Memento Mori

January 25, 2007 - April 23, 2007
It died a slow death from lack of interest... It was a good idea at the time, but its time has come and gone.

The Warmth of Spring

Spring has arrived at last, with a couple of days near 80 degrees, and the flower blossoms are exploding everywhere. So I photograph these blossoms in the back yard and rejoice.

A Pleasant Thought

by Ken Spencer

Forgive me for posting yet another vacation photo, but I have been sick as a DOG since last wednesday with some kind of flu and can barely get our of bed. I hate to miss a post so picked this photograph because looking at it, it takes me almost forget how bad my skin hurts and how I don't even feel like eating... It is the surf and rocks at Point Lobos in California, where Edward Weston used to photograph. Does a soul good to be there and to follow in his footsteps.

CITIES OF THE DEAD

Audrey C. Tiernan
The only grandparent I knew, my Mother's mother died when I was eight. One constant memory I have of her is visiting the cemetery in Queens where my grandfather is buried at least twice a month. There was an old park bench situated under a cherry tree right near the family plot. My Mom would plant flowers for the season: pansies, geraniums and in fall mums. My grandmother would sit on the bench and I would always climb the cherry tree. For me those were fun afternoons and I guess the significance of the trip was lost on me, like the grandfather I never knew. I remember going there for my grandmother's funeral and feeling very small when I saw the big hole in the ground. I didn't visit again until I was eleven and my father was buried in the family plot on a frigid February day in 1967. It was so cold and the ground so frozen that the gravediggers couldn't even dig his grave. I wouldn't go to the cemetery again until I was an adult, for the funeral of my first cousin who died before he was 50. A photo assignment took me into the cemetery several years after that. I decided to go say hello to the family after shooting the job. Instinctively I remembered the turns that took me to the family plot. Immediately I noticed that the park bench was gone and the cherry tree had been cut down too. Oddly enough, I felt a real sense of loss at their absence. I stood for quite awhile, thinking of those afternoons spent with my grandmother on the bench. In New Orleans cemeteries are referred to as cities of the dead, but since then whenever I visit I feel so many memories come to life.

Face to Face

by Ken Spencer



I have always wanted to see the Getty Villa since it reopened. It had been closed for nine years after the Getty Center was built, a series of gleaming white buildings high on a hill overlooking Los Angeles. The Villa is a much smaller facility, located in Pacific Pallisades, a re-creation of the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum. In the book “Blink” there is the story of the “Kouros” which, according to the placard on the sculpture, is either a great treasure or a five million dollar fake. So I wanted to see that sculpture, because of its notoriety, and the museum itself, but the idea of looking at other antiquities was not something I would normally be that excited about. How wrong I was! Standing face to face with these ancient figures carved from marble was to be in the presence of something very powerful. Perhaps more so because of the scarring and other damage - something that heightens their unimaginable age even more. One of the joys of visiting either of the Getty museums is that photography is allowed, in most cases, unlike many other museums. I find this wonderful for two reasons. First, as a photographer I see the world most clearly through the lens of a camera, and enjoy looking at objects and framing the parts of them I find most interesting, or framing them to include or exclude other objects around them. Second, I study the sculptures or paintings as best as I can when in the museum, but I treasure the ability to bring home photographs of them to look at long after first impressions of the artworks have faded. I was moved by being face to face with this sculpture from antiquity, and although I read the placard, it has completely slipped my mind who he is and how old he is. I think it may be a seated Zeus. But the power of this sculpture, and of other statues I saw this day, still stay with me.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Audrey C. Tiernan
I grew up on Long Island and for as long as I can remember drove past this sign without giving it a second thought. Then one day years ago a college friend from Pennsylvania who was visitng saw the sign and remarked: "I guess all roads lead to New York!" Since that day the sign and my perspective have never quite been the same. I suppose all roads eventually do lead to New York. And today, I know for sure that the hearts and eyes of all New York sports fans will be in The Bronx with The New York Yankees on Opening Day.

"R2-D2 Where are you?"

Thomas A. Ferrara

For all those who were wondering how the post office would compete with E-mail.

