Small camera reflex syndrome

I left the house three times over the last week to take pictures. It’s nothing to be proud of but I’ve been asleep at the switch for almost two months. When I began processing the images from those adventures, I discovered I hadn’t made a photograph with either of my main cameras in seven weeks. It might be the longest I’ve gone without using a real camera in thirty years. Maybe much more. Part of the reason, you are tired of hearing, was the long-fused effort to build a new website. But the other, and more valid excuse, is that I’ve come to rely on the iphone in my front pocket. Or in my left hand when I’m running. It’s unobtrusive, expedient, and competent. I am but one of those.

Taking a real camera in your hand does change the dynamics of picture making. It's heavier and more complex than a smart phone much the way that a 4x5 was a slow anvil compared to a full frame DSLR. But you give up contemplation and craft when you rush things, naysayers sniff. You don’t take the time to wait for the magic moment, the ideal light and the perfect composition. Sez you.

Having dispensed with the bulk and snail’s pace of large format not to mention the vaporous darkroom 18 years ago I happily embraced the ease and speed of DSLRs and now I embrace the remarkable iphone. Call me a hussy but I like my action easy, fast and indiscriminate. And there are processing tricks on a smart phone that I can’t perform in Photoshop. I have one word for you citizen, Snapseed.

From the fabled adobe portfolio are this gaggle of images from my heavyweight Canon 5D Mk III and my ever ready iphone 7. They are of historic San Francisco de Asis Church in Ranchos de Taos and the equally important Martinez Hacienda half a mile down the road from us.

Pretty hard to tell what image came from which device.

Lessons Learned

Corrugated roof  in Los Ojos, New Mexico.

This follows up on yesterday's post that included the first ever video in my blog. The first lesson is that you can, indeed, use video in a blog. That wasn't evident till my friend Terry Thompson emailed that tidbit this morning. Lesson two is that you have to click on the title of the post, in yesterday's case Moving Target, to be transported to the the blog itself. That's where you can view the video at the bottom of the page. This is a test run. Nothing more. It's too short. It moves too slowly across the canopy of trees, but it shows that I can produce a video clip in the style of my black and white stills. That was quite a discovery. Gotta find the sweet spot that tells story before it bores your bag off. The one Monday was seven seconds.That wasn't enough.

Did you know that videos garner 1200% more shares than still images? 

When there is a video in a post I'll include message that says something like, "Click on the title to visit the blog and watch the video."

Moving Target

Here’s an epilogue to the I didn’t get into the Contemporary Taos 2020 show at the Harwood Museum saga. Thanks to all of you who held my hand through the trauma. After steaming about it from Thursday April 23 to Monday April 27 I had aggregated a set of questions and concerns about the selection process. It turns out that the museum chose 24 of the 30 finalists to be included in the actual museum exhibition and the remaining six finalists plus the ten artists on the Wait List would be “recommended” for a satellite show to run concurrently at a gallery to be chosen. I learned this from an email response to my query to Nicole Ashley Dial-Kay, the museum’s new Curator of Exhibitions and Collections. While Peggy suggested that I stop whining in public about slights both real and imagined, coming that close to being in the museum show felt worse than simply not getting in. They took 80% of the finalists after all. If they’d taken the top ten or fifteen, I’d say tough cookies. That’s the way it crumbles. That they accepted most of the finalists was the unkindest cut of all. On the just barely brighter side I might be accepted for the secondary show. Like kissing your sister perhaps. Half full or half empty? The hell if I know.

I sent a follow up email to Nicole that fished for some perspective on how and why I came up short. I proffered the hypothesis that, one, the fall-off between the 24 selected and the six also-rans must have been significant or the fact that the images I submitted were shot with the phone in my front pocket might have been a deal killer. I told her that I felt a hitch in her enthusiasm when I admitted my dastardly deed. Then again it could have been a lousy virtual tour or lackluster credentials. There’s no MFA in my timeline after all. I did not hear back. I'd prefer to believe the work that was selected was just better. One way or other I'm anxious to see the show and to see if I agree.

