The tenth muse

Street Photography: Reality then and there

2012-01-12T16:46:00.000-06:00

I'm going to start this blog with a quote from a great American photographer who flourished in the middle of the last century, Walker Evans:

Stare. It's the way to educate your eyes. Pry, Listen, Eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.

I found this on line at the Street Photography Now Project Introduction. It's a well balanced and insightful treatment of what it means to take pictures of strangers. There are a number of things to keep in mind by anyone who carries a camera to an event or while touristing, or sometimes even just downtown. This wikipedia article also has a lot of interesting things to consider while doing or evaluating street photography. Photos that have recognizable people in them merit some thought before you press the button. I'm going to discuss the kinds of street photography I'm aware of, and then discuss the reasons why I picked one of them as a "winner."

Candid Street Photography

On a warm June evening, I am in that mode, hunting for an image of interesting life on the streets of downtown Columbia, Missouri. I am staring down the street, listening to what's going on. I know something is coming, something that might be new and interesting because I hear the laughter and camaraderie. My thought as I capture this image is that this is one of the kinds of things that defines this town: a bunch of college women, some in jeans, some in dresses, all in party mode, coming up the street, lots of laughter and good times going on.

Girls night out

Sometimes a street photograph shows a truly unrehearsed and candid shot like this one. These are basically journalistic in nature, and some might even become historic. That does not mean a journalist or news photographer took the picture. It means a candid street photograph is defined by the subject being the general public unaware they are being photographed. Not every snapshot taken on the street or at an event tells a story or otherwise captures something interesting. Often all that is there is of more interest to the participants than anyone else. This is a truly candid street photograph of a gaggle of gals out partying on a balmy June evening. As it happens, this was a scavenger hunt bachelorette party, and yours truly turned out to be one of the items on the list. The bride to be had to seek out and kiss the oldest man they could find. Ah well, the benefits of grey in my beard. We talked a bit after and exchanged emails so that when this photo later went up on facebook nearly everyone in it got tagged, though I didn't know any of them.

Ham-it-up street photography

Then I asked if they would pose for me and I got to do a different kind of street photography. This is not so much posed as it is hamming for the camera. It's not often that one finds such well dressed and shapely young women turning into instant models as quickly as this pair of the group did.

This kind of street photography is not invalid, even though it is no longer "candid." Though in a sense, it is the candid truth about how these two responded to "pose for the camera." No rehearsal, no careful placement with regard to the lights other than positioning myself.

Staged Street Photography

Reaching for the light

And then there are the staged street photographs where a concept is being presented rather than a piece of "reality." Here the model and I did several takes, trying for the effect you see here. We talk about what we're going to do, how long the exposure will be, where to stand, the pose and so forth. The digital camera with its preview capability makes it possible to try, look, adjust, and try again.

As with ham-it-up street photography, the staged version is not invalid, and also, when done reasonably well, reveals a truth about the place, the street where the image is made when it was made. The staging is deliberate and planned, locations are checked out, lighting and angles are considered. The only thing candid is the rest of the people and the traffic behind them. In this case it was just outside one of the free summer concerts that make this city such a fun and interesting place to be.

Arranged Street Photography

Rockstar

When the subjects in the photo are aware of the camera, of the fact that they are being recorded, but are not hamming it up for the camera, and not setting up a staged shot, we have yet another kind of street photography. In this image I had talked with the central figure, Anna, and had taken several pictures already and she was well aware of me and "posing" for me. But more posing for herself, with most of her attention on warming up to go on stage with her band and sing a few minutes later. The fellow on the left, Jeff, is also in the band. The guy on the right, carrying a camera of his own, is on his way looking for some other prey, though he does find her interesting.

I think the ideal "street photograph" is one where the subject matter, even if posed and set up, does in fact represent reality at that particular time and place.

I really like photographs where no title, no words at all are necessary to convey the story or to explain the action that is taking place. If we need words to be able to identify the image, a title should be sufficient.

