A Full Preview of "Elements of Order" Book

About two years ago, in Dec 2007, I was privileged to have a solo exhibit of 24 of my photos at a book store/gallery in Coral Gables, Fl (you can look up a blog entry I wrote up about it at the time here). Not too long afterwards, I self-published a book woven around the theme of the exhibit - "Natural Order" vs. "Human Generated Order" - called Elements of Order. The book includes all the photos that were exhibited, along with about twice as many additional images that fit into the same theme.

While the book itself is not new (indeed, I've published about a dozen since; they are all listed on one of the sidebars on my blog), Blurb has just introduced a new policy whereby authors now have the option of allowing previews of the entire contents of their books.

So, as an experiment, I have made the entire contents of my Elements of Order book fully accessible on-line. When you go to the link provided, just click anywhere on the image of the book's cover that appears in the top left of the page (where it says "preview book") and you will be allowed to "read" the book at leisure on your screen.

Chiocchetti's and Palumbo's Gift of the Soul to Orkney

Orkney (Scotland) and war, of one kind or another, have a long intertwined history. Scapa flow, for example, which is the name of the sea that surrounds the Orkney Islands, is one of the great natural anchorages of the world, serving as a harbor for Viking ships more than 1000 years ago. More recently, it was the site of the United Kingdom's chief naval base during both WWI and WWII (the base closed in 1956).

It was in WWII, in early 1942, that over 500 Italian prisoners of war (captured in North Africa), were brought over to Orkney to help construct the Churchill Barriers (a fortication ordered built by Churchill, following a German U-boat sinking of the HMS Royal Oak in 1939, an attack that took the lives of 833 members of the Royal Oak's crew). However, since a treaty prevented prisoners of war from working on military-related projects, the Churchill Barriers became roads linking the southern islands of Orkney together (a function they still serve today). But the barriers were not the only project these Italian prisoners of war had worked on.

A small hillside on the north side of the island of Lamb Holm overlooks the most northerly of the Churchill Barriers. On it is a small and (from the outside) modest appearing chapel that is now know as the Italian Chapel. A glimpse of the soulful beauty of the chapel's inside is given by the image at the top of this blog entry (the other "side" of the chapel, the part that visitors walk through as they enter, is simply an austere vestibule; if anything, its simple unadorned appearance intensifies the grand vision that immediately grabs hold of all visitors' attention).

During the years 1942-1945, the hill was where the Italian prisoners of war lived (at Camp 60). By all accounts, however, Camp 60 was infused with an unexpected aesthetic. The prisoners built footpaths (using concrete that was readily available for the barriers), gardens, and vegetable plots. They also set to work on a place of worship, culminating - under the leadership of prisoners Chiocchetti and Palumbo (who designed the wrought iron rood screen) - in the Italian chapel. The chapel is a mini artistic-masterpiece, and stands as a living testament to the indomitable will of the human heart and soul.

The Skies of Skye and Orkney

As difficult a task as it is to point to a single distinguishing feature of Scotland that stands out in my photographic eye - for so much of Scotland simply transcends an aesthetic breakdown of any kind; Scotland's beauty must be experienced and cannot be verbalized (nor, perhaps, even be photographed in a way that captures its deepest secrets) - I will start my musings on the recent trip my wife and I took to Scotland by recalling the magnificent skies of Skye and Orkney.

"The great plain of Caithness opens before our eyes. This is the northland, the land of exquisite light. Lochs and earth and sea pass away to a remote horizon where a suave line of pastel foothills cannot be anything but cloud. Here the actual picture is like a picture in a supernatural mind and comes upon the human eye with the surprise that delights and transcends memory. Gradually the stillness of the far prospect grows unearthly. Light is silence. And nothing listens where all is of eternity." - Neil Gunn, Highland River (1937)

My previous benchmark for varied dramatic skies was Hawaii, where the weather changes on a dime and the interested observer / photographer can find dozens of different "skies" in any given hour on any part of the islands. But Scotland's skies leave their Hawaiian cousins far in their wake. I have never before seen such dynamic, textured, layered, epic-scale Wagnerian colossī as the "seas of clouds" on Skye and Orkney.

