Olena

Poetry has always frustrated me. In school, particularly in high school we were given extra points in class if we memorized a poem. I never tried. In elementary school I remember my mother making me repeat lines, over and over so I might memorize the assigned poem. It was terrible and I know I must have cried at my futile efforts.

While I am able to write an efficient blog and for quite a few years magazines and newspapers paid me to write I have never attempted writing poetry.

I love poetry and film but never have I been tempted to shoot video. I am happy with one photograph at a time.

I look at these two pictures of Olena that I took with my Fuji X-E3 at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020 and I wish I could write an accompanying poem that might go hand in hand with them.

Once the half-tone process was invented at the end of the 1870s photographs could now appear in newspapers, magazines and books. Until the bottom fell out from g8ood journalism and magazines a few years ago photographs and illustrations shared space because the combination added context to both the copy and the image.

Now in this 21^st century perfect photographs with no copy have no context and in my opinion they fail. Even a lousy photograph of a cat if followed by information on the cat and the opinion of its owner works for me. Those pristine photographs, with equipment references in detail, leave me cold.

The vertical photograph of my friend Olena for me elicits a strange feeling of Eros. I played with making her skin more blue, less blue, more yellow, less yellow and with different degrees of red. But there is a mystery in the pose that I could never shoot again. This one was off the cuff and it worked. To put a purpose before shooting something like this would defeat the process.

The second photograph is my recent obsession with getting an accurate skin colour. I believe I achieved it partly because Olena has infinite patience for work methods.

Now, the above is not a poem. But it will have to do.