Subterranean Stream

"The landscape of my days

appears to be composed,

like mountainous regions,

of varied materials

heaped up pell-mell.

There I see my nature,

itself composite,

made up of equal parts

of instinct and training.

Here and there protrude

the granite peaks of

the inevitable, but all

about is rubble from

the landslips of chance.

I strive to retrace my life

to find in it some plan,

following a vein of lead,

or of gold, or the

course of some

subterranean stream,

but such devices

are only tricks

of perspective

in the memory."

- Marguerite Yourcenar (1903 - 1987)
Memoirs of Hadrian

Island of Knowledge

"We live on an island

surrounded by a sea of ignorance.

As our island of knowledge grows,

so does the shore of our ignorance."

- John Archibald Wheeler

(1911 - 2008)

Lenswork Portfolio eBooks Available for iPhone & iPad

For those of you interested in seeing the complete editions of the two most recent portfolios I've had published in Lenswork - Micro Worlds (Issue #76, May/June 2008) and As Above, So Below (Issue #95, Jul-Aug, 2011) - eBook versions for the iPhone and iPad are now available:

The Micro Worlds portfolio reveals an extraordinary and mysterious cosmos within an ostensibly "ordinary" everyday world. The project that produced these photographs cannot have started more innocently or unexpectedly. One day, as my family and I were sitting down to dinner, my wife placed two small acrylic candle holders on the table and reached for some matches to light the candles. A veritable universe of nested "worlds within worlds" of trapped air bubbles immediately grabbed hold of my eye, my soul, and - of course - my camera.

A portfolio of Luray Caverns (in Shenandoah Valley, Virginia. Consisting of over 60 black & white images of this natural wonder, the portfolio was made possible by the generosity of the Luray staff, who allowed this photographer essentially free reign of the caverns over the course of an entire day. My hope is that at least some of the extraordinary beauty, mystery, and majesty of this subterranean cosmos is revealed in the images in this book.

Three eBook Offerings from Blurb Books

Blurb, with whom I have self-published a number of portfolio books over the last few years, has recently introduced an intriguing eBook option for prospective authors. Though currently confined to be read only by Apple iOS devices (i.e., the iBooks app on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod-touch devices), Blurb's new eBooks are faithful full-resolution versions of their print counterparts. I am impressed with the ease of conversion (on the author-end) - as it essentially amounts to nothing more than selecting the "ebook download for Apple iBooks" option on the page for editing a previously published book, and waiting a few moments - how beautifully it is rendered on my iPad, and by the price, which (as expected) is vastly lower than for any of the print editions.

Indeed, I think this offers a viable alternative for people who do not want to invest $50 or more on a physical book unseen; and who typically decide to purchase a photo book based only on a low-resolution preview of however many pages the author has allowed to be displayed (and/or their own knowledge of the photographer's reputation).

Thus, as a test of sorts (and originally planned only for my sole amusement, adding perhaps that of members of my extended family), I offer the following eBook-versions for three of my more popular physical print books (at a nominal cost): (1) Seeing the Invisible, which is a portfolio of some of my personal favorite black and white images, and includes photos that appeared in juried exhibits, Lenswork magazine, B&W magazine, B&W Spider Awards, and private collections; (2) As Above, so Below: A Harmony of Contrasts, which consists of over 60 black & white images of Luray Caverns in Shenandoah Valley, Virginia (and a selection from which has recently appeared in Lenswork magazine); and (3) Sudden Stillness, which is a 250+ image portfolio expressed in four movements (each introduced by a short essay): chaos, order, complexity, and entropy. The first is available for $2.99; the other two for $4.99.

In each case, after clicking on the associated link, you will find the option to purchase an iPad/iPhone Version (which may be read using the iBooks app) at the top right of the screen.

If there is expressed interest in converting any other of my prior books (I currently have 14 in all), I will certainly make them available here and on my Blurb page.

Postscript: the same three three books are also available in the iBooks bookstore: link #1, link #2, and link #3.

A Blurred Path Toward Clarity

"To be an artist is not a matter

of making paintings or objects at all.

What we are really dealing with

is our state of consciousness

and the shape of our perception."