The drama was often so great, and the magic light so fast moving and changing, that all I could do to keep up was to simply click away, mechanically, unable to take in all of the spectacle unfolding before me, behind me, all around me. Once, on our first day on Orkey, even before we arrived at our hotel in Kirkwell after arriving by ferry at Stromness, a spectacular sunset begged us to pull over to the side of the road, and as I was setting up my tripod to catch a sunset, a fantastic - phantasmagorical! - rainbow appeared to the east; as my attention was diverted, my wife screamed that another rainbow was forming to the south! There we both stood, slack-jawed, swaying gently in the Orkney wind, in awe of nature's beauty at its finest. I had even momentarily "forgotten" to do anything with my camera; as my conscious and unconscious minds fused into one and my attention was focused solely on the experience. Such deep ego-disappearing total immersion in the moment, as we soon learned, is the norm for being in Scotland. (It is thus easy to understand the origin of some folk tales, such as the one about Herla - the "wise King of the Britons in ancient times" - who once visited an underworld realm, where he was lavishly entertained with song and dance. But upon returning to his own world, King Herla discovered that centuries had passed!)

"From the high summit watch the dawn come up behind the Orkneys, see the mountain ranges of Sutherland the grey planetary light that reveals the earth as a ball turning slowly in the immense chasm of space, turn again to the plain of Caithness that land of exquisite light and be held by myriad lochs and dubh lochs glimmering blood red." - Neil Gunn, Highland River (1937)

As dramatic as the skies of Orkey are, Skye brings an added dimension (or two or three) to the landscape, literally. For as relatively flat as Orkey is (though it has its fair share of rolling hills and cliffs!) and is devoid of vegetation, the many rolling mountains and jagged peaks of Skye make it a veritable mini-Himalaya, along with its enormous array of beautiful lowland flowers.

I soon noticed a distinct change in my compositions. Where, in Orkney, my eye tended to mostly ignore foreground detail (for, in truth, there was little to be had except an occasional but uninteresting rock or twig) and focus on clouds and sky with a bit of a horizon, in Skye, my camera was taking in the full view from my feet to as far away as my lens could take me! Moreover, because of the lovely colors, I also found myself - very uncharacteristically - thinking and previsualizing in color! I thought back to last year's trip to Santorini, Greece, where I had a related (but very different) experience with "color versus B&W" visualization. In Santorini's case, however, my thoughts on the matter crystalized after I had returned home and was viewing my images in Lightroom. This time, in Skye, the utterly un-ignorable effervescent colors compelled me to adapt my photography from B&W to color on the spot! While this may not sound like a "big deal" to most readers, I can assure you that for one, such as myself, who is almost exclusively a B&W photographer and therefore tends strongly to view the world in B&W, the shift was very dramatic (and, in hindsight, very enjoyable). Perhaps I can use this experience as a stepping stone / learning experience to widen my photographic horizons a bit.

"My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go."
- Robert Burns, My Heart's in the Highlands

The Preturnaturally Sublime Beauty of Scotland

The recent paucity of blog entries may be explained (at least in part) by the fact that my wife and I have been traveling all over Scotland; Edinburgh, Inverness, Loch Ness, Orkney, and Skye to be precise. We have just returned from our trip, after logging a bit over 1100 miles by car.

It was a magnificent trip, overflowing with memorable experiences and spectacular landscapes. Having brought back the equivalent of 40GB+ of raw files (my Hyperdrive was indispensable!), I look forward to the many digital darkroom days/nights it will take to process them all. As individual images warrant, and as I recall the stories surrounding them, I'll be posting some musings in the weeks ahead.

From a bird's eye view - as a whole, in Gestalt form - Scotland is a sublime, preternatural wonder of equal measures drama and serenity; it pulses with a quiet soulful elegance and beauty all its own. From its tranquil green pastures (punctuatued by the "baah-baahs" of its sheep and "moooooos" of its Highland cows), to its rugged coastlines, to its majestic Wagnarian-like skies and clouds, to the magnificent wind-swept jagged peeks of the mountains on the isle of Skye, to its many Castles and pre-historical sites (such as Maeshowe and Ring of Brodgar, both dating back to before 2500BC), Scotland is a land of almost infinitely diverse terrains and vistas. Its people are warm and friendly, its delicious food is as memorable, in its own way, as are its landscapes (though my wife enjoyed Haggis far more than I), and its single malt whiskys are second to none (our personal favorites on this trip were Highland Park and Glenmorangie)!

