A photo array of the Louisville, Kentucky skyline as seen from across the mighty Ohio River:

A crazy loon on Hanscom’s Lake in Northern Wisconsin:

and a flying turtle about to lay her eggs (modesty pose):

Once great American farm buildings:

Not knowing whether I was attempting but failing to improve my creative bent, I entered a few pieces of digital art (hard core photographers would call these “computer-manipulated photos” just as we used to call early color photos “color-manipulated photos”) into a few competitions with very respectable judges. And guess what? I’m actually winning prizes! Small vindication, I know, but vindication nevertheless.

I thought you might enjoy my sharing a few of these with you.

First, there is “Hollow Heart”, my current pride and joy. This image started as a rather boring photo of a bird known as a snowy egret. I won’t bore you with the details, but after a few dozen hours of TLC, this picture:

became this image:

So what, you say? Well, it took a statewide first place (blue ribbon) across all the Florida Council of Camera clubs (some 96 clubs, I believe). Additionally, it took another first place as part of a juried exhibition at the local visual arts center. Most significant, this latter distinction was accompanied with an actual triple digit cash prize! Go figure. I even had to fill out a W9 IRS form. How cool is that!

Another image started out as a nice although rather mundane head shot of a sandhill crane;

however, with more than a bit creative effort, this became another award-winner, albeit ‘only’ 20th in the state of Florida (I’ll take what I can get!):

Addtitionally, utilizing my favorite model, my beautiful grand-daughter, I snagged this nice snapshot (ignore the black spots in her hair – an artifact of resurrecting the “before” photo in the time I allotted to assemble this post):

and generated a significantly more dramatic piece (high caliber black ‘n white ain’t easy):

I further increased the drama with some unique & rather complex black matting with a black frame mounting. I actually squeaked out another ribbon in the same juried exhibition (sorry, a photograph of a photograph is never very good, but you get the idea) – a few artificially generated tears? a nine panel window pane? eyes are a window to the soul? title: “A Soul Shattering”? Work with me here, people!:

I have several other pieces in an exhibition, and while they are quite nice (I thought), apparently weren’t worthy of awards – the competition was quite spectacular, after all:

“I Wanna Iguana”

“I AM the Job”

“Lady in Red”

Currently entered into another state-wide competition with judging now in process:

“Dragon Whimsy” (yup, also a result of another close-up & moody Iguana encounter)

“Earth is an Orphan” (yes, folks, it IS a metaphor)

“Soul of Greece” (my friend Miltos from the island of Milos in the Aegean Sea)

Not sure how much talent I have, but sure is fun tryin’ to run with the big dogs! And I seem to be more prolific in visual media than in writing. Oh well. After all, this IS retirement, is it not? So sooner or later I’m bound to get it right once in awhile.

Thanks for showing an interest. Gene

Dateline: Sunny SW Florida afternoon on the shore…

So I’m sauntering down the tide line, wading in gentle waves slapping my flip-flops, sporting my “big glass” (my new 80-400mm lens) on the big Nikon.

I’m convinced that the babes were speculating why this old man was hunched at the shoulders. Well, kids, its because this new lens weighs about forty-six and a half pounds, that’s why.

Why? Well, the delightful news on the codger beat, is that when you’re sixty-two years young, sucking in one’s gut for the beach babes is more of an amusing concept than a worrisome practical matter. I mean, really?

THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is the primordial reason I found it compulsory to snap a few frames of the one guy on this beach this day that I was very sure was actually more ancient than your reporter.

Enjoy…

One day they dragged us old folks along to Ft Myers Beach. Of course, yours truly brought the camera and took pics of our kids, the sand, a  few babes and their hulks, as well as other children at play.

How about a rare winter solstice lunar eclipse that only happens every 350 years? Yup, that’ll do it, at least for that repressed photojournalist buried deep inside of me clamoring to come out.

In fact, even though I didn’t remain awake and exposed to the elements for the entire three hour event, I captured the highlights with digital camera, zoom lens, tripod and remote trigger.

There are a few things that make a lunar eclipse particularly and uniquely interesting to a photographer.

First, unlike a solar eclipse, it lasts a good long while, so set-up and capture can be a leisurely activity.

Second, the lunar landscape changes color rather dramatically as the event unfolds. This happens because the moon radiates the reflected hues of solar light arriving from the earth since in this case, the earth is precisely between the sun and the moon.

Such a scenario makes for some exciting changes in illumination of the moon’s otherwise monochromatic surface, and in a rather historically significant manner, no less. 

Notice in the partially eclipsed image above, the orange hue with a bluish tinge at the border between light and dark? Fascinating. Not only does the moon affect the depth of earth’s oceans, but in the case of a lunar eclipse, it would appear that the oceans also affect the moon – at least chromatically.

