Obama and his high level of deception

As a president, you'd have to be supremely wise and quite cunning to get there.

So for a president to deny knowledge, or simply disagree the with actions of congress, is a farce. There's no way a person of that magnitude cannot account for the actions of congress, let alone unwittingly pass the bills that come before their very own desk.

There is a blanket covering for all this, and it's the 2-party election system. This creates the dust cloud that is needed, so outsiders cannot see what's actually happening. Behind every elected official, every deal, every law, every act of congress and it's figurehead, there is a conveniently placed, and compromising attack on our liberties and someone is getting paid for it. Obama knows this, and he has his too. 

When you take into account the overtly fashioned Wall Street-lining of Obama's cabinet, it's pathetic to attempt any sort of denial for where his party favors are going. 

This false sense of tension he has created between the Presidency and it's members of congress is to disguise the underpinnings of every deal that comes to the floor. 

Senate bills will get either get passed, neglected or vetoed, but all of which is for a very specific reason. The public catches wind to some of these and either rallies behind it or throws their hands up in disgust, but no intended or reciprocal action of the deal ever plays itself out. Instead, the law is taken behind the scenes to be gutted and strewn into a new sense of monopoly and we the people are never the wiser. We only see it's effects in the constant upheaval of our nation and it's pathetic sense of economy.

Nothing good has come from the grandeur motions of Obama. He spouts his rants amidst the chaos and confusion allowing for people to continually fall prey to this notion of him being the great rescuer of our nation. That, or Obama is continually given his unwarranted pardon for the "mess" he walked into. Obama stepped into the perfect stage for acting out his play on deregulating the economy and continuing the trend of giving more power and wealth to those that already have it.

It's a smoke and mirrors game. The public is totally fooled by his speeches and attacks on congress, while the fiery demands and cheap attempts at bravado against the enemies of "good will" act out in some other universe. 

What Change has resulted because of Obama? When does he get held accountable for the housing market that tanked and when does Wall Street get the proper attention of a President to take down it's stranglehold of all our investments?

Or (sarcastically speaking), is this all included in the stimulus package for his second-term, where Obama actually follows up on all the claims he promised in the first go?

What's even worse is the second place nominee to Obama, the overtly-fascist Romney. Granted his lack of consideration for the non-wealthy is rather black and white, it's not his ability to undermine and pursuade the public like Obama, no it's his means to enact total devastation on our working class. It's a pity we cannot elect better persons, but rather, forced to endure this seemingly endless charade of embezzlement and fear.

Don't take no crap people! If something feels wrong, it probably is.

Isaac's in the Neighborhood

Tropical Storm Isaac made it's way across the Florida Coastline this weekend. There was some pretty heavy rainfall with winds reaching 65mph.

(Click to enlarge/use viewer)

Top of the "No Swimming" sign completely submerged under 3' of water..

And after more rains, the lake had risen even more..

The tree line that's usually 10 linear feet away from the shoreline..

Noticed our favorite foot bridge may be impassable..

Nope, no chance of getting across here..

Pooch sure liked the easy water access..

Tropical Storm Isaac, come and gone.

Blue Skies

So the altruistic experience of free diving in the big ocean, coupled with the underwater cinematography of this, has continued to be most joyous reason for why sunny Florida is so great. Every dive is a new adventure, and the sightings, are never a bore.

 

In this instance, just minutes after I'd slipped my fins on and was floating in the crystal clear waters, a trio of Spotted Eagle Rays glides underneath me. They couldn't have been more graceful. I dove down to watch as they made their elegant passes and admired the coloration of their skin. Though it would be far from the biggest spotting of the day.. 

As we let the current drift us out near to the end of Palm Beach's inlet, we crawled up and over the rocks that separated the southern and northern parts of the jetty. Sightings of a manatee had been coming and going and sure enough, just as we slipped out of our fins to call it a day -- a sighting of our own is made! A large, dark mass is spotted not 15 feet from where I was wading at. Quick to delete some of the last pictures we took, I make chase of the creature without any fins at all! Scurrying to catch up, I watched from close behind how the big fella made his little fins push off in the sand to keep himself going. Once I got alongside it, the manatee began with the rear fin and took off toward deeper waters. I signaled to the pair of divers what was headed their way, and slipped back to watch as the creature faded from sight.