The one nasty part of our trip was driving in Edingurgh (1) without a GPS and (2) while the Fringe festival is going on. It is difficult enough for two people accustomed to driving on the right side of the road (in the US) to switch to left-side driving in Scotland (though this part was easy to adapt to), but when faced with street closures and "Diverted Traffic" signs (seemingly posted every other street), navigating Edinburgh proved almost impossible. That we did so the first time around while also sleep-deprived after overcoming what amounted to a 36 hour multi-leg plane trip that finally got us over to Scotland, borders on the unreal; certainly that is how my wife and I both remember it;-) Our experience has thus led to a new sacrosanct Ilachinski "trip rule": never, ever - ever! - drive a car in a major foreign city without a GPS and before getting at least one good night's rest. (Sacrosanct trip "sub rule": if the major foreign city has a festival going on, don't drive under any conditions!).

On the Art of Observing Gallery Viewers Observing Art

The NY Times recently published a fascinating article on the subject "how people engage art" in art galleries. As one might expect, there are a variety of "approaches" people take to viewing art. Some walk around slowly, savoring each artistic morsel on a wall. Some walk through the gallery quickly, hardly glancing at much of anything save for the watch on their wrist (in hopes of escaping, perhaps). Some bring their sketchbooks, look around a bit, then find a spot to rest for a while and try to "take away" a bit of what they've seen (or are looking at). Some come in groups, that congeal and disperse in rhythms, punctuated by periodic outbursts of comments and discussion, as they weave their way through the displays.

The article reminded me of my own experiences of watching "people passing through a gallery" while I was still a member of the Lorton Arts Workhouse Photographic Society (WPS). Part of my Co-op duties included gallery-sitting, for which I had to come in to open the gallery, greet guests, photography admirers and/or potential customers, answer questions, conduct sales, and so on. In truth, apart from the motivation to "do more photography" while I was part of the Co-op, my most enjoyable experience was in greeting and schmoozing with passerbys and interested observers. As I write this blog entry, two months or so removed from my last such sitting, I must admit to missing the opportunity to experience this on a regular basis.

For context, the WPS gallery (Gallery W-6 at Lorton Arts), contains about 120-130 prints at any one time, (new hangings occur at roughly 8 to 9 week intervals) and the main gallery is about 100 feet by 20 feet in size (there is a smaller space for pictures at the front entrance, that contains an additional 15 or so prints). Here are some of my miscellaneous observations about how "people wander through the gallery," culled from nine months worth of informal record keeping:

(1) People are generally quiet - very quiet, as though they are in a library - as they walk through the gallery. In many cases, even if I attempt to initiate a conversation in a regular tone of voice, the response is muted, hardly above a whisper.

(2) The average "walk through" time (of people who choose not to interact with me after my greeting them; this class makes up only about a quarter of the people who enter the gallery) is about 3 minutes, plus/minus a minute or so. It's pretty fast. A short look is all that most prints get, even as the people are moving on to the next picture. Another interesting statistic: about half the people entering the gallery choose to look at only about half of the pictures; they leave before completing a full circuit around the gallery! (Personally - speaking as both photographer and gallery viewer - I also tend to move quickly through a gallery, giving most pictures about 10 secs worth of attention. However, I have rarely been to any gallery, of any kind, in which at least a few images/paintings did not grab my attention and hold it for long stretches. Indeed, it is the anticipation and possibility of encountering such "grab your eye/I/mind/soul" art that brings me to galleries in the first place.) Note: thoughtful readers who may be musing about the role that "thin-slicing" (= rapid cognition) may play in art viewing will find interesting reading in Malcom Gladwell's Blink.

(3) About half the people who enter the gallery are happy to reciprocate in an exchange of pleasantries and otherwise ask questions about the art and engage my presence in the gallery. Indeed, for this class of gallery observer, the interaction with me only seems to spur their own interest in the art, for they spend, on average, at least two to three times the length of time simply "viewing the art" than does class one (as defined above). (Of course, this may simply be a correlation between the type of person who is both more interesting in photography and, simultaneously, more predisposed to engaging others in some verbal exchange.)

(4) A small minority (about 5-10%) appear interested only in the fact that there is a human being in the gallery with whom they can speak about photography, rather than the photographs themselves. This class of observer enters the gallery, looks around not for the prints on the wall, but for the gallery-sitter, makes a bee-line toward that person, and is the one to initiate contact. Also, about half the time, the ensuing conversation is more about their art, rather than the prints they have yet to see in the gallery they've just entered.

