Men of a Certain Age and the Saddest Story in 4 words

I have just come back into the house after having spent time out in winter storm Jonas, shoveling the snow outside the back door for the dogs, and also to cutting a path to the chicken run to see if the hens are ok. They are, by the way, in fact so “ok” that one of them was in the nest box laying and was quite cross that I disturbed her!

So, I dry myself off, make a cup of tea and think about what I should write today. I post some pictures of the storm to facebook for friends and family to see and, as I procrastinate, I see that someone has posted a link to a challenge to write the saddest story you can in 4 words.

Quick as a flash the following phrase springs to mind:

“Man dies shoveling snow”

Whoa, there – not another bleedin’ subliminal message, thinks I. As a “man of a certain age,” what am I to make of that?

Well, a quick search of the wonderful wide web tells me that around 100 people in the US die from heart attacks in the winter while shoveling snow, although there are thoughts that the real figure may be more than double that. Although it’s mainly sedentary men who this affects, causing those of us who consider ourselves to be “fit” to think we’ll be alright, this is not always the case. Apparently plenty of younger, fitter guys (and their families) befall this unnecessary tragedy too, as the exertion of lifting snow, coupled with cold air which works to constrict arteries, creates “a perfect storm” for a heart attack.

So, to keep this message short and sweet I offer another 4 words and a sobering, but humorous image, that everyone should heed as Storm Jonas makes its way up the East Coast:

“Be careful out there”

~Richard

January 23, 2016 2

Artistic inspiration

For my day job I work for a large corporation, doing corporate activities that generally involve me “flying a desk”, as I like to describe it. For those of you familiar with the corporate world you can perhaps empathize with the following story: We are in the process of a management-led activity to “improve morale” and increase the level of “teamwork” following a series of layoffs and restructuring, all amid a general atmosphere of continued uncertainty. This activity involves a full day of team building exercises which will include each of us being prepared to share with the group something that inspires us.

I have a naturally skeptical disposition when faced with this sort of activity, having been through initiatives of similar ilk many times over the last 25 years or thereabouts, so I have been facing this week with mixed feelings of boredom and dread, as I don’t want to derail the well-intentioned plan, despite my innate misgivings. In fact, I have been struggling hard for a week to find a relevant example of inspiration without wishing it to be too trite.

Now, fast forward to a completely unrelated activity: the recent tragic early death of a local artist, friend and teacher of my wife. Although I did not know the lady directly I accompanied my wife to her memorial service at the local Quaker Meeting House and was very moved by the deeply heartfelt personal nature of the modest occasion. The memorial allowed for anyone present to speak on any memory or thought about the deceased for as long they wanted and one mourner stood and recited the following poem:

“I am an artist.”

I am an artist.

My definition of art is creating

something with my hands that is an

expression of who I am.

Art is a part of me.

I can’t escape the urge to create,

to get out my feelings in the way

of paper and glue. Or losing myself

behind the lens of my camera.

I am so thankful for my art.

It’s my own personal therapy.

And in the process I am leaving my mark

in the works I create.

I am an artist.

And there is nothing else in the world

I would rather be.

-Author Unknown-

I don’t consider myself to be a spiritual person, having been bathed in secular science all my life, yet as I listened the words struck a chord within me which I think will remain with me for a long time and I felt truly inspired. I truly believe that the unique act of creating art for art’s sake is a wonderful activity; personal yet shareable, challenging yet cathartic, and most importantly mind-expanding.

We should always have this in the back of our mind on this as we peer through our viewfinders and create our masterpiece.

For Mary and Diane

I originally wrote this piece in October 2014, when it inspired me in that moment to go for a contemplative lunchtime walk and to sit under the autumnal trees overhanging a local brook and create the artwork above. I have since returned to this artwork several times and it even hangs at work in a friend’s workspace. It also seems ironic that, some 15 months later, our organization is repeating the same training, so making this post relevant again and, much more tragically, only last night a second artist friend of my wife’s lost her battle with cancer too, re-emphasizing the cyclical nature of the world perhaps.

