Madge’s Picks: Say it Loud!

If you’re thinking about declaring your love this Valentine’s Day and can’t quite muster up the words, we’ve got you covered. Whether you need to add a little spice to your life or need to reconnect with your sweetheart via a long, luxurious phone conversation, Viewville can help.

Michael Jensen’s image Cayenne will spice up even the dullest dish, if you know what I mean!

And Jeff Seltzer can help you send out a love call loud and clear. Luckily, he’s kept all the lines open in Telephones in a Hotel Lobby. C’mon, say it loud! I dare you!

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We’re sharing our love this season and giving a 14% discount on any images ordered
for your Valentine! Just enter SWEETIE during checkout. Offer good until, you guessed it,
February 14th!

The Last Blue Moon of the Century

Where were you on New Year’s Eve, 2009? Chances are, where ever you chose to celebrate the incoming year, you welcomed it beneath a luminous blue moon.

At 4:30 p.m., I watched the moon rise over a frozen lake in the northern vastlands of Minnesota. With the temperature barely hovering at twenty below zero, the frigid stillness gave a surreal clarity and sharpness to the landscape.

While I was witnessing the Northern moon, over a thousand miles away, in Los Angeles, Lillian Elaine Wilson was out after midnight, documenting her West Coast version of a Blue Moon. Sweet!

Above: Blue Moon Over Disney Building, Burbank. Below: Blue Moon Over San Fernando Valley, from Studio City looking East. © 2009 Lillian Elaine Wilson

Most years have twelve full moons which occur approximately monthly, but in addition to those twelve full lunar cycles, each solar calendar year contains an excess of roughly eleven days compared to the lunar year. The extra days accumulate, so every two or three years there is an extra full moon. The extra moon is called a “blue moon.”

The Blue Moon on December 31, 2009 was the last Blue Moon of the Century.

Night Swimming

From a series of images created with the San Francisco Ballet Company, Chad Riley takes ballet off the stage and into the ethereal depths of the aquatic world.

Choosing to shoot all the images in a pool, and at night, he creates a mysterious yet completely engaging performance piece. The dancers are more graceful than you’ve ever seen the human form, circling and reaching like a playful pod of dolphins.

These photographs surprise and delight, as evident in what I like to call Night Swimming!

Time is on her side.

In the fast paced, ever-changing digital world that we live in, there’s something to be said for slowing down a little. Taking your time. And Isabel Gomes shows us how to put on the brakes and take a long, slow look at the world around us.

Armed with a stable of older, unusual cameras and film formats, Isabel creates beautiful and unique images the old fashioned way: methodically, slowly and with great patience.

The Spider was created as a tintype — an involved and quite complicated process that exposes a photo-sensitive plate to light, and requires processing within a few minutes of shooting the image. Yes! She has a dark room!

It takes time and patience to use these seemingly “simple” tools. Carve out a few minutes to take a look at the rest of her work. You won’t be disappointed.

Born on the Bayou, via Minneapolis.

I’ve always had a strange fascination with Louisiana – it’s curious that it has such a hold on my imagination — considering I’ve never even traveled to the state.

Somehow, the bayou, or anything that remotely sounds akin to that area, conjures up danger. Danger in the form of dark, moss laden swamps, infested with alligators. Danger in the form of oily, musclebound convicts, circa 1952, on the lam from the law. Or just the irrational danger of walking into a landscape and never finding your way out. Trapped by nature in a place that is as alien as the moon. Pure Stephen King.

When I first laid eyes on this photo series of Thomas Strand’s, I was a little more than taken aback. I was freaked out. How did a kid from Minneapolis end up with images that were pulled from my imagination? That were culled directly from my dreams? I am called back to these photographs over and over again – like a train wreck on the side of the highway, I can’t stop looking, I always slow down. And secretly, I love what I see!

American Landscapes: The Tradition is Alive!

Forget the Polaroid App –– this is the real thing!

If Dr. Land were alive today, I’m sure he’d be thrilled to meet Jill Sands. Her SX-70 images show what happens when science (albeit, 70s technology) merges with the creative mind!

Shot in the Bahamas, these images, from a full series of photographs, are some of the dreamiest instant pictures I’ve seen. Shooting outdoors, with flowers submerged in water, Jill let nature take the lead. The flowers shift and move with the oceanic breezes. The light moves in and around the delicate petals. And the lens captures the essence of the image from her subconscious. The result: ethereal, dreamlike and peaceful images –– try shooting this on an iPhone!

Laurie Rubin drifts into Viewville

I’d venture to guess that almost anyone who comes home from travels that have taken them to the ocean, carries at least one talisman from time spent wandering the strand. Whether a pearlized shell, a textured stone or green beach glass, nothing says beach-combing like the things we carry home.

One of our newest photographers, Laurie Rubin takes beach detritus to a higher level. After collecting driftwood from the same beach in Mexico over a five-year period, with custom agents annually holding up the family while she was questioned about her found objects, she shares with us her pure, simple forms. Images that conjure up a universal family vacation from each of our collective memories.

Drift over to Viewville and check out Laurie’s images, and then book that trip to the Outer Banks.