 Such marvelous encounters and much, much more is to come.

(Sept / 2011)

Under the Sea

Recently, I've ventured down to sunny WPB, Florida. I've been itchin' to get my dive legs going, and finally that aspect of my life has started to materialize. Starting off, the dives have been most excellent, but due to recent hurricane Irene, things underwater have certainly shifted themselves. The environment has drastically been changed and the tides are still recovering from Irene's after effects. That being said, there's still plenty to see and much to find and with the recent addition of Sony's new Vegas software, I've gotten to involve my fingers and design senses for the production of recent dive footage.

And as we head out of jelly season, things are startin' to look up already ...

Psychometry Reading

Carol Golemboski
Stereoscope
Silver Gelatin Print

This spring Carol exhibited her Psychometry series at the Rowe Arts Gallery, and taking the chance to attend the accompanying lecture with the opening, I was able to receive insight as to her methodology and inspiration for some of the images. After browsing the works, I became drawn to the various objects depicted in her images. Some were teeth, some were hands, some were photograms of small animals, and towards the back along with the later parts of her series, I saw stereoscopes being used in her images. I had a chat with the curator about the novelty of these items and how to photograph for their use. It was neat to see Carol reference this object, as a lot of her scenes depicted common novelty items.

Working with a Hasselblad 2-1/4, Carol gave account to how hard it was for her to begin scratching the negatives. For anyone that works with film, you know that the negative is all you have to revert back to.  If a print becomes botched, it can be redone, but if a negative becomes scratched, it requires reshooting altogether. After overcoming this feat, she felt liberated to make the marks become part of her methodology. The scratches were done intuitively based upon the image itself, often in conjunction with the shapes of the subjects themselves and sometimes expressive in nature matching the overall feel for the image. It often created a vignette for the picture plane. 

Most all her works were printed at 20x20 square format, with exception to her earlier works. For this print in particular, I felt as though it were in motion, as though these enchantments were being spun around the object, conveying the sense of a seance. Carol was interested in the popular superstitions attributed to her found objects, and for many of them, the objects selected were associated with varying points in her life. For a stereoscope, people were fooled by the appearance of a multidimensional space depicted in a 2-Dimensional picture plane. The lure of this image is still playing on the age-old hype of darkroom magic.

Retouch Extravanganza!

So given the recent assignment to retouch our professors face, I was inspired by the constant sighting of him with his son to do a bit of a tribute to how we look up to our fathers.


I think that sons are inspired by the tracks their fathers have made, and seek to push out further into the wild frontier than their predecessors. To boldly go where no man has gone before.


Happening to occur on the 50 year anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's voyage into space, it serves to be an example of what a contemporary frontier man might look to be.

Delinquents at Work

Collection of images as a pre-shoot for the final project at Jackson Training Center, Concord NC.

This series came from the abandoned dormitory residences found leading up to the main parlor house which is to be our primary shooting location. It wasn't easy for us to be in these spaces all the time, but after awhile they became familiar to us. Still, the most unsettled feelings came from within the residence buildings. It wasn't hard to imagine what life was like there, minus the personalities of the administration, because most of the structures were still intact. Of course, observing things in color was one way of viewing it, but I had no idea what the level of eeriness would be until after I had developed the b/w images.  

Considering the lives of patients there, and even under a heavy dose of mind-numbing medication, you wonder what level of scared and hopelessness one might've felt if they were a residence in this place. There is hardly a sense for freedom and a return to things normal. 

Being a delinquent means a lot of things, but I would describe it as being wild or untamed and independent, free from societal control. To have that spirit ripped away from someone and fed drugs to suppress those inhibitions must've been excruciating to all parts of the mind, body and spirit.

Visiting the residencies first helped us to become aware of our shooting location. Getting the insiders account to life in the Jackson Training Center as first a resident would better us in developing the narrative for our final shoot. Hopefully, the persons and places involved will then register in the final images. From that we could see a story unfold like none other, because it is our imagination teamed up with the preconceived notions we developed go hand in hand.  

Delinquents in a sense that we will reconstruct what we believe to have happened there and not take from it the press release version of how things we're conducted.

Film: Kodak Tmax 100 ISO

Camera: 120 format holga

( Mar-Apr / 2011 )