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Blue into the night.

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ou’ll understand in a minute. You know, the title.

I’ve been making progress on the new and improved storyteller. It’s active now, but I haven’t published yet. I thought that when I activated it that this Storyteller might be inaccessible. I panicked for a minute until I thought about it. Ah ha! I knew where to find this.

Whew.

I’ll tell you when, but http://www.Laskowitzpictures.com

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efore I forget, WordPress sent me an email. I get those because I pay for this site. They are getting ready to upgrade to WordPress 6.0. Apparently, there are major changes in how we edit. One of the changes is called emersive editing. We can edit everything at once, using drag and drop tools.

You know what I think about this. And yet, they’ve asked me to be a beta tester. I really dislike beta tests. I used to do that for Adobe with Photoshop. Some of the bugs were so bad that they crashed my computer. Not the app, my entire machine.

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his picture was a case of me messing around. I took the original picture as far as it could go, and then I took it further. The biggest change came when I dropped a border around it. Parts of the image turned pink.

I don’t know why.

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Streaking into the sky.

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kay. I’m going to get back on posting track. So, this one is for 1pm Central Time. We’ll just see about that. That sounds a lot like the always infamous, “Just wait until your father gets home.” You know how that used to work, right?

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother with DSLR or mirrorless cameras. If all you are doing is making pictures for the internet it really doesn’t matter anymore.

I have a friend who is a pretty good photographic artist. We went to college together. While I pursed photojournalism he did something smarter. He studied law, worked as corporate counsel, built a retirement program and retired a few years ago.

He and his wife traveled to Mexico City, a hotbed of great places to explore and photograph. You’d think that he would have carried a bunch of “real” cameras. He didn’t. He brought his smart phone. An iPhone.

He posted some of his work on Facebook. I opened some of them so I could get a better look. They were fine. The quality looked like just about anything you could get with a DSLR.

Of course, enlarging them for a gallery show or something similar might be a different issue. But, a few years ago I made a test 16×16 inch test print from an iPhone image file. An older iPhone. It looks great on the wall.

I think that we’ve reach a point that unless we are going to do something exceptional with a photograph, smartphone photography might be good enough.

That’s a hard pill to swallow.

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All a dream.

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ometimes you can’t sleep. But that was okay because I slept too much the night before.

While I was laying there my past came into view. Both good and bad memories. I intentionally forced the bad ones away. Who wants to try to fall asleep with bad things in mind?

There were a lot of memories that were driven by intuitive decisions. You could say that I got lucky. But, I think luck favors the prepared. It’s sort of what I call photographer’s luck. If you don’t leave the house you won’t get lucky.

For the most part I photograph what I see. I talk about making pictures as opposed to taking them. You could ask me that if I work by discovery how could I possibly make a picture. That’s simple enough. I’ve been doing this for a long, long time. Every picture that I made in the past prepares me for the picture I make today.

I don’t make pictures by machine gunning around. I shoot enough to capture the scene. Usually, that means compositional moves. It also means capturing action — when I shoot too much — or waiting for the decisive moment or expression. A lot of that is hand – eye coordination. The more you do it the better you get. It’s practice, practice, practice.

That’s what I think.

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Mystical blue.

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ystical, magical and very blue.

This was really a test. What happens if I turn a white statue blue and add leaves? Now we know. It looks like this. Sort of mysterious. Sort of like the garden of good and evil. This is another picture that took some time to make. I think about twelve years. I started it in New Mexico. I finished it in New Orleans.

That’s the picture.

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emember how I mentioned that every big digital company has a different story? Yeah, well I still don’t have email.

Go Daddy did their job. They transferred everything to WordPress. WordPress mapped my site but forgot to say how I link my email to Google. I found that out by looking through about a billion pages of documentation. Google is opaque. Their methodology changes without documentation. They are so walled off that you can never talk to a human being. Ever.

I need to place a Google token somewhere in the foundation of the new Storyteller. But, I don’t know what a token is suppose to be. I think of tokens as of pieces of metal that look like a coin. You used them to get on a subway or bus. Obviously, that ain’t it. I’ll have to figure this out.

Steven Jobs once said of Apple computers that the technology should be running in the background allowing us to focus on doing whatever it is we do. Obviously, the rest of the digital world disagreed. They make their products impossible to work with “under the hood.”

You are really on your own these days.

And, so it goes.

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Into space.

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pace. The final frontier.

This picture was assembled from bits and pieces of other pictures. I’d say it was layered, but it wasn’t exactly that. Normally, I lay one entire picture over another. This time I laid a portion of a picture over the base and blended until you can’t see the edge. It took some time, but I learned a lot.

That’s almost more important to me these days than repeating myself.

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ow to the point of the post.

I’ve managed to work through the process of creating a second Storyteller using my preferred address of Laskowitzpictures.com. Preferred because I’ve used it since the 1990’s. I’ve also moved hosting from Go Daddy to WordPress.

