Merry-go-round, Roma, Italy 2009 by Douglas Stockdale

As I prepare to return to Rome again, one of the images from the week before that I captured in the late afternoon was this Merry-go-round (I don’t know the Italian name for this), which still haunts my memory. I have also tweaked this in a Black & White version, and I am not sure which version works the best for me. There are the expectant, but empty chairs, and no children hanging on the horses or waiting patiently for their turn to ride. Everything is in place. The image and this place has a bit of saddness to it.

I know where this Merry-go-round is, so I may try to work on this composition and explore these feelings again later next week.

Best regards, Douglas

Colosseum Gelati by Douglas Stockdale

The rain did finally clear just after 1pm yesterday, which was good enough to catch the bus into downtown Rome. I did not want to eat lunch inside the hotel, so by the time we arrived in town, I was a hungry puppy. Remembering the cafes lining the nearby Plazza Navona, I found a nice table outside with a protective umbrella (still some quick drizzles) on the edge of the Plazza and enjoyed a plate of very nice pasta, slightly andante, and a glass of local red vino. very nice.

Then a short walk around down a pedestrian walkway to the Pantheon, but could not find one of  my ubiquitous rolling diners to compose my photograph with, so I quickly moved on. The goal was to get to the Colosseum before sunset. Made it with some time to spare. Also saw the Arch of Costantino and some of the surrounding archaeological digs going on. All in all, a nice afternoon. I even worked a little on my fashion portfolio. nice.

I bet the Roman Senators would have loved to have this wonderful diner available back in the day, grab some pizza to watch the gladiators duke it out, and the gladiators could have run out for a quick Gelati during the half time intermission.

So some things to think about when I am back here in a couple of weeks, although my plans to spend a day in Milan that week are falling through.

Best regards, Douglas

Vatican Hot Dog by Douglas Stockdale

Egads, another rainy day in Rome, so I hope that it clears a little by this afternoon.

So I had some time this morning to check out my earlier images of Rome when I was investigating the fine Italian restaurants, and I recalled this little Vatican diner, above. I am not sure if this serves the Pope’s favorite hot dog, but it sure is close if he needed to run across the plazza from St Peter’s to grab a quick snack.

This was a very high contrast situation, probably best if I had the HDR set up on a tripod, shooting into the late afternoon setting sun, unlike the photo below, where I had the option to compose the photograph oblique to the setting sun. I had opted to capture the details of Vatican’s Hot Dog stand and lose the sky. If I feel that this image still has potential, I will need to add a few more adjustment layer tricks to save what I can of the sky for a color version. On the fly working with Photoshop on the portable computer, I think that this image looks pretty decent in the black & white mode. With the black & white adjustment layer, I can create a little more separation between the hot dog stand the St Peter’s dome in the background.

Below is the Vatican’s Panini stand, probably another papal favorite.

hmmm, looking out the hotel window, I can see a faint glimmer of lightness in the clouds, so perhaps there is some chance of the rain clearing this early afternoon.

Best regards, Douglas

Vatican Panini by Douglas Stockdale

Yamamay by Douglas Stockdale

With a little free time in Rome yesterday afternoon, I figured it would be a good opportunity to work on my fashion portfolio, since Rome is considered the number 4 fashion city after Milan, Paris and NY. I mean Rome, Milan what’s going to be the difference in fashion photography? But I had guessed wrong, because Rome does not seem to have the same fashion infrastructure like that of Milan. I don’t know, maybe I was in the wrong neighborhoods in Rome, or perhaps I was too close to St Peter’s Basilica?

Either way, if the rain lets up tomorrow, I hope to investigate Rome a little more and continue to work on my fashion portfolio. Okay, maybe it might be investigating the fine eating establishments here in Rome.

Best regards, Douglas

As of late, I think I can safely say that I am not an animal/nature photographer, but while sitting adjacent to Plazza Cavour in Rome, sipping a nice glass of local red wine, I could not help but notice the huge flock of birds flying directly above, usually in random patterns, but then occasionally flying in close formation and creating these floating, dense masses in the overhead sky. It was amazing, because the flock kept getting larger and larger and these fast-moving and odd-shaped patterns kept rapidly occurring. I  recall a photobook that is/will be published (sorry, the name of the photographer escapes me) about just this, photographing flocks of birds and the resulting patterns that they had created en mass.

So I found myself trying to photograph some of these bird pattens, but it is a lot harder than it appears, especially with a limited field of view. I guess that I had found it hard to believe that birds would/could do this, and was thinking that perhaps a little photoshopping was going on, but I saw it occur with my own eyes. Amazing.

And to prove that I only had one glass of wine, I have this one photo to show, not by any means the best or most intricate of the patterns, but probably the best one I was able to capture.

Best regards, Doug

Welcome to Milano: Fashion Week! by Douglas Stockdale

In a bit of a marathon today, I finished posting my photo project Milan Fashion Week. I just hope that I really don’t need to explain that it may be a social-cultural satire, but you can never tell.

Another aspect of this project is how it is shared, sans formal gallery, nor a self-published book that few, if any will ultimately purchase. Constructing and designing a blog that allows the project to unfold is about a democratic and open distribution. This is also about what we do with a completed project, that provides some underlying structure and accessibility.

The implications are that if this is a better means of sharing access to a project, then I have some work cut out to restructure my prior projects. But first things first, which is to determine how well this particular experiment works.

Best regards, Douglas

Fashion Week Accessory: Paparazzi by Douglas Stockdale from the project: Milan Fashion Week

Although I lost a couple of days of photo files from when I was in Milan last month, I had hoped to fill in the gaps in my project when I returned to Milan at the end of this month, possibly the begining of November. It now appears that my return to Milan will be probably be later in the Fall, with my principal assignment is being changed to Rome. I think that I can make Rome work and it should be an excellent location to obtain the remaining photographs that I want. nice.

