Up an estuary without a paddle

Headland, Point Reyes

Salt marsh, Drake’s Estuary 

Drakes Estuary, Point Reyes.

I feel like a boxer with one fist tied behind his back. Or more to the point I”m a photographer who can see the images on the SD card in his camera but can’t download and process the files because my laptop PC won’t turn on much less show images on the screen in front of me. This situation announced itself on Saturday, September 7 in my room in Cayucos, California. So, now nine days later I have six memory cards to download and develop and I have no computer.

This has put a real damper on my spirits as you can imagine. I’ve lost sleep over the prospects that I cannot post my weekly blog post except with iPhone photographs and text from my trusty iPad. That’s what happened last week by the by and will continue this way till my PC is repaired or I buy a new one. Both will be attempted at first light on Monday. The renegade machine will be delivered to Electric Sheep in Taos when they open and I will order a new unit before noon. The sad thing is that I have been gnashing teeth for weeks about the purchase. Now, of course, I wish I’d done it earlier and I would have saved myself the misery I’ve felt all week. The new machine will take a couple of weeks to be built and delivered and the repair, if possible. Should take less time. My worry is that it can’t be fixed and, worse, I’ll lose all the information on it. I’m a nervous wreck to tell you the truth.

The Contenders Are

Found Art, Rinconada, New Mexico

Butternut Squash, East Conway, New Hampshire

Tubular, Colebrook, New Hampshire

Hubbard Squash, East Conway, New Hampshire

Last week I said I’d disclose my four selections for submissions to ArtsThrive 2025, the prestigious juried exhibition that benefits the Albuquerque Museum Foundation, the fund raising and outreach arm of the Albuquerque Museum. The annual show is sweeping in its range of visual arts, every kind, and scope. There are 135 artists represented and more than 400 artworks. So, it’s a big deal and I would submit the finest annual juried exhibition in New Mexico, and it’s not close.

In short, I have been a proud participant for two years and have crossed fingers that I’ll make the cut again next year. It’s not a gimme. The competition is outstanding. I take nothing for granted, that’s for sure.

Choosing the portfolio from which to pick my four entries was a tough task. I think these images from the Found Art series work together beautifully though I'd be proud of four images from any of the portfolios, Under a Big Sky, At the Edge of What’s Left, Sketches of Winter and Found Art. Ultimately, I chose Found Art because I like the way the four photographs look. flow and feel together. At the top of the page are those images in the order in which I would hang them.

You’ve got to make the call at some point. And this is the way I’ve called it. Which is not to say that I’ve haven’t second and third guessed myself. Boy, four of those sky images would have been strong. Wouldn’t Presbyterian Church and other places that have been left behind be powerful?  Blah, blah.

Now I’ve done it. In the words of several thousand sages of art, “Don’t do it for anybody else. Do it for you.” May I paraphrase, “Screw ‘em if they can’t take a joke.”

Portfolio Envy

Leading up to my September article, Into the Fog, for Shadow and Light magazine was the arduous task of selecting the images to submit to ArtsThrive 2025 at the Albuquerque Museum. I worry that I vest too much psychic energy in choosing work for any juried show. Perhaps I want it too much. Choosing is the hard part. I know that I have in my vast stores of photographs ones that will be accepted and that will sell. But which ones are they? Damned if I know.

In my winnowing, there’s that word again, I’ve sought order in the process by selecting the portfolios from which my images will be chosen. Further, in the search for cohesion, all four of my submissions will be from a single portfolio. In principle, they belong together as if hung on a gallery wall.

While I have a nine portfolios, I have chosen five to consider. The other four, while worthy, aren't a fit for a Southwestern show, like The Fog Series which is too coastal and might not sell, or like Monumental Heads because portraits don't unless they're of a loved one. In no particular order the nominees are below. Visualize that each of these are examples of the theme and style of the four images submission.

