Men Working

To me there is little more beautiful than the slow but insistent work of man, the kind that I think of as "one foot in front of the other" work. My father recently put up a barn, a large and complicated one, with one buddy in the span of couple of months. I asked him how it could be done, and he told me "by hitting nails. Most things, when you come right down to it, are all about repeating a tedious action a thousand times."
I watched these guys digging this hole throughout one foggy morning and afternoon. They began by slamming up the concrete, then they starting using the earth mover. A lot of it, though, had to be dug by hand. That's where the slow but insistent part comes in.
And me, I was busy writing a final project, but I kept coming around every twenty minutes or so with my camera, unable to keep away, so that by the end of their very gritty day, they would straighten up and wave when they saw me. And eventually, both my project, and the whole, were complete.
What they plan to do with the gapping hole in the middle of our quad...now that's a mystery. Maybe its a trap for elephants.

I've always been very interested in pictures that capture the feel of a place. Looking through my old images (printing for final crit.) I noticed some pictures that really said Worcester. I haven't run them through photoshop or anything yet, so excuse the rough feel, but here it is, Worcester Ma. Preparing for crits has been very stressful. I keep double guessing myself. See, part of me really likes my images, but part of me knows that if I'd just thought harder, moved a little more, worked them up better, and looked for more inspiration, well then my prints would be better.
On the other hand, I've been making myself rework each image from scratch before producing the final print, which is time consuming and annoying, but shows how much I have improved at working up images in photoshop. No matter how finished I thought the print was when I first printed it, I can make it look better now than I could then.
Plus, I know this is not in any way the end of my electronic photo career. Even as prepare my final, I think of things I could do better next time I shoot.

A Message

A friend pointed out how sometimes the world leaves messages for you. This is one I noticed in Northampton, Ma. Sorry, Frank, the pop reference might go over your head...

Ok so its kind of cheesy...

But its so damn cute! I just had to post this cat picture even though I normally hate them. I think this picture portrays perfectly the character of our family cat, Kitty, who is a somewhat curmudgeonly old and half-blind cat that wandered out of the woods one day. What a bad-ass.

Dead Season

I used to call this time of year dead season, for obvious reasons. One time I told an old radical guy I know that it was my least favorite time of year, and he made me go on a hike with him. We went out to an old abandoned marsh, where told me to look for color. At first I didn't see what he was talking about, it was just a bunch of dead grass and stuff, but then I looked deeper. I began to notice greens and yellows, rust, and soft tans, even purple, and dusky blue's. It's a lesson I'll never forget; even in the deadest of seasons, colors abound.

Get a Cash Advance

So I've been sick as a dog lately. I haven't gotten out of the dorm much, and I haven't had a chance to take many pictures but here's one I took because I was out buying cough drops. I was going for the ultra-dramatic look, which I think I achieved. In actuality it was kind of a drab day, making it even more enjoyable that the picture came out looking like a haunted castle or something. Sometimes the joy of a picture is not just in capturing the image as seen by the eye, but also as seen by the mind.

The world hasn't been particularly conducive to my sanity. At times like this, what keeps me going are the snap shots of perfect clarity, the images that just make sense. Is it bad that all I can hang on to right now are images? As yesterday fades away and tomorrow tapers off, here I am, trying to capture the past. Good thing that wall was there to help.

I have become completely converted to the church of my new camera (the Rebel XT). I worship its deep focus and high quality image, not to mention greater control over image and focus. I know it's not even the best digital camera out there, so right now it feels like the ceiling for digital image quality is unspeakably high. I'm entering a brave new world, folks.

Some of the most amazing portrait photography I've ever seen: http://www.100youngamericans.com/home.html

As promised, a flag picture. We were supposed to take pictures of tattered post 911 flags, but this one is actually outside a fire station. Regardless, I like the picture, so I guess it'll have to be good enough.

Geometry

The Colors are Changing...