And speaking, as we are, of iphoneography, the images in this post are from the diminutive device in my pocket. I’m really excited about the prospects of adding video from that very appliance to my social network presence. My enthusiasm comes from my general appreciation of the importance of video across all platforms, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, the lot. People prefer to look at video. Then a recent webinar underscored the potential of adding video to my repertoire. The interconnectivity among all the platforms can help build a larger reach, something I’ve struggled to do. My audience is small but elite.

In the last few days, I’ve included a couple of short videos on Facebook and Instagram and shared them with the other. I posted one on Instagram as part of My Story and the other on Facebook as a regular post. I'm feeling my way. I can’t tell which one is more effective this early in the game but I'm leaning toward posting my videos on Instagram the way I do stills. Then I'll share them with Facebook. Time will prove the efficacy of that approach. My handle on Instagram is steveimmel and on Facebook I’m Steve Immel. My April 30 post on Facebook is a short video of the canopy of trees that shade Burch Street in downtown Taos. It looks like it came from the same human who shot the stills shown here. The potential of this has my juices flowing. 

That's a screen shot from the 8 second video. Sooner or later I'll figure out how insert a video that you can play into the blog. The internet tells me it's possible. I scoff.

No Cigar

Lost Hills California

As you are too aware. I have been sidelined for three weeks of horror and frustration while building my new website and making it function fully. There’s been precious little time for making photographs or creative writing of any kind. This is as creative as it’s going to get.

Wasco, California

Then as my website making ordeal reached its apex of failure Thursday evening, I had lost all my email for a year and I was ready to jump off the proverbial bridge, I got the news that had not been selected for the Harwood Museum of Art’s upcoming Contemporary Art Taos/2020 exhibition. I wouldn’t say I was counting on it except that I was counting on it. 

Old Dale, California

Friday morning at 7AM I didn’t have the errant email and hadn’t received any new mail since 4PM Thursday. I was, shall we say, miffed. Then at 11AM the year of old emails had populated the Inbox on my computer, my iphone and my ipad. I was getting my new mail and something was right with the world.

 

Imperial Dunes, California

An unintended bi-product of populating the new site was the discovery of some older photographs that I wouldn’t have identified if I hadn’t taken a look back. Some are included here. Recent stuff certainly wasn’t an option. You may pick up on the forlorn theme.That they're all from the Mojave Desert and the Imperial Valley is pure chance.

That’s all I've got.

Truncated in Taos

Here’s a truncated version of yesterday’s post. It dawned on me that my instructions on how to view my handy dandy new website were convoluted at best and impossible at worst. And inducing you to look at my pride and joy was my mission for the post in the first second and third place.

To get to the link you would have had to click on the headline get to the actual blog, page down midway and click on the Steve Immel Photography link to the right on the photograph, Book of Solemnity. My mother wouldn’t do that for me.

So, click on www.steveimmelphotography.com and you can view the new site. I hope you’ll take a look.

Brave New World

Book Cliffs from the Under A Big Sky portfolio

Making the short list of 30 for the upcoming Contemporary Art Taos/2020 show at the Harwood Museum put some bounce in my step. I wouldn’t exactly say I’d been languishing in the minor leagues of photography, but I hadn’t felt the love for a while. A while meaning 2010 when I had my work all over the place. It was shortly after 2010 that I trimmed my sails, stopped advertising and for the most part stopped entering shows. The result of those austerity measures was that name recognition and sales fell with equal alacrity.

Lines of Defense from Sketches of Winter

Then, during this shelter in place winter and with plenty of time for reflection, I shook off the cobwebs and entered a couple of shows. When I got that congratulatory mail from the Harwood my lengthy to-do list sudden seemed less daunting. Forty must-dos every week can elicit a why even bother response in the most deluded of planners. But two weeks ago with the wind of the Harwood short list in my sales I looked the number one item on my list right in the eye and said to it, “I’m not afraid of you, you son of a bitch. You’re toast.” Or words to that effect.

Book of Solemnity from the Divine Light portfolio

With that I began to build and launch a new website. “New website” had topped my to-do five years. I kid you not. My clunky old site was built my friend Jeff Fongemie, now a noted web developer, fifteen years ago and while pretty trick for the time. But it had become, let’s face it, a relic befitting a relic.

Standard Oil from The Edge of What's Left

Most of all it wasn’t web friendly so you couldn’t see the full page on the screen of your smart phone or tablet. And in a time when most site visits are done on one or the other, you’re hosed unless folks can actually use the site.