Under a Big Sky 

Book Cliffs, Grand Junction, Colorado

At the Edge of What’s Left

Presbyterian Church, Taiban, New Mexico

Found Art

Found Art, Rinconada, New Mexico

Sketches of Winter

Lines of Defence, Brazos Pass, New Mexico

The Last Shepherd

Winter Dance, Taos San Luis Valley, Colorado

Based on these single images which theme would you choose? 

Next week you'll see the portfolio and the four photographs I submitted.

The fogs of a lifetime

Farm in Fog on the road to Ukiah. 1969.

Silent Running, Putney Vermont. 2005.

The Bridge to Nowhere. San Francisco. 2009.

Canopy. Point Reyes National Seashore. 2013

Three weeks of exploring the Fog Series, the photographs from which my article in September’s Shadow and Light magazine will come, culminate with a short look back at the long history of the series. It all began in 1969 though I didn’t know it at the time. That first image, Farm in Fog, and the feelings I felt when I saw the farm, stopped our VW on the road to Ukiah and made the photograph are as fresh as yesterday. That it took 36 years to identify a second image for the nascent series is evidence of my inattention. It’s not like I didn’t see any fog between 1969 and 2005. We lived near the ocean in Massachusetts for 25 of those years for heaven’s sake. And a tidal river was a block away in the mid-Seventies.

The second image from 2005, Silent Running, was made on the socked-in Connecticut River during the Putney Rowing Regatta in southern Vermont. I was tagging along with my friend the writer and photographer John Snyder who was on a magazine assignment. Then in 2009 while on a fashion shoot at the Presidio of San Francisco I made a dozen or more fog shots including The Bridge to Nowhere taken the Presidio of San Francisco. I didn’t put it all together till a fourth photograph in 2013, Canopy, from the Point Reyes National Seashore in West Marin County, California signaled that The Fog Series had become just that, a series. It only took 55 years. But who's counting.

Riches to Riches in the land of plenty: Sonoma here I come.

Bishop Pines and horizon line on Bodega Bay.

The sun burns through in Tomales.

Depth of Field in Valley Ford.

As was the case last week these images were made in California fog, specifically along the Sonoma Coast. They lean toward abstraction and the shapes within seek interpretation. They’re details rather than landscapes.

The soul of Sonoma is agriculture so wherever you look is a tilled field, a farm, a dairy or a vineyard. Gifts from the soil and the cheese, bread and wine from nature’s abundance are what makes Sonoma my very favorite place.  Then there's the seafood. Don't get me started on freshly shucked oysters at the Marshall Store on Tomales Bay, cheeses at the Cowgirl Creamery in Point Reyes Station, and the best pastries ever at the Route One Bakery in Tomales. My list of tastes to be rediscovered is long but I have a big appetite. There's wine to be quaffed in Sonoma I'm told.

Happily, I will soon be savoring Sonoma and West Marin after a absence of five years. What was an annual pilgrimage before Covid will begin again. I am giddy with with giddiness.

Otherworldly treasures

Pines and fence line. The Presidio of San Francisco.

Sea Grass. Cayucos, California.

As thick as it gets. Cayucos Beach.

The bridge to nowhere. The Golden Gate Bridge from Battery Godfrey in the Presidio of San Francisco.

At least two probably more of my most satisfying photographic moments were fog cloaked mornings on the California coast. Correction. Four were in Coastal California and another was at a rowing regatta on the Connecticut River nearly 20 years ago. Photographing in thick fog is almost too easy. The dense, mysterious otherworldly atmosphere makes every shot magical. I guess that’s the reason that picking ten for Shadow and Light out of a hundred is such a scramble.

Today’s offerings come from the Central Coast and San Francisco. All were taken in early morning soup. The San Francisco image was accidental. A friend and I had hired a model but when he was half an hour late, I was able to play near fog shrouded Battery Godfrey with the Golden Gate Bridge disappearing into the murk.

Succinct is my middle name at least for today.

