Presence

I've gotten a few comments/questions about the semi-new banner, so I thought I'd post the details. The picture is of the Reading Room in the British Museum. That's about all I know.

Here's the tricky part about the banners; I get an image in my head, something I think would look cool, and then go about trying to find an actual photograph of what I've envisioned. In case you've never tried this, it's really, really hard.

My original idea was of a perspective shot looking down a row of stacks in a stately old library, with shelves upon shelves of books going off forever into the shadows. Nice dark wood, warm lighting, musty books. I spent days scouring the net, to no avail. I looked on Amazon for books about libraries, I went to Barnes and Noble; nothing. I even took a camera to the New York City Public Library; they were closed. In the end, I had to go with something a little different than I had originally intended. I'm still pleased with the result, I guess I'll have to try to do the stacks one another time.

The first banner, you may remember, was of me, my brother and father, with a man standing behind us. The man is my grandfather, who had passed away around then. The next picture was of a roller coaster about to go over a big drop (you can't see the drop, but you can see the faces of the riders). This one also turned out differently than I had envisioned. I wanted to show just the back seat of a coaster, empty, against a large expanse of blue sky, with a few fingers, perhaps a hand or the top of a head reaching up from the bottom of the picture. I think the cicadas are self-explanatory. As for libraries, well, I love libraries; they give me the feeling of being surrounded by massive amounts of ephermeral knowledge.

In general with these banners, I'm trying to convey the unseen presence present in the picture. It is there, although you can't see it; it's truth is revealed through being, rather than proven objectively. None of this putting nature to the rack. Think of it as a little jab at positivism. I'm not sure if that qualifies as artistic or not, but I think it's a bit better than the giant metal monstrosity outside Penn Station, or "The Nominal Three," which, I will say, is even more illuminating in real life than in photo.