The Ring of Fire
A bit of a change of pace. This is a 30 second exposure, we set some steel wool on fire at the end of a chain and gave it a spin. If you care to attempt this, be very careful as the steel wool burns without flame and will catch things on fire! Now a bit about the inspiration…
“Ring of Fire” or “The Ring of Fire” is a country music song popularized by Johnny Cash and co-written by June Carter Cash (wife of Johnny Cash) .
Although “Ring of Fire” sounds somewhat ominous, the term refers to falling in love – which is what June C was experiencing with Johnny Cash at the time. Some sources claim that June had seen the phrase, “Love is like a burning ring of fire,” underlined in one of her uncle A.P Carter’s Elizabethan books of poetry. She worked with Kilgore on writing a song inspired by this phrase as she had seen her uncle do in the past. In the 2005 film Walk the Line, June is depicted as writing the song while agonizing over her feelings for Cash despite his drug addiction as she was driving home one evening. She had written: “There is no way to be in that kind of hell, no way to extinguish a flame that burns, burns, burns”.
Depression Glass
This was shot in our Studio, augmented with a bit of Dry Ice. What is special is the Depression Glass!
Depression glass is clear or colored translucent glassware that was distributed free, or at low-cost, in the United States around the time of the Great Depression. The Quaker Oats Company, and other food manufacturers and distributors, put a piece of glassware in boxes of food, as an incentive to purchase. Movie theaters and businesses would hand out a piece simply for coming in the door.
Most of this glassware was made in the central and mid-west United States, where access to raw materials and power made manufacturing inexpensive in the first half of the twentieth century. More than twenty manufacturers made more than 100 patterns, and entire dinner sets were made in some patterns. Common colors are clear (crystal), pink, pale blue, green, and amber. Less common colors include yellow (canary), ultra marine, jadeite (opaque pale green), despite (opaque pale blue), cobalt blue, red (ruby & royal ruby), black, amethyst, monax, and white (milk glass). www.kerstenbeck.com
Labelled
This is a shot of a bottom lit slice of Blood Orange from our Studio. It seems like everything has a label – I saw an apple in the grocery store that had a sticker “Sodium Free”!
The first use of barcodes was to label railroad cars, but they were not commercially successful until they were used to automate spermarket checkout systems, a task for which they have become almost universal. Their use has spread to many other tasks that are generically referred to as Auto ID Capture (AIDC). The very first scanning of the now ubiquitous Universal Product Code (UPC) barcode was on a pack of Wrigley chewing gum in June 1974. www.kerstenbeck.com
A Photographer’s Vision
I'll be watching You!
This is not a pontifical dissertation of what constitutes a “Photographer’s Vision”, just some spontaneous creativity with this wonderful media of photography. Perhaps one day I will look back and make cohesive statements of what I was trying to achieve, but right now it’s just the joy trying new things everyday. That’s why I post a new image every day – some good, some not so good, but for me, all good as I am constantly trying new things and learning from my peers. Everyday – shoot and shoot some more!
This shot is a self portrait using a “mouth mounted” Nikon SB-600 Flash and Nikkor 100mm lens. When I was “somewhat” younger, I used to fire my Vivitar flash off in my mouth to scare my Mother. So I had an idea of capturing this as the Image of the Day as I was driving home. It’s curious that it appears that I have a moustache (I don’t), but I am guessing it is the hair follicals under the skin that are lit from inside. Just a bit of photographic fun! Try it and scare Your Mom!
Breakfast on the Coast
I wanted to do a session of Moon rise and sunset from Hotel Del in Coronado, CA, but the clouds did not agree with me today. The Moon is not only full but orbitally super close to Earth – scientists call it a Super Moon.
So instead, I created my own landscape, or foodscape. I smashed a floodlight, broke an egg (two yolks in one) and lit it up! I was amazed to find the entire San Diego coast in the reflection…Wow!
Ice Fishing
Being a Canuck (Canadian) I have done my share of Ice Fishing! Ice fishing methods have changed drastically over the past 20 years. The name of the game is Mobility for today’s modern ice fishermen. The days of drilling one hole, waiting and hoping that a fish will swim by, are starting to fade. With light gear, battery operated sonar units, and fast and powered augers, a fisherman can conceivably drill and check hundreds of holes in a single day. When the fish stop biting where they are at, fishermen can move to the next hole, checking it with their sonar first to look for activity, and if there are no fish they will keep moving until fish are found
This Studio shot of a crystal fish,which I solidified in Blue Jello, added ice cubes, blow torched to smooth the ice, then..the shot! www.kerstenbeck.com
A new article appeared on Digital Photography School about people ripping off images for profit. When I shot this dead on it looked very similar to the one mentioned…this one is from profile of course. Check out the interview here http://www.digital-photography-school.com/noam-galais-stolen-scream
ICE-9
I Miss Kurt V
This is a recent Studio shot which could be called “Frozen In Time” (somewhat cliche) but I’d rather tribute this to ICE-9 … a fictional material appearing in Kurt Vonneguts’s novel Cat’s Cradel.
ICE-9 is supposed to be a more stable polymorph of water than common ice which instead of melting at Zero degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), melts at 45.8 °C (114.4 °F). When ice-nine comes into contact with liquid water below 45.8 °C it acts as a seed crystal, and causes the solidification of the entire body of water which quickly crystallizes as ICE-9.
A global catastrophe involving freezing the Earth’s oceans by simple contact with ICE-9 is used as a plot device in Vonnegut’s novel. YIKES!
Hockey players would rejoice!
Drops of Jupiter
This is from Kerstenbeck Photographic Art Studios and a tribute to rock band, Train.
Drops of Jupiter is Train’s second album released in 2001. The album’s title is derived from “Drops of Jupiter (TellMe)”, its first single which was extremely popular and won the Grammy Award for the Best Rock Song!
Interesting hypothesis about Jupiter: It is speculated by some scientists that the core of this gas giant is actually an enormous compressed piece of Carbon…
Diamonds are Forever
….yes, a Diamond! www.kerstenbeck.com
A Puck in the Hand
Hockey Night in Canada
This is a Studio shot taken of a Vintage Bruins hockey glove and an NHL puck – funny that the glove is Vintage now…I used it when I played PeeWee Hockey in Canada!
The league was organized on November 22, 1917 in Montreal, Canada, during WW1 after the suspension of operations of its predecessor organization, the National Hockey Association (NHA), which had been founded in 1909. It started with four teams and, through a series of expansions, contractions, and relocations, the league is now composed of 30 active franchises. www.kerstenbeck.com
Kerstenbeck Photographic Art 