a multi-disciplinary dialog
Among my recent plastic acquisitions is a substantial mirrored sheet. The grandkids like to see their fun house reflections as it is all bendy. It’s an old notion and applied to exhaustion, but I decided to see what the camera would catch reflected in it.
I’m thinking of hauling a smaller version of the sheet around with me.
Wedded to watery motifs, fond of reflection, and taking advantage of a brilliant, calm day in the dunes of Northern Michigan, motifs as the following were collected:
I am continuing to re- and re-read Schmid’s chapter on edges, because I’m not sure I have a decently full grasp of what he’s saying.
The book is Alla Prima: Everything I Know About Painting by Richard Schmid ($50 USD in soft cover from him; more from Amazon and more in hard cover).
Schmid begins his chapter by saying “Think about edges the way you would think about kissing someone…. Think of edges as exquisite subtleties, as the means to transmit romance, as ways to make your dabs or paint whisper or shout and reach nuances beyond the range of color. Think of them as visual poetry… but especially think of edges as you would the agents of expression in music….pianissimo (very soft), andante (flowing), allegro vivace (fast and lively), maestoso (majestic), fortissimo con sforzando (whamo!).
Recent posts here on the topic of edges and their sharpness (or not) have been finding echoes in other places. For example, I’ve just read the intriguing but peculiar short story by Balzac, entitled The Unknown Masterpiece, which I learned of by reading that Picasso was asked to illustrate an edition. He (P) was apparently fascinated enough that he rented a studio in Paris thought to figure in the story; that’s where he painted Guernica.
Despite all the discussion and analysis on A&P, I seldom, if ever, carry it consciously in my head when I’m out photographing. If it happens to be there at the start, it soon flees as I focus on the subject. Sub-consciously, who’s to say? In any case, in my first outing after writing about complexity, I made some pictures that not only relate to that issue, but seem to have a loose resemblance to some of the drawings discussed. They also involve the edges June brought up recently, so I’ll have a look at that, as well.
A new capability since our upgrade of WordPress is the tagging feature. Tags are like categories: labels to describe the post. But unlike categories, tagging is free-form; you can use any words or phrases you like, whether or not they’ve been previously used. Just as with categories, clicking on a tag label will show other posts bearing that tag. So it’s a great way to find similar content without having to search on a particular term. Searching doesn’t always work well, as a post might contain the search term without it being very characteristic of the post content.
You’ll notice in the sidebar (possibly scrolling down a bit) a list of recent tags, with their frequency indicated by intensity of blue and font size. That provides a snapshot of recent topics which can be more informative than our sometimes cryptic post titles. Clicking any of these also brings you to a list of posts so tagged.
So far, I’ve tagged just my last few posts to show how it works. We need some other tags in there! Feel free to go back and tag any old posts, and use tags if you like for future posts. On the post edit page, tags are added immediately below the compose area, right next to the category assignment list.
I hope tags will offer an easier way to find posts of interest and ones related to a post you’ve enjoyed. Let’s see if it works out that way. Meanwhile, any comments or suggestions would be appreciated!
