Groundhog Day and Memories

Today is Groundhog Day! For those of us living in Pennsylvania it means it’s time when the State gets a little more air-time as the news crews descend upon the small town of Punxsutawney, PA where a poor old groundhog, designated as “Punxsutawney Phil” is dragged into the limelight from his home in the ludicrously named “Gobbler’s Knob” and, through some magical ceremony, prognosticates on whether Spring will be early or late.

The statistics of Phil’s accuracy are interesting and, with a 39% rate of being correct are significantly worse than chance. This being said, then I am assuming that we will have a long Winter this year since the unreliable rodent has opined that it will be an early Spring. Let’s see!

Of course the other famous Groundhog Day is the now classic 1993 film of the same name directed by Harry Ramis and starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. In my opinion this is much more fun! The idea of reliving the same day repeatedly but being able to alter it though your own behaviour is quite fascinating from a philosophical point of view. As Murray experiences in the film, after the initial shock and boredom wears off, there are myriad ways one can explore one’s own psyche as well as that of others. Now that is quite a fascinating concept. Imagine the ability to simply erase the mistakes of a day until, in the end you create what you consider to be your perfect day. Could you do it, or would you go mad trying?

I, on the other hand am going to approach this from a more mundane and blatant angle by posting one image below a link to a few images of the town where I spent some of my childhood many years ago.

The number of days we kids spent roaming around and playing in this area, especially over the school holidays, meant that we were always searching for that “perfect day” and, although we wouldn’t have called it such, perhaps this was our own Groundhog day of sorts…

~Richard

February 2, 2016 1

Pardon the Pun

It is only two weeks (yes, guys that’s only 14 days!) until Valentine’s Day. The fabulous 14th of February when we have a chance to express our affection to our cherished ones. I think I’ll probably write a bit more about my thoughts on this subject on the actual day but suffice to say that I am so grateful that myriad Jewelry stores, car manufacturers and Hallmark have been so thoughtful in reminding us of this celebration since the New Year began. Nevertheless, I wanted to make a post related to this today for a couple of reasons:

Firstly, I was still thinking about my previous post concerning the great work of Kevin Abosch. I had been mulling this around in my head for a few days and then suddenly had the thought to try something similar myself. “Ah, but how to make this unique?” thinks I, as I ponder the situation.

It was when we were in the kitchen last night and my wife asked me to make up a salad to accompany our dinner, and I was absentmindedly thinking about Valentine’s Day and what was the best way I could show my affection in the next fortnight (pretty advanced planning for me, in actuality), that I had one of those so-called “moments of inspiration”. Now, my cerebral pun-engine is always turning over in the back of my head (probably due to having been raised on a diet of British comedy, not least the Carry On films) but this time it leaped to my consciousness and delivered a classic (to my mind). So, I scurried to my basement studio (aka an ironing board with a tote lid covered in black material underneath a large LED shop light), stood on a chair and created the following image:

I also created one as fine art (i.e., without any text) in true homage to Mr Abosch should anyone wish to have a large leafy print adorning their home 🙂

~Richard

February 1, 2016 0

A Story – Small Journey

It had taken the four of them the a long time to build the car. They had seen pictures in the papers of the “big people” and a group of them had been enthused by the possibility of creating their own. Over the months they had copied the plans appropriately. It was never a problem to get the materials as the”big people” were always so wasteful. They hadn’t even noticed the missing can and other objects.

They had worked together as a small team and were pleased with the results, even though it had taken them months of their spare time, after all their normal duties had been completed. Some elders of the group had initially told them they were wasting their time but, to be honest, most were secretly impressed when the car started up.

The youngsters had clearly learned a lot and they could see that this development would open up so many possibilities for the community at large…

~Richard

January 31, 2016 0

52 week challenge: week 5

Week 5: Landscape: Black and White – Look for a scene with great contrast that will make a great black and white.

The recent snow came to my rescue a second time in the challenge. As I was driving home from an appointment yesterday evening I was pleased to still have what was left of the evening light available, so giving me an unexpected opportunity to make a start on this week’s challenge. I turned off the main route and took a few back roads on the Delaware/Pennsylvania border and was able to get a few shots. I was very short of time though and, due to having no place to park on these recently plowed roads, I had to resort the to taking some shots from the car. I was pleased with the composition of the shot below but, to be blatantly honest, it is not as sharp as it could be, since I was too rushed (lesson learned there!)