The Ballerina Clown

by Ken Spencer



High up on the front of a building, on a busy street corner in Venice, California is this thirty-foot tall statue of a ballerina with the head of a clown. It is very bizarre looking, but seems to fit right in with this famous seaside community. Everyone here knows of the statue and points it out to visitors. It is an artwork by famed sculptor Jonathan Borofsky who has created large-scale outdoor public commissions around the world. This artwork was installed in 1988 when the new Renaissance building was completed. What an unexpected pleasure to discover this in such a small community. It seemed at its most bizarre at night, which is when I decided to photograph it.

THE SENTRY

Audrey C. Tiernan
I remember the day my Mom and I were walking in Manhattan and she pointed out gargoyles on the side of one of the buildings. I was about eight years old and found them ugly and scary. Mom was quick to tell me that they were really more like sentries or guardians of the building. She could always dispel my fears so easily back then. When I went away to college, some of the buildings on campus had gargoyles too. I recalled what she had said so many years earlier and felt like they were friends as I walked past them on campus. Even today when I walk past buildings I am always looking. You just never know where your friends are.

I Came Out of My Cabin...

I came out of my cabin in the morning at Pfeiffer State Park, in Big Sur, California to find this perfect blossom, in perfect light, just for a moment. Not to mention the drops of water from the rainstorm the night before. I love mornings like this!

cha-cha-cha

Karen Stabile

AT THE END OF THE DAY

Audrey C. Tiernan
Pinot Noir? Cabernet? Perhaps even a Chardonnay?

The Ancient Ones

My wife was going out to a conference in Scottsdale last March, and asked if I wanted to come along. "Absolutely!", I said. She would be spending her week trapped in a hotel conference room - I would be spending my week wandering the desert with a camera, visiting Anasazi Sites I have yet to see. Anasazi is a Navajo word meaning "The Ancient Ones" and they lived in the Southwest United states around 700AD to 1300 AD. They built some amazing cities, Mesa Verde being perhaps the best known. And then they abandoned them. Many Anasazi ruins take the form of pueblos, which are multi room dwellings, constructed from stone and plastered over with clay. Many are multi storied. Some of the most impressive, like Mesa Verde and Canyon de Chelly, are dwellings built into openings in cliffs that may be 1000 feet high. These structures are very impressive, and I have spent the last 18 years visiting and photographing them in the four corners area. This is a smaller ruin which has been reconstructed, called Besh Be Gowah, outside Globe, Arizona. I was probably photographing the light more than the architecture.

Moonlight

Origianl post from "Night Logic"
Thomas A. Ferrara

Gifts from enemies

Karen Stabile

Gifts from Friends

By Ken Spencer


My friend Larry is a professional astronomer at an observatory in California, and he and his wife spend a lot of time in the outdoors. I was planning a trip to photograph landscapes in California and decided to write him for suggestions of places to go that I might not have though of. In one of his replies was this: "... go up to Morro Bay, but when there be sure to drive the extra few miles down to Montana de Orro State Park. The ocean cliff views are tremendous - **** (4 star)."
So I took his suggestion. When I got out of my car, and walked 4 feet to the railing, this is what I saw! Tremendous? Yeah, I guess so!
I am always thankful for the gifts of friends.

NOTE TO MYSELF

Audrey C. Tiernan
A is for....

Winterland

Thomas A. Ferrara

Not all of us could make it to Florida, or California, or the Bahamas... some of us were stuck here, left behind in the snow!!! Thanks guys! :-)

1-800-DICKPIC BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND

Karen Stabile



DICKPICS is looking for help.........heard the new employee must answer to Moe or Buddy if a man, and Sweetie, Honey, Hon, Sweetheart, Girlie or Buddy if a woman.

HERE COMES THE SUN

Audrey C. Tiernan
Details. I look for details that are reminders of another time, another era. They punctuate the landscape of our lives. As I walked down Broadway I saw this magnificent timepiece that adorned the now defunct New York Sun newspaper building. One side offers the temperature, the other the time of day. It made me think of a time when New York City supported more than a dozen daily newspapers. A time when both morning and afternoon newspapers thrived. A reminder of a simpler time when people actually got their news from the newspaper, not the television or now the Internet. Reminders of an ever changing world and anchors to another time. A better time? I guess the jury is still out.

Swimming with sharks

Jim Peppler

Paradise Island, Bahamas

The Mystery Man

by Ken Spencer

What’s going on here?

