I'll be posting here again for a time. This blog seems such a lost cause but I need an outlet so here it is - warts and all - this is it. Pics to flow again soon.

I was given a really fine gift for my birthday that I would recomend to everyone. It is the newest book about William Eggleston. Eggleston is perhaps my favorite artist. His work drips with honesty. Great stuff - get the book - Democratic Camera

David Vestel said this about editing. ""Do you look for mistakes, and get rid of them? Or do you look for good stuff to hold on to?".

I read this here:

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/editing-and-portfolios/

"As an object, a photograph has a life of it's own. It can be saved in a shoebox or in a museum. It can be reproduced as information or as advertisement. It can be bought and sold. It may be regarded as a utilitarian object or a work of art. The context in which a photograph is seen effects the meaning a viewer draws from it." Stephen Shore

I'm getting tired of lugging slrs around. At least for the time being I am going to shoot with my G10 and when I becomes available I'll pick up this new beast ..

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0908/09081907canons90.asp

The new G11 is tempting but i need/want a high quality pocket camera to compliment my walking photo syle.

One of my teachers in college said there were some images that are better left behind ... now I know what he said is so true...

The photo I did not take today was the light hitting Mount Rainier at 6 this morning. The light was a silvery color that was so intense and beautiful as to take my breath away. Even if I had a camera with my I would not have raised it to my eye. No camera could capture the beauty that unfolded before me. Sometimes it's better just to see.

"Without deviation progress is not possible." - the late, great Frank Zappa

"You look one moment and there's everything, next moment it's gone."-- Joel Meyerowitz

A good friend in the bay area sent this to me today... he's been reading my mind.

"Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared." - Buddha

The photo I did not take today and will someday...the back, bed side of a 60's Ford pick-up...sticking out 3 or 4 feet past the tin shed that hides it...it's orange with a white stripe.

"Have another drink on me
I've been empty since Arizona
I've turned my back on me
And the face of who I thought I was"
- Alejandro Escavedo - "Arizona"

The photogragph I did not take today was a young man in a wheelchair with a t-shirt that read "I'm from Nebraska. Let's get drunk". He was looking thru the WWF wrestling dvd's in Walmart. He looked content.

It's a strange way we live
To have been her before
And leave nothing behind
As we move towards the door
No, there's no one to blame
We died a little today
- Alejandro Escavado

I could never see tomorrow,
but I was never told about the sorrow
- Al Green

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it’s too late
and there’s nothing worse
than too late.

Charles Bukowski

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time." - T.S. Eliot

...the photo I did not take today...
...that same man who gets on the bus every day and does the same thing. He searches the empty bus for the perfect seat. The bus is roaring away and still be walks up and down the aisle searching the empty bus (empty of everyone but me) for a seat. He finds one at last. He sits. Tomorrow is another day.

"Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long." - Walker Evans

"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery. celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to." - Jim Jarmusch

"We photographers don't really make anything: we peck at the world and try to find something curious or wild or beautiful that might fit into what the medium of photography can hold." -Lee Friedlander

"Go see the Grand Canyon, the Canyon De Chelly, Yosemite, The Green River. The photos of these places are a hint, just a blink at the real world. At most, an aphrodisiac." Lee Friedlander

"I can't fly but I can make experiments" - William Eggleston

"A small catalog appears in the mind's eye: a city at night, a large parking lot, a highway, a man who owns three cars, and the man who owns none..." Robert Frank

"Time went on...At a very early age I could play the piano. Anything, practically. After hearing it once. Not reading music, then...And maybe never play the same one twice. Very much like the way I work optically today." - William Eggleston

"If you can't make a great photograph of a mundane subject, at least make a mundane photograph of a great subject!" - Anonymous

"I work by impulse. No philosophy. No ideas. Not by the head but by the eyes, eventually inspiration comes" -Manual Alvarez Bravo.

