As I prepared for my next class assignment this evening, I had the TV on and was half listening/watching one of my all time favorite movies, "Finding Neverland" with Johnny Depp, Cate Winslet, and one of the hottest actresses of all time-Julie Christie. It's the story written by the Scottish playright-J.M. Barrie of Peter Pan. The proverbial boy who refused to grow up.....something that I'm akin to. If you remember the original movie or Disney Production first airing in 1955 on TV starring Mary Martin (go figure) as Peter Pan that what an event this was. It's where I first fell in love with the whole notion of Peter Pan and the fact that he could "fly". Along with his friends, Wendy, Tinkerbell, Tiger Lilly, they created this magical world of imagination. I begged my parents to get me some of the fairy dust so it could be sprinkled on me and I could "fly" through the air and escape all my childhood fears. Since that production there have been numerous adaptations of it, "Hook", "Peter, and Wendy", but for me and many my age there will only be one Peter Pan-Mary Martin.
I take from the play for today's quote, "So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things, and your heart will fly on wings, forever, in Never Never Land".
So, here's to all that all your fears and tribulations will disappear as you escape to your Never Never Land.
As I pursue my course work in Digital Photography we are studying the many different photographers that have influenced and left their mark in one way or the other on this ever changing medium. Sometimes it "seems" that the viewing public or critics for that matter attempt to make some Neo Existentialist meaning of what does the photo "say". I often wonder if the photographer ever really meant a particular image to "mean" what a critic's interpretation is. Let's take the noted Czech photographer-Jaromir Funke and one of his noted images.
What are we looking at here? A series of shapes beset by shadow, light, texture??? Or are we seeing a man enthralled in a obvious schizo-affective relapse because he forgot to take his prolixin?
I give you another image and ask what are you looking at and does it have any particular psychological meaning for you?
We boys almost never seem to "grow" up. I whole heartedly admit to having a "Peter Pan" mentality. I think it's what keeps me from not dangling my feet over the grave, lest I fall in. In the world of technology, more notably the world of computers and photography, I believe they have some of us by the proverbial "balls". I often wonder why mine sometimes smart. Is it their purpose to entice us, dangle it in front of our eyes, wait until we're almost convinced that we cannot in any way benefit from the latest updates, more sophisticated, more advanced piece of equipment, then 'wham' they jump down our throats with the next latest and greatest and we're sitting there with memory cache foo yung all over our face. I sometimes think they have these techno geeks locked up in a cellar somewhere developing and creating new software, new features on the equipment, and that they're 10yrs. ahead of us and at the right time when we've already stretched our shrinking dollor to the max....vroooooooooom the beast is unleashed and we again go through the dilemna of, "why, I know I'll need that feature, I'd better get it".
Thus is the case with my most recent acquisition-the new Canon 5D Mark II. This is now my third digital SLR and I swore after the first one that I didn't need a bigger, better, faster, more advanced piece of equipment. Boy, did they see me coming!!! The screwy thing about it is that I bought my second 5D body last summer before I went on my summer hiatus into the Great Northwest. Figuring it is much easier to shoot with two camera bodies, that way I don't have to keep switching lenses and increase the chances of "smutz" getting onto the sensor. However, it was just after I purchased the second 5D body that Canon unleashed the "BEAST", a new body that they not only bumped up the MP to 21, but they added a HDef movie mode to the camera. Again, they saw me coming and I plopped down one of my 5D bodies as collateral and thus began the wait since every one and their mother were anticipating the arrival of the camera. I was fortunate and only had to wait 2 1/2 mos. to get mine. I only hoped that I would get mine before Canon decided to overhaul it again and I'd be left holding the first generation while others would have the new updated one that shot at 31 MP, did HDef movie shooting, had Final Cut on it and would also make a Mocha Latte, non fat, with 2 tsp. of sugar!!Now after all that rambling, here are several shots that I took today with the "beast".
Please enjoy!!
I am awestruck by clouds and skies and the very ethereal quality that accompanies them. It probably started at a very young age when I would be playing baseball at the local American Legion Post or playing "war" with my fellow neighborhood mates. I would often look up in the sky and be mesmerized by their formation, depth, beauty and often mystique. How many times did I, or you (and still till this day) look for someone's face, or the shape of an animal, or object, or even for the more spiritual of us, pretend we saw the face of God there? I am still equally encaptured by sunsets and often retreat to one of my favorite places in St. Louis to view them-the Missouri Confluence Park, where the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers join. I not only enjoy the beauty of a sky on a sunny day straddled with altocumulus, or nimbostratus, or one of the many other types of clouds, but the dark, mysterious, and the often portentous storm clouds.
I offer two clouds today....one from my summer sojourn of 08' where I took my RV, the dogs, and headed to Canada, the Tetons, Yellowstone, Black Hills, Badlands and Colorado for 3 weeks. The other from the Missouri Confluence Park on one of those ominous days where at any minute, the "thrill seeker" in me hoped I would see a tornado drop down from the sky. The first one, I aptly call, "white tornado" as the shape I see is one of a tornado shape hovering over the douglas firs. I especially like the way the "bowl" effect of the trees as the "tornado" pierces the center of the trees.
And the second one, I see a variety of shapes in it as well. Tell me, what do you see?