I was walking on the beach in Venice, California, looking for beautiful landscapes. When I walked under the Venice pier, I noticed a man kneeling on the beach. His trowsers were wet and lying next to him on the sand. He was wearing blue boxer shorts and was wet from the waist down. The portion of the skin on his back that I could see between his jacket and shorts was covered with some kind of red sores. He did not move in the 10 minutes that I approached and then walked by him. Other strollers on the beach passed him as well without a glance. There was something about him, however, that held my attention. Did he need help? I decided to take one photo, just because the scene was troubling. I was using a 300mm lens so I shot from a long way off. About the time I was wondering if I should approach him and ask if he was OK, I saw him quickly turn his head in my direction and then just as quickly, turn and look back at the ground. I took that as a sign that he was OK, and so continued on my way. I have no idea what was going on. But I find the image, and the questions, have stayed with me since I took the photograph two weeks ago.

Reserved Parking

Thomas A. Ferrara

I take solice in the knowledge that parking will be available.

1-800-DICKPICS

Karen Stabile

Could be Dick's gig in retirement .....

A ROSE IS A ROSE

Audrey C. Tiernan
"In the midst of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer." Albert Camus.

Gifts

By Ken Spencer



I am driving north up the Pacific Coast Highway. At night. In the rain.

You have heard of this road - it is cut out of the side of a cliff, hundreds of feet above the Pacific Ocean. In daylight it offers unimaginable views of ocean, sky, and the crashing surf at the bases of the cliffs ahead, as they appear and disappear as the road twists and turns following the mountains. At night it is unnerving. I had NOT planned on driving this road at night. It's all my fault, though. I am spending a week on a crazy thousand mile trip, driving around California, photographing the landscape. At every turn today I was given the gift of yet another spectacular view, of landscape, or ocean or tree or field. It was pouring rain leaving Santa Barbara, and within an hour I was soaked, even wearing rain gear. The landscape and trees in the rain and mist were impossible to pass by. So I stopped. And stopped again. And again. And now I find myself on the road I didn't want to be on at night. But then another thing happens - it becomes simply magical. The twilight sky is reflected in the wet road ahead, and off to my left, the sky, instead of being bright blue, is gray and black and misty, and behind the clouds the setting sun is reflected in the ocean. So I keep stopping and keep shooting. I am thankful for this magical weather, and the late hour of the day.

On my last stop for a photo, I stand by the side road watching the lines on the road reflect the last light in the sky, and just then a car appears from around the bend, headlights on. I wait for a moment, and then snap this. One more gift on a day of gifts.

All Along the Watchtower

Thomas A. Ferrara

"Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them know along the line what any of it is worth."
-Bob Dylan, "All Along the Watchtower"

This photo was made at the watchtower overlooking the Colorado river from the south rim of the Grand Canyon. The Arizona sun was setting in the west and opposite that, the red rock of the canyon wall glowed in the basking.

No Trucks

Karen Stabile

What - cars only allowed in this pond ? Go Figure!

FOR THE BIRDS

Audrey C. Tiernan
I admit it… I took ornithology my senior year of college because I thought it would be an easy A and I needed a class to fulfill a mandatory science requirement. Actually it wasn't easy and getting up for a 7am lab once a week was downright painful. I never expected to enjoy the class, but I did and I gained a life long interest in birdwatching. My backyard has lots of feeders and several birdhouses. I enjoy looking out the kitchen window to see who has stopped for breakfast or lunch. Several Cardinal families have remained all winter. Of course it is built in entertainment for Slugger too. The birds at the feeder have repaid me by providing me with several floater opportunities! This great blue heron didn't stop in my backyard; I spotted him here in Tampa. That's what I like about birdwatching, you can do it anywhere. No special equipment needed--just keen vision. Every day is ripe with opportunity-- catch an Oriole in your backyard birdbath, or an American Kestral on the fence! Actually, birdwatching has made me a better photographer, it has helped me to learn to be a little more patient, to look at things just a bit more closely before releasing the shutter. In many ways it is just like photography, the birder is always on the hunt hoping to find an elusive species or a special moment.