(5) 10-15% of the people passing through are also photographers. Sometimes they are identified by the cameras strapped to their neck; sometimes it is revealed through conversation. However, in almost all such cases, the affect is one of humility on their part. And often, from my point of view, in a quite unjustified manner, for many turn out to be accomplished photographers. Strangely, this fact is more often than not revealed only after some gentle coaxing (by the gallery sitter/gallery-photographer); most (even those that are obviously carrying a camera!) are reluctant to reveal their talents. My impression is that by virtue of being inside of a gallery alone, and by being in the presence of a "photographer" whose works are on the wall, somehow their own abilities, skills and accomplishments are lessened or outright unimportant. It is truly a strange phenomenon, but perhaps not all that surprising, psychologically. Objectively speaking, there is no deeper meaning to, say, having my pictures hanging on the wall in the room they are in than the objective fact that my pictures happen to be there. It is not, in any way, a statement about or reference to the photographic skill possessed by the humble gallery observer. As I write this entry, I am no longer a member of the WPS, and therefore have no pictures on their gallery walls. I'd certainly like to believe that my photographic skills, such as they are, have not diminished. (Though I secretly wonder, too, whether I'd be a wee-bit more reluctant to "reveal" my photography side were I to enter some new gallery?)

(6) 10-15% of the people wandering through the gallery take their time, seemingly with every picture. I cannot over-state how this makes the gallery-sitter's heart soar, because - speaking as one - I could palpably feel in their manner a genuine interest in what was displayed on the walls. This class of observer takes a sincere delight in each and every artist, taking the time to read our bios, the titles of the works, and slowly - sometimes with hands clasped behind their backs - relishing the images near and far, craning their necks for a closeup, and stepping back to admire a print from a different perspective. Somewhat surprisingly, only about half of the people in this group overlap with the class that loves to chat.

(7) I just mentioned that the WPS has short "Bios" up on the wall next to each artist's exhibit. However, we did this only many months after opening, and initially had nothing but titles by the individual works, without so much as a marker informing the viewer that "this wall" has photographer X's works, and "that wall" has works by photographer Y. The week after we put up the bios, interest in particular photographers' works (depending on the predilections of the viewer of course) and likelihood of engaging the gallery-sitter sky-rocketed. Intuitively, it makes sense that if a viewer can learn something of interest about a given artist - - and even more so if he or she learns something of interest about an artist who happens to be the gallery-sitter that day - that the viewer is that much more inclined to react to that artist's body of work and also enagage the photographer/gallery-sitter in conversation. (Before the bios went up, I was amused by how often I'd be asked, incredulously, "Are all of these works yours?")

(8) Most people are not attracted to, and do not resonate (on any discernible level) with abstract photography. Please keep in mind that is a strictly personal observation, and in reference to how I observed people "react to my own work" (which is frequently deep into the abtstract dimension). It is not a statement about aesthetics, or what is "good" or "bad" in photography. I state it purely as a matter of "fact" that I've consistently observed over the run of my nine-month membership in the WPS. (FYI: Brooks Jensen, co-editor of Lenswork magazine, has an interesting podcast on this subject.) On many more occasions than I am willing to admit (though, implicitly, I'm doing so here;-), particularly when - by chance - my own pictures were hanging near where the gallery-sitting desk and chair are stationed, I would see a prospective buyer approach one of my abstracts, muttering (though loud enough for me to hear): "Whoa, what in the world...?" (followed by what I could have mistaken for either a look of horror or disgust or both, as he or she or they quickly made their way to someone else's picture of something more recognizably "real looking"). Note: readers interested in abstract photography are urged to look out for a wonderful new book on the history of abstract photography called The Edge of Vision (by Lyle Rexer).

(9) A very small minority (maybe a handful of people over the entire nine-month period I'm summarizing) were - ahem - less than gracious and humble. With an obvious chip on their shoulder, they would march toward the gallery-sitter desk, announce their arrival (at least by their manner, the loud clop-clop of their shoes banging the floor, and their wide-open staring eyes, seemingly daring anyone in their path to a fight), and proceed to "explain" to the gallery-sitter (i.e., me) that while some of the photographs here are interesting (though they barely even glanced at any of them), it is really their art that belongs here instead of the photographers' who were juried into the WPS. On a positive note, once I politely explained that they too can easily become members of the WPS, provided they assemble a portfolio, and submits prints, a vitae and an artists statement - and are selected by the admissions jury - they all turned on their heels and stormed out the gallery.

