The Great Divide

Black And White Photography, Photography, Steven

The Great Divide © Steven Willard

Separated by age, gender, point of view and experience; how do we find common ground? How do we prevent the over-loud voices from the extremes from drowning out the more reasonable dialogues taking place closer to the center? How do we keep a skeptical eye on the demagogues* without letting our attention on them become fixation?

We talk to one another.

*We don’t need a tweeting Cleon for our time.

I invite you to visit my blog at https://stevenwillardimages.wordpress.com.

Useless

Black And White Photography, Photography, Steven

Useless, Roxbury, Connecticut © Steven Willard

Useless

Even a stopped clock

is right twice a day

A sundial in the shade

is useless

Olympus OMD EM1 with 40–150mm f2.8 zoom. Developed in Snapseed.

Lonely ?

Black And White Photography, Photography, Steven

Lonely?© Steven Willard

I find a certain poignancy in images like this. Perhaps it’s because I have a tendency to grant trees human feelings-and why shouldn’t I ? Recent research has revealed that trees do communicate*, and what is communication but a sharing of knowledge? And if trees can know things it’s not much of a stretch that they can feel things, too.

So, is it wrong for me to believe that his lone tree might actually be lonely?

*Please watch Suzanne Simard on TED Talks, August, 2016.

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Al Fresco

Black And White Photography, Photography, Steven

Al fresco © Steven Willard

I find it difficult to ignore patterns, textures and light-play when looking for potential photographs. Add a small dose of mystery and I’m hooked.

I’m not quite sure why the owners of this restaurant chose to fence it off from the sidewalk. Was it to keep patrons from leaving without paying? Or, perhaps it’s a case of not wanting to have their tables and chairs stolen; in that case it’s like closing the gate when the horse is already gone.

Pentax K5IIs with 15mm lens. The challenge here was getting everything lined up to my satisfaction, made more difficult by the wide lens.

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It might have been Moonglow

Black And White Photography, Photography, Steven

It might have been Moonglow © Steven Willard

Driving home under a full moon recently, I kept looking for a subject to photograph. Whether it was me being tired or my state of mind, the fact was I didn’t see what I was hoping to see. I was a little disappointed, but it is almost always better for me to be moved first by a scene, even if I later manipulate it to look like something only later imagined.

My point here is that while I didn’t manage to make a photograph on that moonlit night, I was moved or maybe even inspired by that drive home. Later, while looking at some older files, I found one I felt I could use to bend to my vision from that night.

Panasonic Lumix G3 with lumix 20mm f1.7 lens, processed in Snapseed and Stackables.

I invite you to visit my blog https://stevenwillardimages.wordpress.com

Rite of Spring

Black And White Photography, Photography, Steven

Rite of Spring © Steven Willard

What better indication that Spring is here than seeing the baseball diamonds being readied for play. I watched on a cold cloudy day as the backstops and batting gages were moved into position, but now, finally, Spring.

Pentax K5IIs with 35mm f2.8 macro lens.

Please visit my blog https://stevenwillardimages.wordpress.com

Who do you trust?

Black And White Photography, Photography, Steven

James in the RV © Steven Willard

I won’t trouble with the backstory here, except to say that I needed a place to live and had concluded my best option was a used RV. I live in Connecticut but figured I would find the best deal either in the South or in the sunny Southwest where rust wasn’t likely to be an issue.

I met James on the internet when I saw the RV he was selling. We emailed back and forth then spoke at some length on the phone. The catch was that I was in Connecticut and he was in California. If I wanted to buy his RV I was going to have to trust the voice on the phone; take a leap of faith and fly out to California, which is what I did. I needn’t have worried. James is one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met, his family is lovely, and the RV was exactly as he described it. I drove it back to Connecticut and have been living in it for three years with no problems.

Sometimes you just have to have faith.

Visit my blog at https://stevenwillardimages.wordpress.com

Richmond Revisited-Again

Black And White Photography, Photography, Steven

At my own blog http://stevenwillardimages.wordpress.com I recently posted a photograph that I mined from images taken last December. In that post I took the opportunity to walk through the basic steps used to arrive at the final color image. Here is the monochrome rendering. Much as I like black and white, this is one instance where I prefer the color, but it is interesting-at least to me-how it holds up to the conversion, and how the two versions are dependent on different aspects of the image. I may print them both and hang them side by side just as an exercise.