Photo II, Spring 2006

Zaki Jarre’s piece seems much like the artist himself. It has a sweet tenderness that you want to protect but it carries with it a sort of dangerous naiveté that will get him hurt one day. That’s bullshit right? I like his piece. I like that he took an image that wasn’t so powerful and gave it a frailty. The silk does that. The stitching does that. He seems to be hovering over dangerous waters but never falling in. It is the magic trick that is being young.

I think he doesn’t care though. Its lack of preparation was unsettling. It seemed thrown up on the wall and that bothers me. The wall was the wrong place for it. It needed a box or table to lay on. It needed to be kept as precious as it was. I don’t think he cared much and that’s coming form interaction with him and his lack of presence at the show.

Good art is so rare. You know?

I have great ideas and lousy follow through. He has real technique and no concern. It’s like a joke except without the nun and the priest. It seems like he might care more. Maybe he does, just not at the moment.

I reviewed Joe Heide’s Phoenix at the recent Student Art Show at TCC. First it’s a little derivative but only if you know the source and assuming Joe doesn’t know the source, I reckon I’m the only one who cares.

I like the fact that he shows his body. It has a feminine quality. This is a pretty tough thing to do. I ain’t skinny and I know how difficult it was to use my shape on film. I can’t stand to see my own face on film. It’s a real effort to do that so Joe’s putting his skinny pale self out there is guts. Any pretty girl can put her wares out on the table. Joe took a personal chance. Guts.

I like the image. It’s messy kind a blend. I mean the two parts are pretty dissimilar. I like the idea of the blend. It needs stronger parts, more connected, the fire is too real and the body too soft. It’s an either or thing in that piece.

It’s weird how so much of the work I love from fellow students is clearly work in progress. I’d like to see it finished but the idea that Joe was reaching for something, even if in the end he fell short, impresses me. I like to see people reach. It seems like, since no one but us and our mama’s gives two shits that failure is just the same as success. You might say, well I know how not to do that now. Maybe down the road it could matter but why?

It’s like that Zen story about the rooster. I reckon the painter had more fun painting the 5000 practice roosters than the one perfect one because then he was done. Finished is pretty boring right now.

Oguibe Olu is a Nigerian artist/theorist who I just discovered. I mean to say that I am learning of his work late in the game. It’s conceptual but not in the obvious way. It exists without explanation which is my biggest complaint with Conceptual art. Usually you look at a Conceptual piece and once you get it, once you understand the statement being made, you’re done. It does invite you back. It does need another look because you got the message. At best, you come back in five or ten years and ask yourself if it still seems like a relevant message. Conceptual art tends not to hold up so well as by it’s nature it’s topical.

Olu’s piece, Brothers IV is with any explanation as is his piece Buggy. They are images or moments that ask us to think about them by the simple act of their hanging or installation but then there is this other thing: they stir. There is something of in the boys, there is something funereal in the Buggy. There is innocence. He gives us enough image that we might start the process of thinking about the idea, the concept and then he stops.

He wants us paying reverence to the child, to see the child in Buggy as special but he doesn’t say why. He isn’t interested in that. May we don’t need it but maybe it allows us to bring our selves to the picture. It is the trick of all good art. The less I tell and the more I saw, the more you might see it as open. It’s the first good conceptual art I’ve seen and but good I mean it doesn’t fall intot the trap of the one time fits all meaning that is usually implied in this type of work.

Brothers is different. It’s open just like Buggy but without the construct. It’s the ties. I mean I see how haunting it is, these boys have an air about them that is daunting. They seem tougher and frailer at the same time than, they are so on the cusp of destruction, of danger. These Brothers seem to me to be apart from the world. They more alive and ghosts at the same time.

And then the pants and tie are green. It says, these things are special and I imagine if you were poor and you had those snazzy pants and yes I said snazzy pants, you might be pretty proud of your uniform. These are school boys. That’s something to be proud of but they are also frail and this good fortune might get stripped away at any moment.

