Moving on....finally a title

I have thought about this for a while, and I will be moving my work to a new blog where I will focus on Penn Station BB shots. I am calling it "Penn Light."

I hope you will follow me there.

This is an amazing experience. I have so enjoyed getting to know all of you.

Peace.

Railroad is running again without delays and there is much snow around. Cozy vacations with good warm meals and company.

Back to work next Monday, make it next year.

Cold day, warm heart. Good day for oatmeal and hot chocolate.

Praise the Lord and pass the road salt for the icy front steps.

There is a line in a popular Christmas poem about children having thoughts of sugar plum fairies dancing in their heads. Well, I dream of Jeanie with any colored hair on an August subway platform.

Just kidding.

Been watching the Dylan documentary "No Direction Home." I finally joined Netflix and the streaming feature with a wireless router is fantastic. The Dylan movie is not available to stream so I rented it on DVD.

Also got the Dylan Mono box set for Christmas but have not opened the discs yet.

Hope you are all well, my best.

A BB shot form "summer in the city" on a December night when here we are having blizzard conditions on Long Island. We expect close to two feet of snow overnight and high winds.

Christmas was great for our children. Today one we has one indoor soccer game and preparations for the snow.

Yesterday Santa brought me I some postcards for Fillmore and Avalon Ballroom shows from the late cities - small versions of psychedelic posters created weekly for bands playing in San Francisco - Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, Pink Floyd, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jimi Hendrix.



This Poster was created by Rick Griffin.

Everyone is calling Santa or Sinatra. Thank you for a year of visits and for all you share....

Santa baby, just slip a Sable under the tree for me;
Been an awful good girl, Santa baby,
So hurry down the chimney tonight

Santa baby, a '54 convertible too, light blue;
I'll wait up for you, dear; Santa baby,
So hurry down the chimney tonight.

Think of all the fun I've missed;
Think of all the fellas that I haven't kissed;
Next year I could be just as good... if you check off my Christmas list;

Santa baby, I want a yacht and really that's not a lot;
Been an angel all year; Santa baby,
So hurry down the chimney tonight.

Santa honey, one little thing I really need...
The deed... to a platinum mine, Santa baby,

So hurry down the chimney tonight.

Santa cutie, and fill my stocking with the duplex and checks;
Sign your 'X' on the line, Santa cutie,
and hurry down the chimney tonight.

Come and trim my Christmas tree with some decorations bought at Tiffany;
I really do believe in you;
Let's see if you believe in me...

Santa baby, forgot to mention one little thing... A ring...
I don't mean on the phone; Santa baby,
So hurry down the chimney tonight

Hurry down the chimney tonight
Hurry, tonight

I am getting used to a clean lens and have to modify technique - speed of pan, amount of intentional camera movement and preference for lighting levels.

I am glad I cleaned the lens and enjoy this new "toy."

For a long time I used the dirty lens to enhance anonymity.

Off today for Christmas so for the next week or so I will rely on my backlog of BB shots.

My best.

After a year and a half finally I cleaned the BB camera lens for the first time. Much sharper and faster iamges which I have to get used to using, again.

Life still blurs, sometimes. A rarer pan to the left.

I work tomorrow and then I will take rest of month off to relax with my family....Peace.

"snowy.owls.dreamnt"

Cold, again, inspiration - Mick's name in it if you look carefully....

'cold.snap"

A week ago Leslie Avon Miller of Textures Shapes and Color was kind enough to post three of my BB images in her new tumblr site. Her new site features many provocative and inspiring work - paintings, quotations and photographs. I provided song lyrics to go with my three images....Leslie is a gifted artist and an inspired communicator.

Leslie cropped my BB images which provides an editorial perspective to my full frame from the hip low resolution work.

The three images she chose can be found here , here and here.

Thank you, Leslie.



"land.scape"

This new quilt features a BB images from the e train. Have a great weekend.

5th Ave platform in evening. Teens here today but no wind....winter.coat.

Penn light - morning rush.

Continued use of the pan and the dance.

Penn Station morning commute today - everyone seems to be wearing black because black is the new black and black is not as good "eye candy" for a blackberrry image. I am drawn to reds, blues and greens.

Hope you are having a productive and artistic week. I am less in touch with blogging artists as I was a year or two ago. I miss that electricity.

ja.va

Been listening to Shakira "Hips Don't Lie" a song she sang at the opening ceremony for the World Cup finals four years ago.

Penn near Subways restaurant. Nice yellow light there. Subways is the home of the five dollar "foot long" sandwich. It is called sub, hero or grinder depending on where you live and eat.

Out west they call a sodas (Coke, Pepsi et al) "soft drinks."

I prefer a stout ale.

late.july warmth

LIRR platform at Penn walking back towards stairs mid concourse.

I believe the picture in the past post is one of the best "traditional" photos I have taken with my BB - shot form the hip and panned and a miracle did result because this is anything but controlled.

Some one could come from the other way, I could be spotted, my finger missed the button, I pan too fast or too slow or my sweep moves upwards or down.

A blog fried wrote recently and commented that she did not take my Blackberry photos seriously. I do, I have come a long way since my first BB images. For every image like in the last pose there are many more moving towards the blur.

Sometimes there is magic that is still and other times less frozen.

Something else I need to address is my general subject matter. I prefer to photograph women. The photos are made with a nod towards Richard Avedon.

