Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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A Decade Of Nothing
This is just a picture. I made it roughly a decade ago. I made it on Christmas Eve 2012. I made it at the bonfires on the river near Lutcher, Louisiana. We light the bonfires to guide Papa Noel down the Mississippi River to New Orleans so all the fine people of the city can…
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Out On The Road
My WordPress buddy Tim Allen said that he hoped this worked out for me. Me too. But, what he doesn’t realize is that this better work out for me because if it doesn’t he’ll have nothing but problems since WordPress is changing everything. One helper told me that since technology has changed over the years…
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Finally
I’d like to think that I’ve finally figured this out. But, I just know that I haven’t. There are plenty of little tells, like my picture in the corner. That shouldn’t be there. My logo should be there. Even though I’ve activated Storyteller Part Two I can’t actually see that I’ve done it. I suppose…
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Everything is Broken
A few of my friends have asked why we are heading to Virginia and farm life. These pictures might speak to that. But, they are a little romantic, a little nostalgic. New Orleans is truly the city that care forgot. The truth is that we’ve gotten as violent as I’ve ever known New Orleans to…
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Cantaloup
T his image is about fall. Yes, I know fall came to an end a couple of months ago. But, I finally got around to working on this picture. It’s another one of my layering experiments. This one was much easier to do than yesterday mostly because I used the basic template that I built…
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Winterlude
I ‘ve been struggling to find topics to write about. I’ve been trying to keep my posts lighthearted but we are living through some of the worst times that I’ve ever seen. The country is so polarized that I’m pretty sure that we can’t agree about the color of the sky. Now we’ve got the…
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Winter Glow
T his isn’t exactly what I meant. I’ve been trying to push back the distribution of Storyteller to about 5pm Central Time. I intended to do it by posting about an hour later every week until I reached 5pm. Oh no. I jumped to 3pm in about two days. Oh Well. A couple of folks…
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Deep and Dark
S ometimes you can’t sleep. But that was okay because I slept too much the night before. While I was laying there my past came into view. Both good and bad memories. I intentionally forced the bad ones away. Who wants to try to fall asleep with bad things in mind? There were a lot of…
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Midnight
M ystical, magical and very blue. This was really a test. What happens if I turn a white statue blue and add leaves? Now we know. It looks like this. Sort of mysterious. Sort of like the garden of good and evil. This is another picture that took some time to make. I think about…
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Questions
S pace. The final frontier. This picture was assembled from bits and pieces of other pictures. I’d say it was layered, but it wasn’t exactly that. Normally, I lay one entire picture over another. This time I laid a portion of a picture over the base and blended until you can’t see the edge. It…
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Thinking of a Place
I reckon we could all use a bit of color. It’s Friday. We sort of made it to someplace else. The weekend. I’m not excited about that. Working from home sort of tones that down. But, this is the start of Carnival and that means something even though I can’t photograph it. But, during parade…
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Fever Dreams
C onversation. It took me a while, but I finally figured something out. I say that photography and music are very similar in approach. And, they are. But. There is one huge difference. One that matters most. Conversation. When a musician plays with another musician they create a musical conversation. They talk to each other…
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A Crack In Time
T here was a time when I thought that I could actually build something here at WordPress. I asked for help transferring Laskowitzpictures.com. They said they couldn’t do it, at least not the way they did in the past. What they could do, however, sell me another website with laskowitzpictures.com included. For thirteen dollars. So,…
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Twilight
I had a lot to talk about. Apparently, it wasn’t that important because I can’t think of any of it. Sleep on it, they say. Seems to have worked. At any rate, I’m back. But, I’m not sure for how long. I tried to switch my extension to the one I’ve had for 30 years.…
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Party At Ground Zero
I started working on this picture so long ago that I forgot what picture I was going to use when it came to publishing this page. I suppose it’s a leftover of lockdown fuzziness. Or maybe I’m just losing my ability to think and remember stuff. I’d like to remember important things. Maybe photographs and…
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World Of Strange Design
S ometimes I forget the work I’ve already done. If you recall I wasn’t posting everyday. That didn’t mean I wasn’t making new pictures and working on others. I was. And, I forgot about it. I was looking for something else when I stumbled upon a little group of pictures that I had forgotten about.…
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Thinking Of A Place
W hat remains. This is one of our storm ravaged trees. Branches are broken, but new leaves are sprouting up like today was spring and not fall. I’m not sure in what form the recovery will take, but at least nature is doing her work. All nature really wants is stasis. One way or another,…
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Fire On The Mountain
Y esterday was a day of nothing. It wasn’t useless. There are no useless days. Instead, on a day normally reserved for errands, I did nothing. I awoke at about 8:15 am, looked the clock, turned over and the next thing I knew, it was 10:44 am. After a bit of stretching and exercise, it…
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All You Need To Know
