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The Photographic Art of Rick Horowitz

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Running Dry

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I spent the last several weeks in a state of extremely-heightened stress. You see, Nudes in November is coming up at the Sorensen Studio – in fact, the submission period for the 2014 show was yesterday – and I desperately wanted to come up with a winning idea. At last year’s Nudes in November show, which was my first juried competition, I came away with First Place, and really started to think more seriously about my photography.

This post really isn’t going to be about my submissions for this year’s Nudes in November show, but I do want to talk briefly about getting ready for it, because that’s what lead up to today’s featured image.  [Read more…]

Rainy Days

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One of the downsides to focusing mostly on landscape photography, as I’ve been doing lately, is that I’m kind of a fair-weather guy. I also hate getting up too early in the morning, if I don’t have to do so.

Oh, let’s face it. I hate it even if I have to do so. Probably even more.

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A Gathering of Old Friends

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Awhile back, a very, very, very dear friend of ours passed away. I had written this post at that time, but for reasons that are not important, I took it down. I really liked the image, and the majority of the post, but there were…issues.

Not a day has gone by since her passing that I don’t think about Carole. She was a dear friend. But by finally taking Carole, cancer has only partially succeeded in taking her from us. As someone I once knew would say, “It has not won.”

I wish I could say the same about what happened with our relationship to her husband. I really do. But our struggle to deal with losing a woman we both loved deeply — among other things — made it impossible for us to maintain the bond with him. I had hoped that would only be a temporary success for cancer, as well, but it turns out, as they say, that there was too much water under the bridge.

And too many other problems.

I will give him credit for this (among some other things): when Carole was nearing the end, he did get in touch with us through other mutual friends, and gave us an opportunity to come see Carole for one last goodbye at the hospice a couple of days before her passing.

Aside from being reminded by all this that we are all far from perfect people, I re-learned the lesson that everyone grieves in their own way. My grief may take a different shape than that of others. I may not always understand what they are doing; it may not always make sense to me. But I have to remember that I am not them; they are not Rick. When I do not understand, it’s a good clue that I should simply stand silent. Which is why you, dear reader, are not getting more specific information on the issue.  [Read more…]

Moon River

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The subtitle for my website, which I think only shows up on mobile devices, is “The Photographic Art of Rick Horowitz.” There’s a reason I call it that, rather than “The Photography of Rick Horowitz.”

Perhaps it’s because I live in an area of the country that — “landscape-wise” — doesn’t tickle my sense of the artistic. Maybe it’s because I like tinkering. Or perhaps, I really wanted to be a painter, but realize I just don’t have the skills to make actual paintings from a blank canvas.

In any event, I’m never really all that happy with what I’m able to shoot in my own neck of the woods. I’ll often go out and drive for hours, only to return home without having taken one shot. I just didn’t see anything that made me want to stop my car, and get out the camera.

I’ve come to realize that, most of the time — perhaps 99% of the time — it’s the skies I don’t like. California is in the middle of a draught. I’m in the middle of California. And there’s just not that much in the way of anything but dirty-looking pollution-infested brownish-to-pale-blue-brown skies.

So it is that I tend to do what I can to “create” photos with the most interesting skies I can. I imagine what I want in my mind’s eye, and that’s what I “shoot,” even if it requires a little artistic creativity after the fact.

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Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay

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Just so  you know, I don’t only shoot agricultural images when I shoot landscapes.

Last weekend, I went to Berkeley for an Evidence seminar — my “regular” job is as a criminal defense attorney — and naturally I took along all my camera equipment.  [Read more…]

The Hills Are Alive

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I have been remiss. I’m shooting, but haven’t felt much like blogging lately. So maybe I’ve got a few stacked up inside me here.

Anyway, last night I went out driving around starting about 6 p.m. I didn’t have any idea what I was going to shoot, but I knew that I wanted — among other things — to try out a new “rail” I bought for being able to keep my camera on a line for stitching multiple exposures. For reasons that aren’t 100% clear to me, although I’ve got some pretty good ideas that it has to do with the distance between subject and camera, combined with focal length, the thing doesn’t do quite what I wanted.

Nevertheless, I managed to get some interesting shots, traversed another 20-30 miles of agricultural land outside my normal purview, and started to get a handle on what crops are being grown where.

Why does this matter? Because I’m wanting to try to apply lessons I’ve learned from landscape photography to shooting agriculturally-oriented shots. I live in the midst of one of the biggest farm regions of the United States; at least one New York Times article says our valley “is the world’s largest patch of Class 1 soil, the best there is.” Though I haven’t found a tomato farm yet — or maybe I passed one and didn’t recognize it?! — we are supposedly the largest supplier of canned tomatoes in the world.

Yet, until recently, I’ve never paid much attention to this.  [Read more…]

Don’t Cry

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Field of Dreams?

For some farmers, that’s just what onions are.

Frankly, I don’t know a lot about onions. I like to eat ’em. That’s about it. Recently, I decided to start trying to shoot “agscapes,” as Ryan from Horn Photo called them when I showed him my work the other day. I was surprised to learn that he’s been shooting “agscapes” for a couple or so years now.

I was also surprised to see that onions, when blooming, look like giant dandelions.  [Read more…]

Excitement Over a Storm

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This website, I think, is about to undergo another makeover. If you’ve paid any attention to me — and my infrequent blogging probably does not encourage that — you know that I keep re-designing the website. There are reasons for that which go beyond “I don’t seem to be able to find something I really like.”

I’ve been trying to transition from being, as one photography vendor once called me, “an enthusiast,” to being more of a professional photographer. (The vendor said that as a compliment. I had referred to myself as an “amateur” in terms of my skill level at that time. The vendor stated that I was far from an amateur, but since I was only selling my prints “in addition to” my non-photography day-job, he used “enthusiast” to describe me.)

As I make this transition, I’m submitting some of my work to juried competitions.

My latest such effort resulted in the black-and-white version of my “Calm Beneath the Storm” winning second place in the Landscapes category at the Sorensen Studio.  [Read more…]

The Calm Beneath the Storm

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I’m always amazed at just what I’m learning these days.

I really hope that some day, I’ll be able to make a major part of my living off photography, and be able to devote even more time to improving my skills. Slowly, but surely, I’m getting there. The image this post is about is currently being sold through Rolff’s Gallery in Fresno. If you want to view the print version, it’s on display in the window of the store.

Anyway…I don’t have a lot to say about this image. It was something of an accident that proved to me that buying the Sony DSC-RX100M II was a good idea.

Not that the image was purely the result of the Sony…

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