Verde Valley Memories

This old hulk from the twenties lives at the Gold King Mine in historic Jerome, Arizona.  Since we're on the road this post will be short on copy and, well, is a one shot wonder given our tight schedule and the haul back to Taos.  To paraphrase the peripetetic Joe McNally, MTC.  That's more to come in layman's terms.

More Street



When we think about street photography we conjure gritty urban scenes of which there are pretty much none here.  The key in street photography, it seems to me, is that some context is provided by the setting, the backdrop.  A story may unfold in the "decisive moment" as in the first image where Jean Luc prepares to enter heaven's door beyond which his life as a monk begins.  Or a lonely hooded soul slumps toward the "vielle ville" as his peers across the beach enjoy a laugh and a smoke.  There's palpable isolation.

A couple of these are portraits that don't have precise environmental context but the subject's attire and ethnicity provide ample texture and sense of place.

 

Street

Last week I talked about street photography.  It’s something very much on my mind so I’ve been sifting through hundreds, nay thousands of images that fall into the category.  Street photographs are the ones that unveil the candid, un-posed, slice of life moments in the human ballet.  At least that's the premise.

There seem to be two schools of thought in the wonderful world of street photography.  One involves a fly on the wall philosophy where the photographer is unseen and theoretically can capture a truly candid moment.  In the other the photographer is known to the subject and may be very engaged in the scene even to the point of choreographing the dance of life. There's one of those here.

 

 

Shy fellow that I am I fall into the former category most of the time.  Responses of my victims when I am recognized vary greatly, from hostility to a warm embrace.  In this series are examples of total disdain, of disinterest and “take my picture, please.”

My program isn't letting me post all the images I intended and I don't know if that's a glitch, operator error or a real limitation of the template.  In any event,  you're getting about half of the photographs I planned.  Is that a sigh of relief or are you just glad to hear from me ?

 

 

 

High Desert Hues

Truth be told I spent the morning assembling a host of street photographs, the kind embodied by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank and many others.  The task proved so daunting that I've bagged it for now and am going with a couple of Autumn shots using motion blur as an artistic device.  The golden hues of fall seem to lend themselves to this kind of abstraction.

Street Photography to follow.