Thursday, September 22, 2011

limited

 In my limited way, I'm changing up the images for the Community Garden show by combining two...a great leap in my skill level. Now what I'm wanting to do is change some of the black and white images I've made from the color Senior Center garden photographs to extremely high contrast to get them out of the realm of unsuccessful black and white images transferred from digital color.

I never imagined that I'd be taking color photographs, much less doing all this community work only in color...and that if I wanted to use any of them as black and white for purposes of reproduction in booklets they would look like shit, more or less.

At any rate, the above image is of the little guys that I was watering by cups full that have now grown up into adults which no one harvests. There are a few melons growing larger slowly, lots of spinach, a zuchinni, some beans, marigolds...all waiting for someone. And my video of Aweis talking with the sisterhood at Temple Emmanuel is waiting to be shortened. But I've run out of energy. Not time, just energy.

The good thing is that a fellow, a retired, professional, ballet dancer, offered to help me in some way and I realized that perhaps he'd be willing to frame the photographs -- taking the cheap frames out of packaging, Windexing the glass and hoping that spots won't appear on the images...   and he was. So, we've met at the Senior Center where i discovered that he's also totally useful at organizing, setting deadlines and making suggestions that the exhibit needs text because what are these people doing, anyway. Now I've made him my task master so that I can buckle under and fulfill his orders -- another 15 prints to frame by next Thursday.

Actually, I'm way ahead of the game...and the Sr. Center show is almost done, about 37 prints, and the other one at the Chelsea Cafe, about 30 prints is a third done..        I absolutely hate the charettes that the city planners I worked for a hundred years ago seemed to love...the all nighters before an aspect of the plan was due, everyone working feverishly.   I'm not good at staying up all night to work, though many people really enjoy the last minute pressure and do their best work during it.

So, in order to fill the slots left in what I want to show I photographed bocce (what a pleasure, a beautiful morning, all these older folks, a few in their nineties, a lot of teasing and laughing), bingo (you might win a dollar), a small class of women who've been talking about poetry on Thursday mornings for years, and a luncheon of folks who, predominantly, speak English -- not as much fun as the previous fiesta I video taped that celebrated the independence days of various Central American countries in early September.

If I wasn't so busy, I think I'd be depressed, but I'm too busy to know....
Getting older is odd...
thank you all...who visit me...and apologies for my poor visiting skills...