Land of the Lost

In 2003 I had bought my first Digital Camera while taking the first digital Photography course that Purdue University was offering, there were but 6 of us in that class, I was the only one with my own camera, a Olympus E10 at that time. The rest of the class were using, I believe, Nikon Coolpix 5700s, at 5mgp, mine was only a 4.2mgp. But it was a SLR, but had a dedicated lens. I was an Excellent lens however, it had a 35mm x 140mm lens with a bit of digital zoom thrown in, it had very good reviews by DPreview.com and so I dropped the 2kUSD because I had decided that Wet was dead, and Digital was the future.

So in 2004 My wife and I went and spent a month on an Island called Tancook, NS about 7 miles off the coast of Nova Scotia out in the last of the Gulf Stream (before it turns into the North Atlantic Current) the island is only 3 miles long, and one and a half wide, but it is very unique in its climate, the East coast has the same zone as Tennessee, USA, and the West coast 1.5 miles away has the same zone as costal Maine. In other words Basil will grow well on the East coast, but not a chance on the West. Strange Huh?

This is a shot I took with that E-10 so I’m sorry it is not as large as the other images I have shown you but it is still a good one I think. It was taken in the Middle of the island, just across from the islands cemetery. If any of you want a place that is in North America yet at times feels European, this is one place you could go, Isolated yet still connected. Sadly it is changing rapidly. I am not going to go into what is happening there, but time is short for them.

So sad; Roger I wish we had been able to go together this time, instead of so many years later, after the changes had started.

Jim

James Longster, © 2014

Lupin In The Fog

A Room For Art

Back in 2005, my wife and I were staying a an Artists and Writers retreat in the Berkshire Mts of Western Mass, in a little town called Ashfield. A very rare and different kind of place, around 4 or so in the afternoon 5-6 Harley-Davidsons would roar into town, and at 11P.M. they would putt quietly out of town. But all that has little to do with this image.

What it had to do with, was that we were in Mass, and one of my wife’s school friends lived in Worcester, Mass and this is her front room of the time. It was a bright day and I was using my 20D with no tripod, it seems that that is my standard affaire, Roger Gauthier would agree I think. But with some manipulation I came up with a usable image, as a treatment all I did was B&W mask and let the colored layer come through where I wanted it to.

Oh, yea, and it’s dark.

Jim

James Longster, © 2014

A room for the Arts

Chameleon of the Air

It is too bad that all the killer bug sprays we use, Kill the most efficient Mosquito eater in the world, If we had brains we’d be dangerous.

Anyway, this was taken some years ago with my 20D and a 300mm L glass tele, luckily it was not windy, and the sun was in just the right place, to get this beauty. The green ones are relatively rare in comparison to others, at least around the area I was shooting that day.

I like dragon flies, They are Very old, and very successful as a species, and as part of the dominant phylum, at least by total weight on this planet, they are among the most successful. You want to not have Mosquitos, get some dragonfly eggs and inoculate your local pond. They eat them, the blood suckers, in the water when young and in the air when they earn their wings.

I have had varying success shooting these insects, the smaller dragonflies are not too bad to shoot, the bigger ones don’t land often and several types roost high in trees, making it a real issue getting to them. This one is of the smaller variety, the big ones that I have had little success with are in the swampy areas of Massachusetts and are easily 3 inches long. Man I want a couple of those to eat my “bad” bugs.

Jim

James Longster, © 2014

Chameleon of the Air

Our Heads In The Sand

This image is about (to me) motivations, and what a group will do in the name of a way of life. I won’t go into the base image here, as I hope all of you know/have seen: “The Lady of Shalott.” I will go into what I have done to it and why.

I Don’t Like War For MONEY! It is that simple. World War II, was necessary, everything else has been for Money, in some cases well disguised, in most, Blatant. The big problem is that our government and the Money behind it has pulled the wool over the eyes of a large, way too large, portion of the American peoples eyes. They have made most people believe that there is a real moral basis for these wars in the far East, when in reality there is only one reason for being there in the first place: OIL! If it were not for our gluttonous need for gasoline we would not give a damn about the sand over there. But there are real moral reasons for being there some say. BS I say.

The world is full of problems: Aids, Human trafficking, Environmental destruction on a world wide scale, Climate change (it does exist, FACT), ongoing continual prejudice based on every difference between peoples you can imagine. Yet here we are, in a big sandbox spending Lives and money to just continue keeping our heads in the sand instead of facing the real reason for spending those lives and money, and that reason is MONEY. War is money. Money to burn, because we have "roads to drive.”

So, I took and image of human death and destruction and tiled it, then put it behind her head so she could completely ignore what is going on around her and continue to have a pleasant float, and lunch.

So we do what the lady in the images does, we put blinders on, and go about our daily lives of not seeing the truth of things. Or maybe it’s just because we don’t want to get rid of our nice comfortable Escalade . . . . . .

Jim

James Longster, © 2014

Our Heads In The Sand

Never Done, Ever Young: an Ode to Joy

This image was taken at/during the “Mosey Down Main street” in 2014. Unfortunately, there was a general dearth of photogenic situations and people at this particular “Mosey,” But I did get there a bit early, and got this shot while they were setting up.

This image talks to me about the ways in which we chose to perceive our aging. As I looked at these women I saw a group that had chosen to “Be in the moment,” bright, alive, active and exuberant! They could have been at home doing mundane things around the house, but instead that chose to be ‘Out There” living, living with Joy, Laughter, and Movement.

The image itself is, I guess, just a photo of some people with a colorful background, other than the name I gave the shot and this post, it is just a photo. I could have cropped down to just above the curb to get rid of that shallow diagonal, But in doing that I would have be doing more of what I don’t truly like to do, follow the rules. In this case the curb angle detracts, some would say, from the subjects of the image, because it does draw the eye, but then the colors and the expressions draw you back to the people. so it is a back and forth thing, I like that. I like things that pull your eye from one thing to another, even when it is a WTF kind of thing.

I like images that in some way, to some people, don’t work as a whole. In my view your looking at this image makes you, the observer, the current owner (once “you” are looking at this image I no longer have control and you put your perceptions onto this image) kind of a 'Schrodinger's Cat' scenario. when you look at this image you change it from the image I took to the image you see. “It’s all in your head” they say, and of course that is an absolute truth, it is ALL IN YOUR HEAD.

Jim

James Longster, © 2014

Never Done, Ever Young: an Ode to Joy