Sabino Canyon

Act Two, Scene Three

More of BatGoddess

Shooting More Seriously

BatGoddess

I've started shooting again. It seems I've tripped over some people who like my style - discouraging though. After over a quarter of a million combined hits on the sites where I'm represented there have only been a couple who've followed through beyond the "Your work is awesome" comments.

It's interesting but I'm hesitant. I'm trying to get back to the style and techniques of some of the earlier shoots in Pennsylvania. The Millers Series was probably the best of the bunch. I wonder if terrible lights and cheap cameras weren't what brought it all together. I have good lights now and a decent camera but I have to work harder to get to the same place. I used to think it was the nut behind the wheel that made everything work. I'm no longer so sure of that premise.

Clouds Over the Catalinas

Airport Man

New Jersey and PA

Restaurant Man

It's finally over. I've lost my enthusiasm for air travel, hotels, and rental cars.

• Last Friday, Saturday and Sunday - Reading, PA
• Saturday met Jack with the Museum. Will donate historic photos.
  
• On Monday we moved the show to Stroudsburg, PA and we had dinner with my daughter in Montclair, NJ.
• Dinner with Bob and Marcia on Tuesday.
• Dinner with Eric and John on Wednesday.
• Lunch with Paul Castello - Dinner with Messick on Thursday (the best of the bunch)
• Back to Tucson via Cincinatti and Atlanta.

Home again, home again, jigitty jog. That should do it for that kind of marathon for at least another year.

Old Tucson Studios

Laundry

I read that a minister in a church here in the USA expelled nine parishoners because they voted for the wrong candidate. Then I think about Germany in the 1930s, Serbia in the 1990s, Rowanda any day of the week since the colonial powers pulled out, Oliver Cromwell, Darfore today ... How many steps away from stoning those people was that minister?

Given evangelical zeal, to imagine it can't happen here is simply naive.

Roof Lines

Where Kirosawa story lines are re-encarnated into spaghetti westerns ...

Ramada

Adobe

Up From Siera Vista

From Reddington Pass

Actually, this was shot in March but it's part of the epiphany of discovering that Ansel Adams didn't shoot landscapes. What he DID shoot was meteorology - the atmosphere. My object this summer is to shoot the atmosphere and learn more about shooting effective landscapes.

Clouds Over the Catalinas

A Real Personality

Palm Shadows / Botanical Gradens, Tucson, AZ

Tohono Chul

Tohono Chul Park, Tucson, AZ

Peek-a-boo, I See You

We went shooting in the Tohono Chul Park on the Northwest side of Tucson today. Candy is feeling much better but certainly isn't operating at 100% yet. It's frustrating. I feel like I have about 20 years left, 10 of which are good. I need to do everythihng I want to do in those 10 years or those things will never happen. This period of inactivity is giving me cabin fever.

For what it's worth, the restaurant at the park is worth writing home about ...

Springtime in the Desert

Mariachi

Mariachi

Mariachi music (I know very little about it, actually) strikes me as being Mexican country western in 3/4 time. I know that "La Paloma" and "Cielito Lindo" have been on the Mariachi Top 10 for more than 75 years.

This weekend brought a huge Mariachi Convension to town. The Mariachi musicians occupied two stages at Ried Park. The thing that I found most striking was that the quality of music and musicianship was orders of magnitude better than either the blues concert or NAM Jam, held in the same venue.

Ride Me

Ride Me - A metaphor of Life

We spent a couple of hours at the Pima County Fair. Everything seemed to be within six inches of where it was last year. It was almost like walking into a time warp.

I found this angle on a rolli-coaster and punched up the saturation a bit .. well, actually a little more than a bit. I think it needs to be a large format print. I have just the place for it in my office - though, for the place, I wish it weren't so green!

Pima County Fair, 2005

Carnival

I have a face, ya know

The Art of the Midway

Midway Art

Ocatillo

Pima Air and Space Airshow

Japanese Torpedo Bomber (c. 1941) One of the planes that participated in the re-enactment of the bombing of Pearl harbor, December 7, 1941.

One word describes the Pima Air Show and Davis-Monthan AFB. That word is "Huge".

In a Little Cafe

(Marina) In the Diner

I went to the Pima Air and Space Air show at Davis-Monthan AFB with my brother-in-law, Ray and his grand children. We stopped for breakfast before heading for the show and, in spite of my doctor's orders to avoid food groups that begin with the letter "B", I had BACON and eggs with BUTTERED toast. Later, at the show I had a BEER. Now that I'm home I'd have some BEN&JERRY's if we had some in the freezer.

Desert Flower

Marie

One of the situations where posting a "Desires to Work With" acknowledgment on OMP actually generated a response. We had a great shoot today. There are some images in the can for a couple of fine art pieces, including an interpretation of Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Decending a Staircase" and we did a little fooling around with some leg fetish ideas. We talked about a couple of other projects that are of interest to us both. I'm looking forward to working with her in the near future.