~Richard

January 22, 2016 0

52 week challenge: week 3

Week 3: Artistic: Red – Shoot whatever inspires you. Red should be the focus of the image. Don’t be afraid to be creative.

According to my previous post on this subject (wow, was it only a week ago?) this assignment should be the one I find the easiest of the three repeating themes. After all, there is certainly not lack of red objects around, even in the winter. In fact, have you noticed that whenever you start to look for something specific you suddenly see it everywhere? We used to call this the new car effect when we were kids. My father would change his car periodically, usually replacing one non-mainstream model with another every few years. They were not new vehicles, but they were new to us, and usually we had not seen many of that particular model on previous travels. However, as soon as we went on a trip of any length it was amazing just how often my brother and I would see “our car” from the back seat being driven on the road. Long before in car entertainment, and rear seat belts, this was theme that played out on many trips.

So, back to the task at hand. Driving around the local area, walking the dogs, and even just pottering about the house and garden I am seeing red (although not in the “getting angry” sense, thankfully!).

So what should I do?

Then it hit me as walking down our driveway; perhaps I should concentrate on something that is quintessentially American. How about the red flag on the mailbox?

I am still challenging myself by only using my m43 20mm prime lens, forcing me to really get into the shot rather than having the convenience of a zoom, but then the advantage of being able to open the aperture up to f/2.0 helps get a great bokeh on the background.

~Richard

#dogwood52 #dogwoodweek3

January 21, 2016 0

The Art of QR Codes

GX1_QRBlack

You have probably seen these weird looking blocks of black and white squares on packages and leaflets, and even on the billboards and buildings, but do you really understand what they are and how you can benefit from them as an artist?

What is a QR code?

Over the last several decades we have all become used to barcodes, with their characteristic zebra-stripes, being printed on all our packaging to make stock control easy in the supermarket and beyond, but in the last few years you may also have noticed the quiet arrival of a new variant of this object in the shape of a black and white set of dots in a square shape. This is a new form of 2-dimensional barcode called a Quick Response code, or QR code, which is able to convey a lot more information than the old stripey barcodes in a format that all users of common modern technology can use without a laser in sight. These squares of high contrast are not only used to identify a product but can also provide a quick link to a website for further information. Unique QR codes can, in fact, be created and used by anyone to allow quick access to anything accessible by a URL. This means we can now use them to drive potential customers to our online art portfolios, or even specific artwork, blog postings, or anything else without worrying about spelling errors or mistyping of long web addresses.

How does it all work?

The first thing that anyone needs to be able to use a QR code is a smartphone with a camera and access to the internet. The next thing to do is to download an app that can read QR codes and then you are ready to start your journey. There are many QR code readers available for iOS and android users, some free (usually with a few, fairly unobtrusive adverts) and others that cost a few bucks. Just search your app store for “QR reader” and see what’s available.

Once you have this installed all you have to do is start the app, line the camera up with any QR code you find, and let the camera focus on it. You don’t even have to press the shutter button as the phone will do the rest for you. As soon as the app recognizes the QR code it will use your web browser to open up the page to which the QR code has sent it, and you can view the site. It really is that quick and easy!

How to generate a QR code

It shouldn’t take you long to realize the potential for this as a marketing tool for your artwork. This little black and white square offers a foolproof way for people to quickly locate any page you want from their phone. All you have to do is generate your code and use it somewhere where others can find it.

Again, the web comes to our rescue, and a simple search for “QR code generator” will provide you with a wealth of choices. I use the google generator app so I will explain how this works, although other generators are very similar.

Go to the web page, and in the URL box type the web address where you want the QR code to point. This could be your artist site, personal site, even a specific gallery or image web address (just copy and paste from the address bar of your own site). You will see a QR code instantly generated for you by the software. You can even check the image now by pointing your QR scanner-equipped smartphone at your computer screen to see it work instantly! Next, you save this code to your computer, usually as a PNG file for later use. With google you can also choose how big you want the image to be and also if you want margins (white space). It’s all personal choice and depends on what you want to do with it.

