LIFE AS A HUMAN

Tarmac Meditations #205: Images in the Sunrise

Michael Lebowitz — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 17:16:56 +0000

“Give me the beat, boys, to thrill my soul…lemme get lost in your rock and roll… ” And I did. Truth be told, I still am. Even when it be Mozart on a Sunday morning. There were shadows and light in the valley this morning. For a moment, the last four years became yesterday’s box score, my mind was free and easy – “lemme get lost in the rock and roll, and drift away”

Back when I still lived at home, a troubled young teenager, I would hear Drift Away, by Dobie Gray, on the FM radio, over and over again, always new, drifting, deep into the night.. The tune and the lyrics became a photograph of places I had never seen, calling out to me. It is the first song I listen to in my workout mix and it still brings a smile to my heart.

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Tarmac Meditations #204: Images From the Road – Smoke Risin’

Michael Lebowitz — Tue, 26 May 2020 11:00:37 +0000

I saw the smoke risin’ over Eugene. It looked in that moment like a memory from before I was born, an image of America beyond the Hudson River, the small towns, mills and factories, the heart of America. I was born in the city, New York that is, but after a while I wanted to be out there, to “Go west and grow with the country” is what I heard. Eventually I made it, I have never looked back.

The second image is from some poking around in a deserted fishing camp off the road to Port Angeles WA. I was on my way to a photo/race shoot in Victoria BC. I stopped for a minute to grab some rest. On the left side of the road were the ruins of what was once a store and post office and another road, more like a dirt track. I followed it. I found the fish camp, turned around and found the smoke risin’ in the mist. “Lookin’ for the home I’ve never found” as an old song puts it. For the rest of the journey that image stuck with me as it does to this day.

Lilliwaup smoke

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Tarmac Meditations #203: Images From the Road

Michael Lebowitz — Tue, 19 May 2020 11:00:22 +0000

Once I was sports photographer. I loved it, save for the commercial pressure to deliver images of value. Some good images would become failures if they never became cover images for the magazine of choice that day. Here are a couple that I truly like for the the interaction of the subject and me.

High end track competition is filled with more losers than winners and, for some, the losing on the day may be the end of years of discipline, practice and dreams. I looked for effort , focus and the “agony of defeat”.

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Tarmac Meditations #202: Images From the Road

Michael Lebowitz — Tue, 12 May 2020 17:31:51 +0000

I took these the other day, constrained as I am by the “virus’ to stick close to home and out of other peoples’ faces in the street photography that seems to be my next photographer development stage.

In the instance of the color image I was taken by the purples and the”flop” of the ripening petals.

In the black and white I was taken by the shading of the light in the surrounding leaves, indicating but not pointing to secret places just out of sight.

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Tarmac Meditations: Haiku # 42

Michael Lebowitz — Tue, 04 Feb 2020 12:00:25 +0000

Marathon morning, #3
Bob Marley in my head, fear,
And joy in my heart.

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Tarmac Meditations: Haiku # 41

Michael Lebowitz — Fri, 03 Jan 2020 12:00:06 +0000

“I rode an old paint”
My clothes were all rags”, went up
Cold mountain, met Han-Shan.

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Tarmac Meditations: Haiku # 40

Michael Lebowitz — Sun, 15 Dec 2019 12:00:05 +0000

Dark and rainy come
Fall, cold stillness in the fog
And sometimes I cry.

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Tarmac Meditations: Haiku # 39

Michael Lebowitz — Tue, 19 Nov 2019 12:00:05 +0000

Astrologer, and
healer seeks his doctorate,
He sells good weed, cheap.

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Tarmac Meditations: Haiku # 38

Michael Lebowitz — Tue, 29 Oct 2019 11:00:10 +0000

“Way leads on to way,”
Robert Frost said that about two
roads, taken and not.

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Tarmac Meditations: Haiku # 37

Michael Lebowitz — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 11:00:02 +0000

I made movies once,
Now I don’t, I make still images,
One shot at a time.

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