Lenny Foster from Monumental Headd

With that in mind I have been reviewing template-based web hosts for this big change. There are a myriad on choices. Photo Shelter, Zenfolio and WIX to name but a few. I liked WIX’s templates best. But all the while Peggy was hawking me to use FASO, Fine Art Studio Online. That’s a one she’s used for a decade and absolutely glorifies. She raved about its ease of use and, more importantly, she touted the hands-on technical assistance she knew I’d need.

Harjula's from The Fog Series

Two weeks, ladies and gentlemen, is what it took to build the new website, to get it recognized in the web world and to maintain my email, contacts and my website and address. And that two weeks was hell.

When I Say Jump from Street Music

I can’t express how timid I was about creating the new website. That's why it took me five years to try. I was close to panic at the start and pull my hair out anxious by Friday night. Had it not been for the resolute Becky Reynolds at FASO it absolutely would not have happened. Poor Becky held my hand like I was a four-year-old till the moment I could actually see the site on the net, that was Saturday, and I could retain my hundreds of contacts and continue to receive emails at my fifteen year old address. That finally came to pass Saturday at noon when my blighted efforts to accomplish it finally bore fruit. 

I have two bits of advice. Follow the instructions and be precise. I don't ever do the first and precise and patient are not my most apt descriptors. 

So far there are seven portfolios on my new website with The Last Shepherd to be added the first of the week. It’d be today but my article for the May-June issue of Shadow and Light is due tomorrow.

I’d love to have you take a look. Tell me what you think. Please click on the Steve Immel Photography link to the right of Book of Solemnity.

Tell me what you think.

Little things mean a lot

If I read another writer paraphrasing the title of Gabriel García Marquéz’s novel Love in the time of Cholera, I’ll vomit. You’d give a ninth grader a pass but to see such sophomoric cleverness from big name journalists is depressing and we don’t need more of that. Life in the time of Corona Virus, Love in the Time of Social Distancing, Lies in the Time of Covid-19. Make it stop.

If you’re like me you’ve had highs and lows through this tempest. I’m one hell of a lot more worried about the economy, mine, than I am about the disease. It’s been a month since we communed in a herd if you don’t count the supermarket, pharmacy and Post Office. It’s been painless and, other than eating out, we’re not missing the action. And we sure are saving money. A couple dinners, two lunches and a breakfast out each week adds up to real money. We are craving, more like dying for, a Smoky Quartz pizza and an IPA at the Downtown Taproom. We’re simple creatures after all.

We’ve indulged in a couple of virtual cocktail hours, the second of which was with John Farnsworth and Thea Swengel Saturday night. Once we got our technical difficulties sorted out it almost felt like we were physically together. I guess we shouldn’t be embarrassed that we had audio lapses. Even the Meet the Press was having sound sync issues Sunday morning. And how about those lovely folks at Zoom. Privacy concerns aside somebody is getting very rich. And all I have is this stupid tee shirt.

John just got back from four months in South America, three of which were in Buenos Aires. He told us he might have stayed six months, but the State Department warned travelers to head back to the U.S. pronto. It took the intrepid wanderer three days of planning and 24 hours of flying to make it to Albuquerque. His itinerary routed him from Buenos Aires to Sao Paolo to Newark and Albuquerque. My ass is sore just imagining it.

Then, to add insult to injury, Thea quarantined him in his studio for 14 days without so much as a hug. She fed him through a slot in the door. She said that he was hesitant to leave his cell when she unlocked the door after two weeks. I wonder how we'll react when we’re let us out of the hoosegow. Will we feel unbridled excitement or apprehension when barriers are gone? Thea thinks we’ll have an awkward transition. And what about handshakes, hugs and kisses. My hero Dr. Fauci, now on the outs with whatshisname, suggests that handshakes should disappear entirely. As far as I'm concerned a courtly bow and a direct look in the eye will do quite nicely.

