of articles and blog breaks – on thrift store shopping and wholeness

Hello, readers/viewers. I don’t know what I ought to call you It has been a little while, but more on that in a little bit.
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First, I have had an article published in catapult magazine about a coat…well, really about other things, too, but finding an amazing coat in a thrift store gets the ball rolling.

In the current issue, which is all about the issues involved in clothing oneself, I also have two haiku, reprinted from here, about some of the wonders of spring.
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Regarding blogging and breaking, well, I am in the process of mulling over a photographic break, both on and off the blog–that is, exiling my cameras elsewhere for a time in order to…well, I am not certain to do what exactly, but perhaps, to riff off the images in the previous post, to let the lake refill. Indeed, the images in that post may serve as an apt image for this time.

I do hope that there will be some activity here, perhaps the posting of an article or two, but, more significantly, I hope to complete an overhaul of The Dassler Effect, with a new look and a section devoted to selling some of my prints.

I am not sure how long the break will last–it has not snowed here and the flowers are as yet to come out to tempt me–but I can be a fickle fellow so there maybe some hope that it will be short.

Thank you so much for coming along for the ride however long you have been on board.

“Home” to Pakistan – Poem Reprint – Haiku Laziness and Out of Africa

One of the advantages of having had a blog for going on 8 years and switching platforms and even emphases from time to time, is that one can emulate the scribe that Jesus describes in Matthew 13:52 and bring out ‘new treasures as well as the old,’ only in this case that order is inverted as I bring out the old–you can be the judge of its treasure-worthiness. It is true that such sampling of an earlier version might dilute the current “brand” of the blog a bit, but The Dassler Effect is nothing if not a little mixed up

Today on a whim, I priced tickets to Pakistan, not because I am going any time soon, but just out curiosity. I have not been since 1993, and simply thinking of going produces a complex set of emotions. It will happen some time, and hopefully sooner rather than 20 years further on.

Below are a series of poems I wrote in 1994 which have appeared on the blog before and reflect on my last trip to Pakistan. I am very pleased with some of the imagery here, but some needs work and editing.

In truth, I am rather poetically lazy. That is one reason I love haiku so much Though, I love that form also for its own beautiful simplicity and power, and I know when I have written a truly worthy one and when I have merely gone through the paces. Free verse is rather harder for me, and sonnets harder still, but one day I will try to give those forms a go again.

Partially I have to do this because there are some things one simply cannot capture in a haiku. For example, this weekend I was unpacking my mother’s china, some of which she bought piece by piece from a bank in Illinois, moved in barrels on a ship to Pakistan where she was to marry my father, which was most recently in my father’s house in Illinois before he died, and now is in my brand new house. Surely that deserves a poem, with the interweaving of themes from another story of a woman ensconced in and in love with a land not her own– Baroness Blixen’s story in Out of Africa, which my mother was deeply drawn to even though their outlooks on the world were quite different. I tell you, it could be a great poem, but it will surely take some work…

In the meantime, it’s haiku and photos and reprints for you (oh, and the odd essay).

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lambert international

a thousand phrases out of context
sit in these padded chairs
dreaming of verbs
to be and do

a thousand islands float
detached from mainlands
forming these strange archipelagos
these strange bays and headlands

and soon i too will float
severed
trailing a muddy wake
streaming back
diffusing with the distance
into clear blue

soon i too
ripped from my context
will struggle just to be
bleeding my dependencies

nocturne in limbo, 30,000 feet

this strange stillness soothes
the unending muted roar of engines
envelopes and subdues me
like the roaring of a monsoon on a tin roof
remembered in warm sleep

this stillness seeps
through this inch thick oval of glass
from the moon filled space beyond
that holds separate two seas of black

and i hang in between
and ache for each

above
the stars for which no earthly metaphor will do
burn their coldness into me
and something
some longing for eternity
quivers and answers
deep unto deep

below
a cozier vastness beckons me
the desert blackness exhales middle-eastern heat
and in the galaxies of light
that island its entirety
lovers softly sleep
ensconced each in each

return

i stand and breathe
my last few gulps of air duty-free
shuffling up the aisle of this airlock
between atmospheres

soon i will be complete
torn into a duality
that appears unseamed in separate hemispheres
that tears each time they meet
at the touching of my sleeping eastern flesh with east

i walk from the door
and then I’m me
in ways that i have not been for years
as thick warm eastern air enfolds me
and fills my lungs
displacing stale indifference
and leaves me coughing
sputtering
amidst these warm embraces
invading my protesting western space
amidst these cluttered streets
breaking life into me
more honest and complete

it may take some time to breathe

chiaroscuro : a photo / photography contrast for summer 2011

Italian, ‘light-dark.’ A term used to describe the effects of light and dark in a work of art, particularly when they are strongly contrasting. -The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms

Well, it is high time The Dassler Effect hosted a photo contest. Check out the details here. Top prize this year? $125 and you could possibly win more than one prize as this contest presents you the opportunity to enter two photos!

Get those cameras shooting and hard drives whirring!

The lie of keeping it real – A review of Losing My Cool: How a Father’s Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture by Thomas Chatterton Williams

If you have not been reading this blog for long, and perhaps “reading” is an insufficient word here, perhaps you are confused whether it is a photo blog or a poetry blog or blog presenting prose pieces. The answer to this question is “Yes.”

It is clear that photography takes up most of its real estate, with haiku a close second, but at several stages in this blogs history, that is to say my history, there was a fair bit of prose as well. That has diminished, but when I do publish a piece elsewhere on the web, I do like to point it out.

That is what this is, a review of Thomas Chatterton Williams thought-provoking and excellently written memoir. Without further ado, I will let the review do the talking.

