More Ramps, Less Clinton

-Strange but true: you can get homework done early. So far, I’ve now turned in three assignments for my classes early. This is truly a bizarre feeling. It’s like I’m being genuinely productive or something. And only 15 years after I should have started acting like this.

-Ate a huge MustGo dinner tonight from my fridge, right before Clay Erinn called, offering me ramps and potatoes. Who am I to turn down such a delicacy? You can see them photographed above. The recipe was as follows: potatoes fried in one pan, with chopped ramps, bacon, and eggs cooking in another pan. Combine in a single bowl, add hot sauce, and consume. Needless to say, I was awfully full, but ramps are damned delicious.

“If you have the means, I highly recommend that you try them. They’re choice.” Thanks Ferris Bueller.

-Congratulations Hillary Clinton. She won Pennsylvania while simultaneously reminding anybody who was actually paying attention what an awful person she is. Way to go! What with her attempts to run a campaign that looks like it has been managed by Karl Rove, she clearly represents nothing more than the empty pursuit of power and the desire to do whatever she can to get it. Even if that includes costing the Democrats the election in the fall.

Incidentally, I saw where Clinton overwhelmingly won PA’s women. My instinct is to stomp around my house cursing anybody who voted for Clinton just because she happens to be female; that would be wrong of me, so instead, I’ll assume that every vote cast for Clinton was done by people who had thoroughly evaluated her positions on the issues and found themselves in more agreement with her than Obama. Because, really, voting for a candidate just because they’re female is so ridiculously stupid that it isn’t worth discussing…for anymore than at least one more sentence, which is this: I’m not supporting Obama because he’s a man, but rather, because he’s a good candidate who has a chance to win nationally, which is what Clinton supporters should be evaluating, instead of concerning themselves with the fact that she has a vagina.

Needless to say, if somebody supports her because they agree with her political positions, fine. If the support is there only because she’s a female, then that’s as dumb as any man’s decision to support Reagan over Mondale simply because he was running with Geraldine Ferraro. Bigotry doesn’t depend upon the bigot’s demographics.

Yes, I’m aware that we can’t change how people vote. But dammit, we can get awfully angry about it, can’t we? Also, that was more than one more sentence…

-At some point, this website is going to change its look. Part of that will include me no longer posting a photograph with every single post. Sometimes, I just want to write something. Of course, none of you are regular readers, because my regular readers don’t exist. Still, I thought you should know.

Where I Write About Photography…

This is the sort of post that I write late at night, ostensibly about the above photograph, although who knows if I end up there. It’s also the sort of thing that my obsessive commenter Haku will certainly not appreciate. I anticipate something along the lines of, “This sucks, you’re boring.”

A few times, I have taken photographs and thought to myself, “That’s a good one.” Good is defined, in this case, as a photograph that satisfies my own vague aesthetic sensibilities, and if you think it’s ridiculous for me to suggest that I have aesthetic sensibilities, you’re correct. However, I like the fact that the subject of the image - Billy Matheny and his band - are not dead-centered. I like the dead space around them. I like that they were talking to one another and not concerning themselves with me in the slightest. I like that this was an image of a band, in a bar, enjoying a drink. To me, it is honest photography.

I realize that claim sounds ridiculous, but I strive to capture real images, whatever that means. “But Sam!” You’re rightly exclaiming, before asking, “Didn’t you alter the image in photoshop?” It’s true. I opened it up and stripped out the color. Black and white is the cheap way to make a regular photograph appear important. Allegedly. For whatever this is worth, I liked the photograph in color, but like it more in black and white. And as this is my site and my bandwidth, that’s going to be quite enough criticism of my photoshopping.

I took these photographs because I was asked to. Matheny and his band need new images for their promotional materials, and because everybody else on Earth was booked, he called me. I don’t know the first thing about taking pictures of people, or bands, or anything else. Still, he trusted me, and I think we’ll end with a serviceable image as a result of our work together, at least until Annie Liebovitz is photographing him for the front cover of Rolling Stone or Spin or whatever music magazine is important these days.

