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J R Compton Love Triangle Rhomboid January 2013 photograph 16 x 23 inches
My most recent Dead Flowers in Little Boxes photo series [sample above and links below] is a branch off my much longer Home Still Lifes photo series, which begat my Dead Flowers photo series, whicht itself has, from time to time veered off to include dead flowers and dead flowers in little boxes. There's a heart-shaped object in this one, because I was invited to submit images to be included in the annual Corazón show at the Bath House Cultural Center, where I've probably shown more of my photographs than anywhere else in the known universe.
The juried exhibition's rules insisted we include "artistic interpretations of the human heart," even though most of the hearts in the show, are not human hearts and look almost nothing at all like human hearts.
And after that compound complex paragraph, I probably should organize a bunch of the photographs that have comprised those series over the last decade or so. And I might. Mostly, I just wanted something new here, at the top of the page.
I made two images for the Corazon show. One was
entered and accepted into the show. This is the other one that was begun and
completed after the deadline to enter the show. I kept wondering why I made it,
and why I paid for making a beautiful 16 x 23-inch photographic print of it.
I tried to get it into the show, but the curator said his walls were already
full. I suppose I could enter it next year, if I am invited to enter next year's
show. I've looked for other Valentine-related shows around here. I may just be
stuck with this. But I love it, so that's copacetic, but I'd love to show it.
I've already wired it, and it's all ready to go.
I love this photograph: My Dad, who was "The Oldest" at the Clare Family Reunion:
together with eight-month-old Laila Kate Reinfelds with hands left & right
of Mary Clare Compton and Kelley ReinfeldsMy latest Clare Family Reunion page has been online since late last summer. It's like in some ways and unlike in some other ways my earlier Pictures from a Reunion I did for our last reunion four years ago.
Anna's and my 2012 Reunion Tour wound our way through East Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi (to see Anna's high school friends), Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina (I don't remember those at all), Tennessee (to the Clare Family Reunion), Kentucky (Anna's grade school friends), Indiana (to visit my oldest and dearest friend), Missouri, Arkansas and back to Texas in two long, hard driving weeks with lots of rest and recreation in the betweens — including a full week with the Clares. Grand fun. Plenty of diversity.
The Blue Window on the Houseboat We Slept in One Night on the Redneck Riviera
Join the Quarterback Club October 21, 2012
Last autumn I spent an inordinant amount of time documentating the State Fair of Texas, and tThat page comprises as wide a variety of State Fair pix as I could manage — and there's a lot of them.
I am so many different people I'm never sure whom to push — or whether I should bother if I'm having as much fun this lifetime as I think I am.
I have been a professional photographer since 1964, with a couple of sites and many photo pages [below]. Some here on my personal site, others on DallasArtsRevue.com. But of all those, my favorite pages are about my family. The latest big page of family pictures is My Mother's 90th Birthday Celebration. Before that was My Father's 97th Birthday Party, although he doesn't like all the hubub of parties, so we'll probably have to wait for his 100th.
I'm also a writer and editor and website guy. I have done very large (Joel Cooner Gallery) and still do DallasArtsRevue.com. My middle-sized site action has waned (like the mostly defunct Lotus Eaters.org), but I still do the ocassional really good little sites like Jane Cornish Smith) for artists, I photograph art and I write about a lot of what I do.
Photographs
The great love of my life is photography, and there are many photos on this and my other sites.
Kathy Boortz Exacting Fiddler
The best, most often updated, most popular and informative of my photography pages is How to Photograph Art. It is one of my two most popular pages, and I've got feedback from all over the U.S. and Europe about it. It's also the most fun, and I almost always have new ideas for things to teach with it, if I can figure out how to say and show it.
One of my other most popular page is The Birds of the Rio Grande II. I'm a good teacher, but I have issues with authority figures and bureaucracy. Teaching via web pages just makes more sense.
Other photo info pages include some of my blogs listed below.
One of my favorite ongoing photographic series is of dead flowers. Because there are several pages on my various sites of those, I now have a Dead Flowers Index, although I have not yet tracked down all my dead flower pix there.
Photographs are everywhere.
It's not one of my official photo series, but over the years I have photographed a lot of people's houses. Some in the guise of studio visits, some just because that place fascinated me. Here's Somebody's House in East Dallas. And here's a whole other way of showing where my mother and father used to live — Maravilla for Mom.
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.
J R Compton The Trinity 2007 digital photo montage from The Matt Kaplinski Collection
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 The Dallas Times Herald, Dallas NOTES from The Underground, HOOKA, The Austin Sun, The Edinburg Daily Review and had photos published in dozens of other publications around the world, including Life Magazine, The Texas Observer and the Dallas Observer.
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 our 40th Anniversary Reunion party. I love photographing parties, but no one ever hires me to do that. I also enjoy photographing art, and from time to time someone will hire me to do more of that.
I've also been a photojournalist, typesetter, community 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 have curated exhibitions and am a published and self-published art critic — writing about art longer than anyone else in Dallas.
