Two Trees

Boston Public Garden,  Spring 2013

I got a whole lot of work done this spring on Selected People, a series I've been working on since 2008. The series consists of a scene, usually around Boston, viewed for about an hour or so. I take hundreds of pictures, then using photoshop, I leave in selected figures. I never change their location or anything else, so these are actually documentary records. But I do choose what stays in, just the way your brain does in real life! Anyway, I did several new pictures this spring while the ideas were coming. Now I'm off in a day or two to present the series at Review Santa Fe 2013, an event in which photographers present their work to gallery, publishing, and museum people. The tree in the background is the same tree featured in one of my more popular pictures.

Tree, Boston Public Garden, 2008

Taking Pictures Then and Now

Boston Public Garden, Tulips, 2013

About five years ago, I did a similar picture to this one I just finished. The gestures people use to take pictures have changed quite a bit. In the older one, which was taken just a few yards from this one, you can still see people taking pictures in the standard twentieth-century manner, by holding the camera up to the eye. Others are using cell phones and digital cameras in the now-familiar modified praying mantis pose. The old camera-to-the-eye gesture was kind of dynamic. You could turn a little sideways and flex your knees and you'd look like a rifleman. Of course, picture-taking is a bit different, now, too. Here's the older picture, below.

Boston Public Garde, 2008

This second picture is one of the first I did in the Selected People series. It represents about twenty minutes and 80 exposures. The tulip one took about an hour to photograph, with about 300 exposures.