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Light through the window.

M

ore changes. I knew that I wanted to design some kind of gallery. I’ve done it in the past. Good luck with that. Now the gallery template is divided by columns so the images are divided into long thin columns. A casual viewer wouldn’t know what they were seeing unless they they opened each picture.

I suppose that’s one way to get you to spend more time on the page, but it seems kind of funky to me. And, not in a good way.

Anyway.

You can’t keep a good man down, they say. I suppose who they is talking about. Good man, indeed.

Being stuck inside the house has pushed me to look at things a little differently.

T

his is about light. The key component of any photograph.

This just may be a little more focused on light than normal since it is light that makes thee three pictures.

I saw the pictures. Or, they saw me. I pressed the button and that was it.

Editing was simple. Darken the images and make them a little contrasty.

Window blinds at night.

The first thing I noticed was how the blinds carried the outdoor color. I decided that I’d better photograph it. So, I did.

The next thing you know, I was playing with the files and this image is what came of it. I think it’s sort of pretty. It inspired me to make pictures of other things that I might not normally think about photographing. The two pictures, one above and one below came from looking out the window, as the sun was dropping on the horizon line.

I like them. I hope you do too. Who knows what I’ll see next.

No widows, no waiting.

In case you missed a few…

Ain’t Done Yet


T his was once good business. Along came Hurricane Katrina who changed everything with her floodwaters the poured through broken federal levees. A lot of businesses were destroyed or closed. Smith Tire seemed to linger. Whenever I passed by, it seemed to be closed. Or, was it ever open? I have no idea. I’ve heard, […]

by Ray Laskowitz

Down On The Corner


A s you know by now I change my mind a lot. Whaddya want from me? Heh. I’m an artist. Or, so I think. I will still do my experimental layering, but those images come together when they are ready. I tried to do a couple yesterday. They were forced and it showed. I also […]

by Ray Laskowitz

Have You Seen Me Lately?


T his picture was made of a little of this and a little of that. I mean it. There are three pictures in there lurking somewhere. None of them were made at the same time. One was made in New Mexico. One was made in New Orleans. And, one was made in Shrewsbury. The last […]

by Ray Laskowitz

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Sometimes just the sky.

It’s a great day for experiments. Rainy. Kind of cold. We’ve had a lot of rain since yesterday. Supposedly, there are three or four more inches on the way.

So, I used a new app. I’ve used it once in the past. I’ll get into the technical aspects of that on the right hand column.

With all the rain, I needed something to counteract that on Storyteller. This picture just about does that. It’s bright. It’s gauzy. And, there’s a lot of yellow. The photograph, if that’s what this is, moves from darkness to light, at least for peoples who read from left to right.

Even thought there’s been a lot of stupidity as the pandemic seems to be getting managed, that’s what this picture might mean. We are headed into the light.

Or, if you are if you are cynical like me, moving into the light could mean the end. You know what people say when they have died and came back because it wasn’t their time yet.

I think I’ll choose the first option, mostly because I’m not ready to go just yet. There’s a lot of work to be done. And, I want to help.

I know that you want to help too.

Amiright?

So. The app. It turns the image into all sorts of colors. The original photograph was monochromatic, even with the golden arches in the background.

If that wasn’t enough, I added a setting from OnOne that made those globes, which are supposed to be bokeh.

It’s really not bokeh. Bokeh, an often misused Japanese word that Japanese people don’t use, refers to the quality of the out of focus parts of an image.

Usually, that’s found in the background. You want something that’s soft and creamy with some shape.

Once I completed that, added a border. I had something mid-way between a photograph and something else.

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Light that lasts through July

Golden light. I think every photographer dreams about it. If not, then the blue hour. I recently learned that I had two chances a day for both. There’s another one that starts about 4:30 in the morning. I didn’t even know there was a 4:30 in the morning.

Alright. I stole a Bart Simpson line. His sister, Lisa was talking about five o’clock in the morning. He looked at her and said, “There is? When did they start that?”

Actually, the blue and golden light that is found in the early morning is far cleaner and brighter because there is no particulates in the air. There is no dust, no smoke, no smog.

On the other hand, those particulates add another kind of color to the air. It’s choice.

If I was smart, I’d use both ends of the day…. and sleep all day. I used to do that when I traveled. Remember travel?

I work at the ends of the day. Not for just about three hours, but for about eight hours. After all, the light starts changing earlier than golden hour. And, there is light remaining in the sky just after blue hour. Besides, then there’s night. You know how I like that.

I’ll tell you how the picture was made in the right column.

Stay safe. Stay mighty. You know the rest. Enjoy all the golden light.

How I made this picture.

We started chasing light after I got jabbed.

My driver knows what to do. She’s done it for a long time.

On this little go around, sometimes I photographed through the windshield. A true drive by.

That doesn’t always work. For one, you get the dashboard or hood in the picture. If the windshield is tinted, guess what?

So.

Sometimes we stopped. I got out and made the picture.

