A Week With Some Sunshine

The week has been somewhat disjointed. The winter weather has been good and bad. Rain today while I take a day off to catch up on some personal business. But some days of sunshine, always a welcome sight this time of year. Even when it’s cold outside, the sunshine makes it just feel warmer and more inviting.

I’ve been struggling with writing this week. Just not in the mood or my head too full of other stuff to sit down quietly at the computer and take stock of some images. I have been posting to my new blog, Artcards, with singular images that have been photoshopped into photoart. My wife and daughter were down in the city for the PDTA dance competitions over the weekend so I spent the time quietly catching up on paper work and bookkeeping, getting ready for taxes, walking the dog, and actually took a couple of naps on the sofa while the dog curled up next to me and I watched Tiger Woods run away with another title. I don’t play golf. But I love to watch Tiger play.

I was pleased to get my little Minolta A-1 back from repair this week. The sensor went bad and, fortunately, because of a class action lawsuit against Konica-Minolta (which has since gone out of the camera business turning over all their support services to Sony) the repair was done for free. A number of sensor failures in the last issues of Minolta cameras led to the lawsuit and the settlement has made the repairs available at no charge. If you have a Minolta camera that has had a sensor failure you should look into the website regarding the settlement. I love this little camera. It was my first digital and has always taken great pictures. My daughter’s boyfriend, Tony, had given her some beautiful tulips for their first anniversary, so I took advantage of the flowers on the table to test out the repair job. Everything seems to be back in working order. Minolta always made great optics and for a 5 megapixel camera, it takes exceptional pictures.

The sun was shining yesterday afternoon as I drove home. The days getting slightly longer and when the sky is without clouds, the warm low sun at 4:30 is really quite painterly. The lake was very still as I came up route 89 lacking even the hint of a breeze. When you’re on the west side of the lake, in the shadows, the blue light seems to make the sunlit distant shore even more warm and golden. Up the lake, the power plant gave off its steam into the chilled air and I felt I had to find a location to shoot the reflections in the water. I drove to the bottom of our road at Camp Barton boy scout camp and walked out onto the shore at the family camp ground. The lake levels are quite low at this time of year and the docks stand tall out of the water, wide shorelines exposed. A small flock of geese took off in the distance, but the rest of the scene was still and quiet.

We wait patiently for spring, for the melt of the ice and the warmth of southern breezes. Florida beckons to me as I pull my collar up and turn back to my car.

All images are Copyright © George Cannon, All Rights Reserved.

Of Grace and Beauty

Last night was the annual talent show for the local school system. Elementary, Middle, and High School students performing for a packed auditorium. I am always a bit in awe of the talent that exists among the young people of this community. Particularly the more mature voices of some of the high school students and the amazing piano players.

My great joy and pride was at the performance of my daughter who danced solo in a piece she choreographed herself to “Perfect” by Alanis Morissette. I have seen her dance so many times with her dance team, even last night. The Armstrong Dance team performed three of their new numbers at the show while the judges tabulated the scores.

But I have not seen her dance solo on stage until last night. She was poise and grace, joy and passion, a beautiful expression of youth and confidence and beauty. Her interpretation of the music was exquisite and her choreography and movement a testament to her dedication to her dance and the years of practice she has so steadfastly pursued.

You can probably tell that I am a somewhat proud father, made even more proud at the reaction and applause of the audience, to know they appreciated her talent and let her know. My joy for her was at its peak.

I don’t know that she understands how much joy her dance brings to me. I gush with praise after she performs and I’m sure it feels like what every kid would hope and expect their parents to do. But I know from growing up as the youngest of four children in a household with parents who barely saw me everyday, feeling very invisible, that it’s so important to see and recognize your children. To be aware of their goals and their passions and their successes and failures. And to understand what these things mean to their lives. My daughter dances from her heart. Like the poetry she writes, I know she feels deeply about expression, and dance and writing and drawing are her art, her outlets. She is a young woman of great passion as are many teenagers. I am so grateful that she has learned to express it in ways that reward her and enhance her character and soul. And also to the great benefit of we who get to watch her.

Thank you my daughter.

All images are Copyright © George Cannon, All Rights Reserved.

Urban Landscape, Part 2

Landscape photography is usually about Nature. The sky, the clouds, the land, the water. Vistas and scenes, or close ups with flowers and plants, trees and rocks, mushrooms and fall leaves. And also about light and shadow and color. Nature’s best expression and something that brings us peace and joy and beauty.

