OREGON TAYLOR FIELDS

  Growing older comes with it the increased potential of a hospital stay. Trust me I know. My experience over the last three years and 4 hospital experiences have taught me valuable lessons. Some personal and some practical. Some Personal thoughts:  Hospitals take away a certain amount of personal control. You find yourself with lots of time to think about your life. It’s easy to feel vulnerable. You’re not going to live forever. You look out the window and cars are going in every direction. Each with a life inside. You realize the world will go on after you and learn overtime to feel that’s OK.  You find yourself making resolutions about how you want to live the rest of your life. You tell yourself you will apply them, but often don’t after leaving. It’s always important to keep those goals around, even write them down and work toward them. The hospital staff is your adopted family. You need to treat them that way. Your loved ones are a treasure. Always important to ...

  In these times, it's tough to find the real beat of what is going on. Even on a short drive yesterday, there were more questions than answers. The sea of apartment forests, the overweight people at the sub shop, the press of cars going from shopping plaza to the next plaza. The silent overhang of war, economy and life as we have know it. Something seems like it has to give. Are we living in the last of the best of times? Things are so much different now. So many more people, such high cost of just making it, reduced horizons of work future, AI, the outside threats of terrorism and war, the press of keeping up. I am not sure there is an offramp to all this. A time out to regroup. We may all be heading toward a cliff edge just beyond our view. A view that has been curtained over with plastic debt. 

  Darkness of late night filled the studio casting shadows on finished paintings leaned against the wall and empty paint tubes scattered on the floor. Eric sat up in bed, watching Jane dress, “you don’t have to leave you know.” Jane turned, “New York tomorrow my dear, I have to get ready.”  Eric continued to watch her dress, he never tired of the view. They first met three years ago. She a writer and him a painter. They lived in apartment buildings next to each other, would sometimes dine together, talk art, share a drink and always it seemed ending in embraces of lust. Still, neither seemed to have found the steps to the next level of relationship. Even the lust had faded, buffed by the years. He didn’t know the why of this place they were at. Sometimes he admitted to himself envy over the degree of her success. How she wrote from her soul and being always grasping the latest in cultural ways. The magazines couldn’t get enough of her words. It wasn’t that he had not found suc...

  Ever since the TV series Portlandia, the Rose City has gained an image of being different, even strange. There is a feeling of artsy in the young people and the many small businesses catering to the Portland way. In recent times, the nature of the place has led to problems, drugs and homelessness. Still it remains a wonderful place to explore. The city has a wealth of low profile buildings especially in the Northwest and East Side portions. Colors and contrasts abound. There is nothing here that say “the same.” No ditto buildings piled against other ditto ones.  They say that good photography is born out of finding stillness and studying all aspects of a scene. The contrasts of people, buildings and vides in Portland teach a different dance for your camera. Some of the contrasts are just meant to be together, others stretch the mind to blend and understand. It all works out though, as you walk this wonderful city and find yourself dancing its side streets.

  The sun and a soft chair bathed me with the warmth of the day. I always have a camera with me, inspiration was running short though. Then I remembered how good it felt to just work the camera. To pick a subject, any subject and enjoy the experience. The light far from perfect, a shadow cut the scene it two, the backdrop only a simple white car. Maybe it was the sun magic or just the corner I found myself in. I began to see patterns to it all. People of all shapes and sizes walking by. The car not moving. A rare calm, I thought. They say the best of street photography is being able to do it without notice. To take the photo and not move the camera from the scene so people won't think they are the subjects. So now I had a project. Happy for that, the shutter worked over and over again until the car owner came back and drove off. Ending my photo day, but still remembering the study of a white car...

I’m not sure what entirely it is, but I feel uneasy in Columbia SC. My camera struggles to make sense of it all and find good images. The city has gems here and there, the art museum, the capital building, a pleasant downtown, the university with it’s iconic stadium, the history museum and repurposed buildings. Still the place has a rough un-sewed feeling about it. Maybe it’s the free ways running north and south and slice and dice it. Not straight lines ones, instead sharp curved ones designed it seems by politicians, certainly not an engineer. Fast cars setting the pace for all the streets and byways that spring off it. You always want to bring home a trophy, a great photo, worthy of the outing. Fate does not always say yes. My full frame Canon RP was not focusing well. When good, this camera takes detail colorful shots. I had to pull off to the side of the road and reset the camera. A lesson for sure. You have to use fine equipment regularly or it will let you know. You could not re...