BH Neely's Photography

Harness, Aldie, VA, USA

No words for this one.

Washington Park Arboretum, Seattle, USA

My favorite place in the Arboretum is the beautiful, simple, vaguely bucolic entrance from Madison St. The stone gateway feels like a call to a quieter place, almost an alternate universe, like crossing the threshold from Spare Oom to War Drobe.

Hoary Old Olive Tree, Peleponneses, Greece

Olive trees are beautiful, gnarly things, some of which can grow large enough to hide an SUV. They also grow very, very old, some may be 2500-3000 years old. I often stop the car to try and get photos of the gnarliness, which Anne says isn't as irritating as it used to be, since I'm much quicker with my DSLR than I ever was with the Hasselblad, but I haven't been as successful as I'd like to be.

I think this is the best photo I have of one, and I'm fairly satisfies with it, but I'd like there to be enough to make a gallery. Guess we'll just have to live in the Mediterranean again someday.

Homeless Dogs, Skopje, Republic of Macedonia

  I hesitate to put this in my series of Adespota pieces, because I don't know what relationship Macedonians have with their street dogs. Is it the love of the animals that Greeks have? Is it the fear mingled with hatred that often appears in the former Soviet Union? Is it apathy? In any case, this troop was patient and moderately cooperative...ignoring me as I clucked and whistled to get their attention, but eventually looking up to see what I was doing long enough to get a couple shots.

Autumnal Stairs, Skopje, Republic of Macedonia

  Yeah, a black & white photographer on an autumn day is gonna take pictures like this.

Log, Zakynthos, Greece

  Here's one where film (or my knowledge of what to do with it) would have been far, far superior to digital. I like the look of this log, but the digital photo is way too crisp. In film, I'd have shot it with a Bergger, Efke or Foma product and processed it in something like Rodinal. Unless of course I already had Delta 100 loaded, which I would have processed in Microphen.

But I had a digital camera in my hand. So I made an effort at aging it. Clearly needs more work. Problem is, I don't think I'm even close to what I see in mind. What I see is something like a 1915-20 bridge between pictorialist and literalist photograph, where the details are a little soft, but recognizably photographic. When I get there, if I don't get frustrated and go on a hate-stupid-digital rant and threaten to throw away the computer and the D200 and shoot only LF wooden cameras with 100-year-old lenses, it should be a pretty satisfying moment.

Arms, Nafplio, Greece

This was very hard to shoot - I was holding the camera left-handed, and that button just isn't in the right place for left-handed shooting.

Adespota, Oia, Santorini, Greece

Sometimes, I don't have a lot to say, other than what the photo says itself. This is one of those times.

Tire & Igneous Rock, Kokkini Paralia, Santorini, Greece

Not only was the Thira volcano powerful enough to hurl these huge boulders a couple of miles, it spontaneously created a tire. Incredible.

Ram's Horn, Markopoulo, Greece

Since it was still oozing a little blood and flesh, I knew Anne wouldn't let me bring it home, so I had to be satisfied with shooting it in the dusty parking lot. My great hope was the animal had died quickly.

Flowers, Athens, Greece

Nikon has a great lens - the 500mm f/8 reflector lens. It looks like a small telescope, because that's what it is. By being a reflector lens with a fixed aperture, it's only a few inches long, rather than the 1/2 meter (20 inches or so) it would have to be if it were a regularly-designed lens. It's old, heavy and very touchy manual focus. With my D200 its focal length equivalent is 750mm, due to the size of the sensor. I've had it for a couple years now, but I don't use it very much, because I haven't been able to think of what to use it for. I decided to just start shooting with it. You learn what a tool is good for when you use it, and I've learned a lot about lenses and cameras by using them indiscriminately until I could see the value of the thing. It's how I learn. So from my balcony, I shot these flowers that are about the size of your thumb and 60 or 80 feet away.

Flowers & Cannonball, Ioannina, Greece

As soon as I walked onto the grounds of the fortress by the lakeshore in Ioannina, I saw this vision from the Vietnam War protests. It was beautiful, man.

Papigo (or Papingo), Greece

Amongst the things I never imagined I'd see in Greece are mountains with this much snow. It isn't glacial, though it sort of has that look. This will all be gone in a couple weeks, but throughout the winter, the higher mountains of central and northern Greece are covered.
But what this is really about is power lines. You probably can't see it in this small version, but if you saw an 8x10 or 16x20, you'd realize that the mountain is out of focus, making the power lines the subject of the photo.

