Category: Studio Light

Sunday Night Muse

Tuesday, I’ll deliver photographs (not these) for display at the 2025 Cary Photographic Artists Members Show at The Cary Arts Center. The exhibit is coincident with the Cary Ballet Company Annual performance of “The Nutcracker”.

My last participation was 2019 (the second photograph) . Which her father made certain to take home. With luck, I might get to visit with both this young lady and her parents. All are still in my heart.

Cary Ballet Conservatory “Nutcracker” Studio Rehearsal- December 2015

Cary Ballet Conservatory – Youth America Grand Prix Preview – April 2019

To Dance and Dream

It’s hard to comprehend this was only four years ago. I was still a “Widower Novitiate”. Work provided balance. This studio session was with a stunning natural beauty and drop dead graceful, elegant dancer. Proof that the Great Spirit was in a really good mood when she was born. To work, to collaborate with such hard working artists was a great gift. I was very, very lucky.

Studio Session at Cary Ballet Conservatory – June 2021

Principals

Oct. of 2010 found me floundering, looking for a raison d’etre. Newly decoupled from an IT job at Lenovo nee IBM PC Company, south of Social Security and burnt from the inanity of self absorbed navel gazers who professed omnipotence, my tank was empty. Which properly worried my sweetheart about how we were going to get along.

So trying to find my bearings . I got a legit press pass from “Cary Citizen” and went to photograph “Celebration of The Children In the Arts”. Which was, unknown to me, a gateway spiritual drug. I found my artistic North Star!

100% naive of Ballet, Deanna Seay (who’d I had no idea had just retired as Principal Soloist at Miami City Ballet or had any idea of what that meant) was very kind and supportive and invited me to just come and watch classes.

And I remember thinking “This is hard – really hard – way harder than than Football or Basketball!” And I got to meet and photograph Principals who were very kind to my endeavors

Deanna Seay Master Class – February 2011

Maria Chapman Kennedy with Mimi Staker – August 2012

Elizabeth Gaither & Class – July 2014

Aha Moment

Fifteen minutes before my turned off, 225 F oven, renders portions of slow cooker pork stew (seasoned neck bones, homemade stock and all the vegetables that needed using) to go on brown rice & millet in homemade veg stock, I’ve some time to write.

Best I can remember, I cycled through 13 or 14 DSLR’s between 2007 and now. There are, 500 or 600 K clicks later, a lot of stories. But today, duh, I realized all my work had to do with intimacy. With us humans. Even my OBX photographs are about, being alone, with clarity.

This is from one of my last portrait sessions. A young woman I’d known as a young Dancer. And I got to visit with her and her Mom and give them the prints they ordered. It answered the question of why, I made photographs.

What Really Matters

Late today, in dangerous heat, I watched a U-Haul Truck unload into an empty apartment in my building. While I was tending the Clam Sauce for my Linguini. In comfortable air conditioning. A vivid reminder of life changes.

Stopped working in the Fall of 2022. And now, luxurious with time, seeing it again. School holidays were Golden Time for me. I could move a ton of lighting gear into studio for a week and schedule dancer sessions. The Artist & Dad genes in me kicked in. I was, chest beating proud of them all. Her folks know!

Studio Session, Cary Ballet Conservatory – 27 Dec 2019

The Importance of Teachers

Early this week, I made photographs of a Kindergarten Graduation Ceremony at a wonderful nearby school where a young neighbor and dear friend, teaches. I finished the edit this afternoon. Gave her a USB Drive to share with the School, Faculty and Parents. Without parental permission, I can’t show them here. And BTW, anyone who thinks teaching is easy, in spite of being a Fitness Buff, she was wiped out from long days at the end of school year.

But I did have permission when I made this photograph. And I could not stop thinking about the fact that this young woman, guiding the very young dancers here, was adopted, from a far away land. And pray every child has a good teacher.

Cary Ballet Conservatory “Aspiring Dancers” 18 May 2019

Muse Redux

Late in 2018, I decided to let go of film & medium format cameras. New digital versions were astronomically expensive and the film versions were costly, in money and time.

This photograph is from a last portrait session with a Pentax 645N Film Camera and Kodak Ektar film. Had the film processed and scanned the negatives myself. The process after that is just the same as a Digital Negative.

But that’s not what this is about. It’s about Art and Artists. Which explains the rolls of Ektar film in my frig., that fit my 1914 Kodak Autographic Junior & 1925 Kodak Brownie Model F.

Old guy, responsible me, has been mulling selling my post widower, post house sale purchased, 645 Digital Gear. Nah. The Muse Provides. I got plans.

Portrait Session at Cary Ballet Conservatory – May 2018