Speaking of music, I’ve been obsessively listening to a single featuring Dwight “Tight Jeans” Yoakam and Ralph Stanley. The song - “Down Where The River Bends” - is fantastic, a simple song about a man going to war and wanting to be with his woman instead. However, I have to admit that no matter how hard I try to force myself to like this sort of roots music, I just can’t do it. I like songs, for sure, but I can live without the genre as a whole. I can live without most genres as a whole. Hip-hop, country, electronica, metal, whatever. For some reason, I’ve struggled mightily to attach myself to any single genre, which means I barely know anything about particular music history. Instead, I can make killer mixed-CDs which is a worthless skill that won’t get me anywhere, so I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

There’s something beautiful and haunting about roots music. (Is roots music even a term, or am I just making stuff up because it sounds good?) But at the end of the day, it’s sad and serious, and I don’t need anything more sad or serious in my life. There’s enough of that in the world. I listen to music because I want to escape into it, not look in a mirror. I think this makes me a failure as a music fan. I’d rather sing with my daughter in the car- what can I say?

So there you have it: I liked the above photograph, Billy Matheny is super talented, and I don’t know anything about music. Haku, set upon me with the dogs of criticism.

Experiments in Black and White

Shameless Ethical Conversation

I admit it. I used Photoshop to digitally alter the above photograph. I stripped out the color and played around with the contrast and brightness options. This is not as a I originally saw the image.

I feel nervous about doing this, as if I’m no longer being honest with my work. Photoshop affords photographers and incredible amount of leeway in creating images that are, while incredibly beautiful, not honest. I now find myself wondering what the limits are.

There is beauty, I believe, in honest presentations. Part of what I’m trying to convey through the photographs that I take is that these very real places are falling apart. One aspect of that collapse is blandness. Aren’t I cheating by manipulating the image?

One somewhat convincing argument that I’ve heard is that the image taken by the camera isn’t what I was seeing either, that no image captured by a third party is like what was seen by the person doing to the photography. Maybe so.

Furthermore, I find myself compelled by black and white images. I do very much like the above photograph, as manipulated as it is, because it tells a story in its own way. Work needs to be done here. I’ve begun reading Ansel Adams autobiography and book of letters; perhaps I will find answers there.

Tried As I Might

I worked so hard to try to get this picture. I must have tried taking it a hundred times. But at the end of the wedding, the combination of the low lights and the need to capture light left me with a blurry picture. Yet, I still like it.

The young girl in the bonnet seemed to just be learning about dancing. She was very enthusiastic, as all kids are, but skittish too. My daughter did her damndest to get her out on the floor, and she would follow. But she wouldn’t always dance. She seemed content to watch everybody else move around her.

Unimportant Photographic Rambling: complete.

My (New) Favorite Photograph

Real photographers can probably find a million things wrong with the above picture. I, however, can’t. I really am proud of the color, the look, and the light. So sue me.

Different Rules For Different People

I got into an argument with a vegan on Flickr. I had complimented the (beautiful) photo of a friend’s wife, saying that I wanted to be like her when I grew up, except for the veganism. I would love to be like her photographically; she takes beautiful photographs. The vegan in question stopped by to say that I wouldn’t be totally grown up until I was a vegan.

We went back and forth for a few posts until the friend’s wife took down our comments. Good for her. No reason her pictures should be our battleground. I went to look at the vegan’s photography and he had pictures of camels in a circus captioned, “animals aren’t property.” But what should he have a few photos later? A picture of his cat.

So I asked him the following question: if animals aren’t property, why does he own a cat (that, incidentally, he feeds a vegan diet)? Reasonable enough, right. His response was that it’s the other way around, that his cat owns him. I observed how remarkably convenient that fact was. He said I was being belligerent - I reminded him that he was still be a condescending vegan. That was the end of the debate.

Was I being belligerent? Perhaps…in fact, yes, I was. I was being belligerent. But at least I wasn’t insisting that my opponent play by a different set of rules than I was maintaining for myself. I suppose that there are more annoying argumentative tactics but I certainly can’t think of any.