A friend of mine used to travel from Michigan to Vermont to photograph fall colors. Now he travels from Florida where he retired. That seems like an awfully long way to chase color. Me? I’m lazy. I walk out of my door and take pictures of fall color. Or, I could. We lost a lot…
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Hour Of Not Quite Rain
T his has been a very quiet time for me. I’m not doing much more than I need to do. That’s not me. Nor, is it good for me. I’ve always been a believer of finishing your daily work and then do one more thing. Big or little, it doesn’t matter. You are making progress.…
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Don’t Let Your Goodbye Stand
“U nderneath the heavens above.” That’s a line from a Bob Dylan song. I heard it just as I started writing. So, I thought, “Why not?” Y’all know that I listen to music while I write, yes? I’m playing a Spotify play list called Summer Rewind. I’m trying to think about what summer this particular…
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Another Park, Another Sunday
T he caption says it all. Another way. I keep reading what a great camera the iPhone 12 is supposed to be. I had better be because it’s a terrible phone. I decided to test it. I made this photograph towards the end of dusk. That means I made a time exposure. I wasn’t sure…
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Time Out Of Mind
W hat are you going to do for the fall? It took me a minute to realize my friend was asking about autumn, not the fall of the country. I really don’t know. I know that I won’t be traveling, at least until sometime until mid to late 2022. I’m hoping that my booster vaccination…
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Into The Red
F inally. The big machine starts. I came to realize that I couldn’t type in my password because the magic keyboard couldn’t type anything. I’m not sure if it gave up the ghost or there is a bluetooth setting that is turned off. After poking around endlessly on various computer repair suggestion pages I found…
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Sometimes…
S ometimes just the sky. And, the trees. That’s all I know. Today. I’m having a terrible time with technology. My main machine has a problem with the logo page. I cannot type my password. The system acts like the magic keyboard isn’t working. After trying every known fix nothing helps. There is one last…
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Until The End
M ore water. More reflections. Even as we dry out, some things don’t change. I think most people have power. Not everyone has internet, which doesn’t seem important but in the modern world it is. We use Cox. They don’t know what they are doing. They sent us a long email apologizing for the lack…
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What Will Be
S ometimes I really don’t have much to say about world events. I’ve read enough to know that some days I’m better off staying in bed. And, on other days I just go for a walk. This picture found me on a walk. Aside from the square crop, I did nothing to it. It is…
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Never Ending
W e listen to a lot of podcasts around here. This morning I was listening to The New York Times’ The Daily. The reporter was talking to a viral scientist. It was a pretty good interview until the reporter asked the scientist when the pandemic would end. She declined to predict that, but did say…
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The Waiting
T om Petty said that they waiting is the hardest part. And, so it is. Most of the preparations have been done. I was about to take the trash out when I remembered not to do it. During a hurricane the trash cans get blown around and the trash gets plastered to your house. Or,…
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Luna
W ordpress has beaten it out of me. After yesterday’s fiasco I think I’ll go back to simple things because WordPress really doesn’t like photographers. Instead of fostering community growth and spirit by suggesting we work together on projects, they want writers to use Upsplash if they need photographs. Upsplash is a portal. Photographers upload…
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The Summer Wind
A nother weird week. It seems like death is following us around no matter what we do. I suppose that’s the way it is going to be until we manage the virus and people are able to think again. I have no idea what killed Charlie Watts. But, it may illustrate something that I’ve long…
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Love and Mercy
A nyone who has been around Storyteller for any length of time knows that there I are things I almost never do. I rarely post twice in one day. I rarely post another photographer’s work unless we are working on something together. And, I never post a picture without a credit line. All of those…
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Charlie Watts
A moment of silence, please. Rest in Peace, Charlie Watts.
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Imaginary Ships
W e do it for the stories we could tell, so says Jimmy Buffett, even when we know do that something could end badly. It’s especially true if you are a young teenager. I was 13 or 14 when I did that story telling thing. I went to a day camp during summer. One day…
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I Think I
M ostly, I say that a picture needs a little post production work to turn into something presentable. Not this time. What I saw is what you get. Better yet, I decided to take a little walk because I’m mostly trapped inside. I looked up and there it was. The moon poking through a wisp…
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Something Wild
Y ou’ll never believe what I did to this picture. Before I tell you, let me say that for the rest of this week Storyteller will look a little different. WordPress sent me a long email about changes to the block system to which I replied, “Oh God.” WordPress sent me a long email about…
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Mellow Yellow
T here is a period in my life when I liked to make very closely focused pictures that are akin to macro photography. That period started about twenty years ago and continues to this day. Some period, eh? For me, this work is something like a palette cleanser between other, more gritty subjects. Of course,…
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Can We Go Home Now?
