December 2nd, 2009 - Candlewasting

I have been running a second blog for some time now that hasn't been getting the Tender Loving Care that it so richly deserves, what with all my important obligations and whatnot.
It was called "Candlewasting" and had been featuring more of the abstract and experimental photography that I am inspired to dabble in now and again.
I have decided to euthanise it, but before doing so, I'm moving it's few existing images over here to Infinite U.
It seemed rather redundant to have a second photo blog, and it wasn't generating much traffic (probably because it rarely changed), but I liked the name. It was spawned from a short-lived local band that played around Minneapolis during the mid-1980's called "The Candlewasters", which I thought was a great name for a band. It turned out to be pretty much a better name than the band.
At the time they shared the stage with such local luminaries as TVBC (Television Before Christ), Ultravivid Scene, Supernova Dumpster, and Trip Shakespeare, which went on to 'fame' and 'bigger and better things'. I guess the competition was just too much. Such is the reality of the music scene.

So here is the first installment memorializing 'Candlewasting'.

It lives on in spirit if not in practice, those times when we buy up all the tackiest candles we can find at Savers and Sally's Army and light them in honor of those past. Rest in peace, dear blog. Your life was short but meaningful. May your candles burn long, and turn into cool shapes before they burn out. (Throws clump of wax onto casket).

Above we have a panorama of the 'Stone Arch Bridge' in downtown Minneapolis, a very old structure over the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls, which really aren't there anymore, having been over-taxed by mill-races and water-wheels to the point of collapse in the mid-19th century. That series of photos were taken on one painfully cold day in February 2007 when the river had been lowered to a trickle for maintenance for the first time in 13 years. It was really something to see, cold or no.
You should be able to click the image and see it big.
The bubbly thing is actually a glass-block window at the Nokomis Coffee Shop, taken on a spring day in 2009, lit by the colors of the parking lot and yard next door.
The pudgy Eastern Tiger Salamander lives at Wood Lake Nature Center in a special tank with a river flowing through it. It is the place I would live if I were a captive salamander and had a choice of where to live.

To conclude, I've added one of my favorite pics of my 1962 Harmony arch-top 'f-hole' guitar. Not a sought after collector's item, but one of my personal favorite instruments nonetheless.
I shot a close-up and bent it into a sphere with Paint Shop Pro's 'circle geometry' function.
And so it goes. More candles to waste later. Remember: 'Dusty candles are a sin.'
Ciao.