06 OCT 2008

About a year ago I staryed more seriously on a project of photographing yoga asana (poses). In sanskrit asana literally means seat. This is partly due to the fact that early asana were seated poses for meditation. It also implies groundedness and steadiness. In Pantanjali's Yoga Sutra (2.46) a yoga asana is decsribed as both sthira (steady, stable, motionless) and sukha (comfortable, ease filled).

I plan on writing more about about each session with the different practitioners, but first below is a sampling of what we ended up with.

-dan

Pay to Park

10 NOV 2007

The city of Boulder decided to upgrade it's downtown parking system. After some controversy (I have lived in Boulder for four years now, and still quite surprised as to what causes a stir), the process of removing the coin operated meters began. In their place, each block now has a black and very sturdy looking parking kiosk. You pay with cash or credit and it dispenses a slip for the dash of your car.

One morning, I was out photographing in town and ended up capturing this image:

In the lower left, you can see one of the parking kiosks. This "end on" view is a stark and graphic element. Previously, I had thought about photographing this very section of wall. However, the images seemed unbalanced since the lower left corner was too empty; nothing drew the eye to that region. But then, "viola" the city of Boulder waved it's wand and the perfect corner anchoring object appeared.

Prior to processing the negative for the above image, I started using other "pay to park" locations to select where to point my camera. My only rule was that some part of the kiosk had to appear in the frame. This was fantastic: a bunch of random locations in town and I did not have to find them myself. Sometimes one of the hardest things about photography is letting yourself look through your camera; interesting images can be found anywhere there is light. Usually we have to judge a spot worthy our time before we set up. With the locations preselected, I was free to just worry about the image on the ground glass.

These are all scans of 5x7 negatives. Contact prints will come soon. The combination of my 5x7 reducing back on my 8x10 camera and a 450 mm lens provided an appropriate amount of visual content. I can't wait to see the resulting contacts generously overmatted. I have a dozen or so I like, enough for distinct a series, but perhaps I should finish the complete set.

-dan

Building Materials

20 OCT 2007

Last December (2006), the first of many major snowstorms hit the Metro-Denver area (which includes Boulder). By the end of the near record snowfall season, we were all pretty tired of the white fluffy stuff. But that point early in winter, the storm felt spectacular; a couple feet of snow shut things down for a few days. Now that fall is here, everyone in town wonders what this winter has in store

I was up at my usual early hour and walked over to the Yoga Workshop, where I practice most mornings. It was a longshot but why not see if anyone would show up. As expected it was closed, but post-holing through the pre-dawn untouched snow in town was just amazing. I returned to my apartment, made some tea, and put my 8x10 large format camera kit together.

A blanket of snow is actually a hard thing to photograph and I wandered around a bit. It was still lightly snowing, so I was quite interested in finding sheltered locations where I could set up. I took a couple images at the Boulder public library where the covered walkway crosses Boulder creek, but was not connecting with the images on the ground glass.

I headed toward town, and realized that a parking garage could provide ample cover. I marched up a few stories in the Randolf building garage and found the above view of a new building being consructed at Broadway and Canyon. A couple months later, I printed the negative and the print was interesting enough to mount and place in one of the portfolio boxes I use to show my work.

Near the end of this summer I was showing some prints to my friend Tasha. When we came to this print her face lit up. She wanted to know where I took it. I got the location wrong and she corrected me! She said that she recognized the materials.

You see, Tasha works for architecture firms, but I never quite knew what she did. This print helped me find out. Tasha is a type of analyist who determines how "green" a building is. Not only had she worked on this building, it also held special significance for her. She was leaving her current firm to work for another, and this had been a major project with her old firm. I also suspect her experience with this project also proved pivotal to helping her secure the new position.

Boulder is small enough that I expect people will recognize many of the places I photograph. I had however imagined this to be a more anonymous image, especially since the rest of the construction has covered it up. For few people there is nothing random about the collection of items in this image. They chose these materials and carefully anaylzed the implications of their choices.

I feel that images must stand on their own independent of context. My goal is for the shapes and forms to invoke a primal aethestic response first. In some cases someone will have an personal conection -dan

contact me using: dan (at) danschmidt.com