Oh, and for more blog brand dilution/confusion, stay tuned–a blog contest or two are in the wings waiting to make their appearance.

Thanks for reading/viewing.

Pocketbooth – Awesome App for Apple iPhones / iPod Touch

When you have owned your own photobooth rental business in which you converted old booths by programming digital cameras to do the shooting. When you have built up a considerable body of photobooth art and co-created the destination website for photobooths. When you have hosted a photoboorth art convention. What do you do for an encore?

Well, if you’re Tim Garrett, it’s simple. You come up with the coolest iPhone photobooth App in the App Store.

Artist/entrepreneur Tim Garrett has designed an App which perfectly leverages the dual camera features of the iPhone 4G and new iPod Touch, but which will also run on iPhone 3G and 3GS if you have the iOS 4 software update.

At the App Store, Brian Meacham, the co-creator and curator with Tim of photobooth.net, which makes him a man who knows a thing or two about photobooths, writes in an unsolicited review:

“It’s all in the details with this app: the fit and finish is beautiful, it works like a charm, and it’s true to the legacy of the real photobooths we all remember.

The wood grain, ’50s green plastic, and metallic details look great. The options are nice, too: color or b/w, matte or glossy, and three or four photos per strip.

The app feels like a real photobooth: the mirror and lights are there, the photos drop down into the metal slot, and even the strips themselves mimic the dimensions and appearance of the old strips.

It’s really the next best thing to a real photobooth in your pocket.”

In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that Tim is a good friend of mine and for that reason alone I want his App to do very well. But I can honestly say that the 20 minutes I spent testing out his App and posting the strips to my Facebook profile were really, really enjoyable–and I take lots and lots of pictures with some pretty nice cameras on a regular basis.

It was fun to mug for the front camera like in a real photobooth and see the red dot on my face as the camera paused between shots and I desperately tried to come up with interesting faces.

For me as a photographer, though, it was even more enjoyable to use the standard back camera setting and go around the house to find and capture little cameos with 3 or 4 photos in each strip which were related to each other only by how I chose to make them related. Fun stuff.

At any rate, this App will normally sell for $2.99, which I think is pretty good deal, but just now it is available for the insanely low price of $0.99. Get yours today and take the fun of a photobooth wherever you go.

Summer Photo Contest! – The results are in!

The results are in for the Lightning in a Bottle: Capturing Summer Photo Contest, but before the big reveal why not take a moment to meet the judges (you may want to visit their sites and give them a shout out), then have another look at the entries and see who took each shot. But if you are the sort of person who eats dessert first, the results are at the bottom.

Check it out!

Helping Your Neighbor, Loving Your Enemies – Pakistan Flood Relief

When the Haiti earthquake occurred, the response in our country was immediate and overwhelming, and with good reason, as so many people lost their lives. The needs continue to be great and help should continue to flow.

The response to the Pakistani flooding, though, in both dollars and attention, seems to be muted in comparison. Perhaps this is so because not as many folk immediately lost their lives, though 1600 have done so already. Perhaps it is because the flooding, which covers an area the size of England and has displaced 20 million people, is on the other side of the world. Perhaps it is because some may view the people in Pakistan, particularly this region of Pakistan, as their enemies.

By way of laying my cards on the table, I am both half-Pakistani and a Christian, one who seeks (falteringly at best) to both care for the poor and dispossessed and to love my enemies. So, I have good reasons to help Pakistanis, people with whom I share blood kinship and whom God commands me to love.

Furthermore, I am an American, a member of a country that is hated by many in Pakistan, and this grieves me a great deal. Without sorting out blame from a very complex history, wouldn’t it be wonderful to see more U.S. military war planes delivering food and supplies with a message “From the people of the United States” emblazoned on the sides of boxes and bags, delivered by the hands of men and women from our country. See Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s plea here.

If you are motivated to help, please text one of the numbers either above or below, or check out the guide I have created for my work which provides more information and opportunities to give.

To explain a little more about the phrase “loving your enemies,” clearly many people in Pakistan and America do not regard each other as such, but many in both countries do. Pakistani rocker, Salman Ahmad, who tries to fight extremism through music, describes the problem in a BBC article this way:

Speaking from New York, he told BBC World Service that he realised that people in the West were hesitant about helping, asking why they should care for a country associated with extremism.

“[But] there are 100 million-plus young people under the age of 25 who can go two possible ways into the future,” he said.

“They can follow their dreams or they can give in to the extremists and the Taliban who want them to go blow themselves up.

“If they feel that the world cares for them, you may change the destiny of Pakistan. Not only is it humane but it is urgent self-interest – this is a moment to win hearts and minds.”

Finally, if you are moved to help with the flooding in Pakistan, please consider either linking to this post or writing a similar post of your own. Please feel free to use any of the images from this post, which have been synthesized from images gleaned from news sites.

The Summer 2010 Photo Contest is Up!

The entries are in, and we have an unprecedented fifty-one! And competition is as fierce as the summer sun.

The results will be out on Labor Day or whenever all the judges report in, whichever comes first. Good luck to all the contestants.

Check it out!

Summer Photo Contest Deadline in Less Than a Week

Midnight on August 8th, 2010. That’s the deadline for the chance to win up to $150 in the Dassler Effect’s summer photo contest, Lightning in a Bottle: Capturing Summer, with no entry fee. Get them in!

Some Words From Me on My Photography

A friend of mine, Sophie, who has a lovely blog on scrapbooking and crafting and family life and full of thoughtful writing, asked me to post some thoughts on my photography. You may check them out here, and then have a look around the rest of her blog.

If you are here from there, welcome! Stay awhile and have a look around. I’ll put the kettle on!