travel
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Good Intentions
I have already posted about Tim Carpenter’s (author, photographer, philosopher) book “To Learn to Photograph is to Learn to Die” but I continue to revisit this book and share ideas about it with the hobbyist photographer. Essential to Carpenter’s argument, that photography can prepare the photographer for death, is the act of “decreation.” In a…
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The mental stumbling block. The creative impasse.
Down By the Hudson, 2026 Sigma BF Monochrome Mode, Sigma 35 DG DN, edited Under the Bridge, Kingston, NY 2026 Sigma Bf, Panasonic 85mm Years ago, while in college and trying to design a high rise building (or was that the redevelopment project along the Monongahela?) I was given great advice by a professor: Stefanie…
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Radiators
Once a main form of energy transfer between steam and air (convection and infrared), the simplicity of the radiator (originally called a “hot box” by the inventor) was, at one time, embellished to be something of an art form (and create more surface area for effectiveness). For those exposed in the grand Victorian home, the…
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Ocean Grove
Ocean Grove is a community in Neptune, New Jersey originally formed in the mid-late 1800s by Methodist ministers as a religious retreat location for parishioners…or as they called it then…a camp meeting community. It is the one of the longest active communities of its type in the United States. What is a “camp meeting community,”…
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Color Me Impressed
Two streams of conscience at once. Can there be such a thing? Reading some notes I made in Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes, one note from the margin stands out in particular, “the onslaught of photos is creating a world of indifference rather than reacting to it – thereby preventing the photographer to escape it…
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The Risky Advance
About 30 years ago, while a frigid cold winter was invading the New York Metro area, I was expressing my disgust with my grandfather about the weather when he turned around and said “the Hudson River is beginning to freeze over with solid ice.” “What?” I asked incredulously. He responded in his diphtheria afflicted voice,…
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Building Bridges
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”- Rita Mae Brown Recently I have been culling through old photos and came to the conclusion that my photography, and its subjects, hasn’t dramatically changed in the past 10 years. It’s as if I am a mad man,…
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Architectural Vulnerability
by James V October 24, 2020 Urban architecture has always fascinated me. From when I was eight years old, I dreamed of designing a high rise. I still do and the ideas for one continuously gestate in my mind. I wanted green terraces in the late 1980’s, floating in the middle of a skyscraper. Actually,…
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The City That Never Sleeps
The Christmas holidays distort reality in New York City. For a short time, the visitors revel in the holiday spirit, the street performers cater to the holiday cheer and the windows on 5th Avenue are decorated to interest the tourist with a style that is all New York… Sigma Bf, Meike 55mm 1.8 Pro But…
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Some BS from the Bf
Speaking to self: “I’m going to use that 24mm I bought when I purchased the camera and try for some dramatic photos of landscape. And you know what else? Maybe I could stop off in a small town and come up with some interesting photos of the place on the way to the reservoir/lake.” Problem…
Amateur in photography. Amateur in life. 