Ok, folks. I have received about 15 cards, and I have not made the time to do mine yet. I've been super busy at work 40 hours a week, plus a second job another 16 per week at night, so I have been dragging my feet.
I will make a definite point of printing them this weekend!
I have a question, though. I have decided to keep with the baseball theme from the last exchange in which I participated (pic of Jackie Robinson bust dwarfing a white lady on a bench). Do you want:
1. Ruins of Tiger Stadium, after the final pavilion was destroyed for good, on IR film. Tiger Stadium opened in 1912, on the same day as Boston's Fenway Park, and until its destruction, was tied with Fenway for the honor of being the oldest ballpark in the U.S.A. Most of it had been torn down a few years prior to the removal of the remaining pavilion, but there was some public outcry, and the diamond and one pavilion were spared from the initial demolition. There was talk of converting it into a museum, and/or using it for film productions. Nobody came up with any money or concrete plans over a period of several years, however, and this past summer, the Detroit City Council decided to demolish and sell the rubble of remainder of the stadium for $400,000 in scrap money. My picture was taken from across the street from the roof of my car after the pavilion had been largely crushed, but before all the pieces had been carted off. The field and the diamond were still there at the time of the shot, and from across the street with my high vantage point, this created a brilliant sliver of maximum white right through the middle of the print. My tribute to Tiger Stadium, a historic American icon allowed to be destroyed by a combination of apathy, lack of money, lack of respect, and short-term greed and corruption over long-term city planning and development for the future. Representative of Detroit and the way it is run, representative of this country and the way it is run, and representative of the death and/or transformation of baseball's old-time spirit.
2. My shot of Barry Bonds in the outfield at Dodger Stadium, when he was one shy of tying Hank Aaron's career home run record. I hoped to see him tie it, and perhaps break it, but it did not happen in this three-game series. The shot is on 35mm Delta 3200, but I crop off the right 1/3 of the shot to make it square format when I print it. It is just a wash of grainy, diagonally-stripey outfield, with a lone Bonds tucked into the lower left corner, his hand on his hip. The way I see it, the shot shows my conflicted thoughts on Bonds. I wanted to show respect for him and my awe of the man's athletic talents by representing him dramatically iconic in his professional environment, with an obvious shot from the stands, like an admiring fan would shoot. One of the greatest players to ever play the game; no doubt in my mind. At the same time, I think the shot shows via composition and mood how his drug use has ostracized him and sadly spoiled this image forever. I don't even like to say the man was great anymore, and nor do most. It is sad to me. He was a guy who was already going to be one of the greats of all time. He didn't need to do what he did...but the pressures that be in professional sports got to him. As opposed to simply being one of the greatest of the great to me, he is now a guy who saw how great he was, and wasn't satisfied with it. He saw how much greater he could be if he could exercise more often (which is all steroids allow one to do; they do not build muscle, but speed the healing of muscle tissue, to allow one to work out more often), got greedy (for both reasons that internal and external), and ended up disrespecting the entire sport. To me, he is the ultimate symbol of the joke that professional sports have become due to financial pressures; a fallen, tainted, flawed hero of sorts...quite classic, really. They are sort of a love/hate thing for me, and I just wanted to get that across with this picture.
Here are the people on my exchange list:
1. Allen Friday
2. BirgerA
3. Black Dog
4. crispinuk
5. donminbox
6. drpsilver
7. DrZish
8. Laurent
9. lorirfrommontana
10. markrewald
11. mckenna
12. Mick Fagan
13. mooseontheloose
14. mthorley
15. OMU
16. photomem
17. polyglot
18. Rob Skeoch
19. rst
20. rtbadman
21. Tim Gray
22. timk
23. TimVermont
24. trotkiller
25. wazza
Well, I love close ups, and this is one is great. The rendeition of the textures is amazing, and I love the composition !