(10) There is one final class of gallery viewer whose membership totals exactly one person (at least during my time as gallery sitter): the person who is herself an artist and who deliberately seeks out a particular photographer in hopes of engaging in an aesthetic dialectic. I was introduced to this class during WPS' 08/09-holiday open house and small works show. I saw a woman, about my age, enter the gallery, take a quick look around, and then immediately head for the wall that had my pictures hanging. Naturally curious (as this seldom happens to my pictures), I quietly approached her and introduced myself. She was shy, but smiled, and started asking a few questions about my photos. I started giving my (by now practiced) general overview, but soon realized there was increasing depth to her questions; none were of the basic "So, what is this supposed to be?" variety. She mentioned how some of the images were very Tao-like, and my approach reminded her of some Chinese landscapes (and mentioned a few artists' names I have forgotten). As we talked, it became increasingly irrelevant as to who was "viewing" and who was "the photographer." She eventually confessed that she too was an artist (and teacher) at Lorton, specializing in Chinese art. She explained that she had seen some of my smaller works, that were at that time hanging in the main gallery (Gallery W-16 at Lorton Arts), and heard about our open house; she came specifically to meet the photographer behind the pictures she liked so much. Shoot forward a few weeks, after I had a chance to visit my new friend at her own studio (and admire her art), and we were both rewarded with new art for our walls: she, with an image of mine she so admired at the photography show; I with an exquisite little Zen Frog that adorns my "day job" office and who has himself become an inseparable part of me. A beautiful example of art meeting art, and art sharing of itself to inspire more art.

Postscript #1: My dad, a lifelong artist who lived art 25 hours out of every 24 (incredible, but somehow true!), carved out a niche all his own as a gallery-viewer. His approach was simple, direct, and pure: gallery day was gallery day, meaning that the entire day would be spent viewing art, in a preternaturally transcendent state that rendered him utterly oblivious to everything around him. My mom and I both saw first hand how my dad would arrive at a gallery - any gallery - reposition his glasses slightly as he entered (his traditional "I'm now in a gallery" maneuver), clasp both hands behind his back (where they would unmovingly remain throughout the tortuously long day), walk up to the nearest exhibit, and look, and look, and look...and there he would remain - at that first exhibit! - for hours at a time! Eventually he would move, but only a few feet either to the left or right of whatever he was just viewing, and only to plant himself in front at an adjacent painting. (It was not unheard of for him to suddenly remember something he had forgot to "look for" at the last painting, and - frantically, as though this oversight would somehow deprive him of a morsel of divine truth - side-step his way back to the previous exhibit.) At times, my dad would stand motionless in front of an artwork for so long, that gallery visitors could easily be forgiven for mistaking him for a newly scultpured artwork on display! By the end of a typical day, in a gallery with ten rooms adorned with, say, 300 pieces of artwork, my dad would still be looking (meditating, absorbing, reflecting, musing, comparing, composing, digesting, pondering, philosophizing, ...) at maybe the 7th or 8th picture in the first room. And at the end of a typical gallery day, as the guards began begging us to leave, my dad would invariably turn to my mom with his own soulful plea: "Katie, please, please, can we come back tomorrow?" (Never did I see anyone remotely resembling this unique class of "gallery viewer" in all my days of gallery sitting at the WPS.)

Postscript #2: All of the images of "gallery viewers viewing art" are from one of my dad's last exhibits before he died, held at Adelphi University (Garden City, Long Island, NY) in June 2000. The viewers are looking at some of his amazing abstracts. The image directly above Postscript #1 is of my dad at his Adelphi exhibit.

Postscript #3: The artist with whom I exchanged some artwork (and whose "Zen Frog" is my faithful office companion) is Hsi-Mei Yates, and she specializes in Chinese watercolor brush painting. Her work is exquisite.

