BH Neely's Photography

Ancient Monastery, Meteora, Greece

Can you see it? The jumble of stones that are too square to be natural on the stubby pillar in the middle of the frame? You spend all that time climbing the hill, building your monastery in the middle of nowhere, then one day, no new monks come. And it goes back to the land whence it came, as will everything we do.

For some reason, visiting Meteora made me very, very cognizant of the fleeting blip in time our presence represents. We think we've been here for sooooooooo long, and we can't imagine the world without us, but if you stretch your arms wide and the beginning of the earth is at the tip of your right middle finger, all of human existence will be removed when you trim your left middle fingernail off. To make it even more stark, get two friends to stretch their arms and you stand fingertip to fingertip in a straight line - your furthest friend's fingertip is the Big Bang.

Don't worry, this is the last one from Meteora, so I won't be scaring the children (or the adults) with our insignificance anymore (well, for a while anyway).

Tourist trap, Meteora, Greece

(as if you couldn't see what I was leading to). Now, the tourists need only catch a bus or drive their cars to the site. You have to climb from the parking lot to get to the monastery. Or, you can hike a well-marked trail a few miles from the nearest town, a lot more work than driving, but still easier than hacking through the underbrush. One tour book said that if monasteries hadn't been built here, somebody would have found some other reason to develop tourism in this gorgeous place.

Monastery, Meteora, Greece

For hundreds of years, hermits and monks climbed up these rocks, carving steps into the hardened sandstone of an ancient seabed in order to make the climb and haul tools and bricks and food and water and sleeping gear. First they lived in tiny caves, more like natural dugouts in the cliff walls. Then they began to build monasteries. There have been 24 monasteries on these cliffs over the centuries, though right now there are 6 functioning ones. Looks peaceful and lonely doesn't it? Come back tomorrow...

Meteora, Greece

Wow. Just wow.

The only adjustments I've made to this are turning it to grayscale, with a reduction from the blue channel (to cut the haze a little) and some curves work to get the contrast right. The oil paint quality it has is from the quality of the light, the haze and the contours of the rocks. I love it when I get to be in the right place at the right time.

Meteora, Greece

Does anyone else feel like there's a Slestak behind that rock? The area that is now Meteora was once a seabed or lakebed. The land rose or the sea/lake drained and rivers gradually washed away the soft stone and mud, leaving sandstone that had cured like concrete, studded with an aggregate of rocks, pebbles, stones and boulders. You can see at the tops of some of the pillars that sometime around the time mankind goes extinct (assuming that we have another couple hundred thousand years or so), some of the capstones may fall. Or it may be long after H. sapiens has gone. At sunset the landscape looks like something out of Land of the Lost.

Monastiraki, Athens, Greece

This is a shot I've been trying to get for months - bags or other articles for sale in the shops of Monastiraki, with the Acropolis on the hill in the background. The dramatic clouds help a lot.

I've started to finally enjoy using Photoshop Elements. This picture represents things that I can do with a negative in the darkroom that I can finally do with a digital photograph in Elements. There's a ton of dodging, burning, selecting, lightening, darkening and contrast adjustment to get the full range of textures in this photo. I learned this stuff much, much faster in the darkroom than I have on the computer.

Central Market, Athens, Greece

I buy my meat at the Central Market (Κεντρική Αγορά), for two reasons. The primary reason is that I like to see my meat while it's still attached to something that looks like an animal. Knowing that someone didn't hunt down and kill a styro-plastic beast makes me happy. The secondary reason is price. This little stack of meat, for which I paid about 12 euros, would have cost around 20 in the grocery store. Sometimes, though, it's the secondary reason that gets me out of the house and onto the metro, knowing that I'll be lugging 25 pounds on the return trip.

Mostly I buy lamb, pork, chicken and ground beef, sometimes I pick up a beef roast and occasionally (especially now that the weather's cooling and I can entertain the notion of making stew) a rabbit or two. I have to admit to missing horse, which we used to get in Kazakhstan.