— Robert Irwin, Artist/Theorist (1929 - )

It has been quite a while since my last blog post; the long hiatus due (as almost always) to the demands and constraints of "day job" responsibilities. As I slowly reacclimate my activities to nurture both parts of my brain, I offer a short and humble blog entry to highlight some recent photography projects and expand upon an observation about "how I do photography" that a friend of mine found interesting in a recent interview I gave (and that others might find amusing to muse on).

First, I am delighted to announce that I have had two portfolios published in the last few months: (1) my Luray Caverns portfolio, which appears in both the print and expanded DVD-editions of Lenswork (issue #95, Jul/Aug 2011), and (2) my Abstract Glyphs portfolio, spotlighted on pages 72-75 in the December 2011 issue of B&W magazine (images also appear on their gallery page).

While listening to my interview with Brooks Jensen (editor, Lenswork) for the DVD edition of issue #95, a friend of mine was intrigued to learn of a particular habit I picked up early in my photography (when I was just learning the art in my late teens, a few centuries ago ;-) I'd be interested in learning if others have had (or have) the same experience.

In recounting to Brooks how I started off my day-long sojourn to Luray caverns, I noted that for the first 30 minutes or so I just walked around without a camera (as I always do) and without my eyeglasses on (also, as I always do). Because I am very nearsighted, seeing the world without my glasses yields an almost abstract - certainly much simpler, distilled - representation of it. Since my eyes sans glasses provide only rudimentary information about shapes and tones, I find it a useful exercise to first "see" my compositional landscape (as it were) in these aesthetically simple terms, before fully investing - and immersing - myself in finding real photographs in it. This has been a vital part of my creative process for well over 35 years. But it started quite by accident.

When I was just starting out in photography, I found the physical act of using the viewfinder on a camera hard on my eyes. The constant shifting between squinting through the camera followed by focusing on something in the distance quickly tired my eyes. So, after even a few shots, I would usually take off my eyeglasses and rub my eyes a bit before resuming my camera work. One day, with my glasses off, I turned to glance in a direction where some commotion was going on. I could make out only some blurry lights and shapes, but whatever was going on it looked "interesting." Without thinking (and still without my glasses, which had also fallen to the ground) I lifted my camera to my eye and - without thinking and unable to really see anything - took a shot. I have long forgotten what that shot was a shot of, but I remember being mesmerized by the thought - later after I developed the film - that it had turned out better than OK; it was a really well-composed, lovely shot! But not one I would necessarily have taken of this subject (namely, a scene with people in it!) had I had my glasses on. The lesson taught me to always first "see" a scene sans glasses.

The middle panel of the triptych shown above depicts, roughly, what I "saw" when I first descended the stairs into Luray's interior. The left panel shows what the scene may look like to a robotic version of Andy that sees the world through an 'edge detect" filter. The right panel shows how a non-robotic version of Andy renders the same scene after he's had a chance to see it with his glasses on ;-)

FYI: a 40-min long mp3 file of my interview with Brooks Jensen is available for download from Lenswork for 99 cents.

Luray Caverns Portfolio

This is a short note to announce the availability of my self-published portfolio of 66 black and white images from a photo-shoot at Luray Caverns (in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley). I have written about my adventure there in posts a couple of weeks ago: here are links to part 1, part 2, and part 3. A mini on-line portfolio of 16 select images is also available here.

I will always remember my experience in Luray as (the title of my first blog entry about it suggests was) a joyous meditation in a subterranean cosmos. Luray is truly an otherwordly place, particularly so when (as I was privileged to be, by the generosity of the Luray staff, to whom the book is dedicated) one is an almost lone observer, displaced and cocooned in time and space. Motion and sound are nonexistent, except for the eerie echoes of the "plip-plops" of water droplets slowly, ever so slowly, adding to Luray's vast storehouse of stalactite / stalagmite forms); one's own breathing is the only reminder of "life on the outside." Alone, wandering around Luray's preternaturally beautiful underground vistas of rock and space, it is easy to forget one's normal bearings in space and time. It is, in the end, a timeless void of mystery and wonder.

Thank you, Luray, for your kind hospitality in welcoming this awed photographer (and amateur philosopher of life)!

Nice Shots, But Where's the Color?

