Stu Jenks: Fezziwig Photography, Music, and Writing

"Alkali Flats, White Sands National Monument, New Mexico" (c) 2008

"Alkali Flats, White Sands National Monument, New Mexico" (c) 2008 Stu Jenks

    [This image was shot, using Ilford SFX 200 film, the poor man's infrared. Sure, I have a $1300 Canon digital camera but was I going to take it out onto those dunes? Not on your life. My old Pentax with its 28 mm lens did just fine. And even though some fine sand grains did get inside my camera, I was able to fix the scratches on the negs in Photoshop.
    After hiking a couple hours in the heat, wind and light, the true highlight that day at White Sands was seeing a family of Chiricahua Apaches playing in the dunes. The whole extended family was there. Mom, Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, and three young children, the kids rolling happily sideways down the dunes, laughing all the way. The parents and grandparents were laughing too. I was smiling as well. The Dad had a Washington Redskins sweatshirt on. I'm not making this up.
    Mostly, I felt happy just seeing their joy. I know a little of the Chiricahuas' history, that only a few survived the Indian Wars and its horrible aftermath, but some have since flourished, to a degree, living on the Mescalero Apache Reservation, east of White Sands. Beautiful mountains, lots of hunting, fine skiing, and a spacious resort to boot. They've worked hard and gotten lucky with the gambling I suppose. I'm happy for the Chiricahuas, and happy to see that family frolicking in the dunes that day. But I still wish the U.S. Government would consider giving some of the Chiricahua Mountains back to them. It was their home, after all, and I'm guessing, still feels like their home in the hearts of many of the members of the tribe. If they took Virginia away from my family after The Civil War, I'd miss it too.]

"The Biscuit Swirl" (c) 2008

"The Biscuit Swirl, Mustang Mountains, Arizona" (c) 2008 Stu Jenks

[Part of the ongoing Time Travel series. Fun Fact: Everything is done in-camera, using long exposures, zooming-out of the lenses and wrist-cranking the camera. Only PhotoShopping that is done, is for enhancing the color and popping the contrast.]

"In The Mustang Rain" (c) 2007

"In the Mustang Rain" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

       [Images: "Spiral in the Mustang Rain", "Agaves in the Mustang Rain"]

       It was a Male Rain at my apartment earlier today: buckets from the sky, bright lightning, flickering power in my apartment, yellow-tan sand and water in the motorways. Here though, it's a Female Rain: gently falling,  my glasses clean and clear under the bill of my Krispy Kreme hat, bare legs barely getting wet from the mist.

       It's late in the afternoon. Been reading the last Harry Potter book. Hard to leave the house because of that, but I have to, for the Mustangs called me. Well, 'Called' is a little overly dramatic. Closer to say, I could see The Biscuit and The Mustangs in my mind's eye and those images wouldn't go away. I know what that means. I won't be happy until I surrender to a trip. So I did and here we are. Plus I really long for a short hike up some stout hills.

       No cattle on the range today. Saw a couple cattlemen though just a few minutes ago, as I turned onto the muddy dirt road that leads into the Mustangs. They were out with a small tractor and a blade, smoothing out one of the tracks that crosses the range. Land isn't theirs. Land isn't mine. Land belong to the State of Arizona. They lease. I come for free. Guessing they don't really need to be out in the rain, with a blade this afternoon. Roads ain't that bad. I bet they just wanted to get out of the house and play in the mud.

       I park sooner that I normally do. The track is very muddy after all. Maybe the cattlemen are doing the Good Lord's work. I park and walk the rest of the way in. Having a 4 x 4  truck doesn't mean I don't get stuck. Just means I can get stuck farther away from things.

       The rain is a delight. It's the monsoon season in Southeastern Arizona, one of the best kept secrets in Tourista-Land. Everyone around the country sees 115 degrees in Phoenix on The Today Show, not knowing that just two to three hours south of The Surface of The Sun, is a region of a lot more rain, a lot less heat, and a lot gentler people. Only tell your best friends now.