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So this morning, on my way back home from an indoor hockey game I stopped off at another open area and put together this shot. I really wanted to capture the texture of the tree, fence and wispy clouds, but as I am still forcing myself to stick to my trusty 20mm f/1.7 lens I was forced to be a little creative. I took 3 overlapping portrait shots and then stitched them together using the free Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE).

Therefore, I offer up not one, but two images for this week’s challenge, although technically the second image is actually 3 photos in itself!

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~Richard

#dogwood52 #dogwoodweek5

January 30, 2016 1

Politically Inspired Graphic Art

I have found the last several months of rhetoric, bombast, bigotry, and other political shenanigans that have poured forth during the run up to selection of political candidates for this year’s White House run to have been more depressing than usual. However, rather than simply getting angry, or demoralized I have used the time to inspire me to create some graphic art.

I make no public claim or overt political stand with this – the viewer can read into it whatever messaging s/he sees fit. Perhaps they would make for a good discussion too?

This is going to be a long year and I just needed to get this off my chest early in the game…

~Richard

January 29, 2016 3

After nearly 70 years – the end of the True Landy?

I just heard today that TATA, the parent company of that classic British car marque Land Rover, will stop manufacturing the Land Rover Defender tomorrow. Admittedly, this had been announced some time ago but I had not seen it.

The Defender is the last of the “true” Land Rovers, and it’s a shame to see it go after 67 years of evolution. How ironic that it lasted nearly “three-score years and ten.” It will be replaced by a more street-worthy vehicle carrying the same name but it will be interesting to see how it can bear the history of a vehicle that is so iconic and was once advertised as the road vehicle you can plough a field with. And if you don’t believe me try looking here and then watching this excellent promotional video from the 50s.

I drove several Land Rovers over a prolonged time in the mid to late 80’s when I was working in the agricultural sector and I admit I loved their basic ruggedness and the fact they could go just about anywhere over the fields. I even towed a small plot combine all over the UK with a 110 V8, at one point having to park this behemoth, with its appalling turning circle, in the center of Edinburgh each night as that’s where I was staying over the summer. Now that was an experience.

With the demise of this quintessentially British icon, much like the original Mini, I feel we are losing a bit of our heritage, but I guess the real Landy has had its day. Maybe it says more about how society has moved on – perhaps we are simply less rugged, or rather more refined, than we used to be. It would have been an anathema to install air conditioning and electronic gadgetry in a Land Rover of old, after all the vehicle was designed so that the interior could be cleaned with a hose, or so I am told, but the new Defender will undoubtedly come with all the whistle and bells that today’s discerning, Hunter-welly-clad, Barbour-jacket-wearing clientele desire, neatly fitted into its monocoque, chassis-less design.
So, as part of my farewell to this Best of British post-war Engineering I am running a Land Rover image contest for fun this week under the auspices of the Quintessentially British Group that I curate. Why not take a look to see what people have entered?

~Richard

January 28, 2016 0

Sold! And it’s no small potato

Solanum tuberosum, aka the potato, or “spud” is a very versatile plant which provides a significant number of people in the world with a great deal of nourishment through consumption of its tubers. It is something that we, at least in the Western World, take for granted as a cheap, staple food source.

One nation whose history is inexorably linked to the cultivation of the potato is Ireland, where the potato famine (or Great Famine) caused a 20-25% drop in population due to death of a million people and immigration of another million individuals, largely to the US, when the crop failed for successive years during the mid 19th century. It can quite justifiably be said that this root crop literally changed the fate of a nation (or two).

It is therefore perhaps a tad ironic that, with Irish farm prices for the spud at about €5 per 10kg ($5 per 22lb) at the time of writing, Irish photographer, Kevin Abosch should sell a single photograph of the humble potato for €1,000,000 ($1,090,000) recently. To put this into perspective, for the same money the buyer could have bought around 2,000 tonnes of the real tubers instead. Quite a discrepancy.

Now, there has been quite a bit hullabaloo about this, much like the previous Peter Lik sale of Phantom and the Andreas Gursky sale of Rhein II (to which I paid my own homage here). But to be honest, I say good luck to him, and his ilk! I think it’s a good photograph. I don’t particularly see anything wonderful about it and it’s not something that I would have hanging on my wall but then that’s the whole point of art – it’s subjective.

We don’t know who the “unnamed businessman” who shelled out for this artwork is, but perhaps he is the descendant of an Irish immigrant who is paying homage to his heritage through buying the image of something very meaningful to him, from another successful Irishman. One million euros is a tremendous amount of money to the majority of us but perhaps not so to the businessman who could be as rich as Croesus, as far as we know. Perhaps to him, it’s no big deal.