This project was a sack o' shite. I got this negative of this brick building and a tree but not even an interesting brick building and tree. I dioged out the building and drew cartoons of an alien named Ricardo. Babs was not impressed. They are not included. Maybe some day. I gave my partner Daniel a 4x5 negative of the girl from the Fabrication project. He made a contact print, tea toned it, put in this spindly old fromae witha locket, and old timey'd it up. I was very depressed and did this. I have exclude the third one, yes there were three, but you get the point. I also made masks of my face with eyehole cut outs that people could wear so that they could "see the world through my eyes". It livened up the entire critique and I'm pretty sure it was why Babs gave me an A.

I was lookig forward to the time I'd need for the Off the Wall project and I figured I'd do portraits. I was in Orlando and Voila! I got these. The first two are of a friends daughter at a party I attended. The second picture is of the girl's mother and my friend John. Both people are very dear to me. I'm only showing one of the pictures of them I submitted. I need to scan the others. I think there were actually three. I also included two images of my mother but I've not included those. Babs gave me a B because I submitted six prints instead of four. She said I needed to be more selective, that being an artist was about making choices and by including the last two, the ones of my two firends, I had chosen badly. I've lost the original note, sorry.

Fuck Ansel Adams. I hate that prick bastard. I am not a technical photographer. I' an intuative photographer. I am so lucking I got a B on this bitch. I won't even bore you with Babs remarks. Not that your boring Babs but these shots were not fun to make. On the flip side of things, I know how to do it and probably will calibrate my Crown Graphic now. These were shot on a Mamiya 1000DTL on Efke KB100 and printed on, who fucking cares. Also I've left one print off as it's flat, and while that never stopped me before, it just hurts to look at it.

Four Self Portraits

These are the images I'm handing in today to replace the one's Babs gave a C. I agree with her. They were C work. I'm not upset about that. I'm upset that so much went wrong. I'll post all the "went wrong" tomorrow. For now I'll just revel in the ungraded glory of this work.

We had this project called the “Free” project. Now this class has like four of us who think in terms of making art as opposed to just taking pictures. I ain't knockin' those other folks. I just have some bigger, maybe unsupportable, ambitions. And for this project we, after our most recent victories, put on our “A” game. Joe worked out this soft sculpture/installation thing using cyanotyping and these weird alien stuffed animals with all kinds of Fruedian text etc. Zach made a movie using slides. Daniel, well, Danny boy did a kind a country porn thing. Now I helped most of these people work out their ideas so I knew what everyone was doing right?

So what did Mikey do?

Project #1: photos of ethnic people holding signs that had question raising statements i.e. an Indian guy with a sign that said, I am not a Hindu, a non smiling black girl holding a portrait of a pretty smiling white woman etc. Not as interesting in real life though, kind oa boring, kind a cerebral.

Project #2 photos of Nashville from my trip to the Ryman and this jack ass brought a view camera. It was like 10 degrees. Not view camera weather. I got six shots on my Kiev using 30 year old TMax 400. Six boring ass shots.

Project #3 pinhole self portraits while drinking liquor. I should not even need to explain why that didn’t work.

SO.

The night before class and the critique, I’m digging through my negs looking for anything, and I mean anything and I found it in spades. I believe Babs, the teacher’s exact words were… “poorly conceived and weakly executed”. C

What went wrong? More than is on this page and I that care to admit right now. Enjoy this work or don't. Babs didn't.

We do one a week. We're supposed to find a photo or a book of them that is interesting to us and write something: what it meant to you, how it works, if it works at all etc. The ones I hand in have a copy of the image for her, Babs, to view but since this work is copyrighted or at least not mine, I have and will link to the artist's page or a page that shows their work or even the actual image I discussed.

These are my thoughts on the work, sometimes coherent thoughts, sometimes drivel. You decide. I'll post the rest as I do them. The ones below this post are the first six weeks worth.

This isn’t my favorite Barbara Ess work. (A shot of woman from the waist down in a frilly skirt with some kind of illuminated trim. She seems suspended in mid-air) It’s beautiful. It speaks to the dreaming line that floats between beauty and death, the flux it hovers over, the impermanent nature of everything. But it isn’t my favorite.

I haven’t ever seen my favorite Barbara Ess photograph in real life. I have only heard about in an article describing one of her gallery shows. It is a pinhole image of a hand-puppet shadow, an animal projected on a wall and the word "wildlife" scrawled on the same wall.

