Wednesday Work (Thursday Throwback?): Carleton Watkins: Yosemite (1863)

This past Saturday was "National Record Store Day", did you all attend to your neighborhood favorites? After feasting on bagel sandwiches overflowing with mozzarella cheese and marinated basil and tomatoes, we stumbled into a fairly new used records&books on 9th, down in Philadelphia's Italian Market. I couldn't decide on a record. But I did pick up a few used books. One, Susan Sontag's novel "America", has this Carleton Watkins image above on the back cover, and I was reminded: Susan Sontag can write, and: Oh wow - look at that photograph.

Carlton Watkins' photographs do what all good photographs should do (in my hungry opinion), they elicit adventure, they call for ambition, they show the viewer how much and how big it is out there - all the while without bringing with them any fears. There are no fears of falling in Carleton Watkins' photographs. We are viewing great feats of nature, but never are we at the cliff's edge. There is no physical danger here, nor is there chance of psychological or emotional harm. There are no others in Watkins' photographs with which we are to compare ourselves. We are not being watched or watching. The land is ours and ours alone, and the land is there to be taken.

Evading many of the trappings found in traditional formal photography, the rectangle or square, the whole thing placed behind glass - Watkins shot for stereoscopes (the View-Master, its like that), his images were cut down, placed in circle shaped mattes.

Watkins' worked on what he loved. He worked and worked and worked. He made photographs. I can't imagine he was thinking about a market, or an audience, (I could be wrong here, but let me have the dream, pretty please....)

I WANT TO BE (like) CARLETON WATKINS.

Follow your spring dreams readers. And read up on your history players. You can't hustle unless you know the game. These are my words of wisdom: T-Dubbya OUT.

(Carleton Watkins, photographs and info - here.)

[Aaaaand, if you're not into throwbacks (but really, either way) give this guy a listen: Hennesy Youngman]
Seriously.

Wednesday Work: Wedding Season

Have you all been to as many weddings as I have this wedding season? Maybe I am at that age, but even so - it sure seems like there have been A LOT of weddings this summer.

Last weekend with an impromptu invitation to a wedding reception of friends in Ithaca, this weekend a little more stressful family affair farther upstate. (Really? My cousin that is soooo good at mimicking while whistling while not speaking, in the game cranium is getting married? He can do that?!? Fantastic.)

Anyhoo, weddings weddings weddings!

Have you seen the photography of Love Me Do? They are a bunch of local ladies here in Philadelphia with a great take on wedding photography.

They have an ever-growing portfolio, which you can check out here. And an extensive blog where they update wedding images as they shoot them.

When the time comes I would love to work with Love Me Do, unfooooortunately in front of the camera I become an Abraham Lincoln on the $5 bill, though he still might have more of a smile than I am able to pull off. Have you seen the awkward "farmer and his wife" - yes that's me, the farmer- balding, perplexed, uncomfortable. (Look it up.)

"Boobs are for weddings." And cupcakes are for work days. Is this one over yet?

Hope you all have a good weekend - we'll be at a wedding! (Congrats Andrew!)