We Are All Wild Things

May 31, 2010 By

I watched Wes Andersen’s “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” with my seven-year old grand-niece on Saturday night.

To say I loved this movie is to understate its charms as they are limitless where as my love sometimes get distracted by IPADS and cameras n’ things.

At the end of the movie (which is a liberal not literal adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s book)  the mid-life crisis of The Fantastic Mr. Fox is successfully resolved but not before putting his whole community’s survival in environmental  jeopardy (feel free to look at the headlines for relevance of theme), he and his buddy Mole drove by an open area where a wolf was on a rock.  The Fantastic Mr. Fox has a phobia about wolves, just plain ‘scared of them” he tells Mole in the beginning of the movie and if anyone mentions “wolf” or “wolves” he yells “to quit the wolf talk, will ya?”

Mole, his sidekick, whose eyes go into pinwheels when he doesn’t understand what is being asked of him (which is most of the time) answers that his phobia is lightning just before the two of them get lit up by an electric security fence as they are stealing chickens.

The wisdom of this movie about fear fightin’  kills me.  Wrapped in old-time stop motion animation (think Faye Ray’s “King Kong”) the look and substance of this movie makes  3-D look like all sizzle and no steak.

Anyhoo, the wolf is on the rock looking out, standing tall and arched.  The Fantastic Mr. Fox stops the motorcycle and calls out the equivalent of small talk, wild animal style: “How’s the weather?”

The wolf just looks.  Quizzically looking, taking in this request for socialization.

Mr. Fox (who is on two legs that look like stilts but have hooves for feet and wears pants with a hole for his tail which by the end of movie has been chopped off in a fight and worn as a tie by his adversary– but I go on and on, don’t I?) raises his paw/arm straight up in the air, fist clenched, sign of we are the wild world solidarity and waits for the wolf to respond.

After a long pause and more wolf quizzical looks, the wolf raises his paw and holds it straight up, holds it there a beat or two, and then, moves off the rock back into the wider landscape.

I gulped.  My grand-niece and I looked at one another.

We both said simultaneously, “That’s my favorite part.”

So, when I asked her the next day to stand in front of the big American flag in Boston,  she did–and just before I clicked the shutter (totally unprompted)- her arm shot up, fist clenched.

I gulped again.

On this day where we remember the presence of others in our shared national and personal life, bedeviled along the way by private and public fears, I can’t think of a better image nor a better movie.  Rent it– buy it even better.  Giving one to a friend, better still.

©Pat Coakley 2010

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Filed Under: FEARS Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

What is it? #3

May 29, 2010 By

This is a single image.  No filters or even Levels or Curves. (Photoshop “stuff”).  I saw this through my lens.

To me, it looks like I am underneath the ocean of the Purple Planet where we all might want to be living if we keep on kicking the crap out of our  “Blue”planet.  This image is also part of a gallery of photos called, “The Art of Purple” taken over the past few months.

So, what is it?

(It’s Saturday and not Thursday.  I forgot, alright?  A seven year old is arriving in a few hours for the weekend,  I had to sample all the snacks I’d bought her  to make sure they weren’t posionous.  They belong to that food group called, “Junk”.  )

©Pat Coakley 2010

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••Select photographs from this blog and from my wider archive can be purchased at www.patcoakley.com

Filed Under: "What is it? Series", Enviornment, Macro Photograpy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

LIVE

May 27, 2010 By

There are certain news images over my 65 years that can still make me wince- even close my eyes or look away from-when they are shown again on TV.

A few examples would be: newsreels of Nazi Concentration camps in 1945, the 1963 Zapruder 16mm footage of President Kennedy’s motorcade in Dallas,  RFK giving his victory speech in a Los Angeles hotel in 1968 after winning the California primary, the young Cambodian girl, on fire from napalm, running with arms raised in horror as her flesh and clothes are consumed in flames, the helicopter atop the US Saigon embassy evacuating the last of the staff with a much longer line than seats on the helicopter, the 1981 assassination attempt on President Reagan outside the Washington Hilton, the explosion of the Space Shuttle  Challenger in 1986.

Today, I have a new one, based on the deep water LIVE video camera images being shown on TV of the catastrophic oil spill off Louisiana with the occasional fish or eel swimming into and out of the shot. The above image began with shots from the TV of this video feed.

This video is not time-stamped for us in a beginning and end moment; unlike the countdown clock which kept running at Cape Canaveral in 1986- long after it was clear that the Space Shuttle had disintegrated and its debris fallen into the ocean–the oil spill today keeps gushing, silently gushing.  It is as if the Challenger was shot into the sky and shattered in a pitiless loop of launch and destruction 24/7, for 35 days and counting.

This clock keeps counting the seconds, minutes, hours of this spewing oil.  Ticking…ticking,…ticking.   The sickening consequences of it, perhaps beyond imagination, shall foul the weeks, months, years ahead even after it stops.  If…it stops.

The waters of the Gulf, just inches from the billowing ooze, are the colors of a Florida sunrise.

Shall I now wince and avert my eyes from dawn as well?

©Pat Coakley 2010

Photographs cannot be used without written permission

**Select photographs from this blog and my wider archive can be purchased at www.patcoakley.com

Filed Under: Catastrophes Tagged With: , , ,

Twirling

May 22, 2010 By

EVERYONE!  Gather ’round like we did last summer.

O, that’s right, Chubby Checker not withstanding- we didn’t gather ’round that summer, did we?

If only I had known that at 65 years of age I’d look like Andy Warhol–I might have lived my life a bit differently.