 The bushwhack up is easier that I thought. The rain has pushed down the tall grass. The footing is sturdy and true. The drip, drip, drip of the Female Rain doesn't impede me but rather helps pull me up the hill. I stop along the way to shoot a spiral or two in the conglomerate rock. There are a lot of spirals here, made from the merging of different molten rock. They look like fossils but they appears to be quartz mixed with basalt. (Then again, fossils are mineralized organic material, and this land was underwater eons ago. Could be prehistoric snail shells or something like them.)

       I drew a spiral in the mud back behind me, near a corral, a half hour ago. Didn't take its picture. Was more of a prayer, a reminder that the journey always goes on. Never stops. Even in death. The end of my mud-spiral flew out and open toward the North. The rock spiral glistening at my feet does that too, yet better than mine. That's fine. It's not about me, really, my quest for Art and Beauty. It's about something timeless and eternal. I just use the Personal to get to the Universal. And no matter how old or bald or broke or lonely or fat or scared I feel, the path always goes on, with or without me. I just have to walk it as best I can while I'm here, find some friends along the way, use my volition for The Good and The True. Not perfectly mind you, not always with my head held high, but I need to just move the feet, even when I don't feel like it, and again do the best I can. God and I are partners here, with other people too. I ain't a puppet. He/She/It ain't no puppet master. And the other good folk who walk with me, in front, behind and beside me, are all equals too. The illusion is, that it is otherwise, that we are not the same, that we didn't climb out of the same ocean.

       I've only gone about halfway up. Going to be dark in a couple hours. Don't want to be hiking out in the dark. Off to the south, across a mile wide valley are some hills of the Southern Mustangs, peaking in and out of the clouds. First they are obscured completed in white, then ten seconds later, a peak shows through; a half minute after that, full details can be seen of the ridge-line; another minute later, back to fully obscured in misty clouds. I sit on a rock, try once or twice to shoot the mountain across the way, and then realize, this is for the Mind's Eye, not the camera's. Photography is a wonderful lie sometimes. It can show the details, the specifics, even sometimes create something that isn't there, but mostly it fibs, giving the strong illusion that what you see is what there is. The slow swirling motion of the mist, the tap tap tap of the rain, the smell of the grasses, the cactus, the ocotillo, and agave, a fragrance that can not be describe well or bottled. The smell of a Barn in Heaven, with angel clouds to boot. Turning these sights, smells, sounds in a three dimensional sphere of existence into a two dimensional photographic window is one tall order. But I try, partly to stir my emotional memory later on, but also, sometimes, to seek the Eternal and share it with others. I try as I can. A Fool's errand that I must do, in order to be happy.

  I get back to the truck with much time to spare. Looks like I have another hour of light. I drink some Coke Zero, and light a Camel. I look in the back seat and see my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I grab it, open it to page 424 that I book-marked before I left my apartment and read "Harry fell, panting, onto grass and scrambled up at once..."

"Dancing in Mammoth, Arizona" (c) 2007

[Images: "Virga on Bluebird Lane" & "Dancing in Mammoth, Arizona" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks]

"See God, Kai" (c) 2007

"See God, Kai" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

       John from Cincinnati tells Kai to see God. She falls back on her mattress and has a number of visions. Her many body piercings heat up. After Kai comes to, she asked John never to do that again. "See God, Kai," John says again. "If that's what it's like, I don't want to," says Kai. "That's what it's like," say John from Cincinnati.

       It's really late. Stu had a small pot of coffee earlier tonight, to get him here. The Full Moon has been waning now for a couple of days, so it's rising later and later in the evening now. It's been up a couple, three hours I reckon. Stu's using a small MagLite to navigate the trail. He's about a mile in. Seems to be going toward the second arroyo. Nope. He's turned off the trail before that. He starts walking North toward Finger Rock. He climbs over some small rocks, weaves his way through the brush. Over a few more rocks, around a few more cactus. After about ten minutes, Stu stops. He's looking around. He's now surrounded by Cholla, Granite, Saguaros, and Creosote, in a little natural bowl of Plant and Earth, with a dome of Sky overhead. He turns off his flashlight. He's just standing there. Then I see him smile.