It's fall, and so we change, because it seems the thing to do. Out come the puffy collared ghetto jackets. The homeless stake-out bridges, the wood-burning stand back to look at their woodpiles, hands on hips, cynical. And here at school, we lucky few worry over marks on paper. It's fall, and so even litter takes on a certain amount of significance. The waste of trees is hard to ignore. Our waste in turn becomes a kind of monument to the things we needed for our energy, and then dropped behind us. It's fall, and the sky is a blue that can break hearts. On a day like this, I wonder how we go about the mundane, faces down, hair tied back against the wind, without turning our faces to the cold sun and howling. Flocks of birds move across the parking lots, and I can hear the call, too. It's a time for moving.
It's fall. The world does its best to shake us up, exploding into a riot of color, but we lucky few do our best to ignore it.

The Fall Festival

The Ashfield Fall Festival is one of those truly small town things that make you feel like you just stepped back about 200 years into a nice post-colonial town. Each year, the same people attend, the same craftsmen display their glass, silver, wooden spoons, and quilted tea-cozies, and the same food-booths offer baked potatoes, maple syrup snow-cones, and fried dough with maple cream. The symbolic (and for many of the residents of Ashfield, still quiet pertinent) harvest is upon us, and pumpkins and gourds line the streets, while the telephone poles are sheathed in corn stalks.
It's hard to believe that a town like this truly exists, a town where the kids are left all day to run among themselves without danger, where everyone greats you by name, where the largest store is the tiny corner gas-station, or maybe the hardware store, packed full of odds and ends (and offering 50 cent ice-cream cones, no less). But it does, truly, 2 hrs west of Worcester, and the fall festival is one place where you cannot deny the authenticity of the town.

Why is it that whenever I go home I end up taking a thousand pictures of my little brother, Sunil, and sister, Raine. Actually, I think I know. When you take a picture of someone you love, sometimes, not always, but sometimes the resulting photo shows not only the subject, but the love of the photographer too.

I can fly!

So I was zooming around testing out my wings, when all of a sudden I accidently ended up on the roof of the Goddard Library. Oops! How the hell did that happen?

Talk about stellar stuff: http://www.horolezec.cz/gallery.htm

As someone who grew up in about the polar opposite culture, Worcester can be a daunting place. My first few weeks at Clark, I kept trying to meet peoples eye and say hello when I passed them on the street. Boy did I get some ugly looks for that. I learned fast. I don't want to sound like some naive clean-cut corn-eating well-mannered country girl. I've had more than my fair share of experiences living with more than 300 people, mostly teenagers, mostly girls, mostly just out of lock-up, or with pending cases hanging over their heads like anvils. Still, the closed up, mind your own business feel of this place surprises me again and again. That's the feeling I was trying to create when I saw these two girls, what, making flower necklaces? There is a security cam on the TV screen, and they are so cloistered in and unapproachable. It's ironic that they are making necklaces, with a set-up like that, it could be Meth. I took one picture, and the tiny noise of my camera made this girl who was pretty far away jerk around and look menacing, and then glare at me like id just killed her kid or something. Sheesh. I think I got that mean old Worcester feel right on.

I can't help but laugh every time I walk by this place. To me this is, laaa, laaa, raaaawr!

Pink Outfit

Payless Shoes

Enough of that crap. Let me start from the beginning. My name is Maddy Leue. I am from a small town called Ashfield Ma. These are my sisters.
Both were adopted on the same glorious day.
That was years ago. Now Raine is turning Seven. Celebration: Friendly's.

Manly Things

I've been trying to find matches among my photographs, to figure out what interests me thematically. So far, it looks like a lot of trash. But I do also have this thing for portraits. My favorite thing about portraits is that they force us to reverse that little anecdote we learned in preschool about not judging a book by its cover. Hey, that's all you get in a portrait! But most of us do betray a lot about ourselves at face value, and that's what portrait photographers gamble on, so keep it up. These are just photos of boys and men doing manly things. Keep it up guys.

These are also from stART. Alone, I think they are mildly interesting, together, arresting.
For your consideration:
Worcester Youth 1:
Worcester Youth 2:

These pictures are from stART on the street, Worcester's annual art festival. I found the eclectic crowd delightful. There were artsy people, and down-right thugs, and everything in between. It was a really bright day, but I kept ducking into the shade of tents and overhangs, so I battled with finding the right exposure, but I think I found it somewhere in there. These haven't been photoshopped yet, I'll edit the post and replace them when I have finished files.