a short example

whale tail stickwork from Man Made Wilderness on Vimeo.

Includes a snippet of my current favorite piece of music by Tayondai Braxton.

last of the iris

I couldn't resist before they disappear for the year.

moonlight 2

02:48 EST

ice

       

       

       

Drooping pines on this morning's walk.

november 5

The Japanese maple that refuses to photograph - that is photographed every year.

november 2

november 1

This morning's view.

return to study

The actual, captured during an evening thunderstorm, several weeks ago. Which means ALL the picture for The Plan has been completed. In fact picture edit is almost locked, and we're waiting on more sound and music.

big john

roscoe day 5

 

By this point we had completed everything in the script except for three scenes. It looked to be a long, complicated day of exteriors, followed by four or five hours in a studio where I'd never worked before. Realizing that there was a good chance of not being able to finish on what was scheduled to be our final day before the camera, the producer in me decided to change locations to somewhere eminently more manageable: our back yard.

The scene in which the Professor balks at going any farther went from getting his coat snagged on a branch to jumping through some tall grass across a hidden trickle of water. A better solution, and much simpler to execute, was to use the small channel on our side yard. It's one of my favorite locations anyway, and have been photographing it off and on for the past four months.

This compromise was an improvement I feel good about. The scene was completed with no wasted time or undue effort, no need to drive to another location, and set up multiple times in an inaccessible field. The equipment then got transfered to a new location a minute away and 100 feet from the back door of the house. As I was considering where to set the camera again, the precipitation that had held off so far began. We moved everything to the breezeway and waited. Ralph and I have been through this waiting game many times before, so this was nothing unusual. After 30 or 40 minutes of steady rain, and checking with everyone present that they could return the following morning, I cancelled our afternoon schedule. It's still a wrenching call to make, especially since I knew the rain would probably cease within an hour.

Which of course it did. But by then everyone was long gone. It would have been too long a wait to ask everyone to sit through. Instead it gave Craig and me some time to search for props and pick up the wheel chair for our evening interior.

old news?

Compare & Despair - as Stuart Smalley used to say. It's certainly easy to despair, these days.

The world seems to be ripping itself apart. Revolutions, earthquakes, nuclear meltdown, tornados that tear apart a third of the towns they touch. Is this the supposed evidence that Judgement Day is upon us? Only now we have to wait another five months until the final, total destruction of the planet.

Tornado victims cheer themselves with the thought that "The Good Lord will provide."

Meanwhile, it is said that prophet "Camping reads neither Hebrew nor Greek, the two main languages of the Bible, but insists his arithmetic is ironclad."

Matt Tutor, Camping's longtime producer "...thinks $100 million is a conservative figure for the money Camping has spent publicizing May 21."

from LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/la-me-rapture-20110521,0,1687317.story

looking elsewhere

Where does the time go? Some work, a lot of reading and viewing, some Steadicam training, a little photography, very little writing. The effort to focus on anything other than the physical world immediately in front of my person seems to become more difficult.

Nonetheless, it feels as if a barrier has finally been broken in the effort to edit the video footage I've recorded with old friend and artist John Borden Evans for the third in a series of videos about artists displaying at the gallery Les Yeux du Monde. We recorded some interview material back at the beginning of March. The seasons have changed, the northern hemisphere has become brilliant green once again. Despite my appetite this year for the barrenness of winter, perhaps I needed to come out of that cocoon to develop some new ideas. The material has felt thin. It needed something to bolster it. Without looking at it directly, and while reading about other films, thoughts were sparked that head in a new direction. I know these things need to get pushed farther out there - somehow. That's what I'm after.

No deadlines are set. But some kind of completion is going to happen in the next week or two.

what the world needs now

Is more cat imagery for the internet. Glad I can oblige, here at the end of our winter season. Much precipitation during the last 24 hours, fortunately none of it frozen.

pond in "the forest" pt. 2

Several weeks later, it appears as if winter has indeed loosened its grip.

Tech note: this photo comes from a 25 year old Nikon 24mm lens on a Canon 7D body. The Nikon glass, with an adaptor, is a lot less expensive than current models of Canon lenses. But this was purchased primarily for use as a video device, an example being the previous entry.

still in winter's grip

pond in "the forest"

how much more expert do ya want?

click 'er for bigger

Ever the wise-ass, and having a hard time taking seriously any serious taking voice of authority, my recent chance encounter with a member of the local fourth estate was one of the more enjoyable random moments that's taken place recently. Probably suspecting that I was a barely compliant participant, my interviewer kept the session short. Probably best, in the long run. After all, they're looking for entertaining sound bites, not memorable wisdom. I was rather incredulous that I was being requested to voice my thoughts about the topic of snow shovels. I mean, really. This passes for journalism? Where can I get one of these jobs?

It goes to show that there is next to no chance of being "discovered" in a big box store. This is the reason I patronize my local hardware store, in this case being Martin Hardware, in Charlottesville. You never know quite what sort of an encounter will take place there. But you can be pretty certain that you'll get the item that you need.

later that same spring

click 'er for bigger

It's a weed thing, ya know?

a measure of success

last month's attempt - click 'er for bigger

After only three monthly attempts to catch a particular planetary occurance, it appears as if last night's foray into the clouds and rain was successful. This was a good example of being doubtful about what the weather is going to do half an hour before the time you want to take a photograph, but going out anyway. It was starting to rain when I left the house, although the sun was shining over the mountains to the west. It rained a bit more aggressively as I set up a new composition pointed in the general direction of where I thought the moon would rise, and the rain continued hard enough that I needed to break out the umbrella, for which I dearly needed a third hand, while also trying to change lenses and take a light reading.

Ah yes, the digital device would have been soooo much simpler. But who said easy was better? In most other forms of work that I've performed, rarely has the easy solution to a problem been the best one. Why should photography be any different?

The first exposure was captured, in the rain, with the landing lights flashing.

The horizon to the west clouded over as the sun went down, but to the east it seemed to clear somewhat. The rained ceased and I waited. After half an hour or so, sure enough the moon rose more or less in the location I had expected. I gave it another fifteen minutes and decided to move the camera across the field for a different composition.

Indeed, the lesson reinforced last night was not to let the weather discourage you from heading out for photographic purposes. Sometimes at the last minute things change for the "better," whatever the desired conditions might be.

The photo is coming...soon.

Update on Friday, April 23, 2010 at 03:31PM by KMW

Yes, the photo was posted last week, and trashed a few days later. Not a very good image, with a vast discrepancy between how it looks on different screens. The desktop PC where most photo work is performed is fairly "accurate" for gamma and output. (Although I notice that several recent images seem awfully dark.) When viewed on the MacBook Pro, with it's adjustable screen brightness, the moon was barely visible against a rather bright sky. Oh well, perhaps I'll keep trying, but I guess you really need a telescope to get a good image of the moon.

a wild evening

 click 'er for bigger

A lot of rain in these parts the past few weeks. Last night we watched the thunderclouds approach while we ate dinner, and got back to the car right as the rains fell once again. Probably something like 2 inches since Friday afternoon.