       My eyes quickly adjust to the Full Moonlight, after I turned off the flashlight. I hold my tripod in my hand. My camera bag's heavy on my shoulder. Then I hears something. Loud and clear. More inside than out, but a little bit of both.
       "Welcome to Paradise," says a still quiet voice.
       I smile, find a piece of ground without Cactus, gently put down my camera bag and get to work.

"The Road to Mt. Hopkins, Arizona" (c) 2007

"The Road to Mt. Hopkins, Arizona" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

     [Good News, bad news: Good News? The drive up Mt. Hopkins was glorious, the finest dirt road I have ever driven on, and I have traveled on many an unpaved road. Why is this road so wonderfully maintained? Because there are telescopes at the top. Big powerful ones, multi-lenses ones, U.S. Government ones. Also, the road isn't beaten down that bad, not like, say, Middlemarch Pass Road out of Tombstone that winds through the Dragoons Mountains, that's used by many locals and tourists alike, and is all tore to shit. No, the Mt. Hopkins road is only used by the astronomers who take her to the top, and by the occasional cool weather camper who pitched a tent on its higher ridges. Saturday, it was 105 degrees in the Santa Cruz River Valley below, 107 in Tucson, but not up on the high Southern slopes of the Santa Rita Mountains. I'm guessing in mid 80S.

     Bad News? My nighttime Lasso shots ended up being very 'noisy' and quite frankly, unacceptable for print and sale. I was despondent for much of Sunday, not knowing why they sucked so bad, but I figured it out, after looking at the JPEGS. Very underexposed JPEGS they were, and when I opened the same images as RAW digital negative files, they automatically compensated for the gross underexposure, but not without a heavy price to the quality fo the image. Hence all the f-ing noise.

     Maybe some late moon shooting tonight, but I don't think I'll be driving a hour and a half south this evening to reshoot halfway up Mt. Hopkins. The Moon wont' be up until after 11 p.m. or so, and I do have a dayjob and responsibilities at work. Damn it all. But who knows. Perhaps I'll just drive five minutes north of my apartment, to the Finger Rock Trailhead and do some Light Lassos in the wash up there. I'll see how I feel after dinner. Hope I don't eat too many sugar cookies and pass out on the futon like last night. Well, I am grateful though, that I figured out the 'noise' problem, and thanks to a couple of photog friends that validated what I was thinking was right.

     Least I got a nice shot of the Santa Cruz valley on Sunday, even if the Lassos pretty much sucked. Live and learn. And one out of two ain't bad. I'll just keep tell myself that until I get a Lasso I like.]

(Images: "The Road up Mt. Hopkins, Arizona" and "The Lights of Mt. Hopkins, Arizona" (c) Stu Jenks 2007)

"Lake Titicaca, Peru" (c) Ben Cole

"Lake Titicaca, Peru" (c) 2007 Steven Ben Cole

[From the camera of British cinematographer and friend Ben Cole, from his recent trip to Lake Titicaca in Peru. By the way, Titicaca is the highest commercially navigable lake in the world, at 12,500 feet above sea level]

"Hot Water Canyon, Arizona" (c) 2007

"Hot Water Canyon, Arizona" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

[Not much Photoshopping here. Shot these trees in Agua Caliente Canyon, through my rose-colored prescription sunglasses, to get this effect]

"The Gnats of Pontatoc" (c) 2007

"The Gnats of Pontatoc, Tucson, Arizona" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks
[Images: "Swan Road from the Pontatoc Trail; "Blue Sky over Pontatoc"]

     First things first:

     Where does Stu live in the photo?

