffic lights also rank high on my list of things that draw my attention. Perhaps it is my fascination with the sky, sun and clouds combined with above ground utilities that transport the infrastructure that make our lives work that causes me to look up.

 There are beautiful skies all over the world. Don't miss them, sunrises and sunsets, clouds, stars, sun and moon and look for themes. You can never get enough.

Both Sides Now

I've looked at clouds...

When I was a kid in the summer I would read laying on the ground. If something struck me in what I was reading that I wondered about I would gaze up at the sky and clouds. I never looked at clouds and tried to figure out what they looked like in real life, such as a bunny rabbit or something. I thought that was silly. They fascinated me because of their ever changing shapes and colors and movement. They allowed me to gaze into them and think about whatever had made me stop reading with a fluidity and motion in my mind that matched the movement of clouds.

I still look at clouds, although not laying on my back reading a book as I did when I was young. More often I notice them when I'm on the road, another form of motion, whether that is in the city or travelling through the landscape of Arizona or New Mexico. In the city and out in the urban areas I stop and look and take photos because I'm still fascinated by them. Whether they are cirrus or stratus or cumulus I long ago forgot from my college days. I only know the difference between what kind of weather they will bring by pure experience and instinct.

What is great about life at a mature age is as a friend wrote "isn't it wonderful to be at peace with yourselves and your lives?" We were having an email exchange about how the tumultuous events of the world do not disrupt us as much as they once did. We know we have little control over what happens in the big picture, although they may change our lives, we can't change them. We only control how we react and adjust to events in our country and the world. We are past the age of worry, in solid long term relationships, satisfied with where we are as people. Our lives are in the second half now and we still think and marvel with liquidity about all kinds of things. The difference is we are in a sense reverting back to our youth and still wonder about things with a fluidity and motion of the mind now tempered by the wisdom of having lived longer.

Over The Hills

Through the Dells...

Night Lights

Waiting for crosstown bus...

Urban Wildlife Refuge

Respite stop between flights...

Oh Say Can You See

The flag for the trees?

Letters and Numbers

Is that an acceptable word?...

Life Is Fleeting

We shouldn't be busy fleeing it...

Storm Cell Research

On the horizon...