Swirls, Whorls, and Tendrils

Although I am a physicist by day—or, perhaps, because I am a physicist (and thus want the left part of my brain to rest when I'm with my camera)—I have rarely come upon a subject that seamlessly combines my love of physics and passion for photography. Until now that is. Maybe it is my penchant for abstraction that led to this subject, and the connection to physics is more of an afterthought. Or maybe my physics “eye” unconsciously led me to take on this aesthetically surreal but very “real” physical subject, in hopes of stirring my conscious attention (and relentless equation scribbling). Whatever the case, my recent focus on “ink drop in water abstracts” has consumed both sides of my brain, and is—even as I write this blog entry—unlikely to release either side any time soon. A small—exploratory—gallery of images is here.

Ink diffusion, in turns out, is anything but simple; either photographically or mathematically (for an example of the latter, see, for example, this paper on ink diffusion in Chinese ink paintings). On the photographic side, many photographers—amateur, pro, unknown, famous, living and long forgotten—have doubtless focused their lens’ on “ink & water” countless times, perhaps stretching all the way back to Fox Talbot. I have no illusions of having discovered a new “frontier” (as Bruce Barnbaum did with his magnificent shots of Slit Canyon). But even a familiar subject can sometimes offer unexpected surprises. My own humble addition to photography's collective oeuvre of subject matter is more akin to Hilla and Bernd Becher's typology of watertowers and other industrial structures. Only in my case, it is a typology of the dispersive structures of a single ink drop in water.

The technique is straightforward, but requires a bit of practice and patience. A small 3”-by-3” glass vase is filled with about ¾” of water (less than that, or more, yields a set of slightly “different” patterns from those appearing here) and placed on a light table (which provides the only source of light). A macro lens (in this case, a 100mm lens capable of 1:1 magnification) is mounted on a camera (Canon's 30D DSLR), and is positioned so that the lens is pointing vertically downward on the surface of the water. A small eyedropper is filled with India ink, is carefully centered between three and six inches above the water (as with water depth, a greater or lesser height yields a slightly different set of patterns), and a single drop—this is the "hard" part that requires a bit of patience—is slowly released.

As the ink strikes the water, about a third of its volume quickly spreads radially on the surface. The remaining blob sinks to the bottom. Some of it bounces back up, and a slow process of diffusion, dispersion, and rotation begins. The resulting 3D patterns are captured (and compressed into two dimensions via the lens) as they unfold, and are processed and displayed as digital negatives. A single drop’s effective "unfolding lifetime" varies between 1-1/2 and 2-1/2 minutes. It is not a real lifetime, of course, since the ink continues to diffuse until it is thoroughly mixed with the water, but denotes a period after which most of the "interesting" patterns—the swirls, whorls, and tendrils—have all but dissipated, and no new internal structures appear. The images in this portfolio show the structure of the radial spread of a single drop of ink in water as it appears at a single time (to within ~ 1/60th sec) near the tail end of its unfolding lifetime.

Each ephemeral form is unique, surreal, and exquisitely beautiful. Since these are lifesize macros, many of the fine details are literally invisible to the naked eye. The macro lens reveals what looks like "organic" life-forms, that develop as though some hidden “rule” (or genetic code) is guiding their evolution. In truth, the myriad shapes and forms are a complicated confluence of multiple simultaneous forces at work: diffusion, dispersion, interplay of relative viscosities of the water and ink, a transfer of momentum as the ink drop bounces upward after hitting the bottom of the vase, gravity, random drifts and impurities in the water, and thermal convection rolls due to the heat generated by the bulbs in the light table.

Tellingly, even as each delicate form is “perfect” onto itself, what starts the whole process going, and what is most responsible for the diversity of patterns, is imperfection. It is because the ink drops are not perfect spheres, because they assume a variety of randomly distorted oblong shapes as they fall, and because they have unpredictable and shifting densities of ink inside of them, that each sequence is a unique creation that unfolds just once, then vanishes forever.

"All is process.
That is to say, there is ‘no thing’ in the universe.

Things, objects, entities, are abstractions
of what is relatively constant from a process of
movement and transformation.
They are like the shapes that
children like to see in clouds."
— DAVID BOHM, Physicist (1917-1992)

Postscript/FYI. Apart from the fact that it nicely describes the subject of my new series, the title for this portfolio - "Swirls, Whorls, and Tendrils" - derives, in part, from the first (and, so far as I can remember, the only time) I have ever seen the word "whorl" used seriously in print anywhere. I remember seeing this term in a paper co-authored by one of my mathematical physics professors in graduate school (N.L. Balazs), back in the late 70s; though on a topic that doesn't have anything to do (at least explicitly;-) with ink drops in water: Quantum Maps.

