May 2022

CONTRAILS

CONTRAILS is part of my “Views From a Third Floor Window “series. It was shot at around 5:30 pm on Saturday, February 27th, 2022, using my cell phone camera and looking toward the west. Given the winds and time of day, the composition and palette are more a matter of looking up at the right time, reacting to the scene and having a camera at hand than they are to any conscious planning or composition on my part. Within seconds of CONTRAILS having been taken the contrails had almost completely dissipated. I was particularly struck by how the contrails created a geometric structure to the scene, and how one seemed to pierce another. (2022)

STILL LIFE IN THE CITY #2

A number of years back I did a series of black and white photographs in and around southeast Washington, DC using a Pentax SLR and Kodak 400 film. These were primarily of the architectural details, their interaction with the trees in the small yards and the lights and shadows. I did my own darkroom work (the Stone Age version of Photoshop) and titled the series: STILL LIFE IN THE CITY. In December of 2021 I used the black and white filter on my cellphone camera, to take a similar series in southeast DC and titled it STILL LIFE IN THE CITY –  II. Other than the black and white filter and some cropping, there were no changes to the images. In many ways STILL LIFE IN THE CITY#2, part of that series is an exercise in visualizing in black and white.(2021)