In this case, the vegan in question clearly believed that he was free to say whatever he wanted because of his moral position of veganism. Because he is a vegan, his immature criticisms are thus acceptable. People who perceive themselves to be overwhelmingly right tend to afford themselves an awful lot of freedom that they won’t afford to those that they perceive to be wrong.

Peter Singer, a lightning rod for criticism, has made a career of advancing arguments that involve guilting and shaming his opposition into agreeing with him. “Oh, well, you wouldn’t kill a child would you? Then why are you spending your extra money on yourself instead of on children in Africa who need medicine to live? You’re the same as a child murderer.” (Singer, in case you’re wondering, is one of the ethicists who decided that humans and animals have equivalent value, and so killing animals is bad, bad, bad. Feeding them a vegan diet, making them miserable? Good, good, good! There I go again, being belligerent.)

But revisit this vegan with his pet cat. He hates the circus owners dragging their camels around the country for their own profit; meanwhile, he forces his cat to eat a vegan diet to satisfy his own beliefs about what is and is not appropriate in our world. In the circus example, the camels are taken out of their natural environment to benefit an owner. In the cat example, although the vegan maintains otherwise, exactly the same thing is happening. Exactly the same thing. The only difference is that the vegan is comfortable locking his cat up, forcing it to eat a vegan diet, and probably “fixing” it so that it wouldn’t reproduce, whereas he greatly objects to the camel owners locking up a camel, forcing it to eat a whatever diet, and probably “fixing” it so that it wouldn’t reproduce.

If the allegedly moral people of this Earth get to make arguments like this, so to does everybody else. If owning animals is wrong when a circus does it, then it probably is when everybody else does it too. Or, maybe it isn’t. Maybe there is a huge difference. I don’t know.

But declaring it off limits to discuss whether or not there are differences? Declaring that the only people allowed to ask questions are the moral, and the only people not allowed to ask questions are everybody else? That’s crazy. Absolutely positively crazy. Beyond being crazy, it’s damned offensive.

Here is the final part. I don’t care that the vegan is a raging hypocrite. I care that he won’t admit it, that the allegedly moral people who fill this world regularly refuse to admit the fact that they’ve decided that the rules governing their lives and actions should be totally different than those that exist for literally everybody else.

…Keeps On Ticking

My photo show is over. School is approaching. I have responsibilities coming completely out of my ears. The question is, what now? My camera is sitting in front of me, unused, untouched, lonely. Driving home from the golf course today I saw photos that needed to be taken. But will this be it? Photos of crumbling places for the rest of my life?

Meanwhile, the weather here is hot. Ridiculously hot. I’m anxiously awaiting, for the first time in my life, the fall. I hate the fall. I hate November. But it has to be better than this painful heat.

Show Update

Were you aware that I had a show this coming Friday (August 3, 2007) at Morgantown’s Wild Zero Studios? You should be. In fact, you should be coming. Still, I’m going to offer you the following out: here’s most of the show. Only smaller. And on a screen. And not framed. And not for sale.

If you can make it down, I’ll appreciate seeing you.

A Photo Of Mine In Rolling Stone?

Although my mind boggles at the very tiny implications of the following “announcement,” if you take a trip to your local newstand and retrieve a copy of the most recent issue of Rolling Stone (the one with Guns-n-Roses on the cover) and turn to page 50, you’ll find, at the bottom, a photograph of mine. It is of the ice machine pictured above.

So…uhh…yay? The picture is very, very small. But it is still there. So here’s to accomplishments.

Gorgeous Decay

I think that these buildings are slated for demolition. They’re located in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. If they’re not actually being demolished, they’re working their way toward the same end result.

I’ll be honest: I love the color here. Which isn’t to say that the picture itself is particularly good; that little blue UFO over the telephone wire is an irritation. But the colors in the picture are fantastic.

One of the things I like about taking pictures is that I only ever have to satisfy myself. I could not care less if this picture doesn’t appeal to you. Obviously, there are better photographers out there, and you should visit their sites to find the truly good stuff.

Soon, I’m putting some photographs on public display. At that point, I suppose I’m going to have to worry about the response of others to my work.