Friday, July 20, 2012

It's All About Druids


Had an interesting day working on what turned out to be a collaboration. Had breakfast with Michael yesterday morning. Among other things we discussed the next competition at the camera club which is DOORS. Well, I don't normally enter the competition even though I general shoot the assignment. I thought that maybe I would like to do something Jerry Uelsmann. Talking with Michael inspires that sort of thinking. My original thought was to do a single oak tree in a field that I could insert a door into. Like most photographers I have dozens, okay, hundreds, of door pictures.

Paul Saltzman and I did a tree project three years ago that I have sort of continued--especially the tree in religious mythology slant. I have always wanted to do something along the lines of the Celtic Druids where they considered the tree to be the portal to the upper and lower realms.

I mentioned the project to Alcy and she suggested a cemetery--way off what I was thinking but we drove over to Hollywood because I knew of a couple of trees there that might work. We shot several trees then drove over to Glenwood where I shot more trees and then photographed the doors on several of the crypts.

So the afternoon has been spent inserting doors into cubby holes in trees. Okay, old people do strange stuff. I won’t enter any of the photographs since my photos frequently start a debate about whether or not they are in compliance with the assignment and truthfully the photographs are not about doors or trees, they are about Druids so the club is probably correct. They also get a little put out with me when I say that the photograph is not about the object photographed—which these are not. The trees and the doors are simply the elements I am using to tell the story that I am enjoying playing with.

Anyway, I have to give credit to Michael and Alcy. They were kind to collaborate on the project.



I even found an angel at Glenwood that I had never shot before--which is hard to believe as often as I shoot at Glenwood. An a strange face, or faces, in a tree--that's Alcy's fault.



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