Southard's Pond II

Jim Peppler

Group Shot

Julia Gaines
This photo was found last week when they finally got to the bottom of the pile of papers on Stanley Wolfson's old desk. The assignment came to shape when Stanley got hold of Mitch Freedman's beat notes on a woman in Montauk upset that gentlemen were swimming in only their bathing tunics with no leggings. Their ankles were fully exposed! Stanley contacted the woman and told her to tell all her neighbors and relatives and anyone she'd ever met in her entire life to meet the photographer at 9am outside the local church for a group shot. When the photographer arrived, expecting only the original upset woman, all the ladies begged the photographer to wait for the 145 other protesting citizens to arrive, but by 4pm, only 140 more had assembled and the sun was going down and the photographer had to take the photo because there was a deadline. The photographer returned to Alicia Patterson's Hempstead garage and worked in the darkroom for several hours. The finished print was placed on Stanley's desk where someone covered it with a pretzel bag and a box of paper clips and two thousand other photographs. It was not seen for 113 years.

Okay, I bought this photograph in an antique shop in Columbia, South Carolina. At the bottom of the photo I found what I was looking for--the embossed surname of my great grandfather and his brother, partners in a photography studio in Columbia in the 1890's. Their subjects were the buildings around the city, class pictures, and portraits of prominent townspeople. I don't know whether it was my great grandfather or his brother who clicked the shutter on this particular photo. I like looking at the fashions and individual faces--some pretty, some plain and some downright strange. I was amused to notice that the chair supporting a woman in the back row (far right) was visible. Maybe an oversight of the photographer due to deadline constraints? That wouldn't be anything new.

big girls

dick yarwood

Right Under My Nose

Ken Spencer


A friend loaned me a new high-end camera for the amateur market, and said “Give it a try, see how you like it, and take some nice landscape photographs with it.” For me, most of my best landscape photographs follow the time-honored style of foreground, middle ground, background - layers of an image that make a landscape more complex and more interesting for the eye. So I went down to Hempstead Harbor which has been frozen for a week or so, and concentrated on the blocks of ice which had piled up on the rocks as the temperatures fell. It was below freezing and windy, and after about 45 minutes I felt I was about done. Then suddenly I looked down at my feet, and there were all kinds of interesting patterns in the ice itself, formed when the tide rose and fell, and the water apparently melted and froze repeatedly. I switched the lens to macro mode, and spent another 20 minutes looking for details in the ice. I cannot imagine how the bubbles froze into this piece of ice, but I accepted nature’s gift and made this photograph. And I reminded myself to look for details in the future. (If you click on this photoraph, by the way, you will get a higher resolution version that shows more detail)

The Ice Storm

Thomas A. Ferrara

As photojournalists, we see many things. It's our job. We look at life through probing, analytical eyes. One of the disadvantages of this, is that we often do so at the sacrifice our own fascination.
Moments that we would once find special, become "assignments" in our minds. Events like Parades, street festivals, and days at the beach, become "floater" opportunities. Sporting events have deadlines, Sunrises and sunsets without a camera become "Missed opportunities"...
And snowfalls...
This I miss most. Once wonderful days. Schools would close, and the world would turn beautiful again under blankets of white. Where I would once grab my sled and head to the local hill... I now find myself grabbing my camera and heading out to photograph the myriad of adult calamities that go along with a winter storm, and I'm finding it harder and harder to be facinated by it all.
But l try, and I still find myself looking for beauty in the crystalline ice.
I made this night time exposure of a tree, encased in ice, in the parking lot of my office, at the end of my shift.

Meanwhile, In a Galaxy Far, Far, Away

Thomas A. Ferrara

Pitchers and Catchers report!

With hopes toward October, Timeless heroes of sport, from both my beloved Yankees, and their lesser cousins to the South, the Mets. (I know I'm going to catch hell for that one) convene once again in Florida for spring training.

The Motherlode

Karen Stabile

Today's headline "Should Workers Pay More?"

FLIRTING

Audrey C. Tiernan
Every day, this little feral black cat that I have named Cashew comes to flirt with my indoor cat Slugger. For weeks I tried to ignore her dances on the window sill, her piercing yellow eyes that are still peering into my kitchen late at night. But her persistence and personality have won me over. She won’t let me touch her yet, although each morning when I take her breakfast she flirts with me, letting me get just a little bit closer. Slugger, well, he acts mighty territorially. He bats at the window and sometimes even hisses. After a few minutes, he is completely put out and turns his back on her. But sometimes, real early in the morning, before the kitchen light is on I see him sitting gazing out the window looking for Cashew. As I watched this all play out in front of me one day, I thought about flirting. My camera flirts with situations every day. It flirts with angles and the ever elusive light and shadow. I flirt with ideas--- the things I’d like to photograph and the places I hope to document. Flirting, it’s everywhere. It’s instinctive.

