"December Rain on State Street" Some things are just so miserable when experienced that it's hard to see the beauty at the time. The freezing rain and high winds on a Sunday afternoon and evening in December resulted in many beautiful scenes -- if you're a camera, or maybe even the weatherproof "Forward" statue on the State Street corner of the Square. For humans, not so much, though the intrepid bicyclist seems to be managing. Me, I just clicked off a quick series from under my umbrella and hoped for the best -- and that not too much rain would blow onto my camera. (Madison Guy)
"Art Tunnel" Quadracci Pavilion, designed by Santiago Calatrava, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Madison Guy)
"Channeling Edward Hopper While Driving Home Thanksgiving Eve" Last year I blogged about the appeal to many photographers of the artist Edward Hopper, who in some ways seems like a photographer with a brush, except that he never painted from photos. I wrote of the "dreamlike, incandescent glow of urban alienation set against the encroaching darkness," in in describing one aspect of his work -- the night paintings of people seen through windows who seem isolated even whe together. And then last night
I almost seemed to be channeling Hopper.
(Madison Guy)
"Back When I Had to Make My Own Stormy Weather If It Didn't Rain" When you're stuck for a daily Year in Pictures photo, that's when you turn to your office wall. With my Coolpix I reshot this old photo of mine.
Enough about ice and snow and subzero windchills. This is a story about rain, or the absence of it. I keep the photo on the wall as a nostalgic reminder of the old days before desktop publishing and Photoshop, back when if you wanted a special effect you had to do it yourself the analog way.
I was editing an association magazine and had planned a cover shot of a jetliner landing in stormy weather, something about "stormy weather for the airline industry." I figured I'd stand in a field at the end of the Dane County Regional Airport runway under an umbrella the next time it rained and bang away with a telephoto lens and shoot pictures of planes landing in the rain until I got what I wanted. Maybe there would be dramatic clouds half visible through the driving rain. I overlooked the risk of lightning and the question of whether anything would even be landing in a real storm. Mere details.
The trouble was, it didn't rain. We had an endless succession of sunny days instead. Days went by. I was running out of time and my deadline was fast approaching. The best I could do was venture out on a partly cloudy day in hopes of catching a cloud or two in the background. Some "storm." Any rain would have to be provided by me.
In the end, I did go out to the end of the runway. In addition to my camera I took a pane of window glass, a jar of Vaseline and a large sprinkling can. I shot through the pane of glass, smeared with Vaseline and liberally watered with a sprinkling can. I spent hours out there, shot dozens of photos of planes coming in. None of them worked out except one -- usually there was too much sunlight shining on the puffy white clouds in the sky. But for this one photo, it all came together.
And by the magic of special effects, I sometimes find myself looking at the photo and seeing it as something I actually observed with my own eyes, the artifice that went into it momentarily forgotten -- like a liar who starts to believe his lies.
2009yip/26 (Madison Guy)
"A Sense of Wonder at the Fire Raining Down from the Sky" The fireworks happen every year, and are always pretty much the same, but we're transfixed anyhow. To give some idea of how motionless these people were at the Shorewood Hills fireworks -- this is a 30-second time exposure and scarcely anyone moved at all.
Note: Click on map location and zoom in on satellite view to see location where photo was shot. Also, see my blog Letter from Here. (Madison Guy)
"Blizzard" Again. (More about being snowbound in Madison, Wisconsin, at my blog Letter from Here.) (Madison Guy)