"The prejudice many photographers have against colour photography comes from not thinking of colour as form. You can say things with colour that can’t be said in black and white… Those who say that colour will eventually replace black and white are talking nonsense. The two do not compete with each other. They are different means to different ends." - Edward Weston

My mom has a habit of asking disarmingly "simple" questions (which usually have "simple" answers, but only after some thought has gone into addressing them). A while back, she asked me why I tend to take series of pictures rather than individual photos (that post led me to ponder the steps that all artists pass through on the way to "self-discovery"). Well, fresh on the heels of my one-day photo-safari at Luray Caverns, and after showing my mom a few early drafts of processed images, my mom came back with: "They're nice, Andy, but where is the color?"

This time, though, since the general question of color vs. black and white has been on my mind as I was preparing slides for a presentation, I was at least ready with a semblance of a real answer; and it goes to the heart of the basic difference between the forms of photography. Interestingly, the seed of the answer I gave my mom (and am now summarizing) was in my mom's own follow-up to the first part of her question. When I told her the "color" of the caverns was effectively a quasi-mono-tonal "orange," she quickly added, "But Andy, you had some beautiful orange abstracts recently, and they were all in color!" She was referring to my recent series of synesthetic landscapes, which are indeed all in color; this one for example:

So why is this in color and the caverns in black and white? The "simple" answer is that it has everything to do with intent. The whole point of the synesthetic landscape series is to communicate a certain aesthetic of color. These abstracts are not about any "thing"; rather, they are all about the tonal distributions of the colors that they depict. While one is always free to convert to black and white... here is an example of one conversion of the above color shot:

...doing so destroys the very essence of what I took the shot to convey; namely color! This is not to suggest that some viewers (including my mom, though in this case, regarding my colorful "synesthetic landscapes," I know she agrees with me) might not find the black and white version preferable - aesthetics, as we all know, is not an objective measure - just that the color version of this particular image (and others in the same series) is the best exemplar of what my intent was in crafting the photo.

Now, what about the black and white picture of Pluto's Chasm shown above (another view appears in my first post about Luray)? First, in truth, it is not a black and white photo, as I add a subtle warm duotone to all of my photos (which you can see for yourself by loading the image in any image viewer and slowly cranking up the saturation). For the record, my mom didn't "buy" my "it's not really a black and white photo" answer ;-) So, let's take a peek at what the same image might look like in color:

Again, apart from comparing individual aesthetics (you may prefer the color to the duotoned version, or you may not like either image), the point I made to my mom is that as far as my cavern portfolio is concerned, my intent is to communicate certain aesthetic qualities regarding tones, shapes, and textures. The rather drab monotone-like, all-pervasive orange that permeates the "color" image does nothing (for me) in this context, apart from likely diluting a viewer's attention from what otherwise would be her sole focus; namely, the tones, shapes, and textures. In short, color is an unwanted visual distraction (and a preattentive one at that, meaning that we cannot choose to not see it, as it is processed automatically by our brain's primary visual cortex). Thus, color - in this case (from my - the photographer's - point of view) adds nothing essential to the intended aesthetic meaning of the photograph.

Of course, in the end, how an image is viewed (and interpreted) is always a matter of personal taste and predilections. I suppose, one could (as an artist) provide a "multiverse" of aesthetic possibilities to viewers (generating not one image but dozens, hundreds, or even millions!... by creating versions in color, black and white, solarizations, alternative processes, photoshopped abstractions, etc.), thereby maximizing the probability that any given viewer will find an attractive image buried somewhere within the pile of images put on display. But that entails moving away from art as conceived, practiced, and crafted by the photographer (and the photographer's own, unique aesthetic vision) to another kind of "meta-art" that depends on the aesthetic choices of the viewer;-)

Luray Cavern Abstracts

"Into the dark beyond all light

we pray to come,

through not seeing and not knowing,

to see and to know,

that beyond sight and knowledge,

itself; neither seeing nor knowing."

- Dionysius the Areopagite

"Any man working with the medium

sooner or later impinges,

merges into, fuses with

the fringes of mysticism."

- Minor White

Luray Caverns Part III: a Harmony of Contrasts

"...an aesthetic perspective is quite at home in the realm of contradictions, for its very nature allows it to transform them into a harmony of contrasts...value entails a synthesis of complexity with order, novelty with continuity, nuance with harmony, richness with stability...the cosmos is such an aesthetic reality. Both in its constituent occasions and in its overall reality the universe is a process of synthesizing and unifying its composite aspects into novel moments of present aesthetic "enjoyment." "

- John F. Haught, Theologian

This is the third installment of a series of blog commentaries on my recent day-long sojourn into the subterranean wonders of Luray Caverns, in northern Virginia (the first two parts are here and here, respectively). In part II I discussed how I have resolved to deal with - though have not yet "solved" - the "problem" of extreme contrasts of light and form.