Other World

Bishop Pines in pea soup fog. Bodega Bay.

Tufts on the road to Tomales.

Ground Fog. Taos, New Mexico.

Years ago, I wrote an article replete with ten photographs from my Fog Series. Nearly all were from the California coast starting in Cayucos on the midcoast to West Marin and Sonoma on the north. Much of this glorious stretch was first imprinted on my brain more than 75 years ago when my mother and I lived in Salinas then Oakland and San Leandro. The rugged coast so often blanketed with fog and the oak studded coastal hills and valleys are my first memories of terrain and place. Visions of them tug at my heart like no other.

Those feelings continue to draw me to coastal California. For several years before COVID I made the pilgrimage to the coast every year. It was usually in September and that was meant to coincide with the vendage or grape harvest. If my main goal was to photograph the coast, visiting wineries was a very close second. I began those efforts in Paso Robles on the inland side of the Coastal Range since it is the closest wine mecca when driving I-40 across northwestern New Mexico, northern Arizona and California’s Central Valley. It’s a 16-hour haul so I often stay in Tehachapi or Bakersfield. 14 hours has proven to be my daily limit. At 14 I’m sleep driving at 80mph.

As I write this entry, itself a draft for my September-October issue of Shadow and Light Magazine, I’m planning another wine and photography safari for the second week of September.

True to my new mantra Less is More I’ll include three images in several posts. These examples from the Fog Series are more intimate and abstract than those in my article six years ago. They appear soft focused even blurred. For the most part there are neither black blacks or white whites. It's more about shapes than details. One feels the dampness and silence.

Enough with the winnowing

Walking through the frame at LA's Union Station. I like the light on the man's hair and face. The dashes of light camera right add interest, too.

As reported last week the editing process continues apace and with it our experiment with the ideal number of images in a weekly post. Last week had two related photographs from the sun kissed Viansa Winery in Sonoma. There was a glass of good Sonoma rosé next to my camera as I recall. Somewhere I have a photograph to prove it.

Since the goal was two images last week that’s what you got. And to bring this experiment to its logical end, a single image graces this page. The photograph which I’ve called Through the Looking Glass sees two figures walking behind large windows above the concourse to the gates at LA’s Union Station. The window frames a couple who are seen in something more than silhouette. Since the photograph has no counterpart, it stands alone today. I’ve been holding this one for this single image post. I can see a stylistic relationship to last week’s duet so the segue from last week seems apt.

It does take less words when a fellow posts a single image. That prompts to me to ponder how much text is ideal for a weekly post. Please don’t say none.

As to the ideal number of photographs in a post I'm persuaded that less is best and that unless the post is really enhanced by the image in question don't use it.

 

Winnowing on the Bay

Topiary, Viansa Winery, Sonoma, California

Artist Albert Handell framed by topiary at Viansa Winery

Three forces are at work as I relive my street photographs over the years. There’s the simple but arduous task of reviewing hundreds of images since 2014. Earlier than that will be a very deep dive. Then there’s the more difficult task of choosing which ones should be preserved in some fashion for posterity. Those are matters that occupy a still agile mind as it approaches 83. The final component is to select the best of that lot for the street photography portfolio on my website and for preservation in printed form. That presentation will be accompanied by a carefully curated digital archive from which prints can be made. In other words I want to leave a lifetime of photographs in a space sensitive and protected form.

In the short term I’ve been posting small handfuls of images that relate according to location, subject and style according to me. The question of how many photographs are best for a blog post is a subject that elicits many opinions I have learned. And while I’m persuaded by arguments for presenting fewer better images and that’s the path I’ve chosen I understand and appreciate the alternative approach to present more. My marketing consultant is a committed minimalist whose contentions are persuasive. So, at least for now I'm in concision mode.

As I write these words on Thursday, I’m editing my cache of possible entries for the week’s post to a goal of two and once again they come from the same place and about the same time of day. The same location element was not what I intended. I simply wanted the photographs to belong together. These do.