What paints a profound sense of fascination with such astronomical events on the minds of mere mortals? The fact that we’re witnessing a moment in time that will not manifest itself again for centuries? Might this be a feeble attempt at pretending immortality, or a grand gesture of offering our children a glimpse of the future? Do we greedily grasp at something larger than one tiny snapshot of time’s incessant passage by preserving such moments, perhaps reminding ourselves that we are indeed a part of that, if only as a temporal observer?

At least I captured a picture of it with my humble kit, as the Brits would say, and it gives me great pleasure to share it with you, with pen in hand,

Gene

P.S. Honor me by perusing some of my other images at www.GeneJurrensPhotography.com.

This monochrome (sans color) world is yet another sub-culture within the ranks of mad artists known as fine art photographers, and I want to be part of that culture, at least in some small way. But I’m definitely a ‘newbie’ who’s learning.

Take a mundane image I snapped on the boat at anchor the other day:

Nice brass, but a crummy picture with no creative composition whatsoever, other than maybe an interesting perspective (down looking up).

Enter PhotoShop, after reading a book on the art of black and white photography (but very little practice):

Improved composition by cropping, increasing contrast, and punching in some light & shadow correction. Much better, but still, what’s the point of this rather mundane picture? Where’s the mood? Could I transform a crappy picture of a shiny brass clock and barometer into something low key and moody? Can it be done? Enter black ‘n white, baby!

Notice the slightly bluish tint (a bit too much, actually), giving the image a cooler affect? Also, I applied some additional cropping and a good deal of sharpening to get the dust to show up on the lower instrument. Jacked up contrast to make the play of light and shadow more provocative. An interesting circular reflection lower right that I tried to accentuate (only partially successfully). And the deep shadows leave just a little to the imagination to conjure.

Another piece I’m not as happy with, but forging through mediocrity is always a way to hone any skill…

Original photo – sort of interesting, but ordinary:

Seeking a gritty effect that would punch up the image and imagination, I went for the following look… what do you think? Doesn’t this look lilke the deck of an old work boat that’s at least a hundred years old instead of a finely maintained contemporary yacht?

Next step is to go further than taking color photos and removing the color. Now I plan to intentionally shoot images in black and white, ‘seeing’ the world in shades of grey rather than in color, and look for images that are best captured that way.

Another tool in the kit, as they say.

Cool stuff.

How far out can a really good sniper guarantee a clean kill?

How long a walk does it take to completely lose civilization?

What’s the distance between two large neighborhoods in a city?

How long of a walk does it take to reinspire a dormant imagination?

About a thousand paces?

I’m almost two inches over six feet tall with average legs, making my stride slightly over thirty-eight inches. It’s considerably shorter in soft sand. More like two and a half feet at most. I share this with you because today I’m measuring one fanciful little piece of my life measured by a couple thousand paces on a round trip stroll down a jungle path.

I found it truly remarkable that even now, ten percent into the twenty-first century, how quickly all things human — sight, sound, smell — can still be made to disappear in less than thirty short minutes. Even more remarkable was my discovery of many small natural treasures, some of which were pleasant, others grim, all wondrous.

This morning, however, I first spent a few hours out in a cinder block hut in a field with a small dedicated cadre of amateur radio operators, practicing the setup and use of emergency field communications. After all, we do live in hurricane country, and weather emergencies almost routinely knock out conventional reach-out-and-talk systems.

Feeling good about doing something for my community this hot Florida morning, on the way home, an impulse drove me to treat myself. I did so by taking a rare hike into some rough territory in search of inspiration for a unique image of the wild — even if mostly born of my mind’s eye. My car almost found its own way to the tiny parking area of the Charlotte Harbor Buffer Preserve, here in Southwest Florida.

Half an hour later, with camera and lens slung over my shoulder, I found myself deep into what felt like a mix of woods and jungle whose lumpy floor was mostly white and some gray sand. I could now see that much of it was overgrown with the greenest of grass and weeds, punctuated by rotting stumps here and there, in rainbows of browns. In fact, there was a good deal of dead and dying stuff everywhere — even stinking carrion. A dead possum, or what was left of it, could be seen in the midst of no less than half a dozen turkey vultures. These are ugly birds whose stench is derived from constantly bathing the ends of their wings in their own putrid urine.
Amidst this lazy, almost slow motion frenzy, a lone sentinel towered thirty-five feet over this grim dance of death and life. As the twisted ghost of a long dead tree stood suffocating in a heavy cloak of emerald kudzu, I imagined this apparition to be wielding either a stabbing weapon or a wand. Perhaps she was in a quandary over this spectacle of odious carnage that lay unfolding at her imaginary feet. Not wanting to reap her wrath, I quietly stole several rapid-fire photos and reverently backed away.

