Brian’s PhotoPile

Movies on a Shoestring’s “International Film Festival” is coming up in April and I had a chance to view all the entries that made it to final judging over the weekend.  I spent most of Friday evening, Saturday, and Sunday morning in the dark. They received some very good examples of what is being produced by emerging filmmakers and it looks like they will have a good show for the Festival.

I haven’t spent much time working on my own pictures the past few days. I haven’t even taken very many pictures. I’m still troubled by my storage filing system which leaves much to be desired. Photos are scattered on several harddrives, cataloged with different versions of Lightroom, Aperture, and iPhoto. Some pictures reside only on my laptop and some on the tower. It’s a mess. I took some pictures at the George Eastman House the other evening while waiting for the doors to open at the Dryden. I love their garden. I only took one picture of some Scots playing bagpipes and when I got home decided all I liked about that picture was their kilts and stockings.

Sixty degrees and up on a roof with a good view of  the Genesee Brewery and High Falls smokestack. The City has new pedestrian walkway signs that are hard to miss. Margaret Explosion sailed up into the rafters at the Little Café wednesday night, most everyone went with them.

Shadows on an old fence with a squeaky gate opening and closing in the wind captured my attention for awhile. There was an umbrella lying on the ground by an abandoned house of no use to anyone, except maybe an artist or a poet. Trinkets hanging there in the doorway, I couldn’t see what the button said until I got home… Stop Killing People. Then after shopping with Judy out at Marketplace Mall, in the midst of traffic, as the stop light changed to green, the sunset.

Wednesday night Margaret Explosion took off to the planet Venus at the Little Café. A lively group of fans enjoyed the two hour musical excursion along with them while enjoying the wine, beer, and other delicacies at the Café.

Thursday was the 6th anniversary of the Iraq War. I’m really such an innocent when it comes to understanding the complex issues that face countries. But it seems to me that  greed and insecurity is a major contributing factor in all wars. It saddens me to see young people go off to war to kill and be killed. I would like to see an end to religious and political intolerance. It’s hard for me to understand how in a world as advanced as we are today, that people can’t see what we all have in common. And why just because they where born in such and such country or raised with this or that religion that they feel they need to be patriotic only to their country or follow the beliefs of only their religion. We need to recognize the humanity of all of us.

On Thursday many groups in Rochester got together to protest the Iraq War. There was a free meal sharing event “Food Not Bombs” at the Liberty Pole, a Parade and Rally downtown, a “Shoe Toss” at Cheney and Bush after their sentencing at Genesee River Crossroads Park, and an Interfaith Prayer Service for Peace at Sacred Heart Cathedral. I spent time photographing the groups that participated in the parade, the largest contingent being ‘Students for a Democratic Society”. They left Washington Square Park on South Clinton Avenue. heading towards Main Street. Once on Main Street instead of marching down the sidewalk like I think they were supposed to be doing they took over the west bound lane of the street. As they walked down the street they were joined by a group coming off Stone Street and later by a large group coming up Exchange Street. They briefly stopped by the Federal Building for some protest speeches. The police where going bonkers, but fortunately kept their cool, no billy clubs or mad dogs. As the group walked down Main Street one police car tried to gently push them over to the sidewalk but the group just walked around it, then later on State Street the horse battalion also tried to move them off the street to no avail. The parade down Main and State Streets lasted only about ten minutes, maybe a few buses got a little bit behind schedule, but I think the students got their point across. It felt good to see such an energetic protest, many, many cars beeped their horns in support as they passed in the other direction. Surprisingly, I didn’t hear any cars that where held up by the parade beeping their horns.

I took a couple cameras with me to the St. Patrick’s Day Parade yesterday. I tried shooting with my old Sony DSC-F828 that I recently bought back from a friend I sold it to a few years ago. Once downtown I realized I’ve forgotten how to use it. It’s time to get the instruction manuel out once again. I love the way the spectators get dressed up for the occassion. I enjoyed looking at them more than much of what was going on in the parade. There were a few groups in the parade that caught my eye. I especially loved the dresses the young dancers with the curls had on and the Scottish Highlander outfits. Regis Mooney who I think is supposed to represent St. Patrick led much of the parade. He really looked stern to me, I wouldn’t want to cross him. I tried to take one photo of him waving with all the people in the photo mural waving back but at a fortieth of a second exposure he was moving to fast and came out a little blurry.