S ometimes, I can tell you everything about making a picture. You know, the how, what, why, when and who of it? But, not this picture. I know where it is located in my archives. But, it doesn’t fit with the rest of the take. My big goal during the lockdown was working on my…
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The Other Side of Midnight
A little something pretty for a Friday afternoon. I made this picture a while back, sometime in spring. I did the developing and post production and promptly forgot about it. I found it looking for something else just as I did yesterday. I reckon if I keep doing that I won’t ever have to take…
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Not California
R escued from my archives. I found this picture while I was looking for something else. That’s sort of the way I make pictures, on the way to some place else. The funny thing about the picture is that the subject doesn’t exist. Not anymore. It was a designer’s idea as part of the landscaping…
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The Middle Ages
M y thoughts brought me to a couple of places. As events start to close down I’ve been thinking about anniversaries. This picture of a flambeaux during Mardi Gras is a great example of that. It’s just a picture, right? Maybe. To me it means a lot. I was suffering during Mardi Gras 2020. I…
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Throughout
M any years ago, I used to publish an experimental picture every Sunday. I haven’t done it for a long while. I’d like to say that I’m going to resume, but I’ll probably forget. Throughout the news sites that I read there have been discussions about CoVid-19 (Over 106,000 daily new infections.), The Olympics, national…
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He Went to Paris
I ‘ve made a change. You’ll figure it out. It comes under the heading of who was I really hurting? In these pandemic days when many people aren’t able to travel, it’s possible to get a European fix right here in New Orleans. After all, we are a French, Spanish and American place. Much of…
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River Rise
I was rooting around in my archives when I stumbled upon this picture. I made it very early when we returned to New Orleans. We used to live in Jefferson Parish, near to where The Saints football team practices. I used to walk on a track. Depending on direction you could walk about 1.5 miles…
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A Little Magic
U pside down. That’s what’s happening to my days. I go to bed early, as in early in the morning. I get up late, like around noon. I’m not sure why my body is doing this, but it’s fine with me. The weather is very hot and humid. Summer in southeastern Louisiana. Walking during the…
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Boxes
T his is the kind of place that we saw on our drive to Natchez. That’s Mississippi, in case you were unclear on it. Stopping at little places like this were one of the reasons the drive too so long. This place was closed. The drive would have taken longer if it had been open…
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What Does It Mean?
L ouisiana is leading the country in Covid-19 infections. We are nowhere near 70% vaccination rate. Orleans Parish beat the CDC in mandating masks indoors again. Now I’m starting to hear whispers in the wind that musical venues will close again and that includes both Jazzfest and French Quarter Fest. The loss of both of…
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In My Dreams
Learning, Always Learning I’ve been at it again. It doesn’t help that DALL-E sends me credits so I can play without cost. I suppose there is the sunk cost of my time. But,I don’t mind that as long as I’m learning… something. This is a great example of synthetic media generated by AI using only…
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What’s Cooking?
I like to eat. You like to eat. I also like to cook, but not all the time. Musical Miss is a better cook than I am, but she doesn’t like to cook everyday. So, we go out to eat in restaurants, cafes or buffets. Well, buffets are out with the arrival of CoVid and…
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Spring Equinox
Equinox. Rebirth. The representation of new life and light, new beginnings, path and seeds. Seeds? Read on. You’ll see. The equinox represents the need for balance because the day and night are equal in length. The first day of spring begins at 5:24 pm EDT. Now the days grow longer as light wins over the…
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Synthetic Media
Generative AI pretty much exploded this week, not so much for visuals which are getting more sophisticated by the hour, but for words and questions. It seems like every app that we all use has some version of ChatGPT-4. Microsoft built it into Bing. Google built into Workspace. Facebook is building their own version. The…
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Train Time
I think you know that I like trains. You also know that I like junk. So what could be better than a junk train? If memory serves I found this abandoned and mostly forgotten train on the eastern plains of New Mexico. I have no idea why it was left there, but there are abandoned…
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Left Behind
When I first arrived in New Orleans I was told a lot of different things about this building. It was said to be a cannon ball manufacturing plant during the Civil War. It may be that there was another building on the land that did make something during the war, but this building was constructed…
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Nature’s End
Green. That’s what I felt like seeing. I thought you might enjoy it too. Not only do I like the color, but I like the stillness of these pictures. Quietude and solitude are two reasons that we bought the farm. These pictures are not from there. We have trees, but they are certainly not huge,…
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Self Defense
As you know, I’ve been playing with my archive. This image is the result of that. It’s in response to the synthetic media produced by generative AI. Yep, AI is growing so fast that jargon is being created as fast AI is being developed. That’s scary for a lot of reasons. Not only can it…
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Upon Further Reflection
Time to move. For sure, I have huge archives of New Orleans images, but enough is enough. I’ve moved so it’s time for Storyteller to move on to other locations. For the life of me I cannot tell you where or under what circumstances I made this photograph. It’s late night stop which means I…
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