Blow, blow, thou winter wind
Thou art not so unkind,
As man’s ingratitude.
-William Shakespeare-
click on image to enlarge
Winter Friends on the Deck:
Winter Memories:
Memory Frozen in Time
The sun danced across the frozen pond’s surface in ripples
warming your face.
The moment was silent with only the wind filling the winter space.
It was the smile I remember bringing us together so many years
before.
I hear the creak of weathered wood from the cabin door.
It feels familiar, like our love, as we live from season to season sharing laughter and
a warm winter embrace.
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2011 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 7,800 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 7 trips to carry that many people.
Hulk v Dog
“IT’S NOT THE SIZE OF THE DOG IN THE FIGHT, IT’S THE SIZE OF THE FIGHT IN THE DOG.”
-Mark Twain-
Signs of Americana
Thoughts from the sidelines during bowl season:
So you’re a sports photographer and proud of it.
We’ll I’m here to say that I’m just one of many photo editors proud of you and appreciate your dedication and visual talents in bringing your awesome images to wire services; web and print publications.
I’m new to the job, but the job is not new to me.
If you are about to make the leap to the proud; the few the sometimes forgotten here are five things to think about while on assignment.
1. We live very much in a digital age where time is king which spans a twenty-four hour news cycle. That wonderful image that you have in the second quarter of the game is going to be overshadowed by someone who sent a lesser image 10 minutes before you hit send. Get into the mind-set that every quarter, every half, every period is your deadline. Understand that there is a market out there for the FIRST image; understand there is a market out there for pre-game images. Be a story-teller!
2. Once you step into that arena of coverage; EVERYTHING is a valued image that may have an economic impact for you and your client.
That helmet sitting on grass near the sidelines: that sports drink bottle on the bench; those player-filled sports shoes in the rain, snow, mud. The kids playing a sandlot game at the corner field.
This is a pop-culture society that places a value on still images. It’s not enough to know your market…you need to know where the future is heading in your market.
3. Don’t stop shooting when the game clock shows no time left. Make sure you tell the final story of both the winners and the losers. Follow-up stories need images to help tell those stories that may run days later. Although you are covering an event; you are really covering athletes and their emotions. Those images have value for days, months, years to come.
4. Don’t short-change the technical. Make sure that your camera sensors are clean; make sure you have a solid white-balance; make sure you have the correct time stamp on all cameras and computers you use, make sure your images are in focus! Take pride in the professional and correct cutlines you provide.
5. Above all be professional; be humble: be proud in the quality of work you produce and learn as much as you can from those that came before you.
The gull:
“THE LEGENDS LIE CRADLED IN THE SEAGULLS CALL, AND THE PROMISE THEY MADE ARE GROUND BENEATH THE SADIST’S FALL.”
-Jethro Tull-
Hudson River gulls, Cold Springs, NY
Another Christmas without Joe:
SHREK THE HALLS
Twas the night before Christmas and I spent all the day finishing the Christmas display.
Now all this would be nothing tragic, so follow me and I’ll show you the magic.
Now out in the years in a glorious clutter is a spectacle there that will make your hear flutter.
With 20-foot cheese balls and big egg nog fountain, and a yodeling Elvis on an ambrosia mountain.
A state where acrobats jump, leap, and prance, and honor the day through interpretive dance.
-Donkey-
You know Christmas is around the corner in Hopewell when the leaves are gone; the wind and cold chips the paint a bit quicker and Joe places the closed sign in the window as he leaves for Florida.
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Never Too Late to Give: If you understand the importance of Photojournalism…think FOVEA.
I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.
-Charles Dickens-
During the holiday season think about charitable contributions in keeping art, music and photography alive in your community. It’s important in raising the bar for humanity.
Advice is like Snow:
“Advice is like snow – the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper in sinks into the mind.”
-Samuel Taylor coleridge-
October snow Hopewell Junction, NY 2011
Man and his snow machine.
Walking on the Color side:
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge-
East Fishkill, NY 2011
Fishkill, NY 2011
Fishkill, NY 2011
Worth waking up to: Clouds in the Sky
Wappingers Falls, NY 2011
“Now suddenly there was nothing but a world of cloud, and we three were there alone in the middle of a great white plain with snowy hills and mountains staring at us; and it was very still; but there were whispers.”
-Black Elk-
Sometimes we don’t pick our friends…nor do they pick us?
“TRUE FRIENDS STAB YOU IN THE FRONT.”
-Oscar Wilde-
A friendship headed for trouble.
A New York state of Mind:
” Some folks like to get away
Take a holiday from the neighborhood
Hop a flight to Miami Beach
Or to Hollywood
But I’m taking a Greyhound
On the Hudson River Line
I’m in a New York state of mind.”
-Billy Joel-
Jet skis glide along the Hudson River beneath the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge, Walkway over the Hudson
Coffee and the Spider:
The thread-like fibers flutter with the breeze.
All but invisible in the early morning fog.
Most certainly the structure invisible to its prey.
We share the balcony with a view to the area’s beauty.
I with coffee in hand
The spider with a trap for what might land.
The Farmhouse:
“Then a dog began to howl somewhere in a farmhouse far down the road, a long, agonized wailing, as if from fear. The sound was taken up by another dog, and then another and another, till, borne on the wind which now sighed softly through the Pass, a wild howling began, which seemed to come from all over the country, as far as the imagination could grasp it through the gloom of the night”
-Bram Stoker-
The farmhouse.
