Keith Johnson Photographs

A beautiful day in the Queen City. Time to head north along Niagara Blvd. to Niagara Falls. this was just one of those pictures (one of 15 such made) that could not be passed up. Yahoo.

Three days of graduate students and critiques was an exhausting blast.

Do Not Open is available at the CPW auction 10/11/08.

Avast, today is Internationational Talk Like a Pirate Day. Invented 1993, popularized seven years ago by Dave Barry, columnist for the Miami Herald, so talk it up, me heartie .

Thomas L. Friedman got me thinking with an column in the Times this Sunday, titled “Making America Stupid”.  I have resisted writing about the campaign because I am feeling bereft and adrift and shaking my head a lot.  But this quote has resonated and stcks not only for what it says about some of the current politics, it also applies to my recent thinking about making art.  “As they say in Texas: “If all you ever do is all you’ve ever done, then all you’ll ever get is all you ever got'”  It is brilliant in its simplicity and language.  He is a really smart guy.

I haven’t posted a picture as I don’t have one I feel is appropriate just now but I will.  It may be something new.

The whole point of putting a blog onto my website was to have a dynamic sometimes temporary place to run a picture or thought up the flag pole to see if anyone notices.  The website has become a bunch of galleries and related stuff that warehouses the past.  The blog deals with things I am trying out or maybe just sharing with those who might look.

With that said, I have been making some pictures for some time that I have loosely thought of as an artist book called “How to do Color Photography”.  This is the working cover.

Just when you think you understand the size of the photographic universe a surprise shows up that astounds. I received an email from William Greiner yesterday letting me know he had run into my work through a friend. Seems the two of us have been walking somewhat parallel paths for a bunch of years. Why we never crossed paths is a mystery given mutual friends and similar photographic concerns. I sure like his stuff, especially Home Front, Snapshot and his Blog. Have a look.

On Friday I head to Woodstock, NY to give the fifth workshop of the summer (technically the last workshop on the last days of summer) Photographing the Social Landscape.  Sunday I am in Rochester to conduct a seminar with graduate students at Visual Studies Workshop, then on to Buffalo for my residency at CEPA.  Good news arrived yesterday that MAC Group (Leaf USA) has shipped the Aptus 75 for my work in Buffalo and Niagara Falls.

I thought that the digital age was going to make decisions easier, quicker and better.  I shot a bunch of stuff digitally while at Penland and two things have happened: I left my charger there so I cannot get into my (now dead) computer to see what I did, plus my external HD is formatted for PC and the Mac will not recognize it.  Thus I sit with pictures in two devices with no means to access until the charger arrives.  Additionally the film shot is on my desk waiting to go to the lab which is now 30 miles away (the last local lab closed July 15).  Ugh.