Dead Santa's

As I drive around the neighborhood I am aware of an eerie presence by the number of nylon corpses scattered about the various front yards that I refer to as “Dead Santa’s.”  During the day they lay silently dormant and as the sun sets they become alive.

They are sort of  like Christmas Vampires coming alive when night comes and darkness descends on the land. They are sort of a representation of how we seem to celebrate the spirit of Christmas, which is basically a gaudy greedy profit seeking corporate heist of this special season.  We witness each home seeming trying to outdo his neighbor in decorative light show and blown up Santa’s that look like a small-scale version of Las Vegas.

And, as we drive by these houses we are mesmerized by these bobbing nylon Santa’s, one wonders what does this have to do with “peace on Earth, goodwill toward men”?   Maybe during the light of day when the sun comes up and these bobbing nylon Santa’s deflate are we brought back to reality?  These dead deflated Santa’s should have us reflect about a Christmas that is much more than inflated balloons.

Alternate Realities

Antique shops always hold a certain fascination with me. There is a somewhat weird thing that happens to me, I seem to search out all the strange dolls or mannequins that reside within their walls or do they search out me?  Maybe it is because they are always staring at me and seem to want to say something; of course they can’t or can they.

I often wonder what they would say to me if they could, and like wise there are things I would like to ask them. Where did you reside before you ended up here and what stories do you have to tell.  And so, I use my photography to capture the feelings I feel while roaming down the isles where antique objects seem to want to communicate with me and I so back at them.

I feel certain sadness as I move past these silent objects.  It becomes an eerie world where the past seems to form an alternate reality with the present as you pass each area of objects -knowing that these objects sitting silently before you were loved and cherished before they were assigned to this antique limbo.

Technically -because the lighting usually changes from area to area you find yourself changing your ISO often (ISO 500-800 with a shutter speed of 1/60 sec).  Also, many of the objects are sometimes among other clutter -which becomes a challenge to isolate what you want to show. Some burning in of surrounding objects in post processing helps and because of the lighting, you are usually shooting with wide-open f-stops, which also help with selective focus.