However, I do want to explain a little bit about why I think this last one is a photo worthy of being printed, framed, and used to decorate a space. Or to be "documentary" of our culture.

A few days later, when we looked through the photos, this one jumped out at us and Anna and I agreed the title of this one should be "Rockstar."

One of the reasons I like it is because it conveys the essence of the rock star credo: I want to be the center of attention. The two men are looking at the woman in the center, giving her their attention. Is she aware of their attention? She is aware of my attention and my camera, and I'm sure she is peripherally aware that she has some kind of audience, too.

So, for me anyway, I feel the image is a kind of cultural icon, something that would be recognized any where on our planet by anyone who has been to a live rock concert at some point. The man-woman interaction is obvious, but the pose and the use of the hoop as a performance toy, says there is more going on than that.

Stare, pry, listen: sometimes it seems to me, the staring comes later, while looking at the images, prying out what all is there by visual inspection.

I am open to suggestions or comments, in fact would welcome them.

Technical stuff

Technical details for the last photo for my readers who also find that interesting. The camera was a Sony R-1, which has a non-removable lens, but that lens is high quality Zeiss glass. The exposure was 1/250 of a second at f5.6. The camera was held a little above waist level, one of the big advantages to a fully articulating LCD viewer. The camera was in P mode, meaning the exposure and focus was set by the camera. In other words, it was a point and shot operation that could have been done with a cell phone.

However, the range from dark to light was greater than even a much more expensive camera could have captured in one exposure. In this case the result is that any sky included turns out white instead of the bright blue that my eyes could see. So it is fair to say that on a technical scale, this image doesn't make the grade -- the highlights are blown out so that we loose detail in the sky, the sidewalk and the seedling tree wrapper in the foreground. It is possible that had I moved several steps to the right and had only trees and leaves in the upper background, the exposure would have been better suited to the high range from dark to light present in the scene. But when doing what is essentially street photography, one doesn't always have the luxury of doing a shot again. I'm looking forward to the day when a camera can capture the High Dynamic Range (HDR) tonal information present in a scene like this.

For post processing, I felt that not only was cropping called for, but also some tweaking of the exposure values and some dodging and burning, not all that different from what one did with film when working in a darkroom. Even at the fairly high pixel count present, 2976 by 1984 pixels cropped, there is simply not enough information in the raw image file to bring out any detail in the super bright areas.

Despite the image barely passing an the technical side, the technical is trumped by the image, the subjects and their interaction.

chop and carry

2011-12-10T16:28:00.003-06:00

Most of us have heard the phrase, "chop wood and carry water." Just the words convey a picture of someone doing chores. Paying dues so that after chopping wood and carrying water you can go out and party. Or perhaps chopping the wood is an art form you have learned and practiced to the point where anyone watching is amazed at how wonderfully coordinated, graceful, and efficient your moves are as you split log after log.

What kind of wood are you chopping?

With what ax do you pay your dues?

Is your ax an implement of tree destruction or is it perhaps some other tool you have discovered that resonates with your soul. A saxophone possibly; perhaps a sword in a sword dance; a voice pure and clear; a camera; a computer program.

Whatever your particular ax is, when you master it, when you can use it to totally slay your audience, then you are ready to carry water. To sustain your skill and become even better. Like learning, you and your ax take a life time to discover each other.

Everyone has at least one talent or skill they can bring to perfection, if they want. Most of us have two or three, some have even more. Mastering one does not preclude mastering another. And perhaps the best life is the one spent mastering the skills that in the end define that life.

"Jack of all trades, master of none" is only true if you aren't willing to buckle down now and then and get the chops, learn how to wield that ax. At some point in life, I think one should be able to say, with reasonable correctness, "Jack of many trades, master of a few."

Wash dishes and sweep floor: Can your life be enhanced by making a chore a work of beauty? Will it make you famous? Will it make your soul resonate? Will it satisfy your mind?