Lots of live stuff too. An ornately dressed orange and yellow and black butterfly, singular in size, lighted on a nearby crumbling stump and offered a delightful counterpoint. Where on the wheel of life had the butterfly landed? From crawler to cocoon to flights of fancy to dust on a rotten stump, does he have days or weeks to wonder, to aspire, or to simply crawl or flit from place to place? Is his only purpose in life and death to inspire others in the food chain to wonder? Or to just eat?

Lots of stillness. Lots of movement. Natural, not groomed. Beautiful. Raw. Delicious in its chaotic orchestration. Rich textures bombard me. Quite different than the fastidiously manicured and entirely predictable marina resort community where we live. I’m not afraid to admit that this city kid harbored just a hint of trepidation. At the same time, I found it delightfully simple for my imagination to meander along with the rest of me. But I guess that was the point of this soon-to-become foolhardy hike.

The sun beat down brilliantly and incessantly from a mostly clear summer sky. I had long since left any visible trace of man’s hand behind, except for the camera over my shoulder and the clothes on my back. I realized, at that point, that is an unfortunate rarity for me. Contrived, by design. Once I had turned sharply away from an aging welded wire fence topped with a single strand of severely rusted barbed wire, it was just me and trees and sand and stink and fragrance in this intentionally untamed tropical forest. I continued to follow my very personal choice of a sandy but overgrown path.

I was having fun getting fundamental in a small way, not unlike the guilty pleasure of dirt under your fingernails, perhaps a grimy spot on the end of your nose, gratification born of fixing an engine or planting a tomato. A bit off the perfectly proper path we’re often expected to walk ever so correctly.

Fortunately, not much was biting, except the occasional fire ant finding himself suddenly and unexpectedly transported on one of my ankles or toes. You see, I wasn’t wearing boots, not even shoes. Nothing but my ever-present flip-flops, de rigueur for this part of the world. The heat index was well over one hundred degrees, so the sun was biting as well. I could feel the tops of my feet searing as I walked, but the more painful sensation was the heat on the bottom of my feet. If I failed to lift my next step high enough, the toe of my flip-flop would scoop up just enough hot sand, trapping it between sole and sandal. Reaction? Shake it out ASAP, before baked sole.

All in all, my impulsive decision to take this walk was definitely not turning out too badly, although the freshly laid cloven hoof prints directly in front of me, somewhat larger than the palm of my hand with fingers spread wide, caused a thoughtful pause. We have wild pigs in these parts. Very big and very black. Some are over four hundred pounds. It turns out they’re not much of a threat unless they accidentally run over you, or they perceive you are threatening their young. This fact was not governing my thinking at that point, however. The prints in front of me were pointing away, so I moved on without much trepidation once reason triumphed over a fickle tickle of almost fear. We have panthers as well. Very protected and very shy. I saw no evidence of one of these cats.

After shooting maybe a hundred pictures, dialing in various exposure settings as a guard against my own lack of photographic confidence, I ultimately came to undergrowth so dense it would have been foolhardy to proceed, I did an about-face at this virtual dead end to start my return trek to the car. By now, I was feeling confidently primitive within this time capsule of my invention. Casting aside concerns of skin cancer, I cast even cast off my shirt. For an hour, I was king of the jungle, and kings are not to be fettered by rags of man’s hand on their regal frame. Only the sweat of my royal labor was now my cloak of office.

With my mission accomplished, on a whim I began counting my steps on the return trip. This also vectored more of my attention toward ground level. I had unconsciously been avoiding unfamiliar vegetation, particularly since both feet and ankles were mostly naked, and because this green stuff was fairly dense and not entirely avoidable, no matter what.

This is when I noticed other delicate imprints in the sand. Snakes leave a distinctive wispy trace of their frequently interrupted path. Jerky. Lots of wisps in this sand that start and stop. Lots of small ones. Made by the diminutive but deadly poisonous coral snake, perhaps? It was now ridiculously obvious that my choice of attire took on an element of sheer negligence. With the car now in sight, this was not the time to die from stupidity. 

It wasn’t until later, when I had returned home to jump into a badly needed shower, that I noticed my feet were covered with a medium dark dust reminiscent of charcoal. But I recalled the sand  being mostly white. Then I remembered seeing a controlled burn of dense undergrowth nearby, along the road recently, a proactive method of fencing in wild fires that frequently occur here when brush is dry and sky is lightening.

This dust was persistent stuff. Only a stiff brush would release that dirty stain from my troubled soles. I had apparently ground it well into my sand-hardened callouses. The few fire ant welts could not be scrubbed off, but the brush helped to numb the itch quite nicely, at least until I could find the Benedryl creme.