How to use a QR code

Now you have your personal QR code downloaded onto your computer – what next? Well, as a PNG file you can load it into your image processing software, word processor, or any other application that will accept an image. How you want to use this is really up to your own creativity.

I started off by printing it on cards and stickers to put on the back of my photographs and exhibition entries, along with my printed name and web address. Then I progressed to a self-inking stamp from VistaPrint (since this QR code can be uploaded as a logo) for a more professional look. By experimenting I found that the color of the image really has no effect on its usability so I have also created a few abstract images based on my QR code for my art gallery. Finally, I like to include it in any written work I do too. I have even defined this as one of my brushes in GIMP so I can include it in it any image I want as a watermark or overlay.

The bottom line is that QR codes can be interesting abstract images in themselves and can be used in any way you want knowing that every appearance is a subtle advertisement for your work!

If you are prepared to invest a relatively short amount of time learning how to use QR codes and a little more time thinking about how you can use them creatively. You could find them an inexpensive way of driving a few more potential customers to your online galleries.

~Richard

January 20, 2016 1

What’s happening to All the Young Dudes? They’re getting old…and dying, but that’s OK

Yesterday morning I heard that Dale Griffin had died at the age of 67. Although not a household name, I enlighten you. He was the drummer with the 70’s British band, Mott the Hoople, who are probably best known for their famous anthem, “All the Young Dudes,” penned by David Bowie, which went on to become a staple song of the glam rock era. That’s right, David Bowie, who died only a few days earlier at the age of 69, only a few days after Ian “Lemmy” Kilmiser, at 70 years old. As I was contemplating this, I heard than Eagles co-founder, Glenn Frey, also died the same day at the same age as Dale Griffin.

My initial thought was WTF is happening to the musicians that shaped my youth? They’re dropping like flies! Who will be next? Given I have a fairly eclectic musical taste and I have already lost Frank Zappa, Ian Dury, Joe Strummer, and too many others to mention who provided background to my adolescent years and beyond, or possibly shaped it, it’s hard to say but one thing is for sure: this trend ain’t ever gonna stop. After all, as the oft quoted adage goes: only two* things in life are certain – death and taxes. We can perhaps avoid or defer the latter but the first is unavoidable, even for the rich and famous.

When I was much younger I would have probably made some smart-alec remark like, well they were old, what did you expect? But now I have grey hair and ache a bit more in the morning I seem to see it a little differently. Lemmy only made the traditional “three score years and ten” by a few days and the others didn’t quite get there. We live In an era where magazines espouse that “60 is the new 50,” life expectancy is generally rising, and people who we would originally classed as “the elderly” when I was a kid (i.e., people who are of retirement age) are now expected to have gym membership.

Perhaps we need to be reminded sometimes that it’s not the length of time we have lived but how we have lived and the impact we have made.

And look at the lives these guys led! They sure packed a lot of living into their time on earth. Being a rock star may be a hedonistic lifestyle, but it’s also creative: listen to what they left for us. They represented different musical genres but they each allowed their millions of followers, be they angst-ridden teens, partying youths, or older adults to indulge in their creativity for a while. They made us smile, cry, and just think about life, the universe and everything, even if only for the length of a single song. We should celebrate that, and not dwell unnecessarily on their deaths.

So, as I bid farewell to these great artists I unashamedly steal some lyrics from the Hoople/Bowie song in celebration of how their musical legacies “carry the news (there you go)…”

~Richard

* or three, if you know the old adolescent joke, but that’s another story.

January 19, 2016 0

Strange Fruit, or why I would struggle to be a photojournalist

This is going to be a very weird post, and I hesitated to write it at first, but here goes; make of it what you will. It covers an incident on Jan 4th this year. It will not contain any images.

For reasons unknown I had had the sound of Billie Holiday’s haunting voice singing the classic song Strange Fruit buzzing around in my head on and off for a couple of days. If you are unfamiliar with this 1939 song, based on the 1937 poem by Abel Meeropol, I suggest you give it some time. It always gives me the chills, and with recent political activities and hate crimes it somehow seemed to stick in my head as the year’s first earworm, albeit an unusual one. I was replaying the song in my head as I was getting ready for the morning’s activities.

