Heartland Views

Life in the heartland is a never ending encounter with changing weather. After a hard and heavy winter, we now are faced with floods that flow from more rain and melting snow. Hopefully we will sometime soon see a return to our normal change of seasons. I will know when this happens because the summer winds will be blowing through our area. I shot this photo last summer when the grass was dry and the sky was blue. Hopefully with a bit of luck, we will soon welcome another “Summer Breeze.”

I was watching a show on crop circles the other day. I have to say that for one to truly believe, one needs a healthy dose of faith and fascination with the unexplained. In homage to all the good folks who pursue these fields of mystery, I would like to offer my own version of what I believe was a true crop circle…or should I say cloud circle…that appeared in the skies over southwest Iowa one summer day last year.

One of the most common questions people ask me is, “Do you manipulate your images?” I always enjoy this question because I honestly answer, “My images are emotionally accurate. They are accurate representations of what I saw and felt when I made the shot.” Now, let me be the first to admit that this might sound like a blue sky response…a reply that might not make a whole lot of sense. So here is my visual reply to all of those good folks who have asked me if I manipulate my photographs. This is a before and after example of one of my favorite photographs. The bottom image is a straight out of the camera…an image that has had absolutely no editing/manipulation. The top image is my final image that I made  from the before example. The final image is truly emotionally accurate. It is exactly what I saw and felt when I took the original shot. I hope this helps folks visualize how I strive for photographs that are captured not created.

This old boy is really haunting me. I worked on him all afternoon. Hopefully it was worth the effort. This is one of my first attempts to find some hidden black and white treasures in my image stash. This is not as easy as I thought it would be. But then, most good things take a lot of work. The color version of this image is called “Sky Rider.” It is in my flickr collection. I think this version is fascinating. As I have often noted, if you look closely, you can see a man on a horse in this image. I tried to ride a horse once many years ago. That is the last time I will do that! From here on in, I will be happy just taking photos of these wonderful animals, even when they take on the look of a ghost rider.

Fidelity, originally uploaded by Heartland Views.

This is one of those good news/bad news moments. The good news is that I have finally managed to upload most of my photographs to Flickr. This is a wonderful photo sharing site that I ignored for far too long.You can find my Flickr photostream by just clicking on the photo badge to the left of this post. The bad news is this image is a very good representation of how my mind feels right now after uploading my photos to Flickr. If you have a chance, I would really enjoy hearing what you think of my latest venture into the deep dark world of social media.

It is hard to believe, but there was a break in the weather for two days in a row. I had to take advantage of this by shooting another sunset from my deck. This image, if you look very closely in the center, captures a jet flying high overhead. As one who has a well established fear of flying, it should come as no surprise to hear that this is my favorite view of an airplane. This image reminds me of my son-in-law John, who is an airline pilot. He is a first class individual, a man who asks for so little and gives so much. Who knows, maybe some day I might dig up enough courage to actually take a ride on his airplane. In the meantime, however, I will happily keep my feet on the ground as I look for a red-flight making its mark on the heartland skies.

I read an outstanding article recently on how one can find hidden treasures in one’s color archives if one is willing to work with the same images in black and white. After I read this, I went back to one of my signature color images and ran it through my favorite black and white conversion software plug-in. This is what emerged from that quick conversion. It looks like I have a lot of new images to work on in the coming weeks…which is wonderful news given the miserable weather we have had for the past couple of months.

Here are two quick thoughts. First, we had our monthly Second Fridays art event in Council Bluffs Iowa. As always it was a good time for all. I had the pleasure of meeting several good folks. In addition, my patrons were on hand, supporting me as they have for so many months. Once again, I would like to thank you for your generous and continuing support! Second thought, I read an article the other day stating that one should have a Unique Selling Point (USP) to help promote one’s artistic career. With that in mind, I came up with my USP which will be on my new business card. Here is a preview of my new card and my new USP. This USP is an homage to one of my favorite characters. My wife could not figure this out. I thought it was obvious. Hopefully you will read well between the lines…the top two lines…to know what I had in mind when I designed my new card.