I am in love with the idea that you might paint with shadows and light using the most primitive means available and still arrive at a delicate result.

I am in love with the idea of the image: a false thing, the shadow animal, and the word signifying, telling us what it is but that it is not that at all. I love the lie.

I am in love with reality defined by negative space, defined by negation, defined by absence.

I am in love with the idea that dreams and reality merge, shadows creeping into the real.
This picture reminds me of those connections we make right before we fade to dead asleep, the halfling time when we hear the world around us, nestle in it’s perfume but what we see is a washy mix of our subconscious and the world shutting down around us.

It is how I imagine death, the slow separation of the sense. There is no longer a whole picture to be made, no meaning to be construed. We are at the mercy of our imagination and our memory so that maybe hell is not a place to go but the journey we take through our own life’s choices right before we pass into oblivion.

This is a quicky and I’m okay with that. I hope you are too.

I have Diane Arbus’ “Boy with a Toy Grenade” as my computer’s wallpaper. It was, for a long time, the way I felt all the time. I recently saw a copy of her contact sheet for that roll and it is funny to me how now that’s how I feel.

The boy looks so racked with anxiety. This little boy on the verge of letting loose a bomb even if it wasn’t real. It’s like the acid trip you might have where you believe you see your own death. It’s real enough in your head even it’s more a fantasy. This boy is gonna kill that bitch.

This boy seems crushed by his anxiety. He hates her. I also felt the weight of life that way. Everything was wrong and I had no control, just like this boy. I thought about suicide like some people think about the weather all day long. It’s always right in front of us.

That contact sheet was full of bad shots and missed moments. It was full of the boy getting it wrong. He was sweet and bright eyed, all the glory of unknowing rushing through him like a cool delicious spring.

That contact sheet was full of Diane Arbus’ frustration, her waiting for that decisive moment when fate would come together and give us that shot. It’s funny, the boy seems so plain. He seems happy and then bored and then annoyed. Diane is an intruder in his day. She is the glitch that seems to drive him mad.

You could argue out all the politics of the sixties that might make that picture a potent reminder of the war in Vietnam but I doubt, for Diane, that was the point at all. This was the freak she needed that day. It was how she could love, and if you believe Eudora Welty, that’s the only way you can make art work. You have to love your victim and your killer.

Diane drew out the monster in that boy. I reckon for arts sake it was worth it but I wonder if that boy sees this picture today and is as grateful. I have no idea but I look at it every day as a reminder of where I was.

My mama had died. I was broke and getting broker. My life was outta fucking control and all knew was eventually there was a silver bullet calling my name. And then something broke. You might want to know what I can’t say. Life lay its hands on my shoulders and all the muscles fell lose in it's grip.

It was just that simple. I still cry over mama. I’m still broke but I’m not afraid of it. It’s just life. It’s just art.

These days I let the weather change on it’s own.

Robb Kendrick’s work complicates my life.

You cannot look at this work as a man or as a woman and be an artist of any kind of value. You have to look at the body of the man and see his sexuality or his beauty as richly as you might see it in a woman and, if you want your work to matter, you cannot afford to look away. You have to own your gut.

Kendrick’s work, this piece in particular, has a rawness to it that sits in its construction. It is the novelty of tintypes that draws me. It is the artifact-ness of them. It is the idea that if you held it in your hand you would be holding the only one in existence, ever. There is one Mona Lisa. There is Night Café. Art should be like that. There is one moment, one vision, one heart.

It is certainly flawed, as the tintype process is so fast, you have to own the image even if the emulsion got laid down uneven or developed crooked. This type of process says the world is messy. It invites you to lay down in the unmade bed. It seems stained or soiled or unclean.

It’s imperfection is intoxicating but it is the rawness of the man in the picture that keeps me looking. He is unfinished. His tattoos are just black lines. He is bare chested. He is leaning out of the frame. His mouth, just opened and his eyes squint, seems to say he is unsure what Kendrick wants from him.