Anyhow, it was the first school run of the new year and I was driving my daughter to school on my way to work when I noticed that there was a police car parked awkwardly at a local park with the children’s playground cordoned off with tape.

My daughter looks over and whispers hoarsely, “Oh my God, there’s a man hanging by the swings.” I ask her if she was sure and she says she is pretty sure of what she saw. We talk for a minute or so and I drop her off at school, after I confirm that she is ok after what she had briefly glimpsed.

I hesitate at the school and decide to come back past the park to see if she was indeed correct or whether it was some kind of prank, and I can clearly see a man dressed in black hanging from a rope in the swing set with his back to the road. It was a truly disturbing sight, and it is disturbing recalling it now, some two weeks later.

I didn’t really have time to think, only feel my emotions. Part of me felt quick sickened by the sight, part of me felt saddened by the fact that this poor man had been in such despair to do this to himself, and so publicly too. Also, part of me felt angry that he had not been covered up somehow, to at least afford him a modicum of dignity while all the time in the back of head was the sound of Billie Holiday’s voice.

However, there was also one other thought that had slipped into my conscious mind, much darker and very fleeting: should I stop and get a photograph? I dismissed this thought rapidly as I felt it would be an invasion of privacy, and trampling on tragedy, but I am ashamed to admit the thought was there nonetheless. I am quite shocked that I even thought of it and, to some extent, I even think that writing this blog post is a step in that direction, but I am, selfishly perhaps, justifying it to myself as a cathartic expression of my feelings.

As I continued on my journey to work, my mind was filled with conflicting ideas. I considered my own actions, or inaction, and considered what sort of person would be able to photograph such a scene. I thought immediately of Malcolm Browne‘s photograph of Quang Duc during his self-immolation in 1963, and of the Eddie Adam’s 1968 Saigon execution: Murder of a Vietcong by Saigon Police Chief. I am sure I would not have been able to photograph these tragic scenes, at least not without significant mental turmoil, and I wonder how such photojournalists can do what they do. They must truly be be remarkable individuals, made of stern stuff and truly driven by the ideal of portraying the truth.

As I listened to NPR on the car radio I was surprised to hear a report on how California is now allowing physician-assisted suicide. This seemed to be a sad, but fitting end to my morning…

~Richard

January 18, 2016 0

A Story – The Steampunk Moonlander

This is a rare find indeed! Discovered recently in a box of ephemera left as part of an eccentric recluse’s estate in Wensleydale, England, this is thought to be one of the fabled photographs that captured the largely apocryphal adventures of her forebear, Theophilus Carter.

Although Theophilus ostensibly made his living as a cabinet maker in Victorian Oxford, he was also of sufficient means to indulge his passion as an enthusiastic inventor. His initial setbacks with his more modest invention, the Alarm Clock Bed, first shown publicly at the Great Exhibition in 1851 met with such muted response that he was forced to continue his future activities hidden from public scrutiny through fear of criticism. In fact, such was his modesty that little is known of his later development of the steam space engine and his subsequent solo return trip to the moon in 1898.

He was blessed with sufficient foresight, however to carry photographic equipment with him on this adventure and I am pleased to be able to share with the public at large this remarkable image of the lunar surface, with waxing Earth and “The Brunel” rocket in the foreground.

January 17, 2016 0

Reinterpreting Public Domain Images

The recent announcement by The New York Public Library (NYPL) that it is to share more of its public domain (PD) images with the public has prompted this short entry on PD images and their use. PD images are, as the description suggests, images that have no copyright attached to them and are therefore “free” to be used by the public in any means, including commercial reselling or reworking. Images may have never been copyrighted, the copyright may have expired (not renewed) or they were donated into the public domain.

Despite the NYPL’s recent announcement the largest source of easily available PD work, to my knowledge, remains the US Library of Congress (LOC) with over one million searchable items arranged in collections, out of a total of 15 million items. This provides a fascinating source of information, not only for the historian, but also for the artist to use either directly or as inspiration.