When the line between performing or creating art and living your life blurs, your muses must be coming to visit.

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Some historical stuff about the use of Ax to mean a musical instrument.

I have also generalized ax to mean any skill done to perfection in terms of Tai Chi Chuan and music.

Musing on a mission statement

2011-06-25T00:25:00.131-05:00

If the preview image that appears above is mostly red lines of light, it is a close up of my creating my art at Interfuse in May this year. My art was a five minute long exposure of myself doing a Tai Chi Sword form that I made on Thursday night 10 minutes before it started raining horizontal on 30 mph winds. I have included this image within the video, which is a 15 minute glimpse into the four days and three nights of Interfuse.

Current draft mission statement (20110717)

Arts at Mount Pleasant (AMP) is a not-for-profit school whose mission is to create beauty in harmony with the natural world by hosting classes, workshops, and colloquies designed to enhance the capacity of people to create and appreciate art.

A mission statement is a summary of the purposes, values and processes of an organization. It's best, apparently, if it is very short and very clear, yet still does a good job of describing the organization, making it obvious what that organization does in relationship to the society in which it exists.

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What follows in this blog are a number of random thoughts about this organization we're going to be building over the next year or so. Somehow out of this we need to distill a mission statement. Comments and suggestions welcome and encouraged. Comment here or email to info at redwoodtwig.com
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It's "we" because for an organization to succeed, there has to be a "we." I have ideas, but my ideas can be melded with other people's ideas to form a group idea. When the group idea works, we have a chance.
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Non-profit doesn't mean you don't make money, it means the money is already spoken for as a means to do what's stated in the mission statement. While volunteer work will always be appreciated, my hope is that we can build something that will in fact pay the staff something more than just good times.
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Founder's syndrome -- putting too much of the personal vision into what has to be a group effort to succeed. Easy to put into the mission statement, but hard to do without making mission success impossible. Mission success requires a shareable vision that others will share enough to contribute time, money, or even simply good will.

On the other hand, the vision of what it's to be 20, 50, 100 years from now, that does need to be there, too. To help separate my personal vision from what is an organization vision, we plan to use a land trust structure that simply gives me lifetime residence rights. The place will belong to the organization, to AMP, and the AMP board of directors will run the place. I will be on that board for the foreseeable future, but I'm only looking ahead a few years on that front. It will develop as it will.
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A piece of my personal vision is to build/grow/cultivate these 9.85 acres to be both a natural haven and a self-sustaining permaculture based food source for the school and those staff who conduct the permaculture workshops and to some extent the students who attend these workshops also.

The place is not big enough for a community. Well, it is, but part of the values of AMP is the "in harmony with nature" part. We are hoping that many of the workshops and such work better in a natural setting. Thus these acres need to be mostly "wild", though really with lots of paths and areas where wild permaculture is being practiced: Persimmons, Sassafras, mulberry, elderberry, black berries, juniper berry, raspberries, wild plum, hazelnuts, echinacea, horse mint, mayapples, and mushrooms are all healthy and either are already thriving here or have in the past. As well as carefully planned and placed permanent agricultural beds for fruits, herbs and veggies.

So basically a single caretaker living place with perhaps as many as 3 or 4 "permanent" residents and maybe as many as 10 established campsites. This way folks who want to participate in a permaculture "seminar" can have a place to stay overnight or longer while taking care of their crop and most likely participating in some other aspect of the arts being done here. Or just chilling. It is not a public camping ground, it is for staff or students only.

"The word permaculture is described by Mollison as a portmanteau of permanent agriculture, and permanent culture." from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture

In addition to wild permaculture, there is plenty of room for several plots of permanent agriculture. This would be a bunch of deep beds in which various kinds of periennel herbs, vegetables and fruit are raised, as well as some where annuals are raised. Each bed would have an instructor or two or three and a contract about how the responsibilities and proceeds are divided.