There is a subtle erotic nature to this picture like a black and white photo booth strip of two sailors arm in arm, in their sailor suits, grinning at each other. You might want to imagine them somewhere, unaware of their bodies, as they swim later that day on some foreign beach. You might imagine anything. I imagine this man as the Misfit, his eyes “red-rimmed and pale and defenseless-looking[1]”.

Maybe he’s just the Sal Mineo type, pressed forward, white knuckling the bed post for Jimmy Stark. It’s that kind a story that sits open ended waiting for the right person to sidle up to it and listen. I reckon it goes both ways. You have to be open to make it but you got be just as open to see what the artist has done or doesn’t even know he has done.

It seems to me that if you owned this tintype, you might put it some place special. Not like wall or a shelf but a drawer, someplace you kept those things too private for any guest, in your house, to see.

Good art is like that. It lays somewhere between the glory of God and the stickiest sins of the flesh, proof that in the heart's country we need have no boundries so that there could be no explaining why we tucked it away only the glorious blush of the unexpected.
[1] O’Connor, Flannery, A Good Man is Hard to Find.

Francisco Mata Rosas took this picture with an Ansco Pix Pano, a cheap plastic “panoramic” camera. It’s a 35mm camera that vignettes an already tiny image. You could crop your own shot and get the same effect and you could argue that a better camera could have made a better picture but I doubt it.

The boys and the dog are playing on a beach that seems less than ideal. There’s the bridge in the distance, maybe worse. I imagine that Mikhailov shot of the Russian men taking the waters out side a factory leaning against the concrete drain. It has that feeling of being off somehow. And the dog isn’t menacing like in Moriyama’s stray dog picture. He seems to be saying just leave us alone. (This was bullshit name dropping on my part. The last line is true though. The dog seems ashamed. )

It’s kind of pathetic and sweet. The photographer is intruding. I try to take my wife’s picture all the time. There these moments that I swear to god are beautiful in that “this is real life” way but she always catches me and the tableau changes to something posed or her hand goes up.

Rosas managed to get the moment. They acknowledge him and seem to want him to leave and it only adds to the image. I wonder if when I catch my wife and she catches me if the moment I am there to grab is the one right after she sees me and after she throws up her hands, that moment when she thinks I gone.

They look and maybe that was his chance to put the camera down and apologize for intruding but he didn’t - he stayed and there they were in a kind a Mexican existential stand off. Who looks away first? Only the dog shows his heartbreak and seems to be saying, "These are my boys. This is our beach. You make it less by watching."

Writing can be the same as photography. Most people just live. They get up, shit, eat, fuck and sleep until they die. I am so driven to get it right, to understand it, to show people what I’ve seen that I punch keys like the Penitent finger beads, mumbling to God.

This picture reminds me that art is not life. Words are not real things. Life is life. The irony being, how would I know if I hadn’t seen this picture and then tried to tell you about it.

Maybe it’s true that the photographer doesn’t have the right to look away, that the only choice is when to shoot.

Maybe a better picture could have been taken but I doubt.

It was tough choosing which piece best represents Dave Anderson’s work. Some of his work inadvertently complements the toy aesthetic and some takes a more mythological bent. I chose to view that work that crossed into the fantastic without the aid of a trick lens. I choose an image that did it on the strength of its own weirdness.

This image is so completely simple: two cloths pins on the line but to me, on first sighting, a hummingbird. I have to wonder what Mr. Anderson thought.

It is that vision, seeing what is not there but is there that draws me. He is seeing into the magic of innocence. Without sounding too sentimental I can remember that spark things had before I started comparing them to other things, before I started seeing them for what they were like because I had not already seen them before.

Mr. Anderson saw something. It wasn’t two just cloths pins.

There is that clear IKEA imagery that people have taken to as art. The image of the place setting, the pillow stack. Everything is crisp and clean-lined. Everything exists in those images in newness of their being.

I know how this can be a study of a thing. Edward Weston’s pepper shots and curled woman shots show us things, are deep studies of form. I appreciate that. I’m not talking about that.

I mean that empty commercial so what crap. It’s crap. It is the world without death and disorder. It’s what being in an anal retentive mind must be like but without the terror waves of disintegration that rush over them all the time driving them to set papers edges to match pens on desks.

