Lost!!!

This photo was a "shoebox" experience about 30 minutes ago. In a quest to find photos I have been ignoring, I started at the chronological beginning of a library of digital photos that has close to 50,000 pictures. About 300 pictures into my search, I found this. I don't remember taking the photo, but I do remember the class with great fondness.The light source was a single 150 watt bulb and the camera was my Canon 1D, which represented the state of the art in DSLR photography in 2002. The camera cost $5500 and do I dare say that it was worth every penny? It had a whopping 4.4 megapixel sensor!The "shoebox experience" is what many of us have encountered when we are searching for something in our closet and we come across a box of forgotten photos. I am sad to say that decades from now, no one will have a clue about all of the digital media that we put into boxes. If the 8-track tape and the floppy disk are evidence of the ephemeral nature of electronic media, imagine what will happened to hard drives and compact flash cards we are using today.If you want to enjoy your favorite digital photos years from now, you need to get them printed. And then put them in a shoebox.

A Little Prayer

For the first time in two years, I have updated my blog's look. I've been contemplating a change for a while but fear of the unknown kept me at bay. When you change themes in blogs, all of the photos have to be resized, hopefully by an automated process. And who knows what you'll get?But it looks like things are working, though if you aren't using a 21st century web browser, you may have problems. Let me know if you do.Here are a few of the changes:

• A more user friendly interface with links to older and similar posts
• An ability to purchase prints through a pro lab
• An interface that works great on iPads, iPods and iPhones (no javascript!!)
• And a nice slide show at the top of the page

Those who have been reading my blog for years will probably hate what I've done. But I'm not going back. . . . 

01-28-12 Dubrovnik's Stradun

I have several photos I took in and around Durbrovnik, Croatia, and when I post them here, I wonder how many tens of thousands of other tourists have photos from the same location.But anyone who has wondered the same thing knows that there is something special about having your own pictures. It is perhaps some odd way of tourists marking territory.

01-23-12 Squall Line

I was out on the water and hoping the rain wouldn't come my way. It didn't.

Summer Blue

For the last two days it has been foggy and because of the snow cover, it has been mostly white.So I went looking for pictures of summer and this is what I found.I suspect that this is one of those photos that has more meaning to me than anyone else. (Translation: it's not a great photo but I like it.) But you do have to appreciate the pure blues of the sky and water in this photo.And you should have been with me the morning I took this. It was one of those quiet mornings on Lake Oahe that I dream about. It was cool but there was promise of warmth. The only sound was that of birds calling and of distant cattle lowing. You would think that a sailor would yearn for wind but as I'm sure I've said before, there is something pure and spiritual in floating quietly on a body of water in a place that is anything but empty.

A City By the Sea

This is a view of the outskirts of the city of Dubrovnik in Croatia.

The Quiet Gallery

Saving His Skin

I took this photo several years ago when I led a Watertown High School student trip to Rome. We had a free afternoon and one of my students and I made the trip to the church of San Giovanni in Laterano in Rome. This church is remarkable in many ways but I was captured by this statue of St. Bartholomew, carved in 1712 by Pierre Legros.In brief, Bartholomew was martyred by being skinned alive. But during the Second Coming, he is resurrected with a new skin. The artistic version of this story that I am most familiar with is in the Sistine Chapel in Michelangelo's brilliant Last Judgement of Christ. In that version, too, he is holding both his old skin and the knife that was used to flay him. In Michelangelo's version, some art historians say that the face on the old skin is the face of the artist.I don't know whose face is on the sculpted version I am showing here[smugbuy gallery="http://scottshephardphoto.smugmug.com/Fine-Art-Photography/Fine-Art/21122937_fHW9Lh"]

The African Gallery

Just beyond the pottery featured in yesterday's post I encountered this scene. Maybe it's not at special as I think it is, but I liked how the human on the left complemented the figure on the right. It results in symmetry that would be absent with the standing woman. This was taken at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Fixed Orbits

In this case I was confronted by this collection of pottery at the beginning of the museum's African collection. The spherical shape and the brilliant arrangement of these pots reminded me of circling planets. Thus the title of today's post.

Magic Mask

New Orleans is gearing up for Mardi Gras and so some of the shops along Bourbon and Royal streets are stocked with masks. This one struck my fancy because of its color, though I'll admit that the processing for this one (as with yesterday's post) involved some pretty strong software filters.

A Study In Green

I was wandering through the French Quarter and I bumped in to the Louisiana Supreme Court Building. I took several photos but this is one I liked the most.This is an iPhone photo and I'll admit that this photo is heavily doctored. I started in an app called Filter Mania and finished in Instagram. Like it or not, doctored photos are all the rage these days.