I was able to attend a workshop conducted by Bill Mollison back in the early 80's. What he described was a very communal approach. I now realize that the basic reason for his approach is that there is no way a self-sustaining permaculture operation can work without a lot of manual labor. Much more than a 40 or even 60 hour week full time by one person, or even two.

I suppose a single adult, working on all the chores plus life sustaining chores, could manage if he or she wanted to go off the grid and become a hermit.

Think globally, act locally: So globally we need to be engaged in our world. Permaculture by itself is fine for a hermit, but our mission is to create beauty in harmony with the natural world. Not just to create natural harmony within these acres.
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Staff, students and public: All staff are paid in some form or another -- could be just half of a harvest from a permaculture crop, but could also be cash money or other trade items (including art from other staff or students) for other kinds of work around the place -- teaching a class, doing a performance, kitchen, landscaping, maintenance, security, whatever. Each of these kind of transactions require a contract that clearly states who gets what and how the costs will be computed.
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Students are the main target of the educational aspect of the place. They come and pay cash money for a lesson or workshop. There are no "scholarships" at first, maybe later. In the meantime, though, there could be work-study type arrangements.
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The public is invited once in a while (once a quarter?, once a month? the solstices and equinoxes?) for a festival and art show of some kind and donate as they see fit. (and buy art from the staff)
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All students and staff who participate in a public event get a share of whatever "profits" are realized from entrance fees and donations. In other words, expenses specific to the event get paid first, then the remainder is divided something like 3 shares for the school itself, 2 shares for each staff member, and 1 share for each student participating.

For example: $1000 comes in, $200 spent on food, beverages, other special items purchased for the event. That leaves $800. 8 staff and 11 students participated, plus the school for 20 shares to be divided.. 800 divided by 20 is 40 per share. School gets 120, each staff gets 80 and each student gets 40.

Same scenario, but if only $100 comes in, well, no one gets any loot and the school posts a "loss". But if the event specific expenses had been held down to $20, then students would get 4, staff 8, and school 12.

Should the division give more to the school? Maybe the mortgage gets 3, the school gets 3, principal teacher gets 3, supporting staff get 2 and students get 1? Perhaps there will a different division of income per event, but in any case, each event will involve a written contract that each staff and student have to sign up to.
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There are two threads in our current world culture that I feel need to be nourished within this school: The burner culture in life and in the The Ten Principles and the slow food movement, which has morphed into a slow life movement.

Radical Inclusion is one of the ten principles of the burner culture, but we are not interested in hosting a biker rally, though we could certainly come up with examples of beauty that can be experienced at a biker rally. We could easily create a workshop on any one of a dozen motorcycle related things. But a workshop and a rally are two different animals. We are not in the business of hosting wild parties. We are in the business of creating and appreciating art. Which might get pretty wild. Basically, when the public is involved, we are presenting something to them -- a show on stage, an exhibition, a program of events. For the public this will not be a "hang out" place. On the other hand, for students or staff, it is a "hang out" place within the terms of the contract signed.
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Written contracts: We'll come up with a few dozen specific types of contracts, simple and clear with fill in the blanks for key parts. E.G. I, {name}, agree to conduct a tie dye workshop on {date}. Expenses chargeable to the school will be {list}. Fee for the class will be {amount} per student. Division will be 3 parts to the school, 2 parts to myself.

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Gift Economy is another of the burner 10 principles. AMP will not be a gifting economy, but gifting between and among staff and students is encouraged. There will be a giving tree established on a permanent basis -- a place where good but no longer needed stuff can be taken or given.
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Family friendly vs adults only: I think mostly family friendly, but it's also quite a lot of fun to let adults play. Plus, as in Huckleberry Finn, making a public event adults only is bound to draw in a bigger crowd. For these kinds of shows or events, we'll need security. We'll need to recruit trained burning man rangers for that.
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Alcohol and related things: Some events will be declared alchohol free, but mostly it would be byob. I don't think we want to get into the liquer license realm at all. However, if BYOB is in effect, again we need security of some sort for public events.

