MN State Fair: No Place for a Jogging Stroller

If you are reading this and thinking, as we did, that your bike trailer that converts into a jogging stroller seems like the perfect companion for Minnesota's Great Get-together (with it's sun/rain hood and pockets to carry snacks and water) do yourself a favor and think again.

The plan looked good on paper, but we forgot that the site of all those people and things on-a-stick renders most fair-goers ignorant of their feet. People were tripping over the front wheel at every turn and one tween nearly fell into the stroller while we were stopped.

So this year's State Fair trip elapsed in two parts. Part One: Ballad of the Obnoxious Stroller, began like this:






We made one detour to the dairy building to recreate a photo from last year:







Then returned to the car to get rid of that stroller and returned for Part Two: Stroller Be-Gone.

Part two was much more fun and included an amazing fish taco, burger and fries, ice cream, pretzel, and Joe chugging two servings of all-you-can-drink milk (which he wouldn't want me to remark was "udderly delicious") and then one glass of chocolate milk for me, but only one photo, which appears above.

Verisimilitude, But Not Actual Verity

I started as a writer-turned-journalist-turned-photojournalist and have spent the last year immersing myself in non-journalistic photography. Specifically, the art of portraiture and all the technical elements that go into the art form. But when I'm shooting it doesn't feel technical. It feels familiar.

In the past, I've seen what I used to do as very separate from posed photography. But I have since refined the way I think about and execute these images and have found myself reaching for the tools from my previous life.

As a writer I control time. Real time is linear, elapsing quite orderly from the hour we are born until the moment we die. Occasionally it feels slow or fast, but it's always ticking away at the same pace.

On the page, everything is different. A writer with no sense of timing is quickly lost in a sea of quotations and plot devices. Masterful writers extend and contract, bend and twist time until they achieve what all artists are trying to achieve: not simply to tell a story, but to evoke emotions in their audience. Writers do this by creating the illusion of reality. How much of an illusion depends on where one lies between journalist and poet.

As a photographer I control what you see and seek to use these elements to create the same illusion of reality. It's a mixed media process, really, combining constructs that are visually evocative (light, color, backdrops, positioning) with real people and their own evocations (laughter, love, excitement, youth) to create art that looks effortlessly real.

I was thinking about this process while watching Gabe Askew's glorious fan video of Grizzly Bear's Two Weeks:

Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear from Gabe Askew on Vimeo.

The video is computer generated but uses photographic elements to create a mixed media film that marries the realistic and the fanciful. We see what seems to be real dioramas mingling with animated fishes and birds creating a more beautiful image than either media would create alone. Then, what gives the video emotional output is the appearance that we really are traveling via film across box after box of cardboard cut-outs and the fantastical notion (and sight) of such a dramatic endeavor. (Read more about how the video was made here.)

Whereas I began my career as a photographer trying to capture what I see, even in portraiture, I am now working more and more to create, instead, an artistic rendering of reality. I'm utilizing all the things lay observers and amateur writers take for granted as so-real-there-is-no-need-to-contemplate-their-explanation — things like intensity and color of light, the tilting of heads and subtle expressions — to create verisimilitude, but not actual verity, in my images.

Whereas I once sought strict fidelity to a collective reality, I am now courting photographs that reflect a world containing all those natural elements but appearing much more beautiful. I'm now making art.

Adventure Tuesday: San Diego

For our San Diego style adventure we headed to the New Children's Museum, which puts a modern art slant on museums for kids. Truman had a blast with his Nana, though much of the stuff was geared toward older children.







My mom pretending to be a rock-throwing giant in the toddler area:








They had a giant room filled with old mattresses to jump on and these pillows shaped like tires My mom took these lovely photos:

Objects of Curiosity: Book House

While in San Diego we had the awesome opportunity to see Aaron T. Stephan’s Building Houses/Hiding Under Rocks, a cube-hut of books that I was magnetically drawn to because it reminded me of The Raw Shark Texts (blogged here). Besides being an object of pure curiosity, the cube was built with great precision — none of titles of any of the books were visible because we're meant to forget that these are books. The center of the cube is carved into a sphere so carefully the interior acoustics are enhanced like a tiny amphitheater for one.

I suppose I'd be the perfect place to read over drafts of your own poetry aloud alone, letting your own voice, traveling through your own words, return back to you from the walls of books.

I could of stayed in there all day, but it was a behind-closed-doors exhibit at the New Children's Museum and we had to wander the rest of the place.

If I'm ever near another one of Aaron T. Stephan’s exhibits, I'll definitely want to check it out.

Clocky's illegitimate son, Andy

I'm sure you thought the Clocky Saga (featured here and here) had ended. Surely there can't be more clocks masquerading as men or acting as poorly chosen mascots loose in the collective consciousness.

Wrong.

Meet Andy, Clocky's illegitimate handyman son, whom I met in downtown San Diego last month:



Apparently Andy is so distraught over the distance between him and his father that he forgot how to use the letter "i," opting, instead, to spell words such as "time" and "smile" with a "y."

As if the clock character wasn't beating the we're-available-around-the-clock concept into our heads enough, they had to add a word pun. What's funny is that wherever I find a Clocky, I'm sure to find a terrible tag line. I call this The Curse of Clocky.

Adventure Tuesday: Minnesota Science Museum

(What's that weird thing bisecting the picture, you ask? Why it's Truman's painting I just happen to snap as it whisked to the ground.)


We cheated and did Adventure Tuesday on Monday this week with Sarah and Khai because the Science Museum runs a special Preschool Playdate event on Mondays. Kids under 5 are free and there are activities specifically geared toward little ones, such as watercolor painting and fun with wind tunnels, both of which we tried.

Truman loved just about everything and ran all around the museum like a banshee. Although I guess a banshee would probably float. He found a small living room built into the middle of the light exhibit where families cool read books and take a rest. He was having a good time there until he noticed that there was a tiny closet-sized office tucked into the corner that contained a computer and other office accompaniments. Of course, this quickly became the most interesting exhibit on display.

The museum worker was kind enough to show them some special non-exhibit items from the closet-office — a ball that lit up when you touched two metal segments on it and a strange puzzle that involved a glass tube, sand and a ball bearing that she challenged me to solve ("I bet mommy can't even figure that one out"). I was on my way to proving her wrong when he realized the light up ball, like all balls, looked great when you throw it and we began bouncing from exhibit to exhibit for a while.

We forgot to pick up the paintings the boys made, but here are some pictures of the painting process:















Oh, and he loved the musical stairs just as much as you would expect a budding audiophile to.

A bride & a baby

amount to a fun day of photography. Here are a few of my favorites from yesterday.

First I went to visit my friend (and Joe's co-worker) Jill to shoot make some photographs of her new daughter, Elizabeth:







Then I headed to the Sculpture Garden for an after-wedding shoot with the lovely Hannah and her husband Jon:







Thanks for the great day, Jill & Elizabeth, Hannah & Jon and my wonderful helpers, Sarah, Dean & Khai, who chased Truman around the Sculpture Garden while I photographed. Here's Dean wearing his own son and carrying mine:

My Husband Fritz

I guess I never thought I'd say that; but here's Joe dressed as Fritz Robinson, the oldest brother in the Swiss Family Robinson clan.

I took this last night while working on some photos for the press material to promote the Mille Lacs Area Players performance of the musical Swiss Family Robinson, which runs August 13-16 and 20-23 at 7:30 p.m. in Milaca, mn.

A few other photos can be found on picasa.