I think it was in making this photo that I understood better Picasso's famous comment that art is "a lie that tells the truth". I don't actually know the story of this little house, but in photographing it, I think I tell a version of it that is both literal and fanciful.
The natural landscape of the American west has stunning and unique beauty almost everywhere you look, but when I'm out there I usually find my camera drawn more to the built world we attempt to superimpose on it.
Captured with a DSLR and a 24mm shifting lens, shifted vertically to preserve geometry.
The tiny ghost town of Harvard is one of a series of sometimes extravagantly named, but now largely abandoned, communities near the Union Pacific Railroad and former Route 66 in the Mojave. Most of these tiny towns became forgotten victims of an upgraded Interstate highway system that passed them by.
I think the couch may still be there, if you need one for cheap.
Stone House (with Sofa), Harvard, CA, 2010
All the pixels, some repairs required, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/4611078542
Apparently pushback from party leaders has nixed the plan to livestream the execution of the Fort Hood shooter.
It might be tempting to conclude from this that there are lines they just won’t cross. But those lines tend to become remarkably flexible after a time. Just a few years ago, there was a line about storming the Capitol and trying to kill members of congress, but that now seems like a quaint throwback to a simpler time.
All packed and ready to head to the wilds of suburban Philly for #jawncon
The natural landscape of the American west has stunning and unique beauty almost everywhere you look, but when I'm out there I usually find my camera drawn more to the built world we attempt to superimpose on it.
I think it was in making this photo that I understood better Picasso's famous comment that art is "a lie that tells the truth". I don't actually know the story of this little house, but in photographing it, I think I tell a version of it that is both literal and fanciful.
Captured with a DSLR and a 24mm shifting lens, shifted vertically to preserve geometry.
The tiny ghost town of Harvard is one of a series of sometimes extravagantly named, but now largely abandoned, communities near the Union Pacific Railroad and former Route 66 in the Mojave. Most of these tiny towns became forgotten victims of an upgraded Interstate highway system that passed them by.
I think the couch may still be there, if you need one for cheap.
Stone House (with Sofa), Harvard, CA, 2010
All the pixels, some repairs required, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/4611078542
This is a really stupid game. Zero stars.
Playing the game where I look at the delivery driver driving farther and farther away from my house with my food on the little map in the app and helplessly yelling ineffectual driving directions at my phone.
Maybe that sounds too pretentiously artsy for some people's liking, but it's really how I think about it.
I'm not trying to be difficult, really, but when I'm asked "why didn't you make this photo in color?", they might as well ask "why wasn't this rendered as a sculpture?" or "why didn't you write a poem?". They're all just different media.
@mhoye And I appreciate your comment! I just don’t generally incorporate color into my practice.
@mhoye That said, there are many different excellent photos one could make of this interesting building, and fortunately, I’m not the only camera owner out there.
@mhoye For the record, I’m not “committed” to monochrome. I do work in color sometimes. But I’m generally more interested in exploring shapes and geometry than colors, which represent a dimension that I haven’t really mastered.
Love them or hate them, mid-century rectangular glass curtain buildings like this are easy to dismiss as being "boring", but I think that misses something.
Reflections of the surroundings become part of the facade, which changes at different angles and throughout the day. I visited several times and made dozens of photos, all quite different, before I settled on this one, and there are infinitely many photos others could make, all unique. (Similar to the new World Trade Center in this regard).
The UN Secretariat building was designed by an international team of architects (most notably Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer) and completed in 1950. It was the first important "International Style" modernist skyscraper in New York - exemplified here here by a simple, unadorned rectangle with reflective glass curtain walls on either side.
Glass box office buildings became almost cliche in mid-century NYC, but the UN remains unusual in being set apart in the skyline, uncrowded by neighbors.
Captured with the Phase One Achromatic back and the Rodenstock 32mm/4.0 HR-Digaron lens, with the back shifted down 8.5mm to maintain the building's geometry. I brought out contrast in the sky with a polarizer, but otherwise used no color contrast filtration. The camera was positioned across the avenue about 10 meters up from the plaza level (at the bottom of the "canyon" of the skyline reflected in the bottom center of the building).