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edit 20110702: added candidate mission statement to top, couple other minor edits.

edit 20110712: couple more ideas at the bottom

edit 20110717: Some formatting and several more points.

Mt. Pleasant School of the Arts: which arts?

2011-06-15T00:27:00.002-05:00

The areas I personally intend to offer classes and workshops include Tai Chi Chuan, Fencing, Photography, Permaculture, Fire Sword dancing, and formal philosophy. I'm fleshing out details about these areas and why I want to work with them on my new website: Http://redwoodtwig.com

In a nutshell: I have been doing Tai Chi for a bit over 30 years, teaching for nearly 15. I fenced for about 15 years and took a break of nearly 20 years from it and have been teaching it now for about 10 years. My students have done quite well at beginner's tournaments. I've been doing fire sword dancing for almost 5 years now, though much more irregularly than fencing without fire. I started doing photography around age 10 and have put it down and taken it up again several times, including a four year stint where I did medium and large format photography and darkroom work about 10 to 20 hours a month. My first motion picture was made on an 8mm hand cranked portable camera when I was about 12. Yes, it was terrible, and no, I'm sure it no longer exists. Philosophy was my major in college -- I had 120 credit hours of philosophy classes when I graduated, in addition to the required courses.

My concept is that we will find other teachers, or they will find us and that this venue works out to be suitable for a wide ranges of classes, workshops, colloquium, and performances.

There is a covered stage area with a nice grassy audience area in front of it that would comfortably accommodate 100 people. Or the stage area by itself can be used for small classes in Tai Chi, fencing, or other body work arts. There is also a large mostly flat field about half the size of a football field that will be great for bonfires and fire performances.

Workshop vs colloquium: the first is where there is a teacher and students. The latter is where there is a moderator and the students are thoroughly versed in the subject matters at hand. In a workshop, students are there to learn from the teacher, in a colloquium, everyone is there to learn from each other.

There are also several suitable camping spots and a lot of woodland and meadow to explore. Well, 10 acres isn't all that much, but there's still a lot of variety, including a couple of ponds. There are several permaculture possibilities here. For example, the mulberry trees could be taken care of for a good crop, as could the persimmons. For permaculture "classes", what I'd be looking for are people who want to commit to an annual cycle of care and harvest for a particular crop. At harvest we make a even split of the crop in some form or another to the "students" who attended the "class", with one share going to the school.

The place is located less than a half mile from highway 63, so there is some road noise, sometimes a lot. Sometimes it works to pretend that it is the noise the surf is making on a beach just out of sight. And sometimes late at night or early in the morning, it is very quiet and peaceful.

Being that close to a major highway means the drive from the bridge at Jeff city is 10 minutes, and from the Broadway exit on 63 in Columbia is 17 minutes.

There is still a lot of paperwork as well as real work around the place before formal classes start, probably sometime in 2012.

I welcome comments and suggestions about any aspect of this venture.

Guiding Principles for Arts at Mount Pleasant ( School of the Arts)

2011-06-12T22:34:00.001-05:00

These principles or concepts are in no particular order, other than having a number attached. They represent an analytic approach to my own values with regard to art and life.

Life happens to us, we happen to art.

Anything that can be done, can be done well, and when done well enough, it's art. Well, almost anything.

These are ideas that have been percolating for a number of years in my mind. A friend recently read the mission statement I'm trying out in the blog entry titled Musing on a Mission and commented that it sounded a lot like something J. C. Friedrich Von Schiller would have said. I had heard of him but he is one of the few philosophers I hadn't studied in college. I find it interesting to discover that one of his papers expresses some thoughts I'd put in one of my papers back then. We both feel Kant took the wrong direction by following the Critique of Pure Reason with a study on morality instead of one on aesthetics. So now I have to read that paper and find out what he said.

