JOURNAL
Striving to experience new landscapes by traveling far and near; rediscovering them when writing about them, with new eyes.
Three Ways of Looking at the Whitebird.
Three Ways of Looking at the Whitebird: after Wallace Stevens
The river is moving.
The whitebird must be flying.
These Fragments I Have Shored: St. Augustine and Vilano in Ghostlier Demarcations of Infrared.
In a Florida summer, an infrared camera turns a Fort Mose boardwalk into a winter wonderland — foliage burning snow-bright, skies drained to black — a season that does not exist, built entirely from the heat at hand. This is a black-and-white infrared photo essay from St. Augustine and Vilano Beach, made with a Phase One IQ3 100MP Achromatic back on a Cambo WRS-1600 technical camera with a B+W 830 (093) infrared filter — a system that records deep near-infrared light no living eye can hold. Low tide clears a path to the ruins of the old Vilano Bridge — I call it St. Augustine's Parthenon. A modern bridge now sweeps across the Tolomato River, and on the shore beneath it a solitary figure keeps her vigil in a three-second long exposure. Back in the oldest city in the USA, the Medici-inspired stone lions of the Bridge of Lions keep watch over the Matanzas tide, and the Castillo de San Marcos stands stoic. It has endured by yielding, outlasting the concrete that cracks. Entropy is pervasive, and the photograph is a fragment shored against it.
Mindful Morning photo-walk.
In a mindful morning photo walk I can combine exercise, attention-retraining, and my avocation in one activity. persistently shifting scenes provide plenty of picture-making opportunities, even in oft-visited neighborhoods. And what a relief it is! What a blessing! Same place, in different lighting conditions, and due to ever-varying weather, becomes new. One needs not to travel to exotic destinations to seek new adventures and find photogenic scenes. Walking during early mornings also ensures solitude. As I walk, with my Hasselblad around my neck and a Leica slung over my shoulder, I scan what's around me to find serendipitous new relations between elements of composition, even when visiting familiar sites.
Blow, blow, thou winter wind
“Ice strangles oldest city,” the St Augustine Record proclaimed twenty-three years ago on December 24, 1989. The temperatures with windchill plummeted to below zero to -20 degrees in Fahrenheit. That day bridges in the area, except the Vilano bridge, closed. There were so many accidents on the ice-covered county roads and I-95 that FHP ran out of people to handle and count them. The night shift had already been called in by 3 PM on Saturday.
The Morning of the 24th of 2022 came close. There was no ice on the roads, and all bridges remained open. Traffic did not stop. Bitter cold wind chill forced down the mercury to 13 degrees Fahrenheit. Residents covered the yard plants in varying materials to ward off the cold-induced death, turned the heat on, and stayed indoors. Tourists and residents alike deserted sites that customarily are bustling.
Post Hurricane Matanzas Sunset
The same hurricane that devastated communities and shattered lives also intensified and recolored the sunset’s palette. Mother Nature is a supreme artist creating one masterpiece after another. She occasionally throws tantrums, rips the canvasses, discards the brushes, and storms away, huffing and puffing. When enraged, she furiously scowls at human hubris. Once her foul mood blows over, she restarts her oeuvre.
Of condensation on windows.
I see condensation, and it makes me smile. It is a transformation – gas to a liquid, and it also transforms – vapor into liquid. It is a change – from a gaseous state into liquid form. It changes the surfaces on which condensation resides and the surfaces on which it forms. The windowpane, the car’s windshield, the can of soda, glasses in spectacles, and the camera lens, among others, are all changed. It also changes the objects that we see through it. Condensation on the camera lens and fogged glasses imbue images we capture or see with a dreamy glow
Vilano Beach Morning Walk
I took my new Hasselblad 907X 50c Anniversary Edition to the gorgeous Vilano beach for a spin. Here are a few images from this walk.
St Augustine Morning
St Augustine Florida glowed in morning light. I started taking images of the Bridge of Lions before sunrise – during the blue hour – and then continued once the sun rose above the horizon.