The urban landscape is about humans and the human environment. City and town, highway and home, our mark and our legacy. It’s about living here on earth in a “not nature” kind of place. It’s documentary and street photography. I use it to express my views of how we live. The places we create to call home. Our idiosyncrasies and our odd habitats. The wake of our passing every day.

I tend to be attracted to construction and destruction. To odd decorations and to strange architecture. I have made collections of images from shopping malls and odd things people place in their yards. I am attracted to strange juxtapositions of things. I am also drawn to the beautiful things people create and display in the urban arena. I like signs and directions and instructions and graffiti. I like the bland and the grotesque, the mundane and the spectacular, the minute and the colossal. I like order and symmetry and chaos and randomness. I like the geometry and the fluidity. It offers such variety and surprise and seldom disappoints me when I’m looking for interesting subject matter.

The urban landscape is as different as people are different. We all leave our own mark in some way. We all have a presence and like the creeping snail on the sidewalk, leave our glistening rainbow on the surface as we pass. Someone makes a decision to paint that door purple or string lights from the trees, or where to build a parking lot or place a pot of flowers. We plant ourselves upon the earth and create our spaces, they age with us, rise and fall as we do, some to the benefit of all, some simply a blight or statement of bad taste. Some are curiosities, some are beautiful, some are down right hideous. It’s all a part of who we are as a civilization, our values, our personalities, the expression of our existence. It’s what we’re about. And it’s a visual feast.

The beauty of photography lies in the ability to take a small portion of what we are presented with every day and isolate it for individual scrutiny. To find the order among the chaos, to create a piece of art from the detritus. To hold and share a piece of our vision with anyone. When we see something that draws our attention, our minds record and wonder and create from that vision. It is through the camera that we can capture and elaborate upon that vision, hold it and dwell upon it, feel it more deeply, and express it to someone else. It’s a marvel. It’s light and shadow, color and line. And it’s reality, it’s our world.

All images are Copyright © George Cannon, All Rights Reserved.

Urban Landscape, Part 1

In the years that I worked as a professional photographer, I shot mostly nature and landscape photos. Rocks and trees, flowers and mushroom, vistas and waterfalls. But when I first began to take pictures, it was the urban landscape that captured my attention for the most part. I grew up outside Atlanta, Georgia in a town called Decatur. In those days Atlanta was a small metropolis compared to today. A manageable big city of just over a million people. I spent a lot of time on the streets of Atlanta as I got older and as photography became my passion. I shot black and white in those days.

And I always felt like Atlanta was a visual playground. I worked for a Pontiac dealership and had a demonstrator to drive, a Luxury LeMans. I would go out on Sunday mornings and drive around Atlanta when the streets were nearly empty, and felt like I owned the city. It was mine for the picking. I took a lot of pictures in those days.

Today, as I shoot for myself and shoot with an artist’s perspective in mind, I am still drawn to the urban landscape. I’ve never been that fascinated with people in particular, but seem to be so attracted to what people do, what we build, what we create and destroy, what we collect and what we discard, what we decorate our lives with and the mark we leave on this planet. What we value, and what we neglect. Our possessions, our clutter.

I wonder if thousands of years from now archaeologists will be digging up our cities and towns, marveling at the foundations made of reinforced concrete and masonry blocks, the remnants of asphalt roads, salvaging paint chips and graffiti on walls, marveling over the fragments of ipods and cds and milk cartons and petrified disposable diapers. Thinking, what a civilization. How did they ever survive? Placing Chia-pets in museum cases as art of our times. What kind of god did this represent? What will last? What will be the important discoveries? What will we be remembered for?

All images are Copyright © George Cannon, All rights reserved.

Dear Mr. President

So it’s 2008 already. It’s an election year. And yes, this is a photo blog and in the past year I’ve stayed away from political issues and commentary. But in the realm of powerful images I just wanted to put up a short post and encourage everyone to go and see, if you haven’t yet, the music video by Pink called Dear Mr. President. You can see her live performance at this AOL site. It’s powerful, emotional, and really moved me. So please give it a look.

Happy New Year! Let’s make it a year of change for the better.

For those of you who are still recovering from the celebration, a pink elephant!

Image Copyright  © George Cannon, All Rights Reserved