Greetings, Earthlings...

Welcome to Beyond the Limits of Reason, the meeting point for all things Michael Doubrava.

Michael Doubrava profile

I was born on Earth during the second half of the twentieth century.

Untitled (San Lorenzo, New Mexico)

Untitled (San Lorenzo, New Mexico)
A metaphor for the conflict between rationality and emotion; betweeen Apollo and Dionysus; between the empirical and the supernatural; between stasis and revolution...

our motto and mission is to

tickle the idiot
rapture the faithful
pity all the ignorant and hateful

illuminate the enlightened
confound the intellectual
with life distilled flood memory's temple
Showing posts with label alchemy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alchemy. Show all posts

July 11, 2025

July 2025


 Ten in-camera multiple exposures on a single file. Camera rotated 360 degrees during sequence of exposures. 

July 5, 2025

In-Camera Quadruple Exposures, Late June 2025

 



Both of these images was created with a Nikon D810 and a 105 njkkor macro, utilizing the in-camera flash as a fill-in to lighten the shadows and cunteract camera movement. The lens also has a vibration-reduction setting, which I used during these hand-held exposures in the late afternoon.

May 7, 2025

October 6, 2024

Late September, 2024: Memory over Time, Time over Memory


After having finished editing these two photos, I've come to the conclusion that they remind me of the way that a specific memory changes over time, just as the historical record changes as years go by,  and that things which once originally seem ideal and solid  inevitably become abstract and faded. or perhaps more gently and elegantly stated,  MY INEVITABLE REFLECTIONS UPON THE PARADE OF ENTROPY.
Both images were created using a +10 year old Nikon D7100 dslr (35mm 'cropped-format' or 'dx') and a 24mm lens of even earlier vintage. The top image, in black-and-white with its' magnificent  doubravatone finish, is a seemingly 'simple' in-camera, traditional, multiple (triple) exposure. The color image below is an in-camera 'image-overlay' of an in-camera triple exposure and an in-camera double -exposure. The D7100 produces 24 mb RAW files.These reproductions here of course are much smaller jpegs, by necessity.

April 21, 2024

New Work (April 2024)



 This image began as a triple-exposure, which was then duplicated four times and arranged to complete the final work. 

January 30, 2024

Skyland; Eye in the Sky (January 2024)





In-camera double-exposures using 85mm p.c. lens on full-frame digital 35mm camera.

December 30, 2023

Sleepwalkers (January 2024)



This is an image of somnambulists, sleepwalkers, engaging in an act of wish-fulfillment. This is simultaneously an image of two spiritual adepts engaging in the practice of "hidden knowledge" based rituals.
 

November 22, 2022

October 2022: Kansas Landscape


 This image of a landscape in Northeast Kansas was created on location, using the multiple-exposure function on a Nikon D810 with a 35mm lens. Two exposures were made in succession, with a 180 degree camera rotation between them. 

This is a Kansas landscape in miniature; this is an Imaginary Kansas.

October 8, 2022

October 2022



Top frame: In-camera double exposure, using 35mm lens on full-frame 35mm DSLR

Bottom frame: In-camera double exposure, combined with another in-camera double exposure of same subject made minutes earlier, using same equipment as top frame

October 4, 2020

Kansas Landscape, October 2020


 The tree which serves as the source image of this photograph stands alone in a carefully manicured suburban housing development. Its powerful, ancient, and mysterious presence does not seem diminished by its mundane surroundings; instead it appears to magnify its weird isolation within a theatrical, scripted space. As I left the golden fields surrounding this titan, I felt a malevolent presence as though this tree, and its family, is not happy with us.

Looking for more?

You can access more imagery by clicking on the phrase above which says"older posts". Many additional works can be viewed dating back to the earliest posts which initiated this blog.