I am also starting to frame out my intent for this project, in that it might need a little more of an external context, but still maintain  a lot of mystery. The questions are more important than the answers.

Best regards, Douglas

BTW the above fashion photograph was created with an Italian fashion magazine, not often you can catch the paparazzi in action.

Update: I had published my first photographer’s statement on this project, part to get out there as well as to think a little more about how well I had defined this project.  But I did not feel entirely comfortable with that first attempt, so I tried again. It is now starting to come together, so here it is for a little wider distribution (not many folks are checking this project-blog as of yet, so go give it a read and let me know what you think):

Milan Fashion Week: What is the purpose of high fashion? To inspire us to purchase garments and accessories that might better represent our true inner self? Is the pursuit of fashion an attainment of a dream like persona, defined by a transitory group of designers, models, and photographers? This  September I was in Milan for Fashion Week to investigated these questions. This is my report, as well as my own fashion portfolio.

Fashion Pavillions by Douglas Stockdale from the project Milan Fashion Week

One of my challenges for blogging my photo-project Milan Fashion Week is to think of my postings in reverse, as I want someone to connect to the blog and experience it as I envision as they scroll down. Which means posting the last images first, the first images last, as I make a separate post for each photograph.

The biggest complication was losing the last two days of the shoot while I was in Milan and not sure when I will be back again to fill in the gaps. There is a small chance that I may be back in Milan this November, but it will be different than the warm, sunny days we had a couple of weeks ago during Fashion Week. bummmer.

But this project does not necessarily need to be photographed entirely in Milan. Great being in Milan during Fashion Week fired me up for this project, so the momentum carries me forward as I develop my conceptual intent. Perhaps not the first person to mock this whole fashion thing, but just as Old Blue Eyes sang, I’m doing it my wayyyyyy….

Okay, enough for now, back to editing and posting…and I have a couple of book reviews that I am in the middle of for photo-eye magazine, which I need to finish…

Best regards, Doug

Copyright of Douglas Stockdale

Over the last couple of weeks I have been doing some traveling and sitting either in a train or a plane, while being carried along, I see some cliches. They just seem to be fun to try and catch and sometimes some new happens. Two from the Netherlands from a couple of weeks ago on a early, foggy morning, and the other, below, of the wind swept clouds over Dallas, TX.

At the moment, with nothing specific in mind, I am just doing some sharing. I guess my version of Flickr, eh?

Best regards, Doug

Welcome to Milano Fashion Week by Douglas Stockdale

One of the downsides of jet lag, is pushing your mental endurance envelop when you should not be. But at the time, you just don’t know that you are not functioning with all of the neurons firing in full sequence ;- (

Case in point, my personal experience from my last two week assignment to Europe. At the moment, I am trying every trick I know of to salvage most of the two weeks of photographs that I had made, which just “disappeared” late yesterday afternoon. And having just arrived from Milan the afternoon before, although I was doing my computer work at 3pm CA time, my body was really functioning like it was 1am Milan time after the day before pulling a 22 hour day. In retrospect, not a good thing.

I had already had the close call when I almost lost my camera rig while boarding the plane from Rome to Milan earlier in the week. I was saved by an unknown angel who had turned it in at the boarding counter and it quickly found it’s way back into my hands just as the plane was about to pull away from the Rome terminal. When I realized that I did not have the gear, my mind could not remember when I had it last in my possession. I was that tired. I probably had just walked away from it, but I don’t really know.

So what happened yesterday? I now think the bottom line for losing almost all of my photographs was a result of not paying attention to the amount of hard disk on my desk top system. I did not realize that I was close to maxing out my system, and when I downloaded my photographic files, I was right on the very thin edge of a total max out. So when I opened the Adobe CS3 Browser to look at the raw files to rename the folders in order to back them up on my external hard disk, the Brower went sideways. For some reason, when the Browser crashed, it totally erased ALL of my downloaded images that were sitting on my desktop, all two weeks of photographic files. Everything! Yes, Crap deluxe.

And my capture and save procedures are not the best, as I download the 2 gig CF files to my portable as I travel, so the lost images are not sitting on a CF card. Another bad process, as I move the files from the portable to the desk top and I have them on the desk top, I move the files on the portable to the trash bin. I am not doing that again! Since I had not flushed the portable trash bin, I figured that the files that I had downloaded were still there. Nope. The portables trash bin was overloaded with what I dragging in and started permanently deleting files without a corresponding warning message. So I did manage to extract three partical days of photographic files. A small consolation prize, but most from The Netherlands was gone, including all of my photo’s from Noorderlicht’s Photofestival in Groningen. I do have photographs from the annual city fair in Oss and a few images from Rome and the first day in Milan. sigh.

So now I think I will remember; download and IMMEDIATELY back up, don’t get fancy with editing and folder naming.

Enough for now, so be careful when you push your endurance envelop, shit could happen.

Best regards, Doug

BTW I had this idea about a project around Milan’s Fashion Week, well just about everything that I had photographed for the project but the gem that started the whole thing, gone. So now I have to think about whether the concept is still viable and if I can reconstruct it, but I lost a lot of that inspirational moment, when working a project loose and fast and having a ton of fun. sigh. I still have that experience in my memory! (and a few of the images to potentially keep me going!)

Update: I feel blessed or as Susan Spiritus commented on my Facebook page, I’m one “lucky duck”. I was able to recover on my portable computer all of my Netherlands photographic files, and a few more of my Rome files. I was not sure if my Roxio GoBack3 was going to recover anything, but it was able to bring it all back that I had downloaded to the portable while I was in Europe. So now my lose is just the three days in Milan that I had kept on my two 2 Gig CF drives. Much better than nothing, eh?