And speaking about freedom, at lunch with Peggy yesterday I commenting on how precious it is and that in some small way our shelter in place regimen makes us appreciate the unfettered license we’ve always had to do whatever we want to do whenever we want to do it. It makes those balmy days in Brittany with artist friends last July seem a like a distant dream. And that studying Spanish every morning in the rooftop classroom of Escuela Ixchel in Antigua, Guatemala was only make believe. This new appreciation of what we had and took for granted stems from the realization that freedom of movement and social interaction is not a given, is not guaranteed. Boy, do I Iook forward to that woodfired pizza and a frosty beer. That’s the simplest expression of free will that I can think of.

Appreciating our good fortune is the gift these hard times have given us. Let’s accept that gift. Applying my new-found appreciation for the gifts that will follow is my goal.

Today I got an email from my friend, the photographer Marti Belcher, in Virginia. Within her Easter tidings was this nugget from author Roald Dahl.

“And above all, with glittering eyes to the world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”

Words to live by.

Thanks, Marti.

Little dreams and big ones

In a post a month ago, the one called Now Look What I’ve Done, I wrote about submitting to calls for entry from The Harwood Museum of Art here in Taos and from The Albuquerque Museum. The Harwood’s call is for Contemporary Art/Taos 2020 and the Albuquerque show is called Art Thrive, formerly Miniatures and More.

I had modest expectations for getting into either show. Maybe Less than modest.

So, imagine my amazement when I received a congratulatory email last Monday morning saying that from 330 submissions, I was one of 30 artists who made the short list for the show.

The good news was followed by a request to sign up to host a virtual studio tour. This in lieu of a face to face right here at Casa Immel. I learned the tours would be held during most of April with the final decision being rendered on April 24. Tour slots would be on a first served for tour slots. And being the aggressive lad that I am, I opted for the first available tour date. That meant I got the very first slot Wednesday at 1:00pm. Somebody has to be first. And they might change their mind.

The show and tell was to be performed via Zoom, a virtual meeting platform that has erupted on the social distancing scene and that has received a torrent of press lately, almost none of it good. Privacy breaches have been abundant. The FBI is on the case.

Reservations notwithstanding I found myself sharing the screen with the new Curator of Exhibitions and Collections at the Harwood, Nicole Ashley Dial-Kay. I was a twitchy old man till Nicole told me how well received my photographs had been. Her encourgement and warmth quickly put me at ease and we were off the races.

First, we talked about the photographs I’d submitted. I spoke of my intent to offer work that was distinctly Contemporary. I suggested that the images were about shapes and the relationships between them. I said I was seeking simplicity. I had submitted them with a rounded white border to enhance the contemporary presentation. She asked why I had added the border and I responded, and I quote, “I thought it looked cool.” That’s not the apogee of artspeak but that was the reasoning. The question about the border could suggest that she thinks that the embellishment was superfluous. Hey, I’m not married to the border. It was part of the pitch.

Based on the call my understanding was that artists were to submit three works, one of which would be hung if accepted. Instead Nicole said that the overarching goal was to mount the strongest possible show and that she believed an exhibition with several works from fewer artists would accomplish that objective better than one piece per artist. In my follow-up email I agreed that strategy made sense even if it reduced my odds of getting in. And I added, I had submitted the images that I did because “I thought they hung together as a grouping.” More than one piece works very nicely.

As we wound down, Nicole asked if I had a specific project that would benefit from the collaboration and support of the museum. Open that door and I'm coming in. In a nanosecond, I had a print of Cuba and his Mauser España 1893 in front of the screen followed by one of Cuba’s “campo” on the Taos Plateau in late January. She proclaimed that they were “beautiful” and that led to a discussion of The Last Shepherd and its potential for a full-blown exhibition. We agreed it's a story that should be told. That it's the story of rural Hispanic life in Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado, a life of the Land, Water, Family and Faith. There’s nothing I want more than to tell that that story.

Nicole, being local outreach oriented, asked if I thought Cuba would attend the show. I said that he's a rustic soul who speaks no English but that I knew that the Abeytas of Mogote, Colorado who own the sheep that Cuba herds would want to be part of it. I said I hoped they would that they would bring the 80 year old herder to the opening. He should be there.

In my thank you email I warned Nicole that she’d need a bigger museum because Andrew Abeyta, the patron of the outfit has five children and fifteen grandchildren. And that’s only one of Abeyta families.