That was in an effort to keep it simple. It wasn’t simple.

That said, I have a few questions. I’d like to focus on certain kinds of pictures. As sort of a test I post pictures to various social media platforms and it seems my best response is to “real” pictures, not the art that I mostly post here. Even here, the highest response that I’ve seen in January was to the black and white picture of the welder. I’m not sure if that was because the technique or the content.

So, what would you like see?

This is really important so please take a couple of minutes and help me out.

A note, the minute that I activate the new blog, this place will be hard to find. It is Laskowitzpictures.org. The new location will be Laskowitzpictures.com.

I’ll let you know when, but it will be sooner rather than later because at this point I cannot access my email.

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All the blues and greens.

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efore you ask, and I’m glad that you might, I’m good. I’ll stay on the lookout. As they say, no news is good news.

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ack to my band of the hour. I’ve drenched the house in their music. They are very, very good. They may be one of the few “new” bands that I’d actually go see. They are touring, so you never know… as long as I don’t have to be in the audience.

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bout that. You know that with my CLL I cannot build any immunity from my vaccinations. That limits me and that doesn’t make me very happy.

Well, well, well… along comes a new drug called Evusheld which combines two monoclonal antibodies. It is given in two injections.

This could be a game changer.

Isolation stops. Street photography returns. I can actually be around people that I don’t know well. You have no idea how happy this makes me. Now, if I can just get my oncologist to prescribe it. I don’t know why he wouldn’t. But, doctors, you know?

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lue and green. I like how the colors work together. I like the shapes that are found in this photograph. They are jagged like broken glass. You never really know how pictures combine when they are layered until you see it. That’s why there is so much back and forth when I make this kind of art. It takes some time.

Just like many things I suppose.

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Look up.

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heesh. I started this post and forgot about it. Until now.

I try to post at noon my time. Obviously, I’m late. Very late. Sorry about that.

Let’s talk about stupidity and failure.

There is a guy who posts as NOLAphotoguild on Instagram. Today he wrote an eight page screed about freedom. I bet you know where this is going. He is calling for an end to all protections, all testing, all vaccinations for all things Covid. He wants FREEEEDUM.

A little research, starting on Facebook, revealed that he has started a number of photo-oriented ventures. Everyone of them failed. He started what amounts to a collective on Instagram. It earns no money but it has a lot of followers. He finally has one thing. A platform.

He’s bitter. He has a platform. His bitterness is going to kill someone like me.

What next?

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Symbolic of changing.

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oday is a big day.

In New Orleans, January 6th marks the start of Carnival with a parade through The French Quarter and a streetcar ride. It only grows from here until the season ends on Mardi Gras Tuesday.

More importantly, today marks the one year anniversary of the insurrection, storming and temporary take over of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.

One event marks a season of joy, the other, a country filled with hate. I could recap what happened but it is enough to say that a former president would do anything to hold onto power. He was not used to being told no. Many of his followers believed him. Most of them still do. The attacked our government. They attacked my belief system and my country.

They say the presidential election was stolen. After audit upon audit there is no evidence of that, so I reply to the so-called stop the steal group, “Prove it.” Don’t tell me you know. Tell me what and how you know.

You can’t.

This picture is more spring-like than wintery. It is about rebirth. The nation is tottering right now. Between extreme polarization, a weakened economy and Covid-19 to name a few issues, don’t you think it’s time for a little rebirth?

I do.

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A long day.

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dark sky along with a dark day.

I’m trying to decide two moral dilemmas. I suppose we all should take the high road, but I also feel that paybacks are in order to just to make sure that consequences of short sightedness are understood.

First, understand that I stand with all the states and people who were hurt by the weekend tornadoes. I know what it’s like to feel natures wrath. I’m with them all the way, but one of those states senators has voted no to every federal request for aid after a natural disaster. We, in the gulf south are still picking up pieces after Hurricane Ida blew through. Should we take the high road and help with federal aid. Or, do we say no with the intent that the voters in the state kick that dumb bonehead out of office? You tell me.

Then, there is me. My body. My primary care doctor will no longer prescribe Tramadol, the most lightweight of all opioids ever made. A couple of weeks ago, after trying to find ailments that don’t exist in me, he decided to take away NSAIDS, leaving me with only Tylenol to fight inflammation. I’ve been in agony for days. I can’t even sit up long enough to get any meaningful work done. That’s why I’m always late here.

This doctor never even looks at me, instead typing away at the examination room computer.

This is closer to home than the states that were blown apart. I’m inclined to help those folks, just as I’m inclined to have my lawyer write my doctor a love note. If that doesn’t get his attention it’s off to court we go.

Put me in pain and I’m going to do the same to you. I’m not normally like that, but enough is enough.

It’s reckoning time.