Winnowing away the hours

Pigeons in flight, Plaza Catalunya, Barcelona. We'd traveled all night yet Peggy insisted we stay up till bedtime. By the we got to the Plaza or Placa with a lisp in Catalan I was asleep on my feet.

Catching rays, Plaza Catalunya, Barcelona. We were both laying down with out heads on our carry-ons when I took this midday beauty. I may have dozed off at some point but I'll never admit it. That evening we chanced upon a little tapas pace on the Gran Via. It was 11pm when we left. The next day we were acclimated and ready to boogie.

Tourist throngs, Las Sagrada Familia, Barcelona. Gaudi's masterpiece was three blocks from our hotel in the charming L'eixemple neighborhood.

When I limited my images to four last week, I intended to reduce it to three this week then two and one. I also aimed at mixing it up so the images wouldn’t all be from, say, Barcelona. Yet the images needed to hang together as if on a gallery wall. That proved a daunting objective. This less is more approach stems from a Ted Talk that showed that too many choices can lead to fewer sales or clicks than fewer more selective choices. One of the research projects was of the olive oil selection in a big box store that displayed sixty brands and another that offered eight. The research showed that the smaller eight variety selection yielded more sales. It made some sense to me, and I could fathom how too many choices might lead to confusion and fatigue. So, the question becomes what is the ideal number of olive oils that represents variety but encourages sales. I don’t claim to know. In my posts I typically offer five or six photographs appropriate to the theme of the post and that still seems reasonable. My marketing consultant seems to think fewer yet might be better and less images might not cause attention deficit disorder. Another result of posting fewer images should be that they are better ones. Addition by subtraction is another way to frame it. A subset of this pursuit is not to post images that are too similar. If the image doesn’t tell a different story than its companions don’t use it.

So, here are a paltry three images all from Barcelona. I was unable to choose that few images from three different locations and have them flow to my satisfaction. I’ll keep working to that end. It’s a work in process, kiddos.

Winnowing the pooh

This rugged campesino was photographed at the Mercado de San Juan de Dios in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico in the fall of 2018. It was under a corrugated roof over the loading dock for the sprawling enterprise so the light was diffuse and soft. It was my first memorable image from my shiny new Sony RX100 V.6.

Tia and Paul Kratter, both accomplished painters and two of our housemates in Brittany, were captured in the carressing light of the falling sun on a hillock above the beach in Keremma in July 2019. This is but one of a dozen elegiac photographs taken as the sun dipped into the Celtic sea. It was 10:00pm. Summer days are long at land's end.

I photographed this sad soul walking through the shadow before crouching in the in the sunlight for a smoke. I invented stories to explain his plight. Now it's your turn.

This was made from my window seat on the Madrid to Malaga train. It was the last stop before its terminus at the Estación de Malaga-Maria Zambrano. Based on their attire I made these folks to be expats not Spanish.

The sorting and winnowing process proceeds though slowly. Because I’m up to my keester in hard drives and a gazillion folders I’ll make this quick. If the goal is to wind up with 20 or so meaningful candid photographs for my Street Photography portfolio, I remain hopeful. What lies ahead is a ruthless edit. For now, here are a handful of candidates. Perhaps the captions will be more robust than normal in the absence of much body copy.

I'm experimenting with Mies van der Rohe's "less is more" today. 

Street Music

The Stride, Madrid, 2014

Street photography it seems to me is candid imagery that freezes a moment in time. The more memorable the better. Usually, it involves people, but that may not be essential. And it may have been posed if you can't tell. It’s safe to say that many if not most of the best-known photographs in the 200-year life of photography are a street photography or photojournalism. Think of Eddie Adam’s wrenching image of the Viet Cong prisoner being executed on the streets of Saigon in 1968 or Nick Ut’s chilling photograph of the young girl escaping her village that had just been napalmed by a Viet Nam Air Force Skyraider. There are thousands of unforgettable photographs that capture history in the making.

