Torment in Black and White

Pine Hill, NJ

Today has been a bad day. I took a day off from work in order to spend it on the phone trying to find money for her to keep her apartment and continue her rehab. She is on Medicare and it will end in 16 days. Medicare told me that you only get 100 days for long term rehab. Her insurance AARP only gives the same 100 days. Medicare pays for the first 20 days and then AARP and medicare will cover the other 80 days together. That stops in 16 days. Medicaid will take over but all your social security and pension money goes to the facility that is caring for you with medicaid picking up the rest of the tab. They give very little money for apartments, utilities or incidentals. The family must do the rest or find a way to finance it. So today is a "Torment in Black and White". Happy Halloween.

Pumpkin and Fall Leaves

Gloucester Township, NJ

The weather is finally feeling like fall again.

The Flames of Hell

Pine Hill, NJ

Leaping red and yellow colors against the blackness of Hell.

The Evil Among Us

Pine Hill, NJ

Every once in awhile I work on one of the "bark tree abstracts", as I call them, and something scary or evil or just gruesome pops onto the screen. This is one of them and I call it "The Evil Among Us". We can be a cruel people as well as a kind and gentle people. Watch a reality show and you can see just how mean and cruel we are at times, even the show "Kid Nation". Last week there were these children being mean to one girl and in the process brought a very nice young man to tears, to the point he wanted to go home. Granted they were able to work the problem out. It reminded me of when I was in 6th grade and a group of us ostracisized another girl and one of our classmates came along and told us in no uncertain terms we were wrong to do what we were doing. I was embarrassed to be a part of the group and it has stayed with me all these years. For just a short time evil got in the way of otherwise nice children and made us cruel to someone else. Evil is among us and here is my version of evil personified.

Headless Strawman

Pine Hill, NJ

Bill and I made a strawman with a very small pumpkin for its head. Bill removed the head and put the body in the rocker we had on the porch and then placed the head in the strawman's lap.

Melting Jack-O-Lantern

Pine Hill, NJ

Yesterday Bill had me add his image of a carved pumpkin. Today my spooky abstract called "Melting Jack-O-Lantern".

Jack-O-Lantern

Gloucester Township, NJ

Many years ago, before we moved into our current house, both of us tried our hand at some still life photos. Bill carved a pumpkin and we took different types of photos with the pumpkin. In this one Bill had put a candle inside to try to get the mouth, nose and eyes to shine. He had me put it on the blog as one of his Halloween images.

A little over a week from today will be Halloween. Over the next few days I will be entering some of my abstracts that have a eerie feel to them. My first example is below. I did it yesterday and call it "Taking the Dead".

Taking the Dead

This image comes from a recent series of tree bark slides taken this past summer. It is the same dead dogwood tree that I made the images "Brain of Genius" and "Praying for the Debauchers". This image is very small as I cropped at just a very small portion of the slide. On the original slide I had seen a discoloration that looked like two forms holding something between them. I began to brighten and darken the image. The form on the left took hold becoming a man, he was still holding something. The second form on the right began to disappear. The sometihng being held began to look like a man his legs dangling, his left arm held away from a body being lifted by the man on the left.

Night in the Mountains

Pine Hill, NJ

I have a roll of film of trees and bark taken at our home. As I have mentioned in other abstract images, I have become fascinated with finding the abstract image with in the photograph. Several previous works have been from the same dead dogwood tree that I have here. In my first attempt I had taken the color slide and removed all the color rendering it a black and white. I then inverted it to a negative. I didn't like the result and went back to the positive. The result is "Night in the Mountains".

City Bikes

Philadelphia, PA

Over the years I have found that I love taking photographs of bicycles. There are always bikes locked to the railing on boardwalks down the shore. I have a collection of these images. The bikes may old or new, colorful, adult or children's bikes. The pictures have been taken from different shore towns. A few years ago, I began to photograph bikes found in Philadelphia, PA. This bike caught my attention by the way it was locked in an upright position along a fence.

Oswego Lake

Pine Barrens, NJ

The lakes of southern New Jersey are all man-made. Near Lake Oswego is the Oswego River which flows east meeting with the Wading River. They both eventually flow into the Great Bay. Canoeist enjoy the trip. In the fall it is the starting point of many trips.

The Brain of Genius

Pine Hill, NJ

This is the second picture I made from the same dead dogwood tree slide I scanned into the computer. If you look carefully you can see some of the details found in "Praying for the Debauchers". I like the texture found in this version and the reddish brown colors. The brain matter has the color I associate with old weathered bones. The whole picture is surreal and abstract.

The other day I took one of my new bark slides and created two abstracts. But, I wonder if these two should be considered surreal instead. Yes, they are abstracts but the image is nearly as surreal as Dali's painting are. Of course I'll never be able to compete with a Dali. Today I'm putting my first image on "Praying for the Debauchers".

Praying for the Debauchers

In this picture I began to see party revelers out of control, having an orgy and one person at the lower left praying for the souls of the debauchers. Can you see his gray hair, long bird flowing down into his hands. He bows his head in prayer. Tomorrow I will put in the other picture from the same dead dogwood tree that I photographed.

Dogwood and Grosbeak

Pine Hill, NJ

Bird photography is very difficult. Last fall I was upstairs reading and looked out at the neighbor's dogwood tree that hangs just off the roof of our porch and only 10 to 15 feet from the window I was looking out. There were all kinds of birds; robins and starlings and one rose-breasted grosbeak. They were all eating the dogwood berries. I called Bill and he tried to capture the robins but the light was to low. We were late afternoon and the sun was not shining on the berries very well. The next day at about 9am I brought my Canon F1 and teleconverter with my heavy tripod upstairs. Moving the couch I set up and began to watch the light and hope the birds would return. They did. But of all the images this one is I think the best and for a bird photographer not quite where I would have liked it. I cropped out some of the background until I had what I thought best showed the colors of the berries and leaves and the fall day that the grosbeak came to visit.

Near Mount Washington

Maine

Bill wanted to see how some of his slides from Maine would look on the computer. Hear is a valley near Mount Washington in Maine. On our ride into Maine, we had gotten behind a older man driving very slow. After several miles we finally got the chance to pass his vehicle. Maybe a 1/2 hr later we decided to pull over for a bathroom break and spent some time freshening up. As we let a car pass the lot and we pulled in behind guess which vehicle was again in front?

This was our first trip together and we had a lot of fun. On the way home we stopped at a rest area and look put over a valley called "Mount Washington Valley".

Three Mushrooms

Pine Barrens, NJ

Walking the trails throught the Pine Barrens here in New Jersey can bring many small surprises. Bill found three mushrooms growing among the weeds and after scanning them in the computer, removed all the grass around them.

The Cowboy

Pine Hill, NJ

It has been 12 days since I've added a photo to the blog. Two words: Work and Mom. At work we have become so short-handed that every week I work from 3 to 4 hours overtime. This coming shift I may have to work to 4AM on 2 consecutive days. The other is my mom's broken hip. I spend a lot of time running out to see her, checking on her apartment and taking care of her bills. So the blog has taken a back seat.

The other day I got a box of slides back. Most of the images have been of tree bark and dead tree branches. This image above is from a dogwood tree that died 2 years ago. We have left most of the tree standing. The birds crawl along the trunk hunting for small bugs, etc....

With much of the bark gone, I got this really neat red, yellow and black image. A man began to pop out and I see a hat. Then I began to see this cloak around the man's shoulders. At the bottom on the left could be an animal's skull that might be seen out on the plains or desert. Although the cowboy's horse in not visible, I had the feeling he was riding it, maybe on a rainy night just outside of town.