What makes the caverns unusual, from a compositional perspective, is not just that the contrasts that are there are so strong (and that, really, visually define how the caverns appear to visitors), but that they are both strong and fixed. The photographer's ability to craft an image is thus constrained in two important dimensions of the (typically much more forgiving and malleable) aesthetic space.

Of course, the photographer still has to journey through the familiar landscape of possibilities and aesthetic design decisions: what to focus on, which forms to include, exclude and/or emphasize, what depth of field to use, what tonal ranges to manipulate in what way in photoshop, what to sharpen and what to leave alone (or blur), etc. But the object of this exercise - the "real world" studio in which the original image is recorded; i.e., the cave - is itself fixed and unchanging. This paradoxically renders the aesthetic choices both easier and harder to make.

Aesthetic choices are easier to make in caves because you are assured of the fact that what is front of the lens now is exactly what was there a moment, or hour, or day, ... before! Whether you turn away for a moment or walk away and come back hours later (assuming the caverns have not yet closed for the night), the "image" you first trained your camera on is still there, identical in every way to the first time you framed it. You can "lose your way" so to speak, and always backtrack to "correct" any errors in judgement, or refine a composition by just a bit, able to fully trust in the fact that "everything will be as it was" except for whatever small nudge up or down or to the left you choose to make now. You are, in fact, traversing a completely unchanging reality (at least in limited timeframes, as new deposits accumulate at the rate of roughly one cubic inch every ~120 years or so); this only adds to the surreal feel of wandering around in the caves - a feeling that is especially strong when wandering around alone.

Aesthetic choices are harder to make in caves because one of the most frequently used tools for "finding the best image" - namely, the ability to simply wait for the right conditions - does not apply. Indeed, part of my meditative state that the title of this series of blog entries alludes to (Joyful Medidations...) was induced by an incessant, semi-conscious, whispering to myself of the mantra "ciwis, ciwis, ciwis, ..." (meaning, the "cave is what it is";-) Waxing a bit philosophical, one can say that caves fuse time and space; insofar as they are (implicitly) expressed by - and compel the viewer to experience as - the spatial dimensions alone. Time is rendered inert and irrelevant. Since I cannot totally separate the left (physics) and right (photography) parts of my brain - even when out and about taking photographs! - I often found myself musing about the idea of how the caves are wonderful way to train oneself to imagine what a totally timeless physics might look like, in which reality consists of an uncountably large set of interlocked slices of "nows" (see Julian Barbour's The End of Time).

As I write this entry, I've completed a preliminary look at the 20+GB worth of raw files I recorded in Luray caverns. The aesthetic gestalt that is slowly self-organizing in my mind, is that of a "harmony of contrasts." Interestingly, and perhaps fittingly, as well, this expressive phrase happens also to be the title of my dad's first posthumous art exhibit in Taganrog, Russia; he and I, it seems, still manage to find ways to connect in the timeless realm ;-) In the first page of the flyer for my dad's exhibit (shown below), "Гармония контрастов" is Russian for Harmony of Contrasts:

Joyful Meditations in a Subterranean Cosmos: Part II

“Three Rules of Work:

Out of clutter find simplicity;

From discord find harmony;

In the middle of difficulty

lies opportunity.”

- Albert Einstein

As a follow-on to my previous entry on my recent day-long photo excursion to Luray Caverns in northern Virginia, I'd like to make a few remarks about the aesthetics of capturing the caverns in a photograph, and - ultimately - a fine-art print. The short version is that it is not easy!

