Tears of Salt

/

I need this.
More
than
anything.
More
than
you.
Do
not
be angry.
I take
my shoes
off and walk
to where
I know
I can
fill my soul.
I can
not explain
it.
As I walk
the
sand
washes
away
all the
wrongs.
The bad
decisions.
The things
I wish
I could
change.
I feel
the tears
stream down
my face.
Because
this is not
what I want.
Or how
I want it.
I get
closer
to my temple,
my church
my forgiver.
This place
can heal
and I am
ready.
I see the
ocean
and I walk out
on the sandbar.
The ocean
breeze
floats
down
my throat
and takes
all those mistakes
and regrets
away.
I walk into
the water
and let
the salt water
do what it
should do,
Fix,
Heal.
This is
the most
honest
place I know.
I swim
until
my arms feel
like heavy weights.
I walk
out of
the ocean.
Knowing,
I can be better.
As I walk through
the sand,
I see you
waiting
for me.
The salt
water
from my tears
is mixing
with the
ocean salt
water.
Under my
breath
I whisper
your name.
You are my
safe place
and I love
your honest
eyes.
You understand
my tears of
salt.

_____
Paper Trail:

Off Season: Cape May, New Jersey

Photographed during the month of February in 2014, the image above was captured during photo sessions for a book entitled, Off Season: Cape May, New Jersey.

This book will showcase high contrast black-and-white images from Cape May during the height of winter in the resort’s off season. Stark, barren, and empty are words and emotions I hope the final images convey. 

It is a labor of love and will be available June 2016. Stay tuned!!

Gottlieb Jazz Collection

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I recently came across a set of over 1,600 images captured by William P. Gottlieb from the 1930's and 1940's. Gottlieb was a notable journalist and self-taught photographer who covered the jazz scene and musicians in it during the period recognized as the "Golden Age of Jazz". Covering a ten year period, from 1938 to 1948, Gottlieb captured these images while following musicians in the New York City and Washington D.C.

Gottlieb was born in January of 1917 in the Canarsie neighborhood of Brooklyn and grew up in Bound Brook, New Jersey. He began his career as a journalist while attending Lehigh University where he wrote for the weekly campus newspaper and became the editor-in-chief of the The Lehigh Review. During Gottlieb's last year of college, he began writing a weekly jazz column for the Washington Post. From there, Gottlieb also wrote for Down Beat Magazine, The Record Changer, The Saturday Review, and Collier's.

The list of jazz musicians that Gottlieb followed and captured in images is extensive. Some of the more prominent personalities included Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Hines, Jo Stafford, Thelonious Monk, Stan Kenton, Ray McKinley, Benny Goodman, Les Paul, and Ella Fitzgerald. From candid moments to street scenes to performances on stage, Gottlieb documented this period in time with an in the moment and intimacy rarely seen.

Gottlieb stopped photographing jazz musicians in 1948. In 2006, Gottlieb suffered a stroke and passed away in April of that year from complications. Following his wishes, the images in this collection entered the public domain on February 16, 2010. They  were made public by the Library of Congress (LOC) and can be viewed directly at the LOC's web site or the LOC's Flickr feed/portfolio.

These timeless images are snapshots of our past. They are venues and moments that are gone, but still live in our collective consciousness. Gottlieb's images are the vision and product of self self-taught photographer and creative. They are truly an impressive legacy.

Enjoy!!

_____
Paper Trail:

This post was originally published on Kerrsplat.com, dated December 17, 2013.

Creative Vision Of A Thirteen Year Old

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There is nothing more thrilling and rewarding than experiencing and nurturing the creative process in young creatives. Their vision of reality is truly boundless and they are not restricted by technique or form or structure like most adults. Young creatives experiment. Young creatives push boundaries. Young creatives are fearless. Unique and inspiring, the works of young creatives are truly captivating.

The images presented here were captured by one such young creative, my son Will. At the time these images were shot, Will was 13 years old. They were taken at a traveling exhibition that comes to our small, hometown airport annually every fall. The exhibition is called Wings of Freedom and it is funded and promoted by the Collins Foundation. It features three restored WWII warplanes as living history and includes a P-51 Mustang, a B-17 Flying Fortress, and a B-24 Liberator.

