Georgia On My Mind

Luckily, when all this ugly business in Georgia started, I was able to go to the shelf and dig out this charming little book about Soviet Georgia published in 1987.

It seems pretty great, right?

This building is remarkable, I'd seen it before in the work of photographer Geert Goiris:

Ministry of Transportation, 2004

Black Moses R.I.P.

I was saddened to hear of Isaac Hayes death on Sunday. I went through a period in the early 90s where I was really into 70s soul, in particular Blaxploitation film soundtracks. Of course the theme from Shaft is the greatest single piece of blaxploitation film music (Curtis Mayfield's Super Fly is the best album), and there is a lot to like about Hayes' other musical work, especially the packaging. Pictured above is my copy of Black Moses, perhaps one of the most over the top record cover designs in history. He certainly had a lot of confidence.

Lord of the Ring Flash II

This is my favorite ring flash shot so far...

Final Socrates Wrap Up

This is piece #1 around June 6th.I had planted almost nothing in this one, so in June I was pleased with all of the self starting weeds that had popped up.

Here is piece #1 on August 7th, some of the weeds had grown to be five feet tall.

Piece #3 around June 6th

Here is piece #3 on August 7th. This one started off with the most plants but a number of weeds appeared out of nowhere. Oddly, or maybe tellingly, the one plant I actually paid for (the bush on the right in the top image) is the only one that died.

During the de-installation process I documented the stratigraphy of the pieces. That pen was not placed there by me.

Destruction in progress

The scorch marks of my genius!

The sun sets on Socrates Sculpture Park, again.

It basically took two days to take everything apart which was far easier than the build. I learned a lot from this project and I met a lot of great people. I'm thankful to Socrates Sculpture Park for giving me an opportunity to work in a new way. Everybody who works there is super nice and really helpful. And thanks again to Michael Baumann for helping me build the pieces, I couldn't have done it without him.

De-installation in Process

The plant growth in this piece was unexpected and incredible, I'll post some comparisons later

I found this brood of spiders on their egg sack under one of the pieces.

I am trying to finish the de-installation this morning. I will post more about all of it later.

18 hours Left to See "Three Shopping Cart Situations"

I'm going down to de-install my shopping cart sculptures at Socrates Sculpture Park, I'm leaving super early tomorrow morning. I think it will take a day and a half, but god knows I've been wrong about the timing before with this project. I'm looking forward to see the state of the plant growth. Anyway, if you want to see it, you have until about 2pm Wednesday afternoon before I take a crowbar to it.

Lord of the Ring Flash

I just got a cheap ring flash to use with the macro lens for my Nikon D80. The ring flash will let me get closer to tiny subjects. Until now I have been using the built in speedlight on the camera, the problem with that is that I can only get so close before the shadow of the lens barrel intrudes into the shot. I just started experimenting with the flash yesterday, already it seems like a big improvement. There are probably a lot of tricks of the trade I need to learn to get consistently good bug shots. Here are some of yesterday's results, it's best to click on them to see the detail.

Check out the clutch of eggs she is carrying, unfortunately, my back hallway is no place to raise a family.

Photographing Damselflies is extremely difficult they don't seem to stop moving...

If you click to enlarge on this you can see a lot of detail

I don't know what these are

If you click to enlarge this you can see the eye arrangement

Herzog in the Snow

We went to see Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World on Saturday night. I thought it was really good, and I recommend that it be seen on the big screen. At times he seems to take his Teutonic pessimism a bit too far in the narration, but it ends up being so funny that it all works. Needless to say, he side steps the normal documentary cliches and he doesn't seem to feel any need to shoe horn every encounter into some tight narrative arc.

Herzog in the Jungle

I just found out that Werner Herzog's new documentary about Antarctica, Encounters at the End of the World, is opening today in Buffalo. I'm excited to see it. Lately, I've been watching a lot of nature documentaries as I mull over some ideas for future projects. I find Herzog's attitude towards nature a refreshing counter to the pseudo religious cliches about harmony that one finds in most nature documentaries. The best example of it is the clip below (from a documentary about the making of Fitzcarraldo), where he talks about the "obscenity" and "overwhelming collective murder" of the jungle. After spending a year plus looking at the nightmarish world of spiders, I'm sympathetic to his characterization of nature. He starts talking at the 36 second mark.