Crows - some people hate 'em - i love 'em.

I have liked crows for a very long time, since i was growing up in a small town in Maine, where i could walk to the far end of my street in wintertime to a place, a big hill to sled down, and walk into open land, pasture, a farm.
There were 4 colors - white, green, blue.. and black.
Snow, pines, sky and... crows.

As i have come west (to California) in 1992, and explored the land, there are two constants in the desert, the middle of nowhere - telephone & power lines.. and crows.
They are scavengers, opportunists - carniverous, vegetarian, omnivores,  and smarter than we would want to admit.

Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crow

"Corvus is a widely distributed genus of birds in the family Corvidae. Ranging in size from the relatively small pigeon-sized jackdaws (Eurasian and Daurian) to the common raven of the Holarctic region and thick-billed raven of the highlands of Ethiopia, the 40 or so members of this genus occur on all temperate continents except South America, and several islands. In Europe, the word "crow" is used to refer to the carrion crow or the hooded crow, while in North America, it is used for the American crow, fish crow, or the northwestern crow.

Recent research has found some crow species capable of not only tool use, but also tool construction. Crows are now considered to be among the world's most intelligent animals with an encephalization quotient equal to that of many non-human primates."

http://www.cracked.com/article_19042_6-terrifying-ways-crows-are-way-smarter-than-you-think.html

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/for-the-love-of-crows/

I have some images, over the years. A crow sailing over the Marin Headlands, dancing in the updrafts:

Another crow that i photographed at Drakes Beach/Pt Reyes Nat'l park.
I was in my car, in the parking lot, which had a fence of sorts, with wooden posts, chains between the parking lot and the beach.
I tempted this bird with bread crusts on the fence post tops., staying just far enough away so that it would snatch, but close enough that w/ a wide lense, i would get at least one good frame. It took a roll and a half (15 frames on a pentax 6x7/120 film).

And in Death Valley, they are always there. Why wouldn't they be? It is Death Valley after all, and crows are scavengers.

I included it in a book i am close to publishing:

Of course, I had to get creative in yet another way with that one:

And later in the darkroom, this image came about.

At the bottom, a campfire, slowly burning out, Above that a shot with the camera in motion, the dying flames. Above that the crow, sandwiched with some 'pseudo - ' stars some sky/clouds, and some birds, a lith neg,
Let's see.... that's 5 exposures.
Don't know exactly how i arrived here, but happy i did.
The end justifies the means.
---------------------------------
A 'Murder of Crows'
Full Episode - PBS
Premiere date: October 24, 2010 | 0:53:10 | Buy the DVD
Although cultures around the world may regard the crow as a scavenger, bad omen, or simply a nuisance, this bad reputation might overshadow what could be regarded as the crow’s most striking characteristic – its intelligence. New research indicates that crows are among the brightest animals in the world. NATURE’s A Murder of Crows brings you these so-called feathered apes, as you have never seen them before.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/a-murder-of-crows-full-episode/5977/

Read the comments on this page before you go to the video episode. My browser and computer (both old an somewhat outdated) didn't react to this too well. I hope you have better luck.

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http://www.livescience.com/52716-crows-ravens.html

http://www.livescience.com/4280-tool-time-crows-share-tricks-trade.html



Soooo... don't call anyone a birdbrain again - they can fly - can you?
They are the last of the dinosaurs... i think.
The final scientific verdict on this one is still out...

And about that asteroid that hit planet earth, and caused dinosaur demise?
Who T. F. knows!

Constant themes - do you have some?

After a few years of (serious?) photography do you have some constant themes running thru your work?
I sure hope so. That means you are focusing on something, hopefully refining your vision.
I recently dug into some 16x20 boxes of montage prints i had made way back east, a loooong time ago.
It was revelation - i found prints i had made almost 30 years ago that had very similar themes to much more recent work, in particular, a chair in the middle of some kind of bizarre enviroment. It awaits a visitor. Print done in... oooh... about 1988 or 89.

 

A west coast update, circa 2014:

And a direction sign, a huge arrow, pointing to who knows what.
The old version:

 

A west coast update, the raw neg, somewhere around the Salton Sea.

What i did with it in the darkroom:

And a photoshop sketch I have in the works, this is how I figure out what I want to print, and get some idea of how it might (notice the choice of word 'might' as opposed to 'will') work out.

 

I've done some serious colorization here... but more on that in a future post.

RE moving to Ca. in 1992 - here's a really interesting article:
My Dark California Dream

Credit: Mark Pernice, Image from Curt Teich Postcard Archives/Lake County Discovery Museum, via Getty Images

"Our parents had wide open spaces all around. We still had nature within reach. Now what?"

By DANIEL DUANEOCT. 24, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/opinion/sunday/my-dark-california-dream.html

I am a transplant from the east coast - arrived in SF on NY's day, 1992, with just what i could fit in a Subaru hatchback. Now that's travelin' light, ain't it? I had no great vision or design, or expectations of some kind of 'golden state' stuff. I had visited SF a decade before, on business for an ad agency i worked for, to do a shoot. The photog's ass't got me ridiculously stoned on Hawaiian weed, i loved the way when i woke up on the tenth floor of a hotel on Nob Hill, it was foggy, couldn't see beyond a block or so.
By noon, sunny, beautiful. At least where we were, 'south of market (street)' in SF.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, at the coast it was still socked in, i am sure.

I also went to Reno a few years later to do a shoot for Brick Institute of America, a firehouse in Sparks, NV. I had included a '(bad)weather day' in the estimate, and sure enough the first day was cloudy/murky, no good for shooting.
The car rental agency didn't have the compact i had asked for, so they gave me... a fucking Cadillac, coupe de ville! Lucky me. And lucky me that i took it up into the hills...
Civilization melts away, there is nothing but raw land and cactus of various sorts.
Color me thunderstruck, it stuck in my mind.
Which is why i came back. For good.

I don't think California is over, it's just going thru some 'ch-ch-ch-changes'.
Got it? What city or state hasn't in the last 20 years??

"Our parents had wide open spaces all around. We still had nature within reach."
Now what?"
So you'll have to walk a bit further. Big fucking deal.

I take a 15 minute commute from San Rafael to Novato every day, and yes, i see alot of suburban sprawl, but i also see many huge hills, open space, way more than what has been settled/suburbanized.
If you think the world will stand still so your vision of it will remain true? You're a dreamer, and i don't mean that in a nice way.

I've been here 23 years now, and i still fee like an easterner - alot of Californians come across to me as being a bit spoiled, self centered. Maybe that's as much about my upbringing as it is about the natives.