Will and I attend this exhibition almost every year. In the fall of 2011, I outfitted one of my older Canon 20D DSLRs with a Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM lens and handed it to Will. I gave him about 20 minutes of basic instruction on the finer points of its use and off we went to the Wings of Freedom tour.

It was a chilly fall day with lots of late afternoon sunshine, remembering back. We paid to get into the exhibition, parked the car, and hit the tarmac. The only guidance I gave Will was explore, play with the angles and light, and, above all else, have fun. Will stayed close to me for a time, but soon struck out on his own. We spent about two hours at the exhibition doing photography and viewing the warplanes and other WWII memorabilia.

Coming home, I uploaded Will's images to my file server, looked them over that evening, and then promptly forgot about them. Such is life... lol. A few days ago, however, Will and I rediscovered his images and I was immediately impressed and captivated by them. Pulling up a chair in my office and digital darkroom, Will and I began to work the images in Lightroom 4.

Captured by Will and worked by Dad, the images below are a joint venture between father and son. That said... Will did much of the work for me in-camera. I am extremely impressed with Will's eye along with his exposure and composition skills. Many of these images are shots and angles I would not have even tried. Yes, I helped Will work them in Lightroom, but they all are a product of his vision and reality as he saw them in the moment.

Enjoy!!

_____
Paper Trail:

This post was originally published on Kerrsplat.com, dated October 20, 2013.

Timelapse From The Silk Road

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Chris Northey shot these timelapse images along the Silk Road from Chine to Uzbekistan in 2012. This is truly a delight to watch. The locations featured, include:
 
China - Beijing, Xi'an, Turpan, and Kashgar
Kyrgyzstan - Tash Rabat and Song Kol
Uzbekistan - Tashkent, Bukhara, and Samarkand

Chris is a freelance digital designer who creates websites, 3D animations and motion graphics. Checkout his work.

Enjoy!!

_____
Paper Trail:
    ▪    Chris Northey: Chris Northey Digital Design
    ▪    Chris Northey: Chris Northey on Vimeo
    ▪    Chris Northey: Chris Northey on FaceBook
    ▪    Chris Northey: Chris Northey on Twitter
    ▪    Chris Northey: Chris Northey on Flickr

This post was originally published on Kerrsplat.com, dated September 15, 2013.

Stanley Kubrick As Photojournalist

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I recently discovered that Stanley Kubrick was a New York City photojournalist before he became a filmmaker. In 1945, while only 17 years old, Kubrick sold a photo to Look Magazine. The folks at Look, must have liked that image. From 1946 to 1950, Kubrick shot more than 300 assignments for the magazine while detailing and documenting the sights and people of New York City.

Based out of New York City, Look magazine also sent Kubrick to different locations. One of these locations was Chicago where, in the summer of 1949, Kubrick shot images for a story called “Chicago, City of Contrasts.”

As one might expect, the images Kubrick captured are both unique and wonderful. Each image represents a forgotten moment in time from a lost Golden Age in America directly after World War II. Sometimes gritty… Sometimes thought provoking… These images all foreshadow the creative perspective and genius that Kubrick later develops as a filmmaker.

Presented below are a few images from Stanley Kubrick's photojournalism work. You can also see more by following the paper trail links at the end of this post. In addition, some of Kubrick’s early photography work can be viewed in a collection curated by Museum of the City of New York. 

Enjoy!!

_____
Paper Trail:

This post was originally published on Kerrsplat.com, dated March 16, 2013.

A Slice Of Life In Color: The 1930s And 1940s

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The Library of Congress has a wonderful collection of color images from the 1930s and 1940s online and in their Flickr photo stream. The collection is called 1930s-40s in Color and showcases color images from the Great Depression and World War II.

Photographs taken at this time typically were shot using black-and-white film. These photographs, however, were shot in color by photographers working for the United States Farm Security Administration (FSA) and the Office of War Information (OWI).

The collection is rather large and contains with 1,615 images. All are wonderful slices of life from a time both familiar, yet different, from our own. Some of the images are truly breathtaking. Each of the images have a story to tell. 

I have selected and presented a few of the images here on KerrSplat!! I invite you, though, to go browse and view the entire collection. The Library of Congress has done a wonderful job preserving and making these images available to us.

Enjoy!!