Daniel Greene

Tag: Phoenix

  • Photogenic



    Photogenic
    Originally uploaded by Daniel Greene.

    I thought so! I love text forms, three-dimensional forms, and shadows. But right after I took this photo of a photography studio sign at Christown Spectrum Mall, a young woman security guard asked me to stop taking photos. I asked her if she were sure that no photography was allowed. She radioed her boss, and he said it was a mall policy: no photography without permission from mall management. She offered me the mall management phone number and I called it. They were closed for the weekend, but I left a message stating that I was just taking photos for my own artistic pleasure and that I believed it was my right to take photos in public places where there was no reasonable expectation of privacy, and besides, I wasn’t taking photos of people, just of the architecture. I left my number, so we’ll see what they say. Interestingly, this is the same mall in which one young woman asked me outside the brand-new Harkins Theatres if I were “newspaper.” I wonder why people are so finicky about photos being taken at this mall.

    UPDATE: I just got a call back from the management office, and (more…)

  • Grand Opening of Harkins Christown 14

    I read on the Harkins Theatres web site that they would be holding a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark the grand opening of the Christown 14 theatres at 11:15 this morning. I got there just a couple of minutes late, but they had done the ceremony at around 10 because people had been lining up around the building and waiting since 6.

    I had an interesting experience as I ran up to the theatre from my car with my camera: a young woman walked by and quickly asked, “Newspaper?” I said, “No,” and she said, “Just for your own enjoyment, then,” and walked to her car. She was wearing a backpack, and it made me wonder whether she were a journalist, and why she wanted to know. I just wanted to get a photo, and didn’t want to take the time to explain that I was a blogger of sorts, and although I wasn’t exactly “Newspaper,” I wasn’t just doing this for my own enjoyment, either. I saw this as an opportunity to take my new lens and battery grip out for a shoot and gain some “event photography” experience in the meantime.

    Anyway, I get excited about urban renewal, cinema, theater, and architecture, so I enjoyed getting there and taking this photo even if I didn’t catch a ribbon-cutting and had to run off to work right after snapping a couple of shots.

    I’m glad I looked professional enough to be mistaken for a newspaper photographer, though! 😉

  • Phoenix Library at Summer Solstice

    At about 12:30 (solar noon on this particular day), people at the Burton Barr Central Library in downtown Phoenix watched as the sunshine flooded the west wall and lit up the tops of the columns like ice blue “flames” atop “candles.” It was not what I would consider a spectacular event, but a quiet one in which a people gathered in a building and witnessed their and the building’s place in the universe… or at least that’s what the architect, Will Bruder, brainwashed me into thinking. 😉

  • Cactus Blossom a Cornucopia for a Bee

    This cactus blossoms in the early morning before the direct sunlight hits them. This means the photographer must capture them either in the available light, which is subdued, or use a flash. I shot this with merely the soft morning light that was available. Two hours later, when the flowers were bathed in direct sunlight, they had already wilted.

    I’m experimenting with my new zoom telephoto lens to take macros. The results are grainier than what I can get with my fast macro lens, because the maximum aperture at 300mm is f/5.6, so I have to bump up the ISO to capture enough light, and the increased ISO results in some noise or “grain,” as film photographers say. Still, I’m happy with the results, at least on this image.

  • Glorious Blossoming of Cactus Blooms

    The cactus buds I’ve had my eye on the last few days finally blossomed this morning, and boy did they gloriously unfurl! It’s a good thing I captured them when I did, too, because only a couple of hours later they had wilted. These are truly ephemeral beauties. I’m lucky I was there to shoot them and proud that I did.

    As I write this, however, I am struck at the similarities between photographers and hunters. Both talking about “shooting” and “capturing.” Both involve the conflict between Man and Nature. Both involve going into Nature and bringing it back to share with Man. A hunter shoots a deer and puts its head and antlers up on the wall. A photographer shoots a deer (or cactus flowers, as the case may be), and puts its image up on the wall (or the Internet, as the case may be). Both hunters and photographers take pride in, and gain social recognition by, what they capture for the delectation of their fellow Men (people).

    Of course, nothing is destroyed when one shoots a photograph– (more…)