bettiecl

Such an effective use of light and shadow to allude to the seductive sensuousness of woman, Elena. The pose and expression recalled the paintings of Gustav Klimt, despite the vast difference between your black/white rendering and his golden, saturated colors. Well done!

It certainly speaks to me, Stephanie! And very eloquently too. The power lines of electricity and water control that has been extended to control the spirit of this cock. The chair turned with its back (without even the conforting filling that one expects from a back rest) to the viewer, also says a lot of the owner of this property. And more symbolically about cruel power wielding generally. Wow!

Mark! This is brilliant. Just enough light to suggest, more than articulate the shapes we "know" although we can't see them in the shadow areas. A real triumph of subtlety. Wish I could call it my capture!

Did you use studio light or the off camera flash? Im asking because Im currently trying this kind of shot. Not with your success, though.

Thanks Timothy. Im curious to hear what you contemplate about it :-)

Siamak, this is such an evocative portrait, veiled not only by the reflective surface but also in a way by the movement which you captured so effectively in slow shutter speed. And the expression you caught which  leaves me undecided to  which emotion is the dominant one - the sadness or the suggestion of meditation and , literally and figuratively, reflective. Toast!

A striking evocation of the idea of Order in chaos and at once also sensual. Great!

Vintage Brad Kim: subtle, sensuous, mysterious and a joy for the senses. The black white conversion adds to the evocative quality of the image. Toast Brad

The artist, Henk Serfontein shuffling around in his studio searching for

inspiration with his feet.

Thanks for looking ...@ the artist moving around in his kitchen/studio.

Abstracted

stanza three, line three, typo error:

....then die (in stead of 'the die')

Thanks for showing the illusion as real and the real (i.e. matter) an illusion. Steven. Now I know why Im so attracted to these slow shutter speed effects. And imagine, it had to be the camera (the false eye) that made it possible for our (true) eye to observe correctly. :-)

Lovely catch, Svetlana!

Bulent, My next attempt will be exactly a piece of abstract music. ARe you familiar with the new classical (20th c) compositions on www.neue-musik.fm ?

The poet  says Yes, to the entire poem, No to an extract of a few lines: So herewith the word gem, amongst others in her album, Difficult Gifts, that inspired me to request the poet/dancer's interpretation of it in movement in front of my camera. Dance photo-series  was born from this experience. 

ALL THAT LIFE by Dawn Garisch

1. All that life: from first rank beginnings in the earth,

something stirred in matter: there emerged a drive

to animate the dirt - Surpirse! - a brief ellipse called

life    the breath   arrived, then came the certain slide

back to sludge. A trick, endlessly repeated. Generations rise,

act, expire. The mud is packed with death. Again, the new

recurs: hopeful twigs root the sky, quick fish swarm beneath

swirls of birds migrating to merge with landscape. None

can escape the loop. Sprigs and wriggling nematodes

lift inspired shapes to glance above the mulch derived

from those who went before    the die   Layers of

life rest limp and crushed beneath the holy stone of time,

hidden from the spinning crazy round of sun and moon,

and left fermenting inside the warm barrel of the earth.

2. All that pain: the bloody, hacked-off limbs of war; those injuries

a lover's heart sustains. Lives stocked with hardened grudge

or slow-cooked revenge. The bludgeon of recurrent thought,

or fuzz of the drug-smudged brain. The push towards

those things we love, and would not lose: an early lily, lush

in bloom; brass ensembles filling sun-bronzed rooms; a child

immersed, creating nests away from harm in long bush grass.

All this richness soon will pass, be lost, is already past, has gone.

The screw rotates again; with each turn the living thread goes

underground. All vital cells, all life's vast loveliness, and all vile

anguish, is delivered back to silence, to rot, to fertilize the next

round of intrepid roots and sprouts, fiery heart- and limb-buds.

Sometimes, the aftermath of life sinks deeper still; lakes of slow

decay compose   thick cud of sleep   and the dark prayer of oil.