The Fontainebleau Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada, is an incomplete $2.9 billion, 3,889-room, 68-story hotel/condo-hotel/casino development, situated near the north end of the Las Vegas Strip.  It is a mammoth, glass and steel monolith that constantly reflects back on itself the intense sunlight and nightlife that surrounds it.  I found it facinating, and shot it many times at different parts of the day and night.  Here is one such shot at daybreak.

New Beginnings

Last week at a meeting with the principal of the high school where I teach, I found out that photography would no longer be offered after this semester.  Growing numbers of students combined with budget cuts across the board results in 92 positions being eliminated, and larger classes for everyone.  Expensive electives such as photography are the first to go.  I was stunned nevertheless.


I was slow to understand the calculus behind the numbers the principal was laying out across the conference table.  Photography had always been one of the most popular and successful courses offered.  They had built a state-of-the-art darkroom at one end of the department, but later banned its use because of supervisory concerns stemming from an incident at another school.  We were relegated to a tiny, dilapidated darkroom with inadequate ventilation annexed onto a classroom with a revolving door that had holes and was off its track.  Through several summer renovations in the wing of our building, the door never got replaced.  Still, the darkroom was in use every lunch hour and every available day after school.  There were plans to repurpose the darkroom into a computer lab for digital photography.  Measurements were taken and plans were made to do the work over Christmas vacation, but when we came back the darkroom was still there.  When further budget cuts made the cost of film and chemicals for the year prohibitive, we began the switch to digital for the second semester.  With only one student computer and my computer hooked up to our new Smartboard, we began critiqueing everyone's best work on the large screen.  All five of my classes saw the entire assignment and voted on the overall "best shot".  New stars began to emerge. 

Now just when I had completed the transfer of all our assignments to digital photography and was sure every student was on board, I was called to the principal's office to discuss classes for the next year.  I had been excited to show him some of our new work.  But something I was not  aware of had already taken shape.  Not only were they eliminating photography as an elective, but they needed the space itself.  Our room is to be demolished, along with the darkroom, to make way for a new science classroom.  The perfect combination of science and mathematics that is photography was written out of the curriculum.

And that is why I momentarily had a brain freeze when asked if I had any thoughts or comments.  I could think of none then, but I can now:  Yes, photography is expensive.  But hands-on education is expensive.  Next year they will have a two person Art Department, and I will be looking for a job.  It was beautiful while it lasted. 

    

  

Full Worm Moon 2011

The moon this weekend is the closest to the earth it has been since 1993, the year I came to Oklahoma.  It is a full moon with the name Worm Moon due to the thawing of the ground, and is considered the last full moon of the winter.  I photographed the prairie the full Worm Moon of 2010 and remember that it rose earlier in the evening, or so it seemed.  This year the sun set before the moon rose, and the prairie was very dark in anticipation of the dramatic moon event.  Dense clouds obscured the moonrise on the horizon for at least an hour.  Finally, the moon appeared high in the clearing sky, behind fast moving black clouds.  The monochromatic scene was as if watching the full moon behind black lace.   

Frozen Food

Here are a few shots from the prairie.  

Wolf Moon

I have been following several of my favorite photographers who have posted links to their winter photographs and couldn't wait for the weekend to try some of my own.  Having no work because of weather cancellations, I headed north to Pawhuska, Oklahoma and the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve to scout out photo ops in the snow.  I immediately ran into a large herd of bison near a frozen pond where I had last shot a full moon landscape back near the end of summer.  Many of the babies from that time were just old enough to survive the harsh cold and wind on the bleak prairie.  They seemed energized by the frigid tempertures and the huge full Wolf Moon about to rise. 

2010 -- Year In Review

2010 began with a photo shoot at Price Tower for a Masters of Influence (Frank Lloyd Wright) multi-media show at Lovetts Gallery. The MOI was later cancelled, but some of the shots of Price Tower went into Oklahomanmade, The Oklahoma City Foundation for Architecture 2010 Architectural Photography Competition. I missed the $500.00 first place award, but picked up a 3rd place in the Professional Photographers catagory.

The Price Tower photos laid the foundation for more existing light studies taken at dusk and late night in Oklahoma. Eventually, this body of work, "Colors at Night", was shown at Lovetts Gallery in June Meet the Artists: Kevin Box and Claudia Patrick. Kevin Box, a sculptor from Santa Fe, showed his metal origami pieces made through a lost wax process and left a giant pantinated maple leaf outside the gallery. My large scale panorama of the Philtower Building, "Polychromed" (84" X 28"), sold to a private collector and now hangs in the recently restored Mayo Hotel.

Inspired to capture more unique and iconic American architecture, I headed to Las Vegas for the first time in my life. Driving up and down the Vegas strip, I could not believe I had never gone there before. Originally thinking of shooting the water show at Bellagio, I was completely taken by the tramendous photo ops presented by the amazing Stratosphere Tower, hotel and casino, where I stayed. In keeping with the number of towers I had focused on thus far, the Stratosphere Tower completely eclipsed everything else by being the tallest freestanding observation tower in the U.S. I had the time of my life, and promised myself next trip to find the courage to jump from the SkyJump, 855 feet above the strip. Dodging security, I managed to capture the image of the Fontainebleau hotel that now hangs as a giclee on canvas at Lovetts Gallery.

Finishing up a busy and fun year, I took my students from PhotoClique, the photography club I sponsor at Union High School, to shoot the Jingle Bell Run here in Tulsa, and headed to Aspen, Colorado for holiday with the peeps. After a flight out before 7a.m. and a four hour bus ride from Denver when flights were canceled, I arrived twelve hours later just as the cloud cover parted and gave way to incredible sun and blue skies. The last shot of the year came Christmas morning when a beautiful balloon traveled slowly over the mountain ridge and aligned with the still visible Full Cold Moon, which four days earlier had been eclipsed by the earth on the Winter Solstice -- a celestial event that had occurred last in 1638.

I don't know what it all means, but I was happy to be a part of it in 2010. Happy New Year everyone!