Dave Anderson is different. This piece is simple but in motion. It lives in the world. It is full of panic. It’s heart is beating a million beats a second. It is completely alive and it is on the precipice of it’s own mortality.

It is two close hangers fluttering on the line. It is a hummingbird. It is the ticklish wind hours before the twister hits.

Normally, if you go all the way to Africa to shoot wildlife you bring a telephoto lens or two. Not Nick Brandt. He brought a Pentax 67, generally using normal to wide lenses. It was such an inspired choice, a portrait camera and in the case of this photograph, he used a shallow depth of field to “black” out the background.

He used a portrait lens. He made portraits. There is this criticism often leveled at the ethnographic photographers of the 19th century, much later after the fact, that somehow they were denigrating the subject by posing them or by creating situations that were artificial. It was the way of the time.

Like Avedon said, there is no truth in photography. There is a millisecond of time captured that we decide is the truth, it looks like the truth. So they never got at the truth. Their pictures created the idea of the subject that the audience could hold onto. Brandt creates the idea of humanity in animals that we can hold onto. He does it by taking apart reality, by softening, by making it fantastic and just unreal. There is an intimacy, a closeness both from proximity and something else.

On the particular trip he took to Africa that generated his book "On This Earth" he took something like forty rolls of film. Only four or five survived the trip and even many of those negatives were flawed and damaged. The one we are looking at, in fact, is one of those.

Mr. Brandt’s image is so strong it seems to defy the damage done to it. It exists despite that quality. This is very interesting, how do you decide to give up or when do you decide to give in? That is to say, how and when can it be alright to be imperfect? Photography has a long recent history of photographers bashing it out over the hair line difference between two “near” perfect lenses. Photography is a craft built on perfection. It seems so dizzying sometimes.

How do you live in the face of perfection? How do you address each imperfect day with such a challenge. There is the argument that control or mastery of the tools you have makes stronger. There’s no arguing about that. This isn’t about that at all. This is about that moment when you say, even wrapped in flaws such as this image might be, what separates it from any other images, what makes it so clearly better, more direct? When do you say, it does not matter that this image is flawed because at some level something is happening, some alchemy that is stronger than flaw.

The purpose of the oversized negative carrier, to show how you didn’t crop the image at all, has been superseded by the “cool” roughness it lends the image, the extra cache it gives the images, the authenticity. The question might be, what separates that from the image whose “authenticity” occurred naturally? Yes of course, there is the control aspect creeping in. One artist made it and one artist stumbled onto it but what does that matter?

It is the central struggle for me right now. My prints are generally flawed, marked my haste or sloppy technique and I have struggled to overcome this with few good results so what am I to do?

I use distilled water when I can. I clean everything religiously. There is just some glitch in my ethic that roughens things up, darkens things. I can struggle against it and be miserable or I can give in just a little, just enough to see if it will work for me, the way I use my hands in the lab is my voice as a photographer. It is an exacting craft but it is one of hand and eye and mind. The eye sees, the mind decides and the hand does.

Nick Brandt’s tender eye and his rough hand made this portrait.

We were supposed to make to Ortho generated prints, either Cyanotypes or Van Dyke Browns. I chose Cyanotypes for ease of manufacture. There are actually three and as soon as it gets taken of the display board , I'll scan and post it. These first two came about as such: I had to ambiguous images of graffiti and I had two ambiguous stories and I wanted to see how putting the two together would work. You decide.




What Babs thought: You have 2 strong pieces here, expressively wacky. They have a "hand of the artist" charm + power. The one that's under exposed and fuzzy could be done over but as is, no. Anyway, you only needed two. A!

Actually, the second one is the under-exposed fuzzy one. I burned and sharpened it in PS2 which sucks I know. More later.

These are the images for my Monroe Street project. The idea being we should find four conceptually linked images on Monroe Street.