Either way, the sale made the news, boosting the exposure of Kevin Abosch (of whom, I admit I was totally unaware) and stirring up the usual rants and hand-wringing from the intelligentsia and blog writers alike. It also almost certainly increased the value of the photo – making it a shrewd investment perhaps, or am I being too cynical?

Either way, I propose that pictures of the potato are passé, and I offer up instead my own, much brighter image of peppers and beans, fit to grace any kitchen/dining area. Oh, and this image is considerably cheaper, too! 😉

~Richard

January 27, 2016 0

A Story – The Observer

In the field stood the viewer, ready for the tourists to use to survey the countryside. It was well used, mainly because it was sited in such a good position that allowed the paying guests to obtain a panoramic vista of the area. However, in the dead of night, when everyone had left for home, the viewer quietly turned on its own. A faint whir could be heard as a different set of lenses were brought into the optical plane. These allowed the machine to see much further and wider that any human being was able to. Not confined to the visible spectrum, the inconspicuous machine also collected infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths and transmitted the data to its owners sited on the edge of the solar system.

The machine was slow and methodical. It was part of a vast network of similar devices that had been working this way now for over 50 years. After all, they were a patient race, which seemed to be more than could be said for the current dominant species of the third rock from the sun…

January 26, 2016 0

52 week challenge: week 4

Week 4: Portrait: Headshot – You shot a selfie, now shoot a “selfie” of someone else!

As I mentioned in my earlier post on this subject ‘… (portrait) is largely unexplored territory for me to date, other than through reluctantly granted periodic “family portraits,”’ so I felt that this was going to be a tough assignment.

Help came though in a totally unexpected way – through Winter Storm Jonas! Bizarrely, as the storm was heading towards us, the majority of my family left to go on a pre-planned ski trip in Vermont, thereby missing the storm in its entirety. I, on the other hand, was left at home in PA to look after the place, but mainly because I no longer ski due to an accident in the Austrian Alps 10 or so years ago. Staying with me was one of my daughters, and as I was spending 8+ hours shoveling snow to dig a path to the road she, obviously, decided to build an igloo.

Aha! I thought, I will strike a bargain and, as part payment for providing some material for her to use as a roof, she agreed to let me take a few pictures of her. I particularly liked her choice of headgear and I had her pose inside her igloo too to provide an interesting backdrop. I admit to taking several shots over a short period (1-2 minutes) and I stuck to using my 20mm f1.7 (40mm equivalent) lens simply because I wanted a large aperture as the light was fading.

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After some minor touch up in GIMP I also tried a black and white version, so this week I offer up two images to the challenge!

I would be interested to see which one is preferred, as it’s a tough choice for me.

~Richard

#dogwood52 #dogwoodweek4

January 25, 2016 0

Happy Birthday Klaus Nomi

Sometime around 1981 or ‘82 I was watching The Old Grey Whistle Test on BBC2 when I was totally taken aback by the outlandish appearance of one of the singers in a music video being shown. It was Klaus Nomi singing Total Eclipse and I watched in fascination only to be completely blown away by the astounding vocal range of this artist. I was hooked; here was a truly unique musical experience for a teenager who was expanding his musical tastes. I needed to find out more, but in those days, pre-internet, in a small coastal British town it was not easy to do. I relied, like most adolescents of the time, on radio and TV music shows, hoping to be able to tape or video anything I could get my hands on.

Over the decades that song stuck with me, and I have gone back to it periodically, along with Nomi Song and Simple Man. Klaus Nomi had a great career opening up for him in the early eighties, but it was not to blossom into the mainstream consciousness as he became an early victim of complications due to AIDS. He died in 1983, at the age of 39.

In the 80s, to me he seemed the epitome of outrageous, without actually being overt in the way that punk had been. In fact, it was the way he casually dropped in and out of the countertenor register seemed truly outrageous to me.

It would have been marvelous to see what he would have been able to create had he lived longer and what further influences he would have had on today’s artists.

Happy Birthday, Simple Man!

~Richard

January 24, 2016 0

Author: ReevePhotos

Groundhog Day and Memories

Pardon the Pun

A Story – Small Journey

52 week challenge: week 5

Politically Inspired Graphic Art

After nearly 70 years – the end of the True Landy?

Sold! And it’s no small potato

A Story – The Observer

52 week challenge: week 4

Happy Birthday Klaus Nomi

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