1. Cause no distress to the earth or the living things that grow, burrow, crawl, walk or fly above her.

2. Cause no distress to living things harvested for eating or other purposes relating to survival.

3. There are two touchstones that define art:
a. Art occurs within a frame or framework. Life is what occurs without a frame or framework.
b. Art is beautiful: An art object or event will evoke the sense of the beautiful. Maybe not very strongly, but even the weakest attempt at beauty is art.

4. Beauty is not ugly. There is ugly, but by itself, it can never be art. Mainly because ugly is the bad or evil part of life, and in its raw form there is no framework, no boundary, no beauty, just life. However, ugliness can be incorporated into the framework of an artistic endeavor, but only so long as the fundamental balance is achieved.

5. Balance is the harmony of an ecosystem, large or small. Permaculture is the art of balancing the local ecosystem with the survival needs of the humans that live there.

6. Balance in art is the "happy" message: a story, image, object or performance event that depicts only the negative side of things can not carry a happy message. Balancing the negative with positive leads to a happy message, at least for someone. A tragedy portrayed on stage or in an image that evokes a sense of completion, the finishing of the frame around the event, can easily become art by the release experiencing it can give to the beholder.

7. Sport is an art as long as it takes place within a framework of rules and conventions. Win at all costs is life, not art and not sport.

8. Philosophy is an art until voices are raised in distress. At that point it is no longer art; instead, the discussion has morphed into theology.

9. Religion in the service of philosophy is the art of living harmoniously within a community: it shapes and colors the framework of rules of that community. Religion in the service of theology is very rarely art because theology normally requires acceptance of an exclusionary framework, one that is out of balance with life.

10. Art is practice for a good or balanced life.

11. Business in the service of philosophy is art. Business in the service of profits only is not art.

Spring running

2011-04-09T17:53:00.001-05:00

The Spring Running is something all the animals in the world do, even the two legged ones. If plants could move about, they would also. Instead, they offer flowers of all shapes, colors, and scents. And the animals, no matter how uptight they might be, feel a need to preen, or sing, or show off how mighty and beautiful they are.

Even the clouds can feel when it is springtime. They seem to want to dance, or maybe it's a fight.

Even the fiercest of carnivores stops to smell the flowers.

And the gentlest feel the urge to charge at life

Do you photoshop your images?

2011-03-09T22:55:00.000-06:00

I get asked this in various ways fairly often. I usually take it to mean "Have you added layers and done image manipulations that weren't possible during the good old days of film?"

That second question I can confidently answer, "Not very often."

If the person indicates some knowledge of photography, I might add that I Lightroom nearly all of my images. By that I mean I use Lightroom from Adobe to apply photographic manipulations. There is very little that can be done in Lightroom that couldn't be done in the film days -- provided you had lots of different kinds of film, dozens of film development recipes, and all the enlarger filters and gadgets you could get your hands on.

I like the tone curves tool in Lightroom because it allows me to stack filters on the enlarger lens, so to speak, until I can see what I'm looking for. Others, such as luminence, ISO, and white balance were in the film days choices you made by buying a particular kind of film and using a particular development recipe. Today you work those variables using a tool like Lightroom. You can do the same things in Photoshop, but the labels, menu choices and so forth are named and organized for a graphic artist rather than a photographer.

So this is my "Lightroom abstracted" photo of a glass:

And this is the "original" raw image converted to JPG so I can display it here:

This is a photo manipulation, but I wouldn't call it Photoshopped because no layers or other images were involved. Nonetheless, a skilled user of Photoshop could do the same thing there.

What modern digital photography is about is the image file. Up to a point, you can modify the image file so that it will print great at any of the hundreds of print shops around the country. When a photographer wants to create a print that is exactly they way he or she wants it, there is another layer of skill that replaces enlargers and print chemical baths, and that is the mastery of the printer hardware and various pieces of software needed to get the image from the file onto a physical medium.

As fine art, I think the definition for a photographer has to include the making of the print itself.