     The road you see to the left in the top photo is Swan Road, north of Tucson, Arizona. Go from bottom to top along Swan. About two thirds the way up the photo, up Swan, one third from the left, you'll see a patch of green. Looks like tall trees. They are tall trees, twenty five year old Eucalyptus and Pine trees. Under their shade is an apartment complex. In one of the units of that apartment complex is me, typing this post right now.  I affectionately call my apartment, The Owlry Studio, named after a family of Great Horned Owls that lived in the branches of those big trees, a few years ago. It's where I've recorded a lot of music, printed up many a giclee print, slept over a thousand nights, watched HBO's 'Deadwood' on DVD, and listened to thousands of hours of music. I've been frustrated by barking dogs from bad dog owners and inconsiderate people whose TVs sound like planes landing, but I'm grateful to my great neighbors, Margery, Christopher, and Bob who literally surround me. And it's where a 30 year old sculpture I carved, of an African Crucifix, hangs from my living room wall that's perpetually lit by colorful Christmas lights, wrapped around its body.

     About the photos, they were taken on Saturday. The Pontatoc trail, from which they were taken, dead-ends about halfway up the ridge. A steep primitive trail made by eager hikers leads then to the top. I didn't go the top peak on this frontal ridge of the Catalina Mountains that day, just to a saddle a mile from the top. Reason was that the gnats were just hell. Springtime in the Desert. Once we get a few weeks of 100 degree weather, the gnats die out, but until that happens, you are pretty much covered in bugs when you hike in some parts of the high desert. I was laughing at myself on Saturday though, hiking in 100 degree heat, with lots of water but it's never really enough, being beaten down by the Sun, the Wind, the Bugs, but still having the time of my life. "Beat Down Light" I coined it, of the harsh wondrous light, just a bit after Noon. Having a great time, getting the blood going, breathing in deep, feeling the endorphins in my brain. Yep, good times, until after I'd inhaled my tenth gnat and got tired of being gently bitten by them. I love hiking in the heat of the day though. Just me and the land. And I don't fault the gnats for having me for lunch. I was the only moist thing for miles around. You can't blame them for wanting to get a drink off my sweat. A good hike nonetheless, but cut a little short by the critters.

And I've often thought about doing a series on Blue Sky and White Clouds. Maybe this sky shot will be the beginning of something.

P.S. Again, don't forget to double click on the images. It'll make them bigger on your screen.

"Daisies for Blacksburg, Virginia" (c) 2007

"Daisies for Blacksburg, Virginia" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

[This image was taken in the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains, north of Tucson, last Saturday, perhaps around the time that Seung-Hui Cho was purchasing his second handgun.

My prayers and love go out to all those who were touched by this horrible tragedy in Blacksburg; the parents of the Dead, the children of the Dead, the frightened, the hurt, the injured, the tramatized. May healing occur for all of them and for all of us.

I also plead and pray that we place blame where it is belongs, not at the feet of the police or with the administation of Virginia Tech, but with the one person, who apparently with premeditation and volition commited these murders.

Seung-Hui Cho.

Lastly, a brief commentary:

I don't believe in Absolute Safety. This, I believe, is a specifically American delusion. Ask most people in the developing world, in Africa, in South America, in China, if they believe they can be protected ABSOLUTELY from harm, and they will, at best, look at you with puzzlement; at worst, laugh at you. Ask any poor kid in Compton, any adult child of alcoholics in Iowa, any old woman whose next door neighbors are crack addicts in Crack Central in Tucson and you will likely get a similiar response.

The World, as I see it, has always been a wondrously odd dicotomy of healing and hurt, comfort and cruelty, beauty and ugliness, love and resentment, peace and conflict, Heaven and Hell. And to expect otherwise is to wish to live in a shopping mall.

All I can do is be the best man I can be, be awake enough to avoid most danger, give love freely, let go of control, create some truth and beauty, and to try and leave the World a bit better than I found. That's pretty much it. A tall order granted, but so worth the effort.

As Joseph Campbell once said, 'Lean toward the Light.' I pray for us all to move to the Light, whatever that means to you, and to bring a bit of it back, to ourselves and to our community.

Love, light and luck,

Stu]

"A Thistle on Soldier's Trail" (c) 2007

"A Thistle on Soldier's Trail, Catalina Mountains, Arizona (c) 2007 Stu Jenks