Texas - PhotoTrice

Looking In

Something you often hear is that photographers are voyeurs peeping into places where they don’t belong. That perception is not entirely untrue. We do look into places that other people avoid. Photographers are curious to see and capture what is around them. That is part and parcel to being a photographer.

I am always curious to discover unique scenes. My finished photographs are interpretations that generally differ from the raw source images. It is highly likely that someone will view any photograph I make as a misrepresentation of reality. That is a consequence of the common belief that photographs capture truth rather than light and shadow. Capturing a fraction of a second in time will always be out of step with the human eye in some way.

The images of the musician and ranch house share a common frame of reference. They were both captured from outside a building looking into interior space. Both are biased by my detached point of view and approach to the subject. I have no idea what the musician was playing because I could not hear the music. I also have no knowledge of the lives lived within the abandoned farm house. They are literally moments in time that strike a visual and emotional chord for me. They are interpretations of the subjects that were in front of my camera. Another photographer will interpret these scenes differently.

Jazz Seen

The heyday of Jazz performance photography is long over. The great masters of the genre and the musicians they captured on film are gone. Those wonderful gritty dark club interiors were of course captured on film.

As far as I know the best album covers ever printed were for jazz LPs in the fifties and early sixties. They were often as avant-garde as the music itself. They mirrored qualities of the music transposed to the visual medium. Maybe you can tell I’m a jazz buff.

Every now and then I try my hand at jazz photography. For one thing I can’t resist music. In this era jazz musicians they are something exotic. They have a presence that may have been overlooked when the music was more common. Of course the best players were never main stream for the pop audience. You had to pay attention to the music and the musicians. They demanded that the audience be up to their standards.

Tall

Agave in Bloom - Dryden, Texas — Agave in Bloom – Dryden, Texas

An agave in bloom is a spectacular sight. Flower masts can tower twenty feet or more above the ground. Sadly, they bloom only once then die. Often the dead masts will remain upright and tall in the landscape for many years, providing safe nesting sites for birds and rodents.

For native peoples the agave was a multipurpose toolkit providing food, drink and fiber. Later inhabitants preferred to make tequila, mescal and sotol from various varieties of agave. They are the legendary firewater of desert America. Makes you crazy they say and don’t forget to eat the worm. Mescal and hot sun is a dangerous combination.