FotoFriday: Show n’ Tell at Mass Maritime

This week we calling it Flickr Friend FotoFriday. WTF!

Here’s a shot by fellow maritime blogger and Massachusetts Maritime Academy cadet Christiaan Conover.

Chatham Boat House by Christiaan Conover

On Tuesday we posted about this historic USCG Boat House being temporarily relocated. (Historic Coast Guard Boat House Gets A Lift) Christiaan saw the post via Twitter and snapped this pic from his room at Mass Maritime at the tug and barge and boat house enter the Cape Cod Canal. Nothing like learning from experience!

Christiaan has a great blog and you can follow him on Twitter too!

FotoFriday: Rare Australian Ferry Duck Giving Berth!

Australia Day Duck Ferry by Bryan Heywood from Australian Maritime Museum on Flickr

Bryan Heywood captured this photo of the rare Australian Ferry Duck. If you look closely, you’ll see the even rarer occurrence of the “berthing” process, which is confirmed by the expression of relief on the duck’s face, being caught on film .

The Australian National Maritime Museum is one of the few maritime museums that has a great blog and an active Flickr account.

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FotoFriday: New Bedford Whaling Museum

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Visited the New Bedford Whaling Museum this afternoon for a quick run through the “Classic Whaling Prints” exhibit that opened today and snapped this cool diorama which is part of the show. If you can get there, check it out.

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FotoFriday: Ramon Terrado, Oceanogrophotographer

Ramon Terrado is a oceanography student that I came across on the soon to close photo community / magazine website JPG where I was also a member. His work is amazing and his story is cool. (pardon the pun) Below the jump is an interview he did with JPG.

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"Do not mess with an icebreaker!" by Ramon Terrado
Alone in the Dark by Ramon Terrado
"Alone in the dark" by Ramon Terrado
Waiting for the Sun by Ramon Terrado
"Waiting for the sun" by Ramon Terrado

Continue reading FotoFriday: Ramon Terrado, Oceanogrophotographer

FotoFriday: Icehouses and Surfers by Catherine Opie

This is the last weekend to experience the Catherine Opie: American Photographer exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC. The show closes on January 7th. Here are a few of works from her Icehouses and Surfers series. To get a better understanding of this artists work, make sure you watch the great video on the Guggenheim website (hope they keep these links live after the exhibit closes.)

Untitled #1, Icehouse, 2001 by Catherine Opie

From Christopher Knight’s December 8, 2008 review in the LA Times regarding the NYC exhibition:

The most beautiful room pairs 14 landscape views of ice fishermen and their shacks on snowy frozen lakes in Minnesota with 14 seascape views of early-morning surfers bobbing in the Pacific Ocean along the misty Malibu shore. “Icehouses” (2001) and “Surfers” (2003) are monumental — more than 4 1/2 feet tall — and verge on abstraction.

Vast, grayish white expanses are striped across the middle with a horizon line and dotted with figures dwarfed by nature’s void. Both chart the shifting organization of temporary communities of sportsmen who have taken to the water, liquid and frozen. For land creatures this environment Opie possesses a distinct otherness. Play mingles with survival.

Nick 2003 by Catherine Opie 

Artist profile in NY Times: Home Views, Bound by Ice or Leather by Hilarie M. Sheets

Exhibit review in NY Times: A Retrospective of Many Artists, All of Them One Woman by Holland Cotter

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In case you can’t make it to the Guggenheim, you can still see Opie’s work in the exhibition catalogue.

 

 

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FotoFriday: Barbara Mensch’s Photographs of Our Lost Maritime Heritage

 "Vinny, an Unloader" (1982).  South Street Seaport Museum
"Vinny, an Unloader" (1982). South Street Seaport Museum 2008.005.0018. Copyright Barbara G. Mensch.

Barbara G. Mensch is a contemporary photographer who through the 1970’s and early 1980’s captured the rapidly disappearing world of Lower Manhattan’s Fulton Fish Market. Thomas Mellins, special projects curator for the Museum of The City of New York, put together an exhibition titled The Photographs of Barbara Mensch at the South Street Seaport Museum. The artist’s work can also be viewed in her book, South Street.

