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THIS PAGE Art Birds Photographs Ideas Family Resumes Websites Blogs
Welcome to J R Compton dot com
Somebody's
House in East Dallas
I am a photographer, writer, editor and art critic, exhibition organizer, poet, curator, promoter and website producer. Among other things.
I have been a Staff Photographer for several newspapers, photojournalist, typesetter, public radio and TV producer, milkman, Secret Film Courier in Viet Nam, Instructor of Photography and Publication Design for honors college classes, Yellow Cab Driver, Publisher of Underground Newspapers and a Night Watchman at a Massage Parlor. I used to collect jobs. Check out my resume [link below] for most of them. But in the last five years plus, I've kept the same old ones.
Illustrators Dan Hubig & the late Andy Poyner at The Austin Sun in 1975-76
In March 2009 I began a page of Austin Sun Photographs I shot in 1975 and 76. Forty years later on Halloween 2009 I extensively photographed the 40th Anniversary Reunion party.
My photographs have been published in dozens of publications around the world, including LIfe, Jet and Texas Monthly and they've been exhibited in more than 90 art exhibitions, though I've grown tired of making prints when web images are so much easier, more beautiful and more accessible.
I don't like to do the same thing for very long, so I don't. I'm easily bored but never without something interesting to do. And I keep coming back to making photographs — especially of birds and art, and writing, editing, designing and publishing — community-based publications (including this one), although the mediums keep changing.
Blogs
The blog I put the most energy into is my Amateur Birder's Journal — more info below.
ThEdblog - As the editor of DallasArtsRevue I do a blog, often but not every day. It used to be illustrated with work by DallasArtsRevue Supporting Members, lately it's been mostly my own strange work in a new series that's neither bird nor art related, though it may be art.
Bloggish in a photographic way is my DallasArtsRevue members page of usually very recent photographs, often of very personal images.
I also cover DallasArtsRevue exhibitions in blog style. These are huge, all in one, blog pages that include all the excruciating details in the production of our member and invitational exhibitions. The next one is The DallasArtsREVUE 30th Anniversary Member show at the Bath House Cultural Center December 5 2009 through January 2010. Blogs for previous shows include Fierce and The Winter Show.
Then there's Art Here Lately, which does art here lately. Art by people who live around here.
My Facebook page and another one on some silly business site — maybe Linkedup — are often inactive, because I just don't have time for fake friends and business associationes in addition to all my real friends and people i do real work with who talk and email with me and read my stories.
Birds
Four Ibises flying over Dallas from the Trinity River — from
the September page of J R's Amateur Birder's Journal
J R's Amateur Birder's Journal is updated almost every day in a personal bird journal documenting Dallas' White Rock Lake and other places, including west to the Grand Canyon, south to The Lower Rio Grande Valley, and north to Colorado, among other directions. Begun in June 2006, the journal is indexed here, but the current month's journal is always here.
There's also a bibliography of useful books, a links page to other lake and bird and other sites and a Feedback page, a readers' bird I.D page and dozens of others linked from the index.
Anna's Arm & Susan's Hand through the storms September 12, 2009
Art
DallasArtsRevue includes — in its more than twelve hundred web pages — art, art stories, art criticism and news, views and reviews of, by and for the artists of Dallas, Texas, USA.
My DallasArtsRevue Supporting Member page always includes some of my more recent photographs.
I'm the editor, publisher and writer. It's the main reason I'm still here.
Bright Darkness at White Rock Lake
Photographs
The great love of my life is photography, and there are many photographs on this and my other sites.
Photographs are everywhere.
Poemagraphics combined poetry and photographs many years ago when websites with pictures loaded much more slowly than they do now, so the pictures were smaller.
Grasslands (Kom) Monkey Mask
Photograph by J R Compton for Joel Cooner Gallery
Click image for more info.Websites
I do websites besides this one, including huge ones for Joel Cooner Gallery and DallasArtsRevue, but I've been doing fewer in the last few years.
I do good ones, sometimes great ones. My sites are simple. I'm not a great technician, but I believe that technology serves some website clients well.
For most, however, simple is better. I like working on artist's sites, because I like artists. It only gets expensive when they need to show everything they've ever done. Better to start with now and add new material as they are made. That way people see the energy put into the site, and respond with energy of their own.
The problem with websites is that putting them up is only the beginning. No one goes back to sites that don't constantly add energy by updating and adding. That takes a lot of work, and website owners either have to do it themselves or pay somebody else to.
When I have time and patience, I offer free advice for people who one:
My Websites page lists the sites I've done and am doing. There's a lot of variety there. And a page of My Prices.
What You Have to Do to Get Your Own Website includes what I (or your webbie does, will do, needs to do) plus major things that need doing that your webbie cannot do: info about your URL; your Web Host; some Warnings; how to organize your site; pictures; and Keywords
The I.S.P. page includes important info about Internet Service Providers, the very different Web Host, Domain Registration and the very important and difficult to come by information about How to Change Web Hosts, along with How to Promote Your Website, something most website owners will not do.
What should you put on your pages?
That's easy. You.
Although it can become one, a website should not begin as an archive of who you were back when. It should reflect who you are now, and what you did yesterday, what you're working on today and thinking about doing tomorrow.
Put your latest work on the top, so people know you've changed the page and the site. Online, the bottom line is on the top.
Many people won't scroll down if what's on the top is the same old thing. That's why I love doing my blogs, because I keep getting to put my newest images on top.
Ideas
Spiritual — The Meta Index includes links to my photographic pages of SolstiCelebrations.
images of personal and public magic,
my metaphysical and philosophical writings about intimacy and prayer,
a Meditation of the Five Ancient Elements, and
J R Compton's Cosmic Coping Kit of Metaphysical & Other Knowledge
Movies Reviewed— 1,280 movies reviewed from the big screen, DVDs and VHSs. Usually short and sweet.
Family
Mom, 88, & Dad, 96, playing in the elevator
The Clare Family Reunion in Estes Park, Colorado in early August 2008
The Clare Family Story - my mother's family story
Back Home in Indiana - my father, John T. Compton's Story
The Ballad of Harold & Emily - my mother's parents' story
The Fire - my father's parents story
Resume
My full resume
The shows my photographs were in
Exhibitions I've produced and
My logo designs
Red House in Sun and Rain - August 1 2009
My latest email address is always on this site's Contact page.