In Honor of George W. Bush's 6th State of the Union Address: Winning the War on Terror

Babs' Remarks: The pictures work together thematically. The Holy Temple is printed too dark but the others look okay. I'm trying to cozy up to the toy aesthetic. I think this subject matter would be better served with a good camera capable of sharp focus. Keep looking for an approriate subject for that camera. A-

John's Remarks: These are friggin cruddy to great affect. I like the series. The picnic shot is the weakest of the four. It's compositionally similar to the Holy Temple and Labor Ready, which seem more specific to the place. Worn and beleagured posters on abandoned buildings are less specific to a place than the other two . . . Since the trailer shot is strongest, in my opinion (no words/text/graphics influencing my attraction), I see the opportunity for two diptichs or a diptych and a pair rather than a triptych and a solo drummer.

Tread's remarks: I think this works on many levels, photographically, journalistically and more importantly stylistically. Your works speaks without any description of what your assignment was... very nice.

Babs asked us to take our favoriteprint from Photo I, show it to people and ask them the following questions:

1) What is the picture about?
2) Does it remind you of something you’ve seen or experienced before?
3) What would you change about it?

So I preceded to show people a work print that was flawed at the negative level and the print level but still strong as an image. I wanted to draw blood. I wanted to see how nice my friends were. A clean print would have been too easy and the answers, generally predictable. I wanted to elicit strongvaried respomses.

I asked friends, family and a bunch of folks on toycamera.com. I got to hear from relative experts, and "just plain folks".

Here it is:

These are the responses I got. They end with a brief note to Babs about the assignment and what I learned about myself.

Mattia - Photographer
1) Complete loneliness and decay.
2) No.
3) I would have centered the tree.

Chris - Photographer
1) Loneliness and desolation.
2) Sure. Both feelings I've experienced and pictures I've made. I find my work deals quite often with themes of isolation, desolation, etc.
3) That's the hard part. I'm not sure how to approach this question without more thought, and not sure I SHOULD approach it. As a teacher myself, I'm wary of telling my students how I would have done something...instead I try to help them ask questions and make decisions that lead them in a productive direction, and help them make the images they want/need to make. But I suspect that's not the kind of answer you were looking for. I'll say this much: I very well might have made this image, but I likely wouldn't show it. It seems a bit lacking to me...an investigation or preliminary step, rather than a final statement. But isn't that what our work is... a process of investigation?

Laura - Photographer
1) Coastal erosion.
2) Reminds me of Louisiana swamps, but since it is such a lone figure, i would say the last remaining tree in the swamp. It seems very lonely.
3) I would make the sky a bit more dramatic with looming storm clouds BUT if you are just talking about the photo, right here, right now, I would use a higher filter and to kick the contrast up a notch, print is a little flat to me.

Tammy - Photographer
1) Well, it gives me a feeling of removal or isolation, and a reaching out to something- maybe reaching for freedom. Being left out...
2) Yes- but I can't put my finger on it. Post nuclear winter maybe read about in a sci-fi book.
3) In a sense of this very composition, I would pump up the contrast considerably; it would make a stronger presentation, but would maybe change the coldness that I feel about it.

Dennis - Entrepreneur
1) These type of photos to me ask "Not what I see...but, what does the photographer see"...and therein lies the problem as I will never know what he saw......but then again, I can guess and that is what makes the picture last and go on and on...........
2) I am getting old....................
3) Nothing..............this is an absolutely great picture.............how can I possible change something someone else sees...especially when I am still guessing on what they saw...............................!!!!!!

Paul - Psychologist
1) The erosion of time. The beach used to be 3-4 ft higher, and the base of the tree is bleached and gray and you could tell it had been sitting out there for a while.
2) It is indigenous to this area, esp. since the hurricanes. Also, the beaches are ever changing or decaying, whichever way you want to look at it.
3) There's nothing you can do, it's just time gone by.

Julia – Application Developer
1) I would guess the picture is about desolation. The dead trees and the empty landscape seem sad and empty.
2) It reminds me of this spot on the beach at Jekyll Island. It’s just sand and driftwood. The day I was there the ocean was really still. It looked just like that.
3) I can’t say what I would change about it but the border not being clean kind of helps the image. It adds to that feeling of being forgotten. When you display it I’d try to keep some of that roughness about the photo itself.

