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The Ball And Chain

Not much has really changed since I shot this photo. The fan died and I got a new one. Instead of facing west into the glare of the late afternoon sun I now face east and look at a wall with a few framed pictures on it. I still make the effort to post a photo every night and write a bit about it. That's "the ball and chain part". I wore out one little fan and bought a desk lamp.

When I got dragged kicking and screaming into the blogosphere (isn't that what they call it?), very much against my best judgement, I figured that it would go on for a few months at best. At this rate I'll be crossing the "one thousand posts" mark before Christmas. It's fun and it keeps me out of trouble. Now I have to catch up and write something about Police Chief Jm Devaney. I didn't write it the other night!

Another day without a picture...

This morning I took a few of my new prints over to the Suyu Gallery to get some feedback from Mario. He loved them and he plans to show several of them along with some of my older work. Believe me, the new stuff doesn't look anything at all like my older work! Mario said that he'd never seen anything like it before. He wanted to know how I got those effects. I ain't giving away my secrets, no way!

Now in addition to Todd and Monkette getting on my case to spend more time printing in the darkroom I'll have Mario bugging me also.

We're cutting back the schedule of posting photos on the blog to three days a week. There should be another one posted tomorrow. Whether I'll be able to resist the opportunity to write about something on those off days anyway, that's another story.

In addition to using some of my new black and white work starting in a few weeks Monkette wanted me to mention that she has a cute little itty-bitty toy monkey herself now! He still doesn't have a name but I'm sure that Monkette will think up a good one for him. He'll soon start showing up here in the pictures.

Proposed Changes And News About The Blog

With the help of Todd Frederick this has been a very successful blog. He's the one who posts the photographs, and in many cases he's used his Photoshop skills to restore the color in some very badly faded color slides from forty or more years ago.

When The Price of Silver first started several years ago it was all old B&W photographs, everything from politics to rock & roll, with a few personal pictures as well. From the begining there were a few paragraphs of copy with every photo, sometimes serious, sometimes tongue-in-cheek. At some point I started with the self-portrait thing when I discovered it was possible to do it with a 15mm ultra-wide angle lens. We then switched to mostly all color. I was hardly going in the darkroom anymore. Todd was getting on my case about that, and Monkette was threatening to cut off my banana supply.

A few weeks ago I met the owner of a new gallery here in North Miami, showed him some of my work, and it's looking like I'll have a bunch of my prints hanging in a group show starting July 12th. I'll post more details in a few days.

As I thought about what to show at the Suyu Gallery I decided that I wanted to stay with black and white prints, but I also wanted to show something more recent than the 1970's. Last night I was mulling things over in my head, what to do, what to shoot, how to do it. I decided that I wanted to show both new and old work. The new work would be based on older photos but printed up with some new techniques. They'd still be traditional silver gelatin prints of course.

In the meantime here on the blog we have a few months supply of those 15mm color shots on hand, but they'll likely be mixed in with the experimental black and white photographs. We'll also be likely to cut back to three or four blog entries a week instead of the killer daily pace. As best we can tell we've already set a record for photography blogs, both as to longevity and for consistancy of posting on a regular basis. If you visit us and there's nothing new that day you can be sure that there will be the next day, so stop back.

Lastly, thanks for your kind comments and emails. Keep them coming. They make all this worthwhile! Todd, Monkette, and I thank you.

Dragging Al to The Doctor's Office

Hi there, this is me, Monkette writing. I really enjoyed writing a blog post a few days ago but I really had to fight with Al to let me write more. Al hates going to the doctor but I insisted. He'd been acting a bit strange (Claudia, his ex, says that he ALWAYS acts strange.) Anyway, I called up and made an appointment for him to see Dr. Katz (Al calls him Larry) and Dr. Katz likes me. He's always asking Al how I am and why doesn't he bring me with him more often.

So I made an appointment for early in the day, Dr. Katz's second, because Al doesn't like to wait, and truth be told, Larry, as Al calls him, has a largely geriatric practice (read: old ladies) so there are no mini-skirted young lovelies to ogle. Also, there are never any magazines to read and he hates watching the TV. He'd rather sit there and look grouchy. He's got that part down pat. We only waited about 15 minutes. Dr. Katz said that everything checked out fine and Al could easily expect to be around for another thirty years. Al was so happy that he went home and shaved off his beard. (That doesn't make sense, does it?)

Well, a few days later Al had another grand mal epileptic seizure in his sleep, the first in several years. He has an appointment with his neurologist in a week or so but in the meantime we upped his doseage. Other than acting stoned out from the drug and disorientated from the seizure he seemed OK. A few days later KABOOM!, another seizure as he took an afternoon nap. I really put my foot down, yes indeed! "AL!" I said, "I'm writing the blog AND taking the photos until you get your shit back together!"

One of Al's photography buddies told him that he needed to become more of a Believer, not so much of an agnostic, and he turned him on to a really cool book Dudeism.com - The Church of the Latter-Day Dude and Al has been reading it. Until Al gets back on his feet I'm going to be doing the blog so all of our fans don't jump ship, or even worse, become Dudists themselves.