Pathway, Meteora, Greece

At first blush, you might think this wearing away of millenia of lichen growth was caused in just the past hundred years or so by tourists. But it's the path the monks follow to get to their hilltop bell tower, two, three times a day.

Bicycle, Nafplio, Greece

I'm not sure what it is, but I can't help but photograph bikes sometimes. At least, in my defense, this is black & white, and, uh, it's not the whole bike. I don't think it looks like the standard American-shooting-an-old-bike-in-Europe picture, hopefully you agree.

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.

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.

Panormou Laiki (again), Athens, Greece

It was nice of the vendor to have stacked his eggplant in such a photographically-useful way.

Nemea, Greece

A palm frond. I've started experimenting with burn & dodge tools and am meeting with a little success.

Legos at the Acropolis, Athens, Greece

Everything new is old again. I was surprised to discover that the buildings of the Acropolis had been built from Legos.

Katerini Beach, Greece

Every morning, they groom the sand at Katerini Beach. Just so that photographers make shots like this one.

Looks old, doesn't it?

The neighbors decided to renovate their house. They started by knocking out part of a wall, right next to a conveniently planted grape vine and decoratively thrown away pot.

Aphrodite of the Flea Market

I love Aphrodite. Sort of an obvious thing, I think, but when I got to see this rendition of her glowing almost as if lit from within, presiding over the collection of stuff in the Monastiraki flea market, I had to get a photo. And share it.

Clouds on a windy day

Just that. The heat evaporated the sea, the wind pushed that wet air into the side of a mountain, where the wet air gathered into this nicely dramatic cloud. I love dramatic clouds. The wind was almost enough to knock me over as I stood on the shattered remains of a castle wall that's old. How old? Really old. The guide book says that Tinos was the last island to fall to the Ottoman Empire, in 1723, about 300 years after most of the country was taken. So I'm going to guess the castle went down sometime around then. I guess I have to post a picture of what's left of the castle, now, won't I?

Hysternia, Tinos, Greece

Anne and I spent a gorgeous, windy weekend on the Cycladic island of Tinos. At about the midpoint of the island, on the western coastline, is the picturesque village of Hysternia, perched on the mountain, a couple thousand feet nearly straight up from the sea. It's your classic Greek island village, with adobe walls and marble stairs and blinding white paint.

It played hell with my camera's light meter, making me glad I had spent all those years shooting fully manual cameras, making my own decisions about what should be black and white and middle gray. The camera wanted to make the bright part of the stairs middle gray. What a muddy, dark picture that would have been.

Jens & Poseidon

An old friend introduced us to a new friend and we took them both to Sounio to see the Temple of Poseidon at the southern tip of the mainland. This is Jens looking out over Poseidon's domain.

textures

A classic b&w study of textures and colors. B&W study of color? you ask. Certainly. using filtration, photographers have always manipulated colors in b&w. How is it that the sky is black or very dark gray in b&w art photography, while when you do a simple conversion, your sky is white? Should I tell you, and ruin the magic?

Okay, I'll tell. It's a red filter. Blocks all the blue light, which makes the sky look dark and pops those bright, white clouds right off the picture. Digitally, you can convert to b&w through a filter. In this case, I increased green and blue filtration to turn a bright red wall black. So now you have to look at the texture of the stucco wall and the wooden sign without using any color information to help you decide how it should look.

Really? Is that what you want?

I love it when I get to shoot two interesting subjects in one photo. I'm a little concerned with the graffitist's needs, but I like the directness of the statement. And just look at the pattern of light and shadow.

I found the shot difficult to get, because I had to figure out which line needed to be square. I went with the window sill, because it seemed to go best with the areas of light and dark.

Soooooo not impressed

Dude, I've lived in Montmartre my entire 5 years. It's just a neighborhood. Get over it.

Xanthus runs again

5000 years ago Xanthus took Achilles into the battle of Troy, after warning Achilles that he would die in the battle, as ordained by fate (you think the son of a goddess would ride a horse that wasn't also of the gods?). Here he is again, in Monastiraki, immortalized in the medium beloved of street artists everywhere - spray acrylic on corrugated sheet metal (it's the modern petroglyph).

Shadow of a bell tower

I was going to quote Metallica's "For Whom The Bell Tolls" here, but it's much, much darker than I need for this. I could do a rendition of the photo that matches the violence and terror of a WWI hill assault, but that's not what I was feeling.

