Colors of Tuscany

Years ago, I was traveling in Italy on my way to Tunisia and picked up a postcard of a watercolor scene from Siena. It was of a beautiful passage into the Via S. Agata, and the image has been a romanticized vision in my head ever since. I was so excited on my recent trip with my mom to spend some time in Siena, wandering the old, tuscan colored streets and finally appreciating (and photographing) the famous archway I had collected on a postcard some 28 years ago.

My mom, excited about the colors, talked about the raw umbers and burnt sienas from her first set of paints as a young artist. They are antique colors, full of warmth and softer than I imagined in the fading, cool light of late Fall.

This photograph hangs next to my watercolor postcard in my mind, as a celebration of coming full circle; from past to present and from paint to pixels.

Horsepower

No Midlife Crisis here. He invested in horsepower.

I'm always drawn to photograph unusual doors and windows. They are like portals into worlds I know nothing about. I had a visceral response to this door while wandering around what looked like a warehouse district in Tacoma. Someone had spray-painted the word "NO" on it in neon yellow. I liked it's abrubt quality; the way it commanded the space on that cracked and peeling door.

Taken in the setting of this retro-urban environment, I appreciated its spontaneous "counter-culture" message; a universal response to all of the bull-shit that ever was and ever will be.

And aesthetically, at least for me, a door with a neon "NO" is more interesting than just a door.

Urban Shangri-La

I think of the domed fountain at the Seattle Center as an urban Shangri-La. On a hot summer day it becomes a giant fire-hydrant, the center of the earth for throngs of happy children. I grew up around Seattle and the scene depicted in this image is so familiar to me that I can practically hear the loud music from the PA system and feel the spray in my face. But I like the way it has a universal feel to it, like it could be anywhere, because children everywhere behave the same way around water on a hot day.

Photo Walk '09

I've been busy this week going through the images I captured last Saturday for the Annual Worldwide Photo Walk. When I heard about this event I knew I wanted to be part of it; the idea of thousands of photographers all over the world hitting the streets at (roughly) the same time, zooming, clicking, capturing whatever was there, whatever presented itself. My group met in downtown Tacoma. It felt like a treasure hunt as everyone headed out in search of his or her own pictorial prize; an image, or maybe more than one, that always seems to be out there, just waiting for you to claim it with your unique perspective. The weather was clear and hot. There were beautiful, stark shadows everywhere which I love for their strong, graphic lines. In this photo of two red umbrellas I used the shadows to counter the bright, vivid color and my lens baby to blur the edges.

Breathe

Breathe
Breathe
as the ocean breathes.

Follow the rolling

swells and notice,

the clattering of pebbles
of your chattering mind.

like fragments of torn hearts

mended smooth as

an oceanic prism;
a heart-mind of changing

shapes and colors.

 

Barbed-Wire Spiral

I got a link on Facebook recently from my cousin, a piece from a literary online art gallery on improvisational surrealism. Featured there was the work and ideas of Rodney Tuttle who says, "Grab a camera and walk out into the world; treat the world like a gigantic surrealistic sculpture and capture some surreal images." 

I love to do this.  This image of some tangled up barbed-wire draped across a chain link fence is an odd juxtaposition, my take on the "sculpturally surreal", and I like the improvisational feel of it.  I watched as many people walked right by without seeming to notice it, how out of place and strange it seemed there on a pedestrian walkway.