I’m planning to post some pictures of today’s St. Patricks Parade tomorrow, but first this. I was going to post and comment on this picture a day or so ago, but couldn’t make up my mind to do so. But the issue keeps bugging me so I thought I’d say something. It just seems so ridiculous. During the fall as our trees shed their leaves and the winds blow them hither and thither most all of us have to rake leaves that come from neighboring properties as well as our own. Sometimes we just rake the leaves to areas of our yards where they can make a good ground cover or even let them lie if it’s under a large tree in an area where grass doesn’t grow. But this household wasn’t going to let that happen. Instead of letting the leaves blow where they might, they placed this awful looking black plastic barrior to attempt to block the passage of the leaves into their yard. In seems to have worked causing a fair amount of leaves to build up against the windward side on their neighbors property. This is the only area of of the property with the tree that the owner has let the leaves lie undisturbed; the property is by and large very well maintained. The tree is huge, probably one of the oldest in the City. But now comes the good part. Not only is the plastic barrior offensive, but the City sent a work crew to rake the leaves and charge the owner of the offending tree with a fine and the cleanup costs while the person who erected the barrior gets off scot-free. It just doesn’t make sense to me. Can you imagine what our neighborhoods would look like if everyone made these unsightly leaf dams and then reported their neighbor to have the City remove the leaves. It worked for this person, but I doubt it would for all of us.

More vacant buildings today. On one I found a note tucked into the screen then followed the instruction and walked back to the shed. Sure enough there it was… someone’s purse. It looks like it might have been there for quite some time, however the note wasn’t on the door last month. I don’t know who the note was intended for so I just left everything like it was.

Plywood is expensive. It’s good to see it reused.  I’m gradually building up a collection of embedded objects… bottle caps, coins, glass fragments, nails. This is the first wire I’ve found.

Years ago when the owner of Show World, an adult toy and sex store, was having issues with neighbors he decided to show them who’s boss in his own perverted way by painting the building in garish green and orange paint. He also applied a layer of black paint on the dancing nymphs that graced the front of this building that was once one of Rochester’s premier movie theaters. It was the first and I think the only theater capable of showing Cinemascope movies here in town. Fortunately the new owner, thanks to input from neighborhood groups and the City has agreed to preserve and restore the front half of the theater building. The paint has been stripped off the building and the bricks are being pointed. The rear half was demolished for a parking lot that will be used by the new Rite-Aid being built on the corner and stores that will occupy the theater space. The piano is an other story. It was sitting on the porch of one of the vacant buildings I looked at today. It was dismantled. I don’t know whether it is on its way in or out, alas, probably heading for the street.

On the first friday of each month many, many galleries hold open house. The Bone Lab, an installation by the Pifer brothers, at Potential Life Studios http://www.potentiallifestudios.com/ is awsome. These two brothers brought the dead alive again. It’s like 18th century science and 21st century vision merged. Sarah Rutherford, who has been doing Wonder Woman paintings for some time now, opened her studio and displayed new sepia toned paintings. The installation with the little girl and tall child is hers. Sergei Sviatchenko’s collages at the Visual Studies Workshop posessed humor and other qualities that I can’t enumerate, but I found them fascinating, especially the one that covered an entire wall. I even bought one of his books. Then there is that lady with her back to the camera. I was going to follow her and ask if I could take her picture but I forgot and she left the room before I knew it. The Persian New Year  exhibit that was at the Arts and Cultural Center. I liked their offerings, the grass planters that celebrated the outdoors, green and lush, painstakenly nourished by the sun and water. There is a photo I would like to buy by Courtney Gruttadauria not to mention some of John Pfahls work and those of his students on display at RoCo. Tim Mack is displaying resonably priced collectors items at the 4 Walls Gallery on Elton St. Kurt Moyer’s bathing series of paintings where on display at his studio and at Gallery 9. Dee Topham makes amazingly beautiful painted jewely. Craig Gilbert is clearly an up and coming artist to be reconded with. His well thought out images are mind boggling in their complexity and visual impact.

I took a walk downtown last night. At the Liberty Pole a rally was taking place to protest Govenor Paterson’s budget. Student’s spoke up about how budget cuts would affect their being able to continue their education. Medical health professionals spoke how services to senior citizens, disabled, and the poor would be cut. These are all important issues but on the news this morning I saw no mention of the rally. The news mentioned the govenor’s visit to Rochester yesterday.  A lot of hoopla was made over how funding will not be cut so that demolition of Midtown Plaza and  reconstruction of offices and possibly apartments and stores on the site can still take place. But there was no mention of the rally that was attended by over a hundred people who represent hundreds and hundreds of citizens who are going to be affected by the cuts. We have five television news stations so I admit it’s possible one of the other stations mentioned the rally. As so often happens in political debates the rich end up the winners. Fair share is recommending instead of budget cuts we should tax individuals whose incomes are over $250,000 a year. As Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has written, “reductions in government spending on goods and services are likely to be more damaging to the economy in the short run than tax increases focused on higher-income families.”