Frutos del Mar: La Boqueria V

Whitings at fish market. La Boqueria, Barcelona, Spain, July 2010

Monkfish tails. La Boqueria, Barcelona, Spain, July 2010

I have never been a seafood eater.  With the exception of tuna salad, I don't eat fish.  Forget about shellfish -- I've no use for bottom-feeders.

Yet, some of my fondest memories as a boy were going to Lexington Market, Baltimore's renowned open food market.  There is no market in the world that can rival Lexington Market for a tour of smells:  From the dogs and sausages grilling at Pollock Johnny's, to the roasted Brazilian nuts, the cotton candy, and my favorite smell -- the most distinctly Baltimorean of them all -- crabcakes frying.

And when it came to sights, I would marvel at the fish.  The lobster tank, the crab salads, the trout, and German pickled herring from Chesapeake Bay..... You gotta go there sometime and see it for yourself.

My time at La Boqueria brought me back to all that, in its own way.

Happy Father's Day!

Bernard Jones (9), Plymouth Belvedere (10)

Bowie, Maryland, Spring 1977

When I was twelve, just having joined the Boy Scouts of America, I began working in earnest on my first merit badge, Photography.

My father very graciously let me drag him away from his yard work, to be my guinea pig for my "improper technique" shot of posing him directly in front of a tree, so that the trunk appears to be growing out from the top of his head.   The next exposure is of his 1968 Plymouth Belvedere, my favorite car he ever owned, parked on the street in front of our house.

Happy Father's Day, Dad, and thanks for putting up with me all those years! 

Happy Birthday, L.S. King

Leslie Scher, N&W Railway, Sharpsburg, Maryland, 1988

Photograph by Robert L. Jones

A most happy birthday goes to Leslie Scher King, a close friend going on twenty-two years.  She is also an inspiration to me as an accomplished photographer, whose historically-themed work has that odd and rare quality of appealing to the emotions first, and then the intellect.  Through her mastery of alternative processes, Les's work -- from John Wilkes Booth's escape route from Ford's Theater, to her documentary work photographing war re-enactors -- pulls the viewer into her images.

After spending some time there, you may never want to leave.

Kitties

Tommy and sister Nernie, Bowie, Maryland, 1974

The essence of every photograph, if it is to appeal to the emotions, is that it is a snapshot. Here is a snapshot I took when I was nine, of my Maine Coon cat, Tommy, and his grey-haired sister, Nernie.  I was surprised at how patient they were with me.  Posed though it is (and nicely so), it remains a snapshot.  Thus, it is not "real" nor "art."

When people with cameras decide to get "serious" about the photography craft, they are imb(r)ued with the sotto voce instruction that they must undo everything they have hitherto learned and practiced about photography.  "Snapshot" thus becomes the dirtiest of all sobriquets, and the newly-minted "fine arts" photographer instead shifts all his focus toward making "clever" images that are fraught with "irony."  "Irony" is code language for "I am more hip and sophisticated than thou."

One positive side-effect of the digital photography craze is the reemergence of the snapshot, that impromptu photograph taken and enjoyed for its own sake.

So, enjoy!