Dark Shadows

Casting over Palo Verde trees from oncoming storm...

Trains Gone By

Postcard remembrance of a remote rendezvous...

Walking Suspended Over Water

Waterfall washing wall of Whitewalk Canyon...

Catwalk clinging to canyon walls built in mining era for water pipeline.

Dawn In New Mexico

Railroad cars rumbling across the desert floor...

Some Days

You just feel tired...

Revival depends on you since your survival depends on it.

Yesterday was one of those rare Mondays that recalled The Boomtown Rats song "I Don't Like Mondays." It started with a few little missteps at five in the morning, followed by arriving at work to find no one and nothing prepared and ended in feeling a little worn from the humdrum.

You could say by day's end I was feeling more than a little uninspired. In those situations the best thing to do is keep in mind that a new day begins only one nighttime away. One of my methods to end the day on a good note is to kick the poetic tires and dig through my catalog of photographs to find what seems mundane and make something fresh out of them. Doing so gives a sense of appreciation for the ordinary and the challenge of making it more interesting recharges more than my creative energy. It reboots my soul and keeps at bay the sense of losing a day.

So today, this day, is another day to take and make the most of and double up for one that didn't go so well. Each day is to be embraced and won, not to be wasted on "would have, should have, could have." The previous evenings energizing pursuits prepare the next day to be without remnants of wear and tear from the prior one. There is only mediocrity in life if you choose to view it that way rather than turning it into something more interesting.

Guess That's Why

They call it the blues...

Blue is a color, an emotion and a form of American music. It is a primary color that mixes with two other primary colors to create a myriad of colors.

As a standalone color it is one of the most popular "favorite" colors. Everyone has a different concept of what feeling it evokes for them. "Feeling Blue" represents the down side of life. On the other hand it is an optimistic pigment, the hue of the sky is the limit, you can go as far and as fast as you want to go.

Storm Chasing

Hightailing Fain Road...

In the Desert

Where no one remembers your name...

Rainmaker Revenge

Storm plume overshadowing mountains...

Soaked in Sepia

Mix in some Van Dyke brown please...

One of my favorite techniques in photography is the effect of sepia. In photography sepia came about in the mid-1800s as the first iron-silver based process, argentotype, to give richness to the color of a photograph unlike the stark contrast of black and white pictures. Prior to digital photography when we processed our own 35 mm film negatives and printed them, the standard printing paper we could purchase did not give a great variety of tone. The advantage to the process was the ability to use different types of paper for a variation of depth and hue from burnished to bronze and many shades in between. In photography it is referred to as the Van Dyke process after the Flemish Baroque painter Sir Anthony van Dyck and the color of brown paint he used.

With digital photography the way I achieve the effect is by using the sepia setting on my camera and then enhancing it through editing. The color has an appeal of its own that I like because although it is monotone it gives a full bodied range of warm vibrant brown. In the seventies I could process 35mm only in black and white and sepia at home, color required taking it to a camera store for developing. Practicing and playing with the color allowed me to enrich a photograph in a color I particularly like and be more creative. For that reason I am still attached to the quality it lends to an image.