One day by the Acropolis

An alien ship landed and disgorged its colonists. They came from a strange land, with colonists bearing their tribal affiliations on their chests. Many were from the land of Dolce & Gabbana, others were descendents of Fitch, and several belonged to the Iron Maiden...

Broken shutters

Yep, I'm a post-modern, decay-loving black & white photographer. The next step is to build a pinhole camera (I'm thinking about either a ceramic flower pot or some duct tape and cardboard).

Birds and Minis

Apparently a Mini is large enough to carry an entire flock of birds. Who knew?

doing something new

I'm getting more focused on black & white now, trying some new digital manipulations to get the look I want and that sort of thing. Here's some graffiti from Monastiraki.

The crashed dog

Walking through Syntagma Square, I saw this homeless dog sleeping under the bench. I asked the woman sitting above him, "Θα ήθελα να φωτογραφίζω τον σκύλο με τα πόδιά σας. Εντάξη;" She smiled and thought it was funny that someone would want to photograph this dead-looking dog, but said it was okay. There you have it.

Vine maple

We bought a bunch of large plants to make our balcony look less naked. One was this lovely vine maple.

Chillin' on the balcony

And, just to be fair, here's Dyma, hanging out on the balcony. What you don't see, and what makes his relaxed posture amazing, is that two stories down is a busy street with motorcycles roaring past at 60 mph, tires screeching as people suddenly realize they have to turn, dodging cars coming in from the side street and other cars coming around a blind corner. Frankly, it's amazing that we've yet to hear the crunch of steel and glass as irresistible force meets immovable object.

Mali looking for some fun

There's a small army of stray cats in our neighborhood, and Mali wishes she were one of them. The cat she was staring at in this shot had already vacated the place it was sunning itself several minutes before I took the picture. She's weird like that.

Something I like about digital

This is a shot I've wanted to like for a long time, but the colors are flat, the contrast is bad (it's the lens, an old Nikon 500mm f/8 reflector lens, which delivers muddy contrast). So I converted it to black & white and was able to punch up the contrast somewhat and make it a far better photo. And if you've heard me complaining about digital lately, you'll see that I'm trying, I'm really trying.

Ivy

Most of the trees here are evergreens, which is a welcome change from several years of being surrounded by deciduous trees. However, ivy is deciduous, and the vines make beautiful patterns across buildings when leafless. I shot a few on film before we left DC, and once I get my supplies, I'll develop and see about scanning some of those for comparison.

Close Rocks

Man I hate it when Jerry does this. He finds a way to lean the Jeep waaaaaaay over so I'm face to crystal with a pile of big scary rocks. The seat belts (lap belts only), always feel like they're going to give way if the seat pulls too much. Jerry's in his high-side driver seat laughing - "How do you like them rocks, Neely?" But, the true photographer sucks it up and gets the shot.

Trees

I don't know. Should I quote a song about trees? Should I talk about Ents? Perhaps Mirkwood? Hmmmm. Hoooommmmmm. This Internet is very, very quick indeed. One should expect such things from creatures as short-lived as men.

Near Great Seneca Creek

  I spent 2 hours in an area about 100x100 yards, shooting roads, streams, leaves, trees and so on, and missing my old 4x5 all the while. The pictures I got were good enough, but they really showed the inadequacy of a tiny digital sensor when compared with a moderately large sheet of film.

Terracotta Pot #2

Triumph

I'm thinking about buying one of these when we're in Athens. Maybe I'll start collecting country-appropriate cars as we go from nation to nation. I had my beautiful, rugged '92 Nissan Patrol for the mountains (and swamps) of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. A sporty Triumph (or maybe that Cooper from a few days ago) would be nice to have in Greece.

Mini Cooper

  I love these cars. I've always wanted one in theory, but having owned a Ford Festiva, I'm not sure I would actually want to drive a car even smaller. Might be fun for a while or in a race, but not as an everyday car.

Full Moon over Pteleon

  On the west coast, not too far from Thermopylae, you'll find Pteleos, which has a beachfront walk that's unusually long, given the village's population. Shortly after moonrise, the fishermen came back from their siestas to work on their ships a bit, getting them ready for tomorrow morning's fishing. What? You don't see the moon, reflected in the water in the lower left?

Stormy Sky

 

Blinds #2