Beleive

Julia Gaines

I saw this sign as I was driving on Route 4 westward toward Aiken, South Carolina where my great great great grandparents lived in the early 1800's, his folks from Ireland and hers from Wales--families that came to America for religious freedom. I saw religious signs everywhere as I drove through the state. In the middle of a cotton field, huge letters spelled out "Jesus Country." I wish I'd stopped to photograph that one, but it was along a busy highway with no place to pull over. For this "Beleive" sign, I was able to stop, wondering who had gone to the trouble of making the sign and posting it there.

Expectations

Ken Spencer


We were headed out to explore more of San Angelo, Texas, and Ginger asked if I wanted to see the water lily garden. “Sure,” I replied - I love to photograph gardens.” But water lilies in Texas? “I’ll just bring my toy camera and not drag the Nikon D2x around with me for this trip,” I thought to myself. I mean, what could I possibly find to photograph there?

Expectations... How many times do we think about a place, or a location or a subject, and pre-judge what we think it might be worth in terms of photographs. What time of day are we going there? High noon? What is the chance that time of day would result in great images?

I remember meeting the photographer Paul Caponigro at the Maine Photographic Workshops one year, and I asked him when he thought the best time was to photograph the low flat rocks down at the harbor’s edge. I will never forget his answer. Just go down and see what you can find, at any time. It would be strange to think that the rocks will suddenly reveal themselves to us, just because we arrived on the scene! Go and photograph - the longer you are out there photographing, the more chance you will have to find great photographs. More time in the field equals better photographs. It is now my mantra.

So we arrived at the International Water Lily Garden to fine huge tanks full of all kinds of water lilies, and some of them were just unimaginable, as these were. Someone has since said that these are most likely an African variety. Stunning photographs everywhere. This may be the single best image from a week of shooting! And what camera did I bring? My toy camera! What was I thinking! Fortunately, the little Canon S-70 produces a 20 MB file, and I can make beautiful prints from this small point-and-shoot, so all was not lost.

Stripped

Thomas A. Ferrara

Stripped, stark, skinned, spartan, standing there in rows, muted pillars in an alien landscape. Cut low as if by capricious whim. What happened here?

Twinkies

Karen Stabile

YUMMY - perhaps a cup of coffee with your Twinkies?

OLD GLORY

Audrey C. Tiernan
A Park Avenue drive by shooting in the spirit of Childe Hassam. Perhaps, perhaps not.

Potatoe

Julia Gaines
A Late Saturday Post
Maybe Dan Quayle stopped here and made sure "potatoe" was spelled correctly at this KFC in Fredericksburg, Virginia in December, 2006.