Sometimes, I’d walk down the middle of the street trying to find the angle I saw from a moving car. It was quiet because it was late afternoon on Saturday.

Do not try that at rush hour during the week. Someone will be taking pictures of you as you are wheeled into the EMT truck.

That’s how to make the picture in the field. I have my way of developing and editing the picture. Yours may be different.

The funny thing is that because I first saw the scene through the windshield – the green tinted windshield – I put that back into the picture in post production even when I made the picture from outside the car.

Sometimes, I’m silly that way.

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It came out of the sky.

Running on empty. I don’t know if it is the pandemic, the political situation or just 2020 — where anything where happens — or something else.

I usually take some time to think about my last year. Some of it, in 2019, was pretty good. The rest not so much.

I could have done better.

Yeah, sure. Nine months of my year was impacted by the pandemic. There were shutdowns, lockdowns, no touring and no traveling.

I could have done a lot more with my time. I had grand plans of really cleaning up my archive. That didn’t get done. I started in the wrong place. My earliest black and white work is not a good starting point even though it seems logical to do so.

Ha!

I store my black and white negatives in strips of five. What do I do with the rest of a strip if only one picture is relevant? I should have started backwards with my latest work. Digital images do not need to be stored that way. Keep the best picture and toss the rest.

Or, something like that. Often when I re-cull my work I come to an image that clearly espouses the “what was I thinking” theory.

I was going to move from here to my website. I haven’t yet.

I never documented New Orleans during the pandemic. For many of you that means The French Quarter. I haven’t been there since last Mardi Gras in February. Since there was nobody there that wouldn’t have been an illness spreading job.

Unfortunately, we have moved into stage red — a new way of classifying virus spread in Louisiana. I may get my chance.

I better get moving.

On all of those projects. Don’t you think?

I cropped this deep vertical picture out of a horizontal image. I did that because horizontal pictures are tiny on this new template. A free template. I told you that I was moving on. I have until December 18th to renew the paid version of Storyteller. I’m not doing it. It isn’t worth it. Luckily, I already removed my payment method so there will be no surprises.

Look at the picture. There ain’t much to it. It’s a crop of a picture I might not publish. But, I needed something. It’s not to say that I haven’t been making pictures on my walks. I have. They all look the same to me. There isn’t much that I like. I am a harsh critic of my own work, but not now. Anything’ll do.

That’s my life these days.

Stay safe. Stay mighty. Wear your mask. Wash your hands. Look after others. Enjoy every sandwich.

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Trying the sunlight.

A little minimalist.

New growth reaching toward the sky.

I’d talk about the first day of teaching but it would just make you sick. Let me just say this. Everything the school district said to the parents and the teachers were lies, lies and more lies. This will never work. People will get sick. Some will die.

Dying is the only way to get these smart thinkers attention. I can pretty much guarantee that the lawsuits will cost far more than just doing the job properly in the first place.

I’d like to use this photograph to jump into a discussion of going forward in the face of the pandemic, but I can’t. I’ve lost my driving wheel. I’ve long said that the country’s recovery from the virus is a marathon, a sprint.

Oops.

I made a mistake. I didn’t think the first surge would go on and on and on. I now think recovery will be a long slog through hip high mud. There are just too many people who don’t take this seriously.

I never reply to the comments on a story because that’s like asking for a ton of bricks to be thrown on my head, but I do read some of them.

I don’t care whether I’m reading a newspaper, or a tweet or something on Facebook, the people who do the most hollering, who pass on the most conspiracy theories, or the people who are just plain angry at everything, I’m worn down. My hope is shattered.

I’m trying to figure out if there are a lot of people who think in those terms, or if there are a few of them who are very noisy.

Hopefully, it’s the later.

The Picture

Another dog walking picture made in the late afternoon. I was watching the sunlight dancing around trees, bushes and plants. I asked the all seeing dog to stop whenever I saw something that struck my fancy and I made a few pictures. She always agreed.

Lately, my pictures have been fairly simple. I suppose it’s a reaction to the world around me. It’s my brain’s way of making order out of chaos. It’s either that, or I’m sinking into the swamp.

Stay safe. Stay mighty. Enjoy all the sunlight.

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The bright greens of spring.

Who knew?

Who knew that this new way of working might just give us the tools we need to be more creative without learning to code. I’ve long had a dream to be able to fill the page from side to side. Now I can. This makes me very happy. I think that as I learn more about blocks, I’ll be able to do pretty much whatever I want.

This design is a modified block template. It began as a three picture spread. Then, I reduced it to one picture covering the same area. All of that is shown in pictures. Couldn’t be easier. I just had to test it.

To mask or not to mask is the question.

There seems to be a strong line emerging between those people who chose to wear a mask, and those who don’t. I live in New Orleans. We mask for every little thing. We should be used to it by now. But, noooo. Even here, there are groups of people who refuse to be told what to do even if it will save their lives. Or, mine.

