Posted by Steve Durbin on April 17th, 2008
While reworking and sequencing my Winter Water project, I realized that, for a photographer as well as a physicist, snow, ice, and liquid are very distinct states of water, with distinct texture, tone, and shape. Perhaps because those photographs had no sky, I managed to completely forget about the vaporous state. Last Monday, however, I was vividly reminded of that glorious phase while biking through Yellowstone. Roads were clear but cars not yet allowed, so I had it almost to myself: only a half dozen other bikers all day, and a few service vehicles per hour. Fortunately I had a late start, so by the time I reached the Lower Falls it was well on in the afternoon. The westerly light left the falling water in shade while illuminating the mist.
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Posted by Steve Durbin on April 8th, 2008
About five months ago I described my indecision regarding goals or approaches in my horse project. I can now happily report that I’m still unresolved. It appears that simply making lots of photographs doesn’t necessarily result in refinement. I’ve decided to consider this a good thing, since that’s how it is, anyway. Perhaps one lesson can be drawn: to every style there is a season. Lately in Montana the season has been winter, and a look noted earlier has remained prominent, namely one featuring the texture of snow, especially falling snow, sometimes combined with motion-related texture.
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Posted by Steve Durbin on April 7th, 2008
This is dawn on the Colorado Plateau before I put my glasses on. This particular scene from my bag looks better that way.
Posted by Steve Durbin on April 1st, 2008
Despite the theme of a difficult, overwhelming environment in last week’s post, the Anasazi left many ruins that seem sturdy enough to stand up to it, and perhaps even be a source of power. Sometimes, in the photograph, that impression comes from strong lighting of a well-built structure.
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Posted by Steve Durbin on March 30th, 2008
An article in Wired magazine, Frame That Spam! Data-Crunching Artists Transform the World of Information, introduces several artists who transform found data into artistic creations. Their craft lies in the choice of data source to operate on, and the construction of an algorithm that manipulates the data to give results that are aethestically pleasing and/or conceptually interesting.
The art could be three-dimensional, as with the creations of Alex Dragulescu, though his objects are, as far as I can tell, not actually constructed, but merely rendered as images.
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Posted by Steve Durbin on March 26th, 2008
I’ve just returned from a trip to the Colorado Plateau, my third since getting my camera. The canyon and mesa landscape is amazing, but most of my interest lately has centered around the ancient remains of human habitation, and their relationship to the landscape. I’ve focused on the small settlements and structures, and haven’t even been to larger sites like Mesa Verde in many years. My reasons: the small ruins are not on maps, there are no crowds, and the hiking and searching for them is a large part of the enjoyment.
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Posted by Steve Durbin on March 18th, 2008
Francis Bacon wrote: “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.” Just recently, by one of those common coincidences, I’ve seen this idea compellingly expressed in different contexts, though both related to art. One is the passage below from a Laurie Fendrich interview, which I had occasion to quote in a comment elsewhere.
The beauty in abstraction comes when abstract painters create marks, shapes, forms, and colors that tap into unseen but universal, psychologically beautiful forms and shapes. The marks and colors, since they range so widely in painting, bring to abstract paintings the poignancy of the individuality of each human being. I said I’m almost a complete Platonist, but I’m not a complete Platonist. I think deviation, or falling away from perfect form, is what makes something profoundly beautiful. Perfect beauty is different from profound beauty; the latter is always partly tragic and has something wrong with it, always, and without exception. The “something wrong” part is the handedness, or the individual way a painter paints, which points to the fleetingness of our lives. But it’s really simpler—beauty either is or isn’t, once a painting is done. If it knocks the socks off someone who sees it, and that someone is a deep and sensitive person, that’s the test. Period.
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