From the South Street Seaport Museum website:

For more than a century, a tightly knit community of workingmen, many of them immigrants or children of immigrants, thrived in their nocturnal jobs as fishmongers under the base of the Brooklyn Bridge.  Resistant to government regulations and corporate encroachment these men worked in a closed, internally-policed world that was deeply hostile to outsiders.

Many of the images were taken in 1979-1983, a time of profound change in the political and economic landscape of Lower Manhattan. The waterfront below the Brooklyn Bridge was targeted for economic revival, spurred by the demolition of important locales in the fish market, existing piers, working storefronts, saloons and hotels to make room for new commercial spaces, including a shopping mall.

Since there is nothing like experiencing art in person, make sure you get to the South Street Seaport Museum if you can.

Please don’t miss the great interview with the photographer by Columbia University Press.

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Sea(cret) Santa (13 Days Left): Artful Giving

Sea(cret) Santa thinks that there is no better gift to give someone special than art and today in keeping with Sea-Fever tradition of FotoFriday, his bag is full of Fred LeBlanc’s unique maritime photographs.

Ernestina Fred Leblanc

About the artist from his website:

Frederick J. LeBlanc has worked as a professional photojournalist for over twenty-five years. His commercial and editorial images have appeared regularly in regional and national publications. His life long passion for classic wooden sailing vessels has led him, over the last decade, to document these historic windjammers as they sail, in harmony with the wind and sea.

Viewing himself as a photojournalistic storyteller, he uses his fine art prints,to bring to the public a greater awareness and appreciation of our maritime heritage.

Through his collections of photographic artwork he hopes to recall a vanishing era when the waves were broken only by the power of the wind, to capture the majestic beauty of these historic tall ships and to offer a visual escape that evokes a longing for the sea.

Fred also writes Wake of the Windjammers, an interesting blog about maritime heritage and photography.

Roseway Sails

Best of all, Fred’s original artwork is very reasonably priced. For instance, the above “Roseway Sails,” a 11×16 archival pigment ink print on media, matted 16×20 (includes shipping and handling) is a Collectors Print December Special offered for only $ 39.00! Prices on his other work start at $20.

Fred’s been a great promoter of maritime heritage and supporter nonprofit organizations like the American Sail Training Association.  And Santa thinks his art is great too!

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Foto Friday – Scenes From Antarctica (The Big Picture Blog)

Photo by Mike Usher / National Science Foundation

The former Russian icebreaker and now cruiseliner Kapitan Khlebnikov breaks through the annual sea ice near the Oates Coast of Antarctica on January 29, 2005. (Photo credit: Mike Usher/National Science Foundation)

If you are not familiar with the Boston Globe’s The Big Picture photoblog, you are missing out on one of the most amazing ongoing large scale photography exhibitions on the Internet. Click on the above photo to see the original and explore; you won’t be disappointed.

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Foto Friday – Launching Dreams (New Bedford Whaling Museum)

Lagoda under construction - New Bedford Whaling Museum

I stumbled upon this cool photo this morning on the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s Flickr photostream. The model of the Lagoda has fueled a lot of young sailors dreams including mine many, many decades ago and my 5 year old son Luke’s currently. Check out The World’s Largest Ship Model for more.

Luke on the Lagoda

The New Bedford Whaling Museum has posted a really great selection of photographs and copies of artwork on Flickr, many of which are available for purchase via their Window Back Gallery. (Copies of that it is!)

Hopefully this collection will whet your appetite because there is nothing better than seeing art up close and in person and climbing aboard the Lagoda and dreaming of going to sea.

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Foto Friday – Happy Halloween!

Update November 1, 2008 – This post has received quite a bit of referred traffic today. Pure and simple it was a funny photo calling out for captioning and Halloween created the opportunity.

On Weekly Leader I recently wrote a post titled Why Humor Is Important In Leadership which presents some entertaining video of the Presidential candidates poking fun at themselves and each other. What was so impressive to me was that in the middle of such negative campaigning on both sides, this event and it’s roast format, humanized both candidates. Please check it out. It’s so important to maintain humor and perspective in life yet it seems to be something that’s becoming rarer and rarer today. Thanks.

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Great to see both candidates “suspend” their campaigns today to go trick or treating together. Here’s a photo in their costumes: Obama as President and McCain as Creepy Old Guy. Happy Halloween!

McCain Monster Halloween

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