Then I promised her that she’d be receiving a full blown proposal for a The Last Shepherd exhibition at the Harwood. I began writing it yesterday.

Stay tuned.

Furious Sky

This week has been about the Taos sky. Each image tries to capture the magic of brooding moisture laden clouds juxtaposed against bare trees and the occasional manmade element. A photographer friend, a member of my geezer club, has been lamenting the lack of sunshine and that he's not motivated to photograph at all under these conditions. Au contraire I replied.

"Jesus, Cris. The dreary sky is treasure as far as I'm concerned. Give me dank and cloudy every time."

The drizzly late winter, or is it early spring?, sky over the last couple of weeks has led to something that resembles a series. The infinite fodder for this kind of work, I proffered to Daryl Black, a close photographer friend, could keep a person occupied for a very long time. As in forever.

Les soeurs Meunier

Rene, Nany, Peggy, Josiane and Titoune at the Immel rancho with the Sangre de Cristos beyond.

Two weeks ago, we had visitors from France. Well, three who live in France and one who has lived in the States for nearly fifty years, Nicknamed Titoune, I’m pretty sure that’s slang for breasts like tit, tete and teton, Marie Meunier hails from Chamonix the adventure mecca in the French Alps and who came to our shores for the first time as a camp counsellor when she was 16. She lived in Tahoe and Taos, of all things, with her former partner and wound up in New England’s outdoor capitol, North Conway, New Hampshire. That’s where she lives but her heart remains in France. Or so it seems to me.

Titoune, Nany and Josiane

That may be because she comes from a family of twelve siblings, eight girls and four brothers. One brother has passed. With the visit I have now met at least four of the sisters. Titoune, of course, Josiane whose house in Baudinard sur Verdon we inhabited for a month in 2011. I know that because I turned 70 there. Then a few years ago Titoune and her sister Laure, also from Chamonix, stayed with us for a couple of nights. And this time Nany and her husband Rene from Provence joined Titoune and Josiane on a grand three-week tour of the Southwest that Titoune had planned for two years. She took the group on a sampling of our National Parks punctuated by visits with a long list of friends she’s made over nearly fifty years in outdoor adventure world.

Chimney Rocks at Ghost Ranch.

Rene and Josiane. She called it "Superb."

Nany scrambling for a shot of the valley of the Chama below.

It was in North Conway that Titoune started Wild Things, the high-end manufacturer of rock and ice climbing clothing and accessories with her former husband, John Bouchard. When they divorced, she operated the company on her own. We met her when Peggy was a climbing guide at International Mountain Climbing School. The climbing community is small and very interconnected. Friendships forged in that adrenalin drenched world have proven to be lasting ones. 

Today Wild Things concentrates on high tech clothing for the military. We learned that every part of the garment must be made in the USA, zippers, buttons, cloth. Literally everything. And while Titoune has phased out of the day to day operations of the company, she told us that she still does the occasional trade show and, in her words, “I can be as involved as I want to be."

John Bouchard was a specimen, a wild man with a perfect though atypical physique. Wild Things garments were cut for his ideal body. It was like designing a little black dress for Barbie. Whatever the perfect measurements are, John had them. The standing joke was the Wild Things a one-piece ice climbing suit would fit Bouchard but not an actual human being. Peggy and I each have one stowed in the garage. Let’s just say that mine tugs at the waist and bags at the chest.

Titoune remains unapologetically French despite half a century in the US. She is most proud of her roots in the Haut Savoie and of France in general. She tells an apocryphal creation story that goes something like this.

“When God made France, he made it indescribably beautiful. Then he created its unparalleled cuisine. He added the best wine in the world. The finest cheese. He created the lyrical French language. When he realized he’s bestowed France with such an embarrassment of riches he made up for it by creating the French people.” I paraphrase liberally.

Amazingly, Titoune lived in Taos from 1971-73 when she and her then partner operated an art supplies store on Kit Carson Road in the historic district. We didn’t know that till her March visit. When she searched for her old location, she discovered that the space is now a high-end contemporary art gallery, DAFA, or David Anthony Fine Art. DAFA is owned by our acquaintance David Mapes and is managed on weekends by our dear friend Thea Swengel. That’s yet another small world story to add to your journal. Alas, Titoune’s abode in nearby Talpa has turned to rubble. It’s the house where, upon returning from Tahoe on one occasion, she discovered a pack of hippy squatters. That she let them stay is a mystery to me. Though I guess that it shouldn’t baffle me since she’s famous for taking in strays.  