There are several reasons for this: (1) light (as in "lack of control over"), (2) contrast (as in "there is too much of it"), and (3) innate dissonance (between everything and everything else that consists of light and form;-). As these are all interrelated, I'll discuss them as a group. Light, arguably the single most important component of any photographer's repertoire of "tools," is in this case unnatural (as it is due solely to the intensely locally bright orange tungsten lights), imposed (since it is installed and fixed in place by the park engineers), and fixed (because it is either on or off, never in any "in between" state or alternate projection angle). Thus, the photographer must deal with the lighting conditions as they are defined in situ; in particular, this means that there is no opportunity to "wait for the right light." One might argue, of course, that this is a general quandary all photographers find themselves in; we always "look for" shots, no matter the environment. But what renders this a particularly difficult compositional problem in a cavern is the second reason I've cited for why this task is difficult, namely contrast.

Luray Caverns' lights are bright; very bright; sometimes blindingly bright! And are often focused on relatively small patches of stalactites (dripstone formations that hang from the ceiling) and/or stalagmites (that build from the floor upwards). Again, while contrast is generally a good thing (certainly for black and white photography) and thus not necessarily a problem ("Well Andy, just find the blindingly brightly lit patches you happen to like!"), it can be a problem - certainly an aesthetic one - if what one is ultimately after is not finding the "best" composition that minimizes the impact of brightly lit patches, but one that best respects the totality of forms - including but not restricted to those both defined and hidden by lights and shadows. While visiting Santorini, Greece in 2008 with my wife, I also had to deal with strong contrasts, but at least there the contrasts were predictably variable. Since their strength and location changed throughout the day, I effectively had a degree of control over them; for example, I could decide when and where to set up my tripod (or just wait for the best conditions to arise). In Luray - and, I suspect, all other "public" caverns - there is simply too much fixed contrast to make this possible.

It was extremely difficult to find pleasing compositions of any forms larger than human-sized chunks simply because of the dizzying array of competing light sources. In those instances where I was able to find a pleasing composition of larger and more widely spaced elements (such as in the example that appears at the top of this blog entry, which is a panorama than spans about 100 ft from left to right), my post-processing in photoshop involved many more layers of local dodging and burning than is my norm. Mind you, this is not a complaint; it is merely an observation of one aspect of what makes photographing caverns difficult; difficult compositionally, and - even more so - tonally.

The last "problem" (both defined and exacerbated by the first two) is the caverns' innate dissonance. Nothing in the cavern is smooth, or smoothly varying. Not the light, not the forms, and not the textures. Indeed, the "forms" - such as they are - are best described as large to massive needles made of rock, arranged in staccato fashion throughout "rooms" that themselves range in size from smaller-than-cramped office cubicles to mini cathedrals. Far from a harmonious whole, the caverns are - at least at first sight - a visually loud cacophony of not-always-obviously correlated patterns. Everything is in contrast to - and in dissonance with - everything else in these caverns! There are certainly none of the smooth gradations of light and contour that one finds in the slot canyons of the southwest ;-) Yet, somehow, the photographer must craft a holistic harmony out of these ostensibly discordant compositional components.

So what to do? I chose (by deliberately going to the caverns) and now continue to choose (by spending even more time post-processing what I "saw" there) this experience as an opportunity to find ways of aesthetically balancing discordant parts. As Alan Watts reminds us, "...what is discord at one level of your being is harmony at another level." Yes, the forms are dissonant; yes, the lights are blindingly bright and often ill-positioned; yes, the tonal gradations all tend to yell and scream rather than sing in melodic verses; but my physics background (if not an even deeper intuition) insists that what appears, on the surface, as a confused tangle of a mess, is - at its heart - a wondrous harmony. Stay tuned...

Joyful Meditations in a Subterranean Cosmos

"Meditation reveals that

the obvious place to begin

is not in some other place,

it's right here."

- Angel Kyodo Williams

Being Black: Zen and the Art of
Living with Fearlessness and Grace

People often ask me (when I am out photographing), "You must spend a lot of time doing that, eh?" To which the answer is (and this is not a cop out), yes and no. Yes - obviously - because it is a life's passion of mine, and I "think about photography" most of my waking hours, even when pouring over equations and computer code in my day job (as a quick parenthetical aside, even as seemingly a mundane and unartistic an endeavor as putting together powerpoint slides for a technical presentation involves all kinds of compositional and graphical design elements, essentially indistinguishable from the unconscious processing going on behind the scenes of a photographer's craft). No - equally as obviously, but only after a moment's worth of thought - because, in truth, I do precious little active photographing while ostensibly engaged in photography!