I used to collect jobs. Check out my resume for most of them. But in the last ten years plus, I've kept the same ones. Never know how long that will last.
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.
I don't like to do the same any 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 medium keeps changing.
My Blogs
Stringy Kites with Dallas Skyline
Every time I get a new camera, I start a new Learning My New Camera blog, and the collection now includes my d7k journal about me learning the Nikon D7000, My (Panasonic Lumix) G2 Journal that are ongoing, and the Canon S90, Nikon D300 (in there somewhere) and D200 journals that are mostly finished.
Often my favorite blog is my ThEdBlog (spelled and pronounced thed blog), which is me blogging about me publishing DallasArtsRevue and living life as I have come to understand it, if I even approximate that task. Those pages are illustrated with often enigmatic photographs from my personal existence.
My G2 Journal is about my microFourThirds camera, the Panasonic G2. I got it in late February 2011, and I've been going through an intensified learning experience with it and its lenses. I like it because it's light and fits in my small hands, and the pictures I get with it are different enough from my usual styles, that I'm excited to show new shots with it often (but no longer every day).
Then there's Art Here Lately, which shows and tells about art here lately. Art by people who live in and around Dallas, Texas, USA. Art I've seen recently and thought worthy of writing about. And photographing. I don't entirely ignore the rest of the world of art, just mostly.
I've nearly abandoned my S90 Journal that offered insights into the Canon S90 I still sometimes stuff into my pocket when I don't have a photographic agenda, although lately I just carry my G2. Then came Canon S90 Tips & Accessories and Canon S90 Accessory Reviews, which are still popular even though I have all but abandoned them. It's nice little camera whose major saving grace is that it fits in a pants or shorts pocket, so sometimes I still carry it there.
J R Compton The Sleeping Man: digital montage 2012
model - Alex Troup assistant - Anna Palmer
Bloggish in a photographic way is my DallasArtsRevue members page of usually very recent photographs, often of personal images, but this was for my only gallery showing in 2012. Called Fictional, the invitational required a series of elements for each artist's image. Mine called for "A sleeping man. Mysterious shadows in the dark. Mirrors and written notes." More info about how it came to be on the page linked just above. My photo did not win the best of show award, but it was widely used it the show's publicity, and I am still very pleased with how it turned out.
I also cover DallasArtsRevue's exhibitions blog style in an ongoing art criticism series called Art Here Lately. These are huge, all in one, blog pages that include all the excruciating details in the production of our member and invitational exhibitions. The last one was The DallasArtsREVUE 30th Anniversary Member show at the Bath House Cultural Center December 5 2009 through January 2010. Before that were Fierce and The Winter Show.
Birds
Hummingbirds in Kentucky
The Amateur Birder's Journal — more info below, takes up most of my time and effort online. About three times a week I show bird photographs from White Rock Lake in Dallas, Texas, USA and as far as Montana, Colorado and The Lower Rio Grande Valley and other places we wander. The six years of my Birder Journal is indexed here. There's also a bibliography of useful books, a links page to other lake and bird and other sites and a Feedback page and dozens of others linked from the index.
My Annotated Map of White Rock Lake
The Egrets, species by species, now with babies
The Herons, including babies of several species
Herons vs. Egrets — How to tell them apart.
Several Strange Things Pelicans Do with Their Beaks
Birds Rousing — from the Middle English rousen, to shake the feathers
Fourteen Seconds of Eagle at White Rock Lake
Index of My Bird Pages and Stories
Art
J R Compton White Daisy Open Book digital photograph
hinged wood box, white daisy flower and orange daisy petalsDallasArtsRevue includes — in its more than five 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.
Ideas
Me Meditating in Casa Rinconada at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico
Spiritual — The Meta Index includes links to my photographic pages of SolstiCelebrations and other bits of magic.
Images of personal and public magic
My metaphysical and philosophical writings about intimacy and prayer and some other stuff.
A Meditation of the Five Ancient Elements, and
J R Compton's Cosmic Coping Kit of Metaphysical & Other Knowledge
1,622 Movies Reviewed — from the big screen, DVDs and VHSs. Usually short and sweet reviews, but I can ramble about movies.
Family
My Mother Celebrating Her 90th Birthday — She's the one in the middle
My Mother's 90th Birthday in early 2011
My Father's 97th Birthday in late 2010. He's 98 now.
The Clare Family Story - my mother, Mary Clare Compton'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 - How my father's mother died in a fire saving his life, and what happened after that.
The Bird of Paradise flowers were one of more than 100 species of plants at the house near Mission, Texas where my family lived for 40 years. I did Maravilla for Mom, of, in and around my family's home of 40 years before my parents moved to San Antonio to retire.
That page was a loving visual essay of many of the family, friends and rooms, spaces, places and art that comprised their home — so Mom can go back and visit it whenever she wants.
Resume
My full resume
The shows my photographs have been in
Exhibitions I've produced and/or curated.
My logo designs
My latest email address is always on this site's Contact page, which is not anywhere near as entertaining as the Contact page for DallasArtsRevue.