In the grocery store yesterday, I’d say it was about 70-30% of those people who wore masks as opposed to those who didn’t. The people who didn’t wear masks also had trouble with social distancing. WTH? I used my unneeded cane a couple of times. I have no fear of backing someone off when it comes to my health.

I read in the local media that two bars were given notices of violation. Three, and you’re closed again. Good for whoever reported them. And, good for the city ro react so quickly. This is serious business. Believe it.

The picture. The all seeing dog wanted a little longer walk today, so that’s what we did. We came by this place were the sun acted to backlight the trees. Very spring like. I made another picture that wasn’t quite as sharp. This type of picture has to be sharp. Try as I might in OnOne, I couldn’t make it look good. I made it look weird. That’s a big lesson to those of us who may have forgotten. GIGO. Garbage in. Garbage out.

Stay safe. Enjoy every sandwich.

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New morning, new day.

A new day. A new year. A new decade.

A new time to move forward on our plans. Whatever they may be. To right some wrongs. To fill in the potholes. And, to build something. To work in a positive manner. To grow,

That’s 2020 for me.

Happy New Year.

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Broken bayou.

It’s not that far away.

This bayou. This swamp. This bit of water.

It’s broken.

When I first saw this place, maybe twenty years ago, the trees were lush and full. There were lots of them. Today, between industrial pollution and being a dumping ground for just about everything, it doesn’t look the same.

It’s very likely that in the next twenty years, most of the remaining trees will be gone because this swamp will be filled with brackish water from the high tides in the gulf. This will happen because we have lost, and will continue to lose, a huge amount of land from the barrier islands and swamp land. In the past, it protected us from storms, from storm surges, and even high tides.

Soon it won’t protect us from anything.

I don’t expect the kind of help we need to come from this presidential administration. They are mostly climate deniers. They don’t like science. Even with a new administration I doubt that there will be enough “political will.”

Lucky us.

At least we won’t be alone.

Lucky you.

The picture. I made this picture a couple of years ago. It’s one of those “lost” images. It wasn’t lost. I just forgot the proper file in my messy archive. I haven’t been to this place in at least two years. I’ll go back soon, once @NOLAheat cools down. Sheesh. Normally, I describe our summer weather as a sauna. Not this week. It’s an oven out there.

Anyway.

Now and then I get up early. That’s how I made this picture. Technically, in order to get the flare and the starburst I used a very small aperture, probably f/16 or f/22. Normally, that would mean a very slow shutter speed, but not with that sun shining directly at me. I did some work in post production. Mostly, I opened up some shadow areas. And, I made the light a little more yellow.

 

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Into the sky.

Spring’s rebirth.

A seasonal cycle. Now you see it. Now you don’t. We are at a seasonal point that you can’t help but see it.

If you look at Facebook, the keeper of all infinity, your pages will start filling up with spring flower pictures. It starts around now and lasts for a while as our friends in the snowy north start to awaken from their winter slumbers.

Makes me smile.

Since I only look at my threads on various social media twice a day, I wasn’t aware of the melt down of Facebook and their related sites. Apparently, it got so bad that Facebook had to go to their competitor’s site and tweet about the problems.

So many people were frustrated by the whole thing.

As I said to a friend of mine, it was the best day in a long time. No alerts. No emails saying that somebody commented on one of my pictures. No pop ups from Instagram telling me somebody likes something. Just a pleasant day. A lot of work got done. Not just by me, but by a lot of people.

I suppose the young lady who has a big following, and is an influencer on Instagram, and whose mom was arrested for bribing a USC official in that huge scam was upset. While she lying around on the president of USC’s yacht.  She couldn’t make money while it was down.

Damn.

Funny thing about her. She doesn’t care about college. She makes really big bucks using Instagram. That’s her job.

I’m willing to bet that she hasn’t taken the time to look around and see a place like the one in this picture. Sure. She gets outside. For big deal stuff. But, little stuff?

I’m pretty sure that I’m having more fun seeing stuff like this, than any of the people who were busted. Before they were busted. They seem like a miserable lot. They are too busy cheating.

Many people are blaming the parents, coaches and some colleges themselves. They claim that the kids probably didn’t know anything about it. Yeah. Right. That’s why little miss was cruising around on the college president’s yacht.  Of course the kids are culpable.

One more thing.

I don’t know about you. But, I paid for my schooling. Every time. At every university. I didn’t cheat to pass tests. I didn’t claim to be anything that I wasn’t. I just worked hard.

It’s amazing.

How a pretty spring picture could bring all of that up. It shouldn’t. I’ve known for a long time that the game was rigged. Every game. With every kind of rigging.

Anyway.

Look up. Look down. Look all around. In front. Behind. To the side. See what you see. Make a picture. Make another one. Keep making pictures. Until you are done. If you are really good, it could take you one picture. Or, two. If you are like me, maybe 15 or 20. But, I like to explore the scene. I don’t machine gun. No point in that.

You might make a picture like this one. Or, not. Or, a better one.

But.

There is no competition. Unless it’s with yourself. As they say, help a brother out.