"20 Cups" Image © 2009, Paul Pomeroy. All rights reserved.
... and a little toe-tapping music for the highly caffeinated lifestyle:
Image © 2009, Paul Pomeroy.
This is all the result of too much junk food, I'm sure ...
As I mentioned yesterday, my granddaughter and I have been taking photos of her little animal toys. I took yesterday's photo. Today I'd like to share with you two of Katelyn's. I did the post-processing in Photoshop but that's all. She held the camera, composed the shot and clicked the shutter.
Images © 2009, Paul Pomeroy (for Katelyn Solorzano). All rights reserved.
image © 2009, Paul Pomeroy. My granddaughter has this little "Noah's Ark" play set and she occasionally carts all the little animals into my room. For the past two days we've been setting them up and then taking photographs of them together. What got me thinking about doing this, aside from the fact that I pretty much look at everything with the thought that it might be something to photograph, is the truly wonderful work of Anne Garland and her
Luminous Playhouse Theater Company.
The following music, by the way, has been a favorite of mine for over 20 years. If you like jazz fusion, headphones and loud volume are highly recommended.
sunny with occasional leaps and bounds
Surprisingly, a lot of people really like the grungy, color-shifted look used in the above photograph. Maybe the appeal is in what it implies: that we live in a world where "there is nothing new under the sun" and yet, somehow, everything old is new again. And I'm more than a bit amused by the fact that I'm using a computer and software (Photoshop CS2 on an iMac) to make a photograph look "dirty" even though I've taken it with a digital camera that automatically cleans its sensor to ensure a dust free image.
katelyn watering the plants
She's so used to being photographed that it doesn't take long (usually!) for her to pretty much forget I'm there. It's then that I get blessed with images like this. I understand the cultural role of posed photographs but I could never pose her in any way that would express more of who she is than what I capture in photographs of her being herself in her world. It always makes me a bit sad when clients don't feel comfortable stepping out of the "posed portrait" box.
tony o'brien at the marketplace
This is Tony O'Brien getting into it with his soprano sax. I took this last Thursday evening at the free concert event at The Marketplace in Bakersfield, CA.
image © 2007-2009, Paul Pomeroy.
The original photograph was taken in downtown Bakersfield, CA.
Image © 2007, Paul Pomeroy/Solorzano Photography.
The photograph is a candid shot I took at a wedding.
If you've never heard the following version of Over The Rainbow before, get ready ... this is as good as it gets. Whatever you do, listen to it all the way through. She saves the best for last.
Image © 2009, Paul Pomeroy
I couldn't find anyone else's music that went that well with plums, so here's another one of mine instead even though it's not a plum or about a plum or even vaguely related to anything plummish although it actually is about something ...
The song But That's Another Story is rather different for me. It began as a piece inspired by Spiritual (composed by Josh Haden and performed by his father, Charlie Haden, and Pat Metheny on their 1996 album, Beyond the Missouri Sky (Short Stories)). In working on it, though, it kept bringing to mind a photographer friend who spends a lot of time hiking in the mountains near where she lives. She takes amazing photographs from vistas she spends a lot of time and energy getting to.
But these are not the only pictures she takes as she also goes two or more times a year to Africa (and more recently, Asia and India) as part of a medical team providing free health care. In stark contrast to her wide open, panoramic mountain photographs the pictures she takes of the people she cares for are almost always up close and very personal--you can often times see her reflected in their eyes.
Every one of those people, and even more so every one she is not able to help, breaks her heart a little. Knowing this, you begin to understand the hiking and the almost reverential photos of the mountains. She is restoring her faith and replenishing her serenity. She is mending her heart so that she is able to go back and do it again. If you listen to but that's another story with this in mind you'll understand why it reminds me of her...
A note about the music: This was recorded using a $130 keyboard I got at Costco and version 1 of Garageband (which came with my iMac when I bought it back in 2003). A little better equipment would certainly have helped. However, I just do this sort of thing because I enjoy it on occasion and, though I've spent quite a bit of time playing, I've never really spent much on learning how to play. In the end, it's that second factor that has had the greatest effect here.
Image © 2006-2007, Paul Pomeroy.
Hmmm, for some reason the mp3 player didn't pick up the artist's name. That would be the wonderful Juana Molina.
Image © 2008, Paul Pomeroy.