Matted & Framed Prints for Sale!

Although I have not written about it much on my blog, I have for the past nine months or so been a part of a new art cooperative in northern Virginia called the Lorton Arts Foundation (LAF). In particular, I was one of 14 inaugural juried members of LAF's Workhouse Photography Society (WPS). This group contains many fine and distinguished artists, with a wide diversity of backgrounds and styles. All are exceptionally talented photographers, and I am very honored to have had an opportunity to hang my work alongside theirs. Regrettably, however, because of other projects and time commitments, I have had to resign my WPS membership, effective at the end of June.

While I have other venues and options open to me to hang - and hopefully sell - my work, some friends recommended I try probing my blog readers' interest in acquiring some ready-to-hang fine-art photos. So, here is a first such offering.

The prints for sale are all (slightly warmly duotoned) digital prints - using Epson's archival pigment-based ink. I use Epson's 2400 printer and print on Epson's acid-free Ultrasmooth Fine-Art Paper (to assure colorfastness and longevity). All prints are roughly 17 inches long on the longest side, and are displayed using either an off-white (print 1 and 2) or light-gray (prints 3 and 4) matte-board fit into an 18" - by - 24" black metal frame. The prints are signed on the lower right of each print, sans "edition number" as I do not follow that practice (perhaps I'll post a blog entry on my thought process here).

The price of each matted/framed print is $240.00 + $15.95 for packing and shipping. Since this is an "experiment" (to see if there is sufficient on-line interest), payment is via check, to be made out to "Ilachinski Studios, Inc." All matted/framed prints are offered on a first-come-first-served basis, and will be shipped within five working days of my receiving a check (if impossible for whatever reason, I will inform the buyer via email of any delay). I will not cash any check until the buyer has confirmed receiving the print and has indicated complete satisfaction. If that is not the case, I ask that the matted/framed print please be returned (though here at the prospective buyer's expense; keeping the original shipping container will obviously save on return cost here), and I will destroy the uncashed check upon arrival (or send it back to the buyer, if he or she so chooses).

If interest is strong, I will periodically offer a few of my prints in this way, if only because it provides me an opportunity to expand a bit on my blog on how the images came to be. As is true of most photographers, each of my photos has a "story" to tell, beyond that of what they depict as merely physical objects.

So, without further adu, here are the first four prints I am offering for on-line sale (if interested in purchasing one or more of these prints, please email me at ilachinski.studios@gmail.com):

1. Luminous Boundary

I have discussed this image recently in the context of the unconscious influence other artrists have on our own work. In this case, the image is an "unconscious" homage to a similar work by British photographer Fay Godwin. Although I was not thinking of Godwin, nor any other photographer (so far as I am aware), during the time I captured this image a few yeas ago at tropical park in Coral Gables, Florida, her characteristically soulful approach to her subject matter has certainly impressed itself on me in the years of studying her work. This is one of my favorite images from the last five years or so, and seems to always grab people's attention when they pass it hanging on a wall.

2. Tonal Rhythms

This image was captured on the same day as "Luminous Boundary." It is another of my favorites because it captures (and shows) "light" as much as form. Though it is hard to see in a web-sized picture, the print has a wonderfully subtle "glow," as if shining with an inner light; and has a beautiful organic texture that would look nice on (some otherwise drab painted) wall

3. Micro Worlds

This is an image from my "Micro Worlds" portfolio, which was published in Lenswork last year (Issue #76, May/June 2008; 16 images appeared in the print edition, 75 images + audio interview on the Extended DVD edition -(I also have a self-published book that contains many more images from the same series). It is a macro of a small thumbnail-sized portion of an acrylic candle holder. Apart from its aesthetic appeal, I like this image because it serves as powerful reminder that beauty truly lives everywhere, even in the seemingly "unlikeliest" of places. This print is matted on a light-gray matte board.

4. Mystic Flame


This is one of my favorite abstract images from last year. It is from my Mystic Flame portfolio, about which I wrote a blog entry. (I also have a self-published book that contains many more images.) While it may look like smoke, it is actually a reverse/negative image of a flame; and a relatively small one at that. The actual flame-size was between two and three inches. This print, like the Micro Worlds above, is matted on a light-gray matte board.