April 2015

Pow Wow #4
Bozeman, Montana
2015

 I took this photo primarily because of the cute young jingle dancer, but it also shows some women wearing elk tooth dresses (in the right rear of the photo), another of my favorites. Elk teeth are very highly prized and hard to come by as each elk only has two ivory teeth. Because of the supply-demand mismatch, even in the old days there were imitation elk teeth carved from bone. Today bone teeth are still produced and of course there are plastic ones as well. Real or imitation I think the dresses look very elegant. (Look at me talking like the Fashion Queen here!)

Pow Wow #3
Bozeman, Montana
2014

This particular group of dancers are wearing one of my favorite styles of outfits. (I’m sure they have a name but I don’t know what it is.) They are just entering the arena, only started to pick up their feet to dance. The numbers on the dancers are to identify them for competition purposes I presume, although I don’t believe there was a competition aspect to the Grand Entry.

Like this image, the rest of this series are going to be monochrome. While the colors of the regalia is certainly not to be ignored at these events I still think the patterns and shapes, which are of even greater interest to me, are better emphasized by presenting them without the distraction of color.

I don’t usually tint my monochrome images this much but I wanted to give this series a bit more of a vintage feel commensurate with the historic aspects of the dances and the regalia. Because it is a historic effect I was after I chose to use the same toning colors as the famous Edward Curtis Indian photographs. Tints of his photos vary quite a bit, at least in their internet presentations. I chose to copy the color from this particular image of an Indian named One Blue Beard:

Da Vinci’s Wings
Photo by Robert ParkeHarrison

Some really interesting photos by Mr. ParkeHarrison (yes, that’s the correct punctuation) can be seen here. I find them a bit disturbing, but in a really engaging way.

Jingle Dancers
Bozeman, Montana
2015

One of the more sedate categories of dancers at the pow wow was the jingle dancers. Their dance moves are limited mostly to footwork and and lot of the dancers don’t get much more active than you see on the left side of this photo.  But when they come out as a group the collective sound of all the little bells on the women’s dresses is very pleasing, a sound that at least when you’re down on the floor right next to them can be heard even over the high volume drums and singing.

You can see an example of the drums and singing at the pow wow this year here. Some footage of the jingle dancers (during the actual competition, not the grand entry which I was photographing) can be see here. (Because they were competing against each other and because they’re younger, these jingle dancers are much more lively than the norm I think.)

The Denver art show I referred to in my last post is the Downtown Denver Arts Festival. It will be held May 22-24 on the grounds of the Denver Performing Arts Center. The hours are Friday 4-8pm, Saturday 11am-8pm and Sunday 11am-5pm. More information on the activities can be found here. (Admission is free by the way.) If you live in or are going to be in the area, stop by and say hello.

Every year I sell several hundred greeting cards featuring my photos at the summer outdoor art festivals that I participate in. They’re not a huge moneymaker but I like to have something priced at a point that anyone interested in my work can afford. Some photographers have their cards and even their larger images printed commercially. I prefer to print them all, from small to large, myself. So everything I sell from the largest framed prints on down to the greeting cards is my own work.)

My first show this year is in May in Denver so I’ve been busy the last few weeks getting ready, not only with cards, but the larger works as well. This year I decided to print out all the cards I thought I’d need for the whole summer at one time rather than print them in batches as the season progresses. I just finished the printing. The photo below shows about two-thirds of them set out on every available flat surface in my studio to dry. There’s still the folding and inserting into display bags left to do, but that’s something I can do while I’m sitting around in front of the TV.

Pow Wow #1
Bozeman, Montana
2015

Starting today, I’m going to be posting a series of photos I took at the recent American Indian Council annual pow wow at the MSU fieldhouse here in Bozeman. The primary events at the pow wow were dance contests with competitions in a number categories. Twice a day there WAS a Grand Entry where all the dancers in all the categories come out on the floor at one time. We were standing on floor right were the dancers entered the arena and started their routines. The close-up views ranged from rather sedate dance steps to spectacular blurs of color and motion as shown here. (Note the one static face in the photo.)

For reasons I will try to explain later, most of the photos will be black and white (more accurately duo-tone). But I did want to post a couple in color first to give an idea of the colors of the costumes and because if I don’t, at least one person will ask what it looks like in color!

Kitchen Abstract
Bozeman, Montana
2015

Another in-home found composition. I’m not sure what I was doing when I noticed this; most likely I was just standing there staring at my feet or something equally productive. But I have to wonder by what process my mind uses to go from an aimless glance at something I see every day to thinking there’s a photo opportunity there.

I’ve been busy printing, matting and framing for the upcoming summer outdoor art show season, so it seemed quite timely that a recent Zippy cartoon should address that activity. I can vouch that there’s a lot that isn’t fun about participating in summer art shows but it’s still more rewarding than not–mostly anyway. And I still prefer it to being a dentist (or a cartoonist for that matter).

Wishing Elsewhere
Tucson, Arizona
2015

In spite of what appeared to be a very visible desire to be somewhere else, this young girl and her sister who was nearby were behaving themselves very nicely while their family was taking in the exhibits at the Tucson Art Museum.