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It usually takes me quite awhile to finish a compilation image. One image is very very rarely created and completed in one sitting. Often, I start one, leave it alone for awhile, let it breath, tweak a few things, step away again, and let it tell me where it needs to go.

Of course, they all have to start somewhere.

I had some time tonight to start a new compilation image.

This is just the start of this. It has a long way to go before I consider it finished.

So far, it is made of 3 images:

Winona Train Tracks

Lock and Dam #5

and Flowers.

By the time it is finished, it could be completly different. For now, this is how it exists.

I’m sure you will see it again sometime soon!

~Peace~

It has been a long, but wonderful weekend. Packed full of revelations, and findings. There are not many times you can say that about a weekend.

Friday night John and I went to an art show opening at MCBA. Their current exhibit features work from many many artists, and is leading to a publication that will include those artists plus many more. The deadline for the publication has not passed yet, and I am planning in participating. My entry will be something like this:

Printed on the image with an old iron hand press will be:

He wasn’t stealing information exactly,

He was just borrowing data.

1’s and 0’s from others here

and stringing them together to  make a new person

someone she might open up to.

 

On Sunday we went for a long walk, finding a path we never knew about before, and one that I hadn’t walked for around 10 years or so.

The one I hadn’t walked for 10 years was surprisingly a lot like the way I had left it. It was a place shown to me by a friend a long time ago, and was once-upon-a-time a backdrop for many self portrait projects while I was in college. It is hidden back in St. Paul quite a ways away from most of the places everyone here knows. I can’t even give very good directions to get there. I have tried to find it again a couple of times before, but I was never able to. On Sunday, things fell into place, and for some reason, I was allowed to find it again. The images are a little dark. Both are Polaroids, and, well, these things happen with polaroids sometimes. But I think, that there is also a certain feel to them, and that feeling is reflected in the place. I guess what I’m trying to say is no, they are not my best images, but they captured what I was feeling and what I wanted to take back from that place and sometimes, that is what you are looking for more than a perfect image.

j:Are you still there?

q:That’s a dumb question…

you know i am always here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

j:hello? is anyone here?

q:i am

j:who are you?

q:does it really matter who i am?

j:what are you?

q:that doesn’t really matter either.

j:where are you from?

q:everywhere.

 

It was a good weekend. On to the week.

~Peace~

The city looks so different at night.

I have taken dozens of photos of this building, and this sign. It is a staple of the Minneapolis skyline.

I haven’t thought much of the other images I have taken of this building.

But the one I took tonight came out exactly how I wanted.

I believe it will find it’s way into this project somewhere. For now, it is here.

Sometimes, you just have to look at something a different way, at a different time to find the answer you are looking for. Sometimes that means you have to look up.

 

 

Until Monday~

 

~peace~

Some days, you just need a little inspiration.

One of the things I love doing is taking photos at night (as many of you may have already figured out). Tonight, while looking back through some older images that I will be working with, I found these. They made me smile.

In Minneapolis there is an event called the Luminary Loppet or Tour of Light. It takes place in February. Participants can walk or cross country ski along a course set on the frozen lakes and lined with candles housed in pillars of ice. It was purely an accident that I found this event last year. I will be going back again in 2010.

These photos were most likely taken with my Mamiya C330 (I’m guessing this because it’s a little easier to load film in that one when you have cold fingers, so I probably had that one with me!). Taken with Fuji color slide film.

I am sure you will see these later as a layer in a compliation.

 

~Peace~

There are many photos that I took during our trip to Japan that inspire what I am doing in this project. There are so many places there that fit what is in my mind.

I always knew I would feel this way, even before we decided to go to Japan.

One of the first things that started me on this process was an anime that a friend told me about called Serial Experiments Lain created by Yoshitoshi ABe. It is brilliant! I think about it sometimes when I am working.

On that note, today’s images that I have been thinking about are images from our trip to Japan. There is the theme of the old and new placed together in the first image. The second image reminds me of some of the scenes from Lain.

Until tomorrow

~Peace~

 

 

Another with images and words.

Sometimes it takes awhile for the words to find their images.

I think of her all the time when I’m not plugged in.

I wonder what she would think

if she were here right now.

She’d probably scoff at these people

their attachments to objects

to things just because you can touch them.

They don’t realize the limitations they have in Real World.

They don’t know how, over there, you can not only have the object

but you can also create it,

make every bit exactly how you want it

look, feel, smell, sound, taste,

and then, when it is perfect

you can make it last forever

or however long you like.

It will always be there.

Not like here.

In Real World, people are always losing

things, objects, each other.

In Real World it was barely a building.

Scarcely more than a pile of rubble

most of the walls and ceiling gone

making way for the next thing.

Someone here saved it though

uploading an image of the partial building

and brought it here

coding in windows where there once was brick

skylights where there was only ceiling.

Creating a place to exist and dream and watch.

I wasn’t originally planning on blogging on the weekends.

But, I took a few photos today that I wanted to post.

Sometimes you just need a day to take some pictures and it seems to put everything back into proportion.

A couple of the best from today:

Bonfires are one of my favorite parts of summer and fall!

A portrait of us sitting on the deck. <3

~Peace~

 

I will always remember the double exposure assignment from one of my first photography classes in college. The challenge was to make as many double exposures in as many ways as you could. I always enjoyed the ‘in-camera’ double exposures. The challenge was you didn’t see the final image until after you developed it. There was no way of knowing before. Not everyone works out. In fact many don’t visually work at all. But each one has something to it that makes you stop and look for awhile.

I think sometimes when you are working on a big project, one of the best things you can do to give yourself a boost is to go back to something you tried early on.

In an effort to continue collecting images to use in this project, I went back to early techniques.

These are all ‘in-camera’ double exposures. In a way it is truly the ‘analog’ way of what I do with my layered images in Photoshop.

Taken with a Hasselblad 501c/m using a Polaroid back.

Taken with a Holga.

Taken with a Holga.

Polaroid.

 

~Peace~

Today’s post is just images. Somedays, that is all you have. Images that you are drawn to, though you don’t know exactly why.

I take a camera with me all the time. This is one of the reasons. You never know when you are going to see something that draws you in.

 

~Peace~