Other Time Based Strategies

In the last blog, I alluded to the fact that that typologies can be an affective way to address change over time. However, there are a number of other individual image, or small image cluster strategies that can have the same visual impact, that involve far less traveling, Photoshop time, or a decade to work on like the Rim Fire Project. Commonly, we are just interested in the outcome, or the beginning/end of a process. Much of what goes on around us is invisible, and photography really allows us to see real outcomes we would never even imagine. To this end, I would like to discuss the diptych below, and what once was a latte above. Think of all the photos we will look at in this blogpost as 8th grade science projects with minor graphic refinements.

To that end, let's discuss the latte image above. So how did this actually happen? Well a grad student from Texas gave me these fabulous ceramic "cowhide" latte cups with electric orange interiors when she passed her orals. So the next time I went to Peet's to buy coffee, instead of the usual free, medium high test cup of coffee, I gave them the latte cup. Then I took the latte home, put it in three double thick plastic bags, put it in my baby refrigerator, and a year later this was the outcome. It is of no interest to me if this is called art, science or their perverse offspring. What is of interest to me is seeing what we know is there, but rarely stop to think about. Take my word, there is a story embedded in your front yard soil. Trust me, it did not start out as soil.

Now let's discuss this diptych of my pale yellow kitchen walls a half hour before dawn, and sometime well after sunset. The concern here was studying how a paler version of a brighter color will wobble tonally all over the place on a clear sunny day. The color of the wall is just the baseline tone for how a color will vary based upon sun position, color temperature and intensity of the blue sky. In the case of this diptych, I just wanted to compare the tonal divergence between pre dawn tonality, and the post sunset tonality. Not much pale yellow to speak of in either image, even though the baseline tone is called Straw Yellow at the paint store.

So at this point, you must be feeling like you are trapped inside every forgotten food item in the back of your refrigerator, or stuck deep inside a physics textbook, and this approach to natural processes can only manifest in photos of things rotting, rusting, disappearing, or crumbling, but this is not necessarily so. Many of the processes in the natural world actually produce interesting looking outcomes whether they are the outcome of chemical, electrical, optical, or biological influences. We can immediately see that above in the photo of the warthog skull. The goal across all of this type of work is to visually explore the cycles of creation, variation and how the world takes all things back eventually.