May 3, 2025

This is an in-camera, quadruple exposure. Photographed May 3, 2025.

God of the Dandelions (April 2025)

A strange realization that this image resembles an interior 'vision' I had days earlier washed over me when I stared at my computer monitor screen, having clicked "save image" hours earlier. I believe I encountered this image in a remarkably specific and visually-particular daydream a few days before I made the in-camera quadruple-exposure that served as the source image of this final version. 

The notion of a species of humans that grew a small jewel or diamond or precious amber or ruby or jade or sapphire or turquoise literally on the skin, embedded on the surface like an indelible tattoo, naturally growing each time an act of true love or true kindness was done from purely selfless, noble intentions. These people who did the most good in society would be notable for their encrusted, bejeweled skin surfaces, like old barnacles on a sunken chest of treasure. 

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.

Triple-Exposures (July 27, 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. 

Skyland; Eye in the Sky (January 2024)

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

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.

 

High Desert Mirages, New Mexico (March 2023)

 

Three Different Visual Strategies/Responses to the Same Subject: Orchid

These three photographs were made using the same camera, in the same room, utilizing the same subject: my very patient and always willing subject, the plant I lovingly have named Lazarus, after the biblical figure who rose from the dead. Lazarus the Orchid came into my life  three or four years ago. This orchid has returned from what I believed was death, to bloom and flower again, over and over. This re-flowering, this rebirth, always inspires me to observe and celebrate and create a new round of photographs.

The top image is the most visually conventional, on the surface, yet even it is a couple of steps away from a traditional photograph: looking closely, the viewer detects ghostly double images within the frame.

The second image was made with a pinhole "lens", rather than an actual glass lens. The long exposure time, thirty seconds (due to the tiny f162 aperture through which light strikes the sensor), resulted in a bit of softening of the floral detail.

The third and final image is also a pinhole photograph; it varies from the second image due to a sense of overall Dionysian energy and fecundity, almost from a bug's-eye perspective.

 

 

Mechanical Flowervine, 2020

 This image began as a series of in-camera multiple exposure photographs. On the day I made these photographs, I utilized my camera's multiple exposure capability and made three exposures on each digital file. Additionally, the camera was rotated to a different position on a circular axis between each exposure (the lens was in the same spot, although the camera body was rotated). These four separate files, each a triple exposure, were combined on a new canvas. This new composite image was then saved, and duplicated in a horizontal reverse. This reverse was then added to the first composite. "A process so simple a monkey could do it!"

Exploding Orchidbomb (October 14, 2020)

This image is a composite created from an original single photograph of an orchid. This source image was a multiple exposure of the orchid. This original source image was multiplied into individual identical copies. These nine copies were divided into three sets of three images each; each set was a row of three images in a horizontal line. These sets were either rotated vertically, or left alone. These sets were then arranged on top of each other, with each row laid horizontally upon the row beneath it. These rows were adjusted in Photoshop in layers slightly using the move tool to position them within the compositions vertical axis. A slight amount of blending occurred to smooth out edges, mostly at print output size viewing option.
 

August 2019 still-life of flowers morphs into a Baroque design

The original source material being photographed here was a vase of flowers sitting on a dining room table. Long after midnight I decided to make a couple of detail photographs of them. A few days later I "sandwiched" two of them together, making a new image. This image was duplicated four times, and flipped/rotated/reversed and then joined together, making the final image you see here. This image is very fun to look at, very entertaining, very hypnotic.  The central machine-like flower generator in the exact center is matched in weirdness only by the laughing face of the Dionysus-like creature at very top center. Finally, the viewer notices the pale "image" of a child's face emerging out of the center lower pattern as well. This child stares directly out of the frame, meeting the viewer's gaze. This photograph breaks expectations repeatedly, while still utilizing the tried-and-true compositional norms of the very late Renaissance.

Rome, 2019

Baroque Hallucination Fantasia Rapture, Rome, June 2019

This image was created on a swelteringly hot late afternoon in Rome. Walking through the Borghese Gardens, just past the Aurelian Wall portal. I noticed the beautiful trees which are quite different than I am used to, over four thousand miles away. I notice how the tops of the trees stand out against the sky, a kind of loose pattern. After a minute of fumbling around estimating the exposure details. I make two or three photos. One of them gets to serve as the single image from which this "quad" is formed. The Baroque aesthetic was of course coursing through my mind as I worked, and certainly is present in the "imperfect pearl", Baroque compositional design.

When I look at this creation, I see a delightful floating garden in the sky, upon which one might pleasantly, if carefully, stroll.

Mechanical Snowflake, March 2019

Cosmic Egg, November 2018

Pathway to the Greater Reality, August 2018

Star Map, May 2018.

This is an image of a supernova at the center of the universe. An exploding star: sending forth cosmic elements which will eventually form new planets and new species of life. And then, after the expanding blossom of the explosion recedes, the dying star will collapse and become a black hole, receding inward and consuming all that surrounds it.

This photograph is a combination of many individual photographs; using my camera I photographed many exposures of the floor of a chapel within Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago. Next, I combined these images into a single horizontal panorama. This new panorama of the floor in front of me, became my new "master": it was then repeated numerous times, and half of these were reversed, like mirror images. All of these images were then collected into one "canvas" and digitally "stitched" together using Photoshop.

Baroque Automaton, April 2018

This image is an imaginary re-creation of a Baroque-era "automaton", a term once used to describe a "mechanical-man" (or in this case, a mechanical-woman). Automatons were essentially puppets or proto-robots, powered by wind-up, clockwork-like mechanisms.  These complex productions of engineering and design were handmade by highly skilled craftspeople, and were considered valuable treasures, much sought after for display in the collections of curiousities which fashionable nobles and wealthy merchants curated to delight their peers.
I conceived of this automaton as being in the collection of a Spanish nobleman, circa 1600. Constructed from plates of silver which were looted from Mexico, this mechanical-elf would dance and sing when its' internal mechanism was wound and then released.  This 'renaissance-robot' would sing Andalusian and Catalonian folk songs, while dancing a rudimentary and primitive version of the dance now termed "flamenco." The halls of the royal palace echoed with the startled voices of the assembled audience, the pounding of the automaton's heavy metal boots, and the eerie hollow voice as she sang her sad songs.
This photograph is made entirely from a single source image which has been repeated over and over, at different sizes. The source image, which can also be seen here, is a photograph of a piece of metal which was found lying in the middle of a residential street in Chicago. That sad bit of 21st century detritus has here been elevated into an example of 15th century high-technology.