Finally purged of sweat, dust and dirt, I dwelled on how much can happen in the span of a thousand paces out, and could have happened during the thousand paces back. Not quite half a mere mile each way. Not even an hour of my life, which I had likely and unwittingly risked injury, at the very least, in my impetuous ignorance. I’m trying to convince myself that inspiration derived from this short trip into the bush warranted the risk. But all in all, a pleasant walk is always its own reward. Next time, however, I definitely wear shoes, socks and pants.

Someone was definitely watching out for me today, a thousand paces out and a thousand paces back.

Well, here’s the deal. If you’re curious, read on. It won’t take long…

After I was honorably discharged from the US Coast Guard Search and Rescue teams in 1973, I had developed a line of thought predicated on at least two premises.

First, this was a time when the Viet Nam war was still raging, and most every newscast was brimming with morbidity. Back then, the media delighted in reporting body counts on both sides of the line, for example – daily.

Having been drafted into the Army, I knew I had thirty days to enlist in another branch of service, so I enlisted in the USCG. As a result, over the ensuing four years, I was directly involved in saving over thirty souls.

Second, during that same time, however, I also witnessed not-infrequent failure. I took this very personally. I lamented my own inability to save every life threatened by the sea. As a result, my own mortality punched me squarely in the face. I also developed a chronic intolerance for failure of any sort.

Handling human corpses wasn’t a daily occurrence, but unhappily occurred often enough to instill in me a sense of horrible wonder. To this day, many of these tragic memories are still emblazoned in my mind, and my dreams, with vividly bizarre details, untoward events usually fueled by utter human stupidity, culminating in entirely avoidable tragedies in almost all cases.

Infant corpses were the worst. 

Once I lapsed back into being a civilian again, and a few years on a Liberal Arts campus, I often waxed philosophical in those days. In retrospect, these epitomes of largely existential babble were more therapeutical for me than truly philosophical, nonetheless amusing to me now.

And as we all know, writing of the fabric of the human condition can’t be just about happiness and feeling good. There is an inevitable duality in our condition – good, bad, happy, sad, love, hate, epochal, trivial… One side cannot exist without the other. One cannot truly be appreciated without carnal knowledge of both slices of life, in my humble opinion, a truism shared by philosophers and prophets throughout the ages.

As we all have experienced, the fabric of all life events obviously influences our thoughts, hopes and dreams, our aspirations, our outlook, our writing. And our photography.

As I re-read some of the quasi-poetry I wrote back then, I was enchanted by how differently I feel now, but feel compelled to share a few of those decades-old perspectives. Some of the interest for me is the robust range of the human condition–even my own–perhaps especially my own. Certainly not to be ignored.

I still love the bizarre constructs of poets like ee cummings. Not sure why. Unconventional, to be sure. Celebrates different. Probably the bleeding heart liberal facade that I sometimes paint for the amusement of others.

I hope that helps put these old mental meanderings into some sort of context for you. Not sure why I felt compelled to explain all of this, but there you have it. Maybe I still need a therapeutic pen in my mortal hand. Maybe that’s what writing is entirely about?

Then:

Now:

Gene

Loneliness was always the most intense

Amidst the crowd so indelibly cold.

Distant at arm’s length, they took offense.

So often, it seemed your soul had sold

For a measure of cheap jealousy, always on sale.

No matter how you felt, you were seen as too bold.

Or perhaps you just thought you would certainly fail

When others were threatening you with what they were told

Of your shallow indifference to their empty inadequacy,

Or their perception of your periphery tightly rolled,

Into an understated cancerous indelicacy,

To pillage and burn your dubious affectations. So droll.

Is it fitting and appropriate that their ineffectual efficacy,

Who, in the midst of indefinitely infecting your shallow soul,

Were pretenders of honor and innocence as their prophecy,

Yet armored with their careless anonymity as a whole,

For the last time, every time, an equally careless mendacity

… At your onerous expense? A sentence without parole?

Gene Jurrens, December 20, 1980

Among placid, molten merriment,

Viscous bubbles waltz.

A ponderous and befitting occasion.

Not bragging her boisterous belch,

The crater spits her fury.

A lady in waiting impatiently,

With knowledge of graceful millennia.

Tucked within her girth,

The hollows of pulsing bowels

Scream deeply from within her wavering breath

To exhale eternally and so hotly.

She withers my weakening frame,

She turns me to ivory gold,

Never missing a nerve,

Every instant unfolds

An icy trembling memory.

Entices, engulfs me tensely

To a slowing umbilical end.

Forget, relive, and die

To all reality save one…

To caress her anguish is to know

That all answers are all eternal.

Gene Jurrens, December 30, 1980