I’ve been plotting a presentation of wood photographs for a while now, thinking that there would be a Blurb book devoted to that subset of my work with Creatures. I decided to try a YouTube presentation instead, and Wooden Wunderkammer is the result of the moment:

I’m still exploring refinements of the Ken Burns thing, and haven’t really worked at precision of transitions with the soundtrack, so the above is, as they say, provisional.

Three tiny experiments, steps in getting comfortable with Adobe’s Premiere Pro. All are Talking Dogs (it’s not what they say, but that they talk at all):

Talcott Parsons

A professor at Harvard, back in the day, seemingly resident in a rock at Drift Inn Beach
(experimenting with Adobe Draw and the iPad)

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Ondine and Imam
Two beings discovered in ice and rock, respectively
(another brace, Adobe Draw again)

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A first try at mirroring (there will be many more…)

A fourth YouTube video is up: Ken Burns has Hash at Home Kitchen Cafe, again and again

With each of the videos I’ve done I have learned some valuable lessons, and with each I tried out something new to me. After sending links to a few friends, I then made further edits and changes which I haven’t made public.

I have at least half a dozen other clutches of photos that video presentation would enhance, at least in terms of distributability, and I’ve realized that I need some more sophisticated tools, and more careful consideration of where I really want to take this phase of photographic exploration. And so I’ll be doing a 2-day Premiere Pro workshop at Maine Media during the coming weekend.

It’s very useful to consider Ken Burns himself on the “Ken Burns Effect”:

…a very honorable attempt on my part to will old photographs alive…

…willingness to not hold a still photograph at a distance. To just merely acknowledge its plasticity, to not just see its two-dimensionality but to go into its world and to trust that that world had a past and a present. And to activate it. And to be the feature film-maker that I wanted to be with a master shot, a wide shot, a medium shot, a close shot, a pan, a tilt, a reveal, inserts of shots. And to listen to that photograph. To ask the question, “what sounds is this photograph making if it were alive?” That’s what I do…

from Ken Burns: the Kindle Singles Interview (conducted by Tom Roston)

It will be interesting to see how this particular toboggan ride goes.