I'm working on a series of market photos, with the goal of doing an exhibition, probably called "Ελλινική Αγορά" (Greek Market), sometime next fall or winter. It'll encompass the Central Market, various folk/farmers' markets and the Piraeus Flea Market.

Onions, Athens, Greece

A picture so good it makes me cry. Oh, stop the laughter. I have layers of jokes to peel through yet. That first one was as fragile as paper. I think my need to make people laugh is rooted in insecurity.

Sorry about that.

Carpets, Athens, Greece

While these aren't nearly as impressive as, or of the quality of, the stacks of handmade wool carpets at the Tolkuchka near Ashgabat, I like the colors and textures.

Meteora, Kastraki, Greece

There are, and always have been, obsessive people in the world. Modern, western obsessive people do things like name hotels after themselves, build world-dominating companies, score lots of touchdowns, write long novels, run for president...In past times, obsessives became kings, tsars, philosophers and in the case of the Meteora area in Central Greece, cliff-dwelling hermit monks. This was our view of one of the cliffs from our hotel room. Just as soon as I get them downloaded and processed, there'll be more.

American Musical Theater, Epidavros, Greece

The ancient theater at Epidavros, designed in the 4th C. BCE, is an incredible place. From the stage, particularly the center stone, you can hear clearly into the farthest reaches of the seats. Usually, this is demonstrated by people calling for silence by saying, "Sssshhhhhh," or by dropping coins, or by rubbing paper together, striking matches or clapping. My father-in-law, Pops, is a community-theater actor, and he went out and sang a song for the 200 or so people scattered around. It was the first time I've heard total silence in the amphitheater except for the person at center stage. He got a call for an encore. I'm proud of Pops.

Garbage, Between Corinth & Epidavros, Greece

Λυπάμαι πολύ. Εχεις καλή θέα, και την καταστρεύεις με σκουπίδια. Αυτό είναι το μόνο πράγμα που μισώ στην Ελλάδα.

Work, Acropolis, Athens, Greece

People who know me well know that I have no love for doing work. But among the jobs I've seen people do (and those I've done myself), this has to be one of the coolest (except that he's doing it on a naked plateau in southern Greece). When putting together ancient marble pieces with modern patches, you have to match the grooves and holes and posts and so forth so that they all fit together well. And he's measuring and sanding to fit the shiny, white, new header to the ancient, orange header. That's cool. I wonder if he thinks about that.

Stonework, Acropolis, Athens, Greece

With an iron chisel and an iron hammer a stonesmith sat in a workshop and carved this. More than 100 generations ago. I've been here 8 months, and I still can't get over that. The things we make will be rusted and eroded and gone, and this guy's grooves and flutes will be a little softer from the wind and rain, but still visible.

Nothing modern, Acropolis, Athens, Greece

Amazing. No people, no electrical wires, no cars, no cranes, no cigarette butts. Some 2x4's, but we'll pretend those have been around for 3000 years.

Scaffold shadow, Acropolis, Athens, Greece

After several cloudy, rainy days in a row, we got a gorgeous sunny day for taking the in-laws to the Acropolis. And you know what sun means...that's right, Brian takes pictures of shadows.

Crane, Acropolis, Athens, Greece

You're lifting huge blocks of marble onto the top of the Parthenon, and you don't have 10,000 slaves to do the work for you. So you use a crane. And to keep the crane from falling over, you counterbalance it with huge marble blocks. There's a beautiful symmetry to that.

Scaffolding, Acropolis, Athens, Greece

I live in Athens in historic times. (Actually, we always live in historic times, but this is something fairly special.) They're fixing up the Acropolis, which means I get to watch work progress and scaffolding go up (and hopefully down a little) while I'm here. I get to watch people do the complicated, intricate work of blending marble that's been in place for 3000 years with new marble.