Platonic Love

2010-10-27T21:45:00.000-05:00

Platonic love in its modern popular sense is an affectionate relationship into which the sexual element does not enter, especially in cases where one might easily assume otherwise. In other words, a deep, non-sexual friendship between two heterosexual people of the opposite sexes. (from an extract ScienceDaily.com made from Wikipedia, but that entry is too long for a quick note: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_love).

Someday, when I feel like writing an in depth treatment, I want to revise the wikipedia entry with what I learned from reading Plato's Symposium. When I took the classes on the Symposium (one a graduate level seminar, and the other as a TA for a 500 person intro to philosophy class), most of my other work was in Greek classics, and I was very much at home imagining the party that Plato describes in that dialogue. Like several other of Plato's works, this is a dramatization of an actual get together that really did happen with the real people who are characters in the dialogue. In fact, Xenophon also wrote a work that talked about the same party.

Wikipedia says "for Plato generally, the most correct use of love of other human beings is to direct ones mind to love of divinity. In short, with genuine platonic love, the beautiful or lovely other person inspires the mind and the soul and directs ones attention to spiritual things."

This is one of the seven concepts of love presented by the members of the party. But only one. Socrates himself pretty much bypasses trying to directly answer the question of what love is. Instead, he is visited by his daemon lover, Alcibiades. Alcibiades was probably the most admired (and despised) person in Athens at the time. Alcibiades does not expound on his pet theory of love, instead he simply displays it in his interaction with Socrates.

What becomes clear through the words Socrates pulls from the others is that the basis of love is attention: as in "are you paying attention?" The attention the lovers give to each other is central to all seven of the definitions of love offered by the folks at the party.

So, jumping way ahead, love is simply when two people find something about the other that grabs their attention so strongly that the bond formed grows and matures. Regardless of any other factor, sex, size, shape, age, or whatever. If sufficient attention is there, love is there.

As a photographer, this becomes quite evident when taking or viewing photos of couples. Sometimes it's the eyes, sometimes something subtle in the posture, but most of the time it's quite evident if you look closely. In person of course, it's easy to sense when a couple pay attention to each other. But when you are one of the couple, sometimes it's much harder to see.

Money and the Muse

2010-10-20T12:41:00.000-05:00

So I'm going to "monetize" this blog by allowing Google to place some "related" links on it. I wonder how the engine behind this is going to determine relevance?

2 years later I've decided to un-monitize the blog. I may place some Google ad sense gadgets on my website, redwoodtwig.com, if I find an appropriate place.

Is there a muse for making money? There are 9 muses (table copied from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muse).

Muse	Domain	Emblem
Calliope	Epic poetry	Writing tablet
Clio	History	Scrolls
Erato	Lyric poetry	Cithara (an ancient Greek musical instrument in the lyre family)
Euterpe	Music	Aulos (an ancient Greek musical instrument like a flute)
Melpomene	Tragedy	Tragic mask
Polyhymnia	Choral poetry	Veil
Terpsichore	Dance	Lyre
Thalia	Comedy	Comic mask
Urania	Astronomy	Globe and compass

There doesn't seem to be one directly related to images or the visual arts.

I suppose the visual arts are within the families of comedy or tragedy, or maybe under poetry.

Or perhaps the visual arts belong to the muse who owns the subject of the image. So this photo I made of the Hulagans spinning their lighted hoops probably belongs to Tepsichore, Dance. The Hulagan facebook page is how to contact them if you need hoops or very skilled hoopers.

Hulagan Lights #6

We did a whole shoot using these colored hoops and in fact rehearsed and shot most of the scenes several times. In a number of the scenes we supplemented the light of the hoops with some flashlights and some zooming during the photo. There were two of us shooting, though I set up the exposure on both cameras and we used tripods. And music, of course.

I suppose that all of the muses have concerns that the people they inspire should be making money with art. After all, like any other god or goddess, without worshipers, they would shrivel up and blow away.

It's obvious to me that the world wide web has brought about an explosion of creations the muses very much enjoy and are proud of, and that therefore the muses are working actively to make it so their artists can devote full time to the relevant muses.

