Junkyard

People seeing me with a camera asked what I was taking pictures of. At first I told them about wanting to record the look of a place threatend by an "Eminant Domain" ruling. Their eyes glazed over - too many words. Then I said, "I'm an artist, blah, blah, blah...". Glazed eyes. So I edited my explaination to the essentials. "This place - the colors, the people..." A guy in his station wagon considered this, and took a bite on his cigar, "It's a junkya'd". I shrugged, "It's beautiful." He made the slightest head tilting gesture that said, "You're nuts, but if you like it, knock yourself out". The "junkyard" is a few square acres across the street from the new home of the Mets on Willets point in Queens.

Back Sides

These typical 1930's (give or take a decade) buildings near downtown Kansas City were built with nice materials and detailing at the street facade for patrons and passer-by to enjoy, but were enclosed on the other sides with whatever low grade brick was cheap and available, usually with little attention to appearance. Utility was the only "designer". Manifest economy. We've invented uglier ways to finish "unseen" buildings since, but brick was the choice in those days if you wanted more than just wood siding.

The Zoo

These are photos from a recent trip to Joan's home state of Michigan. She was busy helping to prepare for a wedding reception; Crystal and I went to the Detroit Zoo to see polar bears. I still don't know how there can be peace in what should be the Wisconsin Upper Peninsula.

Cranes & Starlings

These photos are of roughly the same patch of sky near the site of the new IRS building in Kansas City. The cranes will go away when the building is complete, but the birds will still flock over SW Boulevard at dusk every winter evening.

Night in the Park

I went back for these photos one night after walking the dog. It had just rained and was THICK steamy. Glowed like a fish aquarium!

Cows

In these photos I set set out to prove Frank Lloyd Wright wrong who, I understand, once said, "You can't take a bad picture of a cow". I got to know these cows a little in the couple days that I got to borrow them (from my cousin Paula Heck and her husband Greg), and got a glimpse at the cow personalities each possesses and discovered how the animals could be made to mimic the landscape they're an element of. Whether Frank Lloyd is right or wrong, I leave to the viewer.

Centering

This series began as a personal revolt against the "Thirds Rule" of composition, which states (and I paraphrase) that the subject in a good photo is placed at one of the intersections of lines drawn vertically and horizontally through a photo in a way that divides the frame into equal thirds. I strove with these images not only to avoid locating the subject at those four spots, but to have no "subject" at all. At the very center of each I attempted to put nothing with any "subject" level significance; edges, telephone poles, blank sky... I'm pleased with the immediacy these non-subjects achieve, but after having applied my own preconceived rule in lieu of the "official" one, I find that the life in many of the photos are those elements in the composition that defy my rule; the wires that drape from nowhere in particular to nowhere, or the crookedy rail...

Italy

These are the few B&W photos I like out of the many I took during a trip to Europe in 2000. The other 600 are big-eyed, first-time-in-Italy tourist photos in color...