Fishy Christmas

Well, Christmas is over and the last of the relatives have filed back home. I found myself with the holiday blues this year, despite throwing a big party and eating a lot of good food. I hope I'm not having an existential crisis, but it felt a little empty for me.

What rituals are left for the non-believer? It takes more work if you don't go with all the ready-made meaning and ritual provided by a belief system. And I didn't have the energy to re-invent meaning for myself this year. It could also be partly that I dearly missed being in California, and running on the beach as in Christmas's past.

Bracing for a look at my new year's resolutions traded with Sean last year at this time. I have his and he has mine..we are going to crack them open this weekend and see how we did in 2011.

Above by Paul Klee. Expect to see my own interpretation of this still life at some point in the not too distant future.

Sharon Core Blows Up

Alex and I went to see the Sharon Core show at Yancy Richardson on Tuesday. It was so fantastic I almost drooled on myself. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed something this much in a gallery. Why not just look at Dutch still life, you ask? Well, because this is better.

There much subtle and delicate play going on with the sets--luscious paint and real life all mixed up so it is hard to see where one ends and the other begins. I felt I was falling into the pictoral space as I peered and peered into them as they gave up more and more secrets. The compositions and colors are stunning. I am fairly sure that Sharon grew all these plants, because that is her process, as with the vegetables in the Early American series, and the baking she did with the Thiebaud series..

This kind of insane attention to detail and level of obsession can be off-putting, but not here. We are invited in, and the perfection seduces, and winks at us. This may be her best yet. Show is over at the end of the week. Hurry if you haven't already seen it.

Take Me Back, Blogger?

Well, I was hasty. As usual. I am not sure I can live with Tumblr. It is pretty useless with text. You can't even make a live link in text the High Res template I selected. And there's no menu! As Carolyn pointed out, that is super-lame. I'm really not finding the perfect photo-blog solution anywhere.. Thinking I'll do what Timothy Archibald suggested, and continue to use this blog for process stuff, but post the finished images on Tumblr. I can actually do that, and without too much procrastinating. Yes! Expect links to finished work on Tumblr sometime early in the new year.

In other words: I'm back. More soon. Sorry for the confusion.

Above photo shot last weekend, part of an experiment coloring in the shadows..Last time I tried black, this time yellow..

Goodbye Blogger. I'm in Love with Tumblr.

Blogger, it's been fun, but I've had to move on. I've really had about all I can take of your limited format. I've gone batty over the teensy images, and tried everything I could think of to remedy it, or to ignore it. But it's just sad to have a photo blog with tiny images when better options exist.

Henceforth, I've officially migrated the blog to Tumblr.

Please visit Rebecca Horne Photography blog in it's new home. Rebecca Horne Photography/Blogger will remain here as an archive for now.

Black Old Sun

This started as one thing and ended up as another, as often happens! I experimented with a hand mirror reflecting direct sunlight--I was amazed to see that the sun seems to actually burn into the film and shows up black in a reversal.

I had a giant scan made of a polaroid image recently, because it was selected to be on the cover of a forthcoming book. More on that later. Turns out it makes a pretty good big image, after all. I've been wondering how to incorporate some of these polaroids that I love and that can never seem to be repeated in a film version, no matter how hard I try. But now I see, I can just let them be. I'll just make big scans of them, clean off the dust, and have them printed, eventually..

Recent Favorite Pari Dukovic

I went to Atlanta last weekend overnight to be on a panel speaking to students at a small school called Portfolio Center. The panel featured three of the PDN 30 from this year; Justine Reyes (who I've blogged about here before), Pari Dukovic and Matthew Kristall. It was so refreshing to be at a school where people are making things just for the hell of it. The students were great, and it was a pleasure to see the work of these young photographers more in-depth. Pari Dukovic's work struck me as bold, emotional and raw in a way I really liked...He mentioned welcoming mistakes, and going against what he was taught. When he was told to develop the film for seven minutes, he developed it for 20 minutes...
Hope to work with him in the future.

Barfing Salt, again

I worked on this barfing salt shot again this weekend. It was hard to see what I was doing. However, now that I have the contacts in hand, I see that I need to shoot this with a flash, or more light for a faster shutter speed. The only thing really moving in the shot should be the salt. The figure is too soft..

I'm hope all the blog format changing has not been disorienting for readers of this blog. I reverted back to the simple Blogger template as the new "dynamic" templates from Blogger do not allow any kind of homepage information, and I need my disclaimer and note about what the blog is.. One result of trying the new templates was that it encouraged me to post more widely on other topics.. and I think I will keep doing that.