Category: Storytelling

Photo by Joe WilcoxJan 9, 20156:56 am

Flickr a Day 9: ‘Third Age of Man’

Choosing one Neil Moralee photo to profile is an exhausting act of indecision. His candid photos are masterpieces in portrait—the majority black and white, cropped close, and set against dark background and emphasizing shadows. His subjects tend to be older, which is refreshing departure from so much photographic art focused on the young and beautiful.

I wouldn’t call self-titled “Third Age of Man” Neil’s best street portrait, but it’s captivating nevertheless. I look at the geezer and wonder: He looks so out of breath, but he’s riding not walking! I picked this pic not for what it is, but what Neil says about it, and he quotes an organization’s spiel verbatim:

Photo by Joe WilcoxJan 7, 20157:00 am

Flickr a Day 7: Rain Dance

Photographer Dmitry Ryzhkov is truly gifted. His photographs of Moscow are the human-interest equivalent of Google Street View. You feel like you are present, with his subjects, embarrassingly the voyeur. His blog is appropriately called “Moments of Life“. Dimitry’s photos are that and more.

He joined Flickr in September 2011 and is active on many social media services or sites, including 500px, Pinterest, and Tumblr. The photo I select looks like it was formatted for Instagram, being it’s square.

Photo by Joe WilcoxJan 5, 20156:31 am

Flickr a Day 5: ‘Style Over Speed’

At age 25, I begrudgingly got my driver’s license. How un-American, right? Or strange given I grew up in Northern Maine, where snow covers the ground seven months of the year. But anywhere I couldn’t walk, I biked. So it is with delight that today’s Flickr pic represents a bicycle enthusiast, and he has so many great photos posted (more than 26,000) choosing one is challenging. Self-titled “Style Over Speed” is by no means his best, not by any measure, but it’s such a poser I couldn’t resist.

Film director Mikael Colville-Andersen, who joined Flickr in August 2006, lives in Copenhagen, Denmark. His street photography is art. He writes: “Zakkatography is a state of mind. It’s a taste in your mouth, a warm fuzzy feeling. It’s groovy interior design shots, stunning architectural studies and it’s especially raw streetaciousness. Urban fragments with urban creatures. Zakkatography is your friend. Embrace it”. I will, and so should you!

Photo by Joe WilcoxJan 3, 20156:07 am

Flickr a Day 3: ‘In Trouble’

Born in Indiana but living in Croatia, Phil Dragash joined Flickr in March 2007, while still a teenager. Self-titled “In Trouble” captures a moment you want to know more about, and all Phil tells us: […]

Photo by Joe WilcoxJan 1, 20153:51 pm

Flickr a Day 1: Reflect

I so enjoyed preparing the voyeur gallery posted yesterday, more, more, more is my mood. So, assuming I won’t forget and misstep later on, today starts the first of 365 Creative Commons-licensed photos picked from […]

Apple by Joe WilcoxDec 31, 201411:03 am

Five Tech Products Changed My Digital Lifestyle in 2014

Looking back on this last day of the year, I wonder how my daily tech changed so much since the first. On Jan. 1, 2014, my core computing comprised Chromebook, Nexus tablet, and Nexus smartphone. Midyear, I switched out to all Microsoft—buying Surface Pro 3 and Nokia Lumia Icon. While commendable the effort, Windows poorly fit my lifestyle. Today, I’m all Apple—13-inch MacBook Pro Retina Display with 512GB SSD, iPhone 6 128GB, and iPad Air 128GB. I can’t imagine using anything else.

I abandoned my Google lifestyle for numerous reasons, with my desire to create more content rather than consume it being primary. Google gives great contextual computing, with respect to information that is relevant to where you are and even what you want. But Android and Chrome OS, and their supporting apps, aren’t mature enough platforms for consistent content creation.