Trabajadores, Antigua, Guatemala, 2008

Bicycles, Munich Altstadt, 2006

Rough Rider, San Miguel de Allende, 2008

Street photographs need not be drenched in terror and guilt. I think of Elliot Erwitt’s heartful and humorous scenes on the avenues of New York. Erwitt photographed the funny and the absurd till the age of 95, He left us last year. I had the honor of sharing wall space with his work in a group show in Durango, Colorado a dozen years ago. He’s a guy I wish I had met. His humanity was evident.

All this blather arises from a flurry of organizational activity that had me poring over hundreds of my street photographs since 2006. I am trying to complete my Street Photography portfolio which is threadbare. And the sorting and selecting is far from finished. For the most part I remember the place and circumstance of every image. I literally recall the time, the angle of the sun and where I was standing when I made the photograph. It’s a gift that transports me to Barcelona, Munich or Madrid for a second time,

In the absence of new work, I will dole these out over the course of, say, 52 weeks. I tend to inflate.

For sale 6,000 square foot fixer-upper

Side light

Hearth and Home

Sometimes there’s no story to be found. Over the last week I had a few photographic moments that were fleeting, disparate and highly adequate. There’s absolutely no connection from one subject to another. As is so often the case with my wandering attention the images I offer here will be discovered as I select them. Because there’s little linkage between the subjects you may find an image or two from several batches or they’ll all be from one of the photo opportunities in the last seven days. Even I won’t know till it happens.

Baby dolls

Wrought iron

Stained glass and bent metal

The explorations from which these are gleaned are typical Taos landscapes and interiors and still lifes from the late Julian Robles’s adobe casa that was built in stages starting in the early 1800s. According to legend Robles and his partner bought the rough-hewn adobe manse in 1968 for $5,000. Greenwich village had become inhospitable to a gay men, so they decamped to Taos where Robles became one of the Taos Six which included Ron Barsano, Walt Gonske, Rod Goebel, Ray Vinella and Robert Daughters. He died in 2023 leaving only Gonske and Barsano to carry the flame.

In 1968 the 6,000-foot adobe had no plumbing and had an outhouse. It’s still rough as a cob. To say that it needs a work is an exercise in understatement. It’s a coin flip and a million and half dollars away from being a tear down. The buyer of the historic property will need vision and bucks. It’s for sale folks and the seller will deal.

Monhegan. It's about the light

Monhegan Light at dusk

Barnacles and granite

Monhegan School and Peggy's easel

About now fifteen years ago, we spent three nights on Monhegan Island, a lobstering community and luminous art colony just ten miles by ferry off the Maine Coast at Point Clyde. A more memorable visual feast you will not find. The state of Maine, more broadly, is the place we consider the other best place. Taos is the reigning champion. So far.

Lawn chairs in falling light

Lobsterman's shack at the magic hour

Side Light. Monhegan Light House

Island House at dusk

At the 2024 La Luz de Taos Biennial Gala and Art Sale at the El Monte Sagrado Hotel Saturday night we fell into a conversation with one of the featured artists John Lintott and his wife Emily whose daughter had just graduated from art school in Portland, Maine. We gushed over Portland proclaiming it our favorite small city in the country. John extolled the seafood, and I responded that the compact city of 75,000 is one the great food towns in the county, maybe top ten. The other Portland makes the list as well. What’s in a name?

Peggy commented that Maine’s light rivaled that of our little art mecca, Taos.

The light is particularly pure and crystalline on Monhegan Island, an art magnet which like Taos dates back to the end of the nineteenth century. Famed artists Robert Henri, George Bellows, and Rockwell Kent worked together on Monhegan . They were followed by Louise Nevelson and three generations of Wyeths.

I can tell you this. We need a Maine fix stat. Salty air, lobster rolls and surf crashing on granite headlands are calling my name.