Titoune turned 70 in February. Nany is 76 and Josiane is 80 though you’d never guess it. Each sister is trim and can wear clothes like a 40-year-old. They were as lithe as cats on our hike to Chimney Rocks at Ghost Ranch.

During dinner at our house the first night Titoune told us that Josiane remembers seeing German soldiers in Chamonix and that despite their ominous presence she had her friends frolicked outdoors at the farm as toddlers will do. And speaking of Germans, in 2000 my friend Ian Cruickshank stayed at the Hotel Richmond in Chamonix during one of our annual ski safaris. We learned that the Richmond, the cheapest hotel in the town, had been Gestapo headquarters during the occupation. It was a chilling discovery, one made even colder by its granite walls and brooding lobby. One could hear the echo of glistening jack boots clacking on the tile floor. On one occasion Ian and I were drinking beer in the salon. A blustering troop of Brown Shirts entered the space and ordered us to get out.

Duly dispatched, Ian and I took the stairs to the basement and turned right to ski storage and found ourselves imagining the dank space as a dungeon or worse.

The next year we booked the modest but charming Hotel L'Arve, instead. In those pre-Euro days a ski package including round trip airfare on Swiss Air from Boston to Geneva by way of Zurich, transfers to and from Chamonix and a two star hotel with breakfast and dinner was $865. Those were the days my friends. Those were the days.

Real World

That was me lurking around in the alleys of Taos, New Mexico. I was the guy in the tan raincoat. As is I’m fond of streetscapes and especially of what’s happening behind the scenes where rooflines, wires, conduits and trash cans create intricate forms and patterns. I’m a wire man myself. Not that I shy away from the front side of the back side.

Streetscapes can be the real thing or as shown here can be a facsimile thereof like the small-town movie set on the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank. The rain and threatening made it seem even more real.

No look what I've done

Last time I wrote about the struggle to choose images for juried exhibitions. It’s a pursuit that came to halt in 2012 when I calculated that it was a purely ego driven activity that took a lot of time, cost a lot of time and psychic energy and bore no fruit save the nominal satisfaction of being able to say I’m in a show in Brooklyn. And sales, well sales sure didn’t pay for the effort. I remember a time back in 2010 that was I was in three overlapping exhibitions during the summer. I do admit it was kind of cool.

Why? you may ask would you even there. Boredom? Desperation? Running out of time?

Nah, the shows are local. One is prestigious and one, the more local of the two, hasn’t had an open call since the last time I didn’t get in.

From the Harwood Museum of Art, the Taos museum that’s part of the University of New Mexico came the call Contemporary Art/Taos 2020 which invites artists living and working in Taos or those have moved away but have deep roots here. I delivered some paintings here in 1963. Does that mean I have deep roots even if I didn’t ever live here? Anyway, it said Contemporary so I chose three images that are both contemporaneous and may even be contemporary.

For the Albuquerque Museum call, formerly called Miniatures and More now called Art Thrive, I went modern, as well. Since Peggy has been in the show, I’ve attended opening night for the last several years and have watched show become more modern. To that end I’m visualizing a new no glass no frame presentation. But lest I get ahead of myself, here and up top are the four I submitted. 

The Albuquerque Museum will hang three images which needn't be from the ones I submitted but have to be in the spirit and style they represent. The Harwood will hang one of the three you see here.

Alley Cat

I’ve had a thing about alleys and backsides of the historic facades and glitzy storefronts that we normally see. Oddly ignored, the grit and disarray of the rears of buildings are oddly beautiful to me. The gaggle of mechanicals, the twisted wires, junction boxes and meters all speak to the basic needs of life. Unadorned but for the graffiti that personalizes the scene.

And so here are several images of just that, all taken in recent days and every single one was made with an iphone.

As I contemplate which photographs to submit to the two shows I mentioned last week and as I review three years of work I’m reminded that for the second year in a row that among my favorites are ones from the always with me camera in my pocket.

Ton of mood in these suckers.