Will – Network Manager
1) Desolation.
2) Yes, I grew up in Chipley so I am very familiar with desolation.
3) I would have cropped it differently but then again I am not an art major so it would have been wrong. Plus, the way I would have cropped it would have lost whatever shoreline is in the picture and that would have been a shame.

Julie – Art Collector
1) Death (starkness and slight eeriness to the image) I am also struck by the beauty of nature’s forms, balance… it is a very quiet image.
2) Yes.
3) I have seen many photographs of this type, making use of natural material, particularly the dead trees.

Pola – Poet
1) Desolation. Aloneness. The beauty of being who you are. Nature's beauty, and even the beauty of it's ravages.
2) I have a beautiful little girl dog who has knobby knees that remind me of the knobby joints of this tree. I love this dog. My love for this dog makes me feel kindly towards this tree.
3) I would change nothing about this picture itself. However, it would be interesting to do a study of this scene at different times of year, different seasons, different weather... or even different times of day. Like afternoon versus night versus twilight versus daybreak. That would be very interesting.

Mike – Canadian
1) A very wise old tree playing his keyboard on the edge of a lake. He is alone and basks in his solitude.
2) Sitting on the edge of a lake, alone, solitude, time to reflect and think.
3) I would change my composition a degree to the left to oust the little bush baby on the bottom right, and get down a bit closer to the ground to get more of the creepy stumps in the foreground.

Becky – Photographer
1) Low tide, waiting, being alone, but not lonely.
2) It makes me appreciate being someplace that is not spoiled with commerce or overpopulated.
3) Maybe shoot it vertical.

Kent – Photographer
I like the low horizon - offset composition.
1) What's it about? The fragile quality of life on the edge, in this case, edge of the sea.
2) What does it remind me of? The aftermath of a storm, not necessarily Katrina, any storm.
3) What would I change? If I could change anything, I'd try for a more dramatic sky, strong clouds, or maybe seagulls. If I couldn't change anything, I'd be satisfied with this and look for something different. This is a story that's been told before. I like it, but I've heard it.

Tinker – Art Teacher
1) Fantasy shapes
2) Shore of mono lake; paintings by surrealist painter yves tanguy
3) No

Bill – Photography Teacher
I'm sitting here preparing to teach my photo 1 class this evening, but what the heck... I'll help bail you out.

1) Loneliness, isolation, a little angst.
2) Heck, yes. It reminds me of part of the Florida Everglades.
3) For one, the crappy processing. Composition is OK. Perhaps it needs a little more air at the top of the frame.

Dave – Photographer
1) The picture is about quiet. That is why I think it is some of the best work you have done. It is very peaceful. It is about nothing. It is balanced like Zen. When did you become a Zen photographer.
2) It reminds me of South Georgia, a fishing pond. I don't know why because they don't look the same, but they sound the same. Why is this picture about sounds?
3) Here is what I wouldn't change. I wouldn't change the edges. I wouldn't crop it. Here is what I would change. I would change the fact that my friend doesn't have an 11x17ish print of this.

Mark – Server Manager
1) A dying lake.
2) When they drained Lake Talquin when I was a kid. There were cypress trees and stumps exposed.
3) Nothing, I think it’s a cool picture.

Footnote:
I’m not sure what this means but it occurs to me that my first impulse with this assignment was to produce a document. I chose words. That fella with the video camera and the A-Team question, as a visual artist, chose to make pictures. Now it could be a matter of training or that this is an assignment and my student brain is wired for that. Or it could be something deeper. It’s funny but the Creative Writing degree at FSU has the student doing very little creative writing. Mostly it’s survey courses which one could argue was necessary. Learn what you’re rebelling against. Know your history. Don’t repeat it. I’ve done that on my own. I live in books, in thought and dreams. I think art seems more like a doing degree. You spend the two years or so that you have making things. Both of my great-Grandmothers were painters. So was my Grandmother. So was my own Mom. My brother is a grade-A air force douche bag and my sister is an Army wife but in the worst way. There is this familial linage of creation that belongs to me and I to it. We both know my limitations as an artist. I know that shoot like a writer but for the next few years I want to forget that. I’m still writing but I reckon I’m writing better these days. It’s like having a second person in me who sees things instead of hearing them.