Why Enter?
This afternoon I’ll be mounting, matting, and framing “Brooklyn Bridge, October 2023” for a show that I’ve been juried into at the Attleboro Art Museum. Why bother? As author Seth Godin puts it, “Shipping creative work… is not the same as being creative.” When creativity lives on the hard drive, only I see it. Or if I work hard on it I’ll show it to my Creative Accountability Group. But since that group is spread out around the country we still only show each other work that lives on our hard drives. Back in the olden (film) days an image existed only when printed, from the darkroom or from (the late) Ritz Camera. It’s now conceivable that I’ll go months, or even years, without producing an actual physical product, regardless of how much time I put in to make it interesting.
Self-published books and magazines are a reasonable alternative, but even then I rarely “ship.” The exception is sharing authorship with another, like my friend Norman, where we push each other to create a finished product. I also like to have students in my classes produce a final project that they can hold in their hands (street photography, portrait and still life photography), and back in my full-time teaching days students would publish their own portfolios as end-of-year projects. I hope that some still have them.
So I’ve shipped, once I drop off the matted, mounted, framed print in Attleboro. I’ve shipped, strangers will see it, and perhaps someone will purchase it. If not, my kids can take it to the dump when I’m gone!
Brooklyn Bridge, October 2023
Figawi Race 2025
Wow! What an exciting day on the water! Our Sports Photography class at the Cape Cod Art Center had a wonderful day shooting the sailboats lining up to the start line for the 2025 Figawi Race from Hyannis to Nantucket, about 30 miles across Nantucket Sound. Our Sport Photography class had a front row seat to capture images as the boats headed for the starting line, ready to race in a complex formula that allows for an overall winner and victors of each sub category of sailboat. From an aesthetic point of view the starting line is terrific, with sailboats jockeying for position prior to the sounding of the starting horn. Should you ever have the opportunity to watch a boat race on television, much like curling, the strategy is mesmerizing. Looking ahead to 2026 join the Photographers of Cape Cod meetup group and/or the Cape Cod Art Center meetup group to be on board next year’s floating tripod.
Experimental Photography
Thanks to the Duxbury Camera Club for having me as their May speaker on Experimental Photography! A vibrant group, we talked about various ways of “playing” with our images, ranging from motion, ICM, multiple exposure, blending images, Photoshop, cell phone apps, and AI. Below is a small sampling of the images we discussed throughout the evening.
Historical and new “experimental” images from the AIPAD 2025 show.
From my presentation: motion, lens flare, painting, multiple exposure, reflection, abstracts, AI, minimalism.
Model shot 2006, covered bridge shot 2023, multiple exposure & Snapseed, images blended in Midjourney & touched up in Photoshop 2025.
AIPAD 2025
OK Mike, hit refresh! (Inside joke with my accountability partner)
I had the good fortune to be in NY City last week on a consulting gig and was able to get to the Park Avenue Armory for the annual AIPAD show, checking off another item on my bucket list. AIPAD is the Association of International Photography Art Dealers, and what a show they put on!
Where else could I have seen original Matthew Brady, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, and Richard Avedon prints alongside some of the most collectable photographic artists currently working. Vintage prints, unusual substrates, inventive techniques, and a sense of the market were all on display. Having know about this show, but never attended, I was overwhelmed with the amount and variety of images, and was able to incorporate some of what I saw into presentations this month on Experimental Photography (going back 100 years in some cases) and on the History of Photography. Snippets of those coming soon(ish) to this blog, but below see some of the work that was shown. Apologies for the poor quality of cell phone pics, but it should give you an idea of what was on display. Times 100. I’ll be back on April 22-27, 2026, and likely every year I can make it while still upright!
Lee, the movie
The film Lee, starring Kate Winslet, who also produced what she describes as her “passion project,” was not nominated for any academy awards, a huge oversight in my considered opinion.
Why didn’t my favorite movie of last year get nominated for an Academy Award?
February 11, 2025
The film Lee, starring Kate Winslet, who also produced what she describes as her “passion project,” was not nominated for any academy awards, a huge oversight in my considered opinion. Based on the book The Lives of Lee Miller by her son Anthony Penrose, her story had largely disappeared from photographic history as she produced little work after World War 2. More than Edward Steichen’s model, Man Ray’s muse and lover, and Picasso’s friend, she was a tremendous artist in her own right. Her story is worth knowing.
The broad outlines: born and raised in the suburbs of New York, she became one of the most acclaimed fashion models of the 1920’s in New York City. Moving to Paris, she apprenticed with Man Ray (developing the Solarization darkroom technique) with whom she had a tempestuous affair. As war descended on Europe in the 1930’s, she became a photojournalist, with David Scherman one of the first to photograph the liberated Dachau concentration camp. In the aftermath of the war, her trauma caused her to descend into alcoholism, leading to a fairly neglectful motherhood.
Her son, Antony Penrose, knew nothing of his mother’s life until after her death, when in cleaning out her house he found boxes of negatives she had shot and stories she had written during the war.
Penrose also published a book of his mother’s photography, much of it from the war, some difficult to see. Another take on a small slice of Miller’s life, her affair with Man Ray, is imagined in the historical novel Age of Light by Whitney Scharer.
Winslet has brought new life to Lee Miller’s story, here she discusses the film with Christine Amanpour on PBS, including some of the background on Miller.
One of Miller’s most iconic images of of her, not by her, sitting in Hitler’s Munich bathtub after coming to the city from Dachau, was featured in a New Yorker article coinciding with the film.
While Winslet received a Golden Globe and AACTA International Awards nomination for best actress, and the film received a nomination from BAFTA for Best British Film, she was snubbed by the Oscars.
To answer the initial question… I don’t know. Perhaps too dark a subject for these times, perhaps misogyny on the part of Academy voters, perhaps too niche of a film, or too small a box office. A shame, as this is a film that needs to be seen, perhaps now more than ever.
And so it begins…
Raw to cooked, in writing and photography.
Appalachian Trail, Pennsylvania, 2017
An attempt at discipline, at following a practice, at working out my writing in public. Progress has been slow on the tome I’m endeavoring to write: “Buddha and Bowen: A Systems Perspective on Resilient Leadership.” That’s a different website, fortunately for my photographer friends. But the impetus for writing has led me to try my hand at a daily (weekly? weakly?) writing exercise about photography and the creative life. Some of this will be based on my own work, some will be based on the work of others. I hope that you find something of value here, even if not everything is to your liking.
The image above was captured in 2017 while scouting an Intersession trip for The Nora School. It languished in my Lightroom catalog until last December, when I went searching for a boring image with which to challenge my Creative Accountability Group. As part of our monthly Zoom meeting, we take a common image to edit, each in our own way. The results are pretty remarkable in the range of images we produce. Below is the original image, unretouched.
Alas, the Appalachian Trail backpacking trip across the state of Maryland did not occur, as my father passed away a few days before we were to leave. All that remains is a bittersweet memory of a snowy March day at the Maryland/Pennsylvania border, and the raw material for a group of creative artists to see beyond a banal scene to find some element of beauty.
Appalachian Trail, Pennsylvania, 2017, raw file