Photo by Joe WilcoxDec 31, 201412:12 am

‘Mine’ Flickr Voyeur

For the last post, I searched Flickr for “mine”, hoping to uncover an appropriate Creative Commons-licensed pic. Instead, I fell into a voyeur spell. This gallery is a sampling of the fantastic photos, many of […]

Storytelling by Joe WilcoxDec 28, 201410:12 pm

Empire State

I fancied myself a lyricist in my bygone youth (okay, still do today). Bernie Taupin and Tim Rice inspired my topical, storytelling style. I was prolific in my teens and twenties, writing words for eventual melodies. I never envisioned wordsmithery of any other kind and still wonder how prose came to be my profession. It’s not my first love.

Occasionally I put melody and verse together, as is the case with the song (or lyric to it) below. December 1979, just after Midnight on a Sunday morning, I looked down Manhattan’s 34th Street from FDR Drive at the Empire State Building. The night was cold. I was alone, bored, and angry. I wrote the first two stanzas and chorus right then, with melody, and added the last stanza about a month later.

This song, and several others, will appear in my forthcoming book My Blood, which begins serialization someday, credited to fictional character Cusper Rhodes.

Living by Joe WilcoxNov 11, 20148:19 pm

What the Hell is a Biter?

Not long ago, I considered myself still tapped into popular vernacular. I am a people and culture junkie, after all. But today, three barbers showed how clueless and out of touch is this 55 year-old man. I’m not sure which depresses more, the realization or confessing it.

My barber personalizes his workspace with Jack Daniels jars and other signature items described but I couldn’t see. Hey, he takes off my glasses to cut what little hair I have, and my vision blows without them. His coworker in the next chair complained about another guy who comes in to buy hair-cutting supplies and selfies in front of my barber’s chair space. The evidence is on Instagram.

Aspiration by Joe WilcoxNov 11, 20141:21 pm

A Storyteller Returns (Or So I Hope)

One of my favorite bloggers is photographer Carl Rytterfalk, whose voice silenced several years ago. But in a post overnight (in my time zone) he asks: “Am I back?” That’s a good question, which answer is complicated.

“In February 2013 my life changed dramatically with the early birth of my son who was born with the rare and somewhat difficult chromosome disorder named Trisomy 9 mosaic”, he writes about his absence. “Since William was born I’ve been using Facebook instead of rytterfalk.com and I think it should be the other way around. So I’m trying to convince myself that it’s ok for a while to post more from life and when ready—about photography, too”.

Society by Joe WilcoxNov 10, 201410:26 pm

The Best Content is Original

A dozen or so times a day, I figuratively puke all over my iPad Air, out of disgust when reading stories that are plagiarism aggregated, rumors that source nothing more original than some blog or would-be news site, or an echo chamber of repetition—news posts repeating the same, unsourced or poorly-sourced allegations. But occasionally, original content shines through, like Josh Lowensohn’s “I used Apple’s AirDrop to troll strangers with photos of space sloths (And it’s been going on for months)” for The Verge.

Josh doesn’t recap another blogger’s experience, by aggregating something original into a shallow repeat. He produces something enthralling, a story told with vigor, drawn from experience. It’s a confessional. About something sneaky. Invasive. Maybe even illegal. But fun, and activity the reader might wish he or she had been clever enough to have imagined or fearless enough to have done.

People by Joe WilcoxNov 9, 20147:04 pm

A Veteran’s Day Story

I took my father-in-law to IKEA for lunch today. He prefers to eat there, but never on Sunday because the store is so busy. The eatery is by far the most hectic area, with little kids running round and little seating to pick from. He had asked me to choose where to dine, and I decided to challenge the masses. The man also likes a good deal, and the retailer advertised free food for Veterans from November 9 to 11. But we got something better: A cashier’s thoughtfulness.

My father-in-law was 18 years-old when Germany invaded Poland and set World War II in motion. The young man started his active military career in 1943; he already was a reservist because of ROTC. Seventy-one years later, the elder gent is reluctant to discuss his service—and he is no fan of war movies.