First, I’d have accepted the stranger’s invitation to waltz in the cafe at Victoria Station in London in 1974.  He was dancing by himself, people, in the middle of the U shaped cafe to the piped in music.  All of us seated on the round tables were trying to pretend we didn’t see him until he waltzed over to my table and extended his hand like Fred Astaire and my head started spinning like Linda Blair in “The Exorcist”.

Even if he was out on a day pass, what harm could I have possibly done to myself by dancing with him?  I was getting on my train back to Germany in minutes. He was going to be twirling by himself forever.

But, no, I just wordlessly shook my head and looked at my table top as if it was one of The Dead Sea Scrolls.

Now, here on this beautiful spring day as I look at my containers and anticipate the cascading heliotrope and the smell of vanilla, I realize that 35 plus years later that I also twirl alone.

I can’t waltz anymore but I still twirl from time to time.

Here’s a video-twirl, Pappy style.

Miss Mary Comes to Visit.

©Pat Coakley 2010

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Filed Under: Aging, CHILDREN, Nostalgia, Photography, Photography for Shut Ins, PORTRAITS, self-portrait Tagged With: , , , ,

What is it? (Week Two)

May 20, 2010 By

It is Thursday, week 2 of “What is it?”.  Last week can be viewed HERE.

I am teaching myself new things about Photoshop and honest to God–world peace may not have as many twists and turns as this software program.

So, what is it? Or, what does it look like to you?

I’ll tell you this–to me it looks like two funky canoes hanging up on shed.

Unlike last week, there are clues to the actual beginning image.

©Pat Coakley 2010

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Filed Under: Organic Photography, Photoshop, What Is It? Tagged With: , ,

Essex, Massachusetts

May 17, 2010 By

I went to an engagement party north of Boston in Essex, Massachusetts on Saturday.  It was a day of divine light and clouds and a blessed property of horse corrals, green pastures, and expansive spring green marsh land below the corral.  I wanted to photograph the guests but the property and the skies kept calling me.  Judging from my gallery of photos accessible HERE, I think Mother Nature was the guest of honor.

©Pat Coakley 2010

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Filed Under: Family, Friendship Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Caregiver Paradox

May 14, 2010 By

There is beneath the many challenges of caregiving to elderly parents one simple paradox.

Roles have reversed.

The hands that used to lift you up to grab the handlebars on the jungle gym are the same hands that now need your help to walk across a room or rise from a chair or bed.

The  gift of reassurance is the cycle of life powered by many small gestures in the course of a day or a lifetime.

©Pat Coakley 2010

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**Select photographs from this blog and my wider archive can be purchased at www.patcoakley.com

Filed Under: Affection, Caregiving Tagged With: , , ,

Windy Bachelor

May 14, 2010 By

Well, I’m trying to photograph something other than flowers and vegetables.

I really am.

I photographed some neighbor’s children yesterday.

Today, I’m going to photograph my father’s old Kodak Retina IIa rangefinder camera made in Germany that cost 175 dollars in 1953, the equivalent of $1700 today.  Yikes.  $1700 for a Kodak camera today?

The ones made in Germany apparently were quite good according to Google.  Google, I love you. I truly do.  I know you are trying to take over the world but, seriously, at least we’ll be well informed slaves.

I found the manual for his Leica IIIf.  It even had Plus X black and white film still inside. I found the customs card for it as he bought it in 1956 on our trip to Europe.  I found two Leica screw mount lenses.  But, no I can’t find the Leica camera.  I saw one on Ebay for 250.  I’m tempted.  I really am.  But, film?  Oh, lordie.  I don’t think I have the patience for that anymore.  I would really really really love to look at the world through prints from these two Leica lenses.

But, for now, this purple green thing has me in its windy clutches.

It is a bachelor button.

Hmmm.  They don’t name pretty things after spinsters.

Grrr.

©Pat Coakley 2010

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Filed Under: Flora and Fauna, Flower Photography, Flowers, Kodak Retina Tagged With: , , , , ,

What is it?

May 13, 2010 By

It’s Thursday.  It’s a new weekly series called “What is it?” day.

Answer should be in a story form.  Six words.

Prizes for entrants not just winners.

My new name is Agatha Crunchy.  I’m hoping for a BBC series.

©Pat Coakley 2010

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Filed Under: What is It? Challenge Tagged With: , , , , ,

Skinnydipping with Creativity

May 12, 2010 By

Creativity is messy and exhilirating.

You need privacy because you are in a perpetual state of blissful vulnerability like skinny dipping on a moonlit night.

Sometimes you are a minnow wiggling through those dark waters flashing sparks of silver.

But, most of the time, to the outside eye, what one does in this state may appear patently ridiculous– to say nothing of the mess that surrounds your chair or table of activity.

Exhibit A.

You buy a few stalks of tuberose. Green stalk, cream colored small tulip shaped flowers that climb the stalk like a helix.

You don’t put it in a vase like normal people.

You put it in a scanner underneath the black box you have made for just such an occasion.

Whilst the scanner moves across the tuberose, you sit hovered over the scanner, eye level with the scanner bed, delicately moving the stem like it was swimming on a moonlit night.

Then, you put it in a vase.  Tuberose smells sorta sicky sweet, I have to say.  I may have to put it in the pond down the street.

©Pat Coakley 2010

PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION

Select photographs from this blog and my wider archive can be purchased at www.patcoakley.com

Filed Under: 1, Creativity, Deep Thoughts, Flower Photography, Flowers, Motion, MOTION PHOTOGRAPHY Tagged With:
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