From Reddington Pass

It's A Bloomin' Desert, Again

I got Candy out of the house for a ride through Saguaro Park. There's an eight mile loop and we like to keep track of the changes there.

Candy has three more weeks with the hard neck brace, then a doctor's appointment and maybe a soft brace for a while. I told her as soon as she gets past all of this to a point where she can have a sense of humor about it, I'm going to get her a bobble-head doll.

The Poppies at Picacho Park are Past their Prime

In their Glory

Viewing the flowers in the spring is an annual tradition here in the desert. It was bumper to bumper traffic on the roads in Pacacho Peak State Park.

Re-enacting History

The Colonel and His Lady

I went to Picacho Park, between Tucson and Phoenix and killed two birds with one stone, as it were. The poppies at Picacho are just at their prime (I couldn't resist the alliteration) and this weekend was the annual re-enactment of the Battle of Picacho Peak - the battle furthest west of the American Civil War (1861-1865). Thought the battle was barely a skirmish between about a dozen Federal troops and about as many Confederates, it's become quite a thing here in Arizona.

The Confederate Battery

Civil War Re-enactors

TMC

On the way to the Cafeteria

I've always found hospitals to be intimidating places. I find them disorienting and, in many ways, very lonely places. candy's surgery had me hanging around the Tucson Medical Center for two days running. The ironic thought that occurred to me is that I have spent, by far, more time in hospitals in the last 10 years than I had in the previous 45 combined.

I tried to capture some of the feelings I experienced in the run up to Candy's surgery and in the aftermath. I've put the images up elsewhere.

Early Dinner at the OK Corral

Signs of Spring

Spring has Arrived in the Sonora

While snow is falling by the foot in PA and NJ, we're out shooting flowers in the desert and sending the images back to instill hope in those who are loosing theirs.

I can't understand why they find these flower pictures so annoying. I would think looking at them would be a nice break from shoveling out from under.

Hanging Around the House

Playing With Ourselves

My wife and I are very particular about the people we hang out with. We insist that they be very similar to us. We want the to have opinions that reflect our opinions. We want them to be interested in the same things we're interested in. It's the differences between people that creat tension. Better we should all be more alike.

Incidentally, the photographs on the wall are mine, not his. I'm a better photographer than he is.

Art Show Patrons

The Flute Maker

Museum Indian Art Sale - University of Arizona campus, Tucson.

The Examining Room

En la Cantina Mexicana

Black Roses

The Oriental

The Oriental

I splurged today. I bought a hand made oriental rug from ... well, personally, I think it was the Russian Mafia. Chinese, silk and wool. It's a red letter day. I thnk Candy believes I went over the top. It was significantly more than I'd planned to spend, but about one order of magnitude at any rate. Will have to post a picture of it.

I had a nice little antique prayer rug back in the 70s before they were all that popular. Skip Copper, who worked in my frame shop, gave it to me. Unfortunately, it got caught up in one of those "what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine" things. This one is far larger than a prayer rug: 8'x10'. Dark blues and dark reds.

The Crumudgeon of the Sonora

I'm pretty bummed. One of the reasons I was as happy as a clam to have moved out here was because "here" is in the middle of all the ancient North American cultures and their descendants - and a stone's throw from the Aztec, the Maya and not all that far from the culture centers in south America. I have a fascination for thos things and I want to see them before I die ... as many of them as there is time for.

I was surfing around looking at archaeological sites on-line and came up with a very reasonable "dig with the pros" package in Northern Arizona. I showed it to Candy with the eagerness of a little boy showing his mommy the latest bug he'd found. I was crushed when I ran into the brick wall response of, "I don't think either one of us will ever be in good enough shape for something like that."

Personally, I don't think it's true. Personally, I have every hope that Candy's surgery will be a "fix" ... albeit temporary, but worth several years all the same. Personally, I don't believe I'm not in good enough shape to wield a trowel and brush or sleep out doors in a sleeping bag. But, personally, her answer took all the hope out of life. If we can't do something simple like that, what are we to do? Sit here and wait for death?

Both my parents died in their early eighties. I'm just about 60. That tells me I have about 20 years of sitting around, twiddling my thumbs. I can't imagine going off and doing something like that without Candy (she enjoys that kind of thins as much as I do) but the alternatives seem to be either do it alone or sit and wait for the cold to start up my legs.

The Examining Room

Candy and I went to see her surgeon. She's scheduled to go under the knife on March 2. It was a brief, pre-op meeting. He only wanted the answer to one question, "Can you thin of anything that might prevent us from going ahead with your elective surgery."

He says it's routine. It may be routine for him, but it's certainly not routine for either Candy or me. In my book, there is no such thing as "routine surgery".

Monument Series

Monument in a Box