Hulagan Lights #46

So if you feel inclined to support my muse, click on the caption to go to the page where you can purchase a print of this session blessed by perhaps the tenth muse, the one whose name I haven't yet learned.

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Note: major edits made in Feb, 2012

Moonlight in photography

2010-10-15T21:23:00.000-05:00

The problem with your camera is that it sees only what's actually there in terms of light. Your eyes edit and refine what they see in a way software may never quite get to.

The moon is simply a object reflecting the sun's light. So your camera, if adjusted to shooting an object in direct sunlight, will show you something of the features on the moon's surface. But if you have adjusted your camera to see what's being illuminated by the moonlight, the moon itself will be horribly overexposed. Or shall we call it "artisticly" rendered instead?

Philosophy and fiction

2008-11-16T22:36:00.000-06:00

Philosophy as an academic field, like most other academic fields, is mostly the study of what dead men wrote, or what dead men wrote about other dead men. There are a few luminaries who achieve the status of "philosopher" while they are still alive, just as there are a few in any field whose work jumps out and becomes recognized as great before they die.

R. Buckminster Fuller was one, the author of "I seem to be a verb." Studs Terkel was another. Neither are currently considered to be philosophers -- Fuller was a visionary scientist and Terkel was an interviewer. But both reveal very important world views through their writing, ways of looking at how the world works that in any other age would be called philosophical.

Nietzsche, on the other hand is recognized as a philosopher, yet one of his most powerful works reads more like a novel than a philosophical treatise. I was going through some photos I'd made earlier this year and this one reminded me of the passage I quoted from Thus Spake Zarathustra. In any city with a few parks, you might find a scene like this on a lazy weekend evening. It's unlikely any of those in this photograph have read Nietzsche, even though this is a park on a university campus. But is it highly likely that all of those who were there would resonate to the phrase "Remain true to the earth."

Moonrise over the Potomac

2008-10-03T09:32:00.000-05:00

Vote for my entry on JPG magazine: http://www.jpgmag.com/photos/1086928

Moonrise over the Potomac by *redwoodtwig on deviant ART

A summer afternoon in Dupont Circle

2008-07-10T08:33:00.001-05:00

Dupont circle is a small part in the middle of a roundabout in the middle of Washington, DC. There are always interesting people wandering through it.

I made a short video when I was there last summer. My son is dancing, and I even got a chance to sit in on the drums while my son ran his video...

2008-07-07T16:54:00.000-05:00

Zorba

How to live and love and dance: Dancing is good for the soul.

After nearly 40 years, this music started running through my mind when I stepped onto the dock on the little lake behind Mike's house that almost rainy dreary night in October when the party for Lizzie was almost cancelled. I was wearing some pretty heavy boots and they made thudding sounds, like I was dancing on a huge drum.

I went back ashore and gathered up my toys. Tony was starting to play some danceable music, someone else was starting some drumming....

do it anyway

2007-10-23T13:07:00.000-05:00

The Paradoxical Commandments
http://www.paradoxicalcommandments.com/

by Dr. Kent M. Keith

1. People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

2. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

3. If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

4. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

5. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

6. The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

7. People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

8. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

9. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

10. Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

a little bit more

2007-08-02T08:50:00.000-05:00

Reaching out tentatively,
What am I going to say here?

I've learned a bit here and there,
I know some of it is worth sharing,
And maybe some will help someone,
someplace, sometime.

Beauty and life

2006-07-19T14:22:00.001-05:00

Beauty is balance between order and chaos. Sometimes it is also imbalance between order and chaos. Rarely it is pure order or pure chaos.

Life is also balance between order and chaos. Death is usually pure order or pure chaos.

Good is the ability to achieve balance whilst lurching between order and chaos and back again, however briefly. Evil is the inability to balance.

If Kant had done Aesthetics before Morality, I suspect he might have been a happier man.