Allow me to explain, and set the stage for the picture you see above and what all of this has to do with meditation. As a practical matter, the time I have to devote to real photography (i.e., not quick "point and shoot" grabs, but when I am out and about on a photo safari, mindfully settling into an area, senses tuned to visual possibilities ...) is short and comes in bursts. A few hours here and there on every other weekend perhaps; certainly more when my wife and I are on vacation, or when the family is visiting relatives in different states (hence my archive of portfolios generated in Florida's beauty, which is where my in-laws live). But even then, such as when we visited Greece and Scotland, my "real photo time" was diffused among an endless (but oh so welcome!) parade of 10-15 minute long patches of time during which we parked our car somewhere beside the highway or landmark and "explored for a bit." Then it is back in the car, and the reality of an equally endless parade of pictures that might have been captured - a common lament of all photographers - until the next roadside vista. While there are exceptions to any rule, it is generally rare to have more than a handful of minutes to do photography.

Thus the context for this post, which is intended as a short meditation on the joyful day-long photo safari I was privileged to have on an otherwise nondescript mid-week day last week. Going back a few months, I finally gathered the nerve (after pondering the issue for over a year before; I am a slow ponderer ;-) to leave a comment on the website for Luray Caverns, a popular tourist attraction in northern Virginia. I would have preferred a personal email, but I couldn't find an address on their website, so settled for sending a brief note in a "comment" post. In it, I introduced myself as a "professional fine-art photographer" (after wrestling a bit over whether I can really call myself one, since photography is far - far - from paying any meaningful fraction of my bills; I rationalized that at least the "fine-art" part was correct, since what I do as a photographer is emphatically not defined by anyone's demands but my own), and inquired about the possibility of having a "few hours to myself" inside the caverns with my camera and tripod. I heard back within a week from Luray's publicist, who could not have been nicer or more generous. Provided I choose a day other than a weekend, and one that falls before the April crowd rushes in, Luray would be happy to provide a full-days worth of unencumbered photography! A piece of heaven, I thought; and I was right.

I was greeted early in the morning by a staff member (who herself could not have been nicer or more accommodating; offering just the right mix of "Can I get you anything?" with a sincere "I'll leave you to your work" - it was not work, of course, but I guess carrying around two tripods, a bag with two DSLRs, four lenses, a speedlight, a portable drive for backup, a notebook, and an iPad, looked like it was work;-), led into the caverns, asked to wait a bit until all the lights were turned on (which took but a few moments), and then - music to a photographer's ears - told that "the caverns are all yours!" I essentially had the run of the place all to myself from 9:00am to about 5:40pm or so, armed only with a small bottle of water and a package of trail mix from Starbucks). There was a steady but quickly disappearing stream of visitors every hour or so; but they mostly hung around for a few minutes before moving on and out of eye and earshot. All told, I had over 8-1/2 hours of essentially uninterrupted "quality photography time" in the caverns; easily the longest such stretch I've had in over a decade. In a word, and I'm choosing the word carefully, Wow!

At the end of the day I was utterly exhausted (more so physically than psychically, as the strain of crouching and bending my 50 year old body in odd positions for "just the right" angle eventually took it's toll on every joint and muscle whose toll could be taken), but felt exhilarated; my inner state can best be described as a profoundly deep joyous inner calm. The kind of feeling one gets when one has accomplished exactly what one has set out to do; not to produce something, per se (the quality of which I am as yet unsure, as I have yet to start on the mountain - well, all 800+ images of a mountain - of post-processing work that awaits me in photoshop), but to simply engage in the creative process. And engaged I was. I will not soon forget these joyful day-long meditations on the visual delights I found in the subterranean cosmos known as Luray Caverns!

Polarity, Paradox, Perception

"Everything is dual;
everything has poles;
everything has its pair of opposites;
like and unlike are the same;
opposites are identical in nature,
but different in degree;
extremes meet;
all truths are but half-truths;
all paradoxes may be reconciled."
- Hermes Trismegistus
(The Kybalian: A Study of the
Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece, 1908)

"Every perception is an
awareness of contrast,
of a right/wrong, is/isn’t,
bright/dark, hard/soft situation.
If this is the very nature of
awareness, any and every circumstance,
however fortunate, will have
to be experienced as a
good/bad or plus/minus
in order to be experienced at all."
- Alan Watts
In My Own Way (1972)