Max & Oscar: by Traverse Day Robinette

Most of my pictures so far of Max and Oscar are from winter. In these pictures the Earth tilts back to more favorable temperatures and the boys and I are freed of our jackets to get lost in the splendor of Griggs Park. Spring showers made for many indoor adventures yet this hardly slowed down our camping and lighting storms we created due to the weather.

Traverse Day Robinette, Oscar and his Tent ©2010

Traverse Day Robinette, Max and Oscar in Griggs Park ©2010

Traverse Day Robinette, Max and Oscar in Griggs Park ©2010

Traverse Day Robinette, Max Making Lighting ©2010

Traverse Day Robinette, Max at Franklin Park Zoo ©2010

Summer Heat: by Peter Leavitt

Peter Leavitt ©2011

School ended in May of 2009, and I’ve been suffering an artistic existential crisis ever since. Suffering may be too strong a word, but that’s beside the point.

Peter Leavitt ©2011

Art school is all about helping you improve your skills by killing the love for art that made you apply. Once that has been sufficiently beaten out of you by numerous projects that you can only now see the point of, hopefully you find your voice and recover the joy that brought you there in the first place. At least that was my experience.

Peter Leavitt ©2011

So now what do I do without weekly critiques, deadlines, and countless hours to spend in the darkroom or out in the streets/fields/whatever?

Peter Leavitt ©2011

For the past two-and-a-half years I’ve been back to “just taking pictures.” I try to keep a camera on me all the time, and sometimes I even have something specific in mind. I develop the pictures in spurts when I have the money, and I scan and edit them when I have the energy. My wonderful Linhof 4x5 spends a lot of time in its bag while I make use of an old friend, the 35mm SLR or rangefinder. The big old guy (around as old as my father) taught me a lot, and he’ll stay in my arsenal, but his pictures are views, and I’m after something a little more personal.

Peter Leavitt ©2011

Looking at the last few months of pictures incredibly briefly summarized here, I see again what drew me to photography is the first place: The ability to snatch a moment away from time and share it with people forever, a chance to appreciate the small miracles of wherever we find ourselves that we take for granted every day.

Laura Miner: Fear and Indifference

The new direction in my current project, (in which I am actually going back to older interests) takes the blood and terror I intended from my previous images, and gives it a context with miniature sets.

Laura Miner ©2011

Thinking of the philosophical query, "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" one might reason that there must be other living things besides humans, and of course, those things would hear it fall.  I ask in my current series, "If something bad happens to you in the woods, do the other living things care?"
After trying to come up with subtly gruesome scenes, I came to the realization that a huge stimulus for fear is the idea that if you were in trouble no one would be able to help you. I admit, it's one facet to my own issues with bodily integrity.  There is nothing scarier than knowing that the only living things around you are indifferent to your situation, and may even munch on you. Thus is the inspiration for this series which depicts random pools of blood being curiously investigated and casually co-existing with animals.

Laura Miner ©2011

 Blood, being a tried and true catalyst of fear, and animals, being symbols of peace but also savagery, the images evoke an eerie feeling of dread, but could also contain a twisted and blunt expression of acceptance and returning to the Earth.

Laura Miner ©2011