The Cameras We Carry

Ken Spencer

For the past 20 years or so, I have always had what I call a “toy” camera. The first one was a Nikon L-35AF film camera which I brought with me everywhere. It was auto-exposure and auto-focus, with a 35mm f/2.8 lens and was always at the ready for a quick snap. What a joy that was to use - it would even do long exposures if, as I discovered, you held down the pop-up-flash against its will! When that one bought the farm, I moved to an Olympus Stylus Epic. I would bring cameras like these down to the harbor for a walk at sunset, or on a bike ride, or when I would go to New York City for the day to visit museums, wander in Central Park, or for dinners or the theater with my daughters. They are unobtrusive cameras, and ready at a moment’s notice for a quick shot. Snapshots. Professional photographers do snapshots too, you know. I still have the Olympus and it works perfectly, but as I became accustomed to shooting digital every day, the thought of taking a roll of 35mm film and then waiting to process it, and then scanning the best photos seemed to take way too long. So it was time for a digital “toy” camera. I chose the Canon S-70. Just because it is my “toy” camera does not mean it was cheap - I believe that I paid something like $475 for it about two years ago. The main attraction for me, other than the fact it was point-and-shoot, was that it had a 28mm equivalent lens when zoomed back to wide-angle. A 35mm equivalent wide-angle was never quite wide enough for me. The S-70 shoots a 20 megabyte file at its highest file size which is impressive. The one disappointment is that a camera which costs one-tenth the cost of a Nikon D2x cannot be expected to have the same image quality as its big brother. When shooting at ISO 400, the files have a lot of “noise” in them, and there are JPG artifacts along the edges of objects which can be seen if you make large prints. The other frustrating part for these types of point-and-shoot cameras is their “lag time” - the time from when you press the shutter button, until the camera first determines the exposure, then the focus, and then, finally, releases the shutter. Sometimes it takes longer than a full second, which is just maddening for those of us who are accustomed to taking the picture right NOW! In any case, I have come to live with this camera, and it is always in a small case on my belt. In the summer of 2005, my older daughter, Liz, was based in Nice, France, for the summer and at the end of her tour, my wife, Kathy, and I flew with our younger daughter, Amy, to Nice to join her for a family vacation. I had to decide what to bring with me for a camera, and with great reluctance, decided to leave the D2x home. I just didn’t want to have a heavy camera hanging off my shoulder all day long, and I worried that a professional camera would be an issue in museums that we visited. The S-70 had none of these problems, and was a joy to carry around. I would carefully take it out of its case and even do a forbidden snapshot every now and then in a museum with no problem. It was while wandering inside the walls of the town of Pern-les-Fontaines, that I saw this image. Amy had stopped to look at her guildbook, and Liz had gone on ahead to see where the street went and I came around the corner at just the right moment. Fortunately everything stayed the same for the full second it took the camera to figure everything out, and this photograph was the result. Perhaps just another snapshot, perhaps just a little bit more.

Ken Spencer

Maine again

Thomas A. Ferrara


At anchor in Pulpit Harbor. Our third day at sea. the cook is below baking bread, much of the crew and passengers still in their bunks. a few scattered on the deck above, looking back towards the edge of the american continent, the sun rises over the treeline, painted red by the mist, rising like smoke from the water.

Picture

Dick Yarwood

This is the reaction from an average individual first seeing this ego trip of a website. Let us, please, stop the captions that read like the Book of Knowledge. As Harvey Weber said the pictures should carry it, not hundreds of words of bullshit.

Scruffy

In memory of Scruffy Stabile
Sept. 1993 - Jan.30,2007

Paint

Karen Stabile


This reminds me that I gotto paint my kitchen......... probably a nice mellow yellow .

GEOMETRY

Audrey C. Tiernan


Mathematics was never my favorite subject in school, frankly I wasn’t very good in it. But I liked geometry and I have always found myself trying to incorporate shapes and angles into my photographs. I don't know exactly why, except that I like to try to add dimension to my two dimensional canvas. I was in lower Manhattan one day with my nephew and we walked through an old building that had once housed the first children's courthouse in the country. Built in 1902 in the Classical Revival style it was a fascinating structure. When I looked up I was struck by all the lines and angles in the ceiling and the juxtaposition of the sphere shaped light fixture. I just had to take this picture. As a child I recall that I always had trouble coloring within the lines of my coloring book. Maybe that is why I am fascinated by them in photographs. I don't see lines as boundaries that impose limits, rather I seem them as infinite with countless possibilities. I like to see where the lines take me and where my camera takes me too. So far, there have been lots of turns in the road and it has been an amazing journey!

Aud

Southard's Pond

Jim Peppler


"Southard's Pond #11". from a series of photos for a visual journal of a walk thru Southard's Pond Park in Babylon that I made for a friend. I find the camera a fine tool for connecting to the living reality of LIFE as I experience it; my faith and belief is that each moment is infinitely rich in information, inspiration and "Beauty" (as in the richest affirmation of creation) the challenge is to surender to the seeing and appreciating. This "moment" in a reflection mesmerized me with the complexity and depth of its patterning elements. I was doing the image journaling walk as a dayoff exercise to share my appreciation of the spot with a friend I was trying to provoke into visiting Long Island; but I confess that two days later I went back to seeing howmuch could be "recreated" for a NEWSDAY "floater" - as it turned out several "moments" such as this were still there with different nuances, and several others were very different and in several cases "better" (in that I saw more of their beauty).