I know I am playing with boundaries - candid taken under poor light and close quarter contact without intimacy.

There is respect in these images and I hope that is seen if not heard.

Penn rush hour. Happy Thanksgiving and my gratitude for your visits and kind words.

Late July subway commute. Going through old BB shots, sometimes.

"a.drift"

Found a left.over quilt....fighting off the flu even though I had a flu shot a month ago.

cough.drop any.one?

Just when I thought it was safe the NY Post reports:

The MTA had to fumigate parts of the Ninth Street station on the D line in Brooklyn after the creepy-crawlies were recently spotted in a subway booth, NYC Transit officials said.

Employees hit the booth's emergency button and "immediately left" after they were seen 10 days ago, according to a transit complaint titled Infestation of Bedbugs.

"I lost my mind," said Norman Pou, a station agent who noticed the bugs. "Where there's one, there's two; when there's two, there's more. There's always a whole group of them."

Workers trapped the bugs in an envelope and closed the booth, with freaked-out station agents refusing to go inside. Managers fumigated the area the following weekend, and the booth has since been reopened, union officials said.

According to MTA policy, all complaints about bedbugs are investigated and contractors apply pesticide when needed.

The pests have turned up on wooden benches in some subway stations, including Hoyt-Schermerhorn in Brooklyn, Union Square in Manhattan and Fordham Road in The Bronx, according to city Housing Preservation and Development Department officials.

A transit spokeswoman said there have been no other complaints about infestations on subways or buses.

Early August when the livin' was easy....

E train platform Penn, morning commute. One person waiting for less crowded train, sitting and reading. I walked by and shot from the hip, pausing slightly to avoid too much blur, but careful not to stop too long since there were people right behind me. Have to avoid a pile up.

A BB ballet, of sorts.

I would not sit on that wooden subway bench due to the out break of bed bugs in NY City. I experienced bed bugs in a mid priced hotel abut ten years ago and it was awful.

Note that the picture in the magazine is a pro trait of a model - luck beats skill 5 out 10 times, do you think?

It's beginning to look a lot like Thanksgiving.

Return to the same tunnel - softer focus this time.

The lens on the BB has gotten a bit dirty over a year and a half and I have never cleaned it. I have considered this softening as part of the process since Leica like clarity has never been the BlackBerry's calling card. A dirty lens also requires more time to get light levels so this also has increased blurriness.

Seldom do I discuss technique here.

There is this short tunnel from the downtown subway entrance to the main Penn Station Long Island Rail Road promenade that has a slight incline and figures there are softened by the cold fluorescent lighting that reflects off warmer light gray walls. It can be quite crowded there and in the afternoon you can sense some commuters tiredness as they walk up.

Almost, heading home.

E train heading south tonight. Crowded train, you can see my reflection if you look hard.

Beware of ghosts with a craving for ATM cards. Penn light. Happy Monday.

E train uptown platform, Penn.

There was a time a few years back when I thought the fur trade and fur fashion would end, it has not.

Penn pan pal. Weeks old when the sun still warmed midtown sidewalks.

Thank you for your visits.

Penn morning. Maybe a Madison Avenue man. Does anyone remember Greg Kihn?

There was a time when most businessmen men wore hats.

5th Av. platform this morning.

Go here to preview selected songs from Bruce Springsteen's latest album, songs framed around 1978 when he was working on his "Darkness" album. Bruce cannot leave his old work alone and publish it as honest demos the way Dylan repeatedly does in his Bootleg series. So these songs are not 1978 Springsteen but 1978 as polished by a mature Bruce recently.

I would have preferred the demo originals, warts and all. In 1978 Springsteen was in his artistic prime and still very very hungry. Still "The promise" is worth your time if you like the Boss.

The link will be shut down around the 16th when the CD is available. Got to love NPR.

Uptown E platform, Penn.

5th Av. uptown E platform - 9:15 AM. Almost darkness at the edge of uptown.

Bob Dylan has come out with his earliest discs in Mono. I collect old Mono recordings, once remastered. It is how songs were prepared for radio consumption until around 1968.

As I have stated before the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" is a mono masterpiece. Just got the Dylan discs in from Amazon. So Johnny will be "in the basement mixing up the medicine..." These discs have gotten good reviews.

Going towards the E train....

Waiting for popcorn at Penn.

Penn Station, near K-Mart, near elevator to Track 21.

What should one read - a tabloid or the "New York Times?"

"world.serious"

During a brief summer between childhood and puberty, many many years ago, I thought to myself, "Someday I will have sex and the San Francisco Giants will win the World Series."

Many summers and falls have gone by and many baseball teams have gone to win the championship, but until last Monday the Giants had not won since 1952. I had heartbreaks in 1971, 1987, 1989, and worst in 2002 when we were 5 outs away and lost it all over the next two games.

When I was small I lived in Cuba and Cubans back then, before Castro, loved the New York Yankees. You can see many references to it in Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea where the fisherman thinks much about Joe DiMaggio.

It is easy to be a Yankee fan.

Go Giants, a team with great pitching and no super star profesionals who made it a real team effort.

"temp.est"

Go San Francisco Giants.

LIIRR platform in Bellmore and the E train BB subject. An August flashback when the days were long enough to see daylight on the return commute. Soon the return of thick winter coats and shades of somber black and browns will abound.

We should never complain about heat and humidity.

Penn Station, corridor off of the A train entrance.