Author: conann

  • You will always have your notebooks.

    You will always have your notebooks.

    For some reason I keep seeing ads for the Remarkable tablet. While that appeals to my inner consumer geek, the price is equivalent to about twenty premium leather bound notebooks and a lifetime supply of pens. From the palm pilot on there has be great promises of inner peace and the zen of organization. All…

  • Should have turned left at Albuquerque…

    Should have turned left at Albuquerque…

    The first photographs of the day were meh (img 2&3), it’s a tree, the play of light is interesting but… Picking up and crossing through a clearing I had to go back and make sure the wood wasn’t playing tricks. The screaming tree in the first image is the same tree seen in the other…

  • Bernd & Hilla Becher – The MET

    Bernd & Hilla Becher – The MET

    I wish this had been available when I was doing my MFA. They put together everything in one place.

  • What does it mean? It’s a frightening tree, but why?

    What does it mean? It’s a frightening tree, but why?

    While we were in the woods to photograph Genaro’s tree another one was tugging on my sleeve, seeking attention, though apparently invisible to my present company who were deep in discussion about times gone past. From my vantage point this new tree was obscured, though its branches stretched overhead, longer and more angular than those…

  • Into the belly of the beast to encounter Genaro’s Tree

    Into the belly of the beast to encounter Genaro’s Tree

    There are no lions, tigers or bears in these parts yet I seldom venture too far off the trail. My attitude toward this has definitely changed after my recent adventure off the beaten track at the invitation of Genaro, a neighbor in the village. As a boy Genaro would gather chestnuts with his grandmother under…

  • Silly Symphony actor on the lam in Galica

    Silly Symphony actor on the lam in Galica

    Appearing at the intersection of two of my great loves, animation and painting. This tree in repose echoed both Manet’s Olympia and Walt Disney’s Silly Symphony, Flowers and Trees.

  • Looks like the beginning of a beautiful sugar rush

    Looks like the beginning of a beautiful sugar rush

    There must be something special about our first sweets that creates a taste of home, that sense of where we belong. When I came here first ten years ago there was a strange tang to their sweetness. A bit like the disappointment of that first Hershey in 1977 when we moved to Connecticut. When you…

  • Honey, do these pants make my ass look big?

    Honey, do these pants make my ass look big?

    Not much more to say about that… Always wear a camera? F8 and be there? Hyperfocal rules rule? It is nice just once in awhile to have something catch your eye without warning and catch it while swinging the camera in it’s general direction. That said it still feels a little involuntary or stolen.

  • The water recedes, the floods are quickly forgotten

    The water recedes, the floods are quickly forgotten

    “This too shall pass”. Wise words from a teacher, wasted on a class too young to appreciate anything outside of the present moment. I do hope he was aware of how important that phrase would become over time. There are teachers and there are Teachers, somewhere in the latter group are teachers who read. The…

  • A product of time, labor and love

    A product of time, labor and love

    The over ground cemeteries, like the ones here in Galicia, create unintended corridors of light and dark punctuated by pruned foliage. Not that I am a graveyard junky who spends his time mooching from cemetery to cemetery, but they are always an interesting window into their communities. It is in this way that, though structurally…

  • Last light

    Last light

    As the dead rest their heels the sound of kids screaming and laughing can be heard over the drone of SpongeBob SquarePants’ bouncy castle air pump.

  • Watching the dog fetch a ball in El Río Tea

    Watching the dog fetch a ball in El Río Tea

    Saturday photowalk with my son, exploring the rivers that pass through Ponteareas. It’s very easy to take the clean waters of Galicia for granted but they are remarkable when compared to the filth of 1970s Irish waters of my childhood.

  • Fairy trees on the Camino Real, Esgos

    Fairy trees on the Camino Real, Esgos

    Probably not fairy trees but if they were in Ireland they would have a range of myths around them and how they appear to be dancing together.