Like many others, I have used PD images in several works on my art site. I find the LOC site easy to navigate and almost addictive as I search through items. Not everything that can be viewed on screen is always downloadable, but often times large .jpegs are available and even very high quality .tiff files, which allows for some excellent artistic opportunities.

Generally speaking I don’t like to simply use the image “as is” but a quick google reverse image search shows that many people do just that, as they are legally allowed to. Instead I prefer to work on the image to some degree.This may mean just “cleaning up” the work, by removing scratches, dust and watermarks, and other artifacts, or it could be recovering details lost in the original, such as with this 19th century poster from the age of ballooning:

Other approaches I take may include selectively recoloring the image to add emphasis to an aspect of a photograph. Many people colorize PD images with varying degrees of artistic interpretation, often over doing it, in my opinion. I prefer a subtle color application, as as I have achieved with this photograph of Santa Claus but, as with all art, it’s really a matter of personal preference.

Finally, there is an opportunity to create a completely new artistic interpretation by blending imagery together to tell a new story. By way of example, I used the famous LOC image of an aging Geronimo together with four other photographs taken from his era and just thereafter to create this unique composite image to show how much America changed during the lifetime of one of its indigenous people:

Note that by creating a completely new artwork, involving significant artistic interpretation and work the resulting image is no longer in the public domain and is now copyrighted by the artist (that’s me, folks).

Even if you don’t get as hooked on this source of history and art as I have done, it a least provides a fascinating way to see images of bygone days whilst browsing the library catalogs from your laptop.

~Richard

January 16, 2016 1

Corporate Dreaming Redux

I normally only post once a day but for those of you who read my post from this morning I thought I would provide a condensed version of the 4-hour “show” I attended today.

Here goes:

When a problem occurs you should collect all the relevant facts, tell relevant people about it, try to figure out how to solve the problem, assign people to carry out actions that you identify, agree timelines, and finally, track the outcome.

There you go, I just saved you about 239 minutes. You’re welcome 🙂

~Richard

January 15, 2016 0

Corporate Dreaming – a perspective

Today my colleagues and I have the dubious pleasure of another 4 hour meeting with a group of management consultants who have been brought into our organization to tell us something. I am not entirely sure what we are supposed to gain from this exercise, as it wasn’t made clear during the first 2-day exercise, and a quick straw poll of several of my co-workers has revealed that they too are equally in the dark. However, as is often the case in such situations I am sure it will be seen as money well-spent by the corporation hierarchy. It baffles me how executive management of corporations are hailed as being successful managers and stewards of an organization when they need external consultants to do their job for them, but then as the old adage goes “no-one ever got fired for hiring McKinsey” (even when they do a poor job).

Anyhow, in an attempt to maintain my sanity in this ocean of madness what this means for me is that I have a credible excuse for posting some of my motivational irony that I have produced over the last couple of years, usually after similar exercises, so here goes:

Firstly, I am tired of seeing bombastic scribbles which proclaim just how important we are as individuals, and how we should embrace this thought. To me this somewhat misses the point. Yes, individuals are important but we are only one tiny part of a greater society. Perhaps we should be reminded of this more often, and perhaps our seemingly ever increasing proclivity to narcissism may be held in check. We should be able to deal with this perspective.

The other hackneyed rhetoric to which we are often subject is to “think outside the box”. This truly annoying phrase has been with us since the advent of the management consultant and apparently has links to the old “nine dot puzzle” which is occasionally rolled out as if it is some kind of magic trick. As someone who solved this the first time I saw it, it never ceases to amaze me how many people who are proponents of the out of the box concept struggle with this simple puzzle and its derivatives (yes it can be done with 3 lines and even one line as long as it’s on a sheet of paper (big hint there). Anyway, I digress. My antidote to this, as a Whovian, is the following poster:

And finally, to summarize my view of the whole management consultant affair, I offer the following picture to consider if you too also have to deal with hour after hour of meaningless metaphors sprinkled with irrelevant platitudes:

[rant over!]

~Richard

January 15, 2016 0

Author: ReevePhotos

Men of a Certain Age and the Saddest Story in 4 words