"Digital technology means we have more and more people taking photos and fewer and fewer photographers." Jean-Francois Leroy

I am always mentally photographing everything as practice. - Minor White

"There are lots of photographers in the world, and some of them are artists. There are you and I, who in the presumption of the moment switch our cellphone from ear to eye to defy the ephemerality of telephony and freeze what is right in front of us; there are you and I who go a step further and sit dreaming with our Leica, dreaming of being a photographer like the photographers... whatever in the world that is. And then there are the photographers --- some of whom are artists." - Poul Erik Tojner

"Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual." Edward Weston

"I have no idea what I'm doin'. I've never seen me." - Mose Allison

"Why not be silent?” - Willaim Eggleston

"Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going to
fast - you also miss the sense of where you are going and why."
- Eddie Cantor

Here's a link to one to a great photographer, one of my favorites - Keith Carter. Take a look at the link the "archives". He is the master of selective focus.

http://www.keithcarterphotographs.com/images.html

Masters Of Photography -

http://photography-now.net/international_photography_index/

"I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing." Theodore Roethke

"Your photography is a record of your living." Paul Strand.

I found a pretty cool website with some great camera porn...take a peek.

http://tokyocamerastyle.com/

"It is always the instantaneous reaction to oneself that produces a photograph." Robert Frank

"I always say that I don't want to be sentimental, that the photographs shouldn't be sentimental, and yet, I am conscious of my sentimentality." Robert Frank

"...the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!" Jack Kerouac from On The Road

"My witness is the empty sky." Jack Kerouac

"Many ,many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now . Happily some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them-if you want to . Just as someday if you have something to offer , someone will learn something from you . And it isn't education . It's history . It's poetry." J.D.Salinger

"I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me." Charles Bukowski

My photographic style is bit like Bukowski's when he said - "I do not believe in writing a short story unless it crawls out of the walls. I watch the walls daily but very little happens." I look, I walk and hopefulluy my short story "crawls out of a wall.."

"Every good painter paints what he is." Jackson Pollock

"Our battered suitcases were were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life."- Jack Kerouac, On the Road

"I woke up and the sky was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of them all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creek of the old wood in the hotel, the footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the high cracked ceiling and reall didn't know who I was for about fifteen seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that's why it happened right there and then, that strange red afternoon." Jack Kerouac from On The Road

"One of the great things about books is, sometimes there are some fantastic pictures."
George Bush

“All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together.”
Jack Kerouac

“Blessed be the inventor of photography! I set him above even the inventor of chloroform! It has given more positive pleasure to poor suffering humanity than anything else that has ''cast up'' in my time or is like to -- this art by which even the ''poor'' can possess themselves of tolerable likenesses of their absent dear ones. And mustn't it be acting favorably on the morality of the country?” -- Jane Welsh Carlyle

"Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence."
Minor White

Puyallup

"I think everything can be painted because painting can change reality; but everything cannot be photographed and the photographer often comes home empty-handed, with images which (often) have a documentary interest, but which rarely go further than that. One has to be completely available, very tenacious and admit that many subjects won't give any results... and a miracle sometimes happens, without warning."
Martine Franck

Puyallup - waiting for my bus.

Puyallup - waiting for my bus.

“Perhaps all pleasure is only relief.”
William S. Burroughs

"There is no special way a photograph should look."
Gary Winogrand

Kent

Kent

Tacoma

"...people say they need to express their emotions I'm sick of that. Photography doesn`t teach you to express your emotions it teachs you to see."
Berenice Abbot

Tacoma

Tacoma

Tacoma

Tacoma

After Lee Friedlander saw Charlie Parker play with Nat King Cole on the piamo he said "I was dumbfounded. I somehow knew exactly where he was coming from. He made me understand that anything is possible."

Stalled Series

Stalled Series

Stalled Series

Stalled Series

I'm reading Liars Poker by Michael Lewis. It's a book about Soloman Brothers bond traders in the go-go 80's. The book chronicles the bond trading floor and has many similarities with the greed on Wall Street that brought the world's economy to it's knees yet again...one quote used in their training stood out to me - "in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king".

This will be the first in a series of photos of a stalled